insideMAN

Has the UK become institutionally sexist against men and boys?

by 8 Comments

From suicide and homelessness, to boys’ educational underachievement and the lack of provision for male domestic violence victims, there is an on-going and conspicuous silence from Government in terms of addressing the issues that primarily affect men and boys. Why?

On Thursday, as part of a series of talks by UCL’s Gender Equity Network, Mark Brooks, equalities campaigner and Chairman of male domestic violence charity The Mankind Initiative, presented detailed research into the structures of Government, the third sector and the media that determine the UK’s approaches to tackling gender issues.

His troubling conclusion was that over the past 40 years, an ingrained set of attitudes and structures have developed in Government, policy and the media that oppose discussion and corresponding action on issues that adversely affect the well-being of men and boys.

You can see his full presentation in the videos below. What do you think?

Part 1:

Part 2:

  • Vincent McGovern

    I was present for the presentation by Mark Brooks. Extremely informative and more importantly delivered in a easy to understand style. Sadly perhaps due to my age (57) it reminded me so much of the justification for apartheid in South Africa but more especially the Jim Crow laws which so dominated culture and society for so long in the Southern states of America. One narrative dominates funding and research, then the cycle develops and continues, alternative viewpoints are aggressively attacked, one view only. And all the time children and society loses. We now have VAWG Violence against Women and Girls campaign. What type of gender lunacy automatically ignores half of all children because of their gender.

    • Arminds’ copy of Swank

      An “equality” one that has pigeonholed Men at the 21st century boogieman

  • Pam Western

    I have to say that Mike B who was commenting after the presentation really needs to tone it down a bit. I have a lot of respect for him for standing up against feminism and rabid feminists for which there are many these days I really do. However he really needs to try and speak in a more calm and approachable manner. I feel that his opener which is often “in our party manifesto we identify…..” comes across far too aggressive and it needs to be mixed up a bit.

    That being said we can what we are up against when we saw the behaviour of the feminist who decided to storm out after her comment claiming all women are oppressed.

    • Arminds’ copy of Swank

      Women face issues but most are issues that affect their comfort like cat-calling. Where’s men’s issues affect life and death and poverty and injustice

  • Phuk Yurmudda

    I’m glad that someone is attempting to reconcile the structural inequalities that are increasingly creating a toxic society.

    Equality in no more words means equality for all, not gender-centric policy making that clings to the archaic notions of “damsels-in-distress” while condemning men to become maligned under false conceptualisations of an “evil-patriarchy”.

  • Groan

    The answer is indeed yes. Most obviously in the operation of public agencies. And of course these agencies are pretty wide spread in our society . BBC , NHS, CPS , Courts,police , Education , University , Welfare, Social Services. Quite at variance with our self image the UK is a remarkably political society in which changes are made through gov funding of so much of our institutions . Working with a number if European colleagues all noted a contrast with their own experience in their home counties in which political changes often make little difference and gov agencies are mistrusted and widely simply circumumvented.
    Thus the institutional “benign” (to female) sexisim so evident and rather crystallised in VAWG has wide traction

  • Darren Ball

    The lone female voice (8.40), the psychology student, touched upon the most crucial matter of all. Judging from audience reactions, it seems that her comments were seen by many as a challenge to Mark’s presentation, but I don’t see why Mark and her can’t both be right – in fact, she did say that she agreed with Mark, I think she just wanted to add some additional context.

    Her academic focus is men’s mental health and help for male victims of sexual violence. She wants to know why vulnerable men’s voices aren’t being heard. She “completely agreed” with Mark on the problems faced by men and boys. She went on to say that a point might have been missed, and that was an acknowledgment that the reason why there’s a focus on women and girls is that they have been “systematically oppressed”. I believe that these two words are the point of disconnect between feminism and men’s activism.

    Two of Mark’s reoccurring issues were unequal outcomes for men and boys in terms of DA services and educational attainment. Mark’s points were well-made, and as far I can ascertain, completely accurate. So why isn’t feminism campaigning for equal outcomes here? The answer is, I believe, that feminism doesn’t believe that men and boys are disadvantaged in these areas as a result of “systematic oppression”, and for “systematic oppression” read patriarchy.

    Patriarchy traditionally allowed, if not encouraged, husbands to physically dominate their wives and undervalued the education of girls beyond that of teaching them how to perform domestic duties: this is why DA and education remain feminist issues. It does not mean that feminists are ambivalent towards abused men and poorly educated boys, it’s just that they don’t see them as feminist issues.

    It is perfectly reasonable for feminism to focus only on misogyny and patriarchy, since these are very important parts of the struggle for gender equality. The problem isn’t with feminism per se, the problem is that there’s no overarching gender equalities movement that deals with gender inequalities NOT caused (or seen to be caused) by misogyny and patriarchy. The psychology student clearly thought that it IS a problem that issues affecting men and boys are being missed, but it’s only when we understand the reasons for this will we be able to change the “Grand Narrative”.

    For example, out of 48 subjects examined at age 16, girls do better than boys in 46. The feminist response to this is: what about the other two? From a feminist perspective this is reasonable – the other two subjects are both STEM subjects and girls have traditionally been told that they’re not good at these subjects. However, this cannot be the only response from the equalities movement.

    Equality of outcome demands, that where boys are relatively failing in 46 subjects out of 48, that loud and influential voices demand to know why we’re failing to educate boys as successfully as we educate girls. The trouble is that the current binary doesn’t allow an issue to be gendered for women and girls, and also be gendered for men and boys. The erroneous belief is, that if we acknowledge that an issue is gendered for men and boys as well as being gendered for women and girls, then it stops becoming a gendered issue at all and becomes just an issue. Stripped of its “gendered” status it’s no longer an equalities issue and drops down the list of societal priorities.

    Feminists are sitting in one corner believing that the relative failure of boys’ education is an issue, an issue that many will feel very strongly about, but because it has no basis in patriarchal attitudes it’s not an issue for feminist but an issue for educationalists.

    In the other corner sits men’s activists saying that equality demands equality of outcome. Boys’ educational outcomes are much poorer than those of girls, ergo we have a gendered inequality effecting boys. Since feminism considers itself the go-to movement for gendered equality, it needs to campaign on behalf of boys’ education. When feminists prefer to celebrate the fact that girls are outperforming boys, and then press for at least parity in STEM subjects too, many men’s activists conclude that feminism is a female supremacist movement that hates men – which at face value seems to fit many of the facts, other than the one fact that feminists DON’T actually hate men (not in general, at least).

    I believe that the more sensible answer is to acknowledge that feminism is NOT a movement for gender equality, where gender equality is defined in terms of equal outcomes. Feminism is a movement to challenge systematic patriarchal and misogynist oppression, and has an inherent blind spot on gendered inequalities arising from different causes – unfortunately I believe that this is incorrigibly so.

    If what fires you up are patriarchal and misogynist attitudes and behaviour towards women, that’s fine and I wish you well. I cannot demand that you also get fired up about other issues that have no basis in patriarchy and misogyny just because they’re disadvantaging men and boys. What I can ask is that you recognise that your activism is a sub-set of gender-equality issues, it’s not the full deal. The failure to recognise this has led, I believe, to the horribly skewed government policies identified by Mark.

    Two of Mark’s other reoccurring themes were lack of concern for rough-sleepers, men’s mental health outcomes generally and suicide in particular. It is very easy to see how these and other men’s inequalities are linked directly to patriarchal attitudes of: a hierarchy of men, stiff upper lip, big boys don’t cry, grow a pair and man-up. When I’ve made this point previously I’ve been advised that these characteristics are not part of the feminist definition of patriarchy. Perhaps not, because feminists haven’t been talking very much about this side of patriarchy because it doesn’t affect women very much, but nonetheless, these are very much patriarchal attitudes.

    I believe that if men were to recognised where their gendered problems are rooted in patriarchal attitudes, then feminism might grow to encompass them. For true feminists, patriarchy is the enemy regardless of the affected gender. However, it doesn’t help that some of the most vocal voices within men’s activism deny that the patriarchy even exists and prefers to blame feminism for all men’s problems.

    The second excellent comment came at 14 mins from a gentlemen suggesting that men learn a lesson from the gay rights movement. His point was essentially that because men are the norm, they’re invisible. This is absolutely right and is another symptom of patriarchy.

    Since men are the reverence point, they can only ever be neutral whilst women’s outcomes are judged as being either better or worse. Nobody wants to fix something that’s already “better” – “better” is good, “better” is positive, better leave “better” alone. Conversely “worse” is negative and in need of improvement.

    For instance, generally girls do “better” (hoorah) at school but “worse” (booh) at maths. How often do we here of girls “outperforming” boys at school and women being “under-represented” in the boardroom? All you need to do is flip the referenced sex to reverse the unequal gender.

    • Arminds’ copy of Swank

      See I don’t see how past opression of women has any bearing on current oppression of men. It’s not a competition, men’s issues and supporting them doesn’t have to have anything to do with women, same as women’s issues can be backed without bringing men into the equation, as is being done.

      By addressing how hard done women were you inadvertently or intentionally shift the focus away from the issues that are affecting men. There’s plenty of help for women already so it’s not like they need more when men have almost none. Equality should mean equal help

      For instance it wouldn’t hurt at all to de-gender rape services so women and men can get support there. All that would happen is male victims would get help. Yet this would be seen as harmful to women. Which is the problem. Any help for men is seen as a threat to women when it’s not. It’s about helping men who are harmed by a gynocentric society