Originally posted by: DealMonkey
There's a "men's movement?" 😕 What's that about?
There isn't really a men's movement and nothing like NOW, sadly. For various reasons, most of them related to sex roles and their effect on socialization, men just aren't interested in gender issues and looking out for themselves (and they're paying for it). However, there are some organizations and writers that do want to fight for men's rights and equal rights for men under the law. One such writer is former NOW board member Warren Farrell, who wrote the excellent books
Why Men Are the Way They Are, which is mandatory reading for any woman who wants to understand how men really think and why,
The Myth of Male Power, and
Why Men Earn More, among other books. There's also an active blog at
http://news.mensactivism.org
What kinds of issues are men interested in?
The failure of the legal system to deal with false accusations of rape, domestic violence, and child abuse, which are often used as weapons in divorce proceedings. For example, shouldn't the woman who made the false accusation in the Duke case get prosecuted for making a false accusation as vigorously as prosectors would prosecute a rape case? Why aren't the police treating her like a criminal and shouldn't she have to face the same punishment the victims of her false accusation would have faced? To men, the failure to prosecute for this awful crime and the lack of a punishment as harsh as the one the victims of the false accusation would have faced reeks of unfairness and discrimination.
Unfair child support and alimony orders as well as unfair custody awards.
The discriminatory all-male draft.
Circumcision -- also known as legalized male genital mutilation.
Paternity fraud and states' unwillingness to address the issue and to absolve men of child support obligations when DNA evidence proves that a man is not a father (not to mention orders to compensate men for having wrongly paid child support).
Paper abortions for men--also known as "choice for men", allowing men to be absolved of all child support obligations when they do not want to become fathers, which makes women responsible for their own choices to give birth when they have 100% of the choice about whether or not a child will be born (since they could just have abortions).
A health system that concerns itself with trying to cure women's illnesses (such as breast cancer) while spending less money researching men's illnesses (such as prostate cancer).
Most of the homeless are men. Men have a shorter life span, and 75% of all suicides are by men. Also, men cannot "marry up" out of poverty or the lower class like women can.
Women also benefit from affirmative action type programs.
That isn't an exhaustive list by any means and probably just a drop in the bucket. (You can learn more in Farrell's
The Myth of Male Power.) Defintely go read
Why Men Are the Way They Are, which is all about male-female dynamics. You won't see the world the same again and you'll understand male psychology better.
Unfortunately, men have been conditioned, through sex roles and their socialization, not to complain, not to think introspectively, but rather to "take it like a man" and suffer. For a woman, the paradigm is "Her body, her choice" but for a man it's "His body, no choice" or "A man's gotta do what a man's gotta do." That's why men, overall, really aren't interested in girlish-like concerns such as complaining about unfairness and fighting for equal rights and identical rights.
