Talk:Men's rights movement/Archive 11

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Please Don't Dumb Down Obvious Truths

For example, under the section titled "Divorce" it says; "Men's rights concern is regarding their perception of unequal representation in family and divorce law" then it goes on to say only 3% of men receive alimony indicating that custody rates are similar. This, however, is preceded by the statement "perception of unequal treatment." This is kind of like saying "Blacks perceived unequal treatment under Jim Crow laws." It has a certain weaselly absurdity to it. Grow some balls and say what you mean. If the evidence supports the conclusion, state the conclusion. If you don't understand why, see weasel words under "Passive and middle voice." — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamin9832 (talk • contribs) 05:19, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Why are the history and definition sections there ?

Neither are necessary and come across as an attempt to obfuscate the issue.
Gathering a group of movements and claiming them to be mens rights just because there's men in them is like claiming a group of women supporting wife beating makes them a womens rights group. Pleasetry (talk) 05:03, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

This raises some good points. This article is Men's Rights. While information on the Men's Rights Movement (MRM) is certainly apropos (especially if there's no separate article), we should not randomly assume any modern day men's group is a Men's Rights organization or part of the MRM. The issue does become somewhat convoluted though as men seeing themselves as a specific and separate class with unique needs and issues is relatively new. Thus, while groups like the mythopoetic men's movement never really advocated for men's rights or issues, it was an early attempt at exploring the very idea that men had concerns, issues and needs that were unique to boys, men and fathers.--Cybermud (talk) 18:21, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree that this, like lots of other things, needs work. I agree that the definition section is problematic, with original research etc. As per Cybermud, it seems from the sources that some of these groups were precursors of men's rights actions and activism, even if they aren't really men's rights groups. It will need to be carefully written. --Slp1 (talk) 22:48, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree wholeheartedly, I don't see how unsupported arguments that human rights forums were unduly focused on men's rights is relevant to an article concerning (mostly unexplored) men's rights issues. It reads as an attempt to write unsupported criticism into the head of the article, and suggests that men's rights should be properly understood as issues which do not warrant special attention and are already being adequately dealt with. If the author of this section wishes to make this assertion it might be more honest to label their views as criticism.

The use of the word "patriarchal" in the second paragraph is also problematic as this concept is often used to imply that men's rights issues do not exist and that only women are denied human rights on the basis of their gender. The following section "Men's rights movement" is a much more substantial and less confused background to the subject of the article.

Theicychameleon (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

i don't see how saying that men were and are privileged in many ways necessarily entails that they can't have inequalities at the same time. logically that's impossible and the rest of the page attests to that. just because the facts aren't accommodating, doesn't mean they're untruthful or judgemental. same with the word "patriarchal". Paintedxbird (talk) 16:46, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I would agree: They don't, my personal view (if its any help) is that gender roles bestow both privilege and oppression on both genders. My issue is that the term "patriarchal" implies male power and female dis-empowerment but usually not the reverse. As such the existence of men's rights issues are contradictory to patriarchy theory.

Theicychameleon (talk) 15:27, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Health Section

The wording of the second section bothers me immensely. The emphasis of the Academic credentials of Masculist critics falsely implies that Men's Rights Arguments are mostly unacademic, its an ad hominem attack. Furthermore the assertion that men only suffer from a reduced lifespan due to "conformity with the narrow definitions of masculinity that promise to bring them status and privilege" smacks of victim blaming, as if men dying of heart attacks after a lifetime of labour and service are somehow responsible for their own predicament. If I were to cite authors claiming female responsibility for women's rights issues on the basis that women do so in order to access female privilege, or that they are less relevant as they apply more to minority groups of women there would be uproar (and rightly so).

On top of this, presenting the argument of "the male gender role as the root of men's health issues" being opposed to and criticism of the argument that "men's health issues are gender oppression" and the argument that "men's health issues are being marginalised by feminism" is fallacious: The former does not contradict or criticise the latter statements.

In order to remedy this I propose the deletion of the second paragraph and that arguments made by Academic Masculists such as Warren Farrell be added to the first in order to show how men's health issues being considered to be the result of discrimination and oppression is compatible with the view that they are the result of the male gender role.

At the very least the idea that "male health issues as a result of the male gender role" is a critcism of "male health issues as male oppression" should be contrasted with arguments showing how the two are compatible.

Thoughts?

Theicychameleon (talk) 12:29, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Firstly, thank you, Theicychameleon, for coming to the talkpage for discussion. It's a great step and much appreciated. I've brought the sections down to the bottom as that is where new topics typically go.

If you don't mind me saying so, I think your comments and observations contain a few misconceptions about WP, and WP editing. That is quite fine: I see that you are a fairly new WP editor, and there is a lot to learn I know.

• This is an encyclopedia that seeks to summarize the highest quality reliable sources. Many of the comments made above come from the perspective that the current material is fallacious, that you don't agree it, or that similar material wouldn't be in another article. Articles don't get written based on these criteria, nor on making a new argument but on what high quality sources say. If you found high-quality sources making the point of "female responsibility for women's rights issues on the basis that women do so in order to access female privilege" then I'd support the inclusion in WP on an appropriate page.
• As an example to show that this works both ways, the article currently talks about the difference in funding etc for breast and prostate research. When this overall topic was discussed a few months back (in relation to a different source than the one currently in the article), one of WP's finest medical authors gave a variety of seemingly solid reasons for disagreeing with the men's rights viewpoint on this matter [1]. And the article in question gave several more[2] But none of these arguments have (or will be) included as rebuttals to the men's rights viewpoint because these criticisms/observations have not been made in reliable sources in the context of men's rights.
• Warren Farrell isn't an academic: he has a PhD, but he is not on faculty at a university, teaching students, doing research, writing for peer-reviewed journals etc.

So no, I don't agree with the deletion of well-sourced material, nor do I agree that there is a point of view problem with using the term "academics" since that is precisely who they are.

On the other hand, Farrell is a well-known masculinist author and speaker in the area of men's rights, and his publications are in my mind reliable sources. If you have some material to add from his books, that would probably be fine, making sure though the material is written dispassionately and is not given undueweight --Slp1 (talk) 23:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

No problem, I wasn't really sure where to put them to be honest.

"If you found high-quality sources making the point of "female responsibility for women's rights issues on the basis that women do so in order to access female privilege" then I'd support the inclusion in WP on an appropriate page." Good god, are you serious? We'd be roasted alive! Seriously though, I don't think that would be a helpful addition to the women's rights page, regardless who says it.

Thank you for the warm welcome, but I am aware, roughly, of how wikipedia works (at least at this level). If I wanted to write an opinion piece I'd be over in conservapedia ;)

Looking back over what I wrote I can see how badly I phrased it: Its not so much that I disagree with the cited work (I do, strongly, but thats beside the point), my main issue is that it falsely implies that the concept of the Male Gender Role being the source of men's health issues is solely an argument of MRA-critics and never of the MRM itself.

On reflection, however, I accept that you're quite right: that paragraph doesn't quite deserve deletion.

Instead I'd propose that another sentence or two be added to the effect that MRAs have also argued this position (Men's Health issues as a result of an overly strict Male gender role) in conjuntion with the former two (Men's Health issues as opression and Men's Health issues having been negatively impacted by some feminist discourses). "The Myth of Male Power" would serve pretty well in this respect: http://books.google.ie/books?id=yz-nPwAACAAJ&dq=the+myth+of+male+power

This would preserve existing citations while still getting across the point that some MRAs share this position and that it needn't necessarily be understood as being contradictory to the others.

As argued below I suggest that the critics be referred to as "other academics" on the basis that several of the cited sources for the first paragraph are also academic.

Theicychameleon (talk) 02:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. If Farrell makes his point in his book, great.

Which academics are you talking about? The sources being cited in the first paragraph (which are indeed for the most part academics) all attribute the ideas to "men's rights activists"; these are not their thoughts or ideas, but what they have seen in the men's rights material they have been studying. --Slp1 (talk) 03:25, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough :) I'll include that later this evening so.

"Doctors and academics have argued circumcision is a violation of men's right to health and bodily integrity." All the links following that sentence. If nothing else, it reads a bit weird to read "academics say x" followed by "academics critique this position" rather than "other academics critique this position." Especially when they're the same academics being referred to.

But I take your point that Messner and others aren't stating their own own opinion in the first paragraph. I think that section could do with some tidying up.

Just as a suggestion: I understand that "poor quality" sources such as blogs can be used as sources on themselves, if not their subject matter. While I agree that publications like the GMP aren't by any means of academic standard, and can't be held to be authorative on issues such as the interpretation of statistics, it might not be unreasonable to cite them as evidence that moderate MRAs have spoken out about such issues in the past and help balance out the focus on the fringe.

Theicychameleon (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I'm really not sure what you are arguing regarding the academics. Sorry. As regards using the Good Men Project sources, I truly think it would be a mistake. For one, they are, as you say, poorer quality, and there has already had one row on this page with an editor who edits from a men's rights position who says that the GMP is not a men's rights project and is "ridiculed by MRA's".(see http://wiki.riteme.site/wiki/Talk:Men%27s_rights#Use_of_the_Term_Men.27s_Rights_Activism) Once again, we simply don't know who to believe: you who says that is a moderate MRA project and Cybermud who says it it isn't. That way was lies madness. In addition, neutrality is determined by what the best sources say, and not by seeking out and finding sources to "balance" an article; the reason is that what is "balanced" is going to be different for every single editor here. It is fascinating (but predictable, I guess) that already this is an issue: editors coming from a feminist perspective find the article biased towards MRAs while editors coming from a masculist perspective find it biased against them. So maybe it is about right? --Slp1 (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"Doctors and academics have argued" is rather too strong, since it could be interpreted to mean that doctors and academics were unanimous in this view (in fact, it seems to be a fringe position). I've amended it to say that "Some doctors and academics have argued...", and have also added some citations to those who disagree with this position. Jakew (talk) 11:08, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

i think the entire lot of recent editions have added sources that are unconnected to men's rights activism despite being about related issues. is that allowed? Paintedxbird (talk) 12:19, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I agree. As has been noted in the past, this is not the place to argue about the truth (or otherwise) of the issues themselves with original research and synthesis. Additions need to have a direct connection to men's rights. I will delete the section. --Slp1 (talk) 17:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

To Jakew: By fringe position you mean the idea that men die younger because of their gender role or that men die younger because of genetics? At any rate it looks like a sensible edit to me.

To Paintedxbird: The page isn't about men's rights activism, its about men's rights issues. Which sources had you in mind?

Theicychameleon (talk) 13:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I mean the idea that circumcision is a violation of men's rights, Theicychameleon. Mainstream thinking among physicians and academics does recognise that there may be human rights issues associated with circumcision, depending on context, but generally doesn't take such an extreme position (see this UNAIDS document for a useful discussion of the issues). Jakew (talk) 13:18, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, I'd agree with that.

Theicychameleon (talk) 17:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Domestic Violence Section

Again, I'm forced to ask why Masculist voices are phrased as "Men's Rights Activists" and critics as "Academics." I have no problem with criticism of the motivation of MRAs, this is supposed to be a neutral article and all voices should be represented, but I do object to one side being represented as "academic" and the other not.

I propose that the word "academics" be replaced with "critics" in the second paragraph. Also, I plan to add citations to the first paragraph from Warren Farrell's work on the subject.

Theicychameleon (talk) 12:29, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

As I mentioned above, we follow what the sources say, and the highest quality sources virtually always attribute these opinions to men's rights activists. The only places that I have found where the various viewpoints are not attributed are in books and articles written by MR activists themselves. In this context, trying to attribute what appears to be the mainstream academic opinion to "critics" is what WP calls using a weasel word. See also WP:VALID--Slp1 (talk) 23:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Weasel words are exactly the problem: why is an academic scholar an "MRA" when they draw attention to the existence of Female on Male DV, but an "Academic" when they criticise MRA voices? I say this as many of the sources for the first paragraph are, in fact, academics and in some cases are even the same academics cited as criticism. I have no problem with this, they've certainly said these things, its just that the adjectives supplied by wikipedians seem biased.

If 'critic' is seen as dismissive of their academic title then perhaps 'other academics' would suffice?

Just to take a parallel, academic critics of feminism are referred to on the feminist page as "writers" even though they're almost all professors and former professors. Do you consider this appropriate? If not, should we suggest that they be termed "Academics?" I suspect that this wouldn't be greeted warmly.

As above, Warren Farrell's work on the subject might help, I'm amazed he hasn't been cited in this section and he's nothing if not academic.

Theicychameleon (talk) 02:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

As above, the academics in the "first paragraph" all attribute the ideas to men's rights activists. They don't express agreement with the ideas; they are just reporting them on a factual basis. And as I mentioned above, Farrell is not an academic. He does not have any kind of position at a university. I don't know what is happening at the feminist page but I've already pointed out that WP:OTHERSTUFF isn't a valid argument at WP. Can I ask you to please read my comments, the links I give you, and the references in the article carefully before responding. It is important and a means of saving time and frustration. --Slp1 (talk) 03:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Christina Hoff Sommers is a "Men's Rights Writer" but her critics are "Academics"? I'm not a huge fan of her or her work, I think her criticism of feminism isn't accurate. But I don't question that she's an academic. As above, "other accademics" would be less weasely.

He's held several teaching positions in the past, and he holds a PhD in the area, how does that not make him an academic? He's hardly a lay commentator. Is there a wikipedia policy stating that only field experts with tenure can be referred to as academics? I'm not being smart, I'm just wondering, I couldn't find one in the links you provided and google didn't turn anything up. If there is I apologise wholeheartedly and thankyou for taking the time to add your views.

I'm sorry to hear you feel frustrated, I was merely refering to what seem to be acceptable editing practices in a related area. Its not that I hold you responsible for everything that gets written on wikipedia, or that if x is true on page y it must be applied everywhere, I was just interested to hear your opinion on the matter. Thank you for making yourself clear and I'd like to assure you that I did, in fact, read the links you provided.

Theicychameleon (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"An academic is a person who works as a teacher and researcher at a university or other higher education institution."[3] Neither Farrell nor Hoff Sommers work at a university of higher education institution. Teaching courses at universities doesn't make you an academic and Farrell hasn't done it for a long time. Hoff-Sommers hasn't worked in a university/college setting more more than 20 years. Neither of these are academics per se, nor are they are they lay commentators as you describe it. They are writers, authors, speakers, researchers even but not academics.--Slp1 (talk) 17:48, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Using wikipedia as a guide to defining itself is problematic and I disagree with that definition. Furthermore I still can't find any policy stating that only currently tenured academics may be referred to as such. WF and CHS clearly hold enough academic credentials in this field for their word to be referred to as that of an academic.

Theicychameleon (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

recent addition and now deletion

This morning two editors added some interesting and good materials about men's health issues. However, this is an article about men's rights, and sources need to make a connection to men's rights. It is not the place to do original research and synthesis to show whether MRM specific issues are "legitimate", "true" or not, by providing evidence about the "issue", rather than about men's rights. This material would likely be well placed in an article about men's health, but not here. Reading through the archives might help new editors the stages that this article has been through and why this is necessary.--Slp1 (talk) 17:33, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

A widely held opinion by medical professionals on the subject aforementioned in the section is not OR. It's not synth at all since it doesn't pose a single conclusion beyond what the sources say (nor does it omit major conclusions to the contrary that might be found within those sources). I see you haven't deleted the recent circumcision content you mentioned above as OR/synth, even though those articles do not address men's rights movements. Would you care to show us where those articles specifically address men's rights movements, according to your criteria for inclusion? Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 20:24, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

You are right that it isn't original research in itself, but it is synthesis (and unverifiable to boot) to connect it to this topic, because we don't combine sources together to make a point. As I said, this is about men's rights, not about topics which individual editors think are men's rights. One example from the past that I loved was the rather silly notion of "blue jeans" as a men's rights. It is perfectly possible to find good sources that the men have many fewer jean styles available to them than women do. That's unfair, isn't it? What happens if somebody comes by and says we should have a sub-section about men's rights to blue jeans. No, we need the direct connection to the men's rights movement, otherwise there's no stopping what argument and information back and forth that can be included here.

As far as circumcision is concerned, I didn't remove it because I always had mixed feeling about the topic's inclusion here at all. I was going to open a broader discussion about it a bit later, rather than delete only part of it. --Slp1 (talk) 20:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The evidence connecting men's health initiatives to men's rights is found within the context of the information cited in the section. "Exponents accuse the state, health institutions, and medical professions of either malign neglect...on men's longevity and quality of life." (Menzies -- yes I omitted one of his two claims about the MRM, for emphasis) Flood argues for the inclusion of men's health initiatives (ones which he said should be tailored to men, not cloned from women's health initiatives) shortly after the quote attributed to him. Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 21:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't see the distinction between men's rights and men's rights issues. There also seems to be considerable confusion between the areas of specific men's rights advocacy groups, their opinions and the more general area of men's rights issues (the latter being the subject of this article).

As mentioned above, some of the contrary opinions in the circumcision paragraph don't specifically mention it as a rights issue while the opinions speaking out against it do. Does this mark the contrary opinions as original research and candidates for deletion in your view?

The difference is that reliable sources exist citing health concerns as men's rights issues whereas, to my knowlege, they don't for blue jeans. This is why theres a section about men's health but none about fashion.

This said, the manner in which the sources were cited arguably constitutes synthesis (as defined by the OR page) as they were connected by the editor as a logical stream. This could be rectified by splitting them into separate sentences while still maintaining the references.

Theicychameleon (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

A Suggestion for How This Article Might Be Organized

I suggest that the section entitled "Issues" be renamed "Arguments and Evidence" and special attention be paid to providing evidence to back up what is being said. Tables and stats should be provided whenever possible. Also, here is some evidence;

Sons of Divorce Fare Worse Than Daughters     http://www.socialwork.utoronto.ca/faculty/bios/fuller-thomson.htm
Advance Report of Final Divorce Statistics, 1989 and 1990     http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/95facts/fs_439s.htm
Mothers wrongly identifying fathers in Child Support Agency claims     

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2483751/Mothers-wrongly-identifying-fathers-in-Child-Support-Agency-claims.html

Vital and Health Stats ie: "Among women 0.9 per 100,000 workers and among men 8.3 per 100,000 workers 
died because of work-related trauma." etc. etc. http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_03/sr03_031.pdf
The study above is a meta-study and can lead you to many other studies.
Also, check out this page, which also has websites listed with stats: http://www.coeffic.demon.co.uk/descrim.htm  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamin9832 (talk • contribs) 01:06, 4 March 2012 (UTC) 

wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a soapbox. it's not for users to publish original research or synthesise/interpret claims from sources. assertions must be verifiable from reliable sources and directly related to the men's rights movement, not just issues men's rights activists find relevant as that is synthesis. Paintedxbird (talk) 06:40, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

How is anything you just said sequitur to anything I said? Did I say we should engage in synthesis? Is there any original research listed above? Is any of it not potentially relevant? What are you saying? I have no clue why or what or if I'm being accused of something. Clarify please. Did you read my post before commenting on it? I get the impression that you aren't interested in a conversation. You have attacked me with non sequitur logic (that is reasoning that has no relevance to what is being discussed). I have not done any of the things I think you are accusing me of, and I am not interested in edit warring with you. I am listing sources which could be used to improve the article. I therefor get the impression that you do not want me to do this. This leads me to believe that you have a POV to push. In a nutshell;

1. You falsely accused me of violating Wikipedia policy.

2. No evidence supports your conclusion in any of my statements.

3. This leads to one of several possibilities, either A. You failed to read or correctly interpret my post or B. You are not interested in :::understanding my post, in which case the only logical conclusion is that you trolling for a fight.

Please clarify which it is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamin9832 (talk • contribs) 22:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

"How is anything you just said sequitur to anything I said? Did I say we should engage in synthesis? Is there any original research listed above? Is any of it not potentially relevant?" your entire suggestion is synthesis. as i have said, those stories do not pertain to the men's rights movement. they may relate to issues the men's rights movement are interested in, but that isn't what this article is about. wikipedia is an encyclopaedia, not a forum for promoting men's rights issues and posing arguments, this article is only for describing the men's rights movement. if you read the links i provided you it should repeat that, but i will provide you with the relevant passages from policies and guidelines if you need. p.s please keep your false dichotomies to yourself as it's not in accordance with wikipedia's guidelines on civility or assuming good faith. Paintedxbird (talk) 07:06, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

Every Section Begins with "Men's Rights Activists Argue..." or "Men's Rights Activists Have Stated...", etc.

this method of speech is not only redundant and annoying, it delegitimizes the subject matter unneccesarily. it portrays everything ever said in support of what the writer defines as a "men's rights activists position" to be mere opinion. if it all were mere opinion, then the entire article might as well be deleted. some people think santa claus is real, we don't go around beginning everything on the santa claus wikipedia page with "santa claus believers feel X" or "believers in santa class have stated Y" Kire1975 (talk) 07:56, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Although I agree with you that the current phrasing is awkward and could be improved, generally speaking it is encouraged for Wikipedia articles to attribute the points of view they mention to those parties that hold them, especially with minority and WP:FRINGE viewpoints. And there's nothing wrong with 'mere opinion' - we have tons of articles that deal with mere opinion, and in a manner of speaking, as far as Wikipedia is concerned, everything is mere opinion. To paraphrase a policy, WP:UNDUE, we strive to write articles that represent all significant viewpoints that have been published in reliable sources, in proportion to the prevalence at which they are held. We don't make judgments of truth value. We're all about verifiability, not truth - we talk about what other people say, not what is true.

In this article, we certainly cannot just remove the 'Men's rights activists argue" stuff and state something like "The health issues faced by men and their shorter life spans as compared to women are evidence of discrimination and oppression. Feminism has led to women's health issues being privileged at the expense of men's." To do so would be to present a minority viewpoint as fact, and would go against our policies on sourcing, verifiability, and using a neutral point of view.

We could try to use this article give a neutral overview of men's rights, presenting the dominant, mainstream views of the state of men's rights in today's world. I've wanted to do this in the past, but it has been vigorously argued against by men's rights activists attracted to the article. Such an article would only contain the concerns of men's rights activists in proportion with the prevalence those viewpoints are held by reliable sources - and bluntly, that would mean that only a few of the currently listed issues would make it in.

For this article to present the views of concerns of men's rights activists, we must make explicit that these are the views and concerns of men's rights activists. To do otherwise would be granting undue weight to a minority position. If you have a better idea for wording that would still convey the same meaning, please edit in to the article, because I agree that the article reads really awkwardly currently. Kevin (kgorman-ucb) (talk) 11:01, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

attributing

I have removed the naming of individuals (except in the case of quotes), and the change from academics to "gender studies authors". Here is my reasoning:

• The academics listed are for the most part not "gender studies authors". They are often academics with PhDs in sociology generally working in sociology departments-with their specialities are typically described (by themselves and others) "men and masculinities", but others are criminologists, education professors etc. Not only is it not accurate but "Gender studies" is, rightly or wrongly, used as pejorative term by men's rights activists and thus best to avoid per NPOV.
• Attribution can be used as a subtle tool to minimize a point, as in "According Michael Smith, the earth goes around the sun". See WP:INTEXT. Direct, named attribution of this sort is typically only necessary where there are differing opinions within the same category of opinion givers. --Slp1 (talk) 23:37, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

The three Michaels (Flood, Messner and Kimmel) all have done work primarily or exclusively work in gender studies (or, if you prefer, the study of sociological relations between genders). That covers three of the five citations; of the other two, one is a study that is being critiqued by them, leaving one final study with authors in an unclassifiable variety of fields (criminology, evolutionary psychology). Words like academics are weasel words because they leave unclarified who is doing the talking. The bias you claim is not cited in Wikipedia anywhere I can find, nor do you give reliable sources, so is not justifiable cause for removing the term. Theinactivist (talk • contribs) 03:12, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

I don't accept that "academics" is a weasel word. Quite the opposite in fact. It is a clear factual ad neutral description of all of the authors, whereas "gender studies" is a category that you as a WP editor has determined they all fit into, not the departments that the Michaels work in, nor the PhDs they have obtained, nor the particular field of study they themselves claim, quite apart from the others. And here are a few of the many sources where men's rights activists complain about "gender studies" departments [4][5][6][7]. --Slp1 (talk) 04:03, 4 February 2012 (UTC)

Ok. This really needs to be clarified. It is not just men's rights activists who criticize the "scholarship" of "Gender/Women's Studies." Academics in EVERY field do. Historians, scientists (biologists, physicists, chemists), sociologists, linguists, statisticians you name it. They (gender/women studies "academics") take every aspect of knowledge, language, logic, reason, philosophy and history and twist them into a patriarchal conspiracy infused with male culpability and female victimization. These university programs are bastions of bad research and this has been acknowledged by many. The science wars is a great example of it. There is no shortage of academics or laymens who view these authors as activists publishing "studies" under the colour of their degrees.

If "gender academics" is viewed pejoratively by some readers that is the readers prerogative and the just deserts of said academics producing poor scholarship. Should WP not refer to Nazi's as Nazi's because people have taken a dim view of the things they've done historically? Because you seem to be implying it might be okay to whitewash the fact that some sources have discredited themselves by not clearly acknowledging them. These authors are "gender studies" academics.. at a minimum! I prefer calling them what they are: feminist or pro-feminist. Leaving aside the fact that "gender studies academics" are, indeed, a special class of academic, it is still appropriate to characterize the bias of these "academics" when there is a very clear disagreement between two ideological camps and these academics have consistently shown themselves to be members of one of those two camps. Pro-feminist sources do not get to be portrayed as non-partisan actors/academics when they are also very clearly acting as activists in this area. Trying to shoe-horn other WP policies to apply to this situation is unlikely to work well. Articles on gender issues are doomed to have these types of problems for the foreseeable future because gender has only been academically studied from a feminist view point. I know feminists say we don't need anything like "men's studies" because we have history for that (ie "his story") but that is, to be kind, BS, and does nothing to ameliorate the reality that feminist ideology is massively over-represented in academic sources for gender issues. Feminism is many things, but not even a dishonest feminist will try to pretend that it is not a political movement. Women's Studies mission statements, as can be found on university websites, even explicitly say that they are the "academic arm of feminism." That is to say, the academic arm of a political movement (feminism is, of course, more than just a political movement, but it IS a political movement) This situation might be analogous to having all History departments declare themselves the "academic arm" of communism (another *ism that is also more than just a political movement.) One of things generally associated with academics is a LACK OF POLITICAL MOTIVATION. Scholarly research can only be considered truly scholarly when the researchers are not political activists. Notwithstanding all of the prior, the three Michael's that were the source for this discussion, have all been charged (accurately imo) with misandry. Should we put in a misogynistic academic's findings on something like Women's rights without attributing those findings to the author in question or acknowledging his/her clear ideological slant on the topic in general? I think not, but this is not just an abstract question on ideological sourcing with respect to WP policy on gender issues, but is, in this case, concrete in that Michael Flood/Messner/Kimmel have well established reputations of being pro-feminist misandrists. Seems pretty silly to then quote them on Men's rights without adding some appropriate context. A case could be made that they should just be relegated to a criticism section altogether (though I will not make it.)--Cybermud (talk) 17:11, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

If the Great Wrong that you describe is true, then it is not Wikipedia's place to correct it. If feminist scholars have a prohibitive amount of what you consider politically motivated scholarship, the issue should be addressed in the real world, not by limiting such scholarly references on Wikipedia. Binksternet (talk) 17:28, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." Godwin's law Appealing to "academics" is an appeal to authority. (logical fallacy) leave it out. If you do make an appeal to "academic" authority then is should be correctly stated "feminist authorities" or some such language. Otherwise, you commit both a fallacy of composition (by not having your conclusion be fully relevant to your premises) on top of an informal logical fallacy. In addition, we have an obligation to the reader to tell them where the source of that information came from if there is even the remotest chance of false data due to a biased feminist source. This is not to say that all feminist sources are biased, or even a majority, but that if the source does not meat the criteria being fully objective, it is not up to WP standards, and if it is included it must be stated as with a clarifier, such as; "sources hostile to the men's movement," "feminist sources," "feminist scholars," "feminist researches," etc. --Benjamin 23:33, 4 March 2012 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Benjamin9832 (talk • contribs)

There is no problem in using sources that are not fully objective. Wikipedia does not expect or require sources to be fully objective. When we say we are a neutral encyclopedia, we don't mean neutrality as some sort of weird ethereal vacuum that presents both sides equally - we just mean we represent viewpoints proportionately with how they occur in reliable sources. If those reliable sources are biased, that's fine - our article will then be biased too, and we are totally okay with that. We consider academic sources to be of the highest quality and reliability, and our articles should primarily reflect whatever viewpoint is most common in the highest queality reliable sources available to us. Kevin (kgorman-ucb) (talk) 01:27, 6 March 2012 (UTC)

That's the thing,they aren't reliable sources. Pleasetry (talk) 03:19, 22 March 2012 (UTC)

Allegations of Rape Section

The allegationg that "Men's rights activists and conservative Christian groups question the criminal status of marital rape, arguing that sex within marriage forms part of the marriage covenant" seems to be poorly sourced. The first source could not be retrieved, so I can't comment on it (should it be removed?). The second seems to be based on the following completely unsourced statement within the linked article: "Much of his support has come from men's rights organizations and conservative Christian groups, which tend to argue that a crime such as marital rape should not be on the books because consent to sex is part of the marriage covenant." Furthermore that part of the article mostly concerns the support of a women's rights campaigner, emphasising the broad base of support for victims of false accusations rather than being concerned with the views of deniers of marital rape. If there are sources to back up this claim, so be it, but I can't see how the current sources are adequate. At the very least the sentence should be rephrased as "Some men's rights activists..." as it has not been by any means established that this is the position of the majority of the men's rights movement.

Theicychameleon (talk) 14:18, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

We don't remove citations because editors don't have immediate access to them, Sometimes a trip to the library is required!

The material in question is sourced to a well-reviewed academic reference book, which for the record states that mentions "some emphasized child support, the status of marital rape as a crime, etc". Checking things, I'd agree that the other reference is not a great source, not because of the context or lack of sources (which are not needed in reliable sources) but because it turns out the Insight on the News is a Unification Church-owned newspaper, and has been controversial. But there are plenty of other solid sources out there about men's rights advocates complaining about marital rape legislation, and I will replace it with one or two of them. Another time, try googling and you would quickly comes up with a bunch. Having said that, I'd agree that "some" is probably justified, especially with the change in references. --Slp1 (talk) 23:35, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I have no issue with written authorities :) I merely meant that the supplied link appeared to be broken. Perhaps it should be replaced with a Harvard style reference?

I'm glad you agree that denial of marital rape isn't a core MRA position. Mostly what bothered me was the way the previous wording seemed to imply that this was the case, and I don't think there is adequate sourcing, here or anywhere, to back that up with solid numbers as opposed to the opinion of an MRM critic such as Msrs Flood and Messner.

While I don't dispute that some MRAs have denied that marital rape is an issue, I do wonder if its appropriate to quote them here if it can't be established that their position is representative of a significant portion of the MRA movement. Feminism has had its crazies too, but the page on women's rights isn't exactly replete with references to their misandry (Solonas) and erasure of male victims (Brownmiller).

Nor would I think it appropriate to do so: women's issues are issues in their own right regardless of the actions of a minority of their advocates. But I hold that the same should be true of the men's rights page. Even if some conservative commentators would like to roll back the clock on women's rights its not relevant to a page on specific men's rights issues.

I agree that that kind of criticism is important, projects like wikipedia help ensure that this kind of thing is harder to sweep under the rug, but surely it belongs with the subject it criticises (Men's Rights Activism), rather than tangentially attached to another issue (False Accusations of Rape). There really should be some kind of separation of the issues and the movement.

Theicychameleon (talk) 02:39, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

The link works fine for me. Not sure why you are having trouble but I doubt Harvard style referencing would do anything to improve the situation.

Once again, we go with what reliable sources say. The balance of the material is judged by what reliable sources say. Multiple reliable sources, books by academics, books published by University Presses, etc all state that men's right activists (or at least some) rail against this. We can't take into account what individual editors think are the "core" men's rights issues, because everybody has a different idea about what they are. Let me show you the problem. Evidently you don't think that marital rape is a men's rights issue. But let's say that this guy shows up here and says that it is. Who does WP believe? You'll understand it is just these situations that resulted in the formation of no original research policy. We have to go with the reliable sources. If you have sources to back up the assertions, great, and let's see them. Some reliable sources showing that some men's rights groups have supported legislation about marital rape would be very strong. It's all down to the sources.--Slp1 (talk) 03:55, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Fair enough, must have been just me then. Yep, I agree, if the links working then there'd be no point.

Again, as above, I do see the problem :) I'm not trying to insert my own opinion, I'm just wondering if "some MRAs claim marital rape doesn't happen" is really relevant to "false accusations of rape are a bad thing."

Its a bit like reading a sentence in the middle of an article about poverty in India pointing out that Mother Teresa exacerbated the suffering of many of her wards. Its not that its not valid criticism, or that its not properly sourced, its that it belongs on the page about Mother Teresa, not the page about Poverty. Equally, criticism of specific MRA groups doesn't have bearing on any men's issues, it belongs on a page about masculism.

On the other two subjects under discussion I accept that the criticism has a place: whether the issue exists at all is being brought into question. In this case, however, its not that theres a properly sourced citation claiming that false accusations of rape don't happpen, its a source claiming that some commentators of a particular ideological persuasion have argued that another issue doesn't exist.

Also, just for accuracy's sake, would anyone object to my changing the section title to "False Accusations of Rape," as thats whats being campaigned against?

Theicychameleon (talk) 11:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

within the text it states that some MRAs disagree with what constitutes rape and how investigations are conducted, so it's not just false accusations. Paintedxbird (talk) 12:26, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

Which text? And are those issues raised on the basis that they facilitate false accusations?

Theicychameleon (talk) 13:12, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

if some MRAs can't accept rape can occur within a marriage then it has to do with allegations of rape. Paintedxbird (talk) 14:40, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

If some MRAs can't accept that rape can occur within a marriage then it has to do with some MRAs. Stuff like that really belongs over on the masculism page (and I do accept that its valid criticism). Masculism and the MRA movement are political ideologies, men's rights issues are human rights issues. Just because X speaks about Y doesn't make criticism of X relevant to Y. They're two different subjects. Do you argue that the SCUM manifesto should be quoted on the women's rights page?

At any rate, which text were you referring to?

Theicychameleon (talk) 17:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

the scum manifesto was satire by a person who was clinically diagnosed with mental health issues. that being said, if it was relevant to notable incidences within feminism it'd be on the page. currently it's part of the timeline on the second-wave feminism page. there's no authoritative definition for what constitutes men's rights or feminism for that matter. people falsely label themselves all the time like christina hoff-summers. you can only judge according to the core content policies. this text cites MRAs being against marital rape legislation: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=YBVGswoPYqMC&pg=PA92

Theicychameleon, this page is about men's rights. According to reliable sources, (and according to the most simple internet searches) some men's rights activists oppose legislation that would forbid non-consentual forced sex within marriage. They support men who have been accused of marital rape on the grounds that it is false to claim it is rape when those involved are married. The information belongs here.

You make some points about the definition and scope of "men's rights" "men's rights activism" and "masculism". You also suggest as a point of fact that "men's rights issues are human rights issues". Do you have any reliable sources to support this? My extensive research on the subject suggests that when one looks for sources about "men's rights" you almost invariably come up with the claims of men's rights activists, or people reporting on their opinions. Independent sources do not write about "men's rights". They do not appear to be accepted as a "human right". Based on reliable sources Men's rights and men's rights activism appear to be inextricably bound up together. But perhaps you have some other sources to offer? --Slp1 (talk) 18:01, 7 February 2012 (UTC)

To Paintedxbird (if that wasn't yourself my apologies, unsigned): Fair enough. If your test of relevance for the inclusion of the opinions of fringe commentators is how integrated their opinion is into the mainstream then the words of Valerie Solonas may or may not have a place on a page about Feminism, and I argue that they would under no circumstances have a place on a page about women's rights (rape will continue to be a problem regardless of what individual members of an ideological movement have said about it). By the same test the opinions of the groups mentioned in the "False Accusation of Rape" section are only worthy of inclusion if they have been shown to be numerically representative of the mainstream or if their opinions can be shown to be a "core content policy" of the mainstream, that text establishes only that some MRAs have held these views. As above, those sources and assertions have every place on the page about the ideology to which they belong. Misogyny within men's rights groups is a real problem and shouldn't be ignored, any more than it should be used to distract from or dismiss the issues that this page covers.

To Slp1: This page is indeed about men's rights, not about christian right groups or social conservatives. Theres no need to keep repeating that some MRAs have asserted that rape cannot happen within a marriage: I never denied it and I don't dispute it. What I dispute is that it has a place on this page.

I suggest as a point of fact that concerns regarding the human rights of individuals or groups are human rights issues. How would you prefer me to refer to them? By definition, anyone concerning themselves with sexism as it applies to men is a men's rights activist, so its not all that surprising that anyone talking about it should be referred to as such. Its a semantic impossibility for someone "independant" of men's rights avocacy to advocate in favour of men's rights. Equally, it could be argued that noone indepedant of women's rights advocacy argues in favour of women's rights issues since anyone who does so is by definition a women's rights activist.

To get back to the point: the section in question quotes sources concerning the real issue of false accusations of rape. Throwing in the opinion of an extreme group on a tangential issue (whether rape can occur in marriage) is nothing more or less than an attempt to muddy the waters.

Theicychameleon (talk) 14:53, 8 February 2012 (UTC)

Overall this article was better than I expected it would be, but the whole thing about "no rape can exist within marriage" stood out. Surely it's an extremely minority position, to the point that it's not worth including, or only include with strong qualification that it's a very minority view. It's almost defamatory to me, it feels like presenting it with such weight implies that a serious percentage of men would really consider raping their wives. I almost suspect a conspiracy by extremist feminists, who refusing to accept that some allegation are false, had to cook up something else to put in that section in order to keep their 'rape culture' story working. Jacobitten (talk) 21:49, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

I cut this out

from the Reproduction Rights section because what we have here is not really what the referenced article discusses. it is a good reference and could probably be used, but not to support the sentence in the article. I cut out:

The woman's right to choose to have a baby or not determines the father's obligation to pay child support throughout the child's life.

Carptrash (talk) 16:23, 5 May 2012 (UTC)

dispute status - update?

So there is a long meandering list of supposed issues with this article. most of them seem to be non-existent. I'm gonna go ahead and list them one by one so we can get discussion going on them and move forward with either fixing them or removing tags that are no longer relevant. Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It may contain inappropriate or misinterpreted citations that do not verify the text. Tagged since February 2012.

Not sure what citation this is referring to, any one have an idea? I move to remove tag Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

If you look in the archives of this talk page, numerous citations have been shown in the past to not adequately support their content, and in some places to support the exact opposite of what the page says. Given the degree of past problems, until someone reviews every single citation, this should stay. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• Its embedded lists may contain items that are not encyclopedic

I admittedly don't know much about this policy, so if someone could comment on this tag, that would be greatly appreciated Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, neither do I. I know that formatting articles in this list-like format is generally frowned upon, but don't know much besides that. Hopefully someone else will chime in. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It needs attention from an expert on the subject. WikiProject Sociology or the Sociology Portal may be able to help recruit one.

I'll say, Not sure one could be found thou. Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Someone added it a while ago. I agree that it's a bit silly. I didn't want to remove it at the time because it was added by a pro-MRA editor I didn't want to be (further) accused of censorship. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It may be written from a fan's point of view, rather than a neutral point of view. Tagged since May 2012.
• Its neutrality is disputed. Tagged since March 2011.

These are the same, After reading the entirety of the article I am not even sure this is even a valid claim anymore. I move to remove these two tags unless someone can come forward with something I might have missed, in witch case i move to remove one of the tags. Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

I don't really think the first tag should be used in the article - I always thought it was meant as an alternate version of the NPOV tag for using on tv series/branded products and such. I'm fine removing it. I'm not fine with removing the NPOV tag; I don't think that this article presents a neutral view of the topic "men's rights" - at best it's a halfassedly written list of the grievances of some (mostly) western groups, which isn't at all a neutral treatment of "men's rights". Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It may contain original research. Tagged since May 2012.

Generally when such a claim is made a section is suppose to be opened in the talk page. With no section nor any inline tags, There is no way to know what this claim is referring to, and I move to remove this tag unless examples are brought up .Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

There are tons of previous archived talk sections dealing with original research problems in this article (although it's not a strict prerequisite to have such a section if there is original research in the article, anyway.) I don't see a completely obvious example of original research offhand that isn't just OR-by-synth, but don't have time to do a thorough review of the article this morning. I'll look around and see what I turn up later today or tomorrow. If there's no straight OR and only synthesis left, then we could remove this tag. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Tagged since September 2011.

There seems to be a lot of examples of views and movement chapters in other parts of the world. I move to remove Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

It hardly presents a worldwide view. Are you telling me there's nothing encyclopedic dealing with men's rights outside of the Western developed world and India? I can think of some pretty hugely significant men's rights issues in China, for example. The tag should stay until the article makes more than a token effort to represent a worldwide view. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

• It may contain previously unpublished synthesis of published material that conveys ideas not attributable to the original sources. Tagged since May 2012.

First time seeing this tag. No comment until I can research it a little bit more Kyleshome (talk) 07:13, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Ok, this is just a synth tag. it was tagged in may but i see no comments on it in the talk page nor any examples of with this is referring to. Since no talk entry was created I move to remove tag. Kyleshome (talk) 07:19, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

There have been literally tons of talk page entries talking about synthesis issues with this article, just look at the archives. It's been a while since I looked in-depth through this article for issues, but just offhand, the second section of the military conscription section is an example of synthesis. I'm sure there are more. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:30, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

One more note: one thing I've suggested in the past, that I still think would be a good idea, would be to redirect men's rights to human rights and to create a separate article specifically about the MRM. This would reduce a lot of these issues, like making the globalize tag no longer relevant since it's not a global movement. It would also allow for more of a history of the MRM to be included, and for more use of MRM sources (since you can in a limited way use sources written by groups in articles about themselves, even when many of those sources wouldn't be acceptable in a general article.) Last time I suggested it the idea had mixed support, with (in something that surprised me) a lot of the MRA posters from reddit who flooded in vigorously opposing it. I think this would result in a better/more encyclopedic pair of pages, and also pages that are more to the liking of the MRA folks. Kevin Gorman (talk) 16:33, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

Successful Suicide Rate

This article will morph for the forseeable future under the stream of impartial biased people from every side of every related issue, so excuse me for picking a small spot in this article that popped out as possibly an artifact of edit warring. In the section titled "Men's rights movement" (odd capitalization, since the existence of the section implies that the MRM is a proper noun) I think the qualifier "successful" in front of suicide is a symptom of the argument over this article.

♠ To begin with, we refer to successful suicide as just "suicide," do we not? We never talk about the recent string of "successful suicides" amongst gay teens. It's when suicide is attempted but failed that we bother to qualify it as "attempted suicide."

♣ Second, I don't believe I've ever heard (or read, but then, I've never read such literature) someone claiming to be a participant in the "Men's rights movement" complain of the "higher successful suicide rate," so I tried to check the source cited for the offending sentence... and lo, the page cited is not available on Google Books, nor at my local library, and to purchase the book would cost more than $200. My suspicion is that at some point, someone wanted to include a sentence indicating that suicide attempts amongst females have a lower success rate, but that edit warring commenced, so the sentence boiled down to include, as a means to diminish the idea, "successful."

Summary: Without making any value judgments about the participants, it's clear that MRAs do not focus on the "successful" aspect of suicide. If you're trying to indicate their positions, which the sentence as it currently exists does, you shouldn't simultaneously try to fit in a critique of that position.

That said, if it's agreed that the word successful doesn't belong there, maybe you can all fight about whether to put the data on suicide attempt/success rate by gender in some other section in this article. (My guess is that that will stir up more argument, but hey, right now it's just sitting there pretending not to be the result of woman-hate, man-hate, woman-hating-man-hate, and man-hating-woman-hate. For the record, I haven't checked the revision history for when that changed, so I could very well be wrong.) Undiskedste (talk) 22:33, 12 June 2012 (UTC)

You're right, the word successful probably makes no sense there. I don't have easy access to the citation either, but I'll take it out just because I can't imagine that it's supported by the citation. (This is one of the reasons why the citation maintenance tag is in the beginning of the article - the previous unconstructive back and forth over the article resulted in the misrepresentation of a *lot* of citations.) Kevin Gorman (talk) 18:43, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

It's interesting that neither of you can read the source, because it works fine for me. I wonder how or why googlebooks works. The source says "The literature of the men's rights movement frequently cites statistics that show that men suffer shorter lives, higher successful suicide rates, and a higher incidence of most stress-related diseases than do women," so it is supported by the citation. I think that the "successful" point may be important, because women (in the US at least) make 3 times the number of attempts as men do,[8]. The wording is not felicitous however, I agree. --Slp1 (talk) 22:31, 16 June 2012 (UTC)

Rename article to Men's Rights Movement, also serious article issues

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Trying to address scope of article, as well as issues with the use of sources when it comes to describing the subject. A lot of the sources come from other than the subject of the article, rather than self-declarations, and I feel this is causing problems with the article's tone, as well as WP:SYNTH issues.

--JasonMacker (talk) 14:14, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

I'm proposing that this article be renamed to Men's Rights Movement, because the current scope of the article is only dealing with the men's rights movement. In the lede, it states:

• Men's rights have been the subject of a variety of social and political movements, including men's liberation, profeminists, mythopoetic men's movement, gay male liberation, Promise Keepers, men's rights movement, and antifeminism.

So how come there is ZERO information in the article about all those things, except for the men's rights movement? In the Issues section it blatantly states "men's rights movement" and doesn't say anything about all the rest of the things associated with men's rights.

If someone wants to counter with WP:SOFIXIT, I wanted to open this up to discussion because of the Talk:Men's rights/Article probation and see users more experienced than me give their ideas on this. I can see this going two ways:

• Men's Rights, sans Men's Rights Movement, is a notable enough subject that it deserves its own article.

• Men's Rights should not give WP:UNDUE weight to only one aspect of it (namely, the Men's Rights Movement), and not also discuss antifeminism, profeminism, and other things associated with Men's Rights. Especially since the Men's Rights Movement isn't a mainstream accepted movement, so how come the are granted a monopoly on the term "Men's Rights"?

Content

As far as reliable sources go, I must say that some of them are no good, and I'm going to start removing them in a few days if nobody pipes up with a good reason to keep them. Here's a breakdown based on section:

Extended content

Divorce First sentence seems okay, but the second sentence seems off. Rich Doyle wrote of the view... Who is Rich Doyle and why does his opinion matter? He doesn't have a Wiki Article, and a Google search doesn't bring up anyone with prominence. The next paragraph begins: Laws and practices regarding spousal support, maintenance or alimony vary considerably by country and culture... This paragraph seems out of place. Okay, it's just a bunch of facts about alimony. What does this have to do with Men's Rights or the Men's Rights Movement? Is there anyone notable within the MRM who is using these facts to argue for his/her cause? I say this paragraph should be taken right out unless someone can show me some relevancy. The paragraph continues: In the United States, the current alimony laws are challenged for constitutionality, assignment of temporary vs. permanent financial support paid to a spouse, and fair and equitable treatment under family law; There are several men's rights crusades to reform alimony at a state and federal level, including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Massachusetts, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee. This statement is cited to Levitz, Jennifer. (October 31, 2009). "The New Art of Alimony." Wall Street Journal. Retrieved November 25, 2011. Yet, this source makes NO mention of Men's rights or the Men's Rights Movement. Also, using the word "crusade" here seems a little bizarre and definitely not neutral. The same citation is used for the following statement: Now that women make up a large percentage of the workforce, existing laws regarding alimony in the United States have come into question. Come into question BY WHO? Again, the source doesn't mention Men's Rights or the Men's Rights Movement, so it seems strange to be using the passive voice here. And again, the paragraph this statement is in doesn't even provide context... all it does is state the facts about how the workforce is changing, but there is no mention of how this is relevant to the men's rights movement at all. If there are MRM leaders who take issue with this, they should be quoted and sourced. Simply presenting these "facts" is not enough; there needs to be relevance. Anti-Dowry Movement The section on the SIFF looks great as far as I can tell, except for that one unsourced statement with a citation needed tag. That needs to be removed but I'll give it a few days before it gets taken out. Reproductive rights This section entirely makes NO mention of Men's Rights or the Men's Rights movement. Is there anyone notable within the movement who has discussed reproductive rights in this context? Otherwise, this is WP:SYNTH and the only ones linking this issue with the Men's Rights Movement are the editors who added it to the article. I say this section should also be removed entirely. Adoption First sentence is fine, but why is Oregon's adoption laws randomly brought up? Is there MRM presence in Oregon (or elsewhere) that is challenging these laws? Yet again, we're just presented with facts, and not why they are relevant. Second sentence should be removed, and also MRM activists (or father's rights, whoever is taking up this cause or discussing it at all) need to actually have their views presented here. Child Custody Family law is an area of deep concern among men's rights groups. No source for this statement. The rest of that paragraph is fine though, except for the last line. I think it should be changed to be front-loaded at the beginning of the section with the "Main Article: x" arrangement. Second paragraph is also fine. But then at the very end of this section, there is this: In the United States, fathers were awarded custody in 17.4 percent of cases in 2007, a percentage that has statistically not changed since 1994. Again, we see some random fact being brought up without its relevance being linked. Needs to be taken out unless there is someone in the MRM specifically citing this fact as evidence. Parental Abduction Nothing of concern here. Parental leave No relevance to the MRM is being shown here. Also, The most liberal... what/who is calling this "liberal"? Needs to be reworded or shown why a political term is needed here, especially when referring to countries. I say this section should be struck out entirely, for the same reasons I've discussed earlier (no MRM rep tying it together). Paternity fraud No relevance to the MRM is established. Needs to be removed entirely. Health They state that feminism has led to women's health issues being privileged at the expense of men's. That's not what the source says: "In the language of men's rights organizations, the feminist-inspired privileging of women's health issues has relegated men to the sidelines of medical policies and condemned them to infirmity and premature death." Why reword it? Why not just quote the source directly on this? Also, the MRM never said this directly. Rather, Susan B. Boyd the author of the source, is characterizing the men's rights organizations as saying this. This needs to be made clear (she doesn't have a wiki article and I don't see any sources which state that she is a men's rights activist or identifies as one). If a representative of the MRM is saying something, that should be made clear. If someone from outside is discussing the MRM, this should be made clear. Best way is to simply present the people who are saying things, and avoid just attributing everything to the "men's rights movement". The rest of the paragraph is worse, using the word "they" when the sources are of people from outside the movement discussing the movement. The sources need to be properly used here. The third paragraph also seems out of place, but this whole section is a mess so I think it's better to leave it alone until the first two paragraphs are fixed, then we can decide its relevancy. Education Okay, first sentence: Men's rights activists describe the education of boys as being in crisis, with boys having reduced educational achievement and motivation as compared to girls. The source is an interview of Warren Farrell. As in, one person expressing his views on the issue. So why does this say "Men's rights activists" and not "Warren Farrell, a men's rights activist, blah blah"? And even then, there is no mention of "men's rights" or "men's rights movement" in the interview. Second sentence: "Advocates blame the influence of feminism on education for discrimination against and systematic oppression of boys in the education system." Source does not say that. The book's description states: This book offers an illuminating analysis of the theories, politics, and realities of boys' education around the world -- an insightful and often disturbing account of various educational systems' successes and failings in fostering intellectual and social growth in male students. Examining original research on the impact of implementing boys' education programs in schools, the book also discusses the role of male teachers in educating boys, strategies for aiding marginalized boys in the classroom, and the possibilities for gender reform in schools that begins at the level of pedagogy. Complete with case studies of various classrooms, school districts, and governmental policy programs, the detailed essays collected provide a look into education's role in the development of masculinities, paying special attention to the ways in which these masculinities intersect with race, class, and sexuality to complicate the experience of boys within and outside of a classroom setting. No mention of men's rights, no mention of men's rights advocates, no mention of the men's rights movement, and no mention of feminism. None of the authors of the book, as far as I can tell, are related to the men's rights movement, nor has anyone made that relation. So again, even if it were the case that those topics are discussed in the book, we fall into the issue of people who aren't in the MRM describing it, and instead it being described as what the MRM represents itself as. They have also urged for clearer school routines, more traditional school structures, including single sex classes, and stricter discipline. Again, the source is someone from outside the movement putting words into the MRM's mouth. Final sentence: In Australia, men's rights discourse has influenced government policy documents; less impact has been noted in the United Kingdom, where feminists have historically had less influence on educational policy. This is again sourced to the book I described earlier, so the same issues are rehashed here. Military conscription Men's rights activists have argued that military conscription of men is an example of oppression of men. That's not what the source states. Also, again, we have that article-wide issue of people putting words into the mouth of the MRM, and its not being described as such. Second paragraph seems okay. Governmental structures Men's rights groups have called for male-focused governmental structures to address issues specific to men and boys including education, health, work and marriage. Again, this suffers from taking everything and WP:SYNTHing all together as one, singular, view of "men's rights groups" with no regard for the sources. The actual groups can be, and should be named here. Domestic violence Since the late 1970s and 1980s men's rights activists have asserted, based on academic studies, that the incidence of domestic violence and murders committed by women is under-reported, partly due to men's reluctance to admit being victims. This statement has three sources: two books, and a Guardian article. The Guardian article is great, because it specifically offers the POV of men's rights activists straight from themselves. However, the first book, "Politics of Masculinity", isn't even on the same subject. The citation links to a section on gay pornography. And the second one, seems fine but it's a misrepresentation because it's clear that it's being critical of the MRM, yet this isn't mentioned. Also, this section in general isn't providing enough context. It jumps from MRM groups in India to the United States without even mentioning it. Allegations of rape and have campaigned to increase the level of evidence required to support rape and domestic violence cases. The statement here is sourced twice, but I'm concerned about the second one. This book, "Men and Masculinities", doesn't even mention the phrase "men's rights activists". Instead, it gives a list of various organizations and categorizes them as antifeminist. This should be noted in the article here. They protest the naming of accused rapists while providing the accuser with anonymity. The source doesn't mention MR or MRM. And "they" is problematic on its own. Social security and insurance Again with problems about someone assigning positions/words to the MRM instead of the MRM itself speaking on the issue. Wording needs to reflect that. The part with Warren Farrel is exactly what I'm talking about, in terms of how this ought to be done. Female privilege = This section seriously lacks context. Are MRM claiming that male privilege no longer exists worldwide, or are they limiting this claim to certain societies, or something else? The source isn't clear on it. Perhaps a better source can clarify this? History Why is this at the end of the article, and not at the beginning as is standard format? Don't have much to say about it though.

Overall

When someone makes a claim, that someone needs to be identified, rather than simply be described as a "men's rights advocate". This can definitely become a great article as long as the positions of MRM activists are made clear and distinct from outsiders speaking about the MRM. This seems to be an systemic issue of this subject in general because it seems that the people who actually make up the movement are laymen, while the ones who are describing the movement have academic backgrounds. This dichotomy should be exemplified in this article. Wikipedia:FRINGE should provide helpful guidance as to handling this issue.

For the sake of clarity, please don't respond within the comments I have made, and instead respond below and reference the section. Thanks. I'm going to leave this up for a few days, if nobody bites, I'm going to WP:BOLD and make all the changes myself.--JasonMacker (talk) 14:06, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

• Support Overall I largely agree.--v/r - TP 15:37, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support (Uninvolved editor responding to RfC.) in general-- but perhaps with more structure than suggested:

Prevailing Usage and lack of authoritative sources

It seems that, overwhelmingly, the term is used to refer to child custody matters and, secondarily with domestic violence as relates to child custody.

• Problematic with sourcing is that those groups are almost entirely Internet-based and lack of common affiliation.
• For example, a typical Men's Rights group will have an Internet presence, established by attorneys or local bar associations, have no meetings, no office, the membership is usually unknown, and members or supporters are affiliated only for as long as a custody battle is being waged.
• Because custody and domestic violence concerns vary by State law and local court procedures, little unity has been attempted, so there are few recognized authorities.

Anecdotal and Statistical verses Organizational Research

I do not have the sources at hand, but researched this a bit a few years ago:

• 1) US government statistics on domestic violence are taken from Women's Shelter intakes, and therefore do not directly include statistics for male victims of DV.
• 2) US Federal funding provides County-level courts which are restricted to enforcing and increasing child support, but forbidding decreasing child support or enforcing custody. Such matters are anecdotal to the article-- and that seem the problem-- they do not apply to an organization, or an authority to be sourced.

Probably thousands of men's rights groups exist, and yet there is no umbrella under which they fall, no equivalent of the National Organization for Women; and so we are left with an article attempting to define a broad range of issues, of which only a few have any organizational efforts, and virtually none have common organizational support-- and that leaves the article in this scattered state.

Have I re-stated the problem with useful accuracy?

cregil (talk) 16:46, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support rename, and a lot of the rest of what you say. I've thought a rename was a good idea for quite a while. Disagree on one set of points: it's okay to use sources outside of the men's rights movement to describe the men's rights movement. We have no policy that suggests that we should only use statements of people inside of a movement to describe the movement. We should use statements made outside of the MRM to describe the MRM in this article for two reasons: first, WP:NPOV requires it, and second - there just aren't enough reliable sources written from within the MRM to write a solid article using them. I'm not saying all the current instances where it's done are appropriate (in general, I think it's better to trash about 90% of this article and start over,) but there are certainly instances where it is appropriate and necessary.

There's a good example of appropriate use of non-MR sources talking about MR in the education section: when the last sentence (about Australia vs the UK) was originally added, I was skeptical of it, so I went and checked the source. The source explicitly and completely supports the sentence: it explicitly says that men's rights discourse has had a large effect on Australian education politics, but less of an effect on UK education politics. The publisher of the book is Taylor & Francis, an academic press. It's a high quality reliable source that explicitly supports the statement that it makes, which is an interesting and encyclopedic bit about men's rights discourse w/r/t education that couldn't easily be sourced to any author or organization inside the MRM. (It's also a good example of why you have to actually look up citations, not just their abstracts or book summaries. The summary of the book doesn't mention men's rights, but the page cited does.) And it doesn't, by our policy, matter that the authors are not identified as being part of men's rights discourse themselves, as long as they meet our standards for reliability (and as academics they do) and their text explicitly supports the citation. Kevin Gorman (talk) 20:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the input people. I want to give it at least until this weekend so that editors at peak hours have a chance to give their input before I start nuking the article. Also, Gorman, what I was trying to say is that we should model this article more similarly to the New antisemitism article. I think a great takeaway from that article is that there's no "proponents vs critics" sort of dichotomy. Instead, each person who says something is personally identified, and there's no "identity politics" factor of grouping a whole bunch of people with separate opinions/insights together. This, to me, seems to best way to avoid WP:SYNTH. Here in the Men's Rights article, instead of identifying people, we have "Men's rights activists say x", rather than "gender studies scholar Y considers the men's rights movement to be Z." which would be a more accurate telling of the sources.--JasonMacker (talk) 04:18, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

The best way to approach this depends largely on the specific example involved. I am generally a fan of explicitly naming sources when the material involved is explicitly opinion (that's not held by a majority of reliable sources,) but it's not necessary in all other instances. If a recognized scholar in the field of men's studies/some related field says "The men's rights movement is misogynistic" or "The men's rights movement is a necessary counterbalance to gender feminism" then we should only include that with an explicit mention of who they are. But if the statement in a reliable source is more to the effect of "The modern men's rights movement has had significant effect on public policy in Australia," then attributing that statement to a specific source is generally not necessary, it's okay just to say that in the article as fact. There's a specific policy that backs this idea up, but I can't think of it offhand - I'll dig it out tomorrow or so if you'd really like. (And to reiterate, I do agree with you that a lot of this article needs to basically be trashed. And I do agree that some things currently in the article should be attributed to specific sources/people that are not - I just don't think all should be.)

As a secondary note: I'll be slow in responding to anything for the next week, because I'm flying out to DC for Wikimania. The same will be true of many other people who would normally be commenting here. I might suggest leaving any decision on whether or not to move the article open until the 20th or so for this reason. (I do strongly support moving the article and most of the other changes you suggest, but the last RfC closed in favor of keeping the article at it's current title, so it's probably best to wait until after Wikimania concludes to make sure that most interested contributors have the opportunity to comment here before making a decision.)

Another thing that may be a good idea would be to start a user-space draft of what an article on the men's rights movement would look like before simply renaming this article, that all here could contribute to. That way when a rename does happen, the new article would instantly be better. Kevin Gorman (talk) 04:57, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm definitely the sort of "measure twice, cut once" type of person so I have no problem waiting until after the 20th to actually change the article. I'm thinking about using my sandbox to make my proposed changes and I'll post a link to it here once I finish it. Have fun at Wikimania.--JasonMacker (talk) 09:27, 11 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support rename. It is clear that the subject of this article is the men's rights movement (as it always has been). By moving the article, it will allow people who want to cite MRM sources more latitude and will cause fewer conflicts about Original Research (since a lot of MRM talking points aren't really related to "men's rights" sensu stricto). Thus it seems like a win-win situation for everyone. Kaldari (talk) 22:44, 11 July 2012 (UTC)
• Support rename. I'm on holiday with no computer and very limited internet. So this is just a placeholder for a longer comment towards the end of the week. I too support a rename, and agree with Kevin's concerns about some of Jason's suggestions. In particular those regarding attribution, that the best sources for the article are in fact secondary ones, where academics (for example) who have researched the movement synthesize information about them, not MRM primary sources and that some of the material stated not to be in the source given is in fact there. I will elaborate later.Slp1 (talk) 18:06, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

Okay, a quick follow up on some of Jason's proposals.

• Firstly, I agree with a lot of what Jason says about sections (e.g divorce, reproductive rights) that need massive reworking or deletion. I started work on better sourcing and removing original research from the bottom sections, but got discouraged at a certain point. I do think it is better to try to rewrite/rework the sections that just delete them, as there are sources out there for most of them.
• Next, we have to go with what the high quality reliable sources say, and the fact is that when you look for information about "men's rights", 99% is about the men's rights movement/activism. Try it, and you will see what I mean. There doesn't seem to be a subject "men's rights" which is independent of the movement or claims (unless you count very old references to "men's rights" used in much the same way as we use "human rights" these days. e.g [9][10]. For that reason I support the rename, but I would just like to make clear that I don't think that there should then be separate "men's rights" page created. Based on reliable sources men's rights do not appear to be a notable subject separate from the MRM, and thus there would be clear issues of WP:POVFORK.
• As stated above by Kevin and myself, secondary academic scholarly sources are the best sources for information, and we do not need to attribute these mainstream claims to their source. Indeed, doing so can be a way of inserting POV by attempting to minimize or marginalize a viewpoint. Primary sources such Men's rights groups are not required or even very desirable given our sourcing policies see WP:V and WP:NOR.
• I've checked some of the claims that material is unverifiable and find that it isn't all together accurate. For example, the information about conscription being seen as a sign of oppression can be found exactly as cited [11], and Kevin has pointed out some other examples. On the other hand, checking all the refs is a good idea. I've corrected one clearly erroneous that I probably added through careless cutting and pasting of references. Sorry all. Slp1 (talk) 21:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

• No opinion. I tried this before, and would like to know why opinions changed. Arkon (talk) 00:06, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I don't think any of the people who have said rename here have previously held different positions, although I'm not sure. I know I've always supported the idea of moving it. Last time consensus was against the idea, but a lot of the people who participated in previous discussions aren't participating here so far, and consensus can change. I think that the article will have a much greater chance of improvement at a MRM specific title than at MR generally, especially because it will resolve most undue weight issues and allow the use many more sources dealing with the MRM than this article title does (since it would allow things like self-published sources from prominent MRM groups to be used.) Previous talk page attempts at a rename can be found here and here, although I think there's at least one discussion that I'm leaving out. Kevin Gorman (talk) 01:24, 16 July 2012 (UTC)

I have consistently supported the move. No changed opinions here. Slp1 (talk) 21:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

• Oppose: the problem with the article is that everything is attributed to "The men's movement..." or "Men's rights groups..." or "Men's right's activists..." The discussion of basic human rights for men in the article has been reduced to pathetic men whining for special treatment. We need to review the sources and rewrite the article so that this POV is removed. The POV that there is no such thing as men's rights---only complaining by disgruntled deadbeat fathers.– Lionel ^(talk) 08:12, 19 July 2012 (UTC)

• The problem with your suggestion is that per WP:V we have to follow what reliable sources say and use about the subject of men's rights; and the fact is that in virtually every "men's rights" search for reliable sources I have done, the sources found attribute claims to men's rights activists, the MRM etc. Obviously WP can't turn around and make those claims in its editorial voice without that attribution. That would really would be a violation of WP:NPOV, which requires us to "carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them clearly and accurately.". Slp1 (talk) 21:14, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

(already supported, above) A thought... Given the experiences of the contributors, and especially in concern for those who opposed, is there any way forward for a Men's Rights article which is divorced from the sometimes marginalizing characterizations of activism and hate groups?--cregil (talk) 02:07, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, it all has to start with research and finding the best sources and then writing a good encyclopedic summary from there. It is a serious mistake to start by having ideas about the content, tone etc without first doing the research to find out what is out there to summarize. The latter route leads to an incomplete, POV article. I'm not exactly clear what your idea is, cregil, but as I've said a few times, in the sources I've seen "men's rights" are rarely, if ever, divorced from MR activism and activists, so I don't think that part of your suggestion is possible. However, based on informal research I think the sources are clear that there are a variety of opinions within the men's rights movement; and I can't remember seeing the term "hate groups" in any of the reliable sourced literature, so I doubt that has to be included. But it all has to start with sources, and more sources. --Slp1 (talk) 02:39, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

I am in agreement. To clarify, I researched a bit on this subject a few years back. I received an email from a British author of a book on the subject, suggesting I might wish to do some research. What I found of strictly "Men's Rights" was local legal resource sites for men who were victims of spousal abuse and men who were unable to enforce custody of their children. Those groups also tended to help with determining paternity and such other matters which did not specifically address rights, or lack thereof. Attorneys tend to run the sites with men they are helping or have helped doing clerical work as volunteers, essentially having little more than a web presence.

There are countless such sites, all very similar. Beyond that, there were two books out contemporary to my research: one from a female journalist and the other by the British man. Just like the contributors to this article, I found too little "meat" -- no centralized organizational structure- and so no strong voice. I interviewed a couple of attorneys, local to me, and was given the impression that the many such organizations have neither the time nor the funding to organize-- instead attempt to hold classes on how to represent oneself, file motions, and basically make legal action as affordable as possible for men-- as juxtaposed to virtually unlimited resources for women-- at least by comparison.

So, the Men's Rights groups are out there, but the "sources" were a thousand voices saying and doing the same thing-- all anecdotal. I think it is important, but that Men's Rights has no voice is not Wikipedia's fault-- or responsibility. I just wish it were otherwise-- my conscience is bothering me.--cregil (talk) 20:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

• Support rename. Not just because the article is already written about the men's rights movement but because – as Slp1 points out above – that is what you find if you search for "men's rights". The previous RfC about a rename proposal took place last year and ended with an inexplicable decision. Only a few people voted oppose while the clear majority presented persuasive arguments in favor of a rename, but the closing admin must have overlooked those. --Sonicyouth86 (talk) 23:59, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

By my reading, this RFC should be closed with a consensus to move the article. If no one objects to this, I'll write up a longer closing statement and carry out the close in the near future. (If anyone wants to beat me to it, feel free :)) Kevin Gorman (talk) 06:17, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

Given everything, I think it would be better if we got someone uninvolved to determine consensus and close it up. Killerchihuahua was watching over this from an admin perspective; I think I'll ping them and ask it they might do it. I hope that is okay. --Slp1 (talk) 22:08, 13 August 2012 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.