This is one of five letters written by the (now
disbanded) International Pro-Male Association to international organisations.
None of these letters was replied to or even acknowledged.
3 December 2006
The Secretary-General designate
Mr. Ban Ki-moon
UN Headquarters
First Avenue at 46th Street
New York, NY 10017
USA
Dear Mr. Ban Ki-moon,
Subject : Introducing the the International Pro-Male Association
On behalf of the International Pro-Male Association (IPMA), I would
like to point out the clear irrationality and discriminatory nature
of the one-sided emphasis placed on women’s perceived rights and
needs. This has become a conscious part of the current United Nations
reform process, as evidenced by the relevant section of Delivering as
One, the Report of the Secretary-General’s High-Level Panel (http://www.un.org/events/panel/resources/pdfs/HLP-SWC-FinalReport.pdf
). The irrationality is manifested in an ideological refusal even to
consider men’s rights and needs, and an unevidenced assumption
that the men who hold most of the positions of authority use this authority
to further the interests of men over those of women.
As secretary of the International Pro-Male Association (IPMA), an organisation
created to counter both the anti-male bias and ignorance of the male
perspective found in international institutions, I would seek to have
our views incorporated into all future work of the UN.
There is an important difference between an assumption and a fact,
and the IPMA considers that the standards of rationality and intelligence
employed by the United Nations decision-making process should be of
the highest order.
It is not enough simply to assume that women are disadvantaged. If
they are disadvantaged, that must be in relation to men, and that logically
requires a thorough, objective comparison between the advantages and
disadavantages of being a man or a woman in today’s world. No
such thorough, objective comparison between the advantages and disadavantages
of being a man or a woman in the world has ever been carried out. It
is not enough simply to assume, on the basis of emotive language and
selective, or even fictionalised data, that women are relatively disadvantaged
over all.
The proposed consolidated UN “gender equality and women’s
empowerment programme”, in particular, will further intensify
the discrimination against men which is already rampant in many areas
of life. This discrimination is especially pernicious in developed countries,
where the rise of the Men’s and Fathers’ Movement will not
have escaped your notice. It is a Feminist assumption that men cannot
discriminate against other men, but, in fact, men who believe Feminist
doctrines are at least as likely to discriminate against other men as
are women.
We would also like to point out that the notions of gender equality
and women’s empowerment should be analysed separately as distinct
concepts, and not just run together slogan-fashion. The notion of gender
equality implictly includes the concepts of equality of welfare and
equality of power (and there are many forms of power that should be
analysed). The notion of women’s empowerment, on the other hand,
appears simply to assume that women have no significant forms of power,
and that they should have more (for unstated reasons). It is historically
typical of men that they have held more of some forms of power than
women, but it is also historically typical of men that they have used
this power mainly for the benefit of women and children. Empowering
women, when they are empowered by simplistic and irrational Feminist
myths, merely results in women using their new forms of power to benefit
women at the expense of men and children – as many countries are
now finding in the area of divorce and separation law, for example.
The IPMA therefore calls upon you urgently to convene a conference
of equal numbers of representatives of Men’s Rights and Womens’
Rights organisations at the United Nations in Geneva, in order to inject
some semblance of professionalism, competence and rationality into the
area of gender. Until such a conference had been held, no reform plans
in this area should be implemented.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Zohrab
Secretary
International Pro-Male Association
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