How well qualified are the organizations and members in the Men & Boys Coalition to provide and promote solutions to individual issues affecting men and boys?

November 16, 2016 By Mike Buchanan 9 Comments

From the About us page of the Men & Boys Coalition (henceforth MBC):

We will, where possible, assist members of the media to find relevant facts and research or signpost them towards professional experts on gender issues affecting men and boys…

The Coalition will not:

Provide and promote solutions to individual issues affecting men and boys, that is the remit of the individual organisations and leaders themselves…

This simply begs a question, of course:

How well qualified is the collection of organizations and individuals within MBC, to ‘provide and promote solutions to individual issues affecting men and boys’?

In our 2015 general election manifesto we explored 20 areas in which the human rights of men and boys in the UK are assaulted by the actions and/or inactions of the state. I’ve put in bold text below, the issues where one or more of the 23 member organizations would appear to have some expertise – even if, as with CALM, the ‘expertise’ is delivered by a feminist-run organization. The first three issues affect females too:

Abortion

Foetal alcohol syndrome

Fatherlessness

Male circumcision

Education

Employment

Access to children

Domestic violence

Sexual abuse

Armed Forces veterans’ health issues

Homelessness

Suicide

Criminal justice system

Paternity fraud

Anonymity for suspected sexual offenders

Divorce

Health

Political representation

Company director appointments

Retirement years expectation

By my estimation, then, out of 20 men’s and boys’ issues, MBC member organizations can claim expertise on only six issues. The obvious counter is that individual members – there are 26 of them, most of whom I’d never heard of, before yesterday – can claim expertise in some of the 14 remaining issues.

I’m about to email MBC (info@menandboyscoalition.org.uk) a link to this blog piece, and ask them to identify which organizations and/or individuals they consider qualified to ‘provide and promote solutions to individual issues affecting men and boys’ in the remaining 14 areas. J4MB is qualified to provide solutions in all 20 areas. After all, we did so in our manifesto, which was published in December 2014, almost two years ago.

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epistemol

I’m sure we all await the answer with interest…
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bakamonosan

I read the page and wondered ‘Crikey, Mike! What’s wrong with this?’
Then I read who they won’t work with:
* anti-women/girls and/or advocate removing resources from women/girls
* who express misogyny etc etc
No mention of misandry then?
- hequal
  
  That section was one of my biggest concerns. It’s a constant battle to try to get people to recognise misandry as with as misogyny and thus treat everyone fairly. All too often the term “sexism” is simply replaced by “misogyny”, thus denying the existence of misandry yet this coalition does the very thing we’ve spent so many years campaigning against!
  
  Grave errors such as this are even more pressing than any lack of experience and even their failure to tackle MGM. I suppose it’s still early days, but starting out on the back-foot like this can’t be a good idea.
  
  There’s also this: “The conditions of membership for the Coalition include an agreement that progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the interests and wellbeing of women and girls. The Coalition’s gender-inclusive approach asserts that solutions to male-specific issues should complement campaigns on women’s issues, rather than oppose them”. http://www.inside-man.co.uk/2016/11/15/historic-coalition-50-leading-mens-issues-advocates-launches-ahead-international-mens-day/
  
  That all sounds great in an ideal world, but things really don’t work like that in practice. If we fixed domestic violence services then women and men would both be on waiting lists for a place in a shelter instead of women at the front of the queue and men all on the street. Doing away with quotas, all women short-lists and all sorts of other sexist practices are incredibly important yet it could be argued it’s against the interests of the privileged women who benefit from them right now. Just the other week we had Women’s Aid Scotland expelling a local branch for daring to have a man on its board, how on earth is anyone supposed to compliment 95% of what goes in in the dv sector, are we supposed to remain silent about such human rights abuses? You simply can’t “compliment” most major feminist campaigns such as White RIbbon, Respect, Women’s Aid, Everyday Sexism, etc (and they wouldn’t even let us if we tried). I’d absolutely love to be able to compliment a campaign on FGM with the message that all genital mutilation is wrong, but again they just won’t allow it.
  - Mike Buchanan
    
    Thanks. I’ve posted a lengthy comment (#27) on how male disadvantaging always results from female privileging – Fogg said that was very rarely the case – and I’ll work it up to a blog piece when I get the time.
  - cheannaich
    
    “an agreement that progress for men and boys should never come at the expense of the interests and wellbeing of women and girls” .Now, where have I heard of a real life example of that policy being implemented. Ah yes! University of York last year for IMD when the enraged, screeching feminists forced York’s equality committee to revoke any support of IMD.
    With that clause alone, men’s issues will never be raised or supported.
William Gruff

‘ … assist members of the media to find relevant facts and research or signpost them towards professional experts on gender issues affecting men and boys … ‘

Given the feminists’ assertion that they alone are qualified to decide what is and is not best for men and boys that could mean anything. It does not, by any means, suggest that the MBC will vigorously pursue an anti-feminist masculine agenda and one only has to recall Paul Elam’s claims about the anti-male bias of psychiatric medicine and other mental health professionals to see that those ‘experts’ are unlikely to hold an impartial position.
daveyone1

Reblogged this on World4Justice : NOW! Lobby Forum..
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