Does that include female MRAs?
The most disturbing, and disgusting, part about fMRAs is that those women tend to be very well placed to know how far the supposed privileges of their gender can actually bring them. One can think that this would have given them some insight on the futility of "advantages" that are ultimately based on patronizing attitudes. Instead, they become full of resentment towards
those other women who had an easier life than them, full of themselves for having overcome hardships
those other women can hardly imagine, and, ultimately, full of the shit they talk at length about
those other women on their Web-based soapbox.
So, yeah. Female MRAs are definitely in favor of downgrading women, because if they had it harder than most people, every women should.
1) REAL MRA's or Progressive Masculists are not in any way against feminism or the progress of women's rights.
I almost stopped reading right there. Not because what you said made me furious or convinced me to "give up on you". I just thought you were fundamentally mistaken about what the MRM actually entails, and the four other points in your message pretty much confirmed it. The crux of the matter has already been explained by SmokingDodongo and Alehksunos, but I figured I could contribute my rant-sized stone to the edifice.
There are plenty of men-focused groups. Some of them oppose feminism, some support it, others are more ambivalent about it. And yes, as you have said, those who support feminism sometimes call themselves progressive masculinists. That's something I have been exposed to beforehand, so it's not like my initial stance towards the emerging MRM was completely negative. I was pretty curious about it, really.
The school of thought that calls itself "Men's Right Movement" is explicitly and fundamentally anti-feminist. There's no way around it ; most prominent activists actively identify as such, and I can't think of any who would reject the label outright. On the other hand, they will protest loudly about being qualified as "against women's rights". According to them, feminists are the ones who are undermining equal rights.
A central tenet is that, before the dangerous experimentations of feminism, there was a balance between genders. Men broke their backs with hard work and killed each other at war, while women were merely expected to be chaste and subservient to the men of their household. While this social order assured to men the sexual availability of women, which is a
commodity in misogynistic thought, it primarily benefitted the lives of women, who were gentlemanly kept away from the most gruesome responsibilities. Even though women were the property of their father or their husband, it totally can't be called a patriarchy, because highborn women were still above men of lower social status and because men had it worse anyway... or maybe both genders had it equally bad - it really depends on what point the MRA is trying to make.
Then feminism happened, and all hell broke loose. Liberated from their accountability to men, women are now free to abuse their societal privilege and inherent sexual power over men. Today, women can act like harlots without facing any social repercussion, while men are facing false accusations of rape around every corner. They are encouraged to choose any job they want, and stop working whenever they want to take care of their children, and all that without any financial constraint because their husband still have to provide for them even after a divorce. Violence against men is rampant and widely accepted, while women are more untouchable than ever. In popular culture, men are depicted as dispensable, stupid and violent while women are erected into precious avatars of reason and virtue.
The previous paragraph was a fair and balanced view of the gender dynamics of Western society today, just as the one before it was an accurate depiction of its past. All those injustices were created by feminism, either by accident or by intent, and mainstream feminism is still actively campaigning to uphold them. The fact that these injustices stem from the deeply-ingrained attitudes of an historically male-dominated society is absolutely irrelevant and should be dismissed without further examination as feminist rhetoric.
While all this might make it seem like Men's Right Activists
might maybe support traditional gender roles, they are very much against them, and will in fact proclaim it loudly and frequently whenever prompted. They just want to fix the mess those silly
women feminists made when they disturbed the natural order. Their new solutions to this highly complex dilemma apparently involves ranting against every piece of legislation with feminist-sounding names even when the actual text uses gender-neutral language, debating various feminists into pointless and often one-sided flame wars, trivializing in very offensive terms the various kinds of violence and discrimination that are not helpful to their cause, ranting about tropes as if it offered great insight into gender dynamics, attacking a feminist for ranting about tropes as if it offered great insight into gender dynamics, seeing the erasure of men's plight inside the results of an incorrectly-entered Google search query, and generally acting like a spear counterpart to obnoxious tumblr "social justice" feminists. Except those are not all of feminism.
If there is something charitable I can say about the so-called Men's Rights Activists... they consistently treat women as fully-fledged people, at least in theory. That doesn't mean that they are treating their rights fairly, mind you, or that I would fully trust one of them around an actual wowan. However, it does represent a major difference from the die-hard misogynists they borrow and adapt most of their arguments from, and that they sometimes defend in a misguided attempt to oppose feminism at every corner. Those tend to see women as a man's accessory.
Really, when you think about it, the failings of the so-called "Men's Rights Movements" are suspiciously similar to those of their very own feminist strawman.
"Feminists" treat rape and physical abuse as gendered crimes? MRAs treat false accusations of rape and psychological abuse as gendered crimes. For that matter, they also treat false accusations as a rape-specific crime.
"Feminists"
still treat rape as a gendered crime? MRA also treat rape as a gendered crime, whenever they want to complain about people "overreacting" to it and blame it on feminism.
"Feminists" conflate MRAs with social regressives? MRAs conflate feminists with social regressives over "equal responsabilities" issues like the draft, with even less justification.
"Feminists" disrespect the agency of raped women by focusing on their victimhood? MRAs disrespect the agency of men in dangerous occupations by focusing on their victimhood, again with considerably less justification.
"Feminists" reduce the MRM to its most fringe elements in order to dismiss it? Reducing feminism to its most fringe elements in order to dismiss it, is the MRM's entire
raison d'être.
"Feminists" cynically use social topics they don't really care about in order to push their sexist agenda? Four words : male victims of rape.
"Feminists" display a disturbing lack of compassion towards the suffering of men? Please, don't get me started on this.
Have you ever visited A Voice for Men? It is a MRA mouthpiece that is generally considered to be a moderate "public face" for the movement, as demonstrated by the fact that the comments are typically more radical, considerably so, than the articles themselves. The articles are still pretty bad, in my opinion. If you still think that MRAs are not necessarily "against feminism" after spending about half an hour on that website...
