Thursday, June 26, 2014
Giving it a name posted by Richard Seymour
Men's Rights Activists. Move that phrase around in your mouth for a while. Or, if you like, suck on the abbreviation, MRA. Now it sounds, as it should, like something you might get vaccinated against. In one respect, we can be grateful the MRAs exist - even if only as a lumpen backlash against fourth-wave feminism. For they have:a) allowed a collective term to be assigned to commonplace beliefs and practices (cf. 'MRA ideology' etc),
b) given it an explicitly political valence (so it can't be said, 'why are you making this a political issue, I just said I'm sick of being friendzoned that's all, gawd', because everyone knows it's political now), and
c) associated these beliefs and practices with something so utterly sad and repugnant that any reasonably far-sighted male will take pains not to be associated.