As a man, in principle I’m a huge supporter of mens’ rights.
But almost all the stuff I look at w.r.t. men rights seems to not so much be pro-men, as anti-women.
No rational man, and remember the whole “reason” for men being “against” women is that men are more logical (other reason are just A v B, not male v female) would suggest hiding things and other duplicitous nonsense to make things difficult for women.
And those are just the basics.
I am interested in looking forward. I have various ppuppies I am responsible for but not being a weirdo I don’t actually believe they are children. Nevertheless I like to know what is gfoing on.
But most importnatly I don’t need upsets. Please can someone explain the issue. It’ sdiscgracful, and we dumbed down what was going n, to recognise the actual ammo view. Anyway go aheadl
There isn’t really a single answer to this question, but I can tell you what I’ve observed in my travels on various MRA forums.
First off, let me state that there are definitely valid issues that the Men’s Rights Movement brings up: low societal awareness of male rape, widespread family court inequalities and mainstream culture’s bullshit messages about what it means to be a “real man” come to mind.
Unfortunately, the guys that you tend to remember are the ones who just seem to really, really hate women. Naturally, this doesn’t help their image much. In my experience, these people are more likely to identify as “anti-feminists” than as Men’s Rights Activists, but they make MRAs look bad by association.
I obviously just pulled this number out of my ass, but about 80% of the time I see one of the nasty guys, their animosity towards women is motivated by at least one painful divorce, after which they can’t seem to so much as look at at a Women’s Restroom symbol without thinking about their ex, who they hate with the fiery rage of a supernova. When these people encounter any of the various flavors of feminist to be found on the internet, (and to be fair, there is no shortage of mush-brains to be found in this contingent!) you’d do best to take cover.
They often complain about unfair custody decisions (fair enough, this happens and it sucks), alimony payments (I’d be mad, too, I guess, but alimony exists for a reason), and child support payments (fuck these guys.)
Probably the best place on the web to find reasonable, non-bughouse MRAs that I know of is on the Men’s Rights Reddit. The up/down-voting system there does a pretty fair job at pushing the dregs to the bottom.
I agree with colander. There are a lot of legitimate issues they bring up, and a lot of them make good points, but the ones you remember are the psycho ones, as are the articles people pass around.
It’s a lot like modern feminists really. Plenty of cool, rational, or otherwise sane ones but which blog posts and videos are the ones that people tend to pass around Facebook? The sensationalist ones where somebody is in earnest claiming basically everything men do supports rape. The same with MRAs, a lot of them make good points about inequities facing men, and point out cultural double standards that benefit women – but when you find a random link to an MRA article being passed around? Holy shit the KKK and the Nazis wish they they could use rhetoric like that sometimes. Because it’s easy to attack, it’s easy to feel good about not being one of them, it’s sensational and memorable and people love to hate on it.
ETA: Though I will say, with no data to back it up, that just from my personal experience that MRAs are much more likely to be of the psycho persuasion than feminists.
I do believe however, we have a more than legitimate gripe about custodial rights.
On several occasions, I heard this tired old story:
[ul]
[li]Couple gets divorced.[/li][li] wife is so fucked up on drugs; judge gives kid to the father. (or replace drugs with: Wife just doesn’t want the kid.)[/li][li] Mother quits drugs and gets her shit together[/li][li] Mother goes back to court and gets custody of the kid.[/li][/ul]
That’s messed up. I don’t condone it, but I can understand how some men might be a little anti-women if they are on the shit end of this stick.
I can actually offer one scenario where the child support thing is bullshit, but it’s because the father is a scumbag.
My little cousins have to spend every other weekend with a neglectful father because he won’t give up partial custody rights since he doesn’t want to have to pay child support. Despite the fact that, for various reasons, it is abundantly clear that they should not be with him (any week they’re with him they get in much more trouble, one of them even has gotten in criminal trouble, and they have measurably worse grades those weeks). He literally wants nothing to do with them, screaming at them to leave him alone if they bother him while he’s playing video games in the back room (which is 90% of the time). He will outright refuse to sign documents that require signatures from guardians because he doesn’t want to be bothered with “their business”. And if he has to, will only do it if he gets a signed guarantee from their mom and stepdad that he won’t have to pay anything. Naturally, since he’s 50% responsible for medical bills he’ll fight on signing consent forms on necessary medical procedures as well. And, honestly, the kids absolutely HATE being by him by their own words.
So that’s easy, go to court and remove them from his custody and force child support, right? No dice, for whatever reason, the courts in that state will not remove the children from his custody without his consent (apparently what he’s doing doesn’t legally qualify as abuse or neglect). Now, their mom and stepdad have plenty of money, they do not need child support and are willing to waive the requirement, and he would be happy to get the kids out of his hair if he didn’t have to pay child support. But surprise, the courts won’t allow that either! He has to consent to giving them up AND he has to pay child support, and he cares about money more than getting the kids out of his life so the kids continue to be neglected and have problems every other week because they cannot by law void the child support requirement (or something similar to that, it may not be quite by law, but the judge just may be refusing for his own reasons, I’m not 100% sure).
So I can say that there exists at least one case where not forcing child support would help two kids.
I don’t see anything wrong with that. Firstly in implementation, the CS laws are stupidly inflexible and often end up with stupidly high payments being ordered, payments being made by fathers with sole custody, payments being made by victims of statutory rape, payments being difficult and expensive to change when income changes, payments being made by people denied any access to their children for no good reason, and so on. Secondly, not paying if punished overly harshly, as it can lead to prison, to being labelled a deadbeat dad, in some cases even having their names publicised by the state, and all that despite the fact that the vast majority of non-payers are poverty stricken and don’t pay because they can’t, and probably can’t afford a lawyer to tell that to the court. Besides which, nature gave men the ability to walk away from children they don’t want anything to do with, as it gave women the ability to abort a pregnancy. We don’t tell women they should keep their legs crossed if they don’t want to be parents, we shouldn’t tell men that either.
As for MRAs in general, half the leading MRAs are women, like two of the three hosts of the most popular MRA podcast the Voice for Men Radio, and the woman who’s the second result when you search youtube for “feminism”. So it’s hard to find an MRA who’s really against women.
I agree. And similarly, a lot of feminist types seem to be anti-man.
I think it’s because peoples’ political views are driven to a large extent by emotions. If you have a negative experience with a few people from Category X, it’s common to develop a lot of negative emotions towards people from Category X.
In dating and relationships, a lot of men choose the most sexually attractive girl they can find without regard to whether the girl is a decent person. Similarly, a lot of girls choose the most sexually attractive men they can find without regards to whether the man is a decent person. People who make their choices like this (and often they are not all that aware of what they are doing), are likely to have a lot of negative experiences with members of the opposite sex.
Everyone knows the cliche about the girl who is constantly falling for “bad boy” types and then bemoans the lack of nice guys in the world. I think a lot of men are the same way. They would never consider marrying a girl who is plain and overweight but nice. So instead they marry the psycho who is hot and great in bed but who goes on to cheat him and then take him for everything in divorce court. And conclude that all girls are cold-hearted gold-digging b****s.
Because those who traditionally hold power don’t like to see it weakened.
But one shouldn’t break down humanity into component parts and selectively hate them by being a misandrist or a misogynist. Both sides are essentially correct in their estimation of the other – women are crazy, manipulative and greedy and men are violent rapists who want to rule over all. So be progressive and hate equally. Be a misanthrope.
How the hell are you guys debating something that isn’t even defined? What are these men’s rights groups? I’ve never even heard of one. And can someone translate the last two paragraphs of the OP into English?
Okay, so you think fathers should be legally entitled to abandon children they don’t feel like supporting.
In that case, government aid is going to have to pick up the slack. Government aid is funded by taxes from me, you, and Uncle Jimmy, none of whom had anything to do with the creation of the child.
How is that more fair than what we’ve got going now?
To be honest, I aaaaaalmost became a men’s rights activist (MRA) of the slacktivist variety once after reading a bunch of stuff and watching some videos (though I was going to simultaneously be a feminist which is a preeeeeetty bad idea). But then I went to the National Coalition for Men page and it stopped me dead. The front page article was about how some group or another of radical feminists in Canada were doing rather rowdy protests of some reasonable thing concerning men and saying some pretty vile things (I can’t recall the specifics, I think calling for a book burning of some guy who publishes books about Men’s issues and threatening people going into the conference but don’t quote me). That was the gist of the article, and phrased calmly, I would’ve probably agreed.
But the thing I learned very fast from that page and other related blogs are that even if they’re reasonable in their arguments, MRA pages are often vicious. Absolutely inexcusably abrasive, devolving into namecalling and language that would make 4chan blush even alongside very reasonable arguments and observations. I’ve heard MRAs defend it by saying “to have a movement for social change you have to make people comfortable, because when people are comfortable they stop thinking.” Fuck. That. Noise. I think a lot of MRAs aren’t misogynists, but they intentionally use inflammatory language, and use that flimsy excuse to do it. So they come off as misogynists because they’re so busy flinging the most vile insults they can think up as they’re making their points. And since most of critics of the MRM are women, well, the most vile insults tend to be gendered – and even if they’re just saying them to get a rise they look misogynistic for them. However, if you stick around long enough, you’ll see that when they get a male critic, they do the same damn thing with comparably bad language, and even gendered insults exclusive to men oftentimes. Like I said, oftentimes they make good points, but the language they couch it in is vile as all hell.
ETA: Wait, I missed that part of blindyboard’s post. I know this is an anecdote, but getting child support out of my dad was like pulling teeth. It was absolutely not punished harshly. My mom filed legal complaints numerous times and the state never lifted a finger. The only time we started getting ANY money was when he started collecting social security and the state could take it directly out before giving it to him.
I’d take it a notch back - at least to justify my own view. Here it is:
Women who are crazy, manipulative and greedy are dangerous as fuck, but they are not threatened by women who fail to be crazy, manipulative and greedy. They’ll cut you and go on their merry way; all they want is the win.
Men who are violent and want to rule over all are threatened by men who are “weak.” They want to put those men in their place, and they’ll seek out men who don’t measure up, because a man who doesn’t dominate is not a man. They have to win and keep on winning.
My view, then, is that I don’t hate women quite as deeply as I do men. A man will fuck you up on principle, and think he’s “schooling” you.
Doubtful, since 4chan is a hotbed of vicious anti-feminism, particularly /pol/, although it’s not practically possible to tell trolling from the earnest.
