I get lots of advice on the right way to do activism; almost always from people not doing any. Some of my favorites are the ones that come from MRA’s that appear to have more issues with MRA’s than they do with feminists. I got one such email this very evening. I thought perhaps by posting that here, along with my response, that it would help me in the future. From now on I can simply return those emails with a link to this post, as I am doing now with Larry.
And now for the message from MRA Larry.
[box type=”note” icon=”none”]I love this – the face for the anti-feminist movement is an angry white man who talks like an ex-drill Sergent and preaches hate toward women! How is this working for you? Oh, and the mission statement of “don’t get fucked”, that should rally some more angry supporters. After all, the world needs more hatred right! Hate hate hate – hate you, hate them, hate everyone! Hate hate hate! Anger! Violence! This is the way to restore peace. Reminds of the war on drugs! Or the war on crime! Both are absolute jokes! Wage war – that’ll fix it!
I don’t disagree with you that feminism is terrible – but I completely disagree with your approach – it’s atrocious! It won’t change anything and will actually make things far worse. You really need to understand that what you fight you strengthen and what you resist persist. This is the laws of the universe. Your message is going to be lost in it’s delivery.
I’m on the same journey – but I’m taking a very different approach. The war mentality, along with anger and hatred – they are dead. They leave a trail of broken lives – how is that any better than how it is today?
But you won’t understand my point because your ego won’t let you. It’s blind with anger and you probably don’t understand how unconscious you actually are. You think your conscious, but your not. Your ego is driving your whole show – it’s in complete control of you. You don’t even realize it because the ego is actually not very smart. You see, you are actually a pawn for the feminist movement – you’re what gives them the ability to say” see what we man – this is what we’re talking about.”
Nice website – layout is good and the logo is cool. Has potential to actually do something positive…if it wasn’t filled with hate and war.
What you fight you strengthen and what you resist persist.[/box]
Hi Larry,
How is it working for me? Well, first of all it’s “us,” not “me.” There are lots of voices here, and despite your racist and sexist launch not all of them are white or male. Now that this has been clarified for you, let’s look at your “points.”
This website, another by a man with an “angry” moniker, and an expanding number of others have done more to inject dialogue about men’s issues into the mainstream than anything before them. We are growing rapidly and there is a reason for that. It’s because anyone who possesses even a modicum of understanding of history knows that no social movement has ever made any progress without at some point being driven by the anger of disaffected people and those that sympathize, empathize, with their struggle. That means the sympathizers are angry, too.
How about blacks in this country? Were they being hateful when taking to the streets and even being sometimes explosive in their protests? Or is that just what we should have expected after a history of subjugation and being marginalized?
Even feminism, which is a social movement, albeit a corrupt one, was and is driven almost entirely on anger. Their anger was not legitimate, but it did give them momentum. Do you think otherwise? Do you know of any movement to seek justice that was not fueled by the shared anger of those previously denied?
Are you even capable of the intellectual honesty to answer these questions? Are you so obtuse as to conflate anger with hate, outrage with bigotry, unfettered honesty with misogyny?
You say you agree that feminism is terrible. And you speak in a way that at least attempts to represent yourself as someone who understands the problem. If you understand that problem fully, then you understand that men are dying, Larry, by their own hands and the hands of others, and that the culprits operate with impunity. You know that there are men languishing in prisons; men having their children, property, freedom and future assets unjustly stripped away from them, because of this problem.
If you understand the problem you know that the future for our sons is being robbed through an education system that begins assaulting the core of their identity, with drugs and denigration, from the first day of school – and that now, by the time they reach college age, most of them have been drummed out of an academic future altogether. And you know this is a problem that is getting worse.
If you are aware of the problem, then you also see people like Hannah Rosin enjoying widespread support for publicly gloating on the destruction of half the human species, promoting more of it, and you know that support is reflective of a deeply seated bigotry against men and boys that will not succumb to reason or decency.
But you are clearly not aware of anything, Larry, save your own sense of omniscience. I have some news for you. Despite the myopic nonsense strewn throughout your intended lecturing of me, this is a war. It is not one that men asked for or wanted. In fact, it has taken half a century to see signs that men are actually starting to fight back. And as anyone present in this cause for any times knows, it has always been the lack of fighting back that has kept us defenseless. Men like you would further that defenselessness.
Your inability to see the war, and your failure to be angered by it, is only a reflection of a lack of compassion and empathy for the casualties; proof that you are ultimately as steeped in the current cultural misandry as any feminist ideologue.
Larry, you are supposed to be angry at the outrages of injustice and cancerous bigotry that has spread though the collective consciousness. The fact that you are not makes you as helpful to the men’s movement as dung on a dinner plate.
And you are now coming to me with a condescending tongue because I have the decency to be angry? You dump platitudes at my feet like some sort of pop-psych guru-philosopher, intending to infer some sort of superior wisdom in doing so? You condescend to all of us about telling men who are getting fucked that there are ways to prevent it? And finally, you, in the almost unspeakable depths of stupidity tell me that I am a feminist pawn because I don’t subscribe to your milquetoast idea that the way to approach activism is to live in emotional denial of why you were driven to be an activist to begin with; and to shame other men out of expressing that anger.
I said you were of no use to the MRM. I take that back. You are of significant use. You are the example of what not to be, and your less than artfully crafted words are now on display as an example to a good many men and women who know better than this capitulating nonsense, but don’t mind the occasional reminder.
