In an Op-Ed in the Epoch Times (https://www.theepochtimes.com/who-cares-about-male-suffering_3891890.html). Janice Fiamingo opens with the fact that July 11 is Gender Empathy Gap Day designed to bring awareness to societal indifference to the suffering of men and boys. She goes on to provide multiple examples which I encourage you to find in the article itself. What I found troubling as a MRA/FRA were the comments to “man up” opposite those that stated they had “sympathy” for men and boys.
I post a link to the difference between the empathy called for and the sympathy offered here, https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/sympathy-empathy-difference. As Ms Fiamingo point out, what we are looking for is EMPATHY, a simple recognition that men and boys who suffer are treated poorly by both men and women. You don’t have to have been victimized yourself and “feel my pain” and sympathize. You simply need to recognize the disparate treatment that men suffer and recognize it as wrong. As she plainly states this isn’t a victimhood contest between men and women, “it does seek to prompt recognition of our collective inability or unwillingness to recognize the humanity of men”.
The man up and don’t be a soy boy crowd is dismissing the issue out of hand without even looking to see if there is merit to the complaint. Of course attacking the “soy boys” allows them to avoid having to speak to the multitude of facts presented in the piece. Ironically this argument supports Ms. Fiamingo’s position that the societal indifference to the suffering of men exists. Having sympathy also can ignore the problem for feeling my pain and sharing my feelings does not necessarily translate into working to correct the problem which caused my pain.
Being a career law enforcement officer, I have never committed a crime with a female accomplice (it’s frowned on in my profession) and I don’t have sympathy for a criminal sent to prison as I’ve never been one. But if he was sent to prison and she given probation for doing the same crime I do have empathy for his disparate treatment which is obviously bias for being male. And in my 30 year career I was witness to and can attest to preferential treatment given to women by law enforcement officers, prosecutors, and judges for both minor and major offenses.
In the olden days (1990’s) we used to have fathers rights meetings face to face. The “man up” crowd referred to them as “pity parties” and did not attend, dismissing the plight of others. The sympathy crowd would attend the meetings for the emotional support but wouldn’t get politically active to work to change the system. Regardless of their level of victimization by the system, it was those who had empathy for others who would fight for change. Parents, siblings, and second spouses were often the most vocal for change driven by their empathy for another.
Within the Men’s Rights, Fathers Rights, Parental Rights movements we see the same lack of empathy. Home schoolers and conservative Christians pushed the Parental Rights and Responsibilities Act but specifically excluded “non custodial” parents from the act. When I co-founded the Coalition of Fathers and Families NY, Inc. (FaFNY) I was told, by males and females, that I should change the name as it wasn’t “inclusive”even though the mission statement supported equal rights for both parents and both parents rights free from government interference. Bias towards fathers and fathers rights is what allows them to be removed as a parent and their parental rights.
And we have our share of “man ups” in the FRA/MRA movement. After 3 years of litigation I was arrested, suspended from work, dead broke, with $20 in my pocket and the clothes on my back with a borrowed car and place to sleep. With an OOP over my head based on false allegation and violation of that being a felony I tried to get my access exchange at a neutral location and was denied. Faced with certain felony arrest should I try to get my kids at her residence I stopped picking them up and she refused to deliver them. At the next meeting I was told to “fight harder”. “Don’t give up”, in effect to man up and sacrifice myself. You can see those types of comments all over MRA/FRA social media pages. As if manning up and fighting harder with self sacrifice in a system designed to drain you financially and emotionally will somehow result in a different outcome.
I co-founded the NY Men’s Action Network (originally a PAC) and was a principal lobbyist in Albany for 10 years advocating for parental rights and court reform. There are many politicians who knew how bad the system was and didn’t care to reform it. But the bulk of them were uninformed and my factual stories were dismissed with an “it couldn’t be that bad”, certainly my being male and the lack of empathy for men played a part in limiting reform as the vast majority of negative outcomes in (anti) family court and the system occur to men.
In my 25 years of work with FaFNY I have well over 1000 contact hours with individuals and groups in peer support and counseling. The vast majority of persons I counseled wanted empathy; to be listened to, for their story to be believed, and for recognition that they received a raw deal. While they were the victim of the system by having their individual and parental rights destroyed they were not victims themselves looking for others to correct their problems, they were looking to get others to stop causing their problems. This is much different than the “victim” who blames life’s problems on their race, sex, or life circumstance and looks to others to give them something for free to fix it.
Lack of empathy for men and boys has us ignoring the problems of men and boys. The first act to correct a problem is to recognize what the problem is. A lack of empathy and dismissing the problems prevents us from that first act. And in the multitude of problems facing men and boys; suicide, crime victims, disparate incarceration, denial of parental rights, and on and on there is one underlying facet of each of these problems, a lack of empathy for men and boys.
I disagree with Ms. Fiamingo one one thing, I think every day should be a day of empathy for boys and men. I encourage you to read the article and use it to hone your debate skills in support of men and boys. And if you are looking for more information on boys and men you can go to the Global Initiative for Boys and Men https://www.gibm.us/home, or the National Coalition For Men https://ncfm.org.
James Hays, Lt. (Ret) NYS En-Con Police, past President FaFNY, past Director NY MAN.