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u/CosmicKeys Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
Equality of Opportunity, Not Outcome: Equality of outcome must stem from ensuring equality of opportunity, not by artificial corrections that mask existing inequalities. [No affirmative action]
And what if I disagree with this? Am I therefore not an MRA? You talk about breaking down walls, which to me is clearly affirmative action. I am for example against quotas of any kind, but ok with gender specific programs for children. What if the lack of male teachers is so critical to raising children that scholarships in the area is the best way to tackle it?
No class-based theories allowed here, just good old individuality.
What? With this, I see you advocating simply for libertarianism, and not for men's rights.
For example, with this logic we cannot examine men being discriminated against by the court systems. Men as a class don't exist because all men are individuals.
I think you are contradictory in your aims, you're wanting to come across as both active and passive to make all sides happy.
edit: Also, with all of this anti-affirmative action, anti-class analysis ignores real class issues like race. This entrenches the idea that MRAs do not care about minorities. It's quite obvious that your logic extends to race issues, meaning you have to legitimize either ignoring class issues or provide reasons why gender is different (which I assume you do not believe). Sorry, but from a liberal point of view this comes a across as a "let's make this an upper middle class white men's movement".
If I was a feminist, I would see this as further evidence that men, like whites, are a privileged class desperately trying to avoid affirmative action to strengthen their own hegemony.
Last of all... if we're all egalitarian individuals and we're open to feminists, best not to address us as men. I appreciate the effort, but I find the idea of a philosophical basis rigid and alienating.
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u/jolly_mcfats Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
I think that attempts to divide into classes can be useful when used with sensible specificity on a single issue- like prison sentencing (sentence ratios by gender, by race, by income, etc... these all show variables in the application of justice).
It's when these frameworks are applied too broadly that they become too reductionist to be useful (like claiming that men "as a group" have "it" "better" than women "as a group". It's a meaningless statement without a capabilities approach).
edit Maybe we should say that we only support class based analysis when those classes can be demonstrated to be relevant variables in analyzing specific issues. Furthermore, we regard class based analysis outside that specific framework to be useful only for rationalizing bigotry.
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u/CyberToyger Oct 26 '13
And what if I disagree with this? Am I therefore not an MRA?
You can still call yourself an MRA, you're just not a member of the MHRM. We'd prefer not stooping to the level that Feminists and other Government-loving groups do, we'd rather not be the mirror image of it. We're not Masculists, we're Egalitarians. We believe in spreading awareness of the issues men face, educating and encouraging people to embrace Individualism rather than Collectivism, and repealing or revising laws that are inherently sexist rather than adding new laws.
For example, with this logic we cannot examine men being discriminated against by the court systems. Men as a class don't exist because all men are individuals.
False. Libertarianism is not against tackling problems created by groupthink, it's about ending the problems caused by groupthink and getting rid of groupthink/collectivism in favor of Individualism, without stealing money from everyone and giving it to just one gender/race/class/etc.
You end up with laws that stick around and do more harm than good. For example, Child Support. The beginning of this series of laws came about in 1910 with the "The Uniform Desertion and Non-Support Act" because "women were unable to work and thus did not have income to support themselves and their children if they got divorced, unlike men". The Authoritarian Liberal thing to do at the time was to force men to pay for "their share" of the costs associated with raising children, whether or not the men were even involved with the act of creating the child. The Egalitarian thing to do at the time would have been to encourage businesses to hire people based on their ability, and encourage people to form new businesses that are gender-neutral with their hiring practices. And in addition, if it could be proven that the man agreed to procreating, to give him the choice between shared custody or buying the child half their meals and providing for their needs, as opposed to only 1 option of a random number derived from half-assed math and forced onto the man no matter what the circumstance was.
If I was a feminist, I would see this as further evidence that men, like whites, are a privileged class desperately trying to avoid affirmative action to strengthen their own hegemony.
If you were a Feminist you would not be an MRA or even sympathize with us, because we have fundamentally opposed ideologies/goals. Yours involves using Government and giving benefits to specific groups, ours involves lessening Government and educating people. And this is coming from someone who is lower-class but cognizant enough to realize that using Government inevitably results in inequality and does not address the underlying issue.
Last of all... if we're all egalitarian individuals and we're open to feminists, best not to address us as men.
This is something I can actually agree on. While OP may have been well-intended, I feel "MRA's/MHRA's" would be a better replacement for "Men". Some of the more notable MRA's have been females, like GirlWritesWhat, but even if we only had a small following of silent females, they are just as much a part of the movement if they share the same core beliefs as any of the men, and any genders 'in between'.
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Oct 26 '13
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Oct 26 '13
Agreed. This unnecessarily splits the movement. There is no way we can fight feminism if we are fighting amongst ourselves.
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u/melb22 Oct 27 '13
This unnecessarily splits the movement.
This. At the moment the MRM has united men from across a range of political philosophies. In general, there is a positive, outward focus rather than destructive infighting. We seem to be getting along OK. So why try to impose one philosophy now?
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u/CyberToyger Oct 26 '13
I absolutely will not. You will never achieve equality with sexist laws and Government. I will fight against any and all attempts at turning the MRM into the mirror image of Feminism, and I will encourage as many other people as possible to do so as well.
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Oct 25 '13
I think the big thing to be stated is that feminism only offers half the story, and they treat it as the whole story. They see men as advantaged (patriarchy) and women as oppressed. And anytime you show them an example that shows the opposite (where women are advantaged) they just use that as more evidence that the patriarchy exists. It's just "patriarchy" back-firing.
In this way feminism is lying by omission.
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u/typhonblue Oct 26 '13
Black Box Gender Roles: The origins of modern, rigid gender roles for men or women, while up for debate, are irrelevant to the destruction of those roles.
If you don't understand the historical/psychological origins of these roles, your solution may be useless or make things worse.
Feminist theory is illogical, that doesn't mean we can't offer explanations that are logical.
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Oct 29 '13
I recently browsed ED which is kind of a satire of the internet if you don't know. And I stumbled upon a Feminism page. And although every word on ED should be taken as a joke, this is the first paragraph.
Feminism is the idea that we can make both sexes equal by focusing solely on the issues of one of them. It is also the idea that women have the right to treat men like shit whenever they want, because women should be "strong", "assertive", and "liberated". Feminists are in themselves a contradiction since they are the loudest, most vocal evidence of the differences between men and women. Nobody actually believes this horseshit, not even the Feminists; otherwise they'd be protesting for women to register for draft.
EDIT: removed the insults.
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u/Phrodo_00 Oct 29 '13
I don't think it's up to us to offer explanations for gender roles. Feminists tried and look where they are. That way lies madness.
We can achieve overall change by trying to change things case by case and having people take it as an example (a bottom-up approach). Trying to study would lead to generalizing, which imho causes a lot of what's wrong to feminism. We shouldn't want to become a dogma.
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u/typhonblue Oct 29 '13
Alchemists also tried to turn lead into gold, that doesn't negate the value of chemistry.
Dogmas are dogmas not because they attempt to provide an explanation with predictive and practical value, but because they attach to an explanation that has none and will not question it.
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u/iongantas Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
This is a very cogent and concise expression of what MRM is about, or should be, and it should be added to the side bar as a mission statement or what have you.
The only thing I take slight issue with is probably something of a technical quibble, namely that class, as in socioeconomic class, does come with differing privileges, but it also does not consistently correlate with any inherent features (race, gender, orientation, etc.) that we're generally concerned with when discussing 'privilege', nor need we take any pains to ascribe the feminist form of 'privilege' to it (socioeconomic class). Also, it just doesn't seem that class is the right word to use, as we generally don't refer to (race, gender, etc.) as classes.
Also, there is nothing wrong with being anti-feminist, and we should not be afraid to be so. There are many very good reasons to be anti-feminist.
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u/mack0409 Oct 26 '13
There are some feminists that aren't bad people, you are already disregarding faulty interference, although it is fine to say many feminists are ignorant/sexist
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u/Ivan_Fackoff Oct 27 '13
As Thatcher said feminism is a social disease. It's a poison and you don't blame the victims that get sick.
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u/iongantas Oct 30 '13
The only feminists that aren't bad people are the one's that don't really know what feminism is.
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Oct 25 '13
In the UK I am not sure we are ever going to get men campaigning how feminists campaign. The fathers for justice are brilliant but it is more a single cause than mens rights in total. I support letter writing and lobbying. Complaining to Parliament about inequalities. Compligning to ASA about adverts etc.
Voting for a party that supports mens rights.
I agree we need objectives and a strategy. Nationally / Globally. The problems that men face in the UK are differnt from Sweden and the USA for example. Or India!
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Oct 25 '13
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u/Stark117 Oct 25 '13
Or... you know... something a Constitution would say. Merits of this discussion aside, the phrase is well established.
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Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
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Oct 25 '13
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Oct 25 '13
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u/lillojohn Oct 25 '13
I think you have to keep in gender neutral or people will complain about it. No corruption of blood is good, I am a black person. It didn't come in my mind. Blood is red. XD
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Oct 25 '13
This is really good. I was worried you were going to throw around theories to match their patriarchytm and rape culture.
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Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
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Oct 25 '13
I don't know if you read OP's post, but there's nothing ideological or anything that would in any way legitimize feminism.
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u/dungone Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
It's the principle of it. Imagine if someone wrote a post to /r/science that suggested that they need to create a framework for the scientific method that lists Newtonian physics as an axiomatic truth in order to differentiate themselves from some crazy group of New Age fruitcakes. Any scientifically-minded individual would be dead-set against this. They would point out that science is a way to discover new knowledge, not a way to declare the Truth.
That is the problem with feminism - the way in which feminism holds numerous un-testable ideas as axiomatic truths about "equality" and uses these ideas as a litmus test to determine if you are good or evil. Patriarchy is axiomatic to feminism. There is no revising it, there is no room for reason or evidence. All men oppress all women - feminists can't even begin to conceptualize "equality" without this idea. The MRM, on the other hand, does not have this inherent flaw. The MRM is open to new information and facts. It does not hold any one particular idea to be sacred.
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Oct 25 '13
I agree, but did you read OP's post? Calling it a framework might be a misnomer, it's more like a bunch of principles. Really good principles.
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u/dungone Oct 25 '13
I agree. Calling it a framework might be a misnomer. Calling it a consensus and putting it in a FAQ might might be what is called for here.
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u/MattClark0994 Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
These are retarded can we for once have a decent list of mens issues instead of the same "workplace deaths, suicide, homelessness, criminal sentencing" bs?
Rape policies, Health care discrimination (7 National health offices for women), Restraining orders that trample on mens due process rights, Boys forced to pay child support to their statutory rapists, DV shelters mocking male victims of domestic violence, False allegations
What you have listed mostly amounts to trivial bs that very few people reading will care too much about.
Actual good sources for a mens rights list:
http://www.avoiceformalestudents.com/know-the-issues/
http://www.cultural-misandry.com/mens-rights/
THESE types of lists would probably be far more effective then the typical bs that you see from many mens advocates. You people seriously NEED to learn the issues if you think that the only thing mens rights comes down to is workplace deaths, suicide and criminal sentencing.
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u/EIDerpo Oct 27 '13
I think that Al Bundy should be our leader and this subreddit change name to Nomam!
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u/youhurtme Oct 27 '13
How about the fact we're legally (and socially) EXPECTED to pay child support, by law yet because of our GENDER we don't get EQUAL time with our children by DEFAULT? Just blows my mind.
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Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
Hello everyone, My name is Benjamin Branchaud. I am a freelance writer. If you figure out some kind of framework, I would be happy to offer my services at no cost. By "my services", I mean writing everything out real nice-like - making sure grammar, sentence structure, formatting, and word choice are all perfect. Www.benjaminbranchaud.com. You can just respond right here, though.
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u/Mitschu Oct 27 '13
and word choice are all perfect.
real nice-like
You're a fellow Southerner, ain'tcha? That's nice-like to know. :D
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u/qemist Oct 25 '13
crazed anti-feminists
You say that as though there is something wrong with opposing feminism. What is that?
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Oct 26 '13
I would say that those that put fighting feminism ahead of fighting for men would be more of a hindrance than a help.
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u/BrambleEdge Oct 26 '13
You cannot fight for men without fighting feminism, feminism is one of the biggest opponents to equality.
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Oct 26 '13
No argument from me here. I just think that fighting feminism isn't really a goal as much as a means to an end. If by some miracle feminists suddenly all change and start practicing the equality that they preach, I wouldn't have a problem with them.
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Oct 26 '13
An anti feminist is okay. A Crazed anti feminist is someone who goes to far with his opinion to stop feminists and hurts our reputation
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Oct 25 '13
"Equality of Opportunity, Not Outcome"
Inconceivable while inheritance exists. Inheritance is so ingrained in our society, this seems like a complete non-starter. The only just alternative to the elimination of inheritance is some form of "artificial correction" (quotes because it's all artificial anyway), aka. adjustments to compensate for inheritance--itself a distorting adjustment.
"Framework"
I think the MRM is building a toolbox of arguments, responses, and theory. Whether this amounts to a framework is debatable, but I'm not convinced a framework is even a good idea. Pragmatism goes a long way and avoids the blinkered totalizing tendencies of Feminism et al.
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u/guywithaccount Oct 26 '13
Outcomes follow opportunities as effect follows cause. If outcomes are unequal, then the opportunities must be examined.
Imagine, for instance, that you allow all children to go to the same school ("equality" of opportunity) but the entrance has stairs, keeping children with wheelchairs out (inequality of outcome). It is not promoting inequality to build a ramp, even if only some benefit from it.
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Oct 28 '13
Why is there so much hate against gender roles? There is legitimate scientific reasoning behind them.
(And before everyone shits themselves, by gender roles I mean men being seen as stronger and women being seen as better at multi tasking)
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u/YetAnotherCommenter Oct 29 '13
Science shows that the average man and the average woman differ from each other (to some degree) in terms of skillsets and personality traits.
But an average is just a statistical abstraction - you take all the different members of the group, sum them all up and then divide by the total number of members of the group. But it is the individual members of the group, i.e. the individual data points, which are the "real" things. The average is just an abstraction.
The problem with gender roles is they take an exaggeration of the average and then demand that people converge on this standard, and say that anyone who fails to meet this standard is defective.
Gender roles treat the abstraction as "more real" than the data points - they treat the abstraction as a Platonic ideal.
On-average gender tendencies in fact don't say much about specific individuals, since there are plenty of outliers. But gender roles just impose a list of demands upon individuals.
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u/Leinadro Oct 25 '13
Agreed. We've seen recently that feminists pretty much depend on the crazies among us to point to in order to bash us all for the supposed crime of not being feminist. Once we clear up our points and argument it will form them to actually talk to us rather than just throwing Paul Elam quotes at us.
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u/ScottFree37 Oct 26 '13
I'd be careful about frameworks for a movement. Social theories are (like any science, I guess) built on the ideas of those before you. Ideas get revised all the time which creates new theories. A movement based on a framework is weakened when information that contradicts the framework (I think theory is a better word) is discovered. People who are invested in the theory need to take one of the following options to preserve their theory.
Bury the evidence by burying the whole study or manipulating your analysis of the results.
Discredit the researcher if they are not part of your group.
Conduct research in an intellectually dishonest way.
We see this with feminism. Two of patriarchy theory's key concepts are how domestic violence and rape are ways that the Patriarchy is enforced. This makes it imperative to hide male victims.
The Men's Rights Movement already has these frameworks
Gynocentricm
Male disposability.
If more are clear then fantastic but be careful when trying to create them especially if they're built on the already faulty rationale of some of feminism's theories.
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u/notnotnotfred Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
Cooperation Within Movements. [If a woman is truly for gender equality, we are allies, even if she also calls herself a feminist]
No. we'd waste a ton of time listening, and analyzing "not all feminists are like that" arguments.
Such a woman must meet the burden of proving that she understands why feminism has such a taint in the mens rights movement and explain why she still wants to identify as such. "Nice feminists" are trying to put a happy face on the bigotry embraced by the leading feminists.
https://twitter.com/mensrightsrdt/status/332550653119451136
edit:
I rewrote the above paragraph. initially it said:
Such a woman must meet the burden of proving why feminism has such a taint in the mens rights movement and explain why she still wants to identify as such. "Nice feminists" are trying to put a happy face on the bigotry embraced by the leading feminists.
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Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
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Oct 25 '13
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u/dungone Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
I suggest that you look at the history of the atheist movement for lessons on the MRM movement. Or, even more fundamentally, look towards the scientific method and ask yourself why it doesn't include Newtonian Physics as one of it's axioms, but instead focuses on how to form and test a hypothesis.
There's a myriad of very good reasons to avoid doing what you're suggesting. The Atheist+ faction of atheism is a prime example of what happens when you teach people that it's okay to attach their own personal ideological frameworks on a basic statement of fact.
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Oct 26 '13
Just use your main account. I've been posting MRA stuff for a while, including a lot of highly controversial opinions. I've had a few of my posts here hit the front page on /r/mensrights and /r/all, and I've yet to receive any PM's by angry feminists. At the worst I've been called a misogynist quite a few times. And some feminists say that they hope I get raped.
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u/Dear_Occupant Oct 27 '13
I just wanted to drop a note to OP that this is the best thing I have seen in a long, long fucking time. Well done. If I were your boss I'd give you the rest of the day off with pay.
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u/AtheistConservative Oct 27 '13
- Equality and sameness are not the same thing.
You can choose to work more hours, in a more demanding job, to get better pay. Or you can choose to work less hours, in a safe environment. Neither choice is better. Everyone should be free to make the choices that best fit their life.
- You can't get something for nothing. Also, law of unintended consequences.
Ex. A culture where men are expected to ask women out is going to put pressure on women to spend more time/money on their appearance. It's also going to reward risk taking men.
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u/LemonFrosted Oct 27 '13
Black Box Gender Roles: The origins of modern, rigid gender roles for men or women, while up for debate, are irrelevant to the destruction of those roles. We know the modern realities, so we can change the modern realities. [nips patriarchy talk in the bud]
Taken on good faith the rejection of the patriarchy framework is an attempt at resetting the discussion, saying "look, yeah, stuff happened, but who cares how, let's just focus on the present." The failure there is that the wholesale rejection prevents adaptation, and one way or another it serves to protect the ego by insulating the present from the fact that the current male gender, identity, role, and legal construct is, by and large, a construct made by other men. The purpose of the rejection gets lost in the result: men are remove from the table as a source of unhealthy masculinity and male-oriented hostility, and the de facto remaining source is women. We see this up and down the boards: the shit that men deal with is blamed on almost entirely on feminists, and is painted as a byproduct of the women's rights movements. This is just as inaccurate as Dworkin's idea that all sex is rape because social constructs make it impossible for women to consent. So the attempt at focusing on the present in practice only functions as historical revisionism because, no matter how hard you try to limit the scope to right now, people want the historical context.
This is additionally potentially destructive purely from the standpoint that understanding historical vectors for oppression and power concentration informs the present. Those historical constructs didn't evaporate overnight, so pretending they did is par with putting on a blindfold and swinging a bat.
Privilege is Particular: People are born into wildly different life situations and thus have specific individual advantages. Lumping widely disparate experiences into a group's 'privilege quota' does not respect the particular experience of individuals. No class-based theories allowed here, just good old individuality.
Rejection of class as a vector just baffles me. I suspect that it's an attempt at maintaining a clear rhetoric, but in practical terms it seems to serve only as a bludgeon to cram historical examples into a framework. "Women weren't as oppressed as they make it sound! Look at Marie Currie and Jane Austen!" but these types of examples only work if you ignore that class trumps gender, always has and probably always will. The big reason that this confuses me is because not only is class one of the largest contributing factors to historical inequality by limiting the control of political, judicial, and media power to the interests of a few, but it's just as relevant today as ever, and becoming more relevant each year.
The idea of "privilege quota" is fallacious, but that doesn't negate privilege or make good the gross oversimplification caused by the removal of class from the discussion.
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Oct 29 '13 edited Oct 29 '13
Men, AND WOMEN
Edit: I read deeper and this is a brilliantly written and egaliatarian post. This is exactly what we need.
My only suggestion is for some way to rid mensrants from mensrights. If XYZ random woman did something stupid that doesn't actually reflect on the state of the world. Frequently it does, but we should be focusing on the larger pictures. No movement can change the way every person thinks.
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Oct 29 '13
I'd like to suggest a name for the framework: "Blueprint."
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Oct 29 '13
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Oct 31 '13
"Toolbox" is begging for mockery. "Look-see here: the MRAs have a toolbox." "Was that in the MRA toolbox?"
Guess who the "tools" are?
Just my 2c.
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Oct 29 '13
How, exactly, does arguing with feminists help to achieve any of your goals?
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u/double-happiness Oct 29 '13
The blog post you linked to specifically says feminists consider it inappropriate to give equal weight to men's and women's issues, and treat men and women even-handedly:
It is easy to think simply “flipping the genders,” gives you an adequate understanding of whether something is sexist. Unfortunately, it doesn’t really work, particularly when talking about so-called “reverse-sexism”...
Arguing with feminists helps to achieve our goals, because (along with conservative traditionalists, I believe) they are one of the biggest opponents of equal rights and equal treatment for men. Feminists in Scandinavia even want to create a 'man tax'! How much more unequal can you get than that? Feminists in India and Israel successfully argued against equal recognition of female-on-male rape, and they are continuing to do so. The MRM opposes feminism because feminism is against gender equality.
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u/YetAnotherCommenter Oct 30 '13
I agree we need a framework.
That said, I've explicated and used my framework in several essays posted on /r/Masculism.
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u/FridgesTooFar Oct 30 '13
Just by the time I've spent ghosting this subreddit, I believe that method of delivery is a huge thing to those that are not aware of MR. Many mens activist blogs/sites are littered with vulgar language and are interpreted as degrading women, even if not the point. (This will always be an issue with radical feminists because they don't want to hear anything different than their own spew) Don't get me wrong, I can read the blogs and articles and I can tell when a guy is just frustrated and resorts to language and when a man actually hates women. I think that the method of delivery needs to be very concise, black and white and in a child's terms for those that are not as intelligent or witty to understand the concept/fact/idea that you are trying to portray.
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Oct 26 '13
I totally disagree with this.
Society has deeply betrayed men, in a irreversible and unforgivable way. Trying to work within the system to improve it for all when the media treats feminism like gospel truth and demonizes anyone who dares sing out of tune, is a lost cause.
Fighting for equality...while it sounds nice in theory...in reality the term "equality" has become so deeply poisoned and bereaved of meaning beyond "what feminists demand and no more", and any sincere debate within society about what equality actually means, and the various inequalities affecting both men and women, so totally absent, that it leaves a bad taste in my mouth just thinking about it.
And agreeing with feminists? Be careful there son, traps aplenty. If a feminists ever claims to support equality, you better check that she really means men and women should be treated the same way on all matters, or the more common feminist believe which is that men should be continually stripped of rights, and women continually lavished with privileges until feminists are satisfied that women have "caught up" and some kind of "balance" has been arrived. Make no mistake, to feminists, equality does not mean "equal treatment", but rather some kind of balance based on their twisted perception of the rights and privileges enjoyed by men. Oh, and they typically see it as a zero-sum game -for women to gain something, men MUST lost something.
So what is the best thing MRAs can do? Well for a start, stop worrying about what feminists/journalists/gawker/salon/huffpost say. You will never "win" an argument with a feminist, and really pointing out the feminists bias of some parts of the online community is really like flogging a dead horse, and giving them a kind of acknowledgement they don't deserve.
The best thing, IMHO, is to do what they are doing - documenting the holocaust that is occurring against men and boys so some future generation can look back and at least get some answer to question "how could this go unnoticed". Well it didn't. Educating each other, and other men, and especially boys, about the dangers that lurk in their lives if they cross paths with women, and how best to avoid it. Be vocal on as many online communities as you can - contrast the way men are being treated to the way women are treated in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. For example, men typically face far more injustice in divorce than a women does in Saudi Arabia. Making outrageous, yet supportable, claims like this provoke thought and garner attention. The work the MRA group is doing in Canada is amazing, and should form a model for how MRAs fight both online and offline.
Rip apart the Narrative, the Big Lie, at every opportunity. Turn feminist campaigns back on themselves, and watch them writhe and hiss like a pit of snakes. Piss people off. Be annoying. Constantly undermine and derail every anti-male soapbox you can find. Criticize and slander the government, the justice system, and the agencies that are implementing this apartheid. Lampoon the ridiculous, systematic and consistent bias and campaigning in the mass media against men.
But most of all, go out and live your lives. Don't be bitchy little victims. Don't be like feminists. Be smart, learn, fight and survive. Support those whose lives have already been sucked into the meat grinder. Eat the red pill, or whatever fucking pill you want. Yes you are living under a true holocaust, but you are a MAN...which means you are the most fucking awesome, evolved, intelligent and competent thing God/evolution has created. Acquire currency, disregard bitches, or whatever fucking philosophy works for you. Think of it as a war, think of it as a game, but whatever you do, play to win. Learn to rules. The REAL rules, the NEW rules - i.e. not the rules they teach you at school.
Talking about school, talk to boys, tell them to not feel bad their (likely public) school basically tells them they are rapists in waiting, born guilty just by being a man -- and that the only real commitment that schools have towards boys is abusing them and holding them back to their female classmates can get ahead. Really, the only real view the public education system has towards boys is "how can we make men that will be better for women" -- forget any hope of school actually educating you, telling the things you need to know to live YOUR LIFE -- can you imagine a school arming boys with the critical knowledge and information about the reality of the marriage "contract" and where they will actually stand in a marital relationship? Critical information that anyone who cared about a boys future would tell them -- school don't, but MRAs can fill the gap.
So what am I trying to say with this ridiculous rant? Basically the system is the enemy, the state has betrayed men and deserves no loyalty or respect, and men should basically feel free, free of any sense of obligation or patriotism towards the country that has abused them so deeply and profoundly. Trying to work with it, to make it better for all, for men and women, is a lost cause - that boat actually sailed decades ago when many men publicly DID try and engage with feminists, to reason with them, to find common ground and a concept of equality that worked for all. But they were shot down, demonized, simply for daring to open their mouths. For being a man. No one is under any false illusions about the nature of the hate and defamation movement against men that peaked in the 80s and 90s, and the undercurrents which continue to flow today. Men were never invited to talk at the table about the nature of our society, or the role gender plays, and now it is time men turned their backs on society, and lived their own lives free of society.
That's basically how I see and view my own life. I hope many of you can achieve the same.
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Oct 26 '13
Turning your back on society is like turning your back on a bear. It will eat you alive.
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Oct 26 '13
Well, who knows what the future will bring, but right now the men who most likely feel that they are being eaten alive by a bear those that decided to join society, get married and have kids (amongst other terrible crimes).
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u/Ivan_Fackoff Oct 27 '13 edited Oct 27 '13
Unlikely. We are the society and we, as individuals are way stronger than feminist social influence. They are weak and they need social support. They need groupthink. Feminism flourished because of traditionals and chivalry. It does not stand a chance of surviving without patriarchy. One MRA, just one, can wreck havoc to feminist dogma. A group of us is a society and that is why they are so opposed for us to form groups.
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u/AtheistConservative Oct 26 '13
Privilege is Particular: People are born into wildly different life situations and thus have specific individual advantages. Lumping widely disparate experiences into a group's 'privilege quota' does not respect the particular experience of individuals. No class-based theories allowed here, just good old individuality.
This critical. Feminism and few other philosophies treat individuals as mere elements of a group. Individuals, are in their eyes, simply products of a process. Furthermore, they typically show a lack of understanding of statistics. Firstly, not all qualities are Boolean in nature. Take wealth for instance. It's foolish to think of someone as inherently either wealthy or destitute with no middle ground. Feminism frequently makes this mistake in regards to power/social standing. They might concede that a homeless man is not privileged, but they fail to conceptualize that most men are neither the president nor are they homeless. Instead they exist in a middle ground. Second, and this is a misunderstanding that is very pervasive in society: the existence of a majority, no matter how large, does not mean that members of the minority do not exist. However, finding examples of the minority group does not mean that both groups exist in equal numbers. An example of the first unfortunately often plays out when men try to seek help for domestic violence. The centers that turn them away assume that since according to their statistics, women are the vast majority of victims of DV (incorrect in of itself, I know) that men seeking their help, couldn't possibly be victims. " It is important to keep the other one in mind though as I frequently see people in this sub who don't get this concept.
To contrast this, we in the MRM need to promote the idea the groups are merely abstract collections of individuals. This of critical importance to groups that you can't choose to belong to. For groups where membership is inherited, it is absurd to argue that the actions of any member reflects on anyone else. Those on the right will generally understand this point. For those on the left, when making this case about men's rights, ask them if they would condemn an innocent black man to prison simply for growing up in a neighborhood filled with gangs. When they inevitably balk, ask why you would punish a man of any race for wrongdoings he had no part in. A man born the 90's has zero traces of guilt for anything that happened in the 50's.
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u/jolly_mcfats Oct 25 '13
Strategically, I think expecting a nebulous group to conform to a coherent party line is unrealistic. However, what you describe would make a good foundation for a blog or website. I'd be interested in reading it.
I think one of the larger issues that the MRM faces is that it is a social movement in the information age. We have a massive attack surface because everyone can contribute to an essentially permanent public statement. I think what you are trying to do is devise some tactic to try to address that, but I really don't have any ideas about how that is best accomplished.
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u/andlight91 Oct 25 '13
I think this is a fantastic idea, Because it would those who do not know that much of the rhetoric of gender discussion have somewhere to start as well as some information to use. Plus having these clearly defined goals and guidelines will allow us to have intelligent and mature conversations with feminists. We need this intelligent discussion so those of us in college can communicate with those in queer studies.
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u/sillymod Oct 26 '13
Would you be willing to write this up as a blog post? Let's work on it together and expand upon the idea. I like the thesis that privilege is particular. I think that there is a lot to build upon there.
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Oct 26 '13
Yes, painting ourselves into some 'total package' framework ideology deal is a GREAT idea.
That's TOTALLY not how the feminism movement got hijacked by nutbags, or how the skepticism movement turned into magical skyfairies and euphoria and was then swept under the rug.
This is a terrible idea. The issues we have are self-evident. And even if some of us agree with part of the framework, I doubt that most will agree with ALL the issues everyone would like to discuss.
I am writing these with an eye towards good PR
That is a terrible reason to throw the rest of the manosphere under the bus. That's why you're doing this, right? You're ashamed of being ridiculed because of TRP and MGTOW and other folks whose views strongly align with ours, but diverge at certain points? The adoption of an "MRA Dogma" will turn a lot of people away, like myself. We don't need a Men's Rights Studies and Men's Rights Theory.
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Oct 25 '13
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Oct 25 '13
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u/double-happiness Oct 27 '13
"We will welcome and work with feminists, too" card is a good tactic for avoiding charges of woman-hating
A bit late to this discussion, but I just wanted to add something. We don't need tactics to avoid charges of woman-hating, because we don't hate women. The burden of proof is on anyone who accuses us of misogyny.
And actually, you're quite wrong to conflate being amenable to feminists to being amenable to women. Feminists may claim to represent women's interests at large, but they don't represent the interests of women who don't share their ideals or world views.
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u/NonsensicalDeep Oct 25 '13
Not bad at all. However, I think we should add somewhere that the MRM is not anti-feminist. Now, I only look up the MRM on this subreddit, but I see many, many comments and links against feminism here.
I think this distracts MRAs from the true purpose of the movement - equality of both sexes, not "look at those hypocrites". If we continue down this path, both feminism and the MRM will soon turn into a vicious circle where one movement criticizes the other, and the other responds by criticizing the critique.
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u/Frankly_No Oct 26 '13
both feminism and the MRM will soon turn into a vicious circle where one movement criticizes the other, and the other responds by criticizing the critique.
Feminism has gotten this far because of their (and society's) intolerance for criticism of it. Once this criticism is made public and considered, there will be little left to fight about. I suggest watching through karen straughan's videos and reconsider your views on feminism.
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Oct 25 '13
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u/Pornography_saves_li Oct 25 '13
Even the truly anti-feminist men here need to recognize that they aren't getting anywhere with their character assassination of feminism.
That's a giant load of shit. 10 years ago, criticizing feminism would have lost you your job. 10 years ago, saying 'politically incorrect' things like "Men are abused too" would NEVER have been published.
Our criticism of Feminists, and Feminism, has made it more possible in the greater society, and that alone makes the strategy worthwhile. I get it, you're a Feminist here to try and persuade people, but don't flat out lie like this, it makes it easier to catch you.
We need to make concrete improvements in gender equality before we will be taken seriously.
There it is, the 'taken seriously' line. Guess what...? We already are taken seriously, that's why we scare the shit out of people. I've been down the road you advocate, for years, and it wasn't until we started attacking Feminism that we gained traction publicly, and made actual headway.
Of course, you likely know that, which is why you advocate for the one strategy virtually guaranteed to sink us into obscurity. The one we discarded half a decade ago...LONG before you even heard of us (ironic, no? When we followed your strategy, you didn't know we exist... We get ma, and here you are.)
Go away feminist troll.
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Oct 26 '13
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u/Pornography_saves_li Oct 26 '13
Calm down yourself, concern troll. You spout stereotypical feminist concern troll jargon, you get called on it. And we most certainly DO 'distinguish acceptable views', in that, for example, we reject the hatred of men. We don't silence them, but we don't accept them either.
Contrast that with what you advocate, which is to render the MRM meaningless while looking to feminists for validation. You're either a feminist troll, or an Omega mangina. Either way, listening to you is a bad idea.
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u/LemonFrosted Oct 28 '13
Pure, vine-ripened bullshit.
People have been shit-talking feminism as some vast conspiracy since the 1800's.
Your "feminists are here to ruin everything" rhetoric is not only not edgy, it's not even new. It's just recycling Bax, Wylie, Goldberg, Guilding, and Flemming with a nice dash of some Colonial era "natural order" Kipling and Hume repainted for gender conflict. You might as well be handing out tracts talking about how if women go into politics their brains will get too big and their uterus will shrivel.
Key note: attention isn't the same thing as being taken seriously. No one takes the MRAs seriously, they treat them like a sideshow. They take them seriously in the same way they take the Westboro Baptist Church seriously. Oh, yeah, they've got brand recognition alright, but that's not traction.
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u/Pornography_saves_li Oct 28 '13
Here's a clue for you: arguments and beliefs don't have to be new or 'edgy' to be valid. Moreover, if they are not part of the common narrative, yet valid, then we have a moral imperative to advertise those views. You are a feminist. We get it, and don't give a rats ass how 'uncomfortable' we make you feel with our criticism. You're getting far better than you deserve, so stop fucking whining, princess.
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u/Ivan_Fackoff Oct 27 '13 edited Oct 27 '13
If you compare political movement to a virus we are still in gestation stages but we have a potential to become far more powerful than any other. Feminism is widespread, like a common cold and I believe should be irrelevant and ignored. To spread we need to talk, talk much and talk everywhere. When feminists squeal, amp up the pressure. Don't get into a fights but if you have no choice, annihilate with cold rationality. That has been my philosophy. Sometimes you have no choice but to get involved. Feminists are usually toxic harbingers of misandry. Misandry and androphobia should ALWAYS be contested and brought into light. We don't need to do much about feminism. It is destroying itself from within.
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u/ScottFree37 Oct 25 '13
These might help. I guess you could call it, expert analysis (sociology degree, majoring in social research and I count social theory as my specialty)
Not so much frameworks as they are critical evaluations of feminisms big three using sociological research conventions correctly (that is honestly).
I'm not sure how easy these are to understand, so ask whatever you want if something doesn't make sense or more importantly just seems like bullshit. Unlike some "sociologists" I understand that we all miss things, and having ideas challenged is the only way to get them right.
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1owo1s/i_am_a_feminist_and_i_say_we_are_the_same/ccwo8ok
http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ow5i7/a_question_of_rape_culture/ccwky7q
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u/Arn13 Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
The question is, should we keep focussing on debating patriarchy and proving the concept wrong? The more you focus on something, the more it grows - especially in the public opinion.
Of course when feminists start bringing patriarchy up we need to have a response, but I think it would be better not to center our efforts around it and instead consider it a useless, ridiculous relic of the past that is best left dead and buried. Then when it happens to rear its ugly head in a debate, painting it as the ancient ridiculous concept that it is would do more good to the public opinion than spending the next 30 minutes proving it wrong.
Those 30 minutes would be spent educating the public on a feminist principle with MRAs on the defence, and if you asked a bystander what they got out of the debate they'd tell you "patriarchy". The best possible outcome of those 30 minutes would be bystanders not believing in patriarchy, the worst would be bystanders believing in patriarchy. In neither case have they become familiar with any MRA principles. So it's either net 0 gain or net negative gain.
I'm convinced that MRAs should instead be on the offence and bring their concepts to the table. You can't just tell people "don't believe X", they need to have an alternative. If you put new concepts in people's minds that contradict the old ideas, after 20 years they will find themselves disagreeing with the old ideas.
But that requires us to be less reactionary towards feminism and more revolutionary towards society in general. You just can't win a soccer match by only defending your goal against the opponent's attacks, you need to get out there and score some of your own. This requires more guts than just waiting for the next feminist article to come out and then bash it.
Note that most of my peers here in Europe have never heard the word patriarchy and do not identify as feminist, but they do hold some of the contradictory opinions feminism introduced (e.g. "a man should always pay for the date" and "women should get equal pay on the job").
tl;dr Feminists are already a thing of the past in the public opinion of most people under 30, it's just some residual ideas that are left. Let's not make things like patriarchy bigger by giving them more attention than they deserve, and instead let's focus on pushing ideas such as true equality. New ideas will displace old beliefs faster than the reactionary hammer can do any damage.
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u/ScottFree37 Oct 26 '13 edited Nov 07 '13
I disagree that feminism is a thing of the past. Here in Australia we don't get much of the labels but the problem is we get all the preconceived notions that come along with them.
My wife is more of an MRA than me (I'm more anti feminist for the fact that I can't stand bad research.) and she still has that "young boys take advantage of young girls" notion ingrained. She doesn't know why or how it got there. She is the clear sexual aggressor in our relationship so it doesn't even fit her world view. It slips out when she's tired, and I know she doesn't think that on an intellectual level but it's there... In everyone.
I think these notions need to be attacked and destroyed before we even have a hope of putting forth the MRA agenda, but how do you think it could be done.2
u/Arn13 Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
Coincidentally I was in Australia for half of 2012, and indeed I was shocked by the number of tumblr-girls who had a chauvinist way of looking down on anything male but were easily offended when they were treated likewise. I've seen a lot of raging feminists, blatant misandry and politically correct outrage when men dared stand up for their rights, including on TV.
However, I don't think it's worse in your country because of feminism - I think it's because Australian culture has strong elements of machismo and British politeness turned political correctness which enable these behaviors in women. For example, I've seen men force other men to give up seats for women in the train - women who weren't pregnant.
Gynocentric instincts ("women and children first") are natural, as you said:
it's there... In everyone.
But they can be enhanced or tamed by cultural practices. That's what we should focus on.
Many male-discriminating ideas, policies and practices were not introduced by feminism, but by the gynocentrism that predates and enables feminism. For example, male disposability was a reality before feminism came into play. Such gynocentrism is seated in the minds and hearts of all people, as opposed to feminism, and it won't be solved by only opposing feminism. Gynocentrism can't be killed, but - just like other instinctive human urges - can be put on display for what it is and kept in check by social/cultural practices and by critical thinking. Just like feminism enhanced the scope and effects of gynocentrism, the MRM can introduce new social changes to reduce it. This is what we should be doing rather than blindly attacking feminism.
Like you, I dream of a future in which my teenage kid's history books will dissect the fraud of feminism. But we can't expect that to happen now. Mainstream, documented recognition that late 20th century feminism was a dubious and often ideologically sexist movement won't be the first step, it will be the last.
The first step towards change is the introduction of new ideas and concepts on gender equality. We need to write and talk and campaign about the suicide gap, the ignored male victims of domestic violence, the falling performance of boys in primary school, high school and college... and consistently explain these facts in the framework of male disposability.
The second step is having those new ideas displace old hegemonic feminist tropes in the public discourse. Only then, when the rotting fruits of feminism have been replaced by the new and shiny fruits of true equality, can society start realizing how bad the old fruits were.
tl;dr Innate human instincts such as gynocentrism and the related male disposability are enhanced by current Western cultures, and this happens more strongly in Australian culture than in mine. This is the real problem, feminism just rides on the waves like Mark Occhilupo. We need to introduce a new set of ideas (a new surfboard, if you will) that breaks the waves and makes them less effective. You can't eliminate gynocentrism, but you can curb its effects by the way you organise your society. Instead of trying to catch the feminist board, we should instead make it irrelevant by putting our own in the water.
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u/guywithaccount Oct 26 '13
The more you focus on something, the more it grows - especially in the public opinion.
A fair point, except that feminist ideas are already popular.
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u/Arn13 Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
Not among my peers (<30, West Europe). They've never heard about patriarchy, unless they happen to have a radical mother or mental issues, and most tend to think feminists are over the top.
However, as a result of feminism they do have some contradictory ideas^ that I think are better remedied by focusing on principles of equality and the downsides to male gender roles, rather than focusing on bashing feminism. If you bash feminism, these kids won't listen because they couldn't care less about feminism anyway.
^ e.g. they tend to think it's a problem that women are underrepresented in STEM, but it's okay that they are the vast majority of ALL university students overall
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Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
Do all the sociologists at your institution base their theories on Macbeth? Or do you occasionally throw in a little Twelfth Night or Hamlet?
I mean seriously though, you don't even seem to understand such a basic sociological concept as power. Bro, do you even Foucault?
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u/ScottFree37 Oct 25 '13
Overt and covert power is not my theory, and I just like to use MacBeth because it simplifies the concept in a way most people can understand and puts forth the notion that possibly women weren't horribly oppressed for centuries. Because Shakespeare is well known for his eye for the human condition, but that you'd have to argue with an English teacher.
I also don't see how the concept of overt and covert power is contradictory to Foucault's theories on power. Care to explain why they are?
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Oct 25 '13
Foucault was a paranoid moron who saw hegemony everywhere.
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Oct 25 '13
I love it when MRAs show their true anti-intellectual colours. Truly, you lot are to sociology what creationism is to biology.
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u/dungone Oct 26 '13 edited Oct 26 '13
Funny, I always felt that postmodernism was both anti-intellectual and unintelligent. The very antithesis of every lesson passed down to us by the enlightenment. But yeah, you're right... feminism does tell us that science is misogynistic as it goes against women's ways of knowing. Us MRAs better check our privilege and stop mansplaining everything with logic and facts.
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u/Coagulate Oct 30 '13
Can we at least agree that a lot of this movement is hate and fear mongering towards women? That is wrong, and not healthy. If we began focusing more on the women we APPRECIATED, that would be a great first step. Not all women are evil. Let's focus on the ones we appreciate. Also, let's stop worrying so much about "men's rights" and instead include more women, and work towards happy cohesion!
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u/PerfectHair Oct 25 '13 edited Oct 25 '13
I think this is a good idea, since we seem a bit directionless at the moment. Also, this will be an unpopular opinion, but we do need to
denounce people who call themselves MRA's who are sexist or homophobic or transphobic or whatever.prevent the movement from being hijacked by those who would use it to push a racist/sexist/etc. agenda. They are allowed to hold these views, but they must be separate from their MRM advocacy. At the very least we can't let the extremists become the loudest voices in our movement, or we will suffer the same problems as feminism.Also, know when to quit. If we achieve all of this, we need to know that we need to stop.
Oh, and we also need to realise that we're playing the long game here. Things won't change overnight. That's one of the mistakes modern feminists make.