F-Bomb

by Lauren McKeon

  Men’s rights activists loathe the What Makes A Man conference, of course. More moderate MRAs complain that the conference and its attendees don’t discuss the real issues men face; others prefer to call the men who attend “pussies.” MRAs, after all, don’t want to ally with feminists; they want to blame them. Unsurprisingly, they also ridicule White Ribbon founder Jeff Perera chiefly because he has focused his foundation on helping men end violence against women. In their spirited takedowns of any anti–violence against women organization, including Perera’s, MRAs gloss over the complexities of violence, particularly intimate partner violence. In 2008, for example, men committed 99 percent of the intimate-partner violence reported by women, according to the US National Data on Intimate Partner Violence, and women committed 83 percent of the intimate-partner violence reported by men. In sheer numbers, this translates to 552,000 non-fatal violent incidents against women and 101,000 against men. Many men’s rights activists use raw data like these to argue women are just as violent as men. When they do this, they usually neglect to add that numerous studies have shown a woman’s violence in these cases, unlike men’s, is often in self-defense, less severe, and rarely continues after she leaves the relationship.

  This doesn’t mean we should demonize men or ignore violence against men; it does mean context is essential. The data cherry-picking has gotten so bad that some researchers have taken to adding what are essentially direct academic disclaimers to MRAs in their papers. For example, one 2017 paper in the journal Violence Against Women noted: “We resist the anti-feminist misinterpretation of studies on female perpetrators of violence in which readers mistakenly assume that males and females commit [intimate-partner violence] at identical rates, with identical consequences, and in identical contexts.” Another prominent longtime researcher on violence against women wrote a direct response paper to anti-feminists, addressing each of their criticisms of his research. At the end, he asked: “So, what’s up with these authors? Why the comic book caricatures of the feminist analysis? Why the gross misrepresentations…? Why the single-minded focus on alleged evidence that women are as bad as men?”

  These researchers might as well be asking a fish why it swims. None of it matters to anti-feminists. Just look at why they don’t like Jeff Perera. To them, he is a feminist apologist and a hypocrite, largely because—and I’m not kidding—he once indicated he’s a fan of Miss Piggy. When Perera tweeted approval of an MTV clip of the famous Muppet asserting she’d make a pothole out of any catcaller, MRAs frothed. He was promoting violence against men! Miss Piggy was an abuser! She probably, one commenter suggested, called fake rape after her famous “Hiii-yah!” Another responded: “[It] adds a new dimension to squealing like a pig.” It’s all so ludicrous—except we keep hearing this about real women, too.

  If we can conclude anything, it’s that this renewed focus on masculinity and men’s issues is filled with contradictions and confusion. Which version of #BeBetter are men supposed to embrace? Are we really exploring and expanding masculinity, or are we using this exercise as the guise to reinforce pre-feminism gender roles? We’re not just selling these shiny new Ken doll concepts to men, either. Women are the secondary (and, in some cases, primary) intended buyers. We’re the ones who are supposed not only to “Need man! Need man!” but “Want man! Want man!” regardless of our age or sexual orientation. What an effective distraction. We are busy trying to parse what kind of behavior and beard make the perfect (gentle) men and we’re simultaneously guilt-tripped for spending too much time on women’s issues. The underlying message is apparent: Stop being so selfish, ladies. You’ve already made it. It’s time to help make men great again.

  At the end of our conversation at Grey House in 2016, Brea Hutchinson said something that at first surprised me, given her history of political action: “I don’t identify as a feminist today.” She was quick to expand, perhaps accustomed, by now, to disaster-managing people’s shock. “It’s not because I reject feminism but because I think feminism is a past practice and not a future practice. In feminist communities and dialogues, we’re not open to contradictory opinions. We’re not willing to hold that maybe we’re not doing things right. Our understanding of power is incomplete,” she said. “It means we have to review and revisit [our actions] and maybe listen to people who we don’t like.” She went on. “What does feminism mean today in 2016? It’s a question I can’t answer. For me, I can’t answer.” She added that her actions can be described as feminist, but that’s she’s not sure what the politic is anymore—or even if there is one. Can we say we’re feminist if our actions aren’t? And who gets to police that? But there’s more: “Feminism has never really made much space for me as a trans woman. Feminism has never included my body or my experiences in any real way. So, I’m like, ‘I’m going to step aside and let you guys have this.’” She looked at me tentatively.

  But I was not shocked. The more I reported and researched, the more it made sense to me that some women didn’t identify with the word “feminist” as a label, a movement, or both. And it made sense that one woman’s feminism may look nothing like another woman’s. The movement and the word were both, I was discovering, going through the most severe growing pains: crucial self-analysis, tough discussions, bad PR, brutal backlash, active exclusion and active inclusion, a new and contradictory rise in seeing both everything and nothing as political, an onslaught of mixed messages on what it means to be women and men and what it means to include men, the total normalization of anti-women narratives, love and hate and apathy, and on and on. So, yes, I understood why women shied away from the f-word, even as they worked to improve women’s rights and equality, often doing a neat little linguistic sidestep with “I’m not a feminist, but . . .” What I still didn’t understand was why women identified with the anti-feminist movement, or what, beyond endless kerfuffle over the label, it would mean in the long term. What was their end goal? How were these narratives reframing conversations and affecting polices? Before I could dive into examining the consequences, I realized I needed to hear what they had to say for themselves.

  It was time to meet the women who hated feminism.

  TWO

  On the front lines of the new women-on-women gender wars

  4

  How a feMRA is made: In conversation with the leaders of today’s rising women-led anti-feminist movement

  At the end of June 2014, roughly two hundred men and women packed a shabby, wood-paneled Veterans of Foreign Wars hall located in a northern suburb of Detroit. As the fluorescent lights beamed down, giving cheeks, bald heads, and linoleum floors an unflattering sheen, the attendees, drawn from all corners of the world, hooted and hollered. This was the first annual International Conference on Men’s Rights, and it was a long time coming. Self-righteous victory hung heavy in the air: for months, feminists had tried and ultimately failed to stop the conference. Nothing could dampen the triumph: not the bad lighting, or the hardback chairs, or the dumpy venue. Today, the (self-proclaimed) underdogs were on top. If they wanted to trash talk feminists, nothing could stop them now, and they knew it. As the three-day conference opened, Janet Bloomfield, a general of the women-led men’s rights, anti-feminist faction, said of the hundreds of women who protested the conference: “Let those cunts fuck themselves up their own asses. Bring it, halfwits!”

  Still, this wasn’t how Paul Elam, head honcho of North America’s most prominent men’s rights activist (MRA) organization, A Voice for Men, had pictured the day when he announced the conference in December 2013. Elam is an imposing presence: a physically large man (in one A Voice for Men post, he assures followers that he’d hit a woman back if physically provoked, boasting that he’s six foot eight and 285 pounds) and a loud, aggressive one, too. Judging by looks alone, he’s a man’s man. He had made much of its chosen location, initially downtown Detroit, calling it a poetic choice. “If we wanted to find a city that was an iconic testament to masculinity, we’d need look no further,” he wrote on the gr
oup’s blog. “It is a city teetering and struggling for its footing. It is seeking, like many men, to find its balance and its place in the world again.” Elam booked the conference into a swank hotel, the DoubleTree by Hilton, its banquet hall resplendent with fresh flowers, plush chairs, and damask carpeting. It was symbolic and perfect, the right place for such a momentous occasion.

  Except hundreds of people in Detroit disagreed: they stormed the streets, surrounding the hotel, mere weeks before the conference was supposed to take place. Protestors circulated a petition claiming the hotel would put itself “in bed with domestic terrorists” by hosting the conference. The men’s rights movement is linked to the May 2014 mass shooting in which Elliot Rodger killed six and injured fourteen University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) students, including two sorority girls. Before the shooting, Rodger uploaded his 140-page “manifesto,” in which he called himself an “incel” (a term those in the manosphere use to describe involuntary celibacy). He grew increasingly obsessed over said status, eventually claiming that “females truly have something mentally wrong with them” and that he wanted to kill both the men that “took the females” away from him, as well as the women who rejected him. Women were “foul bitches” for not having the “grace” to say hi to him. He blamed them for making him feel “worthless.” He started throwing his drinks at couples who kissed in front of him, later trying a gun out for target practice and joining several online forums for men who were “starved of sex” and shared his “hatred of women.” He hated (and named) men whom he viewed as more socially successful than him, planning a “Day of Retribution” to punish, torture, and kill women. Though he never called himself an MRA, many feminists linked him to the movement, citing the mirrored “I’m a nice guy and it’s women’s fault, not mine, that X, X, and X is wrong with my life” rhetoric. “Simply search the phrase ‘MRA,’” said protesters in Detroit, “and you’ll see the violence, hatred, bigotry, and misogyny that MRAs support.”

  Soon thereafter came the threats, or so A Voice for Men claimed. The group complained of anonymous letter writers who said they would disguise themselves as guests; feminist groups openly said they would storm the hotel. Hotel managers sent A Voice for Men an ultimatum: hire eight police officers to provide security, or get out. Staff wanted two officers in the lobby, three on the floor that held the conference, and three more patrolling the rooms. It would cost more money than A Voice for Men had budgeted for security, but the organization was used to playing the victim to its advantage.

  The group immediately mobilized against the “feminist radicals,” creating an online crowd-funding campaign that cast Bloomfield as its star. In the accompanying video plea, Bloomfield, a conventionally attractive, slim blond, abandoned her usually crass online persona, instead calling herself a wife and a mother who “needs your help.” The feminists, she said, “want to silence me—no, they want to do more than that. They want to kill me.” Alison Tieman, another feMRA, as female MRAs are colloquially known, took to her anti-feminist YouTube channel, eyes wet, stating: “Even discussing men’s problems—this society can’t handle it, can’t tolerate it. How is that a patriarchy?” The women saved the conference. The campaign easily surpassed its $25,000 goal, raising more than $32,000. A handful of people were so moved by the pleas they donated $1,000 each.

  Yet here everybody was in June at a different location anyway, cheering and buying T-shirts emblazoned with Bloomfield and Tieman’s faces. It’s unclear why the conference venue was changed when A Voice for Men was able to pony up the cash for extra security. In subsequent updates, Elam glossed over the details, intimating it was his choice to move the conference. He claimed interest had grown rapidly and they needed a bigger venue. Considering the hotel has two ballrooms and seventeen meeting rooms, and the VFW hall is just, well, a hall, it seems more likely the hotel wanted the conference gone, or that, despite all their bluster, the MRAs were spooked. Ensconced within their suburban fortress, MRAs were able to jeer at feminists all they wanted and control the message getting out.

  No matter what work got done inside, though, the event’s biggest success was proving the might of the men’s rights movement beyond the fringes of the internet. Not only was it able to show that its members existed in real life and not their mother’s proverbial basements, it also demonstrated it could quickly marshal itself to raise cash, if needed. Instead of being something feminists could laugh at, it suddenly became something worth being scared of—a Halloween freak show turned next-door neighbor.

  Even worse, perhaps, was that the MRAs demonstrated they could secure a PR win. Sure, hundreds protested against the conference, but hundreds also supported it, donating without attending, all buying into the men-are-losing-because-of-feminists narrative. It was, in essence, the same hate-filled and formulaic propaganda that has always worked. With the venue crisis, the MRA movement had finally found its lynchpin: charismatic women orators. Who better to tell the world feminism should be dead?

  Bloomfield and her cohort fascinated and repulsed me. In fact, women who eschewed feminism in general puzzled me; they scared me, too. Everywhere I looked women were saying no to feminism and yes to weirder things, like becoming feMRAs. I feared that, if their ranks kept growing, we were unwittingly heading for the ultimate patriarchal victory: women who’d willingly abandon the fight for their own rights in favor of helping men superglue their royal bottoms to the Top Dog throne. It was like the world’s biggest guilt trip. Women were convinced they should feel bad about feminism’s victories, ready to rewind our gains. FeMRAs seemed like cartoon characters, but also ones that could suddenly come to life à la Roger Rabbit. I ping-ponged back and forth, unable to decide where I landed on the terror-o-meter. Should I feel threatened that these women could become the norm, or were they destined to live forever on the fringes of freak? I had to know more about what motivated them to—so adamantly—decide that while women had it all, men were hurting. Just imagine our lives if every women started to feel that way.

  Oh, hell no.

  The men’s rights movement is fond of saying its members don’t hate women. What a load of BS. Sure, I’ll buy MRAs may love some particular women. But it’s hard to see how a movement that’s always fought to quash our rights could argue it likes capital-W women. That’s akin to saying an abusive husband likes his wife. Whatever, buddy; that’s not the point.

  Like breadcrumbs along a fairytale forest path, the movement’s origins can be traced back to the innocent-sounding A League for Men’s Rights. Founded in the late 1800s in England, the league was a direct answer to feminism, “securing the legal and moral protection of men against the encroachment of women.” Its founder, William Austin, told the Weekly Standard and Express, “I have looked carefully into the legal aspect of the matter and find that a woman has a much greater advantage when it comes to litigation about almost any matter over any man, rich or poor.” The fledgling feminist movement, he added, meant men were always losing and women were always winning. His screed appeared in the Weekly Standard on May 14, 1898, under an advertisement hailing the new discovery of Dr. Weir’s Porous Plaster, “a sure and certain cure for pains in the back and joints.”

  Thirty years later in Vienna, Sigurd Höberth von Schwarzthal founded another men’s rights group called, in German, Der Bund für Männerrechte (or, in English, The Federation of Men’s Rights). A divorced man with arched eyebrows and a moustache reminiscent of two dead caterpillars, Höberth von Schwarzthal remains a men’s rights folk hero today. One of his more famous (or infamous) statements is: “We love and honour the ladies, but we want to leave to our descendants once more real mothers and wives, and to prevent their being killed off by the alleged emancipation of the woman.” Bachelors, divorced husbands, and unmarried fathers comprised his group. He insisted married men wanted to join, but their wives held their coattails too close.

  At the group’s first mass meeting in 1926, its members showed an unbridled distaste for the new feminist movemen
t. “The feminist, hysterical and degenerate cafe scribblers have helped cunning woman to forge intolerable chains for men,” one rally member told newspapers at the time. “The man is roped before the family coach, and on the driving seat sits the ‘gracious lady,’ and if he doesn’t pull till he drops, she swings the whip of legal paragraphs over him.”

  This sentiment persisted throughout the next several decades, dominating various men’s rights groups who opposed the increasing rights of women. Many groups took on the crusade against alimony payments, saying they shackled men to the responsibility of marriage but encouraged women to “become out-and-out adventuresses”—Höberth von Schwarzthal again. They demanded alimony be repealed, or at the very least that women also be forced to pay it (should the divorce be their fault) and that all legal punishment be overturned for failure to pay (for men only). Even silent film star Charlie Chaplin, whose second ex-wife, Lita Grey, supposedly demanded $1.25 million in alimony, reportedly joined the movement, earning himself the admiration of today’s men’s rights activists. On the whole, the movement called for equality, but only in the broadest, most simplistic sense. If a woman killed her husband in self-defense, for instance, she should be sentenced to the same jail time as a male abuser who beat his wife to death. And so on and so on, in a weird Chinese finger pull of logic: the more feminists talked about women’s rights, the more MRAs screamed, “But, men!”

  One of the earliest mentions of men’s rights was in 1886, in Putnam’s Magazine, a then contemporary competitor of Harper’s. “Putnam is for progress. Putnam is for women’s rights; but it is also for men’s rights—for everybody’s rights.” That doesn’t sound so bad, but the magazine’s editors went on to entirely miss the point of equal rights, stating that since the man in marriage was like the “guardian and master” and the woman “a child and a servant” he was duty-bound to take responsibility for her behavior, even if her actions were atrocious and even if they were her idea. As an illustration of women’s power for manipulation and penchant for wickedness, the magazine cited Lady Macbeth. Evidently, many late-Victorian women persuaded their husbands to commit murder.