(This was written in 2022.)
A recent report came out about disinformation in the Asian media sphere, and it was weird to me.
It mentioned Asians With Attitudes as one of the disinformation sources. r/aznidentity was also mentioned. These were under the umbrella of “MRAsians”. The MRAsians thing happened back around 2018, but got a new surge of coverage during the pandemic, because some people in the #StopAsianHate meta-movement were upset with a letter Eileen Huang put out, about Asians being racist.
People got polarized over the issues, and said (and are saying) a lot of negative things about their opponents.
The MRAsians moniker is an insult to them, and the intention is to align a group of Asian people mainly on Reddit and in the Instagram comments, with the Mens Rights Activists, (MRA).
The MRA is an anti-feminist movement that broke away from a part of the feminist movement that some men started, to look at society through a feminist lens critical of patriarchy. The split between the “men’s movement” and “men’s rights movement”, is that the latter sees men as being an oppressed group, rather than oppressors and beneficiaries of patriarchy, who happen to suffer from patriarchy as well. The current MRA also has adherents who are part of Proud Boys, an ultraright white supremacist group.
MRAsians are not white supremacist. They seem to be different shades of anti-whiteness, ranging from simply not identifying with America, to being anti-imperialist, to being bigoted against white people, to reviling some of the partially-white Asians in the organizations like Proud Boys. So, a merger between the MRAsians and larger MRA isn’t likely.
So, how is it that these anti-feminists, who may also be anti-racist and anti-imperialist come to gain a large presence, to merit a section of this Disinformation report?
I suspect it’s the lack of spaces for discourse of Asian mens issues, particularly in the mainstream US and ethnic press.
MRAsians have different conspiracy theories about this, and I’ll add my own to the mix.
I’d attribute it to intersectional-ism and “oppression olympics” within the Left tendencies.
The rise of intersectional analysis of society, through the lenses of race, class, and gender, transformed the Left. Some on the Left are still upset about it, and call it “identity politics”.
Personally, I think it’s great. It helps people understand the complex dynamics between race, class, and gender, to see its effects on specific subgroups of people.
One problem, however, is that the people with the most combined oppression become valorized, and held up as potential heroes, as members of the vanguard who will lead the way.
That sets up a kind of “oppression olympics” situation, where you might have two people competing for space in the media. Imagine this:
- One is an East Asian American woman.
- The other is an East Asian American woman who is lesbian.
The latter is more oppressed. To the media, this person is more “interesting”. To the Left, the most oppressed person is the most interesting.
Eventually, you have these extremely marginalized people being objectified as a kind of ultra-representative for all the oppressed identities.
In the process, oppressed people, who are less oppressed, end up losing space in the conversation.
Examples: white feminist TERFs, Asian men anti-feminists, Black men hoteps, non-Black POC who don’t like Black POC, etc.
Solidarity is being destroyed.
Destruction of solidarity benefits the Right wing reactionaries.
The trend of “calling in” instead of “calling out” addresses this issue, recognizing that these groups are not ultimately enemies. Whether this works or not is debatable – but in conditions where there’s a greater enemy, these groups can unite.
Leave a Reply