Who are The "Men's Rights Activists"?

Today I saw a BBC article titled Who are the men's rights activists?. It contains interviews with several MRAs on the so-easily-refutable-it's-dull pressures they perceive themselves to be facing thanks to the lady-fascist gynotopia they reckon they're living in, including 'men always lose custody of their children' (no they don't), 'men are more likely to be victims of violence' (at the hands of other men), and 'men are more likely to be conscripted into the military' (by other men because women are perceived as too weak).

Special mention has to go to the seemingly indefatigable Tom Martin, the man who spectacularly failed to sue the LSE for 'sexism against men' earlier this year. Tom's got some fairly interesting ideas when it comes to discrimination against men, including 'hard chairs are a feminazi conspiracy against men', 'Saudi Arabian men are victims of the lazy whore Saudi women' and 'women who don't know who their baby's father is should be sent to the gulag'. Believe me, I'm missing a lot of his other views out there, including 'female penguins are whores' (see second link). So, what utterly traumatic event happened to young Tom to make the scales fall from his eyes to realise we're living in a whoriarchy (his word!)? Well, brace yourselves:

"He says he was radicalized while working as a barman in a club in Soho. "I could see that male customers were being abused at every point," he says."

"Men had to queue and often pay while women got in free. They were goaded by bouncers to leave, while women were treated with respect. But worst of all, he believes they were used by women to buy drinks."

THE HORROR. I mean... I.... the POOR MAN. Where will the scandal of women being allowed into clubs free because they're seen as bait to entice men in end? If you thought it was with the poor lads offering to buy women drinks in order to get into their knickers, you're sadly mistaken. As Tom continues:

"Since the pill, women have been told they can and should be having orgasms. And because they haven't been, they categorize that as men's fault."

He concludes that "it's women's job to make themselves sexually happy, it's not a man's burden.
Those bitches, wanting sex to be enjoyable for all concerned. Those evil, evil harpies. Now, far be it from me to pass comment on someone's sexual prowess (but I'm totally going to), it's not a conspiracy against Tom that he apparently can't make women come. Most people, if they realized their partners weren't enjoying themselves, would talk to their partner and discuss what their needs were. See if there was any way they could improve. Work on their techniques. Maybe get a new partner who they were more compatible with. But no, Tom just (apparently) screams 'FUCK YOU, YOU WHORE. THIS IS YOUR PROBLEM, NOT MINE', and that's women's fault. Somehow.

Now, it should be pretty self-evident that Tom Martin and those of his ilk are boring, self-entitled whiny nitwits who couldn't argue their way out of a paper bag filled with scissors. But do I think that's true for all of those campaigning for men's issues? Of course not. Big props go to the seemingly only sensible man mentioned in the BBC's article, An Broc, who is founding a men's refuge in Ohio. That's great. Men can be victims of intimate partner violence and they shouldn't be afraid to speak up and get help. The fact that this is apparently the first men-only shelter in the US is a scandal (as far as I'm aware, usual procedure is for women's shelters to provide a man with a hotel room, which gives him an escape but doesn't get him access to other services provided by the refuge).

But people like Broc are a tiny, tiny minority in the festering bog of misogyny known as the 'Men's Rights Movement'. This is literally the first positive thing I can think of someone described as a 'men's rights activist' having done. Because all I have ever seen of them is a group of laughable bigots who think that not holding women as property is the biggest affront to human rights since WWII. A check on Manboobz.com provides daily updates of the streams of hatred towards women - often so extreme that the SPLC have named the MRM as a hate group.

The MRM as a whole manages to hold extremely hypocritical, disgusting views on women - we're apparently simultaneously entitled cunts who steal men's jobs and should be kept in the kitchen or the bedroom, and lazy bitches who are living off our partner's dime while he breaks his back at work. Sluts who are ruined after our first encounter with cock and so deserve to be raped, or teases who torture men by not sleeping with them and deserve to be raped. Women are demons who will 'murder' or 'kidnap' men's children and not give them any custodial access but also spermjacking hags who trick men into impregnating them and then live the high life by 'enslaving' the men into child support payments. Women secretly control the world and all the governments in it, all while being ridiculous, hysterical, over-emotional vagina-babies who are too stupid to breathe on their own, for the most part.

I wish I was making this up. It's not even the half of it. I haven't even begun to mention 'all rape claims are false/women can have men locked up FOREVER on a whim' and shit like that. This is what they think 'men's rights' are. A gender war for the right to get their dick wet on demand. And the fact that the BBC is reporting them - a fucking hate movement - with any sense of legitimacy is fucking disgusting.

When your fight for 'rights' boils down to 'WHY CAN'T I STARE AT WOMEN IN THE STREET WITHOUT BEING CALLED A CREEP?!? THAT'S SHAMING LANGUAGE, YOU MISANDRISTS', frankly you deserve to be laughed at. When it's 'PUBESCENT GIRLS DEVELOP EARLY JUST TO ENTRAP MEN INTO SLEEPING WITH THEM AND SEND THEM TO JAIL', you probably should be in jail. When your 'moderate' sites advocate that 'female babies should have their voiceboxes torn out at birth'...well, fuck. But no one in the MRM bats an eyelid. They all goad each other on instead. If a feminist blogger came out with this, they'd be condemned straight away - by other feminists.

I'm all for tackling some of the shit that hits men. Western cultural notions of masculinity, like femininity, are pure bullshit. We should be tackling the endemic problem of prison rape. We should be offering help to men in danger of suicide. We should be fighting for shared parenting to become the norm. But it's not feminism or women's rights that's causing these things, it's the bullshit 'GRR I AM A MAN I DO MAN THINGS, MAN NO HAVE FEELINGS LIKE STUPID BITCH WOMEN' trope that lies at the fucking heart of the dolts in the MRM.


TL;DR - until your movement actually pretends to give a shit about men instead of just whining on the internet about how rights should be taken away from women, you're not 'men's rights activists', you're whiny, nasty misogynists.

All links in this post, except the SPLC one, are from Manboobz.com, a site dedicated to mocking misogyny. There are two reasons for this: 1) it's a great site, with a brilliant set of well-informed and funny commenters, who are well worth reading, 2) I don't particularly want the scum I quote to find this blog and put me on the feminist equivalent of Redwatch (it does exist, it's called Register-Her and is dedicated to providing details of women they don't like to be used for harassment/stalking purposes). The links I have provided contain links to the original sources.

MRAs Send Death Treats to Feminist

Over the last year, the online men's rights community has made life difficult for a number of feminists. Numerous women have had their personal information made public, received rape and death threats, and even lost their jobs.

Now the misogyny call-out blog Manboobz is reporting that yet another feminist, a Canadian blogger, has gone into hiding after being doxxed and bombarded with death threats.


The men's rights group Equality Canada has been busy sponsoring lectures and talks at the University of Toronto over the past year. The talks have drawn intense protests from feminist activists, who have attempted to blockade entrances, gotten arrested, and pulled fire alarms to disrupt the events.

The central goal of the men's rights movement is, in its own way, to promote gender equality. But the group views feminism as the dominant political force bringing down men, and so many feminists find the agenda harmful because of the hate speech it breeds.

Earlier this month, one feminist speaking outside the latest campus MRA event attempted to address a group of attendees by reading from a list of things that both MRAs and feminists want. The list was intended to show MRAs how similar their goals were to feminists'.

However, perhaps because her group had protested loudly throughout the event and pulled a fire alarm to disrupt it, when the protester began reading her list, she was repeatedly interrupted and drowned out by her audience. The scene was caught on YouTube and uploaded, where it spread widely among MRAs. Many touted the woman's fiery reaction as evidence of the evils of feminism itself:

MRAs on sites like YouTube, Reddit, A Voice for Men, and Crimes Against Fathers went into action, repeatedly declaring her "evil." A Voice for Men blogger Dan Perrins dubbed her the “Little Red Frothing Fornication Mouth," snarking about her "sheer tits in your face gumption."

The Amazing Atheist, a vlogger who notably denounced the first of Anita Sarkeesian's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, called her group of feminists "a bunch of mindless, cackling cunts" in a YouTube video that has received over 200,000 views and 15,000 thumbs up.

But they didn't stop there. The blogger told Manboobz' David Futrelle that she had been receiving nonstop harassment ever since the video went up two weeks ago:

Because I had the audacity to tell a dude to STFU, an MRA no less, I have since been the target of not only just online misogyny (as if that’s a surprise) but cyberstalking, rape and death threats. …

I dunno how many haters I have, and I don’t know where they are. I can’t be sure at any given second, if I’m ever outside my house … if anyone is going to recognize me and try to hurt me.

The men's rights community had turned her into a meme, she said, pointing to crude image macros comparing her to Pennywise the clown, and other pictures that aired her address and phone number alongside comments she'd made on her various accounts.


A Voice for Men issued a request for commenters not to post her personal information, while at the same time calling her "obnoxious" and "moronic." However, comments with her personal information remain on public display, and several MRA forums contain threads in which her real name is discussed openly.

On Tumblr, condemnation was swift. Playwright Sabina England called it "a serious reminder that women are not safe anywhere."

"It blows my mind how people are accusing the red-haired feminist activist of 'bullying tactics' and opposing 'freedom of speech' and 'silencing' the MRAs," wrote theaetherealmeadow. "She had her personal information plastered all over the Internet, and is having people stalking her, and has endured countless death and rape threats. ... Now THAT is bullying and silencing tactics."

GirlWritesWhat "Systematically Dismantles" Feminist Theory - NY State Libertarian Convention

Mostly by giving her biased opinions, taking far longer than necessary to get the point (as she always does), and not knowing what she's talking about. Emotionally-charged rhetoric sure looks good, and there's even talk in the comments of a "Feminazi Regime" (lol). Charged rhetoric is definitely effective when it panders to a base that already agrees with your (opinions and theories), especially when you present them as factually contrasting to opposing theories.

Amirite?

I'll let you all decide for yourselves:

http://reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1dbc18/girlwriteswhat_systematically_dismantles_feminist/

Here's a good analysis of her speech from /r/againstmensrights (which isn't very inclusive - but they often get it right):

...this:

"One need only watch the Life of Julia, Obama's most naked and blatant appeal to the natures of women--especially young, single women. Julia has no father, and no husband--she needs neither of those things. The state will take care of her needs from birth to death, and will support her when she decides to have a child of her own--a child that, in Obama's narrative, is also fatherless. The man in Julia's life, the one who will perform the roles--provision, protection, support--historically performed by husbands, brothers and fathers, is more powerful than any man she'll ever meet, more able to provide for her, and one she need make no compromises with."

What is "Life of Julia" (WARNING, this video is absurdly offensive)? It's a youtube video about a fictional person named Julia, that because of "liberalism," fails schools, gets abortions, becomes a radical feminist, gets a women's studies degree, becomes a lesbian, becomes a trans man, and marries a cat. Wasn't it just a few days ago that MRAs were bleating that they support the LGBT community...?

I have to admit, reading GWW public [rant] is just about the surest way to shoot coffee out your nose at 9 in the morning. I mean, the title of this r/MR post says it all: GirlWritesWhat systematically dismantles feminist theory in her address to the NY state libertarian convention, already invites significant chuckles, but the actual speech content is laughably ridiculous, astoundingly offensive, and profoundly troubling (not to mention peppered with so much cis gender, heterosexual, white, upper-middle class, western privilege).

Let me just highlight some of the amazing pieces of insight and thoughtfulness this grand FeMRA has to share:

"Some of you--maybe all of you--might be asking yourselves, what on earth is an anti-feminist gender theorist doing speaking at a libertarian party convention. What the heck does gender, or feminism, have to do with libertarian politics and philosophies? The answer to that question is at once extremely complex, and very, very simple."

Lol, "gender theorist," really? Is this the gender theory where you use Wikipedia factoids (search for the word "bonobo") about primate behavior to explain "female privilege" and "male disposablity"?

"To demonstrate these effects of gender I'm talking about, I'm going to make a few statements, and I want you all to pay attention to how you feel when I say them. They're statements I've culled from published books, newspapers, or the speeches of politicians, though you'll notice I've flipped the genders for effect..."

...to which she starts randomly quoting people but with the genders switched. She uses Obama, Hilary Clinton, some people I don't recognize, a poster, a newspaper, and Andrea Dworkin (who quotes Dworkin anymore, is it just MRAs?). As to her point with these dumb misquotes, I have no idea. I imagine she was filling time between commercials.

"Canadian libertarian philosopher Stefan Molyneux once described feminism as "socialism in panties."... I'm not going to bore you with a detailed history of the marriage of feminism and marxism. For that, I'll refer any who are interested to a lengthy but fascinating lecture by Soviet ex-patriot Valdas Anelauskas..."

Lol, it must say something that I have no idea who this person it (is he the guy who made those xbox games about the morality of being a hero?). However, the true hilarity is how GWW spends so much time laying the groundwork for her to argue that feminists are just cryptomarxists and secret soviet spies. LMAO, has anyone else read "The Unhappy Marriage of Marxism and Feminism: Towards a More Progressive Union" by Hartmann? I think it's pretty good. However, it's funny to read GWW's take on the issue, mostly because she doesn't know the meaning of the words "property" (as Marx was talking about private ownership of the means of production, not toothbrushes...), "marxism", "Bourgeoisie", "Proletariat", and "The Patriarchy" (why always always the capitalized words, these aren't proper nouns).

From here on, the rant deteriorates into vague, meaningless paragraphs, WORDS IN ALL CAPS, lots of Warren Farrell, women behaving badly, government is evil, feminism is even more evil, and...

"A lot of people have wondered aloud why there aren't more female libertarians. If there's a reason, it might lie in a lack of incentive. Big government costs the vast majority of men--their wealth, their civil liberties, their autonomy, sometimes their freedom--but for most women, big government represents an insurance policy and a perpetual subsidy of their personal choices, good or bad. Men pay, women benefit."

There is nothing more to say but laugh (There is link to the complete documentary at the very bottom of the page, which I find even more funny because it's "available online from the National Film Board of Canada.")

TL;DR GWW does an amazing job of being both a crazy libertarian and a dumb anti-feminist. She really has no idea what she is talking about, but is sure glad to talk about it to anyone who'll listen. She's offensive and uninformed, but dumb libertarians and MRAs love her because she can gab for hours. Honestly, Her existence clearly demonstrates how intellectually bankrupt the MRM is, but she advocates for dangerous political and social positions which actually harms men and women.

"NiggerJew944" Comes to /r/MensRights to Defend Raping Drunk Women Again & MRAs Support Him

reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1dokb0/rememberonly_a_man_is_responsible_for_his_actions/

("what happens if both parties are drunk who is the responsible one?" ah, the question no feminist can seem to answer)

As we all know, Feminism always blames the man. It says "Fem" right in the name - Feminism is obviously a gendered movement!

Unlike us, the Men's Rights Movement.

The MRM: Specializing in strawman fallacies and fighting fictious forms of Feminism since 2008.

Note: NiggerJew944 (obviously not a bigot) runs around spamming racist Stormfront copypasta all over the place.

No surprise the MRAs don't mind them.

"The outrage is alright, but switch it around and it's still the man who's in the wrong somehow. Get blackout drunk and wake up to find several females have played ring game with the penis and you'd still be the bad man and potentially en route to paying child support left and right. Then they come here and chatter on about how there's an innocent third party involved now and we just have to focus on that, squeezing every last nickel out of the man and not the semen thievery. What!? Builds up the rage."
+18 Comment Karma

>Totally not an incoherent and semi-insane hate group.

A Guide to the Violence of the MRM

Ever wonder why MRAs promote hatred or hostility toward women when they actually could be doing at least something worthwhile instead? I’ve been getting a lot of questions about this in the last few days (perhaps because of speculations that MRA affiliation had something to do with Justin Vacula being asked to resign from SkepticInc, but that’s not my network so I can’t speak to that).
I’ve said before that MRA groups could have chosen to work as allies with feminists, respectful of women and women’s issues side by side with their own, even sharing contacts, resources, and models for action, just as many other special interest groups do. But that’s not the road they took.

If you don’t know what I’m talking about, MRAs are Men’s Rights Activists. MRA can also mean Men’s Rights Activism collectively, but that is more commonly known as the MRM or Men’s Rights Movement. I shall be distinguishing that category (of those who specifically identify as or with men’s “rights” activists) from another, that of men’s issues advocates. There are many of the latter who are exactly what MRAs should be but aren’t: respectful and sensible campaigners for interests unique to men or affecting men in gender-distinct ways. They just don’t pompously describe what they do as advocating for men’s “rights.”

So what went wrong with the MRAs? Instead of acting like other special interest groups of merit, by and large (there may be exceptions; I rarely see them) the MRM has historically developed as a de facto hate movement, specifically in opposition to feminism (MRAs are often explicitly anti-feminist, and almost always at least implicitly so). In every organized instance I know, self-described MRAs endorse or promote sexism or misogyny in some form, and (of interest to skeptics) promote pseudoscience and conspiracy-theory-style claims about the world that are demonstrably false or dubious, but believed because they support a desired narrative or worldview.

And yet, there are those men’s issues organizations that do not identify with the MRM and are not hate groups, but actually do it right. So today I’m going to talk a little about both sides of this divide, to illustrate what “doing men’s rights rightly” would actually have looked like, if the MRM took its cue from those meritorious men’s issues organizations (and other special interest movements altogether), rather than from a baseline hate-filled worldview of delusional anti-feminism.

Getting Up to Speed

Wikipedia has a decent article about the MRM (Wikipedia on the Men’s Rights Movement), which is very well supplemented by another article at RationalWiki, which will be of particular interest to organized atheists and skeptics (RationalWiki on the Men’s Rights Movement). The Southern Poverty Law Center has articles on the MRM documenting examples of their affiliated sexism, misogyny and pseudoscience (see Misogyny: The Sites, and Intelligence Report Article Provokes Fury Among Men’s Rights Activists, and Men’s Rights Movement Spreads False Claims about Women). Several blogs are also devoted to monitoring and exposing the agenda, bile and delusion plaguing much of the MRM (see, for example, the sarcastically named Men’s Rights Activism and Man Boobz, which has a convenient Glossary).

But beginners (and anyone who likes a laugh) might prefer to start with an amusing semi-serious comedy piece at Cracked surveying the history, content, merits, and flaws of the MRM (see: Men’s Rights). That also discusses what happens when you write articles like I am now, so I will likely be directing a lot of my (inevitable) MRA commenters back to it (and the other links above and below) in lieu of wasting my time with them. But for a particularly apt perspective, there are study papers on the MRM housed at A Men’s Project (a men’s issues organization that actually isn’t evil, a point I’ll be coming to in a moment) under the category Men’s/Father’s Rights.

For some of my own encounters with the “false narrative” brigade in the MRM see here and here, instances where I found MRAs not actually checking their own claims or trying to understand the actual facts, but just selling their “us vs. them” persecution narrative with a ginned-up mythology. I have caught feminists doing the same, of course, but only occasionally and not as egregiously or unrepentantly. Reliance on myths and false narratives and inaccurate facts is a tactic found in many other special interest groups, from environmentalists to radical vegans, too. But it doesn’t typify them, as they appear to typify the MRM. There are always sensible and accurate activists to be found in other movements, and indeed they often dominate. But so far, not in the MRM, not in my experience.
But merely having the facts wrong would just be amusing. It’s the hate that is most disturbing. Though the MRM could have developed as a special interest movement that cooperates with other movements with similar goals for their own constituencies, as nearly all other special interest movements have done, it just didn’t. Compare, for example, the behavior and inter-group cooperation and mutual respect often witnessed among many gay rights organizations; racial, ethnic, and religious minority rights organizations; organizations lobbying for the rights of the poor, disabled, or mentally ill; and, of course, women’s rights organizations, like NOW, the National Organization for Women, whose statement of purpose is “to take action to bring women into full participation in society—sharing equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities with men, while living free from discrimination.”

Legitimate Issues, Illegitimate Solutions

Now, I often get weird reactions when I mention there is such a thing as a Men’s Rights Movement (“Wait, what? What rights don’t men have?”), but as many of the above links openly discuss, there are several legitimate issues raised within the MRM, where men are in fact discriminated against in one fashion or another or otherwise become the victims of social injustice merely or predominately because they are men, or where men have special needs not met by other groups. The first category ranges from disparities in prison sentencing and child custody decisions to such overlooked problems as federal insurance not covering a man who suffers breast cancer because the law, perversely and contrary to scientific fact, only specifies women can get it. The second category includes such facts as that men suffer from particular cancers women don’t, and have other male-specific health issues, and men face unique pressures culturally and socially, often in result of outmoded expectations regarding masculinity or gender roles.

In actual fact, pretty much all of these problems are the result of patriarchal cultural assumptions. In other words, they predominately originate with and are sustained by men and are usually based on men’s assumptions about gender roles and masculinity. And thus the primary solution to them is changing the behavior and attitudes of men, more than of women. The MRM, instead, typically blames everything on women and feminism, which is perverse, since their own sexism in doing so is only further sustaining the real evils they claim they are fighting against.

Case in point. Women have done a superb job lobbying and rallying in support of campaigns to cure breast cancer. But men have (until recently) done a lousy job rallying in support of campaigns to cure prostate cancer. MRMs blame women for this. You know, because clearly women looking after their own welfare means they are shitting on men’s welfare. Only that isn’t how it works (gay rights lobbyists aren’t against straight rights, black rights lobbyists aren’t against white rights, they are just focused on their own constituencies).

So the MRM complaint here makes no sense, except insofar as women won’t work with them the way men work with breast cancer campaigns, but that’s entirely because the MRM is so openly sexist, misogynist, or anti-feminist. If they weren’t pissing on women, but actually cooperatively and respectfully working with them, they could make progress on this issue. If, that is, MRAs actually did things like develop campaigns to fight prostate cancer. As far as I’ve seen, most of them hardly do anything substantive beyond complain. (The exceptions are few or feeble.)

If men won’t rally to the cause of fighting prostate cancer the way women have rallied to fight breast cancer, you can’t expect women to pick up the slack. Men have to take the lead, or carry at least an equal share of the load (in volunteering, funding, activism), just as women did. But if the men who care enough about prostate cancer to get angry about it are going to patriarchally blame and denigrate women and frame the whole issue as taking men’s power back and being dominant again, they are shooting their own foot, making themselves so loathesome no one wants to work with them, and many won’t even want to listen to them, and thus any valid complaint they may have had will be drowned in the bathwater of their own bile. Thus by sustaining and embodying patriarchal assumptions, the MRM actually becomes the problem rather than solving it. [Edit: whereas by contrast, to illustrate my point, the Movember campaign against prostate cancer is exactly what doing it right looks like.]

The same analysis follows for every issue the MRM takes up that has any actual validity: they blame the wrong people, failing to see the flaw in themselves, and thus turn their complaints into grist for their hatred for women and anyone who advocates for women’s welfare. And all of it because the MRM still clings to patriarchal assumptions about gender and power and dominance. Read almost any website in the MRM and you’ll see it’s often about sticking it to women, or attacking women, or getting back at women, or putting women back in their place, or how women’s equality has produced male subjugation. All patriarchal attitudes, across the board. (Peruse the leading MRM website, A Voice for Men, long enough and you can’t fail to find examples. Particularly amusing is this take on modern marriage, whose author doesn’t even notice how patriarchal his own assumptions are, even as he thinks he is arguing against them.)

Brief Digression on Patriarchy Theory

I get the occasional pseudoscientific bigot in comments claiming there is no such thing as “patriarchy” anymore, that women and feminists just made that all up, that it’s an untestable theory, and whatnot (indeed, ironically, the MRM champions this point of view, despite itself being one of the most glaring manifestations of patriarchal belief-structures in modern society). In fact, the concept of patriarchy is an empirically testable theory of social attitudes and organization, and the evidence more than bears it out.

For a quick intro to the concept see A Basic Definition of Patriarchy. But the very best, and my very favorite, intro to the subject (showing very well how pretty much all the valid issues the MRM takes up are caused by patriarchalism and not feminism) is Christina Rad’s video Gender Roles, Trolls, and Sexual Harassment Policies (and importantly supplementing that is her video About My Feminism Video). One key fact to understand is that patriarchy is not all-or-nothing: some societies can be more patriarchal or less patriarchal than others, even a lot less and even actively becoming less, and yet still be patriarchal. Thus it does no good to pick some extremely patriarchal society and say our society is nothing like that, therefore our society is not patriarchal, or not suffering from any patriarchal assumptions and behaviors at all. I’ll leave you to explore the above-cited resources for more on that matter. If you haven’t read and viewed those, all the way through, you aren’t qualified to dispute the concept.

Doing It Right

Admitting that women face discrimination and gendered social expectations and unique problems is the first step to recovery. And if you want to see what that looks like, check out what men’s issues groups do.

The only major example based in the US I have found so far is The Good Men Project. That is a website sponsoring articles covering men’s issues from many angles, without any significant sexism or misogyny, but in fact with a lot of respect for women and women’s problems and concerns (needless to say, wannabe MRAs have denounced one of its founders, Tom Matlack, as a mangina…to which he composed a very amusing and educational response). They are also an IRS-recognized charity that provides funding “dedicated to helping organizations that provide educational, social, financial, and legal support to men and boys at risk.”
This is an example of doing it right. That does not mean I agree with everything they say or every position they take, only that I agree with the way they approach men’s issues and the problems men face. And I am certain, overall, they are doing a lot of good. The world is a better place with that organization in it.

Largely thanks to Ally Fogg (one of our new bloggers here at FtB) I have also discovered and become acquainted with several men’s issues organizations abroad. In the UK, these include The Fatherhood Institute, which specializes in helping fathers and dealing with problems unique to fatherhood (including maladaptive cultural assumptions about fatherhood and gender roles); CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), which focuses on combating male suicide (because the rate of suicide among men is two to three times higher than among women, pointing to a real disparity caused by sex or gender, whether biological or cultural or both, demonstrating need for a specialized approach in preventing male victims); and such groups as AMIS (Abused Men in Scotland) and the ManKind Initiative, which deal with male victims of domestic abuse. An umbrella organization addressing many of these issues together in the Americas is AMP (A Men’s Project).

Explore all of these and you’ll see they are free of hate, anti-feminism, sexism, misogyny, and pretty much free of pseudoscience, fallacies, false narratives, and all that whatnot. They seriously fight and advocate for men’s causes without pompously claiming to be taking back men’s “rights.” Many of them actually do stuff (like lobby or fund community resources for men and men’s issues). And they don’t blame “women” or “feminism” for any of the ills they combat.
(If anyone is aware of comparable organizations in the US, please let me know.)

In fact, these organizations often have mission statements or guidelines that spell out exactly what “doing it right” looks like. Even in general, as Ally Fogg reports, AMIS and the Mankind Initiative “always emphasise that providing services and policies to meet the needs of men should only ever happen in addition to services provided for women, never at the expense of women in need.”
Now look specifically at the mission statement of The Fatherhood Institute (Our Work), which is inclusive and supportive of women, not denigrating or disdainful of them. It even declares a commitment to continuing research and accuracy (something you don’t get from MRAs). One of their goals is (with emphasis now added):

To change education so that boys are prepared for future caring roles and boys and girls are prepared for the future sharing of these roles. We want to see children and young people discussing gender inequalities and understanding that mothers and fathers experience pressure to specialise in caring and earning roles, and that mothers and fathers should have a similar range of choices over their caring roles, not limited by gender. We want to see more encouragement of boys into childcare careers.

Notice how different their goals and whole manner of discourse are from MRAs.
In a similar fashion, About CALM explicitly talks about the need and goal of building cooperative enterprises with other groups and popular culture and media generally (something you don’t see from MRAs, who generally take a bunkered and accusatory “us vs. them” attitude that is repulsive to the wider culture and media), and states their inspiration plainly and sensibly–and inclusively (again emphasis added):

We believe that there is a cultural barrier preventing men from seeking help as they are expected to be in control at all times, and failure to be seen as such equates to weakness and a loss of masculinity. We believe that suicide is neither inevitable nor an indication that the individual was a failure in any respect. We’re a campaign for all men…and start with the belief that all of us, at one time or another regardless of gender, will hit a crisis.

Notice how they identify the actual problem: patriarchal assumptions about manhood and masculinity. Not women. Not feminism. Notice, too, how they don’t imagine themselves as in competition with women or resources for women.

A Men’s Project in Particular

The best declaration yet of how to do it right is made explicitly by one of the leaders of A Men’s Project, Michael Flood, who has composed an article on Responding to Men’s Rights Groups. That he, even he, had to write such an article tells you almost all you need to know about the pervasive rot that is afflicting the “Men’s Rights” movement as a label and a brand. Flood’s article is a good survey of the problems characterizing the MRM. It also contains a great manifesto on how men’s issues activism should actually be conducted, which he outlines with four general goals: (1) assert a feminist-supportive and male-positive perspective; (2) take up men’s rights issues, but differently; (3) show that men’s rights strategies are in fact harmful to men themselves; and (4) actually set up services (in other words, stop complaining and actually do something).
I am most impressed by how comprehensive AMP’s official statement of values is, since it’s something the atheist community could take a cue from:

A Men’s Project (AMP) attempts to be inclusive of varying perspectives on issues of concern to men. Being inclusive is not license for ideologies in clear opposition to AMP’s basic core beliefs.
We believe in seeking a world where men and boys:
1.) No longer are hurting women and girls, as well as other men and boys,
2.) Support and nurture children as parents, grandparents, allies and friends,
3.) Try to take better care of our own physical and mental health, and
4.) Help and encourage others who may be or feel “different” including by: race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity as well as in other areas.
…
We are not supportive of perspectives which seek to blame others based upon who they are, rather than what they do.
We are strongly opposed to bullying.
…
While we believe that individual women and girls may hurt individual men and boys, we strongly do not believe that:
“women”, “girls” or “feminism” are “the problem” related to many issues facing men and boys.

We also do not believe that: “men” or “boys” are “the problem”.
We wish to distinguish between: “men and boys” and “masculinity” – how we are socialized to “be a man”.

Being a man is important. How we are socialized as boys and men is also important. Fighting to be “on top” at the expense of others and in other ways not respecting and supporting others (as well as ourselves) is simply not acceptable to us.
Men’s Rights and Father’s Rights advocates are highly visible nationally and locally in much of North America. They clearly represent the perspectives of many men. A lot of these men live with a lot of pain as a result of difficult life experiences.
[But] we have serious problems with much of the general focus of Men’s and Father’s Rights Groups.

Men’s and Father’s Rights groups may do some good with some of those they work with. Their basic approach most commonly blames: women, girls and feminism for much, if not most, of the pain that men feel. We do not see such groups working towards the positive changes that we seek. We do not see such groups building a positive masculinity in their work. We do not see such groups respecting women and girls, except in limited ways.

"We believe that “feminism” and “feminists” commonly has/have core beliefs supporting the end of gender based discrimination helping girls and women. Our support of “feminism” is not a simple acceptance of all who self-identify as feminists. We do not support those who do not support the positive growth of boys and men. We do not support the blaming of men and boys by our gender, rather than our specific actions and behaviors."
…
"We want to encourage positive masculinity where men and boys lovingly support each other as well as women and girls."
…
We have responsibilities as men to:
a. Be nurturing, loving, caring people,
b. Be supportive of the women and girls in our lives as well as the men and boys,
c. Confront abusive behaviors and help others become nurturing, loving people,
d. Work proactively to change society in positive ways
To the degree that Men’s and Father’s Rights advocates may oppose abuse, we wish to support such actions. [But] we do not list their websites within A Men’s Project because we believe that their blaming of women in general is primary to their focus. This is not acceptable to us.

That’s doing it right.

Summing It Up

As with many institutions and organizations, I do not agree with every position or argument articulated by AMP. I hold it up as a model only in the particular aspects I’ve mentioned.
For example, they are predominately anti-porn and anti-sex-work, whereas I am a sex positive feminist who has actively promoted expanding the rights of sex workers and improving the standards of the sex industry. Ironically, one of the many gripes MRAs have against “feminists” is that “feminists” are anti-porn and anti-sex-work. I say ironically not only because that’s false–I am living evidence to the contrary, as are several of our fellow bloggers here at FtB, including Greta Christina (a former sex worker) and Yemmy Ilesanmi (a lawyer and unionist actively engaged in international efforts to expand the rights of sex workers) and literally countless other feminists–but also because even those whom by their own standards MRAs would have to concede are men’s rights advocates can be anti-porn and anti-sex-work. So much for their favorite narrative. And their love of the false generalization fallacy.

But I don’t think AMP is evil or a danger or to be opposed simply because it’s wrong about some things. Nor do I denigrate its laudable goals and values because of that. I think it’s a good, if imperfect, example of an organization doing good and making the world a better place. MRAs tar all feminism with the brush of the most radical (“radfem”) feminist nonsense they can find (often decades out of date). Which is a huge fallacy of false generalization, and thus intrinsically illogical. And to stalwartly stick to illogical arguments is irrational. Likewise to attack and deride whole organizations that otherwise do a lot of good, merely for being wrong about a few debatable things.
Yet I have found that it is not the same fallacy to consider the whole self-described MRA movement as mired in sexism and misogyny and ant-feminism, because unlike feminism, the whole self-described MRA movement is mired in sexism and misogyny and ant-feminism (just compare NOW with AVfM). There may be exceptions, but they are very hard to find (or confirm). And thus they would indeed be exceptions. Feminist groups and sites as a whole (or by any reasonable standard of what’s typical) simply do not act like MRAs. There are some, but those are the exceptions. It’s thus night and day.
It has bothered me that the MRA movement can be so pervasively vile and yet rally themselves around a body of legitimate issues, claiming to be their champions. Because this is the very worst thing for alleviating those problems. To have their advocates surround them with such repulsive attitudes and behavior that the taint stains even their legitimate causes, is actually a great harm to men, because it makes it very hard to talk about or act on those legitimate concerns without being dragged into the pit of offal the MRAs themselves have created. (Especially since MRAs so often use that as an actual tactic to derail or disrupt discussions of women’s issues.)

It thus reassures me that those legitimate issues have been taken up by respectable groups, who do not call themselves men’s “rights” groups. We can now cut loose the MRAs and focus on the legitimate organizations and causes wholly separate from them, such as those I’ve described here. Indeed, even feminists are doing more in the real world to end discrimination against men than MRAs appear to have done (it certainly wasn’t MRAs pushing to end the ban on women taking combat roles in the military, for example; likewise, it has mainly been feminists, much more than MRAs, who have been calling attention to aspects of “the masculine ideal” and other outdated assumptions about gender that are hurting men).

Persistently advocating or endorsing hate speech, bigotry, or the harming of innocent people is reprehensible, yet MRA sites have done all of these things (as the resources I linked earlier document). MRM’s live in a fantasy world where all feminists and feminist organizations are the ones doing those things, when in the real world (where the rest of us live) almost none of them do (certainly by relative measure). And that means if someone takes money from and writes for an MRA site or source instead of these other legitimate organizations, they are choosing sides, consciously selecting hostility to women and feminism over genuinely working to better the lives of men in an inclusive and friendly (and actually productive) way.

To borrow AMP’s statement on the matter, “Being inclusive is not license for ideologies in clear opposition to our basic core beliefs,” which for the godless ought to be evidence-based skepticism and rationality, humanist compassion and integrity, and freedom from myths, legends and superstitions. So atheists should all get on board. Most of us are already there.

Ex MRA Shares His Opinion

I was in the MRM for a short-time (3 days literally). Essentially the whole thing is about telling 

a)feeling sorry for yourself 
b) hating feminists 
for a lot of them. I feel really sorry for them. I am as socially awkward as the next geek but I know that this is my fault and not anyone else's. I think that is the difference between being an adult an a whiny child: being able to take personal responsibility for yourself. A lot of it is self defeating shit talk. "We are afraid to talk to women, therefore we don;t have girlfriends therefore women are bitches therefore we are afraid to talk to women. " It goes around and around in circles.

Just look at this:
"turned and pushed her into the refrigerator and pinned her against it. I was already hard (hey, I was 21) and pushed my erection into her thigh. I ran my hand up inside her sweater and over her breasts and I leaned in to whisper in her ear I know what you fucking want." - And there's the beginning of every rape porno ever.
 
"It really is funny. I already knew at 21 what feminists have been trying desperately to convince the world isn't true women. Most all of them, want to be sexually dominated. End of fucking story, everything else is bullshit." - OKAY I AM DONE.

Conclusion: Elam needs help. While I know women who have rape fantasies as a sexual fetish, the difference between that and what Elam is describing is well, astronomical. Good to know that a man like him is at the top of the AVFM foodchain. 

Intelligence Report Article Provokes Fury Among Men’s Rights Activists

The last issue of the SPLC’s Intelligence Report presented a scathing portrait of “a hard-line fringe” of the Men’s Rights Movement (MRM): “women haters whose fury goes well beyond criticism of the family court system, domestic violence laws, and false rape accusations,” whose rage is “directed at all women, not only perceived feminists.”

The article, entitled “Leader’s Suicide Brings Attention to Men’s Rights Movement,” provoked a tremendous response among men’s rights activists (MRAs) and their sympathizers.
“Piggybacking on the two minutes’ hate against Limbaugh,” the National Review Online sarcastically declared, the “clueless commissars at the Southern Policy Law Center” have “found a new arena of hate groups, comparable to neo-Nazis and the skinheads: the ‘manosphere’ of misogynist web sites.” The website In Mala Fide was defiantly proud: “Before, our enemies ignored us. Now, they point their gnarled, disgusting fingers at us, sputtering syllables of disapproval.”

A Voice for Men’s Paul Elam tried on a collegial tone at first. “The goals of SPLC and AVfM are quite similar,” he averred in open letter to the SPLC’s president, Richard Cohen. “We both work to identify groups who seek to oppress others, and inform the public of the inequities they would perpetuate.” But just days later, in a post headlined “Southern Poverty Law Center Linked to Hate Activity,” he changed his tune.

It should be mentioned that the SPLC did not label MRAs as members of a hate movement; nor did our article claim that the grievances they air on their websites – false rape accusations, ruinous divorce settlements and the like – are all without merit. But we did call out specific examples of misogyny and the threat, overt or implicit, of violence.
Thomas James Ball, for example, who was hailed as a martyr on so many men’s rights forums, called for arson attacks on courthouses and police stations. The Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik wrote extensively about the evils of feminism. We included as much as we did about Register-Her.com because it is so intimidating to its targets, not all of whom are criminals. When Elam accused Vliet Tiptree, a pseudonymous contributor to RadFem Hub, of “calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is,” he offered a cash reward for her real identity. The names and locations of several candidates were publically aired.

Elam and the authors of countless angry posts and letters have demanded to know why the SPLC hasn’t also condemned feminist man-hating (or misandry, to use the MRM’s preferred term).
“You do know that there is a forum out there called ‘RadFem Hub’ that actively advocates infanticide, gender-selective abortion and killing/mutilating men and boys, right?” one letter asked us. “Read the SCUM Manifesto,” another said, “and research the reception it has received over the years, and the regard with which many feminists still hold Valerie Solanas.”

Solanas was the undeniably disturbed woman who shot Andy Warhol in 1968. “Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women,” her manifesto began, “there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”
SCUM stands for “Society for Cutting Up Men,” and it is true that Solanas continues to be much-read and quoted in some feminist circles. (“We don’t really cut up men,” the tagline of the Feminazis blog cheekily declares. “Well, unless they deserve it.”)

The existence of hatred on one side of a color, political or gender line hardly justifies its presence on the other. And radical feminists do say hurtful things about men. “[T]reatments can be developed to mitigate the death-drive of men, their hierarchical psychology, their insensitivity to the pain of living creatures, their pleasure in violence and intimidation, their acquisitiveness, their rape and phallic obsessions,” Tiptree wrote in a post on RadFem Hub called Radical Feminism Enters the 21^st Century. “[M]y best bet is that what’s wrong with men is that their androgens need genetic modification. I’m serious about this. If we can do it with corn, men ought to be easy.” Few possessors of Y chromosomes could read her words without feeling queasy. But to characterize her essay as a well-developed plan, as Elam and his colleagues do, is not only ridiculous, it is willfully obtuse.
Cathy Brennan owns the domain RadFem Hub. “I don’t hate men,” she told me. “I have a father, I have a brother, I have a son. The war that Paul Elam is waging is in his head. I worry about women and children and the increasing violence in our society.” When I asked her what she thought of Solanas’ “Scum Manifesto,” she laughed. “I view it as A Modest Proposal-type work of literature, a satire. It’s brilliant, but it’s not my personal bible.”

While men’s rights activists fantasize about existential threats to the male sex, real gendercide is being committed against girls in China, India, East Asia, the Caucasus and other parts of the world.
Of course, some radical feminists do hate men, and when MRAs lurk in members-only chat rooms and cherry pick their angriest, most shockingly over-the-top posts to reprint on their own sites, as an MRA “mole” did at a forum called RadFemSpeak (which is not affiliated with RadFem Hub), they commit the same injustice they accuse the SPLC of doing to themselves. No one makes a very favorable impression when they’re spewing bile.

This is a lesson that some MRAs are beginning to learn for themselves. “With all of the kooks inhabiting the manosphere, it was easy for the SPLC to smear anti-feminism,” one MRA site sadly concluded after our article appeared. “The problem is larger than just AVfM. Even rational anti-feminist blogs and organizations like the False Rape Society and SAVE [Stop Abusive and Violent Environments] are being tarnished with the same brush because the MRM ‘leadership’ has failed to deal with the kooks.”

“Women are not feminism. … To equate the two is beyond ignorant,” a thoughtful MRA blogger wrote. “[I]deologically speaking, I have some issues with feminist theory, but honestly, I think it’s a distraction from working on the real issues that face men. … issues like: Homelessness – Men’s Health – Education – Suicides – Homicides – Deaths on the Job – Family Court Inequalities – Child Custody – Criminal Justice System – Incarceration Rates – Prison Rape and Violence – Domestic Violence – Unemployment – Drug and Alcohol Abuse – Military Deaths and Service – Vilification in the Media – Legal Inequalities. This is what the MRM is all about; this is about social justice and equal protection under the law.”

I dare say that if social justice and equal protection under the law were all that the MRM were about, then the SPLC would have had no reason to write about it. If the article inspires more self-criticism in this vein, then perhaps it did the Men’s Rights Movement a service.

Paul Elam is Wrong About Society: Not Hatred of Males, Fear of Males

*Here, Paul Elam is disagreeing with the contention that people are socialized to "hate" women, and instead, asserts that people are actually socialized to "hate" men.

I believe that his assertion is somewhat incorrect, or at the very least myopic and biased, for various reasons.

Generally, when it comes to the negative aspects of socialization that affect women and men (meaning, how we are typically raised to view each sex), it is more often that women are ascribed stigmas which relate to their perceived weaknesses, while men are more often ascribed stigmas which relate to their perceived strengths.

For instance, women are sometimes ascribed the stigmas of being too physically weak to perform difficult or demanding tasks - they need a man to do it, or they're emotionally unstable (having a higher EQ), unlike men, who are generally able to place reason before feelings (having a lower EQ), or women are unable to rationalize and reason to a level which is equivalent to that of men, or they're unable to comprehend various aspects of mathematics and science due to supposedly innate cognitive limitations.

These things are all stereotypes and stigmas (diminishing the status or perceived capabilities of women) - which is where people often derive the idea that these views and stereotypes imply a "hatred" (misogyny) or "dislike" for women, because they frequently involve women being too weak / incompetent in some way (innately) to perform tasks that come more easily (innately) to men.

While, with men, we generally find the opposite (they are held to a higher standard).

Men are more often mocked for perceived weaknesses that relate to being too feminine (like a woman). If they're too emotional, they're weak, because men are held to a higher standard than women when it comes to the societal allowance for their expressions of "feelings".

Men are supposed to be tough, logical, rational, reasonable and so forth - not "emotional" like women. This, of course, indirectly implies that women are overly-emotional, or unable to control their emotions, or are less reasonable and logical than men, or that characteristics typically attributed to women are beneath the standards of what "men" should be.

So, while men are sometimes mocked for this, this is not necessarily evidence that society socializes us to "hate" men, it is more evidence that society views feminine (like a woman) things as being contemptible when they are attributed to or exhibited by a man.

Now, when it comes to the bulk of what men experience, the perception is more one of "fear" than a definable "hatred". You can dislike things that you fear, but the two words are not the same, and our rationalizations of each feeling, even if they are fairly similar (hatred / fear), are also different.

Men are feared for their physical strength. People are more likely to fear that a man will rob / rape / murder them than a woman, because women are not generally ascribed a perception of being capable of great physical exertion, ability to cause harm or damage, aggressiveness, and so forth.

Women are generally weaker, and so these things are viewed as less of a threat from them. The likelihood of a woman committing one of these acts is also less often considered, due to the aforementioned stereotypes.

Women are generally weaker, men are generally stronger, and so one has more to fear from men.

This is not to say that these stereotypes or stigmas are absolutely or necessarily true, or that they are fair, but the general "fear" of men does not directly or even necessarily indirectly imply any sort of definable hatred or dislike (misandry), but more a fear of their strengths and capabilities - men's ability to cause harm and damage is perceived as being greater.

While, with women, the general perspective is more one of a "dislike" for their weaknesses - inability to do things which are physically demanding, inability to rationalize emotions, inability to comprehend things due to supposed cognitive limitations, and so forth.

This is where the distinction lies.

Once again, I am not stating that I agree with any of these stereotypes and stigmas, as they are quite general, but more often than not, men lie on the "fear" side of the socialization spectrum, while women lie more on the "contempt" side of the socialization spectrum.

Men | Women
Strengths | Weaknesses
Fear | Contempt

Et cetera.

Likewise, it probably does nothing for the general social perception of men that men so often engage in violence, frequently against other men.

For example, observe this list of violent shootings:

Note: Ages are listed as they were at the time of the incident.

Shootings:

January 10, 2013: Taft Union High School, San Joaquin Valley, California. (Name unknown, Age 16). Male. Zero killed.

January 5, 2013: Aurora, Colorado: (Unable to find name and age). Male. Three killed.

December 16, 2012: Mayan Palace Theater, San Antonio, Texas:  Jesus Manuel Garcia, age 19. Male. Zero killed.

January 16, 2012: Appalachian School of Law: Peter Odighizuwa, age 43. Male. Three killed.

May 25, 2008: Winnemucca, Nevada: Ernesto Villagomez, age 30. Male. Two killed.

March 5, 2001: Santee, California: Charles Andrew “Andy” Williams, age 15. Male.  Two killed.

April 24, 1998: Edinboro, Pennsylvania: Andrew Jerome Wurst, age 14. Male. One killed.

October 1, 1997: Pearl High School, Mississippi: Luke Woodham, age 16. Male. Two killed.

Mass Killings:

December 16, 2012: Newtown, Connecticut: Adam Lanza, Age 20. Male. Twenty-seven killed.

August 5, 2012: Sikh Temple, Oak Creek, Wisconsin: Wade Michael Page, age 40. Male. Six killed.

July 20, 2012: Aurora, Colorado: James Eagen Holmes, Age 25. Male. Twelve killed.

April 16, 2007: Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia: Seung-Hui Cho, Age 23. Male. Thirty-two killed.

October 2, 2006: Amish School, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania: Charles Carl Roberts IV, Age 32. Male. Five killed (all little girls).

March 24, 1998: Westside Middle School, Craighead County, Ark: Mitchell Johnson and Andrew Golden, Ages 14 and 12. Male. Five killed (four little girls, one female teacher).

April 20, 1992: Columbine High School, Columbine, Colorado: Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Ages 18 and 17. Male. Twelve killed.

.

.

.

One would be hard pressed to find this many female shooters on any list comparable to the one above.

For the greater majority of all shootings, and in fact all violent crimes (approximately 90%), men are the primary participants / perpetrators, and even the primary victims.

Once again, for example, observe these crimes statistics:
(U.S. 2000-2007. CLICK TO ENLARGE.)

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

.

.

.

In every instance, males are the overwhelming majority of those who commit violent crimes, and we also know that men are often a great number of the victims of violent crimes as well.

Most crimes are male-on-male or male-on-female.

This is supplementary to the general fear of men that comes through socialization. People fear what men can enact, what they are capable of, people fear their strengths and perceived abilities, and people ridicule them for not living up to the higher standards that society has set for men.

The only thing, out of all of these things, that could be considered contempt-through-socialization, is the criticism that men receive for not being "manly" enough, but even then, this implicit derision is one which stems from men exhibiting traits that are deemed "too feminine" (like a woman), or "beneath" the status and or existence of a man.

Women are generally not feared for what they can do, because once again, the stigmas attached to women are most often ones which relate to contempt for their weaknesses, and some of this disdain carries over to men who display similar characteristics.

I would like to reiterate that this post is not in agreement or disagreement with any of the previously discussed stereotypes and stigmas, and of course all of these things are essentially my opinion, but I am explaining society and socialization, at least primarily in so-called developed nations, as I see it.

Men | Women
Strengths | Weaknesses
Fear | Contempt

This is also not to say that there is no hatred of men in society, but merely that most of the negativity towards men relates more to a fear of their capabilities than to a definable "hatred" of them for their sex.

I could expound further, but I believe that this will suffice for now.

Thank you all for reading, and have a wonderful day.

Sincerely,
Femitheist

Seeing The Feminist Light: An Ex-MRA Tells His Story

I'’m a man, in his late twenties (actually 30 this year but shhh!) who is proud to call himself a feminist. I am fairly new to being a feminist, still have a lot to learn, still make mistakes – for which I am grateful for correction. I eventually want to play a much more active role in feminism.
But I haven’t always been that way – quite the reverse. And this piece goes into how I was opposed to feminism, why and where it came from, and what so dramatically changed those views. I am not a writer, but I am writing this for two reasons: first, because I was kindly asked to, and second, and more selfishly, because I could do with venting it out in a process of self-help and understanding.
I would like to begin by pointing out that I do not change my opinions or beliefs easily, especially in politics; in fact, I take politics more seriously than football, and if you knew me, you’d know I’d find it easier to change my species than change my football team! But something changed – or rather a few factors came together to change them. I also want to say that I am having great difficulty writing this piece. Not because I haven’t written like this for some time (I’m a designer: I draw, I don’t write!), but because I’m having to revisit beliefs I once held, things I’ve said to friends or others, posted on the net, read and thought. I’m finding it tough, but I think it has to be done with brutal honesty. Some of the things I’ll write are awful, but I won’t shy away from admitting that was me. I can’t believe some of the things I’ve said or believed, but I’d rather be honest. I will cringe immensely from what I’m about to write, I’m not sure if you can die from cringing, but I think I’ll come close. Actually, cringe might not be the right word, ashamed would be more appropriate. The scary thing is, I don’t think my old views are that different to many boys and men today.
Anyway, here goes…

Feminists Wanted More Than Equality
For much of my adult life, I had always misunderstood feminism, and as a consequence was deeply opposed to it. I spurned, turned my nose up at feminism, at their stories, articles or opinions. It was all “man-hating, misandric feminazi” bullshit. Feminists were the bigots, only interested in their own entitlements at the expense of men; they wanted to make women more equal then men. It was easy to spot too; all you had to do was look around, see the perks women got, were entitled to as a result of feminism. See how men were undermined, made to feel guilty for being male. From job entitlements; family laws and rights; expectation of men to protect and serve women financially and emotionally, to disparity in suicide rates of men; male healthcare; and the increasing number of girls outperforming boys in education. It was clear men were under attack from all fronts. It was clear women were getting help and a ‘leg up’ in every walk of society, while boys and men were being left behind in a wake of guilt and oppression. A simplistic way of looking at things, but simplistic is always the first way to look at something, because it’s easy; because it can avoid getting to the real route of the problem and acknowledging anything to do with privilege. I mean, hey, feminists just wanted equality added to still receiving the perks of chivalry; they wanted more than equality.
I remember how I talked to male friends throughout university and beyond about women, or, as I referred to them then, girls. I’d never treated a ‘girl’ badly, but then there was always an undercurrent of “us versus them”. They were objects, even if I loved them, and maybe they me (on rare occasions, I grant you!). The debate of consent often came up; we saw any law emphasizing consent as an attack on “lads being lads” (God I’m cringing writing this out). We joked how “we’d need to get ‘em to sign a contract before we had sex” how all the power’s now given to a girl. And yes, more often than not, the myth that if a girl woke up the next morning, regretted a one-night stand, she would just have to cry rape and the man would be guilty until proven innocent. It was another attack on men. That was how many of us viewed it, and that was what we thought of it.
Feminism Was to Blame For Destructive Male Stereotypes
You could see misandry in the media too, just take a look at advertisements on the TV, men were always made to look ridiculous, against a wise and in control woman – men were made to feel stupid and incompetent. Yet that was acceptable, as was violence against men perpetrated by women; I’d argue “could you imagine if the gender roles were reversed, they’d never allow that” and I’d naturally blame feminism for it. The “lets throw rocks at boys” t-shirt debate was feminism’s fault: man-hating at its worst. Look at how men’s bodies were objectified in adverts and on TV, whereas the same objectification of women would always be met with opposition from feminists. I’d argue how misandric programmes like ‘Loose Women’ were allowed; yet anything male orientated would never be allowed. I hadn’t bought a ‘lad’s magazine’ for a fair few years, but I always defended their existence, again countering any feminist argument against them with “what about female magazines that have half naked or naked men in them.” Any articles or columns in newspapers or magazines slightly alluding to making women’s rights an issue was simply “feminist bullshit”, even if, deep down, I may have agreed with it; my hatred was stronger than my reasoning. To me, it was one rule for women, and another entirely different and unfair rule for men. Feminism’s fault, entirely. It was so obvious.

Feminists Lacked Humour and Logic…
My anti-feminism crossed over into all walks of my life too; I’m a huge football fan, and about a year or so ago Sian Massey became the first female referee assistant in a Premiership match. The appointment was shrouded in controversy, not because of anything she did (actually preformed very well and made correct decisions) but because of the off-air comments made by Sky Sports presents Andy Gray and Richard Keys; whose misogynistic comments were nothing new to those behind the camera; but they were caught out by microphones being left on this time. I fiercely defended them and their “lads banter” (another cringe). Most of it was done online, but I would claim it was just the way lads talk to each other, it wasn’t offensive, and you women need to get a sense of humour. The defence went further, why were women allowed to officiate the men’s games when women had their own leagues, it was feminism and political correctness gone too far; is nothing sacred for men to have just as their own? There was even a group on Facebook I had joined, just to express my anger at the two presenters being sacked, and the unfair advantage given to Sian Massey. It was a hotbed of misogyny and sexist jokes. And I told plenty of them too; I had no problem with sexist jokes, they simply played on the stereotypes of each gender, nothing more. Women should just get over them like men had gotten over jokes made about them. For every sexist joke aimed at women, there is a joke relating to men too. Stereotypes should be embraced and accepted, rather than fought against.
On the subject of jokes…this next bit really hurts to write; genuinely hurts to write. I feel so ashamed by this part I wasn’t going to include it. Not least because a few of the most valued people I follow on twitter are survivors. But, again, I think it needs to be included. I have defended and used rape jokes and used references to rape in casual conversation. I never saw any problem with them. They were no worse than a racist joke, and, as a half caste Asian/white person, if I could see the funny side of a racist joke, then women should be able to take a rape joke and see the funny side of it. Humour should cover all topics, no matter how uncomfortable, and if you don’t like it, don’t listen to them. No humour should be banned or oppressed.
I used the jokes in casual conversation between friends (I despair to think what any female friends genuinely thought of them) and online too. I laughed when I heard them, memorised them and spread them myself. I’ve heard them at comedy clubs and laughed, on the TV, in songs, in all forms of media and never saw why anyone would be offended. Like I said, if you were offended by it, you should get over yourself and get a sense of humour; leave us men, and women in some cases, alone to have and express our humour. It was a no brainer, right?
In casual conversation, the word ‘rape’ was never seen as anything more than a word – it would often be used to describe any number of incidents or events where one would find oneself in a bad situation: “I can’t go out tonight mate, that last phone bill raped me, I’m skint” or, more often: “United are gonna rape [insert opposing football team] at the weekend”.
This type of casual conversation, of reducing the horror of rape to describe something as trivial as football, was commonplace amongst my friendship goup. It was nothing out of the ordinary. Although I obviously recognised it as a horrific crime, I thought it no more than any other crime like murder, severe muggings and other violent crimes; I’m still staggered that I ever thought like this.
I used to work in a hospital as a porter during and for a while after I finished University. I suppose on rough estimate, 70% of the staff were female, but the portering side was almost exclusively male. And it bred casual sexism on many occasions, even if none of us was being intentionally sexist or misogynistic; we perpetuated gendered stereotypes often without realising it. Although we all had upmost and a mutual respect for all female staff, medical or otherwise, there were incidents when difficulties arose, and the problem wasn’t caused by a misunderstanding or miscommunication, it was “women’s logic”. And that was to blame, rather than a human error that could’ve been caused by either gender. This blaming of problems on gender differences rather than getting to the actual root of them probably explains why, while gender stereotyping still exists, so many problems remain unresolvable. But at the time, it was just, lads will be lads and women will do their own thing – never the twain shall meet, and that’s how it should stay.

…And ‘Male Feminists’ Just Want To Get Laid
Men who were feminists were traitors; they were just pretending to be feminists to get laid. This was obvious, because, if a man agreed with feminists, if they were friendly or treated a woman with respect and equality, she should owe him somehow – usually with sex, as of course, that is why we men interact with women. Anything else, and she’d “friendzoned” the man. Male feminists were either gay or had ulterior motives; they were “manginas”.

How I Came To Think Like This: My Childhood
So where did all this hatred and misunderstanding come from? I look back and see several reasons dating right back to childhood up to experiences of school, university and work.
My parents divorced when I was very young, and my Mum brought me up on her own, while holding down a fulltime nursing job. An incredibly demanding and draining job, while having to bring me up is absolutely no easy task! So it’s strange that I felt like this.
I saw my Dad frequently at weekends or on holidays (when he moved down South miles from me). And I think his influence is partly where my sense of what I now recognise as patriarchy and male privilege stems from. My Dad is Hindu, and in his culture, even more than most, the men rule the household. Anything feminine is weak and nothing to be proud of. Femininity is for women, who could never handle the power of being masculine. No, masculinity was something to uphold and be proud of, something far greater than femininity. Its very strange how that came to be in my mind, but looking back it’s quite clear. My Dad would often say, from such a young age (4 or 5 years old) that if I’d done something wrong, I was “like a girl”, acting like one, being like one. If I ate slowly (I always did at that age!) then I was “eating like a girl”, if I got upset “ you’re not a girl are you?” and the old chestnut “a girl could do it better than you” making me make sure no girl ever beat me, a boy!
It’s amazing how it starts so early, how we’re made to fit into gender roles from such an early age. Blue for boys, pink for girls; and if the two crossed, a girl would be a ‘tomboy’ and a boy would be ridiculed as ‘feminine’ or ‘gay’. Watching my Dad as head of the household was the first introduction I’d had to patriarchy, although it would take me decades to realise this. Of course, I never gave it a name at the time, it was just how things were, nothing more. This set up my beliefs and behaviour for my life up until recently. Astonishing really.

How I Came To Think Like This: Relationships
I’ve always had good relationships with women, whether they be colleagues, bosses, friends, family or in relationships, but that isn’t anything to do with feminism; I believe feminism comes from deep principles and understanding. Any man can be pleasant on the outside, but still hold sexist and misogynistic feelings deep down. I should know.
A feeling of failure is often at the root of hatred and bigotry, as are misunderstanding and miscommunication. I look at past relationships and see how bitter experiences, when seen through the prism of gender stereotypes enabled me to extrapolate one relationship breakdown to statements like “all women are like that”, “women cannot be trusted”, or even in the heat of the moment, “I hate all women”.
I also subscribed to the idea of the “friendzone” – a myth that almost every male I know still believes. It is a patriarchal belief that, if a man is respectful, friendly and genuine with a woman, that woman, by default, should be sexually/romantically interested in the man. Any rejection is called “friendzoning”. A man showing the same degree of friendliness he would fellow male friends is ‘owed’ by women. And the payment should be in the form of sex. I have been guilty of using the friendzone terminology to explain rejection, when of course the reality was that the woman valued my friendship more. And lest we forget, under patriarchal gender roles and the shadow of male privilege, rejection is something to be ashamed of – not ‘man’ enough.

And Then I Discovered MRAs
I found myself in the all too familiar position of being a graduate struggling for meaningful work in my field. But a job opportunity arose which allowed me to move to London. On moving there I left an existing job to try and raise my own small business, while working low paid jobs to keep ends meeting. However, despite a strong start, it coincided with the recession and work became scarce. A spiral developed and living arrangements became very difficult: rising rent and cost of living, added to deteriorating health. And it was at this point I started to take notice of the MRA movement. The idea that men were unworthy deadbeats if they had little money, success or a stable career played on my mind. MRAs claimed that women wanted equality, while still demanding the perks of what I now realise are patriarchal gender roles. Women still expected men to pick up the bill, to be the breadwinner, to provide and pay for their lifestyle: to still be chivalrous. I equated that to my situation, and wrongly blamed feminism for feeling like a failure. I became annoyed that my situation was preventing me from succeeding. I became blinded and bitter and blamed things that were never to blame for my situation. I would eventually come to realise that if there was any blaming to be done, it was of patriarchal gender roles. Nothing else.
Success shouldn’t be measured by material, fortune or power, but in a patriarchal society it is. The gender role to be provider, hunter, is laid at the feet of men and if a man doesn’t fulfil that role then he isn’t a man. I’ve always had a good set of friends around me, we were never ashamed or felt awkward about talking about feelings or all that teen angst! It’s always been this way and continues that way now; I think it shows a side which gender roles don’t accept as being associated with men. But despite this friendship group, I nevertheless grew up with the pressure of conforming to my stereotypical gender identity. So when I read about MRAs and how feminism was damaging to men, how it was just a form of bigotry to hate men, it was music to my ears. Finally, someone to blame for both the pressure I felt to be a ‘real man’, and the failure of my business.

But Then I Discovered Feminism – Real Feminism
So what was it that changed my beliefs so dramatically? What was the catalyst for the sudden change and realisation? Well, not an awful lot has changed in my life if honest; aside from moving back up North. I’m not a millionaire (actually, I’m still pretty much skint!), I don’t have a great career or business and my life isn’t suddenly wonderfully full of happiness!
But something did change in me. I started to reassess my life and why things weren’t great. I didn’t understand the hatred of anti-feminists or MRAs any more than I actually understood feminism itself. So I decided to start asking questions, start reading and begin to understand. I read blogs, websites, books. I asked questions on social-media sites like Facebook and Twitter. I must have come across as such a privileged fool at first, thinking he knows more about feminism then feminists! Although I wanted to learn, it was difficult for me to acknowledge privilege and recognise patriarchy. Luckily, they were patient!
My politics have always been left leaning and liberal. I have always believed all people were born equal. And the more I learnt about feminism, the more I realised I was more in line with its beliefs and principles than I could ever have thought.
My Understanding of White Privilege Helped Me to Understand Male Privilege
The biggest catalyst of all however came when I read about male privilege. It struck a deep chord with me. As I said earlier, I am of mixed race: white and Asian. I grew up in a very white-dominated area of the country and I’ve always experienced casual racism, right from my very first days at school to recent occurrences. It was pretty bad at the beginning, but I had always considered myself fairly lucky. I had great friends around me, and I’d always considered abuse as galvanising. However, my friends were all white English, so in some circumstances, it was difficult for them to understand what racism meant to me. I’d always been aware of a white privilege (even if I didn’t refer to it as that), buts it’s difficult to explain it to some, as many are in denial. The idea that having a slur against a white person is equal to a racial slur against a non-white person is absurd (we’ve recently witnessed white privilege being denied in court, as a footballer claiming being called “an English c***” is just as abusive as his calling a fellow black player a “black c***”. Laughable, at best.), but deniers of white privilege use that argument. Maybe it is because they are uncomfortable with acknowledging that privilege.
This white privilege is exactly how I see male privilege. The idea that sexism toward a male is in any way as damaging as sexism toward a female, or that misandry (if it exists) is somehow the equivalent of misogyny, is absurd given the privilege males are given just by their gender. As a result of male privilege, the objectification of women in society is far more damaging than any objectification of men. In fact, objectification of men is usually to show men how to be “men”; it is another form of patriarchy and gender roles. The objectification of women still alludes to the belief that women are objects for men to own, use and abuse; that is misogyny.
I used to believe that the glass ceiling that women faced in the workplace never actually existed – it was merely in their minds. But then I considered the glass ceiling non-white people face; although you can break through it, it is unusual for a non-white person to rise very high in certain fields. Who was I then, a man, to suggest that glass ceiling didn’t exist for women? It clearly does. We see every time a woman breaks that glass ceiling, how her gender is referred to; yet a man in the equivalent position requires no reference to his gender, because it is not unusual. It is considered normal. It’s as if society says, “Well done, even you, a woman, can do this job”. This is male privilege in action.
Men can face sexism, but it is just not the same as what a woman experiences. In the same way, a man can be raped, but a man will never know the everyday fear a woman faces from rape. I’ve read a fair amount on the fear of rape that women face – and not just every time they step out alone, because contrary to appalling rape myths, the vast majority of victims know their attacker. It is exactly this reason why I am so appalled that I once considered a casual rape joke or using the word ‘rape’ for trivial complaints acceptable. I can only apologise and do my best to pull it up when I see or hear it; looking at you, Tosh and Boyle.
It’s taken me a while to get to grips with male privilege, but I’m happy I have. I recognise it and know when it becomes damaging (which is almost always, even if subconsciously). I’m comfortable admitting it, but certainly not comfortable that it exists in the first place.

Seeing Misogyny Everywhere
I began to see how much work feminism still has to do. I watched a programme recently on sexism in football and I was ashamed to think I was once one of those sexists. The songs, chants, the casual sexism aimed at females. I see it so clearly now. My views have obviously changed entirely. I have no issue with female referees in the men’s game; I’d like to see a female manager being given a chance in the men’s league too, because there’s no reason why they can’t. I think it would be more beneficial to society and feminism if the women’s game was given more funding and exposure. A few years ago, I read how the football team I follow had disbanded, in a very ungracious manner, the women’s team. I am still disgusted at this, especially from one of the most successful and rich clubs in the world.
I see the misogyny in the media so clearly now too. Its unbelievable how I ever missed it in the first place; hindsight is wonderful! The objectification of women is alarmingly common and accepted.
But more alarmingly, we see certain news stories gaining more publicity than others, especially rape stories. I remember on a few occasions reading about false rape claims, especially those involving footballers. These get main headlines and front pages, and results in men thinking false rape claims are commonplace; and that victims are to blame or are lying. That’s not even touching on lad’s mags. At one time, I’d have defended their right to exist; now I think at minimum they should have an adult age limit or just not be printed at all. They serve no purpose other than to perpetuate misogyny. I used to buy the odd few as a teenager, and although I never really thought they had an effect on the way I thought, perhaps they did. Subtly it would make me objectify women, to see them as purely objects. It is also full of reinforcing gender stereotypes and roles for both men and women; damaging to young minds still growing and developing.

Realising That Patriarchy Damages Men As Well As Women
I understand now how patriarchy works, how the gender roles it creates cause much of the damage men blame on feminism. The idea that men are stronger, wiser and should provide for women is a patriarchal belief, not a feminist belief. Feminism fights these gender roles. The idea that women are ‘homemakers’ (with no other choice) and men go out to work while the woman raises the family is patriarchy. The old MRA/anti-feminist argument of feminists wanting chivalry along with equal rights falls apart when you examine where chivalry came from. The best argument they usually use is the “women and children first” as their example of chivalry; usually from that of a sinking ship. The myth is that it was maritime law, and that it was used to benefit women. Its most famous and last occurrence was its use on the Titanic. It actually started from HMS Birkenhead, and was called the ‘Birkenhead Drill’ and kept by men as tradition as “the distinguished thing for men to do”. So in fact it wasn’t a result of women’s wishes or feminists, men created it in a patriarchal society, upholding gender roles. Men were stronger and therefore were there to protect women, as they were incapable of looking after themselves. Once again, feminism fights this patriarchy and its out-dated gender assumptions.
MRAs try to claim they fight for fathers’ rights too. This is the biggest myth of all. Courts still favour women in custody battles because patriarchy makes women the primary carer; and men next to irrelevant when it comes to raising a family. It is once again patriarchy that causes this discrimination, and something that feminism fights against. MRAs fighting against feminism results in upholding patriarchy and its gender roles; it therefore actually fights against fathers’ rights. But then, that’s not really surprising: MRAs are anti-feminists and nothing more. They are set up solely to undermine feminism and are nothing more than a hate group. If MRAs were actually fighting for men’s rights, they’d be called something else: they’d be called feminists!
I’m not going to go into everything I believe about feminism, we’ll be here forever more, and you’re probably bored enough already of me! But I will say that I have been reading, tweeting, listening and reading again about feminism and I truly believe this is where my political beliefs lie. I am a lefty, but feminism grabs me more. Yes, it benefits me as it quashes patriarchy. Yes, it benefits me because understanding male privilege helps with the struggles I’ve had with white privilege. Yes, it benefits me because I detest gender roles and I like to wear pink and eyeliner! But its more than that, it’s a set of principles, of equality and of not making any person, male or female, an object for anyone else to use or abuse. It is eye opening and I wish I’d found it earlier; my friends are probably sick of me going on about it, but I’m not going to stop!
I do laugh when I see MRA/anti-feminist trolls perpetuating myths I used to believe, or those shitty kitchen jokes. I also laugh when people question my sexuality when I say I am a feminist, like believing in equality for both genders makes me homosexual somehow. “Mangina” and other slurs, don’t bother me, they just come across as a desperate argument. And as for feminists having no humour you must be kidding me! They have the best sense of humour I know! The persistent accusation that I am only a feminist in order to ‘get laid’ still annoys me, because it is illustrative of male privilege – the idea that my agreement with and respect towards women somehow makes them owe me something. No feminist, male or female, owes me anything. Ever. I believe in feminism because it benefits all of society. I am quite content with my principles.
So there we have it, how I began as an anti-feminist then realised maybe I was a feminist underneath after all. I turned it around and am now proud to be a feminist. I still have a long way to go, a lot to learn and a lot of mistakes to make; but hopefully with some help, my understanding and knowledge will grow. Feminism is forever evolving, and just like racial equality, once one hurdle is conquered, quickly another one approaches that must be overcome.
I don’t want a medal, or praise or anything for becoming a feminist. I just want people to understand that it’s education and communication that make people realize the benefits of feminism. When boys, girls, men and women are brought up in the doctrines of patriarchy, and gender roles are forced upon us from such an early age, it is difficult to break free. It is difficult to oppose and fight a system you don’t even realise exists. That doesn’t excuse bigotry or misogyny, and we must continue to fight against that at every turn. I am just so happy I asked questions and understood feminism; with a bit (a lot!) more knowledge, I hope to carry on and become more involved. Whether I continue to write badly or just preach to others who knows?!
I’ll leave you with a quote from Johann Wolfgang von Geothe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”
CAN ALSO BE FOUND ON: Week Woman