From Men’s Liberation to Men’s Rights: angry white men in the US

[ismnotwasm]

Last edited Tue Jun 10, 2014, 10:36 AM - Edit history (8)

Interesting article.

Men’s Rights activists see men as the victims of reverse discrimination in every political, economic, and social arena; feminism has been so successful that men are now the second sex; and men have to stand up for their rights. In doing so, they believe, they strike a blow against the wimpification of American manhood: they get their manhood back by fighting for the rights of men. Who says the personal isn’t also political?

So how did we get here?

The origins of MRA

It might come as a bit of a surprise to know that the initial seeds of the contemporary men’s rights movement were planted in the same soil from which feminism sprouted. The critique of what became known as the female sex role, the traditional ideology of femininity, resonated for some men, whom by the early 1970s, took the feminist call for women’s liberation as an opportunity to do some liberating of their own. “Men’s liberation” was born in a parallel critique of the male sex role. If women were imprisoned in the home, all housework and domestic drudgery, men were exiled from the home, turned into soulless robotic workers, in harness to a masculine mystique, so that their only capacity for nurturing was through their wallets.

But feminists moved from a critique of those sex roles – abstract ideological constructions – to a critique of the actual behaviors of actual men, corporeal beings who acted in the name of those antiquated roles. And once women began to make it personal, to critique men’s behaviors – by making rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, part of the gender dynamics that were under scrutiny -- the men’s libbers departed. Instead, the Men’s Liberationists stuck with the analysis of roles, which, they argued, were equally oppressive to men; they shifted their focus to those institutional arenas in which men were, they argued, the victims of a new form of discrimination – gender discrimination against men.

The question was why men were so unhappy. What caused the male malaise? The way different groups of men resolved this question provided the origins of the various men’s “movements” currently on offer.

Edit: please use BainsBains link or go to the right side of the page were the article is embedded here

http://opendemocracy.net/5050/michael-kimmel/from-men’s-liberation-to-men’s-rights-angry-white-men-in-us it says 'page not found', but it's there.

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Very interesting article

Im doing a lot of reading from the perspective of the right and the rise of the Dominionist theory. As I peel back more and more layers - what is there is frightening.

[seabeyond]

10. It must have been a decade ago when I wAs introduced to dominion. It filtered down from Colorado

Springs, focus on the family. My kids were in a private Christian school and I started hearing about it then.

[BainsBane]

2. Your link doesn't work

But I was able to find the article here: http://opendemocracy.net/5050/michael-kimmel/from-men%E2%80%99s-liberation-to-men%E2%80%99s-rights-angry-white-men-in-us

This quote confirms what I've observed from these guys, more numerous every day.

Where are the legions of Men’s Rights guys when it comes to “other” men? Men’s Rights is almost entirely a movement of angry straight white men. Gay men, Black men, Asian men, Latino men and other racial and ethnic minority men feel no such sense of entitlement to power that these middle class white men feel has been unceremoniously and illegitimately snatched from them.

Earlier in the article it notes that they are also largely middle and upper-middle class.

[ismnotwasm]

4. Huh

I can't fix it even using your link-- I'm going to edit to add to use the link you provided

[BainsBane]

5. I think part of it didn't get hyperlinked

Some of what you posted as the link didn't turn up in blue.

[ismnotwasm]

6. It didn't

I tried select all, and 'copy' several times. The article is there to the right, but still. Irritating.

[BainsBane]

19. The fact is MRAs are overwhelmingly white men

As demographic surveys show. What you think about individual men here and there is irrelevant. The whiney piss ants that make up the MRA movement are a particular brand of losers. Additionally, men of color don't need to invent fictitious grievances to whine about. They suffer actual discrimination. The MRA creeps believe they deserve anything they want simply because they are born born male (and white).

[redqueen]

3. Wow this sure seems familiar:

Out of the amorphous men’s liberation movement, emerged a third group in the late 1980s and early 1990s that embraced what they called men’s rights. They may have shared the initial critique of the oppressive male sex role, and the desire to free men from it, but for the Men’s Rights activists (MRAs) , that critique morphed into a celebration of all things masculine, and a near-infatuation with the traditional masculine role itself. Men didn’t need liberating from traditional masculinity anymore; now they needed liberating from those who would liberate them! Traditional masculinity was no longer the problem; now its restoration was championed as the solution. It wasn’t traditional notions of masculinity that made men so miserable, it was women.

[seabeyond]

11. This us where we are today. The hypermasculination if manhood. In all things.

They certainly got corporate and media behind them.

[redqueen]

14. It's as if some more people are frightened by the progress being made here and elsewhere. nt

[seabeyond]

16. it is as if.... nt

[JoyinTorah]

7. Generation of Men's Rights Groups

There are still men's groups that remain from the 80's. NOMAS is a good example of one. Michael Kimmel belongs to NOMAS iirc. Jackson Katz too.

The difference between 'men's groups' and 'Men's rights groups' is incredible. The labeling distinction is important.I've monitored the 'Men's Rights groups' for many years. I keep a blog called mancheeze on wordpress to disseminate information to men and women about this group.

The best way to describe these MRA's is what they describe as the Manosphere. It's interesting and predictable that these men would claim a space on the internet to call their own. It's the notion that men have to take up the entire space and not allow women into it, which is exactly what the Manosphere is.

Some women are on side with these MRA's but they're few and far between. They coddle these men and their notions of what a man should be (traditional masculinity) as well as take on the misogyny. All of these women are below the middle/upper middle MRA's as far as class, not to mention sex. Many of these women use the MRA's to extract money. It's no small feat to raise 25K in less than a day, which is what MRA's did.

Then the female MRA's hopped on the gravy train and got another 6K and counting.

The current MRA movement has a single guy at the top, Paul Elam, who takes hundreds of thousands of dollars from angry men and puts it in his pocket. This movement has done NOTHING to help men the way that the men's groups of the 80's did.

[ismnotwasm]

8. This is true

There are very positive men's groups that aren't toxic wastelands.

They usually have a powerful message of non toxic masculinity especially for youth. I've been thinking about this lately, there needs to be a strong distinction between the two, because MRA's use abhorrent tactics and get far too much traffic, while the men's groups that are about positivity and forward thinking, don't get near the publicity, and they are the ones we want our youth to hear.

[seabeyond]

13. We often post men that are working for men and boys, in this group. They are powerful speakers.

The mra crowd rejects what they have to say and their goals in helping our boys.

[redqueen]

15. Yep, they dislike those groups for daring to criticize the cult of masculinity. nt

[BainsBane]

9. the women extract money?

How so?

[Tuesday Afternoon]

17. I venture to guess they "ask" for money for whatever myriad of reasons.

ask = extract, in this instance.

[seabeyond]

12. Interesting post. Thanks joy. Nt