MRA or Antifeminist.

Crosspost "[Serene Sunday] Men's Rights Activists in 2018" from /r/FeMRADebates:

I haven't flaired as an MRA on here in quite some time. There are plenty of reasons for that, but an important one is that for a long time it's seemed that to be an MRA has meant being an Anti-Feminist first. During my time here on FRD, I have met many great feminists, many of whom have sadly left of the sub for one reason or another. My interacting with them has caused my Anti-Feminism to mellow out into a merely "non-Feminist" status. To be clear, by "non-Feminist" I don't mean I don't support Women's Rights efforts, merely that many feminisms I have seen I disagree with and cannot stand with. That said, feminists like u/Proud_Slut, u/LordLeesa, and u/femmecheng are usually people I agree with and generally find their brand of feminism in line with my own beliefs. Other feminists like u/TryptamineX I can barely understand, but their grasp on their brand of feminism has led me to believe that there are feminists who earnestly contribute value through their feminism.

And for all that, that isn't what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about supporting Men's Rights. This takes on many flavors and has many aspects that are difficult (possibly impossible) to pin down. It seems to me, from speaking to many others, that men are finally realizing they have a "Problem without a name". Women talked this problem for themselves decades ago, employing education, therapy, small groups, politics, and misandry, to flesh out what is the name for their problem. The feminist movement today understands, at least in part, what the names of their problems are. I do not think the same can be said of men and I think it is important, nay essential, that we give men the space to do so for themselves.

One person, frequently spoken about today, has said that men's problem is that they need to return to traditionalism. That if they are miserable, they should clean their rooms, go out into the world and solve their problem like their grandfathers did. I'm not so sure about that being the best thing. But, to quote an older user on here, what would be best might not make men any happier. What is best for men is to wrestle with the issues they face, find a name for their problem and explore what that means. That will mean men will need to employ education, therapy, small groups, politics and, yes, misogyny. I do not hate women. I don't think hating women is a particularly beneficial thing for anyone to do. But I recognize that many men may need to go through hating women to explore the problems they are living in.

This being said, I do not think, or believe, that said misogyny has any place in public discourse. We do not live in a society where that will lead to anything by ostracism (at the mildest). We can tackle the issues men face without engaging in misogyny. Problems like Father's Rights, Paternity Fraud, Selective Service, Education, Sentencing Bias, Alimony, and many more. None of that needs to be engaged using hatred of women. Some women might feel like it's misogyny, for, as the old adage goes, "When one is used to privilege, equality feels like discrimination", but that doesn't mean any of us need to employ it.

Tangentially, I think that the policy of "Anti-feminism First" needs to die. Not everything a feminist says or does needs to be fought against. Feminists have explored many elements of gender and sex and femininity through a lens that MRAs might benefit from understanding, even if we don't find them useful to men. People like Tryp who write long posts about Foucault and power dynamics are not necessarily writing things we should reject just because a feminist wrote it. Should MRAs oppose misandry? Sure. Absolutely. I've had to look away and ignore certain feminists because I am both powerless to do anything and hurt by every word they write. But we don't need to reject all of feminism wholesale.

Finally, I'd like to invite any MRAs, or those who might have once identified as such to join me in trying to be the change to what the term MRA means. Once upon a time, long long ago, (okay maybe not *that* long ago) we benefited from being a part of a unified manosphere, but (to use an all to frequent cliche) it's 2018, and we should be past that. We don't need tradcons, TRP, PUA, or any of the other less savory elements of the manosphere in our movement. We can stand alone as people who want to improve things for men because men deserve a voice too.