Thanks to PostPatriarchalMan for pointing out what I should have seen the first time, so I could post this properly!

Until 2001 I was extremely active in the MRM. When people weren't calling Warren Farrell the "Gloria Steinem of the MRM," they sometimes threw me a bone and gave the label to me. Note: I'm nowhere close to the same league as Warren. He's a great man and if I knew him better I'm sure I'd love him like a brother, but I just admire him to bits. If anybody deserves to be called the "Gloria Steinem of the MRM" in a good, non-insulting way, he does.

But late in 2001 I became very active in a hereditary organization, and from 2002 until this year I was an elected official. But it was a miserable experience. I was hounded and harassed by feminists within the organization, who demanded that I cater to their whims, and when I refused they began taking stuff from my website out of context to accuse me of hating women.

This past May when one of my fellow officials threatened to have me recalled, I took the opportunity to resign. Since then, I have started a little monthly e-newsletter to report on their...activities. They are unthrilled.

Yesterday on FB one of them posted something that showed up on my homepage because we're "friends." Her post reeked of hypocrisy. I pointed it out, and the next thing one of the people who made the past few years a nightmare for me was there (she's not an FB friend) making the usual non-specific accusations that feminists and other professional victims are so famous for.

Today, a mangina who is a friend or fiance of the person whose hypocritical post I commented on threatened me. I immediately responded that he was threatening me, reported and blocked him. Then, like so many of you, I learned to take screen shots of potentially problematic FB posts and save them as jpegs. I put them into a PDF and sent them to the appropriate officials within our organization. Our next meeting is a week from Saturday. The mangina might be there. The person whose hypocritical post I commented on is supposed to be there. (She's an officer.) and I am prepared...with pen and paper...to take my notes and report on their actions.

Activism takes many forms, and I see a lot of that, here. Especially from college students, who have it a lot worse than we did in my day. I went to college from 1971 to 1981 (I was a working student, paying my own way because that was a lot easier back then than it is today), and it was soooooo bad that the worst it got I walked through the middle of the last anti-war riot at the University of Washington, and it was sooooo violent (how violent was it?) that I didn't know about it until I got home and Mom asked me if I was okay.

Yea, I had first quarter organic chem that day and it was pretty tough. ;)

Back then, we did not take our academic career into our hands by being men. Now, you do. That can be really harsh. What should you do? The organization I belong to provides benefits. So far, I've contributed hundreds of times more than I've gotten, and since I expect to be wealthy in my own right (I'm working on it, and no, not from my websites, which are more of a personal commitment and a very serious hobby), I'm unconcerned about the possibility of losing any benefits. But these people attack me, mostly behind my back or when they are surrounded by people who agree with them, they malign my reputation with malicious lies, and challenge me in ways that set me up to look bad no matter what I do.

When this happens, I always remember what my dad taught me: always stand up to bullies; if you don't, they will keep coming after you until you do.

For all of you who are confronting similar situations--at school or where ever--about all I can offer in the way of advice is to stand up to bullies, but to pick your battles. Sometimes the better part of valor really is to walk away. Other times, not. The trick, I suppose, is to know when.