Recently, I've been seeing people posting on here that the repetition ad nauseam of "if a man did X, people would lose they fucking minds" is unhelpful, off-topic, or reactionary; I'd like to question that move, because I think that while crude, asking if the situation would change if the genders were reversed is actually a good common-sense way to point out double standards.

Feminists have long been keen to point out double standards in both the western industrialized world and in developing countries all over the world. Especially for developing countries and cultures, this is a very good thing, because people still don't have equal rights in many places. But feminists do one thing extra--they latch onto any inequality as an excuse for their own agendas of social change and programming.

That's why I feel it's important for the MRM to keep on asking the question "what if the genders were reversed?" when discussing topics about life for men in the west. It keeps feminists honest in debate, because they cannot bring up struggles of people halfway across the world in lands that don't even have running water or reliable electricity; it also keeps MRAs on topic about what really matters to the movement--men's rights.

Men are severely disadvantaged in the most serious aspects of life in the western world with respect to women:

  • Suicide

  • Homicide

  • All forms of physical violence except rape

  • Educational achievement

  • Crime victimization (especially domestic violence resources that will cater to men)

  • Prison sentencing/living conditions

  • Healthcare opportunities

  • Financial burdens on men (both at home, stuck in traditional provider roles as women spend 80+% of consumer income, and in the larger society as men's earnings are taxed at increasing rates for ever-larger welfare and Social Security programs that disproportionately benefit women)

Keeping the pressure on feminists to justify not focusing on these extreme disparities in health, welfare, prosperity, and achievement that exist at all levels of society exposes the direct result of feminist legislation and political/social programming, which has directed the largest part of western society's resources for the people who need it the least.

So yeah--if men, sitting there in the oval office or in parliament or in their national councils, conspired to directly steer the vast majority of resources, benefits, achievements towards men as a gender, totally explicitly with names like "Council for Men's Advancement" and "Office for Men's Affairs," women would be absolutely in the right for claiming that a ridiculous and intolerable double standard exists in western culture that favors men. We should similarly be pointing out that same double standard when it favors women, even if by just asking the question of "what if a man did X?"