We often talk about the disposable male; I attribute this phrase to Warren Farrell, but only because that’s where I heard it first.

In being disposable the corollary is that male rights must also be disposable. Just to be clear, I am not talking male rights v female rights (which we often compare on this site) but simply our rights within a civil society.

At this point you’re thinking, ‘can I be bothered getting into this philosophical rubbish’? I just want to get on with my life.

But that’s just it, how can you get on with life when your rights are arbitrarily dismissed, impeded, or removed?

How did you end up here anyway?

Yes, of course it happens all over the world, and so easily in New Zealand because … that’s another story.

An example of this is progress:

In 2007 we had a Family Court Matters Bill before parliament. Amongst the submissions to this bill was one from the Law Society that outlined that the bill was a breach of human rights because it did not allow DNA testing to confirm the relationship between a father and a child.

Some will recall, at that time, we had an ideologically-minded (feminist) Labour Party led by Helen Clark, and then Minister for Courts and feminist lap-dog Rick Barker (figuratively speaking) flipped the bird and told men in New Zealand that they could get stuffed.

The transgression probably doesn’t impact on a great number of New Zealand men – and not to dismiss the severity of the impact that this can have on any man’s life – but the greater travesty was that we ignored the fact that a minister of the crown allowed legislation to pass that gave priority to party policy rather human rights.

We ignored the fight for rights because it didn’t impact on those of us happily living in our own little bubbles.

Is this the single biggest fault of men in modern society?

Have we always been like this?

The continuing story of, The Rights of Men