Feminism vs. MRM vs. Egalitarianism

Gender Rights Over The Years

This chart is not meant to be historically accurate or scientific. Rather it’s meant to illustrate the different social movements (feminism and MRM. And yes its missing LGBT activism) that have been gaining momentum and “vocal share” over the past century and more. We start by benchmarking the rights that men had in the early 90s as the egalitarian standard.

Feminism

If you look at the chart above, you’ll notice that even in the early 1900s women’s rights were disproportionate to those enjoyed by males. For example The Nineteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal voting rights regardless of sex, was ratified only on Aug 18, 1920.

For a view on why women weren’t offered suffrage before, see this video by GirlWritesWhat

Here is what she had to say

From the website “great war fiction”, regarding Britain’s white feather campaign…‘In other words, the white feather girls and the suffragettes understood that men had political franchise and women did not because men had a duty to go to war, and protect women.’”

Feminism started as a movement to secure equal rights for women.

Radical Feminism

With time, however, fringe factions that advocated misandry (both subtly and in plain sight) hijacked the feminism conversation. It ceased to be about securing equal rights for women but rather about male hatred masked by half chewed ideas masquerading under pseudo-scientific terms like “patriarchy”, “rape culture” and my personal favorite “male privilege”. The movement became all about “paying back” the men for years of “repression”.

Traditionalism

Over the course of time, some started to see through the pseudo-intellectual smog that radical feminists started to push. The result was members of both sexes advocating for a return to the times of old, wrapped under the premise that we all have different roles to play. The only problem with traditionalism, however, is that this boat has long since sailed and unless some unprecedented humanitarian disaster occurs that forces a radical altering of our social course, this is nothing more than a pipe dream.

 Male Rights Movement (MRM)

From the emasculation of men in media for decades (even more acutely after the 2000s), the heavily skewed family court laws, domestic violence laws, rape culture propaganda, educational and economic setbacks due to a combination of various factors and in no small part due to protectionist ideologies, males have found themselves holding the shorter end of the stick. This gave rise to the movement advocating for equal rights of men – The Male Rights Movement or The Male Rights Activism.

Some would like to believe that the purpose of the MRM is similar to that of traditionalists hell-bent on bringing the world back to the 1950s. The truth couldn’t be further.

Egalitarianism

However Utopian this might sound to some, securing equal rights for all groups is the purpose of the egalitarian movement. Unlike specific movements designed to secure rights for the groups they are designed for (which in essence is also its biggest flaw), egalitarianism is an all-inclusive movement.

Egalitarianism vs. Feminism vs. MRM

Why is the egalitarianism circle slightly larger with more intersection area? Egalitarianism, for example, doesn’t hold the view that parenting decisions should be the sole right of one of the sexes. It transcends the feminist and MRM movements to include other marginalized sections of the society including the LGBT community, the transgender community and other communities that may arise in the generations to follow.

Conclusion

Members of both feminism and MRM contend that the while the ultimate destination could be an egalitarian society, its time to focus solely on the needs of their groups. To highlight the danger of this narrow view, I would like to put forth something I heard recently while watching the movie Lincoln

A compass will point you true north. But it won’t show you the swamps between you and there. If you don’t avoid the swamps, what’s the use of knowing true north?

Most activists in either camp recognize that the ultimate direction (true north) will take them to an egalitarian state. But in the interest of winning those “low hanging fruit”, they chose to overlook that advancing their own causes, through the reasoning of priority, takes them directly into the swamps and ravines.

God gets 10% and you get fired

Did you read about the St. Louis pastor Alois Bell who followed WWJD (What Would Jesus Do) to the letter by stiffing Applebee’s waiter his/her tips? When a picture of her eloquently stated reason

I give God 10%. Why do you get 18?

ended up on Reddit, albeit with identifiable information, and went viral, she later had an epiphany and decided it was an act that “brought embarrassment to her church and ministry”

And while she had this apparent change of heart, she also had the “presence of mind” and “forgiving nature” to place a call to the restaurant location and call for the immediate firing of all staff. Yep, that’s right! All staff! As a result of her selfless actions, the waitress Chelsea who took the picture and posted it online got fired. Oh by the way, Pastor Alois Bell is a mother of three. Great example for the kids!

Dear Alois Bell, thanks for giving Christians all over the world a bad name.

While the Internet sleuths and regular Joes/Janes are raging about the unfairness of the whole ordeal, most of America and the rest of the world are saying

“In the midst of all this you had the time to make a call to get everyone fired?”

Ain’t Nobody Got Time Fo Dat!

India’s New Time Pass Is Rape

Recently the nation of India was in the news for all the wrong reasons. Apparently men in India are fond of raping women. In India, a rape occurs every 18-20 minutes. I recently read that Delhi, the nation’s capital, was affectionately called “Rape Capital” by the media. In the last 2 weeks of December 2012 many folks took to the streets to protest a brutal incident where a student was gang raped by 6 freaks on a bus. Tragically, the girl succumbed to her injuries.

You see, this isn’t the first brutal rape to happen in India and without change it won’t be the last. Even while protests were going on, there were multiple incidents reported in various other parts of India. The response to the whole incident and what is undoubtedly a social, cultural and national epidemic was unsurprising and comical at best.

First, the government decided it was going to honor the status quo and took a vow of silence. When anger grew even further some ministers decided they would switch tactics and started the blame game. Some even said the government had to be sensitive/neutral and therefore abstain from addressing the protests. As negative feedback grew all fingers suddenly pointed towards the state police. As if all of this wasn’t comical enough, the media focus frenzy was where the true gold could be found.

If you have ever tried watching a news segment on Indian TV you’ll notice that you can’t hear a goddamn thing as everyone is intent on yelling and more importantly talking all at once. Coz God forbid someone can actually hear what you have to say! “Pundits” and “gurus” came out of the woodwork to offer their take on the “issue” and a plethora of rhetoric followed. All that could be heard was “We have to ask the hard questions”, “Time for introspection” etc. Seriously? People wanted to see change and in true form, the suggested action was “thinking of what action needed to be taken” (half a decade after everyone knew this was a problem)

Here are the some of the fascinating suggestions on short/long-term actions  (as stated by the nation’s citizen on national TV)

1. Stay indoors
2. Ban skirts
3. Stricter laws (as India’s reputation on upholding laws are stellar)
4. Ban porn sites in India (this was the funniest one. A “liberal arts” student was on national TV advocating this. I’m sure she had tons of data to support her theory about its effectiveness. I am also quite certain she knew all about how proxy servers and VPN worked)
5. Hiring more women police (as India’s history on workplace harassment is just amazing)
6. Further segregation between boys/girls and men/women (as it has proven effective for the past 60 years!)

If THIS is the kind of mind-blowing, forward thinking ideas that the nation could come up with, it’s no wonder we are still stuck in this unfortunate rut. I think what is even more sad is that the true intellectuals were drowned out, or they just plainly refused to say what they had it mind coz why bother?

If there is one thing Indians love, it’s status quo and rest assured this won’t be the last we hear of India’s rape epidemic.