1621

Ah yes, students, the plague of European governments and civic authorities. It must have been student panic that shifted Europe to the right overnight on NYE, not identity politics.

1622

Both are advocated by SIFF.

The only reason it’s even coming up at the moment is because it might possibly become a women’s issue.

I think the draft is stupid, period. Then again, it isn’t used in the United States, and I think it won’t be used here in the future. If I’m wrong and our government is ever foolish enough to reinstate conscription, I’ll be protesting right alongside the MRA folks.

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.

Suicide is an important issue that deserves a lot of attention. No question about that. But it already does get a lot of attention. For as long as I can remember, a standard medical interview has included questions about depression and suicide. For as long as I can remember, 24 hour suicide prevention hotlines have been available. When I was a child, I laughed when Rodney Dangerfield complained “I called suicide prevention and they put me on hold!” So unlikely!

The same is not true of some issues that affect women, like domestic abuse. Those preventive efforts are relatively more recent on the scene, in part due to advocacy by feminists. When I was a child, I laughed when Ricky looked like he was about to hit a cowering Lucy. But not because I thought it was unlikely.

If it were the other way round, if it were largely women who committed suicide,

Women are more likely to attempt suicide. No, I don’t think we need a special campaign addressing this fact.

Roosh is not a MRA

No true Scotsman? Ok, how about Return of Kings? If those jerks are out too, then it sounds like you have a PR problem, both are routinely described as MRA. Never heard of Paul Elam.

male circumcision,
female rape,
laws stacked against men in marriage,
men not being able to see their children, etc.

The reason why few people pay attention to male circumcision and female rape is that few men have come forth to explain how either has ruined their lives. I’m NOT saying no lives were ruined, or that nobody has EVER spoken out. But you need a critical mass for any movement to gain traction. See Ferguson, Tamir Rice, et al.

If the men’s rights movement can produce the sheer volume of horror stories that feminists have produced, then people will start paying attention.

I am slightly more sympathetic towards “father’s rights” than the rest of the men’s rights agenda. Still, my understanding is that the main reason why fathers are not awarded custody is that they do not seek custody.

You’ve just fallen for the core of the Third Wave Feminist threat narrative: “woman weak/man strong”. … Any problem men have is laughable, and they should “man up” and GTFO,

I think you have me confused for someone else.

1623

Many have equivalents- one con in North Carolina is run by a Yachting Club in the middle of the state.

1624

Goddamit, I had a full post in response to all the points on yours but I forgot to do what I usually do with posts on QT3, select all and copy for safety! It got swallowed up by the stupid captcha thing.

Anyway, in lieu of re-writing the whole thing, I’ll just note here that if you don’t know who Paul Elam is then you’re way off in your understanding of what MRM/MRA is. He’s one of the “old guard” who’s been continuously active since the 80s (along with other names like Warren Farrell and Dean Esmay) and the founder of the main MRA “hub”, A Voice For Men. Some younger Youtuber MRAs are Victor Zen and DoctorRandomerCam (my particular favourite).

There are also the “Honey Badgers” (a bunch of ex-feminist MRAs, most notably Karen Straughan, Alison Tieman and Hannah Wallen). Many of the female anti-feminists you’ll find on Youtube are also MRM-aligned (if not positively active in the way the Honey Badgers are). Some of the prominent anti-SJW/feminist Atheists and Sceptics on Youtube, like Sargon of Akkad, are also MRA-aligned, as are a few of the “Slymepit” folks (post “Elevatorgate” Atheists).

These are people who are self-described as MRM/MRA.

The Roosh/Kings type of thing is only tangentially related to MRM, it’s a thing called MGTOW (“men going their own way”) which is an outgrowth of the PUA (“pickup artists”) movement. Both MRM and MGTOW could be considered as part of the “Manosphere”, and may occasionally unite in anti-feminism, and some MGTOW also identify as MRA; but they’re quite different things, MGTOW being a loose movement of men who have decided they are no longer willing to participate in the social institution of marriage (or even engage in sexual relations with women at all any more). Some MGTOW guys are indeed misogynistic. (In a way comparable to the minority strain of genuinely man-hating feminism.)

MRM/MRA is specifically an egalitarian human rights movement, with a focus on men’s rights and men’s issues like the ones I mentioned in my last post. MRM/MRA is not misogynistic in the least, and is supportive of women’s rights, and all the gains to parity made by women in the area of women’s rights in the past century; IOW, they don’t want to “turn the clock back” in any sense (e.g. as you allude to with your Ricky/Lucy reference), EXCEPT insofar as they believe that there has been some degree of legal and political overshoot and imbalance in special favour of women in some areas in the last 30 years or so.

MRM/MRA is anti-feminist in the sense of being anti-Third Wave feminism, because modern feminism has become in large part a female supremacist, quasi-religious ideology, and is no longer an egalitarian movement focussing on women’s rights.

1625

God that sounds so desperately sad.

What little exposure I’ve had to the MRA youtubers like Sargon of Akkad leaves me with a very poor impression indeed. Quasi-intellectuals trolls.

1626

I must admit that I don’t really keep up with this thread, and don’t know much about the whole issue in terms of what kind of crap is actually going down, but from the outside it seems like the most invested people on both sides seen like absolute assholes. They just don’t seem like normal people.

Like the guy who was saying rape is OK, on private property? Wtf? That’s not even covered under the moniker of absolute asshole. That’s like, criminal i guess. The idea that such a thing could be even tangentially related to any movement is absurd.

For the less extreme things on the men’s rights thing, complaints about injustice, even for normally empowered groups is fine. Injustice is injustice. But kind of like the black lives matter thing, you can’t just use a non sequitur of something like “all people should be protected” to shut down discussions about oppression against women.

Some of this stuff is, like most bias, generational I think. If you go back to the baby boomers, I think a lot of folks believed things like women were bad at math or couldn’t control their emotions or things like that.

But I don’t think people of my generation really believe that. Perhaps some do, but it’s certainly less prevalent. Some of my best engineers are women, and at no point does their sex come into play. I pay then the exact same as the men holding their positions.

1627

MRA/MGTOWs are just another special snowflake identity group playing the same set of victim cards as the rest of them. Them and SJWs are just different sides of the same ass-penny.

1628

Yeah, but that’s not actually happened.

Re. differences between men and women, they are obviously to some extent innate, and to some extent culturally downplayed or reinforced. The point would be that they shouldn’t make a difference to the principle of equal treatment (by any treating agent), any more than differences between males or differences between females should.

The liberal principle of rights understands that people are in fact, in concrete terms, vastly unequal in their capabilities and potential, but it abstracts away from concrete differences.

Why? Because liberalism is based on the seed idea that’s encapsulated best in the legal principle of, “innocent until proven guilty”. The idea is that human being should be presumed to be free to go about its business until it can be demonstrated to have done, or be likely to do, harm of some kind or another. In this context, inequalities of capabilities are irrelevant - you are granted the presumption of liberty whatever you are or aren’t concretely capable of.

This principle gives a fair amount of free play for Left wing and Right wing forms of liberalism, because the concept of “harm” is open to debate (e.g. subtler senses of “harm”) and changes as technology changes (opening up new ways in which people can be harmed).

However, both Left and Right liberalism are an ocean away from any sort of ideology that prescribes for human beings particular duties or roles based on some theoretical confection that’s barely tied to reality and falsifiability.

As soon as Progressivism becomes ideological and quasi-religious, and loses sight of demonstrable, falsifiable harm as its guide, relying instead on terms that are defined solely from within the theory itself (like contemporary feminism and the contemporary social justice movement) it ceases to be liberal and becomes regressive.

Again, beware of any theoretical construct that goes like this: there is a “source of power”, which defines “oppressor/oppressed” groups according to their closeness to or distance from that “source of power”, and human beings’ behaviour is wholly determined by their membership of the oppressor/oppressed group. That’s all quasi-religious mind-virus crap. There may be a “grain of truth” to it somewhere,and most adherents may not pursue it to its logical conclusions, but it’s when people do pursue it to its logical conclusions that you get purges and eventually megadeaths. IOW, this kind of theory leaves hostages to fortune in the same sense that the “convert or kill” tone of the Koran gives hostages to fortune.

1629

Yes, it is rather sad that feminism has become a quasi-religious totalitarian movement ;)

1630

A science denying movement too. Great documentary I came across on the subject: Hjernevask.

1631

There might be some meta-meta-joke I’m missing here, but did you just post some creepy drunk in a ratty hat ranting in what looks like a squat somewhere in England as, I’m not sure…evidence of something?

This does explain a lot.

1632

Talking of crazies in England, Peter Tatchell has now been no-platformed.

It’s not just that single NUS officer, she certainly isn’t alone.

Although used to being assailed and vilified, I was stunned by the vicious and often untrue nature of the Twitter attacks - and by the sheer volume. A colleague estimates that I received 4,000 to 5,000 mostly hostile comments from Saturday to Monday. They ran from 8am to midnight, continuous and relentless. At peak times, there were 30-40 comments a minute.

Some were fine: critical but polite and fair. Many were hateful and abusive: homo, foreigner, misogynist, paedophile, nutter and so on. Others were threatening: “I would like to tweet about your murder you f*cking parasite.”

The attacks on Tatchell even continue below the line on the Guardian article, but are in a minority. The majority reject this totally.

Does anyone want to step forward and explain how Tatchell is a dangerous bigot whose views cause violence to people?.

1633

He’s a fool, deconstructing a video; his ironic deconstruction is his argument. The video he’s ranting about is the evidence, but it will only make sense as evidence if you agree with his argument. But you won’t hear the argument if you’re clutching your pearls at the sight of his ratty hat ;)

1634

It’s the inevitable result of quasi-religious ideology. It’s just like “purges” in any totalitarian system, or schisms in religions - the initial, well-meaning, moderate, liberal-minded light-bearers become passe, have to be ousted, and the movement becomes more and more extreme, as more and more moderates and well-meaning people get ousted.

What you’re left with is the scum.

1635

Interesting vid. The doublethink and projection on display is truly stunning: at 33:20 where Egeland says the guy is “seeing what he’s looking for”, that’s exactly what she’s doing when at 34:26 she says that her theory (which she believes is “scientific” lol) trumps biology.

1636

@gurugeorge re: “source of power”

It is actually a “culture of power” and I find it hard to believe that it doesn’t exist. The entire planet’s culture is based on male dominance by the majority race in a given geographical space. That gives people who are part of that group an advantage over all other people outside of the culture of power.

In addition, people within the culture of power have difficulty recognizing that structure because they are not negatively affected and it. It’s just the way things are and anybody who suggests its existence is reactionary or “too sensitive”.

1637

This clown’s knowledge of childhood development is just flat out wrong. The fact that this guy is one of your favourite online MRA personalities is illuminating.

1638

I watched the first two minutes, realized that it was 23 minutes of a crank in a bad hat, and that it did not appear to support your contention in any way whatsoever. The first two minutes anyway. I’m sure there was some great stuff in there though.

1639

Equality is simply about equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome. This is well understood by everyone but conservatives apparently.

1640

Does anyone want to step forward and explain why an isolated incident of one student with fringe views is a concern? You’ve cherry picked one ridiculuous extreme single example to point to. All that proves is that one person is (potentially) an idiot. That seems to be the theme of your posts in this thread.

I’m not at familiar with Tatchell so can’t comment on the allegations, but just reading the story you linked made it clear that it was the one single individual taking this stance and even the organization to which the individual belonged was distancing themselves from that stance. Even with no knowledge of the background of that individual, Peter Tatchell, or that organization it’s extremely clear that the article is trying to frame the issue to incite outrage over a single incident that totally doesn’t merit it.