Are MRAs always angry?

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Here is the thing, most of the issues that MRA's are angry about are caused by other men. Women generally haven't got a hand to play in it, because they still lack the economic and political capital to do so.

* Gender depictions and gender role stereotypes? Enforced by alpha-male culture.

* negative portrayal of men in the media? The media is owned and controlled for the most part, by men. What we're talking about here is the consequences of profit orientated decisions. Its not someone plotting to ruin the weekends of disenfranchised men.


Now if we look at feminist grievances, such as the stagnancy of women's wages or women's lack of political efficacy then we do see a correlation between that and the much larger stake that men have in business and politics.

If you were sincere about that, you'd realize that it goes both ways: Women in the US worry themselves sick about appearance issues that 99% of men don't even notice. The nastiest figure-bashing is in hollywood gossip magazines that are published by women and staffed by women.



I've replied to this elsewhere. The most powerful person in my state is the speaker of the state house. A rep. from the district next to mine held that post for several years, and I knew her. The mayor of my city (population of half-a-million) is a woman. She was my councilwoman for 8 years. The police chief is a woman. So was the fire chief until just a little bit ago.

Woman can and do succeed when they want to. Women who run for office in my state win at least as often as men.

Oh, it absolutely can - but:

It usually blows over quickly, so by the time you get in for an appointment, it's over. The most that a doc will do for it is tell you to take some NSAIDs and rest it.

I sometimes get sore rector spinae muscles from riding bent-over road bikes, so I have a sense of what that feels like. Usually people with sore lower back muscles will have a stiff, stable posture because it hurts to move or tense them. It helps to try to walk in a way that doesn't require a lot of muscular balance correction, so they'll take slightly smaller steps, narrow their stance and maybe lower their posture.

(You also see that kind of thing in laborers because they're sore almost all the time.)

Are you suggesting that, in the US at least, female-heavy industries have been 'protected' from the ravages of the market, and male-heavy ones have been left to crumble? If so, could you flesh out how this is, please? Are you saying this is purposeful - as in the farming example 0_equals_true offered - or just that women heavy industries have fared better of late than some male heavy ones? Because if the latter - that's capitalism.

http://www.ilo.org/washington/areas/gen ... /index.htm



Obviously, manufacturing is a lot easier to cheaply do overseas then import than nursing or teaching. That doesn't strike me as protectionism. What's more, the counterpart is to bring in cheaper immigrant labour. As Thomas81 observed, the culprit time after time in MRA complaints is capitalism and the profit motive.

You really do seem hung up on the men vs women line - if something bad befalls a man, it must be because of, or at least benefit, a woman - and particularly on a personal, individual level.

Last edited by Hopper on 14 Apr 2014, 4:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

*eats his popcorn as the polar opposites argue it out*

This is one of the more dimutive problems. The main ones as i've already mentioned, are their lack of economic and political efficacy, because of underrepresentation of the respective fields.

Stressing out over lifestyle magazines while a valid issue, is something more of a first world problem.

Either way it is hardly something that is constrained to women. Alpha men also sell analogous material to beta men, in the attempt to sell an unrealistic or unobtainable existance of mansions, fast cars, a weightlifters physique and airbrushed barbie doll girlfriends. Thats also what i meant by men being the ones to maintain and propogate binary gender roles. If a man wants to wear dresses and collect my little pony, a woman will never be the one to stand in his way.

You are very interested in labour protectionism clearly.



This is a stupid argument, you resent something that is not the fault of women. This is beyond most people's control, especially if they are not innovators.

As you know that manufacturing in general, unless specialized, is in decline in both the US an UK.

Manufacturing has always had women, e.g. factory/assembly workers in some cases, it was full of women. I worked for 1st tier supplier in the car industry, making components for all the major brands (Volvo, Ford, Nissan, etc), quick look on the assembly line the full of women. Even the injection molding machines had some women manning them. Btw in the 1970s there was even more women working on the line, there is more men now.

Nowadays it is employing more women in the technical and management side, especially stuff like quality control and continuous improvement.

I return to my point of you thinking everything you don't like being related to women.

Not as hung up as you are on every female hardship being caused by men. I gave examples:

1: "Girls may have been married off at the age of 7 (as a feminist poster on another thread claimed), but boys were apprenticed off at that age as well. They became the property of cobblers, tailors or blacksmiths." That was bad for both genders, not just girls. It was caused by an excess of kids and a shortage of food, not misogyny.

2: Lots of women didn't support feminism when it was new. They treated my mother very badly.

3: Plenty of "pretty girls" are nasty to tomboys. By the time a hardworking girl is old enough to be discriminated against by colleges and employers, she's already had years of barriers put in front of her by other girls. You blame it all on the patriarchy when it was other girls who gained competitively against her by doing it.

4: The childcare system among housewives was reciprocity-based. That's hardly friendly to mothers with full-time jobs outside of the home.

5: "Women in the US worry themselves sick about appearance issues that 99% of men don't even notice. The nastiest figure-bashing is in hollywood gossip magazines that are published by women and staffed by women." They're also read almost exclusively by women.



In that sense it is, but I've known gullible guys who let girls shame them with horror stories about "impossible" appearance standards. It's fair to point out that the worst of those aren't the handiwork of men.



Agreed.



You only brought up a single, assembly-centered industry. I worked with Bosch, Seagate, Nikon, Zeiss, Applied Materials, Okamoto, Mitsui, GE, 3M, Lockheed and others, and the people that I worked with were mostly men. You prove our point. Your sense of agriculture is way off. The only dumb thing here is that you ask me to prove things to your satisfaction when you haven't held feminist arguments to the same standard.

I've given you and Hopper plenty of chances to show how the feminist arguments are really correct. Here's just one, from my first post to this thread: "If women believe that they were forced into domestic roles by men acting capriciously, then they need to show how gender integration could have been achieved in the 1800s or earlier." I got no takers when I posted that. Half of the feminist case is unsupported if they can't carry that one. You want me to prove stuff? Eat your own soup.



I don't think that men are stopping women, either. If a woman wants to do her own thing, she can. She doesn't even lose many opportunities. A lesbian friend of mine had a crew-cut, never wore makeup, didn't try to make her skin look artificially youthful, did absolutely no figure-accentuation, didn't color-coordinate her clothes or worry about how high or low her jeans rode or whether the pant legs were hemmed a half-inch too long. She had at least three successful, thoughtful, fit guys romantically interested in her until they found out that she wouldn't be interested. And after that they were happy to be her friend.



It would actually be easier to import nurses and teachers. India is full of people more qualified to teach English than most Americans. Even for those who've emigrated, teaching certifications in the US are deliberately onerous. We also have full-fledged doctors from overseas already living here who aren't allowed to practice unless they re-do their internships. By contrast, an Indian engineer who moves here can compete for jobs from the day his plane lands.

It was extremely hard to move manufacturing overseas in the first place. The US didn't have a national highway system until the 1950s, and yet by the '70s and 80s we were building road systems in faraway parts of the world simply so that we could access cheap labor there. That meant building power plants and electrical grids, and even things as basic as a reliable water supply. Then we had to ship the machines there, and even a small lathe weighs 6,000 pounds.

so to the OP, in summation: yes.

thank you to nobodyknows for belabouring the point for us all.

You're welcome

Maybe not, but I must admit that you're a master or all-caps and multiple exclamation points.

Your welcome! I got bored with the feminist gig so I decided to pick on the MRAs now I am equal opportunity! My mishief combined with curiosity and hyperactivity get to me!

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F7LTzEmnyms[/youtube]MRA in a nutshell theyre just mad because women refuse to manufacture sandwitches for them

In the Air Force, I attended an employment workshop.

The woman who was running it warned us ladies that female interviewers were the absolute worst when it cam to judging other women on appearance, or whether our shoes matched our purses.

Like I said elsewhere, I'm pretty ugly as far as female pulchritude goes, but I've always managed to make a living for myself.

Prove what point? Your frustration towards, declining industry has nothing to do with women regardless of the gender mix, because women are not responsible for the labour drain abroad. You have misplaced resentment.

Which feminist group are you asking me to critique? I make no bones about criticizing any group I don't agree with. I don't have any allegiances.

Also I have not heard any feminist arguments, or evidence of conspiracy from women's groups to do with industry moving abroad, it is something much more to do with the competitiveness of the labour markets in those countries, the cost of labour, and lower standard of living.

I was actually asking you for better examples.



It sounds a bit like a strawman. Which arguments? The basic principle of fairness?

On the other hand: Things like land ownership, voting, issues of domestic/sexual violence, whether or not they could have tackled earlier, doesn't mean they shouldn't have been. There is no doubt we are better off for progress.

If you are talking about feminists who only castigate men in general for problems, well I would suggest this not an effective strategy for change. They have to win over men, and many do effectively.

Btw I actually degree with the notion, that female subjugation was purely at the hands of men, it was also enforced by women too. It was just that in order to achieve change it was men that were the gatekeepers. Nowadays things a bit more complex, it really depends what the issue is.

If some feminist group gave me pretty much the equivalent of your argument, I wouldn't really give them much credence, it doesn't deserve it.

The biggest problem I'm having with your view is rather then focusing a clear men issues, I get the impression you relate any general socioeconomic problems to women or feminism.

I have a pretty low opinion of anyone man or women who only see themselves as victims, and do little to change their situation.

........and that's Men's Rights "Activism" in a nutshell. The feminist movement has made gains through actual work and organizations that give support to their issues.

If the majority of men's rights "activism" was put towards those issues that MRAs claim they care about (male circumcision, custody laws, prison rape, the draft, etc) rather than towards harrassing feminists and denouncing the gains of women, they might actually see support outside of Reddit. Most of the men's groups making any progress on these issues are the one's who work alongside human's rights organizations (including feminist ones) and don't associate with the reactionary rhetoric of the MRA movement.

As it stands now, their arguments and tactics are reprehensible to most people

and/or long-winded and nigh incomprehnsible (like the one's in this thread.)

How am I playing a victim card?

When women complained that men didn't help out enough around the house, I stepped up to the plate and learned how to cook and bake. My dad is the one who taught me how to cook, since my working mom couldn't make matzo ball soup from a box to save her life. He has a tougher job than she does, too.

The guy who gave me my starter cookie recipe is an unkempt gun-totting redneck machinist. How does that fit your feminist stereotypes?

I also learned how to sew. I learned how to take care of a three year old. I learned how to change his diapers. That's in addition to all of the male skills that I still had to learn, which very few girls tackle.

If you have to stoop that low, it just shows how weak your position is.