Bohl: Be a man, our culture will value you less

Article here. Excerpt:

'As of late there has been a lot of hubbub about gender roles. I can hardly seem to escape the noise about them. Talk of the role of women in society is everywhere. At Iowa State we have a women's studies program that "focuses on the study of issues and scholarship relevant to women and gender, challenges existing systems of knowledge and forges new scholarship based on the centrality of gender as a category of analysis," and "seeks to improve critical thinking and to question prevailing assumptions."

Since we lack any men's study courses, and apparently as a university care little for issues and scholarship relevant to men and gender, I'd like to beg a critical question of such a nature, an answer for which may hopefully be found using gender as a category of analysis. The question I beg is, "If men and women are equal under the law, why is a woman's life worth more than mine in our modern, equal society?" If you find fault with my words, consider the following: How often have you heard the phrase "... even women and children were killed"? Strange, is it not, that we cringe so at the thought of the deaths of women and children, but are conditioned to accept the violent deaths of men?
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Young men have always been society's most disposable members. Strong enough for battle and harsh labor, yet not wise enough to lead or instruct; young, fully grown, average men are the natural choice for the literal and metaphorical bearing of society's heaviest burdens. It would seem that young men have naturally inherited a gender role from necessity herself. An efficient culture is a more successful one, and while women could work and fight like men, it was discovered that young men could be used most effectively for those pursuits; perforce, young men have become the archetypal laborers, soldiers and heroes. Society long ago deemed us the most disposable and least valuable of her constituents.'