Online Day 4

My group read the article called “Campus Men’s Rights: Group Kicks, Screams.” This article tells of a new organization at Arizona State University called the Men's Rights Movement Group. This group argues that women have never been systematically oppressed and that men are really the ones who were oppressed. The organization (MRMG) makes several arguments about how women have more rights than men and how women victimize themselves. They argue that men are the only ones that sacrifice for women who are, in return, ungrateful and hateful towards men. The story interviews the president of MRMG as well as the president of the Women’s Studies program at ASU.

A list of rights that only women have was created by the MRMG and although there are a few valid points made, the extremity of the accusations and accounts make the arguments seem ignorant and pretentious. The president of the MRMG club, Zachary Morris makes himself out to be a sexist pig as well as a self-pitying cry baby. His deep-rooted negative remarks about women being only useful as homemakers and making biscuits are extremely stereotypical and false. Morris uses gender roles as a weapon in his arguments in saying that only men can handle the important jobs in life and that women are incapable of survival without males doing everything for them. MRMG accuses women’s studies programs as being geared at hating men and being built on falsities to manipulate society into creating enemies out of males. This accusation is completely false and is rebutted by the women’s studies coordinator at Arizona State, Mary Wollstonecraft when she states, "I do not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves." She also says that women ’s studies doesn’t just pertain to women, but almost 20% of the classrooms are male and 40% of the surveys are taken by males.

            This article (which is coincidentally about my hometown) made the MRMG seem extremely winey and illogical to me. There were a few valid points about women’s rights over men such as the “right to be paid for on a date,” and the “right to get emotional and receive sympathy and hearing.” These “rights” that women receive and men don’t are first of all, not written laws but are a product of the traditional teachings of inferiority of women which encouraged helplessness and reliance on males. Secondly, these arguments of male oppression are irrelevant when related to the oppression that women faced when being literally sold to men as wives. Without the demeaning and demoralizing actions of men against women throughout history, gender privileges would not be present at all. The group’s complaint of “a woman’s right to reproduce” is absurd. That argument would be like women saying that it wasn’t fair that men could pee standing up and women had to sit down. Biological differences in men and women are not debatable when talking about the unfairness of our lifestyles as men and women.

            I think that the few men that are involved in this organization need to research more and maybe go to a women’s studies class and realize that women’s studies is not a class focused on hating men, but rather focusing on women being confident and realizing their capabilities are equal to those of men.