Is Female suffering seen as more important than male suffering. It is isn’t it???
Even as babies, it seems female suffering is seen as more important than male suffering. For example, this study found that parents take longer to pick up baby boys than baby girls when they cry:
Goldberg and Lewis "Play Behaviour in the Year-old Infant: Early Sex differences"
Abstract at:
JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
And then there are events like the media uproar when 276 school girls were kidnapped by the Islamic Terrorist Group boko harem:
The kidnapping of the 276 predominantly Christian schoolgirls by Islamic terror group Boko Haram is an atrocity, but it is not the first atrocity they have committed. It is just the first one to garner any interest in the West. A girl’s right to an education has become an important pillar in western ideology, and an important pawn in the battle against Islam.
The recent kidnappings have enraged western sensibilities, because they desecrate hallowed ideas about female equality. The West responded with a self-righteous selfie protest using the hashtag ‘Bring Back Our Girls’. Michelle Obama, Cara Delevingne, Jessica Biel and Anne Hathaway have all involved themselves in it.
But Boko Haram – whose name means ‘western education is sinful’ – does not distinguish between the education of girls and boys. In February, the group attacked another school. After boarding up every exit, its men seized 59 boys and gunned them down or cut their throats with machetes. Some buildings were sealed up and set alight. The girls were ordered to go home, abandon their ‘wicked’ schooling and seek husbands.
There was no protest for the boys.
And then there’s the fact that women attempt suicide 3 times more often than men yet men have a suicide rate five times greater than women.
http://mentalhealthrealities.blogspo...tween-men.html
What accounts for this discrepancy? I believe men are more motivated to actually be successful when it comes to suicide because men know there won’t be any sympathy for them if they fail, and women have an attempted suicide rate 3 times greater than men but fail to succeed four times as often because they know people will be sympathetic towards their suffering when they fail.
It seems the suffering of women is seen as twice as important as the suffering of men. For example, men get similar rates of prostate cancer as women get breast cancer, yet breast cancer gets twice as much funding.
''''''''''This year [2007] 218,890 men in the U.S. will be diagnosed with prostate cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. By comparison, 178,480 new cases of breast cancer will be diagnosed in women. Not a huge difference, but a new report finds that for every prostate cancer drug on the market, there are seven used to treat breast cancer, and federal spending on breast cancer research outpaces prostate cancer spending by a ratio of nearly two to one.
– Business Week, via the National Prostate Cancer Coalition""""""""
As an egalitarian, I believe male suffering should be seen as just as important as female suffering.