Men's Rights

Too often in today’s society, the focus of gender equality is on women. Speeches, organizations, and campaigns are focused on improving the lives of females. I fully support these actions, however, before going out of my way to search for information on the male perspective, I couldn’t fully realize or understand that men had issues too. I am living in a world where ‘gender equality’ advocates always speak from a women’s perspective and talk about women’s issues.

To put it into perspective, men on ships face a hugely unfair disadvantage in the way that women and children are expected to be put to safety first. If gender equality is a rising issue to be talked about and solved, why haven’t people began to change their idea of this everyday thing? If you are male on a sinking ship, your gender automatically puts expectations onto you and increases your chance of being fatally hurt.

Based on a recent study from Ohio University, eighty percent (80%) of suicide victims are male, ninety-three percent (93%) of workplace fatalities are male, seventy six percent (76%) of homicide victims are male, and sixty one percent (61%) of homeless people are male. This clearly shows that males and females are not equally treated with opportunities. I think that a strong reason for these numbers could be from the stereotypes of females being more ‘fragile’ and ‘helpless’. So much of society still sees the female gender as weak that more focus is put on them to make sure that they do okay in life. I see this privilege and biases toward females in my own school where all four of grade nine student speakers at graduation are female. The male percentage of grade nine students in my school are not even given a chance to speak at their own graduation. This simple thing completely puts girls in a higher academic place than boys, which put into a dramatic sense, is very much so evidence for the results of Ohio University’s study.

(Link for larger sized image: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BJSOWvaCQAEp23y.jpg )

This image shows what I believe to be a very true representation of things that happen every day. (Disclaimer: the perspective of this is one that I personally think shows both sides of everyday issues, but I do not necessarily confine my opinion of these issues strictly to this. I know that there are other ways this image could be interpreted, and I am very open to other opinions of what is shown here. There is so much of a grey area with these opinions, and it may never be black and white.) 

Women are most often thought of as the gender to be pressured with expectations of body image. Personally, I have heard so many people talking about the pressure of girls to live up to a picture in a magazine, there have been so many discussions about it. For this particular example, Seventeen magazine has a stamp with girl power written on it that is beside many female celebrities and articles about girls. This is seen as a positive thing, that could inspire it’s female audience. On the other hand, this magazine has pages of each issue dedicated to its ‘hot guy panel’. These pages include shirtless photos of males with (photo-shopped) muscles and all the same sort of look. This is a double-standard! Three percent (3%) of women will develop eating disorders from the ‘pressure to be beautiful’ they see in magazines. Four to six percent  (4-6%) of men turn to steroids.

On the website tumblr, there is a blog dedicated to why people need men’s rights. (http://ineedmensrights.tumblr.com/ ) A few of the submissions are:

• “I need the men's rights movement because when I was looking for a place to rent, over half the posted ads clearly stated “seeking female tenants only”.”
• “I need the men's rights movement because so many people in this world think that “pro-man” is inherently “anti-woman”.”
• “I need the men's rights movement because on the third day of me participating in Movember, I was warned that I’d look like a sex offender”.”
• “I need the men's rights movement because my father was forced to pay my mother child support for 18 years, despite not once consenting to raising a child. That child was me, and I know that is wrong”.”

These few entries got my attention because I can understand where the blogger is coming from. I have seen and heard all of these things many times in my life, and before reading his posts I never thought anything of them. The fact that all of these things are going on right now, without a second thought, is something very wrong. I can’t help but think ‘Why is this the first time I’m seeing this side of things?!”. Why, in a world so globalized and developing, are men so often left in the dust?

While researching men’s rights, I came across the most popular searches in google that began with ‘men shouldn’t’. Following the routine of information I have found, I did not like what I saw. The searches I found are proof that clearly shows to me that men’s stereotypes are ever present. There are entire series of these same ideas of photos like these. Here are a few:

I believe that from all of the information I could have found through the internet, it means something that these photos came to my screen. The fact that I found these tells me that millions of other people have seen them as well. I can’t help but wonder, what would be different about society if these sort of searches were unnecessary? What brought millions of people to search these same things, and what does this mean for the future of the men’s equality movement?

All of these men’s rights issues are only a small fraction of the bigger issues. I think that we, as a society, need to start making these changes. Male or female, female or male, gender should not be a reason or an excuse as to why these problems are still here.