Articles

Richard Jones on how ‘daddy’s girls’ changed his life.

Richard Jones on de-gendering fathering to become a better parent.

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.

Recently, Phyllis Schlafly authored a public opinion piece on the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) that did a great disservice to over two decades of domestic violence prevention work.

Madison, Wisconsin
United States of America
April 26, 2003

Good evening. I’d like to thank you all for coming out tonight. I’d like to thank the organizers for the opportunity to speak; it’s an opportunity I don’t take lightly, I recognize it as a priviledge, and I will endeavor to keep my comments brief.

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OVERVIEW

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.

Suddenly, the field of gender studies is flooded with books about men and masculinities. It's almost hard to keep up with the titles that land on reviewer's desks and library shelves. From the "early"1980s writings of Vic Seidler, Michael Kimmel, Bob Connell, Michael Messner, among others, the field of gender and masculinity has expanded significantly. As a publisher, Sage has contributed to a growing list on the subject. Michael Messner's work on men's movements was published in the early 90s as part of the Sage gender series while Richard Collier's book on criminality and masculinity appeared in 1998 as a stand alone volume.

Warren Farrell was in a fabulous position to help men address and change masculinity when he wrote his new book, "Women Can't Hear What Men Don't Say: Destroying Myths, Creating Love." (Putnam Publishing Group, 1999. He could have used this book to help men to rewrite the masculine role in a manner that is much healthier and much more rewarding than the manner in which it exists today. However, that is not what he has done. Contrary to the book's subtitle, it has neither destroyed myths nor created love. It has not charted new territory that could ease communication between the sexes. Rather, it has perpetuated existing myths, and created excuses.

Sexual violence is a men’s issue. Men perpetrate the vast majority of sexual assault –
regardless of the gender of the person victimized; men too are victimized, and men are
the significant others (lovers, housemates, sons, classmates, brothers, cousins…) of
women and men who are sexually victimized. In all of these ways, sexual violence is an
issue that men confront. In spite of this, and in spite of the increasing efforts over the
past 20 years to define sexual violence as a men’s issue, men, by and large, continue to
ignore, deny, minimize, and otherwise avoid the issues of sexual violence. Sexual
violence is still conceived of as a “woman’s issue,” and men still make up only a tiny
minority of those present at events addressing sexual assault.