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Lionel Tiger, Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and best known for coining the term “male bonding,” has acknowledged the project of men’s issues seems “faintly satirical,” like the set-up to a punchline. At worst, it can seem like “white rights,” a common racist slogan.

Quite frankly, no one will come near us

It is this worst-case interpretation that is often used by opponents to shout down the mainstream, such as the Ryerson University student politicians who spiked a men’s issues club, to be run by two women, on the grounds that it sounded like a hate group. Likewise, in denying status to an anti-abortion group, Brandon University’s Student Union decided it would be redundant “since the Women’s Collective deals with all gender issues.”

Just as abortion is a central theme of women’s issues, so does suicide (which men achieve more than women, though attempt less), hang over the whole men’s issues debate, as a motivating factor for activism and an extreme case study in why men need a place to go for help for their particularly male problems, as hard as that can seem in the modern culture.

In response, feminist advocates say these groups have wrongly identified feminism as the cause of their problems, and that while the patriarchy still exists, the matriarchy is a sexist fiction, a straw woman.

“I am a firm believer in the argument that patriarchy hurts men too,” said Steph Guthrie, a feminist organizer in Toronto who has spoken against the rise of men’s rights activism. “I do not deny that men face challenges in this world as a result of the way our culture socializes gender and masculinity. But these problems are not the result of women’s empowerment or increased independence. They are the result of a system that propagates rigid and toxic gender ideals.”