I'm being admittedly alarmist, because I'm not smart enough to have a well rounded argument, but the way men's rights/the red pill and conservative Christian opinions on women's issues overlap is terrifying. I don't know the numbers on these bases but the fact that they're large enough to get any coverage by major media outlets is troubling. I see a Handmaid's Tale future as not impossible. Someone will probably tell me I'm wrong.
Considering Abrahamic religions have a tradition of plural wives and stoning adulterers to death, it isn't surprising that violent misogynists exist in depressing numbers, nor appropriate to project a downward trend. I mean, this shit used to be Johnny Cash lyrics.
is actually a response to Christianity no longer having the widespread moral authority they once did
Which is ironic really since these supposed atheist guys are all up in arms over women no longer obeying biblical roles, and rape laws preventing them from benefiting from the promise Deuteronomy.
I'd be really surprised if TRP weren't overwhelmingly christian. Like it or not, atheists are far more likely to be on board with feminism, secularism, what have you. Saying that TRP is atheistic seems extremely misleading to me; dogmatically "darwinian" as it might seem. I'm struggling to understand how you're putting a wedge between conservatism and TRP, when they seem to be more or less the same thing, albeit the weird darwinian overlay to one side.
People like to conflate reddit-style back-patting atheists with MRAs, but the overlap is really due to a confounding factor: They're all boys without much education who nevertheless have "being smart" as a part of their ego identity. They love the idea of knowledge that contradicts what most people believe: If they can know some factoid that most people get wrong, they think this means they're intelligent. Oh well. I'll go back to reading Onfray.
I didn't realize the "atheists-are-jerks" meme extended all the way to conflating atheists with MRAs. Atheism and feminism are (often) tangled up in one another. A wonderful source of misogynistic justification is to be found in any holy book you wish to point to. Atheism usually throws this out, along with feminism, and to some extent this sympathy is very strong. I suppose you could imagine a darwinian atheist believing that women have biologically enforced traits that make them somehow "lessers" to men, but I can't think of anyone, ever that has expressed this idea in the modern era (some 20th century authors having a derogatory view of women aside; this was "normal" from any ideological perspective at that time.)
You haven't noticed the evolutionary psych reasons MRAs give for their misogyny. I do not want to do that research for you because gross. Edit: This question -- are misogynist trolls atheists or Christians? -- is an interesting one. Misogyny is cooked into many religions, but unfortunately, the ethos some people take out of "survival of the fittest" isn't always awesome, either. I looked at Elliot Rodger's manifesto (again, gross), and he definitely is not coming from a Christian place. According to him, he, Elliot Rodger, is an angry God (ahhh, mental illness...), and women are animals. He uses the word "species" at one point, but there's no clear indication that he thinks Charles Darwin wanted him to do it.
I mean. Ok? You're talking about a bunch of christians, but you're saying they're terribly unchristian. They might be unchristian to you, but they would call themselves christian.
So, at much personal expense, I looked into the matter, and I think that you're incorrect. TRP's are at the very least as christian as the average american, and probably far more so considering the age group that the TRP is constituted of. There is virtually no scientific data to turn to, but I spent an, absolutely agonizing, length of time looking over "atheism", "christianity", and "religion" within the context of this sub-group, and found a very strong inclination toward christianity. Overtly atheist comments/posts were dramatically downvoted with notable frequency (although the fact that they exist does suggest that atheism exists within TRP culture) and I think you're committing a common mistake: you don't like reddit-know-it-all atheists, you don't like TRP, ergo TRP is atheist.
Here's a single example from "RooshV's" forum, but if you're not convinced I challenge you to take up your own analysis of the subject and see if you aren't forced to the same conclusion. Again, compared to contemporary teenage/20-somethings the inclination toward christianity is stronger than it should be. http://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-41509.html Also, it should be stated with great emphasis that the state's rights movement in the United States, with all that brings along with it, is a deeply conservative, deeply religious movement. It grew out of the white supremacist movement that was also incredibly conservative and incredibly religious, and about the only group that ever took eugenics seriously. Timothy McVeigh to Dylann Roof, this has been a conservative, religious phenomena, and by no means associated with atheism.
My thing is I've seen coverage of MRA outside reddit. Hand wavy, slippery slope, whatever. It makes me wonder how big it is. Men have plenty of rights, we don't need a counter movement because some assholes feel left out at the civil rights table and I think people who believe that are dangerous.
With the amount of times I've had to relocated myself to be away from vocal assholes that bully others around enough for me to say, well, 'let's not see where where this goes", it's a lot. My safety comes first. Don't care if that sounds paranoid, I'm still alive, still recently single after nearly becoming a statistic as was described in this article. I attribute my current aliveness to choosing to remain single. It's my new health plan for a longer life. A vibrator and a pet for companionship, and friends for going out with, I'm far more happier than I ever was in a redeathlonship.
I actually disagree about this. Yes, overall, things are probably better for men than for women, especially with regards to this particular topic. However, there are some issues for which men got the short end of the stick (being taken seriously by the police when they say they have been raped, the prevalence of prison rape, the mismatch in the likelihood of getting custody of one's children, men who have had to pay child support for children they never knew they had, etc.,) and the Men's Rights Movement seeks to address those issues, without compromising the equality gained with feminism. I understand the reputation MRA's have and plenty of them are truly dangerous chauvinists, but I think this is a case, like you see with feminists as well, where a small but loud and extreme or irrational minority screams the loudest and makes the group as a whole look bad.
Right. Just about every violent crime (can't think of one where this isn't true) is more likely to be committed by men, and to men, than women, including rape. A growing disparity between genders in education exists. Something like 40 percent of domestic abuse cases had male victims in the UK according to a study a few years ago - it's probably similar or more than that in the USA. The vast majority of workplace deaths are men. Significantly more men are homeless and commit suicide than women. Now, these are just a few facts. This can be separate from things less quantifiable, like issues with the male gender role, court-related problems, and so on. I'm not an MRA or someone doing really any kind of work for men's rights (this post being the most I've done in quite a while, since a post similar to this). However, I don't think men's issues should be ignored, and I think activists in that area should be lauded like other activists are. Life is complex and time is limited, we need not expect everyone to take an active interest in every cause. In fact, this is why activists exist in the first place. What time I volunteer tends to go toward other things. Some issues are much more pressing that others, but that doesn't mean the whole world need to focus on them. Splitting the effort seems, to me, a much more reasonable approach. So, while I agree with the other user in saying that men's issues tend to less important than a lot of others, I don't think it warrants completely ignoring them and calling those who don't assholes. That's a little ridiculous. Hell, I mean, feminists and environmentalists don't give a shit about Rohingya Buddhists, child warriors in Africa, or general mistreatment of animals worldwide. And that's okay - Divide and conquer!