Mens Rights Thread

Another article in a national newspaper complaining about the plight of women:

Margaret E Ward: Irish media has a problem with women
Women make up fewer than one-third of Irish media professionals, even less at top level. How can the industry report on society if it doesn’t reflect it, asks Margaret E Ward

https://www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/commentanalysis/arid-40226234.html

It ends:

Based on a submission to the Future of Media Commission by the Equality Expert Group (EEG), a collective of experts drawn from a variety of fields, public and private, seeking to support equality and diversity in Irish social, economic and cultural life. Current founding members of the EEG include Carol Hunt, Áine Kerr, Dearbhail McDonald, Jillian van Turnhout, Noelle O’Connell and Margaret E. Ward. EqualityExpert@gmail.com #EqualityExpertMedia

Though women are not in the title it looks effectively like it is another group for women.

A Gender Policy Council That's Sexist … and Racist? | Opinion
WARREN FARRELL , AUTHOR
ON 2/15/21 AT 6:00 AM EST

https://www.newsweek.com/gender-policy-council-thats-sexist-racist-opinion-1568940

By creating a council for "gender policy" rather than a council for "women," Biden seemed to be heeding the warning embodied in Betty Friedan's The Second Stage: The liberation of women will plateau if attention to men's issues does not follow.

The Gender Policy Council's mission is to help only women and girls. Boys are left out. Fathers are left out. Men are left out. Even transgender people and gays are left out—if they are male.

Just listening to a discussion on NewsTalk on assisted reproduction. Since last year there is legislation that there is no anonymous sperm or egg donation. All children conceived in this way when they get their birth certificate aged 18 plus will be told their genetic background (in other countries it was pointed out this info is available before that).

Then it was pointed out that we learned from adoption practices in the past how important it is for people to know their genetic make-up.

However it doesn’t seem to get mentioned that the supposed genetic father is not always the real genetic father. This could easily and relatively cheaply be checked at birth but isn’t.

Also blocks can be put in a man’s way to find out the truth. A man needs other people’s or the court’s permission to get this info.

So not alone do people not know their genetic history, they can have the wrong info. People could even end up having children with a genetic relative including a half sibling.

I thought this was an interesting article and discussion underneath

‘My husband is unemployed. Where will he go if I leave him for my business partner?’

Tell Me About It: ‘He’s not the man I married: he lacks ambition and takes money from me’

about 21 hours ago
Trish Murphy
https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/health-family/my-husband-is-unemployed-where-will-he-go-if-i-leave-him-for-my-business-partner-1.4491819

I think the advice that she should share with her husband her feelings that she won't be happy if he doesn't get a job rather than simply separating straightaway seem sensible in this case. One or more people underneath point out that some women they know have separated from men without communicating with them that they were unhappy.

I haven't watched this and doubt I will so I'm not in a good position to comment on it except that I'm not sure there would be a similar mainstream film made at the moment about boys dismantling feminist influences or the "matriarchy" in a school:

Movie Reviews: Schoolgirl sets about dismantling the patriarchy in Moxie
Girls subjected to sexist ratings, more stringent dress codes, and encouraged to laugh off threatening male behaviour

https://www.irishexaminer.com/lifestyle/artsandculture/arid-40236275.html

Deleted User wrote: »

https://youtu.be/ABJOhoRBpiE

It's a vid covering a range of issues, but mostly relates to Denmark, where men are being pushed into second class citizens, with extreme favoritism towards women in all areas such as work quotas, court sentencing, child support etc. Which is present in the US, UK, and the Scandinavian countries. And... likely will happen here too.

I watched all 26 minutes of this video and am I the only one who thinks it is a bit…yikes? Seems as divisive and factually incorrect as any extreme feminist piece (or *womanism* as Joker likes to say).

He firstly uses a Daily Mail article and two random tweets to give examples of “typical” female behaviour, i.e., tricking men into raising children that are not theirs and leaving good men for drug dealers. Just the normal womanly things we do for fun when we have run out of things to watch on Netflix.

Example 1: Daily Mail article about a father who raised a child that wasn’t biologically his– he never questioned the paternity of the child despite the child being black (he and the mother were white).

I mean fair enough, this is something that could only ever happen to a man (for obvious reasons) and completely agree with Joker that the actual biological father of the child should have been told when she was born. However, I am not sure how anyone would not have questioned the paternity of a child that is visibly a different race to him and his partner. In the article, the woman (the grown up child) says that she caught her “father” ticking a “rather not say” box for her race on the signup form for her swimming lessons as a child and when she asked him why he did that, he got flustered and said it was because it was no one’s business. He also agreed to a give her a DNA sample on his death bed. Seems like someone who made a conscious decision to accept his wife’s infidelity and knew that he was raising a child that wasn’t biologically his, rather than being duped.

Example 2: A random tweet that says: “Dated this guy for 7 months and today he asked me why I don’t have a boyfriend”.

In relation to this tweet, Joker says that women “should secure the relationship before you try to secure the bedroom, or he may never actually consider that you’re serious or committed and he might look at you as a plaything”. I think it’s good advice for both men and women to clarify that they are on the same page romantically but a huge amount of relationships just happen organically. In this tweet (if it even happened) there’s no evidence that the guy in question would ever have been her boyfriend even if she had waited for months to have sex with him but Joker is of the view that essentially, it’s her fault because she let him lose respect for her. Seems like a fairly unhealthy mindset to me and nothing really do with men’s rights?

Example 3: He then gives an example of another tweet (spelling mistakes included): “Four years ago I had the best bf ever that did anything to make me happy, my momma loved him, everything. He bought me the cutest puppy and I left him for a ****in cheating ass drug dealer with 4 kids. Nursury retrograde rlly be ****in **** up”

I am not sure what nursury retrograde means…think she might have been trying to refer to mercury in retrograde haha. Joker says that these are “the women you will come across in dating” and “you can be a “a great man to a woman…but it’s that bad boy gene, they can smell the bad boy”. I mean, I’d make the point that someone who gets involved with a drug dealer usually has substance abuse issues themselves. Most women don’t leave their boyfriends for drug dealers. I googled the tweet and she is a woman from Florida who is highly active in tweeting outrageous statements in order to promote her OnlyFans. I fail to see how she represents the average woman.

Example 4: A video of a girl on a train trying to check her boyfriend’s messages on his smart watch while he is asleep.
Joker says “dude” in a disapproving manner but right before this he said that he caught a previous girlfriend of his cheating the same way when she left her smart watch in his living room so I’m not really getting his point here – it’s okay for men to invade their girlfriends’ privacy but not the other way around?

With the exception of the Daily Mail article concerning being duped into raising a child that isn’t biologically yours, I really don’t see how the above tweets have anything to do with men’s rights? If his point is that sometimes women are awful, then that’s true but awfulness isn’t limited by gender. There’s also the fact that the tweets of two women can’t be used as evidence of the inherent flaws of an entire gender. Would equivalent tweets by two men be evidence of the awfulness of the entire male population? Social media has meant that there is an endless supply of posts, videos and tweets to cast both women and men in a negative light.

For his claims about Denmark, he largely relies on a blog post by a random Danish man.
Claim 1: Denmark has fallen to “womanism” and as a result of this “gender infirmity”, Denmark’s birth rates and population growth have plummeted. He further claims that countries that aren’t falling into feminist tropes are not having problems with their birth rates.

This falling birth rate is in no way exclusive to Denmark. Greater economic development and lower fertility rates often go hand in hand. The low birth rate is not related to MGTOW and men refusing to sleep with women because of evil feminists – it’s largely due to an aging population and couples waiting longer to have children. There are also several Eastern European states, which could not be in any way said to be “feminist” countries, that are struggling with a declining birth rate. Hungary's Prime Minister announced plans for free fertility treatment to couples while Putin has pledged state funding for new mothers, both incentives to stimulate the birth-rate.

Claim 2: Men’s sperm count is dropping

Yeah, this is true.

Claim 3: Girl power advocates have given immunity to women from civility and a licence to openly hate and ridicule men. The man in the blog post says it is not uncommon for women to sit on a bus and openly point to men and say how unattractive they are.

I spent my Erasmus in Copenhagen – it was a few years ago but I find this an incredibly bizarre statement. Most men and women there seemed to have gotten on completely fine – friendship wise and in dating. There certainly weren’t groups of women laughing about how unattractive men were on buses. Comes across like that Louise O’Neill article where she wonders if her grandfather hates her because of a random alleged college group chat.

Claim 4: The Danish legal system is set up in way so that once a woman is impregnated, the man is disposable in a divorce and the man’s role as a donor is further degraded by requiring him to pay for his child for the rest of his life so that the woman may enjoy her fulfilment as a modern womanist.

I don’t have any knowledge about the family law system in Denmark but there is no automatic duty for a man to pay child maintenance in the event of a divorce. Where the parents do not live together, the parent with whom the child does not live is still required to support the child financially (not gender dependent). In Denmark, the amount of maintenance is actually determined by a written agreement between the parents, and, if they are unable to reach an agreement, the Agency of Family Law will determine the level of child support required. Child support consists of three parts: a set basic amount, a fixed supplement, and an additional supplement depending on the gross income of the parent concerned and the number of children.

It actually appears to be one of the fairer maintenance systems comparatively – it’s not largely based on the income of the payer and is more focused on the idea that the money paid should be half the living costs and expenses of the child.
There could absolutely be unfairness and discrimination towards men in the family system in Denmark but that specific statement is incorrect.

Claim 5: There are quotas in Denmark for women

Unlike other Scandinavian countries, there are actually no legislated quotas in Denmark. The Danish government is opposed to it. Targets were introduced in 2013 for some of the largest Danish companies and state institutions – they have to set aims for how many women they want to have in management, and they must develop plans for how to get more women into leadership in general. However, these targets (while they may be criticised) aren’t legally binding and they are not duty-bound to increase the number of women. There are no sanctions if companies fail to live up to their goals. The idea is that because companies are asked to highlight what they are doing to further gender equality, those who do nothing will be exposed and this will motivate more to take action to get more women into leadership positions. The fact that quotas are still a topic of debate in Denmark due to low representation of women in boardrooms would indicate that peer pressure from these targets are not forcing companies to increase numbers of women.

It is also interesting that around the time the targets were introduced, the Danish government presented an action plan for gender equality which highlights how the welfare society in several areas did not meet the needs of boys and men, noting that men have lower education, suffer from more lifestyle illnesses and struggle more during a divorce or if their spouse dies. The then Minister for Gender Equality, Manu Sareen, stated that “For many years the focus of our gender equality debates have been about key issues like equal pay and more women in leadership positions. This is also important. But for me gender equality is basically about the everyday opportunities faced by women and men, girls and boys.” He further stated that he wanted to use to new strategy to stimulate the public sector to think more about gender in their services - for instance by targeting activation measures either towards men or women or to do something extra to get boys into education, because they fall out of the education system more often than girls.

I couldn’t find if such measures for boys in education were ever followed up on or not – if not, this would definitely be a fair criticism.

Claim 6: Only 20% of Danish men are active in the dating pool.

Joker states that this supports the 80/20 principle (hypergamy my old friend) but also says that the 80% of men who aren’t involved in dating in Denmark are refusing to participate because they have the power to be choosy and they want feminine, soft spoken attractive women and not feminists (so is it hypergamy or men’s choice?). He quotes the guy in the blog post who makes several generalisations about women (not just feminists) in Denmark, such as that they lack “human compassion”.
Firstly, according to a poll, conducted by the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project of more than 25,000 people in 23 major countries, only a quarter of Danish women consider themselves feminists. This is in contrast to Sweden, where 46% do, and a smaller share even than in countries like Italy, Spain and the UK.

I found it hard to get precise statistics on this (lots of things behind paywalls) but Statistics Denmark reported in January that the proportion of single Danes had hit an all-time record of 37%. Statista Research Department has reported that according to a poll from 2018, 77% of single male respondents wanted a partner and that men aged 25 to 44 years showed the highest wish for a partner. This doesn’t suggest that 80% of Danish men are refraining from dating which would be an astronomical number. Again, the rising single rates don’t seem to be anything in particular to do with feminism either, more just young people waiting until they’re older before settling down.

Claim 7 - The Danish Government is trying to bribe men to sleep with women

Joker states that there is an ad (“an intense propaganda campaign”) that Danish feminist institutions undertook to try to beg men to inseminate women. He then says he couldn’t actually find the ones by these feminist institutions (right…) and instead provides a link to an ad by a Danish travel agency, Spies Rejser, who offered a "child-friendly holiday" and three years of baby supplies to anyone who could prove they conceived while on a vacation booked through the company. The Wikipedia entry for the ad states that it was a “tongue-in-cheek attempt to lure Danes to book holidays as a way to stop a purported population decline in Denmark. Despite the advertisements' obvious irony, it did actually result in an increase of the Danish birth rate.” So, a joke ad by a travel company aimed at increasing sales. Hardly the Danish government bribing the men of Denmark. And also, not a failure!

Joker doesn’t mention these but there have been some local campaigns in Copenhagen aimed at raising the birth rate – one campaign bizarrely called on people to think about their fertility; with slogans asking men if their sperm was “swimming too slowly?” and women if they had “counted their eggs today?”. Even these ads aren’t aimed at just men however – they are aimed at both men and women, and as referred to above, the low birth rate isn’t due to MGTOW in Denmark.

Joker proceeds to end the video by criticising a woman’s tinder page (not really sure of the relevance of this).
I am in no way trying to undermine men’s rights or issues and there are obviously elements of truth to what Joker is saying (there is unfairness for men in family law, there is an increased pressure for companies to be seen to have more women in senior positions) but his rhetoric that Denmark is under some sort of feminist totalitarian control where men are laughed at on the street resulting in them going on a mass sex strike is frankly hysterical nonsense.

My qualms are just with this specific video and his extremely specific statements that to be honest seem to be underpinned by a dislike of women generally (I can’t see what other relevance there is in bringing in random women’s tweets and tinder profiles). If a similar video was posted in the Ladies Lounge that made mass generalisations about men backed up by plainly incorrect statements it would be ripped to shreds.

anewme wrote: »

Why would you like something, if you havent watched it.?

If you are liking posts and approving them without watching, it indicates lack of awareness and reflects badly on you. Do you blindly support false information just because they support your bias?

Or perhaps those who liked that video might give their reasons for supporting it. Do you ll believe it still to be true, given now someone has exposed the holes.

There were six sentences in the post, only one related to the video. I didn’t like the post, I thanked the poster for sharing their thoughts which, as I said, involved six sentences only one of which related to the video.

If I have time I might watch the video and read the very long comment. That looks like it would take an hour or so which is no small commitment.

Okay, I have now watched the video. I had never come across this guy before. It is much more like a MGTOW video rather than a men’s rights video. The name of his account is “Better Bachelor” which gives an idea that he is coming from a MGTOW perspective. The focus in the video is mainly on issues relating to dating and relationships.

As I have mentioned before on this forum, I have looked into MGTOW fora before out of curiosity but I haven’t spent much time there as I find the discussions often involve a lot of bitterness towards women. In this case, it does look like he has some bitterness towards women, at least in terms of dating them in the future.

I thought it was interesting that he said he couldn’t use “feminism” much in the video or it would be flagged by YouTube. Instead, he used “women-ism”. It is disappointing if critiques of such an important ideology are being censored on YouTube in general.

Pay-walled Irish Times article
https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/opinion-analysis

"Kathy Sheridan: More damaged men out there than we realise

Are we ready at last to address the dynamics of male violence, power and abuse?"

"A recent study by Trinity College Dublin and Maynooth University found that one-in-five men reported being sexually assaulted or harassed throughout their lifetime."

Not a single mention of women in terms of direct or indirect involvement in male suffering; the impression is that it's all down to men.

We cannot solve this without each other’s wholehearted support – and as Ellen O’Malley Dunlop has suggested, a dedicated minister with responsibility for sexual, domestic and gender-based violence.

It would send out a signal at least – this is serious. And it’s not only about women.

I'm not sure this would necessarily help men that much.

Here are some comments underneath:

"Are they (men) ready at last to address the dynamics of male violence, power and abuse?" How to mix (intersect?) misandry, arrogance and ignorance in one sentence.

It would be nice if the tag line for this article focused on the role of males as the victim, which is a core point of the article itself, rather than on men as the perpetrator. Men in this country receive tragically little notice in this respect in spite of suffering domestic and physical abuse to an enormous extent from both male and female abusers.

While I welcome any article which looks at the plight of abused men, I am cynical about any profession of concern. The comments below the line on such matters have been going on for so long but there has been no concerted attempt to get to grips with the issues. Indeed male support services across a wide range such as men undergoing separation, sexual abuse and domestic abuse are just about where they were 20 years ago.

The Irish Times runs an article like this once in a long while but on Monday International Women’s Day it ran articles by 3 well known women all calling loudly for more of everything. This shows where its heart lies. Now the Irish Times along with RTE and others are looking for state support to enable them to survive in today’s media landscape.

They trot out the well worn sanctimonies about the need to hold government to account. But tomorrow the press and media will no longer be independent; how can they hold anyone to account? They have yet to prove they are worth supporting to at least 50% of the population.

One of the things that we can change is to not go along with this conflation of harassment with assault. Stats from gender studies people widening the definitions so that sooner or later the majority of women (their main focus) will be included in the victim group and the majority of men will be amongst the accused, merely dilutes focus and weakens the likelihood of justice for victims of actual assault.

“Less expected is this public outpouring from men who have bottled up injustice, grief and humiliation for half a century.”

There are few if any support groups for men that enable them or encourage them to do so. While the Rape Crisis Centres are open to men, do they have enough male staff that men will feel comfortable talking to? It is something never referred to in the advertisements or the literature. HAs Kathy ever asked why any of her colleagues or the Irish Times has never bothered to run articles exploring it.

In short, no the Rape Crisis centre is not geared towards men at all (I did some sponsorship work for them). The ONLY available resource for abused men in Ireland is an outfit called AMEN that was setup independently by a lady in Navan in her kitchen about twenty years ago.

End of the day it's all about budget and men lost out on any of that long long ago and there's a coterie of powerful female activitists from the Four Courts to the media to the Dail who intend to keep it that way.

Suicide statistics for Ireland. Look at the gender disparity, and then look at the supports for men: https://www.nsrf.ie/statistics/suicide/

As many suicides are not even recorded as suicides - e.g. a single vehicle crash - the problem is significantly greater than the statistics indicate. We have a stupid culture of "Big boys don't cry" that continues to do untold damage. I have never seen any public campaign financed to address men's mental health.

I think I'll continue in the next comment so people can pace themselves reading it, if so inclined.