Comment by hoopd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hoopd | Hacker News Reader

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Pointing out that feminism has been damaging to men and the male psyche is accurate, your movement has had collateral damage and you need to deal with that.

It's impossibile to stand up for masculinity as being a natural and good thing without butting heads with THE group who says masculinity is an overvalued social construct that needs to be destroyed.

On victimhood, it's completely childish for a movement to spend 50 years talking about how victimized its members are and the moment somebody else starts using the same tactic it's "let's not talk about victimhood, it's sooo stupid!" It's a classic "learned it from watching you" scenario.

On who I blame, I don't have a group that I blame for everything. We live in a difficult world where survival is a challenge, there will always be things that are nobody's fault. People who have a default boogeyman use them in times of uncertainty: "the gays caused the earthquake", "the patriarchy caused me to miss that promotion", "I drink because of my ex-wife", etc.

But do I blame feminism for the things it's responsible for? You bet.

edit: I don't mind donwvotes, but I do take notice when something is downvoted in less time than it would take to read and reflect on the comment.

First of all, hypocrisy again - you say blaming patriarchy is lame, "default boogeyman" and so on, but you completely fail to see you use feminism in exactly the same way. MRAs typically blame EVERYTHING on feminism. Any kind of problem men face today must somehow be caused by feminism, there is rarely any other explanation that is acceptable.

Second, I did not say that pointing out problems men face is stupid, far from it. What I said was that comparing is stupid. "Who's the bigger victim" is stupid talk. Negating the problems women face, as if this were a competition, some kind of zero-sum game, is stupid. Try some of that charitable reading you recommended yourself.

I tried to make it clear that I think feminism should only be blamed for things it's responsible for. Really.

Victimhood is almost always relative and I've spent my entire life hearing about how society victimizes females as compared to males, you can't just rewrite the history of the movement when it's convenient.

In fact if you listen to them these evil MRAs are saying the exact same thing you are right now, that all the victim playing of feminism is disrupting any societal discussion of men's problems. The day feminism stops caricaturizing men in order to talk about female victimhood is the day you get to complain about MRAs entering the conversation. If you think feminism doesn't misrepresent men then you're part of the problem being fought against.

And when I suggested you read comments more charitably it's because I thought you weren't and it was causing you to miss the point. It wasn't just to hurt your feelings, this isn't reddit.

> ...I've spent my entire life hearing about how society victimizes females as compared to males...

Maybe that's what you heard from it, but it's not the position of feminism that, e.g., rape is bad merely because women get raped more than men. Rape is bad, period. The point is that the problem affects women disproportionately more, and in the past men could get away with it without any punishment. So, women need, and have fought for, extra protection. And of course, for the general dismantling of the power imbalance between men and women. Why some men immediately internalize this, and feel like someone just called all men rapists and woman haters is really beyond me.

In any case, we will probably have to agree to disagree. In my experience, MRA is not really about anything else than feminism. There are some who actually care about the specific injustices faced by men, and some who have endured them directly (and you may be shocked but I am a feminist and still support them...). But the MRA movement is really just using these things as tools in a fight purely against feminism. Because, it's always feminism. Nothing else can be at fault but feminism. Every male problem is either caused by feminists, or feminists are indirectly to blame because they didn't fix it already (?!). Because, yeah, fuck all the rapes, domestic violence and shit, the most important thing all feminists have to care about when fighting these injustices is - men, of course! :D

A lot of feminists probably go to far, and dismiss valid concerns too easily, but to take that as a reason to focus on feminism, and to constantly negate the whole of feminism makes it clear that the MRA movement, for the most part, is just anti-feminism and nothing more. That the problems men face are being used as a fig leaf to cover up simple misogyny.

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