In 1991, “June Stephenson, Ph.D.” authored a book entitled Men Are Not Cost-Effective: Male Crime in America. The book is largely a collection of newspaper clippings apparently intended to document that men are “the criminal gender.”^ The book proposed that the state and federal tax system discriminate against men for being part of the criminal gender:

This country cannot count on its men to rectify its violent nature. They are too much a part of it. So what is left? Besides building prisons and increasing incarceration, what is left? Nothing short of men paying for their own criminal gender. Men must pay for being men.^

The book also proposed changes in child-rearing practices, increasing arts education, and helping males to develop their feminine side.

Among the remarkable assertions in Stephenson’s book:

• “Men are expensive.”
• “Both boys and girls need a male mother as much as they need a female mother.”
• “As many incidents in this book demonstrate, males are easily frustrated and become angry when they don’t get what they want.”
• “A battered men’s shelter is not even imaginable.”^

Stephenson’s book apparently was so successful that HarperCollins reprinted it in 1995.

The author of this book was not condemned as a bigot. June Diemer Bailey, the Stanford University graduate who wrote this book under the pen name June Stephenson, was featured in a “spotlight” in the Class Notes of the Stanford Magazine. The note observed that her book was “controversial,” celebrated Bailey’s decision to study law at age 85, and observed:

Bailey has a long history of fighting injustice. …Whether or not she faces the bar again, June Bailey’s example encourages others to dare and dream.^

One might dare to dream that one day thoughtful persons will condemn misandry, that one day thoughtful persons will recognize the serious social problem of criminalizing men, and that one day men will be highly disproportionately imprisoned no longer. Don’t expect prominent newspaper columnists to help make this dream a reality.