Been lurking for a while, just wanted to let you know you have a convert.

I have been lurking on the outskirts of this movement for a while now, and I must admit I was sceptical for a long time. I have had many conversations, mostly online, with MRAs and similar types, and never really understood the point of it all until I came to this subreddit. As a white, middle class, Australian male, I had never experienced any kind of discrimination (still haven't), and I had this vague feeling that the whole thing was some kind of attempt to claw back the position men occupied as the nominal head of a household in many historical societies. I now see that this feeling had no basis in fact.

Now I understand it is far more an issue of fundamental rights than I ever realised. Because I had not experienced the discrimination personally, I could not understand that it exists. Because some of the encounters with MRAs were with the extremists, who were so damaged by their first hand encounters with misandry that they actually did hate women, I failed to notice the vast majority were very reasonable people objecting to real discrimination. /r/mensrights has taught me that, in the vast majority of cases, MRAs are just average guys like me, who have had enough of the double standards and of the positive discrimination.

Without doubt, in some Western societies the pendulum has swung too far. It reached the middle, where men and women had equal rights in society, and ignored it, seemingly attempting to make up for historical grievances inflicted by generations long dead by swinging in the opposite direction. As a husband, I don't want to wonder if my wife succeeds in life because of where the pendulum hangs, rather than because she is a good nurse. As a father, I don't want to wonder whether my daughter succeeds because she ticks a certain box, rather than because she is good at what she does. I don't want to live in a country where children are deprived of their fathers because family courts use sexist assumptions in reaching their conclusions. What we have now helps no one, and I can no longer see how anyone can support the status quo.