Click "Read more..." to read this outstanding essay.

Memorial services were held recently for the 12 men who died in West Virginia’s Sago Mine. The men died Jan. 2 after returning to the mine from the holiday break. An investigation continues to determine what went wrong.

The tragic death toll in the West Virginia mining accident is ironic. Every day of the year, an average of 12 men die in this country in work-related incidents [1](.pdf file). We are often reminded of the more than 2,000 deaths suffered by U.S. Armed Forces in the Afghanistan and Iraq. But each year, that grisly death toll is reached in the U.S. workplace by the end of May.

A majority of these deaths are white males and typically cut short the lives of the youngest men. (Women account for 8 percent of U.S. workplace deaths.) This annual workplace slaughter of men is ignored by media, making it a truly silent crisis.

Many initial media reports on the mining tragedy referred to the men only as “miners,” which is an odd twist for a media so otherwise gender-conscious. But when men die in war, they are merely “soldiers;” and when men die in construction accidents, they are merely “workers.”

In the article, “Dying at Work,” by Carrie Coolidge for Forbes.com [2], she lays out the statistics but never mentions that more than 90 percent of U.S. workplace deaths inconvenience men, and permanently so. Ms. Coolidge works for a business publication but seems unable to do the math or to discern a statistical omission.

While our country’s death toll from mining operations is regrettable, men elsewhere fare much worse. From 1992 through 2002, mining accidents killed 434 miners in the U.S. and a staggering 59,543 in China. Working hours and conditions in Chinese mines are debilitating, and holidays are rarely given. One survivor from a mining disaster in China’s Lianing province, where 220 men died in two days in February 2005, said he worked without stop for a year because “there is a great demand for coal in the country.” [3]

PC imagery vs. hard reality

When terrorists attacked the Twin Towers on Sept. 11, 2001, the politically correct term “firefighters” applied to dead firemen only. The New York City firefighter death toll from that horrendous day was: men 343, women 0. America as a gender-neutral society seems a swell idea until someone gets hurt.

But it’s an old story. Remember the Titanic? Ninety-four percent of those in first-class who survived and 81 percent of those in second-class were women. A modern take on the chivalrous phrase “women and children first” coincided with the release of the movie, Titanic. The joke was: “How long can a feminist hold her breath?”

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 5,703 deaths occurred in the U.S. workplace in 2004, a 2 percent increase over 2003. Most of the deaths occurred mainly in construction, agriculture, transportation and law enforcement. In 2003, a total 5,129 men died on the job, an average of more than 12 male deaths every day, weekends and holidays included. More than 70 percent of those deaths were white males, ages 35 to 54. Hispanic men accounted for 15 percent of male workplace deaths that year and male African-American workers, 10 percent.

Ironically, the controversial “Violence Against Women Act” is based on making the workplace safer for women. When the multibillion-dollar VAWA was first passed in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, critics pointed out that relatively few women experienced job-related “assaults and violent acts,” a key category used in granting VAWA federal authority under the Commerce Act. In fact, only about 2 percent of all assaults and violent acts involved women. Incidents in this category include “violence by persons, self-inflicted injury and assaults by animals.” The figure remains nearly the same today.

Nonetheless, our federal legislators renewed VAWA late last year, and, in the process, condoned a millennia-old social norm: men are expendable. Yet imagine the reaction if one were to suggest affirmative action or a “Violence Against Men Act” to bring about true equality in the workplace?

Of course, men can only be victims of other men, and not societal injustice. A letter from a woman printed in the Houston Chronicle recently used the trite feminist excuse: Men have all the power; therefore, men are to blame for the miners’ deaths. Of course, if men had all the power, then women would work the coal mines.

Women consume a great deal more than they produce. Most retail stores -- 75 percent by one estimate -- cater to women and girls. Men largely build these stores and provide the raw materials and transportation for the goods, including the fuel, trucks and jets involved and maintenance of same.

The woman’s comments reflect the reprehensible politics of feminism, which encourage a primal narcissism among followers. And once having succumbed, they are incapable of acknowledging, let alone expressing gratitude, for the millennia of sacrifices made by men on behalf of women.

Mike Spaniola writes political commentary from high atop the Rocky Mountains in central Colorado. He seeks to counter the oxymoron known as mainstream media.