Lets get this out into the open: MRAs

http://rebloggy.com/post/11-signs-you-re-a-men-s-rights-activist/43373729190

 

11 strawmen made of straw

whee

 

I just love how men's issue are just swept under the rug and we are told to "man up" and if anyone dares to highlight the issue, they are slurred in this way. There is discrimination against men just for being on and yet to try and highlight it it means yo get into trouble for doing so.

@JR, thanks for proving what I said.

 

I agree there is discrimination against men. I discriminate against them when deciding who to have sex with.

 

Go outside a live a little. Everyone has advantages, personal characteristics that allow them to dodge certain types of punishment. Probably you too.

Unattractive women & men usually have less subtle ways of gaining favor. The first step is to realize your talents & not feel sorry for yourself or victimized.

Me for instance, I'm charming & rarely do people get really angry at me (IRL).

You have some stats to talk about? I'd imagine 2nd & 3rd generation high-income blacks (aka : not guys like Tupac) are similar to whites in their amount of jailtime.

 

The irony is that some (Traitorfish) have argued that men's issues were part of(academically-themed) feminism, for instance by freeing men from "toxic masculinity", which I think can be argued to include the idea of "manning up".
But this thread seems to demonstrate how practical feminism in deed is a matter of one group vs another.

 

That's another issue I find, actually - life is unfair to people by virtue of being people. Occasionally it seems as though feminists ignore that; you might be being picked on because you exist, or you're a junior employee, or the person picking on you is a nasty person rather than because you're a woman. Indeed, equality would still mean a lot of unfair treatment.

 

that's it in a nutshell...

there's nothin inherently wrong with MRA, it's just that almost every MRA-organisation and guys claiming to be MRAs are not really that, but anti-feminists, which isn't the same at all. MRA and feminism aren't mutually exclusive.

Just take the OP, some valid issues (like how men in many places are disadvantaged when custody is determined) are mixed with vague 'they've got it better than me'-things (like the suicide thing, by that logic, egypt would be heaven on earth while most of the west is crap), down to twisting things into something they're not (like child support by calling it punitive...)

 

Agreed.

Help me see it. Honestly.
How is this patriarchy maintained? How come women haven't been able to break it? What is it they lack to do it?

Agreed.
There certainly are people who are described by few of the "11 signs" JR posted above. They are an embarrassment, but fortunately they don't seem to be many.

 

You have to man up. Real men do not need mass movements to win "rights" from women.

For starters, I do agree with (pro-)feminists regarding MRA, as much as I disagree with feminism itself.

 

Untrue, in my experience. Men get in trouble for trying to make gender issues all about them. If men want to address men's issues, they should construct spaces in which to do it, and most feminists are supportive of such a project. Serious scholarly studies into men and masculinity (the "men's studies" classes that MRAs like to demand but refuse to actually take), for example, have grown out of feminist scholarship, with the support of feminist scholars.

You can point to feminist hostility towards "men's rights" groups and websites, but feminists don't criticise them simply because they're for men, but because they're deranged, retrograde hate-clubs. To put it bluntly. At best, they're pity-parties, where men can commiserate each other on their frustrations, without actually doing anything to improve themselves or the world. Progressive men's groups and websites- which exist, but which I doubt you've ever bothered to explore- are not met with the same ire, but rather with sympathy and (if sometimes critical) support.

 

Many of your criticisms TF could be levelled at feminists. As someone said upstream in this thread, feminism and MR are different sides of the same coin. They're both moaners.

 

(Help me! I'm sinking fast. I can't resist the urge to post...: )

They lack the balls.

 

Well, with feminists, there's a strong history of legitimate complaints. So (in total) the whining:legitimacy ratio has been higher with feminists.

The MRA are at great risk of creating a much worse ratio.

I mean, I look at the list in the OP, and the only one that even seems pseudo-legit is 'Father's rights". On that front, where it's tougher to get access in a hostile breakup, there might be a point. I admit, society has a bias that assumes that a mother is more 'parenty' than a father, and so a father has a higher hill to climb in the cases where it's not true.

 

So you actually think the facts have changed all that much in 7-14 years?

The footnotes were there in the article before you posted this inane rant about a highly reputable "subpar source".

The only people who seem to think the organization is dubious at all are the usual far-right suspects for the usual wacky reasons.

So they are actually highly misleading statistics which are occasionally deliberately taken out of context. Interesting.

Claiming that women physically abuse men as much as men physically abuse women is just sheer nonsense.

 

11 Signs You're A Real Man!

1. You have no problem with the gender wage gap. So you wouldn't mind having to pay for dates.

2. You insist that it’s a scientifically proven fact that men are stronger than women. So you agree about society believing that it’s worse for a man to hit a woman than for a woman to hit a man.

3. You believe that the age of consent is unfair and that there’s nothing wrong with having sex with teenage girls. When you learn of other teenage girls having sex and enjoying it, good for them.

4. You hate when a woman automatically assumes that a man is a douchebag before getting to know him. Find better women.

5. Since you believe that the military is not a place for women, you do not think it is necessary for women to be drafted in order to have equality.

6. You hate when women assume that men are like wild animals. Find better women.

7. You hate the fact that men are bullied for conforming to their male gender roles. You don't mind the fact there are men who prefer not to.

8. You hate when women assume that there are no nice guys. Find better women.

9. You hate when women assume that men just want to get laid. Find better women.

10. You hate when women make generalizations about all men. Find better women.

11. You insist that men should be responsible for protecting women from being raped

 

It's been tried.

http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com...ns-issues-are-the-new-taboo-topics-on-campus/

Why should feminism have the monopoly voice on gender issues? Modern men's rights (read: not 1970s) got started because feminism was ignoring any and all concerns about male issues.

"Oh, the patriarchy hurts you too! Join us, we'll smash it together by making things better for women!" isn't a very attractive slogan.

 

I think that in developed nations, patriarchy now continues to operate mostly through minute, scarcely-noticable, notions and assumptions. But these notions and assumptions are nevertheless numerous and collectively, they silently condition our thinking in ways that generally tend to work to the advantage of men. Let me give as an example the phrase I used in my first post: “Be a man!” This is an exhortation to adopt a particular kind of behavior, generally regarded as predominantly positive: Be strong, be tough, work through small pains. Its sheer existence as an exhortation indicates that the behavior suggested is regarded as on the whole positive (we never say “Be an ax-murderer!&#8221. But there is no equivalent for women. No one exhorts someone to “Be a woman!” When we put a magnifying glass on this particular asymmetry, we see that, in a tiny way, our language habits suggest to us several things: that there is a mode of masculinity qua masculinity that is predominately regarded as a positive thing, but that there is not for femininity qua femininity; indeed, one could go further and say there is no way at all for women to simply “be.” If a young girl hears her dad tell her brother “Be a man!” and never hears anyone tell her “Be a woman!” she may never consciously notice the discrepency, but in a subtle way, it will probably condition her thinking, and her brother’s.

Now, of course it’s true that the phrase “Be a man!” is not wholly beneficial to men. It’s a way of steering men into a cultural stereotype of masculinity that may not be entirely appropriate or welcome or healthy. It exhorts a cultivated insensitivity, to pain, but also to other things. But between a gender that one can “be” in even a mixed way, and a gender one can’t “be” in any particular way at all, I know which one serves a person better.

Now this is just one example. I frankly only picked it because it was close to hand. So don’t imagine I’m putting any special stock in this particular example. Perhaps this one exists only in English. But there are thousands of such, and collectively they condition our minds to conceive male success and thriving more easily than female success and thriving.

The net result of these micro-notions was well captured by that article someone linked to this forum a while back on being a white male as being like playing a video game on easy mode.* Men, I believe, continue to be advantaged by numerous small notions and assumptions deeply embedded in our cultural matrix. Women are swimming against a tide. We see the results of that in the wage gap and representation in top positions gap, etc.

What does feminism need to get past this remnant of patriarchy? Time, scrutiny of minute particulars and creativity. These come to one’s attention. One lays out how they operate. Then one devises clever mechanisms to defamiliarize people with these little constituent parts of the ideology. One needs creativity because it can’t always simply be a tit-for-tat corrective. I’m not sure this case, for example, that the most fruitful avenue would be to devise a workable version of “Be a woman!” (But since this has become a long post, I won't for now elaborate on why. In the mean time, Be a bee!)

*Now I had one criticism of that article, which was that if all white males are playing on easy mode, but playing against one another, then a lot of the playing doesn’t feel particularly easy to a lot of the men. But still, the main point was valid.

 

Feminism doesn't have a monopoly on gender issues. However, all progressive or for that matter intellectually coherent approaches to gender issues have derived from the feminist movement. The rest- "men's rights", conservative "feminism", etc.- are as a rule retrograde, toxic and generally doubleplusungood.

You can't accuse one company of having a monopoly because its competitors refuse to sell anything but sacks of venomous spiders.

 

I don't even know... I can't even begin to comprehend the mind-set that came up with this sentence. If I invite someone, man or woman, out to dinner, I expect to pay. If they invite me, I expect them to pay - though I'd be happy to offer to pay.

Again, I fail to comprehend. Isn't it simply wrong for anyone to strike another? I don't see how it's more wrong for one gender to strike the other, or vice versa.

So paedophilia is an OK thing, now? When did this happen?

The person who wrote this is full of hate. Just don't hate... anything really. Hate is self-destructive, imo.

The military is not the place for anyone. Violence of any kind is not an answer to anything. If it does anything, it makes things worse.

Here you go again. What's with all the hate?

Hate. Hate. Hate. Bullying for any reason should be discouraged though.

"Find better women. Find better women. Find better women."

Something tells me the person who wrote this has a one track mind. Maybe women aren't far out when they stereotype the person who wrote this?

Find... something else to take an interest in.

You might do better to insist that everyone should protect everyone else from being raped, if the circumstances demand it.

"Real Man"? Piffle! Not even close.