Crosspost "Interview with a Men's Rights Activist" from /r/UnpopularInterviews:

I'd like to preface the following interview by saying that I had a slightly negative view of MRAs, but now can see why some people would choose to be a MRA.

What made you get into men's rights and was it gradual or relatively sudden?

I was a youth worker in the 90s when the suicide rate of young men spiked. So I have been interested in men's issues for a while. Several years ago I became aware of a few unfair things men face and started looking into it a bit more. The more I looked the more I found that there were a lot of issues that weren't being addressed in a meaningful way. This pricked my sense of fairness and justice so I started doing more to address those concerns.

Why do you believe some individuals hate the men's right movement?

Here's something I discussed with someone else: Firstly, people have a bias towards seeing men as having agency, and women as lacking agency. Tania Reynolds did some research recently supports this. She found that people are more likely to see women as victims and men as perpetrators. For women, this means it is difficult for them to be taken as seriously as men. This idea is familiar to most people when talking about women in leadership. It also shows up in the justice system where judges are less likely to see women as serious criminals. Samantha Jeffries looked the the statements from judges and found that judges often talked about women being led astray by others or being a victim of circumstances. That is, having less agency. On the contrary, judges talk about men as being bad and dangerous and needing punishment over rehabilitation. That is, having more agency. (The result of this is men getting longer sentences for the same crimes).This difference in perceived agency ties into how people feel about helping a person. We feel good about helping someone who lacks agency. It is the right thing to do. Like being charitable to poor people. Helping someone who as agency is seen as distasteful or wrong. If someone has agency they don't need help. Helping them is like giving money to rich people. So because men are seen as having agency, helping them is seen as more objectionable than helping women.

Secondly, we have a societal tradition of expecting men to protect and provide. Suggesting that we should be protecting and providing for men goes against men's long-standing gender role.

Thirdly, the dominant model for gender relations is dominated by conflict theory, critical theory and intersectionality. In fact, Sociologist Michael Flood says that gender equality should only be viewed through this lens. This views gender relations in terms of power and conflict. Men have the power and women lack power. Change must come from a revolutionary change to the power structures between men and women where women are empowered to even out the power differential between men and women. When Flood says 'gender equality' he means equal power between men and women. With this view of the world, empowering men increases gender inequality by widening the power gap between men and women. Flood says that men's rights activists are only using the progressive language of gender equality to try to prevent men's loss of privilege and are really trying to go back to a more patriarchal society where men had more power. Men's rights activists do not accept this view of the world. Instead, they use other models for understanding gender relations, for example, a functionalist perspective sees gender relations as a co-operative point of view. Traditional gender roles were a division of labour and functioned reasonably well, until things like the industrial revolution and birth control changed society dramatically. Evolutionary psychology also provides a useful perspective for gender relations.

Fourthly, most people are largely ignorant of men's issues. For example, most people don't realise that in many western countries women have more legal rights than men. In my country, we have laws that explicitly discriminate against men. If someone thinks that women are lacking rights but men aren't then they can't really understand what the purpose of a men's rights activist is. Finally, most of the messages about MRAs in the media are negative. People have just absorbed their views from the media and others around them. One of the biggest problems is that the term MRA is applied to people who are not MRAs. The term is used as a general pejorative. For example, anyone who says anything vaguely pro-man, anti-feminist or misogynistic is labelled an MRA without the labeller knowing if they actually do any activism for men's rights

TL:DR: People hate MRAs because

  1. Biases we have to see women as lacking agency and men as having agency
  2. Advocating for men goes against traditional gender roles
  3. MRAs don't agree with the status quo on gender relations
  4. People are ignorant about men's issues and don't see the need to advocate for men
  5. Media distortion of MRAs

Has being an MRA ever affected your work and/or your personal life?

Being an MRA hasn't really affected me negatively. I'm not working currently because of health problems. My personal life is also mostly unaffected because I don't have a wide social circle and I use common sense about when it is appropriate to talk about men's issues.

I think being involved in the MRM has made me a better person. I've been forced to do some introspection and that's lead me to understand myself and other better. I went to see a feminist speak on her book promotion tour a couple of months ago. It was interesting because when I thought about something I didn't like about her approach , or her attitude to certain things, I realised that I had been guilty of doing the same kind of things. So while I didn't find much of what she said to be useful or convincing, it was a really useful experience because I learned more about myself and the things I have been doing that have been getting in the way of being an effective advocate for men.

Is there anything you'd like to say or clear up?

Firstly, MRAs are politically diverse. There's people like me who are more left leaning, who see advocating for men as a way to address injustice and unfairness in society. Other lefties see that working class men are getting a raw deal, or that racism against blacks tends to be directed mostly at black men (eg stop and search disproportionately affects black men more than black women). There's right leaning MRAs who see a problem with governments trying to enforce equal outcomes, or are concerned about the devaluation of fathers.

In any case I don't think the MRM fits well into the left-right spectrum. It doesn't really fit on the left, because the left's discourse is focused on intersectional feminism (as I said above). It doesn't fit on the right because the traditional gender role for men is to man up, not complain and do your duty. The men's rights sub was the subject of a study which included political orientation. You can see the result here.

Next, I 'd like to address the issue of anti-feminism. First, let me say that I did the Feminist Perspectives Scale test and scored highly for 'liberal feminist' and I think that reasonably accurately describes my beliefs.

Feminism has two basic meanings.

One, the belief that men and women should be treated equally, and, two, a political movement to promote women's rights and interests. In feminist literature the term anti-feminist typically means anti-equality (the first definition), however, in the MRM anti-feminist typically refers to opposition to the feminist political movement, not opposition to gender equality.

Not all MRAs oppose feminism, but those that do, don't oppose feminism for it's ideals, but rather the actions of the political movement. Most people aren't aware of the things the feminist movement has done and is doing that work against gender equality for men. For example, the sentencing guidebook for judges in the UK directs judges to be more lenient to female criminals, even though women are treated more leniently than men in the justice system. This was the result of feminists campaigning. Many MRAs also oppose significant amounts of feminist theory. Anti-feminism is not the same as anti-women.

This concludes the interview.

Posted by [deleted] | 18 June 2019 | Link