Men's rights
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 on women or which deny men equal rights under the US Fourteenth Amendment; there are conservative "traditionalist", "liberal", and libertarian strands.
Ancillary streams of the men's movement are
*
Men's liberation an attempt to apply the principle of women's liberation to the issues facing men.
*The
"mythopoetic men's movement", interested in
self-help and psychological
archetypes.
*
Pro-feminist men, who support
feminism and view men, as a class, to be the oppressors of women as a class.
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 potestas (literally "power of the father")[
1] 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".
In the West the concept of
rights developed, becoming increasingly
egalitarian.
Legal standing and
human rights extended to other groups, to encompass
all adult males, and women and children. but 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.
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, yet 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, right, and center 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 criminal, civil, and family law. Most supporters of men's rights are from Western nations.
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.
http://165.224.221.98/programs/quarterly/vol_2/2_2/q6-1.asp source*Suicide rates are dramatically higher for men and boys of all age groups.
http://health.utah.gov/opha/publications/hsu/9903suicide.pdf source*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.
Social security
In some societies there is legislated discrimination against males in provision of social security. In Australia, for example, a woman over 50 years of age may obtain a
Widow Allowance[http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/qual_how_wid.htm] approximately equal to a pension if, after turning 40, she becomes widowed, divorced, or merely separated from a spouse (who may be a de facto spouse). She must have "no recent workforce experience", but she can easily qualify for this well after the loss of her partner by going through a period of underemployment. There is no similar allowance for men.
Some of these discriminatory arrangements (including also women's earlier qualification for Age Pension, etc.) are gradually being removed, under Australian legislation.
Treatment of refugees
In Australian immigration policy a distinction is regularly made between
women and children (often treated erroneously as equivalent to "family groups") and
single men. The details are subject to current debate and legislation in the Australian Parliament. But for example in one famous recent case, the Minister for Immigration, Senator Amanda Vanstone, determined as follows concerning Papuan asylum seekers (all forty-three of whom have since been accorded status as refugees): "The single men on the boat would be sent to an immigration detention centre, but families would not be split up and would be housed in facilities in the community."
["Vanstone refuses to return Papuans", Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 2006; online at http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/vanstone-refuses-to-return-papuans/2006/01/19/1137553712890.html] The discriminatory treatment of single women (routinely assumed to be members of some
family) and single men evident in such a practice is rarely examined in the Australian media.
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 [
2]. 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
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.[
3] 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.
Michael Flood is a critic that accuses 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.[
4] Critics cite Gelles (co-creator of the CTS cited by 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." [Long Island Newsday op-ed 2/22/94],
"the statistics are likely to be misused by misogynists and apologists for male violence" [cited in Orman, 1998]. ) 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 [
5] [
6] demonstrating instances of domestic violence do not reconcileFurther 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.
*
Antifeminism*
Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them*
Gay rights*
List of family separation research articles*
List of men's rights organizations*
Marriage strike*
Masculinity*
Masculism*
Mythopoetic*
Parental leave*
Pro-feminism*
Feminism*
Radical Feminism*
Feminazi*
Radical Faeries, Gay men's movement begun in 1970's with
Harry Hay*
Shared parenting*
Father's RightsSignificant writers
*
Bettina Arndt columnist in the
The Age,
Melbourne, Victoria,
Australia*
Stephen Baskerville Ph.D.*
Michael Green*
Warren Farrell*
Henry Makaw Ph.D.*
Marc H. Rudov*
Christina Hoff Sommers*
Glenn Sacks US broadcaster and columnist
*
Howard Schwartz*
Bill WishartSave 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 [
7]
*
Flood, Michael: Men's movements in: XY magazine, vol. 6. 1996 [
8]
The Man's No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth by
Marc H. Rudov, 2004.
Men's issues
*
What are Men's Issues? (PDF document)
*
Men's-Rights.Net Information and Statistics on Men's Issues.
*
National Coalition of Free Men*
Rohner, Ronald P. & Veneziano, Robert, The Importance of Father Love: History and Contemporary Evidence in Review of General Psychology, Volume 5(4), December 2001, p 382â€"405*
Men's rights forum*
Masculinism.net.
*
Men's Rights Agency Australia*
Parity UK*
The Male Affirmative Resource Network*
Desert Light Journal blog. "Domestic Violence Resources for the Whole Community".
*
Men's Issues Online Yahoo! Group.
*
Mensactivism.org*
Men's rights commentary*
Men's News Daily*
MaleDepression.com*
Stop Abuse for Everyone*
Men's Health Network*
Dr. Warren Farrell author of numerous men's issues books.
Family issues
*
Fathers & Families (FAF)*
The American Coalition of Fathers and Children (ACFC)*
American Psychological Association*
Choice for men - Paternity suit reform
*
Family Caught wiki - a new wiki devoted to Family law, parenting, divorce and separation.
*
DadsRights.org: Divorce, Custody, Child Support, and Other Resources for Single Fathers*
Parents For Protest -- Bob Geldof leads movement in UK (two videos: marriage and divorce)
*
National Congress for Fathers and Children*
Domestic Violence against Men*
Fathers for Life*
Parental Alienation Syndrome Dr. Lowenstein's publications, including Custody, Residence and Contact.
*
Dr. Stephen Baskerville - insightful writings on divorce industry's effects on father's rights.
*
Teri Stoddard - Feminist4Fathers (and mothers) - Shared Parenting Advocate*
Shared Parenting WorksFurther reading
*
Women Have a Choice; Men Should Too by Jeffery M. Leving and Glenn Sacks*
Save the Males by Richard Doyle
