A person can support equality without being a feminist, just like they can be good without god. You can agree with some aspects of an ideology without embracing the whole thing.

Sir_Fancy_Pants · 2014-07-31T08:02:14+00:00

The same is true of mens rights also btw, if you label yourself an MRA it has the same toxicology as "feminist"

Most people (myself included) hate all injustice and inequality, i am as much pissed off as women being treated like sub human scum and raped by the police and authorities in places like rural india as i am boys being abused in care homes etc.

The instant you reduce your activism/concern to only consider your own sex you lose the title of "being reasonable" to other people.

Women's issues are just as important as mens issues, the only reason i populate MRA is that feminists tend to have the greater batshit crazy nonsense trying to make issues out of nothing and make ludicrous stupid claims that defy all reason. Which i enjoy seeing and laughing at.

nigglereddit · 2014-07-31T06:53:40+00:00

Feminism is not about equality, it is about female supremacy - enforced gender quotas on company boards, access to superior healthcare, exemption from rape and draft laws and he pro-women bias in family courts among other things.

Since the definition of feminism includes patriarchy theory, someone who does not subscribe to patriarchy theory is not a feminist. And someone who subscribes to patriarchy theory cannot be egalitarian, by definition.

ignatiusloyola · 2014-07-31T10:51:25+00:00

You can never achieve equality if you focus only on one gender, whether male or female.

With that, said, feminist movements have had a very important and good effects historically, and still does a lot of good today - there are legitimate concerns over things like access to contraceptives and abortion, and they are still often not paid as much as men. But feminism is an incomplete rights movement, and so is the men's right's movement. There are inequalities for LGBTs, and amongst different races.

And I think many MRAs know and believe that, but feel their concerns are always put on the backburner. "Why should we deal with problems regarding men when we have wars we don't need, immigrants rushing in from countries we helped destabalize ourselves and then reject offering help to those immigrants, climate change that could kill all of humanity, and when women's problems are comparatively worse?" You get this list of stuff and are told to stop complaining, you have it "good enough". But it's never the wrong time to do the right thing. It's never too early to implement fairness. That's why I sympathize with this subreddit and this movement (if it's big enough to be called a "movement"), because it's the only place I feel I can go to and see people discuss these issues. I can't bring it up anywhere without literally being dismissively mocked at with no attempt from the other party to even try to have a real discussion.

I really rambled, but in summary, I believe the only way the men's rights concept can go anywhere is to try to merge all concepts of equality into the idea of whole universal equality.

TorontoAnnex · 2014-07-31T15:24:59+00:00

Feminism creates a false dichotomy of that there is only belief in feminism or you want to enslave women.

The other problem that feminism co-oped all previous women's movements as "waves" of feminism when they were not . The suffragette movement was its own thing as well as the ERA, and feminists paint anyone who criticizes it as wanting to take away women's vote or worse.

Feminism has become worse then are the institutions they despise, like the church . You as an atheist want to help the poor people in your city , the Church of Feminism pops up and say . "Ohh charity for the poor is a part of the church, you have to be a member of the church to do that, you have to be a believer of the church doctrine and you have to contribute to the church and the church will decide who is poor, and its not those people you want to help."

And you say , " well no I don't believe in your doctrine , I don't want to join your church and actually I think it is harmful in someways and wish to go my own way"

The Church of feminism labels you a satanist and evil and claim that you are commit all sorts of crimes. ( as happened in Toronto Repeatedly with MRAs and used these claims to ban them from public funded spaces and universities ) .

HerbertPurdy · 2014-07-31T16:07:56+00:00

It all depends on what you mean by equality. If you mean equality of opportunity: that every person has an inalienable right to be treated the same as any other and not be inhibited in their aspiration to achieve their highest potential, then I believe no right-minded person would, or could, disagree.

If, however, you mean equality as having the same number of women on corporate boards as men, or in the workplace, such as equal numbers of women as men as engineers for example, then that sort of equality makes you a feminist. You are espousing a political cause that is intent on placing women in a position they would not otherwise be.

The reason why fewer women become company directors, or engineers, is to do with their preferences because they are women, and their work-life balance decisions, say when they want to have children and don't want a full-time, high-powered career, but feminism declares this to be a 'problem', blames men for having brought it about, and claims 'equality'.

Then, if you mean equality as women being entitled to the privileges they do not deserve in their own right, but only because they are human beings who happen to have been born with a vagina; if you believe that women are entitled to equality of the sort that takes away men's rights to their equality of opportunity, then that makes you at least a supporter of feminism, however unintentionally.

For those reasons, I really question the proposition that you can pick out bits of feminism and not others. To accept any of these things, other than the first definition, makes you at least a feminist sympathiser, possibly a fellow-traveller, and by virtue of that, a supporter of a socially divisive ideology, whose intent is far from the liberal Enlightenment aims of true equality of opportunity.

ezetemp · 2014-07-31T07:01:29+00:00

Considering expansion of feminist label to include the number of mutually incompatible ideas that it does I'd argue that you can't even find any feminists who embrace feminism (in the sense of the whole thing).

The inability to keep anything even near a consistent set of fundamental beliefs and clearly delineating offshoots and their beliefs as specifically not part of the core belief makes the term meaningless except as a way to claim followers.

The idea that 'if you believe in equality, you're a feminist' is as offensive as claiming that if you believe in doing unto others as you'd have them do unto you, then you're a Christian. No. No you're not. Both of those labels carry some more baggage that one might not want to carry for that group.

Frontierguy · 2014-07-31T09:40:38+00:00

I believe in equality and that is why I could never consider myself a feminist. I believe in the equality of both parents when it comes to custody after divorce, I believe in equality of sentencing in the criminal justice system, I believe in equality of responsibility regarding intimate partner violence, and I could give many more examples; but I can find no feminist groups with similar views. Feminists work very hard to establish rights for women, but they work twice as hard to assure that women are not held responsible for their actions.

Hungerwolf · 2014-07-31T10:51:55+00:00

Feminism is an ideology- It is very similar to a religion.

Women's Rights, Men's Rights, Civil rights, Gay Rights- Those are RIGHTS MOVEMENTS. They do not claim a particular worldview, they are concerned with rights. When you start making claims about the nature of reality, especially if those claims are unfalsifiable, then you start becoming an ideology, which is inherently no longer anything but an ideology.

Comments