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Friends? We Don’t Need No Stinking Friends
on Wednesday 20 February 2008
by WolfmanMac

WolfmanMac submitted the following article with the caveat, I don't know if you will want to use this, insofar as you are part of the topic. But if you can use it, please do. Thank you Wolfman. Your sanity and (un)common decency are particularly appreciated within my life at this moment.

***

I did not volunteer for the gender war. I was drafted. Following my induction, I found myself following and (when my circumstances permitted) actively supporting the Men’s Rights Movement. I came to the movement first through a pretty radical website, but found a forum for my writing and the articulation of my political ideas through Wendy McElroy. I greatly admired her work before that and was greatly complimented when she found my work fit for inclusion in her website. Prior to any association with her, I had come to the conclusion that men in general, and those victimized by gender feminism in particular, never had a better friend.

So, when someone like Wendy McElroy writes something like this [my Feb. 16th blog post "Moving out of Striking Range"], I have to clearly delineate my position vis-a-vis any man who would approach this woman with less than heartfelt admiration and gratitude, much less be so low, so cowardly, so offensive to the very idea of everything it means to be a man – as to attack her with threats of violence.

Men’s Rights Activists, for all of our differences, can (in large part) unite behind one simple and easy to grasp idea - Feminists are the enemy. Some go further and say that all women in contemporary society have benefited from the excesses of feminism, whether they are aware of their having benefited or not. While men were imprisoned in droves in response to rape and domestic violence hysteria, while men’s lives and livelihoods were ruined by ridiculous charges of sexual harassment, punitive alimony and child support enforcement, and all the other arrogant inequities of a family court system that seems to see them as sperm-doning wallets who had their fun and now they are going to pay, pay, pay - women did not rise in outrage and what was happening to their sons, brothers, fathers and potential life partners. If women are now beginning to feel a backlash in society in the form of marriage strikes, prenuptial agreements, an unprecedented aversion to chivalry on principle, and increased indifference on the part of men to the challenges they face in society, call the National Organization for Women. This was all their idea.

Okay, fair enough. But for far too long, far too many men have then taken the first premise – feminists are the enemy – inserted the legitimate justifications for that premise, and preached a gospel that women are the enemy. Screw ‘em all – take the same approach to guilt or innocence the feminists have, and if a few innocent women get caught in the switches of social change, well, they had it comin’ – they should have done something when they were in control.

Catherine MacKinnon couldn’t have said it better herself.

But what about the women who have tried for years to do something? What about women like Kate O’Beirne, Christina Hoff-Sommers, Charlotte Hayes, Carrie Lukas, Cathy Young, Erin Pizzey, Esther Vilar, or Wendy McElroy? This is not an inclusive list, mind you, but these are names that come off the top of my head when asked to name women who have stood damn tall in facing down institutional misandry. They did so when an awful lot of so-called men- in military leadership, in government, in academia, in the judiciary - were crawling on their bellies, willing to sell out every principle they had sworn to uphold to convince the feminists “they get it.” For their trouble, these women have lived with death threats, threats of rape, censure, loss of income – the whole litany of consequences the entrenched feminist culture has at their disposal to punish heretics. Are they the enemy?

Yes they are, say these so-called Men’s Rights Activists, and here’s why – “because now that men are beginning to wake up and mount an organized response to gender feminism, they are jumping over to the winning side to save their own skins. Just like women, they want it both ways – they can see the tide is turning.”

That position demonstrates a level of stupidity worthy of an Ivy League Professor.

To begin with, the simple fact is that most women (and men for that matter) have no idea how bad it has gotten out there. In keeping with the finest traditions of human nature, most women (and men) don’t believe it even when they are told just how bad it is – only when it bites them do they believe the alligator is a threat. Women as a whole cannot be held accountable for not understanding the size and scope of the problem when most men don’t know. Feminism put on a warm cuddly face that a lot of people bought into, and feminists knew how to work that media. While I would be sympathetic to a position that cut no slack for a woman (or man) who, once informed, continued to champion or tolerate the goals of groups like NOW, the fact remains that we come to our present state largely because feminists were at war when most people didn’t even know there was a war on – and they couldn’t have done that without the craven cooperation of an awful lot of men. I hear MRA’s wondering about the stances the current sorry crop of contestants for welfare statist- in -chief are taking on men’s rights. Where in the world were these “leaders” when our schools, military, courts and police agencies were becoming infested with the philosophies (if not the persons) of people like Dworkin, MacKinnon, French and Clinton? I’m supposed to trust some pol that starts putting forth solutions to problems he played no small part in creating because he is a man, but hate and distrust people like the women I mentioned above? When they were championing my cause (at great personal cost) years before I knew it was my cause?

People have to be convinced by calm, measured logic and immutable fact. Spittle flecked anger convinces them the feminists were right all along. Or at least, convinces them it’s better to stay with the devil they know.

As for that “now they want to switch to the winning side” nonsense, here is a reality check, fellas. We are not winning. The tide is not turning. The most optimistic assessment of our position confirms that at best, the tide may be showing signs of slowing. It is years from stopping and at least a generation from beginning to turn. Between then and now, we have (for the first time) a credible female presidential candidate. She is also an uber-feminist and unabashed socialist who bears men little affection, and whose career reads like a demon’s resume’ of every tactic applauded by the NOW crowd – Machiavellian manipulation and lies, the strong woman when it suits her, but shrivel up and play the victim when those nasty old men challenge her. Here’s the news, guys – she’s getting away with it. She might win the whole thing. Were it not for the fact Obama is a minority, and was also born with a ticket to the entitlement lotto, there would be no question as to the Democratic candidate for president – I don’t care how much he sounds like Kennedy.

But Wolfman, you say – maybe a Republican will win. That’s a pretty flimsy position. In my life I’ve seen five Republican presidents. I’ve also seen NOW, VAWA, Womyns Studies, Tailhook, child support enforcement, IMBRA, “hostile work environment,” and Andrea Dworkin. That’s just a few. Remember those people I was talking about earlier crawling on their bellies to appease feminists? Most of them were Republicans. That’s why they had to crawl in the first place – the Democrats were pre-neutered, so they had nothing to prove.

It is wishful thinking at best, and truly delusional thinking at worst, to suggest we are winning – much less that our side is the desirable one to be on if one wishes to feather their nests by attaching themselves to a cause.

The answer lies first in correct diagnosis of the problem and the problem is the first premise- “feminists are the enemy.” That is only half true. The enemy is identity politics, or to put it another way, Cultural Marxism. When society is divided up into groups identified by race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socio –economic status, government becomes a great big pork barrel in which our “leaders” are competing for the job of doling out the goodies. The goodies come in many forms, but they all start the same way- as other people’s money and other people’s rights. Each group clamors for more and more, claiming this or that injustice at the hands of this or that other group, claiming they need more money from or more government force used against their “oppressors” in order to capture the chimera of “social justice.” This is, of course, impossible – so every group holds onto power as long as they can until the worm of public opinion begins to turn. Then another group gets its turn as the “victim group du jour,” and their justifications for privileged status are the benefits the other groups received when it was their turn on top. Those on the bottom can justify direct violence upon members of the groups presently “in” by asserting their downtrodden status. On and on it goes, the only winners being those in power, handing out the goodies, and satisfying the mob’s thirst for vengeance in the form of government force to deny rights to others. The public participates in this not only willingly, but enthusiastically, unable to set aside their own grievances and petty hatreds long enough to realize that they have reduced freedom, justice and human dignity to a zero sum game – and only those in political and economic power really get any.

That rot is present in the Men’s Rights Movement, and it is well past time
decent men in this movement speak out and take an uncompromising stand against it – against men who say they want justice, when what they want is revenge. Who say they want equality, when what they really want is power. Who are filled with rage at all the hurts and disappointments of their pathetic little lives and call it “passion for a cause.” It is anything but. What it is, is a pretty good working definition of “gender feminist.”

 
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