What I Learned as a Woman at a Men's Rights Conference

http://time.com/2949435/what-i-learned-as-a-woman-at-a-mens-rights-conference/

by stevesalevan • 12 years ago

15 22 12 years ago

pdabbadabba9• 12 years ago

I wish that men's rights advocates could see the obvious when it comes to parental rights: this is just another result of the traditional gender roles that feminists have been fighting since the beginning. This just happens to be a case where it disadvantages men instead of women (or, maybe, men as well as women).

The irony is, though, that instead of fighting these traditional gender roles, some men's rights activists seem to embrace the roles and then confuse diminution of those gender roles with the diminution of men. If more of them could embrace the goal of the abolition of traditional gender roles, and stop speaking in stereotyped terms about the need to promote and respect "masculinity" as though it were synonymous with male-ness, I think they would find that feminists (good ones, at least) are their greatest allies.

(This applies only to the "men's-rights" activists who don't say things like "All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married a–holes" and "Doesn’t no mean yes?" Clearly some men characterize themselves as "man's-rights activists" because it provides, in their view, a framework for legitimizing their antecedent misogyny.)

wiejfjiwioef5• 12 years ago

Family courts "do not just happens" to disadvantage men. There is duluth model and other literature produced mainly by feminists largely responsible for that. On any proposal such as child payments to be accountable or visitation rights enforceability, feminists screams rape.

MRA are making many efforts to cooperate with feminism. Many MRAs are feminists shamed and kicked out for not being radical enough. So far we got only acknowledgement that "men has issues too", that is kind of success.

I will not comment on article itself. I could go on any feminist conference and cherry-pick many statements.

pdabbadabba9• 12 years ago

On any proposal such as child payments to be accountable or visitation rights enforceability, feminists screams rape.

It is hard to take MRAs seriously because they include people who say things like this.

This sort of language discredits any actual argument that feminists might actually have by reducing them to contentless, stereotyped feminine shreiks. That's seriously sexist. And at the same time, it mocks women's legitimate fears of being, you know, actually raped.

pdabbadabba9• 12 years ago

Also, what does this mean?

Many MRAs are feminists shamed and kicked out for not being radical enough.

Is feminism an institution? I was not aware anyone could be "kicked out" of feminism for not being sufficiently radical. I would know, being a not-particularly-radical feminist myself.

At any rate, this is quite dubious. The only MRAs I know of are not even close to being merely "insufficiently radical feminists," except perhaps in the same sense in which Catholics are insufficiently radical atheists.

Note that by "MRAs" I mean people who self-identify as part of the MRA movement. There are, I'm sure, many people out there who are aware of and interested in men's issues who could also qualify as feminists. Such people, such as myself, choose not to be identified with the MRA movement because of all the misogyny that travels with it.

I suppose you might make the argument: "why not refuse to be identified with the feminist movement for the same reason"? There are (at least) two reasons. First, feminism is less associated with a small particular people and institutions than MRA. This may just be because feminism is bigger. But, whatever the cause, I don't feel that identifying myself as a feminists as closely associates me with objectionable activities at the fringes. More to the point, I simply don't think most feminists generally are as virulently anti-man as MRAs are anti-woman. Again, maybe this is attributable to the size of the movement. I know that there are feminists who are virulently anti-man, but I think they make up a small fringe of the overall feminist movement. Ultimately, though, this is just a question of what labels one is or is not comfortable taking on.

philwelch3• 12 years ago

There is a widespread illusion that feminism is some ideology that favors justice and equality. In reality, it is a political movement that favors the interests of women.

pdabbadabba9• 12 years ago

As a feminist, I find this surprising. (Though it is true in this uninteresting sense: feminists think that women are systematically discriminated against so, of course, advancing justice and equality will advance the interests of women.) I suspect the issue is that we have different perceptions of what "justice and equality" requires.

It would be nice, though, to hear some specifics about what mainstream feminists you find objectionable so we can have a discussion based on something other than generalizations.

nobodysfool2• 12 years ago

It seems to me the men were laughing because the woman was objectifying herself in her selfie...

In any case, the woman in this article had her own experience, yet it is only a single person's experience, and as I can see, it is colored by her own pre-conceived notions and judgements. I appreciate that women are willing to listen to the message, but disappointed that she chose to focus on one thing she considered negative to ridicule their points of view and make ad hominem attacks on the speakers.

CocaKoala3• 12 years ago

What do you feel is the one thing that the author "considered negative" which was used to ridicule the points of view of the presenters, and what do you feel are ad hominem attacks made by the reporter?

pdabbadabba9• 12 years ago

I think you're being awfully generous to the conference-goers, and a little unfair to the author of the article. That article highlights far more than "one thing she considered negative."

How about, in addition:

When the conference’s MC, Robert O’Hara, asked a woman in the audience a question and she responded with a no, he quickly shot back “Doesn’t no mean yes?” The audience burst into laughter.
Molyneux said that because 90% of a child’s brain is formed by the experiences it has before the age of 5, and women have “an almost universal control over childhood,” violence exists in the world because of the way women treat children.
Women who choose a–holes guarantee child abuse . . . All the cold-hearted jerks who run the world came out of the vaginas of women who married a–holes. . . . Women worship at the feet of the devil and wonder why the world is evil. . . . And then know what they say? ‘We’re victims!’

I have no doubt, having taken a look at avoiceformen.com and related websites, that these were only the highlights.

Maybe it's debateable whether these statements are offensive, unreasonable, inappropriate, or incorrect. (Though I would contend emphatically that they are all four.) But I think it's fair to say that these statements reasonably contributed to Roy's negative experience.

And, on the other hand, I think there is little in her article that is fairly described as "ridicule." In fact, I was pretty surprised by how restrained and, on some points, openminded Roy was in her article. Her closing is representative:

When you talk to someone like 68-year-old Steve DeLuca, the legitimate need to remedy some of the issues raised by men’s rights activists becomes more evident. A Vietnam veteran who was injured in combat, DeLuca spoke movingly to me about the two brothers he lost to suicide, and the unfathomable toll the high suicide rate among men can take. There are men out there, like DeLuca and Brendan Rex, who have a real stake in the movement’s success. The paranoia and vitriol of its leaders can’t possibly do anything for them.

So, yeah, as Roy points out, there are a lot of serious issues affecting men that could really be helped by the movement's success. But there comes a point when it comes with so much objectionable baggage that a person can't simply be expected to ignore, e.g., the rape jokes, for the sake of getting at the "real" issue.

I would think that the burden should be on the presenters at the conference to refrain from that sort of nonsense, and not on Roy to ignore it all.

filoeleven• 12 years ago

If anyone is interested in a place where issues of particular importance to men are being discussed by a variety of writers (and not just men), I recommend checking out The Good Men Project.[1] I've found a good number of the articles there to be timely and thought-provoking, and the general spirit is one of cooperation rather than the antagonism that seemed to be underlying the conference detailed in the article.

Some of the topics frequently written about include the changing perceptions of masculinity, child rearing, friendships, dating, sex, work, community, race, self-worth and fulfillment. That's painting in very broad strokes, but with such a diverse collection of articles (and a narrower yet similar variance in quality) it's hard to give a more specific description without linking to individual articles, which I will not do since I am at work.

[1]http://goodmenproject.com

What I Learned as a Woman at a Men's Rights Conference

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