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Men Going Their Own Way

Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW /ˈmɪɡtaʊ/) is an anti-feminist, mostly online community advocating for men to separate themselves from a society which they see as harmful to men, and particularly to eschew marriage and cohabitation.

The community comprises websites and social media presences as part of what is more broadly termed the manosphere. MGTOW purport to focus on men's self-ownership rather than changing the status quo through activism and protest, which to participants differentiates the community from the men's rights movement.

Associated with the alt-right, the MGTOW community has been called a misogynistic male supremacist group. The Southern Poverty Law Center places it "on the borders of the hateful incel community".

Origins

Mack Lamoureux wrote in Vice that "The MGTOW community's history is murky, but it was most likely birthed in the mid to early 2000s by two men who go by the online aliases of Solaris and Ragnar." Jie Liang Lin writes that while MGTOW's origins are unclear, it seems to have emerged from the red pill phenomenon, a metaphor used by antifeminists for "waking up to society's gynocentric evils". MGTOW's presence exists almost entirely online in the form of online forums and Youtube channels. Members of the community are disorganized and live in all parts of the world.^[1]

Beliefs

Political Stance

Originally libertarian, the community later began to merge with the neoreactionary and white-nationalist alt-right. MGTOW has been described as misogynistic. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified the community as a male supremacist group, placing it "on the borders of the hateful incel community". MGTOWs differ from members of the incel community in their apathy and jadedness towards women and the courtship process as opposed to the desire for sexual intercourse felt be incels. Online discussions with MGTOWs indicate that their views range from very radical to moderate but are generally non-violent and less extreme than those of incels.^[2]

Views on women and feminism

MGTOWs advocate male separatism and believe society has been corrupted by feminism, a view shared with the alt-right. MGTOWs posit that feminism in conjunction with political actions and advances in contraceptive technology allowing for more casual sex^[2] have made women dangerous to men, and that male self-preservation requires dissociating completely from women. MGTOWs fundamentally disagree with feminist claims of female disadvantage and instead argue that the opposite is true. Historic male over representation in dangerous jobs such as military personnel and construction are often cited by MGTOWs as evidence of this. Many MGTOWs believe that women live longer, less stressful, and more fruitful lives at the expense of a male provider's emotional and material investment^[2] Levels of MGTOW involvement range from "red pill" awareness, to rejection of relationships (including "marriage strikes"), to economic and societal disengagement.

MGTOWs believe that there is a systemic gynocentric bias against men including double standards in gender roles, bias against men in family courts, lack of concern for men falsely accused of rape and lack of consequences for their accusers. According to Angela Nagle, their rhetoric suggests "punishment and revenge" against women are the driving force behind MGTOW.

Some self-identified MGTOWs see women as hypergamous and manipulative. According to Futrelle, the "central MGTOW myth" may be that of the "cock carousel": the idea that women spend their youth "flitting from alpha male to alpha male in an endless utopia of casual sex [...] Meanwhile, the overwhelming majority of men in their teens and early 20s live in a parched sexual desert, scorned by women". In Digital Environments, Lin writes:

MGTOW believe modern women have been 'brainwashed' by feminism to believe 'they are right no matter what.' She will 'ride the cock carousel' with as many men as possible, most of whom will mistreat her and valorize her feminist claims of victimhood. When women do decide to settle for a man, he will be a passive 'beta-type,' whom she will boss around and target for his 'utility value'—financial assets and stability. The 'beta' may be a Purple Piller who is aware of the risks of marriage, but tries to hold out for a 'Disney-ending.' However, divorce proceedings will inevitably sway in a woman’s favor, due to institutionalized female privilege.

Some MGTOW have short-term casual relationships or engage in sex with prostitutes. A more austere subset of MGTOW called MGTOW "monk mode" eschews pursuing courtship and sex, and instead advocates for celibacy and self-improvement. A MGTOW that chooses celibacy over sex and relationships is said to be "going monk"; some embrace maintaining their virginity.

Lamoureux writes that MGTOWs have "a serious problem with feminism". Barb MacQuarrie, Community Director at Centre for Research & Education on Violence against Women & Children at University of Western Ontario, said, MGTOW advocates "have no real ability to identify the global forces that are at work in their life, so they hang the blame on feminists", and show "a complete lack of self-reflection", in the end "reinforcing each other's really distorted perceptions of what's happening in the world".

MGTOWs deride feminists as "social justice warriors", and see the LGBT rights movement and support for safe spaces as obstacles to male self-ownership. Leah Morrigan states that the MGTOW.com founder Sandman's videos "proclai[m] his bitter, indiscriminate hate towards women", who he claims are all "manipulative whores and liars" whom Sandman "slut-shames, fat-shames, and age-shames". When women are discussed on MGTOW forums, it is often "angrily".

The "red pill"

MGTOW use jargon such as "red pilled" to describe members of their movement and "blue pilled" to describe men outside, or opposed to their movement.

Relation to other men's groups

MGTOW shares many concerns with other elements of the manosphere, such as online men's-rights websites, while disagreeing on other points.

Men's rights movement

Unlike men's-rights activists (MRAs), MGTOWs do not seek to change society, but rather to distance themselves from society. The early MGTOW community was consistently libertarian and opposed to "big government", in contrast to MRAs' support for legal reforms in the area of divorce and custody. Futrelle writes that MGTOWs have "largely abandoned" the issues of concern to MRAs, such as male suicide and false rape accusations, "to focus almost entirely on the airing of grievances".

According to Lamoureux:

At first glance, it's easy to lump MGTOW in with typical Men's Rights Activists (MRAs) who also believe that female oppression is a myth and that it's actually males who are oppressed—but that's not the case. The two groups differ significantly ... While MRAs are out to fix the problem through action and activism, members of MGTOW hold self-preservation above all else, and because of this the majority of the community seems to have decided to bow out.

To this end, MGTOW has been called "a community of emotional and moral support" rather than a community of political action. Many users of it's online communities seek a sense of solidarity with one another over shared feelings of bitterness and isolation while some discuss only hobbies.^[1]

Herbivore men

According to Roselina Salemi, writing for the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the Japanese concept of herbivore men is a subset of MGTOW. Lamoureux sees herbivore men as a consequence of Japanese socioeconomic conditions and MGTOW as an ideological choice. Kashmira Gander, writing for The Independent, sees herbivore men serving as role models for MGTOW.

Pick-up artists

MGTOW have a reciprocal disdain for the pickup artist community. The MGTOW movement has been criticized by the pick-up artists (PUA) for being cult-like, antithetical to human nature, and likened to separatist feminism. Pick-up artists disparage the MGTOW community, calling their "'philosophy'...completely wrongheaded", according to Lamoureux. Matt Forney from Return of Kings, a pick-up artist website, calls MGTOW a "creeping cult of male loserdom".