Maybe people are lazy, maybe they’re opinionated. Either way, they often let their convictions take hold and opine about things they know little about.
By Jordan Holbrook: A few days ago, Sam Glover wrote a piece for The Mancunian titled “Men need an alternative to the toxic men’s rights movement”. The wonderfully astute piece is filled with all the usual buzzwords, rhetoric and accusations, save for a mention of #GamerGate – perhaps we’re reaching the stage where mentioning #GamerGate is no longer cool?
It is completely lacking in any citations, there are no links to any external sites, the whole thing is one long condemnation of the author perceives to be the Men’s Movement. However, we are tossed but a minor bone in that he ever so kindly mentions CALM and states we should be more like them. Thank you, Sam, it’s not like CALM is part of the Men and Boys Coalition, the largest pro-men’s organisation in the UK.
But, all that aside, I want to pick up on some of the author’s rather insightful commentary, which can easily be summarised as:
- MRA’s hate women (duh!)
- Feminists don’t hate men (why would they?)
- MRAs don’t understand the pay gap (projection)
- Men, not just MRAs, hate women (level up!)
- You’re only doing it because you are bitter, join feminism
If you’ve read those above listed five points, you’ve read Sam Glover’s article (yes, his ‘article’ really can be summated as easily as that). So, let’s dig through his points one by one.
MRA’s hate women (duh!)
There are two stimuli that could have provoked this conclusion:
- A conflation of ‘feminism’ with ‘women’
- Misinterpreting anger and frustration from men who have been chewed by the system
The former occurs more times than I care to deal with, the assumption that feminism represents all women so thus, an attack on or criticism of feminism is therefore an attack on or criticism of women. This is baloney yet, appears to be the norm. One cannot criticise feminism without being accused of misogyny. Reminder: only 7% of the UK population identifies as feminist; 8% either oppose it or think it is irrelevant.
The latter can be empathised with, to only a minor degree. There are many men who have been chewed by the system, chopped up by outrageous divorce proceedings and horrendous decision making in the family courts. Naturally, this will leave many men in a pit of anger and loathing – everything they’ve worked for stolen away from them and they have little to no ability to defend themselves. However, to construe their pain as sexism is foolish beyond imagination.
But sure, there are some who gravitate to the movement and genuinely have negative feelings and perceptions of the opposite sex. But, what happens to them? They are ejected. Discarded like last week’s trash. Hope Not Hate has attempted to conflate such persons with us, lumping Daryush Valizadeh (Roosh V of ‘Return of Kings’) with us. He has written several times how he is not part of our movement (see here and here) yet, we’re still levied with such infantile accusations.
If this accusation were to be true, why would women ever be part of the movement? Surely our supposed hatred for them would motivate them to stay away or, if these women were ardent enough, our hatred for them would motivate us to rebuff them? Take, for example, support from Dr Joanna Williams, who will be speaking at the upcoming March for Men in London. Across the pond, there’s the indefatigable Professor Christina Hoff Sommers and Karen Straughan. Hardly a bunch of misogynists if we accept women to help lead the charge.
Feminists don’t hate men (why would they?)
Whew laddie, this is a fun one.
I could tell you about the Child First campaign by Women’s Aid which, with their 19 Child Homicides report, unironically recommended that any man who is accused of domestic violence will want to kill their kids. They then went on to say that 62% of cases in the family courts feature allegations of domestic violence (sounds like a lot of men want to kill their children). Such spurious allegations have easily been refuted (see here and here, respectively).
I could also tell you how, in a 1992 paper titled ‘Detecting the Scope of Rape : A Review of Prevalence Research Methods’, Mary Koss said:
“Although consideration of male victims is within the scope of the legal statutes, it is important to restrict the term rape to instances where male victims were penetrated by offenders. It is inappropriate to consider as a rape victim a man who engages in unwanted sexual intercourse with a woman.”
That’s right, it is inappropriate to consider male victims of female-perpetrated rape as victims of rape. This paper was submitted to and accepted by the Centre for Disease Control.
Read this reddit thread for links to other second wave feminists who outright denied/attacked the existence of male victims of female perpetrated sexual assault/rape.
MRAs don’t understand the pay gap (projection)
This one is easy. Far too easy.
I’ve discussed the pay gap before here on The Screen so, rather than rehash old ground, I’ll just link it.
Men, not just MRAs, hate women
Apparently, young men hate women because there are mean things said about women online. I wonder what the author has to say about Rebecca Reid’s article that openly supports feminists harassing men on the internet!?
I am digressing and I’ve only just started this segment. According to Pew Research Data, which is the gold-standard, men are more likely to experience any form of harassing behaviour online. However, women are more likely than men to view it as a problem than men are. Also, women are just as likely as men to perpetrate misogynistic abuse as women. In fact, a feminist’s natural ally, a right wing male in a position of power (in this case, Male Tory MPs), they receive more abuse!
You’re only doing it because you’re bitter, join feminism
It’s funny, the author states MRAs are angry at feminism and concludes that the solution is to join feminism. The author is not very smart.
Evidently, he has not done his background research, exemplified by this ignorant article. Nonetheless, it provided me with half an hour’s worth of entertainment in writing this half-assed response piece. Gave me something to do whilst I fight off this yucky bout of flu I’m suffering right now.
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