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From Men’s Liberation to Men’s Rights: angry white men in the US
Last edited Tue Jun 10, 2014, 11:36 AM - Edit history (8)
Interesting article.
Men’s Rights activists see men as the victims of reverse discrimination in every political, economic, and social arena; feminism has been so successful that men are now the second sex; and men have to stand up for their rights. In doing so, they believe, they strike a blow against the wimpification of American manhood: they get their manhood back by fighting for the rights of men. Who says the personal isn’t also political?
So how did we get here?
The origins of MRA
It might come as a bit of a surprise to know that the initial seeds of the contemporary men’s rights movement were planted in the same soil from which feminism sprouted. The critique of what became known as the female sex role, the traditional ideology of femininity, resonated for some men, whom by the early 1970s, took the feminist call for women’s liberation as an opportunity to do some liberating of their own. “Men’s liberation” was born in a parallel critique of the male sex role. If women were imprisoned in the home, all housework and domestic drudgery, men were exiled from the home, turned into soulless robotic workers, in harness to a masculine mystique, so that their only capacity for nurturing was through their wallets.
But feminists moved from a critique of those sex roles – abstract ideological constructions – to a critique of the actual behaviors of actual men, corporeal beings who acted in the name of those antiquated roles. And once women began to make it personal, to critique men’s behaviors – by making rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, part of the gender dynamics that were under scrutiny -- the men’s libbers departed. Instead, the Men’s Liberationists stuck with the analysis of roles, which, they argued, were equally oppressive to men; they shifted their focus to those institutional arenas in which men were, they argued, the victims of a new form of discrimination – gender discrimination against men.
The question was why men were so unhappy. What caused the male malaise? The way different groups of men resolved this question provided the origins of the various men’s “movements” currently on offer.
So how did we get here?
The origins of MRA
It might come as a bit of a surprise to know that the initial seeds of the contemporary men’s rights movement were planted in the same soil from which feminism sprouted. The critique of what became known as the female sex role, the traditional ideology of femininity, resonated for some men, whom by the early 1970s, took the feminist call for women’s liberation as an opportunity to do some liberating of their own. “Men’s liberation” was born in a parallel critique of the male sex role. If women were imprisoned in the home, all housework and domestic drudgery, men were exiled from the home, turned into soulless robotic workers, in harness to a masculine mystique, so that their only capacity for nurturing was through their wallets.
But feminists moved from a critique of those sex roles – abstract ideological constructions – to a critique of the actual behaviors of actual men, corporeal beings who acted in the name of those antiquated roles. And once women began to make it personal, to critique men’s behaviors – by making rape, sexual harassment, domestic violence, part of the gender dynamics that were under scrutiny -- the men’s libbers departed. Instead, the Men’s Liberationists stuck with the analysis of roles, which, they argued, were equally oppressive to men; they shifted their focus to those institutional arenas in which men were, they argued, the victims of a new form of discrimination – gender discrimination against men.
The question was why men were so unhappy. What caused the male malaise? The way different groups of men resolved this question provided the origins of the various men’s “movements” currently on offer.
Edit: please use BainsBains link or go to the right side of the page were the article is embedded here
http://opendemocracy.net/5050/michael-kimmel/from-men’s-liberation-to-men’s-rights-angry-white-men-in-us it says 'page not found', but it's there.
23 replies
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Response to BainsBane (Reply #2)
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Response to redqueen (Reply #14)
ask = extract, in this instance.
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