MRAs exposed
Red State Feminist has compiled a bunch of comments from MRA/FRA boards about the shooting of a family court judge in Nevada who had angered the fathers’ rights crowd. (MRA=Men’s Rights Activists, FRA=Fathers’ Rights Activists.) The shooter is believed to be Darren Mack, a deranged MRA (is that redundant?) who is also wanted for murdering his ex-wife.
To use the nomenclature we’ve developed on this blog, what we have here are men deprived of their joo-joo and willing to kill to avenge their loss. This has nothing to do with “equal rights for men” (ha!) and certainly not the welfare of children in a divorce; it’s all about regaining male superiority and punishing women who have escaped their control.
I’ve excerpted some of the comments below; Red State Feminist has more. Nothing does a better job of showing how these guys really think (and spell!):
Unfortunately, this is the only way a victim of this the family court can get justice – by killing the judge.
Men have snapped over the system and have lossed everything and have gone to extreme ways of veangance.
Judges and attorneys should take note and watch their back…This is only the beginning…It takes this kind of extreme to deal with another extreme…And for those dirty judges and cock roach vampire attorneys who look upon men/fathers as only a paycheck, not people with “rights” hahaha/just mention rights and the law in a court and see how fast you are told to pay more…
Violence is sometimes a necessary evil when you are dealing with tyrants. This country was born through violent revolution. It shouldn’t be that hard for people to understand that violence is sometimes justified and necessary.
Sounds like the chickens are coming home to roost. How many times is this going to happen before the legislatures realize that they have unleashed abominations known as family courts upon the land? How many more people will be injured or die because the state stuck it’s nose into something it does belong and is violating the rights of a class of Americans, who, if pushed to the point of nothing left to loose, will strike back?
Do the right thing; refuse to cooperate with this “domestic enemy”, stop paying the unlawful extortion. (Note: “unlawful extortion” means child support. The “domestic enemy” is apparently women, or at least divorced mothers. — Violet.)
Many deaths are to come if we don’t have a serious dialog [and serious action] about sexual discrimination against men. We shouldn’t be so backed into the corner that violence seems the only option… But here we are backed into the corner….
Violence may be the only solution! Nothing else seems to work!
I applaud these kinds of actions. Men and Fathers are at war with their respective governments. If the “enemy” is to sit up and take notice, there must be casualties.
Repeating my favorite mantra here: “…Feminism made this happen. Feminism made this happen. Feminism made this happen. Feminism made this happen. Feminism made…..”
17 Responses to “MRAs exposed”
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Mandos says:
I don’t think this is really that exposing. They’ve been saying this for a while. But yeah, like I said, at risk of sounding sorry for them (I am), they’re often extremely damaged men who need something to give back to them a sense of being alive and valued. Otherwise they find each other and feed off of each other’s resentments, because that’s how they value each other.
June 17th, 2006 at 3:04 am EST -
Paul Tergeist says:
There are always going to be a few dozen or a few hundred radical extremists…like Jim Deeny or Mandos or Steve on the side of any crazy issue.
There are sure as hell more whacko radfems than there are MRA/FRA people. But you gotta have them. If you don’t have fringes you can’t tell where the center is and you can’t measure where society is going.
What’s worse, a male loony homocidal maniac or a female loony homocidal maniac? Instead of just accepting that some people are homocidal maniacs, all the radfems try to blame men whenever a woman murders someone. Whatever a woman does it’s some man’s fault and whatever a man does it’s the patriarchy’s fault.
But I happen to think that everyone is responsible for their own actions. Except me. A woman drove me to it.
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gordo says:
What I found telling about the quotes RSF collected was the confluence of “angry white man” issues and rhetoric.
There are harangues about an out-of-control judiciary, gun rights, feminism, no-fault divorce, and hate crimes legislation. If only there had also been a rant about taxes being the equivalent of the government taking your paycheck at gunpoint, the list would have been complete.
Bush voters, all of them.
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Violet says:
For people following the Hugo imbroglio, I’ll take this opportunity to explain that a longstanding source of my irritation with Hugo is that he indulges MRAs on his blog. His MRA commenters don’t advocate murder like these nuts, but they do engage in extended burp fests wherein they expound at length on these very same complaints, with special attention to the compelling theme of how feminism has ruined the country.
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Txfeminist says:
Mandos, your compassion’s commendable. Big picture, it’s very necessary.
At the same time – these are not a few “bad apples” nor are they just *talking* angrily about this or that. These guys are also acting angry, they are very organized, and they carry out their threats, time after time . Mack is just one example, who made big news because he shot a judge.
When they hurt their ex wives and children ? It gets page ten.
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Violet says:
I wonder what the answer is to this MRA movement? I tend to think the solution to every gender problem is more feminism, since I believe that freeing ourselves from the patriarchy means liberation for everyone. But that message apparently isn’t getting through to the MRA crowd.
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will says:
TxFem:
Why do you think these are not just a few bad apples?
What percentage of fathers do you think that they represent?
I do not get why you say that they are not a few bad apples.
It seems to me like saying that Farrakan (sp?) represents all blacks.
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Violet says:
I think Tx is saying they’re representative of MRAs/FRAs, not fathers. Huge difference.
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will says:
I can accept that. I will say that I suspect that most “rights” groups are made up of people with fairly intense views on the subject.
But I havent been too impressed with MRA or FA groups from what little I have seen.
I just do not see much of them in Virginia.
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Alon Levy says:
I tend to think the solution to every gender problem is more feminism, since I believe that freeing ourselves from the patriarchy means liberation for everyone.
The problem is that this view tends to become circular, as the specific solution to every gender problem gets called feminism.
Genuine men’s liberation – as opposed to abusive thugs’ rights activism – is fully compatible with modern feminism and gay rights. Betty Friedan commented that she viewed men who broke away from stereotypical masculinity as “the other half of the feminist movement,” which tried unraveling the masculine mystique just as mainstream feminism was unraveling the feminine mystique.
I don’t think NOW is going to have any problems with men who build shelters for straight male victims of DV, or agitate for more includive rape laws, or teach men they don’t have to rape women to prove themselves, or fight efforts to reinstitute the draft.
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Timothy Shortell says:
Well, the most important thing is to make sure that this gets framed as an issue of political violence and then to oppose it on those terms. (That is not to say that one ought to treat DV as political violence; rather, I”m talking about the killing of a judge.) Those who support it, who talk aobut being “backed into a corner” or who try to claim the mantle of the American Revolution (and what kind of looney would buy that?!) are really just supporters of terrorism. They are as extreme as the militia movement or the supremacists.
If presentations of MRA are always framed this way, they won’t be taken seriously by the mainstream. If they succeed in shifting the focus to feminism, they will be welcomed by the right-wing media network, since attacking feminism is high on their to-do list.
Killing judges is just like killing doctors — it is a form of terrorism. We need to be clear on that point. Organizations that tolerate it or apologize for it are participating in the political violence.
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Paul Tergeist says:
a re-reading the first couple of paragraphs in the initial commentary seems to indicate that the crimes of this individual nutloaf were planned by an entire group of men specifically to keep every woman in the world in slavery. Here’s an example:
“what we have here are men deprived of their joo-joo and willing to kill to avenge their loss.”
-VioletYou use a desperate act by a dipshit to accuse all males of being complicit by virtue of their gender. That is not helpful. Feminism, as I understand it, means that men and women should be equal politically, economically and socially. It does not mean that every opportunity should be taken by men to create hate and discontent against women by accusations of plotting and witchcraft. want…..and neither is it a green light for every violent act by a man, especially against another man, to be used by radical females to foment hatred of the entire male component of the human race because they think we are responsible for them having to bear the burden of gestating and bearing children. We didn’t plan it that way. MOTHER NATURE did. “The Goddess” did. Blame someone else or, better still, accept it.
Equality is a good thing. It’s hard for anyone to argue with it. But it’s just as hard to accept a load of whiners from either camp. I paid child support to a PO box for 18 years and never saw my daughter. Her mother hid her. I didn’t whine. The mother told my daughter for 18 years that I wasn’t paying anything to support her and that I didn’t visit her because I hated her. But I didn’t know where she was. The presents I sent at Christmas and her birthday came back for 18 years. But I kept the cancelled support checks. When she was 20, she found me and confronted me for being a deadbeat. I gave her the checks, all of them, 18 years’ worth, all made out to her and all signed and cashed by her mother. That settled that, but it didn’t bring back the lives we didn’t have.
As far as I am concerned, my rights were trashed by a someone simply because she could, and because she was hurtful. But I’m still not whining. I did the right thing and I didn’t lose any fucking “ju-ju”. I didn’t feel the need to kill anyone. I don’t feel the need to rape or abuse anyone. And I think most people are like me.
I’m saying that everyone has a story and everyone has an opinion and it isn’t always about some goddamn woman singing “poor, poor, pitiful me”.
If you want to stand beside men, just stand up. Don’t whine that you are oppressed because we don’t pick you up and bow down to you. Stand up and let’s work together. If you don’t, it won’t just be the men who die when the earth overheats. It will be everyone.
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Violet says:
Paul, your comment is very heartfelt and I’m sorry about your daughter, but it’s kind of hard to respond when your whole argument is predicated on a misunderstanding:
You use a desperate act by a dipshit to accuse all males of being complicit by virtue of their gender.
When did I do that? We’re talking about these particular fucked-up guys and what drives them. I don’t know how you got from that to my accusing “all males” of anything.
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Violet says:
But I’m still not whining. I did the right thing and I didn’t lose any fucking “ju-ju”. I didn’t feel the need to kill anyone. I don’t feel the need to rape or abuse anyone. And I think most people are like me.
You did do the right thing in a bad situation. And I agree that most people just cope with their personal tragedies and certainly don’t resort to violence.
But here’s the question under consideration, if you feel like thinking about it: what about these guys — the ones referenced in this post — who don’t do the right thing, who instead transform their personal loss into violent revenge and political action against women as a group? What is the answer for those men?
As of now, the MRA/FRA movement is preying on these guys and feeding off their sense of displacement. It’s telling them, “you aren’t suffering a personal tragedy, and none of this is your fault — you’re the victim of an evil feminist conspiracy to disenfranchise men.” Each man’s personal crisis is thus transformed into a political problem of women (abetted by a feminist government, as hilarious as that sounds) robbing men of their rightful power.
Beyond the fact that this reactionary MRA crap needs to be countered just as Timothy says, I also wonder what positive movement is needed to give displaced men like this some kind of sense of belonging. Blog Mascot/Cognitive Benchmark Mandos and I are of similar minds about this, perhaps: the core problem may be that these are men who can’t seem to find their way in a post Father Knows Best world. The old joo-joo is gone.
Alon mentions Men’s Liberation, and I think something like that sensibility is what animates the many educated, enlightened, feminist men I’ve known in my life. But what about the rest of the guys out there, the ones who aren’t getting the message, and who are prey to the MRA rhetoric?
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Mandos says:
So I think I mentioned earlier an Internet acquaintance who, if I remember correctly, told me that he can almost credit some of these groups for saving his life. And he’s definitely not an anti-feminist as such—at least, not now.
See, if there is at all a positive component to the message that these groups emit to the men who are their target, it’s “Dammit! You’re worth something as a man and a father!” What poisons the whole message as the additional caveat: “And you wuz robbed.” That caveat is responding to something that I honestly don’t think The Generic Feminist has handled very well in her approach to the {M,F}RA.
The Generic (Straw?) Feminist, in my experience, has very little trouble agreeing to the former attitude, that fathers are worth something as men. Very placidly and nonchalantly, I might add, but agreeing. But the problem is that, no matter how much one values a separated/divorced man, he is still standing necessarily in opposition to a woman. Many men, therefore, do not need to be told that they are the only people who owe something in this situation. They have a feeling, legitimate or otherwise, that they too are owed something—out of life, out of their effort to build a family, etc. They’re going to resent The Generic Feminist most acutely when they’re told that their situation is about their marital faults—and about their entitlement. And that isn’t a basis for starting over.
And the FRAs are going to be ready to tell them that they’re right, and they were robbed, and that they should do something about the robbery. And it might escalate from there…
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Reclusive Leftist » Blog Archive » A particularly nasty strain of the FRA virus says:
[...] MRAs exposed [...]
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ginmar says:
Wow, all those feminist homicidal nutjobs, huh? That’s interesting, becuase MRA propaganda aside, men do most of the killing. I guess the feminist homicidal ones are just better at hiding the bodies.
