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Desrtopa comments on Factions, inequality, and social justice - Less Wrong
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Well, these days, more feminists are inclined to do whatever they can to marginalize them, claim that they're not "real" feminists, or that they flat out do not exist. Yvain discussed this in a very interesting livejournal post
What struck me most about that very interesting post was how "legalistic" the MRA controversial claims were. I'm a lawyer, that's not a slur. It's an interesting contrast between the feminist controversial claims, which are mostly about social dynamics, and the MRA controversial claims, which I could write a model statute to fix in practically no time at all.
And since writing statutes to fix social dynamics is a crude tool at best, and often counter-productive, reasonable MRA activists and reasonable feminists have a great deal of trouble avoiding talk-past-each-other-itis.
Depends, if the social dynamics where themselves created by bad statues, fixing or repealing the statute seems like at least a start.
That's a good point, but it's worth noting that the "obviously reasonable" MRA claims are mostly social issues that are not effectively addressed in our society. A lot of the "obviously reasonable" ground for feminism has already been won, and many of the more uncontroversially reasonable matters that could be addressed by statute already have been. Earlier generations of feminism have eaten up a lot of the low hanging fruit, whereas MRA hasn't really accomplished much.
I don't really agree with your history. Consider the first of the "controversial" MRA claims:
In the United States, one way to create immediate improvement (from the MRA perspective) would be repeal of Federal Rule of Evidence 413 or its state law equivalents. Historically, this rule is actually quite recent, dating from 1995 - Congress actually overruled the Rules Committee recommendation not to have Rules 413-415. Personally, I think 413-15 are inconsistent with how the criminal justice system normally deals with prior bad acts of the defendant.
Nonetheless, that's very different from asserting that the issues haven't been addressed. Things once were closer to what the MRA now advocates, society considered the issue, and the position now adopted by MRA activists lost. My sense of the history is that most of the more legalistic desires of MRA listed in Yvain's post are also attempts to reverse previous defeats.
I don't see that this addresses my comment. The "currently controversial" claims are controversial because there are plenty of people who're convinced that they're going too far in the wrong direction, so it's no surprise if some of them are lost ground to people who think, for instance, that the relative levels of protection should be more favorable to women.
The "controversial" issues have seen more social and legal address than the "uncontroversial" ones, because feminists are a much more effective lobby group, and have mostly moved past the "obviously reasonable" issues on their own end and are moving the borders of the "currently controversial," while MRA has more or less failed to effectively agitate for even their "uncontroversial" positions, let alone the "controversial" ones, so the activists addressing the "controversial" issues are almost all coming from the feminist side.
In my original comment, I wasn't trying to divide controversial from non-controversial. I was dividing MRA from feminist.
In brief, my perception was feminist = social dynamic, MRA = legalistic. That's an over-generalization, but I thought it was interesting - and a partial explanation of the difficulties you noted with alliances between the reasonable on each side.
Analytically, this helps one explain the interactions between MRA and feminists without assuming oppression is a necessary part of the human condition, it's all status games, or that either side is innately evil.
My response to that point was that feminism seems less legalistic now because the low hanging fruit which could readily be addressed by legislation largely already has been, so social dynamics and things that are not easy to address with legislation (at least in the current political climate) are what's left.
"Equal pay for equal work" is sort of a holdout, in that an employee can legally sue their employer for discriminatory practices for not providing equal pay for equal work, but on the other hand, companies aren't required to divulge their pay standards, either to all their employees or to any oversight body charged with ensuring equal salaries. So while it's generally regarded as "uncontroversial," its legal protection is very incomplete in large part because the measures necessary to guarantee it are opposed to business interests which are themselves a powerful lobbying force.
It's not that feminism is inherently less legalistic than MRA (at least, I don't think we have the evidence to conclude that,) but that the difference in focus is largely due to the gap in the amounts of ground the movements have already covered.