There is not enough academic and credentialed people on the MRA side to make logical cases, going by this Red Pill documentary. Warren Farrell is probably the only person worth listening to and isn't focused on tearing down feminism since he has history fighting for women's rights and has recently focused on men too. He's probably the only academic person on the mens' rights side (although I don't think he identifies as MRA). Fred Hayward is more specific and personal about his bad custody story.
EDIT: Just checked up on Warren Farrell and his views on incest YIKES! I take back what I said about him.
http://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2...search-with-evasive-non-answers-and-a-smiley/
Yeah, he was definitely couching his langugage and points in this documentary.
The documentary doesn't do much to criticise these MRA figures directly.
There's a bit too much focus on feelings rather than facts, more anecdotes than statistics, which is ironic considering the MRAs at the start of the documentary are shown to be against. No one makes a convincing case that there is gender discrimination towards men under the law.
Where the documentary succeeds is when it's just focused on men's issues, especially custody cases or men being victims of domestic abuse. It falls apart when these people start talking about as a reaction to feminism, that men are the ones actually discriminated against, that women have the advantage in this world in terms of employment and education. Basically, everything that Paul Elam goes on about with his hyperbolic rhetorics.
These MRAs bring up gender expectations, but don't make a convincing case for how feminism is responsible for any of the issues that men face like the statistic shown a few times about male deaths due to workplace, war, or suicide.
CUSTODY
The documentary makes a good point that people who join up to be MRAs are usually divorced men who feel they've been disadvantaged by the family courts. However, on the feminist side like Michael Messner explains, there is reasoning for why this statistic is a thing.
Dispelling The Myth Of Gender Bias In The Family Court System - Cathy Meyer
According to a Pew Research Center analysis of the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG) released in June of 2011:
"...a married father spends on average 6.5 hours a week taking part in primary child care activities with his children. The married mother spends on average 12.9 hours. Since two-income households are now the norm, not the exception, the above information indicates that not only are mothers working, but they are also doing twice as much child care as fathers.
It only makes sense that mothers who have a closer bond due to the time spent caring for a child be the one more likely to retain primary custody after a divorce."
Divorced Fathers:
"According to the above study, when fathers and children live separately, 22 percent of fathers see their children more than once a week. Twenty-nine percent of fathers see their children one to four times a month. The most disturbing fact though is that 27 percent of fathers have no contact with their children at all.
When you take into consideration that mothers spend more time taking care of children before divorce and only 22 percent of fathers take advantage of spending what I would consider quality time with their children after the divorce, the fact that more mothers retain custody seems reasonable... doesn't it?"
Is the Family Court to blame according to statistics?
"According to DivorcePeers.com,
the majority of child custody cases are not decided by the courts.
- In 51 percent of custody cases, both parents agreed — on their own — that mom become the custodial parent.
- In 29 percent of custody cases, the decision was made without any third party involvement.
- In 11 percent of custody cases, the decision for mom to have custody was made during mediation.
- In 5 percent of custody cases, the issue was resolved after a custody evaluation.
- Only 4 percent of custody cases went to trial and of that 4 percent, only 1.5 percent completed custody litigation.
In other words,
91 percent of child custody after divorce is decided with no interference from the family court system. How can there be a bias toward mothers when fewer than 4 percent of custody decisions are made by the Family Court?"
So, the statistics don't back up this gender discrimination towards men in custody cases.
"What do these statistics tell us?
1. Fathers are less involved in their children's care during the marriage.
2. Fathers are less involved in their children's lives after divorce.
3. Mothers gain custody because the vast majority of fathers choose to give them custody.
4. There is no Family Court bias in favor of mothers because very few fathers seek custody during divorce.
I fully understand and appreciate the value of fathers in the lives of their children. We as a society should do everything in our power to encourage responsible parenting by both mothers and fathers.
After studying the statistics and working with divorcing clients for more than 10 years, it's my opinion that the 'gender bias' argument is used by some fathers who fail to understand the value of legally fighting for more time with their children during the divorce process.
A gender bias argument should not be used by a divorced father unless he has personal experience and can back up that experience with proof. Until the statistics tell us that more than 4 percent of divorced fathers are seeking custody through the Family Court system, there are few men who have such experience and proof of a true 'gender bias'."
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE
I think the most supported statisctic in the documentary is about domestic violence and how there aren't enough shelters for men. That a lot of men are also victims.
CDC:
https://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/NISVS-StateReportBook.pdf
Men
"In the United States, 30.9% or nearly 1 in 3 men have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in his lifetime (Table 5.4). Among states, 18.5% to 38.2% (all states) of men reported any of these behaviors by an intimate partner in their lifetime (Table 5.13). State estimates were stratified into quartiles (Figure 5.2). In the twelve months preceding the survey, 6.4% of U.S. men reported any contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner, with reportable state estimates ranging from 4.9% to 10.7% (19 states); see Tables 5.4 and 5.14. Among all U.S. men, 7.0% reported contact sexual violence by
an intimate partner in their lifetime, with state estimates ranging from 4.2% to 12.8% (27 states); see Tables 5.4 and 5.13. During the 12 months preceding the survey, 1.8% of men reported contact sexual violence by an intimate partner (Table 5.4); state estimates were not statistically reliable. Physical violence by an intimate partner was experienced by 28.3% of U.S. men during their lifetime, and 4.7% in the 12 months preceding the
survey (Table 5.4). State estimates of men reporting physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime ranged from 17.8% to 36.1% (all states) and 4.2% to 6.7% during the 12 months prior to taking the survey (7 states); see Tables 5.13 and 5.14. In terms of specific types of physical violence, 26.0% of U.S. men were slapped, pushed, or shoved by an intimate partner in their lifetime, and 4.4% of men reported those behaviors in the 12 months prior to taking the survey (Table 5.4). Severe physical violence by an intimate partner during the lifetime was reported by 13.9% of U.S. men in their lifetime, and 2.1% of men in the 12 months before the survey (Table 5.4). The lifetime and
12-month prevalence of stalking by an intimate partner for U.S. men was 2.3% and 0.8% respectively (Table 5.4); lifetime and 12-month state estimates for stalking were not
statistically reliable."
Women
"In the United States, over 1 in 3 women (37.3%) experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking victimization by an intimate partner during her lifetime (Table 5.1). Individual state estimates of lifetime experiences of contact sexual violence, physical violence and/or stalking by an intimate partner ranged from 27.8% to 45.3% (all states); see Table 5.7. State estimates were stratified into quartiles (Figure 5.1). In addition, approximately 1 in 15 women (6.6%) reported contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking victimization by an intimate partner in the 12 months preceding the survey (Table 5.1). State estimates for any contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner experienced by U.S. women in the 12 months prior to the survey ranged from 4.2% to 10.6% (34 states). Contact sexual violence by an intimate partner was experienced by 16.4% of U.S. women during their lifetime, with state estimates ranging from 12.0% to 22.5% of women (50 states); see Tables 5.1 and 5.7. In the last 12 months, contact sexual violence by an intimate partner was experienced by 2.1% of women in the U.S. (Table 5.1); state estimates were not statistically reliable. Physical violence by an intimate partner during the lifetime was experienced by 32.4% of U.S. women, and state estimates ranged from 25.4% to 42.1% (all states); see Tables 5.1 and 5.7. During the 12 months preceding the survey, 3.9% of U.S. women experienced physical violence by an intimate partner, and among reportable states, estimates ranged from 3.5% to 7.6% (5 states); see Tables 5.1 and 5.8. Specifically, 30.3% of U.S. women reported being slapped, pushed, or shoved by an intimate partner in their lifetime and 3.6% reported these experiences in the 12 months prior to the survey (Table 5.1). Severe physical violence by an intimate partner was reported by 23.2% of women as happening in their lifetime, and by 2.5% of women as happening in the 12 months preceding the survey (Table 5.1). Stalking by an intimate partner was experienced by 9.7% of U.S. women in their lifetime, and 2.5% in the 12 months prior to the survey (Table 5.1)."
The documentary at the very end briefly mentions the online manosphere. That Reddit's redpill community and MGTOW see themselves at odds with MRAs because they are the more extreme version and want to take advantage of the system. It highlights an important point for us that we people at NeoGAF mostly come across MRAs as these online people who are way more extremist and hateful than what the IRL MRAs in this documentary are shown, especially of the older age. Even then, the older MRAs might just be coaching their language for the documentary, and I'm certainly in big disagreement with people like Paul Elam, Harry Crouch; I only really see eye-to-eye with Erin Pizzey's
and Warren Farrell's points.
However, as long as MRAs keep focusing on feminism, they're not going to get anywhere. MRAs and feminists can join on bipartisan issues like domestic violence.