Normally I don't pen my own essays but for this topic, especially as we here in the US are heading now into a major political election season that underscores such matters, I felt this was a good time.
'MRA' stands for "Men's Rights Activist", while "FRA" stands for "Fathers' Rights Activist". It is hard to be one without being the other and for all intents and purposes they mean the same thing. The word "Rights" is represented in both acronyms. (And likewise, "Women's Rights Activist" also has the same word in it.) This word is thrown around all the time not just by activists in this realm but in many others. Indeed, the word "rights" seems to be a very common word when people seek to appeal to an innate sense of or a defined scope of justice.
But consider that, especially when talking of adults, all of us have the same rights. Consider that parents of both sexes have equal rights regarding the children they have. Consider that to bodily and other forms of human integrity and dignity, we all have the same rights. The playing field then, from a philosophical standpoint, is equal. We all have equal rights. Once that is accepted then, what is there left to make adjudications over? Will not one set of rights cancel out the other set of rights? Yes, that is exactly what happens. So the only thing left to consider then is the *interests* of the parties involved.
As men, what we don't have is an equal representation of our interests in practical ways because institutions and people within our societies are not recognizing this fact, or they simply believe we are not entitled to equal consideration because we are men, which is bigotry/misandry in action. This is where (and why) our activism comes into play. To say we are pursuing our rights isn't correct since we have them already. What we want is our interests to be fairly considered when weighed against the interests of another person/people who also have the same rights as we do. We have as full and complete claim to insisting that we have our interests fairly and judiciously considered as weighed against another person's because indeed, we do have the exact same rights as they do.
Having clarified this point, then, I believe it is entirely acceptable for male voters specifically to lobby candidates on matters that directly impact the support of our interests as men and fathers in the same way that women have been doing now for almost 50 years. Men it seems to me just don't view themselves as a voting block, while women do. The press also sees them as a voting block and reports on them as such. If men's interests are going to get defended and fairly represented in institutions of all kinds as well as in the court of public opinion, men need to start making men's issues political issues and vote accordingly. Otherwise, we'll never get anywhere with this stuff.
