A *mass abduction* of children and *mass false accusations* against mothers are being planned and encouraged by men’s rights and fathers’ rights Facebook group “Domestic Violence Against Men” @DVAgainstMen (Sydney, Australia). See facebook.com/DomesticViolen…@nswpolice
Fathers’ rights groups / #MRAs privilege fathers’ contact with children over children’s safety. Try to discredit victims of violence, telling lies about false allegations. Try to protect perpetrators of domestic and family violence. xyonline.net/sites/xyonline…
This is far from the first time men's rights and fathers' rights groups have encouraged or undertaken criminal activities. The Men’s Rights Agency, an Australian MRA group, was exposed in 1996.
MRAs: Men’s Rights Agency, an Australian MRA group, exposed in 1996. Hired private investigators to track down members’ spouses hiding in DV refuges, a coordinator was a violent gun runner & drug dealer, and had contact with man who then killed his family. xyonline.net/sites/xyonline…
This is also not the first time men's rights activists have encouraged, or themselves made, *mass false accusations* of violence. In 2013, MRAs flooded a Los Angeles college's sexual assault reporting system with false rapes. theverge.com/2013/12/19/522…
The irony that MRAs claim that women's false allegations of DV or rape are common, while themselves encouraging or making false allegations, could not be richer.
One key reason many men don’t recognise our roles in preventing and reducing rape is that we don't realise that most rapes are by men known to the victim, in a familiar location, without serious physical injury, and that rapes are common. Many men have a mistaken idea of rape
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Men often imagine some crazed guy, in a park, violently raping a passing woman.
Men often don’t think of what’s far more common:
A man pressuring his date into sex.
A man expecting that his wife will have sex whenever he wants to.
A man taking advantage of a drunk woman. Etc.
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Men, and to a lesser extent women, often believe, mistakenly, that most rapes are by strangers, in a public place, & involving severe physical force, contributing to the neglect of the reality of sexual violence and to victim-blaming.
Report, p. 54: ncas.anrows.org.au/wp-content/upl…
Violence and gender: Men’s rights advocates (MRAs) like to cherrypick findings that show or seem to show that domestic violence against men is more common than DV against women. The latest example comes from a multi-country study of university staff’s experience of violence.
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MRAs claim the study shows more men than women have experienced physical domestic violence.
Two problems: 1) The study *is not* about DV. All the questions ask about violence by someone connected with the institution – other staff or students - not about intimate partners 2/5
2) The study shows that women suffer *more* violence than men. Women suffer more violence overall, and more psychological violence, economic violence, sexual violence, and sexual harassment. See the table, p. 33
The full report is here: 3/5 zenodo.org/records/754022…
Fostering Healthy Masculinities among Men and Boys
First, let’s define ‘masculinity’: The socially learnt roles, behaviours, and attributes that are seen as appropriate for boys and men in a given society.
There are diverse versions of masculinity in different contexts.
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But in many contexts, masculinity is defined in terms of dominance over women, sexual entitlement, homophobia, aggression, rigid stoicism, etc.
There are various terms for this form of masculinity: Hegemonic. Sexist. Traditional. Toxic. Patriarchal. I’ll go with the last of these
There are three compelling rationales for critical attention to masculinities 1) Patriarchal forms of masculinity are implicated in a series of social problems: public violence, sexual and reproductive health, suicide, alcohol & drug use, mental health, occupational injuries, etc
Sex and housework: In heterosexual couples with children, when women do more of the household labour than men, they have lower sexual desire, for two reasons: 1) they are more likely to see their partners as dependent on them, and 2) they see the division of labour as unfair
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Implications: Women's sexual desire is constrained by gender inequities. Low desire in women is not located in women, their bodies or minds. Instead, it is a symptom of a broader problem, of inequalities between men and women, including in the division of household labour.
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So if you are a man with a female partner, alongside fairness, decency and respect, here is another reason to share fairly the domestic work and care.
See a journalistic summary of the new study here:
See the academic paper here: https://t.co/8qiTFh3pEUpsypost.org/2022/12/when-w… link.springer.com/content/pdf/10…
Sexual violence: It is comforting, but wrong, to think that only a tiny proportion of men ever commit sexual violence. 29.3% of male university students in the USA and Canada have perpetrated some kind of SV - systematic review of studies over 2000-2017 among 25,524 men. 1/4
International studies, similarly, find that significant proportions of men, from 2%, to 10%, to 51%, have ever used sexual violence against a woman. This survey (2011) finds that men’s lifetime reported use of SV was around 9% in most countries. 2/4 https://t.co/gNyen0g4eTicrw.org/publications/e…
So why do some men perpetrate sexual violence against women? Because of gender socialisation and gender inequalities, in particular. Because of sexual entitlement and gender-inequitable social norms. Authoritative review of scholarship on perpetration: 3/4 https://t.co/PWdYGkW2nRxyonline.net/sites/xyonline…
Boys, pornography, and sexual violence: A multi-country European study finds that young men who use porn regularly are more likely than other young men to perpetrate sexual violence (Stanley et al. 2018). Survey of 4,564 young people aged 14 to 17 in five European countries. 1/4
Boys were far more likely than girls to regularly watch pornography. Among boys, regularly watching pornography was associated with increased probability of being a perpetrator of sexual coercion. 2/4
Asked if they regularly watched online porn, the following proportions agreed: 44% of boys & 8% of girls in Bulgaria, 59% of boys & 3% of girls in Cyprus, 39% of boys & 3% of girls in England, 44% of boys & 5% of girls in Italy, and 48% of boys & 6% of girls in Norway. 3/4