As I read "Too Few Good Men" (Feb. 22) by Blair Sullivan '10, I came upon the statement, "males have never been the victims of systematic discrimination." Such a boldly stated assertion must be true, even if it invalidates the gross injustice that men have faced historically and continue to face today. Never mind the massive inequities in our country's system that challenge the male gender according to Sullivan, men have never suffered the brunt of institutionalized inequity.
Forget that the United States only forces men to risk their lives in conscripted military service. Or that males must sign up for their Selective Service numbers if they ever intend to see a drop of federal educational assistance. That's not systematic discrimination forced military service is clearly a privilege extended only to males.
And ignore the dark reality of violence against men being treated as a joke in this nation. The Violence Against Women Act was enacted into federal law exclusively for the protection women, perhaps because most acts of violence are perpetrated against females. But for men, no parallel legislation protects a man who seeks justice for acts of domestic violence and sexual assault brought upon him. In this instance, males are also clearly not the victims of systematic discrimination. After all, they're capable of defending themselves.
Just disregard the disproportionate enforcement of statutory rape laws against males in our judicial system. Explaining his decision to give the minimal sentence of five years probation for a 43-year-old female teacher who committed the statutory rape of her 13-year old male student, New Jersey Superior Court Judge Bruce Gaeta said, "certainly society doesn't need to be worried," according to The Seattle Times. Gaeta could not have put it better society is, in fact, not worried at all about the disproportionate prosecution of men.
Society doesn't need to be worried at all, in fact, about the frequency of false allegations of rape either. Slate Magazine calculated up to 20,000 false accusations of rape out of the Bureau of Justice's statistics of about 200,000 rapes in 2008. Such a figure combined with rape shield laws that limit the defendants' ability to challenge their accuser couldn't possibly be a sign of systematic discrimination, not even if the majority of these false allegations of rape go without reprimand.
And let's pretend that the child support laws in this country are fair and just. A California study in 2003 revealed that approximately 71 percent of child support debtors are given a default order. This means that in some cases, the father is not even notified that a legal proceeding is being brought against him. They only discover that child support payments are required of them when the money is taken directly from their next paycheck. But this isn't systematic discrimination; men are expected to provide for children.
Not even in the case of Richard Parker, who proved too late through DNA testing that he was the victim of paternity fraud. He had been ordered by the State of Florida to make child support payments to his ex-wife, despite the fact that he was not the biological father of her child. When he was finally able to present his case, Florida state courts rejected requests for damages because he had exceeded the time limit of one year to challenge this case of paternity fraud. If we ignore the fact that Parker's former wife was never reprimanded for committing paternity fraud, or that the judicial system's rejection of Parker's victimization is part of a pattern throughout the nation, we can see that there's no signs of systematic discrimination here.
Sarcasm aside, Sullivan's claim echoes an ignorance and apathy shown throughout our nation towards masculist issues. The unfortunate reality of these problems by no means invalidates legitimate women's issues, but certainly cannot be ignored by tossing around such terms as "male privilege." Such widespread lack of attention to the neglected civil rights of men is a prime example of why horrendous gender inequities continue to exist in our system today. We must eschew such uninformed statements, claims that "males have never been the victims of systematic discrimination," and examine the veracity of these words for the equal rights and justice.
