About MHRA Connect - UNDER CONSTRUCTION
MHRA Connect is a site that provides some organisation. There's lots of work to be done and lots of people who want to help but there's an intrinsic problem with social networking and getting in contact with the right people.
We'll be upgrading the site regularly and providing resources for various MHRA projects. We hope to provide a platform for everything from poster campaigns, and meet-ups all the way up to getting laws changed.
FAQ
What sort of rights are you talking about?
WTF are all the acronyms about?
Concentric circles of discrimination.
How are you different from Feminists?
How do you really tell what a movement is like?
I've heard/read that you guys ...
Do you support Abortions?
Are you Republicans?
Do you want to go back to the 50s?
Do you hate Star Wars or The Matrix?
Answers
What does MHRA actually mean? (back to top)
Mens Human Rights Activism/Advocate. It is essentially the same as MRA, except that we're making it abundantly clear that we're not talking about the right to see equal representations of men on the catwalks of Paris, or in shampoo comercials. We're talking about actual human rights. Like not being arbitrarily imprisoned or having the state take away your children.
What sort of rights are you talking about? (under construction) (back to top)
There are quite a few legal rights that are codified into law that discriminate on the basis of sex. There are still others that are gender neutral but are selectively applied on an institutionally mandated basis.
Typically when MHRAs talk about rights they are talking about things like:
- Genital Mutilation. MHRAs typically believe that no child or adult should be subject to mutilation of this kind. In all first world countries Female genital mutilation is against the law (and rightly so) but the mutilation of boys is not. In many of these countries the mutilation of boys is technically illegal, it's just not enforced.
- Fatherlessness.
- Employment.
- Reproductive rights.
- Healthcare provisions.
- Sexual abuse.
- Homelessness.
- Paternity fraud.
- Political representation.
- Conscription.
- Intimate Partner Violence.
- Family Courts.
- Criminal sentancing disparities
- Educational Discrimination.
- Planned parenthood.
- Suicide.
- Workplace deaths.
- Media vilification.
- Freedom of speech.
WTF are all the acronyms about? (back to top)
We do use a lot of acronyms, I'm not sure why. They are shortcuts to describe common concepts and experiences. They are the jargon of the Mens Human Rights movement.
Some common acronyms are:
MHRA - Mens Human Rights Activist/Advocate/Activism. Interchangeable with MRA. Someone who believe that there are aspects of society that are unequal in a way that disadvantages men and boys and is trying to do something to fix it.
MHRM - Mens Human Rights Movement.
NAFALT - Not all feminists are like that. Every feminist group accuses every other feminist group of not being real feminist groups. Whenever you point out that this group or that individual feminist is actively involved in extreme violence or sexism the common defense is NAFALT.
NAWALT - Replace feminist with Women.
SJW - Social Justice Warrior (see below).
MGTOW - Men Going Their Own Way. Men who have decided to opt out of serious relations with women. Extreme MGTOWs avoid contact with women. They've decided that the legal landscape has just become too dangerous to associate with women. The merest accusation of impropriety can destroy a mans life.
PBTRNT - self explanatory.
TERF - Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminist. Feminists whos hatred of men include all members of the trans community. Trans-women because they were born male, and trans men because they look like men now.
What is the Manosphere? (back to top)
Well, there are a bunch of definitions, but the one that seems most commonly used is (from Wiki):
is a name given to a loose and informal network of blogs, forums and websites, with internet commentators focusing on issues relating to men and masculinity, as a male counterpart to feminism or in opposition to it. Many of these are men's spaces. Their content is varied, and includes Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), men's rights issues, fathers' rights movement activists, and male victims of abuse, self-improvement, bodybuilding, antifeminism, seduction community commentary for pick-up artists.
This is a pretty good rough definition. For our purposes we'll remove those areas of the Manosphere not concerned with rights and equality (ie. pick up artists and bodybuilders). So, what makes each area of the Manosphere different?
- MRA/MHRA: The Men's Rights Activists/Advocates are concerned with inequalities under the law, in legislation and part of established culture.
- Red Pill: This refers to people (male or female) who have realised that a lot of the beliefs commonly accepted by culture about gender roles, the history of inequality and societies preferred narrative about gender may not be entirely accurate.
- MGTOW: men who believe that the current system of laws are so unbalanced that it's dangerous to even play the game of long term relationships with women. So they refuse to play the game.
- Fathers Rights: More or less a sub-set of the MHRM, principally concerned with combating unequal laws in the "Family" Court.
- Anti-feminists: This is not a sub set of the manosphere, but there is some overlap. In every modern poll, the overwhelming majority of the western population reject the term feminist. It could be said that most of the world is anti-feminist (or are at least non-feminist). Anti-feminists are men and women who recognise the negative effect feminism has had and fight against it. They expose false statistics and popular lies. Almost all anti-feminists once identified as and were active within feminist movement when they believed it was about equality.
Concentric Circles of Discrimination (back to top)
Discrimination can be divided roughly into four layers.
The first level being Personal Preference. You may prefer Indian to Italian food. Or working with people of your own sex or the opposite sex. It's your choice. You are discriminating between two people.
The second level up is Common Public Practice. This is the zeitgeist of your society. One country may believe cutting up the genitals of girls is fine but if you do it to boys it's barbaric. Another country may believe the exact opposite. There may be popular prejudice against a particular religious (or irreligious) or ethnic group. It may be common to expect one group to pay for another group or to provide services to another but no expectation in the opposite direction.
The third level is Official Practice. The first two layers concern how ordinary people treat each other. The third and fourth layers concern the Government and the Legal system. Official practice concerns how institutions handle discrimination. There may be laws governing behavior between individuals, education and medical treatments that are written in an entirely neutral way. But if it is established practice to enforce these laws unfairly we have Discrimination in Official Practice.
When discrimination is Enshrined in Law we get the fourth level of Discrimination. This is when the law actually states that only a woman is protected from X, or that you are only eligible for medical or financial help due to your genitalia.
The MHRM is very concerned with and are trying to eradicate third and fourth levels of discrimination. We'd like to open up discussions and challenge public perceptions of second level discrimination.
Your own private preferences are your own, we couldn't care less. Be as personally bigoted as you like. Buy Male Tears mugs, wear sexist tee shirts. We don't care. We're not into thought policing. Think and say what you like. But if you try to stop another group from speaking or from getting education or employment; we'll be there in force.
What is the Red Pill? (back to top)
Aside from an excellent documentary by Cassie Jaye, it refers to changing your perception of reality.
Almost everybody in the MHRM has had their own private Red Pill moment, where they realised that the world was not as they had always believed. People who go from a religious upbringing to becoming an Atheist go through the same thing.
I was at a Women's Rights rally in the 70's (feminism wasn't in common usage then) and there were thousands of people there. Almost all women, but some children and a few men. I was 9 years old and was there with my mother. I had counted myself as one of the group because I believed that everyone should have the same rights and the rally was advertised as being all about treating people equally.
The first speaker stood on the fountain in our brand new Mall and told us all about where we were going to march and where the people with banners should stand and what we were going to shout. All good.
Then the second speaker got up and made a speech about how men were evil and needed to be crushed. That women were naturally superior and needed to take their rightful place as the leaders of the world.
I can remember so clearly thinking she was going to get howled down. That this sort of sexist hatred would never be tolerated in this mass of people who only wanted everyone to be treated equally. She had totally misunderstood the Women's Rights Movement.
Then the whole crowd cheered. All of them. Some shouted about killing and mutilating men.
I looked around in horror.
It was I who had totally misunderstood the Woman's Rights Movement. That was my Red Pill moment.
For the next few hours I looked around me at the women I had thought were decent honest people and noticed so many things I had never noticed before; the way they looked and the way they spoke. Things I would have simply thought of as odd before suddenly made sence.
Other people slowly become aware that things are not as they have been told and some lucky people are born knowing that the world is more nuanced and less black-and-white as many people believe.
What is Meninism? (back to top)
Meninism is a parody movement like the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Things that Meninists have campaigned about;
- 99% of cosmetic sales go to women, that proves we live in a matriarchy.
- 9 out of 10 college men are harassed by sororities using a secret ranking system.
- Only 1% of the highest paid fashion models are men.
- Men should have to pay less for food because they're larger and need more food to stay alive - by making men pay the same amount for a kg of lamb, you're oppressing them
- There aren't enough male protagonists in women's erotica - women should be seeing the story through a middle aged white mans perspective.
- Men don't have their own word for themselves (like wo-man). Man includes women, while women excludes men.
- Women must receive constant enthusiastic consent to carry a child to term. If the man, at any stage, withdraws his consent to have a child she must abort.
- Equal representation of men in sewing circles.
- "Little Women" should be re-written as Little People and have half it's cast changed to men.
The significant thing is that the complaints must be trivial and ridiculous.
If you ever read an article on the MHRM and they use the term Meninist in a serious way, you know the writer hasn't even done the most basic of research.
How are you different from Feminists? (back to top)
We're almost the opposite of Feminists. In fact many of our most popular and influential MHRAs describe themselves as anti-feminists.
The conflict here is a matter of definitions. People who self-identify as Feminists consider themselves to be fighting for equality and fair treatment. And they universally do this by dividing the world along gender lines and treating both groups differently on the basis of gender alone. Examples: special hiring policies, women's only areas (but none for men), gendered laws, women's only universities, etc.
MHRAs think people should be treated the same whatever they identify as. They should be treated based on their character. ALL people who are the victims of violence need assistance, not just female people. ALL perpetrators of violence need to face repercussions, not just male ones.
Feminists will say that they believe in that too, and then they'll say; "but ..." and come up with some reason why only women need to be fought for and any attempt to extend protections to men is derailing.
Also feminism is the title of an ideology (not a philosophy). It is a fixed set of beliefs that don't change in the face of new evidence.
The MHRM is simply fighting for men to have the same rights as women. Look at all the talking points and activism so far. There has never been any special privileges demanded, no quotas, no demonisation of women for being women.
How do you really tell what a movement is like? (back to top)
This is an important question and it's important to understand it. There are extremists and bad apples in every group or ideology. And I fully expect that once the core goals of the MHRM have been realised, the moderates and reasonable activists will pack up and go home. As soon as that happens the movement will become extreme just like feminism. It must, all the moderates are gone and only the extremists are left. And the moment an extremist becomes popularly supported by people who identify with the title MHRA, I will stop identifying with that title.
That being said; at the moment it's a very clean movement. The goals are all real, identified and have mountains of evidence supporting them.
So what are the telltales for identifying what the movement is like?
Individual Comments: These, in themselves, mean nothing. A single hateful or unreasonable comment may be totally unrepresentative of a movement. However, the number of upvotes and downvotes will tell you a lot. You've also got to be careful about who's upvoting. In a forum like r/mensrights or r/feminism you can be sure that the area is full of the target group. On a public newspaper site, not so much.
The Popular Leaders: This says a lot. Look at the people who's opinions are repeated. If the most popular leaders of a group are espousing hatred and intolerance, it doesn't paint a good picture of the group. Also, don't base your opinions on what the Opposition says a Leader believes, listen to the Leader themselves. Listen to them speak or read what they, themselves have written. Get your information firsthand, not from someone who openly admits that they hate the movement. You may find that you've been lied to.
The Actions: Words are one thing, actions are another. Has the group frequently, or ever, used intimidation tactics, threats or attacks on people who disagree with them. I'm not talking about saying "you suck" in a comments section, but actual attacks. Gone to their homes, killed their pets, threatened them with bombs, written their places of employment to get them fired, sent SWAT teams to their homes in the hope of getting them killed? These are the actions of a hate group. And once again actually check to see if the group in question has done this. Don't rely on information from their opponents. Ask for links and videos. The MHRM typically carries cameras with them wherever they go because opponents of Men having equal human rights are typically violent and irrational. We've got hours of videos to back up our claims of violence.
The Dictionary: Virtually useless. The dictionary definition of National Socialism (Nazism) mentions nothing about gas chambers, racial purity and taking over the world. You have to judge a group by their actions, not by some technical definition.
What is a SJW? (back to top)
Social Justice is, by definition, different from actual justice.
Justice is the legal or philosophical theory by which fairness is administered. It's meant to be objective and impartial based on circumstance not identity. Many brave and wise people have fought and given their lives for the concept of equal justice for all being enshrined in highest levels of legislation. So that, regardless of race, gender, religion or sexual preference, every citizen should get treated the same way (at least under the law).
Social Justice is a belief that those people with the most social power should decide who gets rewarded or punished in any particular conflict. They fight for specifically biased legislation that treats people differently based on race, gender, religion or sexual preference.
In many ways the addition of the "social" prefix to a term can be replaced by "subjective" or "not". Social Science, Social Justice, Social Media etc.