(Fair use from Wikipedia.)
MGTOW is an acronym for Men Going Their Own Way. It is usually pronounced as 'mig-tow' (rhymes with 'pig-cow').
Somewhere in the early 2000s I noticed a movement on YouTube called Men Going Their Own Way, and it fascinated me. Just as a point of fact, the MGTOW movement has been around a lot longer than the MeToo movement, but the latter has probably helped to promote the former.
Well, folks, here we are in our brave new world, in which marriage is treated by modernists at best as quaint or stifling, or at worst as oppressive and a remnant of the dreaded patriarchy. The haters of traditional marriage have won. It will never be fixed. We will never go back to it, because there is no pathway back to it. But I ask you this question: How long do you think that our society can exist while we collectively hold in contempt the traditional notion of marriage?
So, Ward Cleaver (of Leave It to Beaver), you were an abominable person. Charles Ingalls (of Little House on the Prairie), you were an oppressive bastard of the Patriarchy! Down with the Patriarchy!!! (Of course, I don't really believe these accusations, myself. I'm being sarcastic here to make a point. But if you don't think that I'm fairly representing modern feminism, maybe you need an update on your knowledge of where that movement is right now.)
Our society will someday collapse, and it's mostly thanks to extremist on both the political left and the political right, which tend to feed off each other. Hatred of the Patriarchy will speed that up. Hatred of the Patriarchy is hatred of traditional family roles and gender roles. But there's no fixing it. We just have to keep going into the dystopian brave new world we have cut out for ourselves.
Marie Curie was (and still is) a highly-esteemed professional female scientist (of the early 20th century), who still got married and had children. The truth is that you do not have to hate the patriarchy to be a successful professional woman.
The MGTOW emblem:
(Fair use from Wikipedia.)
I'm going to begin with what Wikipedia says MGTOW is. (I want to point out right now that I have been a consistent financial supporter of Wikipedia practically since its inception.) The following is taken right off the Wikipedia page:
Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW /ˈmɪɡtaʊ/) is an anti-feminist, misogynistic, mostly-online community advocating for men to separate themselves from women and from a society which they believe has been corrupted by feminism.[2] The community is a part of the manosphere, a collection of anti-feminist websites and online communities that also includes the men's rights movement, incels, and pickup artists.[3]Like other manosphere communities, MGTOW overlaps with the alt-right and white supremacist movements,[4] and it has been implicated in online harassment of women.[5] The Southern Poverty Law Center categorizes MGTOW as a part of the male supremacist ideology.[6]
Further background: The Manosphere (Wikipedia):
The manosphere is a collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting (to varying degrees) masculinity, misogyny, and strong opposition to feminism.[1] Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists,[2] incels (involuntary celibates),[3] Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[4] pick-up artists (PUA),[5] and fathers' rights groups.[6]Gee wiz! Is Wikipedia here guilty of fallacious thinking, namely, that the people in any given group who yell the loudest should be heard the most? Or that they are the most representative of the group? The radical elements of the Manosphere and MGTOW do NOT represent the majority of its members. Golly, did you know that the membership of the Manosphere overlaps substantially with the dairy consumers of America? So what? Does that mean the dairy consumers are tainted by their "association" with the Manosphere? Or vice versa? Of course not.The manosphere overlaps with the far-right and alt-right communities.[7] It has also been associated with online harassment and has been implicated in radicalizing men into misogynist beliefs and the glorification of violence against women.[8] Some sources have associated manosphere-based radicalization with mass shootings motivated by misogyny.[9]
In all my many years of watching MGTOW videos on YouTube, I have rarely heard any of them even mention the Manosphere and that was a long time ago. They did occasionally mention incels or PUAs, but that also is less common these days. I have no recollection of any of them ever mentioning the alt-right or white supremacist movements, or promoting any form of harassment of women or of feminists in particular. It should be remembered that not all women are feminists, and therefore a large percentage of women are also the victims of the modern feminist movement. Therefore, it makes no sense for a MGTOW man to 'hate women' when they a) recognize that not all women are feminists, and b) accept that women as a group can also be the victims of feminist extremism, and c) have seen for themselves videos out there made by women against radical feminism (I invite the reader to watch some of them), and d) admit that the assaults on traditional values do not only come from feminist doctrines.
MGTOW is NOT about violence toward women! And I have seen MGTOW videos made by both whites and blacks, so who makes these nutty claims that MGTOW is in league with white supremacists? I have seen plenty of pro-MGTOW videos made by fair-minded women. These false accusations are just nonsense! MGTOW is not about racism! You know, if you bear false witness against an entire group of people, so as to malign them, you'll have to give an accounting of that on Judgment Day. And I'll add that men from the alt-right or white supremacists who claim to be MGTOW aren't doing the movement any favors.
That fat vertical line in the MGTOW emblem represents to me two things: First, the traditional pathway for a man through his life. By 'traditional', I mean what was expected of a man until about a hundred years ago, when it all started to unravel. Second, the main line (vertical line) represents the activist Manosphere, that is, that part of the Manosphere that is activist legally in defending men's rights under the law. So, in the first case, MGTOW men are accepting the reality that the traditional means of male-female interactions is gone and not coming back, therefore, they go their own way in life to find something positive to do, and that has NOTHING to do with harassing women or misogyny! Men in MGTOW do not participate in activism because they don't feel it's worth their time or effort. That's what 'going their own way' really means: they have given up believing that they can change anything in their society other than their own lives.
Now, I don't want to be misunderstood on this point. MGTOW philosophy does not discourage men from helping the people in their communities, such as they can. But, I believe it is accurate to say that MGTOW philosophy discourages its members from developing a false hope of making positive systemic changes to the zeitgeist of the society around them. The die is cast, and we must all live with the inevitable consequences of that change in Western beliefs. All we can do now is to grab a firm hold on the handlebar of the cultural roller-coaster car we're in and try to enjoy the ride, until the whole thing inevitably crashes.
Let's get something straight, folks. No man in the MGTOW movement thinks of it as his 'best life now!' Rather, he thinks of it as his best way to come to terms with the reality that he will probably never find love or marriage in this life, yet not to succumb to prolonged disappointment in life or anger at society. MGTOW is about going forward, with peace of mind and finding a positive direction in one's life after 'getting the memo'.
The Manosphere is primarily concerned with just two questions:
1) What is the de facto standard by which all men are expected to
conform to in modern society at all levels of involvement and
in all manner of behaviors?
2) After a man has learned what MODERN society expects of him in all manner
of behaviors, how should he -- the individual man -- respond to that
information?
Some of these men become activists, seeking to protect the legitimate rights of men. However, MGTOW strongly denies this philosophy for itself. MGTOW is manifestly passivist. I have heard this passivist philosophy preached on YouTube videos from the beginning. The MGTOW philosophy is this: MGTOW men aren't going to become activist or to concern themselves with men's-rights issues (though somebody else can do that). It means to just accept the way modern people think, so, stay away from women to protect yourself, and then find some way to occupy your free time in a positive way.
As for the 'PUA subgroup' within the Manosphere, I cannot fathom why it's there in the first place. I don't consider it as a valid part of the Manosphere, but that's a question of semantics. And pretty much the same goes for Incels. I can understand why some incels would adopt the MGTOW philosophy, but as for there being a legitimate subcategory of Incel within the Manosphere, that makes no sense to me.
So, I want to state the obvious: If you have a group of people with maybe a 100,000 (or more) membership, just to pick a big number, you can expect to find a wide spectrum of beliefs within that group. Some of these beliefs will be radical, but probably most of them are not. If you find a man writing on a blog or reddit who is stuck in a negative mindset about feminism, you haven't found a person who is true to the passivist and positively oriented MGTOW philosophy. Now, I'm not claiming that MGTOW men actually like modern feminism. What I am saying is that MGTOW men are encouraged to make a separate peace with it because it has already won and therefore it's a waste of precious time to fight against it or to remain in a negative emotional state over it.
Second, I have been a viewer of MGTOW YouTube videos for at least fifteen years, so I feel confident that I can report on the doctrines of MGTOW rather accurately -- at least for most MGTOW followers of YouTube videos.
FYI: I have never read the so-called MGTOW Manifesto (at least so far as I can remember), and I have no intention of doing so, because the mindset of its small group of authors need not represent the majority of MGTOW believers. For me, the YouTube videos I have watched over the many years is where I get my representation of MGTOW. It is my de facto source, yet they may not be consistent with the image of MGTOW derived from websites, bloggers, or reddit forums, which I do not follow.
So, we are told that MGTOW are "anti-feminist, misogynistic." I am definitely going to claim that most MGTOW are not antiwomen. As for "anti-feminist"? What does that really mean? Most MGTOW do not like what modern feminism has already done to our society. (By the way, I'm not talking about the form of feminism of 90 years ago.) I'll state this again: The philosophy of MGTOW is that the damage done to traditional values is already complete and irreversible. Thus, there is nothing to be gained by arguing with or harassing women in general or feminists in particular. The only option left is to go your own way (to protect yourself from false accusations and scheming entrapments) and try to find some positive avocation to occupy yourself.
Yes, feminism has been a part of the destruction of society, but so have many other forces within our society. So has divorce, for instance. One of these other forces is the male proclivity for premarital and extramarital sex. Another is the degradation of modern Christianity into either a mealy-mouthed version of 'I'm Okay, You're Okay', or the utter debasement of the religion into just another right-wing fascist political organization, pretending to follow the teachings of Jesus, but preferring to destroy democracy in America and set up their own 'Christian' dictatorship. That pretty much defines modern evangelicalism. But I will warn those hypocrites of evangelicalism that if you continue to do the Devil's bidding, don't be surprised when you receive the Devil's eternal condemnation.
They profess that they know God; but in works they deny him, being abominable, and disobedient, and unto every good work reprobate. [Titus 1:16]I am writing this essay, not so much to defend MGTOW men, as to clear away so many misconceptions people seem to have about the majority of them and their movement.
There are basically two kinds of men who have come to MGTOW:
1) those men who wanted to have premarital sexual relations with women (fornication),
but find it has become increasingly dangerous to them by the possibility of false accusation
or because she may have lied about being on contraception to purposely get pregnant
and then sue the man for child care financial benefits.
2) The other group of men are those who have finally awakened to the fact that they
can't relate to women the way men could in 1950s' Ward and June Cleaver-style
relationship. That's as passe as the dinosaurs.
That way of life is dead and is never coming back in this dispensation. The only
thing left to do is to find some kind of alternative positive, but celibate, lifestyle.
Taking the so-called 'red pill' is a metaphor for men waking up to the fact that male relationships with females at every level has become increasingly modified, confusing, uncertain, and dangerous to a man's reputation, finances, and freedom.
Men hear feminist say, "I don't need no man!" So, is it any wonder that eventually men yield to the inevitable conclusion and reply, "Well, then, I guess I don't need no woman." If you were a man waking up to this reality, would you do it any differently? How much would you be willing to risk to go against the odds in trying to find a one-in-a-thousand woman who is willing to live in a traditional relationship, especially within a wider culture that would condemn both of them for trying to live out their outdated notions for 'traditional marriage'? Isn't feminism just the female version of MGTOW? Isn't it just Women Going Their Own Way, but they having done so decades before men found it necessary to do their catch-up version of it?
I keep seeing both men and women mischaracterize what the majority MGTOW men really are. Some insist that they must be misogynists. The dictionary claims that a misogynist is a person who hates or discriminates against females. I do not think that most MGTOW men hate females. I certainly don't, myself. However, we are all of us entitled to choose the people we associate with on our own time. In the very act of choosing which people we will accept as our friends and who will not be accepted, that is an act of discrimination. And it goes both ways. If a woman decides to make her friends of mostly, or even exclusively, of other women, does that make her discriminatory? Well, certainly not by legal standards. Then why can't a man choose his friends exclusively from other men without being accused of being 'discriminatory'?
But all men are coming to realize, if they haven't already, that the old rules on how men and women are to relate to each other have changed forever and they aren't ever going to return to the old ways. As a result, men are trying to figure out how to reconstruct their futures without the prospect of marriage as a realistic option for them. Now, maybe most people think that this is no big deal, but for a lot of men, this is at first a traumatic realization that they must in time come to peace with. At the same time men must restrain their thoughts and behaviors to protect themselves from missteps with women that could easily get them in trouble with the law or with their company's Human Resources.
Now to the facts:
1) Most divorces today in the US are initiated by the wife. I find the number of 70% being kicked around for women initiating divorce in the US. If you were a man considering marriage, what would you do with that statistic? By analogy, would you be willing to invest in a financial bond that is supposed to mature in twenty years, yet has a 70% chance of going bust in less than six, and you losing everything you invested? Maybe men are just being rational in the face of this modern reality.
Why should a man invest his heart, soul, and finances into a marriage relationship that will likely end in divorce in three to seven years? Divorce courts recently have been notoriously unfair to men in rendering financial and custodial decisions.
2) In the workplace, a woman need only claim to HR that what her male coworker said in her presence made her feel "uncomfortable" and then the man is demoted, loses the chance for promotion, or is even fired. No wonder informed men are walking on eggshells in the presence of their female coworkers. Maybe they're only acting rationally.
3) Today, most college graduates are female. Since 2010, 60% of college graduates are female, and the gap is only getting wider as the years go by. What do you suppose will be the long-term effect upon society at large if this sustained trend gets worse, and someday it will be 80% of college graduates are female and only 20% are male? What do you suppose will be the long-term effects on society? I'm not going to spell it out for you (because to do so would be for me to risk the ultimate male sin of 'mansplaining'), but, instead, I'll just ask a couple questions. If it does ever come to that, will college-degreed women even want to marry a man without requiring him to have a college degree? (Which would be 'marrying down'.) And, will a man without a college degree ever hope to marry a woman with a college degree?
4) Many Western countries, including the US, are in a state of falling population numbers. Their fertility rates are below replacement level. What this means is that on average the populations of these countries is decreasing year-by-year, with no end in sight. Complicating matters, as the decades progress, both men and women are losing fertility. This loss is a biological decrease that is exacerbating the new-age socially induced drop in fertility. Women no longer feel that they should marry young and raise children. Those women that do marry, on average, wait longer in their lives to get married in the first place, which reduces the number of children on average per family.
Okay, that's their choice, but such behaviors don't happen without societal consequences. If this tendency continues unabated, populations could drop below a critical level to support the society's social structures on which they have founded for decades. The only way to offset this is by immigration, which in the US is absolutely hated by the political Right, and not just the extreme political Right. Such short-sightedness and the 'Me! Me! Me!' mentality is going to have profoundly negative consequences that will affect us all.
5) Men complain that 80% of the women are after only 20% of the men. I don't know if this is true, but it's a scary thought if you're a man. In fact, it's scary if you're a woman, too! Men complain that they are invisible to most women because they aren't wealthy enough, educated enough, or good looking enough. Is this pattern sustainable?
5) Young men complain that young women don't want the 'nice guys'. They want
the 'bad boys' instead. Assuming that this is true, and I don't know if it is
(because I have been out of the male-female dating situation for 40 years or more),
I have some hypotheses as to why this might be.
I guess that for men who don't mind being in the friendzone, that's okay. But for men who want more, it's demeaning and exploitive. At some point they have to see the hopelessness of that relationship and leave it. And, for some of them, that means to go their own way.
More about the 'nice guy' syndrome. I have watched some women in their own YouTube videos claim that the reason they don't date 'nice guys' is because they are disingenuous: all they want is to sweet talk a girl to get her into bed. So, if this claim is true (which I doubt is true of all nice men) and yet they'd rather date a bad boy (who also only wants to get her into bed), does this makes sense? So, I get confused when I watch videos in which women talk about nice guys. Half the women claim they can never find any, while the other half claim that they'd never date them because they're all disingenuous.
What about the woman who wants a nice guy, but has found them to be manipulative by their phony kindness and traditional mannerisms? Simple. Don't get emotionally involved early. Then, wait them out. If the guy is really disingenuous then make them wait a while before you give them much of your time. Logic suggests that under those rules, the disingenuous guys will be first to say goodbye, to find greener pastures. Problem solved.
What about the guy in the friendzone who doesn't want to be there but doesn't have the courage to just walk away to find some healthier relationships with other people? The slang word for this is a 'simp'. This refers to a man who becomes fixated on a woman who will not reciprocate in like manner towards him, yet this man cannot seem to walk away for the hope of something better.
Is there anything else to say about 'nice guys'? Yes, and it's that 'too many cooks spoil the pot'. What I mean is that there are too many definitions of what a 'nice guy' is and they contradict each other. Another definition of the 'nice guy syndrome' is an overly passive guy, who won't stand up to the female. The issue here is that she can't respect this guy because she sees him as timid and morally weak.
6) Is MGTOW a cult for toxic masculinity? No! The very phrase 'toxic masculinity' should be enough to make a rational man run from any woman who espouses this nonsense. Women wanted to be freed of the 'oppression of the patriarchy'. Okay, they got what they wanted. You could rightly say that feminism was a reactionary movement to the patriarchy. But turnabout is fair play. Since the reality is now that men have to find an alternative lifestyle to settling down into a traditional marriage 'till death do them part', they have found it necessary to create a counter-reactionary movement of their own, just to figure out what their lives mean any more and how they fit into this brave, new world.
We are running headlong into a dystopian future of our own making. The MGTOW movement is not trying to stop this from happening, because it can't. No one can. It's now inevitable. All it can do is to educate men unto the new realities of life so to protect themselves from stepping into a tar pit that they can never get themselves out of.
Did you ever see the movie Tremors (1990)? In the end of the movie, the un-educated Val was interested in the highly educated Rhonda, who seemed likewise interested in him. But Val was rightfully apprehensive to approach her with any suggestion of a serious relationship. And who could blame him? Rhonda is going to finish her education with a doctorate and probably become a university professor. Fine, more power to her! But could she really marry Val? As what? Her sidekick? Her live-in plumber and landscaper? And if she did, would that work out? Would Val really be able to deal with that relationship for very long?
One thing I suppose: The older they get, the greater the differences between their outlooks in life and their accomplishments in life will manifest themselves. Also, I suppose that Rhonda might not be so tolerant of Val's porn collection (this is implied subtly at the end of the movie). After all, Val is a red-blooded, young, active heterosexual male, right?
My logic tells me that there's one thing worse for them than to not get married, and that is for them to throw caution to the wind, get married, and then live miserably until they decide it was a mistake and get a divorce.
It isn't that Val isn't smart. Actually, he's very smart. But he's smart in his way, and she's smart in her way, and never the twain shall meet.
Earl (Val's good friend and business partner) encourages Val to pursue Rhonda. And when Val does, he replies to the wind, "What's a woman like her want with a guy like me? She's going for her damn Ph.D."
Since Val is being rushed into making this important decision, he has no time to think out the consequences for the long term, in an unemotional, rational manner. But if I were Earl, I would have said to Val, "Go give her a last kiss and then say good-bye to her forever. Then, if you two ever meet again, it will just be professional and not awkwardly painful."
This schism between Val and Rhonda is a perfect example of how the genders have long ago departed from their traditional roles -- the roles we once heard about from our great grandparents. Rhonda went her way to an advanced degree. Val went his way to find employment wherever he could, along with his long-term friend Earl. It seems to me that both Val and Rhonda have made choices that worked well for them separately, but definitely not well for them together. That's life. When we walk through one door, we may find that we have permanently closed others.
The movie ends with Val kissing Rhonda, and that's a made-for-Hollywood, feel-good moment. But that's where their relationship should end. The fact that they're both young, attractive, and nice people is just not enough to sustain a serious relationship between them. Their differences are screaming out to be recognized. Now, I'm not saying that Rhonda has made the wrong choices for her life. I am saying that the choices she has pursued has opened some doors for her, but tightly closed others.
Val's heart tells him to pursue Rhonda, while his brain tells him that he'd be an idiot to do so. Do you think that Val would get used to being introduced to Rhonda's colleagues as her boyfriend or sidekick? How long could Rhonda endure that amongst her university colleagues? Don't get me wrong, because I don't find that the work Val does to be dishonoring to him at all. It's hard, honest, and respectful work. But it doesn't quite fit into Rhonda's future life.
I'd like to end with some comments about the movie itself. I really like this movie. I find it near faultless, except for the female-without-pants-on scene (but that's my Christianity speaking). It's a smart and humorous movie. It was well-written, directed, and acted. The last scene strikes me as a real accomplishment of screenwriting, because I couldn't have written it, myself. I wouldn't have even tried. How does one effectively write two minutes of two people in an awkward situation and find enough words to fill it out? I don't know. Well done, writers!
CONCLUSION:
MGTOW is the philosophy that a man must reject the traditional male roles that he believed were in place over him by society but aren't anymore, because that vision of maleness is gone long ago and it's not coming back. MGTOW is also rejecting an activist role within the Manosphere to seek, instead, some positive, passivist future for himself, which will not include marriage, traditional or otherwise. It also does not include political activism or harassing women or feminists. MGTOW is to disengage from all unnecessary interactions with females as much as is practicable.
The modern feminist claims that she doesn't like men or want them around her. They consider men to be at best brutes, full of 'mansplaining' and 'toxic masculinity'. Alright, then. So why then are they so upset when men give them what they claim they want and do their best to avoid them? You'd think that they'd applaud that.