Writers and intellectuals who spoke about Men's rights

SvitlanaLeo · 2025-06-20T04:27:10+00:00

I saw this Heinlein's quote

Conscription is slavery, and I don't think that any people or nation has a right to save itself at the price of slavery for anyone, no matter what name it is called.

Robert A. Heinlein.

If this is a real quote, than I would say - I know much more pro-male-disposable thinkers.

Blauwpetje · 2025-06-20T10:48:50+00:00

In Dutch: Maarten ‘t Hart ‘De vrouw bestaat niet’ (free translation: ‘Woman’ as such doesn’t exist) Renate Rubinstein: ‘Hedendaags feminisme’ (current feminism) and Emma Brunt: ‘Je zal je zuster bedoelen’ (you’ll mean your sister, a sarcastic Dutch expression).

All around 1980. Especially the first two were famous Dutch - more or less liberal! - authors and their books sold well. Nowadays no publisher would dare burn his fingers on them.

They’re all more criticising feminism than explicitly addressing men’s issues, but as 80% of feminism is about adoring women and belittling men (to put it mildly) those books are indispensable for men. If you can read Dutch.

alterumnonlaedere · 2025-06-21T02:00:46+00:00

Not exactly related to Men’s Rights but the Kurt Vonnegut short story Harrison Bergeron, published in 1961, looks at equality taken to an extreme.

In the year 2081, the United States Constitution dictates that all Americans are fully equal and not allowed to be smarter, better-looking, or more physically able than anyone else. This is due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th amendments. Diana Moon Glampers, the Handicapper General, and her agents enforce the equality laws by forcing citizens to wear "handicaps" such as ugly masks for those who are too beautiful, earpiece radios for the intelligent that broadcast irritating noises meant to disrupt thoughts, and heavy weights for the strong or athletic.

In terms of looking at men's issues there's Esther Vilar's 1971 book The Manipulated Man and Ernest Belfort Bax's 1913 book The Fraud of Feminism.

Ernest Belfort Bax is an interesting character. What's more interesting though is that his criticisms of feminism, made over a century ago, are almost exactly the same as those made today.

Bax was a passionate advocate for the social and legal rights of men, which he saw as lacking in comparison to the legal rights of women. His first major article on the subject was "Some Bourgeois Idols; Or Ideals, Reals, and Shams" (1886), in which he proposed that women were privileged under law at the expense of men. He was to continue writing articles on this topic for most of his life, published notably in Social Democrat, and Justice, and later in The New Age.

In 1896, he wrote The Legal Subjection of Men whose title is a play on John Stuart Mill's 1869 essay "The Subjection of Women." In the volume, Bax draws on his extensive experience as a barrister to demonstrate the numerous ways in which the legal code favoured women to the detriment of men and boys. Chapters in the book include 'Matrimonial Privileges of Women', 'Non-Matrimonial Privileges of Women', 'The Actual Exercise of Women's Sex Privileges', and 'A Sex Noblesse'.

"The most elaborate cruelty in the way of insolence and insult is unpunishable by the law when committed by the wife. The husband remains bound to support his torturer, who may publicly waylay and insult him, harass him at his work, procure his dismissal, libel him by postcards sent to his workshop, or to his club. If he be a rich man, he can get some tardy redress in the way of palliation; but he remains liable to divorce and expropriation at his wife's behest. Now the feminine noblesse can torture their slaves with impunity. If the husband retaliates, the magistrate's order promptly consigns him to gaol and the prisoners' lash."

Bax was an active antifeminist since, according to him, feminism was failing to address inequities for both sexes evenly. According to Bax, the "anti-man crusades" of his day were responsible for anti-man laws being both preserved from the old legal canon, and for new laws being passed that were also anti-male and sexist. Bax wrote many articles in The New Age and elsewhere about English laws partial to women against men, and women's privileged position before the law, and expressed his view that women's suffrage would unfairly tip the balance of power to women. In 1913 he published a book, The Fraud of Feminism, critiquing feminism. In it, he described chivalry as "the deprivation, the robbery from men of the most elementary personal rights in order to endow women with privileges at the expense of men."

Bax's concern for men's equality fuelled his interest in socialism, to which he turned for a potential solution to what he viewed as the exploitation of males by the capitalist system.

Phuxsea · 2025-06-20T06:11:37+00:00

Hey I'm the one who made the post about George Orwell. Cite me

qHzB · 2025-06-23T11:00:29+00:00

David benatar (Antinatalist philosopher) has wrote a book called "The second sexism" where he talks about sexism men face

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