MGTOW. Wtaf?

[CallarMorvern]

Not even sure what to say?

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/26/men-going-their-own-way-the-toxic-male-separatist-movement-that-is-now-mainstream

In spite of having a pile of good men in my life, I am not infrequently given to wishing that the 'men going their own way' would just do that. Permanently and with the minmum of fuss. Don't suppose that's actually an option?

I wish they would go their own way and be bloody quiet about it.

🎵 They can go their own waaaaaayyyy, go their own waayyyyyy

Now I've got Fleetwood Mac in my head

Yes, they can go off and not make a fuss about it.

It's not the going their own way that made me wtf, if that's what they want, then fine off you go, toodle pop 👋. But it's their conviction that women are the evil sex, who are just out to get them... OK then...

33K members is pretty thin stuff considering how much talk there is about it. I recall hearing of this almost 10 years ago (it was set up in 2011) and i asumed there'd be tens of millions signed up to it. It's baffling how unpopular it is IMO, considering how many aggrieved men seem to be knocking around on Twitter, Facebook etc.

I wouldn't think it a bad thing if men like that aimed to be as far away from women as is possible.
In reality, none of them are going to do that. They'll just pat each other on the back online, reassuring one another that everything that has ever gone wrong in their life is the fault of women or feminism or homosexuals or the liberal agenda, yada yada yada.
Then, when they do get girlfriends or get married, they are just going to make another woman very, very miserable.

@Lisz

33K members is pretty thin stuff considering how much talk there is about it. I recall hearing of this almost 10 years ago (it was set up in 2011) and i asumed there'd be tens of millions signed up to it. It's baffling how unpopular it is IMO, considering how many aggrieved men seem to be knocking around on Twitter, Facebook etc.

Yes, sometimes I think that these groups are really pretty fringe, but they make a good topic for an article.

In some cases I think this kind of coverage is actually what makes these groups become mainstream.

I think there is something worth considering here, and I don’t mean the ideology, a lot of that is misogynistic tripe. However I do think there is a crisis in masculinity of which I believe the most significant contributing factor is absentee or emotionally stunted fathers who are failing to model positive masculine behaviour.

I don’t think our wider cultural obsession with competing in the oppression olympics helps much either. So many groups are in this desperate race to the bottom on which group has it worst and is thus worthy of the most social/political consideration. As indeed the trans lobby has had most success with of late.

Now this may be tinfoil hat thinking on my part, but I have been trying to unpack this misogyny in my head for awhile, and I believe (although I don’t think mgtows, mras or trans activists are cognisant of this) that these men resent the objectification of women. Now bear with me a moment as this is either counter intuitive (or perhaps most likely entirely wrong!). When society objectifies women either as sex objects, an unpaid labour force or as baby makers thus confers an intrinsic value on each individual woman based on her relative positions on those scales. Men aren’t objectified, but have more agency and I think men who fail at marshalling that agency into whatever they would define as successful in their own heads end up massively resenting that intrinsic value women as objects possess whilst simultaneously entirely missing the point that objectification carries with it that loss of agency, however for an unsuccessful that intrinsic object value looks mighty tempting by comparison and a source of all this massive resentment.

I note that some transgender women who pass and meet current beauty standards sometime struggle to fathom this reduction of agency and some regret transitioning at all as a result. I also note conversely trans men who pass reasonably well end up quite enjoying the extra agency and the freedom it entails.

I think thats an accurate analysis, but I also think you made it from the POV of a person who values having agency and can see that being objectified is infantilising and unappealing.
Thats why its difficult to put yourself in the position of someone who may be very successful but would still like to be objectified on their own terms. Like only at the weekends, and only by good looking, successful men.
I think there may also be the belief that objectifying must feel good for you because its me doing it.

I think this is another instance where a media feminist has appropriate information that has been on the internet and discussed for some time by feminists.

If you google "incel" you will get some idea.

And it is important to be aware of them, as there have been cases of violence against women (and I think one terrorist act) where the men concerned have had internet interactions with other incels.

ie the movement is as much a reastion to men who feel (unfairly) rejected by women. So rather than looking at what might be their faults / attitudes, instead make out the problem is women.

I wish more women would go their own way, but I find it refreshing that women are finally starting to wake up to men/male nature. These males are doing us all a favour. Incels are very dangerous but I'm glad the FBI are keeping an eye on them.

Going their own way only because they can't bully, intimidate or gaslight women into going their way. They are at the same time both pathetic and dangerous.

I wish they would just go their own way. They'd find that a world entirely under male influence would be a horrible place though. It always is. Think ISIS or Afghanistan.

And it is important to be aware of them, as there have been cases of violence against women (and I think one terrorist act) where the men concerned have had internet interactions with other incels.

Two. There were the Isla Vista killings at UCSB. Then there was a copycat attack in Canada where a man mowed down and killed 10 people and claimed to have been inspired by the Isla Vista killer.

These people hate women but feel they are entitled to sex with them, whether they consent to it or not. So much for 'GTOW'.

A PP nailed it: they're both pathetic and dangerous. It's the pathetic ones who are actually more dangerous IME.

Here are just a few depressing (and frightening) links that show even other men are aware of this male sub(?) culture but it is not policed in the same way as a fundamentalist terrorist group would be.

A new series of memes are being shared on social media platforms, including 4Chan and the 8Chan replacement EndChan. These memes visually connect violent Incel culture – an offshoot of Pick Up Artist culture from the ‘Manosphere’ – to violent radical right culture using gendered logics of masculine shame and redemption. Ultimately the visual rhetoric of these memes poses violent mass murder within a frame of sanctified dominance as a pathway for disaffected young (white) men to recover their “proper” masculinity.
www.opendemocracy.net/en/countering-radical-right/manifesto-memes-the-radical-rights-new-dangerous-visual-rhetorics/

Some self-identified incels, as they call themselves, have developed an elaborate sociopolitical explanation for their sexual failures, one that centers on the idea that women are shallow, vicious, and only attracted to hyper-muscular men. They see this as a profound injustice against men like them, who suffer an inherent genetic disadvantage through no fault of their own. A small radical fringe believes that violence, especially against women, is an appropriate response — that an “Incel Rebellion” or “Beta [Male] Uprising” will eventually overturn the sexual status quo.
www.vox.com/world/2018/4/25/17277496/incel-toronto-attack-alek-minassian

Women experience intimate partner violence, stalking, and rape at higher levels than men. These disparities are particularly pronounced for stalking and rape, for which women are approximately 74% and 90% of victims (Smith et al., 2018). These statistics reflect a societal issue with gender-based violence that exists in countries across the world. The United States, however, is unique in that it has the highest mass shooting incidence rate in the globe, which disproportionately affects women (Christensen, 2017; “Global Firearms Holdings,” 2018). Family and romantic partners are targeted in 54% of mass shootings, leading to an overrepresentation of women and children compared with single-victim gun homicides (Everytown for Gun Safety, 2017; United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2013). Various shooters have an explicit history of gender-based violence, further suggesting that mass and gender-based violence are intertwined (e.g., Lopez, 2017; Sakuma, 2019). Despite these patterns, and that men commit 94.4% of mass shootings, policy and mainstream debate tend to neglect a gender approach (Ramsey, 2015).
journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1557085119896415

Nailing down the motive behind a mass shooting is often difficult. Most shooters tend to be driven by a poisonous blend of entrenched grievances, personal setbacks, depression, rage, suicidal urges, and in some cases, serious behavioral disorders or mental illness. Rarely can their actions be explained definitively by a single factor. However, Mother Jones’ in-depth database of mass shootings reveals a stark pattern of misogyny and domestic violence among many attackers. This factor is already relatively well known in cases where men gun down intimate partners, children, and other family members in their own or other people’s homes. There is also a strong overlap between toxic masculinity and public mass shootings, according to our latest investigation.
www.motherjones.com/crime-justice/2019/06/domestic-violence-misogyny-incels-mass-shootings/

Literally terrified of independent women. I hope they all reach level 4 and find isolation away from any women.

@Dervel

I think there is something worth considering here, and I don’t mean the ideology, a lot of that is misogynistic tripe. However I do think there is a crisis in masculinity of which I believe the most significant contributing factor is absentee or emotionally stunted fathers who are failing to model positive masculine behaviour.

I don’t think our wider cultural obsession with competing in the oppression olympics helps much either. So many groups are in this desperate race to the bottom on which group has it worst and is thus worthy of the most social/political consideration. As indeed the trans lobby has had most success with of late.

Now this may be tinfoil hat thinking on my part, but I have been trying to unpack this misogyny in my head for awhile, and I believe (although I don’t think mgtows, mras or trans activists are cognisant of this) that these men resent the objectification of women. Now bear with me a moment as this is either counter intuitive (or perhaps most likely entirely wrong!). When society objectifies women either as sex objects, an unpaid labour force or as baby makers thus confers an intrinsic value on each individual woman based on her relative positions on those scales. Men aren’t objectified, but have more agency and I think men who fail at marshalling that agency into whatever they would define as successful in their own heads end up massively resenting that intrinsic value women as objects possess whilst simultaneously entirely missing the point that objectification carries with it that loss of agency, however for an unsuccessful that intrinsic object value looks mighty tempting by comparison and a source of all this massive resentment.

I note that some transgender women who pass and meet current beauty standards sometime struggle to fathom this reduction of agency and some regret transitioning at all as a result. I also note conversely trans men who pass reasonably well end up quite enjoying the extra agency and the freedom it entails.

'Crisis of masculinity' presupposes there is a way to be male. Or at least ways to be male that aren't female. I don't doubt the crisis is a real thing and that men and boys see threats on all sides and some youngsters seem to have no idea how to behave around females, whom they regard as a separate species.

If there's a 'crisis of masculinity' it's way beyond time society examined its assumptions about sex roles.

But no. Really, no. There isn't a way to be male. There is a way to be a decent, considerate human being, and the bits that concern being male are to do with physiology, and not trying to put your physiology where it's not wanted.

stumbledin

Very worrying statistics about mass shootings. No suprise that the shooters are almost always men, but I hadn't realised the victims were disproportionately women and children, or people known to the shooter.

Also a pp mentions young guys not knowing how to relate to women. DD is 15 and the boys she knows just don't seem to have any connection with girls, until they become romantically interested. I'm always surprised by people on Mumsnet who say their daughters have friends who are male. I went to an all girls' school and thought I had missed out on male friendships, but seeing DD's experiences, I wish she could have had a single sex education.

It seems odd for the Guardian to pick out a tiny fragment of the anti-women propaganda that is written online and do an article about it.
It's got to be seen in a wider context surely of MRA's and men generally harassing and intimidating women online, not just a fringe group of cranks.

It is typical Guardian. They aren't really interested in feminism, or wider news reporting.

This article is just one long promotion for one of their own ie a journalist has written a book so they have given her a lot of space to write a puff piece.

It is much too important an issue for it just to become a passing fancy for someone who has been encouraged to feel they can get books published even when they are not qualified to do the subject justice.

So much of the media is now just about themselves and each other.

Whether print media or tv.

And when they run out of that they just look at twitter (one of the least used social media platforms globally) and make out that what is being said there is news, whereas it is little more than the usual drunks down the local pub.

CallarMorvern

I think what may have happened when you and I were growing up, particularly if you went to a single sex school, did create as sort of who are these aliens people (for both sexes).

But what is happening now, is more than the everyday sexism of our childhoods (gender stereotypes, etc.) but an actual organised philosophy that perpetuates the idea of women as being hateful, deserving of violence and so on.

If a group formed to write about another group based on their race or religion they would be talked about as being racist or anti followers of a religion. And some might be called domestic terrorists.

But when men organise against women and promote violence it is just boys being boys, or worse still girls weren't nice to them when they were growning up, so of course they are hurt and need sympathy.

It seems odd for the Guardian to pick out a tiny fragment of the anti-women propaganda that is written online and do an article about it.

It seems this is just one chapter from a whole book about online misogynists. I just read an interview with the author. Interview was conducted by Zoe Williams but still interesting to read. www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/27/laura-bates-on-the-men-who-hate-women-idolise-murderers

Just to add to the grim list the Montreal Massacre although not the first act of violence against women / feminists, was the first that the media recognised as being motivated by that.

And was recognised as such officially 30 years later theconversation.com/the-montreal-massacre-is-finally-recognized-as-an-anti-feminist-attack-128450

More articles on the Vancouver Rape Relief web site www.rapereliefshelter.bc.ca/montreal-massacre

[quote CallarMorvern]Not even sure what to say?

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/26/men-going-their-own-way-the-toxic-male-separatist-movement-that-is-now-mainstream[/quote]
First read about these nutters in Kill All Normies by Angela Nagle. They sound like a self pitying version of the women separatists I knew in the 80s.

There seem to be some pretty questionable
individuals in the incel/MGTOW scene but I do also wonder if some of.the resentment comes from them not fitting the objectified 'ideal male' stereotype.

I often think that, despite all the criticism if toxic masculinity, women still reward men who wear those attributes well - the tall, muscular, dominant, successful, assertive men. All women generally want equal pay but a significant number also value high earner status in a partner.

They do seem full of self-pity and are constantly whinging about women, which only makes them come across as pathetic. Too much negativity and paranoia and focus on 'evil' women. Nothing positive or based on self-development, self-esteem etc. Sherratt in the article accurately identified the problem - these online communities centre women way too much instead of actually putting in the effort to live their lives away from women.

I don't see anything inherently wrong with male separatism, in the same way I don't see what's wrong with female separatism. Neither are likely to appeal to a significant portion of the human population, but it might be useful to some. I think it's healthy to a certain extent to cultivate a level of independence, self-respect and resilience in either sex. Marriage and relationships can be good, but they shouldn't define you as a person or necessarily be the end goal of your life. We are hardwired to want companionship, but that doesn't mean your life is a failure or devoid of happiness if you prefer to eschew romantic relationships and focus on other things.

It's the whole negativity that undermines the MGTOW movement - instead of learning to be happy being on their own or forming uplifting and positive friendships with other men, maybe even creating a commune. Angry, self-absorbed, anonymous rants online are so pointless.

Level three requires economic disengagement (reducing taxation as far as possible, in order to avoid paying towards the support of other groups, from “elite alphas” to “single mothers”).

Oh dear.... Someone needs to explain to them how money is created and how it works. Taxation doesn't 'pay for' anything in modern economies. 😂

ForrestTrump I assumed that resentment at not being the ideal male is the underlying factor in most incel/MGTOW types.

There must be lots of women who experience resentment for not fitting with the objectified 'ideal female' stereotype, yet they don't seem to turn into groups planning violent retribution. I think 'incels' initially included women as well. It's the male entitlement, arrogance and aggression that's the problem.

Women who fit feminine attributes well are also rewarded. I think this is a fact of human life - good looking women and men who fit societal norms and expectations have usually had greater opportunities for relationships, status and respect etc throughout history.