Fathers4Justice is to challenge an Advertising Standards Authority ruling banning its advert campaigning against “anti-male” comments on Mumsnet, and will continue to use the advert in defiance of the ruling.

The ASA upheld two of the three issues raised against the recent Fathers4Justice advert and ruled that it must not appear again in its current form.

The advert in question appeared in the national press on Friday 16 March 2012 with the headline ‘Say it with hate this Mother’s Day’ as part of a campaign calling on parenting website Mumsnet to remove anti-male comments from its forums.

Text in the advert stated: “Fathers4Justice are writing to all advertisers this Mother’s Day to inform them that the Mumsnet website carries abusive and distressing anti-male content which promotes gender hatred against men and boys. We believe the general sexist labelling of men and boys as ‘rapists’, ‘paedophiles’ and ‘wife beaters’ is as unacceptable and offensive as racism and homophobia.”

Complaints were made to the ASA about whether the claims in the advert could be substantiated and were misleading. There were also complaints about the use of an image of a toddler with words such as “thug”, “pig” and “feckless”.

In its adjudication the ASA ruled that this could not be substantiated because “the context of the ad implied that Mumsnet themselves had unfairly generalised men and boys in their editorial content and yet we noted that Fathers4Justice had also not provided us with evidence to suggest this was the case”.

The regulator added that “it was misleading of Fathers4Justice to imply through this ad that Mumsnet themselves had made or endorsed those comments”, and said that that Fathers4Justice should not imply that forum postings indicate endorsement in future.

Fathers4Justice disputes ruling

Founder of Fathers4Justice Matt O’Connor told civilsociety.co.uk that the organisation “will be challenging the legality of the ASA ruling” because it was “subjective”, and has instructed solicitors.

He said Mumsnet was providing a platform for extremist viewpoints and it was important to bring this to the attention of advertisers.

O’Connor also said that as he wrote the text for the advert, he felt it was an “attack on my personal freedom of expression”.

O’Connor added that: “We would question the role of the ASA to make the ruling – they are unelected and unaccountable.” And he described the organisation as “a quango which should have been torched a long time ago”.

He plans to “continue to run the adverts where we can” and is hoping to run it again in a print publication. And he will continue to run the campaign through the media.

Mumsnet hits back

Justine Roberts, chief executive and co-founder of Mumsnet, said: “We’re pleased that the ASA has ruled that this ad was misleading, as the suggestion that Mumsnet encourages gender hatred would be funny if it were not so plain silly.”

She said that: “There are many and varied opinions on the site and no one Mumsnet party line prevails, save for the view that we respect diverse opinion."

Mumsnet told the ASA that it receives more than 25,000 forum posts each day and relies on users to report offensive content, which it removes if it breaches the terms of use.

Roberts also attacked Fathers4Justice about the way it had carried out the campaign, and said: “The recent actions the group has taken against Mumsnet constitute plain and simple intimidation and a naked attempt to court publicity by a group of people who, for whatever reason, appear to have tired of climbing cranes in superhero outfits. And it does their cause no good at all.”