OTTAWA, ON, CANADA, May 7, 2023/EINPresswire.com/ -- Protests 4 Men was the organizer of the first protest for men and fathers at Parliament Hill, Ottawa. In this event, the protestors assembled peacefully on May 6, 2023. They asked for equality for men and fathers in the police system and courts, and they spoke up for men and fathers who had been the victims of a systematic discrimination and those who had lost their lives due to a suicide connected to this matter.

As summarized in the Canadian study (Dim and Lysova, 2021), there is bias against men in the courtrooms and in police agencies which would cause many male victims of domestic violence not willing to ask for police help because of the expectation of being ridiculed by the police, not being believed, or fear of being arrested. According to this article, those who chose to seek the police help, reported a negative experience about hostile and antagonistic police treatment. This is aligned with another Canadian research (Dutton, 2012 : https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2012-20485-008) where it was reported that 64% of men who asked for police help in the same context were treated as abusers.

Discrimination against men in the judicial system has been shown in other studies, e.g., (Brown, 2004: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-004-1000-7) ; a Canadian study in which it was observed that the prosecutors were 20 times more likely to file charges against a man vs a woman in the cases that no physical injury happened to either party.

Discrimination against fathers in the family courts have been shown in other studies, e.g., (Millar, 2010: https://commons.allard.ubc.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1075&context=can-j-fam-l) ; in which the custody outcomes of over 650,000 children in Canada were studied. It was observed that in 89% of the cases women gained some type of custody while in 67% of cases men completely lost the legal custody. Such a bias is an important contributing factor in more fathers being alienated from their children. Parental alienation is an important contributing factor in men's mental health problems and high suicide rate (Barry, 2020: https://www.pjp.psychreg.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/barry-liddon-57-66.pdf) (Sher, 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26565536/). This analysis is consistent with the fact that divorced men kill themselves almost 10 times more compared to divorced women (Sher, 2015: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26565536/).

The founder of Protests 4 Men is Arman Arian. He is a researcher and has a PhD in Mathematics from UBC. He believes that this type of protest raises the public awareness and if this is combined with contacting and lobbying with politicians and presenting the research and data to them, a reform in the legal system can gradually happen and we can have a society with more equality for men and fathers. This would reduce the high male-suicide rate and improve men's mental health. He mentioned that during this protest, there were people who came by and asked about the root and the cause for this protest and they were surprised to learn about this type of discrimination as it was underrepresented in the media.

For more details, visit www.protests4men.ca

Arman Arian, PhD
Protests 4 Men
info@protests4men.ca