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By David Futrelle
Do MGTOWs hate women? It’s not a difficult question for most of those who’ve ever encountered the MGTOWs to answer. (The answer, by the way, is “yes.”)
But MGTOWs themselves have some trouble with the question. On the one hand, they would like the world to believe that they don’t hate women. On the other, they really really really fucking hate women.
We can see this, er, tension play out in the following two comments from the Men Going Their Own Way subreddit. Call it a Tale of Two MGTOWNs.
MGTOW is peace
In a recent thread devoted to the (more apparent than real) differences between so-called MGTOWs and so-called Incels (“involuntary celibates”), a fellow called Ed_Moy insisted:
MGTOW is a peaceful walking away from co-habitation, dating and relationships with women. We realize the game is rigged to our disadvantage, so we choose not to play anymore and focus on making ourselves better versions of what we currently are. There is more to life than just fucking and marriage and kids and the “white picket fence” life.
INCEL’s are bitter and furious that the game is rigged and have stormed off, preferring that the game change so they can enter it again with an advantage in the dating and relationship realm. They want to fuck and are mad they can’t or it’s so much harder to do so in today’s climate.
HUGE DIFFETENCE between the two.
MGTOW is peace, we don’t hate women. We feel sad that both genders have been sold a bad bill of goods on how life works in 1st world cultures, and are walking away from it all to find a better path in life.
This comment got a positive response from the r/MGTOW regulars, earning 22 upvotes.
“Learning to hate women is the best thing to happen to me”
Some months earlier, a MGTOW calling himself ancap-biochemist had a rather different story.
Ever since embracing misogyny my life has become something I can be proud of. My career has taken off, I’m in great shape, my finances are solid, I’m more well rested, better fed, my sexual gratification became better*, I’m more focused, happier, and more philosophically grounded in reality.
. * When I was still sleeping with women (which I’ve made a conscious choice to never do again earlier this month, after a risky ONS) – there was a marginal increase in my enjoyment of sex. When I used to masturbate (I’m also trying the no-fap thing in addition to celibacy, since early this month) it was also more enjoyable with more misogyny.
Mr. ancap-biochemist then took what he called “a quick digression into celibacy/no-fap” that involved discussion of the “sperm retention thing” that I think we can safely skip because ew.
Returning to the topic of hating women – it is the best thing to have happened to me because, I think, that women are a disappointment regarding virtues. They’ve been sold as a panacea for all of men’s ills (she will civilize you, make you food, clean your house, give you a moral foundation, massage your sore muscles, listen to your problems, blah, blah, blah). The Woman TM wonder-drug is like heroine [sic] … pretty soon you’re spending all your time and money supporting a drug habit.
And, make no mistake, love is a drug. Love will blind and stupefy a man into taking a bad deal.
Think about the following; nature endowed men with a survival advantage for using their wits in a hunter-kind-of-way. …
The love-drug lowers a man’s IQ to that of the woman (or lower). All that beautiful women see are idiot men. When the men leave the women they become expert hunters and survivors who have brought nature herself into submission, and cracked the very atoms which constitute the [or “a”] fabric of our material existence. Men are smart, but not around women.
Hating women has reversed that weakness which was required to continue the species.
Hating women has made me a stronger person… because, let’s face it – there’s a lot to hate, and women make you weak. …
Women love powerful men, and fuck them readily… and if a man (unburdened by women) is free to excel due to his natural advantages and without his natural inhibitions … then he becomes the “alpha” male – women reactively lubricate their vaginas and accelerate ovulation toward the man who has become strong thereby, and their husbands become jealous. …
The freedom and strength is too great of a reward not to raise a middle finger toward those cucks and tell their whores to fuck off.
My life is too great to give up. And hate (toward such an ugly thing as woman/white-knights) can be the most healthy response a man can have.
This post also got a positive response from the r/MGTOW regulars, earning 94 upvotes.
In other words, MGTOWs seem to agree that they both don’t hate and do hate women.
Let’s just split the difference and say that they really fucking do hate women.
Ex-Gay Guy Recommends Joining the Manosphere To Learn How To Be Manly…this is not a joke BTW.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2018/05/11/ex-gay-guy-recommends-joining-the-manosphere-to-learn-how-to-be-manly/
“Once you go straight, you may go years without sex; nobody wants to hear you cry about it. Once you find your woman, you can’t just blow off things she complains about. You have to sit and listen to her whine about stupid stuff for hours without laughing or rolling your eyes or getting snarky.”
“At several points in his two-page-long screed, Lopez explains that there are two different kinds of women on the planet — good girls and “trashy throwaway dolls” — which is a very manosphere-like way of viewing us. He recommends finding one of the former types and then not having sex with them until you (the ex-gay who now hates women) have married them. I guess because, that way, you’re kinda stuck?
It’s really a pretty insidious way of hating both gay men and women. He wants gay men to stop being themselves, because God hates that, and he doesn’t think that even the “good women” deserve to be with someone who’s romantically and sexually attracted to them, because they’re obviously just baby-making vehicles for eternal salvation.”
Misogyny is a lot like other kinds of bigotry. There is a certain stage of a young man’s life in which hormones take all the room that is otherwise occupied with brains. Avoiding women during that prolonged adolescence is easier if you persuade yourself that you hate them …but then what? Will you ever be able to pull out of that spiral? Will you ever be able to have a conversation with a woman that isn’t directed toward a sexual relationship? Will you ever be able to GROW UP? I don’t think deliberate misogyny is any better as a life strategy than religious or racial bigotry. It’s actually worse: no matter how lily-white the neighborhood is, short of entering a monastic order you will have few chances to live in a woman-free environment.
@Ann Kah
I wasn’t aware that misogyny and hormones were linked?
I also wasn’t aware that becoming a misogynist was a set stage in puberty.
I just couldn’t let a comment claiming that all cis boys have a point in their teens where they are biologically wired to hate women go without a rebuttle.
I think, instead, this period and resulting hatred of women is something brought about by toxic masculinity, which young men trying to define themselves as adult men are probably pretty vulnerable to.
I’m not quite sure what you were going for with your comment, Ann Kah. I’m guessing not what i took from it, haha!
Ann Kah – I’m agreeing with Rhuu here: Bigotry is learned, not just brought about by puberty or whatever.
The “Ew, girls are icky!” parts of a cis boy’s development is very much learned, just as racism or homophobia are, and they can be unlearned as well with the proper guidance and some self-reflection.
Hell, a lot of women grow up with a lot of internalized misogyny so how do you explain that? Do cis women go through puberty just learning to hate themselves instead of boys? Do they pick it up from boys? Is it because cis women also produce testosterone? Do all genders just grow up hating women when they hit puberty?
Nothing you’re saying makes sense.
… Well, it’s a whole new take on evo psych nonsense, at least?
I’m coming back to my complaints about Harris’ free will book… The discussion about Sagan and the supernatural is pretty interesting, I think. I can see how you can make interesting versions of that claim.
The thing about Harris, though, is that he defines free will so that it includes being able to make choices that are neither caused nor random, have absolutely perfect knowledge about everything that goes on inside your own psychology, and also be able to choose what to choose what to choose in an infinite regress of choices. So “impossible” isn’t literally part of the definition, but clearly, with this definition, it is impossible, and all talk about how science proves we don’t have these amazing abilities becomes redundant.
And then he makes a big deal about how pretty much everyone, the sheeple, believe that we have these abilities. Despite the fact that what empirical science there is on the topic “what do regular people believe about free will?” points towards a majority of people believing we have free will in a way more simple and non-mysterious sense, like we occasionally choose what to do with no special interference, unhindered by strong neurosis and the like.
So he misrepresents ordinary people’s beliefs and he also misrepresents the philosophical schools he writes about. And I think this is a common problem among New Atheists, like they wanna be so much smarter than everyone else, and the easiest way to accomplish this is to misrepresent the views of others.
Same with young women.
There’s no need to avoid or hate anyone. The solution to being horny due to hormones and not having a sex partner is to masturbate. Does this really need to be explained?
I’m about to google “sam harris ladybrains” to find out what he said. Do I really want to know? Maybe not. Is he really trying to make the case that women have different brains from men? Some years ago I was impressed with his clarity of thinking and presentation (on the few podcasts I heard). Been out of the loop and maybe I should stay that way.
@Dvärg:
I’ve noticed that the New Atheists, and those who draw from their intellectual tradition, seem to have a dislike of philosophy and a burning need to reinvent everything from scratch. This is particularly odd given that one of their number, Daniel Dennett, is himself a prominent philosopher.
I was very much influenced by the New Atheists in the mid-2000s, but as I’ve gradually moved away from that school of thought, I’ve started to feel that there’s an aspect of anti-intellectualism about it. They don’t like learning from the humanities, or the arts, even while they praise those things as Western culture to be defended. Even science gets rejected when it contradicts some of the beliefs common in that movement: witness the extent to which actual scientific criticisms of evolutionary psychology or gender essentialism get ignored or ridiculed. It seems like the only ideas they like are ones they come up with themselves. I’m worried where this will lead.
You know more about philosophy than I do, and possibly more than I ever will. Do you think my worry is fair?
I think the strand of anti-intellectualism, or at least of anti-humanities, comes from the fact that the prominent New Atheists don’t come from the humanities, and so they don’t quite get it. But they’re convinced that being smart in one area (see Dawkins) makes them smart in all areas, and venturing into the humanities would quickly make it all too obvious that they don’t know what they’re talking about there. Add to this the common thought that the arts are easy, and they have no impetus to discover more about them. Conveniently enough, this means they don’t have to engage with how much of Western art is tied up in religion. It’s a whole lot harder to claim that religion has done anything to the benefit of humanity while listening to Bach’s B-minor Mass or looking at the stained windows of Chartres.
I think yet another part of it is a pure knee-jerk reaction to the phrase “Liberal arts.” Specifically, the “Liberal” bit.
Which sounds ridiculous even by MRA standards, but we are talking about the same people who shit their pants in unimaginable terror every time somebody says “Socialised health care” despite their understanding of it beginning and ending with the word “Socialism.”
And it’s not as if they understand the word “socialisn” either.
Unrelated: Is it just me, or has the term “incel” jumped into mainstream language really quickly? I keep coming across people using it casually and expecting others to understand what’s meant, like a journalist calling ISIS “incel-fascists” and another talking about Handmaid’s Tale as “incel evoking.”
I don’t know if it’s a good thing that people now seem to know what it means, or potentially a sign that people aren’t taking them seriously.
Oh, absolutely; I should’ve worded that as “Despite their understanding of it beginning and ending with it having the word “Socialism” in it.” Posting before coffee. =P
*hangs head in shame*
To be fair, no one should claim to understand the word “socialisn,” as it doesn’t exist.
EJ and others: This is my impression too. They have this idea that anyone can do humanities, anyone can do philosophy, you don’t need to learn about these disciplines before criticizing them or trying to reinvent them from scratch.
And yeah it’s weird that Dennett hangs with them given that he’s a philosopher. Although I heard rumours that he’s starting to feel uncomfortable around the rest of the NA bunch and wants to distance himself a bit from them nowadays.
@idli sambar revolution
Searching for [Sam Harris estrogen vibe] will give a good example. His inability to deal with criticism from women was my first experience with his problems as an atheist/skeptic authority figure.
https://the-orbit.net/greta/2014/09/29/why-both-of-sam-harriss-recent-comments-were-sexist-even-if-you-accept-some-degree-of-innate-gendered-behavior/
I’ve seen it a lot, too. It’s a classic combination of overgeneralization and strawman. Any number of times I’ve seen some asshole (Christian or atheist) declare “all Christians believe X.” When I respond “I am a Christian and I don’t believe X, I believe Y,” their response varies only slightly:
Christian asshole: “No, ALL Christians believe X. Therefore, you are lying and are not really a Christian.”
Atheist asshole: “No, ALL Christians believe X. Therefore, you are lying and you really believe X.”
Being lectured on what I “really” believe is especially infuriating because when I call one of these assholes on their ignorance, they often dismiss any need to study my religion as “the courtier’s reply,” sometimes quoting Richard Dawkins’ “Must I study Leprechology to disbelieve in leprechauns?”
When someone’s claims are not limited to “leprechauns do not exist” but extend to “leprechaun believers think leprechauns are Scottish giants that hoard silver,” then yes, they DO need to study Leprechology.
Dawkins’ meme theory is a great example of this, since it basically boils down to “I am an expert in evolutionary biology. The social sciences must work JUST LIKE evolutionary biology. Therefore I am an expert in the social sciences.”
Sounds like there’s also a hefty dose of No True Scotsman in there.
Seconding @Luxbelitx’s sentiment on that Vox article. It definitely made clear the intersection of your Bari Weisses, Sam Harrises and Jordan Petersons with your Alex Joneses, Mike Cernoviches and Richard Spencers: a shared grievance from a perceived loss of social cache. It would explain their distaste for the same people: black activists, feminists, Muslims, and the LGBT, particularly any vocal trans activists. They “steal” attention they feel should rightly belong to them for being big thinkers.
I always bring it back to this fact whenever some Twitter troll tries to pull the “You call everyone you disagree with a Nazi” gambit: Jordan Peterson might not be a swastika-wearing skinhead, but I’ve noticed that he hates all the same people that the skinheads (often omitting but sometimes even including Jews) and they seem to share the same language about those groups. That’s on them; I can’t absolve them of their choice of targets and choice of language.
I think it would be very simple if the New Atheists were simply sciencebros who disdained the arts and the humanities. There have been many such people since the Earth was young. I think it’s deeper than that.
Harris is a neurosurgeon by training. He understands biology on a level that I never will. He has chosen to embrace evolutionary psychology, despite it being bad biology. I don’t know why he has done this; possibly because it supports the conclusions he wishes to advance.
Hitchens was a journalist by training. He understood politics on a level that I never will. He chose to embrace neoconservatism and clash-of-civilisations theory, despite it being bad political science. I don’t know why he did this; possibly because it supported the conclusions he wishes to advance.
When a person chooses to go with junk theory rather than good theory, despite clearly knowing enough to tell the two apart, it suggests to me that something deeper is going on.
I don’t think it’s a matter of them just being sciencebros; it’s the ignorance that comes with that.
One of the things about not having an education in the humanities is that it means you don’t have very good knowledge of history. If all you have is superficial knowledge, it’s easy to think that history justifies your views, be they evopsych or clash-of-civilizations. And since you find the history that has justified your views, you don’t feel the need to dig any deeper.
So yes, they adopt the views that support the conclusions they wish to advance, but I don’t think they’re actually aware that’s what they’re doing. They’re so invested in their own (self-declared) intellectual superiority that it never occurs to them that they could be subject to confirmation bias. After all, they’re rational: Rational people aren’t subject to unconscious biases.
I think this is where they tie into the manosphere, alt-right, etc.: the NA’s conviction that they’re rational is like having taken the red pill. They see all clearly, and those who don’t agree with them are blind. It never occurs to them to self-examine to try and see why their rationality takes the form it does.
And this is where their lack of knowledge of the humanities comes back into play, because self-examination is one of the things the humanities encourages. The scientific view they cling to is all about explaining things you can see under the microscope, that is, exterior things. And you don’t put yourself under the microscope, because you can’t. Looking into the mirror isn’t instinctive on their part.
Add to that the fact that the humanities look at intangible things, and the problem becomes even clearer: After all, belief is intangible too. The humanities, therefore, are suspect, because they’re suspiciously close to being irrational, according to their definition of rational.
The idea of examining the reason why they adopt a given theory is therefore verboten, because it suggests they’re not being rational, and implies there might be something intangible at work in their own super-rational minds, and that’s a terrifying thought.
Bit of a word vomit, sorry.
“They’ve been sold as a panacea for all of men’s ills…”
Welcome to the real world where women, as human beings, can’t actually live up to the unicorn-like fantasy some men seem to believe about us and expect us to meet.
Can we talk about the gal in the pic’s hair? My guy’s got weird ass proportions, but home girl’s hair looking like it’s possessed. Like it’s boutta stretch out and attack the dude on her behalf…
Maybe she’s Medusa from Marvel’s Inhumans and that unpleasant dude on the beach is about to get a nasty surprise?