Despite progress, a gender difference in parenting remains: men and women are judged, treated, and viewed differently as parents.
One of the first things you notice when entering a heated conversation between MRAs (including some fathers’ rights groups) and feminist scholars is that the two sides cannot seem to see eye to eye on anything.
A perfect example of such competing worlds is found in the exchange between Amanda Marcotte (a feminist contributor in the debate) and Dan Moore (also known as “Factory,” of the MRAs). For Marcotte, the MRAs are “wrong about pretty much everything”; more to the point: “They’re so wrong about everything, they’re wrong even when they’re right.”
For the MRAs on the other hand, Dan Moore offers, “Why Do MRAs Hate Feminists So Much? In a nutshell, because nearly everything they say is a lie.”
So both sides are lying. And both sides are wrong.
Who is to be believed?
My view is that it depends on which epistemic community one joins on any given issue; although there are significant internal differences within each group, fathers’ rights activists and feminists can act as different epistemic communities on strongly contested issues.
Check out Andrea’s full post here.
—Photo by Neal./Flickr
If feminism has a problem with fatherhood then that is sufficient evidence the social theory is deeply flawed. Equality can stand on it’s own without a ideology committed to promoting the interest of one gender over the other. I doubt Ms. Magazine would even consider pushing a debate that talks about motherhood being bad for sons.
Feminism & Fatherhood go hand in hand. Let’s examine the definition of feminism – equality for both genders & eradicating limitations based on gender, for both men & women. To me, that means throwing out the stereotype men can’t be nurturing wonderful parents and it also means women are not expected to be subservient to outdated stereotypes of male entitlement. In real life, I don’t know anyone who ISN’T a feminist, men & women included! If you are not a feminist, you are supporting gender prejudice, which I can’t imagine anyone would willingly do. In my very limited experience, father’s… Read more »
If you are not a feminist, you are supporting gender prejudice, which I can’t imagine anyone would willingly do. Irony. You just did it. In your rush to make that declaration (and I know that declaration makes feminists feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside) you just left out a lot people who don’t support gender prejudice and are also not feminist. Yes I know the prevailing belief is that feminism has a monopoly on good moral value and gender equality but it doesn’t. Its entirely possible to work towards breaking down gender prejudices without being feminist. I’ve been… Read more »
The vast majority of American women claim that they are not feminists, and even a greater percentage of men. Many feminists and feminist groups are anti-male, which includes fathers.
If we’re just talking about Dan Moore and Amanda Marcotte then I think we are looking at one good example of why people think feminism and fatherhood seemingly can’t mix. Neither side really wants to listen to the other. Instead there are people (often the most vocal ones) on both sides that want to totally shut the other side out of the conversation so they can dominate it and ultimately make the changes that they want, other side be damned.
A good example of Marcotte willfully publishing lies can be found here – http://i.imgur.com/aob5k.jpg
Well Amanda Marcotte has a track record of publishing outrageous lies seemingly without shame, and Dan Moore doesn’t.
Feminism is visibly against shared parenting and reproductive rights reform and routinely makes broad false allegations of abuse against men that advocate for father rights.
So one group is obviously much more credible than the other.