Did you ever think what those sleepers are that underlie the railroad? Each one is a man, an Irishman, or a Yankee man. The rails are laid on them, and they are covered with sand, and the cars run smoothly over them.
– Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Today’s culture of misandry could be considered the greatest complex of oppression and abuse seen in the modern age. Over three-billion men and boys are routinely exploited, overlooked and abused, with it all rationalized as necessary, as fair, or as simply not happening. This system of inequality is likely the largest (by head count) oppression of a single distinguishable demographic of the last century, if not of all history.
However, there exists another structured inequality that is even more far reaching: poverty. For centuries the greater masses have been exploited by the wealthy to further grow their riches and to wage war between houses, kingdoms and nations at the whim of the plutocrats. Make no mistake, the mass poverty we experience to this day is enforced with the sole intent of sustaining the status quo; it is no accident, but a requisite of the current system.
Together, these two cultural complexes, misandry and poverty, oppress and abuse the vast majority of humanity. Poverty consumes the working class, unemployed and homeless, and even the middle-class man is not spared mistreatment due to his gender. Alone, each seems a nearly insurmountable hurdle to overcome in the fight for an egalitarian society, and together they form the greater mass of the world’s injustice and abuse.
However, misandry and poverty are not truly separate and they do not need to be combated individually. Born from the evolution of ancient cultures, both are now tools of the world’s corrupt controllers, carefully considered and cultivated for the benefit of the powerful. Misandry and poverty support one another, feed on each other, and in reality the fight against one is the fight against both. Men are the fodder ground down and consumed by the modern economic system, but that is only possible as long as men do not fight back. Were so many men not trapped in poverty, such vitriol against their sex would not be tolerated. Without the repressions of a misandristic culture, men would not tolerate so many of their brothers being condemned to live with almost nothing.
The fight for Men’s Rights is the fight against wealth inequality. Out of the systems of misandry and male disposability sprout the weed of poverty, using the fear and low self-esteem of men to enrich the wealthy. Winning men their rights will be a blow against global poverty, not because men are more important or their financial well-being of greater impact, but because cutting away the injustices and abuses of men and boys will strike at the roots of the cultural complex that facilitates mass poverty. The oppressed men of the world are the fuel for exploitation and freeing them will help free us all.
One of the front lines of the fight for Men’s Rights is Father’s Rights, striving for reform in family law and changes to how society perceives and treats fathers. Modern family law was born from seemingly well-intentioned legal agitation in the mid-twentieth century, but it has come to contribute in profound and long-lasting ways to poverty. Not as a conspiracy, but as a cultural gestalt that drives people to compete for resources where collaboration would better serve everyone’s interests. It is the Men’s Rights Movement that will make for that collaboration.
The current landscape of family structure in the west continues to put the greater burden of financial earning on the husband/father. This imbalance discourages women from contributing fully to family economy and puts all the proverbial eggs in a single basket, leaving many families destitute in the event of the husband losing employment, as happened en masse during the Great Recession. Increasing men’s work-life balance will encourage married couples to better balance their earning, insulating them against the ravages of a fickle economy.
However, things are far worse and far more complex when divorce enters the equation. Upon separation an even more rigid relationship of provider-dependent is enforced. Alimony does little to encourage female participation in the workforce and leaves men suffocating under crushing fiscal demands. This drains his own wealth, and keeps the woman from building hers, thereby contributing to the poverty of both and limiting upward mobility. Serial marriage-divorces compound the problem, creating a downward spiral of debt.
With children the problem becomes even more pronounced. Child support doubles down on the burden of alimony. Blatantly unbalanced custody orders leave mothers un- or underemployed and fathers financially and emotionally trapped under the heel of the family court and vulnerable to the whim of their ex-wife. All this weakens the family economy, draining parents’ resources and dooming many children of divorce to a life in poverty.
Improving father’s rights will balance parenting time, improving the quality of life for everyone involved. Separated fathers with meaningful relationships with their children are happier, healthier and contribute more to the economy of the children. Children with regular access to their fathers grow up healthier as well, and less likely to themselves become impoverished as adults. More balanced custody allows mothers to work and earn more, providing for their children and their own (now independent) retirement.
Greater father’s rights will further boost the economic well-being of families by (a) reducing the number of needless divorces spurred on by the current system, and (b) stopping the extortive flow of money into the overfull coffers of family law attorneys. Father’s Rights is a cornerstone of the fight for Men’s Rights, and one that will help raise many broken families out of the clutches of poverty.
Deeper than abuse of fathers, however, and perhaps a core cause of it, is the larger cultural view of men as cattle. Cattle to be driven to work and strain until they die seven years younger. Cattle to be forced onto the front line of war, disaster and danger because it’s their “duty”. Cattle to suffer in silence and “take it like a man” so others can be given life-saving aid. All this has been trained and beaten into men for millennia until even men themselves don’t question their own martyr complex, their self-valuation based on utility.
This is why misandry thrives. Men are conditioned to not speak up and to internalize the hate they encounter everyday, and hate it is, even the so-called “noble” ideals of self-sacrificing manhood. To teach a boy that his life is less valuable than his sister’s is to teach him to hate himself. This also contributes to global poverty by teaching men to accept being an exploitable utility without wanting anything in return. Men have always been the backbone of the economy, whether as serfs or salarymen, doing the lion’s share of labor, paying the majority of income tax and putting in more hours at paid work. Where men go, the economy follows, except that the men themselves do not control the flow of wealth they produce. This allows the rich to feed off the working class, draining resources for their own self-serving desires.
Liberating men from their cultural shackles will free them to build wealth for themselves and those they choose to care about, not for the anointed few or whomever society decides to force upon them as dependents. Men should not be shamed and pressured into working themselves into early graves. Let every adult contribute equally and then share in what is earned, because we will all be wealthier for it.
The fear must also be stopped. Men are cowed into their role of utility by imposed, irrational fears leveled to control and exploit them. “Performance culture” drives men to disregard their own well-being for the sake of impressing others, fearing being rejected as sub-standard. The gynocentric structure of relationships burdens and drains men as little more than gift cards; spend and discard. Any man who dares speak out against the practice is shamed and punished, so wealth continues to be siphoned away to products and industries men don’t even care about, leaving them with little but their bread and pay-per-view circuses.
Men must strike out, not violently against their oppressors, but boldly onto a new trail. Men are half the population, and the greater bulk of the world’s production force. The economy is in their hands, if they will take hold and demand that, for once, it do something for them. Not out of selfishness or greed, but because the system as it stands exploits them and their families and only the men themselves can make it better.
Don’t waste money on shows of wealth; cars, suits, property and trophy girlfriends give only a false sense of worth. Your money will just feed into the pockets of corporations who don’t give a damn about you.
Stop letting others drain your hard earned wealth; pay your taxes, donate to your favorite charity, but don’t let anyone tell you how to spend your money. Every dollar is a piece of your life and it is yours. Don’t be an ATM for anyone else’s bad habits.
Refuse to participate in the scalping-fest of family court; no sane man should expose himself to the risk of divorce. It is little more than self-accepted human bondage.
Corporations can’t do a damn or earn a cent without you, so don’t settle for that cubicle job just because you’ve got alimony due and your new date likes expensive wine. Work should be fulfilling, not soul crushing, and if you cut off all the fiscal leeches you will have much greater options in jobs.
Men will never be given rights. Rights have to be demanded, taken, and defended. When men free themselves from their shackles, the industrial machine will have lost its sheepish workforce, and men will become the force working for their own good, the good of their brothers and of those they love. The gross injustices of male homelessness, unemployment and early death are all ignored by the leisure class because they facilitate our culture of unsustainable spending, but it is time to stop tolerating the abuse of our fathers and brothers and sons.
There is enough to go around if we don’t let the select few hoard resources. It is shame and fear of rejection that keeps men working and dying for strangers, rather than finding their own definition of self-worth and working to enrich their lives, not someone else’s bank account. Stand up and refuse to be anyone’s utility; that is when the cycle of bloodstained consumerism will be stopped. Men carry the economy, but they don’t have to be crushed by it.
