Consider the plight of the poor, horny Man Going His Own Way. He may have convinced himself that women are icky monsters out to highjack his sperm and steal his money. He may have convinced himself we live in a femi-fascist gynocracy out to destroy men and civilization generally. Yet his disobedient penis can’t stop thinking about sex with these evil, filthy women.
And so he turns to his fellow MGTOWers to ask for help: what can I do, my brethren, to stop popping so many boners? Ed1974, a newbie on MGTOWforums.com, puts it this way in a plaintive recent post:
[M]ore than almost anything I want to be woman-free and contentment to live a woman-free life. For more or less all of my adult life I’ve played in to society’s demands that I have to have a woman, and preferably a pretty woman, in my life. I’ve done a lot of Internet dating and every friggin time I get involved with a woman I regret it. Either I just want to get some ass and the woman wants a lot more than that and makes a mess out of my life when I leave, or I end up spending way more money than I ever wanted to spend just to have her grace my life with her presence, or something else that fucks up my life. The bottom line is I sincerely want to live a life without the desire to have a woman in my life.
So Ed is taking steps to quell his desire:
1. I downloaded a firewall blocking all dating sites.
2. I’m going to read as many books on misandry that I can.
3. I’m going to take myself out of situations where I can get in trouble, such as bars.
4. I’m going to fill free time that I would normally spend out with some woman with something productive.
I also want to remember the bad times where I’ve had women who I’ve tried to get out of my life end up stalking me for months on end. And to be perfectly honest, I want to remember the time I got the clap from some skank. I also want to remember that I should be thankful that I’m not a baby daddy and I’ve never had any false rape charges against me.
Alas, but poor pretty Eddie is afraid that this won’t be enough, and begs the assembled MGTOWers for “other steps I should take.”
Site admin Nacho Vidal suggests he go another way entirely:
My advice would be to scrap the ‘steps’ you’ve taken and take your wanking up a notch! Also, have you looked into hiring a whore or two once a month?
Others jump in to endorse the masturbation-and-prostitute strategy, and encourage him to cultivate his hatred of women by reading from the ample selection of stories on the site about evil, depraved, disgusting women. As fairi5fair puts it:
I go to college and still get the biochemical reactions that play into the mate-spawn-die script when I see a 20 year old with a candy apple ass and perky tits, but my growing understanding of women in general helps to make it less urgent and more negligible everyday.
A few others have more novel advice. Our friend womanhater suggests a trip to the mall:
Sit in the food court, and spend a good three hours there. Leisurely sip on some coffee, and simply watch.
See all the soulless men being dragged around by cupcake holding her bags. You’ll see the total absence of hope in the eyes of men in this trap. You’ll see his brain calculating the immense debt being run up, and yet he knows he’s fucked.
Pay attention to the stupid whores in training aged 15 or so, and simply listen the absolute shit running out of their mouth. Watch their behavior and internalize that every twat you see aged 25 was doing the exact same shit a decade ago.
Every time I start to feel my ghosting resolve start to slip, I go to the mall for a few hours. Clears my fucking head every time.
NewWorldMan suggests a sort of mind-over-boner strategy:
Sounds like BS, I know, but telling myself (actually saying the sentence in my head at the moment of attraction): “I control my dick, my dick doesn’t control me — actually works for me.
Frederick326 suggests an anatomy lesson:
Read up on vaginas. They’re fucking disgusting.
And fairi5fair also links to the (somewhat NSFW) video below. I’m not sure what exactly it’s supposed to accomplish other than to remind us that Japan leads the world in baffling entertainment product:
Curse you, HTML!
I’m not and I won’t apologize for it. If NWO doesn’t like it, he write to his local Congressperson about this grave injustice.
So is NWOSlave still with his first girlfriend?
I mean, the answer’s obviously yes, as he’d be a rancid hypocrite otherwise, but it would be good to have a definite confirmation.
“So is NWOSlave still with his first girlfriend?”
That’s the real question. Even if we accept the horrible double standard slut=Don Juan, that still means he may have destroy the purity of one or several previously good women!
Didn’t NWO say at some point that he’d had girlfriends and been engaged?
THAT SLUT.
Pterygotus: I tell normal men they’re sexy all the time, as do most of my feminist friends! The solution here, clearly, is Moar Feminism.
Well, maybe NWO got dumped, at which point it would still be the fault of Teh Ebul Wimminz.
Well, yes, but if a man dumps a woman, surely she is obligated never to be with another man again. Spoiled forever!
At least I’m assuming that’s how NWO’s logic would go.
Ozymandias: It seems to me that many men are incapable of viewing themselves as sexy. Myself, I find it pretty much unnatural – perhaps because I’m not attracted to men (myself included), perhaps because I have internalized “the myth of men not being hot”.
At any rate, I am pretty certain that I am not alone in this. Many men seem to genuinely not be able to view themselves in such a way.
NWO strikes me as the kind of guy who writes his Congressperson enough to have his own file. It probably looks like the NYC phone book.
Asking if I’m “still” with my first boyfriend is a meaningless question, ’cause I’ve never dated. There is no first boyfriend. I hope that doesn’t mean I’m dividing by zero if I answer… O_O
If you’re worried about dividing by zero, Bagelsan, allow me.
0th boyfriend, 1st girlfriend.
Stick that potato up your tailpipe, Milkboy.
RocketFrog (and other straight dudes), are you able to tell that other men are hot/would be considered hot by people who are attracted to men? Most women seem to have a very acute sense of how other women look, and how they compare to them, even if we don’t necessarily agree with the beauty standards by which we evaluate ourselves.
Okay, I went back in time a few seconds and fixed everything! Whew.
Oh fuck Rutee oh no ohfuckOHFUCKNOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOO VOOORPHSJSDSKHDXCJ EKJFNWLKEJFCBLSDHfna dbjgvsbafbsdj njsdnkvjskjgbHBH–schoooooowp BLOORK!!!
I can certainly understand why straight women and gay men might fancy a particular man, even if I myself feel nothing at all. But I’m terrible at judging my own sex appeal – I assume I must have some, since I’ve rarely been without a partner of some kind since my teens and they’ve mainly been pretty high-quality partners who wouldn’t have much difficulty going elsewhere, but quite what they see in me physically I’m not entirely sure.
But then again I look in mirrors so rarely that I still get mildly startled by the beard I’m currently sporting, even though I’ve had it since June.
I’m delighted that I didn’t marry my first boyfriend, personally. We were totally incompatible and wanted different things out of our adult lives. We’d both have been miserable together (but were fine as teenagers).
I guess NWO thinks that misery is normal for married men, so he wouldn’t mind condeming another guy to marriage to an incompatible partner just so that she could be properly punished for having pre-marital sex.
Bagelsan: I can’t speak for all heterosexual men, obviously. The closest I can come to “sensing” whether other men would be considered attractive to people who are attracted to men is to compare their appearance to that of other men I know are considered attractive by such people. I can compare myself to other men in a similar way. At least for me, this is a purely analytical process of mentally producing “lists” of physical characteristics.
On the contrary, I *feel* attracted to some women (including a few transwomen) in a much more physical manner. Women I find sexy seem to create a rush of chemicals in my brain. No checklists of physical characteristics are necessary – in fact, I would be completely unable to construct a precise one, since I have felt attracted to women of very different body shapes, sizes, age groups, ethnicities and “presentation styles”.
“Feeling sexy” thus seems to me a completely incomprehensible concept. And I’ve noticed that many women can comfortably talk to one another about “feeling sexy”, whereas men generally don’t. I am not sure whether this is for the same reasons as myself – that judging the attractiveness of men is a purely analytical process – or if it is just because there is a cultural taboo associated with males feeling sexy. But at least for me – I honestly can’t imagine *feeling* myself sexy.
(although I must hasten to add that I am not someone who people who are attracted to men would generally find particularly attractive.)
Incidentally, that latter point, as well as a congenital neurological disability, is why I am personally interested in whether there is a constructive, non-misogynist answer to Ed1974’s question on the NGTOW Forums: Is it possible for a heterosexual man to live an asexual life without frustration and misery?
It seems to be a thought that many people aren’t even willing to consider seriously. Both here and on the NGTOW forums, snarky remarks about castration are quick to pop up. But what about heterosexual men who do not wish to mutilate themselves physically (or are unwilling to take the health risks associated with castration), but who – whether out of ideology or of necessity – want to live unfrustrated, unmiserable lives without sexual or romantic contact with women?
(and as I said, I think the misogynist coping strategies proposed by the people at the NGTOW forums are self-defeating – a heterosexual who spends a lot of time and energy hating the sex he/she is attracted to must therefore spend at least that much time *thinking* about that sex, which is probably a recipe for *more* misery and frustration.)
I don’t think it is possible, however, for a heterosexual person to become truly asexual, any more than it is possible for religious fundamentalists to turn a homosexual person into a heterosexual one.
I think it’s certainly possible (albeit not easy) for people who are not naturally asexual to choose to be celibate, and to lead happy and fulfilling lives – priests, monks, nuns, and various other religious folks have been doing it for centuries. The trick seems to be pretty simple: find something else that’s more important to you than sex/romance (in their case, presumably, religious service), and focus on that instead.
The extra good thing about the “just put your energy into things that make you happy besides sex” plan is that it’s a good plan even if you’re not trying to be celibate. As a general rule, people who are desperately trying to find a partner (whether for sex or a relationship) or focusing on how bitter they are about not having a partner are both vastly, vastly less likely to actually find a partner than people who are happily going about their lives finding fulfillment and confidence in other areas, and approaching sex/romance as “something that would be nice if I find someone and there’s mutual interest” instead of “something I NEED RIGHT NOW.”
Also, masturbation. Lots of masturbation.
Polliwog has it exactly right, in my opinion.
Also, unless there’s a reason to want or strive to be functionally asexual (or at least celibate) I don’t see any reason in assuming it’s inevitable and thus trying to avoid any possible sexual situations. That’s too much of a self-fulfilling prophesy! You can’t know that you won’t find someone you like until it’s literally your last moment alive, at which point you can say “I legit lived a perfectly sexless life!” and then promptly expire. :p
And maybe this is pure sampling bias, but I mostly hear this kinda angst out of youngish men — older men can be bitter and misogynistic but I haven’t heard them say that sex with any woman ever was completely impossible for them (they just didn’t like the sex or the woman for various reasons.) Even if it’s a miserable long haul most people seem to manage to get laid (and even relationship’d) to some extent by the time they retire, yanno?
Polliwog: Thank you for a thoughtful answer.
Putting one’s energy into other pursuits than sex and romance is something that would probably be healthy for pretty much *everyone* to do, including people who are satisfied with their sex lives – in fact, I think a life based solely on sex and love would be an unfulfilling one. But I don’t think people have a single pool of “energy” that can selectively be poured into things. At least for me, there is a qualitative difference between the “energies” involved in different pursuits. Even when I am completely engrossed in something, I can still feel lonely and sexually frustrated once I drop out of “The Zone”. I believe this is a common phenomenon among lonely, sexually frustrated people who have interesting jobs or hobbies.
And that seems to be the problem. Even IF there are things one finds more important than sex and love (and at least for me, there certainly are), it is very difficult to not have a very powerful (and in periods, ever-present) feeling that something is missing. Ultimately, monks, priests and computer programmers are animals too.
One difference between a “secular celibate” and a monastic one is that monastics typically live in, well, monasteries. There, they’re sectioned off from the community at large, and therefore never (or very rarely) meet members of the other sex – and their social contact is almost exclusively with other monastic celibates. Perhaps this makes their lives less frustrating?
RocketFrog, I raised that exact snark yesterday as an example of what feminists don’t want to happen, jokes aside.
The isolationism of the MGTOW movement is really disturbing, because we humans are social mammals and the great majority of us are wired both physiologically and neurologically to enjoy one another’s companionship, to enjoy another person’s touch and obviously, for sex. (Asexual people may enjoy the other aspects of a relationship, other than sex.) It seems the MGTOWers aren’t interested in women for companionship, and the desire for sex isn’t compelling enough for them to submit to working at a relationship with another human being who may have different priorities, desires, and goals from them. If they have gone their own way, what companionship do they get? A nightly trip to the pub after work? Their only intimate encounters with another person then happens to be the short hour spent with the hooker they visit once a month? If that asceticism is by their own choice, when they do actually crave these things, then I think it’s a manifestly sad existence to lead.
I think it is unhealthy for someone to attempt to suppress natural sexuality, whether that is a religious fundamentalist trying to “convert” homosexuals, or the practice of celibacy imposed from without or by the person. Whether a person can actually “change” is missing the point – the “gay convert” remains gay even if he or she now only has heterosexual couplings, the celibate still is non-asexual even if they succeed in refraining from sex. In both cases there must be repression of their own feelings and urges.
Bagelsan: I’m not sure if you are perceiving me as angsty, bitter, misogynistic or any combination of the above. I am in my mid-thirties, so I probably don’t fit neatly into either an “older” or “young” category.
@RocketFrog: Just angsty, really, and I don’t mean that in a nasty way. Worrying about, for lack of a gentler phrase, “dying alone and being eaten by your cats” is something a lot of people deal with I think. I do. But for younger people (including me, and including you, imho) that possibility is likely decades and decades off, so to some extent I find it comforting to remember how much one’s situation can change in the future.
For example, you’re in your mid-30s, right? So you’ve probably been keen on having a sexual relationship for the last 20ish years (but let’s be honest, many people are crap at those as first, so we’ll knock it down to 10 or 15 years of you being a candidate for a proper mature relationship ;D) and you also probably have a good 40 or 50 years left in you, which means you’re basing your “lack of success” on the results of only about 1/4 of your total opportunity, and just assuming the next 3/4 will go the same. Silly! Silly and bad math! ^^
(And yes, I’m simplifying this analysis wildly, but hopefully the gist of it remains true.)