Yeah, there are indeed plenty of more moderate men's activist groups of various types, but they don't get funding, don't get much press etc etc. e.g. the movement to get more men's shelters going. it's an
existing movement, there is evidence it's needed, but it has little political traction. Erin Pizzey, the founder of the women's refuge movement in the 1970s says there was evidence of need right from the start, however when she pushed for men's shelters, she was ex-communicated from the women's movement. So there's been 40 years at least of denying the evidence in this sort of thing.
And then the response as stated, from some feminists is "if it's so bad why don't you start your own movement", but if you do that, you get lumped in with the worst ratbags, or alternatively the response is "don't talk about your issues, they're from patriarchy, so feminism has you covered so shut the f. up until we fix it for you". which is
clearly not how reality works. People who don't speak up for themselves don't get their problems fixed by other people. This response makes no more sense than a bunch of men telling women to shut up because "we have you covered".
Another quite
odd response from feminists is to attack the few universities which have
research into masculinity. The counter-response is "
every course is a men's course. so you don't need formal research into it, it's bullshit". Which is basically saying that because "men" have "engineering" we don't need to actually do research into the male gender and how it fits into the world. That's about as insulting as saying we don't need women's studies because you guys have typing, teaching and nursing courses.
"gender studies" courses run by women, about women, are clearly bullshitting if they claim to be about both genders. One gender cannot claim to have a monopoly on the truth or have it that only their perspective matters. This is probably the most fundamental basic criticism of feminism's claims to be a
universal critique of gender. How can only the "Yin" of "Yin and Yang" claim to be universal? Clearly, it's just one narrative. That's fine, a single narrative can be 100% accurate in its claims based on its single perspective, however if it's going around claiming that it's the only true narrative from the only true perspective, then that part of the claim is b.s. Things like cultural relativism work both ways: just as a rich white person can't really speak for poor black people, some women in academia can't actually speak as if they know what it's like growing up as a poor white male in the midwest, but they act as if they can completely pigeonhole this person and explain away everything that they've experienced as one-dimensional "male privilege".
EDIT: It's the leftwing version of simplistic theories. e.g. doing the "wage gap" thing where they act as if the average woman earns 75% of what a man does for identical work (a gross simplification) appeals to
simplistic answers: "why don't they just pass a law?" In fact the "78 cents in the dollar" wage gap averages out single women without kids (
no wage gap) with women with children (who are logically earning far
less than 78 cents in the dollar). You can't possibly fix the wage gap without actually fixing the male/female childcare issue (because, it is in fact the
entire issue), which is much more complex than just passing a law. It also poses a bit of a conundrum for feminists to support: you need to
support fathers both economically and socially, if you really expect them to take time off for kids. Scapegoating / shaming fathers while using populist rhetoric to shift
more resources to helping only mothers won't help with the gender imbalance in childcare. Additionally, it's recognized that child raising is one area women have the most say and control over. Equalizing that with men is more than just saying men should do more. With responsibilities come rights, and some of the rights relating to mothers and their children are extremely sacrosanct in our society, no less in feminism:
actually giving dads equal responsibilities in childcare instead of merely giving it lip-service means
both genders need to give up certain privileges. There's an article
here about "rethinking masculinity" to share in childcare: the logic is that
men need to change so that they will do childcare duties and that women won't be changed by this. However, they have this reversed. Changing some nappies or doing laundry doesn't challenge male identity
whatsoever: men do tasks, nappy changing is just another task.
Men don't scorn other men for trying to take care of their children:
women are the ones consuming narratives that do that: e.g. all those "useless dad" adverts (e.g. dad changes a nappy and feeds the dog, only to discover that he put a nappy on the dog and fed the baby from the dog's bowl) are targeted at
women not men. So you see women defensively laughing at men doing "female" domestic chores. This tells a completely different story, it's women for whom their bond with children is a deep part of their self-concept of what it means to be a woman who are the most defensive about societal shifts in childcare duties towards men.
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