A recent exchange in the comments under a post I did on Masculism and Feminism makes me think that revisiting the subject is in order. Sorry for reproducing the exchange but it provides a basis for my following remarks.

Masculist Man wrote:

Where do I start first? First of all women have enjoyed privileges that men have never had. During the 19th century women have been exempt from paying for crimes they committed by not going to jail (if they were convicted their husbands would end up doing the time,not the wives). Women today are exempt from signing up with Selective Service and women are not expected to maintain the society in which they live in in fact they don't have any responsibilities at all. For instance if a new mother doesn't want to keep her child she can drop it off in safe havens in various cities. On the other hand if a new father wants to reliquesh his responsibilities he can't. Why? Because of the laws that feminists have pushed to hurt men have done their job rather well and we are fighting back. There is misandry (hatred of men) in courts (criminal,civil and family) that reward women for whatever behavior they engage in while punishing men more severely and when men and women commit the same crime the man usually gets a more harsh sentence. Women are also more violent with men while men are conditioned to treat women with respect no matter how said women act. This disease is called "chivilary" and I'm glad I do not suffer from it. As I was saying women do treat men worse than how men treat women. Women hurting men seems funny while men hurting women is not and this is a double standard and it is something I am opposed to. Thanks to feminists such as yourself this is a MATRIARCHY not a patriarchy like you wrongly claim. These are just a few examples of how women have it better than men. You know what? Feminsim is the biggest con job during the 19th-21st centuries because women were never oppressed as they had more entitlements (they still do) than men have ever had,no matter how much those men may deserve them such as serving his country in time of need or that equivilent. No,women get these entitlements just because they were born with a vagina and that doesn't sound like much of a justification to me. Women were never oppressed in the western world and probably not much elsewhere either. Men are the ones oppressed not women. Feminism is reactionary. Masculism,on the other hand,is quite revolutionary and I hope to see it implemented real soon.

My response:

It's difficult to argue with your points because they mostly show a complete lack of recognition of the basic humanity of women. You seem to believe all women are absolutely immoral and unethical. Reading it reminds me of racist screeds and rationalizations as to why certain "races" were inherently inferior.

Your perspective is illustrative of a patriarchal mindset moving towards an extreme, of the oppressor positioning himself as the oppressed. I'd also suggest that you might be projecting your motivations, the options you are able to take advantage of onto women.

Perhaps I'm wrong but that's how it strikes me.

Masculist Man responds:

I suggest you read The Myth Of Male Power by Dr. Warren Farrell before you state that men had all these so-called privileges that women never enjoyed. Read this book and then try to refute what I'm saying because so far it's been name calling and nothing of substance.

And my final rebuttal (I've edited this a little from my original):

Perhaps you are right and reading the book you recommend will change my perspective. I am doubtful because all the "masculist" material I've read contains conclusions based on data easily shown to be factually incorrect. Please note how carefully I've worded that last sentence. It is only based on my direct experience with the writings and my own research into statistics presented in these writings.

It's true that I presented no substantial arguments in my last post but, again, read it carefully and you'll see I did not call you names. I note that some of your points about the "entitlements" of women seem highly conjectured opinion not congruent with my personal experience or knowledge.

Generally, the masculist view has struck me more as a thesis in search of substantiation rather than an obvious, provable, truth. Perhaps I am failing to appreciate the validity of the argument because of my feminist-leaning bias. Perhaps. But a few of your statements totally contradict crime statistics I'm familiar with. "Women are also more violent with men while men are conditioned to treat women with respect no matter how said women act."? I'd love to see your statistical evidence for this statement.

Most of what I see written under the "masculist" banner is angry and empty rhetoric. By "empty" I mean with very little supporting documentation. I can, to some extent, understand those feelings of anger as anger but don't expect me to equate it with logical argument or proof of the thesis.

So once again I find myself in the slightly uncomfortable and odd position of being a man defending feminism. I'm never quite sure whether I should be making these arguments as a man. The tricky thing is that other men will often give more credibility to a man making exactly the same arguments as a woman. In essence, other men's response to me provides a general proof of sorts to the central tenets of feminism.

Without reading Dr. Farrell's book, I'm unable to critique it. Reviews of it on Amazon are so polarized, I don't think I can fairly assess it without actually seeing it. Feminist reviewers indicate it is poorly researched, facts are cherry-picked, and straw arguments are set up and knocked down. Supporters of the book think it is a radical re-interpretation of what they say is an overwhelmingly dominant feminist paradigm within our society.

I did find part of a manuscript online titled The Masculist Perspective: A Masculist Response to Feminist Claims by Craig Conway of UKMM and FNF, December 1998. I don't know if it is a good example of masculist rhetoric but it reflects what I've seen as typical so I'll use it as an example here.

The first thing I noted was the author's use of quotations around phrases he claimed were the feminist positions. No footnotes, sources, or bibliography accompany this use of quotes. From the way these "quotes" are phrased, I'm fairly certain they are the author's interpretations of feminist positions and views, not from feminist source documents. Why does this matter? Because the feminist positions he is purporting to describe are usually not accurate or consistent with feminist arguments I'm familiar with.. This is what is called a "straw argument" (or previously known as a "straw man"). In other words, he sets up a position phrased ideally so he can provide the most effective counterargument. The problem is, by misstating the actual feminist arguments, his rebuttals are so far from them as to be almost unrecognizable.

This framing probably sounds good to men unfamiliar with real feminist theory and dialectic. They can feel intellectually superior to feminist views, like they've found the obvious faults with feminism as a philosophy and an agent of change in our society. In this scenario, masculists become Heroes valiantly saving society from destruction and decay through their insight and visionary ability to see beyond the obvious.

The masculist writings I've seen have a tone of the "true believer" to them, of creating a structure to support their pre-existing belief that feminism is bad for men. The anger and rage the pours almost palpably off these masculist writings seems misdirected somehow. I can't seem to grasp a logical connection between the anger itself and the declared cause or source as being feminism. I can't see this connection and the arguments made do little to illuminate the connection or convince me it's valid.

I come to no conclusions. I'm just skeptical about the basic premise of masculism and nothing I've seen written has swayed my opinion.