Daniel Ferguson said:
So, do these actually exist? I don't go to the comments sections of articles very often (a good thing) so I don't really know for certain, but I hear the MRAs are all up in arms about Mad Max Fury Road, so apparently this is a real thing? Maybe?
Or are they like an urban legend?
Well, this represents the problem with the way the US (and most of the first world) operates. We've moved into an environment where pretty much all media and all of the platforms needed to communicate ideas on a level to gain any influence are privately owned. Even a country as free as the US has it's laws rooted in some very dated logic, so the "right to free speech" only protects you from government censorship, largely because it was believed by the people who wrote those laws that only the government would be able to engage in censorship. It was also never really conceived that you might see a genuinely incestuous relationship between the press and politicians to force specific idealogy on people. In today's world we pretty much have the majority of platforms controlled by "liberals" who exercise private ownership over them to control and/or prevent the expression of points of view or ideas that do not fit their agenda. When something sneaks through the cracks, or comes up through one of the platforms they don't control, it becomes very easy to shout them down and demonize them simply on the merits of controlling far more platforms. With this kind of control over the flow of information it becomes very easy to indoctrinate people as well. I myself have long argued that we need laws that prevent the exclusive private control of platforms, and which limit the ability of private citizens to censor other private citizens. One of the biggest signs of societal decay right now is when you see people from the dominant position argueing "the right to free speech does not guarantee one a platform, or protections from the repercussions of that free speech" which is truly frightening as it undermines the entire idea, and yet people believe it. By that logic and interpretation there is no point to even having the right, since people can ruin your life over what you say or think, and of course prevent you from expressing yourself in any meaningful fashion. Much like could have happened in say England at the time where speaking against your betters could bring strong societal and social repercussions, and of course they could have you arrested or flogged for putting your soap box somewhere where people could actually hear you.... but this is just warming up to answering your question.
Men's rights advocates DO exist, but you generally don't hear from them because they simply aren't allowed platforms because the very idea of Men's rights is anathema to the liberal positions and power base, and is contrary to what the left wing spent a long time fighting for. When a Men's right advocate does get something out there, they are immediately shouted down and demonized into the worst kind of person without much ability to get a word in edgewise. Given that it's not practical to express such sentiments on any large scale, most do not, and as such your not likely to find them unless you really look. Every once in a while you might hear one referenced or make a point somewhere, but it's pretty uncommon. It's much like the people who argue that whites are being discriminated against, you just can't find many platforms that will let you express that kind of message, and if you do find one, all of the liberals will jump on you and rip you to shreds since they maintain tight control of most of the media and platforms.
See, case in point, you get some guy who comes out and says that he dislikes how heavily weighted the system is towards women who claim rape, to the point where even if a guy manages to win he's going to be tainted for life. He might make points about how women already don't have to justify their behavior as much as should be necessary in a criminal trial, and how disturbing it is that there are movements to increasingly require women to provide less and less personal and background information because it's "demeaning". This guy would likely be attacked as being everything from a predatory rapist himself, to someone engaged in "victim blaming", or "slut shaming", or whatever else, when fundamentally all he's likely doing is pointing out that a man accused of rape is still supposed to have all the rights of a defendant in the US justice system, and that includes things like being able to grill the accusing party to poke holes in the case since by definition the defense is out to provide a "reasonable doubt". As you point out this can apply to other things like child custody, or heck, even just how men are treated in relationships gone bad. Almost always you hear about how everything bad happens is the guy's fault, the woman being a train wreck rarely comes up when the media airs public disputes. I'm sure exceptions exist, but there is a definite trend in media coverage to present girls as being all sweetness and light, and guys as immoral animals whenever a gender conflict arises.
That said it's not likely to change easily, but yeah, the media needs a lot more influence from the so called "right wing" simply to balance things out, and it needs to be understood that singling out specific groups in the media is bad. It's not "okay" to bash whites and men or whatever, while protecting non-whites and women, it's still biased bigotry no matter who is on the receiving end, and what's more fuels a lot of the social problems society is dealing with. That said you will find VERY few places that will allow you to express sentiments like that, especially on a large scale, and in a lot of places where you can, your going to immediately get hit by a swarm of liberals out to demonize you every which way from Sunday.
To put it into perspective, I wouldn't really consider myself a "Men's Right Activist" or any kind of "Racial Crusader" for whites or any other group, but just for not being liberal I've been attacked to a crazy degree. If you do a search for "Therumancer" you'll probably run into both some conservative posts I wrote on a liberal site or two being mocked, and PART of a disciplinary thing I was involved in on RPG.net (but not the entire discussion) because despite how it looked I was actually not banned from RPG.net (and proved it a couple of times by posting there) though I am not a regular. Someone just found a way of putting that specifically up for a public search for lulz. Mild stuff, but you know... annoying... and at the end of the day I'm about as small potatoes as you can get, imagine the crap I'd get if I actually tried to pursue a greater platform than say hanging out on these forums (which is really the only place I post nowadays). If I wasn't such a RL mess and decided to say try and pursue Youtube "fame" and say become the anti-Anita Sarkeesian by rebutting a lot of the overly liberal stuff in games and the geek media in an effort to give some balance I wouldn't be faking death threats in order to cinematically overreact like Anita, I'd probably have people shooting through my windows. Who knows what would happen to someone who was more serious about some of these issues given the frenzy the rest of these platforms would stir up.
