Friday, May 24, 2013

Men's Rights Advocate Earl Silverman Leaves a Legacy of Feminist-Bashing


Earl Silverman was a man who spent 20 years of his life trying to help men and boys who have been abused. On Friday he was found hanging in the garage of his home in Calgary, where his men's clinic was shut down and where a suicide note appears to blame the Canadian government for not paying enough attention to male victims of domestic violence. And in the days since, the myths (that men are abused as often as women) and realities (that men are abuse victims) have returned around the so-called Men's Rights Movement, or MRM, leaving advocates on both sides as conflicted as the man who apparently took his own life fighting for a controversial cause. We've attempted to sort them out:
What is the MRM? 
That depends on who you ask. Men's rights advocates, on the most basic level, claim they are combating discrimination and injustices toward men. Which sounds like a reactionary version of feminism for men, but this isn't all men's lib: MRM advocates focus on family law, military service, and domestic violence, insisting that men often get treated unfairly in these spheres of society. Clearly, their positions do not always go over well.


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