I do, in fact, support equality for everyone, regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status, religion, etc. However, you are very selectively choosing facts to draw a picture in which men "have the same amount of gender equality issues (maybe even more) than women".
Sorry, but you are severely mistaken regarding the relevance of history. It is of primary relevance, because without properly understanding how we arrived at this point in history, you couldn't possibly evaluate the actual scale of gender disparities in social relations.
The percentage of male rulers as a total percentage of the human population is not a valid metric. When you study history, and the impact of rulers, you evaluate their impact on the subject population, the society and culture, as well as the world around them. History, because it is ever so relevant, shows a rather stable trend in which one can chart the increases in social inequalities in favor of one gender at the expense of another, or of one (or more) ethnicities at the expense of others, etc. So far, we are looking at about a century of social justice being established to improve the standing of women in relation to their historical subjection by men.
Once you have an adequate grounding in history, you can then start thinking philosophically through how best to proceed without retarding equality. While there are, of course, contemporary social imbalances and inequalities where men are concerned, what we do not need is more gendered lines being drawn in the sand. Moreover, we do not have a social structure in which men's labor and sexual faculties are institutionalized in a form that is under female control, which would be a huge red flag that the pendulum has swung too far.
One can advance equality and be vigilant against sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry and discriminatory behaviors without resorting to more of this us vs. them bullshit that "men's rights" evokes. But understanding the root causes of inequalities--as opposed to merely pointing out instances of what appears to be inequality--is where the real work lies. Not a masculinism cult that establishes its identity as the negation of feminism.
In sum, a "men's rights" movement is not going to increase equality, because it is only going to codify more gendered division in the social fabric. If you're really interested in enhancing equality as a social good, you would do better to champion the cause of equality that is blind to biological and socioeconomic factors, and works instead to specifically eschew attempting to define equality as inversion of a movement whose existence required the specificity of gender because history had only ever concerned itself with the rights of man.
>But understanding the root causes of inequalities--as opposed to merely pointing out instances of what appears to be inequality--is where the real work lies.
No, the real work is in removing inequalities. Talking about "root causes" of inequalities is only a method by which one denigrates the actual fight against inequality itself. There are countless deep and abiding inequalities which one can argue back and forth indefinitely about their origins, and this is especially true in questions of gendered inequality. Is this, that, or the other thing responsible? Here's an idea: who gives a shit? I no longer do.
For example, take the issue which finally broke my ability to take feminism: male rape victimization. Where does the purposeful ignoring of male rape victims come from? Feminists (when they admit that male rape victims exist in substantial quantities and deserve to be mentioned) would argue that the gender system produced by the Patriarchy refuses to recognize men as potential victims because that would feminize them and weaken their social position. Men's Rights Activists would argue that it is because our society systematically refuses to recognize male victimhood, period. I think the latter is a better position to take. The simplest explanation is best, and the solution is far clearer: stop that.
>If you're really interested in enhancing equality as a social good, you would do better to champion the cause of equality that is blind to biological and socioeconomic factors
There are issues that require a specificity of gender because they affect a specific gender. Discussing the development of a growth mindset in mathematics does require some discussion of gender because women and girls are much less likely to be encouraged to develop a growth mindset. Discussing rape certainly requires discussion of gender, since rape is considered as a gendered crime and the sex of the perpetrator and victim hugely affect how it is perceived. Discussion of virtually every single issue that the MRM touches upon requires a discussion of gender since they are about gender. When cops choose to apply different standards to men and women, you have to look at gender. Paternity fraud requires that one look at sex in order to be discussed because it only directly affects one. There are times and places where pretending that everything is solved is the optimal solution to a given problem; there are also times and places where it is not.
The idea that one should ignore socioeconomic and biological factors in championing the cause of equality is systematically wrong. Sometimes people suffer specifically because they are men. Sometimes they suffer specifically because they are women. You have to discuss this or you might as well not discuss anything at all.
"However, you are very selectively choosing facts to draw a picture in which men "have the same amount of gender equality issues (maybe even more) than women"."
I'm not, really. Feminist discourse is based on the claim that women have more gender issues. They never really argue for that position. I've linked a list of gender equality issues (though my primary source is unfortunately not in English).
"It is of primary relevance, because without properly understanding how we arrived at this point in history, you couldn't possibly evaluate the actual scale of gender disparities in social relations."
Yes you can. We can look at metrics for gender issues: e.g. do women get paid less or more (they get paid the same per hour), do women get raped more than men (not in USA), is the majority of violence made against women (it's about 50:50). It doesn't matter if women were discriminated against more in the past, if empirical evidence shows that they're not.
"what we do not need is more gendered lines being drawn in the sand."
Agree. Many men's rights activists agree on that point, and are against gender roles that hurt both men and women.
"Moreover, we do not have a social structure in which men's labor and sexual faculties are institutionalized in a form that is under female control, which would be a huge red flag that the pendulum has swung too far."
Your sentence implies that men's labor and sexual faculties are under male control, that's not true. Women decide who wins the elctions - majority of voters are women: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20231337
"One can advance equality and be vigilant against sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry and discriminatory behaviors without resorting to more of this us vs. them bullshit that "men's rights" evokes."
That would argue that we only need men's rights movement, not a women's rights movement. Since the women's rights movement doesn't concern men's rights, we need a men's rights movement.
The biggest feminist organizations do not accept me as a member because of my gender. Their organization discriminates on the basis of gender. That's not equality. I cannot take part in the women's rights movement because of my gender. That's why we need a men's rights movement - so that men's gender equality problems are also taken care of. Currently 90% of the gender equality resources in politics is used for women's rights. That number should be 50%.
"In sum, a "men's rights" movement is not going to increase equality, because it is only going to codify more gendered division in the social fabric."
You make the implicit claim that men's rights movement is for gender roles. That's not true. In addition, you can use your own argument against women's rights movement, as it 'codifices a gendered division'.
"If you're really interested in enhancing equality as a social good,"
I'm really interestd in equality, and men's rights is the most important movement in recent years. Almost nobody used to talk about gender equality issues concerning men. In recent years, after the men's rights movement was formed, there have been small mentions of men's rights in official statements in the country I live in. Without a men's rights movement all the gender equality policy would say would be about women. Therefore, it's pretty clear that the men's rights movement increases equality.
I cannot link sources because they're not in English, but it used to be that only representatives from women's rights organizations were given representation in the official gender equality council of my country. They only talked about women's rights. Now a few seats have been given to the representatives of the men's rights movement.
The link you provide in the original comment is for violent crimes (including rape), not for rape alone. There is little doubt that women are more likely to be raped in the US than men.
"In January, prodded in part by outrage over a series of articles in the New York Review of Books, the Justice Department finally released an estimate of the prevalence of sexual abuse in penitentiaries. The reliance on filed complaints appeared to understate the problem. For 2008, for example, the government had previously tallied 935 confirmed instances of sexual abuse. After asking around, and performing some calculations, the Justice Department came up with a new number: 216,000. That’s 216,000 victims, not instances. These victims are often assaulted multiple times over the course of the year. The Justice Department now seems to be saying that prison rape accounted for the majority of all rapes committed in the US in 2008, likely making the United States the first country in the history of the world to count more rapes for men than for women."
Rapes inside of prison are almost all male on male, and there is evidence suggesting that the numbers of such are comparable to and may exceed rapes outside of prison. So it is not impossible that the majority of rape victims in the USA are men.
True, however, the vast majority of rapes of women are by men, and the vast majority of rapes of men are by men.
It's not like the issue of men being raped is predominantly due to women, whereas the issue of women being raped is predominantly due to men.
I also wonder if all the 'alpha male' bullshit might actually be a detrimental influence on prison rape, since it so clearly reinforces and mimics the sort of hierarchy that exists among men in prisons.
""Rape" is defined as forced sexual intercourse in which the victim may be either male or female and the offender may be of a different sex or the same sex as the victim. Victims must be at least 12 years old; victims less than age 12 are excluded from all estimates. Includes attempts and threats to commit rape."
>"Overall, an estimated 91% of the victims of rape and sexual assault were female." //
It may not change the ratio but of course one must remember that is "victims of rape and sexual assaults that were reported and recorded as such".
The study linked, (text version http://bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/SOO.TXT) says only a third of the rapes reported to them were reported to police and in my cursory glance I couldn't see how many of those reported led to a conviction and how many led to a dismissal of charges, etc..
However I did notice this:
"In 1994 victims reported about 1 rape/sexual assault
victimization of a female victim for every 270 females in the
general population; for males, the rate was substantially lower,
with about 1 rape/sexual assault of a male victim for every
5,000 male residents age 12 or older."
It's often joked on certain forums, eg reddit, that men who're incarcerated are likely to suffer rape (I'd guess women do too but the jokes are always concerning men it seems). I wonder how true that is and how well these figures reflect those crimes.
Men are less likely to report sexual assault and rape against them than women are, for a number of reasons. One being that rape is defined as being penetrated against your will, and not being made to penetrate against your will.
Any study that counts convictions, or even complaints, it going to underestimate male victimhood.
You need to look at victim surveys to have any hope of estimating how many man are raped, and how many women rape.
See my other post in this thread for details on that.
Women are 50% of rape victims, and 40% of rapists. That is in the general population and excludes prison rape. If you included that, men would be the majority of victims.
These figures are from the CDC's 2010 NISVS (National Intimiate Partner Sexual Violence Survey), although you won't find it in the executive summary. You have to look at the data tables. Here is a link to the NISVS: http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/nisvs/specialreports.h...
The executive summary tells the usual story of rape being a male on female crime. There are 2 problems here. One is that they define rape as being penetrated against your will, and not being forced to penetrate (what a female rapist would do to a man). This erases female on male rape.
However, they did ask men if they had been forced to penetrate in the prior 12 months, and 1.1% of men surveyed reported that they had, and 80% of those had been attacked by a woman. 1.1% of women reported that they had been penetrated against their will in the prior 12 months, and 98% of those reported a male attacker.
So we have 50% of victims are male and 50% female. Of the 50% of male victims, 80%, or 40% of total victims, were raped by a woman.
So women are 40% of rapists. Here is a image of the data tables from the NISVS, with the relevant figured circled: http://imgur.com/a/aw0eU
Earlier I said there were 2 problems with the executive summary. The second one is that the CDC looked at lifetime victimization, and prior 12 months victimization. Their figures for men as victims of rape (when you include being made to penetrate) are much lower than for women. In the executive summary, they use the lifetime stats to show women as the overwhelming majority of victims, and don't mention the prior 12 month numbers.
Why the disparity between lifetime victimization and prior 12 month? Lifetime stats will tend to underestimate the problem, because, over time, people tend to erase their memory of traumatic events as a survival mechanism.
From the analysis I linked above:
>Researchers into the field of traumatic memory recovery note that the longer the period of time a person is asked recall a traumatic event, the less likely they are to remember it. How this works is that surveys that ask about a traumatic event in the last six months get less false negatives than those that ask about a traumatic event in the last twelve months which, itself, gets considerably fewer false negatives than lifetime prevalence.
> For men this effect is even more pronounced.
>
> 16% of men with documented cases of sexual abuse considered their early childhood experiences sexual abuse, compared with 64% of women with documented cases of sexual abuse. These gender differences may reflect inadequate measurement techniques or an unwillingness on the part of men to disclose this information (Widom and Morris 1997).
>
>Only 16% of men with documented case histories of child sexual abuse disclosed that abuse on a survey intended to capture child sexual abuse. Sixteen percent of men compared to sixty-four percent of women.
>
>That amounts to a disclosure rate of child sexual abuse four times higher in women than in men.
>
>Is it any wonder that the CDC’s 2010 survey (correcting for their mis-categorization of female-on-male rape) found that 18.3% of women and 6.2% of men were victimized over their lifetimes?
Sorry, but you are severely mistaken regarding the relevance of history. It is of primary relevance, because without properly understanding how we arrived at this point in history, you couldn't possibly evaluate the actual scale of gender disparities in social relations.
The percentage of male rulers as a total percentage of the human population is not a valid metric. When you study history, and the impact of rulers, you evaluate their impact on the subject population, the society and culture, as well as the world around them. History, because it is ever so relevant, shows a rather stable trend in which one can chart the increases in social inequalities in favor of one gender at the expense of another, or of one (or more) ethnicities at the expense of others, etc. So far, we are looking at about a century of social justice being established to improve the standing of women in relation to their historical subjection by men.
Once you have an adequate grounding in history, you can then start thinking philosophically through how best to proceed without retarding equality. While there are, of course, contemporary social imbalances and inequalities where men are concerned, what we do not need is more gendered lines being drawn in the sand. Moreover, we do not have a social structure in which men's labor and sexual faculties are institutionalized in a form that is under female control, which would be a huge red flag that the pendulum has swung too far.
One can advance equality and be vigilant against sexism, racism, and other forms of bigotry and discriminatory behaviors without resorting to more of this us vs. them bullshit that "men's rights" evokes. But understanding the root causes of inequalities--as opposed to merely pointing out instances of what appears to be inequality--is where the real work lies. Not a masculinism cult that establishes its identity as the negation of feminism.
In sum, a "men's rights" movement is not going to increase equality, because it is only going to codify more gendered division in the social fabric. If you're really interested in enhancing equality as a social good, you would do better to champion the cause of equality that is blind to biological and socioeconomic factors, and works instead to specifically eschew attempting to define equality as inversion of a movement whose existence required the specificity of gender because history had only ever concerned itself with the rights of man.