Gender wars are a subset of culture wars. We risk raising a generation of boys who are emotionally damaged and mentally fragile amidst a sea of snowflake children who, terrified by multifront extremist alarmism, demand governments keep them safe from any unpleasantness and all life challenges. Indoctrinated into bearing the burden of collective guilt for past sins that isn’t really inheritable, how many white Christian boys will struggle with mental health issues? The excesses of trans extremists have finally begun to attract serious pushback from some brave souls like popular writers, athletes, civil servants, police officers, school teachers, professors and a few politicians like Moira Deeming and Claire Chandler. When are men, with the support of women who believe in gender equality and need to consider the welfare of their sons, fathers, brothers and husbands, going to organise the fightback to restore equal rights for all regardless of racial, religious and gender identity? To fight that war and hope to win, an army must first be raised. An army of advocates, activists and even some metaphorical martyrs to the cause.

Instead, additional demands continue to come from women’s rights advocates. On 17 September, Chief Executive Women released its annual report showing that 91 per cent of CEOs are men. It called on companies to set real gender targets because ‘diverse voices are important and diverse leadership teams are good for business’. There are big problems with its tall claims. It pushes the interests of a narrow cultural elite, not of most women in their quotidian activities. We never, but never, hear talk of equal gender outcomes in the dangerous, menial, physically demanding, family life-disrupting and geographically remote jobs. If the nation’s senior women executives are truly motivated by concern for group-based social justice and the belief that diversity in the senior executive leadership will ‘unlock substantial economic growth and productivity’, they should prioritise getting racial minorities ahead of women who are even more badly under-represented. However, promoting people into senior positions based on chromosomes and race is not talent-scouting but virtue-signalling. And what if top women leaders were disproportionately represented in high profile leadership disasters? Would a male police chief have prioritised a visit to the hair stylist and going out to dinner during the Black Saturday bushfire that killed 173 people in 2009? Of course there are many examples of female leaders acting with acumen, courage and integrity: Christina Holgate’s commercial success with Australia Post and Renée Leon (sacked by Scott Morrison as departmental secretary for terminating the unlawful Robodebt). But only recklessly courageous researchers would explore gender-based failures of leadership and so we are stuck with platitudes instead of empirical data.

The ubiquitous gender pay gap myth mostly reflects different occupational choices on work-lifestyle balance. How many women would choose to work 12-hour shifts in mines in remote locations for extended periods, for double what they might be earning? In full-time work in the US, men work on average two hours more per week. Among those working less than 35-hour weeks, women earn five per cent more. In countries that offer more job flexibility without imposing financial hardships on families, for example in Scandinavia, more women choose the lower paying but less stressful and more flexible professions that provide more job satisfaction. Nataliya Ilyushina made a similar argument by noting that the report on the gender pay gap from Australia’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency had accidentally measured women’s freedom of choice.

The increasingly radicalised and unhinged attacks on toxic masculinity culminated in the #MeToo moment when women had to be believed and men vilified, defenestrated and perhaps even incarcerated, no matter how thin the evidence and absurd the alleged victimisation and grievance narrative. In the process, longstanding pillars of Western jurisprudence and criminal justice systems have come under sustained assault with a weakened commitment to the key principles of equal protection under the law, due process and innocence until proven guilty. There’s a double standard at play, where the woman is effectively infantilised and denied responsible agency. Being too intoxicated is an acceptable excuse to transfer the burden of proof and responsibility entirely to the male defendant. But being drunk is no excuse for him. Judgmental remarks about a woman’s sexual behaviour and the choices she makes will unleash a social media pile-on demanding public censure and dismissal. Yet it is permissible to characterise men’s conduct in judgmental language. The justice system downplays the reality that some women can act unwisely, succumb to temptation in the heat of the moment and change their stories subsequently either because they regret their ethical lapse, or because they fear the consequences for their marriage or relationship; and some are outright malicious or manipulative and use sex consciously as a weapon. Following public criticism of ‘lazy and perhaps politically expedient’ but unserious and unmeritorious prosecutions for alleged sexual assaults, New South Wales chief prosecutor Sally Dowling told a Senate hearing on 4 September, an audit was launched and 15 rape cases were discontinued.

The biggest victims of the culture wars have been whites, Christians and males. By a clever sleight of mind, ‘toxic masculinity’ has morphed into the charge that masculinity itself is toxic. Competition, bravery, honour, chivalry, gallantry are also hardwired traits of masculinity. The warrior-protector trait led a dad to jump to the tracks in a fatal effort to save his twin babies whose pram had rolled down from the platform while the mother screamed. Few would be surprised by that gender difference or judge the mother harshly.

Treating the accused perpetrators and victims of serious crime differently is anathema to the fair administration of justice. As in every aspect of public policy, sexual assault laws should balance the rights of complainants for justice and closure with the rights of the accused to a fair trial, due process and protection against malicious, extortionate and vengeful allegations. A particular category of crime should not have a lower threshold of evidence for prosecution than other serious crimes. The process itself as punishment and the cost of being found not guilty further undermine justice.

Lower life expectancy and higher suicide and incarceration rates for Aborigines in Australia and blacks in the US supposedly prove the reality of systemic and institutional racism. But do lower life expectancy and higher suicide (three-quarters of suicides in Australia and the UK are among males) and incarceration rates for men prove toxic and criminal masculinity? The death rate for American men on the job is twelve times higher and injuries are 50 per cent more than for women. In Australia, ABS data show that men comprise 70 per cent of those working over 60 hours per week and 96 per cent of those dying in the workplace. Which women’s lobby group highlights these job statistics?