The idea that I’m referring to is basically that MRAs/pick-up artists and anti-abortion social conservatives are the same group of people with no meaningful distinctions between them.
An example of where I’ve seen this idea expressed:
You know those left-leaning meta subreddits like r/therightcantmeme and r/shitfascistssay that are largely about posting dumb right-wing stuff and then dogpiling on it together?
Earlier this year I saw a post (now deleted) on one of those subreddits where the content of the post was a manosphere-type meme that depicted a (attractive) man who got his (attractive) girlfriend pregnant and then, with help from his male friends, fled the country so that he wouldn’t have to pay child support. And the general tenor of the meme was supportive of this; basically the conceit was “being hot and scoring lots of noncommittal sex with hot women, without any concern for their well-being, is all that matters”.
Obviously this is an offensively terrible way to think about women, so the post got a lot of interaction and comments. But some of the comments caught my attention, because they tied in anti-abortion politics in a way that I think is kind of off the mark. One commenter said “The same guys who are anti abortion are the guys who laugh at stuff like this” and got a lot of upvotes.
I replied to them with something like “Huh? No, I don’t think that’s accurate. This is not a meme that anti-abortion social conservatives would find funny. This is a meme for ‘players’ who are misogynist in a lot of other ways, but generally support legal abortion.”
My comment got heavily downvoted. There were a couple of people who agreed with me and replied things like “lol you’re getting downvoted but you’re exactly right”, but those people got downvoted too.
Overall it seemed like the vast majority of people in that comment section disagreed with me, and believed that there really is no significant difference between anti-abortion Christian social conservatives and the MRA/PUA/Andrew Tate crowd.
I still think I’m right about this, though. What are your thoughts?
The differences are much smaller than you think. Sexual predators will often force women to get abortions, sure, but it’s actually just a manifestation of the same misogynistic impulse to control women’s bodies.
There are true believers in the anti-abortion sphere, so like your conservative evangelical types, but many others it’s just about controling women’s bodies and they don’t actually care about the fetus. Predators are the same, but want a different kind of control.
But sure, there are differences.