> I disagree with those arguments or at least any extrapolation from those arguments towards broader gender inequity > you should see how unfair and, in fact,

> I disagree with those arguments or at least any extrapolation from those arguments towards broader gender inequity > you should see how unfair and, in fact, terrifying the domestic violence legal situation is for women Seems bad, though I'm not familiar enough with the situation to say anything specific. I've only recently started looking at politics/ideologies after having managed more or less 10 years of living by an overly literal interpretation of http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/gw/politics_is_the_mindkiller/ 's title :p > But having concerns about family law does not make you an MRA. As you say there are reasonable people doing things related to men's rights. If you choose not to include these people in what I'll now call the "MRA spectrum" (since you've just narrowly defined "MRA" here), that's fair -- I agree the parallel with feminism breaks. If we try to compare a narrowly scoped group of awful people against a much broader and diverse loose coalition of less awful people, it's an apples and oranges situation. However, we can also create a narrowly scoped subgroup of feminists. I think MRAs might be using the term "3rd wave feminist" for this, but to be on the safe side I'll coin a new term for our use here: FRA (TERF may also work, but I'm playing it safe). We now have two narrowly defined groups of awful people, sitting inside and more or less agreeing with a broader, more diverse coalitions of politically active less awful people. The broader groups dislike the smaller groups, though are less harsh on their own. Both smaller groups suffer from seeming psychological problems, have a strong ideological streak, and are rather awful to interact with online. This is to say that the relation between FRAs and feminists has a similar feeling to that of MRAs and "MRA spectrum individuals". If the parallel now makes sense to you, I believe you may have been mistaking a recurring semantic disagreement (namely: people on forums not realizing you have an extremely specific definition of MRA), for a widespread cognitive error (namely: people thinking MRAs-by-your-definition and feminists are similar). > We cannot argue about the historical context of feminism. I think we're in broad agreement on the history of feminism. My discussion was about feminists as a group of individuals, rather than an intellectual lineage. (Similar to meaning "people who live in the us" when discussing Americans, rather than "the philosophical descendants of the US founding fathers").