Married with Children as a Parody of Men's Rights Activists

[Gizen]

Here is the primary problem with MRA. 90% of the time, when they show up, it's to hijack a topic that does not concern them.

A discussion is going on concerning problems women face, and guaranteed, 100% of the time you will get some MRA jackass who shows up to go 'but men have problems too!', as if they can't stand that something might be going on in the world that isn't about them. Alternatively, they may also/instead respond with 'I don't personally experience this issue, so clearly that means it's not actually happening and you're just making it up' or dismissal of the women's issues as unimportant in comparison to the problems that men face.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

In conclusion women suck and don't do enough of it
.

...-_-....really?

I couldn't resist. I like to get it out of my system before being anything close to serious.

Anyway, one of the aspects I think feminism has gotten wrong is equal punishment, in law I mean. Women can cry and get a reduced sentence, avoid the death penalty not pay back money from misuse of child support. It's in these cases Men have it worse than women and I never see here or read any group of Feminists say "Hey that's not right she deserves to go to prison for saying that child was his!" Or something.

I don't have a lot of respect for most political groups but specifically for Feminism as it is now, what bothers me the most? When they don't hold women who go against the cause accountable.

 

[Vault101]

I don't have a lot of respect for most political groups but specifically for Feminism as it is now, what bothers me the most? When they don't hold women who go against the cause accountable.

I'm not even touching the first one....

as for the second...Feminsim still has plenty of valid applications

Here is the primary problem with MRA. 90% of the time, when they show up, it's to hijack a topic that does not concern them.

A discussion is going on concerning problems women face, and guaranteed, 100% of the time you will get some MRA jackass who shows up to go 'but men have problems too!', as if they can't stand that something might be going on in the world that isn't about them. Alternatively, they may also/instead respond with 'I don't personally experience this issue, so clearly that means it's not actually happening and you're just making it up' or dismissal of the women's issues as unimportant in comparison to the problems that men face.

this is why it strikes me as reactionary bullshit rather than an actual valid thing

 

[V4Viewtiful]

I'm not even touching the first one....

as for the second...Feminsim still has plenty of valid applications

Most of which I agree with (being very much a mommasboy) but it's the first point that right now bothers me the most, it's a complex issue. I won't pretend it's simple.

 

[Traistio]

I'm just gonna leave this here for why MRA's, The actual MRA, not the one's constantly shown as the "TRUE MRA FACE" need to exist.

http://real-justice-waluigi.tumblr.com/post/86142870693/pr0of-misandry-iz-real

 

[Gizen]

Anyway, one of the aspects I think feminism has gotten wrong is equal punishment, in law I mean. Women can cry and get a reduced sentence, avoid the death penalty not pay back money from misuse of child support. It's in these cases Men have it worse than women and I never see here or read any group of Feminists say "Hey that's not right she deserves to go to prison for saying that child was his!" Or something.

I don't have a lot of respect for most political groups but specifically for Feminism as it is now, what bothers me the most? When they don't hold women who go against the cause accountable.

Issues with your statement.

A) The situations you list, while they DO happen, and they ARE terrible, they're also not nearly as widespread as people like to make them out to be in order to make things look worse than they actually are.

B) Feminism is not an organized group. There's no membership to revoke when somebody who claims to be feminist does something bad. There's no roster that you can read to immediately know who's proclaiming themselves to be a feminist and whether they're doing anything stupid or not. Therefor, kind of difficult to 'hold someone accountable'.

C) Generally, when people are committing the criminal activities you list, they're not doing it while proclaiming feminism as their motivation/justification. Hell, feminism has taken on such a negative connotation and is now so frequently mistaken as to what it actually means, that many women deny being feminists even when they share its ideals. As a result, it's hard to get mad at someone for 'going against the cause', when they're not part of the cause, or deny being part of the cause to begin with.

 

[the December King]

I really hope Men's Rights Activism and Feminism work together in the end.

Most of the issues that plague men negatively impact women too and vice versa.

Hear hear, Rather Dull. I'd like to see people stop reacting to or even calling the extreme elements of social movements the norm. It's a shame that the loudest parts of such groups tend to be morons. And I think you're totally on the ball with the fact that issues that impact men negatively effect women too.

...

Oh god, I hope you weren't being condescending or sarcastic.

 

[Frankster]

I should have liked this article not least cos of Bundy but one big inaccuracy at the start of the article totally spoilt it: "For example, it was apparent in the aftermath of a horrific May 2014 murder-spree in California that a great deal of the American mainstream was hearing about "Men's Rights Activism" for the first time, owing to the 22 year-old gunman having been found to have associated with various MRA-adjacent websites"

That's a load of BS.

A little context: when the Elliot Rogers story broke out in the escapist forums, there was a few feminists adamantly claiming that Rogers was an MRA, etc.

I believed it and was hoping for some drama, so did some internet sleuthing. I could not find ONE SINGLE SOURCE that linked Rogers to any sort or MRA movement or the PUA community (as at least one forumite in that thread was claiming), in fact quite the opposite, he was a member of an ANTI-PUA community and made some.."interesting" posts on bodybuilding.com's misc forum. That's it, that's the only concrete evidence on this guy and what his online activity in forums was. He was never "found out" to have associated with any MRA site in anything else but people's mind.

I also took the time to read the guys..."manifesto" (more of an autobiography but w/e) and didn't find any mentions of MRAnism in that either.

Maybe Bob knows something I don't? Ok I'll go check his linked sources. Again nada. Not a single fucking shred of evidence besides everyone just going "whelp the guy had problems with women, so he was obviously an MRA!" and it became accepted fact despite a complete absence of evidence on the internet that the dude even remotely associated with an "MRA adjacent website". Unless you honestly count some fucked up antiPUA online forum and bodybuilding.com as bastions of MRAness.

This wasn't the focal point of the article nor does it detract from its purpose. But it really left a bad taste in the mouth to see Bob contribute to a misinformed narrative that others will read and in turn accept as fact, much like the posters in that previous thread did.

 

[Gizen]

Here is the primary problem with MRA. 90% of the time, when they show up, it's to hijack a topic that does not concern them.

#NotAllMen says hello.

#NotAllMen is only further evidence of my claim. It's inserting yourself into a topic simply to state 'but I'M not like that'.

That's nice. Except we weren't talking about you. We were talking about the people who ARE like that, but now you've seen fit to insert yourself into the conversation because god forbid something might not be about you. Instead of adding something constructive to the conversation, you've initiated an attempt to divert attention away from it.

#NotAllMen also gets shut down really hard by #YesAllWomen. No, not all men are jackasses, but yes, all women have to deal with constantly being harassed by jackasses, and if you wanted to actually be helpful then you'd assist with getting rid of the sumbags instead of spending so much time proclaiming how much different you are then them. You would use actions instead of words to prove your point.

#NotAllMen is exactly the kind of nonsense that is embraced by the MRA while actively harming their cause by furthering the stereotype that they're all douchebags, because non-douchebags already know that #NotAllMen goes without saying and don't feel the obsessive need to bother with it.

EDIT: As an aside, it's ironic how often I've caught people going 'yes, well, #NotAllMen are complete assholes you know', and then IMMEDIATELY after saying that they'll then proceed to say or do exactly the thing they just said not all men do.

 

[Gizen]

Whoops, my bad. I'm tired and probably shouldn't be reading through this topic without more sleep. Oh well.

Though my response wasn't actually meant towards you specifically, and was just more of a general 'you people who use this phrase'.

 

[V4Viewtiful]

Anyway, one of the aspects I think feminism has gotten wrong is equal punishment, in law I mean. Women can cry and get a reduced sentence, avoid the death penalty not pay back money from misuse of child support. It's in these cases Men have it worse than women and I never see here or read any group of Feminists say "Hey that's not right she deserves to go to prison for saying that child was his!" Or something.

I don't have a lot of respect for most political groups but specifically for Feminism as it is now, what bothers me the most? When they don't hold women who go against the cause accountable.

Issues with your statement.

A) The situations you list, while they DO happen, and they ARE terrible, they're also not nearly as widespread as people like to make them out to be in order to make things look worse than they actually are.

it's enough to be cause for concern

B) Feminism is not an organized group. There's no membership to revoke when somebody who claims to be feminist does something bad. There's no roster that you can read to immediately know who's proclaiming themselves to be a feminist and whether they're doing anything stupid or not. Therefor, kind of difficult to 'hold someone accountable'.

That' not what I meant, I just mean I have seen a few known feminist groups when injustice towards females make there presence known but when women do something underhand and aren't readily punished, they're nowhere to be seen.

C) Generally, when people are committing the criminal activities you list, they're not doing it while proclaiming feminism as their motivation/justification. Hell, feminism has taken on such a negative connotation and is now so frequently mistaken as to what it actually means, that many women deny being feminists even when they share its ideals. As a result, it's hard to get mad at someone for 'going against the cause', when they're not part of the cause, or deny being part of the cause to begin with.

You're right, it's just that the lack of vocal indignation undermines what feminism tries to achieve.

 

[Gizen]

B) Feminism is not an organized group. There's no membership to revoke when somebody who claims to be feminist does something bad. There's no roster that you can read to immediately know who's proclaiming themselves to be a feminist and whether they're doing anything stupid or not. Therefor, kind of difficult to 'hold someone accountable'.

That' not what I meant, I just mean I have seen a few known feminist groups when injustice towards females make there presence known but when women do something underhand and aren't readily punished, they're nowhere to be seen.

C) Generally, when people are committing the criminal activities you list, they're not doing it while proclaiming feminism as their motivation/justification. Hell, feminism has taken on such a negative connotation and is now so frequently mistaken as to what it actually means, that many women deny being feminists even when they share its ideals. As a result, it's hard to get mad at someone for 'going against the cause', when they're not part of the cause, or deny being part of the cause to begin with.

You're right, it's just that the lack of vocal dignification undermines what feminism tries to achieve.

I really don't see this being an issue. Basically, your argument boils down to 'criminals exist, and sometimes they are women, so why aren't women speaking out about these women criminals?' Probably for the same reason that every man in the world doesn't go out of their way to distance themselves from another man who commits a crime, same reason why corporation A doesn't issue a press release saying they don't support unrelated corporation B when it gets caught doing something criminal.

It's because these things go without saying, and unless the person committing some illicit activity is actively claiming to be a part of your organization, there's no reason to waste your valuable time/energy to distance yourself from someone you were never associated with in the first place.

 

[Ryebread]

Before I start, here are two links that reflect what I think of the MRM. First, a redditor's open letter about quitting the MRM, which has received a lot of similar supportive comments from other redditors:

http://www.reddit.com/r/offmychest/comments/1t4o00/a_vent_to_my_old_friends_at_rmensrights_and_why/

Two, the Southern Poverty Law Center featured Men's Rights sites as inciting hate in a 2012 issue:

http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/intelligence-report/browse-all-issues/2012/spring/misogyny-the-sites

While men also face gender issues, the Men's Rights Movement does little to nothing to address it, and any progress towards eliminating gender issues (both for men and women) has to be done away from that toxic banner.

But I want to focus more on the #NotAllMen/#YesAllWomen with a video game analogy. Everytime #NotAllMen is brought up, it makes the argument of single-target effects, i.e. while these men are a negative dangerous influence on the world, some/most (or NotAll) men are neutral to positive influences and that the neutral+positive outweighs the negative. However, #YesAllWomen shows that many women have been subject to negative experiences from male violence/harassment and fear of further instances of it. This demonstrates an Area Of Effect, in that one misogynistic male can negatively effect many people, as well as a persisting debuff (the fear that these negative acts will happen again in the future).

Also, negative events have a much stronger influence on the psyche than positive events; we remember the negative because we need to remember what may potentially harm us. If #NotAllMen was to have any reasonable grounds for an argument (which they don't), it would have to argue that the amount and strength of positive effects from men are strong enough to greatly overshadow the negative. This is absolutely most certainly not the case.
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/remember-bad-times-better-than-good.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negativity_bias

#NotAllMen attempts to trivialize and derail topics on dangerous gender issues, and by not directly criticizing the extremists in their camp, they condone it. By condoning them, they weaken/bias their own arguments.

 

[itsmeyouidiot]

I'll admit, when I first saw the #YesAllWomen campaign I initially took it to be an attack on maleness, because the first example I saw of it was the "poisoned M&M" analogy that's been going around lately. It was a pretty bullshit analogy that can be applied to literally any group ever, and as a result I found it offensive. It wasn't until later that I saw that most of the #YesAllWomen tweets were fairly innocuous.

I do think that women do have to go through a disproportionate amount of shit in regards to harassing and catcalling and stuff like that, but I feel like there's currently too much pressure being placed on men to bear the sins of every other man on the planet. The very fact that people are even making fun of "not all men" proves that people think it's perfectly okay to make a horribly offensive generalization as long as it's for a good cause. Apparently the ends justify the means now.