The bizarre thing about the rant is that his solution is totally inappropriate for the problem. He says to concentrate on the big battles and stop whining about the little things. He makes it sounds like men are whining about having to open bottles for their girlfriends, or that women get served first in a restaraunt. Yet, he acknowledges the fact that the real concerns are different treatment in the courts, living ten years less, higher suicide rates, and government agencies for women.
What could be more important than being treated equally in court when deciding how often you get to see your kids or whether you have to pay alimony? How can he say that the large difference in life expectancy is not important? He talks like someone who believes he will never get old. As he points out men make more money and thus pay more taxes, yet the government those taxes support are actively discriminating against them. Then he tells men to only complain about big stuff?
The team analogy he makes is strange and makes no sense. How are alll men on a team with fireman? Do men get rescued first or are men just supposed to feel warm and fuzzy because they share the same y chromosome with a hero?
Scott Adams can be great to read because he is such an original thinker but most of his stuff is really bizarre.
Exactly. I love my wife, but I have no idea why she has to spend so much time and needs my input trying to decide between two slightly different, but practically identical black pumps. If you can’t decide then there is no wrong answer. Just flip a coin. (For the record, that is how I ultimately picked her wedding ring).
I like the idea that men need a “strategy” for “dealing” with women.
Here I was thinking that we were all people, living in a society together, trying to work stuff out. Nope, I’m a thing that needs a strategy to be dealt with. Good to know.
Yeah, I found his article to be more offensive toward women than men. The stuff he said about men was pretty benign.
Except that I don’t agree that the problem in question usually is stupid. Males aren’t told to “be a man” just about minor gender relation problems, they are told that about everything from being beaten as a kid to being hurt or sick or having their lives endangered as adults. It’s code for “males are supposed to shut up and suffer in silence”. It kills men on a regular basis; for example, women are much more likely to go to a doctor when sick, because they haven’t been taught since childhood that they should “be a man”, tough it out, and not take care of themselves.
It’s true, but just for you specifically.
Agreed. It is massively illegal to pay a man more just because he’s a man (or a woman less because she’s a woman) and women are more likely to work part-time. That’s all.
I loathe the phrase “studies show”, but it’s true that men’s and women’s pay is roughly the same if they don’t have children.
Either the author of the article is being dishonest or his “readers” are giving him false information. As far as I know, ‘men’s rights’ has absolutely nothing to do with any of those ‘examples’ mentioned in the quote. I have never known any male who had a problem with the military draft excluding females or even the existence of government agencies for women. The rest of the so-called ‘examples’ are things that have to do with nature and hardly worth having a ‘men’s-rights’ movement about.
There are actually genuine sources of grievance that men (including ‘manly’ men) have a right to complain about. Such as the unfair bias against men in divorce & settlement courts. A woman is allowed to have affairs and still demand divorce, keep the kids and have half of the man’s estate (or monthly payments to her and her boyfriend…oops I mean kids) no matter how she behaves.
Then there is also the unfair bias against males by the police/justice system. A woman can physically abuse a man and if he dares to defend himself, she only has to call the cops…and guess who goes to jail?
These are the kinds of things that men rights advocates complain about. And these are legitimate complaints – not the garbage ‘examples’ that the author of that article posted. This is a typical example of creating a strawman by attacking positions that one’s opponents do not even hold.
You know, I read his rant to my wife and she saw it very differently than I did and I came to agree with her. I saw “Get over it, you bunch of pussies,” and I thought we were pretty much in agreement on them.
Yet he used a term “pussy” (calling someone a pussy is like saying they are effeminate and espouse female qualities and those are of course negative) to describe people who he thinks should pick and choose their battles more wisely and says the “best strategy for dealing” with women is to treat them like they are babie or mentally slow.
So yeah, we might have both come to the same conclusion about MRAs (they are dumb and bad and should feel bad), we came about it from very different motivations.
In my case, I feel that women have gotten the short end of the stick in a great many things but even though it’s gotten better for them in this country, it’s still a problem and it sure hasn’t been addressed to the point where men are now suddenly a minority deserving pity.
In his case, women deserve a break because they are like babies or the mentally challenged and picking on them is like taking balloons from children or mocking people with Down’s Syndrome.
So yeah, I changed my mind. Fuck him.
As far as the circumcision thing is concerned, have you ever noticed how so much brouhaha is made about female circumcision in Africa (which I oppose by the way), but nothing is ever said about male circumcision on little jewish baby boys? Apparently, we are supposed to believe that little baby boys should just “man up and take it”. Or maybe it’s just an imperialist attitude towards African culture…I don’t know.
Or maybe it’s because the two aren’t equivalent. I applaud you for your brave stance against female circumcision, though- you’re really going out on a limb there.
Or maybe this is a false equivalence.
There is no benefit for female circumcision. None at all. Unless you think that destroying the nerves that allow women to have sexual pleasure is a benefit. Whereas there are indications that male circumcision does have medical benefits.
If male circumcision involved cutting the head of the penis off, it would be a lot more like female circumcision. But it doesn’t involve that.
Don’t start…
The problem with Men’s Rights is that it’s not “women versus men” or “men versus women.” It’s a whole nasty interrelated system. There isn’t a single gender expectation or power relation that doesn’t have a corresponding component on the other side.
Let’s just take this little snippet:
No. First, it’s almost certainly not “the man’s estate”, it’s usually joint property that BOTH parties have worked to build up. If one party can prove that some property is his/hers alone, then that property doesn’t get thrown into the community property. Even if one partner stayed at home and did housekeeping and childcare, those services do have a real monetary value. Second, I don’t know about other states, but in mine, there’s a minimum length of time that the marriage must have lasted, there’s a limit to how long alimony (if it’s even awarded) will last, and marital misconduct does affect whether or not spousal support will be awarded.
Seriously? :dubious: I’m a male and I have a huge problem with it. I know plenty of men (& women) who think it’s unfair (at least if they think about the possibly of a draft at all). I was still in high school when 9/11 happened and we discussed stuff like this in social studies class. Most of the boys didn’t think it was fair they had to register for the draft while the girls didn’t. A lot of the girls did too, but the general consensus was that nobody should be drafted.
One thing I will agree with is that the phrase “men’s rights activists” sounds either “pussyish” or chauvinistic depending on what angle you look at it. Apart from the fact that it uncomfortably rhymes with “men’s tights”, it is simply bad strategy to choose a name like that for your campaign. A much more politically correct and agreeable appellation would have been “Citizens for Gender Fairness & Equality” or something of the sort. You simply shoot yourself in the foot and make it possible for people like scott adams to misrepresent you by calling yourself “men’s rights activists”.
I think what he’s referring to is the practical reality of it: as a general rule courts won’t look into “who did what to whom & whose fault is it?” Because then every case would take approximately 458,153,298 hours to resolve. Of course, if you have the money for it, you can do it that way. But most people don’t.
Yes, that’s exactly what’s wrong with MRA - The unfortunate name of the organization. Else they would be taken seriously.
Nah… I’m still going with, it’s because they’re “whining pussies.”
It doesn’t affect child support judgments, at least not where I live, and a spouse’s income doesn’t affect that either. I realize that alimony and child support are two very separate things.