The list of grievances for MRAs is long. It includes the elevated rate of suicide for men, educational discrimination against boys, economic and workplace conditions for men, violence against men, false rape reporting, fathers’ rights in custody battles, rates of male imprisonment and prison conditions, and the horrors of war. Many of these issues deserve a thoughtful response and the force of an organized movement for address them. It’s too bad that’s not what men’s rights activists are offering.
-Jaclyn Friedman
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
Yeah, feminism already offers a response.
Posted by Heisenberg (Member # 13004) on :
Seriously? You think that feminism both makes an issue of and solves the problems listed in that quote?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
That quote gets at the heart of what's infuriating about MRAs.
Men do have legitimate issues that deserve serious consideration by society but are ignored or discounted.
But with those morons out there, every possibly issue attached to men is automatically even further discredited.
Is it really that hard to advocate for men without being a complete jackass?
Posted by dkw (Member # 3264) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Is it really that hard to advocate for men without being a complete jackass?
That depends entirely on whether you're advocating for the wellbeing of men as a subset of the wellbeing of all humans or whether you're arguing for the wellbeing of men as measured by their dominance over the rest of humanity. The MRA folks don't seem to grasp that there's any possibility other than the latter.
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
you could presume that the MRA movement started with a difficult to research mixture of people with different focuses on different types of advocacy, and that either structurally or owing to the focus on a class of people who have the great majority of social power to begin with, it attracted in or initially had enough ****ing loons to start polarizing and radicalizing the movement into the utter neurotic insanity it finally settled into being.
a process of cyclical radicalization begins occurring when a vocal and otherwise extremely visible part of the whole begins to make other more moderate parts of an originally diverse movement drop out of or defect entirely from the movement, which causes that part of the whole to become larger as a percentage and more prominent, the effect of which is to cause the movement to shear off even more moderates. you can imagine a lot of what you could have ever called the 'good MRA's' quickly learned that you couldn't associate with the movement at all because of what it had become.
end result: yup
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
Are we talking MRAs or Republicans? Oh. Nevermind.
Posted by Elison R. Salazar (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Heisenberg: Seriously? You think that feminism both makes an issue of and solves the problems listed in that quote?
Yes, by definition. Mainstream feminism is also concerned with issues males have, feminism isn't about reversing the roles, but about reaching substantiative parity.
Posted by NobleHunter (Member # 12043) on :
quote:Yes, by definition. Mainstream feminism is also concerned with issues males have, feminism isn't about reversing the roles, but about reaching substantiative parity.
It's one of the reasons some feminist academics go for gender studies rather than women's studies.
Feminism is by no means monolithic though. My preferred definition is based on two points of agreement:
Other than that, get three feminists in a room and you'll have five opinions on any given topic if one of them is sleeping.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
quote:Originally posted by Heisenberg: Seriously? You think that feminism both makes an issue of and solves the problems listed in that quote?
Yes, by definition. Mainstream feminism is also concerned with issues males have, feminism isn't about reversing the roles, but about reaching substantiative parity.
In theory, sure, but the listed issues aren't a focus for feminist activism.
Posted by JanitorBlade (Member # 12343) on :
quote:Originally posted by scifibum:
quote:Originally posted by Elison R. Salazar:
quote:Originally posted by Heisenberg: Seriously? You think that feminism both makes an issue of and solves the problems listed in that quote?
Yes, by definition. Mainstream feminism is also concerned with issues males have, feminism isn't about reversing the roles, but about reaching substantiative parity.
In theory, sure, but the listed issues aren't a focus for feminist activism.