The MRM gets called out for misogyny a lot, and it’s a valid complaint in a lot of cases. I started noticing something a while ago – many of the most misogynistic, even toxic MRAs were men raised by feminist mothers. How could that be? Why wouldn’t feminist mothers, of all people, be raising the best adjusted, most gender-egalitarian, woman-affirming men ever. What gives?
Well, we may be set to find out. There’s a new sub-reddit, r/ Sonsoffeminists. So far there are only two posts but I am hoping to see many more. This post is an attempt to help that happen.
The first post I read was heart-warming. A guy got raped twice, both times by women. He confided in his feminist mother, she seems to have said all the right healing things and then pursued tthe matter with the police, who blew her off. He says it broke her heart. Now that’s the kind of feminist that feminists insist really do exist.
But there surely is the other kind, and we can expect to hear from their sons too.
- The Woman Card - May 2, 2016
- Frat boy bachelorettes and the invasion of gay bars - April 15, 2016
- “Not my kid….” - February 22, 2016
by 
How could that be?
How can that be you ask? Simple such feminists are actively denied in a way that they would not stand for among other groups. Those feminists are conveniently swept under the rug of, “Not all feminists are like that!!!”, “Oh they are not feminists.”, “No feminist I know would do such a thing!!!!”
Convenient Deniability. When it’s convenient, deny it.
The first post I read was heart-warming. A guy got raped twice, both times by women. He confided in his feminist mother, she seems to have said all the right healing things and then pursued tthe matter with the police, who blew her off. He says it broke her heart. Now that’s the kind of feminist that feminists insist really do exist.
Sad indeed. It’s good to see that feminists like that exist but while I do like that she took up his fight it’s what others would do to warp this event.
Stories like this are ones where the fact that she is a feminists would be put front and center as some sort of advertisement of, “This is what feminism looks like.” Switch that around to a feminist mother that turned against her son after being raped and all of a sudden it would be unfair to even mention the fact that she was a feminist.
“The MRM gets called out for misogyny a lot, and it’s a valid complaint in a lot of cases. I started noticing something a while ago – many of the most misogynistic, even toxic MRAs were men raised by feminist mothers.”
Name some names, eh?
“Name some names, eh?”
Who wants to know? Think someone is talking about you? I’m not, because the issue doesn’t matter that much to me. We need to stop crumpling every time someone flings the misogyny accusation.
And what would be the point of naming names? I don’t see the point; it’s not like I think it’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Misandry was never enough of a problem to feminism that it kept feminists from achieving their aims; why should misogyny impede the MRM any more? I don’t appreciate the way charges of misogyny have the power to shut people down, to be debate-stoppers, so I refuse to regard misogyny as some kind of heinous sin. I am not interested in worrying about the hurt feelings of people who think you or I are sub-human.
It is probably impossible in our society and our culture for a man to be as misogynist as most women (and most men) are misandrist. A serial killer like Gary Ridgway, who raped and murdered howevermany women that was, is not half the misogynist that a surburabn housewide with a gas-guzzling SUV, that dirve all these oil wars, with one of those motherfucking yellow ribbon decals to show her crocodile tear support, full of giggling little girls who will never register for the draft, is a misandrist. In the past ten years over 6,000 men have died in these wars – in that time how many women have male serial killers killed?
Yes, I can certainly agree with all of that. Was just wandering which “toxic” MRAs you were talking about is all, as I find such people rare at the “MRM” places I read.
But the “MRM” is such a hazy, constantly shifting, ill-defined concept that it’s difficult to clearly attribute any qualities to it. Unlike with feminists, many people who are labelled “MRAs” do not actually self-identify as such.
Anyway, you are on the right trail with your article. As Fidelbogen has pointed out many times, the greater power and influence feminism exerts upon the world, the more misogyny will inevitably flourish as a result. Misandry and misogyny flow from the same source.
I’ve seen a gay relative be accused of misogyny simply for not wanting to have sex with women. It’s turned into a meaningless accusation.
Given the fact that misogyny actually exists, who, I ask, WHO, is responsible for the over-use of the term?
Tonight, I was having drinks with a female co-worker after work in which I was utterly going to town railing against radical feminists. Oh yes, it was one of my better rants. Now, I’m not sure what her stance is on radfems exactly, but I heard the shoes on her feet clomping-about under the table, as if I was putting her under some stress, but she never offered any kind of defense for them.
I’m wondering how many people out there are willing to stand-up in defense of the radfems.
I wonder if it’ll wind up being a parallel to ‘recovering Catholics.’
“I was raised in a toxic environment, but now I’m working my way back to sanity…. maybe I’ll go into standup comedy.”
“…many of the most misogynistic, even toxic MRAs were men raised by feminist mothers. How could that be?”
I don’t find this to be surprising at all. Feminism, at its core, is all about the hatred of men and masculinity. First wave feminism posited the “moral superiority” of women and used this to help justify women’s suffrage and prohibition. Concepts such as “patriarchy,” “rape culture,” “male privilege,” etc., are used as weapons of shame and blame to guilt men into falling into line. Feminist mothers would be more likely to used such weapons against their own sons than would non-feminist women. Even they are not used as weapons, the mother’s belief in feminist ideology and its misandry would affect many boys in a very negative manner. On of my favorite tv shows is Criminal Minds. In one episode a female agent is profiling a very misogynistic serial killer and proposes that he must have been abused by a woman because “Only a woman could have caused him to hate women so much.” It is no stretch to believe that a feminist mother could produce a misogynist son, particularly if she believes in the more misandric aspects of feminism.
“Yes, I can certainly agree with all of that. Was just wandering which “toxic” MRAs you were talking about is all, as I find such people rare at the “MRM” places I read.”
forweg, there’s a lot here.
Starters – no one on anay manosphere board comes close in misogyny to the rampart man-hatred that is trumpeted and celebrated in radfem spaces. And it doesn’t work to label to call those people marginal – Agent Orange’s work on RadFemHub has shown that those people are in positions of institutional power.They are thoroughly mainstream. And until feminsts clean their own house and pull the log out of thier own eye, they have no room to say anything about the speck in someone else’s.
Second – Look at the difference between what gets called misogyny and what gets called misandry – or doesn’t even get called anything at all Look at the man-haterd roiling in this thread – and OP for that matter – http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/19/is-it-rape-if-you-dont-mean-for-it-to-be-rape/ And then there is this abortion of a thread – http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2012/09/25/lets-stop-attacking-aids-researchers-yeah/#comment-528703. It is a false equivalence to equate the misogyny you do see on mens’s site’s with the misandry you see in the femmisphere.
Because what is getting called misogyny? See Aych’s comment above for an example. Nothing sets the misogyny accusations going like a MGTOW. It is an intolerable affront to far too many women’s – most probabaly – sense of self-worth and attractiveness to be turned down by a man. (And society condones this, chuckles at it – Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. So you’ve ebeen warned; from now on it’s all your own fault if you make her mad and she does whatever she feels like.)
So when a gay man turns a woman down, he’s in the wrong, he’s a misogynist. Because she has a right to sex from him, and he’s a woman-hater if he denies her that. It’s pure rape culture and the feminsts response is to accuse men instead of women’s own crimes.
Third – The whole “toxic MRA” meme is a damseling plea for pity. It’s not even conscious most of the time, it is so normalized in the culture that people who do it think it’s just normal. Why is misogyny considered such an abomination when misandry is either as existing at all or else is celebrated as some kind of you-go-grrrl form of righteousness?
TDOM offers a peral!
“On of my favorite tv shows is Criminal Minds. In one episode a female agent is profiling a very misogynistic serial killer and proposes that he must have been abused by a woman because “Only a woman could have caused him to hate women so much.”
Aren’t all the worst misandrists men? That’s why it’s such a load of shit when someone says the patriarchy benefits men – after all men set it up; who is it going to harm most?
I am still of the belief that more men are raped in prison than women are raped in the whole society yet we hear nothing about this in the mainstream media.
Great article that is touching to me & I hope the cause continues to get out.
“In the past ten years over 6,000 men have died in these wars.”
Yes, and probably over 1,000,000 men, mostly civilians, have died in these wars, and probably over another 1,000,000 womyn. The second Lancet Study estimated almost 655,000 Iraqi dead by June 2006. I am not sure about estimates of Afghan dead.
@Marja, where have you come up with the figure for the 1 million invisible creatures called “womyn” who have died in these wars? If you’re going by a total estimate for Iraq is 650,000 involves mostly-male casualties, what sort of math do you use to come up with equal numbers of male and female deaths overall, by your estimation?
The 2nd Lancet Study only covered the first 39 months of the Iraq War. So if we extrapolate to 100+ months of the Iraq War and 130+ months of the Afghan War, the total casualties must greatly exceed 2,000,000 Iraqi and Afghan dead.
The majority of the Iraqi and Afghan deaths have not come from conventional front line fighting, but from other types of fighting, bombings, and cholera. Unless you can give some reason bombs, cholera, etc. would kill more men than womyn, it makes sense to assume that these things have killed roughly equal numbers of men and womyn.
Marja, that Lancet study was crap and was debunked years ago, so long ago I don’t even recall the specific problems with it. Its most obvious methodological problem was that no one had any way to gather data, so the analysis was all based on guesswork.
As for civilian deaths, those also tend to skew sharply male. Feminist Critics has discussed this in depth over the years and if this interests you that’s a good place to start. They try hard to be rigorous with their analysis.
In particualr the sectarian fighting and assasination campaigns in Iraq were aimed almlost exclusively at men because political power, and who was going to end up running Iraq is almost exclusively a male matter in Iraq, so killing women is a waste of ammunition. Misogyny and misandry kiss.
The same is quite obviously true in Afgahnistan. Women come in for quite a lot of shit in these places – getting acid thrown in yoyur face for daring to go to school is horrible – but it is hardly on the level of armed gangs coming to hunt you down and take your life, is it? And its misandrist to equate or attempt to equate the two. Isn’t it?
If people saw half of what I say about testosterone poisoning, and didn’t see the personal context, they might think I hate men and rant about men, instead of realizing I hate my medical issues and gripe about what I’ve been through.
I think it’s a good thing to have a place to gripe.
I don’t know where to draw the line here. I want more spaces where people can gripe, I don’t want spaces where people create an echo chamber and convince themselves that ‘if you have a son and a daughter your son will probably molest and rape your daughter.’
I understand that the 2nd Lancet Study is the best study available. It’s not the highest estimate. I’m surprised by the high proportion of deaths they attribute to immediate violence and the low proportion they attribute to disease.
But my point was that the vast majority of the dead are Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and that the American media often invisibilize these dead or cherry-pick figures which undercount the dead.
The first Lancet study estimated only 7% of the casualties being female. They literally estimated more children under 15 were killed than females of all ages. You’re simply choosing to ignore this and speculate that since bombs and bullets can kill women, too, then they surely must have. You’re ignoring the study that you are supposedly basing your speculation on. I don’t know the percentage of female casualties that the second study said but I’m sure that you were staring right at it and chose to willfully ignore it in favor of your own estimations.
Your speculation only shows that you are very much ignorant about these wars. You’re just utterly biased, trying to inflate the ratio of female deaths to make it sound like women are much larger victim of these wars. And you’re doing it because you simply refuse to acknowledge that being subject to military service harms men.
Do yourself a favor and base your war dead on actual figures that actual researchers tally up instead of making them up based on what you think. The nature of the fighting in the first few months of the Iraq war was far different than what happened later. It was far more intense, with far more fighters from both sides, than the low-level insurgency that happened later. It was far more widespread than the fighting in Afghanistan, which is a different war with different casualty figures, if you ever bothered to educate yourself about it. Extrapolating the death rate for 10 years of fighting in 2 different countries based on 39 months of heavy fighting in one is, seriously, just plain old wrong.
And look, I know what I’m talking about because I was there and I actually did kill civilian men, as did many other US military men. I almost killed a woman once, because she was in a car that I destroyed, but luckily for her she survived and I called in a helicopter to medivac her. But overall, being a woman keeps you safe whereas being a man makes you a potential target. The very first thing that anyone looks at when evaluating a potential threat is at the gender and age of the individual. So if a 20-something male runs a stop sign towards a group of military vehicles, he is liable to get killed seconds later. But if a woman runs the same stop sign, she has a far greater chance of survival. It’s also men who go out into town and face bombings to buy some food for their families while women stay safely protected in their homes. There are many good reasons why the Lancet study reported such miniscule female deaths. You can’t simply change the reality of war because you decided that females must be the victim.
And that, too.
They wouldn’t just think it, they would be right, as “testosterone poisoning” is a myth invented by man-hating feminists.
Yeah, Marja, not sure where you are getting that men and women are killed with equal frequency in wartime (whether civilian or not). Obviously, in the US armed services, at least for the time being, men dominate in combat related deaths because of policy, but I have never seen any data or even any anecdotal evidence to support the idea that 50% of civilian casualties are women/female.
Someone who is smarter than me might make the argument that we can assume that it is not a 50/50 split in the casualty rate, because of our countries extreme sensitivity to female victimization, and the apparent lack of outcry. A very clever person might be able to provide a solid argument that the misandristic nature of male disposability ensures that there will never be an outcry when the majority of victims of something are men. And therefore, the lack of evidence of ratios of men to women would seem to indicate that men are, in fact, the majority of wartime civilian casualties.
Of course, I am not clever enough to do that. And maybe there exists, somewhere out there, a study which does look at this. But in general, its bad form to assume that because 50% of a population is type A, that type A will represent 50% of the winners/losers/victims/perpetrators, etc. etc. (c.f. US prison racial makeup, US army racial makeup, sex/gender of primary child custodians in divorce cases, etc. etc.)
Addendum to above comment:
Obviously, there is research into this topic that I was unaware of. That you everyone for pointing it out. Seems that I was wrong about a smart person making a clever argument. It seems like if the estimation of 7% female casualties is anywhere close to correct, you wouldn’t have to be smart or make a clever argument at all.
Marja,
“I understand that the 2nd Lancet Study is the best study available. It’s not the highest estimate. I’m surprised by the high proportion of deaths they attribute to immediate violence and the low proportion they attribute to disease.”
This is a good point and it is odd. They could have extrapolated – extrapolation is fine as long as you don’t mistake it for anything else – a reasonable of deaths form all these forms of social disruption.
“But my point was that the vast majority of the dead are Iraqi and Afghan civilians, and that the American media often invisibilize these dead or cherry-pick figures which undercount the dead.”
This is a very valid point. Thrre’s natural bias at work -people care more about thier own than about strangers. But it is a form of blindness that deprives us of useful infroration. It’s no help to Iraqis or Afghan either because even though they could really not care less about our estmation of them, and quite properly; still out perceptions guide our actions, and that is a problem for them.
“If people saw half of what I say about testosterone poisoning, and didn’t see the personal context, they might think I hate men and rant about men, instead of realizing I hate my medical issues and gripe about what I’ve been through.
I think it’s a good thing to have a place to gripe.”
This is the difference – when you gripe about testosterone, it is specifically about your own personal and individual experiences, and you are not claiming anything else or generalizing from them. That is valid, honest and as it happens, interesting, at least to me.
“I think it’s a good thing to have a place to gripe.”
Yes. it’s like setling inot a bar though. It takes time for people to get to know you, to get to know what you, Marja, are saying when you gripe about whatever. It takes time to learn all the necessary context. That is happening here, but I am not fully up to speed on that yet.
Jim, are you aware you’ve been branded as an anti-semite over in the feministe thread on circumcision?
I got called worse in one of the Guardian threads. And when I pointed out that I’ve been attacked, and bashed, by neo-Nazis, and despise everything they stand for, I got called a coward and a collaborator.
*sigh* alpha-dog posturing.
“Jim, are you aware you’ve been branded as an anti-semite over in the feministe
thread on circumcision?”
No, and they have no credibility on that point. They have had commenters who have posted articles there – Ma’ia comes to mind – that have called the existence of Israel imperialist and oppressive, and they were cool with that. Harry’s Place, who certainly do have credibility on the subject, are quite clear on what they see as the cheapening effects of over-use of the accusation.
Besides those peole are such toxic man-hating phobes – with some shining exceptions – that their opinion counts for nothing. at all.
“Besides those peole are such toxic man-hating phobes – with some shining exceptions – that their opinion counts for nothing. at all.”
Which raises a question I’ve been wondering about for some time. How come they’re on the blogroll?
“I started noticing something a while ago – many of the most misogynistic, even toxic MRAs were men raised by feminist mothers.”
I think this may be partly part of a broader phenomenon I’ve seen, which is that hard-core misogynistic men often seem to have started out with an, unreasonably POSITIVE view of women. This could be from feminism, or from traditional sentimentality about women being inherently purer, more loving creatures than men. In either case, the belief is cherished, something they strongly believe and really want to believe- but the proof that it isn’t really true keeps piling up, and since their attitude towards women won’t bend it eventually breaks instead.
I’ve been distrustful of women most my life-grew up with a sister and new the sugar and spice thing was complete BS….
Mommy was a second wave feminist, had her dog eared copy of the Female Eunuch and other tomes of misandry. Used to slap me around until I turned 12. I asked why she stopped hitting me, she replied cause I was now bigger than her.
Just recently, I got the courage to tell her-stop taking it out on me because you chose a shitty husband-I really don’t care to see you for the rest of my life and won’t be giving you any grandkids. Feminist mother’s create MGTOW sons-well the one’s who don’t sex selective abort or drive the sons to suicide that is….
As I have also mentioned before, I am also a son of feminists – but my mother was probably the sanest feminist around in my childhood (the only thing I can really fault her for is that she should probably have stored her old radfem literature in places where her hyperlexic son could not get to them). But I did grow up in an environment in which almost all authority figures were female feminists, and since I lived both my childhood and my young adulthood largely isolated from mainstream society (which was largely something I did myself; I was generally terrified of large gatherings of people and of very noisy places – as a child I found it extremely difficult to interact with my peers, and as an adult, I drifted into a small community of feminist and pro-feminist activists which quickly became my only social circle), basically the only view of men I had was what I was told by feminists. My father and mother divorced when I was very young (and for various personal reasons he and I lost contact a few years afterwards), my stepfather was an extremely cruel person, and the male teachers and mental care personnel I knew were distant and impersonal.
I did not grow to be a misogynist, but I do hate myself an awful lot.
As I have said before though, I do not really think it would be fair to blame feminism for the personal failings and misery of a man with multiple psychiatric diagnoses.
“Which raises a question I’ve been wondering about for some time. How come they’re on the blogroll?”
It makes surveiilance and monitoring easier if the link is handy. Don’t imagine that it implies any kind of approval.
Ahh, that makes sense. My first guess was sarcasm.
RocketFrog:
It seems to be at least some of those psychiatric diagnoses can be put down to a dysfunctional upbringing, for which I do think feminism deserves its share of the blame. You’ve been abused, and like many abused people you’re blaming yourself for your abuse. But please understand it was something that was done to you and was not in any sense your fault.
Patrick,
Asperger’s syndrome is, at the very least, not caused by dysfunctions in childhood upbringing. Major depressive disorder can be – but in my case I am almost certain that there is also a genetic component, since my father also had it, as did nearly every man in his close family (and he did not grow up in an environment similar to mine). My very poor self-image almost certainly at least has a component of misandry in it.
I do sometimes find myself wondering whether my life might have been very different if not for those things. I would almost certainly still have problems relating to other people (that is to be expected when you are unable to decode facial expressions and body language), but I think I would possibly have hated myself less. My youth would certainly have been different if I had not spent years vacillating between sitting around thinking about gendercidal fantasies, isolating myself for fear of my presence in public being oppressive to women, avoiding contact with women for fear that I inadvertently act oppressive or offensive. Perhaps I would have been able to form and maintain friendships with other men. Perhaps I would have done things in my life that I could be proud of – as opposed to now, where I regard my only real victory in life as the fact that I have managed to last to my mid-thirties without having killed myself.
And then a thought from the back of my head tells me that perhaps I might have become a rapist, so perhaps it was all for the best.
But no – I did not, in fact, become a misogynist. I just grew to hate myself. If anything I fear women, some part of my stupid child-brain thinks they have the right to punish me arbitrarily (sort of like how I am absolutely terrified of small boys of a certain age group, because another part of my stupid child-brain associates them with being brutally beaten up by boys that age when I was a boy that age).
I do not think there is necessarily a link between misogyny and having been raised by feminists. I think children raised by feminists can grow up to be just fine if their feminist parents provide them with a safe and caring environment while they are growing up and do not try to drill ideology into their heads before their brains can really process it right (but the same can be said of parents who follow any political or religious ideology).
I did involuntarily shudder when I read Hugo Schwyzer’s reflections on his having a son, though. It brought back painful memories.
“Asperger’s syndrome is, at the very least, not caused by dysfunctions in childhood upbringing. Major depressive disorder can be – but in my case I am almost certain that there is also a genetic component, since my father also had it, as did nearly every man in his close family (and he did not grow up in an environment similar to mine). My very poor self-image almost certainly at least has a component of misandry in it.”
I’m pretty sure he wasn’t talking about Asperger syndrome. But about feeling clinically depressed about being male, which has nothing to do with being aspie. But a lot to do about being told maleness is evil all your life by close relatives.
“I do not think there is necessarily a link between misogyny and having been raised by feminists. I think children raised by feminists can grow up to be just fine if their feminist parents provide them with a safe and caring environment while they are growing up and do not try to drill ideology into their heads before their brains can really process it right (but the same can be said of parents who follow any political or religious ideology).”
Excellent comment. I don’t think there’s any necessary link between being raised by a feminist and misogyny; I think the link has to do with being raised by a woman, and only certain, hopefully few?, women are going to have this effect. The feminism is either a non-issue or else in the case of these few misandrist women, an path for expressing their man-hatred and projecting it onto their sons.
I wonder RF, to what extent your mother’s feminism actually motivated yur mother to remove oyu from the obviously baleful influence of those other feminists, hwo much her feminism awakened her to the issue of gender injsutice so that she recognized it immedialety when she saw it directed at you.
In the examaple in the OP of the mother whose son was raped twice by women, you can see the influence of the mother’s feminism on her response.
Yes, being Aspie makes a lot of things harder. I know I got harassed for avoiding eye contact [or more descriptively, eye pressure] and for staring when I’m lost in thought. Many neurotypicals interpret the former as a sign of evasiveness or guilt, and the latter, if I’m not careful where I’m staring, as a sign of creepiness. I wish I could offer some useful advice but I haven’t figured things out for myself yet, and what might work for me might not work for you.
Standards for eye contact vary widely, widely across cultures, and it would be a huge help if people just were a little self-aware on that score. It’s really helpful when youa re trying to communcate across cultures. And it would broaden the standard of mormality and that would give Asperger people a litle grace and room for variation. This isn’t so hard.
Marja
For your own sake, get off this page to have a say about what is important to you. These guys are all misogynists and will only continue to discredit everything you have to say. Find a nice place to air your thoughts sweetie!