An oxymoron is a combination of contradictory words. Examples include jumbo shrimp, Great Depression and pretty ugly.
I’d like to submit another term to the lexicon: men’s rights activists.
If you think I’m making up the term, take a quick peek at mensactivism.org, nationalcenterformen.org or mensrightsassociation.org. These organizations focus on correcting the supposed disadvantages, discrimination and oppression faced by the Y-chromosome owners among us.
As if men need to actively fight for their rights over women. Nice try.
Or, actually, it’s a rather disturbing try. In a Sept. 26 article in Metro News Canada, men’s right activist and Wagner College psychology professor Miles Groth blamed declining male enrollment at colleges and universities on discussions of date rape during orientation seminars for new students.
Groth said, “Some of the content of these seminars … set these boys coming in, set them up as being potentially dangerous, and potentially harmful, particularly to women on campus.”
He’s absolutely correct; men are indeed potentially dangerous — “potentially” being the key word. A 2009 study published in the Journal of American College Health found that 19 percent of undergraduate women experienced attempted or completed sexual assault since entering college. And according to a 2006 report by the National Institute of Justice, 99 percent of female and 85 percent of male survivors were raped by a male. So it’s absolutely vital that administrators engage their students in active discussion about the problem.
If such discussions have to include the unfortunate above statistic, so be it. If 19 percent of professors had their exam answers stolen, I doubt anyone would dispute the necessity of confronting students. Administrators wouldn’t tell professors, “Don’t let students steal your exams”; instead, they’d tell students, “Don’t steal exams.”
Similarly, orientation seminars shouldn’t tell women “Don’t get raped” to protect the minority of men whose egos can’t bear to hear “Don’t rape.” Blaming rape victims isn’t effective, correct or moral and likely contributes to the estimated 54 percent of sexual assaults that go unreported. Perhaps even more disturbingly, a 2012 study found that 41 percent of students believe that a woman is at fault if she’s raped while drunk. People of all genders need to be better educated on the importance of consent.
A decent male student will understand that sexual assault education doesn’t aim to villainize males, and instead of getting defensive, he’ll be supportive of initiatives to protect the health of his female friends. Just as there’s no need for a White History Month, and the suggestion for one would rightfully be deemed racist, the existence of men’s rights movement is a not-so-subtle display of sexism.
As a Caucasian, I must admit that I benefit from certain privileges every day, whether or not I consciously realize it. I don’t have to worry that someone will view me as a threat when I walk around at night or that someone will make negative assumptions about my upbringing based on my skin color. But you don’t see me protesting discussions on race out of fear that others may assume I’m racist. I know I’m not racist. Calm down, men. Just as I don’t assume every white person is a blatant racist ready to join the Ku Klux Klan, we ladies know you’re not all rampant misogynists, ready to rape us at every turn, even if some of you are. Any logical woman will understand that while sexual assault is a real concern, “male” isn’t synonymous with “rape.” Joining a men’s rights organization only hurts your own argument.
Men’s right activists need to quit their angry cries and calmly admit their privileges. Does that mean they can still be oppressed for other reasons? Of course. Despite my white skin, I still experience prejudice from being female and Jewish. Gender isn’t the entire picture. Give women some credit; we know that. We realize that your manhood isn’t equivalent to your humanity. But that certainly doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be concerned with sexual assault and cease preventive initiatives, which have been proven effective, in order to protect your feelings.
Do I agree that men should have rights? Of course. Am I disturbed by the fact that men die in 90 percent of workplace fatalities and three out of four suicides? Absolutely. I also realize that men can be victims of sexual assault and violence, and I believe that female perpetrators should be prosecuted. But pinning individuals’s actions on the delusional idea that men are suppressed by a supposed female-favoring society doesn’t alleviate any real social norms. It’s a way or ignoring the real problems of mental illness and violence, which we should work together to address. Sexual assault presentations at orientations are a healthy part of that.
Men should focus their energy and anger on advocating for issues that unite us all, never mind gender. Feminism can go askew when it veers into blind misandry, but supportive feminism, which focuses on advancing women, is still essential in today’s male-dominated world. Men’s right organizations go wrong simply by existing with that name, suggesting or even proudly stating that members see feminists as oppressors.
Hey, men. I’ll give some credit; I’ll praise a male now. Michael Kimmel, author of a “The Guy’s Guide to Feminism,” who has called men’s rights a “backlash movement,” captured the necessity of maintaining open dialogue on sexual assault in a 1985 PBS interview.
Kimmel said, “If we as men make it very clear to the women in our lives that we don’t support men’s violence against women, that we are actively opposed to it, that we are willing to confront other men who we see doing aggressive things, then our relationships with women will actually improve.”
Men, let me introduce you to what you should really be fighting for: human rights. I hope that one day, when our genders are treated equally, we ladies can also say goodbye to feminism and “women’s rights activists” will also sound like an unnecessary oxymoron. But that’s certainly not today.
