Why I Changed My Mind About International Men’s Day

How could one research “gender” without looking at the experiences of males? It is the very most central conceit of many forms of popular feminisms. So much “all men are……….” stuff allied to attempts to suggest that their isn’t in fact a whole variety of experiences. I recommend the video diary of the feminist director of the recently completed documentary “the Red Pill”. Perhaps most telling is her comment that re-examining her feminism improved her relationship with her partner by occasionally listening to him and thinking of him as a person. I gather that in Australia there has been quite a campaign to “ban” the Red Pill. Which as one commentator pointed out proves one of the central points, that “feminists” are not for dialogue or discussion ! rather going to show the importance of IMD.

There are some important insights in Mr Gelfer’s piece to which I want to draw specific attention, beginning with:

critical studies of men and masculinities continually demands the acknowledgement of differing and nuanced masculine experiences, yet does not do a great job of acknowledging such difference and nuance among those groups—such as IMD—it identifies as regressive.

To paraphrase or rephrase, critics of men’s issues insist that their own extremists don’t characterise their movement while simultaneously insisting that extremists within the target of their criticism somehow typify or define their own movement.

This is hypocrisy, but a necessary one if one wishes to avoid giving legitimacy to the valid points made by the opposition.

Sooner or later, progressives are going to have to decide what we/they care about most: genuine progressive values about equality, or maintaining control over the public narrative. By definition, you can’t do both because imposing control uncritically privileges some ideas over others (regardless of merit), and that directly supports Mr Gelfer’s proposition of a ‘big tent’ under which there need not be universal agreement, and under which it is possible to coöperate where there is common ground and agree to disagree where there is not.

It may just surprise a lot of progressives exactly how much common ground there is, as Mr Gelfer hints at.

It may also come as a surprise that many who chose the “wrong side” did so because there was no moderate ground that adequately spoke for their perspectives, and so they chose what they perceived as the ‘least worst’ option (or else were thrown out by the “right side” for heresy).

faced with the anxiety of being labelled as a men’s rights advocate and consequently often remain silent.

Such is the anxiety around having anything to do with anyone who might be identified as a men’s rights advocate, many progressives will not engage with initiatives such as IMD even though they may share substantial common ground

Given the above, the obvious question that follows is why there should be such anxiety around being identified as an MRA in the first place.

Are their bad eggs who identify as MRAs? Of course but, mutatis mutandis, there are bad eggs who identify as feminists, which goes directly to the last point.

Stigmatising a label and then labelling any speech (or, worse, person/group) with which one disagrees is profoundly at odds with constructive debate — and therefore to progressive goals — because you can’t have a debate when half of it is so ‘anxious’ it ‘remain[s] silent’. In fact, it’s downright dishonest rhetoric and strategy to pretend otherwise. Even if you can browbeat people with whom you disagree into silence, you cannot browbeat them into changing their minds, and only by changing minds will you change social attitudes.

Instead of wrapping up progressive and regressive ideas into a single label based on who espouses them, it is far better to critique specific ideas than the person. First, it deals with the actual problem rather than using the person as a proxy for the problem; and second, the moment the individual is attacked (ad hominem) is the moment that the possibility of constructive public exchange of ideas is lost.

there are still things I am not keen on about IMD, particularly the anti-women rhetoric of some of the individuals who align with it. However, I am more interested in the growth of conversations about men and masculinities and IMD plays an important role in this.

The solution to bad speech is more speech, never suppression. The addition of new voices who no longer must fear reprisals for dissent from orthodoxy will drown out the bad speech, including anti-woman sentiment.

To believe otherwise requires that you believe that most people aren’t fundamentally good and don’t care for social justice. If you believe that, then the only solution is abandonment of liberal values in favour of authoritarianism, a means of government with a very poor record indeed.