MRA Gaining National Awareness

Where I live, liberalism and feminism are rampant. It's a bad place to be a conservative, an even worse place to be pro-life or pro-heterosexuality. Liberal ideology runs the town. In fact, even the local police department was banned (by their lesbian chief of police) from wearing the American flag on their uniforms.

However, a strange thing happened today. I picked up a free newspaper called the "Herald Examiner". After years of reading the Ithaca Journal, I decided to try something new. The first article I read blew my mind away.

Culture Check: Love According to Darwin
by Kay Hymowitz
Reprinted from CITY JOURNAL


The article itself is a follow up to responses the author received from a previous article "Child-Man in the Promised Land". The original was about how "too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with "South Park" reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie scenes."

The original premise followed the standard cultural stereotype of men as immature, boyish, and unwilling to grow up and face the responsibilities of adulthood. But for the first time that I have ever seen, men responded accordingly to set the record straight on this outdated and erroneous cultural cliche. The author goes on to write:

"It would be easy enough to hold up some of the callow ranting that piece inspired as a proof positive of the child-man's existence. But the truth is that my correspondents' objections gave me pause. Their argument, in effect, was that the SYM is putting off traditional markers of adulthood-one wife, two kids, three bathrooms- not because he's immature but because he's angry. He's angry because he thinks that young women are dishonest, self-involved, slutty, manipulative, shallow, controlling, and gold-digging. He's angry because he thinks that the culture disses all things male. He's angry because he thinks that marriage these days is a raw deal for me."

Here are some responses that his original article illicited:

Jeff, from Middleburg, Florida: "I am not going to hitch my wagon to a woman who is more into her abs, thighs, triceps, and plastic surgery. A woman who seems to have forgotten that she did graduate high school and that it's time to act accordingly."

Another SYM, Alex writes: "Maybe we turn to video games not because we are trying to run away from the responsibilities of a 'grown-up life' but because they are a better companion than some disease-ridden bar tramp who is only after money and a free ride."

One more, from Dean in California: "Men are finally waking up the ever-present fact that traditional marriage, or a committed relationship, with its accompanying socially imposed requirements of being wallets with legs for women, is an empty and meaningless drudgery."

The part that shocked me was this little paragraph: "You can find the same themes posted throughout websites like AmericanWomenSuck, NoMarriage, MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way), and Eternal Bachelor ("Give modern women the husband they deserve. None.")"

Not only does this article talk about the growing Ghost Nation and give constructive and pertinent thought as to why, but it also proves that these websites are becoming mainstream. They are becoming a part of our cultural awareness. This is exciting because it shows that the common feminist response to MRA, the whole burying their heads in the sand and saying "Meh, no one is gonna care about some misogynist chauvinists or take them seriously. They're isolated occurrences on the web, probably virgins living in mom's basement." is wholly and totally: Wrong. There are books about the subject... from Warren Farrell's "The Myth of Male Power" to my latest acquisition, "The Decline of Men: (How the American Male is Tuning Out, Giving Up, and Flipping Off His Future" by Guy Garcia. There are at least half a dozen more that you can purchase at Border's right now. Sure, any hack can write a book, and just about anyone can put up a blog. However, the sentiment behind these writings is valid and is now being the subject of newspaper articles.

Whether the publicity is positive or negative, as newspapers and soon perhaps radio broadcast pick the subject up, the fact is that more and more men will be made aware of this movement's existence, and seek out more information. It will be hard for many men, men who have not been completely feminized, to read the literature and not be persuaded.

Also exciting is the growing idea that men aren't playing computer games, delaying marriage, and opting out of college, career-oriented lives, and seeking a lifestyle of seduction (Pickup Artists, or PUAs) because they are immature and mature slower than women, or because men are simply boorish dumb neanderthals... but because men are simply frustrated and angry at a society that leaves them alienated and exploited.

This is what upsets feminists so much about the MRA and the Ghost Nation. Because if they can't blame men for the way men are, then the only other entity to place blame upon is simply the prevalent mainstream male-bashing culture and the slutty, manipulative, picky, entitled, arrogant and gold-digging Western women. Both spawns of the feminist movement.

Really, the only entity to place blame upon: is them.

I'm sure more articles and literature will pop up over time. I'm sure that more newspapers will write stories about this. I'm sure more men, more father's who have had their children stolen, will protest in front of city hall's and the courts. I'm sure more awareness will be raised, and the movement will grow until it reaches critical mass. At that point in time, critical eyes will be on feminists and Western women.

The movement can be dismissed as misogynist, as immature, as being "scared of strong women", or as a display of male chauvinism, or whatever other shaming language feminists try to use. The fact is, I have met an increasingly large number of women in my day to day life who are sympathetic to the movement. I have met an inordinately large number of men who are sympathetic. Their numbers are growing.

It may take time for the movement to grow - a few more years, perhaps, or even a decade. This is because the Men's Rights Movement truly is a grass roots operation. While feminism operated from the top down - with privileged women such as Betty Friedan writing books that seeped down to the masses, the men's right movement works mostly in reverse; with disenfranchised dad's standing up to speak out. Every man who suffers the real oppression of having his child stolen in divorce, who suffers the extortion of child support payments, of living in a world where women are "liberated" and he's expected to fullfill the same traditional gender role of the Walking Wallet. Every man who suffers under the oppression of "women's reproductive rights" whilst men have virtually no reproductive rights. Every man who is tired of how women behave and act in highschool, college, the workplace, and the dating scene. All these men are sleeper cells for the MRA, and it only takes one hyperlink, one article, or the title of one book they notice at Barnes and Noble to activate them.

And as the movement grows, the shaming language will become meaningless. Men, who suffer silently, will finally stand up and force society to start asking the deep, hard questions.

While the article posits that "the reason for all this anger is that the dating and mating scene is in chaos. SYMs of the postfeminist era are moving around in a Babel of miscues, cross-purposes, and half-conscious, contradictory female expectations that are alternately proudly egalitarian and coyly traditional.", this is only part of the reason. Lack of father's rights, lack of men's reproductive rights, a prevalent male-bashing culture, a culture that demonizes and shames men, a culture that is becoming more and more anti-boy, however overt or subtle, are the factors that play into the scenario.

Only time will tell. But maybe soon men will finally become liberated and empowered.