Glenn Sacks here, and it's time for something you didn't know about men...

Something you didn't know about men #8
Women Who Help Men (5/4/03)

In the weeks leading up to our Mothers' Day special on women who help men, I'll be devoting my commentaries to highlighting the special and often heroic efforts many women are making to aid men and fathers. I've spoken many times about the movement to unite divorced and unwed fathers with their children,  but did you know that women make up much of the membership of this movement? That's right--half of the members of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children, the world's largest shared parenting organization, are women, as are 40%  of the members of the Washington-based Children's Rights Council.

Some of these women are the grandmothers, aunts or cousins of children who were cut off from their fathers and the paternal half of their families after divorce. Many others are second wives who've seen their husbands'  desperate efforts to remain a part of their children's lives thwarted by family courts and vengeful exes.

Today as men and fathers struggle for justice, tens of thousands of women are fighting by their side. But I bet the mainstream media didn't tell you that.

To learn more about women who are helping the men's and fathers' movement, see Glenn's columns "Valentine's Day & the Gender Wars" (Newsday, 2/12/03), and "Why Are There so Many Women in the Fathers' Movement?" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune, 6/21/02). The latter column was co-authored by Dianna Thompson, who is the Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children and herself a fine example of women who help men.

What is needed to solve the problem is legislation like that in Missouri, which requires an automatic adjustment of support for reservists called up for active duty. But I bet the mainstream media didn't tell you that. 

Something You Didn't Know About Men #6
Boys in School (4/13/03)

April 24 is "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," newly renamed "Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work Day." 

The unofficial holiday originated with a now discredited report by the American Association of University Women which claimed that our schools "shortchange" girls.  The 1992 report's claim of a "girl crisis" was widely publicized, the Ms. Foundation declared "Take Our Daughters to Work Day," and Congress passed the $360 million Gender Equity in Education Act.

In reality, in 1992 and even more so today, it is boys, not girls, who need special educational attention and funding. 

Boys at all levels are far more likely than girls to be disciplined, suspended, held back, or expelled. By high school the typical boy is a year and a half behind the typical girl in reading and writing, and is less likely to graduate high school, go to college, or graduate college than a typical girl. By every index, our schools are failing our boys. Yet little is being done about it, in part because of the societal misconception that schools favor boys, a misconception which has been generated by feminists. But I bet the mainstream media didn't tell you that.

To learn more about the boy crisis in education, see Glenn's columns "The 'Boy Parent Dilemma'" (Los Angeles Daily News, 9/6/02, Pasadena Star-News &Affiliated Papers, 9/12/02), "Boys: The New Underclass in American Schools," (Los Angeles Daily Journal, San Francisco Daily Journal, 4/15/02) and "Why Males Don't Go to College" (She Thinks, 11/13/02). For a more in-depth treatment of the subject, see Christina Hoff Sommers' Who Stole Feminism? (p. 137-152) and The War Against Boys.

Something You Didn't Know About Men #5
Equal Pay Day (4/6/03)

April 15 is Equal Pay Day, a day sponsored by feminist groups to highlight what they say is pay discrimination against women.  Feminists claim that women earn only 75% of what men do for the same job.  However, as I wrote in an LA Times column on Equal Pay Day a couple of years ago, feminists get the "75%" figure by comparing what full-time employed men and women earn, without accounting for several key factors. These include the fact that full-time employed males on average work eight hours a week more than full-time employed females, have 25% more job experience, and are far more likely to do hazardous jobs, which necessarily pay more than safe jobs at the same skill level. 

Studies show that when all of these crucial factors are considered, women earn within a few percentage points of what men earn. But I bet the mainstream media didn't tell you that.

To learn more about "Equal Pay Day" and the wage gap, see my columns "Is Pay a Function of Gender Bias?" (Los Angeles Times, 5/12/01)

Something You Didn't Know About Men #4
Deadbeat Moms (3/26/03)

We've all heard about so-called "deadbeat dads," but did you know that proportionally there are more deadbeat moms than deadbeat dads? That's right--according to US Census data, noncustodial mothers are 20% more likely to default on their child support obligations than noncustodial fathers. This is despite the fact that noncustodial mothers are less likely to be required to pay child support, and those with support obligations are asked to pay a lower percentage of their income in child support than noncustodial fathers. Partly because of this, custodial fathers are three and a half times as likely to work long work weeks as custodial mothers.

Divorced, noncustodial fathers have been endlessly vilified as deadbeats and deserters, yet the data shows that as a whole they are making a greater effort to meet their responsibilities than noncustodial mothers are. But I bet the mainstream media never told you that.

To learn more about so-called "deadbeat moms," see Fox News' article "Moms Can Be Deadbeats, Too."

Something You Didn't Know About Men #3
Weitzman/Prager (3/26/03)

I was listening to Dennis Prager talking about marriage and family the other day and while I salute Dennis' unambiguous stance on the importance of fathers, I was disappointed to hear him pass on the pernicious myth that men gain economically from divorce and that women suffer from it. I figure if someone as well-informed as Dennis is misinformed on this, then some of my listeners might be, also.

The myth Dennis spoke of stems from a now discredited study conducted over two decades ago by feminist Lenore Weitzman, author of the 1985 book The Divorce Revolution.  Weitzman concluded that women's standard of living after divorce dropped by three quarters while men's rose over 40%. The media trumpeted her research and it led to sharp and often punitive increases in our child support guidelines.   However, years later Weitzman was forced to admit that her findings were vastly overstated, due to a huge mathematical error which she blamed on a computer.

More recent and scientifically credible research shows that divorced women come out at least as well financially as divorced men. But I bet the mainstream media never told you that.

Something You Didn't Know About Men #2
Intimate Murders by Gender (3/19/03)

Probably many of you have been following the Robert Blake murder case in the media lately and have heard feminists like Gloria Allred tell you that husbands are far more likely to kill their wives than vice versa, that when women kill it is only in self-defense, and that the Blake case is just another example of how this society is so rotten for women. In reality, though official statistics disguise it, women are just as likely to kill their husbands or male intimates as men are to kill their female intimates, and the vast majority of these murders are not in self-defense.

One of the reasons many murders of male intimates are not noted is that women generally use less detectable methods to murder intimates than men do. One of the most popular female methods is to poison the victim, and these poisonings are often mistakenly recorded as "heart attacks" or "accidents" instead of murder.

Also, women are much more likely than men to use "contract" killers, and contract killers often disguise murders as accidents or suicides. Even when a paid killer is caught and the truth is known, the Department of Justice counts the murder as a "multiple-offender" killing instead of as a murder of a man by a female intimate.

Despite these large distortions, men still comprise roughly 30% of those officially classified as being murdered by an intimate. If one considers that most murder victims are male and that there are almost 10,000 unsolved murders in the US each year, if only a small percentage of these unsolved murders were committed by female intimates, the number of male and female intimate murder victims would be similar.

And I bet the major media never told you that.

To learn more about intimate murder and gender, see Glenn's column "Let's not 'Learn' the Same Lessons From Blake That We Learned From OJ."

For a more detailed commentary, see Warren Farrell's, Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say, pages 149-152.

Something You Didn't Know About Men #1
Dead Beat Dads (3/19/03)

To learn more about so-called "deadbeat dads," see my column "The 'Deadbeat Dad' Canard"  (Sacramento Bee, 8/1/02), which was co-authored by Dianna Thompson of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children. For a longer and more detailed commentary, see the brilliant Stephen Baskerville's "The Myth of Deadbeat Dads" (Liberty, June 2002).