I hear from the occasional detractor that the men’s rights movement has been a complete failure at getting anything to change. Usually, but not always, this kind of sniping comes from a small and bitter segment of the MGTOW community that is hostile to any effort to improve the lives of men in the legal realm. Not all MGTOW are like that, as the saying goes. Thankfully, the great majority of them aren’t so stuck in anger. I think they’re too busy enjoying the benefits of self-actualized living.
Still, I’ve never put anything on the public record in response to this silliness before and a recent comment here reminds me I should.
First, AVFM is probably the most prominent and well-known MRA organization, and we have never even attempted to change laws any laws at all. That was never our mission. All our efforts have been to reach men with a different, better vision of themselves – and to be a thorn in the side of hateful feminist ideologues. To those ends our efforts have been astoundingly successful given our resources.
That said, organizations like NCFM have been operating for decades litigating against misandrist laws. NCFM Vice President Marc Angelucci has single-handedly taken on the all-male Selective Service System and has scored major victories.
Shared parenting groups have been making inroads recently in some states, despite vehement and well-funded feminist resistance.
Men’s rights activists in India have fostered a revolution of thought in that country that inspires us all around the globe.
But what is even more pertinent, and what reveals detractors in their utter ignorance, is that the jury is still out on ALL efforts. After all, it was 70 years between Seneca Falls and the passing of the 19th Amendment. Then another 50 years before gender feminism raised its ugly head, and that was with a lot of gynocentric attitudes enabling these things.
Comparatively, men have barely started effort for change, and they have done so against furious resistance that women could never imagine. Society rushes to help women who claim to be in distress. Society ridicules men making the same claim. Two very different worlds.
And so now come the occasional armchair quarterbacks who think massive social change operates like a microwave. They join the rest of misandric society in ridiculing men for their efforts.
And that is OK. MRAs are used to the resistance of willfully ignorant people. And unlike those fools, we understand that this is a multi-generational movement for change. None of us alive today will see the end of it.
That too is OK. Patience is common and abundant to those capable of grasping something greater and more important than themselves.
