I'm not sure if this guy has even had a debate with an MRA. Admittedly I've only seen what's written here, but there's so many holes in his arguments:
Much of the misogyny of the men's rights movement is directed towards feminists. Just as racists in the Old South divided blacks into "good negroes" and "uppity troublemakers", so misogynists create a dichotomy of "good women" (submissive, eager to please, able to "take a joke", uncritical of bad male behavior) and "feminazis" (women who demand accountability from men and who ask to be taken seriously as human beings.)
Firstly, he's doing the very thing that he's accusing us of doing. To him there are 'good men' (submissive, eager to please, able to "take a joke", uncritical of bad female behaviour) and 'MRAs' (men who demand accountability from women and who ask to be taken seriously as human beings.)
To say one likes individual women, therefore, is no defense against the charge of misogyny. Plenty of racists like individual members of other ethnic groups. To be hostile to the movement that seeks to liberate women is enough, in my book, to merit the charge of misogyny.
Misogyny is also institutionalized in our society.
But he's just isolated us as a group. He likes good men but hates MRAs, so he's just as blinkered to what he's doing as he claims racists and bigots are.
Perhaps it is my Christian faith informing my feminism, but I am convinced that pornography is the representative art form of a woman-hating culture. In porn, women exist to fulfill men's desires -- they have no real agency of their own. To see anyone as existing only to serve you and to fulfill you is, feminists have argued, a practical form of hatred.
So if magazines dedicated to male pornography, or aimed at gay men existed, wouldn't that indicate that our culture also hated men? If a gay man looks at gay porn, who does he hate? To try and isolate the need for pornographic images as a hetrosexual male only pursuit, he has missed half of the picture.
Relatively few men who use porn are conscious of hating women. But regular use of porn inevitably desensitizes the viewer to the humanity and dignity of all of the women with whom he interacts. It defies all we know about human psychology to say that a fellow can go from masturbating to images on his TV or computer screen into interactions with real women without objectifiying them.
Yes, but I don't hear him (or the feminists) complaining about gay porn. Again they have used an argument that hits only at the specific part of the population they dislike. Are they suggestion that after hetro porn has been abolished they will go after gay porn? Why not go for gay porn first? Oh yeah. That would discriminate.
Let's be clear here. Most folks, if they are really honest about it, go through periods of their lives where they experience (with varying degrees of intensity) authentic dislike for the other sex. Many will go through periods where they also dislike their own.
Proving what? At some time we all hate everybody? This is bearing in mind that women don't look at pornography, yet they still find it in themselves to hate men?
( Self-loathing among young women is famous -- if I had a dollar for every young woman I've worked with who's said "All my good friends are guys" or "Girls are too competitive, I don't like them" I'd have enough money to pay for a sweet honeymoon!)
I hope that Dr Hugo then pointed out to them that such statements are biggoted. But how is 'I hate x' self loathing? Isn't the ultimate form of self loathing suicide?
Most of us take our own personal negative experiences and, at least for a while, allow them to make us fundamentally suspicious of (and perhaps openly hostile to) the other sex. This is one form of genuine misogyny -- or, yes, misandry.
Thank you Dr Hugo. But feminists don't do this do they? Which is one of the main points we try to make. Like a typical feminazi stooge he believes that God could also be a woman, but the Devil, oh no he's a man. No question.
We are eager to evade personal responsibility. An anti-Semite can comfort herself by saying, "Oh, I don't hate Jews -- Hitler hated Jews. I just think that they have too much influence in our culture." A racist can say: "Oh, I don't agree with the Klan. But if my daughter brought home a black man, well, I'd be pretty unhappy about that."
"Oh I don't hate Steve -- My boss hates Steve. I just think Steve has too much influence in office politics."
"Oh I don't agree with the Feminists. But if my daughter brought home an MRA, well I'd be pretty unhappy about that."
While the men's rights movement sees organized feminism as its adversary, pro-feminist men see feminist women as our allies.
And how many of us here supported feminism when it first arrived? Equality? That sounded good. Trouble is too many feminists read 'Animal Farm' and found themselves to be more equal.
Pro-feminist men don't ask women to do for us what we can do for ourselves (such as tell us how to feel, or motivate us to transform);
Yeah. None of us ask for that. It just 'happens'.
nor are we interested in taking leadership roles in the women's movement.
I wonder why they don't want a man as the head of NOW?
Rather, we work in solidarity with each other, honoring our differences as well as our common goal.
This is the usual 'we celebrate diversity BS' that I get at work. It's very one sided.
I got involved in the men's movement out of a sense of frustration with the superficial nature of most of my relationships with men. (See my "popular posts" sidebar for earlier posts on men.) I also came to the men's movement out of a sense of righteous pro-feminist anger.
"I don't hate other men -- Feminists hate other men. I just think their relationships are superficial."
I'll be the first to admit, I didn't like other men when I was younger. But doing men's work led me to love and cherish other men -- without becoming hostile towards women.
Except MRA's. I'd ask Dr Hugo, how it is he's able to call the men's movement misogynistic and love all men, but we (or maybe Glenn) is able to call feminists misandrists and is a sexist?
Ah! Whatever!