Why isn't there a genuine 'Men's Movement'..?

I must be butt ugly then since I married a bloke who lives, works, breathes computer games

The notion that 80% of men are on the lowest rung of society is utter utter bullshit.

arse that's the same shit PUAs say. Please don't taint the board with this crap.

"Successful with women" = they will have sex with you?

Actually if you want to be successful with women its best to ask someone who is successful with women.
Just as you don't ask a man's opinion on what to wear, you ask another woman who dresses well.

Advice of be confidence, be yourself and don't be an arsehole doesn't usually help.
If 'yourself' is to play and talk about video games 24/7 then chances of pulling a woman he is actually attracted instead of 'settling' are slim.
You only have to read the dating thread to understand that being hot and cold arsehole generally gets women hot and bothered.

I THINK this is how our society is structured according to how important they are:

A combination of Powerful and/or good looking men: Top 20%
Good looking women: 20%
The rest of the women: 80%
The the rest of the men: 80%

Whilst its changing, the only way a woman was able to move up the social ladder was/to some extent still is because of man she married.
I think feminism fights to help women move up the social ladder ie. get judged on their achievements instead of their looks.

On the other hand the freedom afforded to men is they can move up and down the ladder based on their achievements.
This means the ones that fail to do so can see themselves as failures and will get reluctant to seek help.

I think that's why some men see feminism as against men because they FEEL they haven't benefit from being a man.

PUA crap generates a false confidence not a true measure of faith in yourself...

From the little I have seen of PUA sites of the likes of Julien Blan[d]c and his ilk, I would have to agree with this. PUA generate a performance of self confidence, a facade, not real self-esteem itself. Real self esteem is hard won, develops over time, penetrates a person to the deepest, most unconscious level, and eventually, affects patterns of thought, emotions and behaviour in a very positive way.

I don't think dervel was being serious about launching a website

A friend of a friend founded www.thecalmzone.net which aims to tackle suicide among men

From what I have seen those men and women who are genuinely working to improve things that have more of a negative effect on men are just getting on with it and view feminists as allies (or as neutral fellow campaigners for a better lot for vulnerable groups). The big difference is between them and self-declared MRAs is that they don't generally view feminists as the cause of these problems

Personally, I get almost all of those things from this site. Why invent a new site when this one has so much content and activity.

Agreed flora maybe even no expectations. Socializing is its own reward, and easier all round when we're well within our comfort zones.

www.meninchildcare.co.uk/ is another group aimed at helping men in a certain area, and indirectly women as it's trying to get away from "Childcare = women".

Movember is a great example of a positive campaign run by men about men's health issues. I'm sure there's some dark corner of the internet where men complain about women not doing enough for Movember but I've never seen anyone involved in Movember connecting it to feminists' or women's failure to do enough for men's health nor complaining about women's health issues getting too much attention.

Dervel those are good points. I'd add "Don't assume a woman owes you sex in return for kindness / friendliness" I know this is a subset of "Don't be an asshole" but it seems to be such a key gripe among PUA types that it does, sadly, need to be specifically said.

I'd also possibly add "have reasonable expectations".

Quite why the PUA movement even needs to exist is quite beyond me. They have it backwards if you are having trouble attracting romantic partners why even goto other men? Ask a women. Unless you want to date a man of course!

Having said that one or two male friends have come to me over the years and have done ok. If I formed a PUA movement it would be a simple website with four simple bullet points:

Be yourself.
Don't be an asshole.
Work on self esteem/confidence.
Widen your social circle (ie more friends of both male/female varieties).

I don't think it would sell very well!

The X factor is the self esteem/confidence and that applies to both genders, and is remarkably hard to acquire on your own, hence the wider social circle. PUA crap generates a false confidence not a true measure of faith in yourself which is something we could all do with more of at times.

On the more positive front, Movember. e.g.: uk.movember.com/programs/mental-health

ApocalypseThen, really that is very naughty me too. I am just trying to articulate why I think men might actually feel inclined to attack feminism. Not sure how a feminist can really get these men on board and explain anything when they see us as the cause of their problem.

I don't think men have these resources at their disposal. DV isn't effecting a wealthy elite and therefore men must fight for these things, just as we have had to, and just as we keep up the fight when funding is withdrawn by the big bad men who represent that wealthy elite. It isn't the job of feminists to keep apologising because some big bad man is making some other man's life difficult.

I don't think anyone would say that things like suicide rates among young men aren't a problem. They are. The differences come when they are thinking about who should deal with it. Feminists say that, because men are more likely to be in positions of power, men are best placed to change things for other men. MRAs tell feminists that it's our fault, and that we should be sorting it out.

They also talk about DV shelters. They say that there's too many for women and not enough for men, so women's ones should shut down in favour of men. This is totally irrational. Men are more than capable of organising spaces in their homes for male victims of DV. It would be utterly inappropriate for women to do this, firstly because of the risk it might pose those women, and secondly because of how triggering it might be for the male victim to have too many women around them when they are trying to heal and regroup.

If men wanted these things sorted, they have all the resources they need at their disposal already.

The fact these new cultural products and groups exists suggests that men probably do feel very besieged.

While obviously my heart bleeds and all that, they may just have to learn to forge an identity not based on dominating women. The sooner they accept that, the better for them.

Oh yes, I should say I think its quite right that all feminists blame patriarchy for their oppression. What seems to confuse this issue is how patriarchy is defined. Often it isn't defined. Is it a theory, a descriptive category of cultural institutions and practice, a social totality (although post structuralists might take issue) does this theory have any methodology etc,

The problem men have is this, if patriarchy is defined as a totality explaining all social relations, and men as a class are the exploiters of women, then to attack patriarchy attacks male privilege. Of course they see this as attacking men.

Luckily we don't have to attack men or their privilege because its being undone as we speak, if what they believe to be privilege is the very thing that capital is wrestling from them. I think men perceive that their loss of privilege is the undoing of their masculinity. They feel emasculated by their loss of economic status. They wrongly believe its a zero sum game with women gaining from this. This leads to a contradictory situation as patriarchal culture is undermined in one sphere, men seek to strengthen it in other spheres, be that DV or rape. Far from being safer, we are probably less so. Which is why we have MRAs and dating gurus telling men women deserve nothing less than "real men" The fact these new cultural products and groups exists suggests that men probably do feel very besieged.

What things are falling through the cracks?

Slight difference though being that feminists blame patriarchy for their oppression, which they acknowledge also harms men, but MRAs blame feminists for all their problems, because there's so many of us in positions of ultimate power.

I think those men who say the MRAs are genuine movements and many are working towards ending all violence, suicide and men's health it is only the feminist movement that label them a supremacist group. are either unaware of the way their groups work and everything they say, or are lying.

At the moment one of the groups with the largest internet presence, the one which instigates such delightful campaigns as don't be that girl' is busily defrauding money out of people by directly copying the white ribbon website. Instead of putting the money they have raised into tackling DV toward men, they are (by their leader's own admission) using it to legally harass women fighting DV and to defend their actions in the courts.

You'll forgive me if I don't believe that they have anyone but their own best interests at heart.

A lot of men will say the MRAs are genuine movements and many are working towards ending all violence, suicide and men's health it is only the feminist movement that label them a supremacist group. Both sides busy pointing fingers at each other while things fall through the cracks.

I think there were moves to create a genuinely pro-feminist men's movement in the 80s and 90s, with things like the Achilles Heel collective, but they seemed to founder for one reason or another. Have to say, I probably would have joined one when I was a bit younger and more politically active, but I'd be lesser inclined to do so now (even though I'm happy to support feminist campaigns at an individual level).

As for the whole PUA thing - well, as someone who's 38 and never had a proper relationship, I can quite understand why some of this stuff might appeal to socially unconfident men, but I quite understand that a) much of it is deeply sexist (and in some cases aggressively misogynistic) and b) there's no 'miracle cure' for a lack of success with the opposite sex. Much of it seems to be laddish types purporting to teach geeks and losers how to be more like them.

It would be nice to see classes in dating confidence run for a mixed-sex group and by both men and women.

I agree that men have never been persecuted simply because they are men and that the institutions of state and other institutions have historically served the interests of men. More so though, some men. Men of property. During the Enlightenment and the transition from feudal to capitalist class relations, the great thinkers who sought to both understand the new conditions, antagonisms and to legitimise property relations and the class system of capital, were the emergent class of bourgeoisie. They were concerned with the setting up of new forms of GVMT and institutions that would manage peacefully and set out in legal terms how men would behave towards other men. Believing that men were competitive and self interested, legal system should control the operation of the market, the only way of mediating between the interest of self-interested individual men.

However, liberalism as an ideology obscures the class relations that subject one class to the exploitation that benefits another. Neither class exists alone and neither can it. But, except for the relations of production (class) all other institutions and residual cultural artefacts of a patriarchal type, such as marriage, property rights only extended to men, trade union membership etc, are just that, residual existing within the superstructure. In the same way that men and women form reciprocal binary opposites, as do classes, so does the base and superstructure, with antagonisms and contradictions arising out of the asymmetrical way in which they are dialectical. The reason why I say that patriarchal institutions are residual and not dominant is because data bares this out. Data on wages, the feminization of work, segregated labour along gender/race lines, the global division of labour, women's rising wages, women's access to better paid employment, the breakdown of the nuclear family, welfare apparatus that supports single parents, and the new segregated commodity markets based on age/gender/race lines.

None of that is to say that women are not the super exploited class, we are, but not because of the totality of patriarchy, because there is no totality of this sort. Residual cultural ideologies such as patriarchy exist in very real terms, but they are neither emergent/new or static and unchanging or aHistoric. Instead they are subject to motion and are largely being eroded, thankfully. We are the super exploited class because capital exploits women's work both productive and reproductive. We have been since the 1950s the biggest target group for consumption, and women make up 2/3rds of the world poorest and 2/3rds of the worlds workforce. But where does this leave men? Instead of worrying about what is really stripping their privilege, they point the finger at gender relations. As do feminists. This creates a closed circuit of bitter antagonism, rather than critical engagement with the real culprit.

So I disagree, should men focus their attention on gender relations and the construction of masculinity? I agree that there is a problem and that the construction of gender is problematic, and that this harms men just as it does women, but I don't think that simply telling men this will actually help them to overcome their very real fears. Men see the erosion of their privilege (as the exploited labouring class) as undermining their masculinity, and they think that the emergent super exploited labouring class women is responsible for this. We are not, capital is the totality that conditions this thinking and creates this new "gender" war. Just as capital created the cultural, philosophical and political arguments that legitimise the construction of race so that it was acceptable to own slaves in the C18th, colonise other nations and make children work a twelve hour a day down a pit.

Sorry for the essay, but I really do feel quite strongly that patriarchy is a descriptive category of cultural and institutional forms, not a theory or a totality.