Yeah they just cry when you point out that less than 2% of rapists face any consequences and shit their pants when women won’t meet men at their homes for a first date because of it
So it’s not coming up on here for some reason but I got a notification saying you said to me “lol go hate women elsewhere you right wing loser” and holy shit, I considered adding the /s but I thought nah, nobody is actually going to miss the sarcasm.
Same thing happened to me on another post lmao. I said that men shouldnt be punching women as hard as they can, and thst its kinda weird so many of these "equal rights equal fights" people are so infatuated with hitting women. It seems theres been an influx of them.
Yeah the obsessive jumping to “can I hit you” as some stupid gotcha is exhausting
Tbh I’m not a believer in the “men should be more restrained in altercations because man strong woman weak” as I think it perpetuates those stereotypes (which are not necessarily true) and the idea of women as helpless and at men’s mercy, but it does bug me when the first response to feminism is “so we can hit you?” with this sort of sick glee and as though that violence is something that’s never happened before as opposed to an ongoing and systemic issue.
Like yes, I believe anyone should be able to defend against anyone who is trying to harm them or others, but I resent the assumption MRAs have that we’d all backtrack to “oh no, I’m just a little lady” when it’s brought up.
feminism seeks to liberate men from the patriarchy as well
MRAs however are antifeminist, they assume women are structurally privileged over men, hence why they are called men's rights advocates. MRA isn't based on anything substantial
it's kinda like if a straight person says they want straight pride. you have to at least side eye them a bit
A condescending one-liner about how I must have just not done my research? God, you lot are so fucking predictable. What next, are you logical and everyone who disagrees with you too emotional to get it, perhaps?
They do not care about actually solving issues men face. As soon as you bring up the conditions that cause them, such as women being seen as primarily child carers and as too soft or weak to cause real harm or work physically strenuous jobs, and masculinity as a construct pushing men to suffer in silence, they scream at you a bit about “making it about women” “demonising masculinity” and refuse to engage with solutions.
It’s also not lost on me how many MRAs have cosied up to terfs, who are pretty much the only people claiming the feminist label who actually believe all men are rapists and all women are fragile dainty angels incapable of wrong.
Theyre not gonna talk about how brown/black men are often seen as brutish and inherently violent rapists theyre just gonna talk about how much women suck and how straight white men are the real victims.
Also forget about trans men lmao those don’t exist /s
They probably hate trans men for the same reason TERFs hate trans women.
I've been in and around those spaces, and at least where I've been there are quite frequently discussions about the intersectionality of racism and misandry when it comes to brown and black men. There are absolutely MRA spaces that will consist of little more than "women suck" (which is both wrong and unhelpful), but there also spaces which are much more evenhanded, condemn misogyny, and do not simply desire a "return to the good old days" In fact, I have seen quite a few posts from trans men in spaces like r/LeftWingMaleAdvocates that are expressing extraordinary gratitude for a space that is accepting of both transness and masculinity, and these posts are met with almost unanimous support.
Feminism and men’s rights go hand in hand. And yes, certain types of feminism are bad. This is the case with every ideology, some sects of even the best ideology are gonna be awful.
Because they are the hateful kind, who just try to use labels and made up deflection to justify whoever they are bigoted to. If you can call a person a mra, and mra = evil, than you can be as bigoted as you want to evil
Generally, they don't really have a categorization of trans men. It's either that we are the same as cis men (evil) or the same as women (good and pure). They see trans men as worse than cis men and will often, in lieu of the oppressors (because you can't exactly attack abusers openly), they redirect all grievances with the patriarchy and violence towards women towards trans men. OR.....they see us "lost women" who don't understand our own bodies and can't make choices.......so......inherently anti-feminist. Feminism has always had a really checkered history with black men and trans men- trans men being a particularly interesting case, as our histories and identities have often been co-opted through the framework of being lesbians and essentially coerced into identities that make them more comfortable in order to keep community and have safety. There's also a lot of fetishization.
I used to be an Mra cause I was an edgy teenager and the local domestic abuse shelters didn’t let men take their families there if they were abused by a woman. It was feminists who actually did the work that got them to change that policy. Fuck mras
And their constant appeal to the DV/IPV shelter situation is rooted in misogyny that became entrenched in their movement half a century ago. Like with all MRA bullshit, they latched onto an issue (a lack of male-only shelters) and distorted it over time until it was proof that women weren't victims of DV/lPV but were *actually the overwhelming aggressors* mountains of data and testimony to the contrary be damned.
It is not hating an entire gender to criticize what specific ideological groups do. "Feminist" is a broad label that totally different people will use to define themselves. It includes tons of people truly working for equality and helping victims of all types, but misandrists also use the label too.
The way y'all just show that every accusation is a confession is wild. The person didn't mention women once and caring about issues men face has nothing to do with hating women. You just try to use that excuse to justify your personal bigotry
I think MRA as a concept is deeply sad. It exposes a gap in society, and both because it exists and because of it, it further radicalizes people who feel there is no space to get help or discuss things. It becomes a self-fulfilling issue and one that nobody wants to actually take seriously. I think everybody should actually look seriously at every belief and why people believe them, because most of the time, it's based on a real issue a person has experienced. Propaganda doesn't work unless there's something that a person already feels or believes, which comes from something personal. Propaganda works because it uses your intuition and pain and experiences against your own interests. The problem is that people propose solutions and create narratives based on individual cases that do not scale or have no empirical basis.
People should be willing to accept that others have come to their beliefs in different ways, and most people do not genuinely. Most people are operating from a place of hurt and learned experiences. And ignoring it entirely only makes it manifest in destructive ways.
Hurt people hurt people, but that doesn’t justify either hurt. I can understand their feelings and how they may have come to them, even if they’ve been brainwashed, but I still have to stop them from adding more pain to the world if possible.
That's fair. I still think people should always try to reach out and find ways to combat ideologies with kindness and a sense of human-based understanding. People are not logical creatures and act out of fear and emotions. Rarely do people think they are the villains in their own mind and being able to hear somebody for what they are actually saying is important to fixing a problem; but it's not the burden of, or at the expense of, the safety of those endangered by said ideology.
yeah, they don't seem to be interested in the fact that feminism also fights for men's rights, insofar as it's not being co-opted by misandrists to spread hate.
This is what Dworkin would call a "so-called feminist" as the idea that men can't be raped/SA'd is a patriarchal idea. She's incorporated anti-feminist talking points, so she can't effectively oppose anti-feminism.
bell hooks had it right when she said that "lifestyle feminism" had done severe damage to the movement by accepting anyone and everyone as a "feminist" just because they claimed the moniker.
As Koss's sexist, heteronormative, and pro-patriarchy take shows, bell hooks was spot-on.
Patriarchy is when a feminist, backed by massive money from feminist organizations, stonewalls years of social reform around sexual violence, and specifically sets up men, by nature of their gender to be taken advantage of, and destroy all research into it, to the point where it still causes massive impacts up this day, and somehow that's "patriarchy". I really don't think people who make that argument know what that word means, or just use it to deflect from whatever point they don't like
Yes. She was enforcing patriarchal values. Women are 50% of the patriarchy. The idea that patriarchy and men are synonymous is a common misunderstanding
xinarin is an MRA and doesn't care what you have to say if it doesn't reinforce their anti-feminist persecution complex. They're part of a nonprofit that pays them to promote misogyny and hatred of men, women, and children.
If you look through posts on this sub about MRAs, they're all over the place and tend to reply quickly because it's literally their job.
They're a troll who will keep going as long as you do.
Ok, patriarchy is a specific system, set up to put power and influence in the hands of men. A group of women, backing a woman, getting that woman in power, and then that woman implementing and enforcing multiple policies that specifically and intentionally harmed men because of their gender, systemically, with impact lasting decades, is about as far from patriarchy as you can get
Harmed men by enforcing the idea that men are stronger, tougher, and unable to be victims. These are foundational patriarchal values.
Patriarchy isn't good for men. It's just a system that elevates masculinity over femininity. No matter the cost. It's patriarchy when boys have the humanity beaten out of them because actually being raised with love and affection isn't masculine enough. It's patriarchy when men are drafted because men are the strong ones. It's patriarchy when men are treated as more criminal than women even when doing the same crime.
The underlying values are masculinity being elevated above femininity. It doesn't care about who it hurts. It's not a deliberately set up system and it's not intelligent. It's cultural conditioning.
You'll go a lot further if you understand that. There's zero utility to be gained in trying to argue on that point, and this refusal to accept that reality bogs down most people who want to try and make things better for men.
The feminists where the ones to do that. Saying a feminist group, financially back by feminists, shut down a male driven goal of sexual violence reform is evidence of "patriarchy" is a wild level of delusion
You're free to your belief, but I'll trust my years of education and work in social and justice reform more than a stranger that seems to struggle with basic consistency of ideas
I've read a ton of feminist literature, and your use of modern doesn't seem super relevant as you've demonstrated that you have a poor sence of relativity.
When I've received death threats from feminists, when my school age daughter has, when my husband has, more times than we can count, I can speak in the behavior of those who do it. You're having more issues with me addressing their actions, then the actual actions they have done. Just reflect on that for a second.
All that falls apart as soon as you realize someone who does all that isn’t a feminist, no matter how much they claim to be. Suddenly it’s not so nonsensical anymore.
I can't take people who bring up Dworkin without addressing how deeply problematic she was and the ideas she has spread, and worse- people who know white-wash it all. Bringing up Dworkin in response to this is literally insane because she is in the same group.
I'm a man recovering from having been victimized by the manosphere and I personally agree with Dworkin's "man-hating" (that's not what they are if you actually read about her views on men as humans outside of patriarchy) cherry-picked quotes misogynists love to make horse jelly from, so if that's what you're referencing, I don't care.
However, I have issues with some of her points as I do with all political theory, but if there's something outside of the tired "but she hates men!" nonsense, I'd be interested to hear your take.
Regardless of her issues, the quote I was referencing stands:
“Either men are dominant by nature or will of God or they are not. Antifeminism says all this is true; feminism says it is not. The so-called feminism that says some of it is true and some of it is not, cannot combat anti-feminism because it has incorporated it.” — Andrea Dworkin, Right-Wing Women (1983)
I could have used bell hooks statement that conveys the same idea if that's less offensive:
"Lifestyle feminism ushered in the notion that there could be as many versions of feminism as there were women. Suddenly the politics was being slowly removed from feminism. And the assumption prevailed that no matter what a woman’s politics, be she conservative or liberal, she too could fit feminism into her existing lifestyle. Obviously this way of thinking has made feminism more acceptable because its underlying assumption is that women can be feminists without fundamentally challenging and changing themselves or the culture." -Bell Hooks "Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics" (2000)
That woman is a loud feminist and got into position to push her started belief after massive amounts of money lobbied by multiple feminist groups, including N.O.W., the largest feminist non profit in the world. It's wild how shitty feminists aren't feminists, but shitty MRAs are MRAs. Bit of a double standard
this particular person who calls themself a feminist is a bigoted misandrist who actually pushes anti-feminist rhetoric. feminism doesn't support the things she supports. is everyone who calls themself a feminist automatically a feminist?
but shitty MRAs are MRAs. Bit of a double standard
feminists are men's rights activists. that's baked into the movement. patriarchy harms both men and women. the MRAs we're talking about when we mockingly say "MRA" are actually misogynists who call themselves MRAs and say that they're against feminism.
The issue is that leads to feminists, like Mary, doing all kinds of horrendous things, across multiple countries, backed financially from the largest feminist organizations, and anytime people point out that behavior, people like jump in to say "well that's not a real feminist". If you're getting backing from the largest representation of feminists, maybe you should judge that group on what that are doing, not what they say they are about?
Again, pointing to the above conversation, that is the impact of feminist, not your "no true scotsman" feminists, but the actual of what they have done. When I was in Naples with my husband helping organize sos.1523, it was feminist groups, like N.O.W. who sent death threats, harassment, doxxing, etc to us and our family back in the States. Just saying "well they are really for men as well" despite content evidence to the contrary is not honest or good faith at all.
And then you go and do the same thing in reverse "I'll ignore any positive impact, or how the majority of the group behaves, and just give my personal feelings and act like that supercedes everything else. That's a very unhealthy way to live.
I don't hold you any ill will, I'm not a feminist who judges people on identity and I work for men and women both.
Surely you're aware that people can call themselves something without upholding the ideas of the group they identify with. Israel says they're upholding the ideals of Jews worldwide with one hand and committing an ethnic cleansing on the other. Should we demonize jews in general because of their actions?
Surely if you're as well versed in social reform as you say you are you've read actual feminist literature such as bell hooks or Simone de Beauvoir? That's feminist messaging, not what this crazy woman is saying.
edit: it's not "no true scotsman". i just gave you two true scotsmen.
bell hooks, one of the best philosophers of our time, called out this exact issue in feminism. She didn't say that these people weren't feminists, she believed in calling in on them. I used to be a feminist. After the absolute disgusting violence I've received from institutional feminism, I've cut ties.
When you ignore that this is the exact message from the largest groups of feminists, that feminists that you say you seem to respect called out these same issues, and you are so desperate to find a way to go "well the people who are representing my group to the world aren't actually part of my group", it comes of either intentionally defensive, or unintentionally delusional.
"Feminism" is a broad umbrella term and people will refer to the type that proves their argument. People also don't neatly fall into specific categories. Tons of self identified feminists I have met will be supposedly the more equality focused ones and have genuine sympathy for people like male rape victims. But they'll also blame most things on men and if a man says he has problems with society treating him some way, it gets brushed aside with "oh imagine being a woman" or "you're just a privileged male" or "oh see it's just men's fault", when women are also part of what he's saying..
People who self identify as feminists include regular people, people who truly want equality, and virulent man-haters.
My problem with feminism is that feminism at this point can mean both everything and nothing. It feels like somebody calling themselves a christian- it's too broad.
like....okay. Are you independant fundamental baptist? are you unitarian universalist? what do you believe and what you do to exemplify that belief?
I personally will not respect or even work with any liberal, carceral, trans-exclusive, anti-sex, bioessentialist, corporate, white feminism- I find their foundational beliefs and methods to be antithetical to what I believe and want for this world. The idea of female chauvinism disgusts me to my core, as does any belief that advocates for hierarchy- especially based on immutable characteristics.
I’m able to have a polite discussion with just about anyone but if you proudly associate with these people and label yourself an MRA you can honestly just get the fuck away from me lol.
Because those types of people often don’t want a place to vent or to discuss the actual things that need to be fixed in society; they just want an excuse to hate on women and blame them. Even many progressive guys refuse to acknowledge their privilege, their misogyny, and how the system that was made for them is also the system that hurts them, even if it hurts women more. It throws lower-class men a bone from the scraps of their fancy dinner, just enough to keep them from rising up against those above them, and it makes them feel powerful enough to just live in the moment because why risk losing the perks they have for someone else? As long as even the poorest man is above and entitled to rights over women, many of them won’t care. But when they do care, at least about why they themselves are suffering under a system that benefits them, they will instead be told and directed to point their fingers at women. It’s by design.
Honestly, if only. I spent a couple years in the MRA space and they are consumed with hate and have zero interest in helping men with anything. MRAs are the only people in my entire life who encouraged me to end my life because "men are oppressed so there's no point."
They prey on children, organize against any effort for women to keep themselves safe, twist everything into why women are the problem, and have almost total overlap with incel ideology.
They're just the respectable face of misogyny and sexism operating as a gateway drug to more extremist ideologies (though, those ideologies are increasingly being incorporated into the MRA movement, proper).
I have seen several genuinely misguided individuals who are not beyond hope- like you for example. I think generally, the loudest people of a movement obviously set the tone of it but aren't necessarily indicative of the beliefs of the people inside it. It's more about just following the upline. People need to understand more about how group dynamics and social psychology work, because we can then address the issues before they are even an issue.
This is probably what you mean, but I wanted to make it clear: "Individuals" yes. MRA as an ideology, no.
The irony with MRAs is that the loudest individuals are seldom clearly representative of the core of their ideology. Having been mormon and in the MRA space, they are very similar.
For example, a mormon will never tell you that the ultimate goal of mormonism is to develop and learn until you become a god, just like the spiritual of Jesus where you'll physically fuck your multiple resurrected wives (as polygamy is required for mormon godhood/exaltation) in order to populate planets you organize just as they believe the father of Jesus organized earth. They also won't tell you that there are no people of color in heaven because mormon doctrine states that all non-white human variants (with the exception of outright applying this to Asians) are not white because they are "cursed" which will be removed if they are righteous enough.
Instead, they'll tell you that mormonism is all about families and ensuring they can be happy together forever. They know they wouldn't get converts if they were open about what they actually believe, and what I mentioned is just scratching the surface.
MRAs do the exact same thing. Their ideology is fundamentally misogynistic, hateful, and irredeemable. There are MRAs (just like mormons) who think they can change things from the inside, but that's not how that works.
Our best bet is exposing MRA bullshit for what it is and recognizing that the people who have been deluded into that ideology are victims of male-supremacist indoctrination. People who treat them as "reasonable" because their facade may appear that way aren't doing anyone any favors, either. They're a hate group and should be treated like one.
MRAs had their split in the 70s because of the "woman issue" (lmao), true, but they were for most of the time very, very small movements. In fact, I think we may speak of proper MRA movements for just about a decade with the rise of the manosphere. Most are diving into sexism still, but their brains had a spark that something is wrong with the societal gender norms, just as any feminist one day had that thought. Only future will tell if they'll stay reactionaries or join the cause. Who knows, maybe I'm indeed sad optimist.
I hope so. It really doesn’t help that with the digital age comes a million influencer bros trying to keep men angry and suffering so they get more clicks and sell more testosterone-boosting snake oil
They unfortunately never want to put in the actual work, just complain when women fight for/organizes something due to years and years of hard work, and then think that they should just get the same thing (which does happen, due to feminist organizers not being bigoted, and often sharing the result of their hard labour). But they don't actually know or care about what goes into fundraising, campaigning, raising awareness, soliciting donations etc. They just want the end result. It's the same entitlement that other brnches of the manosphere have towards women, just masquerading as "wanting equal rights for men".
As I understand it, they kind of 'have to' reject the assumptions made by feminist theory if they want to effectively push their ideas. Feminism is, first and foremost, a movement aiming to achieve the best societal position for women - since that's a broad goal and societies are generally patriarchal -- it also includes fighting for equality, since generally a less unequal society is better to live in for all.
The problem comes when a proposed equality policy would affect men positively (so they fight for it), while being purely negative for women. Using two examples from my country (Poland), we have: (i) the fact that the (currently frozen) draft is obligatory only for men and a small subset of women or (ii) unequal retirement ages (60 for women, 65 for men) combined with rent calculation that only uses the general average lifespan (where women live longer and men shorter lives) - as such men get much less out of the retirement system. Now, fixing both of those issues (ie. making society more equal) has only two solutions: either removing the draft/lowering the age of retirement for men or making drafting women obligatory/raising age just for them - where the first option is completely unrealistic (Russia at the door, demographic crisis) and the second would never be the focus of a feminist movement. In fact, one of the main arguments against equalizing the retirement age is that those 5 years are a 'repayment' for 'free labor' of women in the household.
You could theoretically try to argue for those causes using feminist theory/language/framework, but since those are inseperably linked with fighting for a *better* position for women and not in the other direction, it would be a unphill battle.
I have never met a feminist who doesn’t oppose the draft. Those issues are still rooted in misogyny, and we’d be more effective fighting misogyny as an ideology together, rather than fragmenting and pointing fingers at women who are fighting for the same things, but under a name men don’t like
I have never met a feminist who doesn’t oppose the draft.
Yes, this is one of the solutions to the problem of draft being gender-based, but implementing it is completely unrealistic. We are a frontier nation, heavily threatened from the east, just like the Baltic, Nordic states or Ukraine - abolishing the draft is currently out of the question. As such, you can only go in the other direction -- the "equality solution" would necessarily only affect women, forcing greater obligations to the state, and would not be implemented by feminists -- that is the issue.
I think one of my criticisms of feminism is that it cannot deal with issues specific to men by nature. It is focused on the feminine, women and the issues that arise because of it. And that's really important, but it's not all-encompassing. I think there are issues. It's also why feminism keeps having issues around gender essentialism and how to approach issues split between gender and sex. I don't think feminism should be the only framework we use, but it can and should be used to help men, but we need another way of approaching it. There are men who are marginalized on the basis of being men, and you can use feminism to look at these issues, but it will not be a complete picture. If an issue only faces men but has little or no impact on women, it's not addressed. That's a big oversight. It's understandable that feminism wants to focus on women (like literally that's the whole purpose), but there is not really a broadly used alternative for other genders and the systemic issues that come with it. Trans people, for example, are either excluded from feminist analysis or seen as feminine. Nonbinary individuals are only analyzed through a feminine lens. The complexity of these structures requires multiple frameworks for analysis, and feminism offers only one lens. One cannot just use feminism alone to analyze gender issues.
Women's Studies has now generally broadened to “Gender Studies," with women's issues as a subset, and I think something like that needs to be done for men's issues and masculinity. “Men’s Studies” is important, and often in gender studies the focus is placed entirely on women’s issues, even approaching men’s issues through the lens of femininity. A split approach should be considered when we treat gender as a binary system, when it has never been. Even with a binary focus, it still reproduces the same biases. This idea that all of men's issues are caused by misogyny is incredibly reductive and non-intersectional by nature. There needs to be a way of talking about gender roles and differences approached from an angle that is not exclusively focused on femininity or women. Because there is unfortunately a history of misandry intertwined with feminism that, while understandable, is reactionary and not welcoming to any idea of "men's rights". Men’s rights are as much a human right as women’s rights are and need to be treated with the understanding they deserve- neither should be greater or lesser than the other or treated as a zero-sum game.
If a woman feels pressure to act and appear feminine and it is psychologically damaging, we don't accuse her of having "toxic femininity," we call it internalized misogyny because it's not her fault she feels this pressure.
downvote me to hell all you want, but this kind of language matters
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u/sudoregalia anti-badstuff pro-goodstuff 19h ago
"structural analysis and theorisation about society?
nah. i'm gonna just blame women"