The "patriarchal hegemony" is a unique supposed ruling class, the first one in history whose members continue to die many years younger than those they allegedly subjugate. Objectivity on this issue is past due.
World health authorities agree that life expectancy is the single most important measure of the quality of life. It also serves as a significant index of general physical and mental health. Life span has increased for women and men as western societies have industrialized. But since 1930, Canadian women's life expectancy has increased twice as much as men's. A Canadian woman may expect to live 7.4 years more than a man; even a poor woman will live 3 years longer than a rich man! (Perhaps his hard-earned wealth may be enjoyed by his "trophy" widow.) Among significant causes of death, Canadian research turns up few examples of non-sex based causes from which more females die than males. Every year, over 9500 more Canadian males are born than females. But by the time they reach their early twenties, those young lives, full of promise, have been extinguished.
Theories to explain the growing death toll include the hazards of employment, greater general exposure to risk to life and health, and that all-encompassing canard: "stress." Consider just one element of stress: preserving his wife and children from the fear and insecurity caused by poverty is one traditional male form of nurturance. Men have traditionally struggled to support their extended families in the marketplace. They have paid that price with hazards to their health, and years cut off their lives.
Meanwhile, women have traditionally rewarded and chosen those males who pay, perform, and pursue; ignoring those of lower status and income. When the chosen men, in their classically "strong and silent" manner, continue the activities which made them attractive in the first place, they are criticized as "uncommunicative," or detached from the drama and drudgery of domestic life. These and other social and cultural pressures drive men into smoking, alcoholism, coronary-prone behaviour, and (accidental and intentional) violent assaults. Only doctrinaire commentators see these trends as about to disappear. Indeed, much feminist dogma points to the disproportionate burden of domestic labour that women still bear -- conveniently ignoring the undue weight of workplace pressures and drudgery that carries men to an early grave. Incidentally, when a tally of work hours inside and outside the home is added with the stressful and insecure outside job component, the burden is still heavier for men -- more evidence that is ignored by feminist analysts.
Despite recent reports of increasing depression among middle-class women, the most acute measure of depression -- suicide -- is counted overwhelmingly in male corpses. In 1989, almost 720 females ended their own lives...along with 2900 males. Every three hours in Canada, a man kills himself. Compare that annual toll to the estimated 960 AIDS deaths annually in Canada (95 percent of them male). What effort and funds have been devoted to redress and restrain this massive self-slaughter, especially of Canadian men?
"Stress" and the shocking statistics of male suicide take many forms. Male emotional expressions have become a daily minefield: an appreciative wink at a female colleague may cost him his career. Yet another plea to share sex with his lady may lead to her self-righteous denunciation of him as an exploitative stereotype. With his affectionate and deepest emotions debased, in his own mirror, he begins to see a lecher and a brute. In this era of increasingly polarized and alienating gender confrontation, men still serve as "money objects," reduced to the contents of their wallets. How many husbands and fathers, facing job loss, bankruptcy, poverty, or loss of their children through divorce (on grounds of "neglect," perhaps; or vicious accusations of child sex abuse) have decided that their emotionally empty lives are worth less than their life insurance?
In the 1970s, feminists mobilized for equality. They claimed that their ultimate aim was to liberate both sexes from stereotypes that imprisoned them. Over the past 25 years, male advocates and politicians have legislated most of feminism's political agenda into law. At the same time, the 7.4 year gap between male and female life expectancy has continued to widen. Males continue to toll 80 percent of suicide victims, and close to 100 percent of "accidental" deaths on the job. Is this called "equity"?
The time is long past for this preventable male slaughter to be brought to an end. Those 47 extra male deaths a day are not strangers. They are your grandfathers, fathers, uncles, lovers, friends, and sons. In old-age homes across the country, women outnumber men four to one. Ask those aged women about their anguish over the early deaths of the men they loved.
What is to be done? First, the preventable loss of over 17,200 males annually needs to be recognized as a national crisis. Public health investigators and providers, at all levels, must work to develop preventative strategies. Statistics Canada should seek to provide comprehensive data on the year-by-year causes of male death, from birth to premature mortality. Statistics Canada should not continue to publish only the female victim components of violence studies, and no researcher should claim a feminist bias. Research should be returned to objectivity. A national commission of inquiry should investigate the hazard-filled lives of males. A good start here might be a commission on violence against men, which exceeds that against women for every category, except gender-loaded definitions of sexual assault.
Perhaps these statistics and arguments might dispel the myth of a male "ruling class" under "patriarchy." This is a unique supposed ruling class, the first one in history whose members continue to die many years younger than those they allegedly subjugate; and the first to reserve virtually 100 percent of the most dangerous labour for themselves and the first to direct the majority of violence against its own ranks (including 100 percent of all battle and police deaths).
Some feminists (male and female) have dismissed these appalling statistics with glib and callous rejoinders like: "It's all men's fault"; "You can't fight Mother Nature" (the Y-chromosome-is-destiny theory); "Why should women care?"; and "Maybe men should pay off their mortgages and insurance more quickly."
Articles in the Globe & Mail (Canada's Toronto-based national newspaper) seem to consistently misrepresent sex-specific health and death data. Vivan Smith, in a 6,000 word feature, "Unwilling to Keep Taking it Like a Man" (24 April 1993), dismissed male death rates with five words: "Men get the killing diseases..." Her concentration on women's health asked "...whether women's health should become a separate health specialty..." and seemed to imply that the male-female life expectancy gap was not wide enough. Linda Hossie's article, "Young Canadian Deaths Among Highest in the West" (22 Sept. 1993), mentioned gender-specific health problems, world-wide, only for women. The male death toll was omitted. Do these reports rank as objective journalism?
The present crisis will test the intellectual and moral consistency of feminists along with all Canadians who claim to be concerned about the well-being and security of all our population. No clearer litmus test could be devised to separate those whose objectives are opportunistic from those whose concerns are genuinely humanitarian.