watch?v=4csMxQJxGIQ

I quite accidentally stumbled upon a petition where all the major feminist organizations in my country had signed a goal to PREVENT any public funding to a study whose purpose was to study male victims of domestic violence. "Because over 90% victims are women and we have no need to use our common resources to fund something so trivial it's better to use every penny we have towards those 'real' victims" and not spend it on those trivialities. That was pretty much the narrative and reasoning behind the petition. And I was wait a minute. Even if there might be less victims in total it's not like they’re less important and the other goal was partly to map out the problem anyway because there had been several studies about female victims but not so much about male ones. Thought in my mind was what on earth has this to do with women's rights and feminism if some individual study happens to get funding or not? It's a pretty petty and weird thing to have a petition against especially when behind it was major women's organizations and several women's organization/wings that are part of local political parties. How come this study is so special there are most likely plenty of more trivial studies anyway. It's not like the information could not still be useful especially from the victims’ standpoint, be those victims men or women, what does that have to do with anything. And it's not like we have to just handle one issue at the time until it's "solved" because most of the bigger issues are most likely unsolvable in their entirety anyway. Yeah, let’s not use any resources on abuse and assaults before all the murders have been solved.

And after that event I started to pay more attention to the reality in gender politics and it was quite different what I previously thought it was. And it was more in line with what somebody like Erin Pizzey has told when I many years later happened to stumble upon her. It's not that there is a need to make this a versus question, but what seems to be happening is that feminist organizations are actively opposing things like shared parenting or like this film about men’s rights. Or like in that petition I happened to walk into. Or opposing the more equal legislation and supporting structures that can see women as perpetrators too in cases of domestic violence or what is interpreted as a rape. Or when some men’s group wants to have a lecture about some issues and there are feminist protesters pulling fire alarms and shouting and organizing demonstrations so that those events could not even take place. Yup. Why does it have to be versus. In this case maybe ask those feminists about that...