At birth, millions of boys have their right to bodily autonomy violated through needless non-medical circumcision. At the age of eighteen, even more boys will have their Right to Equal Protection violated, when they are legally forced to sign their body away to military service, or face criminal charges. And again, when they become fathers, many of them will not be granted equal Parental Rights to their own children. These are literal legal rights that so many men don’t have, or were deprived of, or which were violated. Even the iconic ‘Right to Vote’ is not as black and white as many try to pretend. And yet, when people put the words ‘Men’ and ‘Rights’ together, you are often (if not always) on the receiving end of eye rolls, laughter and sometimes outright hostility. With complex conversations boiled down to a mere hundred or so characters, or squashed into a tiny glass rectangle, such shortsightedness and missing pieces are to be expected. But one thing that is not complicated, is the fact that being treated as equal in the eyes of the law, is something we should be striving for, for all people and for all groups, everywhere. Yes as unpopular as it may make you, and as painful as the response to it may be, the fact remains the same – men too, in their own ways, do not have equal rights. So forget men, or women, or gender at all if you like; because really we’re just talking about one thing: human rights. What do you think? ~ You can read more about the British right to vote here Images by Ray Zhou and Gradienta on Unsplash.

2023-01-21