It’s especially sticky because “Men’s Rights” is a bait-and-switch, ripping off “Men’s Liberation.”
Men’s Liberation is associated with feminist movements, because patriarchy hurts everyone. That’s not to equivocate between the extents to which men and women suffer under it (or any group under systemic bigotry), but liberation and egalitarianism would help us all.
So Men’s Rights does the thing where it appeals to people with genuine grievances, but offers them a bullshit solution that benefits grifters and people in power. It’s not this systemic problem, it’s this group of people, and if only we could deal with them, everything would magically fix itself. In this case, “It’s not patriarchy, it’s not capitalism, it’s feminists, and women in general. If only we could get them back in their place, your life would be back on track. So vote for me/sign up for my course…”
So, bringing up the ways in which men also suffer under sexism can kick up some dirt to muddy the waters, intentionally or not. Some will be bad faith actors who just want to shit on feminism. Others will be taking the feminist side on this. And those in the middle, who see things turn toxic, can go any way—but if they stay neutral, or especially move right, then the reactionaries gain some ground.
So I don’t know what’s in OP’s heart. But, at least from way too many fights online, I’ve found that the best course of action is to assume good faith, and give reactionaries enough rope to hang themselves. They don’t have the better ideas, and they don’t have the better plans, but they’re good at shit-flinging. If you just make a good case, they tend to unmask pretty quickly and fall apart. There’s no point trying to convince a die-hard bigot, but you can play to the audience by just making the better case and helping bigots embarrass themselves.
In my opinion, at least, for whatever that’s worth. Sorry for the rambling!
Men’s Liberation is associated with feminist movements,
In my experience, men’s lib is like men’s rights if the first rule of men’s rights was to never question any feminist position, the second rule was to never question any woman’s position unless it contradicts the first rule, and the third rule is any men’s issue needs to be framed in such a way that it’s primarily about benefiting women. Just follow those three rules and you too can discuss men’s issues without it being evil altright misogyny!
I actually found it amusing to see MensLib types talking positively about Contrapoints “Men” video, for example. I actually had to go back and rewatch some old stuff to make sure she wasn’t directly plagiarizing Alison Tieman since some of her points were so close to things Tieman wrote like a decade before that. Alison Tieman of course being best known for Honey Badger Radio.
I suspect I’m a bit older than most in these conversations, or at least have engaged with it longer. I’ll say this, feminism has improved with how they deal with men’s issues over the last 25 or so years. Though to be fair, 25 years ago simply claiming it’s impossible for a man to be the victim of abuse was the default position, so that’s a low bar.
2008 you had angry protests in Canada because a group called CAFE had a speaker giving a talk about suicide in men - if you’ve ever seen the “Big Red” feminist meme, it came from this protest, she was a protester and was basically shouting a Jezebel article at people and screaming at anyone who dared interrupt her calling them things like “fuckface.”
We could also look at Mary Koss, who is kind of a major figure in research around sexual assault in the US. She performed the first real study on the topic, and her definitions and instruments and ones descended from them are still used. As recently as 8 years ago she responded to a question about a man being raped by a woman by asking how that could even happen. When given an example in which a man was drugged and ridden by a woman she outright stated that she wouldn’t call that rape but “unwanted contact”. https://soundcloud.com/889-wers/male-rape
Also, women’s studies and feminist theories aren’t about truth but about providing a scholarly veneer backing activism. To quote Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University who specializes in feminism, political philosophy and ethics: “feminist theory cannot claim to describe what exists, or, ‘natural facts.’ Rather, feminist theories should be political tools, strategies for overcoming oppression in specific concrete situations. The goal, then, of feminist theory, should be to develop strategic theories—not true theories, not false theories, but strategic theories.”
because patriarchy hurts everyone.
Patriarchy is the wrong way to view it all. Patriarchy theory has it’s origins in Marxist class conflict which is a reasonable way to view economic class but breaks down the farther you wander from economic class (hell, the only reason it even kinda works for race in the US is because of what the three largest racial groups are and their economic relationship to each other both historically and currently).
It’s just a bad model for how gender works. A great example of this is that you can point to all kinds of stats as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and oppresses black people, but break down those same measurements by sex instead of race and that same argument would suggest that the criminal justice system is sexist and oppresses men, which the same people who will use those measures re:race as evidence of oppression will also tell you is definitely wrong because it’s backwards from their presumed hierarchy.
That’s not to equivocate between the extents to which men and women suffer under it (or any group under systemic bigotry), but liberation and egalitarianism would help us all.
My biggest gripe with feminism is that when equal treatment and what benefits women are not the same thing, feminism breaks in favor of what benefits women. See for example pushes for family court to adopt a rebuttable presumption of shared custody, most of the opposition against which would frame itself as feminist. Or the DeVos Title IX policy changes and the anger and backlash at them, where most of the changes were either codifying things schools had been successfully sued over or establishing some frankly fucking obvious notions of fair due process, like that the person representing the accuser’s side and the person deciding the result should not be the same person (the DeVos setup requires at least three people aside from the accused and accuser be involved in a hearing, serving roles analogous to prosecutor, defense attorney and judge) or that the accused shouldn’t be punished until after a determination is made (instead it calls for non-punitive measures where needed, like adjusting schedules to avoid contact between parties or other things that would minimize issues while not damaging anyone’s educational progress).
It’s especially sticky because “Men’s Rights” is a bait-and-switch, ripping off “Men’s Liberation.”
Men’s Liberation is associated with feminist movements, because patriarchy hurts everyone. That’s not to equivocate between the extents to which men and women suffer under it (or any group under systemic bigotry), but liberation and egalitarianism would help us all.
So Men’s Rights does the thing where it appeals to people with genuine grievances, but offers them a bullshit solution that benefits grifters and people in power. It’s not this systemic problem, it’s this group of people, and if only we could deal with them, everything would magically fix itself. In this case, “It’s not patriarchy, it’s not capitalism, it’s feminists, and women in general. If only we could get them back in their place, your life would be back on track. So vote for me/sign up for my course…”
So, bringing up the ways in which men also suffer under sexism can kick up some dirt to muddy the waters, intentionally or not. Some will be bad faith actors who just want to shit on feminism. Others will be taking the feminist side on this. And those in the middle, who see things turn toxic, can go any way—but if they stay neutral, or especially move right, then the reactionaries gain some ground.
So I don’t know what’s in OP’s heart. But, at least from way too many fights online, I’ve found that the best course of action is to assume good faith, and give reactionaries enough rope to hang themselves. They don’t have the better ideas, and they don’t have the better plans, but they’re good at shit-flinging. If you just make a good case, they tend to unmask pretty quickly and fall apart. There’s no point trying to convince a die-hard bigot, but you can play to the audience by just making the better case and helping bigots embarrass themselves.
In my opinion, at least, for whatever that’s worth. Sorry for the rambling!
Removed by mod
This is why I like Leftwing Male Advocates instead.
In my experience, men’s lib is like men’s rights if the first rule of men’s rights was to never question any feminist position, the second rule was to never question any woman’s position unless it contradicts the first rule, and the third rule is any men’s issue needs to be framed in such a way that it’s primarily about benefiting women. Just follow those three rules and you too can discuss men’s issues without it being evil altright misogyny!
I actually found it amusing to see MensLib types talking positively about Contrapoints “Men” video, for example. I actually had to go back and rewatch some old stuff to make sure she wasn’t directly plagiarizing Alison Tieman since some of her points were so close to things Tieman wrote like a decade before that. Alison Tieman of course being best known for Honey Badger Radio.
I suspect I’m a bit older than most in these conversations, or at least have engaged with it longer. I’ll say this, feminism has improved with how they deal with men’s issues over the last 25 or so years. Though to be fair, 25 years ago simply claiming it’s impossible for a man to be the victim of abuse was the default position, so that’s a low bar.
2008 you had angry protests in Canada because a group called CAFE had a speaker giving a talk about suicide in men - if you’ve ever seen the “Big Red” feminist meme, it came from this protest, she was a protester and was basically shouting a Jezebel article at people and screaming at anyone who dared interrupt her calling them things like “fuckface.”
We could also look at Mary Koss, who is kind of a major figure in research around sexual assault in the US. She performed the first real study on the topic, and her definitions and instruments and ones descended from them are still used. As recently as 8 years ago she responded to a question about a man being raped by a woman by asking how that could even happen. When given an example in which a man was drugged and ridden by a woman she outright stated that she wouldn’t call that rape but “unwanted contact”. https://soundcloud.com/889-wers/male-rape
Also, women’s studies and feminist theories aren’t about truth but about providing a scholarly veneer backing activism. To quote Kelly Oliver, W. Alton Jones Professor of Philosophy, Vanderbilt University who specializes in feminism, political philosophy and ethics: “feminist theory cannot claim to describe what exists, or, ‘natural facts.’ Rather, feminist theories should be political tools, strategies for overcoming oppression in specific concrete situations. The goal, then, of feminist theory, should be to develop strategic theories—not true theories, not false theories, but strategic theories.”
Patriarchy is the wrong way to view it all. Patriarchy theory has it’s origins in Marxist class conflict which is a reasonable way to view economic class but breaks down the farther you wander from economic class (hell, the only reason it even kinda works for race in the US is because of what the three largest racial groups are and their economic relationship to each other both historically and currently).
It’s just a bad model for how gender works. A great example of this is that you can point to all kinds of stats as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and oppresses black people, but break down those same measurements by sex instead of race and that same argument would suggest that the criminal justice system is sexist and oppresses men, which the same people who will use those measures re:race as evidence of oppression will also tell you is definitely wrong because it’s backwards from their presumed hierarchy.
My biggest gripe with feminism is that when equal treatment and what benefits women are not the same thing, feminism breaks in favor of what benefits women. See for example pushes for family court to adopt a rebuttable presumption of shared custody, most of the opposition against which would frame itself as feminist. Or the DeVos Title IX policy changes and the anger and backlash at them, where most of the changes were either codifying things schools had been successfully sued over or establishing some frankly fucking obvious notions of fair due process, like that the person representing the accuser’s side and the person deciding the result should not be the same person (the DeVos setup requires at least three people aside from the accused and accuser be involved in a hearing, serving roles analogous to prosecutor, defense attorney and judge) or that the accused shouldn’t be punished until after a determination is made (instead it calls for non-punitive measures where needed, like adjusting schedules to avoid contact between parties or other things that would minimize issues while not damaging anyone’s educational progress).