Men’s Rights Movement

Men’s Rights Movement

The men’s rights movement (MRM) aims to address what its members perceive as injustices uniquely suffered by men. Because men’s rights activists (MRAs) are drawn to the movement for various, often personal reasons, the MRM does not adhere to a specific platform or orthodoxy. Several grievances, however, resonate more widely across the movement than others. Most activism within the movement has focused on perceived disparities in family law, criminal justice, employment, and health care.

The roots of the MRM can be traced to second-wave feminism and related forms of activism and debates surrounding gender in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. Present-day members, however, often find themselves in conflict with contemporary feminists. The MRM has garnered significant criticism as being an anti-women movement, and its online presence, often referred to as “the manosphere,” has earned a reputation for being hostile toward male and female feminists. Some members have also been denounced for their general online treatment of women, regardless of whether the women identify as feminists, including antagonistic acts such as sharing someone’s personal information online and bombarding a person’s social media accounts with rape and death threats. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) monitors and reports on the movement, although it has not identified any men’s rights organization as a hate group. Sympathetic critics of the movement have lamented that the concerns raised by MRAs have been overshadowed by the vitriolic rhetoric and aggressive tactics of some of its members. Many men oppose the MRM because they feel the movement is not representative of their experiences.

ORIGINS OF THE MEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

The political climate and social upheaval of the United States in the 1960s and 1970s inspired intellectuals and activists to question traditional conceptions of gender. The women’s liberation movement and the ideological ammunition of second-wave feminism called attention to the limited opportunities available to women in public life and in the home. Second-wave feminists also disputed widely held expectations regarding the behavior and distribution of labor of both women and men. The women’s liberation movement found an ally in the less well-known men’s liberation movement, which also challenged prevalent understandings of gender. One of the founders of the men’s liberation movement, Warren Farrell, originally emerged as a prominent male feminist, appearing frequently on college campuses and television to discuss feminist issues as well as serving for several years on the board of directors of the New York City chapter of the National Organization for Women (NOW).

In his first book, The Liberated Man (1974), Farrell discussed how men could be supportive of the women’s liberation movement. He broke away from the women’s movement in 1981 when NOW spoke out against joint custody in favor of courts awarding mothers primary custody of children in divorce, an issue that would become a prominent focus of the contemporary MRM. Farrell continued, however, to work toward improving communications between men and women. He attempted to discuss men’s issues in a way that women could understand in his second book, Why Men Are the Way They Are: The Male-Female Dynamic, in 1986. Both books received wide critical praise.

Farrell became the object of controversy among feminists and earned his unofficial title as the father of the modern men’s rights movement with the publication of his third book, The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex, in 1993. In the book, Farrell questioned the idea that men hold more power in society because they earn more money than women. Farrell suggested that men hold less power because they work longer hours, often in more difficult and dangerous careers than women. In the case of married men, Farrell further argued, wives are often responsible for spending their husbands’ earnings and making major household purchasing decisions, giving women additional power and influence in their role as consumers. Farrell’s argument has been criticized for neglecting the unpaid contributions that married women make to a household, and other criticisms note that women face many systemic barriers to employment, especially in high-paying careers.

The book’s criticism that feminists seek equal rights but do not seek equal responsibilities to those of men established a sense among MRAs that the words and actions of feminists cannot be taken at face value. Farrell continues to publish his ideas and lead workshops, and he has remained an active advocate for men’s rights. In 2009, for example, he responded to the creation of President Barack Obama’s White House Council on Women and Girls with a proposal to create a White House Council on Boys and Men.

MEN’S RIGHTS IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY

As the MRM has steadily built momentum, new voices have risen to prominence, adopting more antagonistic language and tactics than Farrell to further their ideas of men’s liberation. While the MRM has not garnered much mainstream attention compared to other social movements, the movement’s online presence, which includes many websites, social media groups, and forums, has gained notoriety for widespread use of vulgar and violent language and imagery, often targeted at women. Several of the most controversial and popular forums on the social news website Reddit provide a platform for MRAs to congregate and share ideas.

As in other online communities, MRAs engaged in familiar discussion and generated new vocabulary, often appropriating terms from elsewhere. For example, MRAs refer to the moment in which they realized that men were disadvantaged in society as “swallowing the Red Pill,” and may refer to themselves and others as “Red Pillers.” The term refers to a scene in the 1999 film The Matrix in which the main character chooses to swallow the red pill of reality instead of a blue pill of illusion.

Long-distance truck driver Paul Elam became an influential figure in the MRM after launching the website A Voice for Men (AVFM) in 2009. The site gained a loyal following and continues to attract men who, often through their online activity, have come to believe that women and the advances of feminism have created a society that discriminates against and disadvantages men. In 2011 AVFM created a companion website called Register-her.com for the purposes of publishing the personal information of people who it believes have falsely accused someone of rape or other crimes. The site has since been taken down but not before several of the subjects experienced harassment from MRAs. In 2014 AVFM hosted the first annual International Conference on Men’s Issues in Detroit, Michigan, which featured among its speakers Warren Farrell, and hosted subsequent conferences in the United Kingdom and Australia. Elam describes AVFM as a human rights organization, though reporters at BuzzFeed News note that AVFM neither provides legal services nor engages in political advocacy as most human rights organizations do.

CRITICAL CONCERNS OF THE MEN’S RIGHTS MOVEMENT

Many of the issues explored in Farrell’s The Myth of Male Power continue to resonate with those within the men’s rights movement and people sympathetic to the cause. Critics of the movement often concede that the movement’s call for family law reform has merit. MRAs have objected to the existing systems that determine child custody, child support, alimony, and fault in a divorce, often supporting their argument by stressing the importance of a child having both parents in their life. The MRM has expressed significant concern over parental alienation syndrome (PAS), which refers to a situation in which a child comes to hate one of their parents in a divorce, typically after the other parent is awarded primary custody. Family advocates caution that applying PAS to custody decisions can increase the contact that an abusive parent may have with their child while some psychologists question the syndrome’s existence.

Concerns over men’s health also play a central role in the men’s rights platform. Members within the movement contend that society places a greater emphasis on women’s health than men’s health. They contend that breast cancer and female circumcision, more commonly known as female genital mutilation, receive more attention than prostate cancer and male circumcision, despite the high rates of both prostate cancer and male circumcision in the United States. Supporters of men’s rights have further argued that men face increased health risks as men are more likely to experience homelessness, drug addiction, and alcohol use disorder than women. Men also die from suicide at a higher rate than women. Social expectations for men, MRAs claim, have created a stigma that prevents men from reporting or seeking treatment for mental disorders, domestic violence, and sexual assault. Military service has also been identified as a risk that men disproportionately face, particularly in times of compulsory service. Early men’s rights activists unsuccessfully opposed the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) in the US Supreme Court in 1981, arguing that a male-only military draft violates the Fourteenth Amendment.

The MRM has identified several disparities in how men and women go through the criminal justice system. In The Myth of Male Power, Farrell describes twelve criminal defenses that are only available to women, including shifting blame to postpartum depression, premenstrual syndrome, and experiences with domestic violence. MRAs also note that men tend to receive longer sentences and are assigned higher bail than women with similar criminal history who are accused of the same crime. The movement has also made the bold claim that men are the primary victims of sexual assault because of high rates of sexual assault in prison. MRAs maintain that sexual assault rates often exclude prison assault, which, they argue, produces statistics that misrepresent the risk of trauma men face. While critics concede that sexual assault in prison is a crisis, they contend that all forms of sexual assault require a response, regardless of the victim’s gender. Furthermore, some critics contend, the perpetrators of most sexual assaults, including incidents that occur in prison, are men.

Rape and other forms of sexual assault feature prominently in the grievances of the MRM, particularly the idea that women’s rights activists and the media overestimate the incidents of sexual assault experienced by women. Critics contend that the MRM overinflates statistics regarding the frequency of false accusations made against men. MRAs have promoted the issue aggressively in different circumstances, casting doubt on the claims of alleged victims while advocating for the rights of the accused. On this issue, the MRM found an ally in US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who met with men’s rights groups, including Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE) and Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE), to discuss guidelines regarding sexual assault on campus. In September 2017, DeVos rescinded campus sexual assault investigation policies put in place by the Obama administration because she felt that they were unfair to the accused.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2020 Gale, a Cengage Company

“Men’s Rights Movement.” Gale Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection, Gale, 2019. Gale In Context: Opposing Viewpoints, https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/TGAZBF943708717/OVIC?u=full44847&sid=OVIC&xid=af7917e6. Accessed 11 Nov. 2020.