Arrogance and Ignorance at the WSJ

Are the arrogant always ignorant? Or just most of the time? After all, true intelligence and certainly wisdom require a measure of humility, the certain knowledge that one’s information is incomplete and point of view too narrow. There’s always someone somewhere with a better idea, but the arrogant are never wrong.

Whatever the case generally, this article is a fine example of the genre – arrogance and ignorance as soul mates.

You see, according to former USA Today editor-in-chief Joanne Lipman, men no longer have legitimate gripes (if we ever did) because we “won.” Who’s this “we” who “won?”

The manosphere won.

OK, so what, when and how did “we” “win?” Hmm. Those are good questions but Lipman nowhere supplies, or even hints at, answers. Still, I suspect that Trump’s electoral victory was the “win” for the “manosphere” (whatever that is) to which she refers. Now Joe Rogan is popular, Elon Musk has power in the new administration, Mark Zuckerberg mouthed some words about the value of masculinity and Trump is targeting DEI programs for demolition. That’s Lipman’s “evidence” for her claim and her ensuing demand that,

OK, men, so will you finally quit complaining?

It’s a rhetorical question, meaning that, for Lipman, there’s only one right answer – yes. Trump won, making glorious summer of our winter of discontent. Hence, no gripes.

Right on cue, Lipman finds nothing about which men can legitimately complain, not that she tries very hard. Almost all of her article is about days long past – the 1970s, 80s and 90s - as if conditions then have much, or any, bearing on men’s lot today. About 2025, Lipman is silent.

And that’s a remarkable omission for many reasons, particularly because Lipman’s own article is a good example of one of our most important gripes – that few people know what our complaints are, much less take them seriously, to a great extent because misandrists like Lipman are dead set against acknowledging or dealing honestly with them.

Such is her arrogance, now what about her ignorance?

Does Lipman know that men are still second-class citizens throughout the legal system? That they’re treated more harshly than women at every step of the criminal justice system? That that system’s anti-male bias is about six times harsher than its bias against blacks? That barely 20% of parents with sole or primary custody of children are fathers? That men have no right to even know if they’ve fathered a child? That single mothers can, with almost complete impunity, deny fathers’ ability to exercise their parental rights? That paternity fraud is punishable almost nowhere? That non-custodial mothers have a worse record of paying child support on average than do non-custodial fathers? That in France, it's actually illegal (punishable by one year in prison and a $16,000 fine) for a man to, without a court order, have DNA testing performed to establish (or disestablish) paternity of a child?

What about the wholesale denigration of men by popular culture? Has she noticed that, in TV ads, when one character is depicted as stupid, incompetent, arrogant, etc., it’s all but invariably a man? And when one character is depicted as smart, knowledgeable, able, etc. it’s all but invariably a woman?

Does she know that about 80% of suicides are males?

What about the Selective Service Act that requires men, but not women, to register and make themselves available as cannon fodder? Does she notice that, despite a serious manpower shortage and the future of the nation at stake, Ukraine refuses to conscript women into its armed forces?

What about the fact that, as multiple studies demonstrate, in the U.S. and the U.K., teachers in primary and secondary schools grade boys more harshly than girls?

That, despite the fact that men are as likely as women to be victims of domestic violence, there are about 1,500 DV shelters in the U.S. for women and, at last count, three for men?

That the American Psychological Association considers traditional masculinity to be psychologically harmful?

That, at least in the workplace, a single allegation of sexual impropriety, whether true or false, by a woman against a man can cause him to lose his job, possibly his career and maybe his freedom?

That over 90% of workplace fatalities are male?

I can’t guess what Lipman knows and doesn’t know. But if she knows the above, what’s she doing writing such a scurrilous bit of agitprop? And if she doesn’t know the above, why doesn’t she? It’s not as if any of it is top secret.

Plus, has she noticed that neither President Trump nor anyone in his administration nor any previous president has so much as mentioned any of the legitimate complaints listed above? That men’s pressing issues are addressed by precisely none of his policies?

Yes, Trump won, but we didn’t. For men everywhere, the disgraceful status quo holds as firmly as ever.

So no, Ms. Lipman, we’re not going to stop complaining and in no sane world should we. We’re going to continue trying to make this one a better, fairer and more honest a place, an effort that means improving the lot of men and boys and consigning hateful rhetoric like yours to history’s landfill where it belongs.

But, just to show there are no hard feelings, Ms. Lipman, I personally volunteer to teach you the realities of the movement for men’s rights and respect. It’ll be a long course, but, at its end, you’ll emerge a better person, far more knowledgeable about gender issues and less hateful.

In other words, you’ll be less arrogant and less ignorant than you are now.