TL;DR: There is no tl;dr. The entire value of this post is in its details.

Edit: When I say Left and Right in the title, I am referring to the Neo-Lib and Neo-Con political apparatuses respectively. In my opinion "true Left" leaning people would strive to avoid these philosophies. I don't know enough about the "true right" to speak for them.

I feel like a conspiracy theorist sometimes, but I am convinced that this subreddit is already under assault from paid astroturfers (I don't know what they're called these days). Both from the Left and the Right.

I'm not going to name them, because I'm often wrong about these things and what would even be the point, they just by a new account and start get going again.

Instead, I will try and give you guys what I hope is some sort of vaccine inoculation by explaining some of the core points of the respective Left and Right philosophies about men and how they are harmful to men.

As bonus content I will also explain how some advocacy techniques are really harmful to the movements, and how a slight adjustment may allow for the same information to be presented but be more actionable, even if it is a lot less viral. (Edit: Bonus Content 404 not found. I was going to propose to avoid making rage bait posts and focus on ideas not labels)

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The Jordan Peterson approach

So first, the Jordan Peterson philosophy. I'm am a big fan of a lot of Jordan Peterson's content and it was a huge eye opener for me.

That said, Jordan Peterson's content fits extraordinarily neatly into the republican's strategy to exploit men. And the key aspect to this strategy is responsibility. I agree with Jordan Peterson that taking responsibility for your own life and especially for external things as well, will give your life purpose and will make you happier. It will also make it much easier to get a girlfriend.

However, what is extremely irresponsible and dangerous on his part is to promote those concepts without explaining how applying this will make you instantaneously easily exploitable. This is the kind of mentality that gets men to work too hard, not notice or care when their girlfriends, wives or employers are exploiting them.

And to each his own, maybe some men just don't want to take on responsibility and we should be supportive of that. Understand what they need to still feel fulfilled in their lives and how to help them achieve it. Similarly we should also cater to the unique needs of those who choose to accept hyper-responsibility and how they can best balance all the things they choose to be responsible for without it becoming self-destructive.

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The anti-male feminist approach

I don't think I need to go too much into detail on this one. Everyone here knows about it. It's the original sin theory, men are born guilty, because of patriarchy and male privilege. And other widely debunked lies like Men and Women's behaviors are biologically identical so any difference in outcome is due to sexism.

I don't think I need to explain what's wrong with this in this subreddit.

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The brand-new feminism: fighting for men's rights

These are people who claim to be fighting for men's rights. But in truth are just trying to deflect away the effectiveness of the MRM. Ultimately, these people have no real compassion for men, and in fact probably harbor contempt for men. They are almost always somewhat outspoken about being feminists, but I suspect this will change.

This philosophy can be difficult to detect when you don't know much about it. So here are some signs that you're dealing with was is actually an anti-male philosophy pretending to be pro-men's rights. Pretty much ordered from the most obvious to the least.

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They use pejorative terms

Like "Toxic Masculinity", "Fragile male ego", "Mansplaining".

They will have strong supporting arguments as to how understanding these concepts can be very helpful for men (especially for "Toxic masculinity" and "Fragile male ego"). And it can actually be backed up by strong academic literature.

I am dogmatically certain that these concepts misrepresent reality and that without the proper nuance they are highly harmful to men. But given that it is a lot of people's full time job to justify the usefulness of these concepts and that I don't have an equivalent amount of time and energy to understand it, I just don't.

And this is why I am so very thankful that they chose to use such hateful terms to refer to these concepts. So, for those of us still suffering from the "women are wonderful effect" just imagine how sexist it feels to use terms like "fragile feminity" and "Toxic feminity" and how doing so in any kind of official capacity would probably cost you your job.

Furthermore, these terms are so easy to misinterpret that as they reach mainstream very few people actually use their original definition. And this enables misandrists to use these terms to inform government policy as well as corporate policy.

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They will oppose "Traditional Masculinity"

The key problem here is when anyone tells men that a certain way for men to be is "wrong". They don't know that, no one knows that. Academic research on these topics are way too far from good enough to be conclusive. In a way Jordan Peterson is borderline guilty of doing the opposite by suggesting that Traditional Masculinity is the only healthy path for men to be. There's a way to be traditionally masculine and have it be healthy. So if they're claiming that the solution is for men to abandon traditional values, you know they don't have those men's best interests in mind.

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They will oppose "Toxic Masculinity"

They might not use the term, but by "Toxic Masculinity" I mean any behavior that can be used to assert authority, protect your reputation or retaliate against someone who oversteps their bounds. But like I said before I haven't done nearly enough research into this, but I am convinced that following advice aimed at preventing "toxic behavior" will leave you open to exploitation and unable to assert yourself in social situations.

I will concede that my perspective may be controversial, but I'll still suggest that someone who is genuinely looking out for men's interests isn't going to put opposing these kinds of behavior very high on their priority list.

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They will deal with men's issues backwards

The issues that are most dangerous and impactful to men today are: men's suicide, men's wealth transfer through child support, alimony and taxes, men's treatment in the justice system, men's health, violence against men (including circumcision).

With the exception of men's suicide. I have seen them try to trivialize these top "hard" issues and focus instead on the "soft" issues (like how men should be able to express their feelings more).

For one, it's too easy to propose backwards solutions for these problems (as I explain in the next section). For another usually the solution is for all of society to change their behavior. It's just not a practical solution.

And it strikes me as such a feminist perspective of men's problems. The truth is that these kinds of problems actually are women's biggest problems because all their hard problems are already solved (including violence against women as a gendered problem) so what they're left with are all these micro behavior issues that in the grand scheme of things are really not that big of deal.

And this is one of the reasons that makes this "sign" of an astroturfer kinda tough to use. Because a feminist who is genuinely trying to leave the ecochamber and look at real men's issue will make this mistake. Their first instincts will be to go, "look women have all these problems, let's see what are the similar problems that men have".

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The solutions they propose are backwards

Once you know about this, it's relatively easy to detect. But you can rarely use this sign because they rarely have discussions that go all the way to talking about solutions.

Basically, they'll claim to want to help men, but the solutions they propose is that they want to get men to change. This is not a real solution, you can't force all men to change. And when you think through it, you will quickly come to the realization that the person you're talking to would never advocate that women change their behavior if they were faced with the same problem. We need solve men's problem by changing the law and institutional policies.