Men Need to Help Each Other But Are Allegedly Doing It Wrong

The Institute for Family Studies published an article by Canadian-based journalist, Ari David Blaff. It is headlined "Saving Men from the Men’s Rights Movement."

For most in North America, the word “Men’s Rights Advocate” (MRA) is synonymous with sexism and hatred. Members are seen as resentful guys projecting their poisonous hatred at a changing world that’s left them behind. That judgement is not entirely misplaced.

To me, "MRA" is almost as useless without clarification, as "feminist." What matters is what people MEAN when they use the term. But of course, the USA is misandrist and Canada appears to be even more so, so things that focus on men, other than to tell them to die in war, fund government schemes, sacrifice themselves in marriage, back up women in parenting, or otherwise serve women is seen as bad. What I call Free Men can be, and often are, happy, not wallowing in hatred at all.

Look no further than the leadership of the movement. Paul Elam, creator of the website, A Voice for Men, explained while speaking at a conference that divorce “socializes women to be opportunistic parasites in the lives of men.”

Paul's not wrong, though.

Interviewed by The Independent in 2015, Mike Buchanan, the British leader of the upstart, Justice for Men and Boys (And the Women Who Support Them) Party took aim squarely at feminism: “Men are stripped out of their families and become walking wallets because that suits the state. It’s a very well documented feminist objective of 40 years to destroy the nuclear family.”

Again, Mike's not wrong, depending on what is meant by "feminism."

Elam and Buchanan are part of what academics today call “The Manosphere,” a loose amalgam made up men angry with the state of gender politics. And while the formers represent the ‘professionalized’ crust, baked into the pie are three even more odious layers.

Odious, eh? Let's see.

“Men going their own way” (MGTOW) wish to avoid women altogether to reclaim their masculinity.

There are different levels of MGTOW, but there's nothing odious about opting out of marriage, or even deciding to have as little interaction with women as possible. Are monks who do this "odious?"

“Pick-up artists” (PUAs) are fearful of the feminization of men and seek to dispel such notions by gamifying dating and harassing women.

"Dating and harassing." Really? How about... dating? Aren't men expected to do the pursuing? What is wrong with men sharing with other men how they can increase their chances of picking up the women to whom they are most attracted?

 

One prominent PUA, Daryush "Roosh V" Valizadeh, infamously hypothesized that legalizing rape on private property would incentivize women to be more vigilant over whom they socialize with thus decreasing incidents of sexual assault.

Not the kind of tactic I'd think of, but wanting to decrease sexual assaults is a bad thing?

Lastly, and most insidiously, are “Incels” a fringe element seeking, violent and often deadly, revenge against a society dominated by female sexual power uninterested in them.

I'm completely against violence for anything other than self defense or defending the innocent. But I'm also not an incel. I'm a regretmarried.

Entwined within this thicket of intolerance are uncomfortable truths which modern gender politics struggles to acknowledge.

Intolerance of what? There's nothing wrong with men refusing to tolerate misandry, or a terrible state contract, or only dating people they were fixed up with by someone who sees them as lower level than they see themselves.

It’s these kernels that MRAs leverage to attract alienated men into the fold.

So is the problem the status quo or that men are pointing out that status quo to other men?

For instance, men confront a significant gender sentencing gap in the judicial sphere.

Yes we do.

Family court is no different. By 2013, only one-sixth of custodial parents were fathers and even when they do have access to their children, men are likely to have significantly less facetime compared with mothers.

Yep.

In many cases, judges run roughshod, outdated stereotypes and all, over modern men.

Men can reduce their chances of that happening by living alone and refusing to sign bad contracts with women.

To many, the very notion of ‘men's issues’ or men's rights seems laughable. But consider: If women were dying in 90 percent of workplace fatalities and three out of four suicides, would we not see such numbers as troubling—and as legitimate women's issues? Yet, reversed, the disparities go unnoticed.

Thank you for acknowledging this.

When society has been conditioned to satirize and humorize male suffering, not recognize it, men are left with few acceptable pathways to articulate and advocate for themselves. That is why so many young, impressionable, and hurt men gravitate to obscure corners of Reddit and internet culture to find solace and resources.

There is nothing at all wrong with men networking, sharing information about reality, and developing tactics to reach their goals. These corners are "obscure" because spaces for men are constantly invaded and neutered.

It is here, within the unregulated and unverified Wild West of forum culture, that radicalization and polarization breed ideological echo chambers. A never-ending feedback loop predisposed to fringe thinking.

Hold on. Do you really think that men and boys who are aware of misandry and doing something about it are in an echo chamber? We are constantly bombarded with misandrist, gynocentric, and to repeat myself, mainstream thinking. We can't escape it! It's all over media, social media, academia, government, the workplace, civic organizations, religious congregations, and most institutions.

We have left boys and men exposed to the toxicity of online radicalization through our failure to carve out an appropriate social space in which they can express themselves.

So, boys and men should have their spaces, just not the few they still have, because... because... I guess because the author doesn't like the messages there? Because some writers or podcasters have said things that are problematic? Is there a movement out there that HASN'T had that???

MRAs have so thoroughly muddied the water that apolitical issues like domestic abuse today are no closer to mainstream attention, or sympathy, than when the movement began decades ago.

I'm all for getting domestic abuse rates down to zero: live alone. MRAs have "muddied the water" by citing the same statistics this article does.

Their toxification of the public square has left boys and men lacking a legitimate social and cultural vehicle through which they can advocate on behalf of themselves in a respectful and thoughtful way. To address these legitimate grievances, men require social latitude and flexibility. But if we won’t give it to them, then MRAs will continue to poach naïve youth, and we will be no closer to helping boys and men.

OK, maybe I'm just not understanding. The author seems to be saying:

1. Men and boys are suffering.
2. Men and boys need to network and advocate for themselves.
3. The way men and boys have already done this is wrong.

If so, then... what? What is the author proposing? My assumption is that if the author created such a space to his own liking, it would soon be denounced the very same way he has denounced, with a very broad brush, all the previous efforts by others. Notice, no acceptable men's spaces or leaders were mentioned, nor were any woman (yes, there are some) who have been publicly supporting these men. Considering the site that carried this article, my guess is that the "answer" is for men to keep supporting the current systems by marrying a woman the author considers to be in their league and then raising children. Opting out of this for self protection is unacceptable, for some unexplained reason.

This author may be like Dennis Prager and so many others, who see the problems men and boys are dealing with, yet encourage men to go ahead and sacrifice themselves anyway, even though they have ways - like refusing to sacrifice themselves on the altar of misandry - of overcoming most of these problems and are already sharing those ways with other men.

Maybe I missed something?