Mad Men: Inside the Men's Rights Movement—and the Army of Misogynists and Trolls It Spawned
(never could stand this man)
Mad Men: Inside the Men's Rights Movement—and the Army of Misogynists and Trolls It Spawned
How did an ex-feminist once hailed by Gloria Steinem become a hero of the haters?
On a balmy afternoon last June, dozens of demonstrators carrying "Stop the Violence" and "Rape is Rape" placards descended on the Hilton DoubleTree in downtown Detroit. They had come to protest the first-ever national gathering of the men's rights movement, which aims to battle discrimination against men but has drawn criticism for stirring up hatred of women. Two weeks earlier, a sexually frustrated 22-year-old named Elliot Rodger had gone on a suicidal rampage in Santa Barbara, California, killing 6 people and injuring 13. He had left behind a chilling 137-page manifesto suffused with a bitter misogyny and language commonly found in men's rights forums. "The girls don't flock to the gentlemen. They flock to the alpha male," Rodger wrote. "Who's the alpha male now, bitches?" His attack ignited a firestorm online, spurring women to share their experiences of misogyny via the hashtag #YesAllWomen, and bringing major media attention to the men's rights movement.
With irate phone calls and even death threats pouring into the hotel in the run-up to the conference, its organizer, A Voice for Men, was forced to move the event to a local Veterans of Foreign Wars hall. The group warned ticket holders by email that "ideological opponents" were likely to show up, and that they would be "looking for anything they can to hurt us with."
When conference goers arrived several weeks later, they were greeted by a cadre of burly security guards. A computer glitch at the check-in desk sent the line snaking into the parking lot, where some men lounged listlessly on the hot asphalt. Finally, about an hour and a half after the first workshop had been scheduled to begin, the doors swung open. The crowd clattered up the stairs to a dimly lit room with scuffed mint-colored walls and a water-stained ceiling. There, amid rows of folding chairs, stood Warren Farrell.
A soft-spoken septuagenarian with a silver beard and delicate hands, Farrell explained with a smile why he'd asked the security team to stand down: "I said it didn't look like there were any killers out there." There was a burst of laughter. After a while, he asked everyone to stand up. "Put anything you have in your hands down and just give that person in front of you a nice shoulder rub," he said. Tension faded from the men's faces. Over the next several hours, Farrell doled out hugs, regaled them with stories about his days as a feminist icon, and waxed lyrical about fatherhood and male sacrifice. He also invited the men to share their personal pain. Some wept as they spoke.
Welcome to the Manosphere: A guide to terms of the men's rights movement
Farrell is widely considered to be the father of the men's rights movement. In a series of books published since the 1980s, he has made the case that the primary victims of gender-based discrimination are men—casualties of a society that relies on their sacrifices while ignoring their suffering. He blames this phenomenon for a litany of woes, from the plight of blue-collar workers to the state of veterans' health care and rising suicide rates among young men. Many of today's men's rights activists view Farrell's 1993 book, The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex, as their touchstone, and the online forums where they congregate are steeped in Farrell's ideas.
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http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/warren-farrell-mens-rights-movement-feminism-misogyny-trolls
