Men's rights movement facts for kids
The men's rights movement (MRM) is a branch of the men's movement. The MRM in particular consists of a variety of groups and individuals (men's rights activists or MRAs) who focus on general social issues and specific government services which they say adversely impact, or in some cases, structurally discriminate against, men and boys. Common topics discussed within the men's rights movement include family law (such as child custody, alimony and marital property distribution), reproduction, domestic violence against men, education, conscription, social safety nets, and health policies. The men's rights movement branched off from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s, with both groups comprising a part of the larger men's movement.
Many scholars describe the movement or parts of it as a backlash against feminism. As part of the manosphere, the movement, and sectors of the movement, have been described by scholars and commentators as misogynistic, hateful, and, in some cases, as advocating violence against women. In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center categorized some men's rights groups as being part of a hate ideology under the umbrella of male supremacy while stating that others "focused on legitimate grievances".
History
Forerunners
The term "men's rights" was used at least as early as February 1856 when it appeared in Putnam's Magazine. The author was responding to the issue of women's rights, calling it a "new movement for social reform, and even for political revolution", which the author proposed to counter with men's rights. Ernest Belfort Bax wrote The Legal Subjection of Men in 1896, deriding the women's rights movement as a farcical effort by women—the "privileged sex"—to prove they were "oppressed."
Three loosely connected men's rights organizations formed in Austria in the interwar period. The League for Men's Rights was founded in 1926 with the goal of "combating all excesses of women's emancipation". In 1927, the Justitia League for Family Law Reform and the Aequitas World's League for the Rights of Men split from the League of Men's Rights. The three men's rights groups opposed women's entry into the labor market and what they saw as the corrosive influence of the women's movement on social and legal institutions. They criticized marriage and family laws, especially the requirement to pay spousal and child support to former wives and illegitimate children, and supported the use of blood tests to determine paternity. Justitia and Aequitas issued their own short-lived journals Men's Rightists Newspaper and Self-Defense where they expressed their views that were heavily influenced by the works of Heinrich Schurtz, Otto Weininger, and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels. The organizations ceased to exist before 1939.
Split from men's liberation movement
The modern men's rights movement emerged from the men's liberation movement, which appeared in the first half of the 1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. These scholars acknowledged men's institutionalized power while critically examining the consequences of hegemonic masculinity, believing that both men and women suffered in a patriarchal society. The men's liberation movement was led by psychologists who argued that femininity and masculinity were socially formed behaviors and not the result of genes. They tried to balance the two ideas that men were responsible for oppressing women, but also being oppressed themselves by strict gender roles.
In the mid-1970s, this movement began to focus on the oppression of men and less on the effects of sexism on women. In the late 1970s, the movement split into two separate strands with opposing views: the pro-feminist men's movement and the anti-feminist men's rights movement, which sees men as an oppressed group.
In the 1980s, the men's rights movement focused only on the ways that sex roles discriminated against males rather than the oppression it inflicted on both genders. Author Herb Goldberg claimed that the U.S. was a "matriarchal society" because women have the power to transgress gender roles and assume masculine and feminine roles, while males are still constrained to the purely masculine role. Reneé Blank and Sandra Slipp in 1994 compiled the testimonies of men who believed they were discriminated against based on their sex and race. This occurred in a time where women were entering the work force and obtaining managerial positions.
A major concern of the men's rights movement has been the issue of fathers' rights. In the 1980s and 1990s, men's rights activists opposed societal changes sought by feminists and defended the patriarchal gender order in the family, schools and the workplace. Sociologist Michael Kimmel states that their earlier critiques of gender roles "morphed into a celebration of all things masculine and a near infatuation with the traditional masculine role itself".
Organizations
One of the first major men's rights organizations was the Coalition of American Divorce Reform Elements, founded by Richard Doyle in 1971, from which the Men's Rights Association spun off in 1973. Free Men Inc. was founded in 1977 in Columbia, Maryland, spawning several chapters over the following years, which eventually merged to form the National Coalition of Free Men (known since 2008 as the National Coalition for Men). Men's Rights, Inc. was also formed in 1977, the National Organization for Men was founded in 1983, and Fathers and Families was formed in 1994. In the United Kingdom, a men's rights group calling itself the UK Men's Movement began to organize in the early 1990s. The Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) was founded in 2005, and in 2010 claimed to have over 30,000 members.
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Men's rights groups have formed in some European countries during periods of shifts toward conservatism and policies supporting patriarchal family and gender relations. In the United States, the men's rights movement has ideological ties to neoconservatism. Men's rights activists have received lobbying support from conservative organizations and their arguments have been covered extensively in neoconservative media.
Fringe political parties focusing on men's rights have been formed including, but not limited to, the Australian Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting), the Israeli Man's Rights in the Family Party, and the Justice for Men and Boys party in the UK.
Online activism
The men's rights movement has become more vocal and more organized since the development of the Internet, where activists tend to congregate. Men's rights websites and forums have proliferated within the online manosphere. Paul Elam's site A Voice for Men (AVFM) functions as a central point of discussion and organization for men's rights issues. Other sites dedicated to men's rights are the Fathers Rights Foundation, MGTOW.com (Men Going Their Own Way), and several Reddit forums such as /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill. Men's rights proponents often use the red pill and blue pill metaphor from the film The Matrix to identify each other online; those who accept the idea that men are the oppressed victims of a misandrist society are said to have "taken the red pill". While some of the groups have adversarial relationships with one another, they tend to be united in their misogyny, promotion of masculinity, and opposition to feminism.
Antifeminism
Many scholars consider the men's rights movement a backlash or countermovement to feminism. The men's rights movement generally incorporates points of view that reject feminist and profeminist ideas. Men's rights activists say feminism has radicalized its objective and harmed men. Men's rights activists believe that men are victims of feminism and "feminizing" influences in society, and that entities such as public institutions now discriminate against men.
Men's rights activists dispute that men as a group have institutional power and privilege and believe that men are victimized and disadvantaged relative to women, including in regard to what had been considered feminist concerns. Men's rights groups generally reject the notion that feminism is interested in men's problems, and some men's rights activists have viewed the women's movement as a plot to deliberately conceal discrimination against men.
Topics
Men's rights proponents are concerned with a wide variety of matters, some of which have spawned their own groups or movements, such as the fathers' rights movement, concerned specifically with divorce and child custody issues. Some, if not all, men's rights issues stem from gender roles and, according to sociologist Allan Johnson, patriarchy.
Adoption
Men's rights activists seek to expand the rights of unwed fathers in case of their child's adoption. Warren Farrell argues that in failing to inform the father of a pregnancy, an expectant mother deprives an adopted child of a relationship with the biological father. He proposes that women be legally required to make every reasonable effort to notify the father of her pregnancy within four to five days. In response, philosopher James P. Sterba agrees that, for moral reasons, a woman should inform the father of the pregnancy and adoption, but this should not be imposed as a legal requirement as it might result in undue pressure.
Anti-dowry laws
Men's rights organizations such as Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) say that women misuse legislation meant to protect them from dowry death and bride burnings. SIFF is a men's rights organization in India that focuses on abuse of anti-dowry laws against men.
Child custody
Family law is an area of deep concern among men's rights groups. Men's rights adherents argue that the legal system and family courts discriminate against men, especially in regards to child custody after divorce. They believe that men do not have the same contact rights or equitable shared parenting rights as their ex-spouse and use statistics on custody awards as evidence of judicial bias against men. Men's rights advocates seek to change the legal climate for men through changes in family law, for example by lobbying for laws that make joint custody the default custody arrangement except in cases where one parent is unfit or unwilling to parent.
Divorce
Men's rights groups in the United States began organizing in opposition to divorce reform and custody issues around the 1960s. Up until this time, husbands held legal power and control over wives and children. The men involved in the early organization claimed that family and divorce law discriminated against them and favored their wives. Men's rights leader Rich Doyle likened divorce courts to slaughterhouses, considering their judgements unsympathetic and unreasonable.
Men's rights activists have argued that divorce and custody laws violate men's individual rights to equal protection. Law professor Gwendolyn Leachman writes that this sort of framing "downplays the systemic biases that women face that justify protective divorce and custody laws".
Education
Men's rights adherents describe the education of boys as being in crisis, with boys having reduced educational achievement and motivation compared to girls. Advocates blame the influence of feminism on education for what they believe is discrimination against and systematic oppression of boys in the education system. They critique what they describe as the "feminization" of education, stating that the predominance of female teachers, a focus on girls' needs, as well as a curricula and assessment methods that supposedly favour girls, have proved repressive and restrictive to men and boys.
Men's rights groups call for increased recognition of masculinity, greater numbers of male role models, more competitive sports, and the increased responsibilities for boys in the school setting. They have also advocated clearer school routines, more traditional school structures, including gender-segregated classrooms, and stricter discipline.
One primary characteristic of men's rights groups is the view of boys as a homogeneous group that shares common educational experiences; this means that it fails to account for how responses to educational approaches may differ by age, disability, culture, ethnicity, religion, and class.
In Australia, men's rights discourse has influenced government policy documents. Compared to Australia, less impact has been noted in the United Kingdom, where feminists have historically had less influence on educational policy. However, Mary Curnock Cook, the British Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (UCAS) chief executive, argued that in Britain "despite the clear evidence and despite the press coverage, there is a deafening policy silence on the issue. Has the women's movement now become so normalised that we cannot conceive of needing to take positive action to secure equal education outcomes for boys?"
Female privilege
The men's rights movement rejects the concept that men are privileged relative to women. The movement is divided into two groups: those who consider men and women to be harmed equally by sexism, and those who view society as endorsing the degradation of men and upholding what they term "female privilege".
Governmental structures
Men's rights groups have called for governmental structures to address issues specific to men and boys including education, health, work and marriage. Men's rights groups in India have called for the creation of a Men's Welfare Ministry and a National Commission for Men, or for the abolition of the National Commission for Women. In the United Kingdom, the creation of a Minister for Men analogous to the existing Minister for Women, has been proposed by David Amess, MP and Lord Northbourne, but was rejected by the government headed by Prime Minister Tony Blair. In the United States, Warren Farrell heads a commission focused on the creation of a White House Council on Boys and Men as a counterpart to the White House Council on Women and Girls, which was formed in March 2009.
Health
Men's rights groups view the health issues faced by men, and their shorter life spans compared to women globally, as evidence of discrimination and oppression. They claim that feminism has led to women's health issues being privileged at the expense of men's. They highlight certain disparities in funding of men's health issues as compared to women's, stating that, for example, prostate cancer research receives less funding than breast-cancer research. However, women and minorities had typically been excluded from medical research until the 1990s. Viviana Simon states, "Most biomedical and clinical research has been based on the assumption that the male can serve as representative of the species." Medical scholars warn that such false assumptions are still prevalent. Contrary to antifeminist assertions, empirical findings suggest that gender bias against females remains the norm in medicine.
Homelessness
Glen Poole, author of the book Equality For Men, argues that homelessness is a gendered issue, saying that in Britain, most homeless people are male. A 2018 study focused on three Pennsylvania emergency departments found little difference in the number of men and women who self-reported as homeless; however, the study did not claim to reflect the homeless population in the United States as a whole. For information on the homeless population of the United States as a whole, see Homelessness in the United States.
Incarceration
Men's rights campaigners believe that men receive harsher treatment than women in criminal justice systems around the world. They cite the disproportionate number of men in prison as evidence of this. In the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, India and across the European Union, 90–95% of prison inmates are male. Studies have shown that, compared with women who commit similar crimes, men are more likely to be incarcerated, receive longer prison sentences, and have to serve a greater portion of their sentences.
Military conscription
Men's rights activists argue that the sole military conscription of men is an example of discrimination against men. Historically, most societies have only required men to be conscripted. According to David Benatar, "perhaps the most obvious example of male disadvantage is the long history of social and legal pressures on men, but not on women, to enter the military and to fight in war, thereby risking their lives and bodily and psychological health. Where the pressure to join the military has taken the form of conscription, the costs of avoidance have been self-imposed exile, imprisonment, physical assault or, in the most extreme circumstances, execution." Around 80 countries worldwide still use conscription in various forms, and most of these have a male-only draft. As of 2018, only two countries – Norway and Sweden – required women to be conscripted under the same formal conditions as men.
In the United States, all males ages 18–25 are required to register for Selective Service. Failure to do so can result in fines, imprisonment, and ineligibility for student loans and federal employment. Women are not required to register. In 1971, draft resisters in the United States initiated a class-action suit alleging that male-only conscription violated men's rights to equal protection under the US constitution. When the case, Rostker v. Goldberg, reached the Supreme Court in 1981, they were supported by a men's rights group and multiple feminist groups, including the National Organization for Women. However, the Supreme Court upheld the Military Selective Service Act, stating that 'the argument for registering women was based on considerations of equity, but Congress was entitled, in the exercise of its constitutional powers, to focus on the question of military need, rather than 'equity''. The 2016 decision by Defense Secretary Ash Carter to make all combat positions open to women relaunched debate over whether or not women should be required to register for the Selective Service System. In the case National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, the Southern District Court of Texas ruled the male-only draft unconstitutional.
Paternity fraud
Men's and fathers' rights groups interest in "paternity fraud" or mistaken paternity falls into two main categories: men who are compelled to provide financial support for a child that has been proven by DNA testing not to be their biological offspring, and men who have been led to believe that the children they are raising are their own, and have subsequently discovered otherwise. They hold biological views of fatherhood, emphasizing the imperative of the genetic foundation of paternity rather than social aspects of fatherhood. They state that men should not be forced to support children fathered by another man, and that men are harmed because a relationship is created between a man and non-biological children while denying the children and their biological father of that experience and knowledge of their genetic history. In addition, they say non-biological fathers are denied the resources to have their own biological children in another relationship.
Men's rights activists support the use of one-parent consent paternity testing to reassure presumed fathers about the child's paternity; men's and fathers' rights groups have also called for compulsory paternity testing of all children. They have campaigned vigorously in support of men who have been shown by genetic testing not to be the biological father, but who are nevertheless required to be financially responsible for them. Prompted by these concerns, legislators in certain jurisdictions have supported this biological view and have passed laws providing relief from child support payments when a man is proved not to be the father. Australian men's rights groups have opposed the recommendations of a report by the Australian Law Reform Commission and the National Health and Medical Research Council that would require the informed consent of both parents for paternity testing of young children, and laws that would make it illegal to obtain a sample for DNA testing without the individual's informed consent.
Estimates of the extent of misattributed paternity vary considerably. Some campaigners claim that between 10% and 30% of children are being parented by men who are unaware that they are not the biological father, but Professor Leslie Cannold writes that these numbers have been inflated by an order of magnitude, with about 1% seen in Australia and the UK, and 3% observed in the US. Sociologist Michael Gilding asserts that men's rights activists have exaggerated the rate and extent of misattributed paternity, which he estimates at about 1–3%. Gilding opposed as unnecessary calls for mandatory paternity testing of all children. Even the lowest estimates of the prevalence of paternity fraud suggest it affects tens of thousands of men in the US alone.
Reproductive rights
Men's rights campaigners assert that while a woman has several legal avenues to opt out of being a mother after conception, a man has no choice in whether he becomes a father and is at the mercy of the mother's decision. Moreover, a man who unwillingly fathers a child can be compelled to support the child financially.
In consequence, some advocate for a procedure which would allow the biological father, before the birth of the child, to opt out of any rights, privileges, and responsibilities toward the child, including financial support.
Social security and insurance
Men's rights groups argue that women are given superior social security and tax benefits than men. Warren Farrell states that men in the United States pay more into social security, but in total, women receive more in benefits, and that discrimination against men in insurance and pensions have gone unrecognized.
Prominent men's rights activists
Most men's rights activists in the United States are white, middle-class, heterosexual men. Prominent advocates include Warren Farrell, Herb Goldberg, Richard Doyle, and Asa Baber. There are also women in the movement, including Helen Smith, Christina Hoff Sommers, Erin Pizzey and Bettina Arndt.
Karen DeCrow
Karen DeCrow was an American attorney, author, and activist and feminist, who served as president of the National Organization for Women from 1974 to 1977, she was also a strong supporter of equal rights for men in child custody decisions, arguing for a "rebuttable presumption" of shared custody after divorce. She also asserted that men as well as women should be allowed the decision not to become a parent]], and was an avid supporter of father's rights movements, and argued that domestic violence is a "two-way street." As a result, DeCrow found she was "increasingly at odds with the organization she had once led, though she never broke with it."
Marc Angelucci
Marc Angelucci was an American attorney, men's rights activist, and the vice-president of the National Coalition for Men (NCFM). As a lawyer, he represented several cases related to men's rights issues, most prominently National Coalition for Men v. Selective Service System, in which the federal judge declared the male-only selective-service system unconstitutional, and Woods v. Horton, which ruled that the California State Legislature had unconstitutionally excluded men from domestic violence victim protection programs.
Warren Farrell
Warren Farrell is an American educator, activist and author of seven books on men's and women's issues.
Farrell initially came to prominence in the 1970s as a supporter of second wave feminism; he served on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW). Generally considered the 'Father of Men's Rights Movement,'" Farrell advocates for "a gender liberation movement, with "both sexes walking a mile in each other's moccasins."
Herb Goldberg
Herb Goldberg was the author of the book What Men Still Don't Know About Women, Relationships, and Love,The Hazards of Being Male: Surviving the Myth of Masculine Privilege (1975), and What Men Really Want and Men's Secrets related to the formative men's movement. He was a professor emeritus of psychology at California State University, Los Angeles and a practicing psychologist in Los Angeles.
Erin Pizzey
Erin Pizzey is an English men's rights advocate, domestic abuse advocate and ex-feminist. She holds a controversial theory that most domestic violence between men and women is mutual and reciprocated. Pizzey has released two notable works, Scream Quietly or the Neighbours Will Hear and Prone to Violence. In the 2024 New Year Honours she was named Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
Bettina Arndt
Bettina Arndt is an Australian men's right activist who was awarded the Order of Australia for gender equity in 2020. Despite heavy criticism, the Council of the Award of Australia decided not to strip her of the award.
See also
In Spanish: Movimiento por los derechos de los hombres para niños
