20th-century beginnings of the 'men's rights movement'

Lisa Sugiura's book The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere and the Virtual War Against Women (2021) is open access.

Čeština: Nebeská etapa, 2007. Art by Eugene Ivanov.
Creative Commons license

Originally, what did 'men's rights' mean?

To start with, Sugiura considers movements like Fathers for Justice (FFJ), whose

"primary focus...is actual men's problems rather than espousing vitriol against women, progressiveness and feminism. FFJ is concerned with paternal rights and ensuring that fathers have access to their children when relationships break down, when Criminal Justice Systems entrenched in sexist, conservative ideals ordinarily operate in favour of the mother. In this respect, the continuation of traditional gender roles, the desire and ideal of other groups in the manosphere, marginalises men and devalues their status as parents."

Some men feel disappointed because they were somehow — overtly, by individuals? implicitly, by systems? — led to believe they'd be more powerful and successful than they are.

"Pleck (1974, 1995) attempted to navigate this complexity by asserting that though they hold institutional power in patriarchal societies, most men do not actually feel powerful, creating a further conundrum for men to reconcile with – why do they not feel powerful when they are supposed to?"

An early idea of a "male mystique" and recognition that some men want custody of their kids:

"Marc Feigan Fasteau’s The Male Machine discussed the emotional impacts of restrictive masculinity, borrowing from Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique. Feigan Fasteau (1974, p. xiv) wrote that men's 'denial of dependency ... and emotions leads to silence and the creation of a male mystique'. Feigan Fasteau is also famous for his egalitarian marriage with Brenda Feigan Fasteau, a feminist lawyer who co-founded the Women’s Action Alliance with Gloria Steinem, and with whom he set up a law partnership, representing gender cases such as fathers who sought custody in divorce cases."

Later, especially "pre-web in the 1980s or as part of Web 1.0 from the 1990s to 2000s," men's rights organizations focused on political issues like whether family law (child custody, visitation, and child support) favored "women's interests" and whether that was a legislative attack that was part of "feminism's perceived attack on fatherhood" (Gotell & Dutton, 2016; Kimmel, 2017; Maddison, 1999).

"The previous ‘feminist hero’, Warren Farrell, had taken umbrage against NOW's stance in divorce cases, in declaring their support of providing child custody to the main caregiver, who was usually the mother, and having been through a divorce himself, came to the conclusion that feminists were more interested in power than in equality, a view that was being echoed by many more men. The disillusionment with feminism continued to escalate with the growth of women entering the workforce."