Mens Rights

citytillidie wrote: »

This is why I said in the other thread that I was glad the man gave his compo money to kidscape and not the NSPCC.

According to all the NSPCC adverts the only people who harm children are men.

I want to see male perpatrators reported but I also want to see female victims reported.

My gripe with these type of advertising campaigns is that they discourage victims coming forward or perpatrators being reported. They also profile the perpetrator meaning social services and others do not detect abuse as they are not trained to spot it.

So they hamper victim reporting and perpetrator detection. thats why they are misguided and dangerous.

The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services reports that for each year between 2000 and 2005, "female parents acting alone" were most common perpetrators of child abuse.




One guy, a doctor, who used to post on boards often posted on this issue as it was something he came accross professionally.He stopped posting on some fora as the gender bias was against what he came across professionally.

So how can the NSPCC or Social Workers tackle the issue without acknowledging the problem is something I do not understand.Ahem- its public policy that women dont abuse.

Its like over the centuries a lot of public health issues were improved by improvement in sanitary conditions and our treatment of water and waste.Some of the most important advances in patient care in the 20th century in hospitals were down to soap and water.Getting the simple things right.

I dont want to see either men or women stereotyped in this way but I would like to see Abusers tackled head on irrespective of gender.

Originally Posted by K-9
I don't know if it is a good idea to include lesbians and gay men. They do have their own groups and there is a danger that the mens rights part of any legislation or lobbying would get forgotten about.

They do have their own groups but if we are dealing with a generic issue of abuse and trying to say abuse is wrong and victims need to be able to seek help then we should not marginalise them either.

Its like "elder abuse" will we put other structures in for older people.

Thats why I think its wrong and the logic used that by acknowledging it the womens movement are betraying their own gender does not make sense to me.They are betraying their gender by not doing it.

The Corinthian wrote: »

Not really. On the basis of reality the combative approach works. I'd also agree World peace would be nice too, but such is life. I don't really care if it is Marxist, or Capitalist or whatever - I'm a pragmatist and I will follow results regardless of labels.

There are many types of feminists and the marxist type of old school feminists are just one and have been domimant.

Many and most women do not even know who these groups are -let alone what their ideology is- most women and men are appalled and rightly so by DV and child abuse and I believe do feel strongly about it too.

So while it needs to be decoupled that does not nesscessarily follow that some advances in womens rights on equality have not been justified or right. I am not with the my gender right or wrong brigade.

Maybe I do have an idealised view of the world but I am happier that way.I leave the politics to other people.

EDIT - here is a link to a Canadian site that deals with child abuse and the whole gender thing for anyone who wants an off topic read. i dont know who runs it but its has lots of newspaper stories and stats and links.

http://www.canadiancrc.com/default.aspx

Why has this thread about men's rights movement and men finding thier way to become a lobbying group on those issues become about 'women do bad things too"?

Thaedydal wrote: »

Why has this thread about men's rights movement and men finding thier way to become a lobbying group on those issues become about 'women do bad things too"?

That was not the point of my post.

The reason I used DV is that it is an issue of interest to me and I saw posts by the Corinthian calling some groups a " Trade Union for Women". So it was not me that raised theory.

So personally, I couldn't buy into a Mens Group based on the idea of women as being the enemy as being central to its ideology.

Such a movement would not be one for me. What sort of personal ideology should I have to join one or support one. So to explain why it isn't I posted the political theory behind it.

In fact, you thanked a post by Corinthian saying why the single issue way was the wrong way for Domestic Violence and I answered saying why I disagreed with him.

So my disagreement is that I dont believe that DV where women are victims should be used as a political football by a mens group. I would not be comfortable with it.

So what I am saying is the political philosophy behind the group is kind of fundamental to the way it would move forward.

There is something very fundamentalist about groups like that and I think it would be a huge step in the wrong direction for the Mens Movement and would be strongly against it.

Thats the reason why.

Have I inadvertedly stumbled across something here. I dont think feminism has anything to fear from a bunch of fundamentalist crackpots.

K-9 wrote: »

I see your point but posters are just discussing what is the best way of discussing male DV victims. Pointing out that men are big victims of DV and "women do bad things too" isn't the issue. Just how you go about highlighting it.



Treating DV as a single issue, incorporating both sexes, causes problems. Your response highlights the biggest problem with that approach and while, ideally, it should work, practically, it will wont.

Why would there be a problem for a concensus to exist on issues like this. So if heterosexual men and women and gay and lesbian men and women formed a group on it -it would be wrong and for whom.



It is fairly nonsensical that they cant be gender neutral or orientation neutral because the unifying factor in all of them is not the gender but the DV.

Anyway, I think the examples I have given are relevant and I wont be adding to them.

The composition of and ideology of any Mens Movement or alternative gender rights would be central to its success or lack of it & a fundamentalist anti-women group IMHO is not the way to go.

Thaedydal wrote: »

But yet you are constantly dragging feminism and what you see as controlling Marxist feminist into this thread.

It was totally unintentional and I asked a woman friend as my partner did not know what the term " Capitalist Feminism" meant and " Sex Positive Feminism" meant as they came up in various threads.

So I only posted the ideological stuff as it seemed relevant and even she told me she has not been following the debates for around 5 or 10 years.

Everyone should have a lesbian friend :cool:

Why let feminism at all define what a men's rights lobbying group would be or do? really is seems a very daft and reactionary starting point.

It shouldn't it should be a positive thing. To me ideology and philosophy is very important as part of a group.

I didn't understand why some mens groups like the National Mens Council of Ireland made me uncomfortable and now I do. Maybe other guys feel the same. So it is worth discussing.

Well all those posts look like you are more then comfortable with it, and posts you have made previously, it looks like you favourate hobby horse which gets dragged into most discussions as your fall back topic.

I didnt mean to -I was responding to things K-9 & Cititillidie posted and the Corinthian rather than anything else and was being replying to their posts rather than bringing anything up myself.

I actually avoided replying and wasn't going to.

Thats me done on that part of it. I apologise for raising the issue but inevitably it comes up as the high profile feminist campaigns always zone in on it. Cititillidie finds that offensive and raised the NSPCC and Kidscape. You got me there though and I dont know how feminism can deal with that -but thats another topic.

CDfm wrote: »

I didn't understand why some mens groups like the National Mens Council of Ireland made me uncomfortable and now I do.

I think you really are not getting what I am saying - I'm not arguing on the basis of ideology, but pragmatism. Regardless of your ideology or beliefs, you need to accept eventually that if a strategy does not work, you have to try another. It's about the bottom line.

So if you want to accuse me of following a political text, it is far less likely to be Das Kapital and far more likely to be Il Principe.

I didnt mean to -I was responding to things K-9 & Cititillidie posted and the Corinthian rather than anything else and was being replying to their posts rather than bringing anything up myself.

One thing that you have failed to respond to though, it the failure of the single-issue strategy to actually achieve anything.

The Corinthian wrote: »

.

No, that all other men's rights issues will end up becoming ignored, so long as your hobby horse is serviced. Just as you are attempting to do in this thread.

A bit harsh
.

So, please, wake up and smell the coffee.

Great idea - coffee :pac:

r3nu4l -I just visited by as I am not a huge football fan and herself is. I am trying to keep away from these threads or she may confiscate my netbook.:eek:

metrovelvet wrote: »

Just dont ask your secretary to make it!:)

as if I would -she cant make coffee -I popped out to the shop to get her a Lucozade and Kinder Bueno earlier :pac:

Thaedydal wrote: »

Other then rights for unmarried fathers, equal custody for married fathers, paternity leave, right to marry another man, the redefining of rape and incest so that women can also be charged with it, what else is needed rights and law wise for men?

To name a few (not all applicable to Ireland) and excluding those you mention:

• The use of positive discrimination quotas that demands a minimum percentage of females in certain roles, but makes no attempt at the reverse.
• Male-only conscription in the military in almost every country that has it. Even in counties where there is no peace-time conscription, like Ireland, war-time conscription is legally male only.
• Unequal reproductive rights - a woman has a right to choose, but a man does not, regardless of whether that is to become or not become a parent.
• Unequal political representation - men are just not represented in equality bodies at all.
• Sentencing disparity - in many cases the laws of sentencing differ between men and women, with the latter having legal access to far more lenient punishments.
• The legal protection and recognition in the Irish constitution that a woman should not be forced to leave homemaking/child care for economic reasons - men are not recognized as such.
• The gynocentric nature of divorce law.
• Lack of legal consequence for female perpetrators of paternity fraud of malicious rape accusations.
• Numerous minor antiquated laws that are anti-male, such as it being illegal for a man to enter a woman's toilets, but not the reverse.
• Equality in adoption rights for unmarried men as there are for unmarried women.

In some cases men and women are equal under the law but societal and culturally it skews it which is a harder campgain again, but just in terms of the law and missing rights what else is there lacking for men?

Numerous prejudices and assumptions that, ironically, also affect perceptions of women, such as:

• Homemaking / child care is a female only job - as an extension of this is that any adult male in the company of children must be a pedophile (male primary schoolteachers will soon become a thing of the past as a result).
• Men cannot be victims and are always physically stronger than women.
• Female on male violence is funny.
• Men cannot be sexually abused or even harassed by women - or if they are they should count themselves lucky.
• Men are discriminated in the work place where it comes to physical labour - often having to do the bulk of heavy work, but legally for the same pay as women in the same jobs who do not do it (and in some countries are even barred legally from doing it).
• The complete lack of concern for male homelessness, suicide and other social ills that affect men, while female related social issues are heavily covered in comparison.
• Male genital mutilation - a.k.a. circumcision - completely ignored, dispite it resulting in deaths in Ireland.

And all that is just off the top of my head.

I asked the question because I want to know, and would like for other posters to add to the list, I prefer facts to rants.

Thaedydal wrote: »

I asked the question because I want to know, and would like for other posters to add to the list, I prefer facts to rants.

The list of legal and social discrimination was discussed in the first two or three pages in this thread. I felt the discussion had gone onto where the men's rights movement was going wrong and how this could be remedied. Listing the issues will only get us so far after all.

I think the only serious rants here have been by one poster who posted a number of conspiracy theories that were rejected by everyone here.

There have been a few flames however.

Sometimes these things get started with a single issue. In the US feminism started out with the vote and in Britain, the right to own property.