MRAu Draft Policy
This is a draft policy for Men's Rights Australia.
Policies
Abortion
Men's Rights Australia has not position on abortion laws. Whether or not women should have access to abortion and on what grounds is a matter for the wider community.
Age of Consent
Men's Rights Australia believes the age of consent should stay at the current age.
Young men are sometimes prosecuted for having consensual sex with a woman of similar age. We believe that these young men are unjustly caught up in laws intended to protect children from predatory adults. We believe that if two young people are within two years of age of each other that sex between them should not be a criminal act. Laws like this are in place in other jurisdictions such as Florida in the United States.
Bodily Autonomy
We object to all genital mutilation of children. This includes genital mutilation of boys, girls and children who are intersex. We seek to have the state make all genital mutilation of children illegal but also to encourage the wider community to understand why genital mutilation is unnecessary and immoral.
We do not object to surgery that will correct a medically identifiable problem that impacts the child and that cannot be delayed until the child has reached the age of majority. We do not object to competent adults modifying their own genitals for any reason that they choose.
We focus our efforts on preventing genital mutilation of boys as this is the only form of child genital mutilation that is still lawful in Australia. Infant boys should have the same protection from unnecessary medical procedures that the rest of the community enjoys. Male genital mutilation (also known as circumcision) should be illegal with no exemptions on religious or cultural grounds or the gender of the child.
Courts
We want genuine gender-neutrality in the application of the criminal justice system.
Disposability
Human societies implicitly depend on the willingness of men to sacrifice their lives for the good of the community. This is an expectation over and above any expection on women. We reject that men should be singled out for this expectation. Even if this was historically necessary, the size of the human population on Earth means that we no longer need to be able to recover numbers very quickly following a disaster, so we no longer need to preference the lives of women over the lives of men. As such any historical reasons to justify male disposability no longer exist. Even if male disposability was an historical necessity, this is no longer true. We want an end to the expectation of male disposability.
Domestic Violence
We seek to have family courts reformed so that they act in a gender neutral manner. We want wecognition from society that domestic violence is not a gendered issue Australia needs domestic Violence services that properly supports victims regardless of their gender and that helps aggressors regardless of their gender.
Education
We want recognition that, while there is overlap, boys and girls do tend to behave differently as children as a result of physiological differences and for education systems to accommodate both boys and girls in a way that allows all children to thrive. We also want a university system that is not hostile to young men.
Feminism
Men's Rights Australia wholly rejects the ideology of gender feminists, which is demonstrably anti-male. The position of Men's Rights Australia is that while many modern feminists are equity feminists they are also generally entirely inactive and play no part in modern feminism. Men's Rights Australia recognises that feminism holds undue sway within all arms of government in Australia and seeks to significantly reduce the influence of feminist ideology in government.
Men's Rights Australia holds no official position on historical feminism.
Health
We want fair allocation of resources to health problems facing men and women and public recognition from the government that both genders need their gender-specific health issues addressed adequately.
Law
Various laws in Australia show distinct bias against men and boys, either in the way they are written or in the way they are applied. We seek to have laws to be as gender-neutral as is practical and to have laws enforced in a gender neutral way also. We advocate obeying the law and attempting to reform the law and our society from within the system. We do however recognise civil disobedience as a legitimate form of protest with a long history in common law.
Marriage
Men's Rights Australia has no position on same-sex marriage.
Medication
Boys (and to a lesser extent girls) are increasingly being medicated in response to behavioural problems. We want a proper analysis of why ADHD diagnosis rates are skyrocketing and an end to the diagnosis of normal & healthy boyhood behaviour as pathological.
Parenting
Men should have the same reproductive rights as women within practical bounds. Australian law should enact Legal Parental Surrender in which a man can disavow any rights or responsibilities to children that he should have with a particular woman before the woman falls pregnant. This could be accomplished with a form signed while being witnessed by both parties and lodged with an independent body. Under these circumstances the man would only be able to regain parent rights and responsibilities with the permission of the mother. While this may seem bureaucratic, it allows men to gain reproductive rights similar to those allowed to women today.
In cases of divorce, and if both parents wish it, shared custody arrangements should always be enabled in Australian family courts unless compelling reasons exist to show that this is not feasible. There should always be sufficient access for parents not living with their children for a parent-child relationship to be maintained. Family court orders should be enforced in on fair and just terms. Child support payments should be managed by in a fair and just manner. Family courts should always administer justice in a gender-neutral manner.
Politics
Men's Rights Australia is apolitical. Men's Rights Australia will work with any political party prepared to seriously address the problems facing men and boys rather than just paying it lip service. Men's Rights Australia will not support one political party over another, campaign for nor donate to political parties regardless of their position on men's rights.
Religion
Men's Rights Australia objects to certain religious practices that violate the bodily autonomy of children. We hold that any such procedure should be delayed until the individual has reached the age of majority, at which time they can choose whether or not to undergo the procedure themselves. In at least some of these religions the nature of the religious practices has varied widely over time. Some violations of bodily autonomy performed on infants today were, in the past, performed on people who were in their teenage years or older or were not performed at all. We hold then that these religions already accept variation within their religious practices and should protect the bodily autonomy of children while practising their religions.
Men's Rights Australia holds no position on religion in general or on any particular religion, regardless of whether or not adherents to those religions perform bodily modification of children or not.
Suicide
We want society and government to act to address the underlying causes of the rising suicide rate among men and boys. While we acknowledge that has been effort in this area by Australian governments much more can be done to help men and boys.
Vilification
We want an end to wanton vilification of masculinity in the public sphere by public and private organisations. In many cases this is already illegal but the laws against vilification on the basis of gender are not enforced when men are the victims.
Violence
Men's Rights Australia absolutely rejects violence as a means of effecting political change, or for any other reason. We have zero tolerance for the use of violence by men's rights activists or anyone else.
Definitions
Genital Mutilation
Genital mutilation includes the modification of any part of the genitals of a person who is male, female or intersex without their consent. Consent can only be granted by someone who is free to choose and is of sufficient age and mental capacity to understand the decision and the consequences of this decision.
Intersex
The term intersex is used by the medical fraternity to refer to anyone who cannot be clearly identified as male or female.