Men's Rights Movement

The Men's Rights Movement (MRM) also sometimes known as the Men's Human Rights Movement (MHRM) is a pluralistic movement of men and women who have identified certain problems facing men and boys. It is comprised of many organisations and individuals that are loosely affiliated. Despite this, participants within the MRM maintain a largely consistent position on men's rights. The movement accepts robust and frank internal discussions, which are generally conducted in public. Individuals within the MRM are sometimes known as Men's Rights Activists or Men's Rights Advocates (MRAs).

While the MRM has existed for a long time, it is only in recent years that it has been growing rapidly or receiving significant media attention.

The movement started to significantly increase in membership around 2010. The MRM has many detractors. Some who want to discredit the MRM claim it is a violent movement. This could not be further from the truth. The MRM goes out of its way to be a non-violent movement. The most popular online sites within the movement such as A Voice for Men and the MensRights sub on Reddit actively censure and ban people who make threats of violence or advocate violence.

The MRM is a movement concerned about problems facing men and boys and focuses on bringing attention to the problems in the wider community as well as discussing ways to alleviate and resolve the problems. This article mainly focuses on western countries, where the MRM has its roots, but we want to help men all around the world. Many of the issues we advocate for, such as father's rights, have organisations focussed on that issue only. We advocate on a variety of issues, and advocate for societal changes that no one else is advocating for.

Despite what many outside of the movement think this is not just a movement for men. Many women participate in the MRM and often seem to be among the movement's most active contributors. The movement is pluralistic and inclusive. As well as many women the MRM includes gay and transgender men and women. Participants in the movement come from across the political spectrum. They are united in their recognition of the problems facing men and boys and agree that these problems need to be addressed. Anyone who broadly agrees with the aims of the movement is welcome to participate.

We acknowledge that women and girls face gender-specific issues as well. This is particularly true for women and girls who live in the developing world.

We reject many of the claims espoused by leaders in the modern feminist movement, such as that women cannot be sexist to men, a belief that men have have systematically oppressed women for thousands of years through the use of violence or that domestic violence impacts women far more than men. The MRM and its participants are routinely subjected to vitriolic attacks and derision by feminist groups and others. Feminists routinely try to shut down public talks held on MRM topics. Sometimes they have succeeded as a result of local authorities declining to enforce the law in the face of feminist aggression. The MRM rejects such attempts at silencing others. While we may disagree with, and even object to, much of feminist ideology we would never seek to silence feminists.

Many of the men who have entered the movement until now have been personally impacted by one or more of these problems. They might be, for example, men who have been dealt with unjustly by the family law courts in their country. After experiencing this they may become aware that their treatment by the courts was common and from there became aware of the broader MRM. Young men may experience discrimination in their high school or University on the basis of their gender and from this may become aware of the broader movement. Increasingly people who have not been personally impacted by these problems are recognising a broader problem in society and are stepping up to make a difference.

The movement is notable for being task focused. Although there is no one definitive list of the issues that the MRM is addressing there is broad agreement on a core set of issues. Most activists within the movement have certain areas that they focus on.

Many people look at the top of society, to leaders in politics, business and the military and see men. They conclude then that men rule the world. While some men dominate society it is not true that men generally dominate society. This is an example of the apex fallacy - looking at the most successful members of a group and judging the group by that standard.

The MRM is often associated with other movements. Sometimes this would be a genuine mistake but sometimes this is done to attempt to discredit the MRM. Many people have agreed on the problems facing men but have disagreed on the way to respond to these problems. Various movements with names like Redpillers and Pick up artists have appeared. The name of the former movement occurs because when a person recognises the problems facing men and boys, regardless of their subsequent response to that, they are sometimes said to have taken the red pill. The name of the latter movement should be obvious and generally revolves around young men manipulating the situation to their own benefit rather than attempting to fix the underlying problems. Participants in these movements do not generally call themselves men's rights activists as they understand what the MRM is and they do not agree with our attempts to address the problems facing men. They can even be quite hostile to the MRM. It is interesting that many of the worst allegations made against the MRM are actually a result things said by people who do not identify with the MRM but do often identify with other movements.

One movement Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) involves men who disengage from a society that is hostile to them. In general MGTOWs avoid relationships with women due to the significant financial and legal risks this entails for men today. MGTOWs often work only as much as they need to to survive, thus legally reducing the tax they pay and reducing the support they provide to a system that is hostile to them. MGTOW is the only other movement that has significant overlap with the MRM. Some MGTOWs will simultaneously disengage from society but will still work fix the problems in society. It is notable that Japan has had a similar movement for decades with heterosexual Japanese men (known in Japanese as herbivore men) explicitly deciding to avoid romantic or sexual relationships with women due to the high social and economic costs. This is one of the major contributors to the plumetting birth rate in Japan.

While it may be true that that men's rights advocacy was perhaps initially more popular among the socially conservative this has long since ceased to be the case. The MRM has participants from across the political spectrum and is in itself an apolitical movement. MRAs are not traditonalists. We are not advocating for a return to the gender roles seen in the past. We advocate for the rejection of traditional gender roles. We want everyone to have a fair playing field on which they can be all that they can be.

Bodily Autonomy
Female genital mutilation is now illegal in many countries, and international organisations work to reduce this practice. These same societies often refuse to grant boys the same bodily autonomy that they grant girls - the right to be protected from unnecessary medical procedures. The men's rights movement objects to male genital mutilation (also known as circumcision) on the same grounds as female genital mutilation. Both violate the human rights of the individual being mutilated and both should be illegal. In many countries today all individuals have protection from unnecessary medical procedures except for infant boys. That the foreskin is removed in most cases without anesthetic exacerbates the problem.

Many do not know that the foreskins of infant boys are not destroyed as medical waste but are rather put to a variety of uses. While it is true a few are used for medical research the majority go to cosmetic companies. In some countries the sale of foreskins by hospitals is a lucrative business.

We want: Infant boys to have the same protection from medically unnecessary procedures as are extended to the rest of the community.

Disposability
All societies consider men to be disposable. Men are drafted and can be forced in to combat against their will. Men overwhelmingly take on the dangerous jobs in society. In general men are expected to be prepared to give up their life for the good of the community and, specifically, to protect the lives of women. This is so ingrained that few people, men or women, recognise it. Fewer still object to it.

The MRM rejects male disposability in the modern world. While it may have made sense for a society in the past to be prepared to sacrifice it's men for the survival of the society, the MRM holds that this is no longer necessary. With a population exceeding seven billion that might reach 10 or 11 billion in a few decades, we no longer need the ability to quickly recover numbers and so the original reason that male disposability existed is no longer present.

We want: An end to the expectation of male disposability.

Domestic Violence
Today domestic violence is often also called Intimate Partner Violence (IPV). Men constitute between one third and one half of all victims of domestic violence. A similar proportion of domestic violence aggressors are women. In a significant proportion of cases each partner is both a perpetrator and victim of domestic violence. The notion that domestic violence is a gendered issue is simply not supported by the evidence. We object to all domestic violence regardless of the genders of the people involved.


 * We want: Recognition from society that domestic violence is not a gendered issue
 * We want: Domestic Violence services that properly supports victims regardless of their gender.
 * We want: Domestic Violence services that help aggressors regardless of their gender.

Unnecessary Medication
Children, and boys in particular, are being diagnosed with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and drugged at an alarming rate. This rate has been increasing rapidly in recent years, which is prompting an increase in the sales of drugs to treat the condition. In the United States, for example, sales of ADHD drugs have increased by 89% in four years.

The long term consequences of ADHD medicating on a forming brain are not yet known.

The MRM is concerned that the normal behaviour of many young boys is being considered abnormal and medicated.

This is not to say that all diagnosis for this condition are invalid, but when the diagnosis rate is changing as rapidly as is currently occurring more needs to be done than simply prescribing more drugs.

We want: A proper analysis of why ADHD diagnosis rates are skyrocketting.

Education
The performance of boys in primary and high school education system has been declining for decades. Decades ago boys tended to consistently perform better in primary and high school than girls. Educators set out to change primary and high schooling to improve the results for girls. The problem is that they continued to do this even after it was clear that boys were falling behind.

Education research clearly shows that boys tend to do better in exam assessment and girls tend to do better in in-class assessment. Relative performance in male and female students can be tracked with changing assessment. There has been a clear move away from exams and towards in-class assessment in the last few decades. One notable exception was a recent reversal of this trend in the UK. As expected the performance of boys in the UK improved with the increase in exam assessment.

Increasingly students have less and less time to burn off energy and are expected to sit quietly in the classroom for hours at a time. This is sometimes characterised as the incredible shrinking lunchtime. While this is probably impacting many students negatively the evidence suggests this is generally more of a problem for boys. It is interesting that this should be happening at a time when office workers are entreated to stand and move around more for their long term health.

Alarmingly research shows that in recent years teachers have been academically marking down students with behavioural problems. This has overwhelmingly impacted boys.

The MRM objects to significant gender biases in primary and high school education systems and seeks to reform the system in to one in which boys and girls can benefit.

The problems don't end there. Men have been abandoning the dream of a university education in droves, partly because many university campuses have become very hostile for men. In the US many universities, if a man is accused of sexual assault against a woman he is not afforded council, to know the details of the allegation or even to know the name of his accuser. He then has the onus of proof placed on him. It is not surprisingly that the bulk of such accusation result in the male student being expelled or banned from campus, which generally results in them failing courses.

In most western countries men now constitute less than 40% of university enrollments. While increasing the female participation rates in certain STEM fields is actively promoted there is little interest in addressing the falling university participation rate among men.


 * We want: A recognition in primary and high school that, while there is overlap, boys and girls do tend to behave differently as children as a result of physiological differences and for the education system to accommodate both boys and girls in a way that allows all children to thrive.
 * We want: A university system that is not hostile to young men.

Father's Rights
The family court system in many countries is heavily biased in favour of mothers. In many countries courts still show a strong preference for granting custody to mothers over fathers. Non-custodial fathers often find themselves with very limited access to their children and routinely find that breaches of court orders by mothers (such as not allowing visits in accordance with court orders) are ignored or receive only a token response from authorities. Many men fight in court for years to get reasonable access to their children, only to give up in dispair when they realise the system has failed them.


 * We want: Shared custody arrangements unless compelling reasons exist to show that this is not feasible.
 * We want: Sufficient access for parents not living with their children for a parent-child relationship to be maintained.
 * We want: Enforcement of family court orders on just terms and fair terms.

Health
Males have higher mortality rates at every age. The difference in life expectancy for men and women actually widened during most of the 20th century, peaking in the 1990s. One significant contributor to this is the far greater amount spent on women's health than men's health.


 * We want: Fair allocation of resources to health problems facing men and women.
 * We want: Public recognition that both genders need their gender-specific health issues addressed adequately.

State Discrimination
Even when the evidence against men and women are the same men are more likely to be arrested for an offence, more likely to be charged with an offence, more likely to be convicted of an offence, more likely to receive a custodial sentence, and the sentence will on average be longer. Some states openly advocate on this basis. A UK government commission recently advocated the abolition of all women's prisons. One of the advantages, they argued, was that these prisons could then be used to incarcerate more men.

Laws that are written in a gender neutral way are often not applied that way, and this most often is to the detriment of men.

In Canada these is a special offence for a woman who kills her own newborn, that limits the sentence to five years imprisonment. A major children's charity in Canada opposes this, arguing that a newborn should have the same right to protection from violence as any other member of the community. We fully support their position.


 * We want: Genuine gender-neutrality in the application of the criminal justice system.

Reproductive Rights
Today men actually lack reproductive rights. Unlike women, in many western countries, men cannot choose not to be a father. In the United States there have been numerous cases in which a boy has had sex with an adult woman. The boy was not legally able to consent to the sexual activity and yet when the woman became pregnant the boy was required to pay child support.

Many men have been ordered by courts to continue supporting a child that is not theirs, even after they present conclusive evidence (such as the results of a DNA test) showing that they are not the biological father of the child, and in some cases had no relationship with the child at all.


 * We want: Men to have the same reproductive rights as women.
 * We want: Child support payments to be managed by the courts in a fair and just manner.

Suicide
Men and boys have suicide rates several times higher than women and girls. Male suicide rates have grown at a far faster rate than female suicide rates over the last century. While the of high levels of suicide rates among men has gained recognition within the last few years there is still a long way to go in addressing this serious problem.


 * We want: Society and government to act to address the underlying causes of the rising suicide rate among men.

Vilification
We live in a society that routinely vilifies masculinity. The TV formula so often seen in sitcoms of a stupid or inept (but often well meaning) man married to a super woman who can solve all of his problems for him by the end of the episode is so common it is almost a cliche. The mass media is full of negative portrays of men. The news media is constantly telling us about negative aspects of masculinity. This has led to a general perception of men as people to be feared and suspected. This had led many airlines to maintain a policy of never seating unaccompanied minors next to men. The implicit assumption here seems to be that the men cannot be trusted next to a child. Many men report feeling uneasy around children, fearful that they will be accused of some terrible act. This is a major cause of men avoiding certain industries, such as childcare.

A series of t-shirts and other products produced in the United States a few years ago suggested Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them. The manufacturers took no regard for the impact their products would have on young minds.

A very concerning problem relates to the distribution of food following disasters. Many relief agencies believe that if food is given to men they will keep it for themselves rather than provide food to their relatives and children. Both the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) and USAID exclude men from food distribution centres on the basis of gender alone. Men and boys may not enter the food distribution centres. Women are permitted to enter and are then expected to distribute the food to their relatives. These organisations claim that special provision is made for families with no female members but they are light on details. It seems unlikely that in the hectic environment of a disaster food distribution centre that the staff would have time to properly investigate the claims of men and boys that they have no women in their family. There is anecdotal evidence to suggest these men and boys are simply excluded from the food distribution.


 * We want: An end to the vilification of masculinity in the public sphere.

Violence
Men experience high levels of violence in society and there is very little recognition of this. Men are close to twice as likely to experience violence in public as women, even though it is women (we are so often told) need to be fearful walking alone at night. The rates of rape of males exceeds that of females if prison rape is included in the statistics. Female-on-male violence is an often ignored problem. Some women, having been taught that violence is gendered, simultaneously object to violence against women but feel that violence against men is inconsequential. One often repeated myth is that a woman cannot physically harm a man. The many men injured and killed by women are a testiment to the erroneous nature of this statement.

Society and the government both ignore and marginalise male victims of violence.


 * We want: Public recognition that violence against everyone is wrong.

Conclusion
The Men's Rights Movement:


 * Is committed to peaceful evidence-based advocacy
 * Works to eliminate gynocentrism and male disposability
 * Works to resolve certain issues facing men and boys
 * Works towards equality of opportunity for all
 * Rejects enforcement of traditional gender roles

The MRM is at the confluence of various movements, such as intactivism, anti-feminism and father's rights. These groups do not necessary agree with each other but the MRM agrees with each of them. The MRM can then be a unifying force for these disparate movements.