This is an excerpt from a letter that I sent to another discussion participant over a ridiculous piece written by Jeff Fecke a couple of years ago. I came across it recently and realized that it still largely expresses my opinions and understanding. So I thought I would throw it into reddit (never looked at reddit at all before a couple of weeks ago - the vancouver poster fiasco caught my attention and led me to reddit).

So, please criticize and critique. Where am I right, and where am I wrong?

Jumping into the middle of the conversation, the context will be apparent:

I think this is where feminism and feminist groups really are doing themselves a disservice. If they don't address the abuses made in the name of women's rights, they face a backlash that will reduce their gains. Instead of that they are looking to make further inroads while attempting to discredit those who have been abused.

As I said on the blog responses, most who come to the MRA/FRA groups come from the abuses they experience in family courts. It is a near universal. Having the most important element of their lives, their children, ripped from them, or in my case, made to act like a servant and punished on a whim in order to be a father, make these people very damaged, very hurt, and, in most cases, very angry.

That lead up was to address the issue that you are experiencing with wondering who are the "good guys". There aren't any. The MRA's are angry, bitter and it all boils out of them on a moments notice. And they have very legitimate reasons for being like that. They are constantly denigrated, told that they support abuse, when they are the ones that have been abused and no one gives any legitimacy to their emotional experience. I liken this to telling a rape victim that they weren't raped, or that they must have deserved it. The difference is, once a rape is over, it is the emotional response that needs to be overcome. A man that loses his children can't really ever move on. He is facing constant reminders in the form of support payments and the fact that he knows his children are out there. If he can learn to cauterize that wound then he is "unfeeling".

Ultimately the MRA's have the higher moral ground in principle. They can't express it though because of the pain and damage. Feminism have a large portion of support through societal indoctrination that leads to having women that support feminism that have never really ever been discriminated against. They have cooler heads because it is less personal, but no less a stake in the outcome, because they are support friends. Some of these friends are going to be worse abusers than most MRA's ever could have been. The extreme voices lead and the rest follow like sheep but they do the arguing when the extremist voice would sound like a lunatic (Amanda Marcotte anyone? Unbelievable that anyone wouldn't consider her just stupid).

I will note, that on that blog, none saw fit to answer my criticism of NOW's stance against shared parenting initiatives. After I posted my reply taken directly from NOW's legal position paper, no one touched it. They also dropped the inflammatory language about Ned Holstein supporting the rights of abusive men. I think this is likely the common issue that will crop up on internet message boards. If you can't reasonably refute that some action is harming others, you just say "That's not my particular brand of feminism." and move to positions that cause more reaction or are more defendable.

I don't even begin to know where the right road is here. Family court experiences in the western world seem to be very universal. yes, there are exceptions and there are occasionally women on the receiving end, but to an unbelievable degree, it's guys that get the shaft. This is not representative of society. There is something wrong, and the feminist groups are leading the hysteria to greater protections for women at the cost of protections for men. However, men that start trying to protest for rights are shouted down by a larger percentage of the feminist groups then will defend that activity. ( i.e. They will loudly decry the particular men's group a la Fecke, but when facing reasoned argument, they will say "that isn't their form of feminism").

So what is the right road? Attacking feminism in general? Many MRA's think so. I doubt it. there are too many misdirected roads and there will be far to much effort wasted. Attacking particular groups, like NOW. It's an improvement, but when you do that, as has been seen at Fecke's blog, they all come out of the woodwork to call you names and discredit your position. That's the best road that I can see though. Ignoring blogs like Fecke's entirely is probably not a bad stance, it won't convince anyone who hasn't already taken that position, and anyone who has, isn't listening to reason anyways.

This is a political environment. It will only take notice when sufficient numbers stand up and are counted. I think there was a comment near the end of the comments on Fecke's blog that ran "It is easy to ignore a few MRA's, it won't be easy to ignore a million". That is really where it has to go. I guess the only goal, really, is to gain in numbers. Which the family courts are making easy to do, it is just a matter of publicizing sufficiently and then advocate political reform.

I can certainly understand your dismay over MRA's in general. It isn't a pretty group. I expect that women who were victims of domestic violence didn't have pretty attitudes either. The problem here is the only people speaking for MRA's are the victims themselves.

Arby.