Many people want us to sign petitions, because it might help our cause. I don't think we should concentrate on that. In fact I think it would be a bad thing.

I have five years of professional experience in the political arena, as well as thirty years of amateur activism in my free time. I can assure you that 99.9% of petitions are completely ignored by those in power.

All those people who sign petitions are wasting their time. Even worse, they think they've done something - and this prevents them from actually doing something.

The things that would actually help achieve change, roughly in descending order of effectiveness, are:

  • Creating and organising activist groups for proper action. We need to form support groups and activist lobbies for everything, just like the feminists did. That's one of the most important things at this stage. Getting organised.

  • Comments on public forums and news articles where others can see. This is a good example of one you could use yourself. For comment use, it can be good to keep a supply of replies to common misandrist rants in a text file. Just copy and paste, then edit to suit the individual circumstances. Always keep in mind that the entire point of an Internet argument is not to convince your opponent. It's to convince the people who are reading and not posting - there are about a hundred times more of those.

  • Personal meetings with representatives

  • Personal meetings with the staff of representatives. I was one of those staff, and I had more personal influence than some actual politicians.

  • Personal paper letters to politicans, political staff, advertisers and media. Here is a handy table of relevant statistics and resources Here's another info site. Both are new and currently not fully verified - I would appreciate it if someone who has the time would give it a look.

  • Phone calls to the above

  • Emails to the above. Example.

  • Donations to organised groups, helping out, and so on.

I've left street demonstrations off the list, because their effectiveness is extremely uncertain. A million people marching would get attention,a couple of people with signs might get laughed at. But don't let that discourage you; each person who becomes aware is a victory - and you have to start somewhere. Personally, I don't attend these very often because I think they're not all that useful, but your mileage may vary.

There are other aspects that I might discuss later, but don't have the time for today. However, these are the things that work. More on activism.

Edit: There are some cases where petitions may help, but as wisty said, it's usually when the media are friendly to the cause. And most of the media are not friendly to ours, though I expect this to change over time. It's already starting.

So I'm not saying never sign a petition. I've signed a few myself. What I am saying is don't stop there - do one or more of the other things too.

Edit 2: I've changed and added a few things in this post.In particular, I've uprated and expanded the section about comments in public forums, because I remembered that was the main reason the MRM actually started to go mainstream. I cannot overstate the importance of putting our points on public forums where random silent readers can see them. Also this is relevant.

Edit 3: Some people are worried that we lack leadership, money and lobbying power. Don't worry about that. You only need a small intelligent and disciplined core group that can gradually begin to shift public opinion. Small example.

Then there'll be the less dedicated activists and those who come and go, but they will serve their purpose too.

Once you begin to get enough of these, public opinion will slowly shift. More donations and votes will come as the movement begins to go viral and its memes replicate themselves.

A few years later, you'll have all that good lobby power and the ability to actually change things.

Consider the history of feminism. It went through exactly that process. So did most other successful social movements. I think it will be much faster this time.

Despite the slowing effect of generational change, the Internet will speed things up dramatically. It already has.

Persistence and patience are the keys to success.