This man is Austin Hemmings.

In 2008, a 26 year-old Auckland woman was approached by a man whom she recognised as her cousin. The man got confrontational, looked aggressive and the woman started to feel afraid.

Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw Austin, whom she never met before. She asked for his help. Austin obliged and stood between them, asking “what’s going on here?”

The man replied, “get out of the way, it’s none of your business.”

But Austin stood his ground. He then asked the woman to “run” before he was stabbed to his death by the man[1].

The media proclaimed that he “did the right thing.”[2]

In 2012, James Holmes entered a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, and set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms[3].

Out of the death casualties, 3 of them were men who jumped in front of their girlfriends and literally used their body as shields against the incoming bullets:

The comments under the video[4]proclaimed them as real men. True men.

“I don’t enjoy killing women. Men — I can waste them all the live long.”

— Negan, The Walking Dead

Unimportant male characters drop like flies in action movies and TV shows. People watch men die on screen without batting an eyelid.

I mean, just watch the (female)protagonist massacre 88 men in tuxedos in Kill Bill: Vol 1[5]:

Imagine if a male protagonist massacres 88 women. Well firstly, no such movie was made. Secondly, even if there was such a movie, that guy won’t be the protagonist but a villain who will die a cruel painful death.

Many of men’s deaths were even portrayed as comedies in non-comedy movies.

Jurassic Park

Predator

We were meant to laugh at their deaths.

During World War I, notorious bands of women roamed the cities of England giving white feathers to men wearing civilian clothes[6].

(Image from ‘The White Feather: A Sketch of English Recruiting’ by Arnold Bennett, Collier’s Weekly 1914)

The White Feather was given to men who were not enlisted in the army as a mark of cowardice. If you are not fighting in the war, you are not a real man.

So ashamed of being branded a coward, many men enlisted because of the white feather. There were men who were medically unfit but enlisted and then perished in the war. There were stories about underage boys who lied about their age in order to enlist.

And of course, the (in)famous Titanic tragedy.

The overall survival rate for men was 20%. For women, it was 74%, and for children, 52%. Yes, it was indeed “women and children first[7].

So what is the moral of the story(s)?

MEN ARE EXPENDABLES.

A man’s life is not regarded at the same value as a woman’s.

Men were expendables a hundred years ago. Men are still expendables today.

Men make up:

97% of combat fatalities[8]
92% of occupational deaths[9]
76% of homicides[10]
80% of suicides[11]
About 140,000 rape cases in US prisons alone[12]
66% of all victims of robberies and non-domestic aggravated assault[13]
60–80% of the homeless[14]

Men’s problems don’t get attention.

The above stats barely get any mainstream media attention.

Women’s cancer receive 15 times more funding than men’s cancer[15]:

Despite cancer cases to be relatively equal between the two genders:

The vast majority of violence were committed on men. But why do you only hear about educational campaigns on Violence against Women? Because apparently violence on men were committed by other men so somehow that doesn’t count.

Men even view themselves as expendables.

It’s not biological, it’s a social construct, as many feminists like to say. While I give my deep condolences to families of the men who sacrificed their life to protect the women, I challenge the notion that they did the ‘right’ thing.

Sacrificing your life for a woman you never knew? Give me a break.

Even sacrificing your life for your Girlfriend is iffy considering that you are not married to her and the divorce rates in the western world is floating at about 40-50%[16].

But sometimes, instincts take over. I, myself, may be tempted to play ‘hero’ to irrelevant parties when the time comes.

In the past, this made sense. Men were physically stronger and women were the limiting reproductive factor in a hostile living environment. But with the advance of technology and civilisation, what is the point of male disposability? Our muscles and physical strength don’t make us any more immune to bullets and bombs than women are.

The man’s role is akin to the Queen on the chessboard. It has all the power on the surface, but ultimately, it is just a disposable piece used to protect its King — the woman.

But with the not-so-recent rise of the empowered women in the western world, which I support wholeheartedly, they don’t need our protection anymore. They don’t need our disposability. They don’t need us to value their lives over ours.

They don’t need us to open the door for them. (Some may even get offended.) They don’t need chivalry.

As Irina Dunn said all the way back in 1970: