The Second Sexism: Discrimination Against Men and Boys

David Benatar is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cape Town. He is the author of Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence (2006).

Preface x 1 Introduction 1 What Is the Second Sexism? 1 Disadvantage 2 Discrimination 3 Wrongful discrimination 3 Sexism 5 The First Sexism 12 Two Kinds of Denialist 13 Forestalling Some Fallacies 16 Structure and Method of the Book 18 2 Male Disadvantage 25 Conscription and Combat 26 Violence 30 Corporal Punishment 33 Sexual Assault 36 Circumcision 41 Education 46 Family and Other Relationships 50 Custody 50 Paternity 51 Paternity leave 53 Homosexuals 54 Bodily Privacy 54 Life Expectancy 57 Imprisonment and Capital Punishment 59 Conclusion 61 3 Explaining Male Disadvantage and Thinking about Sex Differences 77 Beliefs about Males 77 Questions about the Beliefs 84 To what extent, if at all, are the beliefs true? 85 What makes the beliefs true? 89 What, if any, implications are there? 93 Conclusion 96 4 From Disadvantage to Wrongful Discrimination 101 Conscription and Combat 102 Kingsley Browne's basic argument 103 "Slippage" 104 Military effectiveness 106 Dangers of conservatism 109 Statistical differences 113 Final thoughts on combat and conscription 121 Violence 122 "The perpetrators are men" 123 "Men are better able to defend themselves" 124 "Men pose a greater threat" 125 Two kinds of discrimination 127 Corporal Punishment 128 "Males are more badly behaved" 128 "Corporal punishment is not as damaging to males" 129 Sexual Assault 132 Circumcision 134 Education 135 Family and Other Relationships 137 Bodily Privacy 142 "Women have a greater interest in bodily privacy than do men" 143 "The conditions are different" 145 Equal employment opportunity 148 Life Expectancy 152 Imprisonment and Capital Punishment 155 Conclusion 163 5 Responding to Objections 173 The Inversion Argument 174 Conscription and combat 175 Violence 179 Circumcision 182 Education 183 Sexual assault 185 Bodily privacy 186 Custody 188 Life expectancy 189 Imprisonment 193 The Costs-of-Dominance Argument 194 The Distraction Argument 199 Defining Discrimination 202 6 Affirmative Action 212 Rectifying Injustice 215 The past discrimination argument 216 The present discrimination argument 218 Lessons from "Summers School" 225 Consequentialist Arguments 228 The viewpoint diversity argument 228 The role-model argument 229 The legitimate-sex-preference argument 231 The ideal argument 232 Conclusion 233 7 Conclusion 239 Does Feminism Discriminate against Men? 239 Are Men Worse off than Women? 246 Taking the Second Sexism Seriously 254 Conclusion 259 Bibliography 266 Index 285