Showerthought: "The lack of recognition of Men's Issues" is the most central Men's Issue.

Grow_peace_in_Bedlam · 2022-04-07T20:31:33+00:00

I totally agree! I believe that men's and women's issues would be just about equal in seriousness if it weren't for one important difference, which is that women's issues are acknowledged as real and important. If there is no society-wide acknowledgment of men's issues, no progress can or will be made, except occasionally and sparingly by accident.

Indeed, with men's issues, there is not only a lack of recognition of their existence, but also an active refusal to recognize their existence and a social penalty for those who seek to change this.

I feel that feminists really don't understand this, since even in the pre-feminist world, chivalry meant that men took women's concerns seriously and wanted to help them. Think of how in 1830s Britain, the divorce laws (which for centuries had favored men, mainly because they were the sex who could best afford to provide for children after a divorce) were changed all because of the campaigning of one upper class woman named Caroline Norton.

rammo123 · 2022-04-07T23:18:34+00:00

Similarly the best example of female privilege is being allowed to pretend that female privilege doesn't exist.

Jonathanese · 2022-04-08T05:45:33+00:00

"The #1 rule of fight club: Don't talk about fight club."

But yeah, that's petty much what it is. That "men don't have problems", because if you have issues, you no longer count as "real men", so your issues don't count as men's issues.

Or as Peter Marin put it

"To put it simply: men are neither supposed nor allowed to be dependent. They are expected to take care of others and themselves. And when they cannot or will not do it, then the assumption at the heart of the culture is that they are somehow less than men and therefore unworthy of help. An irony asserts itself: by being in need of help, men forfeit the right to it."

https://aliciapatterson.org/stories/abandoning-men-jill-gets-welfare%E2%80%93jack-becomes-homeless

BloomingBrains · 2022-04-08T01:58:07+00:00

I think the lack of recognition may be more of an effect than a cause. If you don't agree about the legitimacy of a group's issues and don't want to solve them, then its naturally going to be in your best interest not to recognize those issues exist in the first place. That's why feminists/wokesists hyperfocus so much on talking about male privilege, why men don't have any problems, and women have all the problems. Its smokescreen to cover up the fact that they just don't care but also don't want to reveal themselves as heartless.

Deep down I think many people know full well about the issues, they just don't care. Maybe that's a little too pessimistic and possibly a bit convenient to attribute so much malice to the opposition. At the same time, I'm skeptical that there's just this missing level of recognition and if only that could be gained there would be a sudden wellspring of empathy.

iainmf · 2022-04-08T10:41:56+00:00

I've been saying this for a long time. Here is part of a submission I made to the UN

Fundamental human rights violations exist for men in New Zealand. Men lack de jure equality before the law. Men also face de facto inequalities compared to women. Men are disadvantaged by substantive differences in the justice system, education, health, support for victims of violence, and in family issues.

Exacerbating these problems are systemic issues preventing New Zealand from addressing these human rights issues. Formal mechanisms to ensure gender equality overwhelmingly concentrate on women’s inequalities. This is underpinned by societal attitudes that see gender equality as a women’s issue.

I've also been trying to get the New Zealand Human Rights Commission explicitly include men and boys in their work. Unfortunately they have ignored all of my points.

An excerpt from my open letter:

The HRC exists within a large network of organisations that work to protect human rights. A lot of work has been done to protect women’s rights. This has created a pool of resources and experience which the HRC can draw on. Unfortunately, there is not the same depth of resources and experience for men’s human rights.

“Social pressure can cause evidence to pile up on one side of a debate or issue, while evidence on the other side is systematically screened out. A person who looks at the evidence as it is presented, then, will form a warped view of the matter, even if she rationally evaluates the evidence at hand. I will suggest that whenever there exists social pressure to conceal evidence on one side of a topic, we should suspect that a (possibly dangerous) blind spot is lurking somewhere, due to this mechanism. The catch, and it is a big catch, is that the blind spot will not be recognizable by people who simply look at the evidence as it is presented. They will be unaware that their view of the world is distorted.”

- Hrishikesh Joshi

During the recent UPR-Info mid-term reporting webinar the HRC representative acknowledged that it is easier to advocate for certain groups because their human rights issues are well established.

Gender equality means equality between men and women. In an environment where almost all of the resources for gender equality are focused on women, the term has, in practice, become a synonym for “women’s empowerment”. This is noted by Bates and Baker.

For example,

The United Nations entity for gender equality is UN Women
The Sustainable Development Goal for gender equality only mentions women and girls.
The WEF Gender Gap Index explicitly ignores men’s inequalities.50

The result is men’s inequalities are not considered ‘gender equality’ issues.

Using the term ‘gender equality’ but only focusing on women is an example, of structural discrimination [that refers] to “inclusion in principle, through use of encompassing and inclusive speech, together with a resource-based exclusion supporting disparity in fact.”[HRC 2012]51

Demonstrable bias in the wider system

Neglect of men and boys rights has been identified in the wider human rights ecosystem. For example:

“Some adults are in deep denial of the gender issue when boys are at the losing end of the disparities. ….Sad to say, there is outright sex discrimination against boys in the [Children’s Rights] Movement.” [UN 2019]

Despite the grave and widespread nature of sexual violence against men and boys, the current international human rights framework is inadequate for addressing this problem. … No human rights instruments explicitly address sexual violence against men. [Stemple 2009]

The results show men’s issues are given less attention than women’s issues by the UN and WHO. … Therefore, the observed differences could have two possible explanations: (a) lack of awareness of men’s issues by UN and WHO staff, or (b) bias (conscious or unconscious) against men’s or in favour of women’s issues by UN and WHO staff. [Nuzzo 2020]

My own research found that only 0.1% of Universal Periodic Review recommendations containing gender words like woman/man or female/male are about men’s human rights issues.

Opposition to men’s rights in the human rights system

Universal human rights means that everybody’s rights are viewed on equal terms. When prioritising resources or balancing rights, everyone should be treated as equals and have their needs considered.

However there is scepticism about “men’s rights” in human rights and gender equality communities. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women55 and UN Women56 have noted their concern about men’s rights groups.

Concern seems to be about the actions of advocates rather than with the principle of equal rights for women and men. However, some of the criticism of these groups threaten to undermine that principle.

Flood and Busch argue that men’s rights groups are using the language of ‘equality’ but don’t really mean it. They believe the groups are co-opting progressive language for political goals and are really against gender equality.

That view would allow them to disregard this letter. Rather than a good faith engagement they would see it as an attempt at manipulation for anti-equality goals.

Everyone should be able to advocate for their rights. If the belief that men’s rights advocates are not acting in good faith is widely believed in the human rights system, then how do men advocate for their rights? Can the men rely on the human rights system to protect their rights if the system does not believe them?

Explicit opposition in the wider human rights system

A zero-sum approach to gender equality leads some organisations are explicitly opposed to men’s rights. For example, the “50/50 by 2030 Foundation”, a gender parity initiative at the University of Canberra, sees egalitarian values and including men’s rights in public discussion as a problem for ‘gender equality’.

The moderate perspective combines an egalitarian set of views around gender equality in the workplace and at home, … as well as a strong desire to see men’s rights equally represented in public discussion of equality issues. Given that 62 per cent of Australians align with the moderate position, and its value system this represents a significant barrier to gender equality

ShoutoutsToSimple · 2022-04-09T03:32:36+00:00

Yes, it's true. I've said that quite often. The biggest form of sexism is the idea that only one sex can be the victim of it. The men's rights issue I care about the most is the meta-issue, which is getting society to even acknowledge that men have issues worth fighting for, and that it's not misogyny to care about men.

Title	Showerthought: "The lack of recognition of Men's Issues" is the most central Men's Issue.
Author	shit-zen-giggles
Upvotes	101
Comments	28
Date	April 7, 2022 7:36 PM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/comments/tykwdl/showerthought_the_lack_of_recognition_of_mens/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates/showerthought-the-lack-of-recognition-of-mens.1210250 https://theredarchive.com/post/1210250

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