Hearing the recent accounts from John the Other about feminists destroying property, then assaulting people and then clutching their little lockets and crying like helpless children when they feared they would be called to account was pretty amusing. Aside from the sheer entertainment, it made me think a lot about emotions like anger. But rather than focusing my thoughts on a bunch of sociopaths whose only connection to emotions is to feign them in an attempt to angle for an advantage, I thought instead of MRAs.

Simply put, we have a lot of anger in the MRM.

We come by it honestly enough. There are now scores of men in this movement that have been hurt in the most sadistic and heartless of ways, often at the hands of women whom they loved, protected, and labored like dogs to provide for. Others by women that pointed a finger at them, falsely accusing them of heinous crimes, out of spite or simple convenience.

For many of them, their festering wounds were opened further and salted by a corrupt and hubristic court system. To add both insult and injury, most of these men have been told, even by “friends” and their own families, to just shut up and take it; to “man up” – by bowing down.

At this point we are starting to get a picture of how many men follow those instructions, lowering themselves till they sink all the way into an early grave.

With that in mind I feel pretty goddam compelled to exercise a lot of latitude in here about the expressions of anger. Indeed, over and over again I have instructed the concern trolls and myopic gender ideologues that if they don’t like the anger then they better start paying attention to the pain.

I draw the line at threats or even suggestions of violence, but even then I can’t say I feel good about doing it. And to be even more honest, I would let it pass in a lot of cases were I not compelled to protect the interests of this website and activists in residence here.

I know what happens when men have nowhere to go, no place to unload and no one to listen to them rage against the unspeakable injustice. Proof of that can be found in the epidemic of male suicide, on a piece of charred concrete outside the Keene County Courthouse in New Hampshire and on the faces of men too beaten down and defeated to ever lift their faces to the light again.

Am I angry about that? You better believe I am. I cannot for the life of me imagine why any human being wouldn’t be, but such are the times in which we live.

As destructive as that anger can be, I also recognize its value, properly managed.

Social change is almost always driven by anger. It was and is true for minorities in the civil rights movement. It was true for gay rights activists when confronting exclusion and persecution over something as ridiculous as who they choose to love. It was even true for some feminists, though their anger was largely a product of lies and distortions that they chose to embrace.

Without anger, though, the status quo never changes. It is an important, vital component to challenging injustice. That is why I yield some room to men who need to vent, and even encourage them to do so. Well, that and the fact that they righteously deserve a break, and an audience that does not shame them for telling their stories.

But I have also seen, over and over again, that the anger can be just one more source of personal destruction in the lives of men who are already ripped apart. And I think it is something that needs to be discussed.

I am not just talking about the Thomas Balls of this world, or men who lose it for a moment and say they would like to inflict physical harm on someone who has gleefully caused them to bleed.

I am talking about the guy who cannot seem to his master his anger and make it work for him; who instead is being swallowed up by it; whose pain has become a toxic and self-inflicted daily injury, robbing him of well-being and peace of mind.

We see some of these men here, usually ones that are passing through, and you see more of them on a small number of other men’s sites and forums where the culture is more favorable to bitterness and self-destruction.

And for some those places will be what they need for a while. Some men, when given a lot of rope, will eventually use it to scale themselves out of the hole. But I am concerned for the ones that use it to hang.

Again, for the record, I could not care less what Sir Concern-a-lot thinks about what feminists will make of the comments here. Nor do I care about the likes of disgusting ideologues who mine the comments, picking between the bones of broken men for something they can mock on their second rate blogs.

But as we are reminded here from time to time, there is not just a lot of anger in the MRM, there is a lot of suffering, much of it being expressed in angry terms.

I have come to quickly ban people who preach violence, or even hint that they would like to.

But it feels like shit these days. Not because it is wrong to do it, but because I almost always turn off my compassion in the process so I don’t have to think too much about what I am doing. These men all have reasons for being the way they are.

There are no easy answers to this. We are a lifeline for a lot of men, but the reality is that we have to cut some loose from time to time and just hope they end up in a better place, and that they learn to use their anger rather than be used by it.

In the meantime, I will be working with John to try to figure out a better way to handle those men than just getting rid of them. If anyone has suggestions, we are all ears.

In the meantime, if anyone that reads this feels like their anger is getting the better of them, please consider talking about it; here in the comments, or by calling one of the radio programs, or even a therapist if you can find one that is not practicing while feminist.

Your anger is justified, your self destruction is not.