Why do Menslibbers tell so many lies about MRAs?

Kuato2012 · 2020-01-08T06:33:18+00:00

MRAs only exist because feminism has failed so spectacularly in its stated goals of gender equality and treating all people with respect. At best, feminists are callously indifferent to men's suffering, and at worst, they are ruthless, relentless contributors to it. And that's why the MRM exists at all... because feminism isn't on our side, and is arguably working to make our lives worse, not to mention demonizing every single aspect of men, males, and masculinity.

They regard the MRM as an enemy because its very existence exposes their own failings and hypocrisy.

As for why they so frequently stoop to telling lies, I've found that feminism as a whole is, shall we say, highly enriched for intellectual dishonesty. Now, intellectual dishonesty doesn't mean you are just a liar... a liar knows that 2 + 2 = 4 but claims that the answer is 5. An intellectually dishonest person has done the mental gymnastics required to actually believe that the answer is 5. It means you're willing to lie to yourself.

When you believe in blatantly counterfactual dogmas, you have to be dishonest with yourself in order to maintain your faith. You see this kind of dishonesty in Creationists, young Earthers, flat Earthers, feminists, etc. You have to be willing to truly believe that 2 + 2 = 5 when The Party requires you to believe it.

You have to be willing to lie to yourself in order to convince yourself that "men have it better" even after looking at the male suicide rate and life expectancy, and seeing how males aren't granted bodily autonomy and have to purchase the right to vote, and seeing how media and the legal system treat men, etc, etc, etc.

And just to clarify, this type of self-lying isn't always obvious and flagrant. For example, if you consistently interpret feminist arguments in the most charitable light and antifeminist arguments in the least charitable light, you are being intellectually dishonest (and before any of us pat ourselves on the back too much, the converse is also true, of course).

Secondly, I'm finding it increasingly difficult to shake the idea that truth is simply unimportant to a lot of these people. Winning the culture war, or playing power games, or social engineering, or however you want to mentally frame it, seems to be paramount. They prove that consistently by censoring polite conversation whenever it runs even slightly against the grain of their dogma. They are MUCH more concerned with winning arguments (and the hearts and minds of any readers) than with whether the conversation has borne a fruitful exchange of ideas or brought anyone closer to truth. This is closely related to the above point about intellectual dishonesty, because once you're willing to be dishonest with yourself, no degree of sophistry in service to The Party is too extreme.

The last point I was going to make was already stated well and succinctly by /u/SamHanes10 here. If your faith can't withstand skeptical scrutiny (2 + 2 = 5?!) then you need to resort to dirty tricks to shout down any critical voices.

Oncefa2 · 2020-01-08T01:16:04+00:00

MRAs aren't even always hostile to them. I've seen the mods over on r/mensrights speak about them in much more positive light than I think they deserve. There was a stickied comment over there that lumped them in with the men's movement one time. I forget exactly how it was worded but it was surprising how favorable towards them the comment was.

SamHanes10 · 2020-01-08T02:20:35+00:00

I think it's largely because feminist theory (e.g. patriarchy theory and unidirectional sexism against women) does not stand up to scrutiny when critically analysed with reference to the real world. Since it is not robust to criticism, proponents of feminist theory have no choice but to resort to appeals to emotion and 'righteousness'. As a consequence, menslib, like other feminist communities, have no choice but to paint their ideological opponents as being wrong or 'evil' (even if it means lying about their opponents). If they didn't do so, people would abandon their community once they realise the theory behind it is rubbish.

This really is just a form of indoctrination - once you convinced people that the MRM is evil, it is very hard to un-indoctrinate them, especially since their indoctrination fits well with the gynocentrism already present in most people.

Egalitarianwhistle · 2020-01-08T05:26:44+00:00

Great post!

What we need are more debates. We need to ask for more debates. In all available forums. Because there are only a few outcomes and they are as follows:

They agree to the debate, and all things being equal, feminists will lose to MRAs 97% of the time. It generally comes out somewhat like the debate between Hoff Sommers and Roxane Gay- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-BYREt2r_uQ
The refuse the debate. This doesn't really help if no one knows. But in the scenario where are there are neutral parties that are neither feminist nor MRA, this is somewhat remarkable. Most neutral parties would expect Feminism to be able to hold its own in a debate. Most people don't realize how poorly nearly all their positions stand up to scrutiny.

As a sidenote, what's truly toxic about campus feminism, is that it seems to have weaponized this posturing/shaming tactic when it comes to rape accusations. MRA's are not "pro-rape" or "rape apologists" much as feminists love to smear us. We are not against holding men accountable who rape and murder. But we believe that every person, women and men, deserve to have a defense. To have due process. But I've seen a mob of feminists skip the evidence phase of a social media rape accusation and go straight for the shaming and the attacking. They're so used to working without evidence, or with poor evidence, that it doesn't occur to them that blindly advocating for an alleged rape victim can cause a LOT of damage. Especially once bad actors see how it works.

Having seen behind the mask, I am very skeptical of any publicly announced rape accusation. For those taken to the police, I absolutely think that they should neither be believed or disbelieved. But any statements given to the police need to be under oath. If you lie to the police about rape and/or murder there needs to be consequences. This is a keystone of civilization that feminists seem hellbent upon destroying.

As John Adams said, “It is more important that innocence be protected than it is that guilt be punished, for guilt and crimes are so frequent in this world that they cannot all be punished. But if innocence itself is brought to the bar and condemned, perhaps to die, then the citizen will say, “whether I do good or whether I do evil is immaterial, for innocence itself is no protection,” and if such an idea as that were to take hold in the mind of the citizen that would be the end of security whatsoever.”

#believeevidence

2020-01-08T11:10:43+00:00

I honestly have stopped caring about r/MensLib. I have lost all the respect that I used to have for them.

mtcapri · 2020-01-08T04:43:59+00:00

As an MRA, I agree with most of your post, but there's one thing I'd like to point out about this:

As I said, MRAs don't need to tell lies to criticize menslib. We point out what we think is wrong with feminist theory and with associating with feminism. We don't need to up and pretend menslibbers are literally cuckolds who support men being in the kitchen and advocate for that in order to convince subscribers not to visit.

I think it's more accurate to say most MRAs don't do this, but there is a contingent of fanatically anti-feminist, mostly conservative MRAs who do say shit like that. You're much more likely to find them in MGTOW and Redpill spaces, but some frequent /r/mensrights too, unfortunately.

However—(disclaimer: as an MRA, I obviously can't claim I'm not completely unbiased on this issue)—I do generally agree that feminists/menslibbers stereotype MRAs to a far greater extent than MRAs stereotype feminists/menslibbers. I think there are a number of reasons for that, but the one that stands out most in my mind has nothing to do with the particulars of either movement, and is simply a rather common phenomenon you see when a very large, well-established, accepted group interacts with a new, fringe, small group. The latter is the outsider, and due to their newness and small size, most people in the former group don't have much exposure to them. So, the first time most feminists found out about MRAs was probably from other feminists, like David Futrelle. And, like most people, they don't bother to go and investigate for themselves, but rely on what they hear from inside their circles. By contrast, MRAs know about feminism from growing up with it, and so the intricacies of that group are far more well-known to us, simply because they're far more well-known to everyone, due to feminism's age, size, etc.

You can see this same pattern unfold with many other different types of groups, such as religions. Whenever a new religion comes on the scene, they're regarded as a cult at first, and are almost always met with negative stereotypes by other religions and even society at large. It's unfortunately just a largely inherent part of human group psychology that we regard new, different groups negatively when they first start to emerge. And again, I would maintain that this is largely due to most people having a lack of exposure to the new group and forming their opinions based on the reviews of their peers, which—if the new group is substantially different in disagreeable ways—are usually negative.

Feminists tend to forget that even they were once pretty much universally despised by society, and that it took quite a long time for them to grow to the point where the average person had enough exposure to them to get an accurate sense for what they believed and were fighting for.

This is why I try not to stay silent about men's issues in my social circles. I don't always identify as an MRA, but I try to seed MRA ideas in the people I know to help normalize them, so that one day, they'll be more accepted, and then maybe the label will too.

romulusnr · 2020-01-08T05:47:36+00:00

/r/menslib is trash, it's male feminists who swallow all versions of feminism without question and then couch everything in that narrative.

thereslcjg2000 · 2020-01-08T03:38:26+00:00

My guess? For the sake of recruiting. Feminists are known for their “with us or against us” mindset, and tend to do whatever they can to get the “desired” people (i.e. those who may lack firm conviction or self confidence, and thus probably won’t question the motives they give) “with” them.

This requires barring them from the groups that are “against” them, i.e. the MRM. The real issue with the MRM, from a feminist’s perspective, is that it is against modern feminism. However, if you’re someone who lacks strong political convictions, being against modern feminism doesn’t sound particularly threatening or disturbing.

Consequently, feminists are forced to build strawmen to make the MRM look like something you wouldn’t want to touch with a twenty-foot pole. Forcing women to reject any form of liberation is bad by the standards of any person who isn’t severely messed-up mentally and/or just awful.

This leads to a degree of fear within the feminist movement of the MRM, which conveniently enough makes feminists less liable to interact with it and see that it’s nowhere near as reactionary and evil as its reputation. It’s a plot which ensures more people will gravitate toward the feminist movement.

mewacketergi · 2020-01-08T01:01:25+00:00

Please note the conflation of a red pill traditionalist group with the MRM.

Currently the mainstream feminist rhetoric against their critics (which 'slibbers borrow) is that of demonization, vilification and strawmanning.

Edit: I would guess they think it's easier to maintain the cultural dominance in the white collar strata of society in this way, but I see it as a big mistake.

Edit: I think you are also correct that they are more hostile to us, than anyone else is towards them — I'll admit that there are positive aspects to what they've built, but they will never acknowledge something similar about other men's issues communities.

Our view of men's issues still hold up if 'slibbers are right about something, and we are wrong, but this authoritarian, censorious way they have modeled their community on crumbles completely if they admit that some other men's advocacy group is right about something they are wrong on — and so they deny, deny, deny, deny.

P.S. Also, I can't believe the degree of strawmanning necessary to honestly believe that that conference is serious, and not a practical joke. :P

serpentineeyelash · 2020-01-08T07:46:47+00:00

On one hand, not all of the criticism of MRAs is unfounded. I've recently criticized Honey Badger Radio for their flirtations with traditionalism, which does have the inconsistencies being claimed by menslib. Personally I don't really use the label "MRA" anymore, to distinguish myself from the more right-wing MRAs.

But on the other hand, menslib claims all MRAs are right-wing - and when you try to correct their demonizing generalizations about MRAs, they delete your comments. It's becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy as the MRM attracts right-wingers and repels left-wingers who have been warned against associating with it.

These are the main reasons I started the subreddit, so there can be a men's issues discussion space that is neither feminist nor right-wing.

I'll note that the sub was founded by AgainstMensRights contributors

Wow, even I didn't know that. Do you have a citation for that? I might add it to our Mission Statement's section criticizing menslib.

I also note how it's spammed everywhere at people who talk about mens issues.

Yes, that irks me too! I hope some day there'll be lots of people promoting this subreddit in the same way - though unfortunately I've already noticed some instances of comments being deleted for mentioning us! Still, I encourage everyone here to link to this subreddit if you see anyone claiming MRAs are all right-wing.

bkrugby78 · 2020-01-08T11:46:18+00:00

They do what they do, because they are fully aligned with the feminist subs on Reddit. Excusing Gender Critical of course. The constant theme over there is "feminism for men." (Noted by how if you spend any time in a feminist sub, if people ask for a good "Men's Rights place," r/menslib is ALWAYS recommended). So, any MRA/Men's Right like issue is more often than not going to contradict their line of thinking.

But why bother complaining about them? You could make a case for complaining about r/mensights in a different vein, surely. However, I think this sub would be better served focusing specifically on the issues, than it would be on what a small group of feminists or right wing mra people think.

liztu_june · 2020-01-08T15:59:01+00:00

Withing every civil right movement there are a group of people use its platform to excuse bigotry the MRA movement is not any different. When they see posts saying all women are hypergamy or blanket hatred of feminism it creates an image that MRA are bigots. (yes I realize that a lot of criticism of feminism is valid but let's not pretend MRA won't have the same problem when we become successful)

z770i1 · 2020-01-09T00:26:35+00:00

I joined both and still at it, if they say or do something fucking stupid i will dislike, same with this sub.

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