(Note: Sorry so long, but I think it will be worth the read.)

Some of the finest people I've ever met online I've met here on Men's Rights. In 2016, I moved 1200 miles (ca. 1,931 km) across the country (USA). I arrived in a town that had a common interest Facebook group, which I joined. It seemed like a good group at first, but somehow people got in an argument over men's rights. The mods of the group contended that men's rights were unnecessary because men already had all the rights and only women ever experienced issues that needed to be addressed. I remember the mod of that group called men's rights advocates "douchebags" and "losers." I asked if he had ever gotten to know any MRAs, and he simply gave me the link to some article that supposedly proved that MRAs were all misogynists. It was an opinion piece, and a poorly supported one at that.

I decided to check out men's rights for myself. That's when I came here. I mostly read. I didn't post much back then, and this never became my main sub. But I've come here to read a lot. It's refreshing to see men's issue actually taken seriously. I've always known that there's something very wrong with marriage when a man is putting his life on the line by getting married. He's taking a huge risk, not just that he could lose a tremendous amount of property, but that he could be left financially destitute and emotionally broken. I'm sure that some self-righteous bigot behind recent bannings is clucking his tongue reading this. Of course, any criticism of how men get destroyed via marriage is automatically misogyny, right? Only in a grossly distorted straw man version of men's rights is that true. In reality, criticism of our marriage and divorce laws comes from a concern for real human beings. Men's lives get destroyed via marriage and divorce. Probably some women's lives get destroyed by it as well, but by and large, it's men who suffer the most from divorce. Being honest about this reality is not in any way hating on women. Notice that nothing in my blunt honesty about our system is an attack on women. To twist it as such would be a sick and twisted distortion of reality.

I was a man caught in an abusive relationship, one in which my life was in danger. It was not a relationship with a woman. It was one with another man, and it was not a romantic relationship, as I'm not gay. It was a friendship relationship. I was roommates with my former best friend from high school, but something had gone very wrong with him during his military service. He had gone from a hilarious and fun person to being an angry and dangerous one, and was an expert at martial arts. He had a huge gun collection, all of which he was an expert at using. He was constantly blowing up at me and threatening me over matters as trivial as the brand of paper towels that I had bought. I knew I had to get out. However, the few domestic violence shelters that existed in my area only accepted women. I ended up being lucky to have family that helped me escape, but not every man is so lucky. Without family support, my two choices would have been: 1) Stay and risk being assaulted or killed. 2) Live on the street. I was extremely lucky that I was able to leave and stay with family until I could start a new life. Not every man is so lucky, and it's why so many men end up homeless. It's part of the reason why far more men are homeless than women.

Yet, if you're honest about men's need of help against domestic violence, you might get laughed at. Or worse, you might bet branded a misogynist because supposedly you're trying to take support away from women. Not once in the 5 years of reading this sub have I ever seen any MRA say, "We need to take domestic violence shelters away from women so that men can have them." Not one single time. It's always been some version of, "Men sometimes need help too." I'm living proof that that's true. I got the help I needed, but only because I'm lucky to have family with resources. Men without that same luck would end up homeless or dead.

It's the height of arrogance and intellectual dishonesty for the people at AgainstHateSubreddits to twist issues like this into some kind of hatred toward women. MRAs have said this whole 5 years I've been here, "It's great that women are getting help, but we're not getting help to everyone who needs it." Only a person full of hatred for men could warp that view into some kind of hostility against women. I appreciate the MRAs who have worked so hard to get this situation changed. There's been tremendous push-back, and tragically unjustified, vengeful, and hateful push-back. Earl Silverman was an MRA and domestic abuse survivor who worked hard to change this situation in his home country of Canada. Unfortunately, he encountered the same type of hateful bigots that we see at AgainstHateSubreddits. Silverman was never in favor of taking away women's access to domestic abuse shelters. He was only saying what I said in my previous paragraph: "Men sometimes need help too." To spew vitriol against Silverman for that stance was a crime. It was a violation of his human rights to spread the lie that he was a misogynist. They mocked and chided him. They did everything in their power to block his progress until Silverman's domestic abuse shelter for men that he had worked so hard building failed financially. Finally, he could take it no longer. He was found dead, hanging in his garage.

MRAs are good people trying to get help to people who need it and have been overlooked, namely men. The twisting of the MRA message of hope for men into something sinister is a crime against hard-working MRAs. Men's rights is not now, and never has been, about hating on women. The AgainstHateSubreddts' fanatics and self-righteous zealots are disgusting and evil humans dedicated to disinformation. They piss all over the truth by refusing to do a modicum of genuine research. If they had done one tenth of the reading I've done here, and did so with an open-mind, they would have seen good people trying to help others who have been overlooked. Instead, they've erected a straw man version of men's rights, a grossly distorted women-hating version, that has nothing to do with what the MRA movement really is. It's the height of irony that they think they're fighting for human rights when in reality the're pissing and shitting all over them. They make a mockery of human rights. They're full of hate while under the delusion that they're good people helping others. They're not good people. They're not helping anyone. They're only fabricating disinformation in order to force others to shut up. They use that tactic out of their inability to engage in real debate. If you're intellectually inferior to your opponent, just force them to shut up. They're the vile bigots of the same type that drove Earl Silverman to his death. Shame on them.