What follows has no more weight than my personal opinion for your consideration.
If you are an MRA, you own a body of specialized knowledge. One of the major goals of the movement is to spread this knowledge to members of the general public. Like any other area of specialized human activity, the men’s rights movement has it’s own vocabulary. As the movement represents opposition to an overwhelming majority point of view, it is not surprising that some of the specialized vocabulary of the MRM is invective, disparaging of identified opposition to the human rights of people who happen to be male.
This terminology includes terms like White Knight, Pussy Pass, Feminazi, and Mangina. These terms, being a part of the special vocabulary of the MRM serve several purposes, and an important one is the establishment of culture. We are, as mens rights activists, a community. Despite the diffuse geographical distribution of active MRAs, having more than just a shared set of philosophies, our jargon knits us together.
However, I have chosen to eschew some of the most obvious pejorative jargon, such as “mangina” and “feminazi” and I will explain why.
Every week or so, some well-intentioned newcomer stumbles into this site, reads the content of an article or a comment thread, then advises us that while our arguments are observably true – the obvious anger is off-putting, and if we just toned down our rhetoric, we’d reach a larger audience.
The visitors who make this complaint are fools, and this is not my reason for finding other words to express “feminazi”.
The word “mangina” is obvious as an insult, non-MRAs have no trouble determining that anyone so-labeled is being insulted and disparaged. That is not the problem. The problem is that beyond the offer of insult, “mangina” does not explain anything to a non-MRA. The word fails in the job of spreading the knowledge of the Men’s Rights Movement to a wider audience. In addition, the lack of explanative power, along with the obviously pejorative context feeds into the feminist talking-point that MRAs are merely disgruntled, immature abusers, angry that our “privileges to oppress women” have been diminished.
My own preferred term used in substitute of “mangina” is the admittedly unwieldy “male apologist for female supremacy”. This doesn’t roll off the tongue quite so easily, but is more usefuly descriptive of the subject to a reader who has not discarded the false assumptions of the mainstream narrative of feminism.
I don’t steer around the word to present a polite face to the public. I do not use an unwieldy alternative to disguise my contempt for men who collaborate in legal marginalization of male identity.
Calling a male feminist out as a mangina does provide some satisfaction. Yes, it does.
But my reason for avoiding it, is that calling male feminists by the pejorative “mangina” does not advance the goal of spreading my personal flavor of Men’s Rights Advocacy to the public.
I’m almost done, so here’s the disclaimer. My variety of Mens Rights Advocacy is my own, just as yours is your own. There is arguably no recognizable institution to point to and say “here’s the MRM”. This means that each individual decides for themselves what their goals and strategies are.
My preferences in the use of terminology are my own, and are presented for your consideration. What you do is your choice, and not mine, and should serve your personal goals as an MRA. I am not suggesting to anyone that my opinions have any greater weight than anyone else. To imagine I am the example to follow – how stupid and arrogant I would have to be. My opinions are just that, opinions. But, in my own personal cosmology, my speech and action as an MRA are not an exercise.
I’m here to win.
Thank you for your consideration.
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Related: http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/activism/winning-with-word/
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