Dear Editor,
As a men’s rights organization, we respectfully disagree with Isabelle Novak’s position that men are not discriminated against (“Complaining for our rights,” 10/27/11), and we invite students to consider just a few examples, with supporting sources:
College sports
The College Sports Council has recently spoken out about the NCAA’s rampant discrimination against men in sports scholarships.
And Title IX has caused countless men’s teams to be cut to “equalize” the gender ratio even in sports where women show far less interest in certain sports than men.
Criminal law
Men get higher criminal sentences than women for the same crime, including non-accomplice crimes, even when all other factors (age, race, priors, family situation, etc.) are accounted for.
The gender of the victim matters too. Drunk drivers on average receive a 3-year higher sentence for killing a female than for killing a male. (“Unconventional Wisdom,” Washington Post, Sept. 7, 2000.)
Some states still prosecute only males for sex between minors who are close in age.
A judge in Queens, New York recently slammed the Probation Department for discrimination against males.
Fathers
Fathers have historically been denied equal parenting rights. The 18th Century “tender years” doctrine, which automatically gave young kids to mothers, was later replaced with gender-neutral language, but the discrimination still continues. As late as 1971, the Minnesota State Bar Association’s handbook advised lawyers and judges not to give custody to fathers.
Today fathers ask for 50% custody while mothers ask for and get 80% custody, and fathers become visitors and wallets.
The European Court of Human Rights recently intervened on behalf of unmarried dads in Germany who are given no custody rights.
Similar laws exist in Japan, Ireland and elsewhere.
Forced Labor and Military Conscription
For years, the Forced Labour Convention of 1930 exempted “able-bodied males” between ages 18 and 45 from the ban on slavery and forced labor. Article 11 at http://www.ilo.org/ilolex/cgi-lex/convde.pl?C029 Although the exemption was eventually eliminated, Article 2 still exempts prisoners and soldiers (90+% male).
And to this day male slaves are frequently ignored by human rights laws and policies.
For example, male slaves in China have had trouble getting their slavemasters prosecuted because only women were protected from slavery.
Males throughout the world are still forced to fight wars that the elite create, including males as young as six years old. A large percentage of men in the U.S. were drafted before they were old enough to vote.
People who respond by saying “men make war” are the same ones who find it sexist to say men make science, medicine, etc. The fact is that women leaders have declared war, and women have supported wars at almost the same rate as men. For example, 76% of women and 86% of men supported the U.S. invasion in the Gulf War. http://articles.latimes.com/1991-01-19/news/mn-171_1_times-poll And in his book, “War and Gender,” Joshua Goldstein documents how women have actively encouraged military adventurism, both in modern and indigenous societies, and that in the face of imminent conflict, women goad their men into combat.
Male Victims of Domestic Violence, rape and sexual assault
Male victims of domestic violence have been seriously discriminated against. Although men report it less, which makes crime data unreliable, approximately 300 randomized surveys worldwide confirm that women initiate domestic violence at least as often as men and that men suffer one-third of physical injuries.
For example, a 32-nation study by the University of New Hampshire found women are as violent and as controlling as men in dating relationships worldwide.
But many government-funded DV programs still discriminate against male victims. For example, in California, male victims had to sue the state to overturn the discriminatory laws that excluded male victims from state-funded services.
In Australia and the UK, the government had to revoke funding from DV shelters for refusing to help male victims.
The Violence Against Women Act explicitly excludes American Indian men and implicitly excludes all other men by its very title and implementation. We don’t have a “Men’s Occupational Safety and Health Act” just even though 92% of job deaths happen to men.
Rapes of males frequently occur in the form of statutory rape, and not just by other males. A student survey in New Mexico found 43% of teacher sex abuse comes from female teachers but over 90% of prosecutions are of male teachers.
A large study in Canada found high rates of homeless kids being molested, with 3/4 of the molestations of boys being by adult women, but there were still no programs for the boys, only for girls.
We invite students to view our website for information on men’s rights issues that are seriously neglected in academia, media, and government.
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