[Manco]

Oh, look at this. Turns out women's healthcare received 4 times the funding that men's does despite men dying from it much more often.

That’s a sizeable difference, I didn’t know about this before. Men’s health is something that isn’t talked about or looked at enough, and while there’s been some successful campaigns to change this it’s obvious there’s still more work to be done. Men seem to be much worse than women at talking about health problems or seeking support, and I think that’s likely a contributing factor to the disparity, and the funding difference here isn’t going to help solve that.

(Bonus: while reading up on the topic I came across statistics from Harvard Health describing health disparities in men and women, this article from the Daily Mail which describes how women have to spend more money during their lifetime partly for reasons related to healthcare and social expectations, and this bulletin from the WHO which concludes with the need to close the men’s health gap.)

As for the abortion thing, it's hardly sexism, it's religion. I don't understand why you'd want a feminist movement to fix issues like this when you could have an egalitarian movement to fix the issues of both sexes.

OK, not much to say here as I see the point you’re making, but consider:

1. Sexism and religion are not mutually exclusive – many religious organizations have long histories, and much of that history involves inequality of gender. Hell, there are still churches around today that don’t allow women to hold positions of authority.
2. You can have an egalitarian movement to fix these issues, but this does not preclude a feminist movement also working on these issues. Again, these aren’t mutually exclusive movements, and they can work together or separately toward the same goals.

For example, how men are generally sentenced to, on average 63% longer prison terms than women for the same crime.

This is an interesting disparity, and not one that I was previously aware of. You won’t hear any disagreement from me that it’s an issue that should be addressed.

There’s a line in the article that I think is particularly interesting: “A 2009 study suggested the difference in sentencing might arise because ‘judges treat women more leniently for practical reasons, such as their greater caretaking responsibility.’” I think that the reference to an assumption of “greater caretaking responsibility” is an indicator of a deeper problem which could be a contributor to this disparity, which I’ll address below in the point about custody rights.

Or what about how more men are raped anually than women when counting prison rape?

This actually isn’t true; the Daily Mail fudges the numbers in that article. Here’s a detailed breakdown of the situation (and a second source).

This of course is not to say that rape and sexual assault in prison isn’t a problem, nor that rape and sexual assault of men isn’t a problem. These are both issues that need to be addressed, but manipulating statistics to try and disprove feminists ultimately isn’t helpful to that end.

OR how about how child custody rights are skewed massively in women's favour? (I know this article shows that there's statistics showing this isn't true, but fathers being unable to see their children except over Skype should hardly count in my eyes).

In the article, the writer highlights that the reports findings of 88% of fathers “being awarded some kind of access” doesn’t account for how many of the fathers in question were only given very limited contact – but the summary of the report points out the reasons why this would be the case:

The County Courts actively promoted as much contact as possible even in cases of proven domestic violence, which was often combined with welfare concerns or strong opposition from older children.
o Without any legislative presumption, the normal process of the County Courts in 2011 was to increase the level of contact with the non-resident parent until both parents were happy with the child staying overnight.
o Half of all cases involving parents ended in regular overnight contact.
o Near equal shared care arrangements were rarely sought, logistically difficult to manage for both
parents and children, and often precluded by practicalities.
o ‘No contact’ orders were extremely rare and a last resort in difficult cases where there was a real and serious risk to children’s safety.

This would indicate that father being given limited access are being given this because that’s what they apply for, not because the system is necessarily biased against them.

The writer does have a solid point when he says “our expectation of the role a separated father should play in his children’s lives is so low, that when half of dads who win “access” to their kids can’t even sleep under the same roof as their offspring, academics declare this to be an overwhelming success.” To my eye, this should have been his biggest point – that societal expectations of a divorced father are the likely contributors to this imbalance of custody rights.

This article from the Huffington Post explores some of the statistics around custody settlements. The conclusions to be drawn from the stats are that fathers in many cases don’t care equally for the child during the marriage, don’t seek custody during the divorce, and that most settlements are agreed without going to court – meaning mutual agreement between the parents.

And I agree with you – this is wrong. In a society with equal expectations, custody stats would not be skewed towards mothers in this way. The reason that this happens is not because of court or institutional bias towards mothers, but because of societal expectations that the mother is the primary carer and the father is not.

This is an example of how patriarchal structures hurts men as well as women. And that does make this a feminist issue, because obviously feminism opposes patriarchal structures.

Feminsim doesn't care about these things, despite claiming they do. I've looked.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that feminism doesn’t care about these issues – but the fact is that feminism is principally a movement that advocates for women’s rights as a means to bring about gender equality.

It is wrong to assume that a feminist cannot also be concerned about issues affecting men, or any other group for that matter – but as a movement it has a specific goal and works towards that. So when you reply to a discussion concerning feminism with “why aren’t feminists doing anything about men’s rights?”, it’s just as pointless as saying “why aren’t psychologists doing anything about physical health issues?” – they’re groups with different areas of focus.

And this is where I think Sybil’s frustration with this thread is coming from – in almost any discussion of feminism, there are always people jumping in to argue about why feminists don’t support men’s rights, or aren’t doing anything about them, and it becomes a competition to find out who has it worse. It creates the appearance that men’s issues are only ever talked about in competition to women’s issues – that there’s never discussion about men’s issues on their own merits. This then makes it look like the people arguing about this don’t actually care about men’s issues, and are just seeking to criticize feminists – it looks so incredibly insincere that it becomes hard to take seriously. And when this is seen over and over and over again in any discussion on feminism, it becomes difficult to earnestly engage with an insincere critic.

Some of the points you’ve raised here are new to me, and I was surprised to hear about them. But points like these so often only get brought up when people are using them to criticize or discredit feminism. I think that’s the wrong approach to take, and it’s ultimately harmful to the cause for men’s rights. A better solution would be to seek to bring these topics to public attention on their own terms, not as rebuttals to feminists.