Shameless plug or my own comment on this thread. I had quite enough of that bullshit MRA logic that false rape accusations happen at a high rate (and often cite Kanin (more on him below) at 41% of rapes being false accusations) I broke it down and examined all the rape studies on the Wikipedia False Rape Accusation Page 1 by 1, double checked the citations and wrote it up in a neat little copy pasta for y'all. I cleaned t up a bit & added information, but I will link the original.

It is thanks to my boy Daivd Lisak and a single brave tear rolling down my cheek that I present to you:

Why MRAs Should Be More Concerned About Male Rape Than False Rape Accusations If They Weren't A Thinly Veiled Hate Group

I looked into all the studies done on false rape claims, and even when you put the poorly researched studies that claim 20-50% of rape claims are falsified (after data from one small town in North America with very biased research techniques) and average out the likelihood of all the studies done on rape claims, still only equals about 12% of rape claims are unfounded. However, when you average out the accredited research, the falsified rape report rate is closer to 3%- this means less than .1% of the American female population is likely to falsify a rape accusation.

So yeah, it happens. Not that much. Way less than actual rape. Way less than the amount of actual male rape victims there are out there.

Rape is more of a men's issue than false rape claims.

Citations-

Here is a list of all the studies done on false rape claims:

Crown Prosecution Service Report (2011-2012)- 0.6%

35 cases out of 5,600+ cases studied were found to have false claims. It was also noted that the "mere fact that someone did not pursue a complaint or retracted it, is not of itself evidence that it was false and of the claims that showed to have legitimate falsified information,"^1 the victims were "young, often vulnerable people. About half of the cases involved people aged 21 years old and under, and some involved people with mental health difficulties. In some cases, the person alleged to have made the false report had undoubtedly been the victim of some kind of offence, even if not the one that he or she had reported."^2

^1. http://www.theguardian.com/society/2013/mar/13/rape-investigations-belief-false-accusations

^2. http://www.webcitation.org/6ItOwqb5e

Lisak (2010)- 5.9%

David Lisak, a clinical psychologist who focuses on sexual violence, studied 1 college's sexual assault reports over the course of 10 years, finding 8 of the 135 reported cases were classified as false. Lisak used strict guidelines, citing "a case was classified as a false report if there was evidence that a thorough investigation was pursued and that the investigation had yielded evidence that the reported sexual assault had in fact not occurred. A thorough investigation would involve, potentially, multiple interviews of the alleged perpetrator, the victim, and other witnesses, and where applicable, the collection of other forensic evidence (e.g., medical records, security camera records)."

While Lisak's sample size is small and not directly correlated with the rest of the population, this

1. focuses on a location/age where sexual assaults are at an all time high

2. focuses on the stereotypical victim most likely to be accused of false accusations

^3. http://vaw.sagepub.com/content/16/12/1318.full.pdf

Police in Victoria, Australia (2006)- 2.1%

A study of 812 rape accusations made to police in Victoria Australia between 2000 and 2003 found that 2.1% were ultimately classified by police as false, with the complainants then charged or threatened with charges for filing a false police report.^4

^4. https://www.ncjrs.gov/app/abstractdb/AbstractDBDetails.aspx?id=243182

British Home Office Study (2005)- 3%

This is one of the largest and most rigid study to date. The study included over two thousand individual cases of sexual assault, finding 8% of all cases were false reports. It was noted (as it has been multiple times) that officers used personal judgement to deem most unfounded rape cases false and violated official criteria to determine false claims. After criteria was adjusted, it was concluded that "one cannot take all police designations at face value... There is an over-estimation of the scale of false allegations by both police officers and prosecutors."^5

^5. http://www.ndaa.org/pdf/the_voice_vol_3_no_1_2009.pdf

FBI Statistics (from 1996-present)- 8%

It has been consistently reported from government statistics that false rape claims average at about 8%, however yet again this estimation was considered high as "many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, "unfounded." That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser's statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false."^6

^6. www.theforensicexaminer.com/archive/spring09/15/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

Kanin (1994)- 41%

Kanin studied 1 small midwestern town from the late 70s to early 80s, examining 108 claims in total. Stating the reason for his obscure choice in sampling, that this towns police department "seriously record and pursue to closure all rape complaints, regardless of their merits." The department also "always involves a serious offer to polygraph (side note: Heavily discuraged for proper police work as they have been proven unreliable) the complainants and the suspects" and "the complainant must admit that no rape had occurred. She is the sole agent who can say that the rape charge is false."^7 Kanin then categorized the reason for alleged false rape claims into 3 sections: alibis (50%), revenge (30%), and attention-seeking (20%).

Kanin's research method were later criticized by Lisak, stating "Kanin's 1994 article on false allegations is a provocative opinion piece, but it is not a scientific study of the issue of false reporting of rape. It certainly should never be used to assert a scientific foundation for the frequency of false allegations."^8 Lacking proper methodology and without a clear definition of "false report". It was also revealed that Kanin did not contest any police department deduction of false reporting without scrutiny for personal bias. Lisak also criticized Kanin for the use of polygraph information, a heavily unreliable tool in testimonies, stating Kanin and the department's personal biases echoed throughout his research. It was also noted, "if, indeed, officers did abide by this policy then the 41% could, in fact, be an underestimate given the restrictive definition of false complaints offered by the police in this study. The reliability of these findings may be somewhat bolstered by the fact that the police appeared to record the details and circumstances of the fabrications. This allowed Kanin to explore the ‘‘alibi function’’ of the false allegations in this study."^9 Kanin was again criticized by Rumney for blind true in law enforcement officials with an abnormally high rate of false allegation, "that police officers abided by departmental policy in only labeling as false those cases where the complainant admitted to fabrication. He does not consider that actual police practice, as other studies have shown, might have departed from guidelines."^10

^7. http://sf-criminaldefense.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/KaninFalseRapeAllegations.pdf

^8. http://www.icdv.idaho.gov/conference/handouts/False-Allegations.pdf

^9. http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/6478/1/Download.pdf

^10. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=430299

And finally:

Rumney (2006)

This study actually studied the study of false rape claims, exploring 20 studies surrounding false rape claims. 2 main pieces of information were revealed.

1. The criteria for "no crime" and "unfounded material" is consistently interchangeable, using rape claims where the charges were dropped or not pursued as "false".

2. Officers assessment of "no crime" was largely dependent on their personal judgement.

He concluded most false rape claim studies' numbers were most likely exaggerated, an is impossible to ["discern with any degree of certainty the actual rate of false allegations"^11 Rumney accused multiple studies of rape accusations to be using questionable criteria to conclude false rape claims, citing some reports were found to be "false" if the victim's clothing didn't look disheveled enough, and in one instance a case was claimed to be false because a victim was wearing "too tight" of clothing.

^11. http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=430299

There are 293,066 cases of rape a year.^12 , at most 12% of those reports are unfounded (not false accusations). So that's 35,167 allegedly unfounded accusations out of a population of 318 million. That's only .1% of the population likely to accuse you of false accusations. If I'm an average Redditor I am most likely a straight male from the age of 18-40. The 2010 Census tells me there are 112,183,705 people in the US between the ages of 18-44^13, 51% of them at 57,213,689 being women. Subtracting 3.5% of gay women from that number, leaving us with a population of 55,211,210 prospective partners for the average American Redditor. That means, the amount of elligible women likely to accuse the average straight male of rape with unfounded evidence is only 55,211.

^12. https://rainn.org/get-information/statistics/frequency-of-sexual-assault

^13. http://www.census.gov/prod/cen2010/briefs/c2010br-03.pdf

In conclusion;

Rape reporting is a very difficult and ambiguous study, a concrete number will probably never be solidified until we can improve reporting and statistics surrounding sexual assault. However, it has been found multiple times through research that false reporting is actually lower than what most numbers allude to due to criminal justice biases, improper research methods and the general ambiguity of false claims. However, when consistently reviewed and calculated using various research methods from a multitude of statistics and information, almost all credited institutions have come up with a number close to 3%, 5% less than the most frequently quoted statistic (8%). The truth is, if there are discrepancies in false rape reports, it actually hints to a lower number when the discrepancies are modified.

I'm bad at math and was a bit high typing this, so please comment any corrections.

Edit: formatting

So I'm trying to get some master posts of resources on discrimination in the workplace. Starting with the wage gap and pay discrimination, simply because I have a bunch of resources compiled on that already.

For some of these I've already written a little line and included a quote, but there a bunch at the bottom that I haven't already. If you'd like to take the job of summarising them, that would be awesome. And if you have other research or articles, please add it in the comments below and I'll update this post. We should probably include some resources on where laws are currently and how they don't do enough (specifically the ledbetter law because that's one that everyone knows).

Anyway, here goes:

##Wage Gap

1. When the GAO stripped out other factors that come into play—(work patterns, job tenure, industry, occupation, race and marital status) it still found that women earned about 80 percent of what men did:

“Even after accounting for key factors that affect earnings,” the authors report, “our model could not explain all of the difference in earnings between men and women.” While it couldn’t definitively say what caused that 20 percent gap, plain old discrimination was one of the few possibilities it highlighted. link

1. It's not limited to male dominated industries:

[Women] make less in every industry: among the BLS’s thirteen industry categories, women make less than men in every single one. What this means is that even in “women’s fields,” men are going to rake in more. In fact, men have been entering traditionally female-dominated sectors during the recovery period, and as the New York Times noted, they’re meeting with great success—“men earn more than women even in female-dominated jobs.”

1. Study showing people identical résumés but with some mentioning that the applicant was a mother and others mentioning the applicant was a father. Fathers were offered $6,000 more than non-fathers in compensation; mothers were offered $11,000 less than non-mothers. -link

2. Study where science faculty rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the identical female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. Female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. -link

###On asking for raises

1. But surely women don't ask for raises, right?

Catalyst found that, among those who had moved on from their first post-MBA job, there was no significant difference in the proportion of women and men who asked for increased compensation or a higher position.
Yet the rewards were different.
Women who initiated such conversations and changed jobs post MBA experienced slower compensation growth than the women who stayed put. For men, on the other hand, it paid off to change jobs and negotiate for higher salaries—they earned more than men who stayed did. - link

1. So people are just giving men more money? Yup:

A study of 184 managers involved a scenario in which they were told they had a set amount of money to distribute to employees, who had identical skills and responsibilities.
Half the managers were told they might have to give the worker an explanation about the amount of the raise; in other words, they might have to negotiate. This group of managers, both men and women, consistently gave much smaller raises to female employees. In fact, raises for men were nearly 2.5 times larger than those for women, said Maura Belliveau, who did the research at Emory University in Atlanta and is now an associate professor of management at Long Island University in New York.
The second group of managers were told they would not be able to explain their decisions. They gave equal raises to men and women. link

###Studies within specific fields

1. The gender-wage gap starts early. We have studies showing that 75% of girls do chores, while 65% of boys do. Studies showing that girls are given on average 2 more hours of chores than boys are. Studies showing that for the same chores, boys are paid an allowance that's 15% higher.

2. The gender wage gap in game development

3. Among top physicians:

Researchers from the University of Michigan Health System and Duke University found that among 800 physicians who received a highly competitive early career research grant, women earned an average of $12,194 less than men a year, when all other factors remained the same. link

###The gendered costs of weight bias

1. Weight bias is much costlier for women:

"...women begin to experience noticeable weight bias — such as problems at work or difficulty in personal relationships — when they reach a body mass index, or B.M.I., of 27....But the researchers found that men can bulk up far more without experiencing discrimination. Weight bias against men becomes noticeable when a man reaches a B.M.I. of 35 or higher."
Parker-Pope, Tara (March 31, 2008) "Fat Bias Worse for Women". NYTimes referencing "Perceptions of weight discrimination: prevalence and comparison to race and gender discrimination in America"

1. Weight bias for women is based around beauty (not health) ideals:

"Whereas women are punished for any weight gain, very thin women receive the most severe punishment for their first few pounds of weight gain. This finding is consistent with research showing that the media’s consistent depiction of an unrealistically thin female ideal leads people to see this ideal as normative, expected, and central to female attractiveness (Brown, 2002). Indeed, both our German and American results show that once women reach an average weight, subsequent weight gains are actually penalized to a lesser extent, presumably because the social preferences for a feminine body have already been violated."
[When It Comes to Pay, Do the Thin Win? The Effect of Weight on Pay

for Men and Women](http://www.timothy-judge.com/Judge%20and%20Cable%20%28JAP%202010%29.pdf)

##On women being viewed as less competent (non-wage related studies)

1. In a study of 248 reviews from across 28 companies, Kieran Snyder found that women were vastly more likely to get critical feedback, and receive almost all of the negative personality feedback^1:

When breaking the reviews down by gender of the person evaluated, 58.9% of the reviews received by men contained critical feedback. 87.9% of the reviews received by women did.
Men are given constructive suggestions. Women are given constructive suggestions – and told to pipe down.

"...negative personality criticism—watch your tone! step back! stop being so judgmental!—shows up twice in the 83 critical reviews received by men. It shows up in 71 of the 94 critical reviews received by women. The manager’s gender isn’t a factor. - link

1. In a pilot study looking at how students assessed online instructors, they gave the instructor they thought was male higher marks in all 12 categories, "regardless of whether the instructor was actually male or female,” MacNell says. “There was no difference between the ratings of the actual male and female instructors.”

In other words, students who thought they were being taught by women gave lower evaluation scores than students who thought they were being taught by men. It didn’t matter who was actually teaching them. The instructor that students thought was a man received markedly higher ratings on professionalism, fairness, respectfulness, giving praise, enthusiasm and promptness. article link, link to study

1. See additional research on the gendered nature of leadership language: women are 4 times as likely to be called bossy as men, women are significantly more likely then men to be called pushy and condescending

Assorted resources not yet added:

From an /r/SRSArmory thread about the wage gap:

• http://www.echidne-of-the-snakes.com/gendergap/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motherhood_penalty
• http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-gender-wage-gap-by-occupation-1
• http://www.iwpr.org/publications/pubs/the-gender-wage-gap-by-occupation-updated-april-2011/
• http://amptoons.com/blog/2003/10/07/the-wage-gap-series-so-far/ - this is really excellent
• study showing male bias in hiring scientists - PDF
• http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/adam-grant-and-sheryl-sandberg-on-discrimination-at-work.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/opinion/sunday/speaking-while-female.html
• http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/08/opinion/sunday/sheryl-sandberg-and-adam-grant-on-women-doing-office-housework.html
• http://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/gender-society/women-leadership-glass-cliff-research-roundup
• http://gap.hks.harvard.edu/

I could give you all kinds of reasons that free birth control included in health insurance is good social policy. I'm not going to. Lots of people could do that better than I could. I want a conversation from a different perspective.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am one of the hundreds of millions of women in America who had "full coverage" health insurance for more than a decade that paid for Viagra, but refused to pay for birth control pills because that was a "lifestyle decision". No, I am not 80 years old. This was routine in many American health insurance policies right up until ObamaCare. The companies I was insured with were Blue Cross/Blue Shield and U.S. Healthcare -- two of the largest health insurance companies in America. No one was claiming any religious exemption. That's just the way insurance companies did business in every State where they could get away with it. Which was most of them.

I am one of those women who paid full price out of pocket for infertility treatment. My "full coverage" health insurance didn't include it.

I am one of those women who had amniocentesis to check for fetal genetic problems. Which couldn't be done before I was four months pregnant. Knowing the entire time that if a horrible problem existed, and I wanted a late term abortion, it was going to cost me at least $7,500. Despite "full coverage" health insurance my entire life, I have never had a policy that covers abortion.

I am one of those women told during my hospital sponsored birthing classes that if I went into labor after 6 pm, I should wait until after midnight to come to the hospital. My "full coverage" health insurance demanded hospitals limit inpatient days for women giving birth, each day started at midnight, so I shouldn't waste one by coming in less than 6 hours before midnight. (Never mind that I was in serious pain.)

I am one of those women given pitocin to speed up labor with every birth. My "full coverage" health insurance company demanded doctors discharge women from the hospital in 3 days or less for vaginal deliveries. (See the midnight rule above for when the admission 3 day clock started ticking.) Pitocin was the answer.

I am one of the tens of millions of women who was discharged from the hospital less than 24 hours after giving birth, along with my newborn, during that 3 year window when "full coverage" health insurance companies refused to pay for any longer hospital stays after vaginal birth. I was actually pregnant when my insurance company changed their rules to only pay for one day after birth instead of two days. My premiums did not go down, only my health insurance coverage. That discharge rule did not change until newborns at home started dying and having brain damage from high bilirubin -- a completely preventable problem.

I am one of those women whose health insurance company refused to pay for bone marrow transplants for women with breast cancer. For years after medical research showed it had good results. Luckily I didn't get breast cancer, but knowing this was my company's policy was pretty scary.

In other words, I am one of tens of millions of women who really know, on a visceral level, about sex discrimination in health insurance. I lived it. I don't just know about sex discrimination in cash. I know about it in blood, sweat, pain, stress and risk to my health and the health of my babies.

Where were all these people now howling that it is not fair birth control pills don't have a co-pay, when I was paying premiums for more than a decade for men to have Viagra, but I had to pay full price for birth control pills? Where were they when I was dealing with all of the above? Where were they when medical insurance limitations on benefits uniquely targeted women? Did the definition of "fair" recently change and no one sent me the memo?

I want a conversation about how half the nation only decided differential treatment in health insurance benefits was unfair after women received a higher benefit. In one small area. Where have these fair-minded people been for the last 40 years? I want that conversation first, before they tell me that free birth control isn't fair.

I read a great exchange which inspired me to write this post. I took the twitter exchange that makes up this post as a launching pad, and added in quite a bit. I pulled from the comment section, as well as other articles and theories. There are links to other sources and concepts throughout this piece.

This post includes a back and forth in twitter format between two people. @CathyYoung63's tweets provide the arguments, and @barrydeutsch's tweets provide the response. Anyone quoted outside of the main exchange (which is nicely packaged as a Storify in the source post) has a reference written in. Because large parts of this are quoted from twitter, I've made minor edits to quoted text for clarity and consolidation. I added paragraph formatting, commas, emphasis and the like. I've made a few edits to the text itself, but I've used ellipses and brackets properly. Block quotes and headings should make obvious who is speaking, Any text not quoted is my commentary. If you see any problems or have something to add, please let me know.

##Initial statement: #YesAllWomen

#YesAllWomen because the odds of being attacked by a shark are 1 in 3,748,067, while a woman's odds of being raped are 1 in 6... yet fear of sharks is seen as rational while being cautious of men is seen as misandry. ^1

Argument 1: But wouldn't it be racism if...?

Here's a simple question though--would this tweet be offensive if it referred to blacks/racism, not men/misandry?

Answer: No

Yes, it would be - . . . because of the false and harmful stereotyping of black people.

. . . It's not irrational for women to feel more cautious about men than women, in common contexts. If a woman is walking and someone starts following saying "Hi! Hey, hi!" and escalating to "don't ignore me bitch!," It's VERY safe to assume the person following is a man. And this happens VERY commonly, to many (not all) women.^2

Perhaps you'd say that a woman in such a situation is irrational to fear violence, but I disagree. Few street harassers escalate to violence, but it's hard-wired into humans to find openly aggressive hostile behavior from strangers threatening.

Also the initial attention lets the woman know that this man is targeting her, specifically. If he escalates from attention to harassment or from harassment to violence, she's the target.

So in this very common situation - walking down the street - women could very rationally be more cautious of men than women. (Note I'm just saying "be more cautious." I'm not saying mace every man you see, I'm not advocating any anti-male act at all.) Not every man is a harasser, of course - most of us aren't - but enough are so, [that] threatening, public harassment is commonplace.

And that harassment is socially acceptable enough that women who are being publicly harassed can't count on public support. Often women trying to avoid a man harassing them will be further harassed by onlookers (men who sympathise with the man doing the harassing). They often can't count on support from positions of authority either: most cops are male, and the justice system is notoriously bad at handling gendered harassment and violence. While police should and often do take street harassment seriously, far too often they don't. Or worse, they join in.

The frozen calm of normalcy bias is also at work here. People, in general (70%!) are not likely to intervene. There's a reason that someone can be pummelled to death in public while people just walk past. In cases of gendered harassment, this is worse. You have both normalcy bias working to keep people from intervening and you have a too high population of people who see nothing wrong with harassment in the first place.

In contrast, someone who is more cautious about blacks because they feel blacks are likely to be muggers is being irrational. Statistically, there are a greater proportion of muggers among blacks than whites - "but the number of such muggers is so vanishingly small that a black's chance of being one is only slightly higher than a white's."^3 For practical, walking-the-streets purposes, the odds of a stranger being a mugger are effectively identical regardless of skin color.^4 There are things that matter - youth, acting suspicious, etc - but those merit caution regardless of skin color.

This power differential is also vastly different. If a white person actually is in danger from a black person and needs the justice system, the power is balanced in their favour, every step of the way. From cops, to prosecutors, to judges, to juries, to the law itself: white people are in the best position possible to receive protection and/or justice.

##Argument 2: But what about the men?

. . . but that doesn't mean negative stereotypes of men are harmless (even if they are less harmful than those of blacks).

##Answer: They're hurt the least

I agree, they're not harmless. But the solution is to change how some men behave so women no longer feel the need to be cautious - not to criticize women for saying that they are sometimes cautious of men."

This is different from negative stereotypes of blacks. It is not the way black people act that are the problem, and even so, they already have changed their behaviour to make white people more comfortable. They've had to, because when they don't, they die. (And sadly, even when they do.) Fear of a black person walking the streets is irrational, and the only way to solve that is by tackling the root cause of that fear (racism), not by further oppressing black people.

[It's also important to have an] awareness of [just] who gets harmed by the decision (or tendency) to avoid a potential street interaction, and how that differs between women avoiding street interactions with men and white people avoiding street interactions with black people.

Our society is substantially segregated by race, but not by gender, and the desire of white people to avoid interacting with black people is a major driver of that segregation. Meanwhile, women avoiding street interactions with men mostly plays out by limiting the mobility of women, so women’s pattern of avoidance harms women, and white people’s pattern of avoidance harms black people.^5

Yes, men can be harmed by women having to be cautious. A man could miss out on meeting his soulmate because a woman was being cautious. A man could have his feelings hurt by a woman who is terse with him in public. But this is a far smaller harm then the alternative (socialising women to ignore reasonable fears). And it's not just a smaller harm than the alternative, it's a smaller harm than the one that women themselves pay for being appropriately cautious.

Additionally, because women and men are highly integrated in our society (most women grew up with men in their family, work with men, have male friends, etc), street interactions with strangers do not represent the overwhelming majority of women’s interactions with men. This means that the psychological effects of having an aversion to interacting with strange men on the street [are] heavily moderated by positive interactions with men in other contexts.

Meanwhile, most white people in the US have very limited interactions with black people, so the psychological effects of viewing black people on the street as threats has very little moderating counter-balance, and plays a much larger role in setting white people’s psychological biases when they interact with black people in other contexts.^5

Conclusion / Shorter copy pasta

While men may have their feelings hurt by women avoiding street interactions with them, women pay a much higher price: their mobility is limited and their energy, time and money consumed. Women’s pattern of avoidance harms mostly women. Meanwhile, white people’s pattern of avoidance harms black people (segregation). Men are the people least harmed by women avoiding them, the same way that white people are least harmed by avoiding blacks. Who does the avoiding is not the analogous part. The power differential and the harm differential are analogous here:

The example is exactly backwards. It should be “is it racist for black people to be wary of white people? . . . The implication [of this analogy] is that women are in a powerful and privileged position relative to men, just as whites are in a powerful and privileged position relative to blacks. In real life it is of course the other way around.^6

1. Mirnahh tweeted
2. Data on the prevalence of street harassment can be found here
3. Here @BarryDeutsch is paraphrasing something Cathy herself wrote, hence the quote marks.
4. Ampersand used the Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics to do some quick, back of the envelope calculations. Using data on “robbery” (the category closest to muggings), 136,445 Americans are robbed by white offenders in a year (2008, most recent year with data up), while 246326 were robbed by black offenders. Assuming (wrongly because this ignores multiple-offender robberies and serial robbers) that the number of offenders equals the number of robberies, these stats mean that 99.40% of blacks are not robbers, while 99.94% of whites are not robbers. The odds get more identical for white people when you consider that 1.6 per thousand white Americans are robbed in a year, versus 5.5 per thousand Black Americans.
5. Charles commented
6. Mythago commented

Yeah he's usually great, and I know I'm lucky to have someone who isn't racist or sexist or homophobic as a partner. But at the same time, he doesn't want to admit that he has an advantage by being a straight white cis male

I think that might be part of the problem. If you view sexism and racism as big bads, as filled with intent, then it's hard to adequately capture those concepts, and with them, sexism. But hang on, and let me back track a sec.

First, part of it is explaining the definition. Privileged means advantaged. Should everyone enjoy the normal that he does? Absolutely. But they don't. Like, factually, statistically, the don't. And for as long as we have people who are disadvantaged, then his normal will be considered an advantage. That doesn't make him bad. It's just a basic assessment of the world. The world is an unfair place. Ever play that game as a kid with rice and a spinner? Depending on where your spin lands, you get X amount of rice. Most of the people who spin only end up with a few grains. But if you're lucky and land in a tiny sliver you get a large bag. You don't worry about food. Now of course, no one should go hungry! That's obvious. But people do. And one of the important keys to tackling problems is to recognise this. And also, numbers wise, your husbands life isn't "normal". He's male, which means he's more privileged than half the people on earth. Add where he was born (assuming), social class, economics, his skin colour, sexuality, etc. What seems normal to him is far and away from the normal that many other people live with. Yes, even people near him. That can be hard to grapple with.

I really like Scalzi's piece on privilege: "Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is".

But back to what I was saying on sexism and racism. A huge part of this is getting him to understand that that racism and sexism are normal. Because otherwise the picture doesn't make sense. If sexism and racism aren't normal, then they are aberrations, and more normals would be similar to his. He may be having trouble grappling with this because if other people have a fundamentally different normal, then people like him, who have a "good normal" are regularly being sexist or racist (read "bad"). He isn't a bad person. His friends and co-workers aren't bad people. So it can't really be an issue. This is a crucial thing to get past.

Maybe have him take a few of the Harvard bias tests. That's always eye-opening. Also,bring in studies. Lots of studies. I particularly love some of the pay gap ones. Because there are many studies that really isolate the gender aspect. And also, they often show that women are equally bad as men when it comes to discrimination. Couple examples:

Study showing people identical résumés but with some mentioning that the applicant was a mother and others mentioning the applicant was a father. Fathers were offered $6,000 more than non-fathers in compensation; mothers were offered $11,000 less than non-mothers. - link

Study where science faculty rated the application materials of a student—who was randomly assigned either a male or female name—for a laboratory manager position. Participants rated the male applicant as significantly more competent and hireable than the identical female applicant. These participants also selected a higher starting salary and offered more career mentoring to the male applicant. Female and male faculty were equally likely to exhibit bias against the female student. Mediation analyses indicated that the female student was less likely to be hired because she was viewed as less competent. - link

For those interested, this is part of a larger copy pasta of mine

In this vein, bring in the numbers on hiring of equally qualified white men with criminal records vs. black men without criminal records. (Spoiler alert: it's still better to be white). Or the recent study on how women and minorities were less likely to get e-mail responses from professors.

That is to say, that's it's overwhelming. And it's mostly at all about bad intentions. It's that we're the products of our environment and our environment sucks. Being sexist and being racist doesn't make you bad, it makes you human. Being privileged doesn't make you bad, it makes you lucky. Refusing to acknowledge that you got lucky or that you are influenced by societal pressures...that's where things get problematic. Also, by the way, I love to work in the studies on gender and colour here. There are studies on newborns. Male newborns show a higher affinity for blue, while female newborns show a higher affinity for pink. In America. When you do the same study in China, both genders show a higher affinity for red. That is, there is no biological gender based affinity for colour. But our socialisation is powerful enough to change even newborn babies. If you think that a sexist society hasn't had influence on you knowing that, then you're either nuts, in deep denial or secretly an alien.

Also, given that your particular concern is kids, you might want to bring in stuff specific to that. Like studies showing that 75% of girls do chores, while 65% of boys do. Studies showing that girls are given on average 2 more hours of chores than boys are. Studies showing that for the same chores, boys are paid an allowance that's 15% higher. Or, on a more depressing note, studies showing that girls view sexual violence as normal.

But here's the interesting thing: numbers aren't enough. There's a fascinating study that looked at what discouraged sexist attitudes. For women, greater awareness helped. But for men, even having that same level of awareness didn't make them view these behaviours as bad or harmful. They needed an extra ingredient: empathy.

"Women need to "see the unseen," the authors note, to make corrections, whereas men need not only to be aware of the sexist behavior or comments, but also to feel empathy for the women targeted. These results are consistent with other studies which found that empathy is an effective method for reducing racial and ethnic prejudice."

Btw, for anyone interested in the full text, it's available through LibGen (check out the handy /r/scholar sticky for instructions).

Which makes studies like this one showing that kids who watch tv suffer lower self-esteem...unless they are white and male, in which case it boosts their self-esteem are so important. Focusing on the empathy part is important. Sexism on tv shows and in movies may be obvious, but try asking your hubby to try and imagine what it's life to see all that as a woman. What kind of effect it has.

Again, none of this is his fault. The world kinda sucks. But burying his head in the sand doesn't make it any better.

Also, I have a couple pieces of reading I'd suggest. "We Have Always Fought: Challenging the Women, Cattle, Slaves Narrative" by Kameron Hurley. She eloquently describes the normalcy of sexism, and she does it in really clever ways that get past barriers. She explains the frozen calm of normalacy bias and how it relates to sexism really well. She also describes her own struggle with fighting sexism. Not as an external thing she champions against but as an internal thing, and I think that's a valuable thing to hear. It's the perfect piece for your situation. It covers how normal sexism is. And how it's not about intent. And how it can blind us. And how it effects men and women. And how it's hard. I was going to suggest that you give this to him first, but maybe cover the whole "no that's not what privilege means, and no, your experiences are not normal" bit first.

Also, there was a great recent piece on #YesAllWomen and the secondary trauma that men, as witnesses go through and how to handle that. Probably not something for him just yet, but something that will be useful when he starts to get frustrated.

From my comment here on /r/SRSWomen

Lindy West's If I Admit That 'Hating Men' Is a Thing, Will You Stop Turning It Into a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy? is a pretty fun article in general, but the portion that is written in the way most likely to convince egalibrarians is part four:

A List of "Men's Rights" Issues That Feminism Is Already Working On

Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and fix it. The assumption that women are naturally better housekeepers is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to have to make alimony payments. Alimony is set up to combat the fact that women have been historically expected to prioritize domestic duties over professional goals, thus minimizing their earning potential if their "traditional" marriages end. The assumption that wives should make babies instead of money is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want anyone to get raped in prison. Permissiveness and jokes about prison rape are part of rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want anyone to be falsely accused of rape. False rape accusations discredit rape victims, which reinforces rape culture, which is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be lonely and we do not hate "nice guys." The idea that certain people are inherently more valuable than other people because of superficial physical attributes is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to have to pay for dinner. We want the opportunity to achieve financial success on par with men in any field we choose (and are qualified for), and the fact that we currently don't is part of patriarchy. The idea that men should coddle and provide for women, and/or purchase their affections in romantic contexts, is condescending and damaging and part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be maimed or killed in industrial accidents, or toil in coal mines while we do cushy secretarial work and various yarn-themed activities. The fact that women have long been shut out of dangerous industrial jobs (by men, by the way) is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to commit suicide. Any pressures and expectations that lower the quality of life of any gender are part of patriarchy. The fact that depression is characterized as an effeminate weakness, making men less likely to seek treatment, is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be viewed with suspicion when you take your child to the park (men frequently insist that this is a serious issue, so I will take them at their word). The assumption that men are insatiable sexual animals, combined with the idea that it's unnatural for men to care for children, is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want you to be drafted and then die in a war while we stay home and iron stuff. The idea that women are too weak to fight or too delicate to function in a military setting is part of patriarchy.

Feminists do not want women to escape prosecution on legitimate domestic violence charges, nor do we want men to be ridiculed for being raped or abused. The idea that women are naturally gentle and compliant and that victimhood is inherently feminine is part of patriarchy.

Ever get tired of brave /r/allies wishing the gays would just get out of their face?

From Andrew Solomon's Far From The Tree:

"...While I might have had an easier life if I had been straight, I am now wedded to the idea that without my struggles, I would not be myself, and that I like being myself better than I like the idea of being someone else - someone I have neither the ability to imagine nor the option of being. Nevertheless, I have often wondered whether I could have ceased to hate my sexual orientation without Gay Pride's Technicolor fiesta, of which this writing is one manifestation. I used to think that I would be mature when I could simply be gay without emphasis. I have decided against this viewpoint, in part because there is almost nothing about which I feel neutral, but more because I perceive those years of self-loathing as a yawning void, and celebration needs to fill and overflow it. Even if I adequately address my private debt of melancholy, there is an outer world of homophobia and prejudice to repair. Someday, I hope this identity may devolve into a simple fact, free of both party hats and blame, but that's some ways off. A friend who thought Gay Pride was getting a bit carried away with itself once suggested we organize Gay Humility Week. It's a good idea, but its time has not yet come. Neutrality, which appears to lie halfway between shame and rejoices, is in fact the endgame, reached only when activism becomes unnecessary."

What are some concrete examples of feminism working to solve prison sentencing (men/women), suicide, and custody discrepancies?

I've been debating this real piece of shit MRA, and he won't accept that we support equality without proof that we're doing something about it I guess?

From /u/00000000000006, as posted originally here, on /r/againstmensrights.

The copy-pasta apparently refuting all evidence of a significant gender-based wage gap can be seen here, the rebuttal of which, refuting its many links, can be seen as follows (along with /u/00000000000006's original introduction):

So, we all know about that incorrect yet often copied + pasted comment that 'proves' the wage gap is 'totally a myth'. I posted about it in this thread. I was bored enough to actually click and read each link. I have provided a rebuttal to each point, and would like to know if I should add anything, fix up anything, if I missed something, etc. Not gonna lie, towards the end I started going cross eyed, so the last few points are probably pretty rusty.

And I know that this is largely a waste of time, because more people who upvote that terrible comment don't actually read the links, but I feel like there should be a rebuttal for those few individuals that actually take the time to read.

Here's what I got:

Don't let a lot of links and misleading statements fool you; Most of these sources are opinion articles or blogs that simply link the same study, while the rest are area and demographic specific and don't have anything to do with other areas or the population at large. Further, some of these articles are right before the 2008 recession, so the numbers have no doubt changed nearly 6 years later. Finally, a lot of these articles don't even talk or refute anything about the wage gap being a myth; they are articles OP either didn't read or misread and cherry picked data or quotes to add merit to their incorrect claims.

1. So it says this study refutes and 'proves' there is no wage gap, when that is just flat out not true. This study collected raw data and attempted to find out why there is such a large disparity between men and women. At the end of the report they even conclude that they don't have enough data to declare an actual cause for the wage gap. In addition, this study has been criticized because it used different methods for testing the gender gap compared to other studies; specifically, they counted full time and part time hours instead of just full time.

2. The second article is an opinion piece that simply posts the study above and then links to other opinion articles.

3. Another opinion piece that links more opinion articles. In addition, this is a Canada based article and is talking about Canadian's gender wage gap.

4. Yet another opinion piece linking the same study.

5. Sigh... yet another opinion piece linking the same study. Only this one isn't even arguing against it, just talking about how she doesn't understand how a new bill will solve the problem of employers hiring men over women with the same qualifications.

6. This is a blog, linking to other blogs/opinion pieces.

7. Wow, what a surprise, yet another opinion piece that links the same damn study.

8. The same damn study, only in video form, presented by a conservative think tank group.

9. An opinion piece that isn't even talking about the wage gap, but is instead talking about the recession and how labor jobs have dropped because of it. The labor jobs haven't dropped because of women taking over their jobs, it's because (when this was written) we were suffering a recession.

10. An opinion piece stating the same thing above, mentioning how labor jobs tend to end during the winter months. Says nothing about the pay gap, by the way.

11. Opinion piece about how men in labor jobs have been declining since the 1948s. This is due to more women entering the workforce and some traditionally 'male' jobs are not exclusively male anymore. Does nothing to prove the wage gap is a myth.

12. This is actually true, however the statements are misleading. It's true if women are actually hired they tend to make more... the problem is, there isn't enough women. Qouting the article: >Neumont University, which teaches a 2.5-year computer science program, says their women are extremely valuable within the industry, getting placed better, and faster, than males. But only one out of every twenty students is female. Tech companies are looking for diversity, they say, and research has shown that women coders are actually better communicators.

13. This is another 'true' article, but again it is misleading. For one thing, this is about board directors' salaries and won't apply to you average citizen. Further, the same study even says that while women may earn more than men, they are also out numbered 8 to 1.

14. a 2009 article that states the very few female CEOs earn more than men. Not only does this not prove the wage gap is a myth, it continues to reiterate that women are few and far between in the field. Meanwhile, there are studies that show how even those earning more than men actually aren't (tl;dr: men get more bonuses than women) http://www.nerdwallet.com/investing/corporate-taxes/top-executive-pay/info

15. This piece was written in 2007 right before the recession hit, so that right there is a problem. I'm struggling to comprehend how this 'proves' the wage gap is a myth; it's an article about how New York (not the general population as whole) tends to have young women in the ages of 20-30 out preform men, but it states this is due to women have more education. The reason for the large influx of women (in New York, mind you) is because recent college grads tend to settle in urban areas.

16. This link doesn't even work anymore.

17. This article is about women in urban areas and, as the article states, " only applies only to unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities. The rest of working women — even those of the same age, but who are married or don't live in a major metropolitan area — are still on the less scenic side of the wage divide." Once again, has nothing to do with proving that the 'wage gap' is a myth.

18. This article is re-stating the study above (single women in urban areas) and also stating how men are losing more jobs because blue collar jobs are being phased out. No 'wage gap' myth proven here.

19. Opinion piece citing yet again the same study single urban women, and once again stating that men still out earn women, and yet again has nothing to do with 'proving' any 'wage gap myth'.

20. This URL doesn't exist anymore.

21. ...this is the exact same link as #13. I'm not even joking.

22. Uh, this is a 2005 article that is repeating the same repeated links I've mentioned above, but it isn't talking about the wage gap being a myth, but rather that companies are missing out on highly qualified women because they don't provide support for them. Quoting the article: "Like it or not, large numbers of highly qualified, committed women need to take time out. The trick is to help them maintain connections that will allow them to come back from that time without being marginalized for the rest of their careers."

23. How does this prove the 'wage gap' is a myth again? it's an opinion piece about how old traditions are starting to change. This has nothing to do with employers hiring and paying women the same as men, it just means men in relationships are less likely to care that their spouse is the one earning money while they stay at home... That's a good thing, but even in the article it says: "The male ego as head of household seems to have diminished to the point of disappearance,” said Rosanna Hertz, chair of women’s studies at Wellesley College and one of the researchers involved in the Elle/msnbc.com study. “However, men are still dragging their feet in terms of domestic responsibilities.”

24. 'most men would take a cut to spend time with their family'? It says 38% - that is not 'most'. At any rate, this has nothing to do with the wage gap. This is a 2007 survey about how working dads feel like their jobs are impacting seeing their children. It's not a secret that parents who work generally want to spend more time with their kids.

25. Yet again I ask, how does this 'prove' or even relate to the gender wage gap being a 'myth'? It's about urban area parents sharing parenting responsibilities... this is a good thing that feminists argue for constantly. However, yet again I will say it has nothing to do with how employers discriminate when hiring.

26. A 2005 opinion piece quoting the same tired study I've mentioned way too many times at this point.

27. An article that says a study 'proves' women aren't discriminated against, yet the actual study itself is another one that fudges up data. The samples they used were not random. They tested their theories only on college graduates.

28. ...did OP even bother to read this article? Not only does the author talk about how the wage gap is real, she also talks about why that is, listing things such as women don't have any female role models or how white men overcrowd the tech fields.

It was something you could post in response to '[slur] doesn't mean gay anymore!' and it was super sarcastic and mic-drop-y and I loved it. Does anyone still have it saved?

Edit: I found it! http://np.reddit.com/r/AdviceAnimals/comments/16jo9q/someone_has_to_say_this/c7wtyf9