By David Futrelle
A young Men’s Rights Redditor named Destonreson is puzzled by the hostility directed at him and others of his kind.
“I’m an MRA,” he writes in a post on the Men’s Rights subreddit,
and I simply cannot understand the hate it gets. I think my views are fair and equal. … But the things I hear people say, the pure hatred the MRM gets, it makes zero sense to me. It’s upsetting and scary and has given me a negative view of society.
Really? Because it seems to me the hostility towards MRAs is pretty self-explanatory.
Yet again, a girl I matched with on tinder blocked me when I brought it up.
Ah ha! Now we get to the real source of his discontent.
“I’m glad she did,” he says, though the fact that he’s now writing a giant wall of text on the subject suggests he’s not quite as glad as he’d like us to believe.
I see being anti- MRA as a red flag. IMO, the real reason feminists are so bothered and angry by MRAs existing is because they want to be abusive and controlling in relationships.
Uh, what?
So they hate it when they know a man wouldn’t put up with it, and they hate it when a “white male” dares to have the audacity to see himself as a human being.
Wait, how did “white” make it into the mix here?
Domestic violence against men is one example of what I think is a basic and obvious point of fairness that feminists hate and attack- but why? If you’re against “harmful gender stereotypes”, then why are you against recognizing that male victims exist?
Weird, because the only people /i know of who have actually done something about domestic violence towards men — as opposed to yelling about it online — have been feminists.
Another thing is circumcision. It’s mutilation and IMO not a debate.
Most feminists I know are opposed to circumcision.
But feminists will attack you for even bringing it up, and will constantly defend it or it minimize it by bringing up FGM.
Maybe because by this point the discussion has already become a shouting match? Maybe because every time feminists try to talk about FGM online they are immediately surrounded by angry and sometimes abusive men screaming about circumcision? The anti-circumcision movement is so full of fanatics and antisemites that anyone with reasonable views on the subject is repelled by them.
Yes, FGM is disgusting and barbaric and has now place in the world. It doesn’t just mutilate women/girls, it’s fatal and kills many women/girls. I know! I acknowledge that.
But how is that a relevant part of circumcision? Why does that mean I shouldn’t be able to talk about it?
Talk about it all you want, just don’t barge into feminists spaces to “what about”it.
Would you say “littering doesnt matter because global warming is worse” or “rape doesn’t matter because genocide is worse”? No, because that doesn’t make sense. Why do feminists ALWAYS bring up FGM to “counter” circumcision? As if it’s a “defense?” It’s not.
Feminists, in my experience, don’t bring it up as a defense; they bring it up to see if the men yelling at them about circumcision actually give a shit about the barbarity of FGM.
Feminists are just incapable of making intellectual/logical arguments.
There’s a leap. Not sure you’re doing very well in the logic department yourself, bucko.
There are so many things that MRAs are right about…the education gap, the unemployment gap, the life expectancy gap, conscription, higher pension ages, homeless men being denied shelter because they aren’t “priority need”…what am I wrong about? What do MRAs say that isn’t true?
Where do you want me to start, Destonreson? How about with your assertion that feminists hate MRAs because they all want to be abusive girlfriends?
Of the rest, well, the education gap is real, to the extent that college admissions offices routinely let in less-qualified males in order to even things out a bit. Part of the reason for the education gap, moreover, is that men know they can make better money than women even with less education.
The life expectancy gap is also real, but it’s not the result of discrimination. Conscription? No one in the US is being conscripted right now, and feminists generally believe that if there is going to be a draft, women should be included as well. Indeed, the National Organization for Women sued over this at least once.
The others? I’m pretty sure you’ve just made up the unemployment gap, since the unemployment numbers for men and women, last I checked, were almost identical, with male unemployment only fractionally higher, at least in the US. The only “pension gap” I’ve run across is the result of men getting more pension money than women.
As for other MRA untruths, there are too many to mention. MRAs are gender wage gap deniers. They pretend that domestic violence towards men is the same or worse than that directed at women; never mind that it’s mostly women who end up in the hospital or the morgue because of their partners’ or ex-partners’violent attacks. MRAs pretend that men are as likely to be raped as women. Even more absurdly, MRAs like to pretend that we live in a “gynocracy” secretly run by women, and that men are the real victims of gender inequality.
But the biggest MRA untruth is probably the claim that Men’s Rights activists are actually activists. While they sometimes bring up real issues faced by men, they don’t — outside of the fanatical intactivists — try to do anything about them. Instead, as I and many others have pointed out many times before, they simply use all of these issues — real or bogus — to attack women. As Destonreson has done here, and as commenters on the Men’s Rights subreddit do day after day after day.
Destonreson, if you by chance are reading this, and you’re still wondering about the hostility towards the MRM, just take a look at some of the comments on your own post. One commenter calls feminists “lice infested moth [sic] breathers crawl[ing] out of their lesbian orgy,” another declares feminists opposed to “decency [and] truth,” still another says “that MRAs threaten their lucrative victimhood,” as if all complaints from feminists are manufactured.
I just don’t get it.
No, you really don’t.
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A great post. I’m saving the links.
So much projection and wrongness—where to begin?
She made the right call.
FTFY. The projection is IMAX-level here.
He probably forgot he was posting on a men’s rights forum and thought he was posting on a white nationalist forum. Easy mistake, they look about the same.
Circumcision is maybe the one issue on which MRAs could hypothetically find common ground with non-bigots, but they squander the opportunity as mentioned because they just have to be bigoted about it all.
Sir, your projector is running again…
How does one breathe moths? That sounds painful. And lice are itchy and painful (had them as a kid and it sucked). But I’ve always wanted to go to an orgy, just so I could say I’ve been to one and because it could be fun. So could there maybe be an orgy but without the lice and moth breathing?
If Destonreson were any kind of activist instead of just a noisy malcontent, he would address the one grain of truth he’s actually stumbled upon. The relative difficulty single homeless men face in securing somewhere to live during normal times. It’s actually a thing here, but I can’t answer for other countries.
He could get off his a***e and do something about it instead of staying a keyboard warrior, but that would show compassion, and don’t his ilk view that as a weakness?
Yes, I know I’m a kb myself. (Shows Parkie Pass.)
Sorry, should be kbw.
@Kevin
I don’t know figures for men vs women specifically, but I do know that as a whole homelessness is a very real issue in America. There aren’t too many shelters for men (or women for that matter), but I can say with certainty that none of the shelters for men are run by MRAs (though quite a few are run by feminist groups). I doubt MRAs have anywhere near the organizational skills to run a shelter of any sort.
@Naglfar
In fairness there is (I think still?) a center in Canada, which is run by the MRA-adjacent CAFE. In fact, I’ve noticed that the MRA movement, insofar as it exists offline at all, is weirdly Canada-centric. I wonder what’s the deal with that.
So, there are lots of fucked up things that they do and say around DV, including pretending that slapping a man once is the same as engaging in a campaign of violence, threat, and coercion in order to control that man. I get how you would say that this is “not as bad” … but it’s also just not domestic violence.
While I get what you’re saying, I wish people would choose their words with more care around this, because there are issues here. My mother actually did abuse my father. I witnessed her campaign of violence against him over the course of years. She seems to be a much better person these days, but those were isolated slaps and her actions definitely weren’t self defense.
So in my idea world, I’d like to see something that doesn’t say or even imply that DV against men isn’t as bad as DV against women.
Instead, we could say that DV against anyone is bad, and there’s no easy or simple or fair way to compare those different experiences, but we are sure that
1. MRAs misunderstand what DV is and routinely classify relationships that don’t encourage violent, threatening and abusive behavior as DV when it is not, and
2. DV against men by women is very probably much more rare than DV against women by men, and
3. Despite the fact that we have solid research that gives us good reason to believe #2 is true, it is also true that there are extra barriers to talking about one’s experience as a DV victim/survivor when one is a man and that men need and deserve extra help in overcoming those barriers, and,
4. Even though we don’t expect that our understanding from #2 will change with more men describing their experiences with violent, abusive relationship, everyone in society will gain when men are as free to describe their experiences of victimization as women, and, finally,
5. DV against anyone is intolerable.
I hate to harp, but just the way you’ve written things, the first part of your sentence is about how bad DV targeting men is, but the second part is about how rare or common DV, and the way it comes across is that you think that both how bad it is and how rare it is are different, when the truth is more that the latter (frequency) is almost certainly different but the first is just not something that should be compared any more than we should be saying that one woman’s experience of DV isn’t as bad as some other woman’s experience of DV because she’s wealthier or whatever.
Good work, MRM guy. It’s good for a woman to know right away that a potential date is abusive. Or given to lengthy, intellectually dishonest arguments that are all about him, his needs, his problems, and how the world is scary for men. (Yeah, you definitely need to cover all the talking points about circumcision, even though the effects of female genital mutilation are so much worse.) It’s also good for a woman to know right away that the person she’s texting is stupefyingly boring.
@Kat
In fact, I would suggest that for the benefit of all, MRAs should put this screed in their Tindr bios to warn potential dates.
It’s because the MRM solution to these problems is to drag women down, because everything is a zero sum game to them. If women are winning, that must mean men are losing, so we have to go back to making women lose so that men can win. They propose to solve the unemployment and education gap, for example, by pushing women back into the kitchen.
If the MRM wants to be taken seriously, they need to stop whining, make a genuine case for why men are suffering, and do something productive about it. Trolling and grifting aren’t helping their cause.
MRAs claim that the mythical gynocracy is the problem. But real disadvantages suffered by men are, just like those suffered by women, the result of patriarchy. Anyone really interested in men’s rights (in education, in mental health, in divorce and custody cases) can point out patriarchy (that defines masculinity narrowly and would keep us all – men and women – conforming to specific roles) as the problem.
@Buttercup
One could maybe argue that trolling and grifting have helped them, as those are integral parts of the alt-right that has mainstreamed many of their ideas and got Trump elected.
I suspect his idea off an abusive girlfriend is one that will only do half of the housework and cooking.
@Sheila Crosby
I think he also means one who won’t give him sex whenever he wants it the way he wants it. In an MRA’s mind, women should cook, clean, fuck, do all emotional labor, and have no expectations from their partner.
Did anybody explain to this guy that “matched on Tindr” does not equal “she’s required to be perfect/available for me”?
Oo! I know the answer to this one!
No.
@Naglfar
Eventually maybe they’ll notice that the issues they pretend to care about aren’t getting addressed by the alt right, because they’re too busy owning the libs?
Oh, who are we kidding? Rip the mask off the MRM and underneath, the root demand is always “I want free license to be an abusive asshole with no consequences.”
Which Trumpism certainly promises, though the “no consequences” part is heavily dependent on skin color and wealth.
@Buttercup
I’d say that’s also the point of conservatism as a whole.
@Naglfar: I’d argue that while the most blatantly assholish conservatives are generally people who join the ‘side of good’ (their concept of it, not ours) because it lets them get away with what they couldn’t otherwise, it’s probably more often a side effect rather than the point in itself.
The point of conservatism as a whole seems to me to be about “protection” – protection of self, of family, of tribe (however they define their tribe(s)) and occasional others whom they hope to bring into the fold – and that “protection” includes bullying people (including their own) into giving up “corrupting” thoughts and behaviors, becoming an active threat¹ to outsiders in order to prove their strength and weaken their opposition, and to protect their personal ego and/or the egos of their leaders.
¹To be fair, on a socio-political level, any group of people which is too different to them (including other conservatives) is a threat to their way of life… though often only because such groups serve as a counterexample that undermines their teachings and worldviews.
@Snowberry
I’d hesitate to say it’s actually about protection, seeing how much conservatives are willing to hurt themselves so long as it hurts others. The amount of self-damaging behavior to own the libs that they engage it makes it seem that their motive is far more malicious.
@Naglfar:
You sure about that, though? I mean, on this very site, we mock people for thinking that they’ll come out unscathed (or even ahead) when they propose or support causes/positions/policies which hurt people in general. Or for not thinking about the likely fallout to themselves when they gloat over misfortune to others they dislike, regardless of who or what was/would be responsible. Granted, in the latter case a lot of the time nothing happens to them because the “misfortune” is entirely imaginary or even a benefit for their enemies, but still.
Projecting so hard that the film has caught fire.
@Snowberry
When conservatives do things like that, they seem to mainly think about the harm it will cause to their enemies rather than how it will affect them. If they were about protection, presumably they would worry about (or at least momentarily think about) how it affects their own people more. That’s why I think it’s more about hurting others than protecting oneself.
I just read an article in the New York Times entitled:
Why Are So Many More Men Dying From The CoronaVirus?
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/02/opinion/coronavirus-men-women.html?campaign_id=2&emc=edit_th_200403&instance_id=17281&nl=todaysheadlines®i_id=2488544&segment_id=23715&user_id=ec47da91781a0074de8d1666542989c9
I found it truly fascinating. Apparently, having two X chromosomes both makes it very likely that a woman will outlive her male mate and gives her a distinct advantage over him in successfully recovering from illness and injury. It also makes it less likely that she will be born with a number of birth defects.
There is a downside. Genetic women are also more likely to have certain autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis, and to carry certain conditions, such as color blindness. We can sometimes suffer from some conditions that we usually simply pass on to our genetic male children. Again, color blindness comes to mind. Rare, but it happens.
In short, and in many ways, when it comes to the types of strengths that give us those advantages, genetic women are, to put it bluntly, superior to genetic men. For those of us who have men in our lives for whom we feel deep love and friendship, these are frightening times.
But there is something else that occurred to me after reading the article. Is it possible that at least some of the hatred that so many men have for women – a hatred that is universal in that it crosses all boundaries, geographical, religious, cultural et. al., – be based on what they feel is an unfair and even evil and deliberate advantage? It is irrational and violent, but it might begin to unravel the mysteries at the root of this violent, even murderous, reaction to us.
Why else would so many men insist on defining us as lesser beings, not quite human, with little intelligence, creativity, ethical standards and such? If we live longer than men, grow life within us and enjoy generally better health, what right do we have to also be intelligent, creative, successful, prosperous and all?
Just some passing ideas that popped up after reading and hearing about some nifty (sarcastic sigh) ideas about the need to limit most of our participation in most of life outside of taking care of men and children, our basic natures revolving around our sexual behavior and deviant desires, our theft of what are rightfully activities, such as all forms of creativity, reserved for men who, as we all know, created all forms of culture, science, music etc., all by themselves, with no help or input from females. After all, it is only fair that we pay for our advantages by serving men, being silent, knowing our “places” and such.
@Samantha Kaswell
Sex is a lot more complex than chromosomes. There are people with XX who were assigned male at birth (De La Chapelle syndrome) and people with XY who were assigned female at birth (Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome), and there are further variations like XXY (Klinefelter’s Syndrome) or XYY (Jacob’s Syndrome). And that’s before we even get into the existence of intersex people whose bodies don’t fit neatly into a sex binary, or trans* people whose gender identity doesn’t align with the gender assigned at birth.
Not all women have XX chromosomes and the inherent advantage you describe. I’m a woman, I have XY chromosomes, and because I’m trans* and autistic I am less likely to receive appropriate medical care if I get sick, because society sees me as less worthy of it. To me, your post simply comes off as rather callous because you seem to off-hand dismiss all women who aren’t “genetic women”. I can only assume that that discounts trans* women, women with AIS, some intersex women, and women with Turners Syndrome or certain other chromosomal differences. I am not sure if this was your intention, but that is the effect.