Could you consider a member of a religious organization, say a Catholic priest for example [I realize there are exceptions and those who don’t actively support a practice but are apathetic to it], who advocates or continues to support a sexist system within said religion a MRA? Does Trauma/Anger/Externalization play a part in that? Do they stockpile MREs?
The religion itself is an MRA organization. Anyone participating in these religions, but not working to fix their unacceptable behavior is part of the problem.
I have no way of understanding how tithing catholics can live with themselves. They’re knowingly handing over money to an organization that has in the past and continues to shield child rapists.
If I knew that kind of thing about any organization I participated in, I’d get out as fast as possible. I don’t get what “good catholics” are even thinking when it comes to that.
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It has gotten to the point where leaving a child unsupervised in the company of a priest is ipso facto negligent parenting. The Catholic Church these days is an international conspiracy of rapists with a sideline in religion.
Unfortunately, most of the other churches are not substantially better in this respect. If there is a religiously-run organisation that deals with children, then it is a safe bet that the administration of that organisation has at some point covered for paedophiles within their ranks.
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Relevant, but not for those with weak stomachs:
This was produced by the Iglesia ni Cristo (Filipino Church of Christ)
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Seen Spotlight yet? Amazing movie, easily as good as All the Presidents Men.
@LDoBe Oh jeebus… I thought it was a joke at first… but it isn’t is it. M-More arrows for t-the c-church’s quiver… “shivers, gags, and then proceeds to regurgitate 3 partially digested MREs”
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No. It’s not a joke. The Iglesia ni Cristo is a totalitarian cult with surprisingly high membership numbers.
It’s powerful enough to pull its members’ tax returns to make sure they are paying up that 10% off the top. They also have a very strict attendance policy, and new members must take classes. Classes openly referred to as indoctrination classes.
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I used to work in a refuge for homeless youth.
There ain’t nothing funny about this shit.
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This is a relatively small cult. If I were president of the US, I’d have a very hard time resisting bombing the fuck out of the Vatican, then taking all their nazi gold and art, and returning it to the rightful families it was stolen from.
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I’d argue for economics having an important role here:
It has both traditionally been the case that men are expected to fulfill certain social functions through market activity participation(with atitudes ranging from the arguably-well-intentioned-but-limiting “breadwinning is how I care for my family” to more overtly nasty “Oh, we don’t need to pay the ‘girls’ as much, they are just working for pin money and living off their husband’s salary” and “No way my woman earns more than me!” stuff); and the case that, especially in automated-industrial and post-industrial economies, we have very little use for a lot of lower skill men(often negative use, in that they are considered to be a likely criminal element to be policed at considerable cost).
If you have the necessary education, connections, social status, some combo of the above; it’s undoubtedly true that being male is just icing on the cake in terms of getting a nice gig(see basically any study about executive demographics, hiring biases in science and academia, etc.); but, on the low end, ‘pink collar’ jobs have always been pretty awful and underpaid; and still are, while ‘blue collar’ jobs used to be considerably better; but are now declining in value and availability.
Especially if you’ve been taught to expect that economic activity is essential to aspects of your interpersonal interactions(and, even if you haven’t, if you are un or underemployed and basically screwed); it’s relatively easy to nurse the feeling that you, your life chances, and the existence of your social role are in serious peril.
This view is false at the macro scale(if you look at the commanding heights of the economy, it’s largely men); but for the men who lack skills that are in demand? They are mostly delusional if they think that women are ‘getting ahead’(shit service sector jobs and the like aren’t exactly the cushy spoils of victory); but they may well be falling behind less quickly than you are.
It’s somewhat like being a kid in school: the lower the grade level, the more empirically plausible the belief that women actually dominate positions of authority: At the elementary level, your teacher is very, very, likely to be female; as are most of her colleagues, even the principal is fairly likely to be. As you go on up, the percentage of female authority figures drops; and you start to notice that department heads, superintendents, tenured faculty, the really good spots, tend to be even heavier on men than average.
TL;DR: I have some sympathy for the blue-collar side of the ‘MRA’ position. Not in the sense that I think it is correct; but in the sense that it reflects an erronious interpretation of a genuinely lousy situation. No, it’s not Teh Women keeping you down; and no, the fact that your economic position is tenuous at best does not reflect the distribution of wealth and power among people who actually have nontrivial amounts of it; but yes, odds are that you are screwed, are more screwed than your parents’ generation was, and your job options are worsening and drying up faster than the (miserable; but harder to outsource) ‘pink collar’ ones.
The ones who don’t have an economic excuse, on the other hand? I’m not prepared to deny that some of them probably have legitimate grievances about actual miscarriages of justice in divorce proceedings or family court decisions; but they mostly seem to be narcissistic man-babies who can’t deal with the idea that women have ‘agency’ might(however sporadically, alas) interfere with their god-given right to treat them as sex toys. Not so much sympathy there.
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Most organizations that deal with children have some degree of a pedophile problem among the staff: what is uniquely repugnant about the church cases is how the Aura-of-Righteousness expedites the victim blaming; and how chillingly resistant the organization is to the idea that they should really be horrified enough to clean house themselves; and even if they aren’t, the state has the right and the duty to protect the victims from them, regardless of their silly fantasies about the supremacy of ecclesiastical law over civil jurisdiction.
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I think this is really important - rather than going with the easy answer that MRAs just suck as human beings, it’s important to understand why someone would be attracted to an ideology that creates division and makes them miserable. It seems to be a symptom of a wider problem and assumptions that men should be happier because they have a larger share of the pie don’t really seem to be well informed. Happiness has very little to do with the amount of stuff we have or the control we have over other people. Often the response to MRA-type attitudes seems to be to ridicule the man-child, but this can exacerbate the problem. If we actually try to understand MRAs and treat it almost as a public health issue, we can help people to recognise mental health issues in themselves and get help rather than projecting it onto others. People who are comfortable with themselves are more prepared to show support for others, and I think many modern societies are far too individualistic and lack empathy or community - MRAs are one symptom of this. Fostering gratitude, mutual support, belonging etc. are important components of happiness and are often better supported by community rather than just therapy.
Religion is an interesting component of this - I mentioned in another comment that I had received a lot of benefit from my religious community before and even after I left the church. While there are lots of problems with existing religions, it doesn’t surprise me that a disproportionate number of MRAs are atheists. Where so much of society is controlled by the church, people who leave it are less likely to find a strong and diverse community to be part of. Societies where the church is not at the centre of life seem to be better at resisting this influence (although they often show plenty of other xenophobic traits).
It sounds kind of communist (I bought a tape of Chinese/English communist anthems the first time I went to Shanghai. My brother has it now, but some of the songs were catchy. “The brightest is the sun, the dearest is Chairman Mao.” “Open fire on the fascists!”). Some of the 1000 yard stares on the kids though - it reminds me of Ken Ham’s comments about forcing babies to like vegemite (and by analogy, fundamentalism) so they’d see it as natural when they were older. This was a positive thing, in his view.
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It sounds communist because this church and the communist China of old are both in the business of brainwashing and totalitarian authoritarian rule over people who they prefer wouldn’t think at all.
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This is a big problem. Colossal, really. And there’s a growing number of organizations that want to slap together “atheist churches”, like Sunday Assembly.
I can’t vouch for whether it’s good or bad. I’ve certainly heard great stuff about Sunday Assembly. But I’m not interested in a church-like environment even slightly, and most atheists I know aren’t either.
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Any sufficiently large organisation is guaranteed to have some evil scumbags in its ranks. That’s inevitable.
What is not inevitable is the active, massive and long-established effort to conceal and perpetuate the offences of those scumbags,
Paedophile priests are a tragic and probably unavoidable reality. However, the role of the church in protecting those criminals was a highly avoidable choice. And it wasn’t just a matter of turning a blind eye; known predatory priests were and are routinely shifted among parishes, providing them with an endless stream of new victims.
While this was happening, the victims were attacked, disbelieved, slandered and silenced. And this is still going on.
It ain’t the crime, it’s the cover-up.
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I agree. I want to help them, but it is hard to show solidarity to those who make you feel like your life is in danger, even when fighting the root cause of their problem is the right thing to do.
It’s even harder when they refuse to accept that fighting the patriarchy means fighting for their rights too.
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I am loosely associated with a church and have some good friends there (one of the only people outside of the family I get to talk with seriously is a missionary from the US - we don’t try to convert each other and we actually have some good discussions). I’ve only been to one service in the last year though, I tend to find ways of being elsewhere until afterwards. Honestly, I have mixed feelings about atheist churches. For me, the problem is when people base their community around their beliefs. On the other hand, being explicit about the fact that this is a group where disconnected atheists are welcome can be helpful. What I really want is for you to be able to see tangible empathy and support between members of a community whether or not they belong to the same group as you. For that, I think there need to be more interactions between people who would normally be divided.
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Yeah, it’s definitely the same kind of ‘sympathetic’ that I have for residents of flyover country who are willing to vote against their economic interests in exchange for promises to suppress me and my filthy, degenerate, ilk.
Their position is grim; but it is easiest to sympathize from a safe distance; even as one acknowledges some ethical distinction between those who lash out in delusion and those who lash out with, and because of, full knowledge of what they are doing.
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I am loosely reminded of the people I grew up with.
I had a messy youth, involving a lot of chemistry and crazyness. Pretty much everyone I knew was a victim/survivor of some sort of horror.
Although there was definitely some overlap, you could broadly divide the people I knew into “junkies” and “arseholes”. They were all damaged people, and damage echoes; fucked-over people tend to do fucked-up things [1].
But the dividing line between the junkies and the arseholes was where they directed their echoes. The junkies aimed it inwards; the arseholes aimed it outwards [2].
[1] One of the big flaws in Judeo-Christian mythology is the “sins of the father visited on the son” thing. That is almost exactly backwards. In reality, the sins visited upon the father are visited upon the son. The most destructive people are very often people who had a lot of destruction directed at them in the past.
[2] For those of you who’ve seen Trainspotting: Begbie.
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Eh, I think I’d rather eat an MRE than an MRA.
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I agree there are economic risk factors which increase the sort of ritualized social violence experienced by boys and subverts their expression and sharing of emotion. MRA politics are wholly incoherent but also potentially symptomatic of that sort of socioeconomic and cultural trauma. That the “politics” and behaviors are irrational can raise questions about systemic (as opposed to just individual) trauma and, also, violence intervention and prevention strategies.
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