Whole lotta faulty premises and conjecture going on, with some misogyny for flavor.
A few of you folks could really benefit from some therapy. And no wonder women aren’t clamoring for the modern date pool when these are some of the attitudes. There’s some toxic garbage being thrown around as if it was settled fact, or had basis in fact, and bad premises will always result in faulty outcomes.
Or in my partner’s words when she read this thread: “No wonder they’re not getting laid.”
I’m the nicer one.
@VladTheImplier Generally there can’t be a good faith discussion once the redpill-adjacent and MRA crap shows up.
(tech and plastic better than intimate sexual contact with a willing and enthusiastic partner? really now…)
EDIT/ADD: Some of these “arguments” are rehashes of the same ones against sexual liberation and birth control, against Larry Flynt, against any sexualized media or representations of consenting adults enjoying sexual situations that have cropped up throughout the history of media. It requires more critical thinking to examine where these attitudes are coming from, instead of just consuming and absorbing because something tickles a cognitive bias.
MRAs are often misquoted, taken out of context and demonized for trying to focus on mens issues.
I have no issues with either feminists or MRAs but I label myself an egalitarian. It would be a good idea to watch the unfortunately named “The red pill” by Cassie Jay. It’s a very good documentary that highlights how people have perceived men in recent years.
Its also important to remember people are complex. Many MRA and Feminist have done awful things in the name of their movement but that shouldn’t distract you from the positive they’re trying do.
A core issue with these discussions is they derail on divisive arguments and make accusations, ad hominem, and other insults to “The other side”.
Call me a hippie but I’m strong believer in PLUR. We are all human, capable of mistakes, emotions, good, evil.
You are right that anyone disputing the sheer intensity of these devices hasn’t actually used them, but you are missing the point I made earlier.
When you define sex as an “amount” of pleasure to be maximized, you are treating the experience like a commodity. You have just decided that the digital version is a more efficient delivery system than a human one. The problem is that this perspective ignores the dimension of surrender. In your setup, you are the architect with total control, which means there is a ceiling to what you can actually experience. You can’t surprise yourself or truly lose yourself because you are the one holding the remote. This makes the tech a “safe” experience.
If you use that same tech in a partnered context, specifically in total bondage with a Dom you love, the math changes. When you give up your agency to someone else and you are forced to endure that intensity because they demand it, it moves into a different category of existence. You can’t tie yourself up to the point where you can’t escape. Being forced to endure that by someone else is an entirely different experience because you are giving up control.
You can’t simulate the vulnerability of being physically and emotionally stuck with another person. The guys opting out aren’t doing it because the tech is better. They are doing it because the tech asks nothing of them. Real connection, especially one involving power and trust, asks for everything. It’s scary and requires actual work to be put in.
The idea that the MRA movement and Feminism are parallel groups just focusing on their own issues doesn’t hold up. Feminism is a proactive movement for institutional change. The MRA movement is almost entirely reactive. It didn’t appear to build something new; it appeared as a response to the perceived loss of male status that came with women gaining autonomy (keyword here being PERCEIVED). In fact, many “men’s issues” like emotional isolation are direct results of the patriarchal structures that Feminism is trying to dismantle. MRAs are essentially fighting to keep the same walls up that are crushing them.
I’ve learned that “Egalitarianism” is often just a comfortable way to ignore how power actually works. It is easy to be a hippie about “PLUR” when your identity isn’t the one being debated. I don’t have that luxury. My rights and my marriage to another man aren’t protected by good vibes; they are protected by movements that fought specifically for me against a culture that wanted me invisible. (See Stonewall Uprising if you want an actually good documentary to watch)
Claiming to be an Egalitarian usually just means you are okay with the status quo. If you aren’t actively looking at the power imbalance, you are just letting the person with the most leverage keep it. This all goes back to the same root: real connection is scary and hard. Some people would rather just play with toys or hide behind “neutral” politics instead of putting in the work of being known.
This is precisely why there is so much divisiveness in these discussions.
As an egalitarian, I’m not pro-no-change. I’m pro abortion rights, I’m pro paternal testing at birth, I’m pro womens and mens shelters, I’m pro XYZ issue that improves quality of life for women AND men.
I acknowledge that both movements have blind spots and like to point them out in the “other” group.
It is a fact that feminism has silenced and destroyed mens rights movements and intentionally tried to kill support for mens issues.
It is also a fact that powerful men have attacked women and LGBTQ movements and tried to take away their rights.
It’s a known fact that both movements have issues when they’re fighting each other. It’s also a known fact that both movements have made progressions to help their respective focuses.
It’s insane to me that there are feminists that think paternity fraud is a non-issue, at the same time there are MRA’s that think that feminism is just a bunch of hateful women.
I have been a contrarian a lot in my teen years. I’m also very into debate and discussion. I was lead debater in my philosophy classes in highschool.
Where I was once a feminist basher, when I started debate club, I started practicing listening to the opposition and trying to understand their arguments, I’ve changed my mind on topics a lot over the years. I started very much on leftist/mens rights side of things, but these days im closer to labor party/centrist ideas. I’m both pro abortion, and pro guns ownership. I often find people misrepresent centrism as “Lets just compromise”. Centrism is more like “Both sides have good and bad positions, I want to optimize based on my own experiences and observations to what I think is best regardless the ‘side’.”
This is why I regard myself as an Egalitarian. I recognize both the failures and the winnings of Feminists and MRAs. If I were to side with a specific group, that would only contribute to the division.
LGBTQ people all deserve to be treated like humans, Men and Women deserve to be treated like humans. And wherever there is a conflict there should be discussion, respect, care, and a reflective mind to consider the facts.
I’ll give you a couple specifics and where I stand.
Men’s familial rights are very often cast aside. Many instances of female abuse in the family are ignored. This has resulted in children’s homicide multiple times in history due to negligent family courts biases. This is unequivocally a horrible thing that is often shut down, silenced, blamed on men by feminist movements.
Women’s safety in everyday life is for some reason a debatable topic. We’ve known for a long time that women suffer more assault in everyday life, even non-domestically. People who dismiss this as a feminist talking point to attack men are completely missing the point.
I intentionally chose to describe 2 different issues at different scales because inevitably someone is going to point out that “men suffer less issues/men suffer less common issues/etc” But this is again STILL missing the point. BOTH of these issues deserve attention and attacking someone for pointing either of them out is an issue with our “Us vs them” mentality.
Again, Cassie Jay in “The Red Pill” Talks about this specific “Us vs Them” mentality and directly addresses this issue. Which is why I hate when people try to say “These are not equivalent”
They don’t need to be equivalent, they need to be addressed
It is telling that you support abortion rights and gender-neutral family protections, which is literally the platform of modern feminism, yet you still feel the need to distance yourself from the word. Claiming that feminism “intentionally tried to kill support for men’s issues” is a standard MRA narrative that misses the point. The “men’s issues” you mentioned, like family court bias, exist because of the patriarchal gender roles that feminism is actually dismantling. You are essentially using the tools feminism built to complain about feminism.
You are picking the worst of both sides to say “see, they’re both bad” and using that as an excuse to remain “in the middle.” That middle ground is a luxury that you are able to inhabit because you are a cis, straight male.
You say it’s a “fact” that feminism tried to kill Men’s Rights, but that isn’t a fact; it’s a narrative used to justify a purely reactive movement. Most of the issues you cited are the direct result of the same roles feminism fights against—like women being favored in custody cases because the system views them as only “nurturers.” When feminism fights to break those stereotypes, it is fighting for men’s familial rights.
They are being addressed, but you’re treating these like a balanced budget where one takes away from the other. Women’s safety and men’s rights in family court aren’t in competition; they are both hindered by the same regressive status quo that feminism is fighting against.
You say you want to “optimize” based on facts, but the fact is that Feminism is the movement doing the proactive work for the rights you claim to support.
Then you’re brainwashed and ignoring what a very large portion of the movement has done to harm men.
And there’s the silencing again…
For the record, I’m a bisexual mixed race man.
I am quite literally advocating that this is NOT a balanced budget and they don’t take away from the other. I’m quite literally saying that we agree here.
You’re brainwashed.
Simply because I don’t call myself a feminist and prefer a neutral stance has made you feel attacked.
For the record, I’m not attacking you or your views, and I don’t feel personally attacked by anything you’ve said. We’re having a discussion about power and movements, and I’m just engaging with the logic you’re presenting.
But calling me “brainwashed” isn’t an argument; it’s just a way to shut down a conversation you don’t like.
I’ll acknowledge your identity, and my error in assuming you were straight and I do apologize for that. But being bisexual or mixed-race doesn’t change the material reality of the movements you’re defending. You can be part of a marginalized group and still advocate for reactive movements that protect the status quo. The “harm to men” you’re referencing is a narrative that blames feminism for the very problems (like legal bias and emotional isolation) that are actually caused by the patriarchal gender roles feminism is trying to kill.
The issue is that you seem to be defining the entire movement by Radical Feminism, using the most extreme voices to justify your distance. But look at the actual definition: Feminism is the belief in and advocacy for the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. It is a movement that campaigns against gender-based discrimination to ensure women have the same rights as men.
If you believe in political, economic, and social equality of the sexes-if you believe that women shouldn’t be treated worse just because they are women-then you are a feminist.
You support the goals of feminism, abortion rights, shelters, neutral family courts, but you are denouncing the movement that makes those things a reality. It isn’t “silencing” to point out that your “Egalitarian” middle ground relies on the tools feminism built while ignoring the power imbalance that makes those tools necessary. And I know it’s uncomfortable to acknowledge, but that view comes from a position of privilege.
While vibe with basically everything you’re saying I disagree with this. Feminism and MRA’s are political movements. I don’t fully align with either of them. Much like I don’t fully align with other movements. I agree with a lot of the ideas and disagree with some ideas of both movements.
I don’t mean to shut down conversation by saying you’re brainwashed but when you claim that feminists have fought for men’s rights I have to laugh because that’s so evidently false.
The issue here is from a lot off angles, but the one I want to specifically target is that these qualities make me a feminist.
Having these qualities do not make me a feminist any more than being pro gun ownership makes me a conservative.
Assigning labels to others has historically been a really bad idea pretty much universally. Labels should only ever be self-assigned.
I don’t like many of the ideas that feminists and MRAs have put forward because I find many of them are ignorant and distract us from the real enemy. The white collar class.
Put me in a debate against MRAs, I’ll tell them about the toxic ideas they teach youth about what it means to be a man. I’ll tell them why their ideas about gynocentrism is just sexism guarded by egocentrism.
Put me in a debate against feminists I’ll ask why they’re trying to make paternity tests illegal. I’ll tell them that dismissing men’s opinions because they are cis white hetero is by definition prejudice.
I prefer Egalitarian as a label because it gives me the ability to communicate that I don’t like group-think and I will be the first to criticize my own side when I think we’re in the wrong. I have no “side”.
A quick anecdote to try and demonstrate how I debate
Some time back I got a lot of flack for self-cannibalizing my side of a debate.
The debate was on the right to abortion.
I’m pro-choice, my opposition was pro-life, my “teammate” was being accusatory of the opposition and misrepresented their position.
I directly called them out that he was arguing against a point that was never made, and was accusing the opposition of having a position they didn’t have.
The pro-life position was that abortion was murder. My “mate” claimed that the opposition only wanted the choice to be a man’s choice.
I called them out that this was not position the pro-lifer took and asked them to stop making baseless accusations.
My position is calling a blastocyst life is a stretch and we shouldn’t classify that as life. Otherwise freezing off a mole is murder.
This was an instance I remember pretty well that I didn’t jump sides, but pointed out the bad on my side of the debate.
Where pro-choice and pro-life are positions, they’re not movements and if they were I would be more careful about assigning myself either label.
That is regrettable, but with how we can almost feel the frustration through the screen behind some of the words until now, it isn’t surprising. Add to that, that we have to hold multiple ideas in our heads simultaneously. Let’s hope for the best. I do wish I had more time to take part in this discussion though. Oh well, until my train arrives I guess ^^
I would offer you the over-used “correlation does not imply causation” phrase. There can be a lot of factors at play. And yes while porn can be a factor, it is not necessarily what is driving this. It also depends on where in the world you are. For example: I’ve been visiting majority-muslim countries in North Africa and West-Asia some years ago, which suffer a similar fate in regards to the marriage rates. And while many young people there express a huge desire to get married (remember, religiously conservative, not much toy use over there or sex before marriage), they were not able to because of the high living costs and cultural expectations on how much capital they’d have to amass to get married in the first place. I can’t find the source now, but there has been an admittedly small meta-study comparing this internationally, but the main factor wasn’t porn use.
While I do in principal agree with pretty much everything you’ve presented so far, let us think about the consequences of this statement. Please hear me out. I’m not abandoning any principles, nor am I putting an onus on anyone to get someone out of the red-pill scene. I’m trying to empathize with the people from that other side, which comes from the fact, that I know former (thank goodness) red-pill/incel-adjacent men irl and have seen their journey in and out of it. And I’m so grateful, that I didn’t take that wrong turn myself at some point.
Whenever they would utter anything (which is admittedly misogynistic) they were naturally met with strong counter-reactions and this kind of disregard displayed in your statement. I know of two who also had at least one major negative encounter with a girl/woman when they were younger, which colored their experience. All that unfortunately lead them to isolate socially. This is exactly where con-artists of the manosphere get to them: They take them, their feelings (even if they wouldn’t admit it) and their experiences seriously and they convey not only an alternative world view to shift blame externally (and them as victims), but also community. Even worse: With the internet, it’s easy to find other incels who share similar experiences. It then takes on a dynamic that leaves them to not only subscribe to the red-pill ideology, but identify with it, or developing an incel identity specifically. In that regard: One of the former incels was shunned by his online community, once he managed to finally meet a woman, enter a romantic relation with her and lose his virginity. Of course he had to shift his focus inward for that to even become a possibility. But he wouldn’t have managed to do that as easily, if the only reactions he would get from the outside world were so negative that he would immediately get defensive (remember, it’s an identity level thing, so the reactions are rather intense).
And that last part is exactly the difficulty when trying to talk in good faith to someone who prescribes to that ideology. Taking someone seriously, validating the experience, without validating that world-view and under no circumstances abandoning your own principles. It’s a fine balance, but I’ve seen it work .
Alright, only 2 stops, I gotta get my move on..
This holds so much truth. Women have been emancipating for about 100 years now. It’s time for us men to do the same.
And this is exactly why I hate using labels. I’m sorry, if I take you two as an example, but this is representative of so many other examples. People don’t understand labels. Everyone has their own understanding of the same label. And those usually differ from the dictionary definition.
You two started from an agreement on the issues, but have delved into a discussion around the labels describing them. And of course, because the labels are part of identities, discussions around them can get emotional and defensive and deviate from the issues at hand where you’ve started from.
That said: If we go by the dictionary definition of egalitarianism, then it simply centers social equality and equality of fundamental worth of each human being. In particular this also centers equal rights for all as well as equal treatment under the law. As such egalitarianism is an underlying principle of left-wing politics, as well as feminism, but also libertarianism and classical liberalism and many political movements like worker’s rights movements or civil rights movements. So please… make up again?
Alright I need to get off the train. Hope to join this interesting discussion at a later time ^^
This is exactly the issue: what you’re describing isn’t the core of feminism; it’s a caricature. The idea that feminists are “trying to make paternity tests illegal” is a standard piece of misinformation often circulated in MRA spaces to create fear. It isn’t a “fact”—it’s a narrative used to make the movement look like an enemy to men. It’s a testament to how “dirty” the word feminism has become because of intentional misrepresentation.
A lot of people, even those who hold feminist views, shirk the label because they’ve been told it means “man-hater” or “prejudiced against cis men.” It’s disheartening because it shows that the propaganda has been effective: it has you prioritizing a dislike for a label over the actual movement that is doing the work you claim to support. You say you care about these issues, but you’re distancing yourself from the only institutional force fighting for them because you’ve been convinced the name is toxic.
The irony is that many “men’s issues” cited by non-extremist MRAs, like the need for neutral family courts and breaking down “disposable male” stereotypes, are the exact same points made by mainstream feminists. Feminism is about dismantling the patriarchal roles that hurt both women and men. By denouncing the label, you’re fighting against the group that is actually trying to solve the problems you’ve listed.
You mention the “white collar class” being the real enemy, and while I agree that class struggle is central to everything, you can’t ignore that gender and race are the primary tools used to divide the working class. Using class as a way to dismiss the specific struggles of women or the LGBTQ+ community is a classic tactic to avoid the discomfort of looking at social privilege. You can’t solve the “real enemy” by ignoring the systemic imbalances that keep certain groups of the working class more vulnerable than others.
You aren’t avoiding “group-think” by calling yourself an egalitarian; you’re just using a different name for the same values because you’ve been convinced the original name is toxic. It’s a win for the people who want to keep us divided when they can convince a self-proclaimed thinker to fear a label that encompass their actual beliefs.
I appreciate the peacemaking, but I have to disagree that this is just an emotional hang-up over labels.
When Vlad says he’s an “Egalitarian” because he doesn’t like “group-think,” he’s treating Feminism like a fashion choice he’s too cool for. But the reality is that Feminism is a movement, and for that movement to work, it needs men to stand with it. By refusing the label of the movement that actually achieves the goals he claims to have, he’s just distancing himself from the struggle while reaping the rewards.
I’m quite in line with @randomus that arguing about labels isn’t worth anyone’s time.
I did write out a longer message but I decided it doesn’t matter and deleted it because at the end of the day the only issue I actually have with this conversation was these lines:
If you don’t see the evil that feminism has done you’re not looking hard enough
This is just a mischaracterization of what egalitarianism is and what I stand for.
TL;DR: Feminism and MRAs, neither are wholly bad, both have done substantial enough evils that I choose to prefer a different label I think is more accurate to my ideals.
Being egalitarian doesn’t preclude also being a feminist. Those aren’t competing labels. The fact that you are going out of your way to reject the feminist one specifically is the problem. You support the goals, you just won’t stand with the movement doing the work, while spreading misinformation and doing more harm than good for true feminism.
Ive been trying to keep up but this certainty isnt where I expected this conversation to go, but im not sure if people think my post is shitty or respectable who knows
It sure sounds like some folks are hung up on Dworkin-as-feminism, without recognizing significant shifts over the last 50 years since - including rejections and revisions of principles from prior waves.
The idea that feminism poses a threat to men is bullshit. Yeah, thinking might be hard, and changing some preconceptions or examining where they come from is uncomfortable. @gayrobot hit on it as well - these issues are because men don’t want to put in the work. It is the same as these rejections of feminism… Its work, it’s emotional labor to examine these roles.
“well i don’t have to do it” - That’s a choice, but it’s not feminism’s fault if the unexamined attitudes aren’t jiving with cultural shifts. We’ve even got words for it: “Male Entitlement”.
This is important stuff, in light of recent news: Inside 'Online Academy' Teaching Men To Sexually Abuse Wives
So tell me again, how feminism hurts men… especially in light of how a fuckin “r*pe academy” exists online with 60 million views.
That shit is too heavy for me. I’m just a dude who found a new perspective on the male female dynamic interesting because of my new interest in some cool sex toys.
The only input I could possibly have on this situation is that I, as a male, constantly think about how women must perceive men as threats. Even though I’m sure I look like the least threatening male, it’s one of the most forefront things I think about when I’m around a woman—making sure I’m doing what I can not to make her uncomfortable, knowing how dangerous it can be for women out in public compared to men. That probably makes me seem lame, but that’s all I really have to contribute on the subject based on my experience.
Just stop obsessing with how to not make her uncomfortable. Instead just be ready to honestly and genuinely be a good human, to pay attention to her, to communicate honestly, and to protect her in case one of lost people pops up. Be present in the moment, without having permanent loops replaying in your head and distracting you. Open up, say what you are ashamed of, be vulnerable. That is how you show to a woman that you do not perceive her as a threat, by removing your shield - you have to allow her to hurt you, and when you do, she can stop perceiving you as a threat - if she does not hurt you when she can, she will also understand that you will not hurt her - which physically you can at any time. We are here where we are (including this “feminism vs mra” and loneliness epidemic) because of egoism and shield bubble everyone raise around them to “avoid being hurt”. And yes, there are psychopats who fake all of that… so sometimes she will really hurt you, you can’t really know if someone is honest if you do not test them, and for that, sometimes you will be really hurt, and you will be tested, if you are you able to forgive, are you able to grow… it is part of life.
I perceive this whole “struggle against x” and population plagued with egoism epidemic as a metaphysical solar flare that detached from the sun (men who think they can exist without women and women who think they can exist without men), they are alone and distancing themselves from that other side they perceive as threat, like a solar flare that springs from the point where it was too hot. It is driven by the Earth/biosphere which are part of Universe who is aware and feels that the amount of energy we use is unsustainable (and I am not talking about “renewables” here - anything you buy or experience requires energy to make, and even if all of that energy was captured solar energy, using it converts it to heat, and we use more than what we can radiate away from Earth, so we are raising the temperature and cooking it). So, the system itself develops in a way that will reduce population - the conditions are there for you to embrace life without the “complement”, and I’d say, conditions are such that it is easier to have a life right now without “the other half”, precisely because the system is trying to reduce population to below unsustainable level. If you see Universe as living organism, everything that is happening in society seems perfectly normal phase in constant oscillation (the dance) of life. I’d say the porn is just a symptom (or effect) of the direction in which the system is moving at the moment, and its effects are stronger in areas where population on average uses more energy per specimen.
I never heard about “Male entitlement“ though, The female version i have heard plenty though (and this is very diffirent from feminism).
I think the problem isnt realy that its known about on the internet, the problem is the media denying very hard that certain problems exist. And often are even presenting problems in such way that shows imbalance.
A famous one (number are made up): 30% of homeless people are female. There are soo many flaws in that statement if its randomly presented. And its a statement that sometimes does end up as headline of a news article. Why ignore the bigger 70% group, why focus on the group that is smaller?
I can understand it if the context is about issues women face, but its rarely in that context. Plenty of times its just standalone, and surrounded by things like war, or other general problems. This is what is slowly causing hate, because if you are in such group that has problems, and no way to get out, being ignored adds frustration.
I think most feminism, or racism issue are caused by ignorance of the media. As usualy these just follow the most vocal ones. The real problem cases are nearly always silent.
Ever since i stopped watching mainstream news, and go for specificly more neutral ones, while i dont miss out on news, i also dont feel like the issue is as bad for both. Because if an article is about it, its presented neutral with at most at the end a table that shows some splited stats (and depending on the news type, those numbers can show extremes in both directions).
I’ve got two cents on this whole thing myself. The tech industry has utterly enshittified online dating, the Kardashians and their friends enshittified women, and Andrew Tate and his friends enshittified men. And now we’re living in the enshittifed future no one promised us.
That stupid meme about women demanding 6’, finance, blue eyes, and a trust fund summed up what happened to women succinctly.
Then men stepped up their game with alpha male classes that are the equivalent of choosing to pay Mads Mikkelsen to whack you in the junk repeatedly instead of banging Eva Green at her prime when you heard you could go to a Casino Royale retreat.
If I’m single again some day, I’m getting a robot, people are too complicated and demanding right now and for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, Dan Savage once wrote an article near and dear to my heart on all this: Dan Savage on the Solo Movement
