I am for Men's Rights but...

c0mputar · 2014-05-30T18:14:35+00:00

It can be very tedious to not indict all feminists when typing up a post. I do my best to deliberately make sure that I preface any mention of the word feminists with "media", "prominent", "many", "some", "radicals".... Or just refer to the target group as SJWs.

I definitely agree that contributors to this sub should do their best to not encompass all feminists when they are being critical. I consider myself to be a feminist in conjunction with being an MRA, so I know what people actually intend when they use generalizations. However, for those who are not as informed as we are, it can look like unjustified hate to an entire group of people, and not just directed to an intended subgroup of those people where the context of the discussion actually has any relevance.

BlindPelican · 2014-05-30T18:26:31+00:00

I agree. Generalizations tend to water down the discussion as well. Even if the intended target of a comment was an individual or sub-group, use of the "all" qualifier tends to lead things astray.

Far too easy to find irrelevant counter examples when you aren't specific in commentary and criticism.

typhonblue · 2014-05-30T19:39:10+00:00

How about all feminists who agree that men oppress/oppressed women?

graffic · 2014-05-30T18:35:54+00:00

I'm repeating myself.

There was a nice answer given by Karen. Let me summarize it: why do feel attached to the word feminist? There are other words like egalitarian, humanist. It symbolizes a lot of things and not all of them are good. Of course not all feminist are like that. Although mainstream, academic, scholar, movement feminism... any feminist that matters, are going to have those bad things. You have the power to call yourself feminist and give those people moral permission to keep doing what they do. Feminism isn't synonymous with women rights. The word it's been poisoned beyond redemption.

Link to the answer: http://youtu.be/sfgbIM3gvyI?t=41m24s

This has been discussed before: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen/2013/08/16/honey-badger-radio-cathy-young

DavidByron2 · 2014-05-30T22:27:14+00:00

This crappy argument seems to come up daily.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26thw8/what_has_brought_me_here/chucvag

2014-05-30T18:50:33+00:00

I agree too

TheresanotherJoswell · 2014-05-30T18:48:25+00:00

Good call. The quality of discussion is of upmost importance.

xNOM · 2014-05-30T21:30:51+00:00

My point is, saying 'all feminists' immediately puts off any potential advocate for Men's Rights

Noone says this. We just say 'feminists'. I have no problem with it. If you were opposed to the word 'cunts' I would understand. Stop worrying about hurting people's feelings.

Astiolo · 2014-05-30T19:23:01+00:00

In complete agreement here. I heard a feminist say she came here trying to take us seriously but couldn't because of all the women behaving badly posts being up voted (not exactly the same issue but similar). What people see when they come here is very important and there shouldn't be any indications of sexism.

jcea_ · 2014-05-30T20:10:17+00:00

What do you mean work together?

Feminism doesn't work with men's issues and creates or makes many of them worse.

Sure there might be coffee shop feminists that aren't problem feminists - but they are irrelevant.

BlackMRA-edtastic · 2014-05-30T23:32:01+00:00

Just had a long hard day of fighting the feminist scourge in twitter land where MRA's seem conspicuously scarce. Attacking feminist in general is what we supposed to do because they are trying to label us a terrorist organization and have launched an all out assault the likes of which I've never seen against something as tiny as Men's Rights. People attack Conservatives, and Liberals all the time and life goes on. For some reason feminist think their hot shit. I do not agree. These people are corrupt as the day is long not as individuals, but as a movement.

It's a vast web of lies that boggles the mind with dogma, propaganda, and rhetoric to defend it all. If we want allies then we need to be the threat they think we are. That will win us some friends who'd rather do right to shut us up than face the risk of having us turn people against them.

It would be nice if you guys got on those hashtags and did some educating. Bring your infographics and you will be engaged so be prepared to make some concise points on complex issues.

"In summary, I think we need to try and build some bridges and try and work together with others even if currently we don't see eye to eye."

In summary we're fighting for half of humanity and we shouldn't act like punks looking for feminist cookies. They can respect us as equals and our lack of regard for them is a direct result of their assault on men. If they respect men they'll have our respect but this half of humanity needs to stop folding every time these victim mongers break out a scared white girl with a pitiable story of groping. Let em know someone grabbed your butt too damn it.

BigAlbinoRhino · 2014-05-31T04:43:04+00:00

I agree that a lot of people are being really harsh on here, which is wrong. It IS about equality, and, as a male, I can never seem to see either side attempting compromise.

Nomenimion · 2014-05-30T18:45:58+00:00

Building bridges with feminists gets you half a bridge. It's a waste... or worse.

I can't say this enough times: you don't reason with them. You fight.

baskandpurr · 2014-05-31T00:02:04+00:00

This argument doesn't work very well with feminists.

http://time.com/79357/not-all-men-a-brief-history-of-every-dudes-favorite-argument/

dejour · 2014-05-31T05:15:04+00:00

I suggested using feminist™ to describe self-described feminists who are really anti-male sexists.

And feminist for actual gender egalitarians.

That way, you can just say "feminists™ don't care about men" or whatever.

zpatriarchy · 2014-05-30T20:24:48+00:00

thanks for the....concern

Lobstermansunion · 2014-05-30T22:34:10+00:00

I often praise individual Feminists when they genuinely contribute to human rights.

Feminism, the movement, is supremacist and doesn't even support the rights of most women let alone men.

I'm not going to mince words on the latter because the former hasn't done their due diligence to understand the monstrosity they are supporting.

MRSPArchiver · 2014-05-30T17:59:41+00:00

Post text automatically copied here. (Why?) (Report a problem.)

SalientKing · 2014-05-30T20:53:56+00:00

Okay, i'll correct myself: Most Tumbler Feminists (including Wil Wheaton).

anonlymouse · 2014-05-31T18:34:10+00:00

I'd like to see some examples of the exact phrase "all feminists" being used.

2014-06-01T00:58:17+00:00

It's not my job to distinguish between Feminisms; it's theirs.

"In its simplest form that's exactly what we want is it not?"

If by "simplest form" you meant "stripped of differences", then yeah, we're exactly the same. We want equality where the world is biased against men; Feminists want equality in a world that is only biased against women: those are not the same things.

Whiskeytogo · 2014-05-30T19:59:54+00:00

I do agree that absolutes are never any good, however, the current perspective of the feminist is largely due to what the majority put in public domain. Maybe feminist should be more conscious about how the deal with social issues and not speak in absolutes as well. To put it bluntly, I'm sure that not all Nazis were bad, but....

johnmarkley · 2014-05-30T23:39:37+00:00

We should try and be the better people

Someone who says "people who've aligned themselves with this ideology this ideology suck," even unfairly, is already being better than someone who says "the half of the human race with this unchosen, unchangeable innate characteristic sucks." Significantly so.

xNOM · 2014-05-30T20:57:36+00:00

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

rbrockway · 2014-05-31T13:53:40+00:00

I've been pondering this lately. Using the term feminist (as I have done in the past) invariably results in someone saying NAFALT.

My main concern here is that this distracts from the point I am trying to make. As such I have recently been using the term institutional feminism.

I prefer this term over alternatives because I think it refers both to feminist organisations and also feminists in academia - the two groups that have principally espoused misandry and attacked men's rights.

kurtu5 · 2014-05-30T22:05:26+00:00

Does "all third wave feminists" work better?

For example, Christina Hoff Sommers is a feminist and is fine with me.

theskepticalidealist · 2014-05-31T15:04:41+00:00

It's not "all feminists" since Christina Hoff Sommers self identifies still as a feminist and her work is listed in the recommended reading list in this subs side bar

However, MOST that identify as feminists are "like that". And most people are. However this is not a defence of feminism at all since feminism is necessarily gynocentric, the history of the movement has always been gynocentric, and if you really are an egalitarian that identifies as a feminist then you are in name only for emotional reasons since there is no valid linguistic reason for a gendered word to refer to gender quality

rocelot7 · 2014-05-30T21:45:28+00:00

Most people just don't give a shit. But if feminists let their misandric, hateful, censor happy members lead and speak for the movement, I have no problem calling you when of them.

iongantas · 2014-05-31T00:34:40+00:00

If someone calls themself a feminist, even if they only mean "equality for all" in a real sense, they are still tacitly supporting radical feminists who promote false ideas such as patriarchy, rape culture, and male-privilege, whether they mean to or not. It is entirely appropriate to make them aware of this.

TorontoMike · 2014-05-31T07:00:20+00:00

I am not going to bother to pick out the Fly shit from the pepper, I will leave it to Feminists to police themselves and ostracize their hate mongers. As long as the major speakers and banner carriers for feminism are outspoken bigots, than I will say "Feminists are bad " without reservation .

guywithaccount · 2014-05-31T03:27:04+00:00

Feminists are like police: if there were really any good ones, they would arrest all the others. QED.

TrouserTorpedo · 2014-05-31T01:29:53+00:00

Most men are not rapists, so stereotyping them would be wrong.

Most feminists who are at all active are "like that" - stereotyping them is actually pretty valid, especially given that they choose to identify with their ideology.

Being a man is not a personal choice. I am not lending support to men who are rapists simply by virtue of being a man.

When I say "I support feminism", I am lending support to the most significant group of feminists. I am not just lending support to my specific branch. I am lending support to academic feminists, and NOW.

2014-05-31T12:54:03+00:00

The only good feminists are former feminists. Women with enough sense to recognize what a complete farce the mainstream of their movement has become simply declare themselves humanist.

unbannable9412 · 2014-05-31T06:11:17+00:00

All feminists are misandrists, whether explicitly or implicitly is only a detail of their own ignorance about feminism and it's actions.

In summary, I think we need to try and build some bridges and try and work together with others even if currently we don't see eye to eye.

You cannot be fucking serious...

Feminists have slandered, abused, levied untrue accusations at us, tried to pin some mass murder who had no objective relation to us on us, have gone out of their way to silence us, and hide male victims and female abusers, and you want us to "build bridges".

Fuck you very much you ignorant twit.

But there are those who purely label themselves feminists because of one core value 'gender equality of the sexes'.

Yea, like someone who joins the Klan for the sake of "racial pride".

But do MRAs not have a bad name at the moment? (undeservedly).

You just fucking answered your own goddamn question, we are not in fact responsible for the shit feminists accuse of us of, we do not support rape, spousal abuse, or some narcissistic mass murderer, there is no evidence we do.

On the other hand there is evidence of feminists condoning bigotry against men, abusing and silencing male victims, while aggrandizing female abusers as positive.

That's the fucking difference.

This doesn't mean that you suddenly change your banner to carry on promoting equality.

If the ideology whose flag you're flying commits a documented atrocity, and isn't just slandered, yes you do fly a new fucking flag, but hell most feminists can't even be bothered to know their dirty laundry exists, let alone do anything about it, they're that fucking intellectually lazy.

There are radicals. There's no question of that. There's also level headed people who are open to listening to the 'other side'. Don't shut them off before they get a chance to hear what you have to say.

The damage feminism has done to men's rights is unforgivably horrific, generations of victims, and probably more in the future who will never come forward because by feminist definition, men are the abusers, but never the abused.

So don't fucking try to berate me with an olive branch when feminists don't fucking deserve it.

dopp2 · 2014-05-30T19:27:22+00:00

'All feminist' are radical 3th wave feminists by definition. Unless we talk about Iraq or Saudi, equality rights such as employment and voting etc are already solved. So either feminist lives in past or is promoting female supremacy.

Some people are promoting equal rights and say there are feminists. But they very soon convert to equalists or MHRA, because the way they are treated by other feminists.

Hell, if feminism is about equality, then MHRA should natural sub-group within feminism.

waves_of_ignerence · 2014-05-30T23:21:51+00:00

They're exclusively a hate movement. Why would we want to work with them?

That's like a member of the NAACP insisting we work with the Klan.

The so-called feminists that agree with us are only considered feminists by them and certainly not by other feminists.

TacticusThrowaway · 2014-05-30T22:34:50+00:00

I just like to use "gynocentric feminists" or "tumblr feminists" or "social justice warriors".

2014-05-31T03:29:59+00:00

Actually I think we should blanket all feminists frequently - under the agreement that when they say "not all feminists!", we then link to that meme page for "not all men" or something similar, and then tell them to stop derailing.

When they stop with the "omg not all men" bullshit, then we stop lumping them in with Andrea Dworkin

Title	I am for Men's Rights but...
Author	opinionated32
Upvotes	128
Comments	141
Date	May 30, 2014 5:59 PM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26w4zj/i_am_for_mens_rights_but/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/i-am-for-mens-rights-but.999924 https://theredarchive.com/post/999924

Comments