The feminist activists amongst you may have been a bit baffled by the peculiar activist strategy of the Men’s Rights movement. That is, doing absolutely nothing beyond yelling a lot online, flooding comments of newspaper articles with Men’s Rights rants, and sometimes harassing individual women.
But apparently this is all part of their super seekret master plan. A plan, moreover, which is going gangbusters, all appearances to the contrary. For, apparently unbeknownst to virtually everyone in the world, the Men’s Rights movement is poised for a gigantic mainstream breakthrough. Any moment now!
At least that’s how one enthusiastic Men’s Rights Redditor with the not-technically racist name nigglereddit explained it in a recent comment on the Men’s Rights subreddit that won dozens of upvotes:
The men’s movement is quietly moving into its second phase: wide acceptance and recognition. This is normal and healthy. You’ll notice that we don’t need to have marches in the streets, to hijack TV shows or have official leaders, books and doctrine – that’s because what we’re saying is so obviously and so self-evidently true that no reasonable person who encounters it needs to be confronted or debated. They simply look, see that we’re right and move on with a changed mind.
Ah, yes. The idea that women should have the right to vote wasn’t self-evident enough to be won without an activist movement complete with demonstrations and arrests and hunger strikes. The idea that black people should have the same civil rights as white people wasn’t self-evident enough to be won without sit-ins, arrests, demonstrations met with snarling dogs and water cannons, the murder of civil rights leaders and activists and children who happened to be black, etc etc.
But the idea that the most oppressed group of people in the world today consists of the same group of people that actually basically runs the world today is so self-evident that MRAs don’t have to do shit before they WIN!
Now that scares the SHIT out of many feminists – and yes, I’m comfortable classifying most feminists as being fundamentally against men having equal rights to women.
Well, no. The Men’s Rights movement mostly annoys and amuses feminists. It’s the harassment of women that so many MRAs encourage and engage in that alarms them. Also, [citation needed] for the rest of that shit.
The last thing the feminist movement wants is people quietly pointing out that, for example, the idea that 1 in 4 women will be raped is utterly ludicrous.
An idea like that is so obviously wrong that you don’t even really need to see any statistics or studies to know that it’s a lie. You can just ask your wives, sisters, colleagues and friends. And you know that you’re not going to discover that 1 in 4 of them have been raped. That statistics support this, of course, but it’s so obviously false that it takes us no effort at all to change peoples’ minds about it.
Well, dude, I’m thinking that the women in your life are probably not willing to share this sort of information with you, because I know a depressingly large number of women who have been raped and/or sexually assaulted. Setting aside anecdotal evidence, a recent survey puts the figure at one in five for women. And a large number of men as well as women have also faced forms of sexual coercion and assault other than rape.
And that’s the bottom line. That’s what this is all about. I don’t think men’s rights will succeed after a long hard fight. I think it will succeed after quietly pointing out the obvious. The feminist movement is a house of cards, built entirely of lies and fear. It’s so flimsy that it can be destroyed with nothing more than a whisper of truth.
Then start whispering, dudes! All I hear is a lot of yelling and stamping of feet.
I believe in men. I believe we are good, and strong, and kind, and gentle, and that we make the world a better place, not worse, when we are allowed to behave the way we want. And I believe in women too. I believe that women are good and strong and all those other things too.
Well, gosh, I believe that most people are good, too. But what on earth is that bit about being “allowed to behave the way we want” supposed to mean? You are aware that every society that’s ever existed has put some sorts of restrictions on human behavior? What exactly are men being prohibited from doing that women can do?
And I believe that we will not have to browbeat them, or shout at them, or hurt them, or threaten them in order to succeed, because I believe that they have the courage and the integrity to accept the simple facts we present, and to move out from the shadow that feminism casts over their whole lives as well as ours.
Woah. It’s a bit revealing that the only methods to bring about social change that nigglereddit can think of off the top of his head are:
1) Browbeating
2) Shouting
3) HURTING
4) THREATENING
Oh, Men’s Rightsers, no one is better at making you look terrible than yourselves.
Anyway, nigglereddit, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him, but there was a dude named Martin Luther King who was pretty good at that whole civil rights thing, and I’m pretty sure he never had to resort to any of those things. Well, sometimes he raised his voice, but that was when he was speaking to large crowds.
Also, you really might want to think about changing your “hilarious” name.
Note: In case you go to look at the thread this comment comes from, it’s a discussion of whether or not there is “a cadre of faux MRA’s, i.e. feminists trolling the new posts and down voting and concern trolling before posts hit the front page?” Ridiculousness abounds.
EDIT: Rewrote a paragraph because I hadn’t even noticed nigglereddit’s creepy comment about men “being allowed to behave the way we want.”
David Futrelle
Actually if they follow his advice and do nothing, it may help them a lot more than the stuff the have been doing. A mean, stuff like having a hissy fit, because Face Book agreed to take down images that mock the victims of rape and domestic and acting like its a plot to destroy men. Also calling men who disagree with them, things like “Manginas” or be listening to what a racist / sexist idiot who is clearly unqualified has to say about female sexuality.
David Futrelle
Oh and lets also not forget the harassment of women that you mentioned earlier, especially the ones that oppose the poorly named “Men’s Rights Movement.”
No. Seriously.
The plan really is to do nothing but play video games, aspire to low paying jobs, and contribute as little as possible to society.
Men are shedding their patriarchal enforced responsibility to society.
That’s feminism, and equality.
We are smashing the patriarchy one love pillow at a time.
Yeah, I seriously doubt any woman of NR’s acquaintance is going to tell him about abuse–he seems like he’d be oh-so-understanding and non-victim blaming.
They keep proving they have zero idea how actual activism works.
@Hellkell
You wrote
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Yeah, I seriously doubt any woman of NR’s acquaintance is going to tell him about abuse–he seems like he’d be oh-so-understanding and non-victim blaming.
They keep proving they have zero idea how actual activism works.
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Which given what they want is probably a good thing.
Yeah, the argument ‘so obvious’ coupled with ‘no need for evidence or statistics’ has always worked out great.
Especially in a place where downvoting on Reddit is the sign of a feminist conspiracy.
Garvan: whatever, keep on keepin’ on. Just don’t get pissy when the supermodel of your dreams doesn’t show up at your door hot and fresh like a pizza. GYOW, no one’s gonna miss you.
The last thing they are is a quiet or peaceful movement. They are right about one thing though, the men’s movement is going into a wider spectrum of recognition, however it is nothing like the recognition they are hoping for. 9 times out of 10 whenever I see a reference made to the men’s movement outside of the sphere, it’s to laugh at how warped their logic is. They aren’t going to go on tv or talk about themselves within any mainstream media, and do you know why? Mainstream media would have a damn field day with them. They would completely devour and spit them out in a million pieces. They know this, so of course they are going to stay away. 😉
It would take resources that I don’t have to complete a study proving it, but I’m fairly sure that every MRA rant, threat, blog or entry on registerher either creates a feminist, or reinforces the need for feminism amongst existing feminists.
Because MRAs are so involved in their movement, they don’t realise the total insignificance of it. I think in the next year or two, the mainstream media will cover them to some degree, but it will be a film examining the inherent curiosity of MRAs, not as a nascent political force.
David, has there been any more sectarian clashes within the totally twirling tempest of tumultuous temerity that is the melting point of MRA ideologies?
Let’s play the translation game!
Translation: More and more people agree with us because what we say is obvious and self-evident – because we say so.
Translation: I dismiss victimization surveys because talking to people face-to-face about whether they have been raped is far more reliable that doing actual social science research that adheres to the scientific method. Also, the studies that completely ignore a large number of rape victims are definitely more reliable. Just saying that so that I don’t sound like I’m pulling things out of my ass.
Translation: If a man does something reprehensible, it’s because you aren’t allowing him to do whatever he wants.
This fucking guy.
Emphasis mine:
Exactly what is it that you want to do that feminism is holding you back from? o_O
Aaliyah, ninja extraordinaire!
@Aaliyah –
“talking to people face-to-face about whether they have been raped is far more reliable that doing actual social science research that adheres to the scientific method.”
I would add: “and if they tell you they were raped, look at them suspiciously and question them until they break down. Make sure you understand that it is a lie to steal men’s dignity.”
With this method, women are raped at a rate of 0%, it’s amazing!
I don’t understand this… If MRAs want to get anywhere they need to have sites like AVFM denounce all the horrible shit said/done. Also actually have an understanding of feminism. Of course, that would pretty much put them back where they started.
Also, MRAs, what makes the whole “1 in 4” thing sound ridiculous? Just opinion? Because every time I ask an MRA why, they go silent, except for the few that cite some shit survey that’s taken out of context.
David, I always love the pictures for the articles. I love the old episodes of spongebob.
We did one of those face to face surveys once back in the day on this very subject.
We had been comforting a friend whose dad was terrorizing her. He had been raping her from the time she was seven and she had finally escaped.
In the course of the conversation we decided to do a survey.
There were four of us. We each asked 24 women that we knew well enough to ask such a personal and painful question.
The result was that eighty two out 100 hundred women that we personally knew (including us) had been raped. One as young as two years old, another five, and several others who were also very young.
He won’t do that survey of women he knows because he is afraid of what the answer would be.
Damn, my brain skipped right over that “behave the way we want” bit in nigglereddit’s comment; I rewrote the OP to mention it.
I agree that MRA rhetoric and action (i.e., online harassment) is more likely to invigorate feminism. Speaking strictly for myself, it was only when I was introduced to the manboobz that I proudly picked up my feminist mantle. Reading the manosphere has made me, if anything, more sensitive about privilege and bigotry (gender, class, ethnic) than before — and readier to call it out when I see it.
ditto – I’ve identified as a feminist since college, but I’ve become much more vocal about it since I started reading this blog!
@thebewilderness
=[ That’s horrifying.
I myself know several people who have been sexually victimized in some way – my parents, one of my siblings, and many of my siblings’ friends.
Related video here from Steve Shines, obliterating MRAs! Fantastic!
http://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=watch-vrec&v=bYaRWpGAi9w
Steve Shives, not Shines
As laughable as it is, it’s still got to be one of the least offensive things I’ve seen out of the MRA. Sure, it’s still comically wrong, and that username raises many an eyebrow, but the writer comes off as just woefully misguided rather than hateful. Almost like he really comes from an alternate universe where men were the second-class citizens and hasn’t quite figured out this universe’s status quo yet. Like this:
This actually feels like a breath of fresh air compared to the toxic gas we usually get. I mean, describing men and women with the same adjectives and not relying on gender essentialist propaganda to support keeping women down, saying that they shouldn’t need to be violent for their cause, I might actually describe this guy as a *gasp* ‘moderate MRA.’
Maybe I’m just setting the bar too low. Or maybe I had a little too much Renaissance Fair wine.
I’ve heard the use of archaic words that sound like slurs but aren’t (“niggardly” is another example) described as the “I’m not touching you” game of racism. You know, the one where a kid is told not to touch their sibling, but totally invades the sibling’s space anyway while still not *technically* touching them, as a way to annoy everyone around them. I think it is apt.
When Mr. AK and I were first dating, he was one of those guys who held feminist beliefs but bought into the man-hating monster version of feminism and so didn’t identify as one. Meeting an MRA in real life changed his mind and he now proudly identifies as a feminist.