What is with the backlash against feminism?

[warpus]

Should we be using the term Masculinazis instead of MRAs?

That seems more appropriate! Any woman hating MRA should be known as that.

I mean.. otherwise.. what do we call run of the mill men's rights activists? You know, those guys who have nothing against women at all? The male version of a feminist?

There doesn't seem to be a good word for one. The term "MRA" seems to be super tainted. Imagine if "Feminist" was a negative word.

 

[Borachio]

Whatever happened to the good old MCP expression? Seemed to do the job nicely.

 

[useless]

Just call MRAs what they really are; male supremecists

 

[warpus]

Just call MRAs what they really are; male supremecists

That covers the extremists. What do you call the "Good" MRAs?

 

[JollyRoger]

That covers the extremists. What do you call the "Good" MRAs?

Marginalislanders

 

[Senethro]

IDK, but if it were up to me I'd split them up into very focused issue based groupings. Male suicide prevention, male homelessness, male rape victims support etc.

The main litmus test for toxic MRA is "Do they blame feminism for male problems or see it as a hostile rival for funds/attention?"

 

[useless]

Quackers, do you think that comparing advocates for womens equality to fascists that did genocide to the tune of 6 million dead is reasonable/helpful?

Also, given Rotherham and the repeated coming to light of male celebrities having gotten away with rapes for decades, does it not look like there is a culture of silence, disbelief and looking the other way with regard to rape?

Rape Culture only exists to Quackers when muslims do it

You think im joking but his own beliefs show this

 

[warpus]

IDK, but if it were up to me I'd split them up into very focused issue based groupings. Male suicide prevention, male homelessness, male rape victims support etc.

It doesn't make sense to me to split them up like that, but I don't really know nothing about these organizations. I am saying this only because it wouldn't make sense to me to split up feminist groups in a similar fashion.

I brought all of this up because it seems that ... well.. one of the big problems is people calling eachother names, whether it be someone calling all feminists "********s" or someone calling all people who fight for men's rights "MRAs", which has a very negative connotation these days.

There is probably more going on than just people calling eachother names, but maybe a lot of it is people just.. you know, being jerks? It's easy to call someone a name and walk away. There seem to be extremists on both sides, so maybe we just need to start ignoring them... If we're going to be talking about gender issues, why not leave all the extremists out of the discussion? That might be a rather extreme suggestion, but if all they're doing is starting the conversation with bigotry, then I don't see what they'd contribute to a meaningful discussion anyway.

 

[Senethro]

It doesn't make sense to me to split them up like that, but I don't really know nothing about these organizations. I am saying this only because it wouldn't make sense to me to split up feminist groups in a similar fashion.

I brought all of this up because it seems that ... well.. one of the big problems is people calling eachother names, whether it be someone calling all feminists "********s" or someone calling all people who fight for men's rights "MRAs", which has a very negative connotation these days.

There is probably more going on than just people calling eachother names, but maybe a lot of it is people just.. you know, being jerks? It's easy to call someone a name and walk away.

I guess it depends on if you view many of womens problems as systemic with, to a greater or lesser extent per issue, an underlying cause. Contrasted with male issues which look like disparate holes in a system that usually works in their favour.

 

[JollyRoger]

Male issues with disparate holes is what may behind many a male activist.

 

[warpus]

I guess it depends on if you view many of womens problems as systemic with, to a greater or lesser extent per issue, an underlying cause. Contrasted with male issues which look like disparate holes in a system that usually works in their favour.

This sort of discourse doesn't really help, I don't think. We shouldn't be comparing the issues women face in society to the issues men face in society and trying to see who has it worse or whatever. We should be looking at each issue independently, on its own merits. Otherwise you end up with statements that overgeneralize and disengage people from meaningful conversation.

 

[Harv]

Should we be using the term Masculinazis instead of MRAs?

No ring.

How about Morons' Reactions Amplified?

 

[kramerfan86]

Someone nailed it earlier, the backlash is mostly fueled by people associating the whole movement with its most irksome and radical members. Those members, as is the case in any group, are the most vocal and visible.

 

[NovaKart]

I honestly don't think even the more extreme feminists are anti-male. I regularly read articles from salon.com and slate.com which have a lot of feminist articles. However, I am critical of the feminist movement at least as articulated from those sites. I think they have a kind of tunnel vision and agenda that makes them ignore reality sometimes and twist facts to suit their point of view. This doesn't mean that I'm anti-women's equality at all.

One thing I disagree with is that they analyze representation of women as to whether or not it fits a feminist point of view. I think this is limiting to women because instead of women having the freedom to just make a music video, sing a song or play a role in a movie or TV show, they have to have their representation analyzed to see whether or not it fits a feminist point of view. We can see this with Madonna who for a long time was villainized by feminists for exploiting women but eventually was embraced by many feminists for being successful. It's no wonder that Madonna herself doesn't identify as feminist.

There are a number of other things I could bring up but it would make the post overly long. Maybe I'll bring them up later.

 

[NovaKart]

Beyonce has made some statements identifying herself as feminist and this was criticized by Annie Lennox who says twerking is not feminist. I haven't really looked at her exact quotes on this but from the article itself, it seems like Annie Lennox wasn't so harsh in her criticism but said Beyonce was feminist lite.

 

[warpus]

Someone nailed it earlier, the backlash is mostly fueled by people associating the whole movement with its most irksome and radical members. Those members, as is the case in any group, are the most vocal and visible.

It seems to me that some people are doing the exact same thing with MRAs, or whatever we're calling them.

And if that's all it is, then this happens with every movement or group that's large enough.. doesn't it? Every movement that's large enough will have extremists, extremists tend to be a lot more vocal than moderates, and people end up coming out of the woodwork here and there, defining the movement as a whole by the actions of a few. It happens with Islam, with feminism, with atheism...

 

[BvBPL]

Probably a mix of people not really understanding what feminism actually is(maybe you could argue they don't want to but as yoda said above I am always hesitant to assume people's inner motives), people talking past each other and quite frankly a lot of douchebaggery.

You are exactly right. The confusion over what is and what is not feminism is a huge problem in the public dialectic. People look at parts of third and second wave feminism that are pushing the envelope and are labeled simply as feminism and say "those crazy feminists, I don't like them one bit," and then a bystander hears that and says "he doesn't like feminism, that must mean he doesn't want women to vote" meaning the bystander assumes the other party is opposed to the goals of first wave feminism. This confusion develops into antipathy between the two parties. Throw a few rabid jerks in on both sides and you've got a lovely bunch of coconuts.

 

[nc-1701]

At the risk of being singled out for one of the hate camps, I'll throw in an idea of mine.

A lot of language I have heard from (some) feminists in recent days sounds very conservative in nature. A particular example would be the heavy focus on reducing Constitutional protections given to those accused of certain crimes (mostly rape) and generally toward focusing on punishing "bad" people. This is fundamentally a far right position to take, liberals believe in presumption of innocence. As a proud Liberal myself I'm going to be hostile to fundamentally Conservative policies, even if they are espoused by feminists.
Now are feminists moving to the right in general? Or are we observing some type of "horseshoe theory" effect? I have no idea, but I don't think turning on Liberalism will benefit women in the long run. And it's certainly not something I support.

 

[Senethro]

At the risk of being singled out for one of the hate camps, I'll throw in an idea of mine.

A lot of language I have heard from (some) feminists in recent days sounds very conservative in nature. A particular example would be the heavy focus on reducing Constitutional protections given to those accused of certain crimes (mostly rape) and generally toward focusing on punishing "bad" people. This is fundamentally a far right position to take, liberals believe in presumption of innocence. As a proud Liberal myself I'm going to be hostile to fundamentally Conservative policies, even if they are espoused by feminists.
Now are feminists moving to the right in general? Or are we observing some type of "horseshoe theory" effect? I have no idea, but I don't think turning on Liberalism will benefit women in the long run. And it's certainly not something I support.

Not being an american I don't actually know about this. Can you give an example? Is this about the UoC "yes means yes" thing mentioned earlier?

 

[warpus]

The whole feminist movement as a whole also seems to have some pretty bad PR. I realize that it's not just one movement, it's people here and there, doing stuff, independent of eachother.. and that varying types of feminism exist.

But for a while I would only ever hear negative things about feminism. Bad things, stupid things, and so on. It's probably the "extremists are the loudest and that's what you'll hear" effect happening, but it sort of turned me off the movement at the time. Websites like Jebezel (or whatever it is) seem to be full of extremist feminists as well, and that junk gets passed around quite a bit.

Maybe the moderate feminists need to make more noise? You know, the way we're asking moderate Muslims to make some noise and to speak out against the extermists?

*shrug* I don't suppose to understand the feminist movement at all, this is all just all based on my own personal anecdotal experiences. I can completely understand why people would be against feminism if they only saw the aspects of it that I keep running into - for the most part only the bad parts of it.

So how do feminists get better PR? I have no idea. Like I said, I don't even know if that's the problem, or just my own unique experience that doesn't really apply to others..