The Men's Rights Movement, Feminism and the trap of tribalism.

I was respondig to another post about an OK Cupid profile earlier this morning and I kind of got off on a tangent. I think this may be an important thing to consider so I decided to post about here. I had been mulling this concept around for a few months now, but until I responded to this post:

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1h2ahi/a_cute_girl_rated_me_5_stars_on_okcupid_oh/caqiygo?context=3

I hadn't gotten around to putting it into words, and am very open to feedback/criticism/observations.

Both Feminism and the current Men's Rights Movement are reactive in nature. They are reacting to discrimination experienced based on gender. Feminism originally arose to address some very real issues that affected women, that's why it is referred to by a gender specific name. The same applies to the Men's Right's Movement.

The problem is that these issues become tribal in nature, in this case the perceived tribes being genders. Men who feel gender discrimination against men and women who feel gender discrimination against women. It is very easy to fall into the trap of "us against them", especially with the current state of Feminism.

Feminism was a initially reactive solution to address actual issues. As these issues became less and less prevalent in our society, the threat of the Feminist movement's waning relevance followed. The problem is that Feminism became a career for many women, and men, and they needed to continue to create issues that needed to be addressed in order to continue to receive funding. We all know what the result of that was.

The bottom line is that we need provide a better option than Feminism provided women. Even calling this the "Mens's Rights Movement" may eventually prove self defeating for the same reason that "Feminism" is self defeating. Feminists make the claim that Feminism will also solve men's issues. Obviously we can't expect that to happen at all. It's very nature is to focus only on a certain set of issues, and when they are resolved, the Feminist doctorine doesn't allow for the forward movement of addressing other issues. Instead, it becomes entrenched in government and acedemia, with the idea that it is to ensure the continued prevention of gender discrimination. On paper, it sounds like a good idea, and it gave rise to SOW Canada and the NOW as well as a plethora of women's centres on campuses.

The Men's Rights Movement is also a reactive response to real issues addressing men. It is still in its infancy, much like Feminism was in the 1960's and early 1970's. This is apparent by the amount of backlash it is experiencing, not unlike the early days of Feminism. It is fighting against an entrenched, dogmatic institution that is the current state of Feminist anti masculine rhetoric. The problem is that we are creating our own tribe to react to unacceptable, systematic discrimination against men in certain, important aspects of our lives.

Rather than follow the same path, and make the same mistakes as Feminism, we should learn from that movement's mistakes. We should address our issues, keeping in mind the larger context of a healthy society. Separating children from their fathers. Appalling incarceration rates in certain countries. Cutlural perceptions of disposability, monoply on violence and abuse. Negative attitudes toward healthy male emotions and sexuality. All of these things hurt men. They also hurt their children and they hurt the women who love them, and in some cases the women who hate them.

In my opinion, one thing that Feminism got right was the gender neutralization of vocations in order to be more inclusive. Fire fighters instead of firemen. Police officers instead of policemen. It did however, forget to apply that correct ideology to it's own movement (I know that some are now attempting to rebrand Feminism as Egalitarianism). This serves to keep men away from the Feminist movement, which is exactly the intention of a portion of the movement. If sympathetic men, in large numbers are present, it becomes more difficult to cast them as rapists, child abusers and the sole perpatrators of violence in society.

So, where am I going with all of this? Let's ask ourselves "What does a successful Men's Rights Movement look like?" Do we get Men's Issues offices in government to "balance out" the Women's issues ones? To ensure fairness in family courts? To promote male participation in non traditional careers like nursing or early childhood education? On it's face that sounds good, but my concern is that you would end up with conflict based approach; two tribes , each trying to watch out for their own best intersts, and eventually trying to solicit as much funding as possible to promote their different agendas.

So what does a successful Men's Rights Movement look like? Social engineering. The continual dissemination of scientifically accurate and verifiable facts. Challenging bad statistics and invalid theories, on both sides, when they come up. Ensuring acedemic campuses are nurturing environments for both young men and young women. How great would it be if there were men's centres as well as women's centres on campuses, and that nobody thought that was a bad thing.

A successful Men's Rights Movement should eventually become a successful human right's movement. Rather than following a trajectory that would create tribal conflict and scrambling over funding, a successful Men's Rights Movement should seek to become an unnecessary relic of past problems and move on to ensure that both genders are treated fairly and with respect.

TL;DR The MRM needs to be able to learn from the mistakes of the Feminist movement as well as the things that Feminism got right. Rather than creating an US vs THEM, it needs to be an "all of us" movement, but we have along way to go before then.