The NS Mens Rights Thread

[Camicon]

I accept that this is a legitimate view to hold, I just don't hold it personally because of the terrifying implications. If the issue is soluble, then my position is good.
If it is insoluble due to inherent differences, then fuck.

people are tribal by nature, women just consider themselves one big tribe in this case. if it's good for women, it doesn't matter the consequences for men(unless it affects their man, perhaps)

Isn't it funny that, whenever it's convenient for an argument, certain groups seem to share some sort of hive mind? Men, women, black people, immigrants, Muslims; you'd think we'd've found some kind of evidence for it by now, but oddly enough we haven't.

[Kelinfort]

people are tribal by nature, women just consider themselves one big tribe in this case. if it's good for women, it doesn't matter the consequences for men(unless it affects their man, perhaps)

Isn't it funny that, whenever it's convenient for an argument, certain groups seem to share some sort of hive mind? Men, women, black people, immigrants, Muslims; you'd think we'd've found some kind of evidence for it by now, but oddly enough we haven't.

Always "Us vs. Them".

And usually, the "Us" side has tribalists.

[Camicon]

Isn't it funny that, whenever it's convenient for an argument, certain groups seem to share some sort of hive mind? Men, women, black people, immigrants, Muslims; you'd think we'd've found some kind of evidence for it by now, but oddly enough we haven't.

Always "Us vs. Them".

And usually, the "Us" side has tribalists.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

[Haktiva]

people are tribal by nature, women just consider themselves one big tribe in this case. if it's good for women, it doesn't matter the consequences for men(unless it affects their man, perhaps)

Isn't it funny that, whenever it's convenient for an argument, certain groups seem to share some sort of hive mind? Men, women, black people, immigrants, Muslims; you'd think we'd've found some kind of evidence for it by now, but oddly enough we haven't.

it's a herd mentality as far as I can tell, groupthink.

[Kelinfort]

Always "Us vs. Them".

And usually, the "Us" side has tribalists.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here.

Those who use arguments against block groups who claim that they're tribalists are often tribalists themselves.


Basically, saying a single group has it out for us makes it more likely you're the person who wants a hivemind.

[Gauthier]

Always "Us vs. Them".

And usually, the "Us" side has tribalists.

This is always the case whenever there is a disagreement between two sides.

And homogenizing the other side as a singularity makes it easy to dismiss nuances and apply blanket generalizations.

[Camicon]

Isn't it funny that, whenever it's convenient for an argument, certain groups seem to share some sort of hive mind? Men, women, black people, immigrants, Muslims; you'd think we'd've found some kind of evidence for it by now, but oddly enough we haven't.

it's a herd mentality as far as I can tell, groupthink.

So, your argument is that all women share an automatic hive mind/herd mentality/groupthink in direct opposition to all men... because "people are tribal by nature", and apparently all women "just consider themselves one big tribe".

Do I really have to explain to you why that line of reasoning is so completely full of shit?

[Ostroeuropa]

it's a herd mentality as far as I can tell, groupthink.

So, your argument is that all women share an automatic hive mind/herd mentality/groupthink in direct opposition to all men... because "people are tribal by nature", and apparently all women "just consider themselves one big tribe".

Do I really have to explain to you why that line of reasoning is so completely full of shit?

It is full of shit yes.
However, I would argue that women are raised in such a way as to dissuade them from empathizing with men and to have in-group bias.
The studies show it exists. (Women are wonderful effect.) and such.

Some women can and do break out of this. (Karen Straughan is one obvious example.)

[Haktiva]

So, your argument is that all women share an automatic hive mind/herd mentality/groupthink in direct opposition to all men... because "people are tribal by nature", and apparently all women "just consider themselves one big tribe".

Do I really have to explain to you why that line of reasoning is so completely full of shit?

It is full of shit yes.
However, I would argue that women are raised in such a way as to dissuade them from empathizing with men and to have in-group bias.
The studies show it exists. (Women are wonderful effect.) and such.

Some women can and do break out of this. (Karen Straughan is one obvious example.)

I'm bunt as hell most of the time. I would actually like to be proven wrong, and have a lot of fun in the meantime

And I respect GWW to a point, but at the end of the day she's got her own agenda(news flash: so does everyone else). It was pretty funny that feminists got her Honey Badger Brigade kicked out of some comic convention or something, citing "harassment" when they were just stating why they disagreed with feminism over the assumption that women are always the victim or something.

Erin Pizzey is the MRA I respect the most since she got death and bomb threats for pointing out a lot of women she had in her DV shelters were just as violent and abusive as the men they were fleeing from. She actually had to leave Britain because of it, I think.

[Tahar Joblis]

it's a herd mentality as far as I can tell, groupthink.

So, your argument is that all women share an automatic hive mind/herd mentality/groupthink in direct opposition to all men... because "people are tribal by nature", and apparently all women "just consider themselves one big tribe".

Do I really have to explain to you why that line of reasoning is so completely full of shit?

It occurs to me that in some ways, feminism as a movement is founded on a practice of trying to encourage people to think of "women" as a tribe / group / unit. Many parts of feminist activism have been clearly attempts to construct class solidarity among women.

[Haktiva]

So, your argument is that all women share an automatic hive mind/herd mentality/groupthink in direct opposition to all men... because "people are tribal by nature", and apparently all women "just consider themselves one big tribe".

Do I really have to explain to you why that line of reasoning is so completely full of shit?

It occurs to me that in some ways, feminism as a movement is founded on a practice of trying to encourage people to think of "women" as a tribe / group / unit. Many parts of feminist activism have been clearly attempts to construct class solidarity among women.

if it proves anything, they react to Edward Bernays' ideas well enough.

[Tahar Joblis]

It occurs to me that in some ways, feminism as a movement is founded on a practice of trying to encourage people to think of "women" as a tribe / group / unit. Many parts of feminist activism have been clearly attempts to construct class solidarity among women.

if it proves anything, they react to Edward Bernays' ideas well enough.

Today I learned something new.

In the 1920s, working for the American Tobacco Company, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He then told the press that a group of women's rights marchers would light "Torches of Freedom". On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers. The New York Times (1 April 1929) printed: "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'". This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public. During this decade, he also handled publicity for the NAACP.[30]

And now I am beginning to think I should, perhaps, look further into what the tail end of first-wave feminists were actually doing after they got the vote, other than getting bogged down in failing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment...

[Haktiva]

if it proves anything, they react to Edward Bernays' ideas well enough.

Today I learned something new.

In the 1920s, working for the American Tobacco Company, he sent a group of young models to march in the New York City parade. He then told the press that a group of women's rights marchers would light "Torches of Freedom". On his signal, the models lit Lucky Strike cigarettes in front of the eager photographers. The New York Times (1 April 1929) printed: "Group of Girls Puff at Cigarettes as a Gesture of 'Freedom'". This helped to break the taboo against women smoking in public. During this decade, he also handled publicity for the NAACP.[30]

And now I am beginning to think I should, perhaps, look further into what the tail end of first-wave feminists were actually doing after they got the vote, other than getting bogged down in failing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment...

follow the money and often times you'll see the true motive of the ones leading a movement. it's actually a shame the ERA got slammed down, it likely would have gotten rid of the draft for men since there's no way a gynocentric culture like the west has would like the idea of women going into combat against their will.

[Alyakia]

Today I learned something new.

And now I am beginning to think I should, perhaps, look further into what the tail end of first-wave feminists were actually doing after they got the vote, other than getting bogged down in failing to pass the Equal Rights Amendment...

follow the money and often times you'll see the true motive of the ones leading a movement. it's actually a shame the ERA got slammed down, it likely would have gotten rid of the draft for men since there's no way a gynocentric culture like the west has would like the idea of women going into combat against their will.

i kinda wanna bring up all male marine units preforming better than mixed ones pretty much entirely because i want to use data people were going "HAH TAKE THAT FEMINISTS!" over to crush anti-feminists

[Haktiva]

follow the money and often times you'll see the true motive of the ones leading a movement. it's actually a shame the ERA got slammed down, it likely would have gotten rid of the draft for men since there's no way a gynocentric culture like the west has would like the idea of women going into combat against their will.

i kinda wanna bring up all male marine units preforming better than mixed ones pretty much entirely because i want to use data people were going "HAH TAKE THAT FEMINISTS!" over to crush anti-feminists

it's mostly simple sexual dimorphism making it damn near impossible for most women who try to get through this stuff. there's also a strange social atmosphere brought about with women around in that environment. must be the neoteny.

[Ostroeuropa]

follow the money and often times you'll see the true motive of the ones leading a movement. it's actually a shame the ERA got slammed down, it likely would have gotten rid of the draft for men since there's no way a gynocentric culture like the west has would like the idea of women going into combat against their will.

i kinda wanna bring up all male marine units preforming better than mixed ones pretty much entirely because i want to use data people were going "HAH TAKE THAT FEMINISTS!" over to crush anti-feminists

I would suggest that this means we need to consider different roles for female/male (Not men/women) combat troops, different equipment loadouts and such.

[Atlanticatia]

This is a good article.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/men ... s-movement

[Ostroeuropa]

This is a good article.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/men ... s-movement

if you say so, let's go through it, I have doubts personally given your previous posts an arguments. I suspect this will be the equivalent of creationist science.

Firstly it's anti-gamergate. So it's factually inaccurate and peddling a pro-establishment agenda at least on that issue.

. Very few of the women who have found themselves violently threatened on the internet are.

More men than women are threatened online. The repeated media insistence that this is a womans problem is misandry. It's no different to the media endlessly talking shit about benefit fraud instead of tax evasion when discussing the deficit.

o view Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency videos after reading accounts of her harassment is to be surprised chiefly by how uncontroversial her analysis feels.

Someone is clearly living in an echo chamber. Feminist frequencies videos are rife with inaccuracies and cherry picking the data. Only her outlining of tropes is accurate. The examples she uses are usually shit, as is her contention that the tropes are common in gaming.

The movement has neither a central platform nor any acclimated leaders, but the central themes are consistent: It is men, not women, who are oppressed.

This is a straight up lie. The contention is that feminism oppresses men because it's a poor evaluation of reality, and that men are oppressed as well as women.

to reverse the criminalization of marital rape.

Nope. Not that i've seen. Not in the Anglospheric MRM, which draws a seperate ideological history.

I found Max on Reddit, on a forum largely devoted to making fun of teenage leftists on Tumblr.

Reddit is a free speech zone where anyone can post, and news is discussed and debated. That this inevitably results in anti-feminist atmosphere and contempt for bigots is natural. NS heads that way too, you'll notice. The more politically literate, the more aware of institutional powers, media corruption and agenda pushing, etc, the more likely you'll find an anti-feminist or feminist-ambivalent majority.

In the popular imagination, men's rights activists are "neckbeards": morbidly obese basement dwellers with a suspect affection for My Little Pony.

VERY telling of the tribe this person hangs out with. He's just like you. One of the SJW crowd. There is no "Popular" imagination of the MRM.
It's just you and your kinds conception of us. Notably he doesn't comment one bit on the fact that liking MLP is breaking a gender norm for men.
he calls it suspect. (Because he's far too invested in his cultish view of womens oppression to notice he's holding a double standard.) Are you sure you aren't a bigot for agreeing with this person?

Max was not a member of Gamergate proper. This isn't terribly uncommon: Men's rights activists exist who disdain that particular episode, if not for its virulence then for its celebration of men who prefer Dungeons and Dragons to Monday Night Football.

100% categorical bullshit and trying to paint the MRM as traditionalists. This is a fucking terrible article so far mate, pandering to your preconceptions of the movement. That isn't a "Good" article by any stretch of the imagination. That's daily mail levels of shit. It speaks VOLUMES about you, that this is what you consider good journalism. You want to be told you are right. You don't want to BE right.
If you want to know about the MRM, go talk to them. Don't accept feminists words for it. They routinely lie or get shit wrong. Your side is so fucking wrong that you have to routinely lie about us. What does that say about you? What does it say about your ethics and morality that you're willing to lie to get people not to question your fucking idiotic cult that has infested our societies institutions and uses media power to endlessly frame issues incorrectly and prevent us fixing sexism?

Similarly, there are Gamergate activists who remain stubbornly committed to the idea that they are ethicists of video game journalism, wholly detached from "men" as a generalized political class.

Congratulations, he got one thing right.

And at least one of the bubbles so far was named Elliott Oliver Rodger,

More lies. Christ, you think this is a good article?
No wonder you hate the MRM.
You're the equivalent of a fox news conservative. You're completely and absolutely ignorant of this issue, and so misinformed you are fighting imaginary monsters. You have no idea, what the fuck is going on. Get fucking educated and stop listening to bias sources, is that so hard?

"Putting ‘men' right in the name is a deliberate response to feminism, I think. Because feminists claim to be about everybody, but really they're about women first. So [the MRA name] is kind of trolling them, I guess."

*Shrug.* Debateable. It's a valid interpretation. Notably, this came from the apparent MRA he met. If he'd spent more time quoting him and less time pushing his own shit he might have been a good journalist instead of a glorified blogger with an agenda and an axe to grind.

I ask him if it's such a bad thing for feminism to be primarily concerned with the interests of women. "Maybe a hundred years ago," he says, "But, like, in 2014? Women have all kinds of advantages that men don't."

Such as?

Lol. Maybe if you people listened to the MRM you'd know.

This, Max says, is why he has been a capital-letters MRA since at least 2010. But he is aware of the broad brush he's self-applying, and there are several things he's quick to say he isn't. He is not a Pick-Up Artist, he says. He is not a Red Piller. He is not a "Man Going His Own Way." These distinctions are important within the labyrinthine network of reactionary masculinity movements,

Translation "I'm too invested in my cult and such a complete wingnut that I cannot understand the very simple and important differences between people who disagree with me. They are all the same. Because of my cult, I view anyone who talks about mens issues as a reactionary bigot, regardless of their interpretation of these issues. This prevents me from being able to be ANY FUCKING USE to the conversation, because i'm too much of a zealot or an idiot to understand the difference between a traditionalist, and a radical who wants to completely destroy gender roles. Any use of the androcentric perspective is immediately reactionary to me, and i don't understand why this makes me a sexist."

You're still sure you think this is a good article?

There are some other things Max is proud to be. He is an outspoken atheist and an active libertarian. The contours are the same: a proactive anticlericalism and a distaste for regulatory apparatus couched in a vague sense that this distaste constitutes a moral stance.

Good job. he acknowledged that this MRA is a libertarian. As it happens, the MRM is roughly 50/50 left wing social liberals, and half libertarians.

This trinity is not uncommon. A survey taken last year of the Men's Rights subreddit found that 94 percent of their membership identified as "atheist" or "religiously indifferent." Another, broader study of the men's rights movement on Reddit found that 84 percent identified as "strongly conservative,"

The studies he cites were fucked, and done by biased sources. We conducted our own internal census, and the results are vastly different. he cites these studies because it confirms his narrative and his cult. It's an expression of his confirmation bias, something absolutely fucking rife with his movement.
The only part that is true is that most are atheist. We're also 20% LGBT, well above the norm for the population.

When Max speaks about one ideology, he can hardly help bringing in the others; for him, they are all related, distinct expressions of the same worldview.

I'm not sure that's what he was doing. I think this is the authors impression of it. I think he's trying to explain the different androcentric interpretations of sexism and gender in society. This would be something i'd let slide in another piece, but this journalist is pushing a lot of his agenda here. This mistake is syptomatic of his style of shit journalism.

If this is the calibre of Journalist you read, no wonder you are so misinformed and tribalist. You really are a fox news viewer.

"I think religion is probably one of the biggest threats to society," Max says. "I think feminism and statism and all of that — it's not explicitly about God, but it's definitely the same religious impulse, you know?"

I disagree on the statist point, so does half the MRM. But yep, he's right about feminism. It's a cult.

For Max, religion is something of a starter pack for a lifelong indoctrination into Big Lies. "I know it isn't realistic or anything, but I think if we got rid of religion, that whole kind of way of thinking about things, where you just subscribe to what you're told, where you believe these ridiculous statistics about women or in stuff like the wage gap." (Max has a very long explanation of the "wage gap myth," one that seems cobbled together from multiple readings of a few different blog posts.)

Yeh, he's right. Also lol, the journalist is, once again, either too much of a zealot, or too much of an idiot to understand that the wage gap as presented by feminists is a lie.

He orders us another round and continues on with what has become a familiar line from men's rights activists (or "new atheists" or libertarians): the explicit claim that they are the last remaining purveyors of reason.

That bit about New Atheists?
SJW confirmed.

For all his derision toward the "professional victimhood" of feminists, there's something a little less than sarcastic in Max's own sense of oppression.

Key difference that seems utterly alien to feminists.
He isn't trying to get a paycheck for it.

The irresistible cudgel of "I am oppressed and this is my experience and you cannot speak to it because you do not know" is valid enough,

SJW confirmed again, standpoint theory crap.

especially in those cases where ordinary enculturation does not provide natural empathy toward some suspect class.

IRONY, LACK OF SELF AWARENESS, AND FACEPALM METERS REACHING CRITICAL LEVELS! ABORT READTHROUGH AND HAVE COFFEE!

he is entirely possessed by the idea that it is men like him who bear the true brunt of society's hatred

Well... it's true?
There is an empathy gap, and men are routinely demonized and such. The difference is feminists are too obsessed in their cult to see what's going on. They have an endless series of rationalizations to justify their lack of empathy for mens issues to themselves.

Men's rights activism follows from the bizarre misapprehension (fueled by a disconnect between the opinions of visible intellectuals and the average populace) that feminism has reached suffocating heights of power.

Journalist again asserting his viewpoint rather than actually talking about the MRA he's meeting or his opinions. Did you actually notice he did this most of the article? No, ofcourse you didn't. You weren't fucking paying attention, and it's obvious. You just nodded your head along to the sermon. This is not true what he said, but it's irrelevant to you.

In activist circles of any kind, it is common to hear that injustice is a kind of sight that cannot be unseen. All of it seemed so hyperbolic until I started noticing it. Now I notice it in everything. The "it" is typically some kind of institutional bias: the ways in which women are routinely encouraged to defer to male judgment

Gynocentric conception of the situation here. Androcentric differs. That's the point. *SIgh.*

Reviewing my notes from my first night speaking with Max, I become more confident that his life is some strange inversion of the same epiphany. One day, he is comfortable as a man and comfortable with what masculinity means in the world. The next, he can see behind the veil, and all that goes away. Social justice through a mirror, darkly: Men are the ones subject to genuine oppression, the ones whose issues are taken as uninteresting and unimportant. They are the ones taking terrible jobs and being drafted; committing suicide at incredible rates; losing their children, their spouses, and their homes while nobody else seems to care; shouting in the wilderness while a feminist majority squelches their dissent.

he's so close here. So fucking close. But unfortunately he's so fucking invested in feminism being the be all and end all that he is probably permanently a complete detriment to the discussion and will use his institutional power to make sexism worse.

I am not the first to notice this. Last year, John Herrman noticed the same inversion in the Awl. "A great number of men, online and off, understand feminism as aggression," he said, "They feel as though the perception of their actions as threats is itself a threat. In other words, they too believe that unsolicited public attention is inherently aggressive, but only when that attention takes the form of criticism, and only when it comes from women. They live this belief on the streets, where they are nearly unaccountable, and argue it online, where they are totally accountable."

And here he goes fuckup. Almost became a decent person, but sadly, it was not to be. The reason feminism is sexist is because of it's routine refusal to accept an androcentric perspective and constant assertion of the gynocentric. Notice that, once again, he's quoting other feminists talking about what MRAs believe rather than talking to them.

What the fuck is wrong with you people that you think this is acceptable? You do it constantly. You cannot possibly think this is a normal way to evaluate evidence or someones opinion.
No, seriously, why do you do it?

Is it denial?
Some kind of mental illness?
Sociopathy and active malice?
Stupidity?
Zeal?
Indoctrination?

I can't think of any other options that it could possibly be, help me out here, seriously, because I don't know, I'm not trying to insult you or feminists when I say that, i'm saying that these are all the only options I can think of for you consistently doing this really, really, really stupid thing that flies against both basic evidence analysis, and basic common sense. I'm constantly in awe of it though.

Looking at my notebook, one observation, underlined at the time, stands out: "Max says he needs online MRA communities because on normal internet, he gets shouted down and talked over." A different kind of activist might call that a safe space.

The MRM is explicit about being a safe space for men to voice their opinions on sexism, even if those opinions are what we would consider sexist. We think that people should be able to talk about these issues without fear of being ganged up on. When an MRM expresses sexist views, they are usually encouraged to view the situation androcentrically in order to realize why their stance harms men.

If men's rights activism has a Gloria Steinem, a kind of central activist figurehead, it is Paul Elam, the founder and publisher of A Voice for Men. The website is one of the oldest and, if there is such a thing, most respected hubs for MRA activity.

Another lie. As i've previously shown, lots of MRAs think he's a total fucknut.

Moreover, they don't typically stray past boorishness and into outright campaigns of harassment, although I cannot help feeling myopic in citing this fact as some kind of high water mark amongst the MRA set.

Notably he doesn't come up with any examples or evidence, just a vague smear.

Like Max, Elam sees his issues as a crusade, his atheism as important, his politics as moral in their antisocialism. He was a substance abuse counselor by trade. It was in this context that he began to see. He remembers the first time, working for a men's treatment facility in Houston, waiting in the hall with an invited speaker, a woman about to go in and address the clientele.

"I was standing outside the group room and we were waiting for her to go in, just chatting for a moment about our work," he says, "And just before going into the group, which he was being paid quite a bit of money to do, he says, 'One of my favorite things in the world is to take men's macho bullshit and shove it down their throats.' I saw a lot of this in the treatment field," Elam says, "It's just he said it in such a particularly stark and direct way. At that point I thought, Something needs to be done about this."

Whatever. Only quoted, because it points out that Elam got involved because drug abuse is done mostly by men.

The trouble continued. "I went to the administration about that particular incident," Elam explains. "And everyone who worked at that facility looked at me like I was nuts and said, 'What's the problem?' That's how pervasive this issue is."

Yeh. He could be talking about positive masculinity, or about androcentric views of it. He's fucking up by expecting the journalist to know what he- oh wait.
The journalist should be asking questions about it. Oops.

Basically, he's either saying that the term "Macho bullshit" is offensive because masculinity isn't defined by real manist crap, and shoving "Their Masculinity" down their throats, when related to a DRUG ABUSE thing, is assuming all the men there are there for reasons relating to masculinity. (Some may well be.)

OR

He could be saying that this person is blaming men for social pressures put on them to exhibit masculine behavior, and "Shoving it down their throats" is a form of just further attacking them over it, and that the faculty is too invested in a gynocentric cult to understand this.

He recites a litany of charges against modern psychotherapy, its anti-masculine focus on effusively articulated feelings. If one dismisses for a moment the bizarre unreality of men subject to brutal gendered discrimination, it doesn't sound terribly different, in sense or scope of conspiracy, than the complaints of feminist academics so often mocked by men of Elam's kind.

"bizarre unreality." *Sigh.*
There is no conspiracy involved. If you indoctrinate a bunch of people into an ideology and then use any positions of power members of that ideology have to try and force everyone to adhere to that ideology, and to install more people of that ideology into more institutions, that's not a conspiracy.
he thinks "Conspiracy", because, once again, he's either too zealous, invested, or stupid to understand that someone can think they are helping, but really be a total fuck up. Feminisn is wrong.
That's all there is to it. It's only half of a coherent narrative.

"I do think that is abusive," he tells me, "when you send the message to your clients that they are either failing or succeeding based on your expectations of a stereotype." Through a mirror darkly:

ALMOST SELF AWARE AGAIN. COME ON, YOU CAN DO IT! ALMOST THERE!
Who the fuck am I kidding.

Elam isn't without his objectivity. Unlike Max, he knows, for example, that his position is a rare one.

Must have left out the part where max said that. Top journalism.

All of it breeds a certain paranoia, one I encountered in all the men I spoke to. A feeling likely justified by the ordinary reaction to men's rights activism, that outsiders, especially outsiders writing for mainstream publications, are not to be trusted.

Well, feminists in positions of media routinely lie about us. So yeh. You lie about lots of things. It's either zealousness, stupidity, malice, or just believing the things other feminists say without bothering to check it for yourself. That, by the way, is where max and his whole "Logic, evidence" bit came from that this journalist didn't seem to comprehend.

That they agreed to speak to me at all remains surprising, especially in Max's case: He is friendly, willing to sit down, but insistent that his identity be protected.

Because you people control the media, and because we're hopeful that you can potentially finally understand things, even if it feels like trying to explain things to a fox news viewer.

He seems, like so many zealots, to believe at once that he is righteous and vital and also that speaking out under his own name will bring unsavory consequences beyond his willingness to suffer.

It's easy for the establishment ideology to say this kind of thing, especially when feminists have recently taken it upon themselves to get people fired from jobs for saying things they don't like. People are not required to be heroes. Plenty of MRAs do, in fact, publically advocate.

At one point during our conversation, Elam says: "I'm just going to be frank with you, I've been through countless interviews with the media." As a result, he says, he understands why I need to ask him questions from a "mainstream" (read: feminist) sensibility,

he admits it's mainstream, good. Now if we can get her to admit it's institutionalized, he might have an epiphany finally about why her ideology causes a lot of the problems he endlessly fucking complains about through it's routine refusal to address the androcentric side of things and the knock on effects this has. But I doubt that'll happen. Maybe this WILL be a good article, i'm still hoping so, because so far i'm just growing more and more contempt for both you and this journalist.

I suspect that this is because I am, despite everything, a straight white man. To Elam, and to Max, I am a heretic, but I am not an infidel. I can still be saved.

Utter bullshit, and once again, speculation without merit to fit their preconceptions of the situation (I.E, being a bigot). It's that Elam and Max are polite people. I'm a fucking asshole to people, as the most obvious example.

I see Max again a few nights after our first meeting. I relate some of my conversation with Elam, and Max is quick to echo his bafflement. "I mean, people keep saying we're full of hate. We're just these angry, hateful dudes, you know? Like, we can't get laid, we hate women, all of that. And we come back with statistics, like rational argument, like an actual debate and are like, ‘No, listen, here's this and this and this with men' and here's, like, the logical fallacy in your argument, and they just call you, like, a cis-het shitlord and move on."

Yeh, pretty much.

There's a temptation, brought on by the claustrophobia of extended conversation, a bit by empathy, and a bit by drink, to be taken in by the spirit of the argument. Men face certain social difficulties idiosyncratic to our sex, and while they are not systemic in the way that women's issues are, nor half so severe, I find it easy to sympathize with Max's frustration. In the bar, insulated as we are, when he begins talking about "just wanting human rights," I can only see his face, hear the exasperation in his voice, connect, instinctively, to that face and voice in part because they are well-mannered and in part because they are like my own. In that moment I can, if I like, forget that these issues, legitimate enough on their face, are carried out from a place of one-upmanship, that their expressions, except in rare cases, are solely as debating points, hurled between invective and harassment and the oldest hack tropes about women's bodies and choices. I can forget those things, if I like. I'm only a heretic.

They are just as systemic as womens, this is a stupid statement. They are also severe. Some would argue more severe, some less, but ultimately that's a subjective evaluation. What they are, is deserving of equal attention.

How does he know they are done from one-upmanship and purely to debate? More fucking speculation. This is your brain on Feminism ladies and gentlemen. A series of constant rationalizations and refusal to confront your indoctrination.

"Okay," I say about halfway through our second night. "Let's pretend for a minute that I take all of your issues seriously."

This, right here, is the end of this discussion. This statement from this journalist, is all I need to show that both you and him are bigots. That neither of you actually care about mens issues. When you are not blind to them, you don't care. YOU didn't pick up on this incredibly telling statement when you linked this. You seem to agree with the journalist.

Congratulations on outing yourself.

"Let's say I believe men are maligned, women are taking advantage of them and profiting from it. And I believe all of this and I come to you, a men's rights activist, and say I want to get involved and help. Shouldn't I be concerned that a lot of people on your side don't seem to be doing legal or political work so much as sending death threats?"

What a fucking stupid question. For one, death threats aren't sent just by MRAs. Feminists do it too. For another, there are PLENTY of MRA organizations that try to get things done, but say it with me folks, feminists in institutional positions of power use their power to constantly shut them down or try to block them, then rationalize this decision to themselves circularly.
It is a fucking cult. A religion. An institutionalized ideology that is fucking up society and preventing actual equality. The sooner we realize it the better.

No, Max says. The extreme behavior is mainstream in feminism these days, not in the men's rights movement.

True. The fringe of the mens movement also does it, but it's the mainstream and institutionalized feminism that is fucked.

he explains, "Feminist activists have come out and pulled fire alarms, harassed attendees, interrupted and protested. When we had a conference on men's issues in Detroit, there was a demonstration, pressure on the hotel to shut us down. We eventually had to change venues. How much of what is really going on are you paying attention to, sir?"

Max never asks me that question outright, but I can hear it, minus the "sir," beneath a lot of what he says.

It's good that the journalist is getting the feeling that it's being implied he's totally ignorant of the issues and just spouting stuff from his holy books at people, because that's actually the case.

ask about the harassment of feminists — of women in general, on the street, in their homes, by classmates and strangers. How much is he paying attention to, for that matter? He shrugs it off. "I don't really see any of that stuff," he says. "I mean, I'm sure it happens? But it's not, like, organized, anyway. Guys catcalling don't have meetings to plan it."

Ignores the harassment of men. Common feminist nonsense. "BUT WIMMINZ!" (talks about an issue that effects both men and women, is completely lacking self-awareness as they do so, then feminists in institutions put all attention and resources on helping women in this issue, followed by confusion and shouts of hatred when someone points out they are being fucking sexists because of their constant erasure of mens oppression, of which they are now a fundamental component.) Maxes statement is fair and impartial, though I would have phrased it in a way that more clearly points out I'm against those things too.

(Years ago I was standing on a metro platform with a woman I knew. It was around 3 in the morning; we'd walked a mile to our train. She says it's the first time she's gone that stretch of road without being catcalled. I ask why. The answer is obvious. She says most men won't do it if the woman looks like she's with her owner.)

Oh anecdotes? Cool!
I've been sexually assaulted about 50% of the time I go on trains.
By women.
Why?
Because they feel entitled to mens bodies and think men always consent and want it, even if their asleep. They are raised as rapists. The only saving grace is that they slut shame eachother. When viewed in that context there's a small urge to say it might be a good thing.
Obviously though, I am opposed to slut shaming, and to women being entirely ignorant of consent.
Incidentally, it's nothing to do with "Her Owner." it's to do with her not being available. I've covered this subject before.
If women want to stop getting constantly propositioned, they need to start propositioning more, or to lessen the social pressure on men to acquire partners. But that would involve acknowledging an androcentric perspective, so instead they'll try the same failed bullshit, more women will end up shot and crap like that, and feminists will continually refuse to acknowledge the by now obvious deficiency in their model.

Fuck me, this is a long article.
I'm giving up. Unless you can assure me the rest is any better, i'm done. This was entirely fucking useless. Please, don't post shit-tier journalism and claim it's good again.
Though I suppose if you're going to be arguing for feminism, that's an inevitability.

[Tahar Joblis]

This is a good article.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/men ... s-movement

Some men have always been wretched. It only took the internet to make it obvious. Women — some women, at least — have always known.

An inauspicious start.

The most public victims of last year's Gamergate rage — women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu — were not radicals. Very few of the women who have found themselves violently threatened on the internet are.

Anita Sarkeesian's public persona is that of an academic radical feminist, complete with bad panic-mongering analysis of media, just like MacKinnon and Dworkin liked to do in the 1980s in front of Congress. Never mind, of course, that #GamerGate is not dead. It's busy trying to "victimize" Polygon.

Nice evasion of the fact that violent threats are aimed towards men no less often on the internet.

Men's rights activism has been in the undercurrent of American culture since at least the 1970s and has been largely explicit in its role as a backlash against feminism.

Their sense of history is a bit off. First, everything has changed within the last five years; the internet has given birth to something entirely new. Second, the ideological roots of the modern movement lean as much on people who were feminists as much as a backlash against feminists. See prior discussion of the "men's lib vs men's rights" narrative:

The historical narrative surrounding "men's rights" vs "men's liberation," as expressed by feminists and applied to the modern MRM, is pretty much a shell game.

Warren Farrell came from the "men's liberation" side of the fence. His background was within the feminist movement; he wrote "The Liberated Man," in fact, in 1974. He viewed men's issues as important, and continued to do so, which led to feminists attacking him viciously; he is the closest thing to the intellectual father of the present MRM. He's been the single highest profile individual identified with men's rights - and yet his origins are definitively on the "men's liberation" side of the fence.

The National Coalition For Men, one of the only "men's rights" groups, is roughly on the same side now as Warren Farrell: The side of men's activists who are actually interested in addressing men's issues.

Michael Kimmel came from the same side of the fence. He decided that men's problems were trivial except inasmuch as they created problems for women. He and his organization are essentially part of the feminist movement that describes itself as "men's liberation" without actually wanting to help men.

The modern MRM is not a "splinter" of anything historical. It's mostly something entirely new... and draws as much directly from the feminist movement of the past as it does from men's rights, men's liberation, men's movement, fathers' rights, etc groups of the past.

There is more continuity to be had in talking about the feminist movement as a historical group opposed to drinking, strongly interested in the promotion of religiosity, and perfectly content to have abortion kept illegal. There is also more reactionary sentiment in the present feminist movement than the present MRM.

When they vary, it is in extremity, with some merely decrying the "anti-male" attitude of feminism and others seeking, for example, to reverse the criminalization of marital rape.

If you're going to try to reverse the criminalization of marital rape, you're not going to fit with the modern American MRM. (The Indian one, possibly.)

Max was not a member of Gamergate proper. This isn't terribly uncommon: Men's rights activists exist who disdain that particular episode, if not for its virulence then for its celebration of men who prefer Dungeons and Dragons to Monday Night Football. Similarly, there are Gamergate activists who remain stubbornly committed to the idea that they are ethicists of video game journalism, wholly detached from "men" as a generalized political class. But these vagaries — the specific grievances of Gamergate, the sort of person who self-applies "MRA" versus the sort who prefers some other acronym — are merely symptoms of a broader male sense of victimhood.

What #GamerGate and the modern MRM have in common is (1) the presence of feminists behaving badly and (2) existing primarily online.

And at least one of the bubbles so far was named Elliott Oliver Rodger, the 22-year-old man who went on a shooting spree last year near the University of California Santa Barbara — an act he said was the result of being rejected by women.

Who had absolutely nothing to do with the MRM. He frequented anti-PUA websites and bodybuilding websites.

"When I was, like, 10 or whatever I'm sure I would've said I was a feminist if I'd known the word," Max says. "My mom says she's a feminist. And I guess in the way my mom means it, I still am. But she doesn't know how it is now. For her, feminism means ‘everybody is equal,' but if you said that now, these social justice warriors on Tumblr would call you a sexist and garbage and tell you to die. But I didn't realize that at first. I thought feminist meant ‘women should be able to vote and have jobs,' which I'm obviously cool with."

I do have to give the author kudos for actually quoting this.

Max became interested in the usual gateway drugs of men's issues: paternity rights, the selective service, requirements that mothers sue for child support before seeking state assistance. The term "men's rights activist" wasn't one he encountered in those days; he still says he prefers thinking of himself as a "humanist."

"Gateway drugs" being very serious issues that need to be addressed is a very interested metaphor.

He is not a Pick-Up Artist, he says. He is not a Red Piller. He is not a "Man Going His Own Way." These distinctions are important within the labyrinthine network of reactionary masculinity movements, and confusing one with another is as easy and potentially treacherous as similar conflations between factions of the left.

Because the idea that all of them are reactionary movements runs adrift on the fact that only the MRM is an actual movement, and the Red Pillers are the only reactionaries.

It's more like the insistence among certain rightwingers that Nazism was left-wing.

This trinity is not uncommon. A survey taken last year of the Men's Rights subreddit found that 94 percent of their membership identified as "atheist" or "religiously indifferent." Another, broader study of the men's rights movement on Reddit found that 84 percent identified as "strongly conservative," with particular policy preferences along a libertarian, not traditional, bent.

The 84% "strongly conservative" figure is attached to a link that sends you here, which was the last survey of /r/MensRights that can be considered reliable. However, that survey doesn't contain such a result. The 84% figure actually comes from here, discussing a survey that was deliberately sabotaged by outsiders. On the other survey, Democrats outnumber Republicans by a large number (that survey's political affiliation question).

That's an outright error, and a serious one. I applaud the author for actually interviewing two MRAs and, by all appearances, not engaging in selective quoting to misrepresent them, but still, there are plenty of mistakes in the article that come out of accepting feminist narratives rather than checking facts.

[Ostroeuropa]

This is a good article.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/men ... s-movement

Some men have always been wretched. It only took the internet to make it obvious. Women — some women, at least — have always known.

An inauspicious start.

The most public victims of last year's Gamergate rage — women like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn, and Brianna Wu — were not radicals. Very few of the women who have found themselves violently threatened on the internet are.

Anita Sarkeesian's public persona is that of an academic radical feminist, complete with bad panic-mongering analysis of media, just like MacKinnon and Dworkin liked to do in the 1980s in front of Congress. Never mind, of course, that #GamerGate is not dead. It's busy trying to "victimize" Polygon.

Nice evasion of the fact that violent threats are aimed towards men no less often on the internet.

Men's rights activism has been in the undercurrent of American culture since at least the 1970s and has been largely explicit in its role as a backlash against feminism.

Their sense of history is a bit off. First, everything has changed within the last five years; the internet has given birth to something entirely new. Second, the ideological roots of the modern movement lean as much on people who were feminists as much as a backlash against feminists. See prior discussion of the "men's lib vs men's rights" narrative:

The historical narrative surrounding "men's rights" vs "men's liberation," as expressed by feminists and applied to the modern MRM, is pretty much a shell game.

Warren Farrell came from the "men's liberation" side of the fence. His background was within the feminist movement; he wrote "The Liberated Man," in fact, in 1974. He viewed men's issues as important, and continued to do so, which led to feminists attacking him viciously; he is the closest thing to the intellectual father of the present MRM. He's been the single highest profile individual identified with men's rights - and yet his origins are definitively on the "men's liberation" side of the fence.

The National Coalition For Men, one of the only "men's rights" groups, is roughly on the same side now as Warren Farrell: The side of men's activists who are actually interested in addressing men's issues.

Michael Kimmel came from the same side of the fence. He decided that men's problems were trivial except inasmuch as they created problems for women. He and his organization are essentially part of the feminist movement that describes itself as "men's liberation" without actually wanting to help men.

The modern MRM is not a "splinter" of anything historical. It's mostly something entirely new... and draws as much directly from the feminist movement of the past as it does from men's rights, men's liberation, men's movement, fathers' rights, etc groups of the past.

There is more continuity to be had in talking about the feminist movement as a historical group opposed to drinking, strongly interested in the promotion of religiosity, and perfectly content to have abortion kept illegal. There is also more reactionary sentiment in the present feminist movement than the present MRM.

When they vary, it is in extremity, with some merely decrying the "anti-male" attitude of feminism and others seeking, for example, to reverse the criminalization of marital rape.

If you're going to try to reverse the criminalization of marital rape, you're not going to fit with the modern American MRM. (The Indian one, possibly.)

Max was not a member of Gamergate proper. This isn't terribly uncommon: Men's rights activists exist who disdain that particular episode, if not for its virulence then for its celebration of men who prefer Dungeons and Dragons to Monday Night Football. Similarly, there are Gamergate activists who remain stubbornly committed to the idea that they are ethicists of video game journalism, wholly detached from "men" as a generalized political class. But these vagaries — the specific grievances of Gamergate, the sort of person who self-applies "MRA" versus the sort who prefers some other acronym — are merely symptoms of a broader male sense of victimhood.

What #GamerGate and the modern MRM have in common is (1) the presence of feminists behaving badly and (2) existing primarily online.

And at least one of the bubbles so far was named Elliott Oliver Rodger, the 22-year-old man who went on a shooting spree last year near the University of California Santa Barbara — an act he said was the result of being rejected by women.

Who had absolutely nothing to do with the MRM. He frequented anti-PUA websites and bodybuilding websites.

"When I was, like, 10 or whatever I'm sure I would've said I was a feminist if I'd known the word," Max says. "My mom says she's a feminist. And I guess in the way my mom means it, I still am. But she doesn't know how it is now. For her, feminism means ‘everybody is equal,' but if you said that now, these social justice warriors on Tumblr would call you a sexist and garbage and tell you to die. But I didn't realize that at first. I thought feminist meant ‘women should be able to vote and have jobs,' which I'm obviously cool with."

I do have to give the author kudos for actually quoting this.

Max became interested in the usual gateway drugs of men's issues: paternity rights, the selective service, requirements that mothers sue for child support before seeking state assistance. The term "men's rights activist" wasn't one he encountered in those days; he still says he prefers thinking of himself as a "humanist."

"Gateway drugs" being very serious issues that need to be addressed is a very interested metaphor.

He is not a Pick-Up Artist, he says. He is not a Red Piller. He is not a "Man Going His Own Way." These distinctions are important within the labyrinthine network of reactionary masculinity movements, and confusing one with another is as easy and potentially treacherous as similar conflations between factions of the left.

Because the idea that all of them are reactionary movements runs adrift on the fact that only the MRM is an actual movement, and the Red Pillers are the only reactionaries.

It's more like the insistence among certain rightwingers that Nazism was left-wing.

This trinity is not uncommon. A survey taken last year of the Men's Rights subreddit found that 94 percent of their membership identified as "atheist" or "religiously indifferent." Another, broader study of the men's rights movement on Reddit found that 84 percent identified as "strongly conservative," with particular policy preferences along a libertarian, not traditional, bent.

The 84% "strongly conservative" figure is attached to a link that sends you here, which was the last survey of /r/MensRights that can be considered reliable. However, that survey doesn't contain such a result. The 84% figure actually comes from here, discussing a survey that was deliberately sabotaged by outsiders. On the other survey, Democrats outnumber Republicans by a large number (that survey's political affiliation question).

That's an outright error, and a serious one. I applaud the author for actually interviewing two MRAs and, by all appearances, not engaging in selective quoting to misrepresent them, but still, there are plenty of mistakes in the article that come out of accepting feminist narratives rather than checking facts.

I figured you might go for it too. I got a little further before giving up, but yeh, it's a really bad article on the MRM. This feminist journalist is better than most.
Which is the awful thing.

[Dumb Ideologies]

Jeez, what a lovely piece of hack journalism.

[Ostroeuropa]

Jeez, what a lovely piece of hack journalism.

I feel it has to be pointed out, that the person who posted it is against the MRM, and they considered this a good article.

I think this says a lot about people who are opposed to the MRM. They don't understand how to properly evaluate reality, and so when they read a piece of journalism like this, they don't notice all the glaring flaws in the article purely from an evidenciary and journalistic perspective, before you even get into the ideological disagreement.

That shit-tier journalists and ideological feminists go into journalism, don't understand how to be proper journalists, and then just repeat eachothers bullshit about sexism, the MRM, feminism, etc, and people in their movement like the poster don't understand how to properly evaluate evidence, or how to recognize actual journalism, and as a result just repeat eachothers bullshit and the bullshit they have been told, is probably a huge part of the problem.

Incidentally, feminists ALSO have this problem in their studies and sociological analysis, hence their constant fuck ups there such as domestic violence.
It's entirely clear to me these people do not care about reality. They have their religious doctrine and are determined to stick to it.

This is why I've decided that the only course of action available to us is to constantly point out that they don't know what the fuck they are talking about, pointing out WHY they don't know what the fuck they are talking about, and to shame them into shutting up. Anti-MRAs of this type really are the equivalent of fox news viewers and LIBRULZ. Reddit calls them AMRats on occasion, though that's derogatory. (Anti-Mens-Rights/Rat.), so it's a recognized phenomena and class of person. I think we need a better term though, specifically for this subset of people who are just ignorant and listening to echo chambers about the MRM, because there are more legitimate criticisms, especially from the Egalitarian community. (Worth noting as well, the term doesn't apply to people opposed to the MRM, but in favor of resolving the issues it addresses, but I consider the term too vague and it could confuse people.) They are the equivalent of spammers and shitposters, but they've taken over the national discussion on gender and sexism.

In the Article, the journalist at one point remarks that all the people who oppose this thing keep getting bent out of shape about "Logic" and "Evidence." So it's staring them right in the fucking face. He was even told why the wage gap is a lie and didn't bother to go check out the actual evidence. It's so frustrating to deal with.

Do you think maybe it's a genetic thing?
Like, 80% of people operate based on faith, narrative, and community consensus, and are just never going to change?
It would explain a lot about human history and why our secularizing society is still having a bunch of people who resoundingly refuse to accept shit like vaccines and stuff.

But fuck me, that's depressing.

[The Nuclear Fist]

I'm not even an MRA, but holy fuck that wasn't even journalism, that was just a ranting opinion piece.

[Hirota]

I'm not even an MRA, but holy fuck that wasn't even journalism, that was just a ranting opinion piece.

Jeez, what a lovely piece of hack journalism.

It's no coincidence that vox media happens to own Polygon, who as Tahar mentioned is the target of Gamergate at the moment. You might question the logic in posting shitty hack journalist pieces in defence of shitty journalism.

[Kelinfort]

This is a good article.

http://www.vox.com/2015/2/5/7942623/men ... s-movement

No, it isn't.

It's bad journalism and regardless of whether I share such sentiments or not, that is a terrible article.