Differences

Reading feminist blogs and websites and also reading men's rights sites I am left wondering at the differences between the two. Feminist blogs and websites generally discuss issues such as the sexualisation and objectification of young girls and women; the way rape victims are treated by the courts; the difficulty of juggling work and home life; the rights and wrongs of abortion; pornography and sex workers; and lately the small number of women in the Cabinet formed by the Conservative/LibDem coalition government in the UK. Most of these subjects could not be affected by legislation as you cannot tell people how to think you can only legislate for how they behave. They are cultural issues.

Men's rights sites tend to concentrate on the stupidity of women, the lack of respect for men and the misandry of most laws - though they do not go into specific details the reader is expected to agree with this statement without supporting evidence otherwise they are a troll. Men's rights sites also frequently mention the so-called paedophile hysteria permeating society - i.e. hardly anyone is a paedophile whatever the papers say and women do it to so that makes the men who do it somehow less guilty.

What I'm trying to get at is that the feminist sites are rarely agitating for a change in the law but men want laws which remove inequalities between them and women repealed as they see them as disadvantaging all men. The men's sites come over to me - in many cases - as petulant and childish. They don't discuss things reasonably and the moment they start throwing around insults - mainly taken from gay culture - the discussion degenerates rapidly.

The feminist sites - such The F Word - moderate comments and while they allow many different opinions they don't allow the discussion to get out of hand. Rape and abortion are the two subjects which usually cause most angst here. Most discussions I've seen on feminist blogs are polite even if there are differences of opinion. Unfortunately many are gate-crashed from time to time by people throwing four letter words around and refusing to discuss anything rationally. yet the first accusation many men level at women is that they won't discuss things without resorting to insults.

There are areas where men are disadvantaged; why shouldn't men have custody of their children following divorce?; why shouldn't there be health screening for men? But these don't seem to be things which the men's rights sites are agitating for - they are just useful weapons to attack feminists with. So don't men need to get their act together and campaign for things which would make a difference to them on a day to day basis?