The Men's Rights Movement and the Women Who Love It

[Starry Messenger]

A rundown of the self-proclaimed contrarians. I was hoping this article would provide some analysis, but I guess the fact that many of these women are Republicans kind of speaks for itself.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/08/mens-rights-movement-women-who-love-it

When many people think of the men's rights movement, the image that springs to mind is lonely men lurking in chat rooms and railing against women. But in recent years, a group of brash, witty female activists has taken up the cause. And some of them are emerging as the movement's leading voices. It may seem counterintuitive that women would be helping drive the conversation about a movement that's fighting anti-male discrimination and campaigning fiercely against feminism. But according to Dean Esmay of the men's rights organization A Voice for Men, the fact that they shatter expectations is what makes them such good emissaries. "People want to believe we're a bunch of sad, pathetic losers who can't get laid and are just bitter because our wives left us," Esmay explains. "The very presence of women in the movement creates cognitive dissonance." Often, he adds, this dissonance makes people more receptive than they otherwise would be.

Who are these women men's rights activists? And why do the embrace a movement that some see as blatantly misogynistic? Below is a rundown of key players. A few of them, including Janet Bloomfield, who was the focus of a recent in Vice News article, have been in the spotlight recently. Others are virtually unknown to the mainstream, but within the movement they're seen as luminaries.

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Janet Bloomfield: The Social-Media Provocateur

Bloomfield has landed in the spotlight recently as a driving force behind Women Against Feminism, a social-media campaign featuring photos of women with scraps of paper listing their reasons for rejecting feminism. Since the week before last, when the campaign went viral, Bloomfield—a thirtysomething homemaker and doctoral candidate—has been making the network rounds, with interviews on ABC, the BBC, and NBC's Today Show.

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In reality, while Bloomfield takes a progressive stand on some issues—she supports gay marriage and a women's right to choose, for example—many of the ideas she flogs are anything but. She calls single mothers "bona fide idiots" who don't "give a shit" about their children's well-being and pens blog posts with titles like "Why Don't We Have a Dumb Fucking Whore Registry? Now That Would Be Justice." She also dismisses concept of "rape culture," as "a giant rape fantasy—one in which all women can imagine all men desire them with such force and such passion that they're willing to commit a crime."

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