"Der plötzliche und überraschende Aufstieg der Männerrechtsbewegung"?

Zu dem vor einigen Tagen hier verlinkten Beitrag des Magazins The Daily Beast über die Probleme, die aus der Männerrechtsbewegung heraus für sie selbst entstehen, gibt es jetzt einen Nachfolgeartikel. Ein Auszug:

A lot of the outrageous claims proffered by MRM activists actually turned out to be true.

The Daily Beast article deals with quite a few such claims (and I will be writing about these issues in more detail in the months to come). Notable examples of things I was sure would turn out to be false but ended up being true include:

* In the United States, more men are victims of rape each year than women.

* In many parts of the U.S., men who are victims of domestic or sexual abuse have no access to resources such as safe houses; in many places (including, as it turns out, my home town of Portland, OR) the laws and policies that enable resources for at-risk victims are written in such a gender-specific way as to only apply to women.

* If you fall behind on your child support payments because you have lost your job, you can be sent to prison – and in your trial you are not entitled to legal representation.

* If an adult woman molests a male child, and that molestation results in a pregnancy, that boy can be forced to pay child support for his offspring once he becomes a wage-earning adult.

* As I noted above, the U.N. is pushing for mandatory circumcision in third world countries – and this push has been publically applauded and encouraged by Democratic Presidential hopeful Hilary Clinton.

As it turns out, most the MRM’s opponents actually agree that there are a lot of cracks in the system where men (especially low-income men) are at risk at having their civil rights and safety violated. However, no one aside from the MRM seems willing to actually run with any of these balls. Which means that if you are, for example, a male at risk of sexual assault looking for a political white knight, the MRM isn’t just your best available option — they’re your only available option.

Unfortunately for that at-risk male, the MRM might just have the single worst political instincts of any civil rights groups I have ever encountered. In fact, as you will see if you read the Beast article, the movement’s insistence on pushing aside its more moderate leaders in favor of its most comically vitriolic makes it untenable for a mainstream politician or policy maker to align themselves with MRM causes. (Imagine if you will the effectiveness of the 1970s feminist movement if it had publically rallied around its Andrea Dworkins and marginalized its Gloria Steinems. Or if the Civil RIghts Movement had bet all of its chips on Stokley Carmichael and left Martin Luther King, Jr. as an unknown without a flock.)

Many of the MRM’s critics (and believe me, there are a hell of a lot of them) worry that having the MRM in the public spotlight might be damaging to women. I highly doubt this, if only because I question the movement’s ability to persuade anyone outside of its own sphere. Which isn’t to say I don’t worry that the movement might be damaging; I do. I worry that the MRM might be doing the most damage to the very people it sets out to help. Public policy changes need either mainstream public support or heavy political clout. As it stands, the MRM has neither, and, worse, does not appear have any interest in taking even the smallest steps to change that fact.

Hier findet man den vollständigen Artikel.