Talk:Masculism/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive01 transferred and content moved here by Rorybowman 17:48, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up talk page

If you really must engage in conversations that pertain to the topic but not the article, make sure that they are not so ostensibly off-topic, biased, and self-promotional that they draw the attention of people who are actually trying to maintain the encyclopedia. --mwazzap 01:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Questions on Bias

The article is fairly decent, based on what I have read elsewhere it presents a fairly neutral overview of the concepts and principles of the relevant groups and authors. The second last sentence about how "feminists respond" is a little troubling and seems to be an assertion of fact rather than relating a claim by a masculism proponent. - MMGB

There is, in my view, some subtle but clear bias in favor of "masculinism®" expressed in this article.

I agree with the latter (as of Nov. 9). --LMS

Questions on Addressing Terms

Is the Wikipedia positive or normative? If it is normative (that is, expressing a "correct" usage that is not necessarily the most widely used one) I would have to argue for a complete redefinition of "sexism", "masculism" and "feminism". Personally I consider myself a sexist (in my definition of the word) and believe that it is the more correct system, and think that the words "sexist", "masculist" and "feminist" are misleading. "feminist", for example, can mean a man-hater, but it often means someone who wants equal rights for women. Since such a person also wants equal rights for men (transitivity of "equal") then they are masculists as well, right? If the Wikipedia purpose is positive, however, this viewpoint is irrelevant. Thus, I return to my question: is WP positive or normative? --KamikazeArchon

Interesting but IMHO tough question. Are other encyclopedias (e.g. Britannica) positive or normative?

Though not exactly the most helpful answer, I'd say that Wikipedia is both. Wikipedia seems to contain every possible term that stands up to (or avoids) scrutiny. The very fact that the encyclopedia is a collaboration of various persons seems to indicate that the duality of positivity and normativity can even be found in the same article. --mwazzap 01:32, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Validity of Article

Are you guys sure the article isn't a joke? It looks a lot like the (soon to be deleted?) rant that Mr. xxx kept putting on the Feminism page. I'd like to see a balanced examination of feminism, which I might decide to try someday if no one else does it. Ed Poor

This is not constructive criticism. If you have a specific flaw to point out, let's hear it. The previous criticisms of this entry were also vague allusions, and not specific nor supportable. I think that there are many people who think that all people in the men's right movement hate feminism, and fear them. This is no doubt the reason that this article was censored by cowards at Nupedia. But this is obviously a double standard. Most of us do not claim that most feminists hate men, or want more rights than men, right? So why act this way towards people in the men's rights movement? Why take the sins of a few and project them onto the majority? This is inappropriate.RK

Sorry, I was really asking whether the posting was intended as a joke. I guess you mean it's a serious article. I will treat it as such, no offense intended. Ed Poor

Ideas on improving neutrality vs. accuracy

One way of improving this article, I believe, is to state what masculinism® is for rather than what it is against. Much of the article as it was written contained lots of attacks on feminism, not to mention that the article seemed to accept most of those attacks at face value. I attempted to alter the tone of the article to make it a little less negative, and hopefully this will help to improve the NPOV of the article.

This is like saying we should focus on what the invading American troops at Normandy in WWII were "for". Obviously they were "for" freedom, but in order to achieve it, they had to displace a tyrant and his army. To state what we are against is sometimes quite the point. Feminism's excesses have distorted civilization. I am against that, because I want my children to grow up in a more balanced world. Basic addition tells me that negating a negative results in a positive. What's wrong with that? We can clean up the excesses without betraying women's interests, so why should feminism not be opposed? Perhaps the problem here is equating feminism with women's interests. No, it's just one ideology.--Terence

Accuracy of article

Since I don't know much about masculism, I'm not going to edit this page. However, the view put forward of feminism, that it "asserts that women have been disadvantaged in society" is only half of the story. Mainstream feminism (not radical feminism, which is sometimes very anti-male), holds that both men and women are disadvantaged by being pigeonholed into strict gender roles. It would be wrong to mischaracterize mainstream feminism's position in this article. --Dmerrill

Mainstream feminism may talk about men deserving freedom from outdated gender roles, but it also promotes and accepts entitlement for women that men can't get, and one-sided rulings in family court. Is this not anti-male? Let's not be too quick to contrast mainstream from radical just yet.--Terence

Just bear in mind that it would also be wrong to mischaracterize masculism's mischaracterization of mainstream feminism...better to say, instead, "Feminists would (or do) counter that..."

Paragraph Removal

I removed this:

From New Zealand, Peter Zohrab's book Sex, Lies & Feminism, proposes that society either abolish the so-called female privilege, or revert to a traditional division of labour between the sexes as a fall-back position. He also charges that the power and feminist bias of what he terms the "MUC" (Media University Complex) are a central issue in the Sex War.

I've talked to Peter Zohrab repeatedly about Nupedia and I still lack evidence that he's such an important member of the movement (outside of New Zealand and the Internet) that his opinions should be cited in this article. The aforementioned book has only recently been published--first electronically self-published online, and now in paper form, it seems by the New Zealand Equality Party (which seems to be Zohrab's organization).

Now, look, I know the following statement is going to sound ludicrous to him, but I really do not intend any disrespect to Zohrab. I just want to see evidence that his views really are important within the movement, and that he is not simply engaging in shameless self-promotion (as it seems Tom Smith has been recently as well). --LMS

I understand how Peter and my entries appear to be self promotion, but it's important to know that masculism has been totally suppressed in academia so that it's main advocates have had to be outside academia. It will be the Zohrab's and Smith's that break open academia to masculism at which time we will be happy to be a foot note. Until then, our masculist approaches deserve mentioning Tom Smith

Question regarding article name

By the way, why is the title "masculism"? Most people involved in the men's rights movement do not use that phrase. Rather, that is the name used by (a) enemies of the men's rights movement, and also (ironically) by (b) the most right-wing or conservative members of the men's rights movements. I propose that we make a new entry entitled "Men's rights movement", or something like that. The majority of text from this entry could be copied and moved there, and this current entry could be maintained as a description of (a) and (b). RK

Well, I don't consider myself a "men's rights" advocate, but for what it's worth, every time I try to tone down the anti-feminist rhetoric in this article and make it more NPOV, new anti-feminist rhetoric just pops into the article.

Neutrality of Article

I assume NPOV is "neutral point of view". Maybe the mistake is trying to be neutral. Are the people involved in men's rights involved so as to remain neutral, or to take a stand for men's rights, identifying and opposing the forces that erode such rights? Why is feminism such a sacred cow that it cannot be criticized? Masculism without anti-feminism is like Greenpeace without anti-whaling. Note that feminism is not the only representation of women's interests, and opposing feminism does not mean opposing women's interests.--Terence

The first two paragraphs of this article, as they now stand, are nothing but advocacy writing. They should be removed and replaced with something more objective, in my opinion.

I'm going to attempt to move those paragraphs towared NPOV, while avoiding drastic deletion. --KA

Good luck, and I hope after your efforts, more advocacy writing will not simply replace your work as has happened in the past with this article.

The article structure should be as follows:

Uncontroversial facts
Controversial facts
Interpretation / Analysis
- Interpretation by advocates
- Interpretation by opponents
- ...

Please try to abide by this structure in order to keep the article neutral.

Good idea. --KA

Problems with excess neutralizing

"To write from a neutral point of view, one presents controversial views without asserting them." Someone has been a little too generous with the prefix "masculists claim that...". It is not necessary to use such a prefix to conform to NPOV when the statement is uncontroversial. For example, this statement is uncontroversial: "Feminists consider the sexes as having the same capacities in virtually every respect and denounce differentiated sex roles as an oppressive artificial construct". It is uncontroversial because feminists would tell you the same thing about themselves. Therefore it does not need to be neutralized by adding the prefix "masculists claim that...". If references are called for as evidence of such uncontroversiality, I would be happy to provide them.--Terence

But not all feminists would claim that. Plenty of feminists believe that there are important, deep differences between the sexes (most of them differences that are in favor of women). So, yes, it is controversial to say feminists believe that. --LMS

A good suggestion to keep arguments off the talk page

I don't know who's talking to who on this page. We should set up a yahoo discussion (I have a "Masculism" group at yahoogroups) for this or have some discussion format for the talk section. Until then, could we all do the Name thing so as to identify ourselves after each entry.

And who the heck is Terry Daly? I saw only his page at New Age webworks when I first started the masculism thing on the net a few years ago. His approach is from the Right while my form of masculism is from the Left. We pretty much agree on what masculism is, but our approach or emphaisis is different. QIM

Moving article

Would anyone object if I moved the Peter Zohrab version to Talk? It's sat there without being touched for months now, and looking over it, so much of it is badly NPOV that it'll have to be integrated sparingly. It can just as easily be integrated from Talk as from where it is, and won't be interfering with the current article as it's developing. -- April

Certainly, go ahead. It was nice of Larry to do that and I think Peter wouldn't mind. User:QIM

Moved from main article: The following is another version, written by Peter Zohrab, some of the contents of which should be integrated with the main article.

Masculism is the ideology according to which men have intrinsic rights that are often denied them in contemporary Western culture -- indeed, according to this view, society does not usually recognize that men, as men, even have rights. Feminists in western countries have, over about 200 years (since Wollstonecraft), established as a given the thesis that society is male-dominated and oppresses women. This is the meta-issue that Men's Rights activists raise, as a logical (but not necessarily practical) precondition to the raising of various specific issues.

Men's Rights proponents consider that Feminists have argued for "equality" in respect of self-selected issues only, -- using ad hoc (and seldom explicit) definitions of "equality" that they developed themselves, rather than (for example) calling a conference of all interested parties for the purpose of clarifying the issues. It is argued that Feminists have not sought gender equality on issues such as child custody, the decision to abort one's unborn child, compulsory military service, unsegregated professional sports, law enforcement relating to domestic violence, funding for men's and women's groups, Men's Studies vs Women's Studies, ministries of Men's Affairs to complement ministries of Women's Affairs, and health research funding.

Many Men's Rights activists also criticise Feminism for relying on a restricted view of political power, whereby a count of the relative numbers of men and women in important decision-making positions suffices to determine whether men or women are the more powerful. Men's Rights proponents point out that there are many other sorts of political power - e.g. control over the information and stereotypes that decision-makers rely on as the basis of their decisions. This information and these stereotypes, in the West, are largely under the control of Hollywood, the mass media, the education sector, and the bureaucracies - which are all strongly influenced by Feminist ideology, if not actually female-dominated.

The term "Masculism" (aka "Masculinism®" or "Virism") may be used interchangeably with "Men's Rights", but conservatives in the Men's Rights scene often reserve the term "Masculism" for the liberal branch of the Men's Rights movement (as epitomised by ex-Feminist author Warren Farrell). Liberal Masculists (such as Farrell or Rod van Mechelen) take the position that Feminist aspirations to gender equality should be taken at face value, and men made equal to women in those areas where women are over-privileged. Conservatives (such as Richard Doyle, and religious individuals and organisations such as the Promise Keepers) would prefer to return to a traditional division of labour between the sexes. A third way is espoused in Peter Zohrab's book "Sex, Lies & Feminism", which demands that Society either abolish female privilege or revert to a traditional division of labour between the sexes, as a fall-back position.

The response of Feminists to the Men's Rights movement has not generally been to respond to Men's Rights at the ideological level. Rather, they have either ignored this movement, publicised new issues (e.g. eating disorders) where women might plausibly be shown to be disadvantaged, and/or tried to deny Men's Rights activists access to the media and publishers and influence in education systems and bureaucracies.

Some Men's and Fathers' Rights proponents consider that the sexes are complementary and interdependent by necessity, but this is not a central thesis of Masculism per se. While Feminists denounce differentiated sex roles as an oppressive artificial construct, many Men's and Fathers' Rights proponents believe that profound sex differences are inherent in human nature, and that Feminist social engineering has resulted in high divorce rates, alienation of the sexes, disintegrating communities, fatherless children, high school dropout, drug addiction, communism, teenage pregnancy, suicide, violent crime, and overfilled prisons.

Small Edit

I made a small change in the comment on "women's opportunity". With the consensus of masculists agreeing on the elimination of sexual equality laws, that's kind of a moot point except culturally. There are areas other than "opportunity" that certainly would be of concern to masculists, one being an area of taxation. User:QIM

NPOV header

I added the NPOV dispute header because someone anonymously listed the page on wikipedia:pages needing attention as having "NPOV problems". They didn't say why. If anyone thinks this page is correctly written from a neutral point of view, then they can just edit out the header. I'm unfussed - I was just refactoring junk. Martin 21:28 17 Jul 2003 (UTC)

Thanks Martin for explaining that. The only objections we have had here on the talk pages is from April and she got her way over my objections by adding "Masculinists" to her blurb at the end. My advocacy for masculism has been attacked by an official agency of the Canadian government, the Office on the Status of Women who issued a report that recommended shutting down "masculinists" on the internet by classifying them a hate group. Canada's hate crime legislation is farther ahead of ours and this is serious business for men's advocates there. Now we know why April was so insistent.

It should be noted that this page is one of the most controversial at Wikipedia and recognized as such by Wikipedia itself. We can expect the April's on the net to not hesitate in defaming the site. I will remove the "disputed" tag. User:QIM

Changed "Dispute tag"

I changed the "dispute" tag and while I was added came up with a change to April's paragraph that might solve our "dispute". It's at the end of her paragraph and is now stted thusly:

"However, it should be noted that many masculists vehemently decry this idea, and do not believe that masculism and feminism can possibly co-exist culturally, though all masculists agree on the political incompatibility of masculism and feminism."

She stopped at "coexist" and I added the rest. It's only the fundies that are vehement about cultural feminism and they are a minority in the movement. They'd be happy just to get school prayer for crissakes. Masculists want a whole lot more that the fundies want too.

Many are confused about what feminism is and therefore how to oppose it. I'm not and work from the feminists own history and concepts. Masculists want nothing of legal feminism. The first wave feminist advocacy that masculists oppose is "mother's custody". We support father's custody as a goal. With second wave feminism it's "mandated sexual equality", so masculist support elimination of such laws with the Civil Rights Act of '64 (CRA '64) being it's main target.

So in conclusion, masculism is for father's custody and against CRA'64. Throw in abolition of abortion and you have those feminists squealing, a sound that's music to a masculists ears. User:QIM

Other masculist points of view

Forgive me for not being familiar with the posting method of this debate, I've simply clicked "edit this page" and put a line above my text to seperate it. My name is Alan Carr, I'm the Chairman of arguably the largest masculist, men's rights and father's rights orgamisation in the world, the International Men's Network, encompassing about 20 different national groups in 12 countries.

I support what Terry Daly says at the beginning, in essence masculism is anti-feminism in terms of the more damaging aspects and primarily exists to counter radical feminism and bring genuine equality of treatment and choice (but not necessarily outcomes) regardless of sex. Anti-abortion is anti-abortion, not masculism per se, some feminists for example are anti-abortion. to be a member organisation of the IMN a group has to agree to a manifesto, the text used is the Everyman Manifesto which can be found here

www.mens-network.org/manifesto.html

itself the result of the coming together of various groups. I've edited the entry to remove the negative "current state of masculism" entry (a link to an anti-masculist document that urged any opposing view to feminism should be censored and prosecuted as "hate speech") and simply put what is happening, ie it's growing and getting media attention. I also removed the notion that it's a new word, as Terry said it's been around a long time but is only now becoming mainstream.

Regards

AC

Hi Alan. You can't remove links that are contrary to your point of view, we need to represent all points of views in all articles, see Wikipedia:Neutral point of view for policy info. Dysprosia 11:39, 30 Oct 2003 (UTC)

OK, I accept that, if anything it serves to illustrate the lengths the more radical element of feminism will go to to censor dissenting voices to their ideology. More is available here

http://www.mens-network.org/sowcensorship.html

AC

Adding another page

I have plunged in and tried to make the changes as NPOV as I could, and then attempted to improve some of the clumsiness this introduced. One problem is that the definition of masculism is relatively fluid, like that of feminism. Unfortunately, this fluidity seems to be used by some people to label other groups as 'masculist' when these groups would shun both feminist and masculist labels.

Perhaps another wiki page is needed for the fathers' rights movement?

All the best to you wiki custodians!

203.59.115.236

Paragraph added

Pre-npoving by myself, this paragraph was added

Masculist defenders would note that most self-described Feminists are white, middle class women who claim that being women makes it difficult for them to cope in a "man's world," and object to being stereotyped as haters simply due to their belief that males are often given the short end of the stick in Western society.

The tail of this paragraph fails for me to make much sense. Could someone perhaps clarify this? Dysprosia 03:40, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Question on terms

Who put "gender" in this article? That's not NPOV, that's blatant feminism. It's sex not gender. Who ever did it please change it. User:QIM

Changing the intro paragraph

"Masculism is considered by some to describe the belief that the male and female genders should be considered complementary and interdependent by necessity. However, such a definition is both excludes many who consider themselves masculists and includes many who consider themselves not."

Ok - I think that's clearly a mess. We want something that comes off a lot more clear and confident, not like "oh, well some say this, some say that, who really knows..." We need to start with a good basic definition that everyone feels is accurate before getting into the details about what people disagree with.

So in the spirit of Wikipedia's "be bold" policy, I'm gonna go ahead and change the intro to be a (somewhat less postmodernist) equivalent of the intro to the feminism article. Hopefully people will be happy with that. But if not, then of course we can bring it back for discussion here. --Blackcats 19:22, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Fathers 4 justice

Wouldn't Fathers 4 Justice be an excellent example of a Masculist group? They've made several headlines in the UK? (I'm a little hesitant about editing this page myself because things seem to be rather contentious here) --LukeSurl 21:02, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Merge?

Should this article be merged with men's rights? 24.64.223.203 09:52, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

-- okay, I see a distinction has been made in both articles between "men's rights" and "masculism." However, it seems that these are branches of a larger movement, much like there are many branches of feminism (and one main article), and so I think they should be included in one article. I notice "men's movement" redirects to "men's rights" rather than "masculism." It would be less confusing with one article. 24.64.223.203 10:04, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Re: changes by me (rogpyvbc)

I have made some substantial changes to the structure of the article, without changing or adding much. It had, like many controversial topics, become a bit of a mishmash of opinions, with one person adding their counterargument, then another countering that, etc. - so that there was a lot of repetitition, as well as discussion under the wrong headings. Several parts weren't very clear. It took quite a while, so please don't revert it; if you feel some of my changes are not right, please edit them. If you are worried that I took something out, it's probably there in a different section. Here is what I did:

The list of points was getting long, so I organized it into categories. I then put some related paragraphs from other sections under some of the points.

The sections Ambiguity and Contention over Defining Masculism and An Alternate View of Masculism were closely related to some points in the History of Masculism section (most of which which had nothing to do with history), so I combined all of these under a new heading: Differences in Masculist Ideology. I also expanded the history section a bit.

I tried to imporove clarity, while removing repetition. Roger 06:06, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Some of the edits appear to have some minor neutrality issues. I may address these at a later date, however, I'm not in the mood to closely analyse the article right now. Dysprosia 11:08, 3 January 2006 (UTC)