When I decided to become an MRA ten years ago, as opposed to a non-feminist, it genuinely felt like a momentous decision.
Like enlisting in a war rather than just trying to avoid it. I wanted to defend something, a gender homeland, not because I loved it but because I'd never even had the chance to get to know it, having spent my life up to then as a Nazi ally.
Having observed the Nazis and their propaganda division from the sidelines- they would never let me join in with their Nazi games- I knew we were absolutely fucking doomed. Dying like a man was the only piece of the masculine experience I could see experiencing.
Since then I have done sweet fuck all as a "MRA" I couldn't have done anyway. But the distinction has always mattered to me. I've read many great posts here, but never seen a post here that really speaks to the essence of my depth of feeling about feminism and the MRA. So I'm giving it a whirl.
Seeing the truth is bittersweet, bitter because the truth is harsh, sweet because it gives you the chance to begin to understand yourself. But it doesn't just happen.
Like feminism , Men's Rights is pretty much whatever you can will it to be. Say you're one, you're one. Believe its aims are such, and they will be to you.
I believe this is because both are the names that we put out on societal forces that would play out just the same regardless.
I don't mean that this place or what anyone does here is pointless, not in the slightest. Just that there would still be a Karen S and a Paul Elam, still be incels, anyway, doing roughly the same thing. The label is empty at its heart.
This works great for feminists, who can take the name, gets the benefits and deny any responsibilities.
It works the opposite for for MRA's, because there are no benefits, or rather, any benefit is your responsibility to make.
Fems just have to ask themselves "do I believe in equal rights?", nod earnestly, put their sticker on, and they have got this gender thing sorted, and feel like pretty good people too about it into the bargain. They go about their lives. Whatever they go do next they were free to do in the first place anyway.
MRAs are people who nodded just the same, got trapped and crapped on by the world for it, have now crawled free, and are looking for another way. Equal rights natch, but impossible to ever be feminist again.
(If you came directly to MRA without going through feminist hell, you lucky/intelligent bastard, but this applies to so many people of my generation I think it speaks of the group)
But it doesn't actually change anything to call yourself one, but unlike the feminist, we need it to actually do something. So we have to (have to) make it a more personal thing if it is to help us.
I redpilled hard with many others around here around 2012. The Mayans were right in my case, it really was the end of the world. I can remember vividly just how unbearable it felt, the horror seeing of the world as it was, and yet also how sickeningly inevitable the whole thing felt. How could it ever have been any other way?
It wasn't like it was just some tragedy that occured out of the blue sky of my life, the matriarchy was already highly advanced, competely unopposed, and this hell I now lived in was only going to get worse (If I'd known exactly how much worse, ahahaha, but that's not important to my point)
This was a complete disaster for me. It was also the only place to start from. Horrible as things were, they now all made sense. Feminism was no longer making it impossible for me to grow, I was free to think my way forward. It was an absolutely essential thing to happen to me.
But it did not at all feel like that.
The clues had been everywhere. But I had used the evidence of my senses as something to twist into doubt of my own self-worth. All I knew was I felt like such a cowardly fool to not have noticed this incredibly obvious thing I could actually feel hurting me all my life, but couldn't even name to myself because the magic shield around feminism had made it literally unthinkable for me.
(By the way, this is why I will always viscerally loathe feminism, will always think less of every single one of them, consider them selfish at best- I had thought that for them to be so cruel and entitled, to lock men out of the gender debate so absolutely, that they must be absolutely sure of their ground. That they hated doing it and would stop hurting men the moment it wasn't necessary anymore. I know better now.)
I knew that I was experiencing oppression of a form no female in my society could even begin to concieve of, that it had already damaged me hugely. I was developmentally retarded. It was all feminism's fault.
But I was free. The truth was horrifying, yes, but now I knew it. I could grow.
I failed to reasise that for a long time. Learned helplessness.
I don't blame myself, because I was incredibly scared and angry, and had every right to be. The dissonant state I was in, with the world denying my pain's very existence, made internal reflection seem too confusing and painful. And what's more, completely unfair!
I was the victim here, I certainly shouldn't have to do any work at this stage. Not until they started do something about this anyway.
I look back on this time with regret. I got very angry.
I let feminism into my head far too much. I hated my friends who didn't know these things, but it was too hard to explain, and ruining their innocence seemed cruel.
I could only express myself by using "misogynistic" terms wherever possible. I had to mark the change somehow. I withdrew to the internet, even more.
I read some great things on this site, but really what I wanted was to hate the world, but mainly to see feminists get hurt.
I had great fun whenever this happened, but I mistook my freedom to hate and the righteous feeling it gave me for a genuine liberation, when it was nothing of the sort. I was still in feminism's grip, just in a different way.
I knew men's rights couldn't do anything real to help the problem of misandry, there was just too much of it, it was ingrained in society's pscyhe with the ingrained solidity of an oak, totally unlike the planks of misogyny first-wave feminists credit themselves with girl-powering karate chopping into oblivion.
But I was ashamed to be here. Partly because it felt unmanly, maybe, but mostly because feminism had forced me into here.
I chided others for defeatism because I knew deep down that was all Men's Rights could ever be to me. Denial again.
And it was so stupid of me!
So, if you are at all "new" to this, take or leave this advice.
Ask yourself, look, what do I want out of this?
I think this is the heart of men's rights.
there doesn't seem to be anything here