Spoken aloud, that is one hell of a joke!
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This is actually one of the things that bothers me greatly about our supposed “separation of church and state” which, in fact, isn’t reality: because the Catholic church gets to own billions of dollars worth of property (just in the U.S.) and not pay taxes on them, or on any of the income it makes, I have to pay higher taxes and thus indirectly (directly?) support the Catholic church having more money available to cover their tracks WRT sexually/physically/emotionally abusing priests. I am being forced to support violent criminal activity done in the name of a religion I do not believe in. This cannot be what our Founding Fathers had in mind.
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There’s generally little to be discussed with MRA groups because their presence represents an entire constellation of risk factors for violence: hypermasculinity, objectification of others, formally established gender roles, and more.
A better way to help everyone involved is to support trauma informed violence prevention that reaches systems. Bystander intervention programs in colleges are an example.
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To add to your post: I have seen several times within my own extended families that the person with the greatest decency at their core will be the one to ultimately commit suicide while their closest relatives continue on with their lives, abusing their ‘subordinates’ at home (children, spouse) and out in the world (fellow employees, especially those under their immediate supervision).
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Bought one out of curiosity recently. It was okay, In a pinch out in combat or homeless due to natural disaster, it’s probably more amazing, and I’m going to get some for keeping in the basement (we have a tornado season.) They are bulky and expensive, however.
As to the topic at hand:
I have a differential hypothesis that MRAs are distinguishable into two main groups: The disaffected and disillusioned, and the predatory and narcissistic, with some overlap, I would argue that feminism actually “created” the MRAs in much the same way Marx “invented” big-C Capitalism. I don’t know that MRAs really would have had the vocabulary and framework to coordinate otherwise. I want to contribute more to these thoughts, but I’m running late, I’ll be back.
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OT OT OT OT
Inside that pale green plastic ‘meal heater’ bag, you’ll find a cotton-ish fabric pouch containing grey metal fillings. Then find a DRY ~1-2 ltr plastic bottle and wrap bottle with duct tape for extra strength. Pour fillings into bottle, then add 1/2 bottle of water, cap it, add more duct tape (quickly now) over the cap. Put bottle down somewhere safe and get away from it…
and under NO circumstances should you place that bottle near an armed checkpoint b/c they get pissed about that sort of thing SRSLY
I did always enjoy that the MRE could be used, at least, for diversions. Or, with the Chicken or Tuna ala King, chemical/biological attack.
<—>
MRAs, on the other hand, should get more physical activity and drink more water and get some counseling.
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I’ve never had any MREs, but I used to sometimes take the British Ration Packs when I went camping.
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There was a poll of Reddit MRAs a couple of years ago. MRAs are:
- 75% 18-35
- 89% Male
- 85% White
- 81% Heterosexual
- 57% in the US
- 70% Single
- 92% No Children
- 60% Irreligious
The following are less clear-cut.
Gender ideology:
Political affiliation:
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Looks like a huge disconnect between the 92% childless statistic and the issues. Very strange.
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Education discrimination? Those people are writing papers about my people againnnnnnaaaaaawwwwwwww…
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First thing I noticed too!
Second thing: the number one concern is “false rape allegations”, despite the fact that rape has a lower percentage of false reporting than other crimes, and when you add in the fact that only a minority of rapes are ever reported to begin with, the problem seems unworthy of such hand-wringing.
Third: the highly-loaded term “paper abortion” listed separately from custody rights and child support.
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Strap in. This is going to be long.
I actually understand where these guys are coming from. That’s not to say I condone it, and certainly not to give the impression that I advocate it, but I understand it. I think it boils down to three actually legitimate issues, through filters that are, well, if we were to be charitable in our description, less enlightened. But first, let me explain what I mean by that:
Bob, Tom, and Jim all grow up with verbally abusive parents, and spend their entire young lives hearing how they’re useless, worthless, and no good.
Bob decides fuck that, and becomes extremely successful, driven every step of the way by the drive not only to prove them wrong, but to incontrovertibly surpass his parents in every possible way.
Tom cascades into depression, drug abuse, self-harm, and ends up dead at 24.
Jim gets into therapy, comes to terms with his childhood, and figures out a way to live a life he’s happy with.
Sarah and Jane are both raised by rich parents and have everything handed to them on a silver platter. Sarah realizes how fortunate she is and dedicates her life to philanthropy and helping others. Jane ends up self centered, entitled, and thinking everyone else is there to serve her needs.
TL:DR: People react differently to the same stimuli. Some of those reactions are healthy, some are successful, and some are both or neither.
The first issue, which @tachin1 mentioned, is that society is changing. Gender roles that evolved for a reason and worked for most of human history have been made essentially obsolete by modern technology. That same technology has radically redefined every aspect of resource distribution and how one goes about “earning a living” or “providing”. The dominance of Western European culture is being challenged. We are largely a post-Christian society. Traditional means of forming social bonds are being replaced by entirely different models.
Most people are in distress over this at some level. That’s normal: Change is scary, and changes of that magnitude trigger base level survival anxiety. The question is, do you deal with this by trying to adapt, by withdrawing entirely, by actively trying to effect change, by trying to maintain the status quo, or by something else entirely? And how do you go about doing that?
The MRA is someone who cannot articulate or admit their confusion and distress, so it manifests as anger. Because they are not able to clearly understand what they are angry about (which again, is largely both legitimate and universal), the anger turns inward to self-loathing, becomes directed towards a scapegoat, or grows into unfocused rage.
As stated, this is a legitimate problem which they have a right to be angry over. It’s how they process that anger which is unhealthy and destructive.
The second issue is that men and women, quite frankly, are different. We literally have different brain chemistry. We have entirely different ways of processing things. We have different needs and different mechanisms to meet them. Some of those differences don’t matter for anything but stand-up comedy routines, but some of them bring up real problems: Try arguing strong objectivism versus scientific method sometime- It’s not just a question of how we interpret the facts, but the very way we decide what the facts are. Yes, patriarchy- Men have historically been the ones to set the rules (see that first issue), but I don’t think people are stopping to think just what that means-
If I want to play a musical instrument, and fail, what do I do? I keep practicing. If I don’t understand the homework, I keep reading, I study, I get help, and keep working on it until it makes sense. If I want a job, I go out and keep sending out resumes and pounding the pavement and knocking on doors until I get one. Apply yourself. Never give up. Tenacity. Perseverance.
If I want to have sex with someone, I… Ask once and then drop the matter completely?
How many times have you had this conversation about rape:
“But if I leave my bicycle unlocked, and someone steals it–”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“Well, I have a right not to be murdered, but if I walk down a dark alley–”
“NOT THE SAME THING.”
The reason this conversation keeps happening and keeps accomplishing nothing is because men don’t understand why it isn’t the same thing- And I’m not talking about understanding that women aren’t bicycles- I mean, they don’t understand why sex doesn’t follow the same rules as literally everything else. It just doesn’t- And that’s because all of those other rules follow male reasoning. Yes, insert comment about the patriarchy here- The fact is, those patriarchal rules are all a lot of men understand, and some of them don’t even recognize that there is an entire other set of rules in play. Sex should be, almost by definition, a mutual agreement- But when the two parties are following completely different rules and protocols, aren’t even speaking the same language… Well, that brings us back to either stand-up comedy material, or crimes against humanity.
An MRA is someone who doesn’t recognize that everything doesn’t always follow the same rules they are accustomed to. And that brings us to…
Need and entitlement are two different things, often confused.
Case in point, men need sex. Yeah, I know, I know- we don’t “need” it, we’re not going to die, it’s not going to kill us not to have it. Yes, that’s true- But it’s a pretty low bar. You don’t need your parents to love you, you’re not going to die if you don’t get validation, it’s not going to kill you to never have a moment of privacy. But without those things, you’re also not likely to end up as a healthy, functional, and well adjusted human being.
The thing is, it’s not about sex, it’s what men get from sex. It’s a little different for us all, but the most common things are validation, a sense of self-worth, acceptance, a way to connect, an emotional release, a feeling of power (and NOT in a dominating BDSM way- I mean the pure, physical testosterone rush), and a feeling of openness or exposing the true self. Sex makes men open up and talk about their feelings- A sex worker hears things every day those same guys wouldn’t tell their priest or therapist. Sex changes men- Sometimes just in the moment, sometimes permanently. That’s not to say sex is the only way to get those things- But it is usually the most natural, automatic, and expedient.
For me, for example, it makes the ADD stop. When I get sex regularly, I naturally have much more ability to relax and focus- Effects that I can also get from drugs (with side effects) or meditation (which honestly took years to master). It also gives me the sense that the person I’m with genuinely accepts me as I am, and it’s a hell of a lot faster, easier, and cheaper than the years of therapy it’s taken to work towards getting that on my own.
You’ll notice that I’m not saying I’m entitled to these things. I’m saying I need them, not that I deserve to take them. There’s a difference, and one that I think is completely lost on both MRAs and feminists: No, I’m not entitled to sex, nobody’s obligated to sleep with me, I don’t have any right for force or coerce anyone. That doesn’t change what I need.
There’s another conversation I’ve seen over and over again:
- “I should have gotten that promotion. That bitch took my job.”
- “It wasn’t your job. You weren’t entitled to it.”
It’s totally right to point out the guy’s attitude and sense of entitlement, but nobody’s going to pretend the guy doesn’t have bills to pay, or argue over whether he needs a paycheck. Two entirely different things at play.
Now I’m a healthy, adult enough person that if I can’t find a person to help meet my emotional needs, I’ll find something else: Meditation, therapy, music, exercise- But, and I want to be clear about this, I am able to meet those needs without sex because I am intelligent enough to recognize them, and spent literally years doing spiritual and psychological work with and without help, before I could be at peace with myself- And it’s still a struggle. I am privileged in that I have that understanding, and the resources to apply it. There are guys who don’t have that self-awareness. All they know is that when they have sex, they feel less bad about themselves.
If I came out and said “I’m really stressed right now and feeling isolated, and if I don’t talk to someone and get some kind of validation, I’m worried I’m going to start lashing out”, how would you react? How about if I said “If I don’t get laid soon, I’m gonna kill somebody”? Because despite what you may or may not read into it, they’re saying the same thing.
Again, I’m a healthy, intelligent enough person to articulate that clearly. But when I see people ridiculing Scott Adams (whose misogyny I don’t mean to condone, for the record- I’m talking about one particular statement) over his hugging vs killing quote, what I hear is “my needs aren’t being met and I don’t understand why, so it’s making me uncontrollably angry for reasons I also don’t understand”; and the response, “fuck you, you entitled shit”. Deserved or not is a separate issue, but to get back to topic-
An MRA is someone who does not understand or cannot articulate their emotional needs, and so instead of having their needs met, feels ridiculed for having those needs.
So here’s your nutshell guide to understanding MRAs:
These are men who feel displaced and abandoned by a changing society, while struggling to navigate rules which are completely counterintuitive to them. They have a lot of pain and anger because they feel their needs are being ignored, and lack the ability to meet those needs themselves.
This in and of itself is not unique. In fact, I would argue that most people are feeling similar these days.
What separates them is that they lack either the ability, tools, or comprehension to improve themselves or adapt to the world, and instead grow angrier and more hopeless. Instead of taking responsibility for themselves, they blame others for their failures. Instead of developing new coping mechanisms, they try to make everyone else fit their predefined template- Which only reinforces the vicious cycle of confusion>despair>rage.
Of course, there’s also a few who are just plain clinical sociopaths. That’s kind of it’s own can of worms. I’m mostly interested in the “what could drive a regular guy to do this” cases.
The thing is, that as much as I hate the misogyny and entitlement, I find it hard not to sympathise with these guys.
Thing is, I learned to respect women from my religious pursuits, and from the women I slept with. I certainly didn’t learn it at home. Also, it took cutting off my family, years of therapy and spiritual practice, a failed marriage, and a couple serious suicide attempts before I could get to the place where I was able to undo enough of my trauma to start taking responsibility for myself instead of blaming life.
If I had to go through all that to become a somewhat functional human being, I can’t help thinking what it’s like for someone without my skills and support: For someone who turned to a religion that didn’t teach the equality and interdependency of female divinity; for someone without the self-awareness to really ask why they feel something; someone who was too ignorant or trapped to get away from their bad influences; someone who just doesn’t have it in them to realize exactly what is and is not their own fault.
Because really- I know where these guys start out from. I was there. I made choices, but I also got lucky, and I’m a way better person than who I could have become. Part of me wants to make them become better people, and part of me wants to punish them for the choices they’ve made, and part of me remembers just how much effort I’ve had to put into not expecting others to live the way I wish they would.
Discuss.
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If you’re reluctant to get married or have kids because you feel that you have very little protection if things go wrong, that could explain the data. From the thread:
I am one of those “no children; concerned about custody rights” that /u/tr3k mentions. My concern is for my cousin (male), who’s son is regularly abused by his mother, but the judge refused to grant full custody to my cousin. The social worker says the mother is unfit to have custody of a child. The mother’s psychiatrist says she is unfit to have even partial custody of a child. The mental hospital she’s been released from says she’s unfit to be around children unsupervised. Judge says it doesn’t matter. So my cousin, he watches, helpless, as his 3 year old child comes home from his mother’s, bruised, crying, and scared.
Judge’s literal words “I won’t take a child away from his mother.”
This is why I support Men’s Rights.
Other comments include someone who was jailed for pushing his girlfriend away to stop her punching him or those who know too many other guys who had kids and had them taken away while having to continue paying for them because of the ad hoc assumption that the mother was a better parent. Where 50% of marriages end in divorce and the woman calls it 2/3 of the time, it’s a big risk. Most MRAs are millennials and don’t have the economic opportunities of their fathers, so being single doesn’t necessarily mean that they had no opportunity to get married or have kids. (the above is a summary of a few of the comments)
Feminism is addressing a number of these issues, but generally in a way that is explicitly designed to improve women’s rights. I don’t support feminism because I think women are angels, so it isn’t anti-feminist to want protection in the cases where they’re not.
I can only speak about anarcha-feminism but that movement came about because, while anarchism talks about egalitarianism, the benefits tend to benefit men more than women who are told to wait as things will be better after the revolution (there is a similar imbalance regarding BME/LGBT issues). The goal of anarcha-feminism is still egalitarianism but with a focus on female issues which seem to get ignored too often (it is rarely intentional, but that doesn’t help). We can’t just wait until the revolution for things to get better, we need to fix things now.
As I said above I want to help people who are attracted to the MRA movement, but the leaders of that movement has repeatedly shown themselves to have no interest in egalitarianism, despite what some of their supporters believe. It’s the spear counterpart to straw radical feminism, except there don’t seem to be any straw men which makes it all the more scary.
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I won’t ever claim that family court isn’t the most effed up judicial system around. The whole thing needs to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up, CPS, too. There’s a lot of patriarchal BS baked into the system that should’ve been reformed out in about 1970. And just like patriarchy, it hurts everyone it touches.
MRAs have been around quite a bit longer than the last decade. As have horror stories from family court. More people are exposed to this “movement” because of the internet. It doesn’t surprise me at all that the majority of respondents to this poll on Reddit (FFS, really? The Oldz don’t know this thing exists) are millennials. Nor do any of the other demographics with the exception of the childlessness.
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I think we should predominantly focus on women’s issues. However, a number of things like divorce and child custody involve making a balance between people’s rights where there is scope for abuse on both sides. There’s not really any need to choose between supporting women and equality if your final goal is equality.
I agree, as do many other feminists. Child custody laws date back to when women had next to no rights, and the default was to give custody of children to the fathers.
The reality is that it’s more like “There’s not really any need to choose between supporting men and equality if your final goal is equality.” If that were the case then there would be no need for anarcha-feminism. Sadly it isn’t.
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That’s fine - my point is that either default is outdated and people should get over their prejudices (i.e. the man deserves to keep his heir or the woman is the main parent). As we seem to agree, this would not be some kind of walking back on the part of feminism. As someone who definitely doesn’t have that role, I don’t want to be assumed to be the breadwinner (nor do I want my wife to be - she’s the one who leaves the house).
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What percentage of men have quit playing an instrument, never to look at it again? Dropped out of school? Quit a job?
What percentage of women have walked away from their responsibilities as a mother?
The fact that you think “apply yourself; never give up; tenacity; and perseverance” are male traits, foreign to those of us with female brains, is part of the problem.
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So to elaborate a bit more now that I’m not gulping down coffee, getting dressed, and surfing the BBS while cuddling a kitten and doing twenty bajillion other things while trying to leave a reply; I’d like to start by saying that I’ve spent a godawful lot of time thinking about this. Mainly because I’ve also spent a lot of time watching MRA YouTube videos, and what I term Reactive Right videos. The Reactive Right sometimes includes MRAs, but is often people like Libertarians or Gators that aren’t necessarily part of the MRA movement. They are reactionaries, small-c conservatives who see current progressive trends and attitudes as harmful in one way or another. To some extent, these two groups overlap, and I’ll address how the Reactive Right and MRAs have cross-pollinated somewhat. Before I launch into this, I’m speaking very qualitatively. For a lot of this, there simply isn’t going to be data, and I’m taking a sort of field-notes view, rather than aiming for a complete anthropology.
I started watching the videos out of somewhat morbid curiosity at one point and have been unable to stop. I watch these videos with one hand tied behind my back: I don’t go out of my way to disprove anything in them. My reasoning is that the people who watch them and find themselves agreeing don’t either, and I want to watch with a consequential, rather than critical eye. Meaning I consider what the people who watch them are thinking, rather than spending a lot of time trying to figure out where they’re wrong. In the process I’ve developed some empathy for the devil. It’s not that I don’t feel that MRA philosophy isn’t destructive, but rather that I’ve learned as an outsider in many facets of my life that seeing monsters where people stand often gets in the way of getting a good grip on reality.
I think with MRAs there are two types of people who are initially intrigued by the philosophy. One is the group of people who, and I hate to use psychological terms so loosely, are the kinds of people who score highly on metrics for psychopathy and narcissism. The others are people who are in some way disillusioned with either the status quo, and/or what feminism offers. Let me be clear, I’m not in the business of diagnosing people with mental illness or personality disorders, and I’m quite happy to leave that to the professionals. However, there is a positive correlation between “Dark Triad” traits and rape myth acceptance that has been well-established. I also think that there is an issue of degree. I think that people can have degrees of negative personality traits that don’t necessarily rise to the level of evil or selfishness all by themselves. Finally, I don’t believe in cartoonish evil, but rather consider the banality of evil to be the norm. I think the vast majority of people who are voting for Trump aren’t rubbing their hands together gleefully while pondering how evil they are, I think they’re all pretty much people who believe they’re doing the right thing. Even those who you might easily see as selfish and compassionless have put some consideration behind it. In other words: It’s an ethos, and I don’t think we do ourselves any favors by pretending it’s all so much shallower than that.
Dealing with the first group, people who essentially have some kind of empathy gap, being an MRA offers a lot of advantages. You suddenly have a social circle that is very willing to take you at your word when it comes to wrongdoing, and that in many ways tacitly supports those kinds of behaviors you engage in that even mainstream society considers somewhat problematic. It becomes very convenient to believe in and accept the MRA thesis, because it holds to a lot of things you already believe, such as rape myths. This is sort of an incomplete category, since I think that people rarely belong entirely in this category. There’s more assymetry, with most people belonging to the second or both categories.
The second category is men who are, for better or worse, disillusioned. Bear in mind that being an MRA is not a mainstream point of view. There are conservative and even sexist viewpoints that don’t line up neatly with the MRA worldview. Some anti-feminist backlash is bringing these things together, but being an MRA is still to be in something of a group apart. They are proposing alternatives to the world as they come to it, rather than advocating for the status quo. Certainly there are children being brought up in MRA households and the seeds are sufficiently old that people have probably grown up with the ideal. However, most people are converts. A lot of men (though not most!) come to be MRAs through bitter divorces and custody disputes. Divorce in America is somewhat broken on all sides, since family court decisions frequently become matters of equity, and there is some incentive among family lawyers to prolong contentious divorces. The stats are credibly interpretable either way. On the one hand, in absolute terms, women do gain custody of children more often. On the other hand, most of these custody decisions are not contested meaningfully. However, if your claim is systemic and institutional bias due to social pressures, then this does provide evidence in your favor. Feminists cannot on the one hand point to fewer women choosing STEM fields and talk about social pressure, and on the other hand talk about men choosing to have custody less in purely individual terms. There is undeniably a lot of socialization and messaging at play in both. In fact, MRAs do have a persuasive platform when it comes to identifying a wide range of problems. This is part of why there tends to be dispersion with what MRAs consider to be most important. It tends to come down to what the individual is most familiar with. I think this actually mirrors trends in a lot of social movements. Antiracists on campuses are probably more likely to be interested in affirmative action than people who have family in prison, for instance. It’s not that they aren’t cohesive, but that individual experience dictates perception of importance.
What do I mean by persuasive? When MRAs cite increased male suicides, decreasing male academic performance as a trend, and decreased emphasis on male parental involvement; there is often little wrong in principle with the identification of the problem. Even if one can find reasons that these problems aren’t big, it’s hard to find fault with the cause of reducing any kind of suicide, improving children’s academic performance, and trying to ensure parents are involved with their children. I actually take a rather dim view towards the idea that these issues need to be minimized to discredit MRAs, if only because it’s rather ogrish to take the issue of say, male suicide, and say it’s not worth investing time in. I’d much rather we talk about toxic masculinity, the need for men to accrue material success to achieve ideals of masculinity, and why that is connected to increased rates of male suicide.
So MRAs can easily be rationalize their position with what they see in the world, and are driven to recognize that society is missing something when it comes to gender. I’m instantly reminded of Karen Straughan, AKA girlwriteswhat on YouTube. She’s not part of the MRA movement to serve her own needs as a man in society. Say what you will about her current fame in the movement, that’s not why she started making videos. Her own accounting (in my words) of why she moved to accept MRA philosophies was that she had sons and that she saw no place for them in feminism or society that wasn’t in some way problematic. Indeed, feminists would be hard pressed to disagree with that most basic assessment when it comes to society, even if they would argue with that characterization of feminism. So is it fair to say that underneath every MRA is a feminist, waiting to emerge?
I don’t think that’s necessarily the case, but I do think that a lot of MRAs have misidentified the solutions to correctly identified problems, or issues that are are prima facie problems. I think it has a lot to do with how they relate to the world at large. There but for the grace of God go I, a lonely nerd during my miserable teenage years, and a disaffected young twenty-something- I see myself as once having a lot of risk factors for becoming an MRA. These people aren’t always well-socialized, and develop an intense inward focus. For me, it manifested in destructive self-loathing. The only person that I wanted to destroy, indeed that deserved destroying, was myself. It’s not that I never thought of others, but there is something weirdly selfish about self-loathing. You don’t understand how to interact with other people and so you become the only person who really exists, in a sense. I still suffer from delusions of extreme insignificance sometimes, and weirdly when I do it makes me more of a jerk. It took a while for my current girlfriend to understand that when I get emotionally unresponsive, it’s not because I’ve decided not to care, but I’ve perversely decided that no one cares if I care. I’m not going to get heavily into my own neuroses here, but suffice it to say that I often see where people are coming from, and watching some of these videos or reading some of their diatribes I hear something I’ve often heard from myself before: Other people are not real.
It’s not so narcissistic and psychopathic as it sounds. This sense of unreality is felt by everyone to some extent or another. The Matrix is an entire movie about alienation from society, and from a certain angle is about the artificiality of society. When you’re heavily turned inward though, it can turn into a worldview. To be clear, I don’t think everyone turns inward as I did, and that being inwardly focus can manifest itself in many ways, not necessarily as self-loathing or self-pity. This is where established social norms and ideas come into play. Default human in our society is frequently white, cis, able, and male. Now we’re all the protagonists of our own lives, and I’ll never take that away from anyone, but with MRAs, there’s a strong sense of the male as the hero, the victor, the protagonist, and when you’re already male, already white, and already very heavily immersed in the delusion that you are the only person that really matters (which is debatable as not being an illusion at all), suddenly these things that you notice about the world aren’t about your role as an oppressor, but rather about you as the oppressed.
This brings me to some problematic aspects of feminism as a practice that I think have contributed somewhat to the problem. I said earlier that I think feminism sort of created the MR movement, and that’s not what I’m talking about. Feminism and antiracism (in parallel and sometimes in opposition at first, but now increasingly intertwined) both created the credible framework for recognizing a civilization at odds with itself. Men’s Right’s movements have been cribbing from both of these ever since, and we can argue about the level of deference that MRAs show towards the methods, if not the ideology, of feminism and antiracism. That being said, feminism and antiracism are inherently broadly accusatory ideas. Not only is the world a deeply unjust place, but it is a deeply unjust place in YOUR favor. YOUR life has come at the expense of someone else’s and YOU are perhaps unjustly depriving someone of something that is rightfully theirs. I don’t think this is an unfair characterization. I agree with it, and recognize that my access to extremely cheap food, for instance, has come at the expense of farmers around the world through various trade agreements designed to benefit American farmers, and by incidental extension, me. I support that system when I pay taxes, and sometimes when I vote. So what’s the problem with feminism that I’m trying to get at? I direct you to the phrasing at the beginning of the paragraph: feminism as a practice.
Whether or not feminism is a verb is something I’ll leave to grammarians, but we can all agree that “doing feminism” is really just parlance for feminist activity (worst sequel to Paranormal Activity ever, yo). This extends somewhat to antiracism as well but since the discussion is limited to dissecting MRAs, I’m going to limit it to feminism for this reason alone. Ideologies are difficult to criticize in large part because they can be hard to pin down. However, it’s very easy to look at a group and outline a series of actions that seem to be a trend. Atheism, for instance, is a fairly benign ideology but a lot of Atheists have me wanting to become religious again out of spite. I don’t think that feminism is quite so poisoned, but there is a creeping motion in the heart of it that I think rightly inspires suspicion. MRAs are incredibly tolerant. I should clarify: They’re incredibly tolerant among themselves. They tolerate differing ideas and opinions and slip-ups among themselves fairly well. There is a certain cohesiveness there that may or may not be temporary. Feminist communities, on the other hand, have an unfortunate tendency to implode. Sometimes quietly and sometimes magnificently, I think I’ve seen enough feminists catch and eat their own that I can’t pretend it doesn’t happen anymore. Remember what I was saying about feminism as an inherently (and rightly) accusatory ideology? The reason I’m not constantly on my knees pouring dust over my head is that I recognize that feminism is about systems and not individuals. Yes, where these two things meet there is some blur, but focusing on individuals buying pink toys for girls and blue for boys is less important than say, getting rid of boy and girl sections in the toy store. I think on an intellectual level all feminists understand this, but on a real level feminists suffer from being human.
I think it’s become all too easy in the feminist community to focus on individual people and their individual actions. Where these people were once case-studies in systemic oppression they all too often become avatars of that oppression and become the targets of feminist ire. We are pattern-seeking humans, and I think that we get so good at it that we end up implicating allies all too readily in the same vein. The MRAs see this. They’re not blind to it anymore than we are blind to their foibles, I know because I watch them talk about us. To them, it’s part of the Grand Failure of feminism to create a non-oppressive system. I too, see a bit of failure on the part of feminism to disentangle itself from class and academic language, though I don’t go so far as to pretend that these failings represent a core instability in feminism. I don’t go so far as to claim that feminism drives men to become MRAs, of course, but rather to point to another factor in why people who recognize that there is something off about gender will not readily or necessarily turn to feminism as a source of community. Bear in mind that ideology and community are entangled in real life, no matter how clinically one divides them as constructs. People exist with or without ideas but ideas exist only so far as social networks allow.
I realize now that I’ve written an awful lot about MRAs and what I consider to be salient epistemic issues. I actually started writing this intending to link to a few YouTube videos to try and dissect a number of recurring themes, but my introduction ran a little long. I’ll take a break to let people agree, disagree, etc. I do very much want to talk about the link between MRAs and the Reactive Right, too. They’re not very far apart in a lot of ways.
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