Huffington Post: Das Wiederaufleben der Männerbewegung durch junge Männer

Mit den Vorgängen an der Universität Toronto als Aufhänger berichtet die kanadische Huffington Post über das Neuerstarken der Männerbewegung bei der jungen Generation:

It would be easy to dismiss the campus event and protest as a small, noisy slice of gender activism, but what happened at U of T is illustrative of a growing men’s rights movement driven by some male members of Generation Y (adults born after 1980, also known as Millennials) who are questioning their place in society and whether their rights are being violated. While their views on feminism and the extent of male oppression vary, all agree that we need to talk more openly about issues that affect boys and men.

(...) Iain Dwyer, 28, remembers a poster in his high school that proclaimed: “Boys are stupid, throw rocks at them.” He went to high school in the 1990s when messages about girl power were everywhere and gender equality was a given, said Dwyer, a spokesman for CAFE and one of the organizers of the Farrell lecture.

He says that as Millennial men like himself grew up, they realized that the world was not as equitable as they had been led to believe. Men and boys, they would find out, were suffering too.

Dwyer said CAFE uses the label “men’s issues” rather than “men’s rights” because the latter “implies legal changes are necessary. It implies that there are rights exclusive to men, which we don’t believe is true.”

(...) Now the movement is making rumbles again as young men watch their female peers outpace them in educational achievement, as a stagnant economy crushes traditional male career paths, and as the definition of manhood is picked apart. Some Milliennial men have picked up the men’s rights torch and, given a louder voice and greater ability to find one another online, are making their presence known. There are women among the movement and older men are acting as guides, but Millennial men seem to be feeling the brunt of the struggle.

The controversy over Farrell’s talk, as well as subsequent activities by CAFE on campuses, has helped make Toronto the de facto centre of this renewed movement.

CAFE has set up men’s issues groups on six campuses, mostly in southern Ontario, with more to come. Dwyer said that students appear to be more open to social justice causes and they’ve been attracting many curious young men to their lectures.

Key issues for Dwyer and other activists are fatherhood and paternity rights, men’s health and the education of boys.

“I think that when they (young men) hear about these sort of things, about boys not doing well in school or children not having equal access to both parents, I think that speaks to their equality mindedness,” Dwyer said.

(...) Fiamengo and Dwyer agree that universities are a place for debate and discussion of social justice issues such as gender inequality and that CAFE is attractive to men who are questioning gender roles and, ultimately, what it even means to be a man after decades of feminist influence in humanities studies.

Dwyer said that feminism has done a good job of redefining what it means to be a woman, expanding opportunities and choices beyond the home. He says, however, that it’s time to do that for men, to take them beyond the role of aggressor and breadwinner.

“I felt that there really wasn’t any message about what it meant to be a man except for the occasional, frankly misandric, message that you would see,” Dwyer said.

“The message was just that you’re not wanted, not needed. I think that is the message a lot of Millennial men are getting.”

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