Henry David Thoreau, as anyone who read Walden in high school will remember, was a fiercely independent sort who valued solitude so much he literally lived in a shack by the side of a pond for a year (with regular visits to his mother’s for some delicious home-cooked meals). He’s precisely the kind of guy that the internet’s Men Going Their Own Way should aspire to be, but don’t.
Last night, while poking about in the archives of the MGTOW subreddit, I discovered a commenter who seemed, at least for a moment, to have a little bit of that Thoreauvian spirit to him.
In a post titled “Embracing solitude as a mgtow,” a fellow calling himself taewoodz reflected on some of what he had learned from his time as a MGTOW.
In my short experience of going my own way,I have realized one thing which is I feel is the hardest mental gap one must overcome, and that is not only embracing being alone. But enjoying and relishing in the freedoms of your personal decisions that make your life better for you. Once you can get past all of the opposition who will shame you into traditional acts.
Well, sure, he’s not exactly the prose stylist that Thoreau was, but it’s not a terrible start, as Reddit postings go.
But alas, after this sort-of-promising three-sentence intro, young taewoodz goes quickly off the rails, abruptly segueing into this toxic nonsense:
[W]omen have become parasitic organisms who won’t even s**k your d**k but won’t mind ducking your bank account dry on her lavish spendings. And men sadly have become progressively susceptible to the gynocentric nature of this society and curtail to females when they can do shit for themselves since their “independent”.
Damn it, taewoodz, why did you let me get my hopes up for a second before utterly dashing them like this?
I love my own company I love doing shit that makes me happy and not having to ask for approval like a f**king high school student asking their parents for the car for the weekend.
Ok, that’s a bit better. A little hostile, but better.
I refuse to ask a individual who brings nothing to this world more than a wet mouth and p***y for approval when as a man I form my own path and don’t have to apologize for sh*t.
So we’re back to this nonsense again.
Yes it can be scary having to accept being alone but what’s even more scary is being butt raped in divorce court when she takes you to the cleaners and your life is in shambles but hers.. Somehow turns out 2x better without you than with you.
Golly, how on earth could her life be better without you than with you? That’s a riddle for the ages, huh?
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation,” Thoreau once observed, “except for those MGTOW dickheads, who are noisy as hell about it and should probably just shut their stinking pie holes until they have something worthwhile to say.”
@ theluckyfrog
No worries, I don’t want to interfere with your actual syllabus. As it happens I’m at a seminar this weekend with some army types so I’ll see if they have any thoughts on this?
@ Scildfreja
Once again, thanks to you I’ve learned something from internet comments! I’ve only learned about the effects of a refractory period in terms of sensation, such as staring at one color for too long. It makes a delightful amount of sense that this also applies to semantic meaning, another area of the brain that is extremely well organized. Very Cool.
@ Alan et al
Re: Gunshots, I was also going to suggest some sort of sensory gating mechanism like has been explored with pain. To add to the discussion, some positive symptoms of schizophrenia (And I think also autism?) are thought to be caused by problems with attention and filtering out irrelevant stimuli. You can imagine that it would be very difficult to go through life like this; attending to every stimulus and sensation as though it was important (salient). It’d be disorienting
Edit: In short, in a life threatening situation, the brain might decide that the sound of the gunshot is not salient
Viscaria’s post is, indeed, full of truths. I have one couple in my close circle who went through a divorce. It was about as bitter and ugly a thing as I’ve seen in a case with no children.
At the end of it all, the wife got the newer car and some cash, but the husband retained the house, because it was bought prior to their actual marriage, and paid for with gift money from his parents. Hell, there was even a brief period when it looked like she might owe him money, due to her tapping retirement funds after the paperwork had been officially signed–if he’d wanted to, he could’ve gone back to court and declared those as part of the joint assets earned ‘during the marriage’.
Of course, these asshats aren’t very good with actual legal proceedings. It’s been pretty well established that IF a husband goes to court and fights for custody, his odds are excellent of getting at least joint custody, and better than hers of getting sole custody. The difference in results comes entirely from a difference in effort/input (ironically, what they always use to attribute to the difference in STEM field representation)–men are more likely to be the ones choosing to walk away from their family in a divorce action, so they usually don’t want the kids. (Note: I will concede that many lawyers, equally unfamiliar with this fact, advise their clients to not bother fighting for custody.)
There’s something disheartening about taewoodz and all of the other MGTOWers. Or really, any person who holds these kinds of thoughts about any gender, race, or anything really. I don’t want to start a religious fight, but I’m an atheist. I believe that this life is the only one you get. And to waste it drowning in hate and bitterness, it’s… just sad. All of the friends they won’t have; the experiences that they will miss. I know that people are responsible for their own lives, but it still doesn’t change the fact that I still feel like I’m watching a man drown, but he refuses to grab my hand. Even if people like taewoodz realize their own hate for what it is, it doesn’t bring the time they wasted back.
One of the hardest things that I have ever learned is that some people waste their entire lives. And frankly, I’m not okay that.
Great comment thread as usual, with bonus stuff on semantic satiation (I’m familiar with the experience, but now I know its proper name).
I’m off now to duck some guy’s bank account dry, and get him to curtail to me. Wheeeeeee!
I’ve had the chance to experience something like that while under the influence of a certain psychoactive drug, and while I was able to more or less “enjoy” it as part of the experience, I can’t imagine what it’d be like if that was my everyday life. Disorienting is absolutely correct.
Viscaria-
I know a few divorced feminist men and they ALL had joint custody of their children, even the ones who parted on bad terms with their ex-wives. The ex-wife of the feminist guy who described his divorce as “extricating himself from the corpse of his marriage” even agreed to get a house on the same street so their son could walk over and visit anytime.
Because:
a. They actually asked for it and demonstrated that they cared.
b. Their ex-wives didn’t view taking the hands-on responsibility of raising a child alone a worthwhile trade off for an average payment of $40-60 per week. You know, ’cause in reality that deal would make no sense.
That’s some A+ parenting! Your friend sounds like a good guy.
Two things about the whole “new misogyny” worldview I don’t get, the first of which this article touches upon:
1. If these men are so afraid of women stealing their money, wouldn’t they support feminism since it allows women to have careers and be financially independent?
2. (This applies more to the PUA crowd, since it seems the manosphere is torn between wanting to take advantage of sexual liberation and being disgusted with the “loose sexual mores” feminism encourages in women.) Doesn’t feminism make pick-up culture possible, since, like, one of its aims is to allow women to have casual sex like men and not be attacked for it?
Viscaria- He is stand up guy, and a very involved father. The parents even got together to sit down with their son at a family dinner at least once a month, and continued to do so after they each remarried. Just people two people can’t stand each other doesn’t necessarily mean they have to hate each other.
Hello.
Completly out of topic but…
Well, you obviously can do it yourself (and it is not the same as spanking your monkey). Actually, in France, a “duck” (canard), when not linked to the animal or the music failure, is the consequence of a lump of sugar soaked with alcohol (mainly a disgestive), so that make sense : he wanted his girlfriend to prepare him a “duck”, but she refused, him being bad enough without being drunk.
Have a nice day.
I just read the blog entry, not any comments, and instantly thought of this, er, instant:
(In the fab Emma Thompson’s diction, for ultimate perfection.)
Just a bit of drive-by pedantry here: the title of this post is referring to just one person, so shouldn’t it read ‘If Henry David Thoreau had been a MGHOW….’?
Per the Manurespherian Manifesto, women only want jobs for a brief period of time. Then they all end up looking like the women in stock photos being buried by paperwork, so they start looking for a man from whom they can siphon cash and golden sperm via wallet-rape.
There was some of that back in the day; it’s why you occasionally run across ostensible feminist allies who turn out to have been in it for the opportunity to sexually harass women in the movement.
However, it’s since become more self-evident that one of the key elements of men having sexual agency is that they become more aware of how to say “No”, and also less ashamed of being targeted by a rapist. Since rape ambiguity is the true function of PUA (see: Roosh the Douche), this terrifies them immeasurably.
And there you go, more proof that the MGTOW are just a bunch of men who are mangry that women won’t bow before them and give them whatever they want so they have temper tantrums and overreact saying we are ‘living in a gynocentric society’ because we chose not to “soak their duck” lol. If they only see us as people and not sex objects/servants then they would be happy.
I thought the manospherians hate “false accusations” and claim that only feminists are making everything ‘rape’? Or is it ok when they do it?