It's also dishonest to put such words in my mouth, when they were never said ;)
The disconnect, IMO, stems from the fact that women are fighting, and men are not. Or, perhaps better said, men are just beginning to frame an opposition. Women have stood up, organized, and brought attention to their problems (which were, without any doubt, seriously greater than men's), and achieved many victories. Standard democratic process. Now it's high time for men to do the same. However, if male action gets reduced to just attacking feminism and blaming feminism for everything, that sucks. It is one system, patriarchy, that causes all these problems. If some women and feminists are blind to the problems of men, is that really a surprise? Fully understanding someone else, someone whose shoes you haven't walked in, is incredibly hard. What we need is discussion, finding understanding, and fighting the common source of all these problems - patriarchy. And nobody can stand for men, but men themselves.
> If some women and feminists are blind to the problems of men, is that really a surprise?
Yes, honestly, though perhaps it shouldn't. The point of feminism was to bring equality to the sexes. In places where it has been successful, to see it continue to push forward as a way of achieving victories for women causes spite and backlash. I have low hopes for a real men's version of feminism to form, for exactly the reasons laid out in this article. The main problem (as this article points out) is that any man who admits to difficulties or problems is seen as not-a-man. The current state of MRA might be sad, but they are generally despised first and foremost because men who complain are not respectable men. Perhaps its just a pipe dream, but one would hope that feminists would remember that the original goal was equality for both sexes, and would help us out where needed.
I agree with a lot of what you say. But waiting for someone else to fight your fight never worked for anybody. It's just the way it is, people have a hard time putting themselves in others' shoes, and everyone naturally tends to place greater emphasis on their own problems. And then there's the fact that problems women face still exist.
But for me, the problem with MRAs is not that they are "unmanly". They remind me of something like a slave, who sees another former slave now walking free, and instead of now demanding his own freedom, he fights for the other guy to become a slave again...
You are probably right, MRAs probably will be seen as pussies and belittled, but their response, IMO, should be to embrace it. Yes, I am a pussy. If that's what an intelligent, reflective man is, then let it be - I am a pussy. Kind of like the relationship between feminists and the word "bitch". And that is for some men one hard pill to swallow.
Now that feminism has won a lot of victories, men are in a position that they are still burdened by patriarchic expectations, but no longer enjoy the corresponding privileges. The right answer is to fight the expectations, IMO.
> but their response, IMO, should be to embrace it
I simply do not see this happening. Before people ever do this, they will attempt to accomplish their goals by easier, more acceptable, less self-socially destroying means, like wrapping their complaints in traditional/religious roles or (likely reactionary) ideology. But I don't want to detract from this any longer. The point I was trying to make was far more succinctly put by marrs in anther reply to you.
What sucks is if a men's movement has to accept the same B.S. underpinnings as feminism because feminists can't handle others disagreeing with them.
The whole patriarchy critique is a biased philosophical position of a particular social movement. If you guys like it, fine, but you don't get to force it upon others.
Yeah, exactly, forcing things upon others. Or, as people usually call this, a conversation :D You are being a hypocrite right now. You may disagree, but you may not accuse me of forcing anything just because I said something you disagree with.
You could put a minimal amount of effort into charitable readings of the comments of others.
Feminism has gone so far as to brand the men's rights movement a hate group, they've gone out of their way to characterize men's rights books as rape-apologizing hate speech, and in some cases[0][1] have actively shut down talks given from what is basically the MRA viewpoint.
This is clearly coercion so I feel justified in saying feminism is attempting to "force" the men's rights movement to develop in a certain way.
Am I saying you're personally trying to force me to do anything right now? That wasn't my intention. As for your view that we should all get together and blame the patriarchy, allow me to rephrase myself for clarity: thanks, but no thanks.
That would have been one charitable reading :D Of course I understood you as if you were implying that I am forcing something. Thank you for the clarification!
I cannot really speak for others, I represent no one but myself. I can only guess that, to some extent, such reaction from some feminists is simply defence. The MRA narrative is too focused on feminism, and has too much relativizing, "who's the greater victim" talk, which is stupid.
But I also definitely agree that some of the reaction is just a lack of will to hear what the other side has to say, which sucks.
Pointing out that feminism has been damaging to men and the male psyche is accurate, your movement has had collateral damage and you need to deal with that.
It's impossibile to stand up for masculinity as being a natural and good thing without butting heads with THE group who says masculinity is an overvalued social construct that needs to be destroyed.
On victimhood, it's completely childish for a movement to spend 50 years talking about how victimized its members are and the moment somebody else starts using the same tactic it's "let's not talk about victimhood, it's sooo stupid!" It's a classic "learned it from watching you" scenario.
On who I blame, I don't have a group that I blame for everything. We live in a difficult world where survival is a challenge, there will always be things that are nobody's fault. People who have a default boogeyman use them in times of uncertainty: "the gays caused the earthquake", "the patriarchy caused me to miss that promotion", "I drink because of my ex-wife", etc.
But do I blame feminism for the things it's responsible for? You bet.
edit: I don't mind donwvotes, but I do take notice when something is downvoted in less time than it would take to read and reflect on the comment.
First of all, hypocrisy again - you say blaming patriarchy is lame, "default boogeyman" and so on, but you completely fail to see you use feminism in exactly the same way. MRAs typically blame EVERYTHING on feminism. Any kind of problem men face today must somehow be caused by feminism, there is rarely any other explanation that is acceptable.
Second, I did not say that pointing out problems men face is stupid, far from it. What I said was that comparing is stupid. "Who's the bigger victim" is stupid talk. Negating the problems women face, as if this were a competition, some kind of zero-sum game, is stupid. Try some of that charitable reading you recommended yourself.
I tried to make it clear that I think feminism should only be blamed for things it's responsible for. Really.
Victimhood is almost always relative and I've spent my entire life hearing about how society victimizes females as compared to males, you can't just rewrite the history of the movement when it's convenient.
In fact if you listen to them these evil MRAs are saying the exact same thing you are right now, that all the victim playing of feminism is disrupting any societal discussion of men's problems. The day feminism stops caricaturizing men in order to talk about female victimhood is the day you get to complain about MRAs entering the conversation. If you think feminism doesn't misrepresent men then you're part of the problem being fought against.
And when I suggested you read comments more charitably it's because I thought you weren't and it was causing you to miss the point. It wasn't just to hurt your feelings, this isn't reddit.
> ...I've spent my entire life hearing about how society victimizes females as compared to males...
Maybe that's what you heard from it, but it's not the position of feminism that, e.g., rape is bad merely because women get raped more than men. Rape is bad, period. The point is that the problem affects women disproportionately more, and in the past men could get away with it without any punishment. So, women need, and have fought for, extra protection. And of course, for the general dismantling of the power imbalance between men and women. Why some men immediately internalize this, and feel like someone just called all men rapists and woman haters is really beyond me.
In any case, we will probably have to agree to disagree. In my experience, MRA is not really about anything else than feminism. There are some who actually care about the specific injustices faced by men, and some who have endured them directly (and you may be shocked but I am a feminist and still support them...). But the MRA movement is really just using these things as tools in a fight purely against feminism. Because, it's always feminism. Nothing else can be at fault but feminism. Every male problem is either caused by feminists, or feminists are indirectly to blame because they didn't fix it already (?!). Because, yeah, fuck all the rapes, domestic violence and shit, the most important thing all feminists have to care about when fighting these injustices is - men, of course! :D
A lot of feminists probably go to far, and dismiss valid concerns too easily, but to take that as a reason to focus on feminism, and to constantly negate the whole of feminism makes it clear that the MRA movement, for the most part, is just anti-feminism and nothing more. That the problems men face are being used as a fig leaf to cover up simple misogyny.
The disconnect, IMO, stems from the fact that women are fighting, and men are not. Or, perhaps better said, men are just beginning to frame an opposition. Women have stood up, organized, and brought attention to their problems (which were, without any doubt, seriously greater than men's), and achieved many victories. Standard democratic process. Now it's high time for men to do the same. However, if male action gets reduced to just attacking feminism and blaming feminism for everything, that sucks. It is one system, patriarchy, that causes all these problems. If some women and feminists are blind to the problems of men, is that really a surprise? Fully understanding someone else, someone whose shoes you haven't walked in, is incredibly hard. What we need is discussion, finding understanding, and fighting the common source of all these problems - patriarchy. And nobody can stand for men, but men themselves.