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So why are men disposable?

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On Monday we posted an article questioning why news reports of armed conflict highlight numbers of female deaths, but tend to leave unmentioned the number of casualties who are male — even when more men than women have been killed.

The article triggered a passionate debate across Twitter and Facebook — some arguing men’s deaths shouldn’t be highlighted because men are responsible for starting wars in the first place; others saying that deaths of conscripted men and of male civilians, are being unjustly minimised by a “hierarchy of victimhood”.

One of insideMAN’s regular readers, Darren Ball, was part of the discussion. Here’s his response.

Biologically speaking, men are much more disposable than women. We are only here as a species because we have been successful at reproduction; because one man can father thousands of children, we don’t need many men. Scientists have been able to prove that throughout history a much higher proportion of women than men have passed on their genes, which suggests that women have been selective in their breeding.

Another clue is that men are generally stronger than women – this is a sign that men have an innate protective role. We would be a very badly adapted species if we weren’t innately more protective of women. If nature had selected a characteristic in which women, not men, were most inclined to fight off an invading force or hostile animals, then our offspring would have been slaughtered in the womb whilst the much stronger men cowered in a corner.

Some will counter that men are not more protective of women and cite male-on-female violence as proof. However, my claim is that men are innately more protective of women in their circle of concern (their own family, tribe, country, creed, etc.), but not necessarily of women of enemy civilisations.

‘Visceral and innate’

As for domestic violence, there are some cultures in which male-on-female domestic violence is allowed, and even encouraged, but this is not a human universal characteristic: it is only acceptable in certain cultures, so it is not innate. Even in those cultures, men protect “their” women from external assaults.

DV is quite common in all cultures, even where it is not tolerated; this may suggest that it is rooted in some innate characteristics. However, it does not disprove the theory that men are innately protective towards women. British men are twice as likely to be violent towards a male partner than a female partner, and women in lesbian relationships are at three-times the risk of heterosexual women. Similar patterns are to be found in other western countries. This evidence suggests that in societies where DV towards women is not an acceptable part of the culture, violent men exercise more restraint around women than they do around men, and women are more violent to other women than men are.

Men are more violent than women overall, but usually they are violent towards other men despite the greater risk to themselves.

Our greater outrage to mortar attacks on women is visceral and innate, no matter how much we rationalise it otherwise; it’s a reaction that has served our species well. However acknowledging that society is naturally more protective of women than men does not fit our current paradigm of women being disadvantaged everywhere and maleness being a dysfunctional mutation of the human species.

‘What about the menz?’

Acknowledgement of our greater concern for women, would require us to bestow a virtue on men for favouring the interests of women over themselves, and of bravery and chivalry. This wouldn’t fit our paradigm either: men are not allowed to have any particular virtues.

The reaction by many men (often myself) to our current feminist-inspired paradigm is to say “what about the men being [insert issue of choice]?” Is what feminists often dismissively describe as “what about the menz?”

These men have a good point: you can’t hold the view that men have nothing particular to offer and society discriminates only against women, and then start calling for special treatment for women whenever some nasty shit happens (which we don’t just do in war zones, but also in the criminal justice system, domestic violence, mental health, physical health, etc.).

Asking for equal care for men is valid and rational, but it’s only one way to square the circle. The alternative, which may sometimes be more appropriate, is to reject the paradigm altogether. Perhaps a war zone is one such instance where we allow ourselves to be more concerned for the women than the men, because men are a tougher bunch who should be protecting their women and children, as they have done since the birth of civilisation. Men are good like that.

By Darren Ball

What do you think? Should we give equal importance to male deaths in conflict as we do to female deaths? If not, why not? Tell us what you think in a tweet or a comment.

Photo courtesy: State Library of South Australia

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  • Nigel

    An excellent tour through the issues. I suspect the logic of our biology is both stronger than we like to think and results in more variety than we seem to admit. The cultural rules seem to have considerable variations. In an entirely novel time , in most of the world , of plenty, fertility control and sheer numbers of us we are able to escape that logic and invent new responses to an unprecedented set of circumstances . In the early “dating violence ” studies what was striking was, the actually not so surprising, tolerance by young men of violence against themselves ( by both sexes). If we are to find lots of willing recruits to danger . Then those recruits have to themselves value their lives less than those who benefit . With the WW1 “commemorations” one is puzzled at the apparent willingness of such numbers to continue to face time and again such horror and not simply walk away, at least partly protecting abstractions rather than their family. Certainly in our culture it is hard to identify a norm at variance with “protect and serve” even if individuals fail to live up to the norm( and in doing so get punished). Just heard the UN secretary general make the remark on a news report , that the casualties include women and children. Examining the reasons that is such a norm if investigated would say a lot about our society.

  • Scott

    It’s interesting listening to some people try to justify sexism. Women and men used to have different rights and responsibility and a similar rational was used to justify it. Women did not have the vote, in part, because they were not expected to sacrifice their lives. That rational has been universally rejected. However, it seems that similar rationals are still being touted as reasons that the suffering of men is less significant. In the modern world, where equality is seen as a right, universal, and equal, compassion for the suffering of others should also be a right.

    One of the rationals offered in this article is that one man can impregnate many women. If we look back in history we can see that the childhood mortality rate was 50% or greater. Certainly children raised without fathers to provide and protect for them faced an even higher mortality rate. So while the act of becoming pregnant does not require very many men in a population, the act of raising a child to an age where they can procreate certainly does require a lot more men. Any parent knows that parenting is difficult for two parents in the modern era. In the past a single mother would struggle to survive herself, let a lone raise a child or multiple children. It seems some people have no concept of a father’s role in raising, protecting and providing for his children in this day and age, let alone hundreds of years in the past when survival was much less a certainty.

    • Darren Ball

      Hi Scott,

      There are other ways in which societies can structure themselves for the protection of children that does not involve the nuclear family. If there aren’t enough men in a particular society, that society might evolve a polygamous family style.

      In the traditional Cherokee society, children are raised by the mother and her extended family. If she wants to divorce her husband, all she has to do is put his belongings outside the home and he would go back and live with his mum (which de facto is pretty much what now often happens in the UK). Male Cherokee are primarily responsible for providing for and protecting their nieces and nephews rather than their sons and daughters who are protected by their maternal uncles.

      I am not suggesting that the suffering of men is less significant. I’m suggesting that we are biologically hard-wired to have less sympathy for men suffering physical hardship – not just in case of war, but also natural disasters, when we see homeless people or hear of people injured/killed in accidents. I think we should admit to ourselves that we do this, so that we can compensate for it and don’t ignore male suffering.

      Because out current Zeitgeist won’t allow us to recognise that we are more protective of women than men – it doesn’t fit the “women are victims, men are bad” narrative – our society finds other ways to justify providing more support for women than men – including peddling false statistics and making sweeping false generalisations. In means giving women privilege but without allowing men to derive any sense of worth, pride or recognition for having done so. If there is a crisis in masculinity, then this may have something to do with it. Nothing about masculinity is allowed to be celebrated. Apparently we have nothing particular to offer, until we do, but then we all collectively pretend that we didn’t. I’m not surprised that men are confused.