Hugo Schwyzer: How MRA get Feminism Wrong

**Tyrael** · 9th-March-2011

How Men’s Rights Activists Get Feminism Wrong
March 8, 2011 By Hugo Schwyzer 170 Comments

When I was getting clean and sober in a Twelve Step program many years ago, there was one phrase from the literature that always resonated with me. We addicts have been, the book said, the “architects of our own adversity.” Yes, I thought the first time I read that. It’s time to stop blaming others for my own pain. It’s time to take responsibility.

That same phrase comes to mind when I think about Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs). I’ve been crossing verbal swords with the MRAs for many years, particularly since 2004 when I began to develop a public presence as a male feminist writer and professor. I learned quickly that not all MRAs were the same; some offered thoughtful criticism while others offered only nasty invective. (Look up “Hugo Schwyzer Mangina” if you need evidence of the latter.)

As a professor who teaches courses on Men and Masculinity, as well as a mentor to many young men (and as a man myself, of course), I’m intensely interested in the ways in which men position themselves as victims. I’ve spent years reading the literature and talking points of MRAs and “fathers’ rights” groups. I’ve spent a lot of time in conversation with men who are going through divorce, something I’ve been through more than once. My male students range in age from 17 to 70, from bright high school students taking their first college courses to retired professionals curious about gender studies. I meet with so many of them—jocks, geeks, gamers, drifters, ambitious future politicians and wary-eyed Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
From so many of these men—online and in real life—I hear the same thing: the narrative of helplessness.
♦◊♦
The older, angrier MRAs describe a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men, they claim, are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men. It all provides a satisfying sense of being “under attack,” which is why many—not all—men’s rights activists use, absurdly enough, the language of oppression and resistance to describe their movement.

These men feel victimized, they feel exploited, they feel ignored, they feel impotent. And those feelings are powerful. I don’t think these boys and men who turn to the men’s rights movement are lying about their pain. The problem is that they’ve completely misunderstood two things.

The cause of men’s very real unhappiness isn’t a biased family court system, or feminist college professors, or the perceived injustices of Title IX athletic funding. The source of men’s anguish and uncertainty is the straitjacket of traditional American manhood. Men are suffering because their emotional, psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential is stunted by their own efforts to live up to an impossible masculine ideal.

Whether they got it from their fathers or their older brothers, whether they learned it from peers or pastors, coaches or drill instructors, almost all American boys grow up learning the “guy rules.” As Deborah David and Robert Brannon first showed in their landmark 1976 book on men, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority, the rules are crushingly simple: Big boys don’t cry. No sissy stuff. Be a “sturdy oak.” “Be a big wheel.” “Give ’em hell.”

Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”

Link.

Comment by Jacobtk:

It is unfortunate that Hugo chose to use a strawMRA, because the actual complaints raised by those in the men’s movement are valid. Hugo glossed over a basic fact about human interactions: people tend not to do things that do not get them the results they want. It is rather easy to blame men for their own problems (which is why Hugo did it). However, it is more difficult to look at the situation from an objective perspective.

Human interactions do not occur in a vacuum. Men who wish to date to have to engage in certain behaviors in order to attract a mate. Some of those behaviors that may be defined by the broader society, yet some are defined by the potential mate. The notion that women do not choose one type of man over other types of men simply does not hold water. We can all see that certain types of men get more attention from women than other men, just as we can see that certain types of women get more attention from men than other women. There is plenty of research showing that family courts favor mothers over fathers. There is plenty of research showing that athletic programs for males have been cut in order to create programs for females.

Blaming “traditional manhood” simply makes for an easy scapegoat in order to avoid addressing how women’s attitudes and feminism negatively effects males. This does not mean that every bad thing that happens to males is because of feminism or women. However, it does mean that women and feminism are not always the solution and in some instances are the cause of the problem.

Many of the issues that MRAs bring up revolve around males being valued. If fathers were valued, it is unlikely that women would receive sole custody the overwhelming majority of the time. If boys were valued, it is unlikely that the education system would drug boys or ignore their interests. If men were valued as people rather than as providers, it is unlikely that so many men would have to “prove” themselves in order to attract a mate. Feminism does not seem to provide the solution to that problem because feminism does not value men, either as men or as people. Rather, feminism regards males as the “enemy” who needs to be reformed. The average does not need to be reformed. He just needs to be listened to. However, it is hard to listen to someone when you are busy putting them down for expressing their pain.

"May I ask then, why do you think men DON’T insist on equality (and in fact a great many of them seem quite in favor of the protective laws/norms for women)? Why is it, in other words, that most men don’t seem to care about the issues pushed by the MRM?"

It is not that men do not care about the issue the men’s movement discusses. It is more that men are socialized to internalize their pain and not complain, something that feminists reinforce every time they call men who talk about their problems “whiners.” Men are also taught that they can and ought to solve all their problems on their own (again, a notion feminists reinforce whenever men ask for help). These two social expectations result in men thinking bad things will not happen to them and keeping silent should anything bad actually happen. When men do speak out and find support, one often sees many more men come forward. What it takes is another man, preferably one respected by men, to take the first step. That cannot happen if every time a man steps up forty feminists jump up and start in on him.

"Likewise, and in line with Hugo’s point, why do you think so many men engage in gender-policing with each other?"

The gender-policing is not as severe as Hugo implies. Some of what he considers policing is actually just friends mocking each other. Plenty of men own cats, order sweet drinks, and carry bags without anyone stopping them. Likewise, plenty of women do not engage in a host of behaviors for fear of how their female friends will respond. It really depends on what the person does. I have been made fun of numerous times for saying that I like Project Runway, but none of my friends has ever tried to stop me from watching it. It is also worth noting that the presence of women plays a major role in how males react to each other.

**dad_savage** · 9th-March-2011

The older, angrier MRAs describe a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men, they claim, are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men. It all provides a satisfying sense of being “under attack,” which is why many—not all—men’s rights activists use, absurdly enough, the language of oppression and resistance to describe their movement.

Thank you for this wonderful publicity Hugo, your snide tone doesn't make truth into fiction. People will read this and wake up, oh I'm not a fantasist, I know only the tiniest percentage will because it takes a degree of intelligence to make the transition, but you know what we've got on our side? Once a man or woman wakes up, they're awake for the rest of their life. To to borrow a phrase -

'Truth crushed to earth will rise again,'

On the other hand every day people throw millitant liberalism, PC clap-trap and feminism back into the shit-pile where they found them. To borrow another phrase -

'The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice,'

The cleverest bullshit in the world is still only bullshit, and your bullshit isn't even all that clever.

**chevalier** · 9th-March-2011

He managed to use shaming language quite well without making it sound like shaming language.

But the last paragraph gave it all away.

Basically he is admonishing men to be more like women rather than to strive to be men.

But the part that gets me the most is his claim that men are the source of our own problems not misandry, not the biased courts and I am certain he gave no thought at all to abusive women yet I doubt he will ever say that women ever bring about their own problems.

So this piece of trash article is more of the typical.

Men have nothing to be mad at except themselves and women are right to be mad at men.

Men are the source of every problem known to human kind it would seem.

Apparently we men are not "evolved" enough to understand that.

Unless of course you are a pansy ass Liberal mangina in that case you are good to go then.

**nickb275** · 9th-March-2011

You know, maybe I am naive, but I thought the whole feminist movement derived from a long winded argument that all their problems derived from men. To me this is clear and utter bullshit and he gets no sympathy from me with an opening to an article about how he awoke to all this after going through a 12 step program. The simple fact that women blame men for almost everything is due to the fact that we HAVE been responsible for everything. Men shape the foundations of almost every single element of today's society. What he is saying about how we need to take responsibility for our own pains is nonsense, this is exactly what we are doing, we are acknowledging the source of the pain, addressing it, taking action upon it. We have been trying for that 5 decades to step up and help the women's cause and we got shafted trying to do it. Society as a whole, wanted men to be more active in their kids lives. When we tried just that, these sames kids were taken away from many men. This is not victimization, this is a fact of modern day life in father hood. We must stop the hemorrhaging, and to do that, one must find the source of the bleeding.

**Douglas** · 9th-March-2011

Quote from nickb275

The simple fact that women blame men for almost everything is due to the fact that we HAVE been responsible for everything. Men shape the foundations of almost every single element of today's society. What he is saying about how we need to take responsibility for our own pains is nonsense, this is exactly what we are doing, we are acknowledging the source of the pain, addressing it, taking action upon it. We have been trying for that 5 decades to step up and help the women's cause and we got shafted trying to do it. Society as a whole, wanted men to be more active in their kids lives. When we tried just that, these sames kids were taken away from many men. This is not victimization, this is a fact of modern day life in father hood. We must stop the hemorrhaging, and to do that, one must find the source of the bleeding.

Brilliant. Absolutely spot on. Giving you rep points wasn't good enough, I have to say this is a wonderful précis of where we're at.

**sparkwhite** · 10th-March-2011

a world in which women (and their male “collaborators”) have usurped traditional male privileges for themselves. Men, they claim, are at a disadvantage in the courts, in the business world, in academia. The MRAs see public space in the Western world as increasingly feminized, and they fancy “real men” (in whose ranks they invariably include themselves) to be under attack from a dark coalition of feminist activists, cowardly politicians cravenly surrendering to the cultural left, and a media that never misses an opportunity to demean and belittle traditional men.

Which is all true. Mainstream media is all about the glorifying of the females—not the males. And “Men’s Studies” scholars, who basically accept all the core tenets of feminism, despite writing loftily about a world devoid of testosterone, are men themselves (the only ones I’d consider fit to study the field anyway) and commonly display the very same masculine traits in themselves that they critique in their work, as Lionel Tiger noted once.

Whether they got it from their fathers or their older brothers, whether they learned it from peers or pastors, coaches or drill instructors, almost all American boys grow up learning the “guy rules.” As Deborah David and Robert Brannon first showed in their landmark 1976 book on men, The Forty-Nine Percent Majority, the rules are crushingly simple: Big boys don’t cry. No sissy stuff. Be a “sturdy oak.” “Be a big wheel.” “Give ’em hell.” ...Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”

That served society well back when war was common, before there were nuclear bombs to keep other countries away and the nation had to rely on the fierceness of its men. How many hundreds of thousands of years have humans existed? Because that’s how many hundreds of thousands of years men acted as they do, and were required to do so for the survival of the human species.

**zetamale** · 10th-March-2011

Yes, MRAs got feminism wrong

especially when feminism posts things like this

The Solution to MRA Problems? More Feminism

which you know, completely misrepresent the men's rights movements, the solutions (most) people advocate for, and the reasoning behind the argument

oh and it opens with shaming tactics

But yes, it is us who have feminism wrong

**Zuberi** · 10th-March-2011

Quote from zetamale

Yes, MRAs got feminism wrong

especially when feminism posts things like this

The Solution to MRA Problems? More Feminism

which you know, completely misrepresent the men's rights movements, the solutions (most) people advocate for, and the reasoning behind the argument

oh and it opens with shaming tactics

But yes, it is us who have feminism wrong

The shamming language is proof that the flaming ass hat is clearly ignoring reality and rejecting facts in favor of his agenda.
He is living proof that the old proverb reigns true.
"He who is born a fool is never cured."

**Marx** · 10th-March-2011

Being a man, in other words, is defined by divesting oneself of anything remotely associated with femininity (like kindness, sensitivity, intuition, empathy). When heterosexual masculinity is defined by violent obtuseness, these “guy rules” rob boys of their chance to develop emotional skills to thrive in relationships with others. This frantic effort to shut down a whole aspect of one’s potential isn’t caused by testosterone or Y chromosomes. It’s caused by the longing to live by the “man code.”

Whoa... So men distance themselves from 'kindnes' and suchlike? Wow... I wasn't aware of this 'fact' at all. So all you men, my feminist sisturs were right all along - you am evul menz! And just which men are defining heterosexuality as violence?

What a sexist man this Hugo fellow is... It must really suck to believe things like 'kindness' are feminine traits while 'violence' are male traits. I guess he hasn't looked the child abuser relationship statistics before, showing the vast majority of child abuse occurs "in kindness, no doubt" at the hands of mothers while the safest person a child can be with is their father.

**khankrumthebulgar** · 25th-March-2011

Talking to Hugo Schwyzer about Feminism and the Men's Movement. Is like taking your pet to a Taxidermist for treatment. There is an agenda and it is not in your interest. Hugo is a Professor of Women's Studies. He is also a nutcase. Who has admitted to severe mental health issues.