"MRAs Aren’t Just Terrorizing Women — They’re Hurting Men, Too"

Submitted by Mastodon on Wed, 2014-07-02 02:13

Article here. Excerpt:

'The very first International Conference on Men’s Issues happened over the weekend, in the unlikely surroundings of a VFW Lodge in Detroit. The thought of a bunch of men’s rights activists converging to swap stories of how good women have it these days isn’t one that fills anyone with joy (unless they’ve been on the Reddit red pills for a while), and I’m loath to give it any more publicity — but fuck it, the event has already happened, and it provided a pretty good snapshot of where the MRA movement, such as it is, is at in 2014. And, perhaps most frustratingly, its very existence basically precluded any sensible discussions of the issues it professed to address. Good job, everyone.

It’s easy to write off MRAs as lunatics — any group who can call feminism “a multibillion-dollar hate industry” isn’t exactly asking to be taken seriously, especially since I’m writing this on a day when the Supreme Court just decided that a corporation’s right to believe in whatever bullshit it likes is more important than a woman’s right to insurance-subsidized birth control. If you want proof that the world is still biased very much in favor of men, have a read through Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s dissent on the Hobby Lobby case, and then meditate on this for a bit:

There are many things to dislike about r/RedPill types. Many, many things. But here’s the issue: quite apart from their hatefulness, they do their “cause” — such as it is — absolutely no good at all. As with extremists in many other areas, they hijack and polarize a discussion that is worth having.

Clearly, on balance, you’re inevitably better off being a man in this world than a woman. Quite how much so varies depending on just where you are — there are openly patriarchal societies like Saudi Arabia, where the extent of women’s oppression is extreme and unapologetic. But even right here in the good ol’ US of A, it’s a whole lot better to be the average man than the average woman, just like you’re better off being white than a person of color, and heterosexual and cisgender than anywhere on the LBGT spectrum, and so on. The world we live in is one in which being a straight white man is pretty great; being anything else is pretty fucked. So has it ever been.'

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Terrorize, defined at dictionary.reference.com:

verb (used with object) [ter·ror·ized, ter·ror·iz·ing.]
1. to fill or overcome with terror.1
2. to dominate or coerce by intimidation.
3. to produce widespread fear by acts of violence, as bombings.

1'Terror': noun
1. intense, sharp, overmastering fear: to be frantic with terror.
2. an instance or cause of intense fear or anxiety; quality of causing terror: to be a terror to evildoers.
3. any period of frightful violence or bloodshed likened to the Reign of Terror in France.

Does "terrorize" *really* seem applicable here?

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Submitted by Matt on Fri, 2014-07-04 04:06

He claims Viagra and similar pills are covered by ACA but birth control is not.

In fact, it's just the opposite. ACA does not mandate coverage of Viagra but does mandate coverage BC pills. All Hobby Lobby did was carve out exemptions for four types of birth control. It still covers 16 out of 20.

And a little research on the Internet shows that the old feminist canard that "all insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control pills" is not true. Before ACA, some insurance companies did cover Viagra and some did not. Ditto for BC pills. Under ACA, coverage of Viagra is not mandated but coverage of BC pills is mandated. Viagra requires a co-pay and a deductible. But not birth control pills. Vasectomies require a co-pay and deductible. But not hysterectomies.

The sad part is that for many years I believed the feminist myth that insurance companies covered Viagra but not BC pills. My usual response was Viagra fixes a problem while BC pills prevents the working of a health human organ. But then I looked on the Internet and discovered it's not really true. It was basically a matter of some do and some don't.

Also Viagra is used for more than old guys driving pickups. It's also used in fertility treatments for couples and may have some medical benefits for women.

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Submitted by el cid on Fri, 2014-07-04 15:15

LOL. I love how in the same sentence where he says MRAs can't be taken seriously, he cites a lack of subsidized birth control for women as a form of female oppresion (seeming to forget there's none for men either). Who's asking not to be taken seriously now?

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Submitted by xtrnl on Tue, 2014-07-15 06:58