Men's rights movement

The list of grievances for MRAs is long. It includes the elevated rate of suicide for men, educational discrimination against boys, economic and workplace conditions for men, violence against men, false rape reporting, fathers' rights in custody battles, rates of male imprisonment and prison conditions, and the horrors of war. Many of these issues deserve a thoughtful response and the force of an organized movement to address them. It's too bad that's not what men's rights activists are offering. The men's rights movement (MRM), also known as men's rights activism (MRA), masculism, or "The Men's Human Rights Movement", is a fringe movement which espouses the view that social, legal, and economic discrimination against men is present in society to the extent that fighting it deserves an organized effort mirroring that of feminism, and crucially, that any and all variants of feminism do society and the individual far more harm than good.

Some may present men's rights as a loose organization of concern groups dealing with problems such as low funding for testicular cancer or other valid problems that uniquely concern men. Unfortunately this is not the case. These aren't dealing with "men's issues" but instead with a non-existent problem they call "men's rights". Their primary concern is not supporting one another through uniquely difficult challenges (which is more than valid) but painting a picture where men are systematically oppressed (which is ridiculously absurd). In summary, it is not a movement of mutual support but a counter-reaction to feminism and avoiding dealing with toxic gender roles.

There are two distinct age ranges for Men's Rights Activists: group one consists of adolescent boys aged 12-16, and group two is mainly inhabited by young adult males in the early 20s to late 30s range. The most prominent MRA media and literature consist of memes circulated on sites such as iFunny or 4chan, as well as YouTube channels run by fundamentalists or, unfortunately, New Atheists.

Based on their insistence that men are held back by women at least as much as women are by men (if not more so), combined with a general adherence to neo-reactionary strains of anti-progressivism within the movement, MRAs hold the entirety of modern feminism to be an inherently unequal attempt to worsen the "already equally unfair" balance of rights and responsibilities between the sexes by selfishly putting women even further ahead. The question then becomes why in the world anyone in their right mind, today living, would willingly call themselves a feminist (especially if they're male!) when the perfectly good (and clearly much more egalitarian) label of MRA is — as far as society is concerned — just sitting out there in the barn doing nothing?

The MRA narrative explains this obvious plot hole as the devious result of a long-standing propaganda campaign — directed at the masses from various ivory towers — by a chaotic-evil radical intelligentsia. To support this overtly conspiratorial view, the crankery of various fringe radical feminist cliques (such as the TERFs) are nutpicked and presented both as "what your next door feminist actually believes" and as a necessary end goal to the entire project of feminism.

The MRA membership is primarily male, though some feeeeeeemales also identify with the movement and are sometimes known as "fMRAs" or "feMRAs". These few women are naturally held up front row center as walking proof that the MRA movement really is everything feminism claims to be. While the MRM might bill itself as a progressive movement and a rational reaction to the excesses of third-wave feminism, its demonization of female rape and victims of domestic violence mixed with its thorough cross-pollination with reactionary movements make it nothing but a Trojan horse to roll back protections for women under the guise of fighting male oppression.

Subdivisions
Like most social movements, there is no specific agreed upon set of goals and no formal organization. The general movement is an offshoot of the men's liberation movements of the 1970s, and as such, used tactics learned from the feminist movement to attempt to gain equality in several areas. The movement itself split into two groups: one that largely supported feminism, and one that was strongly anti-feminist. Both movements, but especially the latter — which is frequently overtly misogynist — are generally understood to be to some extent a backlash to feminism.

Genuine equal rights groups
While "men's rights" is often used as a cover for sexism, there are men's advocacy groups that genuinely promote equal rights. The Good Men Project, for example, promotes activism on men's issues, supports charitable foundations such as boys' and girls' clubs, and publishes an online magazine dealing with men's issues that also acts as a forum for dialogue between feminists and men's rights advocates. They focus on criticisms of traditional male gender norms, fathers' issues, factors affecting at-risk boys in inner cities, sex and health. Naturally, according to the sexist element, the Good Men Project should be called the "Good Mangina Project" and is secretly a tool of Ms. Magazine. One blogger actually gave out "Mangina Awards" and The Good Men Project is a recipient. It seems an organization that focuses on men yet evokes sympathy, approval and interaction from women can suffer a backlash from those who prefer it to remain principally focused on men.

Anti-female groups
Some blatantly sexist sects of MRAs push the idea that there are definitive differences in ability between women and men (traditional values and "women's roles") and therefore suppose women should not compete with men for various jobs (although it is apparently all right with them for women to receive more social encouragement to be child care givers, school teachers, or maids, without stigma). Specifically, these groups argue that macho worlds like construction, the military, fire departments and police departments are no place for women because of their presumably inferior abilities or because that's just nasty.

Many of these sites lean right-wing in the political ideologies they promote — e.g., the feminazis are attempting to steal men's hard-earned money through socialist policies. Of course, the irony meter is again through the roof here. Their ramblings tend to read like the communist tracts they also rail against: All feminists are evil (extending to all women for the MGTOW crowd) and seek to bring about matriarchal domination (i.e., become the "ruling class"). They cook up their propaganda in their nefarious women's studies classes in academia and spread it through woman's advocacy groups. This has supposedly caused most men to become indoctrinated into a false consciousness, thereby causing them to abandon "true" masculinity (class traitors) and actively work against male liberties by becoming mouthpieces for and enforcers of the feminazi agenda (useful idiots, or "manginas" in their terminology).

Some also blast feminists for their "man-hatred," but they dump copious amounts of hatred on men who don't subscribe to their agenda share their persecution complex. If you don't eat beef jerky for every meal, idolize Chuck Norris, and tell your bitch to make you a damn sandwich, you're probably a mangina and responsible for the ongoing "feminization" of our society.

When confronted with concepts like patriarchy and its results, they tend to go full-tinfoil hat and assume that it's actually a sinister plot by women and the New World Order and/or communists.   Women more likely to get kids/maintenance in a divorce? It's because women have mindjacked hundreds of thousands of judges and lawyers with vaginal magic, not because women are viewed as "maternal" and socially expected to be caregivers. There's some overlap with Redpillers and Gators, as well, and anti-feminist beliefs like MRAs' are one of the core tenets of redpill and MGTOW.

MGTOW
A splinter group with some overlap with MRAs that says that not only are men more oppressed than women, but the only way for men to be free is to not live with women at all. In other words, the anti-feminist equivalent to the (equally kooky) radical lesbian separatism movement.

Libertarian groups
There is, however, a third class of MRA, who are sadly difficult to distinguish from the second. While still right-wing, this class of MRA tend to hold views that fall within the standard limits of a libertarian ideal, but, for some bizarre reason, seem determined to wrap these ideals in the most misogynistic-sounding language possible. Basically, women earn less money because the free market says so, and by attempting to change it, you're the devil. An example of such an MRA is Paul Elam, host of the internet radio show "A Voice for Men," who posts on YouTube under the name TheHappyMisogynist.

History and goals
girls always love to telling people not to" Mansplain" but they do not care of, "Man's Pain"

Although one could argue the socialist movement was the original men's rights movement, by pushing for an end to male wage slavery, the beginnings of a self-identified modern Men's Rights Movement can be traced to an 1856 article in Putnam's Monthly which argued for an end to laws that made men legally responsible for the actions of women in relationships. One example of such a law had to do with the 'heart balm' suit which awarded the person who broke off an engagement to marriage with financial compensation (virtually always the woman receiving compensation). Women were known for abusing this suit by 'gold-digging'; faking love then breaking off an engagement or blackmailing men whom they were engaged to. By the late 1920s, the practice had become a widespread criminal enterprise, highly profitable for both weeping bogus sweethearts and racketeering lawyers that it gained the appellation, “The Heart Balm Racket.”

The first prominent MRA writer was arguably Marxist writer and anti-suffragist Ernest Belfort Bax. He wrote The Legal Subjection of Men in 1908, modeled after The Subjection of Women by John Stuart Mill. Bax also wrote The Fraud Of Feminism in 1913 — at a time when only a minority of countries in the Western world even gave women the right to vote. In his writings Bax argued against laws which he saw as unfair sex-favoritism towards women, including the stiff penalties or jail time a man faced for leaving a marriage, when a woman faced no such penalties. He argued that feminists didn't really want to abolish chivalry, and will appeal to chivalric arguments to defend their privileged position. He also argued that capitalism inherently placed man in a slave relationship to women, and only socialism could liberate men from women. Bax was therefore a socialist MRA activist, which today would be qualified as a strange kind of moonbat.

A movement called the "Male Liberation Movement" was a single self-conscious liberal feminist movement that dissolved during the late 1970s. By the early 1980s, members of the movement had fully split into two entities. The members who had placed greater emphasis on the 'cost of male gender roles to men' than the 'cost of male gender roles to women' had formed the men's rights movement focusing on issues faced by men. The members who saw sexism exclusively as a system of men oppressing women rejected the language of sex roles and created pro-feminist men's organizations focused primarily on addressing sexual violence against women.

The 80s saw a rise of "Men's Rights Activists" who largely focus on men's oppression, and less on the feminist ideas of redefining social roles in general. MRAs also generally have asserted since the 80s that women and feminism "went too far" and harmed men in the process. Notable MRA Herb Goldberg asserted that women played a larger role in their own sense of objectification as well as the creation and maintenance of their social roles: "I think women didn’t see their side of the coin particularly in their relationships with men; they didn’t see their part of the dance and how they helped to set up a lot of things that they found offensive, how they participated in them." He and other Men's Rights groups also believed that women have the power in any sexual relationship, and men must "fight" to keep a sense of balance, which is often what leads to actual physical fights as men wrongfully use force to reclaim their power.

With the popularity of the internet, fringe groups of men's rights activists began talking with each other, creating centers for discussion of the poor life men necessarily led in a world so controlled by women. As with most internet "groups", a small to significant portion of them had extreme views — in this case, actual hatred towards women in their personal lives and in the world at large. Feeding off each other, many internet men's rights groups have become cesspools of anti-women tirades, name-calling, and even instances of verbal violence against particular women who have stirred the pot.

Outside of these extremist voices, men's rights in the contemporary world is a niche market, but a few groups have helped change perceptions of the laws and application of laws in divorce courts, custody cases and a few other legal venues.

As the movement found the Internet, a new breed of men's rights proponents found a venue for a highly anti-female view of "men's rights", no longer just focused on generally accepted inequality (like family court issues), but an overall idea that men have it bad because of women. Wonder if they'll miss all the boot-knocking.

As the MRAs found a new home on the internet, especially on /r/mensrights, the MRAs managed to create a weird and and convoluted pseudo academic framework of epic proportions. The movement and its children have managed to create a small orgy of various terms and concepts, the vast majority being completely unnecessary. A well-known example from the Red Pill community is the needless grouping of men into different categories based on some kind of social hierarchy. These categories has grown out of simply just alpha and beta males into seven different categories (alpha, beta, delta, gamma, sigma, lambda, omega), and why these are necessary for a sensible critique of modern feminism is completely beyond understanding.

Alt-right overlap
The Anti-Defamation League and others have noted a substantial overlap of men who ascribe to the MRM and alt-right ideologies. Some of the prominent people who are in both the MRM and alt-right are: F. Roger Devlin, Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer, Greg Johnson, Richard Spencer, Sam Woodward of Atomwaffen Division, Henrik Palmgren and Lana Lokteff of Red Ice Creations, and Roosh V.

Claims and rebuttals
[M]ost of the people who regurgitate these statistics – whom I refer to as MRAssholes, because "MRA" alone suggests that they’re both interested in rights and activism, but this isn’t the case – are simply not interested in addressing these statistics and the dependencies. This sort of thing is used exclusively as a whine – "look how bad us men have it!!" or "see, women are privileged too!" That's all. No thought, no solutions, no progress; just whining. There are various specific things that MRAs take issue with, some of which are legitimate issues where men are actually discriminated against. All of these arguments included here are taken directly from "Men's Rights" groups.

The interesting thing here is that feminism addresses essentially all of these concerns. It's as if feminism truly is about equality (one might even call feminism egalitarian).

Family court
During the 70s-90s, it was without doubt that women were given an edge in family courts. Many if not most courts saw the mother as the more important parent, and the courts were therefore more inclined to give custody of children to the mother, all else being equal. This attitude can be found in some courts today, but it is less common and easier to challenge.

It is important, however, to put this in perspective as the other side of the coin of the mandate of motherhood: mothers were the default recipients of custody in good part because raising children was a feminine duty, as it was, in the patriarchal scheme, the most important role that any woman should aspire to.

Divorce became more socially acceptable starting in the 1950s. At this time, women were often considered homemakers - unskilled or unable to support themselves. As a result, during the 50s-80s courts gave large settlements of spousal support (alimony) to women. As women began joining the workforce and income disparity between genders narrowed, the practice has declined. Major reforms in the US, Canada and the UK reflect the reality of co-parenting, two parents working, and women supporting the husband. In fact, a few states in the US do not hear arguments for long-term spousal support except where there are extenuating circumstances. Further, at least in the UK, study has shown that of those who actually apply for custody of their children, an equal proportion of men and women receive custody with no statistically discernible gender bias in rulings. Ironically, it was the accomplishments of feminism in the 20th century that were largely responsible for mitigating this imbalance.

The modern Western presumption that custody should be awarded to the mother was codified in the, adopted in English law in 1839 and expanded in 1873, encouraging similar legislation throughout the European sphere of influence. Prior to the first Act, 'ownership' of children of any age (along with ownership of everything else) was given to the father in cases of divorce, up to and including shutting the mother out of their lives completely, with no recourse. So, in fact, bias in favour of maternal custody is a relatively recent phenomenon; a partial correction or mitigation of women's disadvantaged state at the time it was introduced. Some MRAs will claim that this bias has existed for a lot longer than it has in order to try to frame custody as one part of some vast systematic oppression of men. A crushing ignorance of history and/or culture is merely par for the course for antifeminist MRAs.

Rape of males
The more universally accepted claim by MRA is that men are raped, by other men but also by women. In 2012 the National Crime Victimization Survey found that 38% of incidents of rape and sexual violence were against men. The more extreme view held by some MRAs includes ideas that women often lie about rape. Although the actual number of false accusations is notoriously difficult to pin down and varies with different reporting methodology, a 2009 study of rape cases across different European countries found the percentage of cases designated false to be 4-9%. In the US, different jurisdictions have different criteria for evaluating whether a rape accusation is false and often times it is lumped in with other types of cases (such as unproven or unfounded). However, there have been a couple of studies on the subject such as the study and the generally accepted range is between 2-10% of rape allegations are proven false.

Criticisms
Equality?! Give me back that vote, woman! Lemme guess who's at work and busting his ass all day, lemme guess who makes the most money - I know, it's Chuck! It's the man! [audience claps and whistles] You know who's made the most money throughout history? The man! Who have been the great leaders? Men! Maybe you have but, Egyptians live in triangles, tetrahedrons and shit. A triangle is not manly! [audience claps] Who fought the best wars? Men! Who make the best murderers? Men! Who invented the plague? Men! We got it all, bitch! We run this show, and I don't give a fuck who knows it! Critics of both camps of the movement liken it to reverse racism and argue that men who subscribe to the ideology are merely trying to hold on to privilege granted them by a long history of patriarchal culture. The term "movement" is itself challenged, since "men's movements" function more as a social salve, rather than actually redressing inequality in the overall social structure. There remain relatively few barriers to men's achievement in the world compared to women's (this is especially notable if you look at literal centuries of women being denied opportunity, which is still having an effect today), and few real areas where one can demonstrate a "lack of equality." Where such inequalities (apparent or real) do actually exist, it is important to critique if they're a result of feminism or if they derive from cultural attitudes which long predate it. Indeed, it'll be difficult to find mainstream feminists who push ingrained prejudices such as "men are strong enough to look out for themselves and don't need support."

Men's rights activists have been criticized for privilege blindness and their tendency towards "mansplaining." Frequently, MRA arguments rely on gross generalizations. Men's rights activists also have a reputation for palpable anger, based on their personal experiences of relationships, divorce, or the law. This stereotype is common to almost all fringe groups, however, as can be seen from the "angry feminist who wants to destroy men" stereotype (which has even greater currency in pop culture).

Exaggerating men's issues
MRA's have often come under fire for exaggerating or even making up men's issues with the deliberate intention of either downplaying women's issues or attempting to delegitimize feminism as a whole. They have an unfortunate tendency of blowing up minute problems into massive injustices and oftentimes being completely oblivious to similar issues women face.

An example of this in action is the near-ubiquitous tendency of MRAs to toot the #NotAllMen horn when any criticism of male behavior is raised only to engage in the same kind of generalizations with regards to women.

Many issues MRA's campaign on are either outright fabrications or are deliberately designed as a means of couching garden variety sexism by pretending to care about social equality. An example of this is how MRAs will complain about the poor treatment men who're victims of rape receive only to make male rape jokes.

Misogyny
Many men's rights groups use the term as a front for misogyny while claiming to be for gender equality; some openly supporting patriarchy. Since they haven't gained much influence as of yet, their activity seems to be mostly limited to whining about the "feminazis" or "femtards" on the internet.

One splinter group of the MRM (which has a complicated relationship with the movement) is Men Going Their Own Way, aka MGTOW (the equivalent of "Going Galt" for misogynists). Their aim is to escape the "male-hatred" of our society, which has been poisoned by the cabal of feminists and their vile ideology (which is not dissimilar to some types of separatist feminism). This puts them in a dilemma, as they still want to have sex but have disavowed relationships with women. The result: Sex bot obsession! Liberation will soon be at hand as the sex bot nears perfection!

Mistreatment of men by MRA
I would rather not see these kinds of "gay, redpill, and proud" posts. Masculinity is in part defined by our attraction to the feminine. If your preference is to be a man-pleaser then you're not expressing any kind of masculinity that's worth celebrating. MRAs are known to exploit the stories of male rape victims for their own agenda of proving that men are the really oppressed ones. They lure insecure men into their movement. In the MRA movement, there exists a known hatred for gay men.

2014 Isla Vista killings
On May 23, 2014, in Isla Vista, California, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara, Elliot Rodger, a 22-year old student, went on a misogyny-fueled killing spree, murdering 2 women and 4 men, wounding 13, and finally committing suicide when confronted by the police. Before the murders, Rodger had posted a series of YouTube videos and a 140-page manifesto detailing his wishes of violent retribution against women and society for their perceived slights against him (consisting mainly of not engaging in a sexual relationship with him). He also had a history of making posts in the same spirit on various Internet forums, most notably on r/ForeverAlone and PUAHate, forums for bashing pick-up artists but populated mainly by self-identified "incels" ("involuntarily celibate") and other malcontents that was taken down as soon as the connection started to gain publicity.

Parts of the media and various feminists pointed out the sexist angle, some referring to Rodger as an MRA. Various MRA sites and personalities switched into full defensive mode, dismissing any possible connection between Rodger's ideas and their rhetoric, and going on the offense, decrying the "politicization" of the murders by feminists. Many went as far as to claim that the murders were entirely attributable to mental illness (no one anywhere actually disputed the relevance of his mental health issues) and had nothing whatsoever to do with his rather obvious misogyny. (Sound familiar?) A particularly odious form is the claim that because Rodger killed more men than women (his 3 roommates and a random person on the street) or any men at all, this couldn't have been motivated by misogyny. In addition to playing "no true misogynist," this also conveniently ignores a pile of evidence &mdash; the contents of his videos and his manifesto and his unsuccessful attempt to enter a sorority house, which he followed immediately by shooting three women outside, only one survived. If he had managed to enter, the body count would be very different.

Roy Den Hollander
Roy Den Hollander was a self-described "anti-feminist" lawyer and men's rights activist known for filing many frivolous lawsuits targeting, among other things, Women's Studies programs at colleges, and "ladies' nights" at bars. He also maintained a website documenting his lawsuits, and writing articles chock full of misogyny, antifeminism, and liberal use of the term "Feminazi" (capitalized, of course, so you know that this ad hominem is Really Important). On 19 July 2020, Hollander killed the son and wounded the husband of United States federal Judge Esther Salas at the Salas home in New Jersey. Hollander had previously argued a case before Judge Salas challenging the Unites States' male-only military draft, and had posted vicious screeds targeting Salas on the internet. After the shooting, Hollander drove two hours away to New York and committed suicide. Later, Hollander was also named a suspect in a previous case concerning the murder of another "men's rights activist" attorney named, who was contesting similar lawsuits on the military draft in California (apparently the motive might be that Hollander was pissed off that he... wasn't involved with the California lawsuits?)