Well, I’ve heard plenty of people argue that since they didn’t have ill intentions, the impact of their subconscious bias doesn’t count. The fact that bias was overtly codified into laws (against both women and Blacks) that have only started to be repealed in the past 50 years speaks volumes. Marital rape wasn’t illegal in all 50 US states until 1993, so some of this is even less than 50 years ago.
Please give me an example of legal bias in favor of women. I’d be really interested to hear about it because until fairly recently, women could be fired for being pregnant, couldn’t go to Ivy League colleges (Columbia didn’t accept women until 1982), couldn’t get a home loan or a credit card in their own name, etc., etc., etc. The only thing that I can think of at all is that judges, most of whom are male, tend to give greater custody rights to women, but this is a patriarchal structure in and of itself, because of the assumption that the most important thing that women do is to be mothers.
Also, please give examples of “typical male behavior” that has been recently criminalized because I have no idea what you are referencing. If you are talking about the wholesale harassment and routine assault and battery that women have had to put up with in the past, those things were always illegal and criminal, but it was just never enforced in the past. Now society is beginning to demand that it be enforced, although as referenced above and below, not necessarily for powerful, elite White men and boys.
