Men’s Network Launched in Sweden
December 15th, 2009 by Pelle BillingFor quite a while I’ve been thinking about starting a Men’s Rights organization in Sweden. The rationale for wanting to do this is quite straightforward: Sweden has at least 50 well established Women’s Rights organizations, but the only men’s organizations we have are a few small fathers’ rights groups. Since I believe that gender equality goes both ways, and that men’s and women’s issues are just as important, it’s been natural for me to want to correct the current imbalance.
What’s been stopping me, and a couple of other men’s rights activists in Sweden, is that we simply don’t have time to set up a new organization. Between writing, lecturing and having day jobs we already have our hands full. However, the other day I got an idea of how to break the deadlock. Why not start a men’s network on Facebook, as a simple way to have a central gathering place for people in Sweden who are interested in men’s rights.
Said and done, the Men’s Network (Mansnätverket) was launched yesterday, and we are already approaching 200 members. If you want to support the men’s rights movement in Sweden, then please consider joining the network. You don’t need to be Swedish to join, you simply need to believe that men’s rights deserve the same attention as women’s rights. To enable you to make an informed decision of whether to join, I’m translating our 15 point platform below:
- Gender equality - in other words equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for men and women - is at the core of all work on gender issues.
- Men’s issues are important and need to get full recognition from society.
- Gender neutral legislation is a basic principle of ours. Currently, men are the only group who are discriminated in Swedish law.
- Men are traditionally viewed as expendable by society. Dangerous jobs are performed by men, the ones fighting in wars are men and men are expected to sacrifice themselves for women when danger arises. How is this compatible with the theory of male power?
- Men’s voices should be considered equally important to women’s voices in discussions about gender equality and gender roles.
- Homeless people. 75 percent are men.
- Suicides. 70 percent are committed by men.
- Education. Soon we will have a situation where only one third of university and college degrees are obtained by men, and in schools boys are falling behind. Why?
- Equally shared child allowance needs to be implemented as soon as possible (a monthly allowance is given by the state to all children in Sweden, currently the mother receives all of it). It is nothing but male discrimination to automatically give this allowance to the mother.
- Legally established paternity should automatically result in shared custody, even for parents who are not married. It’s a sign of gender inequality that the mother needs to approve shared custody even when paternity has been established.
- Fair custody battles. Mothers and fathers should be treated as equals in custody battles, both in legislation and in practise.
- Women’s violence towards men needs to be made visible. Women are violent just as often as men in intimate relationships. The consequences are not as serious as when men use violence, but all violence is equally wrong.
- Circumcision of boys under the age of 18 must be made illegal. Men’s are also entitled to full bodily integrity.
- Rule of law needs to be upheld in rape trials.
- Surrogate motherhood should be legal, along the same lines as insemination.
December 16th, 2009 at 1:02 am
So how about establishing a chapter of the National Coalition For Men (NCFM). We’ve been active since 1977: http://www.ncfm.org
December 16th, 2009 at 1:56 am
Nice idea, Harry
Though I think it makes more sense to build a self-sustaining men’s organization in Sweden that can then exchange best practises with organizations in other countries, such as th NCFM. I’m sure we could learn a lot from your experiences though, and avoid common pitfalls.
December 16th, 2009 at 6:43 am
Thank you for this Article. Fathers’ right to be a meaningful part of their childrens’ lives, have been eroded to the point of non-existence. My research suggests that this is a phenomenon consistent throughout the industrialized nations. Children who are alienated from their fathers are more likely later in life to have emotional/behavioral problems, suffer from depression, drop out of school, fail in their jobs, and suffer from other social problems. I invite you to visit my site devoted to raising awareness on this growing problem: http://fathersprivilege.blogspot.com/
December 16th, 2009 at 9:59 am
In Finland men’s organisations have started this year - meybe we should think of some kind of co-operation?
There is “Men’s equality in Finland”
http://miestentasaarvory.wordpress.com/
“Green party’s men’s movement”
http://www.vihreamiesliike.fi/
You should check Pasi Malmi’s dissertation (2009) “Discrimination Against Men
Appearance and Causes in the Context of a Modern Welfare State”
http://www.ulapland.fi/includes/file_download.asp?deptid=23477&fileid=16525&file=20090708114620.pdf&pdf=1
In the year 2007 was published book
“Men without equality”
http://www.miessakit.fi/fi/tapahtumat/mies_vailla_tasa-arvoa
2008 was published my book “Women’s sexual power”
http://www.multikustannus.fi/Products.asp?document_id=201&cat_id=201
http://nsvalta.blogspot.com/
December 16th, 2009 at 10:26 am
David,
It’s quite possible that the struggle for fathers’ rights will be the factor that changes the whole discussion around gender issues. Every man who goes through what you have done recognizes the need to change the system, and once a critical mass is reached, things will start to change.
December 16th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Well done, Pelle!
The tide will turn. The more feminists resist, the more their loathesome agenda of hate and female chauvinism will be dragged into the sunlight to die. Feminists have done for women what the Nazis did for Germans.
As usual, if TRUE gender equality is to be achieved, MEN will have to do it. Women have had their chance — and have failed miserably. (Perhaps explaining why so many women are miserable, despite their “liberation.”)
December 17th, 2009 at 1:45 pm
@Henry
Thank you for the links! I’ve sent an email to the first organization you list, to create a connection between Finland and Sweden.
December 17th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I like the term female chauvinism that you just used. That captures exactly the attitude I want to target.
I don’t think ‘feminist’ really captures it though. While feminism is shot through with misandry, so are lots of other pervasive belief systems (traditionalists are no better, and have a far longer record of misandry).
Again, I think the failures of feminism are significant as a symptom, and not as a cause of the oppression of men.
The face of misandry is that of a male (or female) family court judge, or a male police officer leading a man away in hand-cuffs, accused of domestic violence with no proof of any kind, much more so than the face of an activist feminist.
I also think feminists deserve some credit for setting the stage for MRAs. They had to come first. The liberation of women had an economic payoff so great (increasing the workforce by a factor of 2) that the nations that embraced it were destined to take power and resources away from those that didn’t.
The liberation of men has no immediate positive economic payoff. It’s a much trickier and scary proposition for society to sit still for (”if we take the safety of men seriously, and we can’t easily send them off to die for us, then who will guarantee our safety?”, is the unconscious thought underlying much of the fierce resistance to men’s rights.).
I don’t think men can do it on their own. I think women are playing a significant role in the men’s movement, and will continue to do so.
Just to pick one, the nurse Mayilyn Milos, who started NOCIRC (a movement among nurses to refuse to assist doctors in circumcising infant boys).
There’s a good chance she thinks of herself as a feminist, although I wouldn’t know for sure.
People like her are the backbone of the men’s rights movement and have been around for a long time.
December 17th, 2009 at 10:40 pm
Chris Marshall,
I agree that women can, and should, play a role in the men’s movement. Men will have to be the leaders, however. If men can assume this leadership role (which women crave, no matter what they say), women will follow and provide support.
December 22nd, 2009 at 3:10 am
Thank you for this article, good luck to the guys in Sweden. I would join their group too if I understood Swedish. It is very interresting and heartening to note that in the past year or so many such groups have been established internationally. More heartening is each having almost identical agendas without their being any collaboration. This speaks to the fact that these issues are similar everywhere and men are responding equally, a critical mass has been reached and nothing will stop it now. There are plenty of women who support these ideas and initially they should be encouraged as it they who get most media face time.
December 22nd, 2009 at 1:53 pm
Thanks for the note Charles. I agree with your observations.
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:36 pm
Pelle, how are men’s groups in Sweeden reesponding to stuff like this:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-12-14/meanwhile-back-in-sweden/
I found this reference in this article, which also has some good commentary. (The comments section gets a little strange.):
http://www.the-spearhead.com/2009/12/20/swedish-feminists-applaud-elin-nordegrens-domestic-violence-american-feminists-nervous/
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:48 pm
We don’t really have any formal men’s groups who can respond. However, bloggers like myself (my Swedish blog is increasingly well read) point out the absurdity of cheering for domestic violence.
It’s also true that masculinity has been given a bad rep in Sweden, although not more so than among postmodern or New Age settings in the US and elsewhere. I believe that men standing up for men’s rights in Sweden will also be the first step toward reclaiming healthy masculine values.
What’s often forgotten though when reporting about Sweden, even by Swedish reporters, is that there is a strong conventional streak in Swedes - so we are not nearly as progressive in many areas as the rest of the world (and indeed, ourselves) wants to believe.
December 22nd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
“http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/12/15/in-sweden-domestic-violence-is-girl-power/”
Amanda Hess weighs in. God bless her. She is a feminist who is trying to be serious. Look at the comments too for some sense of the confusion around this kind of incident.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:14 pm
Yes, for the most part an excellent article. Except the end:
“but domestic violence is one male-dominated field where inviting more female participation does not help promote gender equality.”
Domestic violence is not really male-dominated, though it has more serious consequences when men use violence.
December 23rd, 2009 at 12:19 am
“Domestic violence is not really male-dominated, though it has more serious consequences when men use violence.”
Only in countries where guns are hard to get. And not when women have greater access to state power in the form of sexist DV intervention laws, such as is the case almost universally in the US. How often do wives use marital rape laws to get husbands removed from the home, or “predominant aggressor” laws where police simply arrest the man rahter than try to ascertain who started the fight, and how often do wives who’ve killed their husbands attempt to use the DV excuse as a defense after he’s dead and no one is there to contradict it?
What is the situation in Sweden?
“there is a strong conventional streak in Swedes ” Yes. It manifests as strongly commonsensical. That can look radically progressive elsewhere in the world.
It may also have to do with the lack of any kind of utopian, Puritanical streak in the history and culture. That saves the society from a lot of extremism. Her ein the US we have had utopian extremists from the very beginning - intrusive, communitarian and quite totalitarian at times. I’m talking about Massachussetts, as one example, but there have been hundreds more. At least one good thing came out of it - the Virginia cavalier/plantation owners were so wary of the Massachussetts Puritans’ propensities that they wrote very strong personal rights law into the first ten ameedments of the Constitution. That’s where those came from.
December 23rd, 2009 at 8:35 pm
“What is the situation in Sweden?”
No guns, but we certainly have a DV industry, and the only suspects are men.
December 23rd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
The men can come to America. WOOF! You can keep the women.
December 24th, 2009 at 10:27 am
LOL Jim
January 12th, 2010 at 1:28 pm
We need a Men’s Network in Australia as well!
Further to the comment regarding men falling behind in education and earning only one third of the degrees in the near future, the link below explains how secondary school education systems have been set up to make them male unfriendly. Some of this set up was done intentionally and some not. I find it amusing that the OECD rates Finland’s education system as the best in Europe, when the gap between men getting degrees and women is one of the highest in the world! It is fairlly typical for us expendable males, that nobody cares about our education! Just an opinion: the best way to avoid a lot of the problems of discrimination against males is to refuse to marry and refuse to have children. Refusing to marry works even better if you have a degree!
http://boyseducationaustralia.blogspot.com/2009/10/boys-are-discriminated-against-in.html
March 13th, 2010 at 9:16 pm
In Poland we have started two years ago a fathers organization porozumienie rawskie, http://www.porozumienierawskie.pl/indexeng.htm
to pass a preference for physical joint custody in case of separation.
We have a big problem here with getting equal human rights to our kids after separation or divorce.
97% kids live with mothers, and we get every other weekend only, we are very lucky if some of us get one day in a week extra usually it is wends day, but most of us don’t even get this.
in family courts we have 83% women judges and 87% so called psycho experts in RODK working close with family courts.
God save polish fathers and their kids if it came to divorce we have no rights here.
It is probably the Poland is probably is the worst country talking about equal rights to kids in Europe.
Finally we got our government to work on the new law with the preference for physical joint custody hopefully something will change.
Wish us good luck.
March 13th, 2010 at 10:27 pm
I wish you the best of luck, Christopher!
It sounds like you have a lot of work to do, but it’s encouraging that you have started an organization and are working towards political change.
Again, best of luck.
June 1st, 2010 at 7:56 pm
Too reactionary, like most mainstream MRAism.
Merely responding to feminism, pleading politely for “fairness” from the oppressors, rather than forging our own, independent discourse.
This Swedish men’s group seems to be a variant of 1970s Feminist “Remoulding Men Into Gynocentric/Feminist Society” men’s groups. Except they’ve taken a few complaints from the MRA world and interweaved them into the mix.
The true path to progress for men against feminist/matriarchal oppression is not a reactionary, pleading one. Rather it is radical dissection and rejection of feminism/matriarchy, and identification of women as a group as a problem. Indeed, as the essential prime mover in feminist subjugation of men.
“Gender equality”
“Gender equality” is a feminist goal. “Gender equality” is Gynocentrism, Feminism, Matriarchy, Oppression of Men. That’s how feminist women who control the public discourse define “gender equality” and you will not change it.
Feminist man-hating gynocentric women decide the definitions that people internalize. When you say “gender equality” you automatically invoke gynocentrism in people’s heads because that’s the way feminist have set it up.
So, the lot of men cannot be improved by invoking such ideological/propagandistic terminology.
Besides all that, there is not and can never be “equality” between men and women. The possibility of it is the fudge that feminist women use to create matriarchy and subjugate men.
Ordo ab chao. Order out of chaos.
Out of the chaotic, nonsenical idea of “equality between the sexes” (a false proposition which feminist women are perfectly aware of), the gynocentric social order is formed.
June 1st, 2010 at 8:02 pm
“The face of misandry is that of a male (or female) family court judge, or a male police officer leading a man away in hand-cuffs, accused of domestic violence with no proof of any kind, much more so than the face of an activist feminist.”
Yeah but who set up all those systems? Man-hating gynocentric feminist women.
The people you refer to are essentially acting “under orders” of a gynocentric system that women set up.
June 1st, 2010 at 8:07 pm
“In Poland we have started two years ago a fathers organization porozumienie rawskie, http://www.porozumienierawskie.pl/indexeng.htm
to pass a preference for physical joint custody in case of separation.
We have a big problem here with getting equal human rights to our kids after separation or divorce.
97% kids live with mothers, and we get every other weekend only, we are very lucky if some of us get one day in a week extra usually it is wends day, but most of us don’t even get this.
in family courts we have 83% women judges and 87% so called psycho experts in RODK working close with family courts.”
The solution to that is not to complain and beg for “fairness” from feminist oppressors who don’t (and can’t) recognise your interests.
The solution is to identify feminism as the essential problem, and to go on to disassemble the feminist system.
If you don’t do both of those, you’re “father’s rights” discourse goes nowhere.
June 1st, 2010 at 8:10 pm
“I agree that women can, and should, play a role in the men’s movement.”
No they don’t. It’s against women’s natural interests to be anti-feminist/pro-masculinist. That’s why, in actual fact, so few [practically none] are.
Because of this, masculinism should (must) be a male-only space.
I’m not arguing anything different here than the feminists; who in the early days excluded men because Sisterhood Is Powerful, because you could only really build up a feminist ideology out of female-only groups. You could only really identify, conceptualize and work on the issues in female-only groups.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, no?
Even today, there is much exclusion of and hestitancy towards men. In feminist spaces, where men are not outright banned, they are only accepted if they are brainwashed and 100% on board with feminism. A skeptic of feminism will be banned from a feminist space.
All of this is entirely natural: it is merely self-interest. A group (women) standing up for their self-interests, to the detriment of other groups where it comes into conflict, formulating strategies towards that end.
I however argue that men should agitate for their self-interests too. Why shouldn’t they?
June 1st, 2010 at 8:21 pm
“In the year 2007 was published book
“Men without equality”
http://www.miessakit.fi/fi/tapahtumat/mies_vailla_tasa-arvoa”
Note again: women, via feminism, define equality, on their terms. To their benefit, and their benefit alone.
Women can argue that men DO have equality, that this gynocentric society IS equality, because they define the terminology.
And no, we can’t take that “right to define equality” from them, because feminist women control the law, the media, the political discourse. We don’t. Therefore their definition triumphs.
Ditch the equality nonsense, it’s an impossible goal anyway. Men and women aren’t equal; never were, never will be. Feminist women understand this better than anyone else.
July 26th, 2010 at 11:28 am
I am very pleased to see the Men’s Movement is taking off in Sweden. It seems that your country would benefit substancially from gender equalitarians, such as your selves, and soon Men’s Rights Movements across the world will be communicating together on how best to defeat the sexist policies set against us by the feminist propaganda machine.
You mentioned that there are fifty different Women’s Organizations in Sweden, and I believe that you should try to use that fact to your advantage in two ways.
1. Point out to people how grossly under-represented men are in their representation in your country by comparison to how many feminist orgs there are. 2. Use their your solidarity against their numerous different command structures. Your unity of command is your greatest strength;
their diversity of separate organizations is their greatest weakness.
Good luck.
July 26th, 2010 at 1:34 pm
Thanks Jonathan.
July 27th, 2010 at 11:23 am
Boys are doing worse in school education than girls in many countries in the world. The reason is because educational curiculums have been set up address girl’s strengths. This is leading to more girls attending college than boys and men being pushed out of the professions. The website below shows what is occuring in Australia, but the principles are also applicable to other countries. I am also doing another web page titled “How to set up a school education system to ensure that on average, one sex does better than the other” I will send you a link once complete.
http://boyseducationaustralia.blogspot.com/
August 1st, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Thanks for your comment and the link, Nathan.
August 26th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Im from the once democratic country of australia.Democracy ended 3 or 4 decades ago the day an elected government decided they could democraticly legislate the legal right of innocent till proven guilty for 50% of the population to ledgislated guilty until they proved they where innocent.The only accepted proof not required to b ledgislated guilty with a statute of limitation for that proof.Since that day 2 political made up of the same profession have democraticly voted amoungst them selves to cancel every legal right of that 50% by communist methods(employees)or ledgislation.Why didnt the media report any of this democratic communism?Democratic/communism,that bestows this communist honour on them.This profession is the hitler of our time.Wake up human race before its to late or is it????