The men's rights movement (MRM) or men's rights activism (MRA) movement is a branch of the men's movement that diverged from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s. Men's rights activists (MRAs) focus on social issues such as the provision of government services, which they say adversely impact, or in some cases, structurally discriminate against men and boys. Common topics of discussion include family law, such as child custody, alimony and marital property distribution; reproduction; suicide; domestic violence against men; false accusations of rape; circumcision; education; conscription; social safety nets; and health policies.
Many scholars describe the movement or parts of the movement as a backlash against feminism. Sectors of the men's rights movement have been described by scholars and commentators as misogynistic, hateful, and, in some cases, as advocating violence against women. In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center categorized some men's rights groups as being part of a hate ideology under the umbrella of male supremacy while stating that others "focused on legitimate grievances". UN Women has listed movements encompassing "men's rights" among anti-rights movements that frame equality for women and LGBTQ+ people as a threat.
History Forerunners The term "men's rights" was used at least as early as February 1856 when it appeared in Putnam's Magazine. The author was responding to the issue of women's rights, calling it a "new movement for social reform, and even for political revolution", which the author proposed to counter with men's rights. Ernest Belfort Bax wrote The Legal Subjection of Men in 1896, deriding the women's rights movement as a farcical effort by women—the "privileged sex"—to prove they were "oppressed."
Three loosely connected men's rights organizations formed in Austria in the interwar period. The League for Men's Rights was founded in 1926 with the goal of "combating all excesses of women's emancipation". In 1927, the Justitia League for Family Law Reform and the Aequitas World's League for the Rights of Men split from the League of Men's Rights. The three men's rights groups opposed women's entry into the labor market and what they saw as the corrosive influence of the women's movement on social and legal institutions. They criticized marriage and family laws, especially the requirement to pay spousal and child support to former wives and illegitimate children, and supported the use of blood tests to determine paternity. Justitia and Aequitas issued their own short-lived journals Men's Rightists Newspaper and Self-Defense where they expressed their views that were heavily influenced by the works of Heinrich Schurtz, Otto Weininger, and Jörg Lanz von Liebenfels. The organizations ceased to exist before 1939.
Split from men's liberation movement
The modern men's rights movement emerged from the men's liberation movement, which appeared in the first half of the 1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. These scholars acknowledged men's institutionalized power while critically examining the consequences of hegemonic masculinity, believing that both men and women suffered in a patriarchal society. The men's liberation movement was led by psychologists who argued that femininity and masculinity were socially formed behaviors and not the result of genes. They tried to balance the two ideas that men were responsible for oppressing women, but also being oppressed themselves by strict gender roles. In the mid-1970s, this movement began to focus on the oppression of men and less on the effects of sexism on women. In the late 1970s, the movement split into two separate strands with opposing views: the pro-feminist men's movement and the anti-feminist men's rights movement, which sees men as an oppressed group.In the 1980s, the men's rights movement focused only on the ways that sex roles discriminated against males rather than the oppression it inflicted on both genders. Author Herb Goldberg claimed that the U.S. was a "matriarchal society" because women have the power to transgress gender roles and assume masculine and feminine roles, while males are still constrained to the purely masculine role. Reneé Blank and Sandra Slipp in 1994 compiled the testimonies of men who believed they were discriminated against based on their sex and race. This occurred at a time when women were entering the workforce and obtaining managerial positions.In the 1980s and 1990s, men's rights activists opposed societal changes sought by feminists and defended the patriarchal gender order in the family, schools and the workplace. Sociologist Michael Kimmel states that their earlier critiques of gender roles "morphed into a celebration of all things masculine and a near infatuation with the traditional masculine role itself".
Organizations One of the first major men's rights organizations was the Coalition of American Divorce Reform Elements, founded by Richard Doyle in 1971, from which the Men's Rights Association spun off in 1973. Free Men Inc. was founded in 1977 in Columbia, Maryland, spawning several chapters over the following years, which eventually merged to form the National Coalition of Free Men (known since 2008 as the National Coalition for Men). Men's Rights, Inc. was also formed in 1977, the National Organization for Men was founded in 1983, and Fathers and Families was formed in 1994. In the United Kingdom, a men's rights group calling itself the UK Men's Movement began to organize in the early 1990s. The Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) was founded in 2005, and in 2010 claimed to have over 30,000 members.
Men's rights groups have formed in some European countries during periods of shifts toward conservatism and policies supporting patriarchal family and gender relations. In the United States, the men's rights movement has ideological ties to neoconservatism. Men's rights activists have received lobbying support from conservative organizations and their arguments have been covered extensively in neoconservative media.
Fringe political parties focusing on men's rights have been formed including, but not limited to, the Australian Non-Custodial Parents Party (Equal Parenting), the Israeli Man's Rights in the Family Party, and the Justice for Men and Boys party in the UK.
Online presence
The men's rights movement has become more vocal and more organized since the development of the Internet, where activists tend to congregate. Men's rights websites and forums have proliferated within the online manosphere. While some of the groups have adversarial relationships with one another, they tend to be united in their misogyny, promotion of masculinity, and opposition to feminism.
Men's rights proponents often use the red pill and blue pill metaphor from the film The Matrix to identify each other online; those who accept the idea that men are the oppressed victims of a misandrist society are said to have "taken the red pill". Paul Elam's site A Voice for Men (AVFM) functions as a central point of discussion and organization for men's rights issues. Other sites dedicated to men's rights are Fathers [sic] Rights Foundation, MGTOW.com (Men Going Their Own Way), and several Reddit forums such as /r/MensRights and /r/TheRedPill.
Ideology Many scholars consider the men's rights movement a backlash or countermovement to feminism. The men's rights movement generally incorporates points of view that reject feminist and profeminist ideas. Men's rights activists (MRAs) say feminism has surpassed its original goals and is now harming men. MRAs believe that men are victims of feminism and "feminizing" influences in society, and that entities such as public institutions now discriminate against men.
Men's rights activists argue that society has historically benefited women and femininity at the expense of men, an idea termed gynocentrism. MRAs believe that patriarchy is a feminist myth and that feminism creates unfair advantages for women, causing men to become a disadvantaged group. They argue that men are not only oppressed, but also degraded and vilified; this idea of misandry or hatred of men is commonly used by MRAs to dispute feminist accusations of misogyny. Feminism is portrayed as having degenerated from its original purpose as a movement for basic equality into an outlet for vindictive, irrational women to gain power and express their hatred of men.
MRAs dispute that men as a group have institutional power and privilege and believe that men are victimized relative to women, including in regard to what had been considered feminist concerns, such as domestic violence, pornography, prostitution, and sexism in mass media. The movement is divided between those who consider sexism equally harmful to both men and women and those who view men as disadvantaged relative to women, who benefit from "female privilege". [Emphasis in original]
Men's rights groups generally reject the notion that feminism is interested in men's problems, and some men's rights activists have viewed the women's movement as a plot to deliberately conceal discrimination against men and promote gynocentrism. Warren Farrell and Herb Goldberg have argued that women hold the true power in society through their roles as the primary caregivers of children, and that male power is an illusion.
Sociologist Michael Messner states that the early men's rights movement "appropriates the symmetrical language of sex roles" first used by feminists, which implies a false balance of institutional power between men and women. Masculinities scholar Jonathan A. Allan describes the men's rights movement as a reactionary movement that is defined by its opposition to women and feminism but has not yet formulated its own theories and methodologies outside of antifeminism.
Topics Men's rights activists claim that men experience gender discrimination in various areas of society, including child custody cases, domestic violence, health, and education. Some, if not all, men's rights issues stem from gender roles and, according to sociologist Allan G. Johnson, patriarchy.
Anti-dowry laws Men's rights organizations such as Save Indian Family Foundation (SIFF) say that women misuse legislation meant to protect them from dowry death and bride burnings. SIFF is a men's rights organization in India that focuses on abuse of anti-dowry laws against men. SIFF has campaigned to abolish Section 498A of the Indian Penal Code, which penalizes cruelty by husbands (and the husband's family) in pursuit of dowry or for driving a wife to suicide. SIFF states anti-dowry laws are regularly being abused to settle petty disputes in marriage and that they regularly receive calls from many men who allege their wives have used false dowry claims to imprison them.
Fathers' rights
A prominent area of concern of the men's rights movement in Western countries has been the issue of fathers' rights. Fathers' rights campaigners advocate for greater influence of fathers in the lives of children, especially after divorce. Sociologists Melissa Blais and Francis Dupuis-Déri have identified fathers' rights as the main area for recruitment into the men's rights movement as a whole.
Men's rights advocates argue that family law and family courts are biased against fathers, especially in regards to child custody. They believe that men do not have the same contact rights or equitable shared parenting rights as their ex-spouse and use statistics on custody awards as evidence of judicial bias against men. Conversely, sociologist Michael Flood argues that fathers' lack of involvement with their children before separation plays a larger role in obstructing their access to children after divorce. Cited in