This whole thread on the other hand is about how feminism & MRA do not exist as opposites on a spectrum. Feminism, as you say, is an exceedingly common position. MRA on the other hand is a new, reactionary & uncommon position. But its proponents routinely try to play this rhetorical trick.
My point was mainly about your incorrect statement that feminist was to feminism what capitalist is to capitalism. They are not the same thing and thus any extrapolation about negative connotations is unlikely to be correct.
As Thomas says, even anti-feminists usually categorize their antagonism with terms line "third wave".
> My point was mainly about your incorrect statement that feminist was to feminism what capitalist is to capitalism. They are not the same thing and thus any extrapolation about negative connotations is unlikely to be correct.
Ahh, apparently the post was less clear than anticipated. Here's a quote from it that evokes what I was trying to say with the link:
"I feel like every single term in social justice terminology has a totally unobjectionable and obviously important meaning – and then is actually used a completely different way."
Which is to say that I disagree with your definition of feminism in this context.
According to http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/16/feminism-poll_n_309... 80% of people should identify as feminists by your definition, yet only 20% do. This means that at least 60% of the respondents to that survey disagree with your definition of feminism. I think that I (and the gentleman who's position in this conversation I took pity on) am using roughly the same definition of feminism as the 60% of the population from that HuffPo survey.
That definition is harder to put into words, but is something along the lines of "someone who primarily sees the world through the lens of gendered power struggles." Kind of like a Marxist, only for gender rather than class.
Using this definition, likening the reputation of Feminists to that of Capitalists is not a false equivalency (Capitalists here are people who primarily see the world through the lens of economic life).
> MRA on the other hand is a new, reactionary & uncommon position. But its proponents routinely try to play this rhetorical trick.
Agreed, I was not trying to imply it was particularly common. My main point was that, in my experience, the more hardcore ends of both groups share a lot of psychological problems and cognitive errors.
You're still pushing a false equivalence. There are to a first approximation no non-hardcore MRAs. Feminism, on the other hand, is entirely mainstream. It's like saying that the more hardcore ends of both Roman Catholics and Branch Davidians have a problem with violence.
> You're still pushing a false equivalence. There are to a first approximation no non-hardcore MRAs. Feminism, on the other hand, is entirely mainstream.
I think you're mistaking your experienced distribution for the true distribution. Like, I'm very willing to believe that of the MRAs you're aware of, they are all hardcore -- it's a demonized subculture, you'd have to be a zealot or have fuck-you money to come out supporting it.
If instead of defining MRAs as "people posting crazy things to (insert website here)" you simply call an MRA someone who's primary political activity is toward fixing issues MRAs discuss, you'll be able to find a large number non-hardcore MRAs with a couple of google searches. Heck, I think most people working professionally with prostate cancer would qualify. The guy in this thread who mentioned lurking on MRA forums for interesting ideas absolutely qualifies (or rather, he didn't sound hardcore to me on first read).
Similarly if you go looking for the equivalent of (insert MRA website here) for feminists, you will also succeed in that endeavor. Your comment re: hardcore Roman Catholics & Branch Davidians makes me think perhaps you haven't gone looking for these sorts of sites.
Which is to say, yet again, that I do not believe the equivalence is false. I'd even go so far as to say that I expect the rates of hardcore ideologues in each group to roughly correlate with the rates of paranoid delusion in men and women respectively.
If you are saying that there is a group of men (and some women) who argue reasonably that the family court system is biased towards mothers and deeply unfair to fathers, then, while I will disagree with those arguments or at least any extrapolation from those arguments towards broader gender inequity (you should see how unfair and, in fact, terrifying the domestic violence legal situation is for women), I do stipulate that those people are reasonable and should not be demonized.
But having concerns about family law does not make you an MRA. People with family court problems want to fix the family court system. MRAs are people who feel like women are locked in a zero-sum contest with men, and that women have obtained more than their fair share of concessions in that contest. That's a problematic view, not widely believed to be based in fact, and held only by a fringe.
It is not at all comparable to feminism, which is based on the clear historical truth that women have been disfavored both by custom and by law in truly outrageous ways: not being given the right to vote, having the state make coercive medical decisions for them, having no protection from spousal rape, being overtly and deliberately paid less for the same work, &c. We can argue about the state of play on these things today. We cannot argue about the historical context of feminism.
> I disagree with those arguments or at least any extrapolation from those arguments towards broader gender inequity
> you should see how unfair and, in fact, terrifying the domestic violence legal situation is for women
Seems bad, though I'm not familiar enough with the situation to say anything specific. I've only recently started looking at politics/ideologies after having managed more or less 10 years of living by an overly literal interpretation of http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ 's title :p
> But having concerns about family law does not make you an MRA.
As you say there are reasonable people doing things related to men's rights. If you choose not to include these people in what I'll now call the "MRA spectrum" (since you've just narrowly defined "MRA" here), that's fair -- I agree the parallel with feminism breaks. If we try to compare a narrowly scoped group of awful people against a much broader and diverse loose coalition of less awful people, it's an apples and oranges situation.
However, we can also create a narrowly scoped subgroup of feminists. I think MRAs might be using the term "3rd wave feminist" for this, but to be on the safe side I'll coin a new term for our use here: FRA (TERF may also work, but I'm playing it safe).
We now have two narrowly defined groups of awful people, sitting inside and more or less agreeing with a broader, more diverse coalitions of politically active less awful people. The broader groups dislike the smaller groups, though are less harsh on their own. Both smaller groups suffer from seeming psychological problems, have a strong ideological streak, and are rather awful to interact with online. This is to say that the relation between FRAs and feminists has a similar feeling to that of MRAs and "MRA spectrum individuals".
If the parallel now makes sense to you, I believe you may have been mistaking a recurring semantic disagreement (namely: people on forums not realizing you have an extremely specific definition of MRA), for a widespread cognitive error (namely: people thinking MRAs-by-your-definition and feminists are similar).
> We cannot argue about the historical context of feminism.
I think we're in broad agreement on the history of feminism. My discussion was about feminists as a group of individuals, rather than an intellectual lineage. (Similar to meaning "people who live in the us" when discussing Americans, rather than "the philosophical descendants of the US founding fathers").
This whole thread on the other hand is about how feminism & MRA do not exist as opposites on a spectrum. Feminism, as you say, is an exceedingly common position. MRA on the other hand is a new, reactionary & uncommon position. But its proponents routinely try to play this rhetorical trick.
My point was mainly about your incorrect statement that feminist was to feminism what capitalist is to capitalism. They are not the same thing and thus any extrapolation about negative connotations is unlikely to be correct.
As Thomas says, even anti-feminists usually categorize their antagonism with terms line "third wave".