Men's & fathers' rights

Andrew Tate is an example of a new wave of explicitly sexist, anti-feminist, and misogynist male social influencers. These notes explain his popularity, identify the harmful impacts of his male supremacist teachings on girls and women and men and boys, and identify key strategies for preventing and reducing his impact.

Most allegations of domestic and sexual violence are made in good faith. False allegations are rare. Robust studies of reports made to police find that the prevalence of false allegations of sexual assault is between 2% and 10%.

1. You have no problem with the gender wage gap. But you hate having to pay for dates.
2. You insist that it’s a scientifically proven fact that men are stronger than women. But you complain about society believing that it’s worse for a man to hit a woman than for a woman to hit a man.

This report was commissioned by Oxfam to examine the ways in which varying narratives and tropes of masculinity and femininity have both shaped and been used by the far-right in its mobilization of support and polarization of debate. It follows the academic literature in identifying ethnonationalism as the unifying ideology of a heterogeneous political tendency that can be collectively referred to as the “far-right”.

There are various claims made by men’s rights advocates (MRAs) that have no basis in truth. They are ‘factoids’, items of unreliable or false information that are reported and repeated so often that they become accepted as fact. On this page, we fact-check some of the inaccurate claims routinely made by MRAs. Additions and revisions are welcome.

Male supremacist “men’s rights” and “fathers’ rights” groups have been calling for things like a “Ministry for Men” or “Office for Men” for years.

Men’s rights advocates (MRAs) often argue that feminism portrays women as always and ever oppressed, and thus *makes* women into victims. Related to this, MRAs argue that feminist beliefs are harmful for women themselves. However, the actual evidence is that having feminist beliefs and/or a feminist identity is good for women, and that having feminist beliefs or a feminist identity has a range of positive benefits.

What are the links between masculinity, anti-feminist men’s rights, and the alt-right? There is growing recognition that far-right and white nationalist movements and ideologies are shaped by gender, and particularly by patriarchal masculinity, and that there are ideological and practical connections between far-right and ‘men’s rights’ networks and ideologies. In this XY collection, we have pulled together some recent commentaries on this. The articles are linked below. Additions are welcome.

Efforts to promote gender equality and violence prevention in workplaces and organisations often meet resistance. Resistance takes a variety of forms, from denial of the problem, to inaction, to victim-blaming, to outright attack. How should we respond to resistance and backlash? And, how can we make resistance less likely in the first place?

Across the globe, violence prevention initiatives focused on men and boys are proliferating rapidly. The new book Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention highlights effective and innovative strategies for the primary prevention of domestic violence, sexual violence, and other forms of harassment and abuse. It combines research on gender, masculinities, and violence with case studies from a wide variety of countries and settings.