There are certainly issues in our society that negatively effect men, like gender biases in child custody cases, the way male-on-male prison rape is largely treated as a joke, or the pressures to conform to traditionally masculine roles and ideals like prioritizing work over domestic life. But joining an MRA group is just about the least productive way you could possibly go about resolving these issues.
MRAs have little interest in actually addressing these things because they're far more concerned with railing against and/or hiding from women. Even in the most mainstream MRA spaces, so-called "men's rights issues" are frequently only invoked to lend a veneer of legitimacy to the real meat of the conversation: expressing distrust and disdain for women in increasingly violent misogynistic terms.
That the MRA movement largely exists not out of genuine concern for issues effecting men but out of fear and resentment towards women is readily apparent not just in the language they use, but more significantly in the very arguments they present about the causes of these issues they claim to care so much about solving. Rather than understand as any sane person would that aside from these handful of issues (which pale in comparison to the issues faced by women to begin with and whose severity and prevalence MRAs, as they tend to do with most things, dramatically overstate) men still wield an overwhelming advantage in society, MRAs actually seem to believe that men are an oppressed class and that society as a whole is unfairly slanted towards the interests of women.
As a result, MRAs seem to think that feminists are their natural enemies (even in trying to be civil and democratic about it the OP is still basically suggesting that men's rights and feminism are somehow inherently at odds with each other), and that the best way to go about resolving "men's rights" issues is to attack feminism. Not only is this strategy patently absurd and useless, but it's actually the single most counterproductive thing they can do if they're at all legitimately concerned with the things they claim to be concerned with. Because here's the thing:
There is actually already a movement devoted to resolving these men's rights issues, and it's called feminism.
All of the issues MRAs love to complain about, from divorce court biases to unfair assumptions of male sexual aggression to the lack of serious attention paid to male-victim rape, are caused not by feminism, but by the very same patriarchal system feminists are trying to diminish. For example, if women are given an unfair advantage in divorce cases, it's because patriarchy dictates that women are inherently and exclusively predisposed to working in the domestic sphere and caring for children while men are inherently and exclusively capable of providing financially.
Men's rights issues aren't at odds with feminist issues, theyare feminist issues. Patriarchy is a miserable, restrictive social system for men and women alike, and men actually stand to benefit from its dismantling just as women do. The real solution to men's rights issues is better rights for women. In fact, you can already see how the increase in women's rights over the past few decades have started to resolve the issues MRAs talk about. To return to the divorce example, look at the growing frequency with which women end up paying the alimony and child support in divorce settlements. That's due to the increasing number of women in the workplace over the past several decades, a direct result of feminist activism.
If you're really concerned about men's rights, then become a feminist. If on the other hand you just want to use the language of social justice in a cursory fashion to make kvetching about your ex-wife or unattainable crush object seem like a heroic act of political resistance, then by all means join up with the MRAs.
By the way, OP, you seem to be pretty singularly passionate about the issue of penile turtlenecks (FWIW I have to respectfully disagree with your position here for reasons I'm not going to get into now because A: I don't think that the subject is relevant to the "men's rights" debate and I don't want to derail the conversation from what's really important here, and B: my response would involve a bunch of religious baggage that's even less relevant and even more likely to derail the conversation). I'm pretty sure there are several organizations devoted solely to that cause, and I would recommend that you go join one of them instead of hitching your wagon to the sociopolitically ineffectual, often outright hateful MRA movement.
At 12/9/13 02:03 PM, Camarohusky wrote:
Now, the patriarchy is partially real, but mostly a feminist buzzword to complain that the world isn't going their way (just like men who claim Men's rights).
I think it's very real in the most literal, concrete sense. Men continue to hold an overwhelming majority of the positions of power and authority in our society. Male voices and perspectives continue to dominate moral/political discussion, popular culture, and virtually every other social sphere or field of human endeavor. Despite their slow erosion over the past half-century, traditional patriarchal values continue to hold quite a bit of currency everywhere from domestic life to sexual mores (look at how the madonna-whore complex and all sorts of other sexual double standards and hang-ups and prejudices are still going strong, or the disturbing rhetoric still regularly employed by conservative politicians and pundits and the people who support them, or see the above examples of how patriarchal values negatively effect men).
Regardless of whether this reality is a good thing or a bad thing or what causes it to be this way or how it might change in the future, it is the present reality. Women's rights have made some enormous strides over the past couple centuries, and patriarchy is for the most part no longer enforced de jure (though I would argue that conservative politicians' attempts to restrict abortion and birth control access are often primarily efforts to enforce traditional patriarchal values by law), but it absolutely still exists de facto in a number of legitimately troubling ways.
