NZMRA Manifesto

From: Peter Zohrab <zohrab_p@actrix.gen.nz>
Date: 13 Jun 1995 20:02:39 GMT
Organization: Actrix Networks -- NZ Internet Service Providers.
X-Old-Date: Sun, 28 May 1995 07:26:05 +1200 (NZST)
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 New Zealand Men's Rights Association
 MANIFESTO


A.	Information Issues

Information issues are basic to the success or failure of the Men's
Movement.  We have to be able to get our point of view across in an
intellectual climate where women are generally considered to be the
victims of male oppression in an evil patriarchy.


1.	Media Bias			

	Anti-male bias in the media must be monitored and records 
	kept.  Complaints must be lodged where appropriate, and 
	publicity given to the complaints.


2.	Teacher Bias			

	Teacher unions usually have separate female officers on their 
	executives and at branch level.  These often use member funds 
	to circulate Feminist propaganda, which then gets passed on 
	to students and parents.  This propaganda sometimes gets 
	discredited later (e.g. the theory about boys dominating 
	coeducational classrooms).


3.	Men's Studies			

	Women's Studies departments offer pseudo-academic courses in 
	man-hating.  Women's Studies departments at universities act 
	as centres of Feminist propaganda-writing, and also as 
	headquarters for Feminist activism within the university 
	community.  Some U.S. universities already have Men's Studies 
	departments.  Men's Rights activists should push for equity.  
	This means that every university that has a Women's Studies 
	Department should either abolish it, or have a Men's Studies 
	Department as well, in order to counter Feminist propaganda.


4.	Ministry of Men's Affairs	

	The Ministry of Women's Affairs is just a Feminist 
	propaganda-house.  For the same reasons that men need Men's 
	Studies departments in universities, men also need a Ministry 
	of Men's Affairs in all countries (such as New Zealand) where 
	a Ministry of 	Women's Affairs exists.  The alternative 
	solution is for all Ministries of Women's Affairs to be 
	abolished.


B.	Legal Issues

Feminism has captured the legal system to the detriment of men.  Legal
issues are second in importance to Information issues in the Men's
Movement.  In fact, one of the main reasons for pushing the information
issues is to achieve our goals as regards legal issues such as the
following.


5.	Divorce Law 			

	This should cease to discriminate against men in areas such 
	as child-custody and false child abuse and domestic violence 
	accusations in the Family Court.  A mere accusation of child 
	abuse or domestic violence should not have any effect on the 
	accused's chances of obtaining custody.  The charges should 
	have to be proved in court first.


6.	False Accusations

	People making false accusations (such as accusations of rape 
	or child sexual abuse) should be prosecuted as a matter of 
	course and police policy, and the penalties should be made 
	equivalent to the penalties involved in the type of crime 
	that the false accusation related to.  This is necessary as a 
	deterrent.


7.	Sex Abuse and false memories	

	A balance needs to be achieved between the needs of society 
	to protect itself against sex abusers, and the need to 
	protect innocent people from manufactured memories of 
	supposed abuse in childhood produced in adult minds by 
	Feminist councellors.


8.	Domestic Violence		

	The anti-male hysteria surrounding this issue must be 
	removed, by publicising statistics showing that women batter 
	men just as often as men batter women, by encouraging 
	battered men to come forward, and by educating police and 
	public to take a more balanced view of this issue.  

	More research must be done and publicised into the causes of 
	domestic violence, since it is currently presented as if men 
	beat their wives for no reason at all.

	Feminists must not be allowed to monopolise this issue, as 
	they tend to ask misleading questions.  For example, 
	Feminists stirred up some hysteria some years ago by 
	publishing the results of a survey in Australia which showed 
	that a majority of men thought that they might, under certain 
	circumstances, be justified in hitting their wives.

	The issue looks a bit different if you ask questions like:

	-	Are men NEVER justified in hitting their wives, no 
		matter what they do or say ?

	-	Are women ever justified in hitting, or otherwise 
		injuring their husbands ?

	The problem is that Feminists have been pushing the legal 
	systems of Western countries towards a situation where women 
	can successfully plead provocation in crimes against men, 
	while men cannot successfully plead provocation in crimes 
	against women.


9.	Sexist, anti-male offences such as "Assault on a Female" must 
	be removed from the statute-books.


10.	Law of Evidence			

	The restrictions on defence lawyers in rape trials must be 
	removed, in order to safeguard the rights of innocent 
	defendants.  It is up to judges and juries, not parliament, 
	to decide what evidence is relevant in a given case.


11.	Syndromes and legal defences	

	Men must campaign against women-only defences and men-only 
	crimes.  Feminists have been steadily working towards the 
	goal of getting all women treated as innocent victims, no 
	matter what they have done -- and all men treated as 
	criminals, no matter if they are innocent.


12.	Rape				

	The definition of rape must be restricted, and all attempts 
	to expand the definition of rape to include anything a woman 
	might afterwards wish she hadn't done should be strenuously 
	resisted.


13.	Police Bias			

	Instances of anti-male police bias must be recorded, filed, 
	protested about, and brought to the attention of the media 
	and the public.  The Police must be made aware of the need to 
	train recruits to avoid anti-male bias in their dealings with 
	the public.


14.	Infanticide			

	Infanticide by women should be punished just as severely as 
	infanticide by men.


15.	Conscription and Military Service 			

	Men's sacrifices in war must be suitably recognised by 
	Society.  They are not suitably recognised if officials and 
	the media pretend that women made equal sacrifices in wars 
	when they actually did not do so.  The NZMRA considers that 
	it would be impractical for men and women to have identical 
	roles in wartime.



16.	Choice for Men (Abortion)	

	A father should legally have an equal say with the mother in 
	any decision to abort, or not abort their child.  This is 
	particularly important if the father is to be forced to 
	contribute to the child's upkeep -- whether he actually lives 
	with the mother, has custody or access rights, or not.  Any 
	abortion consent form should need to be signed by both 
	natural parents.


17.	Abortion			

	Notwithstanding the issue of Choice For Men, there is a 
	natural tendency for Men's Rights activists to see abortion 
	as yet another way that women can issue a contract to kill 
	with impunity.


18.	Tax Law

	Tax law should not discriminate against the two-parent, one-
	income family.  Family income should be taxed as one unit.  
	Feminism is hostile to the traditional two-parent, one-income 
	family, which is associated with stable societies with low 
	crime-levels.  There is a mass of evidence associating 
	increased numbers of single-parent families with increased 
	crime.  Women in the workforce drive down real wages by 
	increasing the pool of available labour.  This in turn makes 
	the single-income family less viable.


C.	Other Issues


19.	Men's Health and Longevity	

	Equal funds should be allocated to research, prevention, 
	information and treatment relating to male-only diseases 
	(such as prostate cancer and testicular cancer) as to 
	female-only diseases.  As men have a greater mortality than 
	women from most diseases, and a shorter life-expectancy than 
	women, Men's Health should be a priority spending area within 
	Vote Health.


20.	Sports Apartheid		

	Since Feminists favour Equal Employment Opportunity and 
	oppose separate men's clubs, the sexual apartheid system in 
	individual, non-contact sports should be abolished, e.g. 
	female tennis players should play in the same competition as 
	men players -- for the same prizes.  The alternative is to 
	enshrine sexual segregation in some areas of social and 
	sporting life in legislation, with payments for sportsmen 
	being set substantially higher than those paid to sportswomen 
	-- to reflect the different objective standards involved.


21.	Circumcision			

	Circumcision is genital mutilation, and should be campaigned 
	against by all those who are opposed to female circumcision.  
	The fact that it involves less mutilation than female 
	circumcision does is counterbalanced by the fact that male 
	circumcision is more widespread than its female counterpart.  
	Circumcision is particularly abhorrent when it is practised 
	for purely secular, non-medical reasons.


22.	Affirmative Action and Quotas

	These should either be abolished altogether, or applied 
	across-the-board, including areas where women are 
	underrepresented and Feminists have made no move to 
	increase women's representation (e.g. prison populations, 
	suicide rates, wartime death-rates, mortality rates from 
	disease, etc.), and also areas where women are 
	overrepresented (e.g. primary teachers).

	Any such across-the-board fairness would logically have to 
	apply to ethnic minorities as well -- some ethnic groups do 
	better than the majority on these statistics, and some do 
	worse.


23.	Sexist Language

	The media and Government should be just as careful to avoid 
	sexist language that belittles men (e.g. "gunman" instead of 
	"gunperson", "hatchet-man" instead of "hatchet-person") as 
	they are to avoid language that belittles women.


24.	Advertising

	Advertising that denigrates and belittles men must be 
	combatted vigorously.