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Men's rights movement

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Men's rights is a stream in the men's movement. It is closely related to the fathers' rights movement and began as a recognisable movement in the 1960s, largely as an outgrowth of men's divorce societies. (The earliest organization which has been documented is the United States Divorce Reform, founded in Sacramento, California, by Ruben Kidd and George Partis in 1960.) Its professed aim is to promote the health and well-being of all men and boys, as part of a general human rights, civil rights or equal rights agenda. It is frequently concerned with wellness, economic fairness and family law. There is no single unifying manifesto or organization which can claim to speak for the entire movement and the term is often used in various, even conflicting ways.

Related streams of the men's movement are in particular:

  • Fathers' rights focus on the relationship between fathers and their children and particular family law
  • Masculism provides a counterpart to feminism and argues against legal constructs, reforms, or entitlements which confer special privileges to women or which deny men equal rights under the fourteenth amendment; there are conservative "traditionalist", "liberal", and libertarian strands.

Other streams of the men's movement are

History

The legal concept of rights is a complex one, with concepts of divine right, individual rights, natural rights and social rights beyond the scope of this article, which is primarily concerned with the legal standing, legal, civil and human rights of boys and men.

The legal term standing refers to someone's existence or relevance before the law. In Roman law a person's standing was largely determined by their relationship to a pater familias (literally "father of the family") as set down in the Law of the Twelve Tables. Not all biological men were considered pater familias, as this rested with one patriarch per family. Patria potestestas (literally "power of the father") included vitae necisque potestas ("the power to live or not"), making all wives, children and slaves of the patriarch essentially chattel. This is reflected in modern English words such as "manumission" and "emancipation" which literally mean to be sent or released from the manus "the hand".

Within the west, the concept of rights developed, becoming increasingly egalitarian. Legal standing and human rights extended to other groups, including other adult males, women and children. Even today the laws of each country vary as to the de facto status of poor men, children, women and slaves, as reflected in civil, criminal and family law.

Structure

Like most social movements, those concerned with men's rights comprise a wide variety of individuals and organizations, both united and divided in various ways on specific issues including the mistreatment of men in the media, gay rights, the abortion debate, family law and false rape allegations. Technically not a part of the men's rights movement, pro-feminist men tend to disagree on many issues with proponents of men's rights although both groups claim to be working for the best interests of all men. Some groups are formally organized or incorporated, and some are fairly casual alliances or essentially the work of a few individuals.

Although the vast majority of men's rights leaders and activists are men there are a small number of women, including those in significant positions within the movement. For example, Sue Price in the Australian Men's Rights Agency has been at the forefront of activism there. Naomi Penner was a women's rights activist in the 1960s who later helped to create the National Coalition of Free Men in America in 1981. Men's rights advocates are not a uniform group: they include both singularly religious and atheistic individuals, as well as those from the left and right of politics and every echelon of society. The majority of those who participate in the men's rights movement do so because they believe that society discriminates against men on a number of levels, particularly in family law. Most supporters of men's rights are from Western nations.

Issues

Within the larger context of human rights, men's rights advocates are concerned with many of the same general issues as proponents of women's rights, only with special attention to the role of men and boys as victims and participants.

Family

Family law is one area of keen interest among men's groups. Fathers' rights advocates draw attention to what they believe is a systematic bias against men in child custody matters and against husbands in divorce cases.

Employment

Employment law is another area of concern, with such problems as unequal treatment around parental leave, retirement age, and pension entitlements. They also assert sexual harassment policies are de facto directed against the male style of inappropriate sexual behaviour in the workplace, while ignoring the female style of inappropriate behaviour in the workplace (eg: wearing sexually revealing clothing, offering sexual favours in exchange for promotion or raises, etc.). Others assert that many sexual harrassmen laws restrict men's basic freedoms, and cause men to be constantly on edge. They express anger towards the fact that a man telling a joke or simply referring to a co-worker by a nickname is grounds for dismissal and/or lawsuits.

Media Bias

Another issue of concern is the perceived anti-male bias in the media. Men's rights activists have long claimed that men are portrayed unfairly on television, radio and in newspapers and magazines. They claim that not only does the media not pay serious attention to men's rights issues but that men are portrayed in a negative light compared to women, particularly in advertising.

Health

Other issue areas addressed by the men's rights movement includes male military conscription, male circumcision, the failure to address male victims of domestic abuse and the disparity in the spending on men and women in the healthcare system generally.

Advocates frequently cite statistical evidence to support their claims of discrimination against men. The most frequently cited statistics are:

  • In recent years, girls have tended to perform better at all educational levels.
  • Suicide rates are dramatically higher for men and boys of all age groups.
  • Funding for prostate cancer research in the US and across the Western world is significantly lower than for breast cancer, which is less frequent.

Violence

Domestic violence is a key, emotional issue for both men's rights advocates and their opponents. Advocates cite government statistics that show that in 15% to 38% of the cases of intimate partner violence the victim is male. They argue that the real number is likely to be higher, since male victims are significantly less likely to report abuse than female victims, due to social stigmatisation. They also assert that the percentage of shelters for battered men should make up a respective percentage of all shelters. The National Coalition of Free Men has sued several women's shelters with the goal of allowing battered men and their children to be admitted and to receive assistance from shelters.

Procreation Rights

In the United States the abortion debate is another emotionally charged issue, with some groups asserting that treating such a decision as an individual one only for the mother is unfair, while others assert that men can always choose to use more active forms of birth control such as vasectomy or condoms if they so chose. However, men's rights activists claim that it is also the responsibility of the woman to use birth control. Organizations such as Choice for Men argue that abortion and legal abandonment of newborns give women the unilateral right to choose or not choose parenthood after conception. They point to the Fourteenth Amendment's prohibition of state legislatures from making and applying laws unequally, and that while men cannot physically abort, a notarized document filed with a local court would serve the same purpose as abortion or abandonment. A contention of the men's rights movement is that women have this choice to walk-away from the emotional and financial responsibility of a child whereas men do not. This perceived bias in the law is often characterised as burdening men with responsibilities yet granting them no rights.

Incarceration

Though America is home to less than 5% of the world’s population (est. 298 million of 6.5 billion people), America incarcerates almost 40% of the world’s inmate population (about 2.1 million v. 5.5 million prisoners). Therefore, America imprisons over 800% more men than the world imprisons men. About 95% of prisoners are men.

Criticism

As with many social movements, some of the strongest criticisms of men's groups comes from other groups and activists. Feminists or pro-feminist men criticize a perceived ignorance of sexism, male privilege and power. They also allege that men's rights advocates spend much of their time fighting women's rights rather than working positively for all men. Some men's rights advocates respond that they are not ignorant of such issues, but dispute the methodology of many findings or assert there is a cause for gaps other than sexism. Critics counter that men's rights advocates are guilty of the same faulty-methodology and substituting sexism for logic they claim to bemoan of other groups.

Pro-feminist critics such as Michael Flood of the Australian pro-feminist men's organization XYonline paint that the men's rights movement as the most extreme part of the broader men's movement . According to this view, most men's rights advocates have joined the movement as the result of negative personal experience during a divorce or custody battle. Many advocates do not dispute this claim, but argue that this is due to the fact that many men do not realize legal discrimination until after they have experienced it themselves.


In general, all movements claim to address issues of concern to men and to remove institutional and societal discrimination against males. Some argue that feminism was originally and egalitarian ideology and that it has strayed from the goal of gender equality and begun to support the discrimination and abuse of males. Some, like Darren Blacksmith and Chris Key, however, condemn the entire history of the women's rights movement. The men's movement, as a whole, seeks equal rights for all people. The men's rights movement is often equated with the masculist movement, but these terms have never been homogeneous, well-defined, or stable over time, so the relationship or synonymy remains unclear.

Wages

See also: Male-female income disparity in the USA

A classic example is equal pay for women and the supposed "wage gap." Strong research and statistical evidence suggests that this is not sexism, but reflect that men are either required, or are more willing and/or able, to work in dangerous conditions, staying in a field longer (thus becoming more experienced employees), being more likely to relocate for higher pay, and numerous other factors. Critics of feminism point out that the methodology used by feminists to gather their wage gap information was flawed. Lenore Wietzman's study, (the one most often cited by feminist books for wage gap information), simply compared the aggregate reported earnings of men in the US to that of women. This ignores the professions chosen and the number of hours worked, as well as unclaimed income such as unclaimed day care and tips from jobs like waiting on tables. Warren Farrell's book Why Men Earn More identified many reasons why he believes men earn more money than women. When accounting for all of these factors using the same data Weitzman used in her report, the wage gap was less than 2 cents on the dollar.

Feminists and other critics, however, point to statistics that demonstrate dangerous and physically demanding attributes do not amount to higher pay and therefore it cannot account for a gap in pay. Feminists like social-psychologist Carol Tavris also say the wage gap for the same work is narrowing, but labels the solutions put forth as sexist as the suggestions to close the gap falls entirely at the feet of women, that they have to live their lives on men's terms which marginalizes and trivializes the experience of women; she holds that this is unfair because it ignores issues men do not face, such as pregnancy. She contends that when such issues are taken into consideration it is frowned upon as "special treatment" or used to justify the mentality that women are inferior to men because it is not something men experience.

Violence

Critics also accuse men's right advocates of ignoring, trivializing, and/or defending male violence. In response, some men's rights advocates say they "don't disagree that some men rape", but state that some figures put out claiming that 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 women are raped are exaggerated, or that feminists beliefs such as "every man is a potential rapist" are inherently sexist. They also suggest that women can be as violent as men in intimate partner relations, often citing Dr Martin Fiebert's bibliography and Straus/Gelles findings.

Critics, such as Michael Flood, accuse men’s rights advocates of deliberately using free-flowing numbers as if they take into account the context in which violence happens (for example neglecting to consider scenarios that occur when violence against a man by a woman is in self-defense or an attempt to leave an emotionally abusive, potentially violent situation), of using ‘violence’ and ‘abuse’ interchangeably without defining either, and of ignoring the unreliability of the Conflict Tactics Scales and surveys in general. Critics cite Gelles (co-creator of the CTS cited my men's rights advocates) himself of how the findings are misrepresented by men's rights advocates ("In the majority of these cases, the women act in response to physical or psychological provocations or threats. Most use violence as a defensive reaction to violence." , "the statistics are likely to be misused by misogynists and apologists for male violence" . ) and accuse men's rights activists of failing to factor in rape, or stalking and murder that occurs after a couple has split up which is almost exclusively perpetrated by men (and fear of which contributes to why women often won't leave an abuser). They suggest those factors contribute to why what men's rights advocates allege and other numbers demonstrating instances of domestic violence do not reconcile.

Further they cite statistics suggesting that of reported assaults by a partner, men are more likely to call the police, press charges, and keep them than women (Schwartz, 1987; Rouse et.al; 1988; Kincaid; 1982). More still the National Institute of Justice Report on Intimate Violence states that: Men living with male intimate partners experience more intimate partner violence than do men who live with female intimate partners. Approximately 23 percent of the men who had lived with a man as a couple reported being raped, physically assaulted, and/or stalked by a male cohabitant, while 7.4 percent of the men who had married or lived with a woman as a couple reported such violence by a wife or female cohabitant. These findings, combined with those presented in the previous bullet, provide further evidence that intimate partner violence is perpetrated primarily by men, whether against male or female intimates.


Further, critics accuse men's rights advocates of defending male abuse, often by alleging it is justified due to a perceived "unfairness" men face, and even rallying behind abusers. For example, a spokesman for The Men’s Confraternity, after a Perth man gassed to death his three children and himself in 1998 after his visitation was shortened by Family Court, voiced (perpetrator was) probably a decent, hard-working man who was pushed too far by the Family Court. Critics allege men's rights advocates attribute the violence they concede men do to outside forces and then pre-emptively accuse women who allege abuse by men of lying and scheming. Critics also claim, in regards to abuse women and children allege against men, alarmist exaggeration of false accusations by men's rights advocates and voice they then do not apply the same standards to the numbers of male (by female) victims men's rights activists claim exist. Critics contend that this attitude also does existing male victims of domestic abuse a disservice.

See also

Significant writers

References

  • Save the Males by Richard Doyle, 2006
  • The Myth of Male Power by Warren Farrell, 1993.
  • Women Can’t Hear what Men Don’t Say: The myths that divide couples and poison love by Warren Farrell, 1999.
  • The War against Boys: How misguided feminism is harming our young men by Christina Hoff-Sommers, 2000.
  • Who Stole Feminism: How women have betrayed womenmen by Christina Hoff-Sommers, 1994.
  • Spreading Misandry: The teaching of contempt for men in popular culture by Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young, 2001.
  • The Legal Subjection of Men by Ernest Belfort Bax, 1908.
  • The Fraud of Feminism by Ernest Belfort Bax, 1914.
  • The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege by Herb Goldberg, 1987.
  • Refusing to be a Man: Essays on Sex and Justice by John Stoltenberg, 1989.
  • Iron John: A Book About Men by Robert Bly, 1990.
  • Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man by Susan Faludi, 1999.
  • Men Freeing Men: Exploding the myth of the traditional male by Francis Baumli, 1985.
  • Flood, Michael: Backlash: Angry men's movements in: Rossi, Staceay E.: The Battle and Backlash rage on. 2004, XLibris Corp., ISBN 1-4134-5934-X, S. 261-287
  • Flood, Michael: Men's movements in: XY magazine, vol. 6. 1996
  • The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth by Marc H. Rudov, 2004.

External links

Men's issues

Family issues

Further reading

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