insideMAN

Historic coalition of over 50 leading men’s issues advocates launches ahead of International Men’s Day

by 9 Comments

More than 50 of the UK’s leading charities, academics, journalists and campaigners have come together to form the UK’s largest ever coalition to tackle gender-specific issues affecting men and boys.

The Men and Boys Coalition, which includes insideMAN, brings together organisations and individuals specialising in fields ranging from mental health and suicide prevention to education and parenting and will be launched in Parliament today ahead of International Men’s Day on 19th November 2016.

The Coalition aims to collectively ensure that issues affecting men and boys are fully recognised and tackled by Government, the statutory sector and society in general.

The many nationally-recognised and award-winning campaigns that have agreed to participate in the Coalition include The Campaign Against Living Miserably [CALM]; Britain’s leading charity for male victims of domestic abuse, the Mankind Initiative; and organisations working with men and boys affected by sexual violence, such as Survivors Manchester.

A world first

Although bringing diverse expertise and coming from across the political spectrum, all members are committed to developing constructive, progressive, coherent and gender-inclusive solutions to male-specific issues. The Men and Boys Coalition will bring these voices together under a single lobbying and campaigning umbrella, believed to be the first coalition of its type anywhere in the world.

Mark Brooks, Chair of domestic abuse charity the ManKind Initiative, said: “Over recent years, we have seen many examples of cooperation from a wide range of voices and charities all concerned that not enough is being done to support men and boys in tackling issues they face in their lives.

imd2_babyboy

“This joint working includes challenging statutory bodies to provide services, campaigning for funding and representing the needs of men and boys in the political arena. It is welcome and long overdue that this new coalition has been formed which will represent us all and make all of us stronger – for the good of men and boys, and of course, the women and girls they share their lives with.”

Jane Powell, CEO of the Campaign Against Living Miserably, said: “As a society we need to look at the needs of men and boys across all of our services, as we have done, for girls and women, and rightly so.

‘Long overdue’

“We see boys failing significantly more than girls in education, significantly more men in prison than women, and far more men taking their lives than women. Inequality in any guise is unacceptable; this is a coalition which is long overdue.”

Duncan Craig, CEO of Survivors Manchester, said: “The Men and Boys Coalition is important to the growth of an area that has been vastly under resourced and neglected – the health and wellbeing of men and boys.

“The coalition provides us with an opportunity to address inequalities, network and join forces and build new relationships that will inevitably result in better provision across the UK for men and boys.”

‘A better society for all’

John Adams, stay-at-home-father and leading dad blogger, said: “Women face a lot of issues that need addressing and men have a role to play in making society better for women and girls. There has, however, been a definite change. Slowly but surely, society is waking up to the fact men also face significant challenges: poor mental health provision, a depressingly high suicide rate, ever poorer educational attainment. I am delighted to do my small part to help men meet these challenges and help create a better society for all.”

To mark its launch ahead of International Men’s Day, the Coalition has created a series of meme cards for sharing on social media, highlighting some of the hard-hitting facts the Coalition’s members hope to address. Each of the cards has the tagline “Not everyday Is International Men’s Day”.

The conditions of membership for the Coalition include an agreement that progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the interests and wellbeing of women and girls. The Coalition’s gender-inclusive approach asserts that solutions to male-specific issues should complement campaigns on women’s issues, rather than oppose them. The Coalition will not accept or work with organisations or individuals who express misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism or any other form of bigotry or discrimination.

The co-founders of the Coalition are: Dan Bell, Features Editor, insideMAN magazine; Mark Brooks, equalities campaigner and chair of the ManKind Initiative; Martin Daubney, journalist and broadcaster; Ally Fogg, writer and journalist; Dr Ben Hine, senior lecturer in psychology at the University of West London and Glen Poole, UK Coordinator of International Men’s Day.

To see the full list of members and find out more about the Coalition’s aims, visit their site at: www.menandboyscoalition.org.uk 

  • Darren Ball

    All I can say is: well done, these are exciting times.

    • insideMAN

      Thanks Darren

  • Groan

    I wis you luck with your enterprise. It remind me very much of the excitement in the 70s, the notion of “liberating” both sexes from rigidities of role. So sad that there has to be a coalition formed simply to express the idea that males are human beings too. So appropriate that this is at a time of remembrance of the men and boys slaughtered and maimed. I was perusing Vera Brittan’s Testament of Youth. “we send brothers, sons, husbands and fathers to war” recognition that “society” is about all of us and change involves men and women both. That “white feather” is still handed out every day as men and boys are told to “man up” . There is no biological reason for men to have shorter lives. We will know that there has been liberation when boys are born with the same life expectancy as their sisters. At the moment only those born into French social class “a” among a few other such nations will have that equality.

    • insideMAN

      Thank you, yes, very poignant to recall Vera Brittan’s words. Liberation for all is our goal. And once we’ve got that sorted, on Monday, we’ll have a look at world poverty…

  • AJ

    “The conditions of membership for the Coalition include an agreement that
    progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the
    interests and wellbeing of women and girls.”

    If applied this is a major problem. Women and girls should be considered jsut as much as men, strategies and policies should support everyone, but there is also finite resources and women are massively advantaged by the state at the moment. It is difficult to see how male disadvantage can be meaningfully addressed without removing female privilige. How can areas like health or education can be addressed without some shifting of resources from women to men or the elimination of projects and initiatives which are designed to further advantage women and girls when they are already advantaged. There is evidence of systematic anti-male and pro-female discrimination by teachers eliminating this is surely right but will disadvantage girls compared to the status quo.

    A differnet issue arises in the criminal justice system. There are massive disparities in the incarceration time for the same offense between women and men. Without prejudging how this shoudl be adresses it seems inevitable that a solution will mean that average time spent in jail for women shoudl go up and for men go down. How does this reasonable outcomealign with the conditions of membership.

    The condition sounds sensible and it is right that organisations that campaign for equity for men and boys do not descend into the sexist bigotry, prejudiceand narrow self interest that all but a tiny handful of feminists have descended into but in the real world making significant adjustments to be more equitable must disadvanatge those who are currently advantaged.

    • Groan

      I think it is a conundrum. But actually the solution already exists in the Equality Act. This sets out a sensible framework to address and assess “reasonable” positive action. The actual operation of the Act depends on public bodies properly considering the data. It is here that it has fallen down. Due to the actions of pressure groups and an atavistic desire to protect females and “advocacy research” model has often prevailed rather than the often perfectly accessible official data. In the case of gender this slipshod approach has led to perverse outcomes. So firstly any coalition has to challenge skewed data and highlight the better data (ironically often from the ONS !) to challenge poor policy under the Act. So for instance it should be perfectly possible under the act to try to encourage males to seek work in the public sector, in the many sectors in which men are woefully underrepresented while at the same time supporting “returners” (often women who have had “time off” for children). In the criminal justice system one of the mechanisms in sentencing that has been well researched is that “the bench” applies different standards with regard to “mitigation” and to any family responsibilities. The research would tend to lead to men less likely to receive fines or custodial sentences as their wider circumstances would be considered in the same way as is the norm for females. In effect the “advantages” ,positive action, would be better directed. In education it should be perfectly possible to address the well documented effect of prejudiced assessment of boys to pursue better outcomes for boys in general at the same time as encouraging Girls to be more physically active by offering attractive activities..
      In an idea world “reasonable adjustments” would be based on reason, rather than a hodge podge of ideas and prejudices.

      • AJ

        What you say is entirely reasonable but contradicts the stated policy that:
        “The conditions of membership for the Coalition include an agreement that
        progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the
        interests and wellbeing of women and girls.”

        Can members of the coalition advocate these sorts of sensible policies?

  • paul parmenter

    I continue to find it difficult to get enthusiastic about any attempt to influence Government and the statutory sector towards taking male issues seriously. The state has a virtually continuous history of treating members of the male sex as no more than functional and disposable entities, to be ruthlessly punished if they step an inch out of line from the prescribed orthodoxy of their lives. And I don’t see any changes appearing over the distant horizon.

    This is the measure of the problem. It is the state that has placed all these strictures on men and boys. It is the state education sector that has created the disparity between the performances of boys and girls. It is the state health care system that has focussed so heavily on improving female health while leaving men trailing behind as second class citizens. It is the state that has instituted and implemented the horribly biased divorce procedures that routinely separate children from their fathers, employing force and compulsion to achieve that objective whenever required. It is the same story everywhere. You can see the same dead hand of the state behind all the issues that the Coalition has identified. It is the state that has been instrumental in creating these problems for men and boys. Remove the state from the equation and our lives could be a whole lot better.

    So you can also see my cynicism, when anyone decides the way to improve the lives of men and boys is to go back to the state and ask that it recognises what it has studiously ignored for generations, and that it needs to produce resources it doesn’t have in order to do it. Who really believes that the state will ever do anything to change, when it is the state and its servants that systematically create and benefit from the problems in the first place? The state is already trying to do too much, and failing. It has its hands more than full. There is no spare money available to channel away from its favoured projects and into any kind of direct help for men and boys. And there are far too many powerful people with vested interests in the existing system to allow anything to change. Just look at the response to the two debates that have now taken place about International Men’s Day. Apart from the splendid Philip Davies, there are barely any MPs who show any interest, and far more who are openly or covertly hostile. And how much effect do debates have anyway?

    I guess the most obvious response to my cynicism that the state will do nothing, is to ask where else instead we should turn to for constructive and committed activity. My answer is to recognise the resources we all have inside us. It is necessary to divest ourselves as far as possible from any dependence on the state. Not easy I know, but there are many possibilities and avenues. Your sons can get a better education outside of the state system than they will ever get within it, and the state does not have a monopoly. If you don’t want to be destroyed in the divorce court, then don’t get married. If you don’t trust the state to look after your health, then do more to look after it yourself. I am sure that a man taking control of his own life will do better for himself than any amount of waiting for the intransigent state machine to do anything for him, let alone even notice him.