Down in Australia, the government has come out with a new proposal to 'reduce violence against women and children', which not only ignores the significant portion of male victims of domestic violence, but also has called for the creation of laws that are enforceable towards only the male portion of the Australian population. It doesn’t matter to the National Council that over 1/3rd of domestic violence victims are men in Australia, (even more if you count abused boys under the age of 15) nor does it mention that women are the largest portion of child abuse perpetrators. What they are calling for (and I am not sensationalizing this) would literally remove due process and almost all assumption of innocence from men only, in matters of domestic violence and sexual assault. Furthermore, it calls for only women to receive preferred access to domestic violence services, as well as make it very easy to request protection orders against men. No such benefits would exist for men, indeed, their plan completely ignores battered men and battered children.
Tory Shepherd of the Australia opinion publication ‘The Punch’ wrote a piece calling me a Men's Rights Extremist after I wrote several articles questioning not only the basic statistics that the Australian National Council used, but the startling fact that people are so willing to remove the basic human rights of men. She went on to marginalize and ignore the voices of black men, Asian men and Hispanic men (and even women) in the movement, when she made the racist assumption that men’s rights was generally just “angry white men.” Shepherd then made some horribly ignorant and awfully offensive statements, generalizing what she really believes are the views of the men’s rights movement as a whole. I can’t tell you how much Tory’s bigotry bothers me, since I am part of a religious minority and I know damn well that voices from other "minorities" are a huge part of the Men’s Rights Movement. In fact, it was a black man, a person who goes by the handle Krazie316, whose video brought me to the MRM.
I also sent my article to Graham Young, the editor of the news and commentary site Opinion Online, to see if they were interested in letting their readers discuss this situation in Australia. Here is the article I submitted. Young was not very keen on my conclusion which was:
“No victim of domestic violence, whether they are a man or a woman, should be forgotten by society, simply because they are a man or a woman. Not one!”He stated that he disagreed with my conclusions, and that I needed to be more specific. But in February 2011 Young wrote an article touting the equality and greatness of his Online Opinion site:
"On Line Opinion is an open platform for ideas. We have a larger audience than any other Australian opinion site outside the mainstream media because we offer diversity and quality, and because we treat our readers with respect, promoting equality as a core value."Later on in his article, he laments that an unpopular opinion can be harmful to his revenue:
"That advertising income, which helped to sustain both us and a number of the blogs, has just fallen to close to zero, and all because I published this piece by Bill Muehlenberg opposing gay marriage."Well, I am personally in favor of gay marriage, and many other things which are seen as left leaning, so why is he worried about an article on Civil Rights? Is it because any mention of men being discriminated against is seen in society as acceptable, therefore discussion is viewed as controversial? I understand his concern that publishing an article that challenges the corrupt status quo could cost him money, I really do. But at least he doesn't have to get called an extremist, day in and day out, for demanding equal protection under the law.
Young goes on to call my article, which is nothing more than statistics and the opinion that men should receive equal protection under the law and not be systematically discriminated against, a “rant against women.” To this, I was highly offended. (Hell, my wife was highly offended by Graham Young’s statement) This seems like the M.O. of most people who are against equal protection for men; ignore the facts, and accuse MRA’s of some very bad things. Not saying we don’t have a few nut jobs, we do, as every group has their share. However, what was more telling was his statement to me:
”The problem with your article is that this is an area where one has to tread carefully and you’re not treading carefully.”Why is the truth about domestic violence data an area that anyone needs to tread carefully? Here in the United States, domestic violence is perpetrated equally between men and women, yet somehow, people don’t want to hear this information. Why is it that a National Council report on domestic violence, which was sponsored by the Australian government, able to use disingenuous statistics, ignore child abuse data and call for the disenfranchisement of tens of thousands of battered men without so much as peep from almost any media outlets? Why is it that the civil rights of men are less important that the civil rights of women in our society?
Feel free to tell Graham Young and Tory Shepherd what you think about all this. Australian men and boys deserve to know what is about to happen to their civil rights.
Tory Shepherd and Graham Young, this doesn’t have one thing to do with bashing women, this is about viewing men as equals, and as worthy of equal protection under the law. This has to do with the basic premise of civilized society that laws should not be enforceable towards only one segment in society based on a characteristic such as their sex, race or religion. And trust me when I tell you I have firsthand experience of bigotry towards me because of my religion.
This, the MRM, has to do with those men who die each year by the thousands in dangerous jobs, by homicide, by suicide, and those homeless men who sleep on the street because our society has decreed that there is only room at the inn for women. It has to do with agreeing that fathers should have equal rights to their children and deserve fair treatment from the family court system. It has to do with the ugly fact that there are hundreds and hundreds of offices and programs geared toward women only in government, but NOT ONE for men. And this is despite the fact that men are doing very poorly in so many areas. This is not a call to remove the privileges women have; it is a demand for equal and fair treatment in the eyes of the law!
And these biased programs continue to grow, men keep falling further and further behind.
Here are the facts:
Unsheltered Homeless (2009) [1]
Women – 12,000 – 4%
Men – 240,000 – 96%
Life Expectancy (2006) [2]
Women – 80.8 Years
Men – 75.7 Years
Suicides (2008) [3]
Women – 7,585 - 19%
Men – 28,450 - 81%
Deaths by Homicide (2004) [4]
Women – 3,856 – 20%
Men – 14,717 – 80%
Deaths from Cancer (2004) [4]
Women – 269,819
Men – 290,069
Deaths from HIV/AIDS (2004) [4]
Women – 3,357
Men – 8,756
Federal Funds for Sex Specific Cancer Research [5]
Women – Breast Cancer – $631,000,000 - 40,000 Deaths
Men – Prostate Cancer – $300,000,000 - 33,000 Deaths
Deaths on the Job (2010) [6]
Women – 355 - 7%
Men – 4,192 - 93%
Injuries on the Job (2007) [10]
Women – 36%
Men – 64%
College Enrollment (2009) [7]
Women – 58% - 11,658,000
Men – 42% - 8,770,000
Affirmative Action Education Programs (Gender Specific) [8]
Women – Yes
Men – No
Unemployment Rates (2010) [9]
Women – 8.6% – 6,199,000
Men – 10.5% - 8,626,000
Average Hours Worked Per Week (2010) [11]
Women – 36.1
Men – 40.2
High School Graduation Rates (2005) [12]
Women – 72%
Men – 65%
Incarceration Rates (2009) [13]
Women – 114,979 - 7%
Men – 1,502,490 - 93%
Child Custody Rates [14]
Women – 11,268,000 custodial mothers
Men – 2,907,000 custodial fathers
US Military Deaths From 1950 – 2010 [15][16][17]
Women – 139 - 0.01%
Men – 100,063 - 99.9%
Federally Funded Battered Shelters [18]
Women – 2,000+ $300,000,000 per year
Men – None – $0
Federally Funded Health Offices and Research 1970 – Present (not including cancer research) [19]
Women Only – Office, Projects and Programs 70+ – Funds – $100,000,000,000
Men Only – None – $0
Forced Selective Service
Women – No
Men – Yes
Drug and Alcohol Addiction and Abuse Rates (2010) [20]
Women – 5.8%
Men – 12.2%
Yet we are called the extremists, we are called “misogynists” or “neckbeards” for demanding equal protection under the law; we are the bad guys for requesting fair and honest treatment in the eyes of the government and in the eyes of society. It’s acceptable and OK to denigrate men, to chuckle at their genital mutilation and to laugh off the hardships of those men who sleep on the streets or who die every day on the job or through suicide. This has become the norm, standard operating procedure.
Segregation of legal protection in the Southern part of the United States during the early 20th century, through Jim Crow laws, was a horrible display of bigotry and dehumanization, and really showed just how awful some human beings could be towards other human beings. You would have thought we would have learned some lessons from that. All men are not powerful business men, CEO’s, millionaires or politicians. 99% of us struggle to survive every day just like everyone else, and the suffering of men is not somehow less painful than the suffering of women. Suffering doesn’t care about sex or race or religion; and unlike many people, it does not discriminate on such superficial things. When will it become acceptable for society to view men as human beings who suffer too?
That’s why this Men’s Rights Movement is a Civil Rights movement, and nothing less – and I do not plan to tread lightly.
