What MRA has advocated this?
and reinstatement of dowries.
Never seen this advocated for by MRAs.
Some of it is embarrassing garbage, like an obsession with a draft system that has not been used in 40 years,
What do you mean, “obsesssion”? The only reason it’s even coming up at the moment is because it might possibly become a women’s issue.
insistence that men’s suicide deserves more attention than suicide in general,
Suicide “in general” is largely male suicide. Most suicide is male, some female; “in general” suicide is a problem that disproportionately affects males. IOW the imbalance is itself a puzzling feature of suicide that’s worthy of attention. If it were the other way round, if it were largely women who committed suicide, then if someone came along and said “you’re dickish for insisting that women’s suicide deserves more attention than suicide in general”, you’d probably notice the doublethink quite easily. It’s not a question of “more attention”, it’s a question of “attention proportionate to the problem” vs. “lack of attention because it’s NOT ABOUT WYMMYNZ”
and insistence that perjury in rape cases deserves more attention than perjury in general.
That’s not an MRA talking point either, except insofar as there’s little to no blowback for false rape accusation in some countries/states under some circumstances. Obviously, a false allegation of rape is a serious crime because if it goes undetected it can unjustly fuck up a man’s entire life; just as, if a rape goes unprosecuted it can fuck up a woman’s life. Both are very serious matters, just in different ways, with different consequences.
Not only that, but some of the best known voices in the men’s rights movement, like Valizadeh, are likewise vile and embarrassing.
Roosh is not a MRA and he’s often been called out by MRM people (e.g Paul Elam, who is the most well-known voice in the MRM for MRM-ers.).
Now it’s true that there are examples of garbage in pretty much every social cause. But with men’s rights, there’s very little left after all the garbage is cleared away.
Except:-
male circumcision,
female rape,
laws stacked against men in marriage,
men not being able to see their children, etc.
You’ve just fallen for the core of the Third Wave Feminist threat narrative: “woman weak/man strong”. Or more precisely: woman lacking agency, lacking nasty intent, highly vulnerable; man with high agency, high nasty intent, invulnerable.
Any problem men have is laughable, and they should “man up” and GTFO, because they’re emotionally invulnerable brutes (although, of course, if they accept feminism into their hearts, they can “learn to feel more deeply”, because of course empathy and such are essentially female traits :) ).
Meanwhile, simultaneously, female agency and intent are minimized - women are all necessarily and intrinsically sweet angels who would never do anyone harm (like, for instance, falsely accusing a man of rape for their own revenge or advantage, or taking advantage of unjust laws to wring men dry of their money) they are always necessarily only the poor wee victims of the brutish agency of emotionally invulnerable males.
This is “barefoot” feminism, for the plebs. With more sophisticated versions of the mind-virus, both female vulnerability, lack of agency/intent, on the one hand, and male hyper-agency, mean intent and emotional invulnerability, on the other, are traced back to a common cause of “the patriarchy”. But effectively that’s just replacing the final output “… because men” of primitive, “barefoot” feminism, with the only slightly more sophisticated and etherial “… because patriarchy”. In both cases, you are dealing with a quasi-religious ideology, a rationalization engine that takes any input and transforms it into the monotonic “… because X”, brooks no argument, and retreats to its safe space.
Because God, no argument.
Because The Devil, no argument.
Because Capitalism, no argument.
Because Black Men, no argument.
Because Jews, no argument.
Because (White) Men, no argument.
Because The Patriarchy, no argument.
It’s all the same mind-virus in different bottles.
The truth is usually “because many factors”, many specific falsifiable factors that can be argued, because they can at least in principle also be demonstrated not to have been causal factors.
Because Capitalism (specifically crony capitalism), but that’s arguable.
Because patriarchy (in e.g. the Middle East), but that’s arguable.
Because Communism (in all the actually existing forms it’s taken), but that’s arguable.
Because feminism (in the West today as espoused by Third Wave feminists), but that’s arguable.
Because all sorts of things, always fairly specific and falsifiable, alwayss potentially open to criticism.
You can sort of trace the change in feminism to around the mid-80s, when you’d see less and less of feminists arguing their case against vigorous opposition on television. Feminism became more and more of a, “why this is obvious, any idiot can see it, if you don’t agree you’re a misogynist and you’re harassing me” type of deal.
