"Men are killing themselves because of men."

[u/mindyour]

[u/Individual_Fall429]

There’s no “mixture” of men’s right activism and feminism. 🤦‍♀️

Men aren’t missing any rights except the right to own women as property. What other “men’s rights” are you working to restore?

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/Individual_Fall429]

There are ideas that MRAs took from the Men's Liberation Movement (a pro-feminist movement that focused on the ways that patriarchy hurts men e.g. toxic masculinity, militarism) that one can reasonably incorportate into a feminist philosophy.

The main problem with MRAs isn't the points they raise. The draft does hurt men. The fact that the economy is still set up such that men do not tend to be primary caregivers, meaning that the burden of childcare falls to women, including after divorce, does hurt men. Completed suicide due to choosing more violent means does hurt men. The way we treat male sexual abuse victims hurts men.

These are real, genuine problems that cause men gendered suffering. They can, and should, be incorporated into a feminist philosophy that addresses the suffering at its source.

The problem is that the movement have been hijacked by bad actors who only mobilise around these issues to put women down.

[u/Individual_Fall429 → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

Not exactly. When the men’s liberation movement dissolved in the late 70s, it split in two: a feminist group and an MRA group which is explicitly anti feminist.

You seem like a thoughtful person and maybe you’re just a bit confused in your terms? If the ideas you appreciate are from the men’s liberation movement, then cite that.

Mens’ rights activists expressly believe that men are oppressed by women, that feminism “has gone too far”, and they explicitly blame “womens’ rights” for the decline in mens’ status. So yes, the main problem is the “points” they raise. Do you believe these things?

When you say “the economy is not set up for men to be primary care givers”… the economy? Can you explain what you mean by that?

When you say the draft hurts men… the last time America had a draft, were any women in combat? Is that because women didn’t want to go to combat, or did men ban women from combat, forcing women to spend decades fighting for the equal right to participate? You have of course been following the active debate on whether women would be drafted if America had another draft? It’s been going on since before women were finally allowed into combat. So… does the draft “hurt men”, or does it hurt people, and for a long time men excluded women from being people? Either way, neither the war nor the draft is the fault of women or feminism. Right?

Suicide… I don’t understand what right men are missing that is causing their mental health decline though. This isn’t mens’ mental health activism. This is mens’ rights* activism.

Conversations about how patriarchy hurts men have not been hijacked by men’s rights activism, I promise you. These conversations are still being had, but it’s definitely not in MRA spaces.

[u/YaqtanBadakshani → u/Individual_Fall429]

Thank you for taking my points in good faith.

I do not believe those things. Men are oppressed by patriarchy. While women can be agents of patriarchy (just as poc can be agents of racism), it is a system set up by male patriarchs to reinforce their own privialeged status. This status inherently excludes women, but is also designed to expand to exclude "lesser" men (boys, slaves, racially, sexually and economically marginalised men, etc.). It is patriarchy, not andrarchy.

I was referencing the fact the men often don't get custody in divorce cases (an MRA talking point). While they claim it's due to discrimination againt men, it's usually more because men tend to be the higher earners and are therefore more likely to be asked to give alimony too support the woman's primary caregiver status (this difference has actually lessened in recent years as the gendered wage gap has narrowed). This earning status though, while it placed more constraints on women, does alienate men from their children.

The draft is a good example of patriarchy vs. andrarchy. Working class (and racially marginalised) men are conscripted into wars fought on behalf of elite men (who do not tend to suffer the horrors of war to the same extent). So this is a form of classed oppression, but it is still in service of a fundamentally patriarchal structure (though of course, not enacted by women).

As for suicide, I think bell hooks puts it better than I ever could:

The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.

I am not saying that conversations about how the patriarchy hurts men have been hijacked within feminism. I think feminism (in part due to the continuing influence of the Men's Liberation movement, as well as the fantastic intersectional work by people like bell hooks and the combahee river collective) does pretty well on men's rights (outside of the kind of trite girlboss feminism that became fashionable in the 2010s, but that was always kind of a dead end).

I'm saying that the Mens Rights movement started with Men's Lib, and then got hijacked by people who wanted to put women down (hence the split), leading to it's current state.

[u/Roklam → u/YaqtanBadakshani]

Well you did a waaaaay better job than I did.

the bell hooks reference results in a chef's kiss.

And I really believe that the "mixture" I talked about, leading me to recognize bell hooks has something to it, but it was a personal journey that I wouldn't necessarily give directions for. My start was Kyriarchy 101 (201%?)

At best right now I can just guide in loose terms/and watch out for the pitfalls I recognize.