I’ve been lurking around the on-line gender world for about a year now. I’ve spent a good amount of time reading feminist, masculinist and MRA blogs, from all the different extremes; between radical feminists to conservative traditionalists. I’ve never really thought about gender politics or issues of equality between the sexes much in my life before, but the last twelve months has been a real eye opener. I certainly didn’t ever fathom the thought that there existed this world with such varied and complex jargon, pyrrhic emotional flair ups and very unapologetic rhetoric from all sides. It was a world that I thought only existed in academia, a world in which I did not ever think had such a marked impact on the greater public discourse.

I lost a close friend of mine to a very tragic suicide early last year. It was an event that sparked a whole series of transformations in my own life, especially when I learned how many men in the US and Canada commit suicide each year. In a futile effort to find out what was being done on the national level (I lived in Canada for the first part of my life) to address this disturbing problem, I discovered all this. When I read about the Southern Poverty Law Center debacle last month, I felt like it was my time to speak up.

Personally I consider myself to be a fairly progressive political person, and became perplexed that a lot of the on-line feminist world that I had been reading, had been rather myopic in its focus. As much as I’ve read feminists blasting, or in many cases, making fun of, MRAs as being a group of vitriol anti-feminist women haters, I often found the opposite was true. Men’s voices, if not spoken in the framework of the broad waters of feminist theory, were teased and taunted, all while pretending to be a movement which was sold as good for both sexes. This line of thought seemed to be quite against a politics of progressive people, a discovery to which I was frankly shocked.

Just to be clear, I do not consider myself an MRA, a masculinist nor a feminist. But from what I’ve read from many men’s rights sites, once you learn which ones aren’t really about men’s rights and which ones to avoid, most expressed a lot of genuine concerns, which on many levels were being mocked by the on-line and off-line feminist world. A lot of these critiques revolved around the fact that some MRAs are quite anti-feminist theory. But more importantly, it seemed that MRAs have a lot of item specific issues they were constantly discussing, which seemed to threaten the national feminist dialogue.

Feminism of the 1970’s did get the issue of gender roles right in my opinion, as well as the problems that occurred for individual people inside a society that re-enforced these gender roles. However, the gender roles they focused on obviously gravitated towards women’s issues. Not only were issues faced by men ignored, feminism appeared to develop into a “social theory” that demonized men from the start. Once the theory of “patriarchy” and “rape culture” took root in mainstream feminist discussions, the very real problems of men and boys got forgotten. Of course, this has been the national dialogue for both countries for quite some time; one in which issues of sex and gender have been cornered by feminists.

Once I started to read beyond the anti-feminist discussion, the amount of problems men and boys face, such as the issue of suicide which is of great importance to me, were seemingly endless. There are very dire problems which now seem to be bubbling to the surface of the national conscience in both the US and Canada. Feminists have done their best to belittle, to strawman and to fight the rise of a booming men’s rights movement. I have seen several feminist blogs take a “male” slant on their discussions, attempting to persuade readers that feminism helps men too. However, the game remains the same, it’s only the players that have changed.

If feminists really think they can help fix many of the big problems that men and boys face in society today, they need to let go of these old long outdated social theories, and actually attempt to interact with MRAs and others out there that really are fighting for the betterment of men, in a way that doesn’t involve petty arguments or insults. They wonder why MRAs are so anti-feminist, (not anti-women to be clear, as far as everything I have seen – save a few fringe voices) maybe they themselves should examine why their movement of feminism is pushing back so hard against the reality of the situation for the other side of the gender equation.

Feminism started a world-wide discussion of gender roles in society, but it has dropped the ball of progress and gotten lost on its way to a society which values men and women equality. MRAs seemed to be picking up this charge by saying things that a lot of folks just don’t want to hear. Most MRAs are chanting louder and louder, men are humans too!! And despite all the petty antics like that of the Southern Poverty Law Center, these voices are no longer being ignored. I hear a lot of MRAs say they need to go around feminists, and not work with them. While I personally like to see an egalitarian movement become the net result of all this, I think after weighing all the facts, MRAs have a good point, and they have the momentum.

Equality is not a one way street, and I think many MRAs see that; but do any feminists?