(been a while since my last post here... but I did say updates would be occasional)
For the most part, I tend to stay out of discussions on feminism or men's rights. I've seen enough crap on the internet that I don't particularly feel like associating myself with either, no matter how valid their points might be. But having done some thinking over the last few days, I figured I'd write down some thoughts.
I fully expect at least some of this to be controversial, but hopefully I can explain all this well enough that it makes sense. You don't have to agree with me, but these are my personal thoughts and interpretations on what I've observed.
First up: men's rights. From what I understand, the MRA movement was founded as a reaction to modern feminism, based on the belief that feminism has either ignored men or begun to actively push against them. Some MRAs I've read seem like very reasonable people trying to point out legitimate men's issues that feminism actually doesn't seem to have addressed, such as the vastly higher rates of homelessness, workplace injury and death, and suicide in men compared to women.
But large numbers of people calling themselves "men's rights advocates" aren't advocating men's rights so much as hating on feminism and women. The best men's rights communities I've come across online are still at least 50% outrage topics of "look at how horrible and/or negligent feminism is because this one person or group's actions are obviously representative of the entire movement". And those are among the better communities I've seen. The worst attack and threaten any woman who invades what they consider "men's spaces", or rationalize/justify abuse and violence because the woman obviously deserved it, or suggest a return to "when men were real men and women were real women" (or in other words, "go back to the kitchen and make me a sandwich while the men deal with serious business").
While I'm on this topic I'll take a small detour. I often see The Red Pill and men's rights confused or equated. Men's rights is (ostensibly) about men's rights, while The Red Pill is a seduction community based on the belief that they know what women want better than women do, and that what women want happens to be a dominant alpha male (aka an egotistical jerk who cares only about what he wants, and takes it when he wants it). Which is actually a lot more horrible than the idea that men have issues that aren't being addressed - when you take it to its logical conclusion, The Red Pill philosophy is straight up advocating abuse and rape because "that's what women want".
So I avoid men's rights because while there are some legitimate points in there that deserve attention, an awful lot of the members are dubious to terrible in their views on women and feminism. Plus it tends to get confused or lumped in with The Red Pill (which I still can't believe actually exists) so that's definitely something to avoid.
Which brings me to my views on feminism, and where I expect to see more disapproval. It's cool to hate on MRAs, but criticism of feminism is not well looked upon. Anyway. It should be obvious to any rational person that feminism is full of legitimate concerns and issues. It's not an opinion that women have less representation and less diversity than men in just about every form of media ever - it's a simple fact that anyone can verify by watching movies and TV, reading books, or playing video games. It's a fact that women hold vastly fewer positions of power - you can verify this by looking at the makeup of governments or corporate boards.
But it's not quite as simple as "men are privileged and women are oppressed", which is an idea that I'm seeing pushed more and more. I'm a firm believer that almost nothing is as simple or black-and-white as the narrative often wants you to accept. I'm not going to argue that feminism is a negative force, but when Emma Watson's speech at the UN is hailed as a shining beacon of what feminism should be, that gives me pause. She makes this brilliant speech about how we're all in this together, and that men have issues that need to be addressed too, even making it personal with the struggles she's seen her father go through. But then she ends the speech by asking men to pledge to help women in their struggle against oppression. What happened to and "we're all in this together"? Feminism is for everyone and men have problems too, but men should help women and forget about vice versa? And this speech was almost unanimously praised, which, again, is a little troubling to me given its conclusion.
And, like men's rights, feminism has its less reasonable, more radical groups as well. Feminism as a whole is much bigger and more legitimate than men's rights, but as a bigger movement it also has a bigger radical division. I could quote specifics, but I don't think that's productive, so I'll just move on to my next point.
You might have noticed that I mentioned that critique of feminism isn't well received. I often get the feeling that feminism has developed a sort of reactionary shield where, in the interest of creating safe non-threatening spaces, any disagreement or criticism is either accused of misogyny or outright banned. This feeling in particular is why I tend to avoid discussion on feminism or feminist topics - the common accusation that disagreement equates to sexism or hate, that atmosphere of "if you're not with us you're against us". I find this incredibly counterproductive. Accepting legitimate criticism is a hugely important way to learn from your mistakes and improve. Of course, the counterpoint is that feminists receive a lot of backlash and hate, so it's not always easy to filter legitimate criticism from aggression without wading through both. But then again, my concerns about Watson's UN speech went ignored when I tried to discuss.
And here we come to the No True Scotsman fallacy. Whenever you see someone write or say something particularly vile under a feminist or MRA flag, or enough backlash against a particular statement, you'll see others coming out of the woodwork to reject it and say "well, that person isn't a true feminist/MRA". The problem comes in how you define a true feminist/MRA. Both movements have so many factions and splinters and alternative philosophies that you can't really say which one is the "true" one.
When someone who calls themselves a men's rights advocate says "she was asking for it" or someone who calls themselves a feminist says "cishet white men should be killed", or when a member of the movement criticizes the movement, it's easy to say that he's not a true MRA, she's not a true feminist. But they're making their claims under the banner. Who decides what true men's rights activism is, or what true feminism is? What gives you the right to conclude that someone calling themselves a feminist isn't a true feminist just because you don't agree with their brand of feminism?
Perhaps just as importantly, how representative of the core are the extremes? People seem quite happy to judge groups by their extremes, which is another thing I'm really not comfortable with. A thirteen-year-old girl on tumblr who desperately wants to be included in justifiable outrage is not representative of feminism as a whole, and equally, an unemployed thirty-five-year-old man who blames feminism for his lack of work and girlfriend is not representative of men's rights as a whole. And yet it seems that both groups are pretty okay with making those accusations.
And finally there's the idea that feminism and men's rights are in opposition. Both claim to fight for equality between men and women, and yet each accuses the other of sexism and hatred. Now, I'll grant that MRA groups seem to be proportionally much more confrontational and oppositional than feminists, but I still see plenty of feminists using "MRA" as basically a curse word to represent anyone who rejects feminism.
I usually try not to get involved in any of this because people tend to lump the extremes in with the whole and take disagreement or critique as sexism or attack. I'm not thrilled with the frequency with which I'm labelled into one camp or the other when I talk about gendered issues. I don't like the imposed labels, the idea that if you support women's rights you are a feminist, or if you support men's rights you are an MRA (or, for that matter, the idea that if you support men's rights you're also a feminist). I'm not a fan of the baggage that's been attached to both terms so I don't appreciate having either title imposed on me.
So I try to stay out of it. Which is getting harder and harder as awareness spreads. And I feel it says something about the state of criticism that even though I know my friends are reasonable, intelligent people, some part of me still worries that I might make some enemies by posting this.
Sometimes I feel like the Neutrals from Futurama.
