I am a girl who is interested in learning more about the MRM.

Scandimrthrwway · 2012-11-27T04:35:55+00:00

I won't speak to the first two because they aren't imperative to the MRM, and will just lead to a shitstorm of debate. As for the others...

Have women historically been more oppressed than men? If so, is this no longer the case? Is society today more favorable to men or women?

Throughout history, each gender had their privileges and restrictions. Men were expected to do the hard labor, go to war, and were held accountable for the majority of their families problems. Women were expected to handle the domestic chores and raise the children. This division came primarily from biology (men are stronger and thus handle the manual labor/dangerous work, women have babies and are weaker, so thus handle household duties). Keep in mind this is a very simplistic generalization, but the important thing to remember is that each gender had their prescribed roles, and either gender stepping outside those boundaries was heavily discouraged.

While I applaud the feminist movement for doing what they could to break down women's gender roles, where I take issue is that they stopped short of mandating that women take on the responsibilities that men shoulder in return for their privileges. An example of this (though not by any means the only one), men were originally given the vote (and still are, at least in the U.S.) only in return for signing up for the draft. The contract as it stands is that a man is allowed to have a say in the running of the country because he has volunteered himself to defend it if need be. Women on the other hand enjoy the vote without such a burden placed on them; they are granted privilege without responsibility, and for that reason I allege that women generally have it better than men in society.

What do you think of feminism? Is the MRM basically just the male wing of the anti-sexism movement, with feminism being the female side? If not, how do they differ in their theories, methods, and goals?

I have several problems with feminism. Aside from the reason I mentioned above, feminism has discarded their drive for equality (though they still claim to fight for it) and have been striving for female supremacy. This is a handy list put together by one of our members detailing the ways in which established feminist organizations have fought against men's rights, and if you stick around this sub for a while, you'll see similar examples (JTO being threatened while putting up MRM posters, the protestors at Dr. Farrell's lecture). There are many who claim that those aren't real feminists, or that true feminism is about equality, but to sum it up succinctly, I challenge anybody to give me an example of feminism helping men specifically, not when it came as a peripheral to helping women.

Sorry if number 4 seems a bit jumbled, but the whole feminism = good or bad debate has been quite popular on here recently (I suggest you check it out), and it's still difficult for me to verbalize my thoughts as precisely as I want. If you have more questions about my views, I'll try to answer them as best I can.

edit: had to fix a redundancy

SilencingNarrative · 2012-11-27T05:48:36+00:00

I can only answer for myself, but here we go.

1. What is gender? What makes someone a man or a woman? Gender is just a label that is placed on someone when they are born, and they grow into the roles. Many people can take control of their gender and make it their own (either through rejection or reinforcing their assignment) As someone who has watch 4 friends and family members transition, I am an avid supporter of the transgender rights movement. It is also important to realize there are genderqueer and genderless people out there, as well as those who come up with their own genders.

2. Are gender roles positive or negative? I think gender roles are negative. They can be inspiring for some, but largely they are restrictive, especially when society seems to have an interest in punishing all those who do not comply. Even positive sounding gender roles like "women are more caring" have their harmful sides. For that case: women who do not have children were shamed, women were not allowed to go to war, etc. Innocent ideas over time breed sexist regulations. Gender roles are the source of sexism, and need to be brought down for the freedom of all people.

3. Have women historically been more oppressed than men? If so, is this no longer the case? Is society today more favorable to men or women? I strongly believe that yes, women were. However there are certain things that shouldn't be left unstated: Husbands back in the day would pay the dues for his wife's crime, for example. If she stole or vandalized or killed, it was on him, for she was his responsibility. Obviously a woman's legal subservience is awful, but we still feel some of its repercussions today long after it has been reversed. For that case: women earning less prison time for the same crime.

4. What do you think of feminism? Is the MRM basically just the male wing of the anti-sexism movement, with feminism being the female side? If not, how do they differ in their theories, methods, and goals? Feminism is filled with people who sincerely do want to do well by the world. Not many people do wrong because they don't care - they think what they are doing is right. A lot of feminists are interested in male issues and masculinity, but a lot are also closed-minded. The best thing to do is converse with individual feminists about their personal stances on specific issues rather than make straw arguments and ad hominem attacks. There is so much MRM vs Feminism that the people who would otherwise agree on a lot of things can't even talk for a minute without hating eachother's guts based on a label.

Hint to those interested in speaking about male issues with feminists, and interested in exposing whether they are in it for equality or not: Ask them their stances on simple topics:

In my country, there is a ban on all forms of female genital mutilation, but not one ban on male genital mutilation. Do you believe this law should be genderless?
In my country, some men are beaten by their wives. Upon requesting help from a domestic abuse shelter or police, the majority are laughed at or even arrested themselves. Do you believe people should receive equal protection under the law?
In my country, rape is legally defined in a way that discounts all forms of rape against men by women. Do you believe this can have an effect on the statistics that often show men as the majority of rapists?

They can argue the extent of harm of circumcision, they can argue the severity of damage women cause to men on average, they can argue the commonness of female-on-male rape, but none of that matters in an absolute sense. If the problem is there, even if it seen as small, it must be acknowledged by someone who believes in equality.

AloysiusC · 2012-11-27T07:15:21+00:00

Irrelevant
If they're enforced, then that is negative but their existence in principle isn't negative.
Hard to say who had it worse historically. It doesn't matter really either since times were much harder for both genders than they are today. Today, however, society definitely favors women.
Feminism is an archaic, conservative pity-party for women. AS such it perpetuates gender roles and traditional assumptions of female inferiority. That's why female empowerment hasn't moved forward in decades - because feminism has all the power in that discussion and insists on describing everything in terms of powerful men and helpless women.

2012-11-27T11:11:26+00:00

Your are obviously not "a girl who is interested in learning more about the MRM, but you are someone with experience on the subject of gender discussions and you hope to get answers you don't like in order to share stories of evil MRAs with your buddies.
You don't want to "learn", you HOPE to find flaws in MRA thinking that you can point out, you HOPE to encounter aggressive answers, so that your prejudice of evil MRAs is reinforced, you WANT to show us that we are in the wrong.
One of your only two comments starts with "that's awfully silly of you to say". Yeah, it's evident how you want to "learn"...
You are doing the exact same thing that feminists complain about all the time. Someone coming to their blog and posing questions which most of the time are not real questions but ways to derail a discussion or attack the blogger. There's a feminist article on this: "If you won't educate me, how can I learn?" http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/resources/mirror-derailing-for-dummies/#educate

Well, if you really just want to learn something, than prove it by not calling someone's answer "silly", by reading without an already made up opinion, by responding to more answers in this (your own) thread and NOT only to answers that you find aggressive or wrong.

Prove me wrong and I will deeply apologize for saying all this.

But really: Try something like you did here as a privileged white male on a feminist blog and you will get shot to hell. You will be called an assclown and more. And if you were careless enough to provide your email adress, it will be used against you.

We are nothing like that here... we will not insult you or be aggressive. Of course you will always have the option to read aggressiveness into anything we write.

Nepene · 2012-11-27T05:28:15+00:00

We here are not that politically correct. We don't hold any particular meaning for the word gender or sex beyond the conventional one- if you have a penis you're a guy, if you have a vagina you're girl. Some may modify this definition to account for transgender individuals, but in general we're not that into social construction of genders.
Gender roles vary in whether they are positive or negative from individual to individual and from role to role. A woman who loves raising children will enjoy the gender role of women as mothers more than a woman who loves working long hours. We are supportive of those who chose to go inside or outside their gender roles, and vary in how we view particular gender roles.
Women have been historically oppressed more or less from society to society. Men have been forced into brutal slavery as soldiers, workers in salt mines and abuse at the whims of taskmasters. Women have been forced into brutal slavery as sex slaves, mothers of rape children, long hours, abuse at the whims of their mistresses. It's beyond the scope of this reddit to analyse the average level of oppression throughout history.

American society is now extremely oppressive towards men. Men face longer prison sentences for the same crimes, are forced to make large wealth transfers to women through the welfare systems under threat of jail, and still regards males as disposible and worthless unless they are socially powerful.

4. Feminism has routinely campaigned for superior rights for women. They've never particularly been anti-sexism. Even back in the first wave times they campaigned for a vote for women and only women, not men and women. We're not that fond of them here. A minority wants some sort of reconcilliation with them, but feminists don't tend to be that receptive.

Feminists tend to believe in patriarchy, that most men have a distinct advantage and power over most women.

We tend to note that this theory more accurately describes the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_are_wonderful

Men and women have a bias towards viewing women as superior and so tend to favor them socially. As such, while there are more powerful males than females, we suspect they don't like us less affluent males much or give us any special privilege.

We don't have theories so much as we have empirical studies on various issues and many anecdotes of it. The construction of vast social theories, while amusing, doesn't have much real world relevence unless the theories are obvious and overwhelmingly supported by the evidence. We don't hold to any clear orthodoxy. If you question us on something we can tell you what we know about the issue.

Our goals are to guarantee men the freedom to travel, work, interact with their children, and have lawyers as they desire, ensure children have appropriate role models and teaching as suited to their gender, reduce the death rate of men at dangerous jobs, reduce violence against men, reduce homelessness of men, and reduce stereotyping of men as violent raping pedophiles.

Our methods include letter ads to politicians, attempts to increase awareness via posters and engagement, charity work and such.

For example, I did a lot of work with mostly male homeless people, aiding them in getting food and housing. I have also written to my local politician to ask them to support allowing men to share maternity leave.

I have also sought to raise awareness of sexual abuse and violence against both men and women among my friends and family. On bigendered issues our methods often support men and women.

2012-11-27T04:54:01+00:00

These are just my personal views off the top of my head, I've never really given them much in-depth thought, but I figured I'd contribute since nobody else has yet.

Personally, I think a person decides whether they identify more with one or the other gender. One need not even decide; really, gender is a pretty stupid notion that is just a natural assumption on the basis of biological sex. There's no need to consider it further than a natural (albeit partially detrimental) means of stereotyping.
There are aspects about each gender role that are positive, and then there are some that are negative. It varies among individuals whether each aspect is viewed as positive or negative. Some see every aspect of one gender role as negative, and when that is coupled with the assumption that most members of that gender conform to that gender role, you get misandry or misogyny.
I have no doubt as of right now that women have been /historically/ more oppressed than men. While there were some fringe areas where women could pursue worthwhile occupations, women were mostly restricted to the gender roles of their times. For instance, it was very rare for a woman to be involved in science, and for many eras they were scorned (well beyond the extent that males were in the same time period).
Feminism is a bit of a conundrum. The dictionary explains it well, I think, saying "the advocacy of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men." The important part is that the movement is about women's rights justified by the notion of equality, not equality itself. I think that while many MRAs here claim to be for equality, much of the discourse is male-centric and attempts to discredit feminism because of the sometimes inexplicable knee-jerk reaction some feminists have to the MRM.

(4. continued)

I think the MRM was popularized with the recognition that feminism would be fine if it held to its theoretical ideals, but in practice, it "overshoots" by exaggerating the needs of women in areas where there really is not a deficit. For instance, a while ago there was some march for "equality" in housing, wherein the partakers advocated housing for women. The reality is that far more men are homeless, and many of the feminists defending the march were justifying it by saying women are oppressed, like oppression is some kind of binary switch. Really what they should've been advocating, if they were for equality, is either housing "for people" or "for men".

If the MRM exists as the antithesis of feminism, it's not because MRAs don't believe in the rights of women. It's because for whatever reason, feminists have decided that they are adamantly opposed to the MRM, and in response MRAs feel the need to fight back. And really, it's justified. Lots of MRAs are called rape apologists, misogynists, pedophiles, rapists, all for just expressing some opposition to feminism. There are outliers, of course, who actually are misogynist or rapists, that lurk in these spaces — but the same is true of feminism (e.g. radical violent misandrists like Femen). They don't represent the movement as a whole at all. To call a random Men's Rights Activist a rapist is like calling a Troy Davis supporter a murderer.

Also, the academic side of feminism is screwed up, but that's a whole other topic. Nevertheless, I think the ideas of feminism and the ideas of the MRM can be combined to create a sympathetic and progressive worldview that will benefit everyone. Unfortunately, most people take one side (usually bigoted feminism), and we need to fight that.

rightsbot · 2012-11-27T04:00:44+00:00

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Pecanpig · 2012-11-27T06:02:50+00:00

As someone else said, the first tow aren't MRM related, but I will answer anyways.

Either a penis and testicles, or a vagina and ovaries. or either an XY or XX chromosome pair.
Entirely dependant on context, but most "gender roles" tend to be natural in origin and are, as a very broad generality, positive.
Again dependant on context, do you mean in Saudi Arabia or North America? Fact is everyone was oppressed by the 1%, always have been, and probably always will. But I would be willing to say that men have far more restrictions placed on them in western civilization.
I think it is a hate group which is conceptually worse than the Nazis. I do not think of Feminism as an anti-sexism movement as I have not observed it to be. But yes, I would consider the MRM to be it's counter, as a real anti-discrimination movement to counter the pro-discrimination movement known as feminism.

EvilPundit · 2012-11-27T04:09:47+00:00

None of those questions lead to learning more about men's rights.

Title	I am a girl who is interested in learning more about the MRM.
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	2
Comments	32
Date	November 27, 2012 3:59 AM UTC (13 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/13us8o/i_am_a_girl_who_is_interested_in_learning_more/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/i-am-a-girl-who-is-interested-in-learning-more.1008229 https://theredarchive.com/post/1008229

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