I am Karen Straughan [girlwriteswhat]; Ask Me Anything.

I do think that men's interests are gaining ground. There are plenty of mainstream articles that point to a growing awareness of the problem, and when I talk to random people about what I do (whether I say I'm an anti-feminist or a men's issues advocate) I tend to get a lot of, "yeah, you're right! I always thought that was messed up."

The main obstacle to going fully mainstream (particularly with the issues of boys, since male children still command some small degree of compassion from the wider culture), is feminism (political feminism, and casual gynocentrism).

We often get accused of derailing, but I've never been involved in a conversation about the harms of infant male circumcision without multiple people barging in and saying that it's not comparable to FGM and that making a fuss about it is minimalizing or trivializing ACTUAL genital mutilation blah blah blah.

You talk about male victims of DV, and you'll get lots of people jumping in to inform everyone that while men are a tiny minority of victims, it's women who are the majority of victims, and blah blah blah.

When Obama unveiled "My Brother's Keeper" (I think that's what it was called), an initiative to assist minority boys achieve in school and stay out of gangs, there were women's groups demanding to know why the initiative excluded minority girls, despite a multitude of initiatives already in existence prioritizing all girls' achievement and success.

Destroying gender roles is, IMO, unrealistic. Particularly because feminism has managed to convince most of society that they're trying to destroy gender roles by exploiting gender roles. We're just not rational about this, and I don't expect we can convince society to become rational about it. It would require a constant, conscious effort on the part of all members of society to make it work, and that isn't feasible.

This is why, as much as I'd love to talk about how excluding fathers from families hurts men (men are human), it's more effective to emphasize how it hurts children (men are useful).

It's not all about men needing to act like men to attract women. It's the sad reality that the very concept of equal compassion for men is teflon-coated. You can literally convince someone that men deserve compassion as human beings every bit as much as women do, and fifteen seconds later, the idea just kind of slid off of their brains and you're starting from scratch.

Which is why women are very important in the MRM. It's women who can get sympathy--as mothers or daughters or sisters who are themselves hurt by the harm done to the men in their lives. No one's going to give two shits if my oldest never finds a woman worth his time and effort. But they'll care if my daughter finds herself at age 30, unmarried and wanting a child, and simply unable to find a man who can help provide a stable home.

If men's interests are gaining ground, it's because ignoring their interests is having a negative impact on women and children. Well, there's also that anger thing. Paul Elam has repeatedly said, "if society won't hear men's pain, it will hear their anger." So there's that, too.

All in all, though, I can't even realistically hope for actual equality before the law. There will always be informal biases that play into things like the sentencing gap. But statutory equality before the law--that might be achievable. There's some hope that "men" or "male" (and "straight", and "cis" and maybe even "white") might one day become a legally recognized category under human rights legislation.

TL;DR: IMO, there's room for improvement and it will happen, but we're never going to have real equality.