INTERNATIONAL MEN'S DAY LETTER - MEDIA NOT INTERESTED

I hope men and women are all enjoying International Men's Day (went out for lunch with my father) today.

Earlier this week this site reported that the Men's Network who are the UK coordinators for International Men's Day had put together a letterfor the Equalities Minister (Lynne Featherstone) which was eventually signed by 80 organisations and a press release sent.

Going through the 280 comments on a thoughtful article  in the Guardian's Comment is Free section by Ally Fogg (plus Glen Poole's contributions throughout), MarkBrooks70 reveals that no one has been interested in the letter or the press release:

"Not one journalist has called and it has been sent to a number (including the Guardian) today. Hopefully there will be something in the papers tomorrow."

So what media coverage has there been given to the letter. Well, none. The above does not count as it is an article and didn't over the letter (Mr Fogg will not have known about it) and while Cllr Peter Davies in Wales makes a great point and Preston FM has a whole day, the media's silence is deafening.

For International Women's Day in March there were endless articles and the Guardian even banned men from its Comment is Free section but this is not reciprocated by the media.

The fact that 80 charities supporting male issues and run by women and men were actually prepared to put their names to such a balanced and well written letter is a news story - yet why are the media not interested. Such is their hypocrisy and double standards, if "Women's charities" had written the letter about women's issues it would have been on the front page and all over the BBC's news bulletins. The Fawcett Society get a nice feature about their march in The Guardian

As can be seen by the number of events and days in the UK celebrating today (including a number of colleges again), there is starting to be a lot of momentum about today. It is a great pity that the media are not interested but shows the barriers that need to be broken down.

Once again, enjoy today.

Posted by Skimmington   

Comments

[John Kimble]

I think some of the lack of interest is down to people disliking segregation. A lot of people object to International Men's Day in teh saem way they object to an International Women's Day and prefer to see everyone as people.

What I'd say to those people is that we're clearly stuck with the later, and having an International Men's Day adds a much needed bit of balance, fairness and equality to the calendar.

They may be some merit in objecting to these events, but there's no question that the worse case scenario is for everyone to simply celebrate International Women's Day and for the men's equivalent to no exist or to ignored.

In all fairness to Guardian's CIF pages, at the time of posting they've hardly published anything at all today (4 articles), 3 by males so they've almost managed to show some integrity (albeit by accident I presume).

[Groan]

I agree John a hopeful sign of the times seems to be that "Identity politics" Is seen more and more irrelevant to the real issues. In some respects IMD is as much about talking to men as anyone else. I took the opportunity yesterday to have a lively debate with some students. What struck me was how concerned they were to see that women are protected and how surprised at some of the issues. Possibly because they were young they had no notion about health,welfare and family court discrimination. Indeed they had a strong sense of fairness. More aware of the discrimination men may face were a couple of young women in the group. Frankly I think our job is to raise awareness. In some respects the Fawcett Soc. Help in this as the group found it pretty easy to find the holes and special pleading for money.

[Glen Poole]

Check out this review of IMD in the UK which includes a reference to The Rights Of Man blog
http://internationalmensdayuk.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/a-review-of-imd-2011/

[Bob]

Hope you all had a good International Men's day guys.

All the best Bro's!