A man scales a building. A man runs to an overturned car. A man kicks down the door of a burning house. A man throws himself at someone holding a knife. A man jumps into the river, or pushes a child from the train tracks... Every day the world witnesses the bravery of men, their heroism, and sacrifice, and although these stories may be reported; they are rarely framed in a gendered way. Through the lens of the media, the man in the burning building, grabbling with the criminal, or wading into the flood, becomes a ‘passer by’, a ‘stranger’, ‘vigilante’ or ‘good samaritan.’ So we see gender erased. The truth is - men, for whatever reason, perform the vast majority of these bystander rescues and interventions, yet so few dare to mention it. To quote co-director of evolutionary biology at Harvard, Dr. Carole Hooven: “A lot of people don’t like to hear this, but it is a fact that men are far more willing to risk their lives to protect others, even those that are complete strangers. Females can do the same, they are certainly capable of that, but they do it at much, much lower rates and it tends to be for their own children.” So in a world that speaks of ‘male violence’, where is the talk of ‘male heroism?’ Why have we never heard this kind of positive action gendered toward men? Because we all know, the moment a man does something bad or horrific the script flips. ‘Gunman’, ‘henchman’, ‘knifeman’, ‘madman’, ‘manhunt’, ‘conman’, ‘manslaughter’, ‘mansplaining’, ‘mainteruption’ and so on, an so forth… man, man, man. Unlike ‘celebration’ where the male sex is hidden, it becomes front and centre when it comes to ‘perpetration’. So why do we do this, and does it lead to a systemic exaggeration of the badness of men, and a minimisation of the good? Ask yourself, if we are to condemn men for the bad things they do, should we not celebrate them for the good also? ~ Images by Benjamin Lehman, Ozzie Stern, Maxim Hopman, Evgenly Alyoshin, Frank Okay, Camilo Jimenez, and Gradienta, from Unsplash. Learn about #gammabias here  Firefighters by sex Murder Suspects by sex

2023-07-23