In the October 2025 Skeptic News, editor Mark Honeychurch seems to suggest that, like UFOs and Bent Spoons, MENZ should not be considered “reality”.

As there is a history of material disappearing from Skeptics archives, here’s a secured copy: MENZ vs Reality.

Hitting Home Controversy

In March this year, I was able to re-publish several pages of interesting debate about the Hitting Home Report that took place back in 1995. This could not be accessed via the NZ Skeptic website, but after much searching I was able to locate a copy.

I also added this text to the sidebar of every MENZ page:

How Junk Science becomes accepted
NZ’s legislation and public policy is often influenced by advocacy research, which is designed to produce a pre-determined outcome. A classic example is the Hitting Home Report, winner of the 1995 NZ Skeptics Society ‘Bent Spoon Award’. Nearly 30 years later, the committee declared the award was not justified, and apologised for “lack of critical thinking”.

A screenshot of MENZ included in the latest NZ Skeptic News clearly shows the criticism of the Hitting Home Report and the NZ Skeptics’ attempts to rehabilitate this discredited ‘research’:

So it’s fair to say I’ve been expecting a response.

I have read several emails sent to the current Skeptics executive from past members expressing outrage at the 2023 decision, and asking for an explanation. As far as I know, there has never been any reply. Because debate is effectively suppressed within the modern Skeptics organisation, I imagine many of the older members are unaware that their values and interests are no longer reflected by the executive.

But my surprise, there is no reference whatsoever to the Hitting Home Report, or the Bent Spoon Award in the September 2005 NZ Skeptics newsletter. I can’t help thinking that claiming MENZ is not real as a response strategy is a bit someone like sticking their fingers in their ears and yelling: “La, la, la, la, la!”

Here’s how the recent review is presented.

Guilt by Association

My first annoyance is that the author goes to great lengths to frame MENZ as a “men’s rights” website. This label typically appears in lists that include terms like “far-right”, “white supremacist”, and “misogynistic”; groups which supposedly make up the “manosphere”.

• I’ve jumped into the main men’s rights movement website here in NZ
• menz.org.nz is a men’s rights website that claims to advocate for men
• Now, the men’s rights movement is a controversial topic
• a men’s rights conference a few years ago included some legitimate concerns
• pseudoscientific nonsense that has been posted to the site recently in the name of promoting men’s rights

There are, indeed a few (dozen?) men’s rights activists in New Zealand, and they do get mentioned from time-to-time, as do some international MRAs. Not many of them them post here, and it’s never been a particular focus of this website.

Out of curiosity, I searched MENZ for the phrase “men’s rights” to see what would show up. The top result is, understandably, the title of one post made back in 2007, made by an author named Jerry who never posted anything else.

Interestingly, the second hit turns out to be the title of a feminist flier protesting against fathers’ groups in 2001, showing that this tactic of smearing any non-feminist men’s support groups as “men’s rights” is decades old.

The Correct Site ‘Strapline’

For anyone who finds website terminology confusing, here’s a a pro tip: if you look at the code of most WordPress sites, you can easily identify the tagline. In the case of MENZ it is

<p id="tagline">- promoting a clearer understanding of men's experience -</p>

The words misquoted as such by Mark are in the main site heading:

<h1>MENZ Issues: news and discussion about New Zealand men, fathers, family law, divorce, courts, protests, gender politics, and male health.</h1>

Ad Hominem

I’m such an obvious and easy target it’s understandable that the article starts with a spot of character assassination. No journalist would be able to resist this, and I only have myself to blame, so no grudges. I just want to note use of the tactic.

The MENZ website’s “webslave”, John Potter, is the son of the infamous Centrepoint commune/cult leader Bert Potter. If you’re not familiar with Centrepoint, I recommend you read or watch one or more of the many articles and documentaries that have been made about the commune.

This newsletter actually turns out to use the word ‘Centrepoint’ five times, reflecting NZ Skeptics current preoccupation with evil cults. They even included a photograph:

As the legal owner of the MENZ domain name, I am ultimately responsible for anything which remains on the website, in the same way Mark Zuckerberg is responsible for Facebook, or Elon Musk is responsible for X. There have been numerous posts and comments in the past which have been removed for legal reasons.

However, while there is a significant percentage of content that remains on MENZ that I disagree with, I believe that mistaken and even (especially?) dangerous ideas need to be discussed and argued openly.

I also understand how difficult a concept this may be for a feminized mind to grasp.

Substantive Criticism

The reviewer is honest enough to lay his cards on the table right at the start. I’m one of the 71 percent of men who believe protecting free speech more important than preserving a cohesive society, (as referred to by Helen Andrews here). It seems NZ Skeptics is now aligned with the 59 percent of women who think speech need to be controlled.

I don’t think that having a hands-off approach when the website in question deals with controversial topics is a very good idea, but let’s see what the regular contributors have been posting to the website over the last few years.

Motte-and-bailey

This is an illegitimate form of argument whereby a protagonist conflates two positions that share similarities. One position is easily defensible (the motte), but it can be extended to cover a much broader area.

There are over 3,640 posts on MENZ; here are the six (by just two of the 338 registered authors) selected for review. The reader is invited to assume that they are indicative of the recent history – judge for yourself.

• SHOCK DISCOVERY: Any time a woman has sex with a man, she retains his DNA in her brain (Lukenz)
• Lunatic Carol Adams say eating meat by white men is patriarchy and gender & oppression (Lukenz)
• If I were the deep state this is what I would do to fathers and children worldwide if I wanted less of them. (Lukenz)
• Puberty Blockers (downunder)
• Efeso Collins (downunder)
• The war on men – Could it be its all about the reduction of men on the planet? The reduction of waste?(Lukenz)

Several of these posts are a bit marginal, I agree. And the criticisms are all quite valid and sensible, in my opinion. Accordingly, I’ve added them as comments on each article so that future MENZ readers can take them into account. I encourage Mark to do so himself if he spots anything else that he considers dodgy in the future.

Anyone with a genuine interest in combatting misinformation or disputing arguments can make comments like this without moderation. This is how free speech is supposed to work.

Although the article quotes my disclaimer on the About MENZ page which I thought makes it clear that there is minimal moderation, Mark seems confused on this point.

I wanted to focus on the articles, as they have presumably all been vetted and approved by the admins of the site. However, many of the comments are also eye-opening. A huge number of them, written by someone going by the name of DJ Ward, are long pieces of prose.

No, new posts do NOT get “vetted and approved”. I occasionally remove a post if it is likely to lead to legal repercussions, or if it is obviously off-topic. But I don’t always read every word.

There are over 47,000 comments currently displayed on the site. Like in any public forum, some are rude, some are incoherent, some are deliberately misleading. For every comment that remains, about 10 get removed, mostly by automatic filters. If anything slips through that is is grossly offensive or unfair, I will delete it manually if it is brought to my attention. But I’m sure there are countless examples of ‘wrongthink’ in the comments waiting to be discovered by a skilled offense archaeologist.

Review Conclusion

There were many more posts and comments that made it obvious that the authors need a little skepticism in their lives. Some were sympathetic towards NZDSOS (the anti-vax doctors in NZ), and others were conspiratorially talking about organisations such as the United Nations and the World Health Organisation. Not much of the conversation seemed well-reasoned or evidence based, and there wasn’t really much of any push-back against the hateful content that’s being posted to the site, beyond a couple of people who seem to have created accounts just to poke fun at the site’s members.

Thankfully the frequency of new posts appearing has slowed down a lot recently. I really hope that trend continues, given that the content of the website appears much more likely to do damage and make things worse than to help anyone who’s in need.

Most of the discussion and networking within the men’s movement happens on social media these days, so the number of visitors to MENZ has dropped markedly in the last decade. I personally have less time available than I used to, and less motivation due to other projects. Like my mountain-bike.

Changes will no doubt come to MENZ one day, but probably not in the foreseeable future.

Please Explain

I note the November 2023 NZ Skeptics newsletter has Chairman Craig Shearer writing about the Hitting Home Report:

As far as we can tell, the report was well researched and written, and seems to have received a mostly positive reception both locally and internationally, with some notable dissent (mainly from men’s rights groups).

Those evil men’s rights groups again!

The dissent from the Skeptics members “who failed to think critically” is all on this page: Hitting Home Report. Most of them look like academics to me. I concede that Chuck Bird could be legitimately be considered a MRA, but who exactly are these other ‘men’s rights groups’?

I have to say this is starting to look like: “Everyone who I disagree with is a Nazi”.

Mark, you have been asked a number of very reasonable questions by members of the 1990s executive about the process by which Skeptics effectively awarded them the “Bent Spoon” in 2023.

I challenge you to provide an explanation and some answers.