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

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.