The men's rights movement (MRM) is a branch of the men's movement. The MRM in particular consists of a variety of groups and individuals (men's rights activists or MRAs) who focus on general social issues and specific government services which they say adversely impact—or in some cases structurally discriminate against—men and boys. Common topics discussed within the men's rights movement include family law (such as child custody, alimony and marital property distribution), reproduction, suicides, domestic violence against men, circumcision, education, conscription, social safety nets, and health policies. The men's rights movement branched off from the men's liberation movement in the early 1970s, with both groups comprising a part of the larger men's movement.
Many scholars describe the movement or parts of it as a backlash against feminism. As part of the manosphere, the movement, and sectors of the movement, have been described by scholars and commentators as misogynistic, hateful, and, in some cases, as advocating violence against women. In 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center categorized some men's rights groups as being part of a hate ideology under the umbrella of male supremacy while stating that others "focused on legitimate grievances".
The term "men's rights" was used at least as early as February 1856 when it appeared in Putnam's Magazine. The author was responding to the issue of women's rights, calling it a "new movement for social reform, and even for political revolution", which the author proposed to counter with men's rights. Ernest Belfort Bax wrote The Legal Subjection of Men in 1896, deriding the women's rights movement as a farcical effort by women—the "privileged sex"—to prove they were "oppressed."
Three loosely connected men's rights organizations formed in Austria in the interwar period. The League for Men's Rights was founded in 1926 with the goal of "combating all excesses of women's emancipation". In 1927, the Justitia League for Family Law Reform and the Aequitas World's League for the Rights of Men split from the League of Men's Rights.