Shared post - Teen Violence — When Ideology Trumps Data

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Teen Violence — When Ideology Trumps Data

3 - Bias Against Men and Boys in Psychological Research

November 29, 2025

This post is part of an ongoing series originally published around 2010, examining the misandry embedded in mental health research. It’s the first of three research projects covered in that series. This one looks at a report from Great Britain’s NSPCC on teen violence — and it’s astonishingly misandrist. It’s worth reading just to see how deftly they twist language to push their narrative. I’ve included links at the end, along with images of media articles that dutifully echoed their claims. It’s remarkable how easily the media amplifies these lies and half-truths — and has been doing so for years. The remaining two posts in the series will be published over the next two Saturdays.
— Tom

Teen Violence — When Ideology Trumps Data

The first project we’ll look at is a study from Great Britain on teen relationship violence. The research included both a written survey and in-depth interviews with selected teens. The survey results were clear: both boys and girls experienced relationship violence.

Yet, the public ad campaign that followed told a very different story. It focused entirely on helping girls as victims and portrayed boys only as perpetrators. This stunning disregard for male victims — and for the girls identified as perpetrators — stood in sharp contrast to the study’s own data. Those numbers showed that many boys were victims of teen relationship violence, and that girls, too, could be perpetrators.

Let’s start at the beginning — with how this issue first caught my attention.

A friend emailed me a link a couple of months ago to an article from Great Britain about teen violence. The friend was worried that the article was biased against boys. Here’s how it started:

A new government campaign launched today urges teenage boys not to abuse their girlfriends.
TV, radio, internet, and poster ads will target boys aged 13 to 18, aiming to show the consequences of abusive relationships.
Officials describe it as part of a broader effort to reduce domestic violence against women and younger girls.'

The campaign was inspired by research published last year by the NSPCC, which reported that:

One in four teenage girls said they had been physically abused by a boyfriend.
One in six said they had been pressured into sex.
One in three said they had gone further sexually than they wanted to.

I was a bit taken aback by the article, especially given the recent research on teen relationship violence showing that it tends to be fairly symmetrical — with both boys and girls acting as perpetrators and victims. Yet this article presented a very different picture. It assumed from the outset that girls were the primary victims and boys the primary perpetrators, reflecting an outdated stereotype about domestic violence.

That disconnect made me wonder what was really going on. I read several more articles about the ad campaign mentioned in the piece, and was surprised — even shocked — to find that the campaign’s entire focus was on helping girls while “teaching” boys not to abuse their girlfriends.

Each of these articles cited the same research as the basis for the campaign. So I decided to go straight to the source and see what the original study actually found.

The original study was sponsored by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC) of Great Britain and was in two parts. The first part was the “full report” and was a detailed 209 page research report explaining methodology, results, implications and conclusions. The next was the Executive Summary which was a 10 page summation of the findings of the full report. It was a quick read meant to give people the essence of the larger document. I read through the “full report” and then the executive summary. It was striking to me that the data in the full report actually showed that boys were victims of teen violence. The original news article I had read had mentioned that the research had found that 25% of girls said they had been physically abused by their boyfriends. What the news article omitted saying was that the same research had also found that 18% of boys had said that they had been physically abused by their girlfriends. This meant that this research found that almost half of the victims of teen relationship violence were boys! Somehow this important fact had been omitted from the news report.

There were plenty of other headlines that could have been drawn from the data of the full report that showed the boys to have been victims and the girls perpetrators but they were nowhere to be seen in any of the news articles. Here are a couple of examples of headlines that could be written from the data of the full report:

25% of those reporting physically forcing their partners into having sexual intercourse were girls – Table 15 page 82 full report
Nearly three times as many girls reported using SEVERE violence in relationships. table 11 – page 75 full report
Over three times as many girls reported using partner violence in their relationships table 10 page 74 full report
Over 1/3 of those reporting being pressured into kissing, touching or something else were boys. table 6 page 66 full report–
Nearly half (42%) of the victims of teen relationship violence were boys  Table 3 page 44 full report
Nearly one third of the victims of severe violence were boys Table 4 page 45 full report
Twice as many girls reported physically forcing their partners into “kissing, touching, or something else” more than a few times. Table 13 page 82 full report

This is just a sampling of the findings from the full report. It’s clear that the survey showed teen relationship violence was not gender-based — both boys and girls were represented among the victims and perpetrators. However, after reading both the full report and the executive summary, I noticed a striking difference. The full report included data showing boys as victims and girls as perpetrators, but the executive summary contained far less information about male victims and female perpetrators. In fact, the executive summary seemed to focus almost entirely on female victims and male perpetrators.

I began to wonder how such a shift could occur. The original study had shown boys as victims — not as frequently as girls, but still in significant numbers. Boys accounted for roughly 25–42% of victims, certainly not the majority, but far too many to ignore. Yet ignore them they did.

The NSPCC introduced this research to the public through a press release, and once again, we can see the same pattern — a steady move away from acknowledging boys. What began as an apparently balanced investigation into teen relationship violence in the full report became less so in the executive summary, and by the time it reached the press release, the focus had shifted almost entirely to girls. Here’s the opening of that release. Note the “girls only” framing in both the headline and the opening paragraphs:

Teen girls abused by boyfriends warns NSPCC Press releases 01 September 2009 A third of teenage girls in a relationship suffer unwanted sexual acts and a quarter physical violence, reveals new research(1) launched today (01 September 2009) by the NSPCC(2) and the University of Bristol(3). The survey of 13 to 17-year-olds found that nearly nine out of ten girls had been in an intimate relationship. Of these, one in six said they had been pressured into sexual intercourse and 1 in 16 said they had been raped. Others had been pressured or forced to kiss or sexually touch. A quarter of girls had suffered physical violence such as being slapped, punched, or beaten by their boyfriends.

Girls are highlighted repeatedly in the press release. If one only read the press release you might assume that the boys were incidental and that the girls were clearly the identified victims of teen relationship violence. The boys actually did get mentioned in one paragraph (one out of 18 paragraphs, eleven of which were about girls). Here it is:

Nearly nine out of ten boys also said they had been in a relationship. A smaller number reported pressure or violence from girls. (Only one in seventeen boys in a relationship reported being pressured or forced into sexual activity and almost one in five suffered physical violence in a relationship).

Note how the boys victimization is minimized with words like “a smaller number” and “only one in seventeen.” Keep in mind that the “smaller number” referred to in the second sentence was 18% versus 25% which had been the figure for girls. While 18 is smaller than 25, it is not that much smaller. Another important difference is that the girls 25% stat was mentioned in the opening sentence of the document (and indirectly in the headline) while the boys 18% stat was mentioned as an afterthought in parentheses. Yes, the boys percentage was smaller but it seems very obvious that this press release is trying to marginalize the victimization of boys.

Note that the press release mentions that one in 17 girls had been raped. This works out to about 5.8% of the females surveyed. What they don’t mention is that the same table in the full report that showed that 5.8% of girls were raped also showed that 3.3% of the boys were also raped. This stat never made it beyond the full report. The press release mentions the rape of girls but is completely silent on the shocking statistic that 3.3% of the boys were raped. The fact is that their data from the full report shows boys comprised over one third of the rape victims. Not a word about this.

It now seems easy to understand how the media articles focused so exclusively on girls and ignored the needs of boys. They likely only read the press release and maybe a part of the executive summary. The press release might very well have been the only document they read about the study and it clearly focused almost exclusively on girls while ignoring the needs of boys. How bad did it get in focusing on just girls? Here is a sampling of typical headlines from actual news articles on this research and ad campaign: Many Girls’ Abused by Boyfriends Third of teenage girls forced into sex,
NSPCC survey finds  1 in 3 Teenage Girls Tell of Sexual Abuse by Their Boyfriends 
Teen Girls Abused by Boyfriends Warns NSPCC  

Almost every headline I found focused on girls as victims. Not one centered on boys. The articles occasionally mentioned that boys could also be vulnerable, but the main narrative was always about girls’ vulnerability and victimhood.

The ad campaign represented the real-world application of this research — TV, radio, internet, and poster ads aimed at changing teen relationship behaviors. It marked the point where theory ended and where public messaging — and taxpayer funding — began.

Inexplicably, the campaign’s focus was entirely on girls as victims of relationship violence, while boys were portrayed as the problem and instructed not to abuse their girlfriends. Somehow, the original research had shown that both boys and girls experienced relationship violence, yet by the time the findings reached the media — and then the public through the ad campaign — the data on male victims had all but disappeared.

How did this happen?

The Full Report and then boys disappear

The full report offers an abundance of data that shows that boys are victims of teen partner violence but somehow the recommendations of both the full report and the executive summary seem to focus primarily on girls. Here’s a quick summary extrapolated from the full report:

According to their survey:

*** 72% girls reported experiencing emotional violence 51% of boys reported emotional violence BOYS WERE 41% of the victims of emotional violence in teen relationships

*** 25% of girls experienced physical partner violence 18% of the boys experienced physical partner violence BOYS WERE 42% of the victims of physical partner violence in teen relationships

*** 31% of girls experienced sexual partner violence 16% of boys experienced sexual partner violence BOYS WERE 34% of the victims of sexual partner violence in teen relationships.

According to the survey, boys made up between 34% and 42% of the victims. The full report stated this clearly in the data. Yet, as the findings moved from the full report to the executive summary and then to the press release, boys seemed to vanish. Why could that be?

The researchers never directly explained this omission, but reading between the lines, two possible reasons emerge.

The first is that the survey results suggested girls were more “impacted” by relationship violence than boys. One question on the survey asked about emotional reactions to the violence. Girls were far more likely to select responses indicating they felt scared, upset, or humiliated. Boys, on the other hand, were more likely to report feeling angry, annoyed, or unaffected.

The researchers appear to have interpreted these emotional differences to mean that girls suffered more deeply from relationship violence — and therefore should be the primary focus of attention and services. This assumption is implied in several places throughout the full report. Here’s one example:

This research has demonstrated that a fundamental divide exists in relation to how girls and boys are affected by partner violence, and this divide needs to be a central component in the development of professional responses to this issue.

What exactly does “professional responses to this issue” mean? The authors never explain, but it seems reasonable to assume they’re suggesting that girls should receive more attention and services because they were more emotionally affected by the violence. Given that the report’s recommendations focus almost exclusively on girls while ignoring the needs of boys, this interpretation seems well-founded — though I’d be happy to be corrected if that assumption is wrong.

The researchers appear willing to overlook their own substantial evidence that boys were also victims of relationship violence — simply because girls reported stronger emotional reactions. Here’s another example:

These findings are further elaborated on in the interview data where girls consistently described the harmful impact that the violence had on their welfare, often long term, while boy victims routinely stated they were unaffected or, at the very worst, annoyed. These results provide the wider context in which teenage partner violence needs to be viewed.

It’s important to remember that the interview data quoted above — which we’ll examine in more detail later — included only 62 hand-selected girls and 29 similarly chosen boys. Notably, only one of those 29 boys was a victim of non-reciprocal violence. That makes it highly questionable to draw broad conclusions from such a small and uneven sample, especially when the survey itself included over 1,300 teens.

Also worth noting is the phrase “the wider context in which teenage partner violence needs to be viewed.” We can reasonably assume the researchers are again implying that girls should receive priority in services and support. What’s clear, however, is that the data on violence against boys is ignored — both in the recommendation sections and in the resulting ad campaign. The following quote offers further insight into the researchers’ perspective:

Intervention programmes need to reflect this fundamental difference by ensuring that the significant impact of violence on girls’ wellbeing is recognised and responded to, while enabling boys to recognise the implications of partner violence for their partners and themselves.

This statement clearly shows that the researchers believe that the girls should be treated differently and intervention programs need to “reflect” the difference that girls are more impacted by the violence.

But are girls more impacted? I am not so sure. Let’s start by looking at the actual question on the survey:

3 How did it make you feel when force was used against you?   scared/frightened  angry/annoyed  humiliated  upset/unhappy  loved/protected  thought it was funny  no effect

The researchers noted that boys and girls gave markedly different responses when asked how the violence had affected them. However, they didn’t provide the raw data — no breakdown of how many boys or girls chose each option — only a summary stating that girls were much more “impacted.”

There are good reasons for this difference. The question itself was flawed — practically designed to produce a gender gap. Boys and girls are socialized, and often biologically inclined, to respond to emotional threat differently. The creators of this survey question seemed unaware of boys’ deep-seated reluctance to show vulnerability or dependence — a reflection of their hierarchical nature and their drive for independence.

For a boy to check boxes like “scared/frightened,” “humiliated,” or “upset/unhappy” would mean admitting weakness, something most boys instinctively avoid. Instead, they are far more likely to select “angry/annoyed” or even “no effect” to maintain an image of strength. As Warren Farrell aptly said, “The weakness of men is the facade of strength; the strength of women is the facade of weakness.” Boys and men are far more likely to choose responses that convey control and toughness.

If this is true, then boys’ responses in the survey may not accurately reflect their true emotional impact. It’s entirely possible that those who checked “no effect” were just as hurt or disturbed as their female counterparts. With questions framed this way, we’re left not knowing the real story. Basing future services on such data would be risky — and likely lead to deeply flawed conclusions.

Consider this: would the researchers dismiss a rape victim who said she felt “no impact” and decide she didn’t need support? Of course not. Would clinicians ignore domestic violence victims who claimed they were unaffected? Hardly. So why dismiss the pain of boys simply because they reported fewer signs of distress on a survey? Emotional reactions vary widely from person to person, and not showing immediate or visible distress doesn’t mean the trauma isn’t real.

Having worked with trauma victims for many years, I know that emotional impact often emerges slowly — sometimes months or even years after the event. To deny services based on someone’s initial emotional response, or apparent lack thereof, is one of the most misguided ideas imaginable. And to deny those services to an entire group — in this case, boys — on that basis isn’t just poor reasoning. It’s prejudice, plain and simple.

Are the researchers biased against boys?

There are numerous indications, in addition to what has already been described, that the researchers have an anti-boy bias. There are the obvious dismissals of the survey data that shows boys to be victims of partner violence and the complete focus on girls as victims. But there are a number of more subtle clues in the study that seem to indicate a disdain for boys.

When they did mention boys as victims the report tended to minimize their experience. Here is a quote:

Boys’ experiences of violence - Little evidence existed to support the possibility that boys, although they were negatively affected by their partner’s violence, felt unable either to voice or to recognise their vulnerability. Boys minimised their own use of violence as “messing around”. Boys also reported the violence as mutual, although they often used disproportionate force compared to their female partners.

Rather than addressing boys’ actual experiences of violence, the researchers focused on whether the boys could “give voice” to the negative effects of their partners’ aggression. This seems like a weak attempt to suggest that boys were able to articulate their experiences — and therefore must not have been “held back” by traditional masculinity from expressing vulnerability. The unspoken implication is that because boys could talk about their victimization, they must not have been deeply affected by it. In other words, it didn’t really matter for them — whereas for girls, it did.

This framing distracts from the central reality: the boys were victims of violence. Reading the researchers’ words makes it clear how differently boys were treated in this study. Their pain was minimized and rationalized away, reduced to the notion that they simply weren’t as impacted. The underlying message was that yes, boys experience violence from their female partners, but they don’t suffer from it in the same way.

That conclusion runs counter to everything we know about male psychology. It’s well established that men and boys often minimize their pain, hide their injuries, and strive to maintain an appearance of independence. This doesn’t mean they’re unaffected — it means they’re reluctant to show it. Precisely because of this tendency, we need a different approach when addressing victimization among boys.

Unfortunately, this study chose another route: it largely ignored boys’ pain and focused its empathy and attention almost exclusively on girls.

Messing Around

The quote above states that “boys minimised their own use of violence as ‘messing around.’” According to the full report, boys described their behavior this way 56% of the time. This finding is later cited in the recommendations section as justification for teaching boys to recognize and take responsibility for their violence. (See below.)

But what about the girls? You might assume that since boys were singled out for this attitude, girls must have responded differently. Not so — at least not in the curious, upside-down logic of this study. By the researchers’ own data, girls described their own violence as “messing around” 43% of the time — only 13 percentage points less than the boys.

Given that both sexes minimized their aggression in similar ways, it would make sense that both boys and girls should be encouraged to recognize and take responsibility for their actions. Yet the recommendations focus solely on boys. That’s not sound reasoning — it’s bias. Specifically, an anti-boy bias.

Here is the quote:

“However, although intervention programmes should ensure that the needs of both girls and boys are recognised, it is important that the wider experiences of girls remain a focus. In addition, boys’ minimisation of their own use of violence – by dismissing it as “messing around” and justifications based on mutual aggression – needs to be challenged.”

Why would the boys need to be challenged about this and the girls not? The boys said their violence was “messing around” 56% of the time and the girls said their violence was a slightly lower “messing around” 43% of the time. Clearly a strong bias in favor of girls and against the boys.

The researchers went a step farther than just recommending that girls victimization should be the focus. The researchers made the claim that boys lower scores on the impact question actually made them more dangerous to their female partners. Here is a quote:

If boys view the impact of their victimisation as negligible, they may also apply this understanding to their own actions. Thus, they may believe that their partners are also unaffected by their use of violence.

The implication here is that boys’ supposed insensitivity to the violence done to them makes them less sensitive to the violence they might commit. I find that hard to believe — especially considering that nearly every boy grows up hearing, over and over, that he must never hit a girl.

Let’s apply the same reasoning to girls. According to the survey, girls reported being far more emotionally affected by relationship violence than boys. Yet those same girls also admitted to using violence three times more often than boys did. If we follow the researchers’ logic, this would suggest that girls are well aware of how hurtful violence can be — and still choose to use it far more frequently. That hardly paints them in a positive light, does it?

The researchers conclude:

Thus, from these findings it seems conclusive that partner sexual violence represents a problem for girls, while boys report being unaffected.

That sums it up rather neatly — and disturbingly.

Boys are More Violent? When the Subjective Trumps the Objective

While the survey was supposed to be the main source of data, the researchers seemed to place far more weight on the subjective material gathered through interviews. The full report’s survey data clearly showed that girls were three times more likely to report using violence in relationships. Yet, somehow, the researchers claim there was “a clear consensus” among the girls that boys were more physically violent toward their partners than girls were.

Here’s the quote:

“There was a clear consensus within girls’ accounts that boys used physical violence in relationships more often than girls. This common understanding regarding the gendered nature of physical violence was reported by almost all girls, whether they themselves had experienced violence or not.”

This excerpt from page 94 of the full report summarizes the researchers’ evaluation of the girls’ interviews. The most striking aspect is the sharp contradiction between the survey data and the interview findings. The survey clearly showed that girls were three to six times more likely than boys to report being violent in relationships. Yet the subjective data from the interviews claimed that there was a “common understanding regarding the gendered nature of physical violence” — that “almost all girls” believed “boys used physical violence in relationships more often than girls.”

That’s a major discrepancy. One half of the study shows girls admitting to much higher rates of violence, while the other half asserts that boys are the primary aggressors. Such a contradiction demands an explanation, but the report offers little. The closest the researchers come is to suggest that girls’ higher rates of reported violence were due to acts of self-defense — an all-too-familiar claim.

However, the numbers tell a different story. According to the data, 25% of girls and 8% of boys reported being violent in relationships. When we subtract the portion attributed to self-defense — 44% for girls and 30% for boys — we find that 14% of girls and 5.6% of boys used violence for reasons other than self-defense. That means girls were nearly three times more likely than boys to commit non–self-defense violence.

This difference is substantial and should have been a central point in the report. Instead, it was ignored. The researchers’ conclusion — that girls viewed boys as more violent and therefore girls need services while boys need behavior correction — is baffling. It defies their own data and reveals a clear bias. In short, this isn’t just poor analysis. It’s misandry disguised as research.

One partial explanation of this is shown in the following quote:

Only 6 per cent of boys, compared to a third of girls, claimed that they were negatively affected by the emotional violence they experienced. This gendered impact disparity upholds Stark’s (2007) contention that coercive control, which many of our components of emotional violence reflect, is made meaningful only when placed within a gendered power understanding of intimate violence. Thus, although girls had used emotional violence, without it being underpinned by other forms of inequality and power, their attempts were rendered largely ineffectual.

Incredibly, this section seems to be giving girls a pass for their emotional violence. The pattern continues: When girls are perpetrators they are given excuses, when boys are victims they are ignored and minimized.

Reporting oddities

When you look closely at the section about girls reporting more frequent perpetration of violence in relationship you notice something very odd. Look at the following paragraph and note the researchers choice of words. Note that girls “report” and boys “admit” (emphasis mine):

Page 74 More girls reported using physical violence against their partner than did boys; this represented a significant difference (x2 (1) = 60.804, p<.001). A quarter (n=148) of girls compared to 8 per cent (n=44) of boys stated that they had used some form of physical violence against their partner. Looking first at less severe physical violence (see table 10), the vast majority of girls (89 per cent) reporting the use of physical violence had used it once or a few times. Only a few (11 per cent) used it more frequently. Similarly, the small proportion of boys who admitted using physical violence also generally used it infrequently (83 per cent).

Perhaps the words “report” and “admit” have different meanings in Great Britain but here in the US they aren’t usually the same. Report generally means to make a statement or announcement. The word admit however has a different spin. Often it has more to do with conceding or confessing. One assumption from the wording the researchers have chosen would be to think that they simply didn’t believe what the boys reported. In other words they would only concede or admit to a certain amount of violence. Basically, implying that they are not telling the entire story. This is of course conjecture on my part but it simply seems like more anti-boy bias.

The Interview Section

As was previously explained the research had both a quantitative section and qualitative section. The qualitative section consisted of semi-structured interviews which included the utilization of five vignettes. The vignettes were stories that were told to the participant and then the stories relevance was discussed as a part of the interview. The stated goals of the researchers was to use the quantitative survey to gain data and use the interviews to enhance their understanding.

The researchers claimed that they had problems in getting participants for the interviews in the manner they had originally planned so they switched mid-stream to a different approach described below:

“We therefore moved to a system whereby researchers observed which young people seemed to be engaging with the survey. They then asked those young people if they would like to take part in the interview stage.”

So they hand picked the interview participants based on their own subjective impression of whether the young person was “engaging with the survey.” This sounds to me to be a direct invitation to a very biased sample. Then you find out that the choices they made of those who were “engaging in the survey” were 62 girls but only 29 boys. You also find that of the 29 boys only one had experienced being a victim of non reciprocal violence in relationship! Makes you wonder about their ideas of “engaging in the survey.” Needless to say the boys section describing the interviews was only 22 pages long while the section about the girls was over 60 pages. Even with such a short section for the boys, most of the writing was about boys violence not their reaction to being victims of violence. Girls victimization was highlighted as was boys violence. Even in the section on boys as victims.

The Vignettes

When I first began examining this survey, I emailed the NSPCC to request copies of the original questionnaire and the vignettes used in the study. To their credit, they kindly sent both. I had suspected that the vignettes would be biased toward portraying girls as victims — and I wasn’t disappointed.

Of the five vignettes, most centered on boys’ possessiveness, shouting, name-calling, violence, or sexual pressuring. Only one story depicted a girl as the perpetrator, and even then, her behavior was relatively mild: she and her friends stole a boy’s cell phone, made unkind comments, and the next day apologized. In contrast, the other four stories featured boys engaging in clearly abusive or coercive behavior, including physical aggression and unwanted sexual advances. In one case, a girl used violence — but only in self-defense.

To the researchers’ credit, the first three vignettes included a follow-up question asking whether similar behavior might also occur with the opposite sex. But inexplicably, that question was omitted from the final two vignettes — the ones dealing with sexual pressure. This omission is telling. It suggests a possible ideological bias that prevented the researchers from viewing boys as potential sexual victims or girls as possible perpetrators. This is especially puzzling since the full report’s own data showed that many girls freely admitted to sexually pressuring their boyfriends. So why exclude the question in the interview phase?

Imagine if the situation were reversed — if 80% of the perpetrators in the vignettes had been female, and the only male perpetrator had merely stolen a cell phone and apologized. There would no doubt be loud outcries about bias, marginalization, and the lack of inclusivity — and rightly so. Yet this imbalance seems to have gone unnoticed. These vignettes marginalized the boys in the study, likely leaving them feeling misunderstood and excluded, since their experiences were neither portrayed nor acknowledged.

It wouldn’t have been difficult to design a more balanced approach. The researchers could have kept the same five stories but reversed the genders for half the participants — telling the same scenarios from both male and female perspectives. That small change alone would have ensured that both boys and girls saw their realities reflected. Alternatively, they could have used gender-neutral names for all participants, leaving the sex of the offender and victim unspecified, or created six vignettes — three with male perpetrators and three with female perpetrators — each covering different types of violence.

Any of these approaches would have been far superior to what was used.

The fact that four out of five vignettes portrayed girls primarily as victims and boys as perpetrators — and that any mention of girls as sexual aggressors was entirely absent — is further evidence of ideological bias. This project clearly reflects a worldview that insists on seeing women and girls as victims and men and boys as oppressors. Allowing such bias to persist does a disservice to everyone. It fails our boys by denying their experiences — and fails our girls by teaching them a distorted view of reality. If this kind of bias is allowed to continue in the social sciences, the credibility of the field itself is at risk.

Recommendation Section

Here’s a brief look at the recommendations section of the executive summary. There is only one paragraph in the recommendation section that mentions boys. Here it is:

Impact of teenage partner violence – the gender divide The impact of partner violence is indisputably differentiated by gender; girl victims report much higher levels of negative impact than do boys. This is not to imply that boys’ experiences of victimisation should be ignored. It may be that boys minimise the impact of the violence due to the need to portray a certain form of masculinity. However, although intervention programmes should ensure that the needs of both girls and boys are recognised, it is important that the wider experiences of girls remain a focus. In addition, boys’ minimisation of their own use of violence – by dismissing it as “messing around” and justifications based on mutual aggression – needs to be challenged.

This paragraph is baffling. Let’s break it down. Here is the first section:

The impact of partner violence is indisputably differentiated by gender; girl victims report much higher levels of negative impact than do boys. This is not to imply that boys’ experiences of victimization should be ignored.

It first makes a claim that partner violence is differentiated by gender and that girls experience more negative impact, implying that boys should be ignored. Then they deny that they mean to ignore boys.

It may be that boys minimise the impact of the violence due to the need to portray a certain form of masculinity.

They offer a possibility for an explanation.

However, although intervention programmes should ensure that the needs of both girls and boys are recognised, it is important that the wider experiences of girls remain a focus

Then they ignore their own explanation and aver that the “wider experiences of girls” (whatever that means) should take precedence.

In addition, boys’ minimization of their own use of violence – by dismissing it as “messing around” and justifications based on mutual aggression – needs to be challenged.

The researchers conclude by emphasizing that the focus should be on boys — specifically, their use of violence and their tendency to minimize it, as discussed earlier.

I find this paragraph deliberately vague. My guess is that the ambiguity is intentional. They can’t quite say what they mean — that girls are seen as worthy victims and boys are not — because putting that bias into words would make it too obvious. Vagueness, then, becomes a safer strategy: it conceals the prejudice while still advancing it. What’s clear after reading is that, for whatever reason, girls are portrayed as deserving the lion’s share of help and services, while boys are told to “shape up.”

Is Ideology Driving the Research?

Viewed purely from a marketing standpoint, these researchers achieved something remarkable. They managed to produce a document labeled as a “study,” gather objective data, then draw conclusions that contradicted their own findings — and still have those conclusions echoed across major media outlets. The result: millions of people were presented with half-truths packaged as scientific fact. That’s quite an accomplishment, if one’s goal is persuasion rather than truth.

It’s hard to escape the impression that the researchers are clinging to a dated feminist narrative — one that insists domestic violence is a story of male perpetrators and female victims. Yet as Murray Straus and many others have shown, that model has long been disproven. The persistence of this bias shows how far some are willing to go to preserve a comforting ideology rather than face complex realities.

Science, at its best, collects data and adjusts theory based on what is discovered. But in this case, ideology appears to be steering the science. The researchers seem to have decided in advance that girls were the victims and boys the aggressors. When their data failed to confirm that assumption, they reinterpreted it to fit the narrative. Their central claim — that girls should be the focus of attention because they are “more impacted” — is a hollow one. Emotional distress does not determine moral worth or entitlement to support. No ethical researcher would argue that some victims deserve less services simply because they express less visible pain.

Many parts of this study struck me as blatantly misandrist — so much so that I could easily write another twenty or thirty pages dissecting them. I’ll spare the reader that, but suffice it to say this study stands as a cautionary example of what happens when ideology guides research, shapes public policy, and filters what the public is told.

This is precisely the danger of allowing ideological zealots to shape public opinion under the banner of “science.” We need to be far more discerning about what qualifies as legitimate research, and far quicker to expose studies compromised by bias. Any high school science student could point out the flaws in this one — yet our media and governments either can’t, or won’t. That failure has consequences for everyone who depends on honest science, balanced reporting, and fair treatment of all victims.

Men Are Good.

____________________________

Link to the full study https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265245739_Partner_Exploitation_and_Violence_in_Teenage_Intimate_Relationships

Some old news stories that show how they hyped the narrative:

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2009/6524.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8230844.stm

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/sep/01/teenage-sexual-abuse-nspcc-report

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/third-of-teenage-girls-suffer-abuse-from-boyfriends-1779988.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1210375/One-teenage-girls-physically-abused-boyfriend.html

Here’s a partial screen shot of the press release. The links for both the executive summary and the press release are now gone.

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tgolden@tgolden

July 15, 2026

The Women's Health Narrative Meets the DATA

What if one of the most common claims in health policy simply isn’t true?

We’ve all heard the refrain: women are underfunded, under-researched, and left behind by the medical establishment. It’s repeated so often that most people never stop to ask for the evidence.

In this roundtable, Jack Kammer, Ed Bartlett, Ed Stephens, Jim Nuzzo, and I compare that narrative with the available data. We examine research funding, clinical trial participation, life expectancy, and the unintended consequences of policies that consistently prioritize one sex while neglecting the other.

This isn’t an argument against women’s health. It’s an argument for evidence, fairness, and a healthier future for everyone.

Link to the Feminist pdf that calls for 20 Billion dollars for women’s health!
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1IKEEZMGXtRNxU4n5K_M1d6k2w-ZP_wVT/view

Jim Nuzzo

The Nuzzo Newsletter on Substack http//jameslnuzzo.Substack.com
X: https://x.com/JamesLNuzzo

Jack Kammer

Jacks Substack Men’s ...

00:35:24

tgolden@tgolden

July 11, 2026

Mantoon: A Visit to the Doc

A visit to the Doc.

00:00:14

tgolden@tgolden

June 13, 2026

The Feminist Fortune Teller

Can you guess what she will say?

00:00:15

tgolden@tgolden

July 02, 2026

From Shooter to Heroine: The Glorification of Feminist Violence

I recently joined Hannah Spier, Janice Fiamengo, and Jim Nuzzo for a fascinating discussion about one of our culture’s most striking double standards: why violence by women is so often explained, excused, or even celebrated, while violence by men is treated very differently. We examine Valerie Solanas, the attempted murder of Andy Warhol, the SCUM Manifesto, and the film I Shot Andy Warhol, asking what the celebration and romanticizing of Solanas reveals about gynocentrism, empathy, and cultural bias. I think you’ll find it both thought-provoking and eye-opening.

tgolden@tgolden

June 04, 2026

Feminism and Liberal Democracy, can liberal democracy survive feminism?

I found this essay both thought-provoking and unsettling. The post examines how ideological capture can occur gradually—not through dramatic political revolutions, but through the accumulation of influence within institutions that are expected to remain impartial. The result is an essay that asks difficult questions about feminism, liberal democracy, and the future of open debate. I think many of you will find it worth your time.

https://critiquingfeminism.substack.com/p/feminism-and-liberal-democracy

CRITIQUINGFEMINISM.SUBSTACK.COM

Feminism and Liberal Democracy

Can Liberal Democracy Survive Feminism?

JuanGoodman@JuanGoodman

June 02, 2026

I feel heard!! A woman who is honest and blunt. I am going to try to learn more about her

https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1KUgA1NcFj/?mibextid=wwXIfr

tgolden@tgolden

1 hour ago

Fathers and Divorce: The Grief No One Sees

Why One Divorce Can Feel Like Twelve Different Losses

Fathers and Divorce: The Grief No One Sees

When women divorce, the public conversation often emphasizes freedom, personal growth, empowerment, and the opportunity to begin again. Books, articles, support groups, and even friends reinforce the idea that she is beginning a new chapter of life. Men, by contrast, are far more likely to have their suffering overlooked or minimized. If they struggle, people may assume they are simply angry, bitter, or paying the consequences for their own mistakes. Their grief often goes unseen.

As a therapist who has spent many years helping people through grief, I’ve often been struck by how poorly we understand what divorce can mean for many men. People often talk about divorce as though it were a single event: “The marriage ended.” But for many men, divorce is not one loss. It is ten or fifteen losses, all arriving within a matter of months. No wonder so many struggle.

Part of the reason we miss this is because we misunderstand grief itself. When people think of grief, they usually think of death. A spouse dies. A parent dies. A child dies. We understand that these losses bring grief because something precious has been taken away.

But grief does not only follow death.

Grief follows loss.

And some experiences involve so many losses occurring at once that they can evoke a grief similar to the one that follows the death of someone we love.

Divorce is one of them.

Yet beneath the legal documents and the practical changes, many men are mourning an extraordinary number of losses all at once. Until we begin to see those losses, we will continue to misunderstand why divorce can be one of the most devastating experiences of a man’s life.

The Loss of a Wife

The most obvious loss is the marriage itself. Even when the relationship has been difficult, the loss of a spouse often means losing the person who at one time shared everyday life. The person who knew your routines. Who heard your stories. Who sat beside you at dinner. Who helped create a home. That daily companionship disappears almost overnight. The loss may have occurred long ago—perhaps even shortly after you were married—but it is only now that the loss becomes complete.

The Loss of Being Left

This may be one of the deepest wounds of all. When a spouse dies, the separation is usually beyond anyone’s control. Neither partner chose it, and it is not something either of them wanted. Divorce can be very different. If your wife decides to leave, the loss carries another painful message. Whether she intends it or not, many men hear: “I no longer choose you.” That is an additional loss and a powerful rejection. Many men begin asking questions that are difficult to answer. “If the person who knew me best decided to leave... what does that say about me?” The grief of divorce can often be intertwined with abandonment, shame, self-doubt, and a significant loss of confidence.

The Loss of Children

Perhaps no loss hurts more. Many fathers go from seeing their children every day to seeing them every other weekend—or even less. People often think fathers miss the birthdays and holidays. They do. But they also miss the ordinary moments: helping with homework, driving to soccer practice, bedtime stories, cooking dinner together, watching a movie on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Those ordinary moments, many thousands of them, are what fatherhood is made of. When they’re gone, the loss can be overwhelming.

The Loss of Home

A house is more than wood and drywall. It holds memories: first steps, Christmas mornings, family dinners, laughter, arguments, birthdays, watching your children grow. Leaving the family home often feels like leaving an entire chapter of your life behind. For many men the house is either sold or no longer your residence. That loss can be both painful and disorienting.

These losses bring something that surprises many people: chaos. Life is not simply different—it becomes disordered. The routines, relationships, roles, and sources of stability that once anchored a man’s life can disappear all at once, making it increasingly difficult to find a path back to solid ground.

This kind of chaos is familiar to anyone who has experienced the death of a loved one. Profound grief often shatters the order of life. It is this chaos that many men find most disorienting. The familiar ways of finding their center are gone, leaving them in a landscape that feels unfamiliar, unstable, and profoundly lonely.

The Loss of Purpose

Many men organize their lives around providing for their families. The long hours, the sacrifices, the stress of earning a living all make sense because someone they love depends on them. Purpose is often woven into responsibility.

After divorce, many continue working just as hard. But they return each evening to an empty apartment. The paycheck still arrives. The responsibilities continue. Yet the daily experience of providing has changed. The work remains, but the purpose feels different. For some men, it is as though the “why” behind years of effort has quietly disappeared.

The Loss of Identity

Many men don’t simply lose a marriage. They lose identities they have carried for years: husband, daily father, protector, problem solver, provider, family man. These are not merely titles. They become part of how a man understands himself and his place in the world.

When those identities are suddenly stripped away, many men quietly ask a question they never imagined having to face: Who am I now? Rebuilding a life after divorce often means rebuilding an identity as well—a process that can take years.

The Loss of Financial Security

Divorce often means selling a home, dividing retirement savings, paying attorneys, supporting two households instead of one, and, in many cases, paying child support or alimony. Years—sometimes decades—of careful planning and hard work can disappear with astonishing speed.

The financial impact reaches beyond bank accounts. Dreams are postponed or abandoned. Retirement may be delayed. Vacations disappear. Hobbies are set aside. A home that once represented stability becomes a memory. Financial security is more than money; it is the confidence that tomorrow will be manageable. When that confidence is shaken, it becomes another profound loss layered on top of all the others.

The Loss of Friends and Community

Divorce rarely affects only two people. Friendships often change. Couples choose sides. Churches become uncomfortable. Neighborhoods no longer feel like home. Even familiar restaurants or vacation spots may become reminders of a life that no longer exists.

For many couples, it is the wife who has served as the social conductor—maintaining friendships, organizing gatherings, keeping in touch with extended family, and sustaining the couple’s social life. When the marriage ends, many of those relationships disappear almost overnight. Invitations stop coming. Mutual friends drift away. Family connections become strained or vanish altogether.

A man’s world can quietly become much smaller, leaving him not only grieving the loss of his marriage but also the community that once surrounded it.

The Loss of the Future

When people marry, they almost always carry hopes for the future. They imagine building a life together, raising children, growing old side by side, celebrating holidays, welcoming grandchildren, traveling, retiring, and sharing the ordinary moments that make up a lifetime. These dreams become part of the marriage itself. They are not fantasies; they are emotional investments in a future that both partners expect to share.

When a marriage ends, that imagined future dies as well. The life the couple had been building together suddenly disappears. This is one of the least recognized losses of divorce. People grieve not only what has happened. They also grieve what will never happen.

Birthdays that will never be celebrated together. Vacations that will never be taken. Grandchildren who will never know the family as it was imagined. Growing old together becomes a future that no longer exists.

In many ways, this is grief for a life that was never lived but was deeply loved nonetheless.

The Loss of Being a Father

Many divorced fathers describe another painful loss. They still love their children every bit as much. Yet they may have little influence over daily routines, discipline, schools, medical decisions, or even where their children live. Loving deeply while having limited ability to protect, guide, or simply be present for your children is one of the most painful experiences a father can endure.

The loss is not simply one of control. It is the loss of everyday fatherhood. Bedtime conversations disappear. Helping with homework becomes less frequent. Family dinners, weekend routines, spontaneous hugs, rides to school, and quiet moments together may suddenly vanish or become occasional events governed by a custody schedule.

Many fathers also carry a constant awareness that important moments in their children’s lives are unfolding without them. First accomplishments, disappointments, new friendships, school events, illnesses, and ordinary daily experiences continue, but they are no longer there to witness them. They become spectators to a life they once helped shape.

This is a unique kind of grief because the children are still alive. The love remains fully intact. Yet the opportunity to live that love as a father is profoundly diminished.

The Loss of Reputation

Some men leave divorce carrying accusations. Others simply carry assumptions. People quietly wonder what he must have done. Friends become more distant. Coworkers become more cautious. Invitations become less frequent. Even when no one says anything directly, many men feel that they are being viewed through a different lens.

Our culture often reinforces these silent judgments. Divorced women are frequently portrayed as survivors, as women beginning a new chapter, rediscovering themselves, or reclaiming their lives. Divorced men, by contrast, are often viewed with suspicion. If the marriage ended, many assume he must have been controlling, emotionally unavailable, selfish, or somehow at fault. These assumptions are rarely spoken aloud, but they can be felt in conversations, in changed relationships, and in the subtle distance that develops between him and others.

Of course, some men bear responsibility for the end of their marriages, just as some women do. But cultural narratives often encourage us to ask what happened to her while wondering what he must have done. That difference shapes how compassion is distributed after divorce.

For many men, the result is a quiet but painful loss of reputation. They are not only grieving the end of a marriage; they are grieving the loss of how they are seen by the people around them.

The Loss of Hope

After enough losses accumulate, another danger appears. Some men stop believing that happiness is possible. Not because they are weak, but because everything that once gave their lives stability and meaning seems to have disappeared at the same time.

By now they are swimming in chaos. Every familiar landmark is gone. The routines that anchored them, the people who steadied them, the dreams that guided them, and the roles that defined them have all been disrupted. Chaos has a way of whispering a dangerous lie: There is no way out. Things will never be good again.

That lie can become one of the greatest dangers of divorce. The future begins to look like nothing more than an extension of today’s pain. Hope itself becomes another casualty.

Yet one of the most important truths about grief is that chaos is not permanent. It feels permanent while we are living through it, but it is not. As new routines emerge, new relationships form, and a new sense of purpose develops, hope can slowly return. The challenge is helping men survive long enough to discover that the voice of chaos is not telling the truth.

Death by a Thousand Losses

People sometimes ask why divorce affects men so profoundly. Perhaps they’re asking the wrong question. Imagine losing your wife, your children, your home, your daily purpose, your financial security, your identity, your friendships, your community, your future dreams, your reputation, your confidence, your hope, and the knowledge that someone once chose you above everyone else. Very few human experiences involve so many simultaneous losses. That is why divorce can produce such profound grief. Not because one thing was lost. But because an entire life disappeared.

A Final Thought

One of the greatest misunderstandings about grief is the belief that it belongs only to death. It doesn’t. Grief follows love. It follows attachment. It follows dreams. It follows identity. It follows every meaningful loss we experience.

For many divorced fathers, the deepest struggle is not the legal process itself. It is the accumulation of losses that follow it—the loss of daily fatherhood, home, community, identity, reputation, dreams, stability, and hope. Taken together, these losses create a kind of chaos that can make the future seem impossible to imagine.

Perhaps it is time to stop asking why so many divorced men struggle and begin asking what they have actually lost.

If we can learn to see divorce through the lens of grief rather than failure, we may finally begin to understand the silent suffering of millions of fathers. And with that understanding may come something many of them have long needed but seldom received: compassion.

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tgolden@tgolden

July 13, 2026

How Men Became the Villains of American History

It did not happen all at once. Each phase built upon the last until an entire generation inherited a version of history in which men were remembered less for what they built than for whom they supposedly oppressed.

American culture did not wake up one morning and decide that men should be remembered mostly as oppressors, predators, colonizers, abusers, and patriarchs. The rewriting happened gradually. It began as a correction, became a framework, hardened into institutional policy, and eventually spread through media, movies, schools, law, and the internet.

The original project was framed as a correction. Feminists argued that women had been systematically excluded from many areas of public life and that traditional histories had overlooked or minimized their contributions. They believed those omissions should be corrected and women’s experiences given greater attention. But somewhere along the way, the project changed. It was no longer simply about recovering women’s history or pursuing equality. Increasingly, it became a project of placing men—and masculinity itself—on trial.

The turning point came in the mid-to-late 1960s. The National Organization for Women was founded in 1966, and second-wave feminism began to frame American life through the language of male power and female oppression. The slogan “the personal is political” encouraged women to reinterpret private pain, disappointment, marriage, sex, motherhood, work, and family life as evidence of larger male-dominated systems.

Then came the 1970s, when the framework entered the institutions.

Women’s Studies began formally at San Diego State in 1970, the first program of its kind in the nation. Ms. magazine followed in 1972, creating a national feminist media platform. Title IX, also passed in 1972, moved sex-discrimination politics directly into education law. These developments helped establish a new moral vocabulary: women were the excluded class, men were the dominant class, and history needed to be reinterpreted through that lens.

This was the first phase: recovery.

The stated goal was to recover women’s lost history. But recovery soon became reframing. Men’s achievements were no longer simply achievements. They became evidence of exclusion. Men’s authority became oppression. Men’s leadership became patriarchy. Men’s protection became control. Men’s provision became privilege.

The second phase was suspicion.

By the mid-1970s, feminist theory had moved deeply into literature, film, and culture. Laura Mulvey’s 1975 essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” helped popularize the concept of the “male gaze.” This was not just a critique of a few movies. It became a way of viewing male creativity, male desire, male spectatorship, and male-created culture as inherently suspect.

The third phase was legal and policy institutionalization.

In the 1980s, the Duluth Model became influential in domestic violence policy. Its framework emphasized men’s use of power and control over women. By the time the Violence Against Women Act passed in 1994, the male-perpetrator/female-victim model had gained enormous legal, cultural, and funding power. It was driven by the erroneous idea that males were the perennial perpetrators and women the sole victims.

This mattered because law does not merely punish behavior. Law teaches culture what to notice. Once male violence was made highly visible while female violence, reciprocal violence, male victims, and children’s need for fathers were minimized, the public absorbed the message: men are the danger, women are the endangered.

No-fault divorce also belongs in this phase. California adopted the first modern no-fault divorce law in 1969, and other states followed over the next decade. The reform was intended to reduce bitterness and eliminate the need to manufacture fault in order to end a marriage. Yet the broader cultural consequences were far-reaching. The reality was that no fault divorce removed accountability and gave an opening for a revolving door of divorce.

Divorce increasingly came to be viewed through an asymmetrical moral lens. A woman who left her marriage was often portrayed as courageous, independent, or finally “finding herself.” The husband she left was more likely to be viewed as the obstacle she had overcome than as a person experiencing one of life’s deepest losses. His grief, his loss of daily contact with his children, his financial upheaval, and the collapse of his identity as husband and father were seldom given comparable attention. This was also the time when the label of deadbeat dads was assigned to fathers and placed on milk cartons.

As divorce became more common, the cultural story shifted. The focus increasingly rested on the woman who was leaving rather than the man and children who were also living through the consequences. The emotional costs borne by fathers—and the developmental costs often experienced by children who lost the daily presence of their fathers—received far less attention than the narrative of female liberation.

This, too, became part of the broader rewriting of men. The father was increasingly remembered not as someone whose presence was vital to family life, but as someone whose absence was often assumed to be manageable—or even beneficial. One of the most profound losses a man can experience became, in many public discussions, almost invisible.

The fourth phase was media popularization.

News media discovered that stories of female victimization and male wrongdoing were emotionally powerful, morally safe, captivating, and easy to package. The suffering of women could be personalized. The suffering of men was usually abstracted or ignored. Dead soldiers, dead miners, dead linemen, dead fishermen, divorced fathers, homeless men, suicidal men, falsely accused men, and alienated fathers rarely fit the preferred narrative.

The fifth phase was cultural saturation.

Movies, television, advertising, and later streaming platforms increasingly repeated the same moral structure: women awakening, women escaping, women resisting, women healing from men. Meanwhile, men were more often portrayed as obstacles, fools, predators, oppressors, or emotionally defective beings needing correction. Again, not always. But often enough that the pattern became familiar.

The sixth phase was internet amplification.

The internet did not create the anti-male frame. It accelerated it. Social media rewarded outrage, simplification, repetition, and moral accusation. Complex history became hashtags. “Patriarchy,” “toxic masculinity,” “believe women,” and “men are trash” could travel farther and faster than any careful discussion of male sacrifice, male duty, male disposability, or male contribution.

The players in this rewriting were not all the same.

Academics supplied the theory. Activists supplied the urgency. Journalists supplied the stories. Legislatures supplied the authority. Filmmakers supplied the images. Social media supplied the enforcement.

And the reasons were not all the same either.

Some wanted genuine correction. Some wanted justice. Some wanted power. Some wanted status. Some wanted revenge. Some wanted to ruin men. Some were working from unresolved pain. Some discovered that portraying women as victims and men as oppressors brought funding, attention, moral authority, and institutional protection.

The Seventh Phase: The End of the Narrative Monopoly

History took an unexpected turn.

The same technology that accelerated the rewriting of men also made it possible to question it.

For nearly three decades, the institutions that shaped public understanding of the sexes had spoken with remarkable consistency. Universities, major newspapers, television networks, publishing houses, Hollywood, and many professional organizations had increasingly adopted the same interpretive framework. There were always dissenting voices, but they rarely possessed comparable influence or access to large audiences. There was very little challenging of the default female-victim mentality.

The internet changed that. The internet giveth and the internet taketh away.

For the first time in generations, ordinary people no longer needed the approval of traditional gatekeepers to reach millions of readers or viewers.

Researchers studying boys found audiences.

Fathers’ organizations shared information that had rarely appeared in mainstream reporting.

Male victims of domestic violence began telling their stories publicly.

Psychologists discussed male depression, shame, grief, and suicide from perspectives that differed from the prevailing narrative.

Independent journalists, writers, and podcasters began asking questions that had received comparatively little public attention.

The conversation itself began changing.

This helps explain why so much attention has been directed toward what is loosely called the “manosphere.”

The label has become so broad that it often obscures more than it explains. It encompasses fathers’ organizations, psychologists, researchers, educators, podcasters, political commentators, men’s advocates, and many others whose views often differ dramatically from one another. Some are thoughtful and evidence-based. Others are not. Some are deeply concerned with helping men and boys. Others spend time exposing the flaws in feminist arguments.

Treating this entire landscape as though it represented one unified movement misses the larger historical development.

The real story is not simply the emergence of new voices.

The real story is that the monopoly over the cultural narrative had begun to disappear. After several decades of the narrative being sung in unison without counterpoint, alternative ideas were suddenly getting airtime. This was a shock for those who had comfortably relied on the exclusive spigot that spouted only one side of the story. These folks found themselves unprepared to deal with these long hidden ideas. They had no experience in having to defend their ideas since they never really needed to when only their narrative was the default. Now they were running up against a nightmare of counterpoint.

For decades, one interpretation of men had dominated most of the institutions responsible for shaping public opinion. The internet did not eliminate that interpretation, but it made it increasingly difficult to prevent competing interpretations from being heard.

History had become a conversation again.

Conclusion

The rewriting of men did not happen overnight, and it will not be undone overnight. But something fundamental has changed. For the first time in decades, the dominant narrative no longer enjoys a monopoly. Alternative voices are being heard. Research that was once ignored is being discussed. Men’s experiences are becoming visible again.

That is precisely why the word manosphere has become such a powerful weapon.

It is no longer used simply as a description. It has become a label designed to end conversations before they begin. Instead of answering uncomfortable facts, critics simply dismiss them as “manosphere talking points.” Instead of debating evidence, they attack the people presenting it. It is an old tactic: if you cannot defeat the argument, discredit the speaker.

Do not let them get away with it.

When someone dismisses an argument because it supposedly comes from “the manosphere,” ask a simple question:

“Which argument is wrong?”

If they cannot answer that question, they are not engaging in debate. They are avoiding it.

Insist that ideas be judged on their evidence, not on the labels attached to the people presenting them. Demand arguments instead of stereotypes. Demand facts instead of slogans. Demand evidence instead of guilt by association.

The same people who spent decades condemning the practice of judging entire groups by the actions of a few are now too often willing to do exactly that with men, men’s advocates, and anyone associated with the so-called manosphere. Reject that double standard.

History is healthiest when no one controls it. Progress is made when ideas compete openly, evidence matters more than ideology, and every claim—whether it comes from feminism, the manosphere, academia, or anywhere else—is expected to stand or fall on its merits.

The goal is not to replace one orthodoxy with another. The goal is something far more difficult—and far more valuable.

Tell the whole story.

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tgolden@tgolden

July 09, 2026

“Fairness for Everyone?” Then Why Are Only Boys Being Lectured?

A few days ago, two friends whose judgment I respect, Jim Nuzzo and David Maywald, both wrote on X about a new Australian government publication titled Gender Equity for Early Years Education: Fairness for Everyone. So I downloaded the report.

The subtitle immediately caught my attention: “Fairness for Everyone.” Wonderful. Who could object to that? I expected a thoughtful discussion about helping both girls and boys flourish. Instead, I found something quite different.

The report repeatedly presents girls as the group needing protection while portraying boys as the group needing correction. Educators are encouraged to challenge boys’ privilege, reshape their attitudes, and prevent future violence by changing boys. Yet there is almost nothing about boys’ own vulnerabilities—their struggles in school, developmental differences, higher suspension rates, literacy problems, or the tragic fact that many of these little boys will one day grow into the group with the highest suicide rate.

Then I reached the section recommending children’s songs. Most were fairly harmless, but one stopped me cold. The report recommends a song called Come On Boys, describing it this way: “This song was written to shift the responsibility from girls to boys to address toxic masculinity and gender-based violence.”

Read that sentence again: “shift the responsibility… to boys.” The lyrics make the intention even clearer. “Some boys somehow think that they are strong, if they push a girl or make her feel wrong.” The chorus tells boys, “Come on boys, it’s up to you,” and “Respect, respect, it’s our responsibility.”

Please don’t misunderstand me. I don’t object to teaching boys to respect girls—not at all. I have spent decades encouraging boys and men to speak their truth in a way that can be heard. That is not the problem.

The problem is the asymmetry. Imagine if the government had instead recommended a song called Come On Girls and described it this way: “This song was written to hold girls accountable and address their toxic relational aggression.” The song began, “Some girls spread rumors around… Leave another girl out or put her down.…” and then declared in the chorus, “Come on girls… it’s up to you.” How long would that survive before people accused it of stereotyping girls? How many editorials would condemn it? How many educators would object that most girls don’t behave that way? Those objections would be entirely reasonable.

So why are they not equally reasonable when the target is boys? That is the question this report never asks.

The issue isn’t respect, kindness, or preventing violence. The issue is that one sex is addressed collectively as the moral problem to be corrected while the other is not. That isn’t fairness for everyone—it’s a double standard dressed up as fairness.

The saddest part is that the report almost never stops to ask a different question: What do boys need? Not how do we change boys, not how do we prevent them from becoming harmful men—simply, what do boys need in order to thrive? That question is almost entirely absent.

Until we begin asking it with the same seriousness that we ask about girls’ needs, we will continue producing educational policies that claim to be about fairness while quietly teaching children that one sex deserves understanding and the other deserves correction.

Perhaps the greatest bias in this report is not what it says about boys, but what it never becomes curious enough to understand.

Men and Boys Are Good

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