Apparently, we live in a brutal patriarchal society, awash with misogyny and toxic masculinity, where women are excluded, exploited, oppressed, and objectified; where women walk in constant fear of sexual violence; where any woman who dares raise her voice in protest becomes the target of vicious harassment and threats of rape and death. That’s one narrative, anyway. And it’s bullshit.
And yet it is a narrative with huge traction, propagated in pomo academic circles, defaulted to by the media, and piously deferred to by public officials. It spins off moral panics about sex on campus, women in gaming, women in STEM, women on the internet. Women’s issues are burning issues—men, as the perceived bearers of power and privilege, not to mention the perceived oppressors, misogynists, and rapists, apparently do not have any issues at all. Nor are they supposed to express opinions about any of this; they are supposed to shut up and listen to the women. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit.
Women in the developed world live in societies with universal suffrage and legislated equality. We are safer, freer, better educated, and have more personal choice and power over our own bodies than ever before. We outnumber men in higher education and in the electorate, dominate social media on the internet, and control at least half the wealth and about two-thirds of the consumer spending. We have lower unemployment rates than men, and dramatically lower rates of death by suicide, homicide, and workplace injury. We are as yet under-represented in corporate boardrooms and the higher echelons of government, but year by year our numbers there are growing.
Sisters, in case this has escaped your notice, we have already won.
[Up next: Rape Culture]
