GREETINGS MEN. Who are you? Can you help me find out a bit about the men of MensRights?

BlueDoorFour · 2015-03-04T17:26:13+00:00

You're coming from a bias already:

GREETINGS MEN.

1) Many of us are female.

Why makes you anti-feminist?

2) Many of us are not anti-feminists. Most of us here, though, are non-feminist. This may seem like a nitpicking difference, so let me explain. It's rather like the difference between an antitheist and an atheist: One actively opposes an ideology, the other merely doesn't adopt it.

That out of the way: I'm a graduate student in physics in the northeastern US. I did my undergrad in upstate New York, but for obvious reasons I'm not going to reveal where I am now. I enjoy teaching, programming, juggling, and reading.

I avoid the term "feminist" because I'm uncomfortable with ideological labels. Likewise, I avoid calling myself liberal, authoritarian, progressivist, etc., though my opinions may lead you to call me these things. It's easy to find yourself believing things simply because you call yourself a ___ist, and someone tells you that ____ists believe them.

I know this, because in college I went through several phases of feminism, and adopted beliefs after adopting labels. Arriving in college, I wasn't merely a feminist -- I firmly believed women to be in every way the superior of men. I believed men like myself to be defective human beings, and felt enormous guilt for how we'd subjugated and hurt our purer superiors throughout history.

I quickly realized how sexist this view was, and started to see women as human beings, not deities. I maintained in my head that women were an oppressed class, and it was the fault of men, and so continued to carry that guilt with me. After all, I'd been taught over and over how women had to struggle to get ahead. I still had this niggling discomfort whenever we learned about conscription or forced child support in history class, or when how I saw men depicted in pop culture, but I figured that this was deserved revenge against an oppressive group.

It wasn't until about a year ago that I started to see the damage that feminist ideology was doing. I watched Woody Allen's reputation trashed over a flimsy accusation, despite all evidence to the contrary, and when I didn't buy into it hard enough I was called a rape apologist. Not by radicals holding signs outside a Warren Farrell talk – by otherwise rational, college-educated women I'd considered friends.

This was just one incident of many. As feminism rose in popularity in 2013 and 14, I found myself doubting these assumptions I'd always held. It's hard not to doubt things when you have thousands of women screaming at how "people like you!" oppress them. I starting thinking, and reading, and researching. It was about a year ago I discovered the MRM. I didn't agree with all of it, and I still don't. You'll find much diversity of opinions here. Still, it has been more welcoming, less dogmatic, and more rational than any feminist space I ever encountered.

If my race, ethnicity, sexuality, age, etc. matter to you... I'm middle-class, Jewish-American, cis-gendered male, bisexual, and white. I'm aware of the advantages I've had in life, and I'm grateful for them and try to give back to those less fortunate than me.

jaybaird05 · 2015-03-04T17:21:00+00:00

I'm not Anti-Feminist.... I'm Anti Crazy People.... and it just so happens that there seem to be a staggering amount of crazy people within the Feminist movement. But as for your research; I'm 18 years old, from Montreal. I'm not in college yet. I am currently working as a video Game tester.

GenderNeutralLanguag · 2015-03-04T17:21:06+00:00

Identity politics much? Why does the messenger matter more than the message. Why does my genitalia define how correct my message is? How does my skin color affect the truth of my advocacy? Why am I anti-feminists? Because a person's background shouldn't affect their right to speak.

2015-03-04T17:47:08+00:00

50s
US
Caucasian

Tired of abuse from women and them getting away with it.

All feminism does is seek to protect women from their bad behavior and decisions and reward them with largesse they didn't earn.

2015-03-04T18:39:45+00:00

32, white, male, an immigrant from Europe, atheist, egalitarian. Always assumed that feminism was about equality and considered myself one for may years. Slowly started picking up clues to the contrary. At first it was realization that feminists only care about furthering their rights. Then, that they actively oppose men's rights as well. Now I consider them gender supremacists.

BlackMRA-edtastic · 2015-03-04T19:37:24+00:00

I'm black and statistically speaking black men are in crisis. I also find my self empathizing with white men who are singled out overwhelmingly by white feminists trying to dominate them through social aggression. This doesn't serve the interest of racial justice and in fact drives a backlash against it as all social justice is called into question when a privileged group of radicals use the cause to social climb in elite circles. These are my current feelings but originally I was upset that the dialogue on the sexes was so one sided and resources for men were severely lacking. Women were liberated from their roles while men were still being told what their role ought to be by women. As I became educated on the realities of male victimization I found myself overwhelmed at the injustice going on in plain sight being suppressed by academia and the media who were too fearful of feminist retaliation to correct the narrative.

I think feminsm is an ideology stuck in the past that failed to evolve. We need real equality not a smoke screen for overly entitled women who haven't gotten with the times.

2015-03-04T18:30:11+00:00

I oppose feminism's discriminatory legislation and its covering up of abuse.

DavidByron2 · 2015-03-04T19:27:04+00:00

I'm an anti-feminist and so is Girl Writes What, but most people here are not. Anti-feminist tends to be a more sort of an emphasis on equality and justice and anti-hate and concern about society as a whole almost more as an abstract principle. So it can be heavier on analysis and theory. They tend to be skeptical and just not care about what people think of them as individuals. For example I'm a Communist which covers similar stuff.

MRAs tend to be more specifically focused on pragmatics and getting on with people so they can be a bit gun shy of the term "anti-feminist" just because it sounds negative. Typically they will have come to the movement from an experience of discrimination in their own lives or the lives of close loved ones, and not as a theoretical analysis of injustices and inequality.

I just want a little info about what country people are from, what sort of age range, what ethnicity and what sort of background

Well that's tough to say. I'd ask the folks over at A Voice For Men who turned up for their conference maybe. On the internet everyone's a dog.

You can get a feel for country [for this subreddit] from the media articles posted. It's mostly USA of course, followed by UK, Australia, Canada and more rarely other English language speaking countries like Ireland, but with a fair bit from India these days and the odd piece from Norway, Sweden, Germany, Belgium and some other non-English speaking European countries where people often learn English as a second language. Stuff from Latin America tends to suffer the language gap but does get in here every now and then. Other countries are rare.

iainmf · 2015-03-05T00:10:54+00:00

I first started to be think feminism was unhelpful when thinking about how it's difficult to help victims, by labeling them victims, because you risk people adopting victim-hood as an identity. It's worse when you label a whole group of people victims. It's a bit of a dilemma, how do you draw attention to a problem without the victims identifying themselves by their victim-hood.

Then I looked at the white ribbon campaign and saw it was a bad way to go about helping women who are victims of domestic violence. The campaign reinforces the roles of women as passive victims and men as either protectors or aggressors. At this stage I didn't know that domestic violence was a 50/50 thing, and thought it was predominately male perpetrators. Splitting the issue on genders lines seemed to be a bad idea to me, even if when I believed something like 5-10% of victims where men.

It became clear to me that there were several issues that were labeled as women's issues that were either not really gendered, or not helpful to label as a gender issue. If you want women to believe they are powerful, independent people, you probably shouldn't keep talking about all the situations you believe they lack power.

So the thing that got me to reject modern feminism is that it is counterproductive for women.

Late thirties, pakeha*, male, New Zealand.

^{^{^{^*white}}} ^{^{^{^New}}} ^{^{^{^Zealander}}}

MRSPArchiver · 2015-03-04T16:57:45+00:00

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2015-03-06T02:22:47+00:00

I'm a husband and a father to a 12 year old boy. I had to fight with my ex-wife to keep his genitals intact when he was born. I know that one day he'll have to register for the draft, and possibly be forced to fight and die for this country, but his female cousins won't. I don't want him growing up thinking he's disposable, or not as special as anyone else. I just want him to be happy. I have to pay for his college, but scholarships would be easier to find if he were a girl.

I have a brother who is in a violent relationship right now. I'm the only one that knows. She beats him, controls the money, the phone, the TV - it's brutal and he knows it, but he won't leave because of how people would perceive him. Even if I could convince him to go, there's no social workers where he lives (across the country in a very rural area), no men's shelters for domestic violence victims. No social workers will help him. He can come live with me, but I can't make him, it's his own fear of being seen as weak that stops him. Why is it not ok for men to ask for help?

What the Men's Rights movement is about at its core is Equality, with a capital E. Are there sexist men? Yes. However, there are also sexist women. Modern feminism has been twisted from an equality movement into an anti-man echo-chamber. Men's rights, for me is about creating a better world for my son and my wife. ? Why do boys have their genitals cut, when it's expressly forbidden to the same to girls? Why have girls outnumbered men in higher-education since 1980, but there's no push to get boys into college? Why is there a cry for more women CEOs but not for more women garbage-collectors? Why are the majority of homeless men? Why are the majority of suicides men? How come the city recreation center has women's only classes, but no men's only classes? How can it be OK to exclude one gender but not the other? It might sound silly, but that's how anti-male attitudes creep into our society.

When I got out the military in 2011, I got told that staying at home to take care of my son wasn't a "real plan", that was after I convinced them that I was serious. All I'm asking is: if we are going to argue for equality among the sexes, let's make everything equal. We can start by not ridiculing people who point out double-standards and discrimination against men or women. And yes, please do fight against any sexist asshole who charades as Men's Rights Advocate.

Maschalismos · 2015-03-07T03:24:46+00:00

This might well be a doxxing attempt. I would ask OP to check in with NiceMod so he can verify her intentions. Until then:

DO NOT GIVE THIS PERSON ANY PERSONAL DATA.

it could well be used to Dox and/or bully you.

Frittern · 2015-03-04T17:12:31+00:00

Anti-feminist nice word choice, gotten the memo I see. You do now that most MRA don't identify as anti-feminist and that word choice reeks of politics. Like pro-abortion and anti-choice, contrasting positive with negatively perceived words conveys a stigmatizing effect onto the subject.

Title	GREETINGS MEN. Who are you? Can you help me find out a bit about the men of MensRights?
Author	Gauzepaws_etc
Upvotes	0
Comments	25
Date	March 4, 2015 4:57 PM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2xx8fj/greetings_men_who_are_you_can_you_help_me_find/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/greetings-men-who-are-you-can-you-help-me-find-out.986758 https://theredarchive.com/post/986758

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