Men’s Liberation was sort of the left wing of the MRA movement. Warren Farrell was pretty much a Men’s Lib type. Men’s Libbers and feminists started fighting pretty quickly because the feminists were so insane. Also because a lot of Men’s Libbers realized that feminism was a war against men. Men’s Libbers who wanted to go to women’s groups’ meetings and ally with them were banned as the feminists pushed “women-only fora” and “only a woman can comment on the problems of women.” In particular, gay men were some of the first to break off from Men’s Liberation.
Men’s Lib had a reputation for being a bunch of faggots, but that while there was some truth to this, that was not really true as most Men’s Libbers were straight, although their position on male homosexuality was very stupid. The early feminists attacked gay men a lot (Isn’t that incredible?), accusing them of being the ultimate woman-haters for bailing out on women altogether. At the same time, feminist idiots were cheering on lesbianism like they always have from Day One. So lesbians are ok but gay men are not. Screw that.
I will say though that gay men were some of the best of the early Men’s Libbers, and even today, gay men play a surprisingly important role in the left wing of the MRA’s such as the Good Men Project. Straight men have to suck up to women to get laid, so these leads to a lot of pedestalization, reality distortion and failing to see the down side of women. Gay men are estranged from women completely, so they can sit back at a distance and judge them fairly. That said, there is a faction of gay men who are misogynist kooks, and this gay “type” has always been around.
However, most gay men do not hate women at all. They just don’t want to have sex with them. Ever known a straight women who was not some sort of a fag hag? Neither have I. Straight women always love their gay pets.
So you see the feminists have been insane for a long time. Simone Beauvoir was an extreme man-hater and the SCUM Manifesto (a classic treatise in the feminist canon) was written in the heat of the 1960’s. The Redstockings were one of the first hardline feminist groups. Ellen Willis was a member. They were out of Boston. Frankly, they were insane, and this was 1969. Feminism didn’t go nuts, it was crazy from the beginning. That said there are some equity feminists we can ally with and to the extent that women are still treated unfairly, we will support their causes.
There is not much left of the Men’s Libbers, but there are some leftwing men calling themselves masculisits or even masculinists. Generally, most such men are fairly sane and most masculists also identify as feminists in a way. These are sort of leftwing MRA’s who are also sympathetic to the problems of women. In other words, these men say that both sexes are oppressed nowadays and further both sexes oppress each other and there are many injustices against men now too that women have turned the tables and predictably turned from oppressed to oppressors by enacting laws that oppress men. Humans can’t seem to do equality. The oppressed never want equality. They only want to turn the tables and lord it over those oppressing them and turn into oppressors themselves. Humans are rather lousy.
Anyway there is not much left of Men’s Libbers and it could be a movement that should be revived in my opinion. A lot of progressive men need to get on the ball. The women have turned the tables on us and are now oppressing us with a lot of new “Female Rule” type laws they put in to privilege women and attack us unfairly. They did this because feminist now is mostly just paybacks and revenge. I assume that all leftwing men are not masochists, but sometimes I wonder. If Left men are willing to sit back and let women abuse and oppress them, they are beyond hope. It will be a tough call though because most Left men are badly brainwashed by feminism.
