If you want to engage with the Men’s Rights Movement: First acknowledge feminists’ enmity to equal rights for men

The MRM has developed through several stages and at the moment anti-MRAs, feminists in particular, are asking why MRAs are so obsessively anti-feminist. Now if they were a little more familiar with feminism’s stated principles – gender equality and a commitment to dismantling traditional gender roles – and then to to draw the obvious conclusions from these principles, they wouldn’t be asking this question because they would have arrived independently at the same answer as MRAs have.

Perhaps if feminists were a little more committed to feminism, they would agree with MRAs more – unless “that’s not their feminism.” Perhaps if feminists applied feminist principles to their analysis, they would recognize and then condemn feminist advocacy that actively attacks the civil rights of men in their quest to favor women. They would recognize appeals to chivalry in their rape and IPV advocacy. They would recognize advocacy founded on the male hyperagency/female hypoagency at the root of the patriarchal social order when female rapists are excused out of hand or try to accuse their male victims of rape, or denying that women abuse men in relationships as often as men abuse women, and to the same extent. They might even stop making IPV about female victims and distracting attention from the majority of DV victims – children, especially male children – and denying that mothers acting alone are the majority of abusers.

Perhaps if feminists were a little more committed to feminism, they would attack misandry in all its forms and sexism in all its forms, recognize their own anti-male advocacy and stop it.

This thread on r/changemyview caught my eye. The post laid out some reasons that feminism was not the answer to men’s issues. One comment in particular was so good that I thought it deserved wider dissemination.

wrt89 11 points 1 day ago*

Feminists fight AGAINST men’s rights.

Here are some examples to prove my point.

Father’s rights group want shared parenting (equal custody) to be the default if both parents want custody and neither parent is unfit. They feel that men should not be punished for being men, and that women should not be awarded custody to their kids simply for being women. Currently women are awarded primary custody almost all the time, even if the husband was the stay-at-home Dad and the woman was the breadwinner.

Feminists fought against this. You can read NOW’s own statement here. Also note their usage of anti-male lies, i.e. “fathers are abusive, don’t give them custody.” That is from 1997, but still remains valid today.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070708213232/http://michnow.org/jointcustody507.htm
Men want protection against false rape allegations. They feel that a man’s life should not be ruined simply on the allegation of a woman who may be a vindictive liar. Currently, a woman can accuse a man of rape for no reason, and the man’s name is splashed in the paper and his life is ruined. So, they fought for laws granting men anonymity until charged with the crime of rape—not convicted, just charged.

Feminists fought against this, causing it to fail. Also see here, the London Feminist Network campaigning to defeat the proposal.

“The London Feminist Network is a campaigning organisation uniting London based feminist groups and individuals in activism.”

Men want an end to the justice system favouring women simply because they are women, and giving men harsher sentences simply because they are men.

Feminists fought against this, arguing that no woman should be sent to jail, even women who had murdered multiple people.

Men want equal treatment when victims of domestic violence, and to not be arrested for the crime of “being male” under primary aggressor policies.

Feminists fought against this by trying to suppress evidence showing that half of domestic violence is done by women, by threatening the researchers with bomb threats, death threats, etc. Modern, younger feminists are doing it as well.

And sadly, they were successful in this effort of propaganda. For decades, and continuing today, violent men are (rightfully) convicted and punished by the state, while violent women are left to freely terrorize and harm their partners.

The feminist definition of domestic violence has skewed arrest and prosecution philosophies, resulting primarily in having only male batterers criminally pursued.

Men want female rapists to be arrested, charged, and convicted with rape. In Western countries, women are rarely punished when raping men, due to the biased legal system. In some countries, women cannot be punished when raping men, since rape is defined as a male-perpetrated crime.

Feminists fought against this in India, arguing that “there is a physicality [in] rape” and that it would make things “more complicated for judges.”
http://www.firstpost.com/india/rape-law-amendment-where-are-the-cases-of-sexual-violence-against-men-384227.html

Feminists fought against this in Israel, claiming that changing the law would result in men filing false rape claims.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Womens-groups-Cancel-law-charging-women-with-rape

Men want society to stop thinking only men commit rape or only women can be raped.

Feminists rolled out the Don’t Be That Guy posters, which portray all rapists as men.

Or here is noted feminist Mary Koss (author of the famous 1 in 4 study):

“Clinical psychologist Mary P. Koss of the University of Arizona in Tucson, who is a leading scholar on the issue, puts it rather bluntly: “It’s the man’s penis that is doing the raping, and ultimately he’s responsible for where he puts it.”

Men don’t want to be thrown in jail because they lost their jobs and temporarily cannot pay child support.

Men want equal economic support and help from the government. When the recession hit, male-dominated fields like construction lost millions of jobs, while female-fields like education and healthcare gained jobs. So the government proposed an economic stimulus for those fields.

Feminists successfully fought against this, arguing that it was discrimination to support men, and caused the government to give money to women who didn’t deserve it. Hundreds of professional feminists complained against the “sexism” of helping men (who had lost jobs) and not women (who had gained jobs).

Men want the issue of suicide (predominantly male) and educational failure (predominantly male) addressed. Feminists protested several recent events at Canadian universities using such methods as physically blocking entrances and pulling fire alarms. The justification was that the organizing group was a hate group, and the speaker (Warren Farrell) was a rape apologist. The full 2+hour talk was posted online – there was nothing like that discussed. Subsequent events did not even feature Warren Farrell in any way, yet were still met with protests, illegally pulling fire alarms, etc.

Men want society to stop stereotyping men as pedophiles.

As you can see, the claim that feminism fight for men’s rights is a blatant lie. Don’t believe any feminists that say that. Feminists fight for women’s rights. That is a good thing. Feminists also are happy to harm men’s rights, as shown above. That is a bad thing. Feminism is about female privilege, not equality.

Some may argue that these cases of feminists harming men is not “representative” of feminism. I ask you: Are there any cases of feminists helping men? No. Yet, there are many cases of feminists harming men.

It is reasonable to conclude from these two facts that feminism fights to harm men.