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The Men's Rights Movement and the Women Who Love It
No, not The Onion!
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/mens-rights-movement-women-who-love-it
Who are these women men's rights activists? And why do they embrace a movement that some see as blatantly misogynistic? Below is a rundown of key players. A few of them, including Janet Bloomfield, who was the focus of a recent in Vice News article, have been in the spotlight recently. Others are virtually unknown to the mainstream, but within the movement they're seen as luminaries....
Helen Smith: The Renegade Psychologist
According to Smith, a forensic psychologist from Knoxville, Tennessee, who is married to conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, men have had it with women and society in general. Last year, Smith published a book called Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream—and Why It Matters, which argues that the decks are stacked against men in every sphere, from the home and workplace to the justice system (the result of sexual harassment policies and gender bias in schools and family courts). In response, many men are following John Galt's lead and opting out of high-paid work and family life. Smith, who previously worked with violent children, also blogs about men's issues for the conservative news and opinion website PJ Media. In a post earlier this year, she argued that "feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys' and men's issues" may have been "to blame" for Elliot Rodger's deadly shooting rampage in Santa Barbara last March....
Janet Bloomfield: The Social-Media Provocateur...
In reality, while Bloomfield takes a progressive stand on some issues—she supports gay marriage and a women's right to choose, for example—many of the ideas she flogs are anything but. She calls single mothers "bona fide idiots" who don't "give a shit" about their children's well-being and pens blog posts with titles like "Why Don't We Have a Dumb Fucking Whore Registry? Now That Would Be Justice." She also dismisses concept of "rape culture," as "a giant rape fantasy—one in which all women can imagine all men desire them with such force and such passion that they're willing to commit a crime."
Suzanne Venker: The Traditionalist
For much of her career, Venker followed the path blazed by her aunt, the anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly. In 2011, the pair even cowrote a book, The Flipside of Feminism, arguing that freedom and power have only made women unhappy. But their paths began to diverge the following year when Venker, who in addition to authoring books is a frequent Fox News commentator, published a column on FoxNews.com called "The War on Men." It made the case that men were opting out of marriage because career-minded women had lost their womanly qualities and become angry and competitive. And it urged women to "surrender to their nature—their femininity" if they wanted to find husbands. Predictably, the piece went viral, stirring up a whirlwind of criticism. But Venker was also flooded with grateful emails from male readers. "Men were writing to say, 'Thank you, thank you!'" she recalls. "'Finally, somebody gets it!'" Inspired by the outpouring, Venker launch the men's rights blog Women for Men and shifted the focus of her own commentary to men's issues. In her recent FoxNews.com columns, Venker argues that white men face oppression "unlike anything American women have faced," and claims that men's "success in fields such as medicine, engineering and technology have done more to liberate women from the constraints of their former lives than a busload of feminists could ever hope to do." She also maintains that surrendering to male power is an "aphrodisiac" that "grants women access to the deepest parts of a man's soul."
Helen Smith: The Renegade Psychologist
According to Smith, a forensic psychologist from Knoxville, Tennessee, who is married to conservative blogger Glenn Reynolds, men have had it with women and society in general. Last year, Smith published a book called Men on Strike: Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream—and Why It Matters, which argues that the decks are stacked against men in every sphere, from the home and workplace to the justice system (the result of sexual harassment policies and gender bias in schools and family courts). In response, many men are following John Galt's lead and opting out of high-paid work and family life. Smith, who previously worked with violent children, also blogs about men's issues for the conservative news and opinion website PJ Media. In a post earlier this year, she argued that "feminists and their supporters who block funding and education going to boys' and men's issues" may have been "to blame" for Elliot Rodger's deadly shooting rampage in Santa Barbara last March....
Janet Bloomfield: The Social-Media Provocateur...
In reality, while Bloomfield takes a progressive stand on some issues—she supports gay marriage and a women's right to choose, for example—many of the ideas she flogs are anything but. She calls single mothers "bona fide idiots" who don't "give a shit" about their children's well-being and pens blog posts with titles like "Why Don't We Have a Dumb Fucking Whore Registry? Now That Would Be Justice." She also dismisses concept of "rape culture," as "a giant rape fantasy—one in which all women can imagine all men desire them with such force and such passion that they're willing to commit a crime."
Suzanne Venker: The Traditionalist
For much of her career, Venker followed the path blazed by her aunt, the anti-feminist crusader Phyllis Schlafly. In 2011, the pair even cowrote a book, The Flipside of Feminism, arguing that freedom and power have only made women unhappy. But their paths began to diverge the following year when Venker, who in addition to authoring books is a frequent Fox News commentator, published a column on FoxNews.com called "The War on Men." It made the case that men were opting out of marriage because career-minded women had lost their womanly qualities and become angry and competitive. And it urged women to "surrender to their nature—their femininity" if they wanted to find husbands. Predictably, the piece went viral, stirring up a whirlwind of criticism. But Venker was also flooded with grateful emails from male readers. "Men were writing to say, 'Thank you, thank you!'" she recalls. "'Finally, somebody gets it!'" Inspired by the outpouring, Venker launch the men's rights blog Women for Men and shifted the focus of her own commentary to men's issues. In her recent FoxNews.com columns, Venker argues that white men face oppression "unlike anything American women have faced," and claims that men's "success in fields such as medicine, engineering and technology have done more to liberate women from the constraints of their former lives than a busload of feminists could ever hope to do." She also maintains that surrendering to male power is an "aphrodisiac" that "grants women access to the deepest parts of a man's soul."
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