The Artificial Wife and the Men's Rights Movement
When I started to write The Artificial Wife, I asked myself, "What kind of person would buy or build themselves a robot partner?" Love and Robotics had gone with the best case scenario - a human befriending and eventually falling for an AI. This time I examined the dark flipside: people who deliberately procure powerless partners they can treat however they wish. Naturally, this led me to the Men's Rights movement.
There are numerous men's issues that can and should be addressed. The ruinous effects of toxic masculinity. Male rape and domestic violence. Scholastic underachievement, mental health problems and suicide. The trouble is, Men's Rights Activists, despite their name, are not remotely interested in these topics.
The best known website, A Voice For Men, makes this abundantly clear in their mission statement. It harangues women in general and feminists in particular, with no mention of how men can look after themselves and each other. As far as these men are concerned, a woman's role is to provide sustenance and sex on tap. At the same time they believe a vast feminist cabal is secretly in charge of society. The paranoia and doublethink is extraordinary.
Contrary to racist and classist assumptions, the majority of MRAs are white middle class heterosexual men - in other words, beneficiaries of the male privilege they are at great pains to deny. A metaphor commonly employed by them is the 'Red Pill' from The Matrix - that now they've discovered Men's Rights, they see the world as it truly is. (Yes, the favourite analogy of a misogynistic hate group was created by two trans women. Irony!)
It'd be tempting to dismiss this as a purely modern phenomenon, flourishing on the internet (or "manosphere" as their hinterland is known). In fact men's rights movements have existed since the interwar years, to (in the founder's phrase), "combat all excesses of women's emancipation." They claimed that women's autonomy threatened social and legal institutions and would destroy the natural, patriarchal order of things. All the internet has done is give members the means to promote their ideas to a wider audience.
In The Artificial Wife, Robert befriends a hidden community of robot owners on the Storm (their version of the web), and turns to them for advice regarding his own experiment. Some of their views are too extreme even for him; others he adopts without a second thought. Although some are your stereotypical scuzzy basement dweller, others are in the upper echelons of society. Not all monsters come with horns and tails.
There are numerous men's issues that can and should be addressed. The ruinous effects of toxic masculinity. Male rape and domestic violence. Scholastic underachievement, mental health problems and suicide. The trouble is, Men's Rights Activists, despite their name, are not remotely interested in these topics.
The best known website, A Voice For Men, makes this abundantly clear in their mission statement. It harangues women in general and feminists in particular, with no mention of how men can look after themselves and each other. As far as these men are concerned, a woman's role is to provide sustenance and sex on tap. At the same time they believe a vast feminist cabal is secretly in charge of society. The paranoia and doublethink is extraordinary.
Contrary to racist and classist assumptions, the majority of MRAs are white middle class heterosexual men - in other words, beneficiaries of the male privilege they are at great pains to deny. A metaphor commonly employed by them is the 'Red Pill' from The Matrix - that now they've discovered Men's Rights, they see the world as it truly is. (Yes, the favourite analogy of a misogynistic hate group was created by two trans women. Irony!)
It'd be tempting to dismiss this as a purely modern phenomenon, flourishing on the internet (or "manosphere" as their hinterland is known). In fact men's rights movements have existed since the interwar years, to (in the founder's phrase), "combat all excesses of women's emancipation." They claimed that women's autonomy threatened social and legal institutions and would destroy the natural, patriarchal order of things. All the internet has done is give members the means to promote their ideas to a wider audience.
In The Artificial Wife, Robert befriends a hidden community of robot owners on the Storm (their version of the web), and turns to them for advice regarding his own experiment. Some of their views are too extreme even for him; others he adopts without a second thought. Although some are your stereotypical scuzzy basement dweller, others are in the upper echelons of society. Not all monsters come with horns and tails.
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