MRA's (Mens Rights Activists) are extremely critical of feminism.

[Squinch]

166. That is very interesting! And I am being totally serious and not

at all facetious in this: it's like the age old problem of getting men to ask for directions.

I think you are definitely right that more men would be supporters of the feminist movement if they were able to claim they changed their minds about it all by themselves. But this is an interesting problem in itself.

Women have forever been manipulating men into thinking they came on their own to the conclusions the women wanted them to reach. This was how women exerted power from a powerless state. You frequently see posters telling insistent feminists, "your tone is too forceful, you aren't doing your cause any good that way." (I actually once read a poster advising another poster, "you'd catch more flies with honey if you just used a softer tone." I though my grandmother had come back to life!)

But if women did use this tried and proven manipulation, they would be subserving themselves to the ego of the man they are trying to manipulate.

You are right that there would probably be more enthusiasm from men for the movement, but the cost to the women's integrity, and to the attempt to treat men with respect rather than manipulation while moving toward equality, would be too high.

I never quite connected the reluctance of many men to embrace the obvious with this "refusal to ask directions" tendency before you pointed it out, but it is very clear now that you have.