GuitarBizarre

I skipped the entire thread, so I'm probably repeating some things here.

But.



The main problem with MRAs is that the fact is, they don't seem to understand that fundamentally, a rights movement exists because society is in a place whereby a group can generally be considered to occupy a position of decreased influence and power, versus the majority or the status quo, and they wish to address that balance.

Worker's rights movements, Women's rights movements, Rights for immigrants, rights for former slaves, rights for people of minority faith, etc.

The largest and the smallest movements of rights advocates are founded on a fundamental dismissal or outright oppression of a group by a larger or more powerful group.

When you are yourself the majority, or you represent the status quo, or the more powerful interest, then the fact is, you don't need a rights movement for your group, in order to address whatever issues of discrimination, double standardising or simple poor lawmaking are presently affecting you. Quite the opposite. The chances are that one of two things is true in any given situation affecting your particular majority or high-agency group:

1 - You already have enough power, influence, wealth, money and social status to successfully campaign for a given genuine inequality to be dealt with, without having to resort to disruptive social movements, protest, etc. Your solution already lies within the status quo.

2 - The inequality you are perceiving is either not an inequality, or it is a temporary inequality whose purpose is to try and resolve a broader and more significant inequality facing a smaller and less powerful group.

The funny thing is, as far as I am aware it is a problem in most countries that in given court proceedings, decisions relating to parental autonomy will be decided majority in the favour of women. The funny thing is, that's a symptom of male oppression, not female, primarily because we've spent hundreds of years telling our children that men work and women stay at home and mind the kids. Funny that the courts, being as they are, agents of the status quo, seem to have adopted that view as well, right?

We should probably fix it. By making the system acknowledge that being a woman does not inherently change your personality, interests, or even circumstances, in some mysterious way that makes you a super awesome single parent.

Wait, that doesn't sound like men's rights at all. That sounds like making the courts respect that women are equally as diverse in character as men are, both for better and worse. Funny how that seems to be the argument all the feminists are making, right?

In the 21st Century, though things are much more equal than in the 20th or 19th, the fact is, men still occupy a position of significantly more power than women do. In exactly the same way that white people occupy a position of more power than black people, and so on. A huge amount of social impetus has come forwards from hundreds of years of unequal history, that shapes the way our world perceives men and women.

That's not a good thing, and equal treatment is needed. But men do not need a specifically male platform upon which they need to stand in order to have their concern heard - Society already treats the individual male as a person of sufficient authority to raise such an issue within the legal system without having to resort to extralegal measures such as protest groups or marches etc.

The opposite is not true when a woman tries to raise a similar issue. Her position is weakened by general, wide-ranging and extremely broad, but pervasive, social constructs regarding who and what she should be and what she should do with her life. Working within the system is not an easy or practical option for many womens issues, such as for example the UK branding Tampons and Sanitary pads as "luxury items" with the extra tax that implies, needlessly financially penalizing people for being born the wrong gender.

As a result, the only way for a woman to be heard equally loudly on the same issue, is for it to be raised in numbers and for the message to be undeniable, public, and publically well supported - Something like a women's rights movement.

This limits the potential scope for change - The women's rights movement has to argue single issues at a time and eventually chip away at the larger problem. The chance of obtaining sufficient political impetus with a majority white male legal system, to have a full-scale review of the system initiated, is infinitesimal.

Additionally, indoctrination by society since birth means many women fight against their own best interests. I know just as many women who are anti-feminist, as I do women who are pro-feminist. But on the other hand, I know hardly any men who are pro-feminist compared to the vast scores of men I know who are strongly masculine. Most of those women are fiercely independent and value that immensely, which is incredibly ironic that that right to independence, which women have fought for for decades, is something they will then use to spout bull**** like "I wouldn't be bothered about getting paid less than a man I'd just be thankful to have a job, people who whine about that are bitches". (Actual thing an actual friend of mine actually argued with me about).

And it doesn't even stop there - you only have to spend a couple hours in a cafe full of builders to hear how everyday behavior massively reinforces masculinity being a source of personal power.



To move from a world like that, to arguing that men are being oppressed is simply equating the absence of a specifically named movement, with the absence of that political message in broader society, despite the fact that political message *is* broader society and the status quo.

Both sexes deserve equality. The fact is though, there are far fewer issues for men to raise than women to raise, and they are generally not issues of equal importance to society. We should fix them, but there is no reason to conflate fixing them with "Being an advocate for men's rights" - We already have all the rights we need to fix those issues, it's called campaigning for your actual cause instead of complaining that someone else is campaigning for theirs. And if you're trying to use your position of existing power to restrict someone elses? Well that's just being an *******.

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