So, I've been doing a bit of thinking. Ever since the article on thedailybeast by Nancy Kaffer a few days ago, I've come to realize that there's a communication gap between men and women. Kaffer treats the entire MRM with scorn, despite doing no research whatsoever as to what the MRM actually is or stands for. She dismisses the whole thing as mysogeny. While we have some of those around here, I don't believe you judge a group by the actions of its most radical element, so, for the same reason, I'm not going to say all feminists engage in misandry, even though many prominent ones do.

I think the key to us understanding each other lies in being able to walk in each other's shoes. There's the classic "Lex Luthor" problem. Briefly, the reason why Lex can never beat Superman, even though A) Batman's been doing if for decades and B) post-Watchmen, stories where the bad guys win were in vogue (The Joker started beating Batman every so often in the five years after Watchmen, when he never won in the 45 years before it) is because of Lex's mindset. He doesn't understand that Superman is different from himself, and he's always trying to devise ways to defeat himself if he had Superman's power, instead of focusing on ways to beat Superman as he is. Lex believes that anyone with Superman's powers would have to be like Lex himself is.

Similarly, women know all to well what the problems of being female are, just like men know what the problems of being male are. Neither gender recognizes the other's issues because, to those of a gender, the problems of the other are invisible. Lex understands people who run billion dollar companies and run for president, he's not familiar with farm-boys from Kansas. Lex thinks Superman is the former, when he's actually the later.

The stats reflect this. If you wanted to say, thirty years ago, there was a campus rape epidemic, I would have agreed with you, but rape rates have been in steady decline for the last thirty years (according to metrics that other users of this sub have posted). Its much safer, rape-wise, to be female in a western country in 2014 than it was in 1985. Still, there's a "campus rape culture". Whenever you hear something that flies in the face of data, ask yourself who benefits by propogating an untruth? 4 out of 10 Americans don't believe in climate change being man-made, despite overwhelming scientific evidence, at least there, its not hard to figure out who benefits.

Everyone of us should be aware that we can be inflicited with the mob mentality. After 9/11, America was deceived into invading a country that had nothing to do with 9/11. The UVA rape story in rolling stones was lightning in a bottle, because it came after "yes means yes" and re-inforced the need for such laws. Such momentum is still going forward, despite the UVA "smoking gun" not being true. Doesn't really matter if its disproven after the fact, the Duke Lacrosse guys aren't getting their lives back either. There will always be a much larger percentage of people who heard the initial allegation and believed it, and never heard about the rebuttal, than there will be people who heard the rebuttal and never heard the initial allegation. Even lies push the needle forward. Ask UVA whether its had frat activities on campus right now, which were suspended after the RS article, despite the article not being true.

That's the answer to Kaffer's question, why do men need a men's rights movement. Men need one because women ignore facts to further the women's rights movement. There is a tiny percentage of men at the very top who have it made, most of us are like most women, just trying to get by.

On thanksgiving, I was having dinner with my family, when I heard a story that stuck with me. My cousin (female) was talking about a friend of her's who had been in a Long term relationship with a guy. Her friend was egging her boyfriend on for marriage, and the guy was not budging. The friend eventually said we'll give it another year, and if you still don't want to marry me, we should split up. Another year went by, and the couple had been together six years total. The friend laid down an ultimatum, either marry me or I'm gone. The guy said fine, go, so the friend left. My two sisters and my cousin were discussing this story and couldn't make anything of it. I knew what the answer was, but wisely kept my mouth shut (women do not want to hear these things). My two sisters and my cousin went to some of the most elite universities in the world, and have great jobs. They're very sharp knives, but they don't know what men go through, what men think of marriage, and why a man will often get cold feet. I understood perfectly well why my cousin's friend's boyfriend didn't want to get married. It made perfect sense to me, because I've seen my own male friends go through it. If a guy has cold feet about marriage, there's usually a pretty obvious reason why, and that reason is something he'll only tell other guys. My cousin didn't know why her friend's boyfriend didn't want marriage. I doubt the reason would have been that difficult to figure out, if my cousin's friend knew where to look.

My cousin and sisters asked "well, why stay with her for six years if he wasn't ever going to marry her?" That's easy. Every guy has noticed that when you're with a girl, or you're chasing hard after a girl, you become far more attractive to women in general. You get offers for dates and stuff that you never got before. When I was pursuing, and getting shot down by, my dream girl many years ago, a strange side-effect was that I suddenly had far more offers from other girls than I have ever had in my life, before or since. Sometimes, men stay in a Long Term Relationship just to preserve their market value. Women likely do not know this, which is why we need better communication. I'm sure that the same thing is true the other way around. I've known nice guys who thought they were going to hook up with a girl, who got broadsided after months of prep work when she let some asshole stick her. There's probably an obvious reason for that too, that men just do not understand.

Edit: TL;DR - men and women need to work on their communication, and both genders do not understand certain things about the other.