Since they first noticed the men’s human rights movement, feminists have scrambled trying to stifle it with ridicule, shaming, attacks on its validity, and much territorial pissing on the concept of gender issues from a male perspective. They’ve dedicated whole blogs and internet discussion forums to strawmanning and then bashing the movement, i.e. a movement that exists only in their imaginations rather than the actual movement that we’re part of. There have even been hit-pieces done on us by mainstream media sources, often ignoring most of what we actually say.
They’ve attempted to silence the movement by belittling men’s issues and calling it a “backlash against feminism.” Not a rational response and objection and an effort to talk about things outside the feminist narrative. No, just a “backlash.” They’ve attacked serious men’s issues discussion with accusations of “misogyny.” They’ve tried to marginalize the movement with women-first arguments, trying to make every issue about women’s problems first and foremost. They’ve tried absorbing the movement with claims that feminism’s often anti-male rhetoric is a way of handling men’s issues. They’ve tried pushing the movement aside with ridicule and the promotion of false stereotypes.
What they haven’t done is explain why they’re so vehemently opposed to a society in which men’s human rights receive recognition and consideration equal to that afforded to women’s human rights.
So I have a question for them, one that is fairly simple, and should be easy to answer:
What is feminism’s criteria for determining whether a human being merits having one’s human rights recognized and considered by society? If being human isn’t enough, what other requirement do they have?
Inspired by a challenge from John Gormley of Men’s Human Rights Ireland, I’ve posed that question, in a similar style to the “I need feminism” meme. This is the image:
I’d like to see two things about this become things that opponents of the MHRM can’t ignore: the question itself, and the contradiction women in the movement represent to the stereotype of MHRAs that opponents of the movement have pushed, that we’re supposedly “anti-woman” and “misogynist.”
The first speaks for itself; the second is why I’m specifically asking women to do this. Feminist critics of the men’s human rights movement, who claim that it’s men who marginalize women, men who silence women’s voices, men who refuse women the right to make our own decisions–they would rather pretend we don’t exist than admit that we just don’t agree with them. They don’t want to acknowledge the validity and importance of men’s approaches to men’s issues outside the bounds of feminist ideology. They sure as hell don’t want to acknowledge that there are women involved in that. So they just don’t.
I don’t think we ought to take that laying down, especially not from a group that has made exploiting the belief that “women are marginalized” its method of operation.
It’s time we stop tolerating the bullshit.
It’s time for us to get right in our opposition’s faces with a demand for an explanation of their attacks on men’s human rights activism.
I’m asking other female men’s human rights activists to post the same message to whatever media you regularly use, whether it’s Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, or even just in a comment in answer to this article.
“I support men’s rights because men are human. What other reason do you need?”
It’s time to demand answers.
