insideMAN

One young man on how he came to support the men’s rights movement

by 4 Comments

If it’s unusual for men to think about their place in the world through the lens of gender politics — and I think it’s fair to say that it is — then it’s even rarer among young men who are still in their teens.

But YouTube vlogger and insideMAN contributor Josh O’Brien is one of them. So as part of our #100Voices4Men and boys series we asked him to make a video explaining, well, why he makes these videos.

Here it is. And as he explains, it’s complicated.

Take a look at the video below, what do you think of Josh’s journey? Does it resonate with your own experiences? Or do you disagree with his analysis and conclusions? Please let us know in a comment or a tweet.

— This is article #27 of our series of #100Voices4Men and boys

Josh vlogs independently, writes for US-based men’s rights’ website A Voice For Men and contributes to insideMAN in the UK. The two sites are not affiliated.

To watch more of Josh’s videos, check out his YouTube channel here and on insideMAN below:

You can find all of the #100Voices4Men articles that will be published in the run up to International Men’s Day 2014 by clicking on this link—#100Voices4Men—and follow the discussion on twitter by searching for #100Voices4Men.

The views expressed in these articles are not necessarily the views of the insideMAN editorial team. Whether you agree with the views expressed in this article or not we invite you to take take part in this important discussion, our only request is that you express yourself in a way that ensures everyone’s voice can be heard.

You can join the #100Voices4Men discussion by commenting below; by following us on Twitter @insideMANmag and Facebook or by emailing insideMANeditor@gmail.com. 

Feature image: flickr/floeschie

  • Duke

    Bro, this is a powerful introduction to the MRM.

  • L Franklin

    Interesting insights. Well said.

  • Nigel

    I hope Josh gets a chance to address a wider and wider audience . As he points out much of what is modern authodoxy is actually flimsy in terms of reason and evidence. It actually relies on the emotions of protecting women and Josh points out in his generation it is really hard to find such frail creatures except in tabloids and feminism. I hope there will more and more people like Josh who simply use their reason and power of thought. 
    For me it’s not about men’s rights as much as the rights of all people and fairness and compassion to those routinely marginalised. Dr. Hakim had it exactly right in referring to “Modern Myths and Magic Medicine” . 

  • Nigel

    Boys and girls report similar levels of abuse across Europe ! Norway much safer for boys! 

    http://stiritup.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/STIR-Briefing-Paper-2.pdf

    In a recent flurry of articles it is trumpeted that here in England boys, fed by a diet of Porn and sexism, are both violent and sexually coercive. Cue demands for feminist training for these sex crazed dangerous beings. But tracking down the actual research, of 3277 secondary school children from 5 European Nations, one finds some interesting patterns indeed. The link to the report (above) takes one to a short report with tables showing the results for both girls and boys. And here we find that in Cyprus, Italy and Bulgaria there is in fact very similar levels of “victimisation” for both boys and girls across the categories of victimisation. Indeed slightly higher for Boys in being victims of actual violence and sexual coercion. For Norway and England there is a more “gendered” pattern with boys reporting much lower levels of victimisation of violence and sexual coercion than their Italian Cypriot and Bulgarian brothers.
    The Feminist authors realise they have a problem. First of all that if one takes  5 countries and the 4 categories of abuse there isn’t actually a huge difference in the levels of abuse reported by boys and girls. And the biggest difference is in the two supposedly more gender equal societies ( or it turns out Cyprus Italy and Bulgaria are more gender equal despite the stereotypes of machismo). 
    The explanation advanced is that because the 3 do not have long standing Violence Against Women campaigns ( which actually isn’t true of Italy from personal knowledge) Then the girls are simply deluded in those countries and underreport. 
    But this is weak because there is much less variation with the levels reported by girls across the 5 nations, The really big variations are with the boys and the Gendered pattern in Norway and England in other words the Norwegian and English boys report low levels. 
    This suggests to me that in the countries with VAW and Girls programmes in schools and public information. Boys have learned not to report anything as it falls outside the definition or the programmes have had the quite unintended consequence of making Norwegian and English girls nicer to their boyfriends than in the other nations. 
    My suspicions would be it is that our boys have been taught that whatever happens to them isn’t abuse or coercion because that can only happen to girls. I particularly think this as in three large scale researches in the last decade in the UK the results reflected those for Italy Cyprus and Bulgaria. The thing that has changed since then is the programmes on abuse in our schools bulky around the idea that violence and coercion is only experienced by girls. 

    Interesting to see how this research is actually reported. 

    http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/feb/11/teenage-girls-coerced-sex-survey