Hi guys. just wanted to talk about my experience with this subreddit and other pro men's issues spaces online, as well as with feminist spaces. Here goes.

While i never did call myself a feminist in the past (i had never even heard of it at the time), i used to believe the claims that were made about them: they hated women, they wanted to take away women's rights, they were a hate group on par with the kkk and other stuff like that. Then, later on in my life, i came across Dr Shaym's youtube channel, where he spoke out against feminist views. Sure youtube videos may be cringe as a source, but while i found that at times he could be a bit too aggressive, he did bring up good points in his videos. There were also other videos exposing how far feminists were willing to go to to shut down events that dared to cover men's issues. This obviously put me off from feminism.

At some point, i followed certain feminist social media spaces to see if they acted in the way i had been told they did. maybe not the best way to do it but i didn't know how else to. I never did directly engage with the pages, it was more of me observing the behaviours. obviously they did talk about women's issues, which i of course had no issue with. But i found that too often it felt as if they were leaving men out of the picture, despite the constant messages of "feminism is for equality, feminism cares about men's issues too", and even when they did talk about men, it was never about the struggles men face, or what they go through, it was only ever about how men were the problem, and how they were responsible for basically all the atrocities that happen in the world. I also found that, when some people (both men and women) tried to disagree with them on a certain issue, or when some people dared to talk about the issues men faced and how life isn't all so glamorous as it was portrayed, feminists could not handle it without immediately going on the offensive and being rude to those people, going off about how they were misogynistic and sexist when they actually weren't, oh and of course how they were neckbeard incels who would never find a romantic partner. After a while of this, i stopped following, as they had shown me they were incapable of handling different opinions and how they treated people who criticised or disagreed with feminism in some way. In fact, one time i was at a family function, and at some point i stated that while i obviously did care about gender equality and pro women's rights, i didn't call myself a feminist, and i was received with reactions that made it seem like i had just admitted to committing a crime.

On the other hand, i found that online mra spaces were nothing like they were claimed to be. In comparison, the mra spaces did not once say anything about hating women or whatever, in fact when someone did try to be misogynistic, they were called out on their behaviour and told that it wasn't acceptable to be misogynistic. I also found they took disagreement and criticism in a much better, logical way than feminist spaces did. A couple of years ago, when i first came across this subreddit, i at first was nervous because, while obviously i have strong opinions about men's issues being looked after due to the fact that men's issues are rarely brought up, and i'd go as far as to say it's practically taboo to do so, i thought i was going to find what i had been told: it was going to be a space of how women's rights should be removed and all that stuff. But when i did give it a chance, i found that this sub was nothing like i thought it was, with there being posts about discrimination against men, and even men who had gone through something bad and that wanted to vent and feel part of a community, which reinforced my beliefs that mra's are not the monsters they are portrayed to be, even when there are certain views i disagree with.

And that's my experience with feminism and mra spaces. Anybody else want to share their experiences?

tl;dr: used to believe usual claims made about mra's, found that mra's were not as bad as portrayed to be