MEN'S RIGHTS

Men want rights and so they should. But why in the name of free drinks?

Take yourself to Twitter and look up the hashtag – #meninism. You will fall into an infinite pool of tweets that ask you to “piss off a feminist” or argue in less than 120 characters why “beating up an arrogant woman” is justified.  

If you believe this is an isolated issue, go to Facebook and search for “Manscriminate”. You'll find that it's a campaign claiming to stand for gender discrimination against men. So what does this discrimination look like? According to Mancrimination, it's when men don't get free drinks in bars, or are expected to hold doors open (courtesy in general), when they are not entitled to sympathy because of their sex/gender and the lack of men-only transportation.   

These campaigns grow from and contribute to a climate that portrays the feminist movement as absurd and unnecessary, and – timelessly – a punch line. At their worst, these are attempts at critiquing feminism through parodies. At their best, they jokingly underline the discrimination and insecurities that (some) men feel. 

Movements like these have come up time and again with the intention to advocate men's rights but have only managed to create one lasting impact: to highlight an already apathetic world where feminism is considered problematic for men. While these men proudly demonstrate opinions about feminism, they manage to miss a very crucial point – feminism is for men too.    

Ain o Salish Kendra's January to June, 2015 sexual harassment statistics (under nature of violence as harassment) stood at a total of 92 victims, out of which 5 were men. It seems like an infinitely small number against the 87 women who were accounted for being harassed. But the small number speaks volumes; it tells us that men are as threatened by sexual offences as are women and that fact requires recognition and advocacy. Also 5 is just the number on the surface, the culture of fear and stigma multiplies for the men. Most cases go unreported and at times men would go as far as not acknowledging that a violence committed against them is categorised as violence at all. The everyday problems or insecurities that men face are pushed aside as marginalised incidents. 

Men feel trapped by notions of masculinity, the kind of masculinity that defines “real” men as strong, violent, emotionally closed and sexually liberated (aggressive). Society prescribes only a selected range of social, political, and sexual attitudes that men can hold. Men who are raped are more likely to remain silent and in case they open up, they run the risk of being dismissed or laughed at. There remains little to no support for male victims of domestic abuse. The men who suffer violence or feel threatened by societal expectations are surrounded by a veil of invisibility. This veil is the result of decades of cemented societal beliefs that somehow being a man automatically excludes them from being victims. 

Possibly the best way to bring needed attention to actual issues would be to avoid lumping together half-baked opinion and problems that men have under one placard bearing “advocacy”. It would bring back some semblance of legitimacy to the real causes and as a bonus increase the distance between legitimate advocacy and some of the darkest places in the internet.

Ishrat Jahan writes things and often gets mistaken for a twelve-year-old. When she isn't living inside a book, she tries to understand economics. You can reach her at: ishrat.jahan1620@gmail.com