Really? we think that "that organisation" are representative of fathers in general? really?

And speaking as someone whose life was utterly destroyed by divorce (at my mothers instigation), I wouldn't be doing high fives at the news that women instigate most divorces, either.

Yes look at how punished women are by becoming single parents - the stigma, the poverty, the implications that we're unfit partners and parents.

And yet still women prefer to do that, than carry on living with bad men.

It's not men who are opting out of marriage. It's women, once they realise what it offers them versus what it offers men.

Can you point to where I said the MRA's were a good thing?

and funnily enough i don't think women see the pinnacle of freedom as being able to escape domestic violence and abuse ffs. we'd like to see a world where dv didn't happen and a woman could be safe in her own home and relationships between men and women were equally fulfilling and beneficial so that we didn't need to be getting divorced on masse and then overcoming all the obstacles put in the way of single mothers trying to get on with life.

sigmund they do against the odds and they are punished for doing so by greater economic hardship for example. and they're constantly having their ability to make those choices challenged and eroded.

take abortion - a battle won right? no. constantly under attack by those who'd like to take back those rights of a woman to make choices about her own body.

and yy to why would they need to be fighting feminism??? fight for what it is they think they are missing - shelters apparently are needed, paternity leave, flexible working hours, etc.

feminists aren't fighting men they're fighting misogyny and discrimination against women.

yet you acknowledge the mra movement is just about men getting together on the internet to fight with feminists? and that's a good thing?

'As single status has become more acceptable, more and more women are rejecting marriage and women are the primary instigators of divorce.'

All these women making their own choices, who'd have thought it? With the patriarchy being so pervasive and all. Maybe we ought to have a quick word with the patriarchy because it's failing in it's mission to keep all women oppressed.

You really are missing my point, but then I knew you would.

i must be living in an alternate universe - i'm not aware of a time or a country where the government has seen women as more important than men.

and feminism doesn't alienate 50% of the population - it only alienates those who'd like to see the power imbalance continue in their favour. which is kind of handy for sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Are you serious?

As single status has become more acceptable, more and more women are rejecting marriage and women are the primary instigators of divorce.

Men (as a group) have always protected their interests with a greater zeal than feminists have ever been able to muster because men have the sanction of the state behind them. Men have been able to rape and abuse with impunity up until very recently. They fought hard against giving women the vote and property rights. To compare the protests made by feminists to that is breathtakingly ridiculous.

I like men. I just don't like fuckwits. Funnily enough, I know lots of men who think rape is wrong, abuse is wrong, non-payment of maintenance is wrong, etc and they would all be appalled to be associated with the MRA movement.

Like I said much earlier in this discussion, I have a lot of sympathy with the men who want to play a more active role in their children's lives and are prevented from doing so. I would not deny that they exist and I can see why they would want to do something about it. I really can. But the way to do that is to campaign for greater involvement of men in family life before separation is even considered, because the more men who are primary or equal carers before separation, the more men will have this status after separation.

Men need to campaign for more paternity rights, more flexible working patterns, more DV shelters for men, etc. They do not need to do this by fighting back against hard-won female rights; they simply need to advance their own cause.

The MRA's voices are starting to sound strangely like RadFeminists in reverse. Far from alerting men to the injustices women face, all you're doing is alienating men who are sick and tired of being blamed for all the wrongs in society.

I can see their point, although I'm not particularly pro MRA. I think your approach, whilst you are correct that women suffer more injustices than men, only serves to create a gender divide. You may of course, gain the support of some men, but they're in the minority.

Feminism may claim not to be anti-male, but it certainly comes across as just that. This isn't helpful on any level.

Men will probably never form a cohesive group in the same way that women do, they just don't seem to think that way. So they will continue to 'whine' but never get anywhere.

What they ARE adept at, is reaching out to each other via the internet, which they seem to be doing in very large numbers. MRA's are growing, and while they're not forming visible groups, they are waging their own private wars against feminism.

This means that visibly, feminists will be winning the war, and governments will continue to see women issues as more important. Behind the scenes though there will be a large group of primarily voiceless men, who are refusing to get married and have children.

Which has massive implications for society, when our daughters struggle to find a man who will be prepared to father their children, and society is filled with large numbers of angry men, who have decided to approach men's rights with the same zeal as feminists

It's never a good idea to have a movement that excludes half of society, and I don't see how equality will ever be achieved that way.

For me personally, men of my generation and older still hold 'chivalrous' values and treat women respectfully (which is being eroded by such fucked up terms as 'benevolent sexism'), so the march of feminism isn't really going to affect me personally. It's our daughters who are going to be up against it.

I agree that DV/rape and other issues that affect women today matter. The way in which these issues are delivered is key.

but there must be some genuine fear behind it to generate such hate and vitriol towards feminists. are they afraid we will make them redundant? that in a world of true equality they won't have what it takes to be an important part of society, families, etc?

it does seem to be that basil.

because why else would it bother them that we are campaigning for women's issues? we're not doing anything against men, the only thing we're 'guilty' of is not focussing on them and their needs and the mra voice tends to sound like a toddler having a tantrum and whining 'what about meeeeeeeee!'

Basically, it's a resentment about women's focus being taken from men.

Because we are supposed to focus our energies all around them. And when we focus on ourselves, that doesn't happen. Which is wrong.

it does seem to be utter disgust that we are directing our resources, concern and energy towards woman's issues. instead of matching that by campaigning for male issues, raising funding, opening shelters, encouraging men to take on 50% of childcare whilst in relationships, campaigning for better paternity leave etc etc men's rights activists moan about feminists and moan at feminists. i don't get it.

is it that you think we should do it for you? or is it that we should just not try to change things for women because you want it to stay as it is? is men's compensation for their perceived terrible lot to at least have more power than women and therefore uppity women should stfu and stop trying to take that prize from them?

i'm lost. mra seems to equal anti feminist rather than pro anything. it reminds me slightly of the private sector whinging about public sector pensions and not stopping moaning till they lose them instead of campaigning for better pensions themselves. except there at least was a real issue there rather than a fabricated one.

how does women working together to combat dv against women threaten men? how does it stop men doing the same thing for male victims? how does it harm you or effect you if women are trying to improve things in areas where women are clearly suffering? they're not doing it at the expense of men (unless you identify with men who abuse, rape, exploit etc and i'd hope you don't).

Do I think we should have more refuges for men? Yes.

Do I think male victims of rape and abuse get a raw deal and that the true extent of the problem is unknown? Yes.

Do I think men can make just as good primary carers as women? Yes.

Do I think men should have greater paternity rights and greater access to flexible working so that they can play a more active role in family life? Yes.

Do I think women should be fighting to right these injustices? No. Women should not fight against them and should be in agreement with these aims, but they have enough issues of their own to fight for.

I will campaign for men's rights when:
? we have eradicated rape against women
? we have eradicated abuse against women
? we have eradicated a situation where women are forced to hand over children for contact to men who use it as an excuse to continue their abuse
? we have eradicated the detrimental effect of having children on a woman's career

But I don't see that many men actively campaigning to help me with this, so I, as a woman, will concentrate on these women's issues rather than mens because if I don't, nothing will change. Funnily enough, while fighting for these issues I don't find the need to go round to male rape crisis centres and tell them they're moaning about nothing because women get raped too.

Most male rape is perpetrated by other men so I can't really see the point in bringing that up. Perpetrators of rape are overwhelmingly male, regardless of the gender of the victim.

Women fought long and hard to get shelters for victims of abuse and rape. It wasn't handed to them on a plate by some philanthropic males. They pushed it so hard it went from being a non-issue (because men had the right to beat their wives and rape was only a crime if the woman was already married to someone else because she was property) to something in the public eye that could no longer be ignored.

And I have to take issue with the idea that the government are falling over themselves to help women.

Funding for refuge and Women's Aid has been so badly cut that Refuge fears it will have to shut.

Crisis loans (which about 80% of women fleeing DV use in order to find their feet) have been scrapped.

CSA charges have been introduced and legal aid scrapped, which affect far more women than men and actually benefits men in many cases (since men are far more likely to be on the receiving end of the CSA than women and also are far more likely to be earning too much to qualify for legal aid under the old rules anyway). The amendement that this won't apply for those suffering from DV is meaningless, since the average victim suffers 35 separate incidents of abuse before contacting the police for the first time.

Absolutely, when did you last write to your MP to demand a male refuge?

That's because men, as a group, don't bother campaigning for it.

Women's refuges get funding because women work their asses off campaigning and fundraising for it. Women have fought hard every step of the way for the paltry concessions we have received.

Men don't and then whine about women not doing it for them.

Men are over-represented in government at ALL levels. Why don't you ask them why they aren't building rape crisis centres for other men or financially supporting program's for IPV.

Male rape/sexual assault and violence are massively under-reported, but they are no more under-reported as female rape and violence is. They are also not treated as any less unimportant than female rape and violence and they are not subjected to rape and sexual assault at the same rate as females and generally, they are subjected to it by other men, not by women. So not misandry then.

Tell me how women are unequally represented in the law? 90% non report of rape, 6% conviction rate even though only 4% false allegation rate. Women tend to get higher sentences than men for the same crimes.

Men get a raw deal, particularly in the family law courts. They get abused physically and emotionally, yet this is ignored. They get a raw deal, because they have given the women they live with a raw deal and not done their fair share of parenting, so the court rightly maintains the status quo, in the interests of stability for the child. So not misandry then.

"Now I'm not saying that women are not suffering at the hands of men, not at all, but the goverment and charities are falling over themselves to help them, men get virtually nothing." Really? Last I heard, DV refuges were closing due to lack of funds, benefits were being cut, Child Benefit for higher earners is being cut meaning that SAHMs whose husbands earn a lot are going to be even more in their husband's financial control and rape crisis centres are having grants cut.

"And on top of that, you expect your own decent DH's to sit there and apologise on the behalf of men who have committed atrocious acts worldwide (another thread on FWR), and accept their role in the 'patriarchy' (which incidentally is a wonderful cop out for women to excuse their own sometimes appalling behaviour). Mindblowing." Don't be silly.

"When women accept that men are as important as they are, and vice versa, then we might start getting there." Most women subconsciously believe men are more important than them.

In this country:

2 women a week are killed by partners/ex-partners.

0.5 men a week are killed by partners/ex-partners (figures only available for the last couple of years as it wasn't recorded before).

So women are 4x more likely to be killed by a partner/ex-partner than a man.

Finacial and political clout? Are you fucking kidding me? The goverment doesn't give a shit about mens issues. The governmental funding for men's refuge's is woeful, they get virtually nothing.

'And tell me what campaigns egalitarianism or equalism has fought and won. What fights did they take on? What victories did they win? What are they fighting for now? How can anyone join?'

I said I didn't really define myself as anything, but that was the closest in terms of my beliefs.

My beliefs are my own, shaped by my own experiences, not someone elses. I don't need to belong to anything. I make my own choices because, amazingly, even in spite of the horrendous male opression, privilage and patriarchy, I'm free to do that. I must be a particularly strong, empowered women eh? Or maybe I can just see through the BS.

Strangely, I happen to think its men who don't think women are as important as them; what with female infanticide, rape, torture, incest,--and IPV being daily occurrences for women.

As for the issue of refuges for male victims of rapw and IPV, I see a lot of whiny about it to feminists from people who are too lazy to get off their asses and do something about it themselves. If men, as a group, spent less ye whining about feminists supporting women and more time campaigning for and building rape crisis centres for men, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

Men have the financial and political clout to do this. Instead, they just whine about women not doing it for them.

Male rape/sexual assault and violence are massively under-reported, and treated as unimportant as you well know (or at least you would know, if you ever bothered to find out which is highly unlikely).

Tell me how women are unequally represented in the law?

Men get a raw deal, particularly in the family law courts. They get abused physically and emotionally, yet this is ignored.

Now I'm not saying that women are not suffering at the hands of men, not at all, but the goverment and charities are falling over themselves to help them, men get virtually nothing.

And on top of that, you expect your own decent DH's to sit there and apologise on the behalf of men who have committed atrocious acts worldwide (another thread on FWR), and accept their role in the 'patriarchy' (which incidentally is a wonderful cop out for women to excuse their own sometimes appalling behaviour). Mindblowing.

When women accept that men are as important as they are, and vice versa, then we might start getting there.