- For the past decade, the Men's Rights Movement has been gaining traction on the Internet—and growing ever more radical in its attacks on feminists. R. Tod Kelly explores whether a movement where moderates are marginalized can ever break into the mainstream.
Outside of custody issues (which are serious, and quite biased in favor of women), the only people I know who ever bring up the issue of "men's rights" are dudes who can't get laid on their own merit. It's amazing how spite and self-pity can manifest itself as a grand conspiracy. "The world isn't working for me, so there must be something wrong with the world!" Here's a clue: if everyone around you is an asshole, it's probably you.
While I know exactly the kind of guy you're talking about and I agree that custody issues are heavily biased in the favor of women, there are some situations where men's complaints do seem to be dismissed out of hand. For example, female on male rape, men who have been trafficked and even coerced into sex work. I don't identify as a "men's rights" guy, but I do think that there is a problem of women accusing men of rape when in fact it did not happen. I am not saying that this is a common problem, or that it is an acceptable conclusion for police or others to jump to when hearing about the possibility of a rape. But it does happen. Rape is such a huge problem in general precisely because it's often so hard to concretely prove exactly what happened and I have certainly seen people try to take advantage of that. That said, that example of that ad campaign (don't be that girl) is awful and undermines the idea that a man can be falsely accused of rape by a woman who regrets their encounter. I don't know if you've ever seen this Dave Chapelle bit. Granted, it's supposed to be a segue into a Clinton/Lewinski joke, but that part really stuck with me because I've seen how true that can be. Even if no legal action can be taken in a situation like that, it can result in someone being heavily ostracized in their community with no way to prove their innocence. From what I've seen about this "men's rights" thing, it really seems to harm more than help, if only by pointing fingers and reframing serious issues in such a way as to make them look asinine.
Not arguing that there aren't specific situations where men are victims. Just saying that this "movement" from everything I've observed IRL and on the Internet is a joke, a misogynistic circle jerk that doesn't seem to get how silly it looks to the world. Feminists to them are as Jews are to the neo nazis, it seems.
Yeah, I had a bit of a hard time deciding if I should respond to you because I felt that what I was saying was related to your reply or to the thread in general. I thought that whole obsession with the extreme (or "x-treme") was a '90's thing, but there's a whole lot of extremism going around right now. It's interesting to see how the rise of communications technology coincides with a widespread lack of self-awareness in more ways than masses of people staring at their phones.Not arguing that there aren't specific situations where men are victims
Just saying that this "movement" from everything I've observed IRL and on the Internet is a joke, a misogynistic circle jerk that doesn't seem to get how silly it looks to the world.
Welcome to UK law where women legally can't commit rape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rape_in_English_law There's still some things to be sorted from both sides. I wrote a long reply to this article earlier and ended up deleting it, MRM/Radical Feminism just makes me so angry because their trite shitty war means any complaints get you branded as the enemy of THEIR SIDE rather than having a legitimate point. (TE) Radical Feminists have written entire papers on why transitioning male to female is the rape of the female gender, MRM do some bullshit about how MEN HAVE IT THE HARDEST EVER AND FEMALE RIGHTS GO TOO FAR and I know neither group is made up entirely of these asshats but it makes both sides completely unlikeable. When asked I usually just avoid talking about feminism because the second I go "I'm a feminist" I get a deluge of questions ranging from how I'm justifying male rape or male abuse and I'm sick of it all.1-(1) A person (A) commits an offence if—
(a) he intentionally penetrates the vagina, anus or mouth of another person (B) with his penis,
(b) B does not consent to the penetration, and
(c) A does not reasonably believe that B consents.
It's really mind-boggling how permeated MRM is with bigotry. There are some select issues of gender discrimination against men which really warrant scrutiny and activism, but how can they get any attention surrounded by that kind of filth? MRM is working hard to assure all of it's merits are associated with bigotry; it's a disaster. I'd like to support a guy like Price, but even then you have to wonder: what does he think of mingling with guys like Hembling? Does he just quietly tolerate it? Why? The narrative you get from Elam about the issue of radicalism in MRM makes you think he thinks the bigotry is unimportant, like he doesn't disagree but it's just not his main goal. The movement seems totally broken.