National Coalition for Men Endorses Watered Down VAWA Talking Points Memo reported yesterday that a national organization dedicated to ending discrimination against a disadvantaged group had stepped forward to endorse the watered-down version of the Violence Against Women Act that House Republicans are trying to foist on the Senate. The House should pass "a victim-centered" bill, said the National Coalition for Men. I had no idea we had a coalition. Why am I not on the mailing list? I'm a man. Just yesterday, I had a chance to fill out Michele Bachmann's questionnaire and I'm not a Republican, or a woman. I went to NCFM.org (a website that uses a lot of exclamation points) and discovered that the organization, was "founded in 1977 upon the realization that men needed a unified voice in addressing issues concerning men and boys." And here I thought that men had a pretty strong voice, like in corporate boardrooms, local and federal courts, city halls, statehouses, the House and the Senate, the White House, the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, the United Nations, NATO, baseball, basketball, football, hockey and pro golf. But I guess I was wrong. The website has an article, for example, about an important election in which "THERE ARE ZERO MALE CANDIDATES." The website uses a lot of capital letters, too. It's the race for the Steering Committee of the District of Columbia Bar Association Family law Section. This race, I learned, "exemplifies how we are outgunned and out-organized." We, in case you were wondering, are the downtrodden men. Meninists make some good point in TPM's comment section: Men are discriminated against in child custody cases, and are more likely to go to jail or become homeless or commit suicide. Still, the NCFM rubs me the wrong way. Like whites who complain about "reverse racism," the NCFM seems to promote the idea that there's parity in suffering. That's false. Sometimes men are discriminated against. Sometimes whites are discriminated against. But that doesn't change the fact that men, and whites, are born with tremendous advantages, and hardly need collective action to assert their rights. There's something shameful about such successful groups laying claim to victimization.