Men's rights
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Men's Rights involves the promotion of male equality, The rights to equal treament in custody battles, rights, and freedoms in society. Its aim is to promote the physical, economic and emotional 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 family law, paternity fraud, and domestic violence. There is no single unifying manifesto or organization which can claim to speak for the entire movement and the term is used in various ways.[attribution needed][citation needed]
Related areas of the men's movement include:
- Fathers' rights focus on the relationship between fathers and their children and in particular family law.
- Masculism provides a counterpart to feminism and argues against legal constructs, reforms, or entitlements which deny men equal rights under the law on the basis of gender; there are conservative "traditionalist", "liberal", and libertarian strands.[citation needed]
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[edit] Men's Rights Movement
The Men's Rights Movement is concerned with the promotion of male rights and freedoms in society. The development of the modern men's movement, with its own Community and philosophy, is a recent development.[citation needed][attribution needed]
In the 2000s men began to share their concerns on the Internet, often bringing forward unheard statistics or viewpoints. Its supporters are considered part of the Men's Movement, and often call themselves Men's Rights Activists, or MRAs. Father's rights and Domestic violence are areas central to the men's rights movement. It is primarily concerned with legal equality and representation, health, education, employment, civil rights and Constitutional rights.[citation needed] Many supporters are particularly concerned with the effect that Divorce, Custody, Rape and Violence Against Women Act-type laws have on men's rights and freedoms. It is argued that these laws cause violation of Constitutional rights such as the right to a fair trial and the right to due process.[citation needed][attribution needed]
Affirmative Action programmes, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 are also areas of prime concern. One group, S.P.A.R.C., argues that these policies have a far more discriminatory effect than is widely reported or acknowledged. [1]
Men's Rights Advocacy and Masculinism also promote the concept of "defending male identity". Typically MRAs would subscribe to masculinity as strength, honour and honesty.[citation needed][attribution needed]
[edit] History
Prior to 1995 the men's movement was predominantly a reactive and disorganized movement that received little attention or recognition. The American Coalition for Fathers and Children was founded in 1995 by mature activists such as Stuart A. Miller, and Dianna Thompson. ACFC founded the shared parenting movement and organized the largest protests in the history of the men's movement, the largest held in over 225 cities around the world on father's day, 2001 in the "Bridges for Children" campaign.[citation needed]
[edit] 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, the abortion debate, family law and false rape allegations. Some groups are formally organized or incorporated, while others are casual alliances or the work of a few individuals.[citation needed]
Although the vast majority of men's rights leaders and activists are men, there are many 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. B.N. Saraswati founded one of the earliest Men's right group in India. Dianna Thompson, the first Executive Director of the American Coalition for Fathers and Children founded the Second Wives Crusade, which gained popularity very quickly, and later became part of the True Equality Network operated by Terri Lynn Tersak. Self-labeled feminists, such as Wendy McElroy, regularly advocate for men's rights.[citation needed]
Although most men's rights advocates are from the developed world, they form a diverse group, which include both singularly religious and atheistic individuals, as well as those from the left, right, and center of politics and every echelon of society. Significantly, however, the Men's right movement caught strength in India with Purush Hakka Sanraskhshan Samsta, of "Save Indian Family".[citation needed]
[edit] Issues
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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 and consideration to the role of men and boys.[citation needed]
[edit] Education
In recent years, girls in the United States have tended to perform better in most educational levels and subjects. [2] In the United States, 57% of college students are women and growing. [3] The trend is similar in other industrialized countries.
[edit] 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. Others assert that many sexual harassment laws restrict men's basic freedoms, and cause men to be constantly on edge[citation needed]. 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 or lawsuits. Spain's recent 40% requirement on boardroom members has come under harsh criticism from the movement, in particular as it violates EU law which would make working for a company with 65% male board members illegal, while a company with 100% female board members would be acceptable under Zapatero's new law.[citation needed][attribution needed]
[edit] Family
Family law is one area of keen interest among men's groups. Fathers' rights advocates say there is a systematic bias against men in child custody matters. The treatment of husbands in divorce cases, whether or not there are children, is another issue.[4][attribution needed]
[edit] Health
Health areas addressed by the men's rights movement include:
- Male-only military conscription[citation needed]
- Male Genital Mutilation performed without the consent of the individual being circumcised. Neonatal circumcision is still common in the United States. Men's rights advocates believe that male body parts should not be amputated without the individual's consent.
- The disparity in the spending on men and women in the healthcare system. As another example, in the United Kingdom significantly more money is spent on breast cancer research than prostate cancer research. [5] 40,000 cases of breast cancer were detected in the UK in 2000 and claimed the lives of 13,000 women in 2002. In 2000, about 27,200 cases of prostate cancer were detected and claimed nearly 10,000 lives in 2002 in the UK. Awareness for breast cancer is very prevalent in society today, with October being Breast Cancer Awareness Month in the United States.
- Increasing suicide rate amongst young men, four times higher than amongst young women in the United Kingdom[1]; (73% of all suicide deaths are white males in the United States[6].
- Workplace deaths and injuries occurs at a higher rate for men in the United Kingdom[7][8]
- For domestic violence, advocates cite government statistics that show that in 15% to 38% of the cases of intimate partner violence the victim is male.[citation needed] They argue that the real number is likely to be higher, since male victims may be less likely to report abuse than female victims due to social stigmatization [9] . 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.(see Violence against men)[attribution needed]
[edit] Media portrayal
Another issue of concern is the perceived anti-male bias in the media. Men's rights activists claim 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, particularly in advertising[citation needed]. The lack of concern over male issues such as suicide, boys of education, and a willingness of the press to re-print feminist statistics such as the "wage gap" has led to the term "Lace Curtain" being used. The term was coined by MRA Warren Farrell.
[edit] 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 recently failed legislation (August 2006) 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".[10] 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.
[edit] Social security and Retirement
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[11] 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. In Australia and the UK[12], some of these discriminatory arrangements (including also women's earlier qualification for Age Pension, etc.) are being legally phased out. The policy of "age 65 for men, age 60 for women" remains in place in most Western countries, however.
[edit] Wages
- See also: Male-female income disparity in the USA
[edit] Violence
- See also: Domestic violence
Domestic Violence is often shown as a problem of abusive men and battered women. However, a CDC study showed that in women were the perpetrators in 70% of nonreciprocal violence. Women are also just as likely to initiate reciprocal violence.[13] It was determined that self-defense was not a significant motivation for violence perpetrated by women.
A article published in Clinical & Research News Volume 42, Number 15, page 31 states, "In a 2001 CDC (Center for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia, USA) survey using a nationally representative sample of young adults aged 18 to 28, 11,370 who were in heterosexual relationships provided answers to violence related questions. Researchers found that women were far more likely to instigate nonreciprocal violence than were men (IPV = Interpersonal Violence).
"As for physical injury due to intimate partner violence, it was more likely to occur when the violence was reciprocal than nonreciprocal. And while injury was more likely when violence was perpetrated by men, in relationships with reciprocal violence it was the men who were injured more often (25 percent of the time) than were women (20 percent of the time). 'This is important as violence perpetrated by women is often seen as not serious,'
Whitaker discovered, of the 24 percent of relationships that had been violent, half had been reciprocal and half had not. Although more men than women (53 percent versus 49 percent) had experienced nonreciprocal violent relationships, more women than men (52 percent versus 47 percent) had taken part in ones involving reciprocal violence.
Of the study's numerous findings, Whitaker said, "I think the most important is that a great deal of interpersonal violence is reciprocally perpetrated and that when it is reciprocally perpetrated, it is much more likely to result in injury than when perpetrated by only one partner.
These findings on intimate partner violence come from a study conducted by scientists at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The lead investigator was Daniel Whitaker, Ph.D., a behavioral scientist and team leader at the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (which is part of the CDC). Results were published in the May Journal of Public Health."
[edit] Criticisms
In general, all movements claim to address issues of concern to men and to remove institutional and societal discrimination against males.[citation needed] Some argue that feminism was originally an egalitarian ideology and that it has strayed from the goal of gender equality and begun to support the discrimination and abuse of males.[citation needed] Some, like Darren Blacksmith[14] and Chris Key,[15] 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. The culture of "MGTOW" (Men Going Their Own Way) is a recent type of "masculinism" that has come about.[citation needed]
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"[citation needed], but state that some figures put out claiming that 1 in 4 or 1 in 3 women are raped are exaggerated or 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[16] and Straus and Gelles findings.[17]
Michael Flood states that Men's rights advocates ignore the unreliability of the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS).[18] Murray Straus (co-creator of the CTS) refers to such claims about the CTS as 'erroneous'.[19]
Richard Gelles (co-creator of the CTS) describes the claim by "the right of center" that: "Women Initiate Violence as Often as do Men" is a "significant distortion of [his] research". One that "conveniently" ignores that "no matter what the rate of violence or who initiates the violence, women are 7 to 10 times more likely to be injured in acts of intimate violence than are men." As found in surveys conducted by himself and Murray Straus as well as the Bureau of Justice Statistics.[20]
Critics including Michael Flood 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).
One group, FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting), agree that violence against men by women takes place, and suggest that a misreading of the Straus/Gelles studies accounts for the difference in numbers alleged by some men's rights advocates and those from the American government's Bureau of Justice Statistics.[21]
[edit] See also
- Fathers 4 Justice
- Father's Rights
- List of family separation research articles
- Marriage strike
- Masculinity
- Masculism
- Paternal rights and abortion
- Parental leave
- Pro-feminism
- Feminism
- Radical Feminism
- Shared parenting
[edit] Significant writers
[edit] References
- ^ http://www.deltabravo.net/custody/waronboys.php
- ^ Yupin Bae, Susan Choy, Claire Geddes, Jennifer Sable, and Thomas Snyder, "Trends in Educational Equity of Girls and Women", Education Statistics Quarterly, U.S. Department of Education, 2000
- ^ USA Today "College gender gap widens: 57% are women"
- ^ http://menshealth.uws.edu.au/documents/NONRES%20FATHERS.html
- ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/health/663688.stm
- ^ http://www.policyalmanac.org/health/archive/suicide.shtml
- ^ http://www.hse.gov.uk/statistics/tables/table11e.htm
- ^ http://www.springerlink.com/content/l0h5l77h16395wpv/
- ^ http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/13076/20021019-0000/www.nuancejournal.com.au/documents/three/saran.pdf
- ^ "Vanstone refuses to return Papuans", Sydney Morning Herald, 26 January 2006
- ^ http://www.centrelink.gov.au/internet/internet.nsf/payments/qual_how_wid.htm
- ^ http://www.thepensionservice.gov.uk/atoz/atozdetailed/retirement.asp#state
- ^ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?Db=pubmed&Cmd=ShowDetailView&TermToSearch=17395835&ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
- ^ http://www.cooltools4men.com/
- ^ http://www.mens-rights.net/commentary/chriskey/index.htm
- ^ http://www.csulb.edu/~mfiebert/assault.htm/
- ^ http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS21.pdf
- ^ http://www.xyonline.net/husbandbattering.shtml
- ^ http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/CTS44G.pdf
- ^ Richard J. Gelles, "Domestic Violence Factoids" University of Rhode Island Family Violence Research Program, 1995
- ^ http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1247
[edit] Bibliography
- Save the Males by Richard Doyle, 2006, ISBN 978-1411696334
- 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 women 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 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 [2]
- Flood, Michael: Men's movements in: XY magazine, vol. 6. 1996 [3]
[edit] External links
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