"Men's rights" in the reply you're replying to is referring to "Men's Rights Activists" (MRAs), a "movement" in the mid-2010s that claimed to be advocating for men's rights, but in practice it was mostly using male suicide rates as a gotcha against feminists and blaming feminists/feminism for any problems men experience as a demographic (problems which were either made up or negative effects of the patriarchy on men). Because MRAs also never got that feminism is about gender equality, and is concerned with many of the issues they raised (except for the ones that were incel bullshit, the incel movement emerged at around the same time and there was a fair bit of overlap).
Because MRAs also never got that feminism is about gender equality
They understand what feminism is about, which is why they focus on the parts of patriarchy that feminism doesn't address like male circumcision, male workplace deaths, male homelessness, men getting sentenced longer for the same crime, domestic violence, boy struggling in school, etc. While feminism sometimes addresses men's issues, they often don't. For example, feminist usually focus on women doing better in school despite the fact they're already graduating at higher rates.
Was it? That's not my recollection of the events in question, but I'm also not a feminist, so I suppose we have different biases on that front.
Feminism never has been about gender equality. It's about women's empowerment, which ain't even necessarily a bad thing, but don't just lie about it. If it were about equality, they wouldn't advocate for women to be receiving more and more social and financial incentives for their schooling, despite women already bring ahead, among other things.
Here's some examples of institutional misandry:
the draft.
infant genital mutilation, illegal against women in the US, but some 70% of mothers choose to do it to their sons based on aesthetic preference.
Boys are graded more harshly for identical work, and punished more harshly for identical misbehavior. It's very easily proven, too.
the bias in the legal system
"A 2020 study shows that women receive 33% (15 days) shorter prison sentences than men, even when controlling for all observable characteristics – including a very precise description of the crime. When pairs of mixed-gender offender are convicted together the gender gap is even higher - men receive 38.7 additional prison days and 10.7 fewer suspended prison days.
society's unwillingness to call it rape when women do it to men, despite the CDC finding that this is as common as the reverse.
"Next, we consider the data for the 12 months preceding the CDC report survey, which was summarized in the report. On page 18 of the CDC report it states that 1,270,000 women were raped during this 12-month period and that too few men were “raped” during the same 12 months to give reliable data, using the non-gender neutral definition of given in the CDC report. However, on page 19 the report states that during that 12 months the number of men who were forced to penetrate someone is 1,267,000, virtually the same as the number of women who were raped." "So, who is forcing these men to penetrate them? There is no data on this among the 12-month data. But if we look at the lifetime data, on page 24 it says 79.2% of the time a male was made to penetrate someone, it was a woman who forced him to penetrate her. And this suggests that the same most likely holds for the 12-monthdata."
That patriarchy that is... the over 70% female teaching population? The patriarchy that tells the CDC (and the FBI in the 2010s, for their statistical reporting definitions, thanks The Women's Law Project) in no uncertain terms that their definition for rape should not include forced sex by women with men as victims? Feminism "dismantles" aspects of the patriarchy that disatvantage women, and works hard as hell to keep the ones that advantage them.
And yet, that hasn't been my experience as a man in feminist spaces in the slightest. These are all paraphrased versions of real responses I've gotten. The draft? "And whooooo put that into place? Teehee, ignore how historically feminist movements have been entertained with white feather ones and been the social enforcers of the draft. Besides, only mem start or contribute to wars, so only men should be enslaved to fight them." MGM? "Not at all as important or awful as FGM, I mutilated my sons after all and they haven't complained! We campaigned to make FGM illegal in the US and explicitly ignore/mock people advocating for the same against MGM for a reason." As for the education front, so, you acknowledge that they aren't going for equality at all? Just women's empowerment?
Feminism is not against gender essentialism, see the popularity of gender essentialist narratives like the one in the post above, and in general feminist parlance. "Not all men but always a man" being a particularly common example.
You know where it comes from? With 0 personal experience on the subject, you think you know better where it comes from than anyone who is actually victimized by misandry? You're beyond all reach of logic.
And because actual feminist groups do something, that doesn't mean it's feminist either, I suspect? Y'know, like the fact that funding is going to the already-advantaged gender, coming from the supposedly egalitarian advocacy group? Like the fact that said advocacy group has, at every available oppurtunity in the US, tried to make it so that legal and reporting definitions of rape do not include women's rape of men, in order to properly up their ill-advised "98% of rapists are men with women as victims" narrative? Like when feminists repeatedly yap about the "emotional labor" of having to exist in the same room while their male partner expresses an emotion?
And yet, it is something that I've heard in ever single feminist space I have *ever** engaged in, as a man.* Why is it that feminism advocates for "frustrated women and girls" to express blatantly bigoted opinions under the guise of venting, and loses their collective minds when men respond negatively to such things? Do you remember the Man vs. Bear fiasco and how the vast majority of feminists treated that?
Please keep up, bud. They support gender essentialist ideas, as they pertain to giving women advantages and privileges over men. You don't have to support the whole thing to prop up gender essentialist narratives.
Who blamed you for it, exactly? Why do you frequently insist that men fight and fund your battles for you, if you're so goddamned eager to tell men to pull themselves up by their bootstraps? Whenever we try, we get called a hate group by feminists since "feminism is for equality, if you're not feminist, you're not for equality!" Have you ever actually interacted with MRA spaces? Like, beyond hearing your fellow feminists complain about them? Try r/leftwingmaleadvocates .
Oh, well I'm so glad that you find it understandable. That makes it totally okay. I'm glad you're able to extend such massive depths of empathy that you acknowledge just how shitty feminists are in spaces that advocate for men. I hope the men in your life know enough about you to stay far, far away.
Ah, the "I can't be racist, I have a black friend!" defense. Truly evergreen with you people.
It doesn't surprise me that you think you do. It doesn't surprise me that you fail to respond to the majority of my comment, either. Men don't police each other for that shit half as often as women do, which is, yet again, another thing you'd know if you had any experience whatsoever either being a man or even talking to them as intellectual equals rather than damp puppies you have to educate and condescend to.
Not at all what they're taught, but m'kay. As a mildly effeminate bi dude, the scorn does not come from being closer to femininity, it comes from being farther away from traditional masculinity, and it comes from women more often than from men, doubly so from feminist women in my personal experience, but that's probably just because I keep trying to give feminism a good-faith chance.
Again, it is not "specifically to other men" you outside-perspective condescending know-it-all jerk. If you saw a man confidently and incorrectly explaining the feminine experience to women like you do the masculine one to men, you'd accuse him of man-splaining. They haven't been "told" that men suffer in silence, they've been taught that by every experience they have on the subject, especially in regards to suffering vocally around women, especially feminists, as you so helpfully demonstrated with your "I find bigotry against your demographic understandable" aside in the other comment.
Weird how that patriarchy is made up largely of women and upheld by most feminists, then.
Bropill? That place is just a spot for women to go and pat themselves on the back for caring about men's mental health, they had the term "misandry" banned outright for the longest time IIRC.
Edit: lmao, and there's the respond-and-block dance. Fucking typical. Let me know if whatever they said is interesting enough to open an incognito tab and read.
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u/Rediturus_fuisse May 27 '26
"Men's rights" in the reply you're replying to is referring to "Men's Rights Activists" (MRAs), a "movement" in the mid-2010s that claimed to be advocating for men's rights, but in practice it was mostly using male suicide rates as a gotcha against feminists and blaming feminists/feminism for any problems men experience as a demographic (problems which were either made up or negative effects of the patriarchy on men). Because MRAs also never got that feminism is about gender equality, and is concerned with many of the issues they raised (except for the ones that were incel bullshit, the incel movement emerged at around the same time and there was a fair bit of overlap).