New ‘forum for protecting men’ divides Serbian public

The establishment of the Forum for the Protection of Men, which socialist politician Ana Grozdanović announced on Thursday, caused a lot of controversy in Serbia, as the country faced its 22nd femicide case this year.

Grozdanović announced on her Instagram page that she will “deal with the protection of men” and establish a Forum for that purpose. She explained this decision with the opinion that “no one asks what a man goes through next to a woman, but everyone watches what he does in the end”.

“I thought for a long time whether to help the women’s forum or any women’s group, and I definitely made a decision that I am convinced is the most correct”, she wrote and added:

“Women, I think you have gone too far in taking away the male role in this world from men, and that’s why I’m giving support to men in every problem they face. This does not mean that I consider women less intelligent, Grozdanović stated on her Instagram page.

Biljana Maletin, an activist of the Women’s Platform for the Development of Serbia, said in an interview with EURACTIV that this statement, in addition to being unfounded, even seems cynical.

“Since the beginning of the year, more than 20 women have been killed by their partners. We have had mass massacres, violence is ubiquitous, and the perpetrators are predominantly men. In more than 90% of cases of domestic violence, it is committed against women and children.

“Unfortunately, statistics clearly show that violence against women and girls is a major social problem”, Maletin said, adding that we live in a culture of violence.

She believes that political life has a decisive influence on other aspects of social life, and if such messages come from a party that is part of the government, there will be no reduction in violence. “The reduction of violence is ultimately the demand of all the civil protests that are currently taking place in Serbia because they now clearly see both the cause and the consequences,” Maletin told EURACTIV.

She sees such statements as part of the ruling majority’s charade.

“In the absence of a real understanding of the problem and the application of systemic solutions, which necessarily include changing the media image, cancelling programs that produce violence and a different atmosphere in the parliament, one-time aid and measures that serve propaganda are resorted to, without the real intention of changing anything,” she believes.

Regarding the intention to defend men, Maletin said that it is not good for social discussions on the topic of reducing violence against women to be conducted on the line of who is more difficult, men or women, or who is more vulnerable.

“Instead of this discourse of the “gender war”, we must build a real public speech of equality, in which women and men together should change this society. Men are necessary, they should be actively involved in activities and movements to reduce violence, but not in this way”, Maletin said.

Vesna Tomić, a social psychologist, also commented on the idea of establishing a Forum for the Protection of Men for EURACTIV. “My assumption for the basis of the organisation of something like this is the adoption of models from foreign countries, I don’t know which ones, but I can only guess,” she said.

“Methodology – copy-paste. Everything that is seen in other countries is taken over here without any thought and analysis of the involvement of that model in this system of values of a suffering country. In Serbia, you have a lot of priority unsolved and difficult problems, such as, for example, the case with the health system, and this model of protection of men in marital and partner relationships is taken over. I would not comment further on the meaning of all that,” Tomić said.

(Milena Antonijević | EURACTIV.rs)