Some male sexual assault victims feel left behind by #MeToo - Sensationalist Headlines

But this is exactly the problem that people are talking about??? The attitude you're describing is exactly the one that is perpetuated against MRAs.

What do you mean?

To be fair, if you actually read Papaya's links, you'd see that feminists got the FBI to update their definition of rape to include the rape of men. Yes, there are a lot of feminists who only care about women, but there are also a lot of feminists who actually care about equality. You don't hear much about the latter group because negative news spreads much, much more than positive news. "Feminists get FBI to update rape definition" doesn't spread nearly as much as "Video of someone on The Voice laughing about woman cutting off her husband's dick!" Again however, there's a huge number of different types of feminists, so it's understandable to be wary of "just leave men's issues to feminists". It's just as easy to find someone online saying "feminism is about helping both women and men" as it is to find someone saying "feminism is about helping both women and men, also I hate it when men try to interrupt women with men's issues, men don't have issues they're just trying to distract from women".

there's a big difference between making a self standing joke and waltzing into a serious conversation and dropping a genocide joke. people like cube damage feminism as a concept and that you defend them shows you care more about the tribalist aspects of feminism rather than actually bringing about equality.

a lot of feminists are about getting rid of gender roles altogether, rather than turning the dial over and making women the dominant force in society. There's this image which you've prob seen before which obviously isn't a perfect example but gets the point across: https://dreamsfulloflove.files.wordpress.com/2016/07/screen-shot-2016-07-21-at-10-54-50-pm.png feminists who strive to get rid of gender roles, strive for the third one. I'd hope you'd want the third one too.

...Egalitarians?

If you describe yourself as a "feminist" but you actually strive for true equality between the sexes -- which includes individual approaches to gender-based issues for both men and women in a true effort to solve inequality between the two -- then you are part of the wrong movement. That's not to say that you should be an "MRA". Ideally, you'd call yourself an egalitarian. I'm sick of this "feminism actually means egalitarian" nonsense. There's a reason it's called feminism. Words mean things. I couldn't make a local BLM chapter called "whiteism" and successfully defend it with "but actually it's for black equality too!" The name you choose to give your movement is the single largest indicator of your true feelings. For a movement that is extremely concerned with the things that we say ("men at work", as an example), it seems extremely hypocritical to try to pretend that this extreme gender bias isn't apparent.

CDC says that it's actually a lot closer to 40%. The issue is that a lot of domestic violence shelters will turn men away, or turn them to abuser's programs. Like you said though, that's because society says "men are strong, women are weak". It's just that a lot of domestic violence shelters sadly still follow that idea.

The (main and potentially only valid) reason MRAs dislike feminists is because there are coordinated movements by people who describe themselves as feminists to actively shut down and block all attempts for MRAs to make any progress. The idea of Men's Rights Activism has absolutely nothing against reasonable feminism, but for some reason a lot of people who claim to be feminists try their hardest to paint it as that and shut it down for that reason.

But again, the problem with the way we address it right now is that the discussion is focused pretty much solely on getting rid of the negative gender perceptions regarding women, and simply asserting when it's brought up that doing so will just fix negative male perceptions by proxy. It hasn't. Relatively little progress has actually been made in regards to the injustices men face in society. It's great to say "feminism is about equality for everyone!" but the truth of the matter is that if you only ever take action to address one group of people's problems, regardless of whether or not your end goal is to help everyone, then you're only really helping that group of people. I don't think that feminists want to "turn the dial over." I can genuinely believe that what they want is equality. But that doesn't mean that they're actually accomplishing that in practice just because they occasionally pay lip service to male problems when other people bring it up.

Then call out those specific groups, not feminism as a whole

Yeah, okay, it sucks that women are seen as weaker than men. On the other hand, men are being physically abused and people refuse to even recognize or acknowledge their pain. Police are literally told to arrest the man, no matter what, in all domestic violence situations. Sorry that I care more about battered men than the fact that women aren't seen as being as strong as men. If you seriously think our priorities should be on trying to help women be seen as stronger -- and, as an afterthought, maybe men won't be abused and unable to receive any help as much -- then you're doing something wrong.

Actually to be fair, domestic violence is in fact a more serious threat to women than it is to men. Even if you believe the studies that show a near-equal rate of occurrence, women are something like 6x more likely to be grievously injured or killed in episodes of domestic violence.

They don't exist as a group outside of feminism. They don't group up together as "Man-Hating Feminists". They simply group up as feminists.

Agreed, and people should do the same for MRAs.

And women have thousands of domestic violence shelters to turn to in America. Men have one.

That still doesn't mean you should call out feminism as a whole, just those people/ideas

They do. Then the people being criticized hide behind feminism and claim that you're attacking the very idea of women's rights.

I'm not saying that that's not wrong.

Which is still no excuse to be against feminism as a whole

I recognize that, but the point is that domestic violence isn't measured by how many bones you break. Domestic Violence is extremely traumatizing mentally, regardless of how seriously you're actually injured. And if you defend yourself, and you're male, you're going to prison for beating up your wife.

I mean I'm on your side on this for the most part, but other countries have discovered that just building more male shelters doesn't actually accomplish much because men generally don't want to use them.

Why is this same idea used to be against MRAs as a whole though

If you try to host rallies and meetings to discuss real issues that are affecting you, and you're constantly shut down by feminists who drown out your speeches, make bomb threats, and run smear campaigns to get your meetings canceled, I don't think it's reasonable for someone to be upset that "feminists keep shutting us down." Yeah, the basic idea of feminism is fine, but it is being used to be one of the largest obstacles in the path of men being able to solve issues relating to men.

Vancouver tried to build one. The guy behind it was literally run out of town.

Lol, just don't discuss it as the entire movement... Because it's not. Discuss it as those people

it would be much more effective if people on each """side""" publically called out and told to fuck off the garbage on their own side. take other people's callouts as a chance to see problem areas and ACTUALLY FUCKING WORK TO EXCISE THE CANCER. too many times i see good feminists defend absolutely rotten people with vendettas against men and cis people in general, all because they're floating under the same nebulous label. quit doing that shit, you're cultivating a sickness that is actively damaging what you believe in. cut the toxic people out of your social circles.

Most MRA seems to exist as an antithesis of feminism, and doesn't really try to get anything done but tear down feminists

Then you should do the same for MRAs no?

If feminism as a whole is able to accept praise for good things done under its banner, it also needs to accept negative criticism for bad things done under its banner. You yourself, in this thread, have had no issue with positively describing the entire movement. You have not prefaced your praise of feminism with "reasonable feminists who don't shut down men". It's either both or none.