Photo of me reading Gary Larson's The Far Side Gallery to my daughter.

Almost from the first time I saw it in original form this comic has represented the relationship between men, feminism, and anti-feminist agitators.

The bulls in the pen, with the best of all possible intentions, exhort their doomed companion to be distracted by the cape when to the extent bulls have a way out of the ring at all they need to go for the matador instead.

• The cape doesn't hate, fear, or make sport of the bull.
• Even when the bull manages to trample, gore, and shred the cape as they sometimes do his misery and danger will never be relieved.
• The matador uses the cape to enrage and distract the bull.
• The crowd uses cape, bull, and matador for its benefit.
• Occasionally the matador is hurt... not so much when the bull gets lucky, though, as when the matador is unlucky or "goes too far."
• It's almost impossible for the men and women in the audience to be hurt by a bull.
• On the rare occasions it is it's considered the work of a "deranged individual."
• The whole enterprise is a barbaric sport.

It's still not a perfect analogy, obvously.  For one thing a bull can't make common cause with a cape.  Men, on the other hand, could find plenty of common cause with feminism.

Hypergamy, according to it's Wikipedia entry, is defined this way

Hypergamy (colloquially referred to as marrying up or gold digging) is the act or practice of seeking a spouse of equal or higher socioeconomic status, or caste status than oneself.

The term is often used more specifically in reference to a perceived tendency amongst human cultures for females to seek or be encouraged to pursue male suitors that are comparatively older, wealthier or otherwise more privileged than themselves. Hypergamic behaviours can be explained in terms of genetic economic necessity, in which societies with high levels of gender inequality are more likely to have women who "marry-up" for the benefit of their children, and more likely to have men who "marry-down" to ensure that their mates have a higher incentive to remain faithful.

Now hypergamy, as I just pointed out, is a tool of patriarchy. It's not the only tool, however. Another would be... well... I can't think of the term at the moment so I'm going to call it "hyperbooty-amy:" the act or practice of seeking a spouse or partner of equal or higher.

Under patriarchy, even when men and women have equal opportunity to select partners, the rates of pay were and sometimes still are traditionally skewed in favor of men and at the expense of women. Among other things this creates the very unpleasant situation where a woman who married a male colleague with the same experience, same qualifications, and same job as she is nevertheless engaging in "hypergamy." Point being that under patriarchy, women have been structurally obliged to at least be aware of men as the dreaded "walking wallets." Whether they want to or not. Even, at times, with professional equals.

At the same time men are denied virtually all hint that they might be sexually or possibly even romantically desirable to women. Similarly women have been actively discouraged from acknowledging that men might be anything other than "good providers," let alone dare to hint that just looking at any but the most glamourous (read wealthy, famous, and/or accomplished) men might stir their loins.

Men, on the other hand, who assess potential partners in terms of anything but their boobs, their butts, their booties, their blowjobs, or (for the more sedate) their ability to bear children (call it the five B's) are slandered with all manner of suspicion and slur. A gigolo if she earns more than he does. A liar if he admires her "for her mind." And, alternately, "under her thumb," or "she must be really something in the sack," or maybe just "he must be really desperate" if she's less conventionally attractive than his "worthiness" is deemed to warrant.

Let's not even mention the lip-service-only scowls at starter wives.

Men's rights activists deplore, I think correctly, the Patriarchal tool of hypergamy and not, I think also correctly, that hypergamy doesn't get the attention it deserves from most feminists (relative to its patriarchal implications anyway.) Under patriarchy there's a second, less considered phenomenon in which attention and concern are reversed. Call it "hyper-booty-amy" where feminists quite naturally notice and deplore the social dismissal of women who aren't conventionally attractive and... men's rights activists rarely give it any thought. This too is a shame considering that this too is a tool patriarchy uses to manipulate men and women to its own ends.

When someone says of a woman "she could do better," they're encouraging hypergamy. When someone says "he could do better," they're encouraging hyperbootyamy. And when comment-thread gadfly Eurosabra deplores that a) the top 20% of "high status" men "get" the top 20% of conventionally attractive women he thinks he's merely complaining about hypergamy. Instead he's celebrating both hypergamy and hyperbootyamy and merely complaining that he's not in that top 20%. He's not alone.

At the end of the day, though, you can't consistently complain about the one without the other. At least not once it's pointed out.

See also Two Rules of Desire

Ampersand, raising a giant whopping WTF, says that under Federal crime-reporting standards men legally can't be raped.  Turns out that in the 1920s, when the reporting standards were generated, weren't exactly a bastion of progressive, feminist-influenced gender neutrality.

For [Uniform Crime] reporting purposes, can a male be raped?

No. The UCR Program defines forcible rape as “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” (p. 19). In addition, “By definition, sexual attacks on males are excluded from the rape category and must be classified as assaults or other sex offenses depending on the nature of the crime and the extent of injury”

Source: Alas, a blog

Lest Men's Rights Activists cry conspiracy about how it's all a femininisister plot to exclude male victims entirely, under more recent guidelines from the 1980s rape of men by women is legally recognized but...

[I]n the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) ... at least one offender must be of a different sex than the victim for the event to be classified as a forcible rape. For example, a female can rape a male, or in the case of multiple offenders, a female and male can rape a male. However, a male cannot rape another male, or in the case of multiple offenders, two males cannot rape a male.

To complete the FBI's gender-bound definitions, men can rape women, women can rape men, but men can't rape other men and women can't rape women.

But let's stop for a moment and reflect on the pace of progress: in the 1920s the law in the U.S. was almost entirely based on already centuries-old English Common Law adopted wholesale during Colonial times.  That not only defined rape as something that could happen exclusively to women, it was also defined as a property crime.  Where the legal victim was considered to be the woman's father, husband, or other custodial male who's "property" was "damaged!"

Fast forward 50 years to the 1980s when the NIBRS was established.  Society vaguely recognized that in order "to be fair" language had to be less narrowly gender specific.  Thus the inclusion of the possibility that women can rape men.  But based on my own recollection of the culture of the day I'm pretty sure that was a mere formality.  In the early 1980s they were just getting around to registering gay people as statistically relevant.  They were just getting around to recognizing the idea that there was more kinds of rape than jumping out of the bushes.  They were just barely getting around to accepting the idea that husbands could rape their wives.  Heck, they'd only barely just stated noticing all the "drop the soap" jokes about prison rape!

Fast forward 30 more years and... well... there's still quite a way to go but at least...

Advocates question the rape statistics because, they note, the federal government is using a 1929 definition of the crime that excludes male victims, statutory rapes and those committed without force.

Using such an antiquated, narrow definition is a harmful disservice to countless victims, according to Carol Tracy, executive director of the Philadelphia-based Women’s Law Project. Specter agreed, saying the definition is not “inclusive like it should be.”

Men account for roughly 10 percent of victims in the United States, said Scott Berkowitz, head of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network.

The adoption of broader rape statistics is critical to the recovery process for male victims, added Dr. Richard Gartner, a spokesman for the group Male Survivor.

Interestingly, the FBI’s man in charge of the UCR is quoted saying he’s open to changing the definitions.

Compared to the 1189 A.D. English Common Law, or the 1920s UCR, or the 1980s NIBRS, and you can actually detect some progress.

And, at least compared to 1189 A.D. it seems to be accelerating!

If they're not able to acknowledge that anybody can be raped, just as much as anybody can be a rapist, though, they're still stuck in the middle ages.

Something else to agitate for (and be agitated about.)

Echidne of the Snakes says all men's rights activists may not be anti-feminist patriarchal fanatics, which is perfectly true.  The ones who are those things, though, are kind of... well... self-defeating.  She goes into more detail but I'd like to focus mainly on her first example (emphasis mine.)

Feminism, in my working definition, is the goal of offering all people equal economic and social opportunities irrespective of their gender and of equal valuation of the traditionally female and male fields of activity.activity*.

Thus, one might expect an anti-feminist to work on that definition, especially the equal opportunities part, and some anti-feminists do (as seen later in this post). But the most important MRA principles really DON'T discuss equal opportunities for both genders and how traditional patriarchy might short-change not just women but also men. Instead, the main argument is that even in the traditional patriarchy men are worse off than women, and that this is the reason WHY traditional patriarchy should be brought back.

Source: Echidne of the Snakes

That really is self defeating!  Men are perfectly right that patriarchy sucks for men.  My favorite analogy is to say that the "privilege" of patriarchy is getting to sit closest to the only air vent in a stiflingly hot, dark cellar.  Yes, it's nice to get the extra bit of fresh air.  And yes, if you've been traditionally privileged to sit near the vent you're naturally going to resent anyone who expects you to share.  And as long as you overlook the inherent selfishness it's even reasonable that you'd put considerable effort in keeping everyone else in their place.

But that's the zero sum approach to patriarchy.  The other approach would be to team up with everyone else and find a way out of the fucking cellar! There's so much more room, air, light, and especially opportunity in the whole rest of the house, the yard, the street, the neighborhood, the town, the country, and world!  For everybody!  Why stay in the basement at all?  That's the positive-sum approach.

Unless you're short on imagination, stuck in your ways, or just generally really afraid of change there's no reason to stay in the cellar at all, let alone to keep anyone else in it.

Yes, very early on some feminists really did think the answer was zero sum, where success just meant letting women sit near the metaphorical patriarchal vents, or maybe just giving everyone an equal turn.  But that was also back when the idea of shared bathrooms and uniform "unisex" clothes was really hip and groovy (but in practice you'd be you'd be instantly locked out if you were actually trans, or intersex, or genderqueer, or otherwise non-binary underneath.)  And maybe some of them still do think that way but the more operative word for them isn't so much "feminist" these days as it is "fossilized."  Most feminists who've come of age since maybe 1985 have been far more exasperated than angry, far less zero sum than zero interested in staying in the fucking cellar.

Anyway, whether one agrees with Echidne on the rest of her particulars (I mostly do) in almost any system of logic the answer to "patriarchy hurts men" is less patriarchy! More of what makes you miserable, of what keeps you starved for sex, of what controls your behavior by methodically impounding and restricting "access" to women who might otherwise be willing partners, of the stress of sole financial responsibility, of the alienation of working away while your partner and children remain in the home, of the intense dread of homophobia-phobia, of higher workplace and homicide rates of death, of poorer health, of patriarchal "women are natural child-nurturer" custody biases, to being branded "creepy" for normal interest in unconventional sex, to being "seen as a wallet with legs," to just being generally regarded as "expendible?"  All that stuff?  The answer to all that sure as heck isn't more patriarchy.  In fact, where's the mileage in any of that crap?

Meanwhile, often as not just across the table from you, there's a woman who's not only similarly discontent with the way patriarchy's shaking out for her either.  She's probably pretty darn sure the answer isn't more patriarchy either.

The answer, of course, is post-1980s feminism, which, again, is no more interested in feminism as a zero-sum game as you are.  Or would be.  If you weren't still freaking out about Valarie flipping Solanas, published her stupid S.C.U.M Manifesto 43 years ago now and who died in obscurity in 1988!

Kasheesh, dudes!  It's 2011 A.D., not 1120!  You want to spend the next millennium in a dark, hot cellar?