The Site
MrArchivist.com started out as a personal database of mine. I was getting swamped by information as I drank from the newly-discovered Mens Human Rights Movement (MHRM) fire hose. Between citations given in YouTube video lowbars, several dozen link roundups on Reddit, various wikis/independent one-off webpages, and news articles flying at me, I knew that useful information was being functionally lost forever (at least to me).
So, in February 2015, I committed to grab everything that I came across. If the piece of data wasn’t from a primary (or reliable secondary) source, I searched for one. If I couldn’t find one, I knew that the item in question wasn’t fit for me to use. In this way, if I needed data for a discussion on gender issues, I could be certain that I had a one-stop-shop of reliable, vetted primary sources.
By March, my database had grown to about 100 data points, and I thought “maybe other people would like to use this.” So I put it up on Reddit as a gDoc and got some positive responses. There was nearly always someone other than me in the gDoc at any given time, which made me feel that I was contributing something to the MHRM, however small.
I kept plugging away, capturing data and primary sources as they flew at me. By April, I’d amassed 400 data points. The gDoc was becoming too unwieldy, and was very difficult for multiple people to use simultaneously (as there is only one, universal instance of the spreadsheet). I figured: “If I’m going to keep this up, I might as well do it right.”
And here we are.
Mr Archivist
the one who finds the studies, reads the studies, and extracts data from the studies
I’m a recent addition to the gender wars. Feminism jumped the shark for me sometime in early 2014. I discovered Karen Straughan that July, and the rest is history. I hesitate to call myself a Men’s Rights Activist, as I don’t do much activism. I re-post the odd article on Facebook or Twitter and occasionally point out the one-sidedness in some gynocentric observation, but that’s about it. Basically, I’m somewhere in the spectrum between non-feminist and MRA.
But one thing I can (and do) contribute, is reading and documenting. In school, I studied Philosophy and Comparative Literature, which means I’ve been trained in logic, argumentation, and interpretation of arcane texts.
So, while I haven’t earned the title of Men’s Rights Activist, I think I definitely qualify as a Men’s Rights Archivist. And that’s good enough for me, for now.