> "The men’s rights stuff is toxic because it’s about conflict. It’s about pushing back against feminism, which is essentially fighting against equity. With that said, I see nothing wrong with fighting for the interests of boys and men. I, too, want to see boys succeed (I have a son!) But it’s not about his rights. It’s about his opportunities and the support and so on, that he gets."
See the thing about this is even if you genuinely try to not make it about conflict in my experience people project conflict on to you. I once wrote an article about men being disadvantaged when it came to access to resources when escaping domestic violence, despite making up a significant proportion of victims according to data gathered by the Australian bureau of statistics (I'm Australian and was writing about the situation here).
A lot of government sources also presented domestic violence data in a way that was straight up misleading i.e. "31% of women experiencing assault experienced it from a partner vs 4.4% of men", totally ignoring that men were vastly more likely to be assaulted by strangers and a better comparison is the total number of men and women (73,800 women vs 21,200). Which works out to a little over than 1in 5 people surveyed who were assaulted by a partner being men, which despite still being significantly less certainly doesn't seem as minimal as the numbers when presented as a proportion of total assaults suffered. (note this happened nearly 10 years ago so these numbers are from a survey done in 2006).
My article discussed this kind of presentation and how it made male victims of DV more invisible than they should be, and how services for them weren't present (including some government services having "for men" pages which only had advice for how abusers can stop being abusive).
I legitimately had editors at places argue with me and suggest I was ignoring facts to have an anti woman agenda by quoting some of the numbers I was criticising in my article. That's how pervasive some of this stuff is. That you can say "hey look, this place is using very selective language when when framing the data, look if even using their own sources you can see how this creates an unfair comparison to minimise male victims" and then have someone use the exact numbers being discussed to tell you that you are being anti woman.
This is a sore spot for me because as a child I suffered domestic abuse, and I find the idea that there wouldn't have been resources for me if I had suffered it as an adult scary.
And I especially object to the idea that men's rights stuff is inherently about conflict. It certainly is for some people, but I made a genuinely constructive attempt to discuss a problem that in no way blamed women (my sister suffered the same abuse I did, I certainly wouldn't want her to not have resources!) and I had multiple people accuse me of being sexist.
See the thing about this is even if you genuinely try to not make it about conflict in my experience people project conflict on to you. I once wrote an article about men being disadvantaged when it came to access to resources when escaping domestic violence, despite making up a significant proportion of victims according to data gathered by the Australian bureau of statistics (I'm Australian and was writing about the situation here).
A lot of government sources also presented domestic violence data in a way that was straight up misleading i.e. "31% of women experiencing assault experienced it from a partner vs 4.4% of men", totally ignoring that men were vastly more likely to be assaulted by strangers and a better comparison is the total number of men and women (73,800 women vs 21,200). Which works out to a little over than 1in 5 people surveyed who were assaulted by a partner being men, which despite still being significantly less certainly doesn't seem as minimal as the numbers when presented as a proportion of total assaults suffered. (note this happened nearly 10 years ago so these numbers are from a survey done in 2006).
My article discussed this kind of presentation and how it made male victims of DV more invisible than they should be, and how services for them weren't present (including some government services having "for men" pages which only had advice for how abusers can stop being abusive).
I legitimately had editors at places argue with me and suggest I was ignoring facts to have an anti woman agenda by quoting some of the numbers I was criticising in my article. That's how pervasive some of this stuff is. That you can say "hey look, this place is using very selective language when when framing the data, look if even using their own sources you can see how this creates an unfair comparison to minimise male victims" and then have someone use the exact numbers being discussed to tell you that you are being anti woman.
This is a sore spot for me because as a child I suffered domestic abuse, and I find the idea that there wouldn't have been resources for me if I had suffered it as an adult scary.
And I especially object to the idea that men's rights stuff is inherently about conflict. It certainly is for some people, but I made a genuinely constructive attempt to discuss a problem that in no way blamed women (my sister suffered the same abuse I did, I certainly wouldn't want her to not have resources!) and I had multiple people accuse me of being sexist.