I wandered in here today and I'm a little hurt.

nignag · 2012-02-10T18:23:44+00:00

Okay, I keep explaining this, and I guess I need to do so again.

You are a feminist. A single, solitary feminist who ascribes to whatever views you do. You are unimportant. The most active and influential members of your group are not merely the 'loudest minority', but are rather the driving force of the entire movement.

Feminism as an ideology relies upon the concept of Patriarchy, and what is considered more or less as unilateral female oppression. This view, that boils down to more or less 'men as a whole oppress women via their hold on society, and are the source of gender inequality' is diametrically opposed to what most of the people on here believe. The line of feminism being a synonym for 'gender equalist' is a way to inflate numbers. You cannot divorce yourself from feminist theory and ideology and then call yourself a feminist without a significant amount of cognitive dissonance or ignorance being present.

memymineown · 2012-02-10T17:45:32+00:00

Both examples you listed were not making negative comments about women. The first was making negative comments about feminists and the second was making negative comments about the proscribed male social role.

There is a lot of anger towards feminism here and most of it is justified. Why not look at the sidebar and try to find some issues we can agree need to be rectified?

CedMon · 2012-02-10T17:48:55+00:00

You could look at the lack of upvotes on those items and the comments and most likely deduce that the majority of the 30,000+ subscribers don't share these views?

newsgentry · 2012-02-10T18:28:02+00:00

This doesn't need to be a war so long as we don't view each other as the enemy.

However, the first one to make a peace offering needs to be feminists. Their entire discourse is rooted in a philosophy that is blatantly incorrect, namely: patriarchy. While that typically wouldn't bother me, feminists currently hold the dominant discourse. What feminists say, goes. And thus far, everything feminism has been saying is pro-female, meh-male. Some examples:

foregen.org is working to reverse Male Genital Mutilation (colloquially called "circumcision") by developing tissue regenerative technology. It's a promising technology, yet it needs human clinical trials before it can go live. For that, they need funding. If feminism really wanted equality for both genders, then this would have gotten funded at little to no cost and we'd be on our way to repairing men's bodies. (For comparison, foregen only need ~0.1% of the funding breast cancer gets, for one year. Then it's over with, and everybody's happy.)
Closely related is the fact that MGM is legal (and encouraged using unsound studies) whilst FGM is illegal. This screams of hypocrisy, considering both are (currently) irreversible procedures that have a profound impact on adult sexuality, performed on newborns who haven't yet taken 50 breaths. Yet it's only illegal to do it to females.
There are 2 or 3 advisory committees in the US gov't exclusively for women, while there are 0 for men.
Similarly, there is a huge focus on pushing women into science and technology fields, with no comparable efforts to get women into technical fields or men into teaching/nursing/female dominated fields.
Family court system is really, really, really wonky. That's a beast I don't have time to attack in this thread, but I'm certain if you hang around for a bit, you'll see why.
Rape laws are similarly anti-male, though this mostly shows up in practice more-so than in legality. But either way, it's still a major problem.
The radical feminists are in positions of power to affect government policy (I think most count Hilary Clinton as the chief example of this) and to affect the development of young boys. (There was an article where a female teacher who had an undercurrent of 'men rape women' 'men are pigs' and so on, then was surprised when little boys acted like they were being told to act.)
The draft is still male-only, yet the armed forces are co-gender.
Many statistics are essentially protected from scrutiny, from domestic violence & rape to economics and behavioral trends. It takes a bold female or an academically suicidal male to challenge the statistics and/or the conclusions drawn from them.

There's more, but I believe you get the picture. If feminists started paying attention to what the MRM is saying and said "hey, they have a point. Let's help!" and then actually helped, I'm certain that we'd have peace. But as is, whenever the MRM says something, we're met with "privilege! patriarchy! misogynist!" or empty promises and hollow words.

2012-02-10T18:02:31+00:00

On the one hand, you're right. There are threads that are posted here which are grossly offensive, purile, and non-constructive. This is true of basically any subreddit/online community.

On the other hand, I think the one thing /MensRights has going for it is our consistency in asking the tough questions whenever submissions like that get posted: is this really relevant to /MensRights purview? Or has a simple misogynist hatemongerer distracted us from what matters? Consensus isn't always reached in the comments, but at least there is semblance of discussion. The up/down votes on both of those threads hover around 50%, showing a relatively large split in opinion.

Then again, I think I speak for all of us that whenever I see a well-intentioned Feminist post a thread here telling us that we've earned their ire: we don't care. Feminists don't get to tell us what is/isn't appropriate here. That's something we get to decide ourselves (through consensus and moderation).

There are hostile elements within /MensRights, and I don't think anyone would deny that, but they are a small, vocal minority. From my perspective, most posters here are simply average, well-meaning men from the divorced generation who feel marginalized by society (and emasculated by the efforts of your cohorts). It is a sad thing that many bitter, angry men see the MRA name and go 'finally, a place I can air my misogynistic grievances', but that is not the intent or function of this subreddit.

If you decide that because you found 2 threads on the front page which made you feel uncomfortable, that the opinions of an entire subreddit of 30K+ people are unworthy of your time, then so be it, but do not come here and talk down to us about 'over-generalizations'. And if you are suspicious about the lack of 'Feminist inclusion' in the MRA agenda, then I feel comfortable saying it is only because so many of us believe that (most) Feminists do not actually believe in 'gender equality', so such efforts are futile. The Feminists that are interested in such a thing are OOTGO (one of the good ones) and will understand they are welcome here regardless.

Though having disavowed the hostile elements, I still sometimes feel for them. A portion of what gets posted here are simply things that are flagrantly sexist against men (FB posts, advertising, etc) and may not actually seem like a bone fide 'Men's Rights Issue', but sometimes a spade just needs to be called a spade.

I hear that phrase -- 'not helping your cause' -- a lot re: MRA matters. I think there is some misunderstanding about what our 'cause' actually is. It is not to convince Feminists that our aims are the same.

tl;dr - Your thread is preaching to the converted. No one here who is receptive to what you're saying needs to be convinced further. You're not the first (or last) feminist who thinks they can lead us to gender utopia. Come back when you have some original ideas.

SpeakToTheSky · 2012-02-10T18:08:27+00:00

As an equalist, do you believe men should have the right to financially abort responsibility for their unborn children?

As an equalist, would you be willing to give up your seat on a lifeboat on a sinking ship to a man?

As an equalist, have you registered for Selective Service? (If you live in the U.S.?)

As an equalist, would you be willing to forego Affirmative Action and the myriad of other female-favoring grants, scholarships, etc provided by Federal and state governments?

newsgentry · 2012-02-10T19:12:27+00:00

There is a lot of history to this reddit and our antagonism towards feminists.

Having just wandered in, you don't have the context for that. You really need to lurk, listen, and learn a bit more before you'll understand why we are so openly hostile to feminists here.

A lot of it has to do with them continually coming here and trying to disrupt, troll, flame, shame - and basically doing everything to us that you claim we are to them.

Finally this reddit is unique in the gender discussion arena - here we don't ban for your opinions. Free speech reigns. That is not true of other reddits in this area. So here you can say what you like (pro or anti-men's rights) and continue to do so. You don't get protection from criticism or having feelings hurt though. Other reddits will simply ban you outright - but this is an open arena here.

nignag · 2012-02-10T18:30:54+00:00

I am going to forego any subjective arguments and only state factual ones.

There are feminists in power who create/lobby for laws that unjustifiably hurt men.

Many of these feminists, who are in power remember, are bad people.

An argument 'good' feminists like to use is NAFALT, instead of standing up against those bad people.

People, mainly men, have grievances against these feminists and their policies, and have a mask of anonymity. If the worst of their comments are, admittedly, biased and mildly offensive; I am okay with that.

The reason I am okay with their bigoted comments is because the twerps who are making them do not hold sway over laws and policy.

The_Patriarchy · 2012-02-10T18:55:33+00:00

I consider myself a feminist and I believe that we should be equals.

It sounds like you think feminism just means believing in equality...but that's not what it means. Feminism is an ideology centered on women being disadvantaged. That is to say, all forms of feminism hold the following beliefs:

men and women should be equal
women, as a class, are disadvantaged relative to men, as a class
in order that men and women be made equal, women need to be advantaged/men need to be disadvantaged

If you agree with the first claim, but not the second and third, then you're a gender-egalitarian, not a feminist. Feminists may tell you "feminism is equality", but that's not really the whole story.

the over-generalizations of this subreddit are not helping your cause.

There is actual misogyny here and it does hurt the MRM, but your examples do not highlight misogyny...they highlight antifeminism and recognition of a double-standard.

This doesn't need to be a war so long as we don't view each other as the enemy.

I don't view you as an enemy; I view you as misinformed about feminism. That being said, as long as feminism remains influential while demanding that women always have it worse, it will remain detrimental to men's rights, and its adherents will be enemies.

I will not be subscribing.

That's a shame because you could probably learn a lot here if you set aside your preconceived notions.

newsgentry · 2012-02-10T17:56:43+00:00

Yeah, and there are feminists who advocate chemically castrating (or straight up castrating) all men. Why would it be right for you to associate the few "anti women" posts with us, but then us not the same with you. Most of the posts like the second one are examples of how things like that are posted on FB, and every woman assume it to be true. That a man must tolerate everything a woman does, and a woman is basically being inconvenienced by marrying a man. It's sexist. It's not really a Men's Rights issue, but there really is no other place to put that.

CedMon · 2012-02-10T17:58:19+00:00

Permalink to the suggestion of this reddit if anyone is curious, a lot of people tend to agree with a lot of our arguments but shy away because of how aggressive we can be.

http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/pjb4a/which_subreddit_do_you_wish_more_people_knew/c3psv7g

2012-02-10T22:34:24+00:00

Not one person here represents the movement. If people reading posts here can't take what is said as the opinion of the individual posting them then that is on them.

While you may not agree with everything we post on here, you may find it negative, overly angry, maybe even misogynist...men who post on here are often angry and have every right to be. You have no right to tell anyone how to be angry or to tone it down so we don't make MRAs look like a bunch of angry white men with an ax to grind. If you disagree with something, feel free to leave a comment offering your own view.

I've read your edits and am glad that you're warming up to the non-censored discussion format we have here. I think it still needs to be said that some of the over-generalizations you see here may not make sense to you, but to the men and/or women whose experience is most women are exactly like the stereotypes and generalizations that are posted here, someone coming in here and saying "Hi there, I don't think you should stereotype or generalize women like that because I'm not like that/NAWALT/NAFALT" is the same as an African albino saying "Don't generalize all Africans as having black skin, we're not all like that". Yes, we're aware there's a few precious snowflakes out there that are unique and different from the rest...doesn't mean that the majority are all as great as you are.

newsgentry · 2012-02-10T21:42:13+00:00

You need to keep reading. I've only been here about 6 months, and you've certainly missed tons and tons of great discussions.

carchamp1 · 2012-02-11T05:22:11+00:00

Glad to see you wondered in. I think you know this already as I seem to be late to the party, but r/MensRights is the wild, wild west of subreddits. Everything goes, which can sting sometimes. But, I promise you, you'll read some discussions, ideas, nuggets, etc. that you've never read before and you won't find anywhere else. It WILL make you think. It WILL make you question yourself. You WILL be challenged.

I, for one, am thankful you're here.

twokidsinamansuit · 2012-02-10T17:50:20+00:00

Yeah, as a man, that stuff bothers me too. I have a hard time aligning myself with the Men's Rights movement because it seems that only 50% seems to be rational discussion of very real and very threatening issues and the other half is bitterness towards women in general. That gender based hatred is what I think pushed (mainstream) feminism over the edge from a very legitimate need for equality to a call for supremacy. I personally don't want to be a part of a movement that keeps making the divide even deeper. There's also a bunch of trolls around here, so that makes it get even uglier.

I personally think we need less MRAs and feminists and more egalitarians.

Hamakua · 2012-02-10T18:15:02+00:00

This is how I got here. I was excited to see that there was an [2] /r/MensRights. I consider myself a feminist and I believe that we should be equals.

In what respect? Do you think "equality" between men and women should be through equality of opportunity or equality of outcome?

JockeVXO · 2012-02-11T01:11:26+00:00

As time goes by you'll learn to loathe feminism and the bigotry it was built upon: Gynocentrism. Provided you are open to both perspectives.

2012-02-10T23:52:36+00:00

I severely chastise fellow women and feminists for making negative comments about men in general because it's not constructive.

good. link all of the like posts you've made in /feminisms.

2012-02-11T08:21:50+00:00

Feminism is an evil lie. It's not about equality, it's about getting yours.

We don't care if you don't like our subreddit. You support an ideology of deceit meant to screw men over for your own benefit.

The leaders of feminism should be imprisoned for hate crimes.

Riecth · 2012-02-10T17:53:37+00:00

I'm going to go out on a short limb here and say you're either trolling and have poor comprehension skills. In either event, welcome to the male reality. There is no patriarchy.

Demonspawn · 2012-02-10T19:04:52+00:00

I wandered in here today and I'm a little hurt.

Get over it. Your feelings are your responsibility.

I mean, that's what we tell men... and you wanted equality, right?

Or are you going to maintain female privilege that your feelings are more important than men's freedom of speech?

As I sit here reading what I wrote and wondering if I should hit save... I can't figure out if I intend this as tongue in cheek or not =/ The very privilege you display in this post alone is justification for the existence of this reddit, and I doubt you even recognize that fact... Oh well. Ball's in yer court. I'll decide based on your reply if any.

2012-02-10T23:12:21+00:00

"Hey guys! I'm a FEMINIST, you know, one of the people who has been FUCKING YOU OVER and trying to reduce you to second-class citizen status for the last 40 years! I think it's SWELL that you're talking about your rights! But ... please make all your discourse FRIENDLY TO ME, or else I'm going to take my toys and play elsewhere! Moderate what you say, to appeal to ME and other women, and not to men, right now! Then we can work TOGETHER! But otherwise I'm not subscribing! Hmph!"

ThePigman · 2012-02-11T01:06:30+00:00

"I consider myself a feminist"

Stopped reading right there.

Title	I wandered in here today and I'm a little hurt.
Author	newsgentry
Upvotes	13
Comments	112
Date	February 10, 2012 5:25 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/pjkvp/i_wandered_in_here_today_and_im_a_little_hurt/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/i-wandered-in-here-today-and-im-a-little-hurt.1027908 https://theredarchive.com/post/1027908

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