A Brief History Of The Men’s Rights Movement: From 1856 to the Present

By Peter Wright

The Men’s Rights Movement consists of groups or individuals fighting for improved human rights for men. The movement is sometimes referred to as the Men’s Human Rights Movement (MHRM), with human rights serving as a central focus that encompasses the same rights called civil liberties or civil rights but also including those rights that are not encoded in law - such as compassionate and respectful behavior toward men and indeed toward all human beings.

The purpose of the movement has occasionally been misunderstood, this partly because it has been poorly documented. To correct that oversight this book attempts to provide a brief overview of both the historical beginnings and goals of the movement over the last 150 years. A historical survey reveals that the MRM is concerned with a large array of issues impacting men and boys such as alimony, genital mutilation of male infants, male homelessness, mental illness, false accusations, family court bias, suicide, child custody, low funding for male health issues, educational performance, and misandry in mainstream culture just to name a few.

The following pages provide examples of the early MRM in action, focusing in Parts 1 – 3 on the rise of men’s advocacy in the 1800s. Part four provides a sample list of men’s rights initiatives from the 1800s to recent times, and Part five provides a few personal and co-authored essays penned between the years 2012 – 2017 that give a taste of contemporary thinking, with the concluding essay by Robert Brockway giving a general overview of concerns of the modern MRM. With the publication of this material in one volume it is hoped that the historical footprint of the MRM will be set straight.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Wright
• Release date: Mar 3, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463281888

Book preview

A brief history of

The Men’s Rights Movement

From 1856 to the present

Peter Wright

First published in June 2017

by Academic Century Press

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER ONE: Beginnings

1. A Word for Men’s Rights (1856)

2. Conference on Men’s Rights proposed (1857)

3. An Appeal for Men’s Rights (1875)

4. A Men’s Rights Movement Launched (1898)

CHAPTER TWO: 18th Century Strategies For Abused Men

5. The Henpecked Club

6. Riding The Stang

CHAPTER THREE: Ernest Belfort Bax

7. Some Bourgeois Idols (1886)

8. No Misogyny But True Equality (1887)

9. The Legal Subjection of Men (1896)

10. A Creature of Privilege (1911)

CHAPTER FOUR: First and Second Waves of the Men’s Rights Movement

11. The First Wave of the Men’s Rights Movement – 1856 –1998

12. The Second Wave of the Men’s Rights Movement –1998– Cont.

CHAPTER FIVE: A Selection of Contemporary Essays

13. Welcome to The Second Wave

14. Men Who Sit At The Screens

15. Mission Statement from ‘A Voice for Men’ Website

16. A Voice For Choice

17. A New Psychology For Men

18. Roots of the Sexual Relations Contract

19. What Ever happened To Chivalry?

20. Traditionalism vs. Traditionalism

21. Republicans and Democrats: Both Gynocrats

22. An Introduction To The Men’s Rights Movement

AFTERWORD

INTRODUCTION

The Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) consists of groups or individuals fighting for improved human rights for men. Historically these groups have consisted of men and women agitating for corrections to anti-male customs and laws, for the right of men to live traditional or alternative male roles as they wish, and to challenge the forces attacking that freedom of choice via manipulations of the social and legal environment. The accompanying and no less important of its aims has been to challenge mainstream culture narratives that have reinforced misandric attitudes.

The purpose of the MRM has occasionally been misunderstood, this being partly due to poor documentation thus allowing the worst of false caricatures to inform researchers. To address that lack this book will provide a brief overview of both the historical beginnings and goals of the movement.

In the absence of a reliable overview of its history the MRM has also been vulnerable to annexing by ideologues who claim the first men’s movement was launched in the 1970s by second wave feminists in an effort to deal with ‘destructive masculine norms,’ and that the Men’s Rights Movement only later branched off from it as a kind of misogynist backlash. Among sources furthering this myth, for example, is the current Wikipedia MRM entry which has suffered repetitive censorship of the now century-long tradition of men’s rights activism – a tradition that proves the ‘feminist origins’ theory non-credible. In place of that long tradition the opening sentence of the Wikipedia article reads:

"The men's rights movement (MRM) is a part of the larger men's movement. It branched off from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s."

Few serious researchers accept that the MRM began in the 1970s, there being numerous examples of well-organized MR activism extending back into the 1800s (see Parts 1-3). Moreover, the ‘men’s liberation movement’ cited in the Wikipedia article was in fact a feminist initiative that arose within the National Organization for Women to foster pro-feminist ideology among men. The Wikipedia misinformation derives from American sociologist Michael Messner who restates popular feminist factoids without having surveyed literature by or about the men’s rights movement over the last 150 years.

The longevity of the MRM has often been overlooked due to such efforts to distort or censor its existence. That censorship is not new, being already described a century ago by men’s rights advocate Ernest B. Bax who wrote about efforts to block the circulation of his pamphlet on the legal disadvantages and discrimination suffered by men entitled The Legal Subjection of Men. Bax referred to censorship from the influential feminist sisterhood as being well known among publishers:

"[Socialist-feminists say] the pamphlet The Legal Subjection of Men – in which the present state of the law and its administration between the sexes is given – should be suppressed, and also in the representations made to the Editor from a Women’s Committee of the body that I should be muzzled and any statement of mine adverse to Feminism be excluded from the party organs." [Women’s Privileges and Rights, Social Democrat, Vol.13 no.9, September (1909), pp.385-391]

The apostles of feminism, being unable to make a plausible case out in reply, with one consent resort to the boycott, and by ignoring what they cannot answer, seek to stop the spread of the unpleasant truth so dangerous to their cause. The pressure put upon publishers and editors by the influential Feminist sisterhood is well known. [The Fraud of Feminism, (1913), pp.1-2]

As in the examples provided by Bax, the effort to censor men’s voices has continued through all three waves of feminism. It was witnessed recently, for example, with the release of the MRM documentary The Red Pill, which saw groups of feminists threaten and intimidate venues worldwide that had agreed to screen the documentary - venues which later backed out of their agreements due to fear of reprisals. Fortunately The Red Pill went on to become a huge global success, a testament to the hunger of both men and women for fair treatment of their brothers, sons, fathers, male friends and colleagues.

In order to secure free speech there has always existed a tendency within the MRM to push back against feminist-driven censorship of men’s issues, and indeed censorship from other sources. Attacking feminism however has never been the main goal of the movement despite claims by some that the MRM is synonymous with antifeminist backlash. To suggest equivalence is to confuse purely antifeminist movements with the much broader portfolio of the men’s rights movement.

A survey of the last 100 years reveals that the MRM is concerned more directly with issues impacting men and boys such as alimony, genital mutilation of male infants, homelessness, mental illness, false accusations, family court bias, suicide, child custody, low funding for male health issues, legal discrimination, educational performance, and misandry in mainstream culture just to name a few.

To that list I would personally like to see efforts of workers unions added, which often strived for humane and better working conditions for men. Less working hours, safer conditions, or supported time off work to deal with family issues or personal sickness are all within the purview of MR activism. Such an inclusion would require a distancing from extreme political ideologies that sometimes grew within and misdirected workers unions, however the recognition of vastly improved circumstances for male workers, a result of activism, would see the longevity and scope of the MRM vastly extended. That however is a project too ambitious for the current small volume, but hopefully an author of the future will consider expanding the account with the latter addition in mind.

The following pages provide examples of the early MRM in action, focusing in Parts 1 – 3 on the rise of men’s advocacy in the 1800s. In Part four I provide a sample list of men’s rights initiatives from the 1800s to recent times, and Part five provides a few personal and co-authored essays penned between the years 2012 – 2017 that give a taste of contemporary thinking, with the concluding essay by Robert Brockway giving a general overview of concerns of the modern MRM.

With the publication of this material in one volume it is hoped that the historical record of the MRM will be set straight.

Peter Wright, July 2017.

PART ONE

Beginnings

A Word For Men’s Rights (1856)

The following long article from 1856 discusses sexist laws that oppressed men and benefited women, including the practice of frivolous, unjustified lawsuits for supposed breach of marriage promise (or implied promise, or imagined promise). Such suits came, by the late part of the nineteenth century to be a standard operating procedure for women who either felt genuinely spurned or, just as frequently, women who saw an opportunity to misuse laws to control men. By the late 1920s, the practice had become a widespread criminal enterprise, so highly profitable for both weeping sweetheart and racketeering lawyer that it gained the appellation, The Heart Balm Racket.

________________________

A Word for Men’s Rights 

The notions which rule inside of men’s heads, and the phrases in vogue to represent them are hardly less liable to fluctuation than is the fashion of the outward adornment, whether by hats, caps, bonnets, periwigs, or powder.

Sixty or seventy years ago, scarcely anything was so much talked of as the rights of man. Where this phrase came from, we cannot tell. It is not to be met with in any writer of prior date to the middle of the last century. James Otis used it in his famous tract on the Rights of the American Colonies, nor are we aware of any earlier appearance of it in print. Sudden, however, and obscure as its first appearance was, it took, and soon became one of the most fashionable of phrases. It played a great part in the American Revolution. It found its way into our Declaration of Independence, and into the fundamental laws of most of our states. It played a still greater part in the French revolution. Ten or a dozen French constitutions, more or less, were founded upon it. Thomas Paine wrote a famous book, with this title. For a while, nothing was so much talked of as the rights of man—talked of, we say—for, as happened in the case of the thirsty Indian, so with respect to these rights, it was pretty much all talk, with very little cider.

In sixty years, however, fashions have changed. The rights of man —once in everybody’s mouth—are seldom heard of now-a-days—unless it be in an abolition convention—or, if mentioned at all, in Congress and other respectable places, these rights, once the hope of humanity, are referred to, only to be sneered at, as a flourish of rhetoric—a chimera of the imagination.

Still, we are not left speechless nor hopeless. Hope still remains at the bottom of the box, with a fine sounding phrase to back it. Let the men go to the deuce. What of that? Does not lovely woman still remain to us? Today, the fashionable phrase is—woman’s rights. The women have discovered, or think they have, that they are, and long have been tyrannized over, in the most brutal manner, by society, the laws, and their husbands. Woman’s rights is now the watch-word of a new movement for social reform, and even for political revolution—the women, among other things, claiming to vote.

It must be confessed that such general outcries are not commonly raised, without some reason. They are the natural expressions of pain and unsatisfied desire. It was not without reason that America and Europe, towards the close of the last century, raised the cry of the rights of man; and so, we dare say, it is not without reason that the rights of woman are now dinged into our ears. Nor is this cry without a marked effect, not merely upon manners and society, but also upon laws. Almost all our state legislatures are at work, with more or less diligence and enthusiasm, modifying their statute books, under the influence of this new zeal.

To that we do not object. Putnam is for reform. Putnam is for progress. Putnam is for woman’s rights; but also for man’s rights—for everybody’s rights; and, in that spirit, we are going to offer a few hints to our legislators, whose vaulting zeal, on behalf of the ladies, seems a little in danger of overleaping itself, and jolting on t’other side. It is well to stand straight, but not well to tumble over backward, in attempting to do so.

Those who go about to modify our existing laws, as to the relation of husband and wife, will do well to reflect that the old English common law on this subject, if it be a rude and barbarous system, little suited to our advanced and refined state of society—which we do not deny—is also a consistent and logical system, of which the different parts mutually rest upon and sustain each other. In the repair, or modification of such a system, it is material that every part of it should be taken into account. Changes in one part will involve and require changes in other parts; otherwise, alterations, made with a view only to relieve the wife from tyranny and oppression, may work a corresponding injustice to the husband. Nor are the changes already made in our laws, partly by legislation and partly by usage, free from glaring instances of this sort.

The English common law makes the husband the guardian and master of the wife, who stands to him in the relation of a child and a servant. In virtue of this relation, the husband is legally responsible for the acts of the wife. If she slanders or assaults her neighbors, he is joined with the wife in the action to recover damages, and he alone is legally responsible for the amount of damages recovered, even to the extent of being sent to jail in default of payment. He is likewise responsible for debts contracted by the wife to the same extent that a father is responsible for the debts of his minor children. Even in criminal proceedings, it is he who must pay, or go to jail for not paying the fines imposed on his wife; and there are many cases, even cases of felony, in which the wife, acting in concert with her husband, is excused from all punishment, on the presumption that she acts by his compulsion, though in fact she may, as in the noted case of Macbeth’s wife, have been the instigator.

Public opinion goes even further than the law, and holds the husband accountable, to a certain extent, for all misbehaviors and indiscretions on the part of his wife. Not only is he to watch that she does not steal, he is to watch that she does not flirt, and every species of infidelity, or even of levity on her part, inflicts no less disgrace upon him than upon her—disgrace which the received code of honor requires him to revenge upon the male delinquent not only in defiance of the law which forbids all breaches of the peace, but even at the risk of his own life.

The law and public opinion having anciently imposed all these heavy obligations on the husband, very logically and reasonably proceeded to invest him with corresponding powers and authority. Standing to the wife, as he was made to stand, in the relation of father and master, the law very reasonably invested him with all the rights and authority of a father and a master. How, indeed, was he to exercise the authority and to fulfill the obligations which the law and public opinion imposed upon him, of regulating the conduct of his wife, unless invested at the same time with means both of awe and coercion? Accordingly, the law and usage of England authorized the husband to chastise his wife—in a moderate manner—employing for that purpose a rod not thicker than his finger. The husband was also entitled to the personal custody of his wife, and was authorized in proper cases—if, for instance, she seemed disposed to run off with another man—to lock her up, and, if need were, to keep her on bread and water.

Now these, it must be confessed, were extensive powers—harsh and barbarous powers, if you please—though the law always contemplated that, in his exercise of them, the husband would be checked by the same tenderness towards the wife of his bosom which tempers the exercise by the father of a similar authority over his children. But however extensive, however harsh or barbarous the powers of the husband may be, we appeal even to our female readers — if, indeed, a single female has had patience and temper to follow us thus far—we appeal even to that single female (or married one, as the case may be), to say how, in the name of common sense, is the husband to keep the wife in order, to the extent which the law and public opinion demands of him, except by the exercise of these powers, or at least by the awe which the known possession and possible exercise of them is fitted to inspire? If the fractious child is neither to be spanked nor shut up in the closet, how is domestic discipline to be preserved? What more effectual sedative to an excited and ungovernable temper, which might provoke both suits for assault and actions for slander, than retirement in one’s closet with the door locked and a glass of cold water to cool one’s burning tongue?

And so of another great topic of complaint on the part of the advocates of woman’s rights—the power which the husband has by the common law over the wife’s property. He being responsible for her debts and her acts, and being bound to provide for the support of the children, has, as a corollary thereto, the custody and disposition of the wife’s property, if she chances to inherit or to acquire any—which, unfortunately, in the middle ranks of life, where these notions of woman’s rights most extensively prevail, is, we are sorry to say, but too seldom the case.

Such are the relative rights and duties of the husband under the old English common law. Under this law a husband is not a mere chimera, a surd and impossible quantity. There is a logical consistency about him. He is, as Horace says of the stoic philosopher, terei ef rotundus, round and whole, armed at all points, provided with powers adequate to the duties expected of him.

In America we have no such husbands. Long before the cry of woman’s rights was openly raised, the powers and prerogatives of the American husband had been gradually undermined. Usage superseded law, and trampled it under foot. Sentiment put logical consistency at defiance, and the American husband has thus become a legal monster, a logical impossibility, required to fly without wings, and to run without feet.

Women care nothing for logic, but they have a sense of justice and tender hearts, and to their sense of justice we confidently appeal. Who can wonder that the men are so shy in taking upon them the responsibilities of the married state? Those responsibilities all remain exactly as in old times, while the means of adequately meeting them are either entirely taken away, or are in a fair way to be so. By the law as it now is, we believe in every state of the Union, the husband cannot lay his finger on his wife in the way of chastisement except at the risk of being complained of for assault and battery, and, perhaps, sued for a divorce, and (which is worse than either) of being pronounced by his neighbors a brutal fellow. The nominal custody of the person of the wife, which the law still, in some of the states, affects to bestow upon the husband, is a mere illusion. If he attempts to lock her up, she can sue out her habeas corpus, and oblige him to pay the expenses of it; and if she wishes to quit her husband’s house, and go elsewhere, he has no means of compelling her return. He may sue those with whom , takes refuge, for