“这本书主要以数据的形式呈现经验证据。传达此类材料的最容易理解的形式是通过使用表格和数字，通常是图形。因此，这本书有大量表格和数字，而数字往往是彩色的。因此，建议在能够呈现颜色的设备上观看，尽管单色将是adeq在大多数情况下，这是不公平的。”
共情鸿沟提出了一个论点，即男性和男孩在生活的许多领域都处于广泛的不利地位，包括教育、医疗保健、生殖器官完整性、刑事司法、家庭虐待、工作时间、税收、养老金、父子关系、无家可归、自杀、性犯罪，以及在父母分离后接触自己的孩子。书中的实证证据证明了这一说法的合理性，大部分但不完全来自英国，涉及近1000篇参考文献、179个数字和49张表格。对大多数人来说，无论男女，这似乎是一种反常的观点，因为弱势已经成为女性、女孩和少数民族的范畴，而不是男性。然而，客观思维不可否认的是，支持男性和男孩所受不利影响的实证案例。但如果是这样的话，为什么人们普遍认为男性享有特权，而劣势是异性的领域？如果男性的劣势如此普遍，那么为什么男性的劣势在很大程度上没有被男性和女性注意到呢？
提出普遍而实质性的男性劣势的理由，也是对女权主义理论通常的霸权范式的挑战。这些问题都是在移情鸿沟中通过对两性关系的社会心理学提出完全不同的取向来解决的。一种压迫性父权制的观念已经过时。相反，人们认为男人参与人类伴侣关系是利他主义的，这一现象起源于进化，并通过情感心理在个体中形成。这就是性别认知不对称的根源，这种不对称使女性的偏好正常化，因此不可避免地对男性不利。成功的进化策略涉及男性效用和相对的男性可支配性，后者由男女双方对男性的无声同理心——同理心差距——促进。
女权主义并没有像一场真正的平等主义运动那样努力克服这种男性的随意性，而是以此为基础并加以放大。女权主义项目依赖于未被承认的真实状况，而移情鸿沟在其自身的隐形性中起着重要作用。关于这一理论，作者不主张独创性。这些想法在亚文化中流传了几十年。然而，本书的重点是展示这些想法是如何在实践中体现出来的。
The Empathy Gap: Male Disadvantages and the Mechanisms of Their Neglect
“This book majors on the presentation of empirical evidence in the form of data. The most digestible form for communicating such material is through the use of Tables and Figures, generally graphs. Consequently, the book has a great many Tables and Figures and the latter are often in colour. Viewing on a device capable of rendering colours is therefore recommended although monochrome will be adequate in most cases.”
The Empathy Gap proposes the thesis that men and boys are extensively disadvantaged across many areas of life, including in education, healthcare, genital integrity, criminal justice, domestic abuse, working hours, taxation, pensions, paternity, homelessness, suicide, sexual offences, and access to their own children after parental separation. The claim is justified in the book by empirical evidence, mostly but not exclusively from the UK, involving nearly 1,000 references, 179 Figures and 49 Tables. To most people, of both sexes, this will appear to be a perverse perspective as disadvantage has become the province of women, girls and minorities, not males. Yet the empirical case supporting the disadvantages suffered by men and boys is undeniable to the objective mind. But if this is so, why is the popular perception that males are privileged whereas disadvantage is the province of the opposite sex? Why do the male disadvantages go largely unremarked, by both sexes, if they are so pervasive?
Presenting the case for widespread and substantial male disadvantage is also a challenge to the usual hegemonic paradigm of feminist theory. These issues are addressed within The Empathy Gap by presenting an entirely different orientation on the social psychology of relations between the sexes. Out goes the idea of an oppressive patriarchy. Instead, a man’s participation in the human pair bond is seen to be altruistic, a phenomenon arising originally from evolution and enacted in the individual via the emotional psyche. This is the origin of an asymmetry in the perception of the sexes which normalises the preferencing of females and therefore inevitably disadvantages males as a corollary. The successful evolved strategy involves male utility and relative male disposability, the latter being facilitated by a muted empathy for males, by both sexes – the empathy gap.
Rather than working to overcome this male disposability, as a true egalitarian movement would have done, feminism has fed upon it and amplified it. The feminist project relies upon the true state of affairs remaining unacknowledged, and the empathy gap is instrumental in its own invisibility. In respect of this theory, the author makes no claim for originality. The ideas presented have been circulating within the sub-culture for decades. However, the focus of the book is to show how these ideas are manifest in practice.
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