Development of Feminism and MRM (1963-1980)

There have been some posts dealing with the relationship between feminism and MRM.

Here is my simplified take on the history of feminism and MRM with picture.



1. The book Feminine Mystique came to light 1963. It said that women are oppressed by feminine role expectation.

Feminists took the sex role theory as their base theory.

2. In the year 1970 came the Men’s liberation movement. Ruth Hartley’s (1959) article ”Sex Role Pressures and the Socialization of the Male Child” was takes as the movements foundation. Jack Sawyer’s book ”On Male liberation” was the first book to address the oppressive nature of the male role.

Around 40 books were published about the liberation of male role, like Warren Farrell’s ” The Liberated Man” (1974), Marc Feigen Fasteau’s ”The Male Machine” (1974) and Jack Nichols ”Men’s Liberation” (1975).

The men’s liberation movement said that both genders are oppressed, but men are probably even more oppressed than women.

3. Radical feminists (and profeminists) came to conclusion that there is something really wrong with the sex role theory, if men were presented the biggest victims.

So radical feminists developed the patriarchy theory, were women are the oppressed class and men are the privileged class.

4. Men’s liberation movement reacted on the patriarchy theory in two ways.

Part of the liberation movement became profeminist men.

The other part founded the Men’s rights movement when they realized, that feminists are not going to free men from the male role and that feminists are not going to do anything to help men.

CONCLUSION

Both feminists and MRM started from the sex role theory, but feminists abandoned the theory, because it didn’t offer women the oppressed role.

MRM still uses the sex role theory and statistical analysis of men and women, while feminist thinking relies – more or less visibly – on the patriarchy theory.

As a result MRM and feminism can not be united in the one theory of equality, as they start from the very different premises.

SMV and LEVEL explained

SMV (sexual market value) is the amount of potential demand in the sexual market place.

How that demand should be calculated, is not an easy or trivial task, but anyway, demand is a real thing.

LEVEL is a position of a person among his/her own gender based on his/her attractiveness. You have to use both concepts to understand the attractiveness of a person.

Example in the sexual market place

Let's imagine we have a bar with random 100 men and 100 women. How we define SMV and LEVEL for each person in that bar?

We have to ask each person of his/her list of preferences, where a person puts members of opposite sex in order of attractiveness. Then we add lists together and the result is the LEVEL of the members of opposite sex.

Let’s say that top 10 are ten’s, next 10 nines and bottom 10 are ones. LEVEL of an average man is five and he is situated around the 50 among the 100 men in the bar.

So, what is the SMV of each person, if we use similar 1-10 scale? It depends of the demand.

Let’s take our average leveled man, whose LEVEL is five. Is his SMV also five? Probably not. It could be, that there would be no demand at all for our average man, so his SMV in that bar could a bottom as one. 

• LEVEL of an average man = 5 
• Typical SMV of an average man = 1-3 

Why average LEVEL man could have much smaller SMV? That’s because most women would aim higher (hypergamy) than average man, men have stronger sexual desires and more women would be happy without a partner. There is more demand for women than for men in sexual market place.

You should also make distinction between...

1. Sex(ual) market value and 
2. Relationship market value 

Women usually have much higher sex(ual) market value than relationship market value, so woman with LEVEL of 3 usually can have sex with men, whose LEVEL is 7.

Different preferences don't matter for the SMV

People have slightly different preferences for partners. That is often the case in markets, like in the antique market. Some like old furniture, some don't, but in any case old furniture has a market value independent preference of one people.

Three things could be differentiated:

1. SMV
2. Person's preferences
3. Person's opinion of other people SMV

So a person has his/her own list of  preferences, he/she could estimate what other peoples SMV are and finally there is the real SMV, which is independent of a person's preferences and estimations.

Starting this blog in english

I am author of the book Female Sexual Power (in finnish only!) and leading expert of men's equality in Finland. 

I have written everything there is to say about sexual market value theory and equality of men in finnish language.

Finnish discussions are more or less dead, so I try to translate some of my writings in english and maybe write something new.

Here is a video of me with english sub-texts: Equality lie - Finnish gender equality debate