"Mens rights" and #BASHBACK

I recently attended a Rally For Men and Boys in Crisis at Queen's Park. Hosted by A Voice for Men, a blog that speaks for men's rights, the event aimed to speak out against the discrimination against fathers, men and boys that deal with issues in the family, criminal courts, the media, education system and the government.

The event was attended by both men's right activists and a group of feminist protesters known as #BASHBACK. Considering the riots that went down earlier in the year during a lecture at the University of Toronto, the event was relatively calm despite a couple of disagreements.

The men's rights movement has created controversy among feminists calling organizations such as A Voice for Men and the Canadian Association for Equality. But having talked to Paul Elam, the editor-in-chief of A Voice for Men, he simply says men want to generate a discussion and create awareness.

"We live in a culture that has studied the very important issues of woman for the past 50 years in a very open way and aggressive way in universities, yet we’ve had almost nothing focusing on the issues that affect men and boys," Elam said. "There is a lot of resistance to that idea, but part of our presence here and part of our work of a Voice for Men is to try to address that resistance."

Zach "Nocameco" Ruiter of #BashBack had a different opinion. "Of course there's men's issues but that's why they can have support groups for perpetrators, not like apologizing for their, you know, restricting to committing violence against women. They're just retrospective-reactionaries who want to go back to a time they may have idolized. If they're having issues, they're completely misdirected into anti-feminism. And if you look at anti-feminist par excellence would be Marc Lépine, the man who murdered women in the (Montreal Massacre) and his doctrine and his manifesto was decidedly anti-feminist..." he said.

He also stated that this is a patriarchal society and that there is still violence and a threats to certain communities.

"When we start to honour women, and when we get to center them and take lead from them, we can learn how to be an ally and we can actually learn how to be whole ourselves," Ruiter said.

The views presented in this article do not represent the views of Journalists for Human Rights