The Second Sexism is just victim-envy

Are men the new women? Are they having a harder time than silly moaning ladies? Has feminism gone too far? Has political correctness been put away for its own good? These are such familiar cultural tropes that we may dismiss the word trope altogether. Instead I would use another word: tripe. Still, abundant tripe trickles down from on high, even academe. Every so often a new tome details how men, not women, are discriminated against (apart from rape, murder, equal pay, genital mutilation, the power imbalance in politics, business, education, law and arts they may have a point). Things are tough for some guys. Really, I know that. I just find it hard to accept feminism has gone too far, that a bit of underarm hair signals the end of western civilisation. It is entirely possible to understand that many men are suffering at the moment without scapegoating feminism. That is the David Willetts manoeuvre: unemployment largely affecting working-class men is somehow the fault of middle-class women. Now we have Professor David Benatar from Cape Town addressing "the systemic discrimination against men" in a book called The Second Sexism. As always he has to set up some straw women: egalitarian feminists (good) against partisan feminists (bad). He also veers into quite bonkers territory. One of the ways men are more discriminated against is that there are more of them in prison than women. I may be missing something here, but I thought it was to do with them doing more crime? Even the title annoyed me, though. Simone de Beauvoir must be twisting in her chignon, for she understood sexual politcs and its contradictions. There are many ways to understand power in theory. Read some Foucault. And there are many ways in practice. Have a relationship with another human being. The power dynamics between men and women mean that it is possible to argue for equal rights for women while acknowledging that life chances for many men are also on lockdown. Right now, in terribly poor countries, girls are left to die in famines and the last food is given to baby boys, while in terribly rich ones, battles rage over who gets control of women's bodies, women themselves or the state. Still, Benatar lists the ways in which men are discriminated against, from corporal punishment, to conscription to circumcision to paternity leave and "bodily privacy". All of this is done without class or context – he is a philosopher, all right? – and without seemingly much knowledge of actual feminism. While seeking to define them, he blurs the difference between disadvantage and discrimination and so ends up asking if we need affirmative action for men. We already have it. It's called the status quo. Strangely enough, in Volume 2 of The Second Sex, some 60 years ago, De Beauvoir spoke precisely of the prize of liberation: "to carry off this supreme victory, men and women must, among other things and beyond their natural differentiations, unequivocally affirm their brotherhood". Distinguishing sex from gender ("One is not born but rather becomes a woman"), she set off a train of thought about how we all construct ourselves. Freedom from the straitjacket of femininity for women brings with it a freedom for men too, for the price they pay for their dominance is well documented in terms of men's mental and physical health. It is no shock though that at a time when women's rights are under attack (austerity hitting women hardest, abortion under threat), the politics of envy rears its head. For it is victim-envy, this me-too masculism. Or let's just call it out: it is basic conservatism that says any challenge to the system, any rights won, have gone "too far". These people cannot speak about the inequalities riven between classes, ethnicities and genders because it's all about individuals who power through. Thus, we have the mutant Tory feminists whose credo is: "I can have my cake and eat it. Get your own cake." I mind that they don't share the cake, but not whether they keep their faces honeymoon-fresh or not. I am simply bewildered by a feminism that would not want to advance women's control of their own reproduction. Still, we all get bamboozled with the choices women now have. Despite everyday stories of violence and abuse against women, we are now to refer to prostitution as "sex work". I still await the dinner party where middle-class parents tell me: "Tom is doing his law conversion but even though Charlotte hasn't done her Sats she already says she want to do sex work! We always knew she was entrepreneurial." It is clear that all kinds of people are in pain right now, male and female. Victimhood is not an Olympic sport. This was captured succinctly on International Women's Day by the hashtag #whataboutthemenz. To be anti-sexist means to fight sexism, not to try to commandeer it. Or to reclaim it for men. Indeed, this move to consign sexual inequality to the past when it is a clear and present danger has to be countered. And it would be if feminism got itself in gear, never mind going too far.