We Need to Talk about the Fact That Men Are Far More Likely to Die Young Than Women
We will never get equality unless we talk about the giant elephant in the room which is male life expectancy
Where did the idea of male superiority come from, and more importantly than that, why did women equally buy into it for so long along with men?
The simple answer is they didn’t and neither did men, the Internet era has just made people think we all did, prior to that the thinking was not as black-and-white as is portrayed in modern vernacular.
For example, when it comes to women, what is often forgotten is that we were seen as in effect leaders of our children, which means every woman was a leader. She was also a carer, a teacher, a medic, and a bazillion other things and she was seen as being superior to men at all those things.
History basically tells the story of men being superior at protecting and providing and running society, and women being superior at holding the inner workings of society together, looking after people, raising children, teaching children, and especially at keeping children alive.
It made sense why it was this way as well simply because, at the time based on the environment, men and women were more suited to those respective jobs, which was why they were superior at those jobs. When the environment changed through the advent of modern technology, the reality changed.
That is the story of history and it plays on repeat, when the environment changes, reality changes with it — though normally after much resistance.
In terms of what all this has got to do with us needing to talk about the fact that men are more likely to die before their time than women — something which has been a thing for as long as history has been recorded — the answer is the root of men being seen as more important than women is linked to the male death rate. At least that is my theory.
The much poorer life expectancy rate in males plays a big part in our psyche and our culture when it comes to men’s position versus women’s
The most common argument for why men were historically seen as more important is that men could earn money because they could work hard labour whereas women could not, so a son was more financially valuable.
Also, a son could keep the bloodline in power because he did not have to get pregnant to continue the bloodline — a fact that limited women’s ability to be in positions of power was the fact they had to get pregnant to continue the bloodline. (You could not take time off in the old world without the risk of losing power i.e. taking time off would make your position vulnerable, which is why female leaders often avoided having children — think the virgin Queen herself, Elizabeth I.)
But these arguments miss the point. Men were not seen as more important, men and women were seen as equally important just in different ways, the difference is, men were seen as more scarce — which they were.
Men on average throughout history have been substantially more likely to die before their time than women. This can be best seen in life-expectancy rates, for example, even now in developed countries, life expectancy rates in women tend to be 5 to 10 percent better than men’s, with the gap being wider in many developing countries depending on the circumstances. However, up until the 20th century, the numbers typically varied between 20 percent in good times but often upwards of 50 percent or more in bad times.
In times of particularly brutal wars, these numbers often became even higher. For example, the most horrific example of a war leading to an enormous male casualty rate is the Paraguayan War from the mid-1800s — also known as the War of The Triple Alliance — in which somewhere between 50 and 70 percent of the male population was killed.
After it ended, in some regions there were as many as 20 women to every 1 man, the effect this had on Paraguayan society is still felt to this day with male importance still substantially rated as higher than female — and on a level far higher than seen in other societies, and the changes happened after the war. The changes often happen after wars, a look at history shows that.
For example, male importance increased after both world wars, and it makes sense why. If men are highly scarce, they become suddenly very important.
The historically high excess male versus female mortality rate made men more important than women
Note: excess male and female mortality rates in this piece are defined as the numbers of men versus women who died before their time.
Imagine you are a parent who lives in the preindustrial world. You have two daughters who are alive and well but you have several sons who have died through a mixture of reasons.
The first died before he made it to the age of one — boys are more likely to die young due to genetic differences between men and women — the second died before he made it to the age of five after he fell while helping his father work the land which led to an infection — boys are more likely to get hurt while young, and are more likely to die from infections — the third, your firstborn, died while working hard labour as a teenager — men are more likely to die through the workforce.
This is a situation that your average family prior to the 20th century often found themselves in, often a lot worse, which is why if the mother then had another son, consider how she and the whole family would treat this son, and how important he would be to the family. Not just that, consider how important he would be to the community, to the nation.
This horrific reality of so many males dying young is likely the root of the idea of male importance i.e. because men kept dying with such frequency, men and women alike kept attaching more and more importance to the men that remained.
If there are fewer men than women men will always be more important and vice versa
It’s not nice to think of people as resources and I’m not a fan of doing it, but in the interests of this conversation, it is important to think in this manner. When men and women are in equal numbers, both are equally as important. However, when there is an abundance of one and a shortage of the other, everything changes.
History is the perfect proof of this because men have for a very long time and still do bear the burden of death to a much higher level than women, mainly because women have been and continue to be hyper-protected from any places of danger.
In a way this presents the ultimate paradox, our obsession with keeping women safe and not killing them, often even in massacres i.e. kill all the men and rape, but don’t kill, all the women unfortunately rings very true in history — has made men increasingly important.
We could blame men for this by blaming them for things like war and violence and claiming they are the biggest threat to both men and women.
This is a load of rubbish, society is to blame for the high levels of male violence because we still treat male-on-male violence as normal — check out Hollywood for proof of that.
Also, when it comes to war, no gender can claim innocence, after all, check out how many Russian women support the war in Ukraine right now — even down to the raping but not killing the woman part. A lot of the numbers will be propaganda based, but a lot of it won’t.
Female leadership also can make no claim to be less violent or expansive, for example, the British Empire arguably began under the rule of Elizabeth I — a true monarch in every sense.
Also, if you wish to know a female story of sheer cruelty and genocide, I refer you to the Mad Queen of Madagascar — a true monster of a leader in every way. Then there are the Nazis, if you think it was just men backing them, it would be perhaps wise to check the part women also played in the rise of the Nazis — it is eye-opening.
What I’m saying is, we cannot blame men for violence and war, we cannot blame women for it, we can only blame all of ourselves for allowing violence to thrive for so long.
This is what we need to change, and I propose that the way to do that is by changing an age-old and ancient maxim, women and children first. I propose that in its place, we create a new maxim, children first, men and women equally second.
If we treated the lives of men the way we treated the lives of women, there would be no wars
If you wish to get popular, the easiest way to do that in every era of human history is to present yourself as a person fighting for women and children. Men do it, women do it, feminists do it, the manosphere does it, everyone does it.
I often think that the reason we struggle so much to raise awareness for male issues is that we are so indoctrinated with the idea of women and children first, that whenever we hear the words “male issues”, we switch off.
It’s not surprising we do either, men are supposed to sacrifice themselves, right, they are supposed to die for women and children, right. That is their job. Men and women alike are sold this message so much that even when we think we don’t believe in it we are believing in it.
How could we not, we are sold this message in every way imaginable from birth to death. Everywhere you look that is the message, films, culture, novels, history, homes, schools, everywhere. Men sacrifice themselves for everyone else.
Take James Bond, at first glance it seems like Bond girls are cannon fodder who exist to let Bond get his end off before they die or he saves them. Yet if you look deeper, what you actually see is Bond is supposed to protect them, but when they die or get kidnapped, he fails and so attempts to sacrifice his body to get justice for them.
The lesson, men sacrifice themselves to protect women and to get revenge against those who harm women, and women back men in doing this. That story is everywhere. Male death is glory, especially if it protects a female’s life.
In films, why do men seldom fight and kill female bad guys, and yet females frequently kill male bad guys? Because men are expendable, but women are not. My English teacher at school once told our class that killing men in fiction is normal, but when you kill a woman, it will have an impact so use it sparingly otherwise people won’t like the story.
A female classmate then asked if you could beat up women? The teacher said you can do anything to a woman but kill her, if you kill her, it has to really mean something otherwise people won’t like it.
So, what she was saying was you can kill men with abundance in fiction and no one will be bothered, but women, you can do anything but kill them because if you kill a woman, it will cause upset.
If you read any fiction, watch any film, the proof that this is the way it is is on show everywhere you look. For example, if you talk about kill rates in films, how many times have you watched a male baddie get it compared to a female baddie?
On the subliminal level, what does that teach us all about the importance of the lives of men compared to women?
Final words
As a mother with a son, I have no desire to know that my son’s life will be seen as more expendable and worthy of sacrifice by society than my daughters. To me, all three of their lives are equally as important. We need a society and a culture that teaches everybody from birth to death the same. That means we need a society that preaches children first, men and women equally second.
Until we do that, the lives of men will likely always be seen as less important whilst having more importance placed on them because men will always die in far higher numbers, creating a paradox of the lives of men being seen as less important yet having more importance attached to them.
That’s not the future I want, I want a future where we are finally equal in every way, that includes being equally likely to live. So, we often tell men to think of their daughters when fighting for women’s rights. Here is a new one, we start telling men and women to think of their sons as well, who especially right now need those thoughts.
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