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Comment by mtrimpe | Hacker News Reader

I'm an ardent supporter of women's rights, but I'm also a supporter of the men's rights movement.

The (valid part of the) men's right movement is mostly concerned with men who:

* have been raped or faced domestic abuse, but are met with ridicule when filing charges

* have lost custody of their children to unstable / irresponsible mothers

I fully agree that women's rights is several orders of magnitude more important / severe, but that doesn't make these men's plight inconsequential either. This is not an either-or situation.

What is a problem though, and what was raised in the article, is the large mass of mysoginists that are essentially hiding behind that same men's right banner.

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Some of those issues are also addressed/worked on by feminist groups, particularly the rape one. Almost every survivor counseling organization I know of provides services to men as well as women. I'd also characterize most of those groups as feminist. (In fact, it's the ones that don't provide services to men that I'd often characterize as not feminist and that get the most feminist criticism, such as the services offered by most universities).

My experience has been that the Men's Rights Movement's good parts are often what is basically non-radical feminist activism repackaged, and its bad parts are reprehensible. (Note: radical feminism is things like the SCUM manifesto; most feminism isn't particularly radical)

The article does make the important point that there aren't a lot of places for (straight) men to discuss cultural ideas of masculinity and its possible ill effects. (In my experience, gay men often have a better understanding of male dynamics than straight men, and there's more of a cultural discourse about masculinity in some parts of gay culture.)

I wasn't aware of the feminist's support for these men's rights issues, which is admirable and good to know.

As far as your last comment is concerned; my support for women's rights comes out of having been gay and now being somewhere on the bi/genderqueer continuum so I can definitely relate to that.

If you're interested, this speech by Gary Carter captures it more beautifully than I've ever been able to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=P...

"The (valid part of the) men's right movement is mostly concerned with men who: * have been raped or faced domestic abuse, but are met with ridicule when filing charges * have lost custody of their children to unstable / irresponsible mothers"

And attacking women for both of these is folly. That's why MRAs are not taken seriously, because they misdirect their (legitimate in the aformentioned context) concerns.

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