Digital producer and cohost wajahat ali is here bringing feedback. Holy cow is there a lot of feed back. As you imagine. The type of responses are emotional, and a lot of people are not happy we are doing the show. I have to honour that, alison saying as you imagine, today will be hot. We want to make sure we make the distinctions, mens rights and fathers rights movements, both different organizations. The global Mens Rights Movements is in the spotlight after revelations the santa basha shooter was part of this. Mens Rights Groups are growing as they call attention to issues that they stay strip them of their rights. Critics say it is driven by miss only ni and some member exhibit radical views. One was forced to switch venues after a public backlash and an online change. So what kind of men are at the heart of this movement, and are the concerns about them overblown or on point. Joining us to discuss this is robert oharra, u. S. News director for a voice for men, a large mens right organization, and skype, from chicago illinois, a critic of the mens right movement. And founder of blog we hunted the mammoth. Thank you both for being here. Robert. Many dominate in american politics and business and outerb women and have been afforded rights that women had to earn. Why does america need a mens rights group . Men make up 85 men make up 85 of suicide and the homeless and workplace deaths. Men die on average seven years earlier and in years pass it wasnt necessarily the case. The gap is less. Theres a war waged upon men and boys in the Education System. They are failing miserably and no one is doing anything about it. Theres a terrible bias in the family courts and terrible disparities in criminal sentencing and prosecution. You brought up a lot of things there. Are those all because of women, and the right that women have, or are these functions of society and gaps in the societal system. Both, the idea of the disposable male is something that is important and is not talked about much. Have you that talking against men. And feminism has entrenched itself in our Education System and the Family Law Court system and in the media. When men speak up as men about problems they face as men, you see an immediate backlash. What we are seeing knew with the ascendency of mens voices and talking about these problems that they face. You have been writing about Roberts Group for years, and from the writings that i read, you found that they target and harass women, what led you to that conclusion. When i first started to look into the mens right movement. We found they were a group of people that were misinformed and obsessed with issues such as the wage gap between men and women, and that they have decided does not exist. As i got more into understanding the movement, i realised that most of the issues, including the issues that were raised are not really what is driving most of the men in the movement. Theyll talk about male suicides work place death the. But if you look at the track record of the Mens Rights Movements over the last five years, say, they have done nothing to address those particularly issues, or, indeed, most of the issues that they bring up, that they claim are whats motivating them. And they dont look into the cause of workplace deaths, they dont look at what groups are organising to work on work place safety. Certainly you work on this a lot. I have seen no understanding of what can be done to address the issues. The reason for that is that these issues are not the real issues that are motivating the people. What the Mens Rights Movement came up with is a laundry list of talking points that theyll repeat online and on programs like this. When you get down to it. People dont know m about it. If you look at what is discussed on a voice for men, and on mens rites forum, the largest online, its hatred, hatred of feminists. We talked about feminists, and we asked the community, some say feminism is to blame for the weakening and disempower. Of many, and some tweets lion do mens rights come at the expense of womens rights and feminism. I have to making is clear. We are not a miss only nistic group of men. There are men wonderful women concerned about the issues concerning boys and men, that the men are. I need to clarify Something Else that you brought up at the top of the show. Elliott roger did not have a single thing to do with the mens right movement. There was no connection between Elliott Roger and any mens right organization. That conception is a result of yellow journalism that. Actually, he was part of a pickup group, which is considered a subgroup of a mens rights activist group. That is nothing to do with the Mens Rights Movement, absolutely nothing. Originally he was part of the same universe is a better way to put it. He was not did not specifically identify himself as a mens rights activist, but was part of the subculture of miss only nist, in the nature that he was a contributor to. One of your groups stated objectives is to push for an end to rape hysteria. Recently you told one of the reporters that this rape thing has been used by feminists to garner the power and funny. Do you think women are lying when they report rape. Women that generally are raped and report are not lying. I think theres a problem with the false reporting the rape in society. Its huge. Theres no people who falsely accuse other people of Sexual Assault pay no consequences for what they do. Oftentimes its used as a way to get out of an awkward social situation. What studies have shown that . Theres no studies that show that. There are two huge studies, the george kainon study in a midwest town in the 80s. Its a study rejected by virtually everyone in the profession. In what profession . In social science. I dont think so. Research into rape. Its one of a few studies that mens rights activists cite simply because it agrees with their preconceptions. Other statistics we can cite. It suggests that is the actual percentage of false rape accusations is somewhere between 2 and 8 . Somewhere in that ballpark. Its impossible to know for sure. When they talk about this, they talk on another level of magnitude. No one else has done serious studies on this, has done anything remotely like that. Lets assume what you are saying is true. And lets also take a look at what happened in our legal system in recent years. We have taken away due process for people, men, accused of Sexual Assault. This is wrong. It results in innocent men going to gaol. And lets talk about the incidence of rape. Lets stop there for a second. When someone is arrested. Hang on, i want to get on track. Robert, you made controversial statements about women faking rape, using it as political manoeuvring, as a way to get money. Of course youll gets a reaction to that. It feels like now we are on television, you are backing off of that a little. No, im not. Lets make a distinction between feminist group and women. Feminists used the definition of rape, expanding it and exaggerated the incidence to say one in four, one in five, one in three women are victims, one in four will be raped before they graduate from college. Its not used, it is used to generate hysteria. The groups get the statistics from government agencies. No, from other feminists. Yes, they do. Every day three women in america are killed by a domestic partner. These are real statistics. If you are going to through away studies and demms. What study are you talking about. Department of justice reports saying every day three women are killed in america. Theres 365, 385 Million People in america right now. Im saying if you are going to throw out the numbers and facts and accuse fem jipists and womens groups of falsifying them, we need to know how you back it up. I would like to get back to the issue of feminists exploiting the issue of rape for money and gain. I have a friend of mine who is quite involved in rape advocacy, she does it for free as a volunteer, as a rape crisis counsellor. What she does is helps when someone is coming forward to report a rape, she goes to the hospital, she sits with them for hours, often in the middle of the night, trying to help them get through the complicated bureaucracy, trying to help them as they report the rape to the police, and trying to give them support. She gains nothing monetarily from this. And the organization that she is a part of is essentially a feminist organization. In addition to helping out women who are victims of rape, they help out men who are victims of rape. My friend, when shes not volunteering as a crisis counsellor, helps to coordinate other councillors. Let me come in real quick. We had men that respond, this is a reactionary movement in response to feminism. Christian says as we have seen, its hot. Robert, we have 20 seconds before ending this, your Group Complains a lot about women, what do you do for men . We advocate for male fertility control. Theres a drug that will be tested next year. A discrete fertility chrome. The group has nothing to do with that. Yes, we dox. What has your group down . We raised thousands for research for that. Our time is up. Thank you both, we appreciate both of your insights for that segment divorce is never an easy process, especially with children in the mix. With the family law system, are men getting the short end of the stick. We speak to dads active in the growing fathers movements, advocating for fairer laws skewed in favour of the mother. One man shares why his custody battle for a child took him to hell and back simply because he was never married with the mother. Are we dealing with an outdated system disconnected from the modern family . Welcome back, we are discussing the various ways men are organising to demand mens rights. It is concerned with equal treatment of men in child custody case, and should not be deflated with the Mens Rights Movement. Rallies across the country were held, including in washington d. C. , demanding rights on what they call nationalist fathers day. Here to discuss more is mark green. Senior editor of the good mens project, a website devoted to discussing masculinity, and brandon lyons, a family law advocate. And clair huntington, a professor at the Fordham Law School and author of failure to flourish how law undermines l family relationships. Mark we came out of a contention segment. Extreme views thrown around with the Mens Rights Movement. What is the fathers rights movement. How is it different . Id like to be clear in saying the fathers right movement is vast and diverse with a lot of different voices in it. Mras, if they do that discussion, they make up a small part of that. They represent the binary discussions that will not carry us forward. They may get news and motivate us to tweet. It will not resolve the question of how we can best help our children once they are children of divorce. An issue that the fathers rights system brings up is the court system is weighted in favour of mothers. Does the court system favour women. No, its a good question. If you look at the statistics of where children end up after divorce, you think that. Children are overwhelmingly having primary custody. But it is not true on its face that the law discriminates against fathers. We used to have the tender year presumption that said mothers should be placed with the mothers, we have done away with that. Both mothers and farth are equal candidates. Doesnt mean they get custody, they end up with mothers as opposed to fathers, but it doesnt mean that the courts are discriminating against fathers. Even though fathers do more childcare as in the past. They do three times. They do far less than mothers. When you look at dual income, married parent. Both work the same number of hours in terms of paid work, total number of hours. When you divide it up between paid and unpaid, mother are doing far more unpaid housework than fathers. Its not necessarily surprising that children are ending up with the person who has done more of the care for them while the marriage was on. A father has been through the system and tweets brandon, you have been through the system. Has the legal system evolved and adapted to the modern understanding of fatherhood . No, it hasnt. A lot of that comes from the fact that when you talk about two parenting systems, it looks like an accessory rather than something you need. When you start the initial process of separation, whether you are in a regular relationship or married. You really are dealt a lot of the bad laws if you are a noncustodial parent. First of all, they make a person off the bat a noncustodial parent, and you are faced with a lot of burdens from child support, when you are trying to be an active parent. You attempt with having to go to court. And most means you dont have the money to finance those a lawyer or the days off that it takes to make that happen, so you are put in a bad position to move forward and become a fulltime parent, and you have a disadvantage to becoming a parent that you want to be. Brandon, you were Sa Construction workers, and you switched to becoming a family law advocate after your fight to be in your daughters life. What was difficult for you as an unmarried dad in fighting for custody of your child than it may have been for a couple that have gotten divorced . Well, i think like a lot of fathers out there, you go through a time in my scenario when my daughters mother was going to school. I was naive enough to think that we would stick with the status quo of coparenting on a daily basis. Thats what a lot of people are not aware of. When i fall into that situation, we had been split up for a long time. To try to correct that, and to try to get acknowledgment for the hard work that you do is something that for one you dont think about, and you are not keeping track of unless people are knowledgeable about the stom. This is an issue that goes on with friends of Equality Movement or fathers rights movements to gain or give people the knowledge that they need to empower them to have those capabilities to keep the records. Clair your Research Shows married and unmarried fathers are treated differently. What drew you to that conclusion . Theres different laws on the book. In 15 states if the child is born to unmarried parents, the mother automatically has full custody, and as brandon was saying, it can be positive. Lawyers are expensive. In many states most people going through family court are unrested on boats side. Courts are an extraordinarily difficult place to resolve the tricky issues. Maybe we can talk about that in a minute. Certainly the law for unmarried fathers, the law treats upmarried fathers differently. Signing parental rights that married fathers, theres a legal presumption that if a child is born within a marriage, the child has rights. Unmarried fathers dont always have that presumption. Custody is a normal issue. If they dont get custody, or they go to court and fight for it. As a result, the mothers become the de facto decisionmaker about whether or not a father can see a child, and mothers may keep children away from nathers for good reasons. Or they may keep them away for less than pathetic regions. Ive been through two custody battles. The mother has all the power, courts help the mother alienate the father when we come back, one thing we want to talk about is a de facto decision by the court should be joint custody. Well ask clair about that and talk about legislative activity in favour of data. We see movement in a number of states, and what it means for child custody. Back in 2 minutes. The film is about democratization of information the fight for free journalism. These regimes are aresting more and more people. Primetime news only on Al Jazeera America welcome back, we are discussing the fathers rites movement. Before the break we mentioned this it seems like the fathers decision of the court to side with the mother. Should the courts be gender blind and look at both sides equally. What i said is children are likely to end up with the mothers, not because they are bias, but the courts are recreating the situation that the family had before the breakup, where the mother did more of the childcare than the father. In terms of a de facto rule of favour, if sounds good on paper, its not necessarily a good idea. Both parents should be candidates for custody, and the idea should be to try and maintain a relationship between both children, between both parents and the child. To have a presumption in favour of joint custody can raise all kinds of concerns, especially if there has been violence in the past a whole bunch of community feedback. Gerald on twitter says and the chief justice mark, for the good men project, lets move forward. Does it have to lead to a gender war, or can there be a meeting in the middle between both personalities for the best interests of the kid. How do we achieve that . What is remarkable for me in this conversation it were talking about fathers rights to have access and be engaged in their childs lives, and the very the whole 20 minutes now has been about courts and law, which implies a divisive and conflicted view of divorce. Culturally we need a study about divorce where we destigmatize it, where people are not put into a find set where they have to go war with their spouse to determine the outcome. A big challenge that people who are men who are raising their kids, stay at home fathers, which some sources say the numbers are 7 million now, is that as soon as the issue of divorce arises, as soon as a couple decides their marriage will not be sustainable, the implication is that the family that is collapse said. It has not. Families can function and operate. Coparenting arrangements and partnerships can revive the sense for a child that their family is vital and living and going forward. A good night to end it on. Thanks to our guests. Until next time, waj and i will see you online. On the turkeysyria border. Venezuela. Beijing. Kabul. Hong kong. Ukraine. The artic. Real reporting from around the world. This is what we do. Al jazeera america. Like most people, im not an activist by nature. Theres really not that many people whose greatest desire is to go out and fight the system