When Inequality Is Fatal for Men

Equality always has been an American preoccupation, right from the words “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence. Yet even that phrase is not egalitarian enough by today’s lights; feminists long have objected to the gendered language of “all men.” Thomas Jefferson didn’t mean to commit a microaggression; in 1776, “all men” meant women, too. We know this because the Founding Fathers—must we say Founding Parents?—argued about the mismatch between their universal philosophy and the endemic inequalities of their time, with Abigail Adams asking her husband John…

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