Institutional Sexism: The Bias We’re Not Allowed to See - Part 3 - Conclusion

If institutional sexism against men is so pervasive, why can’t we see it?
Why can a society capable of diagnosing “microaggressions” and “implicit bias” remain blind to its own structural prejudice against half its citizens?

The answer lies in a deeper psychological bias — one older than feminism and broader than politics. It’s the instinct to center women’s needs first: gynocentrism.

Gynocentrism isn’t hatred of men; it’s compassion with blinders on. It’s the moral reflex that sees women as fragile, men as durable, and suffering as legitimate only when it’s female. It shapes our empathy map from childhood — the little girl who cries is comforted; the boy who cries is told to toughen up. By adulthood, that reflex is baked into the culture.

When feminists in the 1960s began describing institutions as oppressive to women, they were building on this foundation. The public accepted the narrative easily because it fit the moral intuition that women need protection and men need correction. The idea of institutional sexism against women felt right; the idea of institutional sexism against men felt absurd.

But intuition isn’t truth.

Gynocentrism acts like an ideological shield: it protects women from scrutiny while leaving men exposed. When a woman fails, the system failed her; when a man fails, he failed himself.
The result is a self-reinforcing loop — a feedback mechanism that rewards female victimhood and punishes male vulnerability.

Even academia, which claims neutrality, is steeped in this moral reflex.
Gender-studies programs that once promised to challenge inequality now function more as temples of ideological maintenance. Their role is not to question whether men face systemic bias, but to explain away any data suggesting they do. The assumption is always that men hold the power, even when they demonstrably don’t.

That’s not scholarship; it’s theology.

And like all theology, it protects itself by defining heresy. The heretic, in this case, is anyone who points out that compassion has been rationed by sex.

7. The Human Cost

When systems consistently favor one sex’s pain over the other’s, people learn. Boys learn it first.

They learn it in classrooms that scold their energy and reward compliance.
They learn it in media that depicts them as bumbling, violent, or disposable.
They learn it in families where fathers are peripheral, or where mothers wield the quiet authority of assumed virtue.

By adulthood, many men have absorbed the lesson: your feelings are a burden, your needs are negotiable, your failures are proof.

This is how institutional sexism becomes internalized.
Men stop expecting fairness, and worse, they stop expecting empathy. When injustice occurs — in courts, workplaces, or relationships — they don’t see it as systemic. They see it as personal ​failure or weakness.

That resignation is perhaps the cruelest outcome of all.
Because institutions don’t have to oppress loudly when their subjects have already consented to being overlooked.

The emotional toll is enormous but unmeasured. It shows up in statistics — suicide rates, addiction, homelessness — but the deeper wound is existential. When a man realizes that the society he contributes to has little instinct to protect him, something vital in his spirit hardens.

As one father told me after losing custody of his children, “I didn’t just lose them. I lost faith in the idea that fairness even applies to me.”

Institutional sexism isn’t only about policies. It’s about the quiet message that some lives merit more compassion than others. And that message, delivered generation after generation, corrodes our collective sense of justice.

8. Reclaiming the Term

It’s time to reclaim the language.

If systemic bias means patterns of disadvantage embedded in structures, then we must be willing to name those patterns wherever they occur — not just where they fit a fashionable narrative.

Institutional sexism should never have been gendered. It describes a process, not a direction: the way institutions absorb moral assumptions and translate them into policy. Sometimes those assumptions favor men. Increasingly, they favor women. The honest mind must be able to see both.

Reclaiming the term doesn’t mean denying women’s​ or men’s historical struggles. It means applying the same analytical lens to everyone. It means intellectual consistency.

We’ve built a society where calling attention to male disadvantage is considered controversial, while calling attention to female disadvantage is considered virtuous. That asymmetry is itself a form of institutional sexism — the kind that hides behind moral approval.

The first step toward balance is honesty. We must be willing to ask the forbidden question:

If equality truly matters, why are we afraid to see when the system tilts against men?

If we can’t even name institutional sexism when it harms half the population, then the word equality has lost its meaning.

The goal isn’t to replace one victim class with another. It’s to restore integrity to the moral compass of our institutions — to remind them that fairness, by definition, cannot be selective.

Closing Note

Perhaps someday, a university course on “institutional sexism” will examine both sides honestly. Students will study how empathy, once a virtue, became gendered; how compassion was politicized; how language turned from a tool of truth to a weapon of ideology.

Until then, it falls to those outside the institutions — writers, thinkers, fathers, teachers, ordinary men and women — to hold up the mirror.

Because the greatest act of equality is not claiming more compassion for one sex.
It’s extending it, finally, to both.

When the Nursery Governs the Nation

The Harper family lived in a modest two-story house at the end of a quiet street. There was a father, a mother, and three children: 14, 11, and 6.

They were not extraordinary people. They forgot appointments. They argued about screen time. They got tired at the end of long days.

But something about their home felt solid.

There was warmth. There was order. There was a sense that everyone knew where they stood.

Why?

Because they followed rules that make families work.

1. Belonging Came Before Performance

When the six-year-old spilled milk for the third time that week, no one convened a tribunal. She wasn’t asked whether she had “earned” dinner. She was fed because she belonged.

When the 14-year-old slammed a door and shouted something regrettable, there were consequences. But there was no threat of expulsion.

Membership in the family was unconditional.

Belonging preceded merit.

2. The Strong Carried the Weak

The parents worked. The children did not. The younger ones consumed far more than they produced.

No one kept a ledger calculating whether the six-year-old had contributed enough to justify her meals.

That would have been absurd.

Family is not based on reciprocity. It is based on duty and love.

The strong carry the weak—temporarily—so that the weak can grow strong.

3. Feelings Had Moral Weight

If one child was hurt, everything paused. If someone cried, the room shifted.

Emotional pain mattered.

The parents were especially attentive to vulnerability.

The most fragile voice in the room often received the most care.

No one found this unfair. It was simply what families do.

4. Mercy Tempered Justice

Rules existed. But context mattered. “Why did you do that?” was asked before consequences were decided.

Intent mattered.

Fatigue mattered.

Developmental stage mattered.

Justice inside a family is personal, not mechanical.

And because of these principles, the Harper family flourished.

The children grew.
Mistakes were survivable.
Love was assumed.
Authority was trusted.

Now imagine something strange.

The Same Rules Applied to the Whole Town

Suppose the mayor of the town announced:

“We have discovered that the Harper family’s way of operating produces harmony. Therefore, we will run the entire town by the same principles.”

It sounded compassionate.

It sounded humane.

It sounded morally advanced.

And so they tried.

1. Belonging Before Contribution

Citizens were told:

“Your needs come first. Contribution is secondary.” Resources were increasingly distributed according to distress rather than productivity.

Those who expressed greater need received greater priority.

Those who produced more were told not to focus on reward. After all, in a family, the strong carry the weak.

At first, this felt noble.

Over time, effort subtly declined.

Not dramatically. Not all at once.

Just enough.

2. Feelings as Public Authority

Town meetings began centering on emotional harm.

If a policy made someone feel excluded, it was reconsidered.

If a group felt historically wronged, that feeling carried moral authority.

Facts still mattered—but feelings often overruled them.

Gradually, public debate shifted from “What works?” to “Who is hurting?”

And the most distressed voice carried the most influence.

3. Mercy Without Impartiality

In the Harper home, mercy worked because everyone was bound together for life.

In the town, relationships were not intimate. They were institutional.

Yet rules began bending depending on who committed the offense.

Context expanded for some.
Responsibility tightened for others.

The law stopped feeling blind.
Trust began to erode.

4. The Quiet Burnout

At the edge of town lived Daniel.

He owned a small plumbing company.

He worked long hours. Paid his taxes. Trained apprentices. Fixed broken pipes in winter storms.

When policies shifted toward distributing resources based primarily on need, Daniel didn’t complain. He believed in helping people.

But over time he noticed something.

His taxes rose steadily.
Regulations multiplied.
Clients who didn’t pay were increasingly protected.

When he raised concerns, he was told, gently, that others were hurting more.

He kept working.

But something changed.

He stopped hiring apprentices.
He stopped expanding.
He stopped volunteering for civic boards.

He still contributed.

Just less.

Not out of anger.

Out of fatigue.

Multiply Daniel by thousands.

The town did not collapse in flames.

It simply slowed.

5. The Collapse of Incentive

In a family, parents sacrifice because love binds them.

In a town, producers require fairness and predictability.

When contribution no longer reliably led to reward,
and distress reliably led to benefit,
human behavior adjusted.

Not because people were evil—
but because incentives shape action.

Gradually.
Predictably.

Why It Worked at Home But Failed in Public

The Harper family worked because:

• It was small.

• It was intimate.

• It was bound by lifelong loyalty.

• It operated through asymmetrical responsibility.

• It suspended strict reciprocity for the sake of development.

The town required something different:

• Impersonal fairness.

• Predictable incentives.

• Equal accountability under law.

• Reciprocal contribution.

• Boundaries that protect the whole.

The family is designed to nurture dependency.

Society is designed to transition dependency into responsibility.

The family suspends survival logic so children can grow.

Society must enforce survival logic so civilization can survive.

Both Systems Are Necessary

This is not an argument against families.

Nor is it an argument against compassion.

The family is sacred precisely because it is an exception.

It is the one place where love precedes merit.

And society exists so that families can exist.

Without the productive, disciplined structures of the public sphere, there would be no stable homes to shelter children.

Without the nurturing, sacrificial structures of the family, there would be no mature adults capable of sustaining society.

They are not enemies.

They are interdependent.

But they are not interchangeable.

When the rules of the nursery become the rules of the nation, compassion expands—but accountability weakens.

And when accountability weakens for long enough, even compassion becomes unsustainable.

The tension described in this story is not hypothetical. It is the central argument of David Shackleton’s remarkable new book, Matrisensus: Masculine Collapse and Feminine Shadow.

Shackleton argues that Western society is increasingly governed not by the logic of society, but by the logic of the family — and that this shift carries profound consequences for law, culture, and moral authority.

Tomorrow, I’ll be joined by David Shackleton, Janice Fiamengo, Warren Farrell, and Lisa Britton for a conversation exploring these ideas in depth. If this story resonates with you, you won’t want to miss it.

Men Are Good

Family Courts and Custody: The Soft Power of Assumptions

If institutional sexism exists anywhere in plain view, it is in the family courts.

Here, bias does not announce itself. It operates through procedure. Through precedent. Through “standard practice.” It hides inside the phrase best interest of the child while producing outcomes that are strikingly consistent.

When parents separate, the system does not start from a presumption of equal parenthood. It starts from a quieter premise: children remain with their mother unless a compelling reason forces another arrangement.

Fathers are not evaluated as co-equal parents. They are evaluated as exceptions.

In contested cases, fathers lose primary custody roughly 80% of the time. When joint custody is awarded, it often masks substantial imbalance in time and influence. These outcomes are rarely framed as bias. They are described as common sense.

The “tender years” doctrine may have been formally repealed, but its logic still animates decision-making. The vocabulary has evolved; the reflex has not.

Nurturing is interpreted through a feminine template. Emotional attunement is coded maternal. Stability provided by a father is treated as logistical rather than relational. His authority becomes “rigidity.” His expectations become “pressure.” His insistence on structure becomes “control.”

The system does not need overt hostility toward men to function this way. It simply needs assumptions that go unexamined.

And those assumptions carry teeth.

A father can enter court as a fully involved parent and leave as a visitor in his child’s life. He may be assigned alternating weekends and midweek dinners. He may be required to finance the household he no longer lives in. He may be ordered to pay support calculated by formula — without meaningful consideration of what he has just lost.

He has committed no crime. He has not been found unfit. Yet his relationship with his children has been administratively reduced.

Temporary orders — often based on allegations, not findings — can solidify into permanent arrangements. Incentives tilt subtly toward accusation because accusation reshapes leverage. Enforcement mechanisms operate asymmetrically. Financial noncompliance triggers swift penalties. Parenting-time violations often do not.

This is not accidental drift. It is structural gravity.

And the cultural message is unmistakable: fathers are replaceable. Fathers are secondary. Fathers are providers first and parents second.

Children absorb that message as well.

They grow up in a society that speaks endlessly about the importance of fathers — while administratively sidelining them. They learn, through lived experience, that a good man can be separated from his children not because he failed them, but because the system assumes he is less essential.

We are told this is neutral law.

We are told this is compassion.

But when one class of parent is routinely displaced without wrongdoing and required to subsidize the displacement, that is not neutrality. It is policy shaped by belief.

And when that belief systematically privileges mothers while diminishing fathers, embedded in courtrooms and codified in practice, it is not compassion.

It is institutional sexism.

Health and Mental Health: Compassion With a Gender

Nowhere is institutional sexism more visible — or more invisible — than in health policy. If you doubt that compassion can be gendered, look at the numbers.

Men die, on average, five to six years earlier than women. They are four times more likely to die by suicide, and far more likely to die from nearly every major cause except breast cancer. Yet when governments allocate research and prevention funding, women’s health dominates by orders of magnitude.

The U.S. National Institutes of Health, for instance, spends billions annually on female-specific conditions. Breast cancer alone receives more than double the research funding of prostate cancer, despite near-equal mortality rates. Cardiovascular disease — the leading killer of men — receives little attention compared to campaigns targeting women’s heart health.

When men die younger, it’s framed as lifestyle. When women die younger, it’s framed as injustice.

That’s the telltale mark of institutional bias: not in the data itself, but in the interpretation of the data.

The same pattern shows up in mental health.
Campaigns for depression and anxiety almost always depict female faces. Suicide prevention materials speak in the language of emotional sharing and help-seeking — the very things men are least likely to do. The implicit assumption is that men should adapt to a female model of healing, rather than systems adapting to how men process distress.

The result is a profession that misunderstands half its clientele. And that misunderstanding has consequences measured in lost lives.

Even at the level of public health administration, the asymmetry is startling. The United States has 10 Offices for Women’s Health — but no equivalent for men. Proposals to create one have repeatedly been dismissed as “unnecessary.” The same pattern exists across Western nations: male-specific health policy is the great unmentionable.

 

Imagine reversing the numbers. Imagine women dying earlier, underrepresented in treatment studies, underserved in prevention, and told that an office for them was unnecessary. We would rightly call that institutional sexism.
So why don’t we call it that now?

Criminal Justice: The Gendered Face of Mercy

If compassion is the currency of justice, men are operating in a perpetual deficit.

The criminal-justice system treats male and female offenders as though they belong to different species. Study after study has found that, controlling for the same crime and criminal history, men receive sentences roughly 60% longer than women. Women are more likely to receive probation, diversion, or community service — often justified under the vague rationale that they are caretakers or victims of circumstance.

When men offend, they are agents; when women offend, they are explained.

Judges, prosecutors, and even juries participate in this bias, most without realizing it. Female defendants are perceived as less threatening, more remorseful, and more reformable. Male defendants are seen as dangerous until proven otherwise. That perception bleeds into bail decisions, plea bargains, and sentencing.

The result is staggering:

• Men make up 93% of the prison population.

• Boys are six times more likely to be suspended from school — often the first step in the pipeline that leads there.

• Male victims of violence, particularly domestic violence, are almost completely invisible in official data and services.

Consider domestic-violence policy. Nearly every Western nation has publicly funded women’s shelters. Almost none have equivalent shelters for men. In the United States, over 2,000 shelters serve women, while an estimated 2, or maybe 3 shelters exist that exclusively serve male victims.

When a man calls the police as a victim, he often risks being arrested himself. Officers have been trained, implicitly or explicitly, to see the man as the likely aggressor. That isn’t personal bias; it’s institutional training built on decades of ideology.

Even when men are the majority of homicide victims, policy still orbits around “violence against women.” The moral frame is so rigid that male suffering can be acknowledged only as a footnote — or as the by-product of “toxic masculinity.”

If that isn’t systemic sexism, what would be?

We’re told that men’s overrepresentation in prison reflects innate aggression or privilege turned sour. But the same system that pathologizes male behavior early on, denies fathers equal custody, and undervalues male mental health is also the one that produces these outcomes. It’s a closed circuit of neglect.

Institutional sexism doesn’t just punish men for misbehavior — it helps create the conditions for it.

Men Are Good.

Next post will address the reasons for these biases.