Why “divorced online dads” should redirect their anger
It’s a truth almost too strange for fiction: a movement ostensibly dedicated to helping men has, over time, become one of the things most hazardous to men’s well-being. The Men’s Rights Movement (MRM) is a loose collection of activists and online communities that portray men as the real victims of modern society. If you’ve ever had the idle thought that a “men’s rights” group might be some friendly therapeutic circle where guys talk about feelings and help each other out, think again. In practice, the MRM has often looked more like a grievance-fueled carnival, one that leaves many of its attendees angrier, lonelier, and worse off than when they arrived. This is the curious, tragic paradox of how a movement claiming to lift men up has in many ways dragged men’s mental, physical, and financial health down.
Fragility and Anger
The idea of “men’s rights” is not a s new of a concept as you might think. In fact, the term appeared as far back as 1856 in response to early women’s rights activism. In England Ernest Belfort Bax griped about the “Legal Subjection of Men” as far back as 1896, insisting that women were actually the privileged sex. (Yes, even in the Victorian era, men were convinced women had it too good.) In the 1920s and 1930s, groups in Europe began popping up to combat what they saw as the “excesses” of women’s emancipation. These forerunners of modern MRM groups had a clear theme: they despised women’s evolving social power, and they framed men as downtrodden losers in the gender game.
The current Men’s Rights Movement, as we know it, however, has its roots in the 1970s. But back then an interesting schism was forming in the culture. Alongside second-wave feminism, a pro-feminist men’s liberation movement emerged, made up of men who agreed that rigid gender roles hurt everyone. Men’s liberation groups were influenced by feminist ideas and aimed to free men from the emotional straitjackets of macho expectations. They believed (correctly) that patriarchy demands strict, stoic masculinity from men, which can be stifling for men’s emotional wellbeing. For a brief moment, it seemed men’s activism might partner with feminism to liberate both sexes from the rigid roles imposed on them by pre-industrial survival and feudal economies.
But this kumbaya moment didn’t last. By the early 1980s, the once-unified “men’s movement” split like a bad divorce. On one side were the pro-feminist men’s libbers who stuck with the idea that dismantling traditional masculinity and supporting gender equality would help everybody. On the other side were the budding Men’s Rights Activists (MRAs), who took a very different view: they decided men were actually an oppressed class, and they blamed feminism for just about every hardship men faced. Instead of questioning masculinity, this faction doubled down on it. Traditional manhood wasn’t the problem (in their eyes) — women’s demands for equality were.
A prominent early figure was Warren Farrell, who had actually chaired a chapter of the National Organization for Women before dramatically turning on feminism and authoring The Myth of Male Power in 1993 – basically the MRA bible. Through the 1980s and 1990s, MRAs focused on issues like divorce, child custody, and the belief that society was unfairly stacked against men. (This era gave us groups with names like “Free Men Inc.” and “Coalition of American Divorce Reform,” which sound either like militia groups or support networks for guys with truly unfortunate lawyers.) As sociologist Michael Kimmel observed, by the ‘90s these activists’ early critiques of gender roles had morphed into “a celebration of all things masculine” and a nostalgic cheer for the old traditional male role.
Today, the men’s rights movement is largely an online phenomenon, part of what’s been dubbed the “manosphere,” an ecosystem of blogs, forums, and YouTube channels where grievances about feminism fester and sometimes mutate into more extreme ideologies. It’s a big tent that includes not just MRAs, but also fringe subcultures that make the average MRA look almost reasonable by comparison.
Some of the key players in this digital hellscape include:
Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) – Pronounced “mig-tau,” these fellows decided the best solution is just to swear off women entirely. They’ll live in a man-cave (literally or figuratively), free from the horrors of dating liberated women. It’s like a permanent boy’s clubhouse with a “No Girls Allowed (Ever)” sign.
Pick-Up Artists (PUAs) – A bit of an odd fit in this list, these are the “dating gurus” who see feminism as an obstacle to men’s sexual success. They respond by devising manipulative tactics to seduce women, treating romance like a video game to be hacked.
Incels (Involuntary Celibates) – The deepest, darkest pit of the manosphere. These are men who feel entitled to sex and romance but aren’t getting it, and they’ve developed a violently misogynistic subculture around blaming women (and more genetically fortunate men) for their misery.
This spectrum from suit-and-tie MRAs to nihilistic incels is often described as a radicalization pipeline. A young man might start out watching a few seemingly reasonable YouTube videos about “men’s issues.” Next thing he knows, he’s knee-deep in forums convincing him that women and society at large are out to get him, that he’s a victim of a grand feminist conspiracy.
Toxic Masculinity: Self-Inflicted Wounds
A cruel irony of the MRM is that it often doubles down on the very macho stereotypes that make many men miserable in the first place. Mainstream psychologists and sociologists have spent decades documenting how strict, traditional ideas of manhood can act like an emotional shackle on men. The American Psychological Association (APA), for example, issued guidelines based on 40+ years of research showing that “males who are socialized to conform to ‘traditional masculinity ideology’ are often negatively affected in terms of mental and physical health.”
The men’s rights crowd loves to talk about men’s higher suicide rates, shorter life expectancy, more workplace deaths, etc. These are real problems – for instance, men make up about 75% of suicide deaths globally and around 90% of workplace fatalities. Those statistics aren’t fabricated. But what MRAs don’t acknowledge is why these numbers are so grim. Scholars point out that men’s poorer health outcomes are often the “heavy costs” men pay for conforming to narrow definitions of masculinity. Seeking dangerous, physically demanding professions, while discounting safety equipment and regulations as antithetical to their perceived “rugged” aesthetic.
Yet the MRM’s response to these very real male woes is perverse. Rather than encourage men to break out of destructive masculine norms, MRAs usually deny that masculinity is the issue at all. They often sneer at the term “toxic masculinity,” seeing it as an attack on men rather than an attack on a dysfunctional script that society foists on men. Without fighting these systems of oppression they perpetuate a business culture of cost-costing that makes them less safe.
MRM spaces are also filled with grifters who sell multi-thousand-dollar weekend “boot camp” retreats where participants are subjected to further abuse and humiliation in hopes of becoming “tougher” to deal with social stresses— many enduring debt they can’t afford in the process.
Psychological effects of these work and negativesocial environments lead to increased rates of substance abuse often overlapping with domestic violence. These strained home-lives evolve into the foundations of issues like child alienation and lack of support from family as men age. These painful cycles, however, can be broken with positive effort.
Breaking the Cycle: A Better Path for Men and Society
If current trends continue unchecked, we face a troubling future. Picture a society where increasing numbers of men retreat into echo chambers of resentment. The gulf between the sexes widens as dialogue breaks down into mutual hostility and mistrust.
But that bleak future is not inevitable. The underlying issues that drive some men to the MRM can be addressed in far better ways. Society can support men’s well-being without trapping them in hateful ideologies. In fact, many of the solutions are surprisingly prosaic and within reach:
Encourage Healthy Masculinity
Mental Health and Social Support
Address Economic Inequality
Promote Positive Fatherhood and Family Involvement
Education and Critical Thinking
Men deserve better than the men’s rights movement. They deserve actual support, not snake oil. They deserve to feel heard without being fed a toxic narrative. The good news is that we’re starting to see glimmers of a better path. The sooner we collectively dump the baggage of the men’s rights movement, the sooner we can get on with the real work of making life better for men and women.