David Futrelle dug deep into the Men’s Rights Movement, looking for some kind of activism. Here’s what he found.
When I started my blog Man Boobz around six months ago, I intended to mostly discuss the issues motivating those in the Men’s Rights Movement, and to highlight some of the sillier misogynist emanations from men’s rights activists (MRAs). But the more I delved into the movement online, the more convinced I became that, for most of those involved in it, the movement isn’t really about the issues at all—rather, it’s an excuse to vent male rage and spew misogyny online.
To borrow a phrase from computer programmers: misogyny isn’t a bug in the Men’s Rights Movement; it’s a feature.
Men’s rights activists aren’t much like any other activists I’ve ever run across. For one thing, for supposed activists they are almost completely inactive. Sure, they complain endlessly about things they see as terrible injustices against men. They just don’t do anything about them. While some of those who consider themselves fathers’ rights activists—a slightly different breed from your garden-variety MRAs—try to influence laws and legislatures, MRAs do little more than cultivate their resentments.
MRAs complain about (and dramatically overstate the number of) false rape accusations, but instead of mounting media campaigns or protests or anything else that would involve trying to bring this issue to a wider world, the overwhelming majority of MRAs seem content to use the issue as an excuse to rant about lying bitches online. MRAs, meanwhile, are quick to raise the issue prison rape (which mostly affects men) whenever rape is being discussed, but generally only to score rhetorical points; very few MRAs seem to even be aware there is an established national organization, Just Detention, devoted to fighting prison rape.
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Similarly, MRAs complain that there are virtually no domestic violence shelters specifically designed for male victims, but unlike the feminists and other activists who fought for years to get the woman-centered shelters we have today, MRAs seem content to gripe that feminists haven’t given them shelters, too. The closest thing we’ve seen to an actual activist campaign from MRAs on this issue was when Glenn Sacks, a fathers’ rights activist, called on his supporters to besiege the biggest donors to one domestic-violence shelter serving mostly women—they had run an ad Sacks didn’t like—in an attempt to get them to stop donating to the shelter. That’s right: instead of trying to raise money to build domestic-violence shelters for men, Sacks’ fans instead tried to take money away from a shelter for women.
MRAs are as sensitive to signs of oppression as the princess from “The Princess and the Pea.”
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At its heart, men’s rights activism doesn’t really seem to be about activism at all. What the movement has turned into is a strange parody of “victim feminism,” an endless search for proof that men (despite earning more than women, heading up the overwhelming majority of companies and governments in the world, getting all the best movie roles, never having to wear heels, and so on and so on and so on) are in fact second-class citizens.
MRAs are as sensitive to signs of oppression as the princess from Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea,” who was able to detect the presence of a pea under 20 mattresses. No sign of “oppression” is too trivial to whine about; these are people who think that whenever a woman “gets away with” calling a man a “creep”—apparently the worst insult in the world, far worse than “slut” or “bitch” or other insults directed at women that I cannot repeat here—it is a sign that women “sit on a pedestal of privilege.”
Others see themselves as besieged by women … dressing slutty. One would-be patriarch complained on a forum promoting patriarchy that “dressing provocatively and then suppressing male urges is an assault on men’s sexuality.” By “suppressing male urges” he essentially means not having sex with any man who lusts after her. Meanwhile, his idea of “dressing provocatively” includes wearing blue jeans, “because a tight pair of jeans will accentuate a woman’s legs and buttocks. High heels meet the same conflict as tight jeans, while they may not show extra skin, they accentuate a woman’s legs and buttocks. “Even uncovered hair is bad,” as “raw, long hair can excite men.”
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Next: A vacation from empathy
Thank for writing this article. I think men do have legitimate issues, & it would be nice if someone was actually fighting for those issues. But you are right, MRA’s & MGTOW seems to be a place for men to vent about how “terrible” women are. I’m not saying women are perfect, but focus on the issues, not the hate. When men want to start dealing with real issues, I’ll be there to lend support, but I won’t have anything to do with perpetuating hate.
Great post! It’s definitely a shame that MRA’s are taking attention away from legitimate men’s issues. I regularly have MRA thrown in my face. I can’t understand how blind they are to what feminists are doing. Well, I guess I should only be speaking of “my feminists”. In the feminists spaces where I hang out, prison rape jokes and the like get called out pretty damn fast. And we regularly dicsuss such things as boys being mistreated in primary schools because of gender, male circumcision and how we need equality with parental rights. I don’t see any of these things… Read more »
David Futrelle is my hero.
Don’t you know by now? You’re feeding the trolls. So long as the focus is on the nastiest parts of the MRM, it will only get worse. There are some legitimate issues that they bring up, but it’s the misogynists festering their movement from within that gets them any attention or relevance. There are people out there who seem desperate to find some violent act — any violent act — that can be attributed to the MRM even if it takes enhancing the truth a little bit. There are websites devoted to seeking out the worst among MRAs to publicize… Read more »
Bravo,,,
The real men’s movement is a movement of men living in quiet desperation. The male gender role looks more rigidly defined than it has ever been: we wear the long calf length shorts, the long calf length swimming attire so that we don’t harass the poor oppressed feminists with our naked thighs. Why bother having sex on a one way street? So stay single. Continue the marriage strike. Hey, but what can I say? If oafs are in fashion, then so be it. They give women an excellent target for bashing. Whatever happened to Dwight Stones high jumping in those… Read more »
I read through this and I wish it had had some kind of trigger warning. I was sent here by a post on Facebook and had no idea what I was getting into. I knew MRA’s were bad, sad and rather pitiful and I still feel that way, maybe even a bit more. But their level of hate brought back memories that still haunt me even though I generally have way back in my mind. I lived through a domestically violent relationship in which basically torture was literally involved. I was nearly strangled to death by my boyfriend and my… Read more »
“I knew MRA’s were bad, sad and rather pitiful and I still feel that way, maybe even a bit more. But their level of hate brought back memories that still haunt me even though I generally have way back in my mind”
This comment is as pathetic as a male rape victim blaming feminism and saying feminists are bad. Seriously, get over yourself and stop painting entire groups with broad strokes.
thekelliko70 says:
August 5, 2013 at 7:47 pm …MRA’s were bad, sad and rather pitiful
Reading your story I ask myself what this has to do with the Men’s Rights Movement.
Maybe you can explain?
Everything. MRM groups fuel these behaviours. The link is clear…hearing about attitudes online in MRM groups retriggers memories of violence against womem. Because the attitudes of perpetrators of violence and MRM ideas have strong similarities
MRAs complain about (and dramatically overstate the number of) false rape accusations, but instead of mounting media campaigns or protests or anything else that would involve trying to bring this issue to a wider world, the overwhelming majority of MRAs seem content to use the issue as an excuse to rant about lying bitches online. I represented a client who was falsely accused and convicted of rape. He spent 12 years in jail before being cleared on DNA evidence. His accuser didn’t spend so much as a day in jail. She was immune from civil liability because the state was… Read more »
Strong pathetic White-Knighting by David Futrelle here. Apparently one isn’t a movement if a movement isn’t strong enough to protest publically, I guess. Keep in mind that all movements go underground, especially in persecuted groups. Men are a persecuted group, and men aware of problems and moving for change, even more so. We are aware that speaking out will cause misandrists to try and ruin our lives for trying to get equal treatment. Call it misogyny if you like, but hatred is not targetted at the entire female gender, rather it is directed against those who unfairly oppress others. This… Read more »
As a guy that loves women, i hate all this gender wars between MRA’s and feminists. Thats why i never claimed myself MRA ( yes, i think many of MRA’s are bunch of angry pathetic misogynists its ridiculous ) or even feminist. I love peace, all this hates and rants are ridiculous and fucking annoying. Thats why i love to read GMP’s article about how to raising boys and other articles about men’s feeling and vulnerability (Sadly those kinds of articles are such a rarity ). Men emotions are not all about rage and violence, we have sadness too, joy,… Read more »
If Futrelle had dug a little deeper he’d have found college campus activism, political lobbying, counselling for men, legal assistance during divorce, even community projects run by men who have retired and want to provide free training for young people. There are MRA’s who research and publish concerning proposed laws in their country so other men are informed of how it will affect them if it passed into law.
Seems pretty active for an “inactive” group.
Wait, what?!
Mods, isn’t this a negative generalization of a movement? I thought we JUST covered how this type of writing wouldn’t be allowed (for feminism) an yet here it is! You all are such hypocrites…
David brings up a good point about not enough actual activism taking place. But that hardly invalidates the movement for men’s rights. Don’t belittle men, dude. Far from agreeing wih you and toeing the line, we will fucking hate you for it.
Because remember, hate bounces, Mr. Boobz.
I think it was posted before the moderation change.
Jesse M. says:
April 25, 2012 at 12:39 pm
…abortion is less likely to lead to the mother’s death than childbirth…
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How can you compare pregnancy with a kidney disease?
To consider abortion healthier than childbirth is grotesque.
It sounds somehow that pregnancy is a form of illness requires surgery.
Agree completely with this article. Their intention seems to be to throw a collective temper tantrum in quite a childish attempt to change things, but the harsh reality of life is that no one really cares if you get married or not, or swear off women. You can do that if that’s what you want to do, but I suspect most men in MGTOW really do want an intimate relationship, they have just convinced themselves they don’t want one (or are trying to) to prevent themselves from experiencing the inevitable pain and heartache that comes with them. Excuse me for… Read more »
@John Gottman Like it or not, the Men’s Rights Movement so far is disproportionally strongly growing and this for good reason obviously. The argument that people – there are also female men’s rights advocates – who are considering that men and boys also should have rights, are unable or unfit for an intimate relationship is baseless and insulting. How can you say something like that? About myself, I am married since over 35 years and have 2 daughters. Never divorced – and what about you? About David Futrelle and his chaotic website, as far as I can see, he left… Read more »
Good riddance.
At first after reading a number of Mr. Futurelle’s posts I was convinced he was actually a woman. His writing was so FEMININE. Virtually ANY activist movement that generates a fair amount of support is motivated by real issues. Men generally try to argue by logically de constructing arguments of the opposition. It’s rare to find a male activist who isn’t able to at least comprehend the issues of the opposing side. Mr. Futurelle’s posts by contrast were either completely disingenuous or blinded by emotion. There isn’t ONE single serious argument in his posts. It’s completely contrary to all my… Read more »
Mocking the the author of being your perception that his writing is ‘feminine’.
And here, in a nutshell, is what is so transparently wrong with the mensrights movement: the thinly veiled hatred of women, to the point where your first reaction to criticism is to accuse opponents of being like women.
@Diver
What a nonsense talk – the Men’s Rights Movement does not hate women, and I consider myself as MRA, I am married since over 35 years, 2 daughters already adults and 1 fostergirl. My mother in law was sharing our rooms for over 20 years until she died. And now, the only argument against the MRAs is to claim, they hate women?
MRAs are against feminism, not against women…
*MRAs are against women’s rights, not against women…
because we have to have sex with SOMEONE, and we obviously can’t be gay…that’d be too feminine.
*MRAs are against women’s rights, not against women…
because we have to have sex with SOMEONE, and we obviously can’t be gay…that’d be too feminine.
There are gay men in the MRM, misandric laws only consider a person’s sex, not their gender.
Wendy, I think he means anti-male feminist inspired laws and policy, not anti-woman’s rights. Basically raise women up to equality is fine, but don’t actually cause harm to men in the process. And I don’t mean men losing privilege but things like gendered laws on domestic violence where men miss out on protection quite a bit (which commenters regularly discuss here).
“At first after reading a number of Mr. Futurelle’s posts I was convinced he was actually a woman. His writing was so FEMININE.” Implying that being feminine is bad, and by extension that most women are bad since most MRAs see women as one dimensional caricatures rather than complex human beings.. That’s pretty misogynistic. “Virtually ANY activist movement that generates a fair amount of support is motivated by real issues.” Corrupt evangelicals who build megachurches generate a fair amount of support. Propaganda from all political parties generates a fair amount of support. Hate movements like the Nazi Party and the… Read more »
“Implying that being feminine is bad, and by extension that most women are bad since most MRAs see women as one dimensional caricatures rather than complex human beings.. That’s pretty misogynistic.” So glad you know that most MRA’s view women as one dimensional, which is funny since a common argument I see of feminists is they don’t like to be generalized against yet you feel free to generalize towards MRA’s? Maybe try say many, quite a few, or many I have seen without stating it as most since the others are more personal observations and don’t imply the majority in… Read more »
You aren’t logically deconstructing this person’s arguments. You are simply sifting through them sentence by sentence and interjecting your objections and groundless accusations. Example 1) “Implying that being feminine is bad, and by extension that most women are bad since most MRAs see women as one dimensional caricatures rather than complex human beings.” Strawman argument) at no point in Ethical’s post did he state that being feminine is bad or that it is bad to a “feminine” writing style. You could argue that this is why you use the term imply, but that would swiftly be defeated by complete lack… Read more »
yes. Feminism is bad, amirite? Its not like date rape is harmful or anything, girls will heal, and the guy gets satisfaction, amirite? Women are sexy, but they humiliate men by not giving any, which is a war crime, or something of the like. Hmm. I see some logical fallacies. Do you?
Some parts of feminism is bad, other parts good. Raising awareness on sexual assault is good, ignoring the massive amount of male victims of sexual assault is bad. Too many see feminism as either fully good, or fully bad, not enough seem to realize there is good and bad in it and as a whole it’s probably ok but needs far more work.
Young men are beginning to question why they HAVE to give women rights and respect if all it means is that they get belittled, scorned, accused and disadvantaged. After all, men are stronger, faster, tougher. Why should the strong be made to yield to the weak? I think a lot of young men are changing their minds. If enough young, Western men become fed up with the continual insolence of Western women they may decide that actually, things were better for them when they were allowed to put their foot down and get nasty. The feminist contingent who run this… Read more »
The fact that men wonder whether they have to GIVE rights shows that men feel that rights are THEIRS to GIVE.
Show me a man who doesn’t talk in a way that clearly show they KNOW they have POWER and they are the ones who can GIVE and TAKE it away.
Come to Australia, women have plenty of power here. Hell in the U.S women are the majority of voters, so really women have more power than men.
That relies on the patently false logic that US politics reflect the will of the voters, rather than the will of a smaller oligarchical class. It also relies on the false logic that women are a unified voting bloc prioritizing their own well-being.
But, then, if we can’t even expect women themselves to act politically in their own best interests, then what hope is there that men will act in women’s best interests? It seems presumptuous for a man to say what male behavior is in women’s interest, when women themselves are unable to reach a consensus about it.
If it’s inaccurate to suggest that women today act in their own best interest, then what point is there in trying to keep men conscious of where anyone’s best interests lay?
Yet you project the same flawed idea of a unified MALE conspiracy onto YOUR opponents.
Jess says:
January 3, 2012 at 5:02 am
Exactly what rights do you not have? All I ever hear from this group gets summed up to the right to rape women.
Sounds like feminist hatespeech to me.
This is really a stupid argument against the Men’s Rights Movement.
I’ve been reading MRAs blogs since 2009 and I know women that read and comment on them too and David is right : there is no activism among MRAs, there’s only whining and trolling. In fact, Glenn Sacks had to shutdown the comment section of his blog a few years ago because it was flooded of insanities by MRAs. As an example, a few years ago, in soc.men, there’s a guy that complained that the comment he posted on Glenn Sacks blog had been removed because he said in it that women should not have the right to vote. Another… Read more »
David Futrelle does nothing more than malign and denigrate the MM as it’s is what he does. He introduces lies and misinformation as all feminists do and have done right from the beginning. False information and strawman arguments is the bread and butter of the feminist movement and generating anti-male sentiment, male hate and spreading vitriol against the MM just indicates that it is becoming something to be feared and to be controlled. Too late. Also Congratulation on David Futrelle’s Mangina Award, I know he deserves it and has poisoned a lot of people in order to achieve it. MODERATOR’S… Read more »
No comment on any of the other stuff since i don’t know much about it, but has it occurred to you that blue jeans guy is a troll? An obvious one? And you still fell for it. For shame. How long have you been on the internet?
Far from ‘digging deep’, Futrelle lurked at one or two sites without ever posting (hadn’t the guts to say anything directly), cherry-picked and edited comments, put them on his blog and said ‘This is the men’s right’s movement’.
“Dismantling the Men’s Rights Movement”
Too much big words coming from a so little “man”.
I’m waiting for you at my door, to see how you’re going to “dismantle the men’s rights movement”.
Won’t hold my breath waiting for that to happen though… too much distance between your braggadocio and what you can materially do.
-An Italian Men’s Rights Activist, Celebrating 8 years of activism.
(And I’m 29 years old. About other 50-60 years of activism left, and I’m waking up more and more young men every day who will continue the AntiFeminist tradition…)
they are very active in bribery – of judges in family courts, especially regarding cases of child abuse (them vs. child) and when they don’t want to pay child support, or make the woman who’s never had a job pay child support to them. You’re right about the rage, though.
Any proof of that!?
It’s hilarious when feminists contradict themselves. They seem to do this constantly. David writes “…. the feminists and other activists who fought for years to get the woman-centered shelters we have today….” Here I thought feminists stood for equality. Well shiver me timbers. I never would have guessed that they only supported women. How can you be for equality when you only support 51% of the population? They (feminists) also love to argue with themselves. They tell you what mras are arguing and then they proceed to debate themselves. Easy to attack their opponent when they aren’t actually attacking their… Read more »
“This is like the terminator movies. Man created machine and the machine fought man. Feminists created their own enemies and now those forces are fighting back. This will not end soon and it won’t be pretty either.” This is why so many MRAs come across as angry creeps, because you guys so often act like living mirrors of caricatures of man-hating feminists (of which there are some, but most feminists aren’t like this in my experience)–all you ever seem to talk about is your hatred of feminism, your fantasies about how you’re going to turn the tables on them and… Read more »
Jesse, I’m guessing you’re a feminist but do you like being lumped in with radfems who advocate aborting male children, have big forum discussions about it? Want to reduce the worlds population of men and speak other misandrist garbage? Who love the Scum manifesto like it’s a bible? “Because you guys”, do you mean all mra’s, some mra’s, are you lumping the mra’s who question statistics with the ones that hate women? “If you actually just focused on creating positive change on specific issues that do especially harm men (prison rape, child custody etc.) ” I’m not an MRA, but… Read more »
Jesse, I’m guessing you’re a feminist but do you like being lumped in with radfems who advocate aborting male children, have big forum discussions about it? I’m a feminist in the sense of believing in equality but I don’t buy into all the things that get included in contemporary american feminism, especially when they get into critiques of the media. But in any case I think you could search through vast numbers of comments on mainstream feminist sites (jezebel, feminista) without ever finding any expressing that sort of extreme man-hating view, whereas finding woman-hating (or more specifically “feminist”-hating) comments is… Read more »
Yes, Jesse, but the reality is that for the last forty years the “women’s movement” has very successfully manipulated the mass media and our judicial system to constantly regardless all women as hopeless victims, and all men as monsters. Perhaps that might — just might — account for the rage so many guys feel with regards to “feminism.” Think about it, how many men lose access to their children, often due to bogus claims by women that their spouses are sexual predators, how many men break their backs being good providers only to lose everything in divorce court to a… Read more »
I’m sorry for what happened to your friend. Still, I’d need more evidence to think it was justified to blame this type of thing on feminism–there are plenty of sociopaths out there who will lie in court and smear people’s reputations to get what they want, men and women alike. For example, are cases like this significantly more common in liberal areas where feminism is popular than in conservative areas where it isn’t? I think there’s a general trend in our culture to see women as more sympathetic and likely to be victims, especially when it comes to child-rearing, so… Read more »
I think MRA’s can do a lot more, I believe Glenn Sacks does quite a bit of work and various fathers groups try to get their issues addressed, I’ve seen the anti-misandry websites trying to raise awareness of that issue. I see quite a few of the bad mra’s seem to be in a backlash mode, feeling betrayed by feminism even to the point they are bitter and they are angry. I guess it can be quite daunting to see the bad feminists, and it does appear the bad ones might have a lot of power if the recent avoiceformen… Read more »
Jesse M: You said: “I wonder what the ratio of male rape to female rape would be if one didn’t include prison populations–if most male rape happens in prison, to some degree it makes sense to treat it as a separate issue from rape in the wider society,” The NISVS 2010 Report from CDC did not have any institutionalized respondents, which means that prison inmated were not asked. If you look at the “Last 12 months” prevalency numbers and you accept the premise that “being made to penetrate someone else” (exact definition on p.17 in NISVS 2010) you will see… Read more »
‘If you look at the “Last 12 months” prevalency numbers and you accept the premise that “being made to penetrate someone else” (exact definition on p.17 in NISVS 2010) you will see that 1.1% women reported rape while 1.1% of men reported being made to penetrate someone else (tables on p.18-19).’ I wonder about these “12 month” figures–it seems strange that 1.1% of men would say this had happened in the last 12 months, but only 4.8% would say it happened in their entire lifetime, whereas for women 1.1% say they have been raped in the last 12 months, but… Read more »
Could be men are forcing themselves to bury it more but you run the risk of minimizing the severity of it with talk like that, there could be women who were raped too who didn’t view it as bad but I’d say most men n women really hated it and it affected them in some way. I’m very curious as to why there is such a disparity, maybe women have better long term memory? I can’t recall a lot of my bullying and assaults, only glimpses here n there. I know something happened, I can sometimes remember some of the… Read more »
I notice now that for all the male figures the lifetime figure seems oddly low compared to the 12-month figure–for “unwanted sexual contact” it’s 2.3 vs. 11.7 (so the lifetime figure is less than 5.1 times larger), for “non-contact unwanted sexual experiences” it’s 2.7 vs. 12.8 (a little more than 4.7 times larger), for “sexual coersion” it’s 1.5 vs. 6.0 (4 times larger), all of which are comparable to the “made to penetrate” figures of 1.1 and 4.8 (a little under 4.4 times larger). Unfortunately the survey didn’t include 12 month figures for forced penetration, it would be helpful to… Read more »
Why no, they’re simply saying ‘karma’s a bitch’.
Thank you so much for this article. It has explained a lot of things I see on here, relating to MRAs, which I couldn’t entirely put my finger on/articulate but have FELT them.
I swear some of these threads, especially feminist topics overtaken by the MRAs make me feel like I have walked into a FUN HOUSE, with all these giant mirrors all around me – and everywhere I look, things are distorted and laughing back at me! They make women feel and look like crazy fools! I pity these angry men.
wilma says: January 3, 2012 at 12:06 pm …feminist topics overtaken by the MRAs make me feel like I have walked into a FUN HOUSE ————————- MRAs do not ‘overtake feminist topics’ within the GMP. MRAs, simply said, write their comments in those threads exactly in the same way as the feminists do. You will have to learn as a feminist, that many people, not only MRAs do not agree with you. Of course you will find comments against feminism written by MRAs and published by the GMP, like it or not, but what is wrong with this? The GMP… Read more »
Not all MRA’s are like this, the author basically wrote a piece on a few and generalized badly that most are like this. The same tactic used by those BAD Mra’s the author hates, on feminism. IF the gmp was a feminist site I would not be here because from experience with trying to get anything I say valued and respected in the feminist-areas is like walking on eggshells and having to parrot only the popular feminist ideals, never EVER mention male suffering, join in blind following of women suffer and we can’t talk about the men. I haven’t seen… Read more »
“…getting all the best movie roles…”
You don’t have to be Molly Haskell to find THAT assertion ridiculous. The film industry is dominated by its principle demographic, adolescent males, and it shows accordingly in the films that Hollywood makes, whereby guys are free to be considerably less-than-matinee idols in their looks (Jason Segel, Seth Rogen when he was still fat) in romantic comedies, while their female partners must remain young, slim, and pretty.
For the record, the independent scene isn’t that much better.
Spose you’ve never seen an action movie in the last 30 years where bodies with more muscle than most men can really get without a fulltime gym career and probably some roids….This added in with the recent finding in the uk that men are actually slightly more anxious of their body image than women, you’re argument doesn’t appear to have much weight. Did you also ignore how STUPID those guys are in romcom’s? They’re portrayed as bafoons, losers, lazy in many cases. You can take hollywood and make arguments for each gender that are treated bad.