I've had that discussion in PMs with a couple of the Archangelles - maybe even you! ;-)

Heh, I'm much more innocuous than that.

I agree with the origins of SRSPrime, and I'm familiar with the bifurcations. However, there are several reasons why I believe SRS isn't to blame for the anti-feminist backlash on reddit.

1. Although there is some overlap between /r/mensrights and /r/SRSsucks and /r/antiSRS, the two communities are very different and I perceive the issues that are brought up in MR to be gripes against real-life, specific events (or patterns) rather than against feminism as an idea or a strawman. Mind you, many comments in MR tend to assign blame for these injustices to feminism, but the main topics of conversation are about custody rights, false rape accusations, childhood education, or other real issues that affect men. I don't think - and this is just my idea - that most posters in MR are involved in the meta-reddit communities, nor do they necessarily think that feminism is reflected by SRS. This is in comparison to SRSsucks and AntiSRS, which are obviously created in opposition to SRS and SRS-style "feminism."

My point is that the people who comment in /r/feminism and /r/TwoX and derail discussions cross-post to MR (I check the posting history of folks who seem to be commenting in bad faith), not SRSsucks or AntiSRS. This makes me feel like it's anti-feminists, not "anti-feminist because I don't like SRS"ers that derail conversations. When I see derailing or opposing comments in those women-centric subs, they rarely say "feminism is dumb and you're all bitches," they say, most of the time, "but what about men who are also oppressed?" or questioning the veracity of viewpoints/statistics. If SRS never existed, they would still be going into women-centric subs and arguing for men's rights. MR is a big subreddit with a lot of clout. And their thought leaders - Paul Elam et al - don't give a shit about SRS. They focus on real-life issues, as do the majority of their supporters.

2. I know you insinuated a counterargument in your 90/9/1 comment, but there are 32k subscribers to SRS, not all of whom are goons, and the non-prime subs (SRSwomen, SRSmicroagressions, etc) are so innocuous that I don't think SRSers as a whole (as a userbase, not the mods) honestly believe half the shit they say. And truth be told, there's a reason people keep subscribing to SRS, and it's not because they're all from SomethingAwful.. it's because reddit has real race/gender/GSM/ableism/etc problems.

3. This is entirely anecdotal, but my partner (whom I met on reddit more than two years ago, we live together now) is vocally very anti-SRS, but he says he has never associated SRS with feminism. He's more likely to read MR than /r/feminism. And yet he sees SRS for what it is: an outlier community of angry people. Yes, it's one case, but there are people who are anti-feminists who can nonetheless distinguish the two.

4. I rarely saw SRS mentioned outside meta communities until about half a year ago. Most of reddit had no idea it existed. It's only recently (within the past 6-12 months) that people have begun referencing SRS in popular posts and comments - and even then, the vast majority of redditors have no idea that it exists or what it is.

The point of all this is that you said SRS and LGBT stole the spotlight. I think it's easy to think so when you're involved heavily in meta communities - SRD, SRDB, SRDD, SRS, SRSS, ASRS, SRDX3, SRSB, etcetc - but the ripple effect is negligible outside a core of meta-users, and the people who derail conversations in women-centric spaces would do so even if SRS had never existed, because most of them are not meta-reddit users, and their "leaders" exist in meatspace with real-life concerns.

Yes, I acknowledge that the way SRS is run now is ultimately harmful to the perception of feminism on reddit (although I understand why it is done that way). However, I think the effect it has on the other fem subs is very small, and the invasion of women's spaces would happen without it.