Feminism gets a lot of attention in the modern gender equality movement. The concerns of women and women's rights are normal at the forefront of any debate on gender politics or gender equality. Unfortunately, this means that the vast array of men's concerns go unnoticed or ignored. This brief essay should serve to illuminate some of these issues.

The first is violence. Men are forced to register for conscription while women are not. This is a blatant double standard. Conscription should either be widened to include women or abolished completely. Less blatant but no less important is the general perception that violence against men by women is acceptable while the reverse is abhorrent. Rape of men by women has been depicted as humorous (Virgin Mobile advertisements feat. Wyclef Jean, 40 Days and 40 Nights, et cetera), while any attempt to depict rape of women by men as humorous would be shouted down as anti-feminist. Other movies portray hundreds, even thousands, of men being mercilessly killed, while depicting even one woman dying in such a fashion would be called "promoting violence against women". Parenting is another issue where men's rights are woefully lacking. Equality in child-custody cases is almost absent, with the vast majority of single mothers being awarded full custody over single fathers. In other cases pregnancies have been carried to term despite agreements ahead of time that they would not be, subjecting men to unwanted parental responsibilities and/or child support expectations (see Dubay v. Wells). The flipside of this is the fact that men in America have no rights to an unborn child and no say over whether their wife or girlfriend gets an abortion. In addition, many states in America don't allow single fathers to adopt children while single mothers have no such restrictions.

Government legislation is also often blatantly misandronystic when it comes to gender equality. For examples, there are several pieces of legislation which directly address women's issues without addressing the corresponding need of men (Women, Infants, and Children Act; Violence Against Women Act). There are biases in the justice system against men as well, such as higher incarceration rates and longer sentences for men (compared to women) for the same crimes. Statutory rape laws enforced more vehemently in instances where the victim is female and/or the perpetrator is male (e.g. the cases of Mary Kay Letourneau and Vili Fualaau, Pamela Rogers, and Debra Lafave (Double Standard: The Bias Against Male Victims of Sexual Abuse). The "assumption of female innocence" is yet another example of the double standard that has lead to more male murderers being put to death per capita than female murderers. Until recently there was no accountability for the false accusation of rape either. The rape shield laws likewise make it next to impossible for an alleged rapist to face his accuser, which is a right guaranteed by the Constitution. Men pay higher premiums for auto, health, life and disability insurance, though other forms of discrimination are prohibited and protected against by federal legislation.

In fact, the entirety of society seems to be shifting away from men's concerns to deal with female specific issues. The increasing suicide rate of men in America (73% of suicides are white males) is almost completely ignored while rape crisis centers and abortion clinics receive government funding. Advertisement, awareness and federal funding for breast cancer research outnumbers prostate cancer funding et cetera by a disproportionate amount. The mortality rate for breast cancer is only 30% higher than prostate cancer, but it receives 4 times more funding. Men can be incarcerated for not paying child support while women often don't have to pay it at all. Whole government agencies exist specifically to deal with women's affairs, while no such agency exists to deal with men's affairs. Harder physical entrance criteria for men in many occupations, such as the army, police and fire service, which requires men to be physically stronger than women in these occupations. This leaves men responsible for a greater share of the physical work while receiving no more pay.

Further Reading:

The Legal Subjection of Men, 1908 attack on John Stuart Mill's 1869 The Subjection of Women.
The Fraud of Feminism by Ernest Belfort Bax, 1914.
The Myth of the Monstrous Male and Other Feminist Fallacies; John Gordon
The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex; Warren Farrell
Not Guilty: The Case in Defense of Men; David Thomas
Good Will Toward Men; Jack Kammer
The New Men's Studies: A Selected and Annotated Interdisciplinary Bibliography (2nd Edition); Eugene R. August
A Man's World: How Real Is Male Privilege - And How High Is Its Price?; Ellis Cose
Spreading Misandry: The Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular Culture; Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young
Sex Differences, Modern Biology and the Unisex Fallacy, Yves Christen
The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men; Christina Hoff Sommers
If Men Have All the Power How Come Women Make the Rules?; Jack Kammer
Domestic Violence: The 12 Things You Aren't Supposed to Know by Thomas B. James
Ceasefire! : Why Women And Men Must Join Forces To Achieve True Equality; Cathy Young
The Masculine Mystique; Andrew Kimbrell