Mens Rights Activists

[someonehairy-ish]

Well, a whole lot of people tend to get labelled 'MRA' whether that's really an apt description of it or not.

Some MRAs are people who genuinely are just trying to raise awareness of men's issues. This kind of MRA is compatible with some forms of feminism.

Some MRAs would be better termed anti-feminists, although, again, most of them actually support first or second wave feminists to some extent. They see the particular brand of feminism that currently dominates journalism and academia as dogmatic, propagandistic, and corrosive. Other anti-feminists are against all forms of feminism.

Some MRAs are more properly called MGTOWs. They are heterosexual men who've decided, for whatever reason, to give up on relationships with women.


I'm not really interested in discussions of which side is better or worse than which. I'm not convinced that feminists and MRAs are even on different sides, seeing as they can overlap. I'm just trying to point out the different terminology.

 

[DonTsetsi]

It seems there is some confusion about the different 'factions' of the 'manosphere'. First of all, the manosphere is a somewhat useless term, since it includes everything male-focused on the net. I've even heard the argument that game sites like this one belong to it. Now for the groups that people keep getting confused:
MRAs - Men's Rights Activists - little to no agenda in the overall movement, different organizations have different attitudes, agendas and goals. It would be hard to compare a group for student rights with a group for father's fights or an anti-circumcision group, for example.
PUAs - Pick Up Artists - Name says it all, really. Very few, if any, associate themselves with any activism for rights or equality. Most are openly Anti-MRAs.
Incels - Involuntary celibate - People who place too much importance on sex while not being able to acquire it. Some may be involved with Men's Right's groups, but not many.
MGTOW - Men Going Their Own Way - men who reject traditional gender roles. Most are against marriage, the more hardcore are against any romantic relationship with women and the most hardcore are against any contact. Some do it because of the legal and financial risks associated with starting a family, others also believe that 'woman's nature' is evil. Many MGTOW are also MRAs.
Anti-feminists - against the political and societal effect of modern feminism. A significant part of the MRM consists of anti-feminists.

My personal stance on these groups - I mostly sympathize with MRAs, hate PUAs, pity Incels, half understand MGTOW and consider myself anti-feminist, mostly because of some sexist laws that have been passed in the name of 'equality'.

 

[Steve Waltz]

Urgh... MRAs are just like feminists. Some have legitimate claims and issues, but most of them just whine about trivial stuff that doesn?t matter. I swear to God... The MRAs that are whining about a woman being in the Mad Max film? They need to fuck right off.

I mean, I hate feminists that are trying to force females into movies/video games, but if a script writer or a video game dev wants a woman in their movie/game then I say go for it. If Blizzard wants to throw a bunch of female characters, and a transgender in their new shooter just to appease the social justice crowd, then I say go for it. It?s their damn game and they have the right to do whatever the hell they want with it. If that includes throwing Nazi propaganda in their game? Then fucking do it! This is the free world--Let?s exercise some fucking FREEDOM!

These MRAs that are bitching about a vagina being in ?their? Mad Max movies are just total pussies that can?t handle someone else?s artistic choice. You want a movie without a vagina, then go make your own movie; stop whining about someone elses. There is NO reason why someone should ***** at a content creator for an artistic choice. People weren?t bitching about Vasquez in Aliens.

MRAs and feminists should just fuck each other to appease their sexual frustrations and stop obsessing over their own gender. Maybe then they?d get a clue that we should fucking SHARE the world and not try to fight over it.

 

[DonTsetsi]

Urgh... MRAs are just like feminists. Some have legitimate claims and issues, but most of them just whine about trivial stuff that doesn?t matter. I swear to God... The MRAs that are whining about a woman being in the Mad Max film? They need to fuck right off.

I mean, I hate feminists that are trying to force females into movies/video games, but if a script writer or a video game dev wants a woman in their movie/game then I say go for it. If Blizzard wants to throw a bunch of female characters, and a transgender in their new shooter just to appease the social justice crowd, then I say go for it. It?s their damn game and they have the right to do whatever the hell they want with it. If that includes throwing Nazi propaganda in their game? Then fucking do it! This is the free world--Let?s exercise some fucking FREEDOM!

These MRAs that are bitching about a vagina being in ?their? Mad Max movies are just total pussies that can?t handle someone else?s artistic choice. You want a movie without a vagina, then go make your own movie; stop whining about someone elses. There is NO reason why someone should ***** at a content creator for an artistic choice. People weren?t bitching about Vasquez in Aliens.

MRAs and feminists should just fuck each other to appease their sexual frustrations and stop obsessing over their own gender. Maybe then they?d get a clue that we should fucking SHARE the world and not try to fight over it.

No MRA whined about Mad Max. The one who did is a PUA who is openly against MRAs...

 

[Porygon-2000]

So... egalitarianism doesn't mean you want equal right and stuff for everyone? I'm confused.

What do you call it when you don't give a rat's ass what gender you are or how you identify, but that shouldn't factor into how you're treated?

 

[BrokenTinker]

I feel old, no, seriously, I feel fucking old.

The equality based MRAs were originally equality based feminists first, at least in the states. This was in the 70's and 80's, chapters for national congress for men (and later men and children, before it kinda went defunct due to a bunch of reasons). Is there another old 2nd wave feminist here? Cause I can really use some help with references since it's next to impossible to find the grassroot stuff from back then on the net (it's insane that I can barely find DeCrow's stuff and she was pretty prominent). The idea of MRA (initially) was in accordance with the mainstream feminism at the time, mainly that an equal distribution of raising a family and work will empower the professional woman to pursuit their career. It will give both men and women equal opportunity and choice free from expectation.

The thing is that by the 90s, most of the immediate inequality against women that could be immediately addressed were addressed. The rest of the problem, it was viewed, can only be fixed by time as hostile attitude and value will be overtaken by the next generation that will have values that reflect equality more. Aside from the front against the anti-choice on the right, it's viewed as "the battle is won, let's help others". The group we called LGBT now(I forgot their other names, they had a bunch with different emphasis) and anti-racism causes get added their focus and the active equality based 2nd waver kind of just faded into the back, doing their things quietly. I'm not sure if it's black feminism (think it's call intersectional feminism now?) that took over or if it's the puritan/sex-neg feminist that took over, but this became the 3rd wave and precursor to the SJW insanity we have today.

I believe one of the AVFM founder was a feminist as well.


But, now, we've a clusterfuck. We have the minority group of feminists that's left over from the 2nd wave feminism (that's on both the feminist and MRA side), and the mainstream 3rd feminists that try to dictate who is oppressed and who isn't oppressed, how it's all the patriarchy's fault, how all stay-at-home moms are backward hicks, how all stay-at-home dads are progressive. The MRA side is just as bad since they got dragged through the mud after being completely ignored for about two decades now, so there are a bunch of them that are indeed bitter as fuck (but they don't actively disrupt feminist gathering regularly, which I can't say the time the other way around, so much fire alarm pulling...).

Now you've loons that view any criticism against any female as misogyny, on the flip side, you've the equally loonie ones on the MRA screaming shit right back. LGBT communities that are literally at each other throat, where some prefer to keep their sexlives to themselves as long as they've the right to same-sex marriage while you've the ones that keeps declare their sexual orientation in public discussions when no one gives a fuck and when you call them out on it, you'd get called transphobic/homophobic. Then you've parts of the hostile parts of T community active disrupt the L community (womyn festival closing down can be trace back to T), the L+G community wondering why the T actively try to drag them into fights where they don't feel comfortable to butt in since.

Instead of talking and at least TRY to work together, you've a large splinter with almost everyone is eyeing each other with hostility. Instead of actually trying to find a solution, you've dumb fucks that makes up lies and when they are caught in them, it becomes "At least it sheds light on the bigger issue". Damn nutjobs promoting victimhood as though it's a virtue. Self-righteous crusaders hiding behind a cause to promoting discrimination and bigotry against groups of people in broadstrokes with their "punching up/down" BS. When was the last time someone offered a solution? The few time something is offered, you got the 3rd wavers screaming oppresion (equal enforcement of law ISN'T oppression, due process isn't oppression as well no matter how much some of these loons want "guilty until proven innocent" to be in place against men), the MGTOW just disconnecting from society instead of trying to fix it (too lazy to fix the damn problems that's plaguing the system even though others before did the very same), damn racist buggers keep making things into about race when it's CLASS issue that's underlying cause. Egalitarian isn't much better since bickering about the emphasis of focus get argued a lot, but at least it can be done as an individual instead of being in an group since there's so many people, different people can focus on different things as they encounter it individually since there isn't really a formal organization for it.

So... egalitarianism doesn't mean you want equal right and stuff for everyone? I'm confused.

What do you call it when you don't give a rat's ass what gender you are or how you identify, but that shouldn't factor into how you're treated?

The newer gen. identifies that as egalitarianism, some of the older ones likes to drag its old history and equate it to the modern iteration. It's like 2nd wave vs 3rd wave in feminism, but the gap between mainstream egal. and the previous egal. is really wide apart as opposed to the waves which overlaps. You'd be hardpressed to find an "old school" egalitarian.

 

[Deckard Kain]

Watching 3rd wave feminist, I think we need MRA to even out the odds.

 

[MikeSee]

I see mens rites as gay rites. *shurg*

But really tho, we live in a fucked up world where people ignore male rape cause it happened to a guy, but are gay allies. LOL ^_-

 

[Thaluikhain]

Speaking towards the general discussion; If the stats that Lil devils x has brought forward are true, how do we go about solving them, without using those same stats to bludgeon males? I can easily envision these stats really screwing up a little boy if he heard them in the wrong tone. Is presentation key?

I see this sort of concern raised a lot, but I don't think it's a valid one. The fact that there are a lot of bad people in your group doesn't necessarily say anything about you. Most nations have large prisons, for example. For that matter, the Nazis were white and mostly German, and white people and Germans tend to accept that the Holocaust happened.

Having said that, there are people who will choose to take those sort of facts as personal attacks, (which is probably a big cause of Holocaust deniers), but I see no reason to pander to them. That very quickly leads to people deciding that having to face a problem people in your group cause is worse than the problem itself. There's a lot of that going around, and it shouldn't go unchallenged.

The unfortunate part of that is that feminism isn't equality in gender rights, even the best feminists only support women's rights, there is nothing done to help lessen the gender biases against men by feminists.

Rubbish.

Firstly, you can't get rid of gender roles without it benefiting all genders, and that is a big part of feminism. Secondly, even if you could, you are seriously suggesting that no feminists support the rights of males? When for example, Gorrath says they are a feminist and support men's rights, they are lying about at least one of those things?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Does mosts feminists really want to get rid of gender roles though? I mean i've seen a lot of shit flung at stay-at-home moms for wanting to be a homemaker, so i question whether it's about eliminating gender roles so much as it is trading them.

I mean, naturally you'll get a different perspective depending on who you talk too, but i don't see too many feminist saying that it's OK for women to stay at home, and men to work, where this would be an option if eliminating gender roles were the goal. I mean it might just be that people are vilinizing the 'traditional' roles to try and even things out, but even still it feels a bit disingenuous.

Now, I can't say what most feminists think about that, but yeah, that's a serious problem. However, while I can't say which is in the majority, there are large numbers on each side of that argument.

Anyway, at the moment there isn't really much mainstream recognition that men sometimes get the short end of the stick too, so i think there's definitely call for a group that focuses specifically on men's rights, especially in an environment where press is overall so hostile towards the notion that maybe men don't always have perfect lives just because they're men. Until domestic violence is recognized as something any gender or sex can do to any other gender or sex, and isn't just always men against women, and there's less stigma against men 'showing weakness' by speaking up about being victims, and less assuming men = perps women = victims, there's work to be done, and somebody has to do it, and i doubt this could ever really be resolved by "feminists", even those that are more in line with 1st or 2nd wave feminism, and would be supportive of men's rights as a concept, since even if they do agree that it's a bad attitude for people to have, i doubt it's very high on their to-do list.

Well, getting rid of gender roles entirely is something necessary for feminism's goals, but yeah, there is a serious lack of interest in a lot of male issues. Prison rape, for example, is something many, many people see as hilarious, or an important part of the judicial system.

 

[Fallow]

I refer you again to the examples I gave in my post, one of which outright claimed to be part of the "movement" and one of which is by definition part of it.

Sure, the first is part of it (if they identify as part of it), but the second is not unless they actually identify as such.

Hell, if merely caring about men's rights made one an MRA, we'd be seeing loads of MRA feminists.

When you are for both men's rights and women's rights at the same time, that's called being a decent human being, or perhaps egalitarian.

 

[Fallow]

So... egalitarianism doesn't mean you want equal right and stuff for everyone? I'm confused.

What do you call it when you don't give a rat's ass what gender you are or how you identify, but that shouldn't factor into how you're treated?

That's called a liberal.

Sadly, the opposite of that is these days called left-wing progessive, having migrated from right-wing authoritarian.

 

[BrokenTinker]

Watching 3rd wave feminist, I think we need MRA to even out the odds.

Man, I'd hate to hear what you think we should do in response to ISIS.

We have the all female peushmega corps. (sp? Somehow I only remember their pronunciation and not their spelling ><), and to be fair, they rock.

(and wow, someone agreed with my long ass rant ><)

Does mosts feminists really want to get rid of gender roles though? I mean i've seen a lot of shit flung at stay-at-home moms for wanting to be a homemaker, so i question whether it's about eliminating gender roles so much as it is trading them.

I mean, naturally you'll get a different perspective depending on who you talk too, but i don't see too many feminist saying that it's OK for women to stay at home, and men to work, where this would be an option if eliminating gender roles were the goal. I mean it might just be that people are vilinizing the 'traditional' roles to try and even things out, but even still it feels a bit disingenuous.

Now, I can't say what most feminists think about that, but yeah, that's a serious problem. However, while I can't say which is in the majority, there are large numbers on each side of that argument.

Look at it in the mainstream media, quite a few of them BBC feminist featured/permanent commentators on their shows actively shit on stay-at-home moms, to the point that there is now an actual organization for stay-at-home moms. I won't discard the chance that there's the possibility of a silent majority, but that's why I often use the term "mainstream feminist".

Anyway, at the moment there isn't really much mainstream recognition that men sometimes get the short end of the stick too, so i think there's definitely call for a group that focuses specifically on men's rights, especially in an environment where press is overall so hostile towards the notion that maybe men don't always have perfect lives just because they're men. Until domestic violence is recognized as something any gender or sex can do to any other gender or sex, and isn't just always men against women, and there's less stigma against men 'showing weakness' by speaking up about being victims, and less assuming men = perps women = victims, there's work to be done, and somebody has to do it, and i doubt this could ever really be resolved by "feminists", even those that are more in line with 1st or 2nd wave feminism, and would be supportive of men's rights as a concept, since even if they do agree that it's a bad attitude for people to have, i doubt it's very high on their to-do list.

Well, getting rid of gender roles entirely is something necessary for feminism's goals, but yeah, there is a serious lack of interest in a lot of male issues. Prison rape, for example, is something many, many people see as hilarious, or an important part of the judicial system.

There's actually a bunch of different things going on here that's facepalming (mainly at the situation, but even your issue with the "hilarious part", but I will get to that). The old 2nd wave feminism goal of removing gender role was to promoting empowerment to women(bring women's opportunity in professional career up to be on par with men) and on the flip side, allow men to become a carer should they wish to (now you've claims that men are naturally inferior carers~). The idea was equal OPPORTUNITY, not equal OUTCOME. The emphasis from the 2nd wave was 'Freedom to choose', while the 3rd wave is about the outcome ignoring choice (look at the so called wage gap with mainstream feminists interpretation that completely ignore the choice done BY women).

Let's get to the "hilarious" perception of prison rape. Often time people (and I'm not talking about teenagers and kids, they say stupid shit all the time to get attention) laugh as a 'coping mechanism', why do you think that many of these insightful comedians are some of the best critics? Because they aren't judging, they can mix it up, everyone is free game and they can tell it like it is. You've a mexican american aka "Fluffy" that got invited by a prince in the middle east to host some shows there (and for the self-righteous SJWs, they accused him for "punching down" in the states, despite being the fact he's immensely popular amongst the group he targeted regardless of where he hosted the shows). Seriously, how many adults gives off happy laughter talking about prison rape? There will be some, but certainly not many. You WILL get uncomfortable laughter, but even that you've people complaining about. This is why there's the term "nothing is sacred", otherwise you are NOT going to get people talking if you can't get past their guard (get a job doing a mall survey or a census worker, it's hard to explain it aside first hand experience, or I'm just not articulate enough). Laughter is one of the best way aside from polite professionalism.

To put an emphasis on how important this coping mechanism is, refer to psychologists that work with PTSD victims (not the tumblerina "I'm triggered", actual PTSD sufferers with doctors and shit). Generally speaking, PTSD occurs because a traumatic event that an individual's psyche couldn't process it properly, loses its ability to cope with the event and become stuck in a loop. So instead of "this event happened, and it's in the past", it becomes "trigger" -> "this event is happening NOW" -> "panic". In a lot of cases, treatment can be summed up as "making a coping mechanism that can process the trigger", this could be done through medication (a derivative from cannabis is looking really promising), exposure therapy (low magnitude exposure to triggers until it reaches a manageable level) or through active exposure(? sorry, I can't really remember the actual name of it at the moment) when appropriate, ie. VR reenactment of how the soldier got shot.

So on one hand, psychologists are trying their damnest to get coping mechanism working for sufferers, when on the other hand, you have people actively trying to remove a HEALTHY coping mechanism from the population. Ever seen people laughing immediately after a neardeath experience? Same shit, different scope. Saying "don't laugh, it isn't funny" automatically put people on guard and try to remove one of their coping mechanism for the subject at hand. People NOT familiar with a horrible subject will cringe, laugh, etc... when talking about something uncomfortable, without a coping mechanism, some will just turn off their brain and don't listen. Don't believe me? Try talking about the 'penis fish' (the one that swims into urethra and then anchor itself into place with its spines), you will get a bunch of different reactions. Now tell them that they can't laugh or cringe, let's see how they will react.

Why is it that people were more willing to talk about issues in regards to prisoners in the late 90's and early 00s and not now? It's pretty simple, the PC police were laughed out while the mainstream talked about anything and everything. Someone "laughing" doesn't necessary mean something is "hilarious", which quite a few people seems to misconstrue. If anything, using laughter to open a difficult subject is a lot better than "this is serious, sit straight and listen".

 

[Thaluikhain]

Let's get to the "hilarious" perception of prison rape. Often time people (and I'm not talking about teenagers and kids, they say stupid shit all the time to get attention) laugh as a 'coping mechanism', why do you think that many of these insightful comedians are some of the best critics? Because they aren't judging, they can mix it up, everyone is free game and they can tell it like it is. You've a mexican american aka "Fluffy" that got invited as by prince in the middle east to host some shows there (and for the self-righteous SJWs, they accused him for "punching down" in the states, despite being the fact he's immensely popular amongst the group he targeted). Seriously, how many adults gives off happy laughter talking about prison rape? There will be some, but certainly not many. You WILL get uncomfortable laughter, but even that you've people complaining about. This is why there's the term "nothing is sacred", otherwise you are NOT going to get people talking if you can't get past their guard (get a job being doing a mall survey or a census worker, it's hard to explain it aside first hand experience, or I'm just not articulate enough).

To put an emphasis on how important this coping mechanism is, refer to psychologists that work with PTSD victims (not the tumblerina "I'm triggered", actual PTSD sufferers with doctors and shit). Generally speaking, PTSD occurs because a traumatic event that an individual's psyche couldn't process it properly, loses its ability to cope with the event and become stuck in a loop. So instead of "this event happened, and it's in the past", it becomes "trigger" -> "this event is happening NOW" -> "panic". In a lot of cases, treatment can be summed up as "making a coping mechanism that can process the trigger", this could be done through medication (a derivative from cannabis is looking really promising), exposure therapy (low magnitude exposure to triggers until it reaches a manageable level) or through active exposure(? sorry, I can't really remember the actual name of it at the moment) when appropriate, ie. VR reenactment of how the soldier got shot.

So on one hand, psychologists are trying their damnest to get coping mechanism working for sufferers, when on the other hand, you have people actively trying to remove a HEALTHY coping mechanism from the population. Ever seen people laughing immediately after a neardeath experience? Same shit, different scope. Saying "don't laugh, it isn't funny" automatically put people on guard and try to remove one of their coping mechanism for the subject at hand. People NOT familiar with a horrible subject will cringe, laugh, etc... when talking about something uncomfortable, without a coping mechanism, some will just turn off their brain and don't listen. Don't believe me? Try talking about the 'penis fish' (the one that swims into urethra and then anchor itself into place with its spines), you will get a bunch of different reactions. Now tell them that they can't laugh or cringe, let's see how they will react.

Why is it that people were more willing to talk about issues in regards to prisoners in the late 90's and early 00s and not now? It's pretty simple, the PC police were laughed out while the mainstream talked about anything and everything. Someone "laughing" doesn't necessary mean something is "hilarious", which quite a few people seems to misconstrue. If anything, using laughter to open a difficult subject is a lot better than "this is serious, sit straight and listen".

Certainly, humour can be a way of dealing with a serious issue, only that's not how prison rape is generally depicted. It's a staple of comedy (by comedians whom I seriously doubt have any particular interest of PTSD sufferers, even of those you've decided are "actual" ones), but not nearly so prevalent in serious discussion, except as a useful deterrent for criminals.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Now you've loons that view any criticism against any female as misogyny, on the flip side, you've the equally loonie ones on the MRA screaming shit right back. LGBT communities that are literally at each other throat, where some prefer to keep their sexlives to themselves as long as they've the right to same-sex marriage while you've the ones that keeps declare their sexual orientation in public discussions when no one gives a fuck and when you call them out on it, you'd get called transphobic/homophobic. Then you've parts of the hostile parts of T community active disrupt the L community (womyn festival closing down can be trace back to T), the L+G community wondering why the T actively try to drag them into fights where they don't feel comfortable to butt in since.

The reason there is hostility in between the Trans and the L&G community is because the L&G community keeps tossing us under the bus during legislative pushes. Then there is the underlying current of L&G minorities who believe that trans people are just confused homosexuals, along the line "you're either gay, straight, or lying." Which has caused the trans community to hate be lumped in via sexuality, especially because gender identity and sexuality are separate things, plus every protection we've gotten we've gotten by our selves. Seriously L&G activists have talked such a big game about helping us, then with back room deals tossed our interests out to make legal protections for homosexuals more appealing. You wonder why the LGBT community is considered a misnomer? It's because L&G activists have basically worked really hard to alienate the B and T sections of the larger community. At least bisexual people have gotten protection for their sexuality through this, but every trans protection has been done by exclusively trans activists. That's where the hostility comes from, active discrimination in a community that's supposed to support us.

The unfortunate part of that is that feminism isn't equality in gender rights, even the best feminists only support women's rights, there is nothing done to help lessen the gender biases against men by feminists.

Rubbish.

Firstly, you can't get rid of gender roles without it benefiting all genders, and that is a big part of feminism. Secondly, even if you could, you are seriously suggesting that no feminists support the rights of males? When for example, Gorrath says they are a feminist and support men's rights, they are lying about at least one of those things?

Firstly feminists talk about getting rid of gender roles, but really the talks I've heard about this amount to either allowing gender neutral movement between roles, or is just plain role reversal on a societal level. Most feminists champion making the roles neutral, which is a great ideal, if unrealistic at the moment. Also most feminists, the non-extremist ones, do support men's rights, but as activists they're busy working on women's rights. Now taking a small part of a larger thing I said out of context is kind of a dishonest thing to do, especially if you use it to claim I'm being divisive. What I said was that there are two sides to the gender equality movement, they have different focuses, not that that they're mutually exclusive.

 

[Thaluikhain]

even the best feminists only support women's rights,

Also most feminists, the non-extremist ones, do support men's rights

These statements are mutually exclusive. There's no context that doesn't make the first very obviously untrue.

EDIT: Now, if that's not what you meant to say, fair enough, your next post seems to make much more sense, but the original really did not.