While separated fathers often feel profound distress because of separation and loss of contact with children, the fathers' rights movement does little to help them heal. In fact, fathers' rights groups harm fathers' ongoing relationships with their children and fail to tackle the real obstacles to involved parenting.
Michael Flood
The fathers’ rights movement is defined by the claim that fathers are deprived of their ‘rights’ and subjected to systematic discrimination as men and fathers, in a system biased towards women and dominated by feminists. Fathers’ rights groups overlap with men’s rights groups and both represent an organised backlash to feminism. Fathers’ rights and men’s rights groups can be seen as the anti-feminist wing of the men’s movement, the network of men’s groups and organisations mobilised on gender issues.
Please see below for the attachment, in Word.
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As men become increasingly aware of their experience as men, they are acknowledging the ways in which men are limited by the dominant construction of masculinity. But some men take this much further, claiming the status of victim and alleging that men's power is a myth. Warren Farrell is one such man.
This 3-page handout provides an overview of key statistics on violence against women in Australia. Please see below for the attachment, in Word.
Here is a handy one-page handout on key resources. Please see below for the attachment, in Word.
Michael Flood reviews what works and doesn't work in violence prevention education with men, focusing on educational strategies which are face-to-face. See below for the attachment, in PDF.
Drawing on the Personal Safety Survey (PSS), I address four points. First, PSS data suggest that rates of violence against women in Australia have declined. Second, the PSS shows that there are high rates of violence against males, and there is a striking contrast in women’s and men’s experiences of violence. Third, PSS data may be (mis)used to claim that one-quarter of the victims of domestic violence are men. Finally, I examine the limits of the PSS’s definitions and measurements of violence, and the constraints they impose on our claims about the extent of domestic violence against women and women’s versus men’s subjection to domestic violence.
See below for this article, in PDF.
Michael Flood examines boys’ and young men’s consumption of sexually explicit media. He argues that boys’ use particularly of internet pornography, combined with the wider pornographication of popular culture, is exacerbating violence-supportive social norms and intensifying some boys’ participation in sexual abuse. See the attachments below (in PDF) for the text and Powerpoint of Michael's presentation.
Should men be included in programming and policy related to gender, and, if so, how can male inclusion be made most beneficial? Michael Flood provides an overview, in this piece published in the Development Bulletin, No. 64, March 2004. Please see the attachment below in PDF.