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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One thing I’ve heard of is that both trans and intersex people are considerably more likely than the general public to have different-colored eyes. Different-colored eyes are, with occasional exceptions, a sign of chimerism¹… but not all chimeras have such an obvious tell. Virtually nobody is tested for chimerism even though we have the capability to do so², and apparently nobody knows exactly how common the condition is in humans in general, let alone trans and intersex people.
This means that it’s theoretically that possible that many (or even most) trans people have some parts of their bodies containing XX chromosomes and other parts containing XY chromosomes. If anyone ever gets around to studying that and it happens to be true, then that would throw a pretty big wrench in the gears of the DNA argument.
¹Chimerism is when two (or very rarely more) fraternal-twin fetuses fuse together in the womb and grow into a single person.
²Why the hell not? DNA sequencing is much cheaper and faster now. And in the case of the possibility of trans people having both XX and XY cells, you wouldn’t even need DNA sequencing, just an ordinary microscope! (And, okay, some other stuff, but nothing which hasn’t existed for over half a century.) Not to mention a chimera’s differing sets of cells could theoretically end up being moderately biologically incompatible, which could cause all manner of rare and “mysterious” medical conditions³. If so, knowing this wouldn’t necessarily solve anything, but it could help with misdiagnoses and figuring why existing treatments fail.
³Yes, I overthink things sometimes. Okay, a lot. There’s a good chance this is all nonsense. It just seems weird that nobody has ever at least tried to eliminate this possibility in regards to medical research in general, not just trans people.
Yes, human biology is more complicated than simply XX and XY. The data simply and repeatedly shows that having two X chromosomes is an advantage. That’s it, nothing else. Is there a study that investigates whether XXY and XX have the same advantage? I don’t know, I’m a dry science person, not a wet science person.
I as a man was in a realtionship, that I later realised was quite controlling, emotionally manipulative and abusive. And while my Exgirlfriend was a feminist activist and would deflect critisim of her actions as men not being able to cope with a strong minded female, or just throw a tantrum and cut women out of her life when they tried to point out how gaslighty her behaviour was, I don’t think that MRAs would have helped me in that situation or with the mental problems that followed.
It actually where my feminist friends, who believed me, who I could open up too in a way that I just can’t towards any man who believes in traditional gender norms. Simply because I fear being mocked for having been weak, controlled and all of thoese “unmanly” things.
So yeah, I think having a feminist girlfriend, someone who questions and not enforces traditional gender roles is actually really good for my mental health.
@Samantha Ravensdaughter:
I don’t think that anyone except for MRAs has those statistics in their head. And most men who just carry the kind of “traditional” mysoginist views (you know – the ones that you don’t reflect on, don’t even recognise as such, it’s just what everyone around you knows to be right) don’t know much about them and haven’t even heard about MRAs.
Also – I personally don’t envy women for having like 6 more years in the late 80s and at least in my country right now the mortality rate from Covid-19 for men is just a few percentage points higher than for women and smoking, diabetes and age seem to far bigger a factor.
A better explanation for while almost all (with a few rare exceptions) cultures tried to control women ist that as soon as you start farming (and remember that while they are sometimes wrongfully describes as “still living in the stone age” alltmost native people around the world did farm, at least to some extent) you have property. With property ther is an incentive to control womens sexuality to keep property whithin the familiy. And by in large cultures where the line of inheritance is matrinilear, instead of patrilinear are much less controlling of women.
Why most cultures became patrilinear is another question, that#s rally hard to answer. There are lots of good theories out there but you just can’t really proof them.
@Snowberry
That’s interesting. I’m trans* and both my eyes are the same color, but that’s interesting to note. Come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve ever met a person with different colored eyes. I knew someone who was colorblind in only one eye due to chimerism, though.
I’d guess part of it is that in most cases where chimerism doesn’t cause problems or visible symptoms there’s no real need to test. It would take more resources and there isn’t really much of an advantage to knowing in most cases.
Most humans display some degree of microchimerism—having some of ones’ parent’s immune cell lines that were exchanged in utero and usually persist throughout life. This goes two ways as well, as many pregnant people end up with immune cells from their children that persist long after giving birth. However, this usually doesn’t have much clinical significance.
@laserqueen
I know, and I recognize that. My issue wasn’t with the data but with how Samantha phrased her response. Sorry if I was too aggressive, it’s just that I’m stressed about the virus right now and the last thing I need is more talk about “genetic women” and how I am more likely to die.
I haven’t seen it but I would be interested to know. Klinefelter’s Syndrome is rather rare (about 1 in 500 AMAB people) so it could be a bit hard to get data.
Heterochromia, or more properly Heterochromia iridum. Chimerism isn’t the only cause of it by any stretch, especially in domesticated animals, and even more particularly animals with varied-colour coats. (Apparently huskies are one of the most common dog breeds to have it.)
@Naglfar
I am so sorry there is so much added stress for you. I get it, I kind of lost it yesterday with my kids (17 and 19) because I am also internalizing the added risk factors of my own particular position, and they are young and have none of my risk factors or responsibilities. I am definitely more scared than they are.
I have over the past few years tried very hard to remove any sex or gender references in my writing unless they are absolutely relevant to what is being discussed. My office mates have definitely heard me grumble and rant about forms that are not inclusive and try to collect unnecessary information. I push back where I can have effect, try to get over it if I have no power, and flat out refuse to provide the invasive information if I can get away with it.
Regular commenters here aspire to a higher standard and I have learned so very much, and am very grateful.
Related to nothing, but the phrase “wet science person” gave me the major squicks for some reason. It sounds so… moist. Augh.
@laserqueen
You’re doing good work. I try to do the same in my day to day life to be as inclusive as possible.
A thought occurred to me the other day. With the pandemic has come the new social practice of “social distancing.” Yes, not everybody practices it. The point is that giving somebody space is now considered important in a way it hasn’t before.
We’ve seen various inhabitants of the manosphere weaponize (for lack of a better word) that old childish game of “does this bug you? I’m not TOUCHING you” to harass their targets. As of now, they’re less likely to get away with that. Could that be yet another reason for them to be angry these days?
OT: I’m having a rough day at work. I had to call NYC physician practices about their lab information system. Everybody was either closed/only practicing telemedicine, or trying to keep the lights on with a skeleton crew. That’s my frontline family up there, and here I am bugging them about an upgrade to their LIS. Nobody I talked to seem to mind, but I felt like apologizing none the less.
Related to what Samantha said, since people aren’t usually karyotyped unless there’s a reason to believe there’s something interesting in their chromosomal makeup, most people don’t know the amount of X chromosomes they have. We just assume based on the appearance of external genitalia and such at time of birth.
I don’t know if my some years old information is still current or not, but IIRC chromosomes can get crossed and exchange material, and when this happens with X and Y chromosomes, it can lead to situations where a person has XY chromosomes but has all the properties we expect from someone with XX chromosomes or vice versa, and at least some of these people an have normal puberties and can have children. We assume this happens rarely, but we really don’t know, since karyotypes aren’t routinely checked.
This isn’t to say that assuming karyotype based on gender assigned at birth isn’t a good guess. I’ve just often been in situations where someone asserts that your sex chromosomes are all there is to sex or gender, where I have been tempted to say that my chromosomes have been checked, so I know mine, and ask them if they actually know theirs.
Sorry about the wet science description! I am an optical physicist, very dry and clean and mathematically based science. I only deal with the necessary chemicals to clean optics! Methanol, isopropyl alcohol, and pure soap are as messy as I get. My daughter is heading for a medical illustration masters, and has no qualms about the grossest of pictures and illustrations. Definitely beautiful work that gives me the major squicks. Sometimes I just cringe at her work and in my mind I say, “Please just paint something pretty for your mamma.” She’s got a nice wide dark streak, and somehow maintains a generally happy personality.
@Masse_mysteria
That does happen. Here are a few case studies on fertile women with XY genotypes. Most AFAB people with XY are infertile (as in AIS) but occasionally as shown above they are able to have children unassisted. The second case study is of a person with chimerism, which was mentioned earlier.
I’m aware of the inverse happening (AMAB peple with XX chromosomes) rarely, but AFAIK all cases with only XX are infertile since having XX generally prevents testicle development from occurring the way it does in XY people. Here are some case studies on that (with a bonus study of a male with XX/XY chimerism and low but extant fertility).
There’s a decent article on chimeras here:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/grrlscientist/2014/jan/31/grrlscientist-halfsider-chimera-bilateral-gynandromorph-birds
starting with Twinzy, a budgie that’s green and yellow on one side and blue and white on the other. While Twinzy is male, it notes later on that there are cases where the two gene-lines that make up a chimera are of different sexes, and even has a picture of a cardinal that’s obviously split that way (because in cardinals the males and females are different colours).
The article also notes the oddity that in birds normally only the left ovary is functional, so dimorphic birds like that could only produce eggs if the left half is the female half.
(Not mentioned in the article is that birds are actually also flipped from mammals in terms of differentiation: genetic males have two of the same chromosome, WW, and it’s the genetic females who have a different one, WZ.)
Biology be weird, yo.
(Which, of course, means that anybody trying to use ‘science’ to insist that people need to fit into nice little boxes on sex has failed from the start. Science actually says quite the opposite.)
@Jenora Feuer
I wonder why that is. One would think evolutionarily it would be better for reproduction if both sides worked so there would be a backup in the event of failure.
IIRC some other animals use that system as well, including some reptiles and certain fish.
As well, some animals have more than 2 chromosomes. Platypuses, for example, have 10 sex chromosomes that are called X and Y but are not homologous to placental mammals’ X and Y chromosomes.
Which is also why I have yet to meet a TERF who actually knows anything about biology. I’ve seen them say before that XX chromosomes make someone male and YY make someone female. YY embryos couldn’t form under any normal circumstances, and if they did I doubt they would survive long.
I can think of a few trans* biologists though (Julia Serrano, Ben Barres, etc). We’re not the science deniers, it’s the TERFs and conservatives who are.
@Vespertine
Huh, hddly enough when I heard the term “wet science”: my mind went to Oceanography , Marine Biology/Marine Zoology and Wet Labs.
Those are fun fields of science… especially the Marine Zoology in my book. in particular when it comes to anything Shark Related. Sharks are just awesome.
Those aforementioned fertile AFAB XY people could produce YY embryos. And 2/3 of their offspring would be genetically male.
Usual: X1X2 x X3Y -> X1X3, X1Y, X2X3, X2Y -> two XY combinations and two XXs, so half and half.
XY fertile female: X1Y1 x X2Y2 -> X1X2, X1Y2, Y1X2, Y1Y2 -> one XX combination, two XY combinations, and one YY that I doubt will even implant and certainly can’t gestate to term. So only 3/4 of normal fertility success rate and 2/3 rather than 1/2 genetically male offspring. But if the trait causing fertile AFAB anatomy in the mother is heritable, that might not translate into 2/3 AMAB offspring …
@Naglfar:
Well, birds and reptiles are closer to each other in many respects than either of them are to mammals.
And platypuses are a just plain weird evolutionary holdover. Then again, the fact that they combine both features of mammals and birds/reptiles, I guess it’s not entirely surprising that their genetics are some mess that could over time have eventually simplified down to either of the two more common systems.
Surplus:
Honestly, I’m not even certain that YY combinations will even get past the blastocyst stage to the embryo stage, so almost certainly not implant, though I’d happily defer to someone with actual expertise on this. There are a number of pretty critical genes on the X chromosome that aren’t on the Y.
Which is part of how this whole discussion started, that people with two X chromosomes have a backup for some important processing and that makes their bodies more robust against a certain set of problems. (Colour blindness being one of the most well-studied cases.)
@Nagfljar : for the ovaries problem, there’s a bunch of common biological reasons for something that seem sub optimal :
* it’s suboptimal, but don’t impact reproduction much. Maybe birds just don’t lose ovary function without dying very often.
* it’s suboptimal, but it’s linked to a very useful other trait. Maybe the other ovary is cannibalized to help the growth of a more directly useful organ, or maybe it allow faster maturation by requiring less energy
* it’s suboptimal, but the evolution path don’t allow mutations for other options. In mammals, there is a nerve, the laryngeal nerve, who take a suboptimal path because the organs it link have drifted apart ; and rewiring it in a more efficient way isn’t doable by a simple mutation, the intermediary steps would not be viable.
* it serve a purpose we didn’t discover. Maybe the other ovary is changed into an important gland, but we just didn’t find it out yet. Or it somehow protect against a disease, similar to how the recessive form of sickle cell disease protect against malaria
On another topic, talking about XY women to TERF is sort of counterproductive. Their goals is A – to reduce sex and gender to physical markers and B – mark transgenderism as a disease, and the comparison with XY women help both of their goal : it refocus the discussion on genetic markers instead of mental state, and since it’s on the blurry line between normal variance and disease (it’s a genetic anomaly affecting fertility), it’s all too easy for them to reframe it to being a disease.
And no, it’s clearly not a vent after having to explain again to someone that transgenderness and gender dysphoria have nothing to do with genetics and that there is no biological tests that could validate a transgender claim.
@Surplus
It would depend on how oogenesis worked. Since most XY AFAB people are sterile and the fertile ones are rare, II’m not sure how oogenesis would work. And YY embryos would probably not make it far at all.
Notably, in the first case study I linked the woman had a daughter with the same genotype but the daughter did not go through puberty and was sterile. So it seems more complicated than I have scope to understand as a non-biologist.
@Ohlmann
I see what you mean. Above, I was simply trying to point out that even among cis women not all are XX so the term “genetic female” doesn’t work the way they think it does. It’s more complicated than they’d like to think.
O/T, but this popped up on my LinkedIn.
Jordan Peterson after an illustrator for his new book. Guess he’s recovered from whatever it was.
https://www.jordanbpeterson.com/blog-posts/call-for-illustrations-for-new-book/
@Naglfar : another argument that work about “genetic female” is that mothers that have birthed at least one boy are mainly XX but partialy XY. Apparently mothers chimerize with their offspring to help their immune system not going berserk on the baby. While it’s not a huge amount of cells, it’s also enough that the litteral definition of a cisgender female won’t alway test as XX on genetic tests.
It also remind that identity is not linked to genetic code. That’s common sense given that organ transplants have less effect on behavior than head trauma, but it’s something the TERFs have a lot of problem processing.
@Alan Robertshaw
Maybe some of the Jordan Peterson fan art creators could help him out. It seems in some way rightful that he is asking prospective artists to draw the fool from the Tarot deck, as if he somehow realizes what he and his followers are.
@Ohlmann
IIRC it goes the other way as well so people with XY usually have some immune cells with XX from their mother.
@Jenora Feuer : if you talk evolution, “reptile” isn’t a good term, because, like fish, they don’t form a single group, but are a bunch of separate family put together. Except if you consider mammals and dinosaurs and bird to be reptile, in which case the group isn’t terribly useful.
Platypus also aren’t evolutionary leftover, because evolution don’t work from more evolved to less evolved, and there’s no animals that have stopped evolving or are frozen in time. Especially not the platypus, who isn’t on a remote island with few competition, and have a ton of highly specific organs fit for purpose. It’s similar to how parakeets aren’t evolutionary leftover of the dinosaurs.
@Ohlmann
I find it mind blowing that we’re closer in time to T-Rex than T-Rex was to Stegasaurus!