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Comment by vijayr | Hacker News Reader

Look at some of the stories from the media. Some airlines will not allow males sit next to unaccompanied children. A theme park bans single males from bird watching, "in case they are predators". Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny, to most people. If a little girl has a problem, it is immediately attended to, whereas if a little boy has a problem, he is told to "be a man and suck it up". Feminism is cool whereas MRA is not. Oh, we also have some "interesting" people like this - http://www.vice.com/read/is-reducing-the-male-population-by-...

And so on.

I wish we look at problems without the gender/race/nationality etc lens and only purely based on their merit. This is 2015 and we still have gender stereotypes, whole lot of double standards (for both genders), laws favoring one gender or the other etc. All this noise is just tiring.

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Feminism is cool whereas MRA is not.

Because MRA has an absolutely horrific public image. If they concentrated on topics like visitation rights in divorce they'd be well appreciated - Fathers 4 Justice[1] is/was an organsiation that does exactly that and received positive coverage back in the mid-2000s (sadly, according to Wikipedia they've since gotten worse)

By contrast, almost every MRA conversation I've ever seen has been talking about how awful Feminists are. Using "Social justice warrior" to cover anyone who is passionate about helping women do anything (and why is it a negative label anyway?). About fake rape accusations as if they cast doubt over every legitimate accusation ever made. About how scantily clad women are 'asking for it'.

Is it really any wonder MRA isn't "cool"? (and let's be honest - Feminism isn't exactly universally cool anyway)

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fathers_4_Justice

Didn't feminism have similar beginnings? It was a lot more angry, and it was justified. That anger often tipped over into unwarranted hatred and generalization, but that doesn't mean the anger was unjustified.

> Female sexual assaults are disgusting while male sexual assaults are funny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muuFygvXPAM

Imagine this "witty banter" about female mutilation.

The Femitheist article was actually satire. Yeah, I also didn't quite get it either, though I was thinking that it must be satire, it was so over the top. Poe's law in action, I guess, and well-executed!

"I now no longer present my satirical works without making it clear that they are not serious, as many people have been unable to recognize that fact on their own, despite the over-the-top and theatrical style of said presentations."

http://www.femitheist.net/p/cp-faq.html

>> Feminism is cool whereas MRA is not

The extreme voices of feminism are pretty awful, but AFAICT the entire MRA movement is made up of arseholes.

It doesn't have to be, and there are issues to be addressed. It's just a shame it seems to be addressed by misogynist dickholes.

But part of the problem is that nobody would address radical feminists as "misandrist cuntholes", right? Doing so would automatically disqualify your credibility. But for men, it's fine, they are really dickholes, right?

That's cultural hegemony at work, folks.

>> nobody would address radical feminists as "misandrist cuntholes"

People frequently do!

The difference is that they don't make up the whole of that movement.

>People frequently do!

Do they?

HackerNews search results:

* "Misandry": 2

* "Misandrist": 0

* "Misogyny": 59

* "Misogynist": 23

Most people will have to look up "the opposite of misogyny" to find "misandry", and that's telling in itself. I do understand why this happens (misogyny has always been a culturally-recognized problem with real repercussions, the opposite not so much), but it still happens and it does unbalance the cultural perception of things.

I'm not sure those figures are in any way relevant to anything, and when I said "People often do!" I wasn't referring to HN in a vacuum.

Of course, I was just taking HN as a random sample, to show that even in our highly-educated, male-dominated geek community, people are quite familiar with one term but not the other. This is significant and relevant to the argument, imho.

Misandry does not exist.

3 matches now :)

>> The difference is that they don't make up the whole of that movement.

I'm pretty sure that this statement makes you a misandrist. FYI, MRM does not include actually PUA and MGTOW. Different goals.

>> I'm pretty sure that this statement makes you a misandrist.

You'd be wrong then.

Misandry would be the hating or disparaging of men as a group, not the hating or disparaging of the MRA movement as it exists right now.

As a man, I do not identify with MRA and neither am I offended if someone criticises them, it is not misandry to do so. As I said - I can see that there could be a mens rights movement that addressed mens issues without resorting to being misogynist and anti-feminist. I do not think this exists in the MRA sphere at present. I do not think feminism (in its more mainstream forms) is the enemy, either, in fact it should be a natural ally.

I'll concede that a lot of outspoken feminists often try to intentionally confuse this issue as well, painting anyone who disagrees with any facet of feminism, no matter how extreme, as being misogynist.

And you are conflating anti-feminism with misogyny. It's very hard not to be anti-feminist when NOW is sabotaging shared parenting[1]. Feminism can't be natural ally of mens' rights because it is actively pushing against it. And please don't say that it is the issue with fringe feminists. NOW is not fringe, its as mainstream as it gets.

Have you heard what feminists say about legal parental surrender, military draft, circumcision, false accusations etc? Dodging the issue, invoking "it's patriarchy", FGM straw man and so on. With variations of "XYZ can't be fixed because its biology" or "add more feminism".

You are right on one thing. Traditionalist women are actually much worse than feminists when it comes to MR. Unfortunately feminists cater to this particular "electorate" and because of that feminists are not allies of MRM (outside of /r/FeMRADebates).

[1] http://www.nownys.org/fathers_resp.html

>> And you are conflating anti-feminism with misogyny.

No, I'm not, in fact I'm explicitly and deliberately not doing that, as I said here -

"I'll concede that a lot of outspoken feminists often try to intentionally confuse this issue as well, painting anyone who disagrees with any facet of feminism, no matter how extreme, as being misogynist."

>> Feminism can't be natural ally of mens' rights because it is actively pushing against it.

I disagree.

--edit-- In fact I disagree entirely, there's no reason at all that a mens rights movement could not exist to push the issues you call out, and work alongside a feminist movement working on feminist issues. Women campaigning for greater access to the workplace, and against street harassment, are not in opposition to men wanting greater access to their children. This is what I mean by natural allies.

The idea that they are necessarily in opposition is childish.

They are not in opposition when it comes to idea and desired end goal. They are pretty much in opposition when it comes to political means of reaching that goal. You can't have social change without support of large part of population. MRM caters mostly to men, Feminism caters mostly to women.

> Women campaigning for greater access to the workplace, and against street harassment, are not in opposition to men wanting greater access to their children. This is what I mean by natural allies.

In theory. But in practice they are. Please read the link I provided.

I really hope that you are right and both movements can actually come and act together. Equal Rights Amendment was a beautiful thing, shame it died.

As for now we have rape-on-campus (not supported by statistical data) moral panic instead.

>> I really hope that you are right and both movements can actually come and act together.

Fat chance, humans being what they are...

(Yeah, I'm a closet misanthrope!)

There are some topics that are impossible to discuss even for 5 minutes, before it turns ugly with labels, name calling etc. Gender topics top that list (others include religion, political affiliation, eating meat etc). May be what you are saying is true, still it would be nice to refrain from name calling etc, right? Not that it bothers me personally, it just diverts the conversation from the actual issue. In the end, many people just keep quiet as they realize nothing they say is going to help.

We have managed to figure out how to land on the moon and yet we can't figure out how to weigh certain issues on their merit, and merit only.

>> May be what you are saying is true, still it would be nice to refrain from name calling etc, right?

It's just language....

To put it another way - it's easy to see that a mens rights movement could exist that actually pushes for mens rights. All we seem to have now is a group of reactionaries that like to rant about the evils of women and feminism, and espouse some (IMHO) horrific views about women and their place in the world. They also see mens rights as a fight against feminism in a sort of tug-of-war where no fight needs to exists - gender roles and inequalities could be fought together.

I think calling them misogynist dickholes just about covered it though, because that is the way they generally come across.

I have no problem with the "actual issue" of discussing ways in which men are treated unfairly by society. I have a huge problem with the people who have taken it upon themselves to stand up and be called "mens rights activists" and then proceed to rail against women's rights and women's rights activists as if they are the enemy.

Most American women won't call themselves feminists because it has a bad image. Where do you get your idea of "cool"? I am curious!

Going off of that Vice article, sometimes I think that a 40/60 ratio of men to women would be favorable... it'd probably reflect the proportions of our hunter gatherer ancestry, and a lot of psychological benefits would come with that I'd imagine.

But everything else she said was extremely misandrist and sexist.

You can actually see the difference in gender relations in places with different gender ratios, and by age, as well.

"Single men become a rare commodity later in life due to our unfortunate propensity for dying. If you can get to 50 the world seems to be nothing but women."

http://jonathansoma.com/singles/

"sometimes I think that a 40/60 ratio of men to women would be favorable..."

Without wanting to turn this into a race thing, there are sociological circumstances which sort of give us a glimpse (in subsets of the population) of what that could look like - and it's not pretty... See e.g. http://www.economist.com/node/21532296, which is one of the lesser emotionally charged discussions of it, but I'm sure you can find the right Google terms to find dozens of other articles about it yourself.

China's and India's fad of aborting female offspring is not really very helpful. They're setting themselves up for some really, really nasty future.

Not sure about India, but China is already in trouble

http://www.forbes.com/sites/china/2011/05/13/chinas-growing-...

Sweden have imported so many males from middle east that it's now more men than women in Sweden for the first time in 300 years.

"More boys are born in Sweden, the average life expectancy of males has gone up and it's mostly men who move here from other countries." http://sverigesradio.se/sida/artikel.aspx?programid=2054&art...

Thank you for that link, that really changed my perspective.

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