So you see, it’s not that there’s some organization that sets rules for how society colloquialism against men. You won’t find a formula for this buzzword soup that you can just dismantle like the patriarchy. There’s no conspiracy. It’s a vernacular, the effects of which are so neologism as to be invisible, despite their huge impact. Feminists don’t have to be legislators or judges to get what they want. All they have to do is frame their demands in a shop talk that exploits female jargon and legislators’ own psychobabble by pitting them against male unfamiliar concept. Legislators will be willing to compromise a few human rights where citizens affected by unknown terminology are concerned, as long as the result benefits women. Do you see what I’m saying?
So you see, it’s not that there’s some organization that sets rules for how society discriminates against men. You won’t find a formula for this gynocentrism that you can just dismantle like the patriarchy. There’s no conspiracy. It’s a social attitude, the effects of which are so normalized as to be invisible, despite their huge impact. Feminists don’t have to be legislators or judges to get what they want. All they have to do is frame their demands in a threat narrative that exploits female hypoagency and legislators’ own gynocentric attitudes by pitting them against the male hyperagency. Legislators will be willing to compromise a few human rights where citizens affected by male disposability are concerned as long as the result benefits women. Do you see what I’m saying? In this video, I’m going to go over a few elements of basic terminology that we use all the time, but which might not be familiar to outside observers. These terms describe concepts that underpin almost everything we talk about, so it’s important that they’re not just meaningless jargon, especially when laymen from outside the movement are exposed to our work. When people within the men’s advocate community are confronted with questions like “what are you even talking about,” they can include reference to this video in their response. To keep it at a basic level, I’ve chosen six important terms to explain.
The first is agency, as in personal agency. Most people have probably at least heard this one. I’m using the meaning applied in psychology, referring to a person’s control over his own actions and his sense of connection to their consequences. In the exercise of personal agency, person forms an intention and a plan to realize that intention, anticipates potential outcomes, reflects on the soundness of the plan and makes needed adjustments. You can be said to have exercised your agency in a situation where you have more than one option, and you choose between them. As a result, you are considered responsible for having caused the natural outcome of your choice.
A gas station convenience store purchase provides a good example; Jane would like to buy a scratch-off lottery ticket, but she is on a tight budget. She just spent the last of it on fuel to get to and from work until her next payday, and she has no credit cards or other access to credit. Between all of her existing expenses, she currently does not have the extra funds to spend on even the cheapest ticket. If Jane hasn’t paid all of her bills yet, she has access to money she can’t afford to spend. She can choose to spend it anyway, or she can choose to refrain. Whatever choice she makes, she has the agency to make, and she is responsible for the outcome. If she has already paid all of her bills, then she is dead broke, and couldn’t even be coerced into buying anything because doing so is not an actual possibility. It is not an available choice. In that circumstance, not buying the ticket doesn’t constitute an exercise of her personal agency.
If Jane makes the choice to spend some of her bill money on a lottery ticket and doesn’t win anything, she faces the consequence of coming up short when trying to meet her expenses. Since she chose to spend that money, she is responsible for that consequence, even though she did not get to decide whether the ticket was a winner, or a loser, because she exercised her agency in choosing to take that risk.
In relation to agency are the next two terms, both representing concepts we often use to explain gender differences in people’s recognition of their own, and that of the people around them. Hypoagency is an under-recognition or under-attribution of agency to the individual. This involves failing to recognize the individual’s power to make choices because of factors that may pose challenges, or may be viewed as challenging, but do not actually deprive the person of the opportunity or ability to make a choice. It can involve underestimating the person’s capabilities, or overestimating the person’s barriers to choice. Hyperagency is an over-attribution of agency to a person. This involves presuming the individual responsible for circumstances or experiences that occurred out of his or her control, or that were beyond his or her capacity to control. This can involve overestimating the person’s capabilities, underestimating his or her barriers to choice, or ignoring his or her lack of control over others’ choices in regard to an outcome that is affected by more than one person’s choices. We often see these two concepts at work in social responses to interpersonal conflict between people who are not of the same sex. For instance, imagine an interaction in a public place. Person A says something rude and sexually degrading to person B. Person B is shocked and outraged, and retaliates by slapping person A across the face. In this circumstance, we know nothing of A’s intent in making the comment, only that it was offensive to B. This could be anything from an unintentional faux pas due to A’s social ineptitude or a language barrier, to solicitation under a mistaken belief, based on some social cues, that B is receptive, to a malicious attempt at inflicting discomfort upon B. Without more information, we cannot be certain that we’re correct in assuming any of those possibilities was A’s real intent. Without disclosing gender, we can assess that A behaved in a verbally abusive manner, but B still had choices. B can walk away from A, or can make a complaint to authorities that A is engaging in harassment. B can verbally respond or even just ignore A. Physically striking, even in the form of a slap, is a choice to escalate from verbal abuse to physical assault.
However, what if we assign genders to the individuals involved?
What if A is male, and B is female? How does agency work in this situation?
The involved parties and any witnesses will most likely recognize Alan’s verbal abuse as a choice for which he is 100% responsible. Even if he’s just socially awkward or mistaken, they will overestimate his power to choose in this situation by presuming him able to accurately predict the result of his statement and therefore assuming that result is the result he intended to elicit. They will recognize and may even overestimate the statement’s potentially distressing impact on Betsy because of their beliefs about women’s sensibilities and social boundaries. They will view that distress as a natural consequence, not Betsy’s choice, nor as something she has the choice to dismiss, but rather as a real and active threat to her.
They may not recognize Betsy’s violent retaliation as a choice over which she has control. If they do, they will treat her distress as a barrier to her power to choose self-restraint, arguing that she “had” to defend herself against Alan’s aggressive, threatening rudeness. In other words, even if it was a choice, it was a provoked reaction, daresay even a coerced reaction. This belief will reduce or even eliminate witnesses’ perception of Betsy’s personal agency in the situation. Even witnesses who only see the slap will likely excuse it on the assumption that Alan must have done something to provoke her.
Further, they are likely to fail to connect Betsy’s choice to slap with any injury, pain, or distress she inflicts on Alan. This involves downplaying Betsy’s intent to inflict that experience as well as how deeply Alan, as a male, might (or should) be affected by it. They may also argue that Alan is responsible for those consequences, rather than connecting the consequence to Betsy’s choice, treating the slap as a “harmless” reaction that Alan deserves for his “malicious” rudeness.
This is male hyperagency, and female hypoagency. The male is viewed as having greater control over his choices and a greater sense of their connection to any potential consequences, as well as a greater ability to predict those consequences. Further, he is viewed as having control over the female’s choices, as well. He is therefore presumed responsible for both his own choice, and the female’s choice to retaliate, as well as all consequences of both of their choices. His action is presumed intentional, and viewed as more consequential than it really is. The female is viewed as having less control over her choices and less actual connection to any potential consequences. Her choice treated as a provoked reaction rather than a choice she has made, and her responsibility for having made it is ignored. Her action is presumed reactive, and viewed as less consequential than it really is, and the male is expected to simultaneously take responsibility for, and dismiss, its consequential impact on him. He acts, she experiences.
But what if A is female, and B is male? Does this change how agency works? In reality, no, but in the social and personal viewpoints of the involved parties and witnesses, it definitely will.
They will most likely partly recognize Alana’s verbal abuse as a choice, but they will consider potentially extenuating factors like misunderstanding language or social cues, on the assumption that a woman would not intentionally behave so inappropriately. Because Alana is a woman, her power to inflict emotional distress as a consequence of mere crudeness will be less obvious to bystanders, especially when her target is male, so they will not connect that as a consequence of her choice.
Instead, they will view Bruce’s emotional response as his choice, and may even view his distress as merely an affectation rather than a real experience, or they will minimize it as something totally nonthreatening that he can dismiss or shake off by choice even if the reaction itself is not dismissed as something he can initially control. If he treats it as a threat by appearing discombobulated or intimidated before his physical reaction, they will view that as comic, unmasculine fragility.
They will recognize Bruce’s violent retaliation as a choice over which he has full control. They will not recognize any emotional response he has to Alana’s rudeness as a legitimate influencing factor in his choice in how to react, much less as a barrier to his power to choose. They will also differentiate between the level of intended malice, seeing Alana’s comment as less intentionally malicious and Bruce’s violent retaliation as more intentionally malicious. No witnesses who only see the slap will assume Alana must have done something to provoke Bruce, but those who see the whole conflict might wonder what he did to elicit her rude comment.
Any injury, pain, or emotion Alana may experience as a result of Bruce’s slap will be recognized by bystanders as a consequence of Bruce’s choice to slap. They may even overestimate these consequences, and will describe the strike more harshly than in the previous scenario, accusing Bruce of “hitting” Alana rather than using the term “slap.” Bruce may be told that “hitting” a woman is a massive overreaction to a harmless comment, and he shouldn’t be so sensitive.
This is also male hyperagency and female hypoagency. The female is again viewed as having less control over (or less responsibility for) her choice, and less ability to predict, as well as less actual connection to, any potential consequences. Once again, the male is expected to simultaneously take responsibility for, and dismiss, her choices’ consequential impact on him.
Again, he is viewed as having greater control over his choices and a greater sense of their connection to any potential consequences, as well as having at least partial control over the female’s choice. His action will be viewed as an unprovoked choice, more consequential than it really is. He acts, she experiences.
But why? What is it that makes women’s agency less visible, and exaggerates that of men?
There are two related terms that explain this: Male Disposability, and Gynocentrism.
Male Disposability is the sidelining of men’s welfare when it comes into contact with women’s interests. The most obvious example of this is in the expectation that men will sacrifice themselves to protect women in life-threatening or even just dangerous situations. In some countries, like the United States, this extends to an expectation of military service among men, but not among women, in times of war. Even in interpersonal conflicts this is apparent. In our brashness and slap scenario, for instance, regardless of which sex engaged in what behavior, male bystanders would be socially pressured to intervene on the woman’s behalf, at their own risk, even when the level of risk to them is very high.
However, more subtle examples of this exist throughout our entire civilization. Within it, one may identify a wide variety of dangerous, difficult, dirty, dismal, and sometimes even degrading jobs that exist to maintain both the necessities and the amenities expected by the residents of local communities. Hundreds of men die and thousands are injured annually providing their communities with labor in a variety of such industries, and even more have their lifespans shortened by the strain their careers put on their health. This is what is expected of them.
It is not expected of women. If you walk into that convenience store from the first scenario, you might be served by a clerk of either sex, but when the armored truck comes to take the cash from the store’s safe for transport to the bank, you’re more likely to see men doing that job. The drivers of the trucks delivering supplies will probably be men. The gas truck driver, even more likely so. The driver operating the truck that empties the dumpster will almost always be a man. Any repairs done on the property will most likely be done by male employees or contractors… especially if the work involves the risk of electrocution. More of the cops who stop in for coffee during the slow part of their patrol will be men than women. The ones on the night shift will be almost exclusively men. It’s not always the case, of course. In modern times, a handful of women have ventured into these kinds of jobs… but even now, when any woman who wants to can apply, the higher the risk or the more adverse the job conditions, the more likely the job is to be done by a man than by a woman.
Consequently, in terms of average lifespan, women outlive men in almost every society, with a gap of 5 or 6 years in developed nations, and even a 3 year gap in less developed countries where higher maternal mortality rates increase the female mortality statistic.
This is also affected by Male Disposability’s discriminating cousin, Gynocentrism. Gynocentrism is a a dominant or exclusive focus on women in theory or practice, leading to prioritization of female interests. In other words, in western society and everywhere that it heavily influences, everybody matters, but females matter more. This social standard is one male human beings have shoved down their throats from the time they are old enough to comprehend its immediate meaning and act according to the mandate: “Ladies First.” “Wait for your sister! Ladies first!” “Back of the line! Ladies first!” “Hold the door please! Ladies first!” Limited seating? Lining up for a treat? Ladies first!
It’s not just kids in kindergarten who are subject to this. These are lifelong social and legal standards that determine society’s compassion by the sex of the recipient. Even though both common sense and research show that both parents are vital to their children’s welfare and experience strong emotional attachment to their children, western family court systems prioritize mother involvement in childrearing over father involvement, relegating the father to the role of financial support. In the workplace, it is understood that women will expect more flexibility for work-life balance, meaning less time dedicated to the job, even if they are not mothers of young children. In our brashness and slap scenario, bystanders will show more compassion for the involved female, regardless of which action she took or what she experienced, and they will be more protective toward her as well. They will be more likely to help her, regardless of her role in the incident, and they will be more likely to encourage a slapped female to seek medical attention than a slapped male, regardless of any overt symptoms of injury. In both scenarios, he is more likely to be castigated, and she is more likely to be comforted.
The combination of male disposability and gynocentrism probably stems in part from historical responses to the physical vulnerability women experience during pregnancy. It makes sense that in the course of human evolution, those who didn’t prioritize the safety and welfare of the people who would birth the next generation at least during pregnancy would be “selected out,” so to speak. The higher survival and reproduction rate of people who prioritized at least pregnant women would, over time, result in social norms that could later evolve into overall gender norms. Perhaps we could surmise that the current imbalance in attitudes toward the sexes is just a result of these norms manifesting out of hand?
Not so fast. As Peter Wright points out in the introduction to his resource site, gynocentrism.com, this is not just a natural standard, but a female-escalated, female-enforced culture. He has identified the time period of its origin, writing, “It’s clear that much of what we today call gynocentrism was invented in the Middle Ages with the cultural practices of romantic chivalry and courtly love. In 12th century Europe, feudalism served as the basis for a new model for love in which men were to play the role of vassal to women who played the role of an idealized Lord.” He explains the relationship between gynocentrism and male disposability further on, “At the base of gynocentric culture lies the practice of enforced male sacrifice for the benefit of women. If we accept this definition we must look back and ask whether male sacrifices throughout history were always made for the sake women, or alternatively for the sake of some other primary goal? For instance, when men went to die in vast numbers in wars, was it for women, or was it rather for Man, King, God and Country? If the latter we cannot then claim that this was a result of some intentional gynocentric culture, at least not in the way I have defined it here. If the sacrifice isn’t intended directly for the benefit women, even if women were occasional beneficiaries of male sacrifice, then we are not dealing with gynocentric culture.
Male utility and disposability strictly “for the benefit of women” comes in strongly only after the advent of the 12th century gender revolution in Europe – a revolution that delivered us terms like gallantry, chivalry, chivalric love, courtesy, damsels, romance and so on. From that period onward gynocentric practices grew exponentially, culminating in the demands of today’s feminist movement. In sum, gynocentrism (ie. gynocentric culture) was a patchy phenomenon at best before the middle ages, after which it became ubiquitous.”
I recommend the listener read more of the articles on gynocentrism.com to better understand gynocentric culture. Its importance as a subject of discussion within men’s issues advocacy cannot be overstated. It is gynocentric culture and its treatment of sidelining of male interests in favor of women’s interests as the default social norm that makes people comfortable with law and policy that discriminates against men and boys for the purported benefit of women and girls. In a gynocentric culture, the value of a male human being is determined by whether, and how, women benefit from his actions. He will be viewed by society as a person with the power to affect his neighbors, his community, and his environment through his choices. He will be socially and legally imbued with a responsibility to moderate those choices accordingly. He will even be held responsible for some conditions and experiences over which he has no control. In particular, he will be held responsible for the welfare of the women around him, regardless of his degree of influence on their lives. There will be no reciprocating expectations of women. In fact, as hypoagents, they can be viewed as victims of their own choices, with law and policy written to transfer the consequences to the nearest or most involved man, because if she feels victimized, there must be a man to blame.
And there is your introduction to the Accountability gap. This gap is what happens when you divide a population into two demographics – one whose personal agency is exaggerated and whose welfare and interests are sidelined in favor of the other, whose personal agency is underestimated, and whose welfare and interests are always prioritized.
When we describe a person as “accountable,” we’re saying that person is expected to at least be able to justify his choices, or to put it a different way, we expect that he will take responsibility for the consequences of his choices, and act accordingly both in his decision-making process, and in response to the results of his chosen course of action.
The accountability gap is a gender disparity in societal and personal expectations of personal accountability, or in other words, the exercise of one’s own individual power. This affects social attitudes toward the individual, as well as the individual’s appraisal of his own choices, and his expectations regarding his peers’ appraisal of them.
From early childhood, boys are treated as more powerful beings than girls, ordered to temper that power in various ways in order to protect girls from being overwhelmed by it, and deprived of benefits or accommodations to which girls have access, allegedly to level the laying field. They’re not just barred from defending themselves if bullied by girls. Strictly because they are boys, they’re excluded from financial aid, mentoring programs and other educational initiatives, legal and policy protections, and other special considerations that are given to girls. They’re more likely to be subject to diagnosis with behavioral disorders, drugging, punishment, and exclusion from the education system for the same behaviors. When those conditions affect their outcomes in the education, instead of examining how boys are treated, authorities presume them responsible for the disadvantage they experience as a result of this discrimination, and assume their masculinity is the problem.
This attitude toward boys continues throughout their elementary and secondary education, leading to an overrepresentation of boys in expulsion and dropout rates, juvenile incarceration rates, and rates of completed suicide, while they’re underrepresented in graduation rates, university enrollment, and degree completion, and this gap widens at each higher level of post-secondary education. By the time boys reach adulthood, “ladies first” and its related exclusion of males from the benefits of civilized society is programmed, or perhaps beaten, into them. Society’s view of them is established; they are disposable, dismissable hyperagents in a world where their actions will be judged by whether and how they affect women, or even just by how women claim to be affected. This will include how accountability is assigned under law and government policy. It even includes presuming male victims of intimate partner and sexual violence responsible for their own victimization.
In a previous HBR Talk video, Why Johnny Depp can‘t ever really clear his name as an abused man, we went over one such area of law and policy: That governing the authoritative and social services response to intimate partner violence. In it, we pointed out the gender disparity in western society’s history of responding to allegations of abuse. Communities respond with compassion for the victim, preventative measures, and punishment of the perpetrator when the accused is male, but with indifference toward or even blame, ridicule, and punishment of the victim when the accused was female. We went on to describe how feminists exploited those social attitudes to bring about family violence law and policy that discriminates against both male victims and accused men for the benefit of female accusers.
And as I’ve said, divorce law prioritizes mothers over fathers. This includes cases where a mother uses allegations of abuse for leverage in a battle over custody or marital property, with law and policy that infringes on the due process rights of the accused father on behalf of the accusing mother.
In the United States, our gynocentric family court system gives mothers full custody or primary residential custody in a joint or shared custody agreement over 80% of the time, awards child support to a higher percentage of custodial mothers than the percentage of custodial fathers who are awarded support, and awards a higher amount when the mother will be the recipient than when the father will.
Intimate partnerships are not the only subject that experiences legislative and court bias, however. There is also a gender disparity in outcomes in the criminal justice system. There are two research reports which confirm this: Explaining the Gender Gap in Sentencing Outcomes: An Investigation of Differential Treatment in U.S. Federal Courts by Jill K. Doerner, (2009) and Estimating Gender Disparities in Federal Criminal Cases by Sonja B. Starr (2012.) Star found that, should a man and a woman be accused of the same crime with the same contributing and mitigating factors, the man is more likely to be arrested. According to both researchers, If arrested, a man is more likely to be charged, convicted, and sentenced. Even if a woman also ends up arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced, a male convicted of the same crime with the same contributing & mitigating factors will serve more of his sentence than she will. Doerner also pointed out that this is consistent with past research on the topic, indicating that the problem has existed for a long time.
Starr found that a primary factor in the gap in outcomes is the influence of personal bias in the exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Interestingly, she also found that parental status was a particular area of discrimination. When a defendant is a mother, prosecutors and judges are more likely to use their discretion to accommodate her family circumstances, but when the defendant is a father, they do not, and among single men – in other words, single fathers – having children significantly increases their sentences.
Why would the criminal justice system excuse mothers who are accused of crimes, but more harshly punish accused fathers? Perhaps it is because gynocentric law looks at female defendants through a filter of how they are affected by the justice system. It looks at men through a filter of how their actions affect their communities, and by affecting their communities, how they affect women.
Both women and men internalize this attitude. This is starkly evident in how we discuss reproductive issues, and it’s one of the reasons why it’s been so difficult to reform family law to equally recognize both parents’ value to the child, and equally recognize their parental rights, and their personal autonomy.
The terms most common within discussion of social expectations, obligations, rights, and responsibilities related to these issues denote the male side of human conception as an active role, but the female side as a passive one. He impregnates her; she is impregnated. He knocks her up, puts a bun in her oven, gets her into trouble, makes her pregnant. She falls pregnant, is with child, is in a family way, is in trouble, has a bun in her oven, or gets knocked up. He acts… she experiences.
Conception concludes a course of action that includes two active participants, but our language treats it as something the involved male does to the female. Pregnancy is the result of strings of choices made together by two active participants, but our language treats it as something the involved male inflicts on the female, whose involvement is made invisible by how it is described. It is only natural, then, that when discussing these issues in a legislative or policy-making setting, measures that would impose responsibility on fathers to provide benefits for mothers at their expense would sound reasonable.
What happens when we discuss sex and reproduction in terms that equally recognize both parents’ control over the outcome? I’ve done this in both face-to-face and social media settings, and the result is fascinating. People quickly divide themselves into two groups: Those who are open to considering women’s power to make all of their own reproductive choices, and connect those choices to their natural consequences, and those who are not.
Those who are will show interest in things like potential advancements in reproductive and contraceptive medicine and technology, as well as willingness to consider the ethics of sexual interaction and how safety, emotional health, and the intentions of the involved parties factor in. They consider the issue of consent in regard to parental status, without differentiating between the sexes in terms of a right to refuse. When subtopics like conception through rape come up, they do not treat male victims differently than female victims, but are willing to discuss issues surrounding a right to refuse parental responsibility regardless of the sex of the unwilling parent. They can admit that a child support obligation constitutes imposing coerced labor on one parent for the financial gain of the other, without any legal checks and balances on the other parent’s stewardship of that resource. They are able to consider the morality, ethics, and human rights issues related to that topic, and discuss possible reforms. Even when the contentious subject of abortion comes up, they are able to discuss it in terms that recognize the agency of both parents, as well as the rights and vulnerability of both parents. Their positions on this topic and the topic of child support obligation will be similar, depending on how much they consider the rights of a child to supersede the rights of a parent as a result of the child’s vulnerability and the parent’s responsibility for the child’s welfare. Their opinion on this is not divided by gender.
They are, unfortunately, a tiny minority of the public.
The majority has an entirely gynocentric outlook that largely ignores women’s power to make choices before pregnancy occurs, and overestimates the power of men’s choices. They discuss conception as if it is something the father did to the mother, rather than something they achieved together. It’s his fault she is in this situation. If he hadn’t ejaculated inside her, she wouldn’t be pregnant. They limit their interest in the ethics of sexual interaction to consideration of only those consequences which affect the mother, and recognition of only the father’s role in bringing about those consequences. His safety, emotional health, and intentions do not matter. His consent to parental status is taken for granted, even in circumstances involving female-perpetrated birth control sabotage, or female-perpetrated rape.
Child support advocates from this camp treat single mothers with custody of their children as victims of their own choices, helpless against the adverse conditions of poverty and social stigma, whose demand of payment by the father is justified by his unilateral role in causing their situation. They take this view regardless of any decisions the mother made, including her reproductive choices prior to conception, her choice to retain custody despite having other options, and even cases where the mother has rejected partnership with a willing father and is actively alienating him from his child. Her choices do not matter; he put her in this situation with his one choice, and he must pay.
Abortion advocates from this camp cannot argue their case without sounding almost identical to a profoundly unruly teenage girl who has been dragged onto a daytime talk show by her mother to be publicly castigated and ridiculed before being sent to boot camp for problem kids. Suggest that reproductive choice begins not at the plus sign on her pregnancy test, but at “well, hello there” and you will witness a full-blown temper tantrum complete with an attempt at foisting responsibility for women’s reproductive decisions onto whichever men they choose to be intimate with. If you don’t want women to have abortions, men must be responsible for preventing pregnancy. Point out that women have nearly all of the birth control options, and your debate opponent will suggest that men should be permanently sterilized for women’s convenience. Why? Because using birth control is just such a major hardship. Women’s experience of using birth control is unfair, so men must surrender up their bodily autonomy so women don’t have to think about how their own bodies work.
Underneath every men’s issue, and behind every feminist or feminine demand of male obligation, it’s always the same thing. The wage gap myth is fed by treating women as helpless victims of a their own work-life balance choices, and men as malicious creators of an insurmountable meritocratic workplace culture. The rape culture myth is fed by frequently invalidating female sexual consent as a non-choice, while dismissing female sexual aggression against male victims as inconsequential. The myth that women are oppressed relies heavily on ignoring women’s social power and its influence over government policy making, which, despite being done by both sexes of legislators at the behest of mostly female voters, is attributed solely to men. Meanwhile, the whole attitudinal scaffolding underneath these myths is invisible to the overwhelming majority of people, who cannot recognize the way they’re sorting out every social issue they examine:
Men act; women experience. Men affect; women are affected. Men account, women are accounted for. Mind the gap, guys. That first step is a doozie.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/psychology-agency
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