A Guide for Law Enforcement Professionals.
The Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) is a grass roots, unfunded and loosely associated collection of human rights advocates focused on opposing the marginalization and vilification of men and boys in Western society. The MRM is a non-violent, non-political movement comprised of men and women who believe, based on a growing body of evidence that the human rights of males are being systematically removed by activists, lobbyists, politicians and academicians who cling to a misguided and wrongheaded belief that masculinity is fundamentally violent or harmful. This persistent myth is often referred to as cultural misandry.
The fact of men’s second-class status within western society is demonstrated by a number of well known, but ignored facts. This is a short sample for illustrative purposes only.
A few examples include that Men die roughly 5 years earlier than women, men commit suicide at 4 times the rate of women. In addition, 93% of workplace deaths are male, and while courts enforce financial obligations to women with children, men have no reproductive rights. More information is available at http://www.avoiceformen.com/mission-and-values/about/
Myths about the MRM.
“Men’s Rights Activists Just Hate Women”
This is the most common and laziest argument offered by opponents of male human rights. Much of men’s rights writing opposes the ideology operating under the name of Feminism. Critics and opponents of the MRM claiming this equates to a hatred of women make several false assumptions.
The first such assumption is that “women” and “feminism” are synonyms. One is an ideology, one is a biological demographic. In fact, many of the loudest adherents of feminism are male. Dr. Phil McGraw, Hugo Schweitzer, Micheal Kimmel are all loudly self-identifying feminists. In addition, whether they identify as such, most men are feminists by default in that they conflate feminism with equal rights.
The persistent dogma of female victimhood within feminist ideology affords political power to women embracing it, but ultimately locks women into the role of children lacking adult agency. The superficial benefit to women of feminist ideology is, in the view of many Mens rights advocates, destructive to women’s rights, and to civil society.
“Men’s Rights Activists Want To Send Women back to the Kitchen”
Some extremist social conservatives promote a view of returning to a “golden age” in which men occupied an honoured position in families and society, and in which women were subservient. This is not a view endorsed by Mens Rights Activists, and represents an absurd fantasy with no historical truth.
Individuals promoting this view occasionally surface within Men’s Rights forums online, and are almost immediately ignored and booted by the moderators of those forums.
“Mens Rights Activists are Violent”
This claim is absurd. The men’s rights movement is an avowedly non violent human rights movement. A cursory examination of this website will reveal that the typical reaction from site management to any advocacy or glorification of violence, even in “humor,” is to remove the offending statement and permanently ban the user from posting again.
To date, almost all men’s rights activism has taken the form of video blogging and online writing. This self documentation of men’s activism is distinctly and explicitly non violent. In fact, a substantial fraction of writing within the movement addresses anti-male violence increasingly promoted by feminist ideologues and mainstream media personalities. To wit:
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- Swedish Feminists in 2010 advocated murder to promote hate literature.
- Hosts of a daytime TV show “The Talk” treated male sexual mutilation as slapstick comedy
- Self-identifying feminist “mommy bloggers” regularly celebrate male targeted violence
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False Accusations
Almost all rhetoric opposing the Men’s Rights Movement is based on insult, accusation and speculation of motive, and ignores the substance of arguments made in men’s rights literature. To date, no published writing, online or in print has made any serious refutation of mens rights argument. It is the opinion of most men’s rights activists that this failure represents the intellectual, factual, and ethical bankruptcy of active opposition to the mens rights movement. Consequently, only very new writers in the MRM will attempt to engage in substantive debate with opponents of men’s rights. Experienced men’s rights activists generally learn that debate with dishonest, morally bankrupt ideologues is a futile exercise. As a result, much men’s rights writing focuses on exposing the blatant corruption, double standard and anti male bigotry of rhetoric opposing the men’s rights movement.
Ideologues opposing the men’s rights movement are increasingly frustrated by the small but growing success of the movement – and have begun using false criminal accusations against men’s rights activists in efforts to shut them up, using the police to intimidate and silence them.
A common view within the MRM is that police are exploited as enforcers of feminist ideology. This is formalized by sexually biased legislation such as the Violence Against Women Act in the United States, and by use of the discredited Duluth Model informing police policy on domestic violence disputes.
Bad Actors
In addition to accusations and insults, ideologues opposing the men’s rights movement have also demonstrated a willingness to establish fake men’s rights organizations for the purpose of diluting the message of actual mens rights advocates – as well as posing as men’s rights activists but taking extremist or hateful viewpoints, to attribute those views to the larger men’s movement. The website goodmenproject.com founded by Lisa Hickey and Tom Matlack is a feminist funded operation using the first strategy mentioned.
For more information, law enforcement professionals in the United States are encouraged to contact Paul using paul@avoiceformen.com, while law enforcement professionals in Canada are encouraged to contact John using john@avoiceformen.com.
