I’ve been an active MRA for a few years, and I’ve written and read a lot of different arguments.
Some of them are as follows:
[unordered_list style=”bullet”]
- Men have no reproductive rights;
- Men are sentenced unequally in criminal courts[1][2];
- Men are a disposable commodity in Western society;
- Men are 9 out of 10 of the homeless[3][4];
- 4 out of 5 suicides are male[5][6][7];
- Fathers are extorted and abused by family courts[8][9][10][11];
- The media portrays masculinity as either childish and stupid, or violent and evil;
- Men die earlier[12];
- Men are the majority of the victims of violent crime[13];
- Although women dominate higher education, female favoring affirmative action persists[14][15];
- The wage gap is a lie [16][17][18][19];
- The 1-in-4 rape statistic is a lie[20][21][22][23][24]
[/unordered_list]
et-cetera.
This short list represents a sample, rather than an exhaustive list, but these items are not areas of debate. They are not subjects on which it’s a matter of opinion pending the discovery of better data. Certainly some of them are still central in campaigns of purposeful disinformation by dishonest ideologues, but liars only change perception, not reality. And the arguments surrounding these issues on the opposing side to men’s rights are feminist arguments, even when those making such arguments don’t self identify as feminists.
Having said that, it’s important to distinguish feminism as a thing separate from women. The crowd endlessly claiming men’s rights activists just hate women seem unable to make this distinction, and we have to have patience with the learning disabled.
However – the issues of male exploitation and suppressed human rights are, from the oppositional side; matters of gained advantage for women. As an example, men’s total lack of legal reproductive rights mean that women have powers not only over their own bodies and choices, but they also enjoy the power of control over the lives, freedom, finances and careers of men.
By the way, the usual, puerile argument in this case is that the choice to have sex equals the choice to reproduce. That argument failed with the advent of abortion rights for women.
In addition, almost all opposition to male human rights takes the form of personal attack, straw man and other ad-hominem arguments. It appears that for ideologues, the only way to “defeat” men’s rights arguments is by changing the topic or silencing the human rights advocates making them. However, there remains a third side to the debate. This is the agreement with status quo through silence.
[quote style=”boxed”]We’re not really modern humans with a sane modern ethic. We’re jumped-up cavemen with modern technology.[/quote] Most people believe themselves to be ethical, and there is some merit to this belief. The twentieth century is full of examples of individuals from one demographic putting their voices, their money and their bodies on the line on behalf of individuals from some other demographic who were getting a raw deal. Apartheid in South Africa was ended, in part by an intensive campaign by the members of the entertainment industry to apply international pressure to the problem, and it worked. Individuals stopped buying South African products while South African blacks were second class citizens of their own country. It was a system that thived as long as there was the complicity of a silent majority.
Returning to that first item in the list, that men have no reproductive rights, this is not a matter of debate. If you think it is, my respected fellow MRA GirlWritesWhat may have a few words for you.
Women not only enjoy the legal self determination at every single step and decision leading to reproduction, they also enjoy state-enforced power over men’s lack of personal autonomy in these matters. Enjoy being the operative phrase. In fact it is emblematic of the stated positions of the men’s rights movement. The enjoyed advantages and privileges gained at the expense of the subtracted civil rights of men are at the core of the silence of the vast majority of women.
There is a comfortable self deception in a thought process which occurs in almost all women. It includes the idea: “I’m not the one denying your right to reproductive self determination.” But this idea is a lie. By your silence, you are supporting the continued treatment of men as a disposable commodity. In fact, in any number of supposed human rights initiatives benefiting women – but which ignore equivalent issues impacting men, the activists promoting those causes are indirectly supporting the equivalent victimization of men. All violence against women initiatives do this.
This is because in every area of violent victimization of human beings, including rape, men comprise a larger victim demographic than women. This sounds like a hyperbolic claim because almost all public messaging on the topic is dominated by special interests who benefit by maintaining a narrative of women’s exclusive ownership of the status of victim.
Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius is a Latin dictum expressing a principal of western thought, particularly in law that the expressed mention of one thing, implicitly excludes all others. In application, in the situation where men and women are victimized by violence at similar rates – but efforts to reduce this violence focus exclusively on women as victims – constitutes a practical support for the escalation of violence against men.
This is what almost all funded violence reduction initiatives do. It is not by mistake. To the actors and lobbyists of the billion dollar grievance industry, anything subtracting from the easy and heart-tugging story of doe-eyed and decorative female victims means a reduction of access to government funding and public donation. This is why honest reporting of actual rates of victimization showing sexual symmetry is constantly obscured by advocacy research from the sexual grievance industry.
This is only one example, but it’s out in the open for anybody to see. Like a greater fraction of the issues continuously addressed by men’s rights advocates it doesn’t need to be explained to anybody with a passing acquaintance with current events. Despite this, the response from the public is a resounding silence. Followed closely by the facile solipsism of : “Not all women are like that.”
[quote style=”boxed”]Where once the very real threats to female humans mandated their protection at male expense, we now have and industry that manufactures the illusion of those threats in order to maintain their advantage.[/quote] In actual practice, barring a few notable outliers, all women are exactly like that. For that matter, so are all men. Oh yes gentlemen, you traditionalists, white knights, chivalry-believers and “good men” are feminism’s enforcers. And when I say feminism, I don’t mean the egalitarian, all-for-equality grass roots social movement. That feminism is a sham, and exists only in the public relations lies of top-down organizations like the National Organization for Women, and in people’s imagination. You’re the enforcers of the movement pursuing a never-ending agenda of constructed female victimhood and legal privilege. Try, even in your own mind, listing a single factually true and concrete example in the western world of women’s oppression.
The feminism of the real world is built on hatred and violence. Violence supplied by “good men” like you, who believe their own worth depends on utility, rather than the innate value of your own humanity.
This embedded belief is why the men’s rights movement is necessary. Because “good men” continue to buy into the abyssally stupid idea that of all the different human demographics – males don’t deserve to be valued as human beings, only as human-doings. In fact, “good” men take pride in this culturally accepted disposability, and imagine themselves as “brave” or “honourable” by the degree to which they embrace their mortality for somebody else’s convenience. How noble of you to work yourself to an early grave in a coal mine, or fishing in the atlantic, or the crushing pressure of the corporate ladder.
As it turns out, the ethics of human societies are those they can afford. “Women and children first” is a group survival mechanism, it preserves the reproducers and the offspring at the expense of males. Its the oldest deal in the book, and has real value to group survival in situations of scarce resources or lifeboats.
The problem emerges when human culture evolves past the need for a purely survival driven ethic. In a modern technological culture of abundant food and other resources, that ancient women-and-children-first ethic of survival must be arrested, otherwise it manifests as a malignant drive towards apartheid. We’re not really modern humans with a sane modern ethic. We’re jumped-up cavemen with modern technology. We’re still conforming to an ethic which kept the species alive in periods of famine and tribal wars. but that now turn inward destructively in an age of relative safety and abundance. We live in a world of mechanized agriculture, advanced medicine and every other life enhancing feature of modern technology.
Unfortunately – despite our relatively large brains, the built-in ethic which served us in pre-agricultural societies is just as strong as it ever was, but is now expressed by disregarding the humanity of males where it is neither necessary or currently ethical.
An ideology has formed which exploits this for the political and economic advantage of it’s operatives, and this is the ideology of eternal female victimhood and masculine malice. Where once the very real threats to female humans mandated their protection at male expense, we now have and industry that manufactures the illusion of those threats in order to maintain their advantage. Its the doctrine of hate and violence against the disposable human demographic, pretending to humanism, and calling itself feminism. As much as this superficially benefits women, it’s men who are the enforcers – and who do so by defining acceptable masculinity as self sacrificing, disposable humans.
How brave and honourable such men are to define their own disposability as manly. Yes, how brave they are to totally conform to a public zeitgeist of their utility. Go along with the crowd – that’s certainly admirable. Meanwhile, those who dare to declare themselves humans of innate human value while male, and not disposable – those conforming “good men” along with women who superficially benefit from the disposability of men rise up to condemn any males who dare to self actualize. Or, they remain silent.
Most women have no strong moral position apart from a lock-step conformity with whatever flattering pseudo progressive pablum they’re spoon fed through popular media. Between Oprah, and The View and the two dozen standard women’s magazines grabbing attention at supermarket checkouts – there is not a whispered breath of implied adult accountability. Women are constantly spoon fed the saccharine treacle of goddess-hood along with equal dose of you’re-too-fat-and-plain shame to keep them buying useless face-paint and stinkum and ignoring anyone who’d treat them like adults. They’re certainly in no danger of growing out of extended childhood while its easiest for corporations to sell to locked-in permanent immaturity.
So when anybody points out that they’re actually the most pampered, free-from-accountability humans who’ve ever lived, their immature minds vomit up some inculcated talking point to shame, silence or change the topic. “1 in 4 women is raped!” Or “the wage gap!” or “women have always been oppressed” – all of which are puerile, simplistic lies designed to silence and shame.
And when it comes to addressing the reality that our society runs on the corpses of disposable men, there remains, from women, a resounding silence.
For the vast majority of women, this is the default. But of course lets not forget that not all women are like that. Polling my contacts and acquaintances on four continents and a dozen countries, I happen to know half dozen who are not. For the rest of you, your continued silence is deafening.
Part 2 – Silence of the man.
[1] http://ncfm.org/2011/04/issues/criminal-sentencing/
[2] http://www.terry.uga.edu/~mustard/sentencing.pdf
[3] http://www.crisis.org.uk/data/files/document_library/research/factfile_full.pdf
[4] http://triggeralert.blogspot.com/2011/08/how-i-know-that-something-like-90-of.html
[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
[6] http://www.cdc.gov/ncipc/factsheets/suifacts.htm
[7] http://www.merck.com/mmpe/sec15/ch205/ch205a.html
[8] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJjgOjq5uso
[9] http://www.achildsright.typepad.com/achildsright/titleivd.html
[10] http://www.daddy.typepad.com/
[11] http://mkg4583.wordpress.com/category/title-iv-d/
[12] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
[13] http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/content/glance/tables/vsxtab.cfm
[14] http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_258.asp
[15] http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/06/women-dominate-higher-education-at.html
[16] http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/04/23/the-gender-feminist-wage-gap-myth-appears-to-be-growing-legs/
[17] http://mensnewsdaily.com/2007/04/23/gender-feminist-wage-gap-myth-appears-to-be-growing-legs-part-ii/
[18] http://consad.com/index.php?page=an-analysis-of-reasons-for-the-disparity-in-wages-between-men-and-women
[19] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cb_6v-JQ13Q
[20] http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/false-rape-culture/so-many-lies/
[21] http://antimisandry.com/abuse-dv/one-four-abused-mary-koss-study-update-24633.html
[22] http://www.leaderu.com/real/ri9502/sommers.html
[23] Nara Schoenberg and Sam Roe, “The Making of an Epidemic,” Toledo Blade, October 10, 1993;
[24] “Examining the Facts: Advocacy Research Overstates the Incidence of Date and Acquaintance Rape,” Current Controversies in Family Violence eds. Richard Gelles and Donileen Loseke, Newbury Park, CA.: Sage Publications, 1993, pp.120-132;
