EDIT: Of course, I conjugated a verb incorrectly and can't keep from proofreading it even after submitting.

There is little point in evaluating MRA as an objectively moral or immoral movement because it’s here and no amount of arguing or statistics manipulating will satisfy everyone (plus I'm in no place to question this existence), but I think it’s important to urge caution. The risk as I see it is that MRA mirrors other ideologies in its efforts and strategies, and this is problematic because the practice of employing static ideology as a means for social change has us at the polarized moral standstill where we find ourselves now.

There exist (largely legal) inequities that MRA brings to light, and that is good work. But the movement finds itself in a dangerous place, where it is in danger of becoming less a movement and more an existential crutch. When people start identifying as MRA’s, then perpetuation of MRA ideology risks becoming the goal and not so much the correction of inequities.

More on that in a bit. There are, I’m sure, many, many MRA’s who do not do this, but the short term danger is that MRA’s ignore the suffering of others. It’s easy to get in a pissing match about who has it worse, which does little or nothing to address social problems, much less correct them. For now, MRA’s can keep an eye on themselves and their behavior. If they don’t, then the warnings will surely come from without, only perpetuating bad blood. I fear this self-scrutiny will only become more difficult, though, as MRA becomes a static, almost codified, ideology.

This is when people stop saying, “I support men’s rights,” and start saying, “I am a Men’s Rights Activist.” This is when the movement becomes an existential crutch, because it’s so easy to get lazy and look to static ideology for the answers. I seriously doubt that any sane supporter of MRA believes that men are a subjugated minority and that the situation for men is the same as that of women and African-Americans, or Latinos, or LBQT (or I’m sorry if I’m leaving anyone out) years ago. (I’m not going to say anything about the lot of any group now, as that invites the pissing match, and we simply have too distorted a picture of our times to make these claims. I can safely say, though, that these groups have suffered, and venture to guess that men are not in danger of suffering the same way.) But when ideology becomes a cross section of values and existentialism, then claims like those above are not too far off.

For example, say someone identifies as a Men’s Rights Activist. He started reading MRA literature because he unfairly lost his children in a custody battle. This is a unique situation and does not imply that every father who loses custody of his children deserves it, and our subject understands this. He visits MRA websites and posts thoughtfully on the MRA subreddit, where he finds a community that supports him. He begins to devote more and more time to this community, getting involved in other MRA-oriented issues and learning the party line and rhetoric well enough to spread awareness to a larger and larger pool of readers. His thinking adopts this rhetoric, and by virtue of it, he begins to notice other inequities that he didn’t notice before. Calling himself a Men’s Rights Activist is one example of this rhetorical shift.

Years go by, the general perception of the father changes so that stories like the one that got him interested in MRA in the first place become rarer and rarer. Initiatives that he took on early in his career as a self-identified MRA succeed. But the energy that he devoted to the ideology has not dwindled. His existence is so dependent on the MRA in him that he must continue to find inequities to fight, and if he doesn't, everything about him, except his body, dies. The stakes, though illusory, are very high for him. Since he has let himself think primarily about himself in the name of what he calls morality for years, he can easily ignore others, viewing any warnings from without or dissent from within as yet more forms of oppression. His ideology becomes volatile when others who support Men’s Rights begin to question him, and he attacks back, crying “death of ideology” and becoming ever more radical. These desperate and reactionary (further) codifications of his morality allow him to continue existing.

Now, he sees it necessary for his survival to reduce others with derogatory terms and thinking because it’s him against the world.

I’m sure many will recognize this scenario as one that is playing out with other ideologues right now, religious, political, or otherwise. Please don’t use this warning to demonize these ideologues. Humanity has not always enjoyed the benefit of hindsight we have today. But it is important to recognize the limitations to ideology if anything is to change for the good of everyone. I hope that is still the goal here, after all. Louis Althusser said that ideology is so ingrained into our existence that we don’t even realize it. We are so imbued with ideology that we reflexively or habitually anthropomorphize the objective world around us, which in turn reinforces our ideological thinking, as it gives this thinking the appearance of scientific truth.

This may be so, but there’s no harm in questioning the way generations past have acted on their values. In fact, a certain amount of selective myopia is necessary for action. If we saw every problem that everyone suffered equally, then it would be impossible to concentrate efforts in any one direction. But it is important to remember not to mistake that necessity for permission to subjugate one group for the good of another.

MRA is at a place where it is malleable enough to exercise the caution I urge here. All forms of activism can change, but MRA is new enough to avoid, or root out, the problematic, ideological thinking that threatens to perpetuate intolerance.