Saving Men from the Men’s Rights Movement

Similar to first wave feminism, there are no doubt some half-truths there that proponents are camping out on. It’s easier to point out “disparities” but much harder to identify the root cause. My inclination is to say “quit your belly-aching” but I do think there is a strong bias against fathers in divorce. Even here however there are many factors unaddressed by the article (is the mom stay-at-home or in some other way better suited to parent the children, does the man work longer hours, do the older kids express a desire to stay with mom primarily, etc). The problem with these type of snapshot articles is that they usually fail to weight all the related information into their assessment. This one is no different.

but it’s still a good article!

Yeah my problem is that they are building arguments off of stats without looking into the reasons. The same type of arguments are made about racial disparity (something much easier to prove cause in IMO) and I disagree with it there too.

My brother in law went through an unwanted divorce a bit over a year ago, and I can see how he would be tempted by the siren song of MGTOW, PUA, and the like. In those circles—I’ve seen a bit of them online—one of the chief things I’ve noticed is that a major response to the feminization/feministization (is that a word?) of society is to approach life like a wolf—the argument is made (not totally without evidence) that it is the “alpha males” who really do well with women. If you’ve ever watched a woman or girl you care about fall in love with someone whose only redeeming feature seems to be sort of good looks combined with general brutality and malevolence, it makes a certain amount of sense.

If we put it in a Biblical mindset, though, I believe what we see is that this portion of MRAs (there is also a portion that simply wants things like family court to be equitable instead of biased towards the woman) are simply acting on the same thing that the hypothetical “girl in love with a lout” is doing; they are thinking that the way out of the problems of truncated masculinity is hypermasculinity. The girl who can’t find a decent guy in her college classes starts dating the guy in the motorcycle club; the guy abandoned by the wife of his youth joins the same club.