Constructive criticism of a piece by Peter Wright published in AVfM ('Men who sit at the screens')

NB This was originally a comment under a post by u/theothermod of the following article from March 21, 2017: Men who sit at the screens

Wright comments on points made by the late 'Angry' Harry and I would like to point out that although I really only know Harry from his appearances in the ManWomanMyth video series, I found him to be intelligent and his perspectives insightful - nevertheless, that doesn't mean his ideas should not be queried and this is what I do (hopefully constructively) below.

I have some constructive criticism of Peter Wright's article.

... we continue to be influenced by cultural narratives (or if you like, myths) which guide our perception every bit as strongly as did the old religious stories examined by Campbell. Feminist myth-making provides the perfect example

... there are ‘entities’ as ['Angry' Harry] called them, large institutional organisms generating narratives that we absorb, willy nilly, as our own. These, explained Harry, are contemporary mythologies which guide the sleepy masses, while those who perpetuate them are often driven by motives of power, profit or revenge.

This makes little sense to me as it is fraught with contradictions.

1 To begin with, the concept that there are "cultural narratives" which "guide the sleepy masses" is very much something which many feminist activists would agree with even if they wouldn't use quite the same words to express it in (and they would certainly agree with the idea that "Narrative gives a worldview, and provides identity" Wright gives at the end of the article).

Every time you hear someone such as Sophie Walker from the Women's Equality Party insist that the reason why there are so few women relative to men in e.g. computer sciences or maths departments is because women have been acculturated (i.e. brought up to believe) that those subjects are things which 'real' women just don't do. Feminists such as Walker point to everything from pink Hello Kitty pencil boxes to (notoriously) "tropes" in video games that all work hold girls and women back.

In other words, they would fully concur with Wright that: "cultural narratives (or if you like, myths) ... guide our perception every bit as strongly as did the old religious stories".

Furthermore, every time you hear phrases such as "systemic injustice" or "systemic inequality" what they are referring to is precisely those same "large institutional organisms generating narratives that we absorb" and, going further, whenever they raise up the dreaded spectre of Patriarchy they are doing so to describe the idea that "those who perpetuate [these myths] are often driven by motives of power, profit or revenge." - that, after all, is how some of them eventually arrive at 'Cis White Heteropatriarchal Capitalism'.

But this is a victim narrative writ large across the whole of a society - there are the doers (the Patriarchy; the Capitalists; the Imperialists; the "‘entities’ ... large institutional organisms generating narratives"), who oppress, and then there are the done-to ("the sleepy masses") who are not only the oppressed but willing collaborators in their own oppression.

And, of course, there are also the prophets - those are the ones who (by some means which are never satisfactorily explained) are able to stand outside the system of doers/oppressors-and-done-to/oppressed while also belonging to the done-to/oppressed class and see it for what it "really is" and therefore describe it to the 'sleepers' in an attempt to wake them up (hence, presumably, 'woke').

I find that description of how things are to be nonsensical for a number of reasons and it is because of this that I have a major objection to most forms of feminism that I know of and certainly major objections to almost all (if not actually all) 'pop' feminists - Anita Sarkeesian, Laurie Penny, Amanda Marcotte, Jessica Valenti, Clementine Ford, Caroline Cried-Perez and so on and so on.

My point being that if like me you are someone who regularly face-palms at the pseudo-mystical and quasi-religious gobbledegook which passes for a great deal of the descriptions of Patriarchy then how can that criticism be squared with what Wright says?

2 In that article Peter Wright, seems to be simply re-spinning the concept so that the Patriarchy becomes a Gynocracy, but otherwise the structure of the argument used by many feminists remains intact.

As I see it, this is flawed for a number of reasons:

(a) It actually works to strengthen the claims made in much of feminism which say that society is constructed and operated in such a way that it permanently advantages one class or group over others. The actual errors that underpin this kind of thinking are left untouched and so it actually gives credibility to a deeply nonsensical belief in systems of power within a wider network of interconnected systems all producing and reproducing inequalities and injustices. In short, Wright seems to be doing feminism's work for it by confirming their worldview as being correct in general even if wrong on specific details.

For instance, how is the following extract from Wright's piece basically not the same as the justification used by feminist activists to go into Wikipedia and re-write entries from a feminist perspective (my italics)?

But not all mythologies serve to increase the power, profit and revenge of tyrants and therein lies the challenge for men’s rights activists who work to create new accounts of life that include the male perspective.

[ ... ] men-who-sit-at-screens are not particularly representative of men in general.

More importantly, they are not particularly representative of those who have typically wielded the most power in the past.

[ ... ] the shift of power toward men-who-sit-at-screens will definitely bring about a change in the overall psychology of those who have the most influence.

If the idea of re-writing reality by re-writing the narratives we tell about it and the claim that the people doing the rewriting have been traditionally excluded from power sounds familiar, it's because that is pretty much what feminism argues for when they want to control language and behaviour.

(b) The very fact that two opposing movements - the MRM and Feminists - can use the exactly same concept of how society is constructed and operates and yet come up with radically different visions of the content and details which fill up those structures ought to be a big red flag that maybe there might very well be something wrong with the idea of a too-simplistic description of "cultural narratives", "entities" and so on.

(c) Surely, we should be suspicious of any movement of any kind that claims to be in possession of a 'revealed truth'? I mean, I'm happy for 'The Red Pill' to be used as a handy metaphor for going against the grain of popular ideas, and for the discussion of practically taboo topics, but there is a huge difference between that and subscribing to an idea that ordinary people -like me, maybe like you too - have had all their agency removed and intelligence discounted because they are not 'woke' like the prophets are, but part of the "sleepy masses";

(d) Any movement that feels comfortable referring to "sleepy masses" is a movement that is implicitly suggesting that people not only can be controlled, but should be controlled - for some greater good, where the greater good is defined by whatever the particular 'revealed truth' happens to be;

(e) Accepting the vision described by Wright is buying into a form of revolutionary identity politics in the feminist mold - in fact it's pretty much buying into it wholesale.

Many people round here spend a lot of time trying to unravel the contradictions in that kind of politics so it seems odd to see it promoted on this sub.