One of the more common abusive, bullying tactics of feminists is to claim that MRAs only complain on the internet and don’t actually do things to help people.
This is an abusive lie on multiple axes, and looks like an attempt to change the subject from feminist lies about rape, feminist lies about sexual assault, feminist lies about child abuse, feminist lies about fathers, and feminist abusiveness toward people in general.
In a way, this “you don’t do anything but complain” bullying tactic is a good sign: they’re figuring out that they have no good answers to most criticisms, and that their ideology is and always has been a minority ideology. So they feel the need to change the subject they strike a pose of “look, at least we’re doing something! You do nothing!”
Never mind how much of what feminists do is hateful and destructive.
The problem with this “I demand you show to my satisfaction that you do things I consider important” is multifold. It ignores everything we’ve done to get innocent men out of jail, to get government officials fired, the counseling and support we give to individual men, the articles we publish to help educate the public, the money we’ve raised to fund people’s legal defenses (Ben Radford is one famous example but there are many others), the petitions, the lobbyists we’ve worked with, the male birth control researchers we’ve worked with, the domestic violence and rape researchers we’ve worked with, the men’s shelter groups we’ve worked with, and more.
But let’s be clear about something else: A Voice for Men and the Men’s Human Rights Movement as a whole probably operates on a budget smaller than one Domestic Violence Shelter group. Indeed, there is a Women’s Shelter group, run entirely by feminists, not far from me, that has nearly a $4 million annual budget. Those millions are just for its one county in one medium-sized state in the US. Half a million$ annually is earmarked just for activism and education, in addition to the hefty salaries of those who run the joint.
We by comparison still have to have day jobs and do this stuff in our spare time, with maybe one or two people total who manage to survive–on very meager earnings–through their internet advocacy.
So this demand by feminists that we prove we do things to help men, with a list that feminists will approve of no less: It’s an effort to change the subject. They have no actual interest in helping anyone but themselves, which is very obvious by their words and their deeds, and they actively work to stop and censor anyone who is working to address these issues from a non-feminist perspective.
The “show us what you do” thing is also breathtakingly arrogant: you, who do nothing to help men and boys’ issues, who are part of a movement that actively combats efforts to address these issues, now demand that I do activism your way and to your approval–even though you actively work to thwart my activism and actively advocate harmful policies and repeat debunked lies about boys and men and debunked lies about the people I work with.
You, who spew lies about what I do, demand that I report to your satisfaction how I do my activism? Fuck you.
And I won’t even dignify your claim that I do nothing.
So seriously, to your “you don’t do anything!” bullshit? Pull the other one.
By the way, let’s pretend for a minute that you are 100% right, that I do nothing, that A Voice for Men does nothing, that the Men’s Rights Movement does nothing but complain.
Are our complaints wrong? Why are you talking about us, when the subject was human rights violations? Are we not allowed to bring up human and civil rights issues if we don’t do activism your way, dancing to your tune?
We identify real abuses, real lies, real people who are hurt. And you’re changing the subject to us and what you perceive as our flaws. What does that say about you as a person, or about your movement?
