More on Prostates and Breasts, O My!

Okay, for this post to make sense, you might want to first read this post by me (rebutting something said on Donahue by men’s rights activist Marc Angelucci), and then Marc’s reply to me, which I posted yesterday. This post, alas, is therefore a rebuttal to a rebuttal to a rebuttal.

First point: funding. Marc correctly points out that I didn’t discuss past funding; to tell you the truth, it didn’t occur to me to fact-check something someone said two months ago by looking up what the stats were in 1997. But I think that looking at the funding over time actually supports my point. Let’s look at some data, shall we? This table shows National Cancer Institute (NCI) funding for research on breast and prostate cancer. (NCI funding isn’t 100% of all federal spending on cancer research, but it’s the largest chunk of it, and as far as I can tell is fairly representative of the whole).

So what’s been happening? Breast cancer research gets funded much more than prostate cancer research does, just as Marc says. But the level of funding for prostate cancer has been going up a lot faster. Why the difference? My guess is that the higher level of funding for breast cancer is due to decades of work and activism by women’s groups. But in the past few years, men’s rights groups such as Mr. Angelucci’s have been getting active as well, resulting in a huge increase for prostate cancer funding.

If I understand him, Marc thinks any disparity in funding is unjust and sexist; the lack of even funding is, in Marc’s view, an example of discrimination against men. He feels the diseases are equally deadly (or perhaps prostate cancer is worse), and thus should get equal funding:

The figures I’m looking at published in Men’s Health from the American Cancer society show that in 1996, 317,000 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and 184,000 women were diagnosed with breast cancer. But in any case, they both kill about the same number every year.

But in a world without sex discrimination, would breast and prostate cancer research really be evenly funded? I doubt it. Marc’s data is just plain wrong. Here are some correct figures (all of this data comes from the NCI Factbook 2002 (pdf)):

• According to the American Cancer Society, there are about the same number of new cases of breast and prostate cancer a year (193,700 vs 198,100 in 2001).
• In 2001, 40,600 people died of breast cancer, and 31,500 of prostate cancer.
• Five years after diagnosis, 97% of white prostate cancer patients will be alive, compared to 87% of white breast cancer patients. (For black patients, the survival numbers are worse: 92% and 72%).
• The average years of life lost to breast cancer is 19; for prostate cancer, 9.
• Breast cancer is the number one cancer killer of women age 15-54; prostate cancer is not the number one cancer killer of men at any age.

I think prostate cancer research was until recently underfunded, and perhaps still is; and I certainly don’t resent men’s rights groups lobbying for more research dollars. But given the many ways breast cancer is deadlier than prostate cancer, it’s just strange to call the funding disparity an example of discrimination against men. Breast cancer is deadlier and strikes younger; there probably should be a funding disparity.

And I think that Marc’s refusal to acknowledge the elephant in the living room – breast cancer is deadlier – is a classic example of what’s wrong in so much “men’s rights” thinking – the belief that everything is always worse for men. Marc’s ideology means that he has to always see men as “the worse victim” – and if that means bending statistics backwards until he can convince himself that prostate cancer is worse than breast cancer, then that’s what he’ll do.

There are some other minor points I disagree with, but I have limited time and energy. Let me thus skip over the many, many examples Marc comes up with (labor laws of the 1930s?) to concentrate on just one: disparities in prison sentencing.

Marc links to this article – also written by Marc – to make the point that female criminals tend to have an easier time than male criminals in our court system – the women tend to get sentenced less often and for fewer years, even for the same crime.

Now, I certainly could pick at Marc’s data; he admitted to me in email that the data on drunk driving came from The Washington Times, which is not exactly a reputable source of data. [Update:Marc made a mistake; he’s now clarified that the info came from the Post, not the Times. -&] And although Marc wrote the article in 2002, 3 of the 4 legitimate studies he cites are from the 1980s. Why? Because those studies are using sentencing data from the 1970s, when sentencing disparities peaked. Quoting from an article in The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology: (1994, vol 85 (1)):

…the “women and crime” literature… may describe sentencing patterns that no longer exist. Much of the research contained in these works is based on data collected in the 1960s and 1970s. In the 1980s, however, significant efforts were made to reform sentencing systems at both the state and federal levels. These reforms were designed to substantially reduce judicial sentencing discretion, to reduce unwarranted sentencing disparities, and to reduce race, gender, and class discrimination.

Even if we stick to Marc’s preferred decade, the evidence isn’t nearly as clear-cut as Marc implies: some studies found no sentencing disparity at all (for example, see American Soc. Review vol 49 p541; Justice Quarterly v3 p516; Law and Society Review v8 p375). Nonetheless, although he exaggerates the scope of the problem, on the whole I think Marc is right – being a male criminal probably does tend to mean getting a longer prison sentence, all else held equal. What’s going on here?

Well, what’s going on is sexism screwing men over. As I’ve blogged before, it doesn’t only hurt women. Although in most ways our society reserves the material and political power for men, there are ways that men get screwed over: for example, by the draft, by on-the-job injuries, by lack of contact with their families, and – as Marc points out – by prison sentencing disparities.

The difference, I think, is that most men’s rightists think everything in society is like that. In fact, almost no men will ever be called upon to chivalrously give up a lifeboat seat and drown; most men go through life without being sentenced to felonies; and it’s been decades since there was a military draft. There’s another half of this picture: a half in which rape and spouse-battering happen mostly to women, in which 87% of Congress and 100% of U.S. Presidents are men, in which wage gaps and childcare gaps act against women’s interests, and in which the primary problem of reproductive rights isn’t that men have to pay child support against their will. And that’s a half of the picture that too many “men’s rights” activists seem unable to see.

As I’ve said before (quite recently), “I think feminism needs to be a movement fighting for the social, political, and material equality of the sexes – both sexes. Although sexism affects (and hurts) both women and men, in the end it’s almost always women who end up with the short end of the stick, politically, socially and materially (compared to men of the same race, class, etc.). So most of the time, when we fight for equality and justice, that means improving the status of women. But not always.” Sometimes it’s men who are getting hurt more – as in the case of sentencing disparities – and in those cases, the right feminist action is to oppose the sexist harms to men.

As far as Marc’s lawsuit against the state of California goes – asking for a department of men’s health to be a counterpart for the already-existing department of women’s health – I don’t know anything about the issue. But just at a glance, I think Marc’s right, and I hope his lawsuit is successful.

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