Lundy Bancroft is an expert on abusive relationships and the author of Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds Of Angry and Controlling Men, a book I’ve found very helpful not only in understanding abusers but also in understanding the behavior and “activism” of Men’s Rights Activists.
In a recent post on his blog, he warns about the ways in which “Men’s Rights” ideologies can justify, and made worse, abusive behavior from men who are already abusive, or who have abusive tendencies.
In the post, entitled “The Abuser Crusade,” he writes
When a man has some unhealthy relationship patterns to begin with, the last thing he needs is to discover philosophies that actually back up the destructive aspects of how he thinks. Take a guy who is somewhat selfish and disrespectful to begin with, then add in a big dose of really negative influences, and you have a recipe for disaster. And the sad reality is that there are websites, books, and even organizations out there that encourage men to be at their worst rather than at their best when it comes to relating to women.
It’s not surprising that a philosophy rooted in male entitlement would appeal to men who already feel pretty entitled – and often quite bitter that the women in their lives, not to mention the world at large, doesn’t seem to regard them as quite so deserving of adulation as they think they are.
As I’ve mentioned before, I used to think it was unfair to label the Men’s Rights Movement “the abusers’ lobby,” as many domestic violence experts have done, because I felt that the movement did raise some issues that MRAs at least seem to sincerely believe reflect discrimination against men. But the more experience I’ve had with MRAs, the more I’ve begun to see the Men’s Rights Movement not only as an “abusers’ lobby” but as an abusers’ support group, and an abusive force in its own right, promoting forms of “activism” that are little more than semi-organized stalking and harassment of individual women.
It’s not that every MRA is literally a domestic abuser, though I wouldn’t be shocked to find domestic abusers seriously overrepresented in the Men’s Rights ranks; it’s that the Men’s Rights movement promotes abusive ways of thinking and behaving.
In case anyone had any doubt about which groups Bancroft is talking about, he gets specific:
Some of these groups come under the heading of what is known as “Men’s Rights” or “Father’s Rights” groups. Their writings spread the message that women are trying to control or humiliate men, or are mostly focused on taking men’s money. They also tend to promote the idea that women who want to keep primary custody of their children after divorce are evil. The irony is that we live in a country that has refused to pass an amendment to the constitution to guarantee equal rights for women; yet some men are still out there claiming that women have too many rights and that men don’t have enough.
Bancroft also warns about groups preaching a return to patriarchal values:
Other groups don’t use the language of “rights”, but promote abusive thinking by talking about the “natural” roles of men and women. These groups teach, for example, that men are biologically programmed to be the ones making the key decisions, and that women are just naturally the followers of men’s leadership. These philosophies sometimes teach that men and women are just too different to have really close relationships.
In the end, Bancroft urges women whose partners are picking up new philosophies that seem to be making their behavior worse rather than better to start researching the subject themselves, and reaching out to other women in the same situation, in order to better understand what their partners are getting into — and defend themselves against it.
I’m curious how many readers here have had personal experience with men who’ve embraced Men’s or Fathers’ Rights philosophies (or any of the varieties of backwards Manosphere philosophies), or who know of women whose partners have.
Lundy Bancroft’s book meant a lot to me when I was getting out of my own nasty situation several years ago. It helped me to make sense of what was had been a bewildering situation for quite a long time. I’d recommend his book to any woman who is dealing with an abusive man in her life.
My ex had never discovered MRA philosophies but I’m sure that if he had, he would have used them to his benefit. I still remember the time I finally got him to agree to seek therapy for his anger issues, and how he came back from his sessions saying the therapist thought I had control issues that were causing him to be so angry, and that I should read “The Surrendered Wife” to deal with that.
He didn’t let that one go for YEARS and used my refusal to read the book as proof that I didn’t love him or care about our marriage, so I’m sure that if he’d actually found MRA philosophies – which are actually in line with a lot of beliefs he already had about women and relationships – he would have really gone bonkers with them, as it would have given him even more of a reason to believe he was right about everything.
I’m coming in late, so free internet hugs to those I’ve missed that want them
@alex
Bleach. Former neighbor +former friend sound rather icky
@dustedeste
“Yeah, I hope he can get better, but I’m not depending on it. I’ve seen people get better about their bigotry, but I just feel like it’s foolish to count on it at this point. I just really want to have someone in the family that I can be pansexual, capitalism-critical, socially-liberal, feminist, atheist me around without any qualms, but it just feels like I’m doomed to make awkward smalltalk about the weather with all my relatives forever because everything interesting will unleash a torrent of hatred and gross opinions about how the gender wage gap doesn’t exist and there’s no such thing as racism anymore :/”
Bla, that sounds sucky. I’ve got one massive dick in my family like that, but the rest are mostly okay, so I got lucky.
Aaaaannnnddd as anyone who’s seen me complain here probably knows, that massive dick is my stepmom. She’s convinced girls are just more emotional than boys, girls try to manipulate you by crying (something that’s really shitty for A PARENT WHO STILL HAS KIDS WHO CRY A LOT TO THINK) gay dudes are lol effeminate, dressing in revealing clothes means you don’t respect yourself, and that being called sexist is the same thing as someone calling you names. I left out more of here greatest hits for breve ritzy.
@girlsmarts
Sorry to hear about your doouchey dad. ::offers Internet hugs::
@ally
Hugs from me, if wanted.
@Bon o boils jus
O boy this will take a while…
” Yet every where I turned I was reminded to be good to women (irrelevant of how they treated me) ”
I’ll have shit that doesn’t happen for 200 please. Unless you’re talking about chil vary, but that’s a different deal, and not something many women really support.
“make enough money to be an eligilbe male suitable to care for a woman, ”
Well, that is actually a social expectation of men, so congrats, you actually found one
“and be a great and supportive role model for your kids.”
Where is this great place you live where this is an expectation of men? Cuz I’ve heard men refer to taking care of their own kids as ‘babysitting’. Ppl act like its so great when men take the kids for a little bit, and they get congratulated epon what women do all the fucking time. Men are held to way lower standards as parents than women.
“There is something very different about communing with men, being around others who share the same frustrations and joys”
You do realize what the mrm actually wants, right? They don’t want rights for men, they want to be able to hit women, abandon their kids, and have sec with teenagers. Ffs
” I am also not interested in blindly treating women like lost puppies.”
Keep on fighting that strawman.
“I would like to find a happy medium where I can be wlecome by women and express my frustrations as a man. What is wrong with that?”
Nothing on principal but you are sooooo in the wrong movement if you actually want these things
“We love to talk about angry men, violent men. We hate talking about how that man became angry. If we do it’s because of an abusive stepfather or father, never an abusive mother. We say that he should be in better control of himself, but we never say that boy maybe a product of his mums vicious beatings”
Of course, ther must be a woman to blame somewhere!
” though domestic violence is a genderless crime all we ever hear about or see is the male side. That is really unfair. Especially when the vast majority of domestic abuse occurs at the hand of the mother.”
Citation needed, bub.
And posting bc I don’t want to lose this. Doubly so bc typing on an iPad is hhaaarrrddd
@anarchonist
“Umm… Where is this “here” you’re talking about? This site? Because I’m a man, and I’ve never felt anything but welcome here.”
That’s because you’re not a troll…i mean, it’s because you’re a misandrist white knight.
As for meeting MRAs, there is this BDSM forum where I hang out a lot.
Lately, some dudes are apparently very bothered by the fact that there are discussions about gender, gender discrimination and violence against women.
There are of course a lot of posts on other subjects, both within BDSM themes and random unrelated stuff, but whenever a gender discussion arises, they start complaining and crying why can’t we leave the subject alone.
The most prominent of these guys (who also participates in real-life meetings in that community) has pulled a LOT of MRA-like stuff lately: men are oppressed, Feminism is hateful, traditional gender roles are “natural” and must be enforced (like that’s not contradictory at all, uh-huh), lots of evo-psych, I think he even referred us to WTF “myth of male power” for “more information” once.
There are a few others who are backwards sexist/misogynists who don’t seem to have a systemic “philosophy” to justify their beliefs… I’ll keep an eye on them to see if the alpha asshole drags them to his cesspool of MRAness.
@ Luzbelitx :
Let me guess: These guys are doms, not subs?
I find that your comment is one of those ignorant ones just like those from the MRA boards.
Please fuck off and take your self-pity for a long walk on a short pier.
Nothing’s wrong with that, but it usually comes with a side order of “Why won’t you women fix me?” Ain’t nobody got time for that, or your whining.
@Rea
Actually, the MRAish guy is a switch, although his profile reads “Dom”.
The main non-MRAish dude is a sub, who uses that as an excuse to “prove” he’s not a misogynist.
The rest of the choir, yes, mainly doms.
I guess asshole comes in all shopes and flavors…
@augochlorella
For the edification of those reading at home, from the copy of Why Does He Do That that I happen to have in front of me right now:
The reason I quote that paragraph is that I read it a bit ago and had to re-read it eight times to make sure someone from this site hadn’t broken into my apartment and put a post-it note over the section of the book with a basic summation of the MRA and the trolls here. Augochlorella is totally right, it was just so… weirdly spot on.
I recommend the book, Why Does He Do That, to anyone interested in reading about abusive patterns.
And if you do break into my apartment and secretively edit my books, you can just, like, knock on the door.
I don’t know anyone who has admitted to being an actual MRA to me (they probably would know better), but I do know a lot of garden-variety misogynists that are MRAs in everything but name. In my experience, once you get past any shallow “niceties”, MRA think is everywhere, in men as well as women.
I think the biggest problem with the MRM is that the MRM is often the biggest gig in town when it comes to actually addressing men’s issues. IMO feminism does a terrible job at this because feminism has become terribly reactive to men’s issues over the past 10 years. For example, I’ve heard many feminists argue with MRA-types over male circumcision being “not as bad” as ANY type of female circumcision. In truth, provided an adequate amount of medical care, from an ethical standpoint male circumcision is as bad as, say, Type Ia female circumcision. The medical community agrees that there’s no medically necessary reason for male circumcision, so why argue fellow feminists? Qualifying support for male issues with “but men have it better” is obnoxious whether or not it’s true. We can push for equality without playing the Oppression Olympics and pushing men into the arms of the MRM.
The more invested people are in a philosophy such as the MRM, the less willing they are to question it’s problematic areas. It’s human nature.
@Caitlin
Oh god, that title. Glancing over the book’sWikipedia page shows that the book seems to be mostly about surrendering control and respecting your husband’s choices while still taking care of your own needs, so I don’t know why she would name her book that. Of course, I’ve never read the book either, and since some of it’s synopsis reeks of gender essentialism, I’m guessing that she’s simply an idiot.
And this reminds me why some experts warn that “normal” counseling can make abuse worse. -_-
Citation needed.
I’m not a part of any BDSM community, but I sure recognize that attitude. It happens a lot on Game of Thrones fan site I frequent. Whenever there’s an issue concerning sexism or racism surrounding the show, there’s a whole chorus of people, almost all of whom seem to be men whining about the fact that there’s a conservation. There’s a whole lot of “this isn’t tumblr this is a GoT site” kind of comments. Or a lot of claims that a TV show is not real and can’t be connected with sexism or racism IRL.
It’s not just there of course. Whenever an article about rape, sexism or harassment is posted on Gawker, Deadspin or Kotaku there’s a chorus of complaints about how the article should be on Jezebel because a sexism discussion is off topic for any site that isn’t dedicated to women’s issues. There’s also a flood of “oh no here come the Jezzies patriarchy lol” type of jokes.
It’s hugely telling. I know this site is dedicated to people who go out of their way to be overt misogynists. But there’s a softer, more covert form of misogyny out there too. So many men would like to close their ears and eyes so they don’t have to hear about misogyny. They think it shouldn’t have to concern them. They want us to shut up. I don’t know what the motivations are. Do they not want to acknowledge their privilege? I think maybe it’s a mix of not wanting to let go of privilege and guilt about their own role in perpetuating a system where they’re privileged and someone else is marginalized.
In some people like this, who tell themselves they aren’t sexist, racist, homophobic etc. but don’t want even hear about these issues, let alone do anything about them are in a lot of ways a bigger problem than the MRM. At least the MRM is a fringe group. Rolling ones eyes at feminists and carrying on pretending sexism is over because we vote and work now is unfortunately a mainstream thing.
I hope I’m making sense. I haven’t had caffeine yet.
@MEZ
“IMO feminism does a terrible job at this because feminism has become terribly reactive to men’s issues over the past 10 years. ”
Um, not sure if that reactive thing is right, but you do realize that /feminism isn’t about men/ right? It’s great that dismantling rigid gender roles can help some men, but that’s not the main goal, and IMO, shouldn’t be the main goal.
“We can push for equality without playing the Oppression Olympics and pushing men into the arms of the MRM.”
Men can take responsibility for their actions. It’s not our job to coddle them. If a feminist being mean to them drives them to the mrm, they weren’t worth having as an ally anyway.
“The more invested people are in a philosophy such as the MRM, the less willing they are to question it’s problematic areas. It’s human nature.”
-_- o rly?
@weirdwoodtreehugger
You’re making perfect sense to me :3
No shit. Feminism is for women. Therefore, it doesn’t focus on men.
The only “men’s issues” that feminists even criticize are ones rooted in male entitlement and privilege. One of those being the assumption that we are obligated to do all of the activism for men.
Right? On the topic of “how men’s rights ideologies empower abusers”, you’d be hard-pressed to demonstrate that women or other genders were feeling empowered to abuse by the MRM in the same way that men are. GNL apparently thinks it’s misandrist to talk about men doing bad things at all without mentioning that women are also terrible.
There was that time Cathy Brennan outed a trans teen to his school, but that had more to do with transphobia than misandry.
<3
Fuck this and fuck you. Plenty of people manage to survive abuse without becoming abusers themselves. My dad never laid a finger on us, rarely even raised his voice, despite the hell he endured as a kid. I was emotionally and verbally abused by my mother, and I’ve worked my ass off to be better than her. You can take your abuse apologia and shove it.
Mez,
I have to disagree. “What about the men?” Has just been the new tactic misogynists have found to silence feminists. Although feminism is opposed to traditional roles and ending them can help men in a variety of ways, that doesn’t feminism has to dedicate exactly 50% of its energy to men’s issues. Feminists are forced to constantly prove that women are still marginalized compared to men because anti-feminists are always bringing up “what about the men” to derail any conservation about women’s issues. Any true ally knows feminists don’t hate men, but all the same we’re constantly required to prove that.
Regarding the circumcision debate: Whenever I see a comparison between it and FGM, it’s always the MRA types who bring the subject up. They say it’s hypocritical for anyone to devote energy to ending FGM without dedicating the exact same energy to ending the circumcision of baby boys. Again, it’s a perfect example of the way MRAs try to silence feminism and derail attention from women’s/girl’s issues. Before we’re allowed to be concerned about FGM we must first prove to every man on earth that we are equally concerned about him. Bullshit. The two are not equivalent at all. I’m not necessarily pro-circumcision. Why not let a man decide if he wants it done as an adult? But it’s terribly offense to compare them. Men don’t face a lifetime of pain and suffering from circumcision. FGM is done specifically to cause painful intercourse.
@emilygoddess
“There was that time Cathy Brennan outed a trans teen to his school, but that had more to do with transphobia than misandry.”
Ugh thats horrible 🙁
I think they don’t really get to the guilty part, but they do think they are entitled to not be bothered by what they consider “someone elses’ problem”.
The non-MRA-yet sub dude has many catchphrases about how others “whine about oppression because they need to blame others for their problems”. I think this type of guys just rationalize their guilt away.
I just remembered a thread a few months ago, in which a woman asked why some of us were using x for gender-neutralizing nouns and adjectives in Spanish. People dropped by to share their views, and soon these guys (and the author of the thread herself) were all “stop shoving your not-normal language in our faces, YOU’RE OPPRESSING US!!”
Make up you mind already! ><
Do you even know what feminism is about? Hint, it’s not about men.
Ok, I know I’m all riled up talking about my BDSM community, but this hits right in the target.
The MRAish Switch dude actually threw in the male circumcision argument.
In a thread about street harassment.
To prove we don’t care about “men’s issues”.
He never, ever initiated any discussion on any men issue whatsoever.
Male circumcision included.
There is a special circle in hell for what-about-teh-menz-ers.
@Luzbelitx
Fun thing about “IMO” is that it means that it’s an opinion, a personal observation. You can believe that feminism is all about teh men all you want, but I’ve seen otherwise. It’s a point that both Marie and Ally made themselves; feminism is about women, not men.
And that’s my point. The MRM is needed to support the changes that men need to make in society, but it’s being increasingly radicalized, and IMO feminism is contributing to it. As long as men stay the same, gender roles in general will stay the same.
@Marie
I never said “we must coddle and do the work for teh menz”, a sexist belief on it’s own. I said “we shouldn’t poo-poo men’s issues”, which does happen. For ONE example, I gave the Oppression Olympics that can occur over circumcision.
Good luck making changes to society with those sour grapes.
I mean, it’d be easy for me to make that mistake and talk about how feminism is great for men because feminism has been great for me, personally. It’s freed me from a lot of gender role nonsense that was suffocating me and given me the language and resources to dismantle the toxic patriarchy that was drowning me…
But it didn’t do that for me, or as a focus on me, and that stuff I was drowning in? It was uncomfortable for me, sure, but at the same time I was a jack-booted enforcer of the patriarchy, and my participation made things much, much worse for the women in my life.
Even though there have been good outcomes FOR me, the best outcomes of the changes in my life have been for the women in my life.
So, yeah, feminism isn’t for men, but it’s a heck of a lot better for them than the MRM.
WWTH:
And you could replace FGM with any number of issues. Reproductive rights. The wage gap. Fill-in-the-blank.
You’ll notice we’re talking about circumcision. On a feminist misogyny-mocking site, in the comments of an article about domestic abuse.
Again, citation needed. Unless assfax is the way you want to roll, in which case carry on.
Feminism is not making the MRM act like abusers. Those dudes were that way before they found the MRM.
Oh, please. If you want to concern yourself with the men and coddle their feels, go right ahead, but don’t throw tone shade at those of us who are sick of that shit.