MRAs in real life

I was wondering if any of you have had experiences with MRAs (or MRA-type people) in real life, and how you have dealt with them. I often don't know how to react in such situations, how to make my beliefs clear without offending people/ becoming too angry, etc.

My first exposure to MRA thought (other than online) came in the form of an acquaintance of mine who I met at a social gathering, and who seemed like a fairly decent guy, if a little shy. He told me early on that he wanted to start a group to combat feminist indoctrination in our area of study (English literature), and he wrote letters of protest to the school. At the time, I had some sympathy for him, as I would have been interested in hearing a 'male' point of view in some of my classes. As time went on, though, I found him to quite misogynistic- at one point he stated that a woman who really didn't want to be raped wouldn't be raped (seriously...), and he also stated that he believed women were incapable of universality because they are too focused on themselves (not quite sure what he meant by that). Anyway, I was increasingly bothered by him, and he acted like I was some kind of extremist for being shocked by his views.

It makes me wonder how many other guys have views like this, and how people respond to them. I'm all for equality, but stuff like what this guy said is simply unacceptable to me.

Yes, I have done--well, some guys who wanted perfect submissive wives with conventionally attractive figures anyway. I've also met people whining about the end of traditional manhood and how everyone's trying to make them feel White Male Guilt. I tend to look at them like they've just announced their love for giraffes.

I've met a lot of misogynists in real life, but none of them were really the MRA brand of misogyny. (One of the more recent examples being my boyfriend's brother-in-law, who yelled at me for helping move furniture because "that's men's work!" and who loudly complained to the entire family that his wife--my boyfriend's sister--wasn't having enough sex with him even though he bought her things.)

I've met two PUAs in real life, though. One tried his stuff on me and it failed hilariously. I told him I was an EMT and he told me he was an EMT too, so I broke out some shop talk and then he went back to "well, I'm basically an EMT, I have so much real-world experience and knowledge" and I (rather ticked because I went to school for this, jerk) asked him some basic medical questions and then he got angry. And then I ended up sleeping with another guy at the same party who was nice and not a lying weirdo, so that worked out for me.

The other PUA dude was a guy I dated who sang the praises of PUA to me, but had never actually used any of it on me. He claimed that I was the wrong sort of woman for it, because I was ugly and smart and horny, and that's exactly the reverse of the women PUA technology is engineered for. ("It only works on hot girls" is the new "smart people can see the Emperor's clothes," I think.) This same guy later ended up being hideously abusive.

Many of the guys I used to hang around in HS were Nice Guys™ who believed in Ladder Theory (I didn't know what it was until they kept showing it to me and told me how true it is) and complained about being friendzoned (even though they didn't use that term, I don't think they formally knew of PUA stuff online)... does that count? >_> They also seemed to self sabotage a lot, and not listen to me when I tell them a girl DOES like them... they seemed convinced of their unfair victimhood... one of them actually had a g/f for a short time but was convinced she didn't truly like him and was constantly paranoid she was going to leave him for another guy and him constantly putting himself down and telling her how she is going to find a better guy, etc finally ended the relationship and then this was proof to him of his eternal singlehood -_-

I don't know if mine counts. I met her in a dream once as a young black woman. She was a rich, bitter old white woman who lived in a manor during the early 20th century. I was talking to her, asking her why women shouldn't be able to vote and shouldn't be allowed to work and she said they would become "undisciplined", no longer being proper, obedient women. When I pushed further she said, "I don't listen to crows." And that was it.

I know, it's surreal.

You met her in a dream? -_o

I've never seen anything but standard Nice Guy-isms like Ami mentioned RL.

Well, I've seen plenty of the racist or transexist shit they also and incidentally do in real life, but that level of sexism was out of line for the South. Like, Deliverance South. They're pretty far out there.

Way back in my community college days, there was a middle-agedish looking fellow in one of my elective classes (I think it was intro to psychology or something). He had an MRA talking point to make in every class discussion. It didn't matter what the discussion was about, he always wanted to point out why women were actually very stupid, and why men were actually oppressed and generally better, even if the discussion had nothing to do with gender or gender issues. He was like that popular stereotype of the radical feminist student who interjects every class discussion to ask things like why they call it "HIStory".

Our instructor was a woman and she always responded with a "well, okay, that's a little off topic..." sort of response. Occasionally the class, about half women half men, would laugh awkwardly at his comments. Mostly I think he just made everybody uncomfortable. This was way before I'd ever heard of MRA's. I wonder what ever happened to him.

My brother turned into an MRA for a while. This was before I knew about MRAs. To me he just seemed to suddenly have started talking vicious, scary nonsense, completely out of character for him. When I came across Manboobz I recognized the very same phrases he'd been using. I can see how he fell into it. I think (hope) he has gotten out of it. He hasn't spoken to me for a few years now.

Similarly to the others, I haven't met anyone who was a self-proclaimed MRA but this guy in college who was a casual acquaintance once told me how he had attended a lecture about problems facing women in society and asked the lecturer how women could be facing any problems when Hillary Clinton, a woman, was Secretary of State. He seemed proud of this, like he had drawn some trump card. I wanted to point out that it was like saying, "Well, Barack Obama is president, so black people have nothing to complain about" but didn't bother. Towards the end of senior year he once told me that I should avoid girls with irregular periods because it meant they were trouble. I could easily see him reading AVFM and nodding approvingly.

I've known a lot of misogynists in real life, but they were of the fundamentalist type and not the MRA type. They argued that women should be submissive, and that feminism is wrong, but even they would be horrified at MRA beliefs. I thought an angry guy at Hardee's was an MRA, because he cussed at my children for sitting at a table too close to him. He was probably just an ordinary asshole, though. I also knew a guy in college that would complain that women are shallow and then whine about how he couldn't get a "hottie".

In my directing class in college we had to do a team project....we were teamed up by the teacher so no one had a say with who they worked with. This guy wasn't an MRA per say but he would not listen to women AT ALL! He wouldn't let the two women in our group talk and would undermine all our ideas. The other guy just went along with this guy and didn't seem to really care about the project. He was always talking about how women shouldn't be n the film industry and women were ruining everything...yeah this guy would probably love the spearhead and the like!

I have luckily never met an MRA in real life, or at least a fully-grown one. I've met a few people who've said single MRAish things (false rape accusations matter more than rape victims, women are equal now so modern feminism is "going too far", things like that) but I've never met anyone who's had the full suite of MRA ideology.

I've met my fair share of misogynists, though I don't know if any identified as mras. I have noticed though, that back home and amoung more lower income people, compatibilism is the more common version of sexism, whereas actually openly taking the position that "all women are Satan" is more common amoung wealthy northern misogynists.

BoggiDWurms wrote:I don't know if mine counts. I met her in a dream once as a young black woman. She was a rich, bitter old white woman who lived in a manor during the early 20th century.

Wait, which of you was the black woman?

Ugh, I met an MRA in real life; he was a 'friend" of my aunt who came over for a visit.
His views on women were revolting - he could only bear to have sex with prostitutes and even that disgusted him, since any interaction with women was loathsome to him. All he talked about was how evil women were and how they suck you dry and control you with their vaginas.
I never got why he and my aunt talked, but he tolerated me because I was a biological relative of her.
Curiously, one of the first things he did when my aunt moved into her new house was to urinate all down her back fence at her house warming party. It read like an animal marking it's territory.

I think he's taking the "HUMANS ARE LIKE WOLVES" MRA philosophy a little too literally there O_O

Never (to my knowledge) met one in the real world and I don't know anyone else who has either. To me, they only exist in cyber space. Which is quite comforting in a way.

I'vegotthePopcorn wrote:Never (to my knowledge) met one in the real world and I don't know anyone else who has either. To me, they only exist in cyber space. Which is quite comforting in a way.

Because anyone can be a "scholar" and have a following online. MRAs wouldn't last more than a few years in the real world.

I've never met a self-professed MRA in person, but I did know a guy who on one occasion was going on about how the court system is beholden to "women's rights groups", and men always get screwed over in divorce cases and shit like that.

I've said elsewhere that I have a cousin who hasn't self-identified as an MRA, at least in my presence, but who does identify as an anti-feminist and will occasionally pull things straight out of the MRA phrasebook.

I've known a fair amount of nice guys in college. I'm always concerned that a few individuals in my large gaming group border on MRA territory. We've gotten into several arguments before.

I don't really have an effective method of dealing with them, since absolutely nothing seems to alter their confirmation-bias world views, but once upon a time I flirted with masculinism which brought me right to MRA territory, so I've met quite a few in real life (being, more than 20 willing to admit to such?). Very few in numbers in comparison to their internet 'voice' and can be just as belligerent. I remember a discussion given by one guy that was running over time, so coordinating person informed them at 5 minutes to, then when it was over time, and the speaker goes "I said I was not finished yet! I will finish what I have to say!" in just such a way that you could really tell this was someone with huge issues being told by anyone what to do, ever, the kind of guy that doesn't take 'no' for an answer. While there were some guys that would be fairly welcome at say, a place like NSWATM and actually were concerned about inequality, more so guys that were just upset women weren't following the script. The script that involves them getting sex and helpmeets and so forth, and women being grateful for the attention.

I don't really know how to deal with cousinMRA because there's 20 other people who would have something to say if we got into it, and as a) the youngest, b) female, and c) the person who would be "rocking the boat," (because, as we all know, problems are best resolved with years of stony silence) I would not get much support.

He also tends to exceptionalize women and girls he cares about, which puts me in the position of "one of the good ones." And while, on the one hand, going along with it is tacitly agreeing that there are "bad ones" and that I'm better than them, it's also way, way easier than getting into it. So far I've taken the somewhat cowardly path of just leaving it be.

To follow up on this, I thought I'd list something I heard the other night. I found myself for the some reason the only woman in a large group of men (most of whom are postgraduates at my university) and a woman was on TV and they mentioned she had been raped/ sexually assaulted, and she wasn't exactly thin. One of the guys shouts out 'She should shut her mouth and go and thank that man for giving her the attention, it's more than she deserves'! (or something to that effect) and all the others laughed with him. Seriously, do they know what they're saying? Not mras, really, but definitely the same mentality...

Anyway, thanks for all the responses- they were excellent!

I've met a few of them IRL. One was a client that... you see the seething resentment for his foreign wife and child boiling under the surface. I think I posted about in on Prime once. I still feel sad about that little boy. Another I've discussed as nauseum on the chatter.

I've also met the PUA type a few times. For some reason, there's a specific club that they'd go to where women are notoriously hard to pick up and try to ply their trade there. I'd refuse to speak English and that usually got rid of them. However, there was the PUA that tried to pick me up in front of my family when we were on the way to my brother's wedding reception, at a restaurant in Vegas. Now that was interesting...

@Holly- Yeah, I also briefly dated a PUA. He told me that he was using it to "break down women's defenses because they were so quick to make snap judgments about guys." He was also concerned about father's rights, etc. although he did seem somewhat opening to listening to my opinions as a feminist.

That being said, we was extremely sexually immature, would withhold sex because "he cared so much about me and was heartbroken that I didn't want to be his girlfriend." He started telling me fantasies about our life together in the future that were quite disturbing since I told him on no uncertain terms that I didn't want to be his girlfriend. And rather early in the time we were dating, he sexually assaulted me. So.