Controversy continues to dog the newly formed Men’s Society after the 
Union’s Societies’ Committee asked them to change their name in order to become a recognised group. The request for a name change was made as the Committee ruled that the name suggests discrimination and exclusivity along gender lines.
Ben Wild, founder and Chair of the Society explained that he would like to keep the name. “It’s not discriminating but delineating,” he said.
Wild highlighted “double standards” by raising the similarities between the name of his society and that of the Muslim or Jewish Society, as it outlines their objectives as a group.
The society states that its aims include the encouragement of “a positive male gender identity, also to encourage practical skills, regardless of society’s perceptions of their feminine or masculine associations.” Moreover, the society aims to “fundraise and raise awareness about male health issues.”
University of Manchester Women’s Officer Hazel Kent challenged this by suggesting that the name counters the Union constitution because it exclusively emphasises gender lines. “If the Men’s Society is serious about its commitment to being non-discriminatory then it should show it by choosing a non-discriminatory name.
“Any organisation, from student society to International NGO, are concerned with their perception to the outside world; this is what the name change is about, and it seems the Men’s Society wouldn’t be doing themselves any favours in refusing.”
Asked by Student Direct: Mancunion, Wild said that a change of name is “unnecessary.” However, in a Facebook message to the Men’s Society’s members regarding the name change, Wild wrote: “It is a necessary and potentially helpful compromise.”
November 23rd, 2009 at 16:26
All this controversy would go away quickly if Mr Wild renamed his society along the lines of what it actually does. Therefore I suggest, the ‘Stupid Battle We’re Never Going To Win’ Society. By the same logic, I propose that Ms Kent changes the name of her society to the ‘Tedious Crap No-One Else Cares About’ society. Let’s all get over the idea that delineating along gender lines is at all helpful or grown-up and go back to delineating along the one set of distinctions that really matters: feudal class distinctions. Yeomen can only attend one meeting a month.
November 24th, 2009 at 16:16
This years student executive is predominantly women. Men are now in the minority in further education. Men are more likely to commit suicide than women, they are also more likely to be the victim of a violent assault. Mens health issues currently recieve less publicity, support, and funding than issues related to women, especially at universities.
Set in this context I would argue that the role of a womens officer is becoming increasingly anachronistic. As an overrall of the student body shouldn’t it now be accepted that the problems facing male students are just as, if not more pressing, than womens? As a minority grouping I believe we have that right and the sexist hypocrites who seek to deny us that should be ashamed.
If this nonsense is to be taken seriously then any group that sets it its stall to help a particular minority group should be subject to the same policy. I would personally like to thank the pc brigade for pinning its self defeating colours to the mast.
November 24th, 2009 at 20:40
[...] Groups such as the MENS society (Masculinity Exploring Networking and Support) at the University of Manchester and Oxford University’s MC-O (Man Collective-Oxford) have been caught in a maelstrom of feminist outrage. Here in Manchester, the MENS society has had just about everything thrown in its way to stop it being formalised as a society, from condemnatory letters from the NUS women’s officer to a squabble over the suitability of its original name. [...]
November 24th, 2009 at 23:21
Well said Jennie!
November 25th, 2009 at 11:47
I am upset to see Jennie Agg jumping on the anti-feminist bandwagon. Puffed-up self-righteous vegans? That’s not engaging with an issue. That’s just drawing on tired, outdated stereotypes for the sake of an immature cheap insult. Well, I for one would have expected more.
November 25th, 2009 at 15:33
Sigh. ‘Vicky’, did you even read Jennie Agg’s article? The Guardian article linked in in the above comment doesn’t call all feminists self righteous vegans, it says: “Feminism needs to give the public a good reason to sit up and realise that there’s more to it than a puffed-up sense of vegan self-righteousness” Evidently she’s drawing on a perception of feminism (and using a cliche for effect) rather than stating the cliche itself as fact. This is EXACTLY what’s wrong with the anti-men’s society types who have been so very vocal. They aren’t bothering to engage with the arguments just seeing what they want to see.
Clearly you haven’t read this year’s paper much, if you’re calling Agg an anti-feminist. Read the editorials much? Also word on the grapevine is that she’s a veggy anyway…do you really think she’s being serious with the vegan-bashing?
November 27th, 2009 at 08:48
My sincere commiserations to Ben Wild at having to still change his society’s name in the face of all sanity and despite having put forward logical rationale as to why the name is perfectly adequate in the first place, entirely because of political correctness and anti-male bigotry. Universities are supposed to be places of learning and free-thinking and where all ideas, however outlandish at least get a fair hearing, obviously this doesn’t apply in the UK. As a young woman who has an excellent and close relationship to my dad, brother, one of my uncles, both granddads, a great-granddad and two great-uncles (forged via my family history research) I am constantly contemptuous and disgusted by the constant denigration of men, particularly by radical feminism but also our legal system and social servces, with the preposterous bigotry that men are bad because they are male, and that every male over the age of 11 is a rapist or paedophile waiting to happen. How dare you slander my brother and my dad in such a fashion. My great-uncle was at the Somme at 15 and he fought a war so 50 years later some bigoted woman had the freedom to label him a monster because he had balls not boobs? I suggest Mr Wild & his fellows read “Save the Males” by Kathleen Parker, which excellently descibes the deliberate and sustained campaign against men – it deals largely with the United States, but since much of what starts there ends up here (e.g., Political Correctness) it should serve as the MENS Society “bible” – incidents such as the female university students who dared to take photos of random fellow students (male) and post these around the campus with the banners: POTENTIAL RAPISTS, but who escaped all censure because they were women (just imagine if the male students had done it to their female counterparts with the banner: Potential false accuser/rape fantasist; or the editor of the university paper (male) who was hounded out of his institution when he wrote an op/ed article pointing out that the over-hyped Vagina Monologues condemned the father of one contributer for shooting the man who raped her as a child, but excused her mother, who later allowed her to be the victim of a lesbian rape as teenager by a woman neighbour. Save the Males is by turns incredible and terrifying, but it should serve as a big “warning this could happen to you” to Mr Wild and his society members.
November 27th, 2009 at 20:33
Indeed Ysabel
Melanie Philips in her book Sex Change Society charts the similar process in the uk
http://www.melaniephillips.com/books/#scs
For those of a feminist pursuasion the Men’s Coalition has brought together pro feminist Men’s groups to address the very real problem’s boys and men face. http://www.menshealthforum.org.uk/
In either case there is at least agreement that many boys and men don’t get the support they need.
February 24th, 2010 at 13:08
“University of Manchester Women’s Officer Hazel Kent challenged this by suggesting that the name counters the Union constitution because it exclusively emphasises gender lines. “If the Men’s Society is serious about its commitment to being non-discriminatory then it should show it by choosing a non-discriminatory name.”
So what do you call having a women’s officer?
Can you really argue against the need for groups to highlight and address the men’s issues that are still taboo, ignored, forgotten?
All those years ago when I was at university, the role of the women’s officer was to cast light on the areas where women’s rights and issues were taboo, ignored, forgotten.
The “men have had it too good for too long, they have oppreseed women for centuries, it is sexist to call a group a men’s anything” arguements lack both depth and logic. Men addressing the issues faced by men is by no means an endorsement of the oppression of women, nor does it support it. To the contrary, men’s groups and societies are very engaged in how to express what it means to be a man in a modern context i.e. authentic expressions that create unity, respect and cohesion between the sexes, rather than propagate gender stereotypes. Something which-in my experience-many women’s groups are guilty of doing.