"Delicate Flowers, Birds and Bees"

The "Carnival of Feminists #56" is up at Redemption Blues, and there's one section that I really feel I have to pick apart a little. It's the section headed "Delicate Flowers, Birds and Bees", and it deals with the Men's Rights Movement, and how it related to feminism.

Now, I have no sympathy for the MRA crowd in general, and insofar as it goes, the comments and quotations accurately reflect my attitude to some MRAs in terms of assessing a lot of their character.

However, when it comes to detailed analysis, it all starts to fall apart.

It looks good to start with:

Imelda Whelehan, in Overloaded (London, The Women’s Press, 2000), tackles the men’s rights movement: “Many of the issues raised by various men’s movements are feminist ones too – for instance that men may suffer from lack of choice in their adult role by the fact that their primary identity is supposed to be realised through work rather than their family. In this equation women also clearly suffer because of the association of childcare and domestic responsibilities with their essential selves ... To effect possible transferability between roles, you need to alter the consciousness of those who make these associations. Such a transformation of consciousness might make it easier to convince employers that greater flexibility serves a useful purpose, but should also prompt a revolution of unimaginable proportions in the domestic sphere."

As near as I can see, this is exactly why I'm invested in feminism, and regard being "a feminist ally" as being a more important and more powerful and effective role in feminist debate, than my identifying as "a feminist".

The Imelda Whelehan article goes on to describe where the Men's Rights Movement actually is (and where it is, is pretty contemptible - a reactionary and retarded ideology).

So far so good.

It all starts to break down when we see what feminists have done with this. Which is basically ditch that idea of "transformation of consciousness" and concentrate instead on reinforcing the very problem that Imelda identifies when she writes, "Women have made some gains and these men want to get even – which means that they want to return to a system of naturalised social inequity."

Firswt we have Rage Against the Man-chine with MRAs: A Bunch of Fucking Crybabies. As it happens, and as I've already indicated, i think that's a reasonable description of a lot of MRA rhetoric. But why bother engaging with them at all? And what's to be gained by this type of analysis?

I’m willing to bet that a lot of these disgruntled fathers, if they were honest with themselves, would have to admit that before the end of the relationship, it was the mother who provided most of the care for the child(ren), otherwise the judge would be unlikely to award custody to the mother in the first place. That men feel entitled to a woman’s labour in the form of childcare, and then to custody of the child(ren) that she raised in the event that the relationship dissolves, is pretty unreasonable

So you're saying he shirked before, so he's got no right to prove himself capable when he requests the opportunity to do so? I can't think of a good reason to be specifically against Rage's idea that "custody ought to be awarded in a ratio proportionate to the time that each parent spent with the child before the dissolution of the relationship", but at the same time, I can't think of a reason why it should be the case either. In fact, I do have one concern with this attitude - it turns the child(ren) into a commodity to be earned.

Redemption Blues then quotes long sections of Susan Maushart and Dr Caroline Gatrell who again do an awful lot of explaining that the problem still exists, but not a lot of asking what to do about it, or what is actually wanted. The shorter version of what both authors wrote is that "men still don't get involved in the domestic chores, even when they say they want an egalitarian marriage" and "men don't engage in the basic childcare necessities, only in the 'bonding process' - the fun bit". Frankly, I'm willing to accept these conclusions as valid and true in the majority of cases. However, it doesn't analyse the trap we men are placed in. First of all, we are surrounded with just as much programming as the women of this world, and it forces us into roles (as noted earlier). What that means is that, even if a man genuinely wants to play an equal part in housekeeping, he quite often finds that he is ill-equipped to do so. I think men of my generation and the one coming up behind me may be slightly better-prepared than those before me, simply because we live alone for longer and therefore have to get some kind of competency at things like tidying, vacuuming, washing up, washing and ironing our own clothes, making our own beds and so on and so forth. However, what I suspect is that expectations still differ based upon that previous patriarchal upbringing, so that women do take on a greater share of the housework because they aren't satisfied with the standard with which the men perform the task. I don't know what the answer to this conundrum might actually be (or else I'm just too tired right now to make a reasonable stab at figuring something out), but I think simply describing the symptom and not looking at what causes it, leaves us even less well-equipped to deal with the problem. And criticising men because they are so far unable to live a post-revolutionary life in a pre-revolutionary world (a phrase I've read recently in a Robin Morgan book, but totally appropriate to this problem) isn't going to change things for the better either.

It is easy to criticise MRAs, as most feminists (including myself) do, as (in Rage's words) "the kind of anger that comes from feeling threatened but not being able to say clearly why. They feel entitled to the privileges they have come to see as their birthright, and when women want the same kind of treatment that they feel entitled to, they feel that their territory is being encroached upon."

The trouble is, dismissing them as idiotic and getting on with the great pro-women revolution is not very helpful in terms of getting all the men who also feel threatened but can't explain why, to realise that there is a way out of the problem that lies forwards, and not (as the MRAs so obviously wish) backwards to the Victorian or the Stone Age.

There are real concerns that men have that lie behind the bogus claims of the MRA movement, and that feminism can and should address - the "Fathers 4 Justice" custody argument is one example. They are concerns that men need to learn to address themselves, not as "us vs them" with women as "them", but as a fair assessment of our own position, our own power and powerlessness, and how the former can be used to change the latter. It's what feminists did to win universal suffrage regardless of gender; it's what happened to get laws introduced in the 60s and 70s to change the way sexuality and gender are seen. Women could do it. Men need to do the same. And, hey, lads - women have already done a lot of the basic theory work for us, we don't have to start from scratch! If we get on board with what they're doing, do our homework, read up on what they've already figured out - maybe we can actually through off the shackles together?