Hugo Schwyzer explains how a handful of men are angry for all the wrong reasons.
When I was getting clean and sober in a Twelve Step program many years ago, there was one phrase from the literature that always resonated with me. We addicts have been, the book said, the “architects of our own adversity.” Yes, I thought the first time I read that. It’s time to stop blaming others for my own pain. It’s time to take responsibility.
That same phrase comes to mind when I think about Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). I’ve been 
crossing verbal swords with the MRAs for many years, particularly since 2004 when I began to develop a public presence as a male feminist writer and professor. I learned quickly that not all MRAs were the same; some offered thoughtful criticism while others offered only nasty invective. (Look up “Hugo Schwyzer Mangina” if you need evidence of the latter.)
As a professor who teaches courses on Men and Masculinity, as well as a mentor to many young men (and as a man myself, of course), I’m intensely interested in the ways in which men position themselves as victims. I’ve spent years reading the literature and talking points of MRAs and “fathers’ rights” groups. I’ve spent a lot of time in conversation with men who are going through divorce, something I’ve been through more than once. My male students range in age from 17 to 70, from bright high school students taking their first college courses to retired professionals curious about gender studies. I meet with so many of them—jocks, geeks, gamers, drifters, ambitious future politicians and wary-eyed Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
From so many of these men—online and in real life—I hear the same thing: the narrative of helplessness.
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The older, angrier MRAs describe a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men, they claim, are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men. It all provides a satisfying sense of being “under attack,” which is why many—not all—men’s rights activists use, absurdly enough, the language of oppression and resistance to describe their movement.
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When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others.
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These men feel victimized, they feel exploited, they feel ignored, they feel impotent. And those feelings are powerful. I don’t think these boys and men who turn to the men’s rights movement are lying about their pain. The problem is that they’ve completely misunderstood two things.
The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding. The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood. Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal.
Whether they got it from their fathers or their older brothers, whether they learned it from peers or pastors, coaches or drill instructors, almost all American boys grow up learning the “guy rules.” As Deborah David and Robert Brannon first showed in their landmark 1976 book on men, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority, the rules are crushingly simple: Big boys don’t cry. No sissy stuff. Be a “sturdy oak.” “Be a big wheel.” “Give ’em hell.”
Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”
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Most MRAs agree that the “man code” exists and that it does great damage to young men. But they blame women for these cruel and limiting rules. According to many MRAs I’ve spoken to, it is women’s sexual desire for the alpha male that forces boys to compete ruthlessly with one another. “Women say they want one thing but choose another: they always go for assholes,” so many guys say. If women would broaden their sexual appetites to include “betas” and “omegas,” their reasoning goes, boys would feel less compelled to compete ruthlessly with one another. (The men’s rights activists tend to be wildly off-base about what women actually want, but that’s another topic.)
It’s a typical but tragic mistake: MRAs wildly overestimate women’s power, sexual or otherwise. Men, they insist, are helpless by comparison. But that claim ignores a long and unmistakable history of male domination in human history. And if there’s one undeniable truism about our species, it’s that the rules are made by the dominant group. The “man laws” or “guy rules” were created by and for men. Historically, winning validation from other men has mattered more than getting sex or love from women. (If you don’t believe that, think for a moment about how hard boys will work to please a demanding football coach.) Males are raised to be “homosocial,” which means they’re taught to get their primary affirmation from other men rather than from women. Working too hard for female approval just makes you a “mama’s boy” or “pussy-whipped,” and the frantic efforts young men make to ensure neither of those labels apply to them tells you all you need to know about who it is they are really trying to impress.
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So men are indeed architects of their own adversity. This doesn’t mean that each boy is individually responsible for his own suffering. But it does mean that the pain so many men feel from broken relationships, social isolation, and the gnawing sense of personal powerlessness is not women’s fault. It’s the fault of a rigid code that was set up eons ago, a code that many of us continue to perpetuate. Extricating ourselves from the emotional straitjacket the code forces us to wear requires taking responsibility for our own lives and choices. It requires letting go of blame. And it requires seeing that feminism—with its remarkable claim that biological sex has nothing to with our human potential—is the best avenue for our personal and collective liberation.
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Meet the Men’s Rights Movement
Paul Elam: On Misandry: What’s Wrong With Men?
Tom Matlack: Adultery’s Double Standard
Amanda Marcotte: The Solution to MRA Problems? More Feminism
Zeta Male: The Top 10 Issues of Men’s Rights
Kaelin Alexander: Men’s Studies: Teaching Masculinities in the Margins
Pelle Billing: Unlocking the Men’s Rights Movement
David Futrelle: Dismantling the Men’s Rights Movement
Dan Moore of Menz: The MRA Perspective
Ron Mattocks: When Men Are the Victims of Abuse
Tom Matlack: Do Divorced Dads Get a Raw Deal?
Blixa Scott: Why Do We Forgive Adulterous Women?
Joseph Caputo: Can We Degenderize Domestic Violence?
Image paula rúpolo/Flickr Creative Commons
About Hugo Schwyzer
Thanks for the article!
I am a 23 year old woman, and I have had my fair share of cat-calls and lingering glares to make me walk the long way around to avoid the group of men who are the culprits, but I have also witnessed the abuse that men receive from both men AND women and seen women attack women just as viciously.
I guess just because I am a woman and want equality in the world I am a feminist, but I don’t fit the stereotype of the hippie ‘dyke’. I also want equality for my boyfriend to not be pushed of the footpath because the Maoris (large native New Zealanders) walking through know they are bigger than him and would win in a fight. We need a new term for people of any gender, age and nationality to band behind that demonstrates that they simply want world-wide equality. Not just women, not just men… equality of all. Feminism is tainted by the bad few and what I gather from this article and other comments the MRA is too.
What title can we stand behind? Equalists? Heaven-forbid if we just stood behind the fact that we are all human and we all bleed red but you know, the people we are taking a stance against aren’t the smartest people in the world.
Great comment, it’s called humanism.
Hear, hear. I consider myself a humanist more than anything else. Don’t understand why the term isn’t adapted more broadly. Having these women’s and men’s rights groups, to me, only serves to broaden the gender gap, cause you’re always going to have the crazies who hate one sex or the other, and it’s the crazies that get the most attention because they are the most outspoken.
Feminism is not a hate group. It is about untangling patriarchy, including its wounds and hate, through sex/gender equality.
When you have children these issues become much more critical because of the need to protect and empathize with the emotional life of a child. Since children are utterly dependent they can quickly get traumatized if parents are not compassionate, patient, etc. The MRA demonstrate none of this capacity. Many other dads do, but they tend to be grateful for feminism giving the chance to connect with their children, have better sex lives with their wives, increase the wealth of the household (even though such dads don’t have as much time for earning as a breadwinner dad – the increase in wealth comes from the aggregate affect of shared parenting/shared earning), and be known and truly loved.
You are appealing to emotion, a common logical fallacy, but utterly useless in a debate.
PWNED.
Yes yes, emotions bad, logic good.
I see why you consider yourself a beta male.
You could reframe your statement like this:
Yes, yes, violence bad, logic good.
Appealing to emotion is simply appealing to force in another form.
Spot on.
Emotions are valid… violence is not.
And emotional violence?
The feminists posting here have noticeably failed to address the following earlier posts:
1. Mothers abuse children at twice the rate fathers do. HHS website identified. 2006 statistics.
2. Credible, independent organizational evidence of the significant extent to which women abuse men.
3. Repeated posts regarding the heart of the matter: the clear negative and disparate impact on men and children of current family law, which disproportionately deny men the ability to be with their children and give women near-unilateral power to control divorced fathers’ access to children.
4. Posts regarding how the current system enables women to abuse boys. (I suggest you look at the Vancouver, BC Sun article from a couple of years ago: a University-controlled study found that fully 75% of the male teenage street kids in Vancouver were being “rented” by adult women.)
I find this a refreshing, no-BS debate, where for a change the Men’s RIghts folks are telling you what they think. I feel it is only fair to ask for responses on these four unaddressed points.
Please provide links.
I call myself an egalitarian of anti-oppressionist rather than the long anti-racist, pro-workers’ rights, prison abolitionist, queer activist, environmental activist, anti-ableist feminist,
How do you fit all that Acadmicese crap on your business card? And does anyone think you’re smart for making up words like that?
So you are saying I need to pick one thing to care about, and nothing else–or that you can’t read words or use google?
No, I’m saying that feminist-ese madeup word crap looks infantile, not Academic.
Feminists made up anti-racism? Tell that to the black power movement.
Feminists made up worker’s rights? Tell that to early union leaders.
…Prison Abolitionism? Tell that to libertarians and black feminist theorists.
…Queer activist? Again, not sure what is so academic about supporting LBGTQ rights.
…Environmental activist? Nothing too hard to understand about sustainability.
…Anti-ableism? So you are in favour of discriminating against the disabled?
Again, not seeing the reason for your objection. Unless caring about people is too complex for you too understand… that, or words.
Switch,
These guys are just angry assholes. They don’t wanna meet you halfway.
Why do you use the term “hippie dyke?”
Great article. Personally, I can’t get past the “all women are bitches, liars, whores, gold-diggers, stupid, chidren, narcissistic, and on and on and on” that MRA’s constantly spew. So much of what they “teach” is utter garbage. It’s a hate group and not much more. They think they are going to get huge, but they aren’t because they alienate too much of the population. I know many men who want nothing to do with them. Many deny that they hate women, but clearly, they do as this is the PRIMARY theme of every website affiliated with them, including Paul Elams.
Read the site comment policy about ad hominen attacks.
Just who are you quoting anyway?
Yes, Chris, I agree. I have spent a lot of time reading their stuff not wanting to reject their point of view out of hand, but I think you are right. It is a hate group. I do have compassion for them to the extent they have suffered trauma from patriarchy themselves. But many of them seem to be doing this for status & power rather than trying to actually make things better, including dealing with their own issues.
Chris: WORD.
Useful to remember that these men (and the occasional woman), the MRA’s, are unlikely to garner much support from the general population, handicapped as they are by their greatly oversized sense of victimization. They are useful as a learning exercise in how an extremely deep sense of male privilege causes a person to act.
I agree. But then again, it’s interesting to note that feminism doesn’t seem to garnish much support from the general population these days, either. I mean, to hear feminists talk about it.
What I would suggest is that MRAs and feminism are simply two sides of the same coin. While the sex/gender system does indeed create multiple axes of inequality and oppression, both feminists and MRAs support a reductionist notion of gender that’s ultimately based on Marx’s concept of antagonistic classes. In this model, only one side can be oppressed and the other side needs must be the oppressor.
Much of second generation feminism is based upon a conscious adaptation of Marx’s class model to the rhetoric of earlier forms of feminism. The MRM (quite ironically, as most of its members seem to be fairly conservative in their politics) simply took this model and unreflectively flipped it on its head.
To most of us out here in the Real World, dealing with real issues of gender inequality, both groups come off as slightly mad and more than a little fanatical.
I don’t know about relating it to Marx, but overall I’d say this may be the best summary of feminism and MRAs I’ve ever seen. A good bit of the movements really are little more than a mirror image of the other. I have to wonder how horrified many of them would be to how similar they are to the other side if they stopped and thought about it.
Check out Catherine McKinnon’s use of Marx, WR. When she was putting her synthesis down on paper, MArxist Feminism was quite the rage.
No. The feminists and the MRA’s are not simply two sides of the same coin. The feminists are a movement originating from real grievances that can be easily supported through the historical record. The MRA’s are a countermovement, emanating from centers of power which feel threatened by the existence of feminism. They will try to return society to its pre-feminist status quo. They will fail for the reasons that coutermovements usually fail. They might, however, do real damage before dying out of the world.
Oh, women have real grievances, Athiest. I agree. I’d even go so far to say (at least as far as I can see) that they’ve historically had more real grievances as men, if you want to make that sort of wholly unscientific, two-dimensional and reductionist analysis of social conflict.
However, having met many MRAs IRL, I have to say that it’s absolutely ludicrous to suppose, as you do, that these men are located at anything like the “center of power”. Forgive me for saying this, but you are extremely naive to think that divorced, working-class fathers who are incensed by unfair child custody laws are the people who are making the rules in this world. Naive or very ideology-bound.
As for “feeling threatened”, it seems to me that the emotionally-charged responses of many of the feminists posting here – including the strawmen and ad hominem-laden arguments of messrs. Marcotte and Futrelle – show that the MRAs seem to make many feminists feel threatened. If they didn’t, said feminists wouldn’t bother trying to censor them and would refute their arguments with simple logic, instead of rhetorical and ad hominem attacks.
Chris, I agree that these commenters are part of MRM hategroups. Their comments sound like racially inflammatory Youtube commenters.
Yes, please do.
It’s actually not ideology. I was looking for a scrap of emotional availability, empathy, interpersonal awareness – any evidence to disprove the very point Hugo was making. I see NONE of that in the MRA posts here. I would not let you anywhere near a dependent child.
FF–
This is the second time within a post that you have intimated or just flat out accused a man whom you dont know of being a child abuser.
Get a new schtick babe, this one is transparent and slanderous…..oh yeah…and typical
Yes, it’s true in your posts too, Natasha! Congratulations, you just granted the MRA wish of an actual abusive female.
No, FF….I haven’t, and most of these guys know better
These guys wanna be parents – they need to show emotional availability. That is, and has always been, necessary for parenting.
No wonder nearly every fathering expert has rejected the MRA position. Kyle Pruett, Stephan Poulter, William Pollack, etc.
And those are just the male fathering experts. I’d cite the female ones, but since to the MRA mind, females are by definition incapable of saying anything of value – unless they are parroting and ennabling the MRA – I gather this would be a waste of time.
This is a dangerous tack you’re taking. You are attempting to equate MRA with child abuse in order to discredit their position. It is pre-meditated character assassination.
She’s a feminist, following a well-established Feminist attack meme. She is a product of her ideology (obviously, since she can’t think for herself it seems, but can only quote Feminist shibboleths).
She is, in fact, the “Modern American Woman”.
If by definition, MRAs want nothing to do with women, how can they possibly be capable of being a father to a daughter. They abuse/neglect children by THEIR OWN TERMS, not mine.
Please be honest, and change your screen name to “Feminist Feedback”, okay?
Or do you claim to represent a universal “female” position? I know plenty of women who would take offense at what you are doing here.
I don’t identify with every “feminist” position, but I do identify as female, and this is a site about men and the varieties of their positions. Hence the name “female feedback.”
Next, feed me some touchy-feely crap about my lack of empathy or the like.
——————————————————
To the Unbiased Observer who may be reading this now, I offer “Female Feedback” as specimen of the perfect, archetypal feminist..
If you want to know what “real” feminism really is, and what we are struggling against, then read through this comment thread and closely study FF’s writings and interactions with other commenters.
You will come away with a perfect mental template, in microcosm, of what feminism is all about and how it imposes itself upon the rest of the world.
After that, take what you have learned and extrapolate it onto the larger social stage, and I believe it will light things up for you.
FF, being a hateful venomous hypocrite herself, has no moral license to demand empathy or fine emotions from other people, and no capacity to assess these qualities (or lack of same) in those people.
But she does approve of Hugo Schwyzer, it seems.
Well, there is that….but it still galls me to think anything that hateful has purpose
Things that hateful write the Feminist textbooks…
“Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others.”
Hugo makes a lot of mistakes, but this is his perennial. Completely untrue. For current examples, search for “Brennan Daigle”. Or Fennville bastketball.
I was born in 1945 and was raised by a father, uncles, neighbors, friends’ fathers, teachers, scout leaders all of whom were veteransof WW II. You’d think I’d have been in the best place to get that instruction. Didn’t happen. Or perhaps I slept through that block of instruction.
If this is one of the anti-MRA’s pillars, they need a new architect. But, without it, I don’t know what they’d have.
Also check out Susan Faludi’s “Stiffed” for a much more nuanced view of the kind of masculinity you grew up with, Richard.
“Stiffed”, I would think, would be required reading for MRAs, but I suppose many of them see Faludi as an eeeeeevil feminist, so…
“The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding.”
A good example of the remarkable ability of feminists and their toadies to hide their genocidal hate campaign.
If women wanted you dead, you would be already.
“If women wanted you dead, you would be already.”
Oh yea….how would this be accomplished?
She means that I would have been aborted before being born. Currently women demonstrate their ability for moral agency by killing one out of every three children via abortion. So, women think it is a pretty good threat to use against men. The threat is that if men don’t do as women say, women will start to abort all the male fetuses.
Go ahead, make my day. Artificial wombs are less than a decade away. It will soon be difficult for feminists to use children like commodities. Commodities which can be discarded, drugged, humiliated, or bartered for financial resources whenever the woman desires.
It makes me puke.
AntZ. I dunno. My son was annoyed when he got to college and discovered that the lacrosse team, previously a varsity sport, had been Title Nined to club status. Women’s laxers, of course, get full support.
Crew made a strong effort to recruit my daughter. I understand it’s the cheapest way to bump up female varsity participation, whose numbers are handicapped by the lack of women who want to participate.
Hugo said: “Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy).”
This is horrible stereotyping. Horrible. So incredibly short-sighted. Please stop. Men and boys deserve better.
LOL – yeah, that’s the point. He was describing the stereotype the MRA lives, not healthy men who have stepped out of it, done the emotional recovery, etc.
No. He is bashing masculinity and in the process is bashing men. He is breaking all of the feminist driven rules like “diversity” “advocacy” “inclusion” and “equality.” Easy to see that those feminist principles only seem to be used when applied to women and femininity. You won’t hear a peep from him about women that is remotely similar to the male bashing we see here. This is the thing that most thoughtful folks call BIGOTRY when you treat your preferred group in a very different manner than you treat “outsiders.”
No, Nancy. No one is saying that MRAs cannot go on and live their lives in the way they want, EXCEPT that they need to give up any right to father a child unless they learn parenting. Because want they want is isolation from women, this by definition makes them incapable of parenting a daughter.
I don’t want anything to do with these guys and they don’t want anything to do with me -that’s fine EXCEPT that they need to forgo fatherhood of any kind, except paying money for children they created because 50% of those children are girls and they would by definition abuse/neglect them.
We do not abuse/neglect children in the US. They need to leave the country apparently if they are not going to follow that standard.
You might fit in well with Adolf’s crew that decided who would have babies and who wouldn’t. LOL Either you are a parody or you are dull as a river rock.
Well, Nancy, I assure you that we defend children against abusive/neglectful women as well, so if you are not prepared to parent well, perhaps you need to go to Adolf land with them, or get some help yourself (first and foremost with learning about your biological sex – I assume since your name is Nancy that you have XX chromosomes but just identify as a abusive patriarch for some reason).
It is very telling when people don’t grasp the concept of abuse and neglect. My heart actually breaks for you and the MRAs, in a way, because you almost certainly suffered abuse/neglect yourself if you don’t know what it is. On the other hand, you are adults and are responsible for getting help.
Having children is a choice. Men and women who are not capable of owning that choice do face increased risk of abusing/neglecting their children – and of having the state or public interest organizations that speak for those children prosecute them.
I think my grown daughters and sons would strongly disagree with your assessment of my parenting skills. Your prejudice is epic. Amazing that you feel free to harshly judge others ability to parent based solely on a few words typed on an internet discussion. You make that river rock look pretty good by comparison.
I am thinking you are a great candidate for the 21st century Archie Bunker. May I just call you Archie?
Nancy, you have an astounding ability to intentionally misread.
jeezus, get your tongue out of FF’s ass already and maybe you’ll actually see that her penchant for psychoanalyzing people over the internet and declaring that they all have some form of paternal abuse is not only wholly irresponsible and ridiculous, it’s flat out dangerous and stupid
Female feedback.
Nope. He was describing all men, with the exception of his sainted self.
Oh, I see. You have just never met a good man apparently. No wonder you are stuck in this state.
Female feedback
You don’t see. Hugo has no doubt met good men. There are so many. Problem is, it doesn’t fit his persona to admit it.
Good lord, Hugo…you give with one hand and take with the other. Your last article here was a home run and now you come on and swing a foul ball….
You clearly dismiss nearly all of the core points regarding the Men’s Rights movement with a simple and baseless claim:
“The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood. Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal.”
Sir, you are committing an act of intellectual dishonesty with that one statement which disrespects ever male in this country who has suffered because of the flawed and unfair feminist-leaning legislation and social biases that are endemic with this country.
How does “traditional American manhood” answer false rape claims, male victims of statutory rape having to pay child support to their rapists, women who falsely accuse men of being abusers/molesters to gain custody and leverage in divorces, and the myriad other abuses of the law and social order that are leveraged in favor of women?
I will agree that there are issues regarding the commonly held views of masculinity in American society today. But to blatantly deny the injustices that men suffer at the hands of the legal system today and blame them on a skewed viewpoint of the world and individual self worth is disingenuous to say the least and bordering on malicious and intellectual emasculation at the worst.
I’m not going to insult you on your own post because I’m better than that. However, I genuinely despair of your viewpoint of the American male and I am sorry that whatever experiences you suffered have caused you to hate your fellow man so, Hugo; for whatever else you may think or write, a viewpoint like this can only truly come from disrespect at the very least, but more likely genuine hate.
You have my sympathies, sir.
“How does “traditional American manhood” answer false rape claims, male victims of statutory rape having to pay child support to their rapists, women…etc…”
There are at LEAST two “traditional American manhoods”.
First, the one that exists out there in the world in objective reality — be what it may.
Second, the “mental construct” of this which exists in Hugo Schwyzer’s brain — based largely upon extrapolations and projections of his own youthful memories, and upon his personal “issues”.
Hugo is running basically the same scam as Michael Kimmel, Kyle Payne, all of these pro-feminist men’s movement guys. They are all cut from the same underlying fabric.
Really, these people have no authority at all apart from what the world grants them.
Their presence in the world is parasitical, and the minute we non-feminists muster the collective will and collective PLAN to expel these parasites . . . we will.
We’re working on it, but it’s a huge job. . .
How the hell does Hugo know what pain men are feeling? How dare he state that he knows better than men themselves what they are feeling. What a presumptive, self important fool this guy is. He’s a professor? I don’t think so. He teaches at a community college, for God’s sake. Why would anyone take advice form a self-defined addict, twice divorced loser?
Being a Professor still gets you laid, even in a Community College. Spouting female-centric sympathy lines, while positioning yourself as a “protector” from all those “bad men” is pretty much THE defining characteristic of a White Knight.
Now, far be it from me to assume Hugo is a Professor because it opens the legs of nubile young students (we’ll let historical fact stand on it’s own there). But I can definitely see where he would have an intensely personal interest in taking the views he does, and propagating feminist drivel.
Three marriages huh? And how many were students when he met them?
PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFT!
There speaks a man who’s almost certainly never set foot in a university classroom.
Oh, yeah. Here I am. As a MRA, living up the the “masculine ideal.” (http://fauxwhore.com). Yeah, right.
Yes, awesome, Maggie.
The truth of the matter is, in the last 40 some years, women have dynamically changed the entire structure of their lives. They’ve overcome huge obstacles to create dynamic live, exciting careers, amazing history and research. And just what have men been doing? Well, they remain depressingly the same. There is nothing very new at all about what men do in the world. And they refuse to be angry at the things they should be angry at — male violence, male rape of women and the world, male lack of emotional intelligence.
The male remains the same, stuck, and so he blames his lack of change, and the neverending backlash against women– he blames his misery at these outdated “guy codes” on women. We women march on, excited, motivated, gettting more college degrees than ever before, breaking new ground in women’s studies– we surge ahead as doctors, lawyers, and politicians. When we are police officers, we are much more non-violent, more community based. When we go into finance and politics we are more honest.
So men are stuck. They haven’t created the new world the feminist women have. So in their failure in the world, in their war, rape and destruction, they see no way out for themselves. They know they have lost the game of life and innovation in some very basic way… because well, they run back to “guyness” and remain forever after the obstacles rather than the solutions worldwide.
But this answer the reality we see all around us, Kay. The fact is women are not doing all of the these things:
dynamically changed the entire structure of their lives. They’ve overcome huge obstacles to create dynamic live, exciting careers, amazing history and research.
It’s just verbal subterfuge, that’s all. So you can words like, dynamic, exciting, amazing. The truth is that at the highest end of the IQ distribution women are outnumbered by men by a factor of seven. Women have clogged up the middle, so women are managers…but in the non-profit sector. Women are Professors….of art history. Do you see where I am going with this, Kay? Women still do most of the low-risk labor. Work that is done in climate-controlled offices. Men take the risks, and forge ahead, and lead. Women do not.
Is it really truly amazing when a woman becomes a journalist, or a manager of a non-profit?
Didn’t think so.
“They know they have lost the game of life and innovation in some very basic way… because well, they run back to “guyness” and remain forever after the obstacles rather than the solutions worldwide.”
You must mean ‘guyness’ – like inventing the internet, PCs, smart phones, Google, Facebook – i.e. the entire infrastructure of the modern world.
While women are ‘surging ahead’ into low level cubical jobs and mid-level management, men are inventing a new world. Men are at the top of that new world, because they created it. And women come after, when all the risks and uncertainties have been overcome, and everything is safe – whining that they are underrepresented, and demanding affirmative action and a place at the table that they played no part in creating.
You might want to slow down there with the bashing of women when it comes to tech toys:
A woman wrote the first computer program.
A woman invented Kevlar.
A woman invented non-reflective glass.
A woman invented the compiler (and COBOL.)
In the past ten years, four women have won Nobels in Physiology and Medicine-one won in Chemistry.
A woman invented the disposable (and recyclable) cell phone.
————-
In other words-women had their part in inventing things that we cannot live without today (in fact, many of the most significant inventions of the past fifty years in medicine have been by women so they are not only doing their part, but they are saving lives as well.)
If that is the case. Why do we then need womens’ advocacy group and special government panels on womens’ problems? Women should have no problem fighting on their own in the world we live in.
Has a woman ever won the Fields Medal in Math? Has a woman ever been the world chess champion? No to both. The reason women have advanced is because they have had the support and encouragement of men who have shared their primary role as breadwinner in a fairly mature manner. Let’s hope that women some day will be able to muster such maturity in sharing their role at home and not be such stern gatekeepers as we see now.
Yes, women have gone forward in some ways but a mature and thoughtful woman would acknowledge that men have helped that to happen rather than spew misandrist crap.
BTW the new husband is government and without the governments help and support where would women be?
Men invented the computer and have been the main driving force behind it.
Men invented smelting and are the majority that work with metals.
Men invented glass and also the car which uses it.
Men invented the first COMPLETE compiler.
The MOST significant inventions have been made by men throughout history.
MEN = PROGRESS
WOMEN = EXTRA PROGRESS
MEN + WOMEN = LOT OF PROGRESS
MEN – WOMEN = PROGRESS
WOMEN – MEN = BARELY ANY PROGRESS
“And they refuse to be angry at the things they should be angry at — male violence, male rape of women and the world, male lack of emotional intelligence.”
Hey, thanks for telling us what we should think, and what we should care about. Until I found a feminist to tell me, I had no idea what to think.
Sheesh.
Kay, is this the entire non-feminist sector you are describing here? Are you saying that every non-feminist is like this?
I think you will most whores are women.
Sorry about the typo.
I think you will find that most whores are women.
Men have created the world that women inhabit.
If a job is dirty, difficult or dangerous, it will be done by a man.
Women have not created some innovative new world.
If the world were left to women, there would not be a car on the road or an airplane in the sky.
There would not be water in the pipes or electricity in the wires.
Women do make good doctors.
As for lawyers and politicians, well, I already made the remark about whores.
Lawyers and politicians are unproductive members of society.
Most teachers are women. The schools are failing at an unprecedented rate.
Is that the innovative new world you are talking about?
Go get yourself pregnant, blame a man and sue him for all he’s worth.
That is your new innovative world. Congratulations.
Women invented farming, thank you very much. Men wouldn’t have been able to do half the stuff they have done without farming. Farming made it possible for civilization. Farming made it possible for hunting and gathering groups to be able to stay in one place without having to move with the herd all the time. Farming made it possible to keep the human race alive since humans back then subsisted mostly on what women gathered since meat was difficult to come by.
Women invented farming….maybe. If you mean planting stuff…ok. But men invented agriculture.
Fixed that for ya.
You shouldn’t talk about vague historical stuff in the distant past like it had any bearing upon the immediate present-day crisis. That smacks too much of a feminist dodge, like “global escapism”.
But I will call this one “temporal escapism“.
You activated non-feminists may wish to add “global escapism” and “temporal escapism” to your lexicon.
I’m sorry didn’t realise you were 10,000 years old, tell me how much bullshit have you read?
Except women have been inventing practical stuff for everyone to use for centuries.
From Kevlar (keeping cops alive in shoot outs) to the basic windshield wiper, your claim that women did not do squat falls completely flat upon looking at the vast list of things they have created that we do not wish to live without.
My god. Did I just stumble on a playground fight?
Im sorry we didn’t mean to invent electricity or planes or even games, the internet, glue cause none of that is really practical now is it?
I mean I would be happy if I was sat in mud with some kevlar and a windshield wiper but why would I need a windshield wiper after all the car is a male invention so can’t be practical.
Think then write.
That’s odd, Fred.
Who say most whores are women, correct?
Then you go on to say “If a job is dirty, difficult or dangerous, it will be done by a man.”
Prostitution is a damned dirty, dangerous and difficult job, man. Either admit that there are some jobs of this sort that women are indeed over-represented in, or show demonstrate that most whores are men.
Can’t have your cake and eat it too, man.
Sorry article is incorrect, the source of many men’s lives ruined is precisely a system with anti-male biased laws, policies in western countries which gives men the short end of the stick, from the feminized education which drugs physically active boys, to the unreasonable secretive divorce courts which have no shared parenting, false abuse allegations which can destroy a man’s career and life without providing evidence, nor limits to child support or alimony payments which results in massive wealth transfers, high rate of suicides among males, which makes any man who experiences these things half the man or worse whom he used to be.
The author ignores the real issues.
“The author ignores the real issues.”
That he does indeed. Everything in the article is straight out of the feminist rhetorical playbook.
Hugo Schwyzer has no authority, as a self-admitted feminist, to dictate terms or define reality for non-feminists.
In this article, Hugo commits what I call the crosshairs fallacy. That is, he lines up a narrow, and arbitrarily defined target in order to discredit, in a rhetorical way, a complex global phenomenon.
Furthermore, his depiction of the target is inaccurate.
But I won’t hold that against him, because after all, this is war. And in war, shady methods are the order of the day. In the present case, it is propaganda war I am talking about. And this article is a masterfully slimy piece of piece of spin, done in classic style a la Hugo!
But just remember, for the record, that Hugo Schwyzer has no authority but what you grant him. And I, not being one of his followers, grant him none.
Feminism continuously hails female advancement, yet completely ignore’s men’s issues, how can there be equality when there’s so much special support for women by the government, but nothing for men.
There will NEVER be “equality” because that is an essentially contested concept, i.e. semantic garbage. We all need to clear such garbage out of our heads if we wish to think clearly.
As a general point of semantic hygiene, one should never use the word “equality” without operationalizing it in some way. Preferably, this should be mathematical. But whatever the case, it requires a clear, concrete referent.. One should tie it to a particular context or situation, and state very distinctly WHAT is proposed to be made equal, and HOW.
One should never use “equality” vaguely and abstractly, as a golden halo word or rhetorical banner slogan. It skates too close to the edge of newspeak or doublespeak.
When people talk about “true equality”, my eyes glaze over. It is not that I disagree with the concept. Rather, it is vacuous, and being such there is literally nothing to disagree with in the first place. It is like saying, “a true nullity”.
So, what I dislike is the implication that I ought to entertain any feeling or opinion whatsoever about a nullity. That is asking too much.
+1
I find Schwyzer’s article slick, shallow, patronizing and riddled with falsehoods and distortions about the non-feminist world, and the MRA world in particular. Who IS this Schwyzer guy anyway? And who does HE think he is? I don’t know where he gets his pontification license. . but he is not the pope by a country mile. He has no greater authority than what his followers bestow upon him. . .
In theory, at least, that authority could be revoked at any time, and then he would be just another “Joe” again.
“It’s time to take responsibility.”
It’s time to take responsibility??
For what?
For being discriminated against since the day I was born for having a penis?
For having my genitalia mutilated because society only cares about the well-being of females, not males?
For persevering in the feminized education system, even though I have a penis?
For earning summa cum laude from a prestigious university, even though I have a penis and never received any scholarships or special encouragement due to my penis, whilst women received plenty of scholarships and support through the Society of Women Engineers?
For receiving no internships because the companies I interviewed for preferred to hire attractive, less capable women over me?
Don’t worry, though. I have always persevered even though I’ve never received any special privileges. I grew up poor, white, and male – the worst possible combination if you want to get an education.
Yet I’m still here, though I don’t make nearly as much money as I would if I had a vagina. That’s fine, though. I no longer wish to contribute to a society that discriminates against me in so many ways. Instead, I’ll contribute my hard-earned cash to the men’s rights movement and spend my time having fun. No longer will my tax dollars go to single moms and college women who haven’t earned a dime of it.
As more and more men stop contributing to the society that pisses on them, you will reap the results, and they won’t be pretty.
Wow, this site REEKS of misandry
true that
The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding. The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood. Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal.
QFT
How does replacing “an impossible masculine ideal” with an impossible feminist ideal help?