47 years of NOMAS

NOMAS has been advocating inter-sectional pro-feminism since 1975.

The National Organization for Men Against Sexism is an activist organization of men and women supporting positive changes for men. NOMAS advocates a perspective that is pro-feminist, gay affirmative, anti-racist, dedicated to enhancing men’s lives, and committed to justice on a broad range of social issues including class, age, religion, and physical abilities. We affirm that working to make this nation’s ideals of equality substantive is the finest expression of what it means to be men.

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Annual Conference

Every year NOMAS commits to supporting a new group through an Annual Conference. Find out when our next conference is, or get information from previous conferences.

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NOMAS Model for Domestic Violence Offender Programs
(Previously NY Model for Batterer Programs) presents:

An Evolution of Practice for Over 40 Years

The NOMAS Model for Domestic Violence Offender Programs serves as a mechanism for offender accountability – a disposition available to the courts and its agents when addressing men’s violence against an intimate partner. The program is grounded in an anti-racist/oppression lens in all of its policies and practices and works to end the systemic problem of male supremacy (patriarchy, sexism) in which domestic violence is manifested and continues to perpetuate men’s violence against women.

This training will include reviews and discussion of collaborative experiences that have informed our development since 1978. We will review lessons learned, including essential components related to community coordination, accountability, incorporation of “trauma-informed” practices, and the basics of class content.

May 5 – May 6, 2022, In Person
Rockland County Fire Training Center,
35 Firemens Memorial Drive, Pomona, NY 10970
Doors Open at 8:30 am | Training: 9:00 am – 4:00 pm
Full Conference Fee: $125 | $75 Advocates
NYS CASAC and NYS SW CEU’s Available for an additional $50 each

Reproductive Coercion Toolkit

Jul 8, 2022

Reproductive Coercion Toolkit: The National Organization Against Sexism (NOMAS) and the Feminist Women’s Health Center of Atlanta, in collaboration with The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), have developed and created a training and information...

NOMAS Child Custody Task Group Initiative Introduction

Jun 24, 2022

NOMAS Child Custody Task Group Initiative Introduction The crisis in the custody court system in its response to domestic violence and child abuse has long been a high priority for NOMAS. The worst abusive fathers, male supremacist groups and the cottage industry...

About the NOMAS Model for DV Offender Accountability Programs

Apr 1, 2022

The purpose of the NOMAS Model for DV Offender Accountability Programs (formerly th NY Model for Batterer Programs) is to provide a service to the civil and criminal court systems, for men who are domestic violence offenders. -As a service to the courts, a NY Model...

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NOMAS Child Custody Task Group Initiative Introduction

Alienation Distraction Tactics in Child Custody Cases

Alienation Distraction Tactics in Child Custody Cases Barry Goldstein There is a pattern in most domestic violence custody cases that would help courts understand child custody disputes better and avoid mistakes that place children in jeopardy. In most cases, during...

Custody Courts Assume Protective Mothers Are Just Being Vindictive

Custody Courts Assume Protective Mothers Are Just Being Vindictive Barry Goldstein A recent news item showed a mother attacking a mountain lion who snatched her child. The mother mentioned was not alienating her child from the mountain lion. The mother’s only concern,...

Judges Unaware of Custody Court Crisis

Judges Unaware of Custody Court Crisis Barry Goldstrin Courts cannot save children if they are unaware that standard court practices routinely place children in jeopardy. Researchers, experts in domestic violence and child sexual abuse and people who can count...

Family Court “High Conflict” Divorce Approaches Are Sexist and Gender Biased

High Conflict Divorce Approaches Are Sexist and Gender Biased Barry Goldstein Family courts routinely use the “high conflict” approach that is based on the stereotypes of the vindictive woman and the nagging wife. This approach encourages courts to assume that...

Don’t Confuse Domestic Violence with “He-Said-She-Said”

Don’t Confuse Domestic Violence with “He-Said-She-Said Barry Goldstein Judges, lawyers and evaluators often minimize or dismiss domestic violence (DV) by referring to the dispute as “he-said-she-said.” This flawed approach simply means that the professional does not...

Family Court is Broken and Must be Fixed

Family Court is Broken and Must be Fixed Barry Goldstein Many protective mothers believe that corruption is the reason family courts are so tilted in favor of abusive fathers and create such harmful decisions. This belief is widespread because so many of the courts’...

12 Reasons Family Courts Continue to Destroy Children’s Lives

12 Reasons Family Courts Continue to Destroy Children’s Lives Barry Goldstein Why Don’t Family Courts Fix Dangerous Practices? The research is now clear that Family Courts get most domestic violence custody cases wrong and often dangerously wrong. The proof of this...

Do Women Have a Right to Leave Their Abusers? When Family Courts Protect “Men’s Rights”

Do Women Have a Right to Leave Their Abusers? Barry Goldstein Jennifer Schlecht is one of the most recent women to be denied what should be a fundamental right. Jennifer’s husband like many abusers believed she did not have this right. When the courts and law...

Domestic Violence Is a Gendered Crime

Domestic Violence Is a Gendered Crime Barry Goldstein For many years, battered women and domestic violence advocates have said Domestic Violence (DV) is a gendered crime, but they were not listened to because they usually had no advanced degree; they were mostly...

Prostitution: Key Facts and Analysis, in Brief

Prostitution: Key Facts and Analysis, in Brief Thinking about “prostitution” should always begin with the recognition that this one word actually includes three (3) entirely different categories of people: three groups which have almost nothing in common. Writing or...

PRESS RELEASE: NOMAS commends Ireland on passage of Nordic Model bill

NOMAS, and Coalition Against Trafficking in Women (CATW) commend Ireland, for the historic passage of a new bill which de-criminalizes prostituted people, but penalizes the purchase of sex (the Nordic model). The bill was approved on Feb. 14, 2017. The new Irish law...

Confronting the Commercial Sex Industry: Many Losses, a Few Bright Spots

Dr. Robert Brannon* The NOMAS National Task Group on Sex-Trafficking, Pornography, & the Commercial Sex Industry attempts to monitor events in this wide range of issues. The National Task Group is Chaired by Dr. Robert Brannon, with the involvement of other NOMAS...

DONALD TRUMP AND THE SEX INDUSTRY

DONALD TRUMP AND THE SEX INDUSTRY Robert Brannon National Organization for Men Against Sexism SEXUALITY IS A CENTRAL, life-enhancing, and important part of our lives, but its commercial exploitation for profits has had many negative consequences, for individuals, and...

Trafficked Women, Used in Prostitution, Are Not “Sex-Workers”

Robert Brannon, Department of Psychology, Brooklyn College C.U.N.Y. Panel on Sex Trafficking; International Masculinities Conference; New York City, March 6, 2015 I am a psychologist and within the field of psycholinguistics there is a familiar observation...

NOMAS Opposes Amnesty International’s Policy on Decriminalization of Prostitution/Sex Trafficking

Press Release August 18, 2015 On August 11, 2015, Amnesty International (AI) turned its back on Feminism by voting to adopt policy supporting decriminalizing prostitution...

NOMAS Policy Positions on Issues of Prostitution

NOMAS National Task Group on Sex Trafficking, Pornography, & The Commercial Sex Industry Robert Brannon Ph.D., Chair A. Our Culture’s Mythology of Prostitution There is a common, popular stereotype, sometimes termed “the happy hooker,” of a woman...

NOMAS Position on Prostitution and Sex Trafficking

Moshe Rozdzial and The National Council of NOMAS The National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) has, since its inception, advocated an "abolitionist" position, strongly opposing the life-destroying use of women and children - by men - in sex...

The Commercial Sex Industry, Pornography, Sex Trafficking and Prostitution Links

Survivors of Prostitution and Trafficking Manifesto Survivors of Prostitution and Trafficking Manifesto Press Conference at the European Parliament. “Who Represents Women in Prostitution? October 17, 2005 Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE)...

The Harmfulness of Pornography: NOMAS position statement

A huge majority of Americans believe that some forms of "pornography" - eg. eroticized rape scenes - influence some men toward real-life sexual aggression. Social science also now confirms this. A large body of behavioral research shows that men exposed to certain...

Worldwide Analysis: Over One in Four Women (or 27 percent) Experience Intimate Partner Violence Before the Age of 50

March 24, 2022. McGill University Newsroom Worldwide analysis led by researchers from McGill University and the World Health Organization shows that over one in four women (or 27 percent) experience intimate partner violence before the age of 50. The largest of its...

Is Domestic Violence a “Choice?” No, not exactly…

Is Domestic Violence a “Choice?” No, not exactly… By Phyllis B. Frank and Chris S. O’Sullivan, PhD Reprinted with Authors permission from The Voice: The Journal of the Battered Women’s Movement, Fall 2011 There are many terms and explanations that have caught on in...

Opposition to Systemic De-Gendering of Domestic Violence: NOMAS Position Statement

• Violence is a tool of oppression. It is used to enslave, degrade, dehumanize, punish and coerce. In a male supremacist society, men use these tools to subdue women. In a white supremacist society, white people have used them to subdue BIPOC. Everyone learns the...

Position Statement Against Anger Management as a Response to Men’s Violence Against Women

NOMAS (National Organization for Men Against Sexism), strongly opposes the use of “Anger Management” or Anger Management Programs as a criminal/civil disposition or means in which to deal with violence against an intimate partner. Over the last thirty-plus years of...

ALICE PAUL AWARDS FOR WOMEN WHO HAVE WORKED TO CONFRONT MEN’S VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN

Committee on Feminist Movement History: National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) reprinted with permission from: Brannon, Robert (2017) "Alice Paul Awards for Women Who Have Worked to Confront Men's Violence Against Women,"Dignity: Journal on Sexual...

Tara O’Shea-Watson Could Have Been Saved: Domestic Violence and the Court System

Tara O’Shea-Watson Could Have Been Saved By Barry Goldstein. We know how to stop domestic violence crime and especially homicide. This confidence is based on successful practices in communities like Quincy, San Diego and Nashville that dramatically reduced these...

The Painful Cost of Disbelieving Women

The Painful Cost of Disbelieving Women by Barry Goldstein. A man in one of the batterer classes I teach couldn’t wait to bring up the Duke Lacrosse and Tawana Brawley cases to counter research that women rarely make false reports of rape or abuse. While many men in...

Think It’s #NotAllMen? These 4 Facts Prove You’re Just Plain Wrong

by Melissa A. Fabello and Aaminah Khan, Originally published on Everyday Feminism, October 10, 2016 Dear Well-Meaning Men Who Believe Themselves to Be Safe, Thereby Legitimizing the “Not All Men” Argument, Let’s start here, even though this should go without saying:...

Rape Culture Syllabus

Rape Culture Syllabus Reprinted with permission by the author Laura Ciolkowski October 15, 2016 — I just start kissing them. Just kiss—I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything. Whatever you want. Grab them by the pussy. You can...

LGBT Couples Therapy with Psychological Abuse

Working with Gay and Lesbian Couples with Emotional/Verbal (Psychological) Abuse Moshe Rozdzial, PhD, LPC*. Intimate partner abuse exempts no race, ethnicity, socio-economic status, sexual orientation or social status. On a daily basis, issues of dominance, power, and...

About the NOMAS Model for DV Offender Accountability Programs

Changing Abusers’ Behavior: What Works What Doesn’t

By Barry Goldstein Introduction A few years ago I attended a national conference for and about batterer programs. One of my colleagues aptly referred to it as a marketing conference for the batterer program industry. I am sure there were many people at the...

Position paper on court mandated mental health treatment for men who batter

Many courts throughout the country are using mental health treatment as a penalty for men’s acts of assault against their partners. It is our strong professional determination, based on many decades of work in the field, that an order for mental health treatment as a...

NOMAS Adopts the NOMAS Model for Domestic Violence Offender Programs (formerly the NY Model for Batterer Programs)

After years of exploring a wide range of batterer program models, the National Council of NOMAS has given its full support and adopted to NOMAS Model for DV Offender Accountability, formerly known as the New York Model for Batterer Programs. This model was determined...

What Batterer Programs Can Do Demonstrably and Reliably with All Men Ordered by the Courts

By Phyllis B. Frank, , Director, VCS Domestic Violence Program for Men Batterer programs often confound even those who work closely with them. Courts, probation, prosecution, parole, advocates, and the public understandably have unfulfilled hopes about what batterer...

Batterer Programs may be more Harmful than Beneficial

Even Groups for Batterers run by private or social service agencies that are not mainly mental health staffed and oriented are unlikely to have any real effect on the abuse, and may in some ways make it worse for the abused woman. When an abusive man is required by a...

Reproductive and Sexual Coercion: State Sanctioned and Intimate Partner Violence

Reproductive and Sexual Coercion: State Sanctioned and Intimate Partner Violence Reproductive coercion is defined as threats or acts of violence against a partner’s reproductive health or reproductive decision-making and is a collection of behaviors intended to...

Reproductive Coercion Toolkit

NOMAS Position Statement on “Objectification of Women”

“Objectification of Women” • Pictures Never Lie!? Think about the hundreds or thousands images of Women that we see, every month and year, in magazines, on TV, in the movies, on the internet, in advertising, in social media..., How do these images compare with what we...

Against Patriarchy: Tools for Men to Further Feminist Revolution*

Against Patriarchy: Tools for Men to Further Feminist Revolution* By Chris Crass For all of us who are men who believe in social justice, who want healthy and beautiful lives for our loved ones, and who are working for positive change in the world, let us commit or...

On Fatherhood and Feminism, Writing for the Web

On Fatherhood and Feminism, Writing for the Web - ARIEL CHESLER 7/29/16: 41st Annual NOMAS CONFERENCE I have been asked to speak about fatherhood and feminism today, a topic I think about often. For example, here are some random questions: 1) Why do some people think...

Songs of the Pro-Feminist Men’s Movement

Songs of NOMAS: For over 40 years NOMAS has supported cultural workers, through arts and media, as voices of the activist movement that NOMAS represents. Music and song have been an integral part of the NOMAS Men and Masculinity conference tradition. Below is a...

Male Privilege Checklist

In 1990, Wellesley College professor Peggy McIntosh wrote an essay called “White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack”. McIntosh observes that whites in the U.S. are “taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring...

Male Power and Control: Accountability Wheels

Mansplaining, explained: ‘Just ask an expert. Who is not a lady’

Author Rebecca Solnit admits that even penning a book titled 'Men Explain Things to Me' doesn't stop some men Jessica Valenti theguardian.com, Friday 6 June 2014 Rebecca Solnit is a prolific author (she's working now on her sixteenth and seventeenth books),...

Gender Role Expectation as a Source of Men’s Health and Mental Health Disparaties

Men are more likely to die than women for all 15 leading causes of death; the average life expectancy for a male, at birth, is 74.6 years, while for women it’s 79.6 years. This is because, Men do not seek out medical or mental health information and take...

Intersectional Dominance-White, Straight, Christian, Patriarchy-Won the 2016 Election!

By Moshe Rozdzial, PhD* Many explanations have been proposed, in the weeks since the presidential election, for Trump’s win, and, to one degree or another, most have some validity. One explanation – working class economic insecurity - seems unsupported. The economy is...

“Exposing Reproductive Coercion” Toolkit & Brochures Published

The Feminist Women’s Health Center of Atlanta, Georgia and The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence (NCADV), in collaboration with the National Organization for Men Against Sexism (NOMAS) have published a toolkit for clinicians, domestic violence workers, and...

THE ETHICS OF COMMUNICATION IN CONTINUING GROUPS

In any work group it is important to realize that every act of each person reflects our pioneering of an ethic that comes to reflect the culture of the ongoing workplace. How we treat each other, how we feel we are being treated, affects the direction of our work and...

NOMAS Empowerment and Accountability Process

NOMAS EMPOWERMENT and ACCOUNTABILITY PROCESS Phyllis B. Frank and Wayne Morris History: When I walked into a NOMAS meeting along with other men and women, I picked up an attitude of arrogance and superiority from one of the white men. This is not an unusual...

NOMAS Bylaws on Accountability

11. ACCOUNTABILITY 11.1 Definition We understand the term accountability to mean an explicit process of voluntary communication and consultation with representatives of social groups whose interests and concerns are considered most relevant and important. Being...

GLBTQ+ Affirmative position statement

This is the greatest challenge to our integrity, and one of our greatest opportunities to make a real difference in people's lives; to create positive social change. The homophobia of the majority of American men can hardly be underestimated. We speak out for Gay...

Position Statement on Homophobia

As an organization striving to be affirmative of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgendered, queer, and intersexed persons, NOMAS understands homophobia to be the individual and psychological response to those who do not conform to the expectations of binary...

Position Paper on Gay Rights

The homophobia of the majority of American men can hardly be underestimated. We speak out for Gay Rights, even in light of frightening and alienating the majority of men before they can hear anything else we have to say, not only because gays are among the most...

Lincoln Did Not “Free the Slaves” – The Little-known Story of How Feminists Ended Slavery

By Dr. Robert Brannon It is widely believed that human slavery was ended in the United States by Abraham Lincoln’s ‘Emancipation Proclamation’. This is not true. Human slavery was ended in America primarily by a grass-roots petition campaign led by radical...

The Politics of Accountability in Movements for Social Justice

by Jonathan Cohen Accountability has become a watchword in the movement to end domestic violence. It is almost impossible to be involved in any work related to ending domestic violence without hearing the word accountability bandied about. But while some might glaze...

47 years of NOMAS

NOMAS has been advocating inter-sectional pro-feminism since 1975.

Pro-feminist, LGBTQ+ affirmative, anti-racist, enhancing men’s lives.

Join NOMAS

Chapter Resource Kit

NOMAS Events

Annual Conference

​NOMAS Model for Domestic Violence Offender Programs(Previously NY Model for Batterer Programs) presents:

An Evolution of Practice for Over 40 Years ​

Featured Articles & Initiatives

Our Chapters

Denver

SAN FRANCISCO

New York

Boston

Start New Chapter

NOMAS Model for Domestic Violence Offender Programs
(Previously NY Model for Batterer Programs) presents:

An Evolution of Practice for Over 40 Years