I, over the past few years, have noticed an undercurrent of misandry, the hatred of men, among liberals. Liberalism ought to always include egalitarianism, the concept that all people are born equal. Misandry and egalitarianism cannot exist in the same mind; that would be doublethink. I have met people that can believe in the progression of women and the rights of every person, and simultaneously insult, belittle, or demean men for the sin of their gender. I can’t understand the Orwellian nightmare that they’ve embedded into their minds. I can’t understand how they so willingly accept two ideas so horribly incongruous. If this inconsistency is pointed out to them, their response is bland and forgettable. They are afraid of being labeled a misandrist in a liberal culture which uses labels to blackball people for as long as possible. The entire affair stinks of McCarthyism and hypocrisy.

Liberals ended slavery, passed the Civil Rights Amendment, instituted social security and medicaid to protect the old and impoverished, fought for women’s rights, LGBT rights, and have always championed both immigration and integration. Liberals were targeted by Nixon’s War on Drugs, by McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee, by beatings and lynchings and no knock raids. I can live happily in this country because of centuries worth of liberals. For the ideology of inclusion to cease growing and begin stagnating is the greatest tragedy of American politics at a time of such little integrity. Immigration, foreign relations, civil rights, voting rights, women’s rights, LGBT rights, and the progress of the last two hundred years are under the guillotine– we should keep misandry from creeping up on us. To safeguard the rights of one but not the other is an insidious evil.

Misandry is small and insignificant right now. I can comfortably walk in my neighborhood at three o’clock in the morning without fear, unlike many of my friends. I am constantly more safe than a woman would be in the same situation. At the same time, men have fewer emotional supports. One in ten men has no one to depend on for emotional support; by contrast, one in twenty women is in the same situation. It has been sons, brothers, fathers, friends, and cousins that have been fighting in wars for centuries, voluntarily or not.

The man buys chocolate and flowers, they are never bought for him. The man asks the woman out, and the constant rejection is his. The man is at the bottom of his own list of priorities in any functioning family, and this deprecation often is shared by his family. The children, the grandparents, the wife all prioritize the man the least. His security is assumed, taken for granted. There are advantages to being a man, and there are drawbacks too. No matter what anyone wins in the birth lottery, they still have to play the same game, and there has never been a good reason to discriminate against any group.

I am imploring would-be egalitarians to question whether their beliefs are in order; I am not asking anyone to completely change their mind. Simply to question their mind and their opinions, to entertain the thought. I am asking you all not to forget that men die earlier, more violently, and more often by their own hand.