While there’s an argument to be made that the world would have been a saner place had we not gone down the road of thinking in terms of gendered rights back in the late 1960s(And stuck to thinking in terms of civil rights for one and all, regardless of gender)that ain’t what happened, and there’s no turning back the clock now. If we’re serious about enhancing liberty for all Americans, not just ourselves, that’s going to mean that folks will still be within their rights to identify as Feminists, form organizations, and take part in the political process, violently as we may disagree with them on some subjects
"In the New Yorker, Kerry even said he doesn’t want to have a foreign-policy doctrine. Well, you need a doctrine. A doctrine is a vision for your foreign policy. Kerry seems to resist vision, and that doesn’t work anymore, if it ever did. You need a bold, exciting vision to bring new people into the political process and create a governing majority. People want a strong leader, and I don’t think Kerry is being one right now."
Trump(who was mistaken for The Mahdi by most card-carrying MRAs), during his years in office, never articulated a coherent foreign policy doctrine. No candidate in the upcoming election is doing so, and the closest MRAs have come to expressing thoughts on the subject is “We don’t want men to die in war”, none of which is a vision for The US’s relationship to the rest of the world. MRAs and the few political leaders they endorse resist putting forth an intelligible vision on both foreign and domestic policy, and that’s not been effective at winning widespread and durable public support. A charismatic celebrity like Trump can win followers temporarily on personality alone, but that support evaporates as rapidly as it appears, without a vision
“Democrats frame their proposals around issues, when they should be framing them around values.”
MRAs similarly talk in terms of their pet projects, rather than values
“What really determines how people vote is their core beliefs, not what their position is on an issue like the economy or abortion or healthcare.”
What really determines which causes people support is their core beliefs, not what their stance on subjects like shared parenting legislation and Title IX star chambers are.
“If you can understand what people’s values are, you can figure out how to create a governing majority.”
No rewrite required.
"Our theory is that even people who are fairly conservative on issues like guns and gay marriage hold a lot of progressive values, especially around economic questions, and the Left needs to identify and strengthen those “bridge values.”
The Post-MRM’s theory is that even people who aren’t particularly receptive to “men’s issues” hold many Textbook Liberal values on subjects like the economy and criminal justice, and that to succeed we need to strengthen and identify those “bridge values”
"Polonsky: Name one.
Shellenberger: Well, the big one we’ve been talking about is the notion that government has an important role to play in our economic future. We know it’s a progressive bridge value because it’s one the conservatives feel the need to attack all the time. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh, or take a look at Bush’s agenda for an “ownership society.”
It’s interesting how seldom we progressives sit around and talk about what our values are. Values are the core beliefs that guide human action. But ever since the rise of religious fundamentalism and all its talk of “family values,” we liberals have shied away from speaking about our values."
MRAs rarely speak of values either
"Polonsky: I read about a speech Kerry gave in Nevada on the subject of the proposed nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Flats. He said that transporting radioactive waste and burying it at Yucca Flats goes against “sound science.” Was that a bridge value he was invoking — sound science?
Shellenberger: “Sound science” is a value, but I doubt it’s a bridge value. I think it’s a value that works among educated liberals. I don’t think a blue-collar Reagan Democrat in the Midwest is going to be moved by “sound science.” Kerry’s preaching to the base with that one, and I don’t think he’s even preaching to the base all that well, because liberals are as wary of science as they are supportive of it. Science is a value-neutral enterprise. It can be used for good or evil."
“Adhering to the data” is also a value, but not a bridge value. It works among MRAs and those adjacent to them, who experience relief when they read a study confirming that fathers are good for kids, or that women commit domestic violence at rates comparable to men. It doesn’t exert much influence over the other 80% of America though, who are preoccupied with worries like being able to make their utilities payment by the end of the week, relocating to a less shabby neighborhood than the one they currently inhabit, and acquiring employment that pays more than the barely-above minimum wage that they’re making now
“At some point in the sixties, the Left bought into the big lie that its values were not American values. We actually believed people when they said that about us. I don’t know why it happened, but it did.”
The MRM of The 10s-today has taken a similar stance, that their values are beyond and apart from so-called “Normie”, middle class American values
"Polonsky: What’s the essential flaw in liberal thinking?
Shellenberger: Liberalism is far too complex to be reduced to having a single flaw. That said, there are patterns of thinking that get us into trouble. One of them is the idea that we’ll have more success if we define the problem as narrowly as possible. The way most progressive activism occurs is that scientists discover a problem — say, overfishing. Then somebody funds a few big studies on overfishing. Then the PR people take the studies to the media and get the press to talk about overfishing. And what the public hears is yet another thing that they have to worry about. Here they thought they had a lot on their plates already, and now they have to worry about overfishing! And the solution, of course, is not to eat the overfished fish, or maybe to send a letter to Congress. But the issue doesn’t fit into a broad framework. There’s no big question to be answered. There’s no story or set of values that overfishing fits within."
What caused The MRM to sputter out just as quickly as it arrived on the scene is too complex a subject to explore in the space of one article. That said, there are ways of conceptualizing “men’s issues” which lead us into many dead ends. One of those being our predilection for defining our causes as narrowly as possible. Example: Title IX star chambers which expel students(many of whom happen to be male)for rape accusations which are supported by little to no evidence. The standard MRA approach has been to post lots of videos on YouTube, or in the case of NCFM, lobby the department of education, when such a thing occurs. This hasn’t translated into significant policy reform or increasing our public support though. In no small part, this is attributable to the fact that A). This all just leaves the public with the impression that it’s something else they have to worry about, and B). There’s no overarching story or set of values that the goal(Abolish Title IX star chambers)fits into
"Polonsky: A framework that captured my imagination when I was young, and has captured the imaginations of many people, is sustainable living: how do we coexist with other life forms on the planet? Isn’t this a value? Why isn’t it catching on?
Shellenberger: There are a few reasons. For one thing, although a majority of people will agree that we should do right by the environment, if you ask people, “What are the biggest issues facing the country right now?” the environment doesn’t even make the top ten, often not even the top twenty. “Ecological concern,” as we define it, may be a value, but it’s not a strongly held one."
If we ask a majority of Americans “Do you think that men are human beings, and that it’s a wise to direct some of our resources to correct the problems which disproportionately affect them?”, they’ll say “Yes”. Then they’ll also admit that this isn’t anywhere close to their top 5 concerns. “Addressing men’s issues” may be a widely held value, but it’s not a strongly held value
“A value that is much more powerful is shared achievement. How do we do something great together? The United States is a culture of aspiration. Winning the gold at the Olympics, putting a man on the moon, freeing our country from dependence on foreign oil — they’re all more motivating than “Let’s keep the planet the way it’s been for thousands of years.” That goal actually tends to work against us. It’s not a progressive goal, in either the literal or the metaphorical sense of the term.”
Talking about the ways we, as a nation, can achieve superb things together is going to win us more public support than constantly damning society for all of the ways they’ve allegedly neglected men, while readily sympathizing with women
"Polonsky: But couldn’t you also frame environmental action as a response to a threat? People on the Right have children and grandchildren too, and there exists a genuine threat to the survival of future generations. Why hasn’t that framework been effective?
Shellenberger: People see global warming as a threat, but a very distant one, especially in comparison to terrorism, war, unemployment, and the loss of healthcare coverage."
The MRM pursued a similar tactic: Screech and yelp about all the ways that ignoring “men’s issues” will bring about The Apocalypse. This hasn’t been especially effective, due to the fact that an Apocalypse is something which may or may not occur at some point in the distant future. Most human beings aren’t activists, so their thoughts are naturally preoccupied by more immediate events like inflation, cost of fuel, and finding higher-paying employment than what they have now
"Polonsky: But every life-sustaining biosystem on the planet is in sharp decline. Doesn’t that fact have the power to alarm people?
Shellenberger: I wish I could tell you it did. We’re obviously in a disastrous situation, ecologically speaking. But one of the things we’ve discovered from extensive opinion research on this is that when you tell people about the magnitude of the crisis, either they don’t want to believe you or they get frightened into inaction and become pessimistic about the possibility of real change. So first you have to get people excited about a positive vision before delivering the bad news."
Not much of a rewrite required here. The effect of dropping stats on fatherlessness, homelessness among men, etc onto outside constituents has been that they don’t want to believe you, or they get frightened into inaction, and become pessimistic about the possibility of real progress. You have to get folks excited with an uplifting view of the future
“As a rule, hope is more sustaining than fear. Scaring people is like giving children sugar: you get a burst of activity out of them, but then they crash. I think we saw this happen with the Dean candidacy and the antiwar movement. Those were campaigns that had a lot of juice for a few months, but then ran out. They ran on anger. What they needed was vision.”
The MRM has been fueled by both rage and trying to scare people into action, not on a vision. This has also been the equivalent of giving kids sugar. The movement enjoyed a burst of energy during it’s early days, crashed in '19, and has been in a state of stagnation ever since
"Polonsky: I thought the antiwar movement expressed its position with intelligence.
Shellenberger: What I fault the antiwar movement for is that it was never very clear about what it stood for, neither its core values nor its vision for U.S. engagement in the world. The message coming out of the mainstream antiwar groups before the invasion of Iraq was “Let the inspections work.” What kind of vision and values did that elevate?"
Fault The MRM for the same transgressions. It’s never been clear about what values it stands for, or our vision for the future. The message one gets out of MRAs has pretty much been “We hate feminism/modern society!!!”, and not much more
“Polonsky: It elevated the values of deferring to international authority, creating international consensus, cooperating with our allies, using war only as a last resort.”
The MRM elevated the values of deferring to logic, rational thought, and acting in concert with the data
"Shellenberger: It’s hard to see how any of those values is more powerful than “We’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect our families against terror.”
It’s similarly impossible to see how any of the values The MRM promoted are more powerful than those promoted by those who champion Title IX star chambers and oppose shared parenting legislation… “We have to do whatever it takes to protect vulnerable people from dangerous predators”
“You saw Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, right? One of the most resonant themes from Fahrenheit 9/11 was that the people who made the decision to go to war not only suffered no consequences; they profited. That violates a core value: that people should take responsibility for their decisions. If there’s a price to be paid, they should pay it. Moore argued that when our elected representatives decide to go to war, they should volunteer their own sons and daughters first. If you’re going to make this decision for our kids, you have to make it for your own kids too. I think that is a bridge value. “Let the inspections work” is a policy position divorced from a larger vision and a coherent set of values.”
The politicians and activists who oppose ending the drug war, increasing access to vocational training, making shared parenting legislation the law of the land, reforming Title IX and abolishing The White House’s power to declare war without the approval of Congress also profited, rather than suffering consequences. This violates a core value: Everyone needs to be fair-minded, and held accountable for their behavior. “Let cops and prosectors investigate rape accusations on campus” is a policy position, divorced from a larger vision and a coherent set of values
“Polonsky: How might you articulate core values for U.S. foreign policy?” Insofar as The MRM goes, we have to articulate core values for domestic policy
“Shellenberger: I think we need a foreign policy that encourages democracy and human rights. That would be a very different foreign policy from the one we have now, which is supposedly based on national security. I want to see the United States promoting democracy and human rights worldwide. My problem is not that the United States is an imperial power; my problem is that it’s an imperial power spreading the wrong set of values through its oppressive actions.”
We need a domestic policy which encourages liberty and justice for one and all, regardless of race, gender, creed, or sexual orientation. That’s very different than the one we have now, which is focused on trying to make life as safe as possible. We need a US that promotes democracy and civil rights, not rights for men or women alone
“I believe in the idea of a “just war,” including U.S. military interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. That said, I don’t support the ways in which many of those wars were fought. In most cases, including Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, the U.S. bombed civilian families in poor neighborhoods when ground troops could have done a better job with far less civilian loss of life. In Haiti, it wasn’t clear sometimes whose side we were on.”
I’m sure most of us believe that violent criminals who’ve maliciously harmed their fellow citizens and shown no remorse for doing so need to suffer severe punishment, including life imprisonment in some cases. That said, I’m sure most of us aren’t fans of Broken Windows and so-called preventive policing, which has done nothing more than perpetuate cycles of crime and poverty in our nation’s most impoverished communities
“Not all wars are just, of course, and I don’t believe Bush made the case for war in Iraq. But I don’t think the Left ever articulated a coherent moral vision for Iraq either.”
Not all laws are just, not all cops and prosecutors are righteous defenders of The Constitution, and Trump didn’t really ever say what he meant by “I stand with the cops”. The MRM never articulated a lucid moral vision for the American criminal justice system either
Environmentalism will never be able to muster the strength it needs to deal with global warming as long as it . . . fails to offer Americans an inspiring vision for the future."
The MRM was never able to muster the strength it needed to win changes to law and policy, since it never offered Americans an inspiring vision for the future
"Polonsky: And crawl before you can walk?
Shellenberger: Yes. But I think debates about how to define success hinge on the wrong questions. People within the environmental community love to ask, “Is what we’re advocating extreme enough? Does it really get us where we want to go?” And I think the right question is “Does our proposal give us enough momentum to get us where we want to go in the future? Does it increase our power?”
Debates about how we define success on “men’s issues” also hinge on poorly thought out questions. MRAs are prone to asking “Is what we’re doing in front of the cameras edgy and hard core enough? Does it get us shitloads of attention?” And I believe the more apt questions are: “Are we putting forth policy proposals that give us enough momentum to get us where we want to be in the future? Does it strengthen our influence over the larger civilization?”
“Polonsky: The all-or-nothing debate reminds me of my activist days in the eighties. There was a certain counter-cultural identity within the peace movement. You had a sense of being more bohemian and hip than the mainstream. That identity was pleasant for us, but I don’t think it served our overall objectives.”
Same thing is true within The MRM. Hell, Paul Elam(Star of the documentary The Red Pill, and the most famous MRA on Earth)himself has said outright more than once that his goal was to create “a counterculture”, and when MRAs declare themselves Red Pill, then denounce the rest of us mere mortals they share the planet with as Blue-Purple Pill Normies, that’s just a more jargony way of saying “We’re more hip and bohemian than thou in the mainstream art”. Paraphrase Sidney Poitier in A Piece Of The Action: This has all been little more than intellectual masturbation… It felt good, but it never produced life. It never brought MRAs close to becoming anything more than a subculture
Shellenberger: And it’s interesting what was left out of that identity. People on the Left often leave American-ness out of their identity. They’re ashamed or embarrassed to be American. I do think the Left has gotten better about it. The antiwar movement this time did a better job of attaching itself to patriotic symbols. But as long as we’re not presenting a vision for the future, we’re swimming against the stream of America’s populist culture of aspiration."
MRAs, for the most part, also refuse to emphasize that their cause isn’t just a fight to help men, but part of the larger struggle to make America a more free and prosperous land for everyone. And as long as we’re not presenting a marketable vision for the future, we’re also swimming against the tide
“Let’s define what we like about being American. There’s a lot that I’m very proud of. I can get a business license from the El Cerrito Financial Services Department, and I don’t have to bribe anybody. I can ride my bike with my son to the library, and, at least for now, my librarian won’t call the FBI and tell them what I’ve checked out. I don’t worry about going to jail for saying the things I’m saying to you right now. There are many things that I cherish about being an American, but progressives don’t talk much about those things because we have such a complaint-based culture.”
The MRM has also been mostly complaint driven, with very little talk of all the things we love about being citizens of The US. Ex. The most prominent members of The MRM are all professional content creators on YouTube, who enjoy upper-middle class existences, funded by producing YouTube videos and E-Begging. This is only possible in a society that’s attained the astounding heights of technological development that The US has. Folks in El Salvador and Somalia have no such opportunities. Hell, as recently as The 2000s, making a living as a professional content creator on social media wasn’t even possible in The US!!!
"Polonsky: And that gives the Right fuel to say, “If you don’t like it here, leave.”
This disparity between the fairly rich lives most MRAs themselves enjoy, and the woe-is-me portraits they paint in their public rhetoric gives skeptics fuel to say “You’re just a bunch of fucking crybabies”
Shellenberger: At some point in the sixties, the Left bought into the big lie that its values were not American values. We actually believed people when they said that about us. I don’t know why it happened, but it did."
From The MRM’s beginnings in The 2010s, the movement’s leaders took the view that it’s values aren’t American values. This sort of thinking stems from their core belief that our entire civilization was founded on so-called Gynocentrism, and that to achieve progress, we need to overthrow “The System”, and replace it with a Red Pill Theocracy, with Paul Elam serving as The Grand Ayatollah
“Too many figures on the Left, from Noam Chomsky to Michael Moore to Ralph Nader, focus on the negative. I think there’s something hard-wired into humans that attracts us to the positive. John Edwards has had a huge amount of appeal among voters because he describes what he loves about America and then talks about what we have to fix — in that order.”
Pretty much every prominent MRA(Paul Elam, Karen Straughn, Tom Golden, Brian Martinez, Alison Tieman, Hannah Wallen, Warren Farrell)focuses on the negative. That’s effective in the short term for attracting attention, but leaves everyone demoralized and sapped of invigoration long term. We’re going to attract much more support if we enumerate all the things we love about The US, and then discuss the revisions we believe would be beneficial to everyone, male AND female alike
“Apollo does the same thing. The story we tell at Apollo is “America is a great country, and here’s why.” Once we establish that context, corporate greed, pollution, and global warming can then be seen as un-American. That’s a central part of our strategy.”
Once we also start telling the story “The US is a great nation, here’s why”, we establish a context in which things like dysfunctional family courts, Title IX Star Chambers, The Drug War, and a dearth of easily accessible vocational training are exposed as being un-American. This is central to the The Post-MRM’s strategy
“Polonsky: All those left-wing figures you named provide an important perspective, though, don’t you agree?”
In the interest of fairness, the intellectual founders of The MRM(Warren Farrell, Erin Pizzey), and the movement’s most prominent figures(Paul Elam, Tom Golden, Karen Straughn, Alison Tieman)have provided fascinating perspectives
Shellenberger: Sure, but if you read a book by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, it emphasizes just one side of America. People have suffered in America; there’s no question about it. There’s been genocide. There was slavery. We’ve decimated our native forests. All of that is true."
MRA screeds also emphasize 1/4 of American history. Yeah, we have launched wars which were poorly thought out and which wasted the lives of many, quite a few of whom were male. Our businesses and corporations have visited all sorts of maltreatment on their employees, and men have often(though certainly not always)borne the brunt of that maltreatment
“But it’s also true that America has allowed people to worship whatever god they choose, that it offers an unprecedented amount of personal freedom, and that, compared to most of the world, we have achieved a freedom from want that our great-grandparents couldn’t even dream of in their day.”
While it may be true that “traditional masculinity” is more abundant in parts of the world where industrialization has yet to take place, these are also societies devoid of democracy and civil liberty. In America, we’re free to adhere to any politcal or religious ideology we choose, and to adopt whatever form of masculinity or feminity we prefer: We’re free to model ourselves after Harvey Specter, Jonah Hill, or Jay Z. The days of the factories employing millions of Americans are gone, nonetheless the transition to a service economy has drastically reduced the number of work place deaths per year, and provided us with a diversity of opportunities for economic advancement which were inconceivable to those who were coming of age in The 1970s, to say nothing of all decades prior
“Obviously there’s a huge amount of suffering in the world, but is there more now than before? For most of human history we’ve had low life expectancies and high infant- and maternal-mortality rates. My grandparents, who were born at the end of the nineteenth century, had terribly hard lives. My grandmother, with no access to birth control, had nine kids. She didn’t even want to have the last child, my mother, because her life was already so goddamn hard.”
Goes without saying, most men in days past didn’t want that many kids either
“We enjoy a quality of life in this country that the majority of the world longs to have. For all our missteps along the way, and for all the problems we still have left to solve, our history is a story of progress. That’s why I think the label progressive is a good one for liberals and the Left generally. We have an inspiring story to tell. Let’s get out there and start telling it.”
Loudly as leading MRAs like Paul Elam and Aly Tieman doth insist that our entire civilization is built on Gynocentrism, fact is we enjoy a quality of life far richer than 98% of the rest of the planet enjoys. For all blunders we’ve made, and for all the flaws in our society, the American story is one of progress. The Post-MRM thus has an inspiring story to tell, by aligning ourselves with this particular narrative. Therefore, it’s imperative to go out into our neighborhoods and communities, and attract the public to our side by communicating to them that we’re agitating not just for improving the lives of men, but making America a saner and more gainful place for everyone
Cont’d:
While there’s an argument to be made that the world would have been a saner place had we not gone down the road of thinking in terms of gendered rights back in the late 1960s(And stuck to thinking in terms of civil rights for one and all, regardless of gender)that ain’t what happened, and there’s no turning back the clock now. If we’re serious about enhancing liberty for all Americans, not just ourselves, that’s going to mean that folks will still be within their rights to identify as Feminists, form organizations, and take part in the political process, violently as we may disagree with them on some subjects
Trump(who was mistaken for The Mahdi by most card-carrying MRAs), during his years in office, never articulated a coherent foreign policy doctrine. No candidate in the upcoming election is doing so, and the closest MRAs have come to expressing thoughts on the subject is “We don’t want men to die in war”, none of which is a vision for The US’s relationship to the rest of the world. MRAs and the few political leaders they endorse resist putting forth an intelligible vision on both foreign and domestic policy, and that’s not been effective at winning widespread and durable public support. A charismatic celebrity like Trump can win followers temporarily on personality alone, but that support evaporates as rapidly as it appears, without a vision
“Democrats frame their proposals around issues, when they should be framing them around values.”
MRAs similarly talk in terms of their pet projects, rather than values
“What really determines how people vote is their core beliefs, not what their position is on an issue like the economy or abortion or healthcare.”
What really determines which causes people support is their core beliefs, not what their stance on subjects like shared parenting legislation and Title IX star chambers are.
“If you can understand what people’s values are, you can figure out how to create a governing majority.”
No rewrite required.
"Our theory is that even people who are fairly conservative on issues like guns and gay marriage hold a lot of progressive values, especially around economic questions, and the Left needs to identify and strengthen those “bridge values.”
The Post-MRM’s theory is that even people who aren’t particularly receptive to “men’s issues” hold many Textbook Liberal values on subjects like the economy and criminal justice, and that to succeed we need to strengthen and identify those “bridge values”
"Polonsky: Name one.
Shellenberger: Well, the big one we’ve been talking about is the notion that government has an important role to play in our economic future. We know it’s a progressive bridge value because it’s one the conservatives feel the need to attack all the time. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh, or take a look at Bush’s agenda for an “ownership society.”
It’s interesting how seldom we progressives sit around and talk about what our values are. Values are the core beliefs that guide human action. But ever since the rise of religious fundamentalism and all its talk of “family values,” we liberals have shied away from speaking about our values."
MRAs rarely speak of values either
"Polonsky: I read about a speech Kerry gave in Nevada on the subject of the proposed nuclear-waste dump at Yucca Flats. He said that transporting radioactive waste and burying it at Yucca Flats goes against “sound science.” Was that a bridge value he was invoking — sound science?
Shellenberger: “Sound science” is a value, but I doubt it’s a bridge value. I think it’s a value that works among educated liberals. I don’t think a blue-collar Reagan Democrat in the Midwest is going to be moved by “sound science.” Kerry’s preaching to the base with that one, and I don’t think he’s even preaching to the base all that well, because liberals are as wary of science as they are supportive of it. Science is a value-neutral enterprise. It can be used for good or evil."
“Adhering to the data” is also a value, but not a bridge value. It works among MRAs and those adjacent to them, who experience relief when they read a study confirming that fathers are good for kids, or that women commit domestic violence at rates comparable to men. It doesn’t exert much influence over the other 80% of America though, who are preoccupied with worries like being able to make their utilities payment by the end of the week, relocating to a less shabby neighborhood than the one they currently inhabit, and acquiring employment that pays more than the barely-above minimum wage that they’re making now
“At some point in the sixties, the Left bought into the big lie that its values were not American values. We actually believed people when they said that about us. I don’t know why it happened, but it did.”
The MRM of The 10s-today has taken a similar stance, that their values are beyond and apart from so-called “Normie”, middle class American values
"Polonsky: What’s the essential flaw in liberal thinking?
Shellenberger: Liberalism is far too complex to be reduced to having a single flaw. That said, there are patterns of thinking that get us into trouble. One of them is the idea that we’ll have more success if we define the problem as narrowly as possible. The way most progressive activism occurs is that scientists discover a problem — say, overfishing. Then somebody funds a few big studies on overfishing. Then the PR people take the studies to the media and get the press to talk about overfishing. And what the public hears is yet another thing that they have to worry about. Here they thought they had a lot on their plates already, and now they have to worry about overfishing! And the solution, of course, is not to eat the overfished fish, or maybe to send a letter to Congress. But the issue doesn’t fit into a broad framework. There’s no big question to be answered. There’s no story or set of values that overfishing fits within."
What caused The MRM to sputter out just as quickly as it arrived on the scene is too complex a subject to explore in the space of one article. That said, there are ways of conceptualizing “men’s issues” which lead us into many dead ends. One of those being our predilection for defining our causes as narrowly as possible. Example: Title IX star chambers which expel students(many of whom happen to be male)for rape accusations which are supported by little to no evidence. The standard MRA approach has been to post lots of videos on YouTube, or in the case of NCFM, lobby the department of education, when such a thing occurs. This hasn’t translated into significant policy reform or increasing our public support though. In no small part, this is attributable to the fact that A). This all just leaves the public with the impression that it’s something else they have to worry about, and B). There’s no overarching story or set of values that the goal(Abolish Title IX star chambers)fits into
"Polonsky: A framework that captured my imagination when I was young, and has captured the imaginations of many people, is sustainable living: how do we coexist with other life forms on the planet? Isn’t this a value? Why isn’t it catching on?
Shellenberger: There are a few reasons. For one thing, although a majority of people will agree that we should do right by the environment, if you ask people, “What are the biggest issues facing the country right now?” the environment doesn’t even make the top ten, often not even the top twenty. “Ecological concern,” as we define it, may be a value, but it’s not a strongly held one."
If we ask a majority of Americans “Do you think that men are human beings, and that it’s a wise to direct some of our resources to correct the problems which disproportionately affect them?”, they’ll say “Yes”. Then they’ll also admit that this isn’t anywhere close to their top 5 concerns. “Addressing men’s issues” may be a widely held value, but it’s not a strongly held value
“A value that is much more powerful is shared achievement. How do we do something great together? The United States is a culture of aspiration. Winning the gold at the Olympics, putting a man on the moon, freeing our country from dependence on foreign oil — they’re all more motivating than “Let’s keep the planet the way it’s been for thousands of years.” That goal actually tends to work against us. It’s not a progressive goal, in either the literal or the metaphorical sense of the term.”
Talking about the ways we, as a nation, can achieve superb things together is going to win us more public support than constantly damning society for all of the ways they’ve allegedly neglected men, while readily sympathizing with women
"Polonsky: But couldn’t you also frame environmental action as a response to a threat? People on the Right have children and grandchildren too, and there exists a genuine threat to the survival of future generations. Why hasn’t that framework been effective?
Shellenberger: People see global warming as a threat, but a very distant one, especially in comparison to terrorism, war, unemployment, and the loss of healthcare coverage."
Cont’d:
The MRM pursued a similar tactic: Screech and yelp about all the ways that ignoring “men’s issues” will bring about The Apocalypse. This hasn’t been especially effective, due to the fact that an Apocalypse is something which may or may not occur at some point in the distant future. Most human beings aren’t activists, so their thoughts are naturally preoccupied by more immediate events like inflation, cost of fuel, and finding higher-paying employment than what they have now
"Polonsky: But every life-sustaining biosystem on the planet is in sharp decline. Doesn’t that fact have the power to alarm people?
Shellenberger: I wish I could tell you it did. We’re obviously in a disastrous situation, ecologically speaking. But one of the things we’ve discovered from extensive opinion research on this is that when you tell people about the magnitude of the crisis, either they don’t want to believe you or they get frightened into inaction and become pessimistic about the possibility of real change. So first you have to get people excited about a positive vision before delivering the bad news."
Not much of a rewrite required here. The effect of dropping stats on fatherlessness, homelessness among men, etc onto outside constituents has been that they don’t want to believe you, or they get frightened into inaction, and become pessimistic about the possibility of real progress. You have to get folks excited with an uplifting view of the future
“As a rule, hope is more sustaining than fear. Scaring people is like giving children sugar: you get a burst of activity out of them, but then they crash. I think we saw this happen with the Dean candidacy and the antiwar movement. Those were campaigns that had a lot of juice for a few months, but then ran out. They ran on anger. What they needed was vision.”
The MRM has been fueled by both rage and trying to scare people into action, not on a vision. This has also been the equivalent of giving kids sugar. The movement enjoyed a burst of energy during it’s early days, crashed in '19, and has been in a state of stagnation ever since
"Polonsky: I thought the antiwar movement expressed its position with intelligence.
Shellenberger: What I fault the antiwar movement for is that it was never very clear about what it stood for, neither its core values nor its vision for U.S. engagement in the world. The message coming out of the mainstream antiwar groups before the invasion of Iraq was “Let the inspections work.” What kind of vision and values did that elevate?"
Fault The MRM for the same transgressions. It’s never been clear about what values it stands for, or our vision for the future. The message one gets out of MRAs has pretty much been “We hate feminism/modern society!!!”, and not much more
“Polonsky: It elevated the values of deferring to international authority, creating international consensus, cooperating with our allies, using war only as a last resort.”
The MRM elevated the values of deferring to logic, rational thought, and acting in concert with the data
"Shellenberger: It’s hard to see how any of those values is more powerful than “We’ve got to do whatever it takes to protect our families against terror.”
It’s similarly impossible to see how any of the values The MRM promoted are more powerful than those promoted by those who champion Title IX star chambers and oppose shared parenting legislation… “We have to do whatever it takes to protect vulnerable people from dangerous predators”
“You saw Michael Moore’s documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, right? One of the most resonant themes from Fahrenheit 9/11 was that the people who made the decision to go to war not only suffered no consequences; they profited. That violates a core value: that people should take responsibility for their decisions. If there’s a price to be paid, they should pay it. Moore argued that when our elected representatives decide to go to war, they should volunteer their own sons and daughters first. If you’re going to make this decision for our kids, you have to make it for your own kids too. I think that is a bridge value. “Let the inspections work” is a policy position divorced from a larger vision and a coherent set of values.”
The politicians and activists who oppose ending the drug war, increasing access to vocational training, making shared parenting legislation the law of the land, reforming Title IX and abolishing The White House’s power to declare war without the approval of Congress also profited, rather than suffering consequences. This violates a core value: Everyone needs to be fair-minded, and held accountable for their behavior. “Let cops and prosectors investigate rape accusations on campus” is a policy position, divorced from a larger vision and a coherent set of values
“Polonsky: How might you articulate core values for U.S. foreign policy?” Insofar as The MRM goes, we have to articulate core values for domestic policy
“Shellenberger: I think we need a foreign policy that encourages democracy and human rights. That would be a very different foreign policy from the one we have now, which is supposedly based on national security. I want to see the United States promoting democracy and human rights worldwide. My problem is not that the United States is an imperial power; my problem is that it’s an imperial power spreading the wrong set of values through its oppressive actions.”
We need a domestic policy which encourages liberty and justice for one and all, regardless of race, gender, creed, or sexual orientation. That’s very different than the one we have now, which is focused on trying to make life as safe as possible. We need a US that promotes democracy and civil rights, not rights for men or women alone
“I believe in the idea of a “just war,” including U.S. military interventions in Haiti, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Yugoslavia. That said, I don’t support the ways in which many of those wars were fought. In most cases, including Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, the U.S. bombed civilian families in poor neighborhoods when ground troops could have done a better job with far less civilian loss of life. In Haiti, it wasn’t clear sometimes whose side we were on.”
I’m sure most of us believe that violent criminals who’ve maliciously harmed their fellow citizens and shown no remorse for doing so need to suffer severe punishment, including life imprisonment in some cases. That said, I’m sure most of us aren’t fans of Broken Windows and so-called preventive policing, which has done nothing more than perpetuate cycles of crime and poverty in our nation’s most impoverished communities
“Not all wars are just, of course, and I don’t believe Bush made the case for war in Iraq. But I don’t think the Left ever articulated a coherent moral vision for Iraq either.”
Not all laws are just, not all cops and prosecutors are righteous defenders of The Constitution, and Trump didn’t really ever say what he meant by “I stand with the cops”. The MRM never articulated a lucid moral vision for the American criminal justice system either
Environmentalism will never be able to muster the strength it needs to deal with global warming as long as it . . . fails to offer Americans an inspiring vision for the future."
The MRM was never able to muster the strength it needed to win changes to law and policy, since it never offered Americans an inspiring vision for the future
"Polonsky: And crawl before you can walk?
Shellenberger: Yes. But I think debates about how to define success hinge on the wrong questions. People within the environmental community love to ask, “Is what we’re advocating extreme enough? Does it really get us where we want to go?” And I think the right question is “Does our proposal give us enough momentum to get us where we want to go in the future? Does it increase our power?”
Debates about how we define success on “men’s issues” also hinge on poorly thought out questions. MRAs are prone to asking “Is what we’re doing in front of the cameras edgy and hard core enough? Does it get us shitloads of attention?” And I believe the more apt questions are: “Are we putting forth policy proposals that give us enough momentum to get us where we want to be in the future? Does it strengthen our influence over the larger civilization?”
“Polonsky: The all-or-nothing debate reminds me of my activist days in the eighties. There was a certain counter-cultural identity within the peace movement. You had a sense of being more bohemian and hip than the mainstream. That identity was pleasant for us, but I don’t think it served our overall objectives.”
Same thing is true within The MRM. Hell, Paul Elam(Star of the documentary The Red Pill, and the most famous MRA on Earth)himself has said outright more than once that his goal was to create “a counterculture”, and when MRAs declare themselves Red Pill, then denounce the rest of us mere mortals they share the planet with as Blue-Purple Pill Normies, that’s just a more jargony way of saying “We’re more hip and bohemian than thou in the mainstream art”. Paraphrase Sidney Poitier in A Piece Of The Action: This has all been little more than intellectual masturbation… It felt good, but it never produced life. It never brought MRAs close to becoming anything more than a subculture
Cont’d:
Shellenberger: And it’s interesting what was left out of that identity. People on the Left often leave American-ness out of their identity. They’re ashamed or embarrassed to be American. I do think the Left has gotten better about it. The antiwar movement this time did a better job of attaching itself to patriotic symbols. But as long as we’re not presenting a vision for the future, we’re swimming against the stream of America’s populist culture of aspiration."
MRAs, for the most part, also refuse to emphasize that their cause isn’t just a fight to help men, but part of the larger struggle to make America a more free and prosperous land for everyone. And as long as we’re not presenting a marketable vision for the future, we’re also swimming against the tide
“Let’s define what we like about being American. There’s a lot that I’m very proud of. I can get a business license from the El Cerrito Financial Services Department, and I don’t have to bribe anybody. I can ride my bike with my son to the library, and, at least for now, my librarian won’t call the FBI and tell them what I’ve checked out. I don’t worry about going to jail for saying the things I’m saying to you right now. There are many things that I cherish about being an American, but progressives don’t talk much about those things because we have such a complaint-based culture.”
The MRM has also been mostly complaint driven, with very little talk of all the things we love about being citizens of The US. Ex. The most prominent members of The MRM are all professional content creators on YouTube, who enjoy upper-middle class existences, funded by producing YouTube videos and E-Begging. This is only possible in a society that’s attained the astounding heights of technological development that The US has. Folks in El Salvador and Somalia have no such opportunities. Hell, as recently as The 2000s, making a living as a professional content creator on social media wasn’t even possible in The US!!!
"Polonsky: And that gives the Right fuel to say, “If you don’t like it here, leave.”
This disparity between the fairly rich lives most MRAs themselves enjoy, and the woe-is-me portraits they paint in their public rhetoric gives skeptics fuel to say “You’re just a bunch of fucking crybabies” Shellenberger: At some point in the sixties, the Left bought into the big lie that its values were not American values. We actually believed people when they said that about us. I don’t know why it happened, but it did."
From The MRM’s beginnings in The 2010s, the movement’s leaders took the view that it’s values aren’t American values. This sort of thinking stems from their core belief that our entire civilization was founded on so-called Gynocentrism, and that to achieve progress, we need to overthrow “The System”, and replace it with a Red Pill Theocracy, with Paul Elam serving as The Grand Ayatollah
“Too many figures on the Left, from Noam Chomsky to Michael Moore to Ralph Nader, focus on the negative. I think there’s something hard-wired into humans that attracts us to the positive. John Edwards has had a huge amount of appeal among voters because he describes what he loves about America and then talks about what we have to fix — in that order.”
Pretty much every prominent MRA(Paul Elam, Karen Straughn, Tom Golden, Brian Martinez, Alison Tieman, Hannah Wallen, Warren Farrell)focuses on the negative. That’s effective in the short term for attracting attention, but leaves everyone demoralized and sapped of invigoration long term. We’re going to attract much more support if we enumerate all the things we love about The US, and then discuss the revisions we believe would be beneficial to everyone, male AND female alike
“Apollo does the same thing. The story we tell at Apollo is “America is a great country, and here’s why.” Once we establish that context, corporate greed, pollution, and global warming can then be seen as un-American. That’s a central part of our strategy.”
Once we also start telling the story “The US is a great nation, here’s why”, we establish a context in which things like dysfunctional family courts, Title IX Star Chambers, The Drug War, and a dearth of easily accessible vocational training are exposed as being un-American. This is central to the The Post-MRM’s strategy
“Polonsky: All those left-wing figures you named provide an important perspective, though, don’t you agree?”
In the interest of fairness, the intellectual founders of The MRM(Warren Farrell, Erin Pizzey), and the movement’s most prominent figures(Paul Elam, Tom Golden, Karen Straughn, Alison Tieman)have provided fascinating perspectives
Shellenberger: Sure, but if you read a book by Howard Zinn or Noam Chomsky, it emphasizes just one side of America. People have suffered in America; there’s no question about it. There’s been genocide. There was slavery. We’ve decimated our native forests. All of that is true."
MRA screeds also emphasize 1/4 of American history. Yeah, we have launched wars which were poorly thought out and which wasted the lives of many, quite a few of whom were male. Our businesses and corporations have visited all sorts of maltreatment on their employees, and men have often(though certainly not always)borne the brunt of that maltreatment
“But it’s also true that America has allowed people to worship whatever god they choose, that it offers an unprecedented amount of personal freedom, and that, compared to most of the world, we have achieved a freedom from want that our great-grandparents couldn’t even dream of in their day.”
While it may be true that “traditional masculinity” is more abundant in parts of the world where industrialization has yet to take place, these are also societies devoid of democracy and civil liberty. In America, we’re free to adhere to any politcal or religious ideology we choose, and to adopt whatever form of masculinity or feminity we prefer: We’re free to model ourselves after Harvey Specter, Jonah Hill, or Jay Z. The days of the factories employing millions of Americans are gone, nonetheless the transition to a service economy has drastically reduced the number of work place deaths per year, and provided us with a diversity of opportunities for economic advancement which were inconceivable to those who were coming of age in The 1970s, to say nothing of all decades prior
“Obviously there’s a huge amount of suffering in the world, but is there more now than before? For most of human history we’ve had low life expectancies and high infant- and maternal-mortality rates. My grandparents, who were born at the end of the nineteenth century, had terribly hard lives. My grandmother, with no access to birth control, had nine kids. She didn’t even want to have the last child, my mother, because her life was already so goddamn hard.”
Goes without saying, most men in days past didn’t want that many kids either
“We enjoy a quality of life in this country that the majority of the world longs to have. For all our missteps along the way, and for all the problems we still have left to solve, our history is a story of progress. That’s why I think the label progressive is a good one for liberals and the Left generally. We have an inspiring story to tell. Let’s get out there and start telling it.”
Loudly as leading MRAs like Paul Elam and Aly Tieman doth insist that our entire civilization is built on Gynocentrism, fact is we enjoy a quality of life far richer than 98% of the rest of the planet enjoys. For all blunders we’ve made, and for all the flaws in our society, the American story is one of progress. The Post-MRM thus has an inspiring story to tell, by aligning ourselves with this particular narrative. Therefore, it’s imperative to go out into our neighborhoods and communities, and attract the public to our side by communicating to them that we’re agitating not just for improving the lives of men, but making America a saner and more gainful place for everyone