Every so often I stop by the blog of Glenn Sacks, the Men’s Rights Advocate I wrote about a few weeks ago. I find his politics terribly wrong and misguided, but he seems genuine, and his blog (and its comments) provide interesting raw material. I was particularly struck, recently, by dueling letters from a husband and wife that he posted. The first is from the wife, whose husband was reading Sacks’ blog and "educating himself on male discrimination."
The wife is upset because although her husband has persuaded her that men are getting screwed and feminism is a sham
my husband’s anger is overwhelming and he refuses to acknowledge that I really can see how men are actively discriminated against. I have read a lot of your site. My question for you is, what do you think I can do to show my husband that I do see many of the problems men are facing, and that I advocate fair treatment for all people male/female/white/black/all religions, etc? Please help!!! Thanks for reading.
Glenn, being the relatively sane guy he seems to be, responds to her that "If all is as you describe it, I think your husband is being very unfair to you, and feel free to let him know that I said so." He feels it necessary to add that feminism is, presumably, substantially to blame for her husband’s anger, and that any improvement in their marriage is going to have be contingent on a mutual recognition of the horrible wrongs being done to men in our society, but his basic reaction is still that, hey, we’re all human here and your husband seems to be taking out his anger at the world on you.
Then the husband writes back to Glenn, and it’s a trainwreck, basically a detailed list of all the wrongs that have been done to him by women, womankind, and the feminist movement (or the "Contemporary American Feminist Theory" movement, as he calls it). The most telling paragraph, from a psychological perspective, is this one:
I get angry when I recall my childhood and being manipulated by my mother who, as I can see now as an adult, ritualistically abused my father both physically and mentally right in front of her children and defended it by stating he was an evil son of a bitch who abused her, as she hid behind my fathers male chivalry. Her manipulation caused my father to lose everything, his family and children included. She abused him, yet she was protected by the courts and rewarded for her actions.
What’s most interesting to me about the exchange, however, is the window it provides into how ideology — both feminism and the MRA inversion of it — can get tangled up in the power struggles that are intrinsic to any intimate relationship. Who knows if this guy, who seems pretty damaged, is correct that his wife used to use the language and ideas of feminism as a way to exert power over him, but I have no doubt that it happens (how could it not?). And there’s absolutely no doubt that this guy, now, is using the MRA ideology to exert power in his relationship, and also to take more control of their son, who is of "the next generation to be enslaved by [Contemporary American Feminist Theory].
…My son, your son, all the boys of future generations are counting on us to free them from the tight grasp of female privilege that has come and continues to come at the cost of male rights and freedom. I for one will not go to my grave knowing that I did nothing to try and free them from the same fate that my generation of males has allowed to render them utilitarian and strictly functional for female entitlement. Our forefathers shed their blood for our democratic/political freedoms. I will now stand and fight and shed my blood on that same honorable battlefield. The battlefield for freedom. This is a war, stand up and fight like the centuries of courageous men before you.
This is, among other things, almost a perfect inversion of various radical feminist manifestos (at least the ones without a sense of humor), which is not to say that they’re equivalent–the feminist critique of the patriarchy is much more accurate than is the MRAist critique of the gynocracy–but it is to say that living an unhappy life is universal experience, as is the tendency of the really unhappy to seek systems of belief that promise redemption from unhappiness and freedom from pain. And absolutist /utopian ideology in the hands of immature people, which is to say most people, is a dangerous thing.
