Why Women Should Be Concerned About Men’s Rights Groups
Posted by: Jessica Wakeman
Filed in:
news
12:30PM, Friday November 6th 2009
We write often about domestic abuse issues here on The Frisky and the discussions get quite heated. Those of you readers who get very passionate about the subject absolutely must read the story “Men’s Rights’ Groups Have Become Frighteningly Effective” by journalist Kathryn Joyce on Double X, about the rise of the “men’s movement.” Many men’s rights groups sound innocuous enough at face value. Who’s against men’s rights? Who’s against reporting domestic violence accurately? Who’s against letting dads see their kids? But on closer inspection, writes Joyce, their causes are pretty sleazy: they often seek to discredit women who report abuse and advocate for sharing custody of children on principle, regardless of prior criminal history of the father. Some of these men are utter nutters. One men’s rights blogger Joyce interviewed for her article told her he would refer to her not by her name but by the title “Feminist E,” because he does not use real names for feminists. He thinks men “must verbally oppose [them ]... until our flesh oxidizes into dust.” Uh-huh. Right.
Other men’s rights groups appear to espouse more reasonable arguments (even if some of the men in the groups themselves have criminal histories of domestic abuse), which is why groups like Respecting Accuracy in Domestic Abuse Reporting (RADAR) gain traction in the media. This should concern all women because upon closer examination, Joyce writes, men’s rights groups use the same scare tactics as abusers:
“Critics like Australian sociologist Michael Flood say that men’s rights movements reflect the tactics of domestic abusers themselves, minimizing existing violence, calling it mutual, and discrediting victims. [Men’s rights activist] groups downplay national abuse rates, just as abusers downplay their personal battery; they wage campaigns dismissing most allegations as false, as abusers claim partners are lying about being hit; and they depict the violence as mutual—part of an epidemic of wife-on-husband abuse—as individual batterers rationalize their behavior by saying that the violence was reciprocal.”
There Joyce has touched upon two of my biggest frustrations about domestic violence, which, incidentally, men’s rights groups are promoting: 1) manipulation of the facts to equate violence by women against men with that of men against women, as if they occur 50/50, and 2) the denial of societal dynamics where men have been privileged over women.
Read the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice statistics if you don’t believe me. It says right up at the top of the page, “Females are more likely than males to experience nonfatal intimate partner violence,” and then there’s a litany of statistics to back this up. Obviously, it’s as morally wrong when a woman abuses her partner or her children as when a man does it, but let’s get past a debate which gets stuck at statements like, “Well, I know a woman who hit her boyfriend ...” —that’s a moot point. Violence is a problem in general, yes, but violence against women is more of a problem than violence against men. That is not an opinion we can debate; it’s a fact.
On to my second frustration with men’s rights groups, as well as the people they’re able to influence: these people willfully ignore how intimate partner violence fits into broader societal dynamics. I cannot be convinced otherwise that, in American society, men/Caucasians/American citizens/the wealthy have historically had more privileges than women/people of color/immigrants/the poor. I’ll acknowledge that yes, throughout history the inequalities have improved vastly for some and bit by bit for others. And speaking strictly for women, I’m proud that at this point in history, women have more equal rights (the right to vote, the right to equal pay, the right to equal funding for school sports, etc.) than ever before.
However, isms, like racism, classism and sexism, undeniably still exist. Men’s rights groups ignore that, generally speaking, women are less privileged than men, and it is even worse for poor women, green-card holding women, women of color, etc. Look at reality: the playing field, so to speak, is not level. Women who are societally less privileged face difficulties when they are being abused, and that’s the part of intimate partner violence these men’s rights groups shamefully obfuscate to further their own cause of discrediting mothers with full custody and women who report abuse.
All the female college graduates, all the female police women, all the female-headed households in the country should be lauded, but they shouldn’t lull us into a complacency over the societal dynamics of inequality which still exist. American society is still undoing centuries worth of inequality—and that’s a reality that men’s rights groups willfully ignore.
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theattack
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 12:50 pm: [report]
Oh great, now all the sexist jerks unite to feed off of each other. I always love and appreciate your posts, Jessica!
Frederica Bimble
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 12:56 pm: [report]
What you dwell on multiplies. I know you’re attempting to “shed some light” onto a perceived injustice but the more you focus on things like this, the more you are generating energy behind it.
There is a very old Chinese proverb that states: “Give evil nothing to oppose and it goes away on its own.”
We are now living in a time the break down of accepted roles and that DOES make people nervous. These groups spring up when people don’t acknowledge their own power over what they cause in their own lives.
I’m not commenting about the actual article because the contents of it is beneath me.
If you think the men in these groups are “nutters” then dismiss them - don’t think about them - ignore them - give them a wide berth. Think about the world you’d like to have and that is what you will create in your life.
The men I meet in my life are intelligent, behave as gentlemen (to use an old phrase) and have a sense of fairness. Why? Because that is what I expect in my world.
klobbersaurus685
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:00 pm: [report]
Yes, the groups getting together to discredit actual victims is very very wrong.
However, there is an alarming number of women who do cry abuse to get back at a former significant other. If there are acutal groups that help men with that, good.
I am willing to bet female on male abuse is under reported. There is something in men that says they shouldn’t admit to being a victim of a woman.
Watch ‘Men Don’t Tell’ if you would like to see some of that.
ohhfoggylullaby
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:09 pm: [report]
Very well said, Frederica.
There are some mens rights groups out there who are not totally sexist. SOme are advocating for less harmful portrayals of men in television and movies (the bumbling idiotic father who can’t figure out how a vacuum works, for one, the lazy jerk, the insensitive stud). They argue that these images of masculinity enable and excuse these behaviors in some men, and lead to women expecting that from every male. I’m not too sure if I buy all of their arguments, but I do agree with the image of the incapable husband as a harmful stereotype to both men and women (men figure they can’t so they don’t try, women figure they can’t so they do it for them—this is of course a huge generalization, but images in the media do effect how one perceives him/herself). Additionally, this helps blur the domestic realm from a feminine one to a mix, similar to how the public sphere was blurred in the 60s.
Gender roles, they are a changin.
C.Munro
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:09 pm: [report]
As a person who believes in equality for all, I dislike much of what I’ve seen in the “men’s movement.” In my book, it is often a case of two wrongs trying to make a right, which is a criticism I’ll level at certain feminists as well.
It disgusts me that so many people are only interested in fighting injustice when it suits their own needs, and rationalize injustice when it happens to somebody else.
moonblossom
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:18 pm: [report]
I did some research on these groups in school. They are Fa-Reeks! And I have to disagree with Frederica. If you ignore a problem it most certainly does not always go away. Think of these groups like cancer….ignoring a tumor isn’t a good idea.
I would also like to add a comment on the husband-beating-wife situation that these men’s groups insist actually exists. Yes. Its true. There are women who hit men. The reality is though that a lot of battered women respond with disproportionate force against their aggressor because they are not physically able to stop the abuse. For example - a 5ft/100lb woman getting beat by her 5’10/190lb man doesn’t stand much of a chance. So she grabs a baseball bat and beats him with it. That’s not mutual abuse. That’s a combination of self-defense and battered spouse syndrome.
Anyways, great article. Thanks for continuing to cover this issue.
ChoJinn
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:26 pm: [report]
“I’m not commenting about the actual article because the contents of it is beneath me. “
Yah, I prefer to spew nonsense instead of actually investigating claims. Following links is for suckers. There is an ancient Native American proverb that states: “Facts no good. Chief dismiss any and all evidence which interferes with Chief’s world view. This make Chief heap glad.”
As the amount of data and research supports, this topic deserves much more than the above article is worth. All this and the XX article do is confuse the marketing ploys of predatory divorce attorneys with the claims of men suffering at the hands of an (understandably)
ChoJinn
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 01:32 pm: [report]
prejudiced divorce court system.
TheFrisky should realize that as a quasi-popular site for the female persuasion, it has a responsibility to address serious issues with at least some amount of objectivity. The author hyper-generalizing the subject matter based on a qualitative statement from the DoJ and then implying something about that because women feel the sting of inequality it’s perfectly acceptable if men do as well…yah, that’s pretty disingenuous.
bumbler
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:04 pm: [report]
The problem with men’s rights groups is that they are not promoting equality. Like the immature high school kids who say things like “why can we have an African American student union and not a white student union?” they hide their bias behind the cry of reverse racism/ reverse sexism. If a men’s right group wants to address female on male domestic violence and work to change stereotypes and the stigma associated with a man coming forward saying he was abused I’m all for it. Instead they try and belittle male on female domestic violence and distort the facts. The only representatives from these groups I have seen have either been batterers trying to regain custody of their children or men who don’t want to pay child support.
fallonthecity
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:09 pm: [report]
@bumbler: Exactly.
They’re not interested in equality. They’re interested in themselves.
equnsuocha
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:18 pm: [report]
I think some of these groups are ok, I watched my ex-husband be abused and violated by NY family court over custody of his son and it was not pretty. Many courts especially in custody issues, put the onus on the man to prove he DIDNT do all the things the woman is claiming rather than making the woman prove he did. So groups that help fathers who WANT to parent are ok by me.
william.paul
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:20 pm: [report]
The quote you included makes mention of the tactics that these men’s rights groups use. Are they not effective tactics?
I’m not trying to be incendiary by asking that, but if you believe that they have the best of intentions and are simply mistaken and misguided, it is very different than using those same tactics with sinister intentions.
Kati-Anne
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:30 pm: [report]
I remember doing a project in high school, I can’t remember what it was about, but I sure do remember one of the articles I found. It was an article found on the National Coalition of Men’s website that basically said that women bring sexual harassment in the workplace upon themselves and men can’t help but sexually harass them if the woman is wearing a silk blouse, red lipstick, or tight pants. I can’t find the article anymore, but it pretty much horrified me. Unfortunately, instead of being pro-equality, these groups often end up being anti-women.
NomChompsky
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:38 pm: [report]
I think—hope?—there’s a pretty huge common ground here.
It’s not fair to criticize the IDEA of men’s right’s groups because we live in a society with a strong patriarchal history. Doing so not only belittles half of the population in a frankly ironic way, it undermines the feminist movement as well.
That being said, no group should masquerade bigotry and oppression as fighting for equality. None. That includes male-centric groups. So if prominent men’s rights groups are doing so, it SHOULD be reported. The same way feminist groups should be held intellectually accountable for their arguments regardless of the admirability of their stated aim.
I fail to see how this is not an entirely unfair generalization.
Pierce Harlan
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 02:55 pm: [report]
What a clever device you have employed to marginalize, dismiss, and disparage any and all issues that perhaps, just maybe, quite possibly, might or could or may detrimentally impact individuals because they were born male. Every single men’s rights issue is tossed into one grand MRA stew, the good with the bad, so that - ejusdem generis! - they all appear to be part and parcel of one big, kooky, far right wingnut, woman-hating club! You have deftly given the impression that men can’t possibly, by any stretch of the imagination, have any legitimate claims, in any facet of their existence, to the kind of victimhood feminism has arrogated to women all these years. Not possible. End of story.
This is wrong. The sole issue at my website, False Rape Society, is to give voice to those persons who are falsely accused of rape and sexual assault. By default, that makes me a men’s rights advocate I suppose, like our hero, Alan Dershowitz, I suppose. http://falserapesociety.blogspot.com/2009/08/from-archives-greatest-champion-for.html
I’m going to disappoint you all. I believe in total equality for women. And guess what? I loathe and despise rape, too. You see, I freely admit that my site only tells one part of the rape story—and it really has nothing to do with rape, it deals with liars who hurt innocent people. I frequently invite feminsts to partner with me to do on one website to tell the entire rape/false rape claim story in a way that is senstive to the victims of both. To date, no takers.
Rape and false rape claims have become so terribly politicized that feminists automatically dismiss what I do as being somehow hurtful to actual rape victims. They have it exactly backwards. Every time a rape lie is told, actual rape victims suffer. They’d prefer to stick their head in the sand and insist it isn’t a problem. In any event, it is not inconsistent to oppose both rape and false rape claims.
Every serious, objective (non-MRA, non-sexual grievance industry) study that has ever examined the issue shows that false rape claims are a serious problem. Yet the victims of this crime are treated as necessary collateral damage in the “more important” war on rape, and their legitimate needs are tossed onto a scrapheap of indifference.
Some women are victimized by false rape claims, and we treat their victimization the same as the men’s. Victims of this crime are arrested and incarcerated too readily; their reputations are allowed to be destroyed too freely as their names are plastered on the Internet for the entire world to titillate to their humiliation (and once accused, because of the miracle of Google, they will have difficulty ever getting a good job); and their false accusers are excused without punishment too often.
The sexual grievance industry tells us that only two percent of all rape claims are false. That stat was long ago debunked. A famous law review article traced it to its disingenuous origin. In any event, they still repeat it, or some moving target variation of it—some rape feminists say one percent; others, four percent; still others, six, eight—you name it. Their “stats” on underreporting are equally—ah—diverse, and are wildly inconsistent with their own “stats” on rape prevalence (the two can’t be reconciled). The reality is that we are reasonnably sure that a certain percentage of rape claims are actual rapes (15% result in conviction, although some innocent men and boys are, in fact, convicted of this crime); and we know a certain number are false (serious studies range from 25 to 60 percent—don’t roll your eyes—these aren’t MRA studies!). But we don’t know about the rest, and the “he said/she said” nature of the crime precludes certainty in this field. The great canard of the sexual grievance industry is to insist that the claims we don’t know about should be included in the “rape” column.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the crimes of rape and of false reporting of rape were not politicized? And if the victims of false rape claims were not denied our sympathy just because of the crime that victimized them?
But please don’t dismiss my assertions just because they don’t fit your metanarrative. If you don’t want to partner with me, I invite you over to my site to debate me—trust me, I know the area better than you do. The difference between me and the feminists who blog about rape is that I freely admit that my site only tells one part of the rape story. Their sites don’t tell the whole story, either, but they won’t admit it.
bumbler
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 03:00 pm: [report]
I think one of the most telling things is their immediate dismissal and let’s be honest dehumanization of feminists (Feminist E? Really? Very mature). Feminists are the most vocal proponents of breaking down traditional gender stereotypes in marriage and parenting. Most feminists do not believe that women are better parents than men based solely on their gender, they also vehemently oppose the idea that women are delicate flowers who are incapable of violence. Completely in line with the stated goals of the men’s movement.
bethlynn00
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 03:03 pm: [report]
I think someone could write a similar article about a number of feminism organizations. Anytime that you have a group advocating for any position there is going to be bias, because they are invested in their own interests. I think it is unfair to just label male rights groups as bigots or freaks, because like feminists groups have also done, they use statistics that favor their positions.
Violence is a problem in general, yes, but violence against women is more of a problem than violence against men. That is not an opinion we can debate; it’s a fact.
And no that is not a fact, because the way you phrased that statement is inaccurate. The same stats you used from DOJ, in overall reports on violent crime it clearly states that males experience higher victimization rates than women in every type of violent crime except rape/sexual assault, although those stats are the most likely to be under reported for both men and women. Also if you look over those stats rate of non-fatal IPV decreased for women, but remained stable for men. Any group looking at those stats is going to pounce on that fact, because when one group is on decline in a behavior and another stabilizes at a point that is significant of what is happening and what messages are getting out to people.
Not to say that the article doesn’t make some good points, but aren’t you really just doing what you are accusing these groups of doing? Using scare tactics and dismissive language to characterize multiples as one? That seem unproductive and harmful to your overall point.
INTPLibrarian
wrote on November 6 2009 @ 03:22 pm: [report]
Don’t call the guys you’re talking about Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). That’s not any more fair than the people who call women who are misandrists Feminists.
“Violence is a problem in general, yes, but violence against women is more of a problem than violence against men.” That’s the kind of statement that, reasonably, upsets MRAs. It’s not MORE of a problem; it’s a more frequently occurring problem. The seriousness is the same no matter who’s doing the abusing and who’s being abused.
And an individual man who is being denied custody of his kid mostly *because* he’s a man doesn’t really care that for centuries fathers were automatically given custody. He’s right to be upset and pissed off that gender is even entering the equation. Isn’t that what sexism IS?
I have encountered (in online communities) the guys who are really very anti-female and complaining that women have all the benefits and men have all the prejudice against them. Yes, they exist, and they are idiots. But the women that these same men complain about—women who consider all men potential rapists, who think its ok for a woman to slap a man, etc.—shouldn’t be called Feminists, either.
jay76
wrote on November 7 2009 @ 08:25 am: [report]
“Violence is a problem in general, yes, but violence against women is more of a problem than violence against men.”
As INTPLibrarian has pointed out, this will likely anger many MRA’s and rightly so.
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/homicide/gender.htm
Male offender/Male victim 65.3%
Male offender/Female victim 22.7%
Female offender/Male victim 9.6%
Female offender/Female victim 2.4%
Males are more likely to be the victim of fatal violence, even when the perpetrator is female. Violence perpetrated by males is a more important issue than violence perpetrated by women, but don’t play the “biggest victim” card when more women get to live.
*sam*
wrote on November 7 2009 @ 08:49 am: [report]
OMFG Frisky! IDK what is up with your website but it took me flipping FOREVER to read the comments here because for whatever effing reason, the page kept reloading!! I’d get half way through a comment and BAM! the page would go blank and I’m all the way back at the top.
Not cool.
Oreo
wrote on November 9 2009 @ 06:16 pm: [report]
Yet another double standard. What a surprise…
Mary Berry
wrote on November 13 2009 @ 04:17 pm: [report]
These men’s rights guys are idiots! Women are still oppressed, so they need to shut up. Men can’t raise children by themselves. And if a woman hits a man, it’s either in self defense or because he’s an idiot that deserves it!