Illustration by John Sullivan.On paper, they call themselves a group of victimized men stuck in a society that favors women.
In person, their leader, a quiet, thin, 29-year-old sustainability junior at ASU, says he is looking for a discussion from a new perspective.
But in reality there is no they – there is only Zachary Morris – and his Men’s Rights Movement Group at ASU, a group that critics say advertises with false, inflammatory fliers.
Morris says he started the group in spring 2011 with the purpose of discussion: to both provoke a response from people and to provide them with the opportunity to “say they don’t officially agree with the official line of gender study.”
He ultimately wants to remove hostility between the genders with his group and work toward equality, Morris says.
But others say his fliers for the organization are too extreme.
Morris put up around 350 of these fliers throughout the fall 2011 semester on the round kiosks of the Tempe campus, he says, and about 50 before each of the group’s four meetings.
The fliers have 25 statements written by Morris, with rhetoric proclaiming society, “suspects all men and males as pedophiles, rapists, or criminals,” “treats men like subhuman slaves in family courts and the justice system” and “sits idly as 99 percent of deaths in war are men and 94 percent of deaths in industry are male.”
Sarah Buel, a clinical professor of law and the executive director for the Diane Hall Center for Family Justice at the Sandra Day O’Conner College of Law, says the fliers make inaccurate statements. Buel, who read the same statements from the fliers on the group’s website, says every citation on the fliers leads to a blog or to statistics without the observational data to back them up.
“The problem with a lot of what they’re presenting is dramatic statements that are simply not credible based on empirical research,” Buel says.
Morris says the fliers are not written for moderation, but to pique interest.
“We are trying to provoke a response, we’re trying to motivate people who otherwise might not care, and we’re trying to do it in a teasing, playful way,” Morris says. “We’re not trying to polarize things.”
Theater freshman Desiree Shearer noticed the fliers and attended two meetings. She expected a different meeting atmosphere from what she saw on the fliers, she says.
“They were a lot calmer than I expected,” Shearer says. “Honestly, I was really nervous. I wasn’t expecting them to accept me at all and then it was actually really laid-back.”
Shearer says her interest in the group originates from a desire for moderation – to hear both sides of the story.
Back in high school, Shearer says she had classmates who were extreme feminists, refusing to hold a “logical conversation” about gender issues. They instead claimed women do not need men for anything, which made her interested in the other side of the issue. Hence the interest in the fliers.
Shearer says she has seen less of the extreme feminist side in college, but that both sides must be heard for a moderate voice.
And the group meetings really are less extreme than the fliers – it’s not a boys-only club.
Morris held four meetings in the fall, the last of which was Nov. 3. Attendance ranged from four to 10 people, Morris says, with some attending to note their discomfort with the fliers. There have been two meetings so far this semester.
“It was a good discussion each time. So that’s really what’s most important, just getting a quality discussion in there, even if it’s just with one person,” Morris says.
Mitchell Call, a self-described male feminist and a double-major psychology and women and gender studies senior, says the fliers seemed uninformed of feminist material.
“They start their point of view with believing that women are already equal,” Call says. “They don’t understand how there’s still a lot of progress to be made.”
Call says women still struggle with unequal status in Western society. For example, he says women are still pressured to prepare themselves for men by staying thin and wearing makeup.
Morris has never taken a women and gender studies class, but says he has always been interested in gender roles and has been reading feminist literature since high school. His interest in the men’s rights movement developed in 2007, he says, and grew into a club when he wanted a place to talk about his newfound perspective.
“At a university, if you’re talking about gender issues, you’re not gonna be talking about men’s rights issues [or] the men’s rights movement, you’re gonna be focusing on women,” Morris says.
Pamela Stewart, a professor of women’s history and Western history, looked at the flier and says groups like the Men’s Rights Movement Group have existed since the advent of women fighting for their rights.
“Any time women have pushed for what they see to be their, in the case of the U.S., constitutional rights, there has always been push-back,” Stewart says. “There have always been livid, angry, sometimes violent individuals in groups who are working very hard to make sure women don’t get that.”
These were the times of the suffrage movement, when women were arrested or assaulted for marching for the right to vote, she says.
The more recent uprising of men’s rights group, according to Molly Dragiewicz’s 2011 book, “Equality with a Vengeance: Men’s Rights Groups, Battered Women, and Antifeminist Backlash,” followed a new feminist movement and divorce reform in the late 1960s.
Much of the literature for the movement today exists online in the form of websites like Mensactivism.org, or GlennSacks.com, a website that promotes court reform.
Morris says his group is not opposing women in any way and is open to any and all perspectives.
“It’s a thought experiment. It’s not trying to make women the enemy or anything the enemy,” Morris says.
The adviser for the group, Troy Melendez, a gender issues consultant with a doctorate in counseling psychology, says Morris came to him with the request to start a men’s issues group around custody and domestic violence issues, among others.
Melendez had never before seen the fliers, but he thinks a dialogue about these issues is necessary. Still, he avoids statements like those on the fliers because they present things in black and white, which he says may turn away some who would otherwise be interested in a discussion.
While the group may do whatever they wish, Melendez, who also teaches freshman success seminars, says he can only advise. He has told Morris to find a message and a goal because the group leader currently overwhelms people with his broad range of subjects.
People will confront Morris because his statements are so varied, Melendez says. He added that people can pick out many different statements on the fliers to challenge and disqualify the group. Without finding a specific message or research to focus on, Melendez says, “Your ability to speak truthfully to that and create a meaningful dialogue is compromised.”
He also says Morris’ Men’s Rights Movement Group should reach out to other organizations around campus, like the Feminist Club, to clarify his message and avoid conflict.
“We all need to approach this collaboratively, rather than from an adversarial standpoint. It’s not an us or them; it’s a we,” Melendez says.
Breanne Fahs, an assistant professor of Women and Gender Studies and the adviser for the Feminist Club at ASU, says the Men’s Rights Movement Group exists because feminism is challenging the power of men. Based on what she saw on the group’s website, Fahs says the Men’s Rights Movement Group draws its ideas from concepts that have been around for a long time, because dominant groups have always shown reluctance to losing their power over others. She says the dominant group – men, in this instance – is uncomfortable with the opposition to the control they’ve had for ages.
“There’s lots of interesting parallels between this kind of rhetoric and the rhetoric of white supremacy, the rhetoric of anti-gay marriage campaigns or homophobic kind of rhetoric,” she says.
Morris says he puts in about 20 hours of work for each meeting, making slideshows, finding new discussion topics and researching men’s rights websites. The time putting up fliers at the 25 kiosks around the Tempe campus is an extra five hours, he says. Besides hosting meetings for the Men’s Rights Movement Group, one day Morris says he was a disc jockey at the MU and laid out information about the group on a table nearby. He has also passed out fliers by hand on separate occasions, he says.
“It feels like it’s a full-time job,” Morris says, laughing.
But in the end, Morris says the most important thing is to finish school.
“It’s just a hobby basically, but it’s a serious topic, so I try to give it some real, serious attention because I think it’s important, one of the most important things,” Morris says.
It’s important because male and female relationships are one of the “building blocks” of society, he says. If people move toward harmony between the genders, life will improve.
“If we’re constantly at each other’s head trying to compete and not cooperate, trying to outdo someone in one area rather than raise each other up and support each other,” Morris says, “I think it’s going to trickle down into all regions of life at some level as a conflict.”
Reach the reporter at hhuskins@asu.edu
