The Shifting Winds

Today, in my customary manner, I will make known a new MRA blog which has lately sprung to life. The name of this blog is Ithaca Men's Rights, and as you might conclude, the author is based in Ithaca, New York. Ithaca is a college town, the institute in question being Cornell University. Certain wits and wags have dubbed Ithaca "the city of evil" due to the oppressive polcor (politically-correct) atmosphere on the Cornell campus which has percolated into the surrounding social ecology. I, the present writer, spent about ten months of my very early life in Ithaca — too early to have any memory but for the faint image of a grassy hillside with some brick buildings along the top.

The blog author signs himself as 'Ithaca Skinhead', a name which bears witness to the colorful sociopolitical diversity of the NF sector. Below, I link you to a particular post on the blog:

http://tinyurl.com/a92kql

In the linked post, Ithaca Skinhead (Ithskin for convenience) demonstrates that he has a keen weather eye. Yes, here is somebody who is seeing exactly what I am seeing, so I know it isn't "just me"! And that is always a gratifying sensation. . .

Ithskin starts off his post by paying tribute to an MRA classic called The Catalog of Anti-Male Shaming Tactics. Now to be frank, it seems to me that Ithskin exaggerates, by just a mite, the ripple effect of this document. Certainly, those ripples have propagated widely in limited ponds, but larger swells and riptides are growing in the surrounding ocean — and it is to these latter that we should attribute the greater pull in the general current of developments.

Briefly, a power shift is occurring, and the opposing sector is aware of it. This power shift may not have progressed very far yet, however, it is markedly underway and the signs are everywhere. Here it is proper to observe, that not all feminists are stupid. They may lack intellectual honesty and moral intelligence, but plenty of them compensate for such deficiency by their greater than average endowment of animal cunning. And so, they are aware that certain energies and certain balances are shifting to their disadvantage, and that this tendency bids fair to continue on a rising curve.

Ithskin writes:

". . . the feminists did what you'd expect any mentally ill or irrational person to do: they kept repeating the same actions expecting different results.

"The awareness of shaming tactics basically put up a wall that before allowed entry into male insecurities. And, like any good infant, neanderthal, or robot not programmed "for this contingency", (or just crazy people in general), feminists are still bashing their heads against it.

"Until recently."

Ahhh...yes! Until recently! That's the kicker. Yet it's not so much that they were being robotic, but rather that they were in denial about what was happening. They were in a double-take cognition lag, and it took them a while to catch up. That's all!

Over a time period which commenced during my recent blogging hiatus, and extended into mid-December of 2008, I was e-mailed out of the blue by no less three women purporting to be feminists. This was unprecedented, since up until then I had never heard from anybody but fellow-travellers. All of these individuals were keen to have me understand that they were not evil man-haters, that feminism is about peace and justice, that feminism works for the liberation of all people, and so on. But following that predictable spiel, they trotted out the same old clichés that I've heard a hundred times! Pretty much as Ithskin describes:

"They've stopped trying to flame you into silence, but are now attempting to "kill you with kindness". It's a tactic taught in many courses about "conflict resolution". It actually does not "resolve" the conflict, but it makes the other person (namely, you) feel like the conflict has been resolved. And if you feel like the conflict is over, well... you stop fighting. . . .

". . . She [feministgal] emailed me, seemingly in good faith, expressing an interest in my viewpoints. However, she couldn't resist the "yes, buts..." and I found the discussion about men's rights to subtly and inexorably shift to feminist discussions."

Just for the record, Feministgal was not one of the feminists who e-mailed me. At any rate, throughout my correspondence with the three, my manner was dry, a shade sardonic and occasionally tart, unfailingly honest, but otherwise courteous. After all, there is place for diplomacy when your enemy arrives under the white flag of truce. And let it be remembered that I'm the one who preaches the doctrine of negotiation. My object through all of this was pointedly not to undertake argument or debate, but simply to inform them, to tell them things — and in a way that would guide their thinking. Yet they, predictably, attempted to shift the discussion into a realm of indoctrination, proselytism, or polemic. Invariably, they spoke from the standpoint of feminist subjectivism — although I tried to make clear to them that feminism is not the world, but rather an object for the world. But this, it appears, was an abstruse point for them.

What truly sobers the opposing sector is not merely the dramas in MRA cyberspace, and certainly not the wire-drawn arguments of MRA philosophers, but rather the sum total of developments in the world at large — of which cyberspace is merely symptomatic, and merely a fraction. It is a quaint optical conceit on the part of us cyberspace MRAs that we are the totality of the NF world. We are merely a blip upon the broader picture. Yet we are an important blip, and we have important work to do — let's not forget that!

Still, we cyberspace pundits didn't START all of this; rather, "all of this" percolated into our various life zones through the various portals peculiar to those zones. It touched us, we responded, and by our actions we incremented the fund of energy and touched the lives of others who will then repeat the cycle and carry the business forward in ways we can scarcely foretell. And the energy will grow and grow — is growing, has grown — in cyberspace and far beyond. Such is the power shift.

As I stated earlier, the opposing sector is aware of this power shift. For certain it is, that they cast their eyes upon the world at large. They are not fixated on the antics of a few MRA web personalities, and it is not to our words and actions that they are chiefly reacting. No, the world at large is where they get their significant information. And yes, they see the writing on the wall!

More and more every day, groups and individuals across the spectrum of what you might call activism are acting or speaking out against the femplex. Reform movements of all kinds are springing to life: father's rights, family law reform, anti-IMBRA, "fix VAWA!" — these are growing and spreading. Organizations — even tax-exempt ones — are coming into existence. Pro-male political parties are forming in Europe. F4J in one incarnation or another is still slogging away in England, and getting active in North America too! Big street demonstrations are occurring in India of all places! New Zealand is a land of zeal! A powerful movement is afoot to create an 'International Men's Day'! Counter-feminist videos are a booming business on YouTube! Angry male voices are overwhelming the comment threads and letter columns and pushing feminist voices to the margin — the upsurge in the last year alone has been dramatic! Yes the signs are everywhere if you just look — and I won't even attempt to list the more subtle ones.

Against such a background, more and more feminists are acting conciliatory, and playing the game of rhetorical tokenism. They see, perhaps even more clearly than we MRAs, what is coming down the pike. And they sense that the day is not far distant when they'll be busier than a three-legged cat in a sandbox with all the new complications. Ithskin again:

"Feminists are begining to tokenize ("we care about men's issues, see, we posted 1 article!"), then apologize ("we're sorry that so many of the 'bad feminists' have jaded you and turned you against feminism.") and then attempt to assimilate you into the Femiborg: "Instead of fighting each other, I think it's time we teamed up to address these issues.""

A closely related tactic is sometimes employed , wherein a feminist will attempt to broaden the available target area by pulling all manner of "polcor-progressive" issues into the conversation — even if these aren't directly related to feminism or men's grievances. Words like "privilege", "hegemony" or even "intersectionality" might occasionally get tossed around. The feminist will typically stress the importance of "positive, constructive goals", in order to invalidate the often angry and negative political focus of the average MRA. This maneuver — aside from humoring and patronizing you — is meant to secure the hegemony of feminist discourse, by re-directing your attention to matters that lie within their zone of guidance and reindoctrination. In a word, the femborg.

But to draw an analogy from history: the feminists, like the ancient Romans, are troubled by growing barbarian incursions into their empire. And their strategy shall be, to assimilate the barbarians as "federated allies" in order to preserve that empire. History will be the eventual judge for feminism, as regards the workability of such a plan. But history has long since handed down the verdict for Rome, as we are well aware.

I will leave you with this parting thought: Feminism will earn my respect when, and only when, it learns to smell its own shit. But that will never happen, because then feminism would no longer BE feminism.
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Here's a little something extra:

ithacamenrights.blogspot.com/2009/01/more-rape-madness.html

What's interesting is the comment thread following the post. The entry by Feministgal is quite revealing, I think. ;)