Talk:Men's rights movement

Removing original research

As promised, I am slowly going to remove or replace sections that are improperly sourced or original research. I am starting with the refugee section. The one citation given does not speak about men's rights or discriminatory practices. The entire section appears to be the opinion of the editor who added it, with the citation to provide an example. I have spent the last 30 minutes looking for other potential sources about refugee issues and men's rights, and have found nothing. As a result, I am deleting the section. --Slp1 (talk) 19:32, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Good work. Binksternet (talk) 21:35, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Sounds good, I'll leave you to it. If the men's right movement is back in this article, and there's an exclusion of other men's movement, I'm sure I'm no help here. Best of luck!--CaroleHenson (talk) 22:21, 9 December 2011 (UTC)

Today, I've looked at the pensions and social security section. Some of the section is unsourced. The rest of it is sourced to government documents describing social security provision with no reference to men's rights or any form of discrimination. The current section fails WP:V and WP:NOR. In this case, after a fair bit of research I have been able to find reliable secondary sources making clear that these issues are of concern to men's rights activists. I will be deleting the current material and replacing with what I have found. --Slp1 (talk) 23:04, 10 December 2011 (UTC)

I have tackled a section called "political representation" today. I have revamped the section to be more global, and removed some material about timing of things than seems to have been plumb wrong. I have renamed the section "governmental structures", since I think the previous title was somewhat misleading. --Slp1 (talk) 20:48, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

I have worked on the false accusations of rape section.

• The first sentence was unsourced. The rest of the section has significant problems with the misrepresentation of sources and OR.
• I removed one source [1] which doesn't mention men's rights, and more worryingly has been used inappropriately. The article in question mostly discusses that a young girl may have been too aggressively pursued by the law after making an apparently false rape claim, rather than the actions against "false accusers" is too lenient.
• The source used to support the rape anonymity and evidence requirement sections do not mention men's rights and neither fully support the material included. For example, it is not clear from the BBC source] that "Women Against Rape" complained about the proposed law- they are just mentioned agreeing with it.
• The Boston Law article has been entirely misrepresented. The author does indeed mention some states require corroboration for rape, but does not conclude that "Thus the issue of false accusations of rape is very serious." In fact, the author argues the exact opposite, that corroboration is an inappropriate requirement. e.g. "The prompt complaint requirement, corroboration requirement, and cautionary instructions in the criminal law of rape evinced the belief that, because women lie about rape, men accused of it need special legal protection beyond that which the law affords defendants accused of other crimes.....It is important to connect these retrograde policies with their discredited past and reject them both in the remaining state laws in which they withstand old age and in campus disciplinary procedures in which they are just being born."

The magnitude of the problems with verifiability is very concerning. Evidently, every reference in this article will need to be specifically examined. I have replaced the content with sourced material. --Slp1 (talk) 23:04, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Today I removed the section about Carol Liu and the California legislation. No connection was made to men's rights issues in the sources given, and I couldn't find any reliable sources that did. I have therefore removed the section per V, OR and undue weight. --Slp1 (talk) 20:47, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I worked on the education section today. As with other sections, I have removed some material that was unsourced and some OR material that had no overt connection made with men's rights. I have replaced it with sourced material; there were some good sources for this section. --Slp1 (talk) 23:05, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Criticism of the men's rights movement

Most of the criticism of the men's rights movement is on blogs, but there are a few reliable sources that could be used to build a small section:

• Chapter from The Battle and Backlash Rage On by Michael Flood: http://www.xyonline.net/sites/default/files/Flood,%20Backlash%20-%20Angry%20men.pdf
• Huffington Post article by Tom Matlack: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-matlack/mens-movements_b_836213.html
• Salon.com interview with Michael Kimmel: http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/scott_adams_mens_rights_movement/

Kaldari (talk) 00:40, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I've actually been finding a fair amount of criticism/disagreement in the sources that I have been reading, but I haven't been including it because the criticism is more about the overall approach of the men's rights movements than the specific issues I have been tackling. I don't really like criticism sections, preferring to integrate the text, but it may be the way to go, at least in the short term. --Slp1 (talk) 20:51, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

So wait, this article -is- about MRA's and the MRM now? Arkon (talk) 23:16, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Well part of the article is, it seems. Kaldari (talk) 23:24, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Alrighty then, I'll go back through the archives and readd the material that was removed previously. Arkon (talk) 23:30, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

In my edits I'm sticking strictly to the methodology of looking for material about "men's rights" in a particular topic area. It turns out that when you do that, to date the sources almost always turn out to be about the views of the Men's rights folk, and so I have been attributing the opinions as I found them in the sources. I'm not sure what you are planning to replace, Arkon, but I strongly feel that we should stick to the approach of looking for high quality sources with direct connections to the topic of "Men's rights". The article may end up being mainly about MRAs and the MRM, but we don't know that for sure yet.--Slp1 (talk) 00:31, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

why is it that you can't cite any criticisms of the men's rights movement in here? whether it from MRAs or third parties? this is the only such page without a balancing section. a lot of the stuff here is pro-men's rights OR and kept in good faith, yet everything else is rapidly deleted. it's strange, valerie solanas is allowed to be labelled feminist, yet there's an editorial policy to give MRAs a benefit of the doubt which even extends to publicising an MRA's didactic biased "no true scotsman" statements. Paintedxbird (talk) 09:28, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

This is not a double standard: Valerie Solanas is not listed on the page for feminism, nor radical feminism except as a See Also. She is mentioned in Anarcho-feminism, but none of these articles have a criticism section. This is not unusual: Many editors dislike criticism sections. Ultimately though it's still just precedent: here at Wikipedia all edits will be challenged for elements such as verifiability, accuracy, neutral point of view, reliability of sources. We're about making descriptive statements of our target, not judgements. As for your contention that only pro-men's rights content is kept, you may want to see what the other side thinks.Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 18:49, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

fair enough. still, feminism has antifeminism, masculism, men and feminism, this page, etc all providing opposing views. whereas men's rights has no analogue. also, they would complain; they can't even understand what NPOV/RS/NOR means. Paintedxbird (talk) 07:03, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

You make a good point there, though I should qualify that by saying only three sentences in this article are critical of the feminist movement by name, and there are at least as many criticisms of the MRM scattered throughout the article. The other articles have even fewer direct criticisms, which also tend to be balanced in count. On another note though, by pushing for those quotation marks around "the feminist health movement" are you denying that feminism has a branch supporting women's health? Our article on the subject is labeled as a part of feminism: if you read the source article by Flood, that's exactly what he's referring to. For example, if you Google women's health feminist the first result is the Feminist Women's Health Center. Flood's argument is that it is unreasonable for people to blame these structures. Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 07:51, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

i thought he was describing an idea of the health service. no i'm not disputing that. fixed it back. Paintedxbird (talk) 08:35, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Why are the history and definition sections there ?

Neither are necessary and come across as an attempt to obfuscate the issue.
Gathering a group of movements and claiming them to be mens rights just because there's men in them is like claiming a group of women supporting wife beating makes them a womens rights group. Pleasetry (talk) 05:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Use of the Term Men's Rights Activism

This section should excised. I think it's a good placeholder for a topic of value to the article but it currently contains content that almost exclusively cites the "The Good Men Project" -- a pro-feminist project that is supported by Ms. Magazine and ridiculed by MRA's (although the article implies that the TGMP is part of the MRM.) While the Good Men Project is a Wikipedia worthy blog its articles are not worthy sources for content in other Wikipedia articles. The blogs written by contributors to TGMP do not meet WP:RS by any stretch of the imagination. Furthermore there are piles of books churned out by Women's Studies programs that already speak to the feminist impression of Men's Rights and the MRM which do not have the sourcing issues that TGMP does. I won't even go into the hyperbole it contains which conflates men's rights activism as "glorifying" the murder of women...--Cybermud (talk) 01:17, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

men's rights activists can't be pro-feminist? "no true MRA"? i'd like to excise all the masculism from self-proclaimed feminists who are ridiculed on that page. i guess we're both outta luck. if you read the text it doesn't equate MRAs with glorifying murder, it simply describes some who do. Paintedxbird (talk) 10:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

I'll assume good faith on your rhetorical question even as you assume bad faith and comport yourself in an incivil manner by commenting that if I were to actually "read the [actual] text" I am commenting on I might come to a different conclusion than the one I did by, presumably, commenting on something I didn't actually read. So yes, MRA's are pretty strongly anti-feminist. There are certainly some notable MRA's who self-identify as feminists Camille Paglia, Daphne Patai and Warren Farrell come to mind but they still remain anti-feminist in most of their views, are respected by MRA's and refiled by feminists as a general rule. "Feminist," like many labels, means many things to many people and the reasons an individual chooses to take up that moniker on a personal level, can be as varied as the individual persons who chose to do so. When I talk about the pro-feminist (admittedly also a label) philosophies of others in general I am applying that criterion in a less subjective and, hopefully, more meaningful manner. If my telling you that MRA's and modern-day feminists are often times diametrically opposed to each other comes as news to you I suggest you limit your contributions to the article Men's Rights to copyediting and stylistic issues as you may lack the background in the subject matter to be able to contribute to the content in a constructive manner. As for your comment, "i'd like to excise all the masculism from self-proclaimed feminists who are ridiculed on that page. i guess we're both outta luck." I truly no idea what you're referring to but I will say that luck has nothing to do with it. Perhaps now we can move past this and acknowledge that TGMP is not a WP:RS?--Cybermud (talk) 17:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

"Bellanger and others within the men's rights movement have fingered other MRAs as radicals[92], criticizing the use of language such as in a radio podcast that called most women semi-human.[91] Glenn Sacks of Massachusetts advocacy group Fathers & Families has questioned bloggers for glorifying murderers Darren Mack" so "questioning bloggers" implies "all MRAs"? i don't see it, but i'd be happy to quantify it specifically. i know most MRAs are antifeminist, but it doesn't mean they're "true MRAs" any more than Christina Hoff Summers is a "true feminist". unless you can prove otherwise removing it wouldn't be NPOV. also, the claim (podcast calling women semi-human) you're disputing is cited within the source's text "http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen/2011/03/02/an-introduction-to-the-mens-movement". TGMP is a webzine with editorial oversight. i think it's a RS. Paintedxbird (talk) 19:28, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Your use of pronouns, bad grammar, and un-closed quotations marks is confusing and even where I can understand what you're trying to say I don't appreciate the relevance of it. Also not sure who/what you are quoting when you say "tll MRA's", "true MRA's", or "true feminist" as I would never presume that I, or anyone else, can define what "all" of any social group says or does, nor what constitute a "true" member of it. Perhaps you would clarify if doing so is germane to the article in question? In any case TGMP is not a WP:RS on anything other than, perhaps, TGMP itself. I should think that other editors here who constantly exhort "using the highest quality sources available" should be agreeing with me, but perhaps there is a double-standard at work when the sources in question confirm their pre-existing biases.--Cybermud (talk) 20:58, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

i'll overlook your irrationality and defensiveness. i was referring to what you said. "I won't even go into the hyperbole it contains which conflates men's rights activism as "glorifying" the murder of women". the sentence you're referring to says "Glenn Sacks of Massachusetts advocacy group Fathers & Families has questioned bloggers for glorifying murderers". in the source some MRAs equate Darren Mack and Herbert Chalmers as being like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. why do you think it's wrong to recognise that they call themselves MRAs other than the fact you find it unflattering? it sounds like you're trying to define MRAs as antifeminist to me seeing as you specifically criticise some sources as being "pro-feminist". you dislike TGMP, but i haven't heard anything except anecdotal smear and innuendo against a notable webzine in way of reasons why it shouldn't be accepted especially when the source identifies it's evidence. Paintedxbird (talk) 21:53, 29 January 2012 (UTC)

Please indent your posts by using ":", as it makes it harder to follow conversation threads otherwise. You should also avoid calling people irrational and defensive as it is also wikipedia policy to assume good faith and, for the record, I have nothing to be defensive or irrational about though you may want to consider reading the article projection. Unfortunately your clarification is still not clear. What does what Glenn Sacks says about bloggers have to do with this article? Why are you claiming I think it's wrong to recognize they (who is they by the way) call themselves MRA's and why do you, erroneously think I find it unflattering? Why is calling some sources "pro-feminist" a form of "criticism" rather than a simple statement of fact? And why do you say I dislike the TGMP simply because I, quite reasonably, say it is not a reliable source? If your "notable webzine" identifies its sources why don't you go to them directly. I know there are admins editing this article who exhort others to follow a large number of wikipedia policies that you are flagrantly breaking, first and foremost wp:agf and wp:rs. If you insist on this route and they cannot, or will not, advise you of the error of your ways I will open an WP:Request for comment on your behavior and ask for input from the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding your inappropriate use of the TGMP. Having said that, I will once again remove the poorly sourced and confused content in question.--Cybermud (talk) 00:24, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

"What does what Glenn Sacks says about bloggers have to do with this article?" he's one of the most notable MRAs around. his comments have to do with recognising a school of thought within men's rights. the heading was called "Use of the term MRA".

"Why is calling some sources "pro-feminist" a form of "criticism" rather than a simple statement of fact?" because you said: "This (Use of the Term Men's Rights Activism) section should excised. I think it's a good placeholder for a topic of value to the article but it currently contains content that almost exclusively cites the "The Good Men Project" -- a pro-feminist project that is supported by Ms. Magazine and ridiculed by MRA's" if you accept there's nothing necessarily inconsistent with pro-feminism/feminism and men's rights then why do you claim it as a reason for removal?

"If your "notable webzine" identifies its sources why don't you go to them directly." that'd be original research. also, the blog doesn't have a wikipage.

"why do you say I dislike the TGMP simply because I, quite reasonably, say it is not a reliable source?" i simply asked why you thought it was a questionable source. you linked me to the article, but haven't explained your process. if you check you'll find that the TGMP is staffed by professional writers and editors.

"If you insist on this route and they cannot, or will not, advise you of the error of your ways I will open an WP:Request for comment on your behavior and ask for input from the Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard regarding your inappropriate use of the TGMP." all i asked for was your reasoning. you're also removing citations for being "pro-feminist". i'd like to resolve this so i think that'd be good. Paintedxbird (talk) 02:31, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

i've waited a day for a response so i'm now restoring the "use of the term MRA" section. feel free to either reply here or ask for dispute resolution. Paintedxbird (talk) 03:17, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Please phrase whatever it is you'd like a response to in the form of a question or coherent comment whose content can be easily identified. I don't have time to try to interpret what you are saying or extract it from your badly formatted responses. I am really not trying to be difficult here but a little effort on your part to be comprehensible goes a long way. Are you new to Wikipedia? There really should be no ambiguity to the fact that this section is very badly sourced.. it points to a blogging site run by non-journalists and non-experts and then starts pointing to pod-casts. Even if it were well-sourced it's confused and un-encyclopedic.--Cybermud (talk) 14:13, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I thought it was simple enough seeing as it was written in the format of quoting your comments and a response by myself. Must be too complicated. Paintedxbird (talk) 19:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I guess so. If there's any part of it that you'd like a response to please highlight it again as if you were talking to a child so I can respond because saying things like:

"If your "notable webzine" identifies its sources why don't you go to them directly." that'd be original research. also, the blog doesn't have a wikipage.

seems like gibberish to me.--Cybermud (talk) 05:17, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Identifying sources

I seem to have had this conversation at least a dozen times on gender related articles but feminist sources for articles related to Men's Rights should be identified as such. This article is literally filled with qualifiers like "Men's rights activists claim.." but then includes content from feminist (and misandric) sources like Flood and Kimmel and pretends they are somehow neutral and require no qualification. Even worse feminist sources like TGMP are painted as MRM sources (in which case they also violate wp:RS.) Whatever the solution here it should be consistent. My preference is to have qualifiers identifying the ideological biases of both masculist and feminist sources, but qualifying one and not qualifying the other is totally unjustifiable and a symptom of the fact that almost all non-feminist editors have been driven from this article. I appreciate the fact that many people immediately ignore any research identified as "feminist" due to all the junk science and research that's come out of the their advocacy based scholarship but there's no justification for hiding the fact that feminist research is.. well feminist.--Cybermud (talk) 14:33, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

To make my point more concrete with one example (of several that exist) the section "Health" has two paragraphs. The first starts with:

"Men's rights activists view the health issues faced by men and their shorter life spans as compared to women as evidence of discrimination and oppression."

The second paragraph starts with

"Michael Messner[58] and other gender studies authors[52][59] critique the claims, stating that the poorer health outcomes are the heavy costs paid by men"

Creating a situation where gender ideologues who support the feminist view that all men are rapists are simply identified as "gender studies authors" whereas anyone who supports a contrarian view is labeled as an "activist" (ie non-academic.)--Cybermud (talk) 14:46, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

I deleted the Paintedxbird section because of two reasons: poor sourcing and too much in-universe navel-gazing. I expect that a discussion of the use of the term "men's rights activism" would begin and end with dispassionate scholarly analysis, not blog posts hosted by participants. Binksternet (talk) 15:21, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

While it's always tricky labeling someone who is expected to be giving a neutral overview by their politics, I agree with the statement that feminist authors should be identified as such, on the grounds of the relationship (or at least widely perceived relationship) between men's rights and antifeminism. If a critic may be a political enemy, this is important to note because it effects the credibility of their personal assessments. When I did a copyedit of this article a while back I changed the wording to "gender studies authors" as it had been a highly vague "academics" and I compared each author cited based on personal bios and noted they were involved primarily in the field of gender studies. I don't recall any of these bios espousing feminism, so to identify them as such you'll need to find a reliable source, or an acknowledgement within the sources already cited. Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 19:32, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Warren Farrell and other writers are quoted by the article, the sources are non-NPOV. why is one group who claims advocacy for men's rights allowed and another removed based on a subjective belief on what should constitute men's rights as Cybermud has shown. once again, i'm asking why is criticism being censored? "navel gazing"? if you can have feminists commenting on radical feminism then why can't you have MRAs commenting on their own radicals? Paintedxbird (talk) 19:59, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Really!? You have a problem with quoting Warren Farrell in an article on Men's Rights and you're pushing the TGMP as a reliable source? I still have a hard time following what you're saying with the way you seem to jump from one half-finished idea to another but, in case it's even relevant (i'm not sure), sources don't need to be NPOV, articles do. No one here is censoring anything that I've seen over the past few days. All I've asked for is sources that don't suck and for feminist sources to be properly identified as such. If it's at all germane to the article, could you explain what it is that "User:Cybermud has shown, once again?" --Cybermud (talk) 05:09, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

Well, in reality, saying "Gender Studies" rather than feminist (or Women's Studies) is a way of putting lipstick on a pig. Women's Studies university programs changed their name to Gender Studies to signal inclusiveness of homosexual issues and co-opt the creation of Men's Studies programs by allowing them (academic feminists) to claim that a generic, and inclusive, program now existed (notwithstanding that the curriculum and professors didn't change at all.) While anyone familiar with the history of the "academic arm of feminism" that is Women's Studies knows that "Gender Studies" is a euphemism for Women's Studies which is, according to their own mission statements, a supporter of the feminist political movement, the average Wikipedia reader will not make that connection and may believe there actually exists something called Gender Studies that does not have a Pro-Feminist bias (it does not), notwithstanding nascent efforts to create "Male Studies" programs at the university level.--Cybermud (talk) 05:26, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

"equal rights"

regarding the claim that men's rights advocates equal rights i'm concerned because the two accessible sources don't seem to support it and are taken out of context and both scrutinise the claim. "Citizenship revisited: threats or opportunities of shifting boundaries" on p66-67 quotes a men's rights group as claiming to stand for equality, but then expounds on the fact that the group define the meaning as "equal, but different", which is contradictory. "From Panthers to Promise Keepers: rethinking the men's movement" claims that men want equal status, but not equal responsibility on p 167. and that "the very language of equal rights used by fathers rights might be used to justify traditional unequal forms of parenting and male privilege" on p166 also the third quote is of a book by Michael Messner, who's considered by some to be "pro-feminist". therefore i think the claim needs further clarification and factual verification if it's to be returned. Paintedxbird (talk) 20:20, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

As I tend to agree with Kgorman-ucb that "human rights don't seek anything by themselves" I think this concern is, for the moment, void. However for the future I would note that self-published sources and other personal statements are reliable enough to describe a person's or group's goals. Accusations otherwise, even if in print, are dubious. An assessment of actions and outcomes can reflect on the effectiveness of a group in meeting their goals. Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 20:49, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

that sounds like a double standard. some are subjectively cherrypicked to be "reliable sources" and allowed to speak about others, whereas others are removed despite fulfilling the same criteria. i think the processes should be open and scrutinised, as currently i don't see any consistency towards the three pillars. Paintedxbird (talk) 21:26, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Pure nonsense

I have been reverted twice for saying, in the lead of this article, that one of men's traditional roles is that of "protector" with some noise about a source failure. Are you kidding me? First of all, per WP:Lead article leads do not need citations if the content in the lead is sourced in the body. Secondly, do the editors reverting this change not live in human society? Would someone like me to source a claim that one of women's traditional roles was caretaker of children? I know it is probably fun to revert editors you disagree with just because, but it's not creating a better encyclopedia and just wastes people's time. There's no need to source a statement that says water is wet. If you need a Wikipedia policy for that try WP:Common--Cybermud (talk) 05:40, 1 February 2012 (UTC)