What's So Great About Being a Man?

In this class, and in the class I took last fall semester, Gender Representations in Popular Culture, I learned of the belief that society values men more than women. Even though it would seem that the women take on most of the work behind the scenes, it is common a kind of common knowledge that men are more important. But, what is so great about being a man? I found some descriptions of what being a man entails in the text, and I am not impressed:

Pressure
Strong
Independent
Bully
Don't be a girl
Sex
Confident
Denial of feelings
Don't cry
Silent
Do it
Power
Don't ask

(p.104, Closing the Leadership Gap)

There are very little positive descriptions in this list, the worst of which must be 'don't be a girl.' It seems to be the worst thing in the world for a man to be labeled a woman. The text even has statistics on this.

"In 1991, the Michigan Board of Education published a statewide study of students' perceptions of what it means to be male or female. When asked how their lives would be different if they were the opposite sex, nearly 50 percent of the girls spoke of advantages to being a boy, while only 7 percent of the boys saw advantages to being a girl. Although girls found it interesting or exciting to think of life as a boy, nearly 20 percent of the boys gave extremely hostile, derogatory responses. An alarming number of boys said that they would commit suicide if they suddenly awoke to find they were girls. One boy wrote, "I would kill myself right away by starting myself on fire so no one knew." (p. 105, Closing the Leadership Gap)

This section was completely shocking to me. That a boy would rather murder himself than live the life that I live. How discouraging and terrifying. I can understand why girls would feel so devalued, unappreciated, and worthless after reading something like that. If nothing else is accomplished for women, surely this belief of how terrible and revolting it would be to be a woman should be changed.