Never identified as an MRA but, having dipped my toe into the waters on that shit a bit, straight up I honestly genuinely unironically think they don't actually give a shit about male suicide rates or "men" in general at all. They are for one reason or another as a whole: deeply selfish bitter reactionary people who don't care about community and they are basically cosplaying like they have one.
And really that isn't surprising because the truth is that if you actually ARE serious about digging into and addressing any of the grievances they claim to be concerned with you will actually start to realize that essentially ALL of them are symptoms of cis white male patriarchy under capitalism. Take family court for example. Half of MRAs probably think there's some kind of feminist cabal out to persecute fathers but the degree to which family court favors mothers (if at all) is the result of:
1: Old crusty white male judges who decided centuries ago that a woman's role is to be nurturer and a father's role is to work a job.
2: The reality that men are in general not conditioned to build and maintain support networks through friends and family which in turn makes the logistics of childcare more difficult.
I was there when the men's rights subreddit was created. It was actually posted about and promoted in the socialism reddit for like a week. That's about as long as it took to become reactionary. The first few days there were a lot of feminists there ready to address men's issues and evaluated it just like this. They were all pushed out quickly. It's almost a case study how that community formed and developed.
Ultimately you are right, though. There is so much about it that is steeped in patriarchy and are issues that women are fed up with, too. I think feminism has a place for men's issues because feminism is a way to tackle human issues and that space could have been a great place to spread that. It seemed it might have been for a day or two even. But the reactionary elements of the MRA movement are either deaf to it or actively undermining it.
Never identified as an MRA but, having dipped my toe into the waters on that shit a bit, straight up I honestly genuinely unironically think they don't actually give a shit about male suicide rates or "men" in general at all. They are for one reason or another as a whole: deeply selfish bitter reactionary people who don't care about community and they are basically cosplaying like they have one.
And really that isn't surprising because the truth is that if you actually ARE serious about digging into and addressing any of the grievances they claim to be concerned with you will actually start to realize that essentially ALL of them are symptoms of cis white male patriarchy under capitalism. Take family court for example. Half of MRAs probably think there's some kind of feminist cabal out to persecute fathers but the degree to which family court favors mothers (if at all) is the result of: 1: Old crusty white male judges who decided centuries ago that a woman's role is to be nurturer and a father's role is to work a job. 2: The reality that men are in general not conditioned to build and maintain support networks through friends and family which in turn makes the logistics of childcare more difficult.
I was there when the men's rights subreddit was created. It was actually posted about and promoted in the socialism reddit for like a week. That's about as long as it took to become reactionary. The first few days there were a lot of feminists there ready to address men's issues and evaluated it just like this. They were all pushed out quickly. It's almost a case study how that community formed and developed.
Ultimately you are right, though. There is so much about it that is steeped in patriarchy and are issues that women are fed up with, too. I think feminism has a place for men's issues because feminism is a way to tackle human issues and that space could have been a great place to spread that. It seemed it might have been for a day or two even. But the reactionary elements of the MRA movement are either deaf to it or actively undermining it.