NOTE: This page is in desperate need of revision and expansion. In the meantime, I suggest you use Rationalwiki’s Manosphere Glossary.
For newcomers to this blog, here’s a handy guide to some of the strange acronyms and lingo you’ll encounter here and in the “manosphere” in general. (For a definition of that term, see below.) I will update this entry periodically as needed.
First, the acronyms you’ll see most often here:
MRA: Men’s Rights Activist
MRM: Men’s Rights Movement
MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way MGHOW: Man Going His Own Way.
Ok, so what do those terms mean?
MRM: The Men’s Rights Movement: A loosely defined, but largely retrograde, collection of activists and internet talkers who fight for what they see as “men’s rights.” Unlike the original Men’s Movement, which was inspired by and heavily influenced by feminism, the self-described Men’s Rights Movement is largely a reactionary movement; with few exceptions, Men’s Rights Activists (or MRAs) are pretty rabidly antifeminist, and many are frankly and sometimes proudly misogynistic. Those who oppose the MRM are generally not against men’s rights per se; they are opposed to those who’ve turned those two words into a synonym for some pretty backwards notions.
MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way: As the name suggests, MGTOW is a lot like lesbian separatism, but for straight dudes. MGTOW often talk vaguely about seeking “independence” from western and/or consumer culture, and a few MGTOW try to live that sort of zen existence. But most of those who embrace the term have a deep hostility towards and/or profound distrust of feminists and women in general. Many MGTOW refuse to date “western women” and some try to avoid women altogether. I think the Man Going His Own Way acronym MGHOW adds another layer of confusion to an already awkward acronym, so I use MGTOWer instead.
Some other terms and acronyms you’ll run across here:
Anglosphere: Countries in which English is the primary language, or, more narrowly, those countries that used to be British colonies. They are full of evil Western Women (see below).
Incel: Involuntarily Celibate. A term, and identity, adopted by some dateless guys (as well as some women, but it’s the men we’ll focus on here). While there is nothing shameful about being dateless, or a virgin, or having a really long dry spell sexually — most of us have been there at some point — the term “involuntarily celibate” seems to suggest that the world owes incels sex, and that women who turn down incel men for dates or sex are somehow oppressing them. For those (male, straight) incels who are genuinely socially awkward or phobic, this can be a self-defeating stance that can lead to bitterness towards women. And often does.
Mangina: Derogatory term used by MRAs, MGTOW, etc. to describe guys who disagree with them — e.g., me. You can figure out the various connotations of this term yourself.
The Manosphere: The loose collection of blogs, message boards, and other sites run by and/or read by MRAs, MGTOW, and assorted friendly Pick-up Artists. The primary source of material for this blog.
NAWALT: Not All Women Are Like That. Dudes in the manosphere make so many ridiculous and untrue generalizations about women that they’ve come up with their own little acronym to describe the most common reaction to their nonsense: “not all women are like that.” Remarkably, many seem to think that making a reference to NAWALT is actually some sort of clever rebuttal of their critics.
PUA: Pick-up Artist. PUAs are obsessed with mastering what they see as the ultimate set of techniques and attitudes — known as “Game” — that will enable them to quickly seduce almost any woman they want. There is a vast literature on “game” online, though PUA (insofar as it is not complete bullshit) is at its essence simply a male version of the age-old ploy of “playing hard to get.”
Western Women: Also known as WW. Evil harpies, at least according to many in the manosphere. Contrasted with “foreign women,” a term that (in the manosphere, at least) sometimes refers to all women outside the Anglosphere, but often refers to a subset of these women from poor and/or Eastern countries, mostly Asian, who are regarded as more pliable and thus more desirable to haters of “Ameriskanks” and other WW.
Policy of Madness:
‘Men send other (poorer) men off to war and die.’
‘Men dictate that women stay home and raise children and never achieve any human fulfillment outside those roles.’
Actually those are quite parallel, although not in the way you’re implying.”
Well, neither of these two statements are factually true.
Further, doesn’t chage the fact that to the MRA’s, it is men who are sacrificed their lives in wars.
EJ (The Other One):
“Oh, I see. To you, MRAs and feminists are identical because we both belong in the set called ‘people who don’t obey priests.’ You seem to define yourself outside of that set, and thus oppose us all. I’m glad we cleared that up. It must be comfortable to live in such a black and white worldview.
Tell me, which particular sect of priests do you personally take instruction from?”
Well, glad you’ve finally admitted both feminists and MRA’s are opposed to religion and the traditional natural order.
Also, it doesn’t take a priest to see that men and women are different and are made and suited to different roles.
It’s amazing that you think that being angry about being forced to do things you shouldn’t be forced to do is bitching, but whatever.
Your argument reminds me of one I heard from Karen Straughan a few years ago – about men being disposable because they went to war and woman didn’t.
This ignores the fact that not all societies are the same and that class influences privilege. Not all women were made to stay at home and take care of children (in fact, that seems to be recent. Even the women that would keep their own houses had other occupations) and in some societies they participated in wars, and not all men were forced to go to war (I think clergymen weren’t for instance, but I could be wrong). Saying that all men went to war and all women stayed home with the children is simply wrong.
Besides, people could achieve the rank of nobility through military success – thus, if men were the only ones to go to war, they were the only ones who could change their positions in society.
Do I think it’s wrong that men should be sent to wars against their will? Yes I do. But I think this practice has the same origin as women being forced into staying at home. They originate from the same society, the same ideas, and that is the crux of the problem.
Now, will you tell me why gender roles are natural?
@EJ
Ah, so I’ve heard of him.
Well, I have to give him credit where credit is due – I’d rather go by Sargon than by Carl.
Did you not read my earlier message?
Personally, I’m opposed to religion and to any traditional order you care to name. I will also object to it being called a natural order, because I’m a scientist and you can’t call anything natural in front of a scientist unless you can show how it’s the inexorable consequence of scientific laws. However, there are people on this site – proudly feminist people I am honoured to know and to call friends – who regularly attend church. Feminists are a mixed bag where religion is concerned.
Likewise, some MRAs are atheists (if you don’t like calling Benjamin an MRA, use Phil Mason or Jordan Owen instead) and some MRAs are religious (Theodore Beale, for example, as RosaDeLava points out.) They, too, are a mixed bag.
On the other hand, I think what you’re doing is simply choosing to define the terms “feminist”, “MRA” and “religious” so that they don’t overlap, and therefore making your own statements a truism. The problem with this is that it facilitates poor communication and makes it far more likely that you’ll just confuse people, because that isn’t how those words are usually defined.
Let’s unpack those words. What do you mean by “feminist”, “MRA” and “religious”? What is your understanding of those terms and what sort of people belong to each? How do you handle the people who sit at the overlap of those terms as they’re normally used?
@Dar:
You don’t seem to have heard. Vox Day (Theodore Beale) is both an MRA and very religious. “Red Pill Women” is a subreddit full of… well… red pill women, who are MRAs seeking to enforce “traditional” gender roles. Hell, red pillers are usually very traditional, and some are religious.
Roosh, although he isn’t explicitly religious, very much wants to reinstate gender roles from a PUA perspective.
Some MRAs are religious and some are not, but religion appeals to them because they want to reinstate traditional gender roles in order to once again control women. The things they bring up, like men dying in war or having to be the wage earner in a relationship, are things they only care about because they feel that women aren’t holding up the other end of their fantasy bargain. They would be perfectly happy with male-only soldiers (and many of them argue that women are too weak to be soldiers and would lower morale and cause sexual deviancy), as long as women back home were nicely submissive.
I know a number of religious feminists in real life, but their religion is progressive and moderate. They believe in a god of some sort, but they don’t buy into the whole “wife serves husband, husband serves jesus” hierarchy. It’s just a personal belief in something more than the mundane world.
If you really think all of Feminism and all of MRAism are against religion, or if you think their approaches to religion are identical, then you just prove you have no idea what you’re talking about.
Hooray ninjas!
@EJ:
I’m starting to wonder if Dar’s equivocation is really just “both of these groups aren’t in line with my personal beliefs, so they’re the same in every way as far as I’m concerned.”
Oh, and I feel like I should point out – If all MRAs were doing was talk about how gender roles damage men, I would have no problem with them. If they tried to do anything concrete to change them, I’d actually think they’re right.
I dislike MRAs because they seem to put more effort into complaining about women/feminists/whoever disagrees with them than actually doing something to help men – and they pretend they are the voice that men need, while MRA captain Paul Elam decided to ostracize a bunch of people because they thought posting a video in which he and some other guys insulted feminists was a bad move.
I don’t think men’s rights are a joke, but I think the Men’s Rights Movement is.
It changes the context. MRAs blame women for wars, basing this on the almighty female butt power, but the reality is that wars take place for geopolitical reasons unrelated to the shape of women’s butts, and are prosecuted by men.
You are so, so, so stupid.
@kirby:
I think that’s exactly what it is. It’s like the neoreactionaries defining democracy and dictatorship as identical because neither of them is a hereditary monarchy, or hardline Zionists defining liberalism and Nazism as identical because both oppose the subjugation of the Palestinians.
In other words: We’re surrounded. They’re all in it against us. The sin of one of them is the sin of all of them. And they’re all necromancers.
Dar,
First of all, citation needed on the gender roles being natural thing. As many have pointed out, if it’s so natural for women to be submissive homemakers who don’t want an education and only want to have sex after marriage, why is it that “traditional” cultures have to work so hard to keep us in line?
Also, feminists actually have better opinions of men than non feminists. There’s been research.
@EJ
…
Did you actually write necromancers or did my computer change SJWs to skeletons to necromancers?
I hope is the former, otherwise, I’d be scared.
@EJ:
Plus, “we get to be the one voice of reason in a homogeneous sea of wrong.”
In the immortal words of an xkcd comic, “Well, the important thing is that you’ve found a way to feel superior to both.”
@RosaDeLava: I wrote necromancer. I run a browser script which changes “SJW” to “necromancer”, though, so the two are basically equivalent for me.
@kirby: Plus, we’re never short of a bogeyman to threaten people into compliance with. Eat your greens, dear, otherwise you’ll be attacked by wicked feministMRAtheistPUAs.
RosaDeLava:
“It’s amazing that you think that being angry about being forced to do things you shouldn’t be forced to do is bitching, but whatever.
Your argument reminds me of one I heard from Karen Straughan a few years ago – about men being disposable because they went to war and woman didn’t.
This ignores the fact that not all societies are the same and that class influences privilege. Not all women were made to stay at home and take care of children (in fact, that seems to be recent. Even the women that would keep their own houses had other occupations) and in some societies they participated in wars, and not all men were forced to go to war (I think clergymen weren’t for instance, but I could be wrong). Saying that all men went to war and all women stayed home with the children is simply wrong.
Besides, people could achieve the rank of nobility through military success – thus, if men were the only ones to go to war, they were the only ones who could change their positions in society.
Do I think it’s wrong that men should be sent to wars against their will? Yes I do. But I think this practice has the same origin as women being forced into staying at home. They originate from the same society, the same ideas, and that is the crux of the problem.
Now, will you tell me why gender roles are natural?”
No one is forced anything, You’re forcing your modern warped views on past peoples. Yo really think women in ancient Babylon were sitting at home crying “Woe is me, I’m so oppressed! I wish I can go to war and hold office etc..”?
You feminists have decided that traditional roles are “oppressive”. And having made that idiotic point, you decided to retroactively apply it to EVERYONE EVERYWHERE EVERYTIME.
ALL women are oppressed at all times at all places.
Also, the “traditional” order is what we see in nearly ALL societies through-out human history, from Amazonian tribesmen to Sumerians. What? It was all a grand conspiracy to oppress women?
And these roles are natural because they fit into our differe3nt minds and hearts and bodies. And such differing sex roles are even found among most mammals. if women were “oppressed” for taking care of babies, then so are female gorillas. maybe you can go into the jungle and “liberate them”from their male oppressors?
My fault for entering this bedlam.
EJ (The Other One):
“Did you not read my earlier message?
Personally, I’m opposed to religion and to any traditional order you care to name. I will also object to it being called a natural order, because I’m a scientist and you can’t call anything natural in front of a scientist unless you can show how it’s the inexorable consequence of scientific laws. However, there are people on this site – proudly feminist people I am honoured to know and to call friends – who regularly attend church. Feminists are a mixed bag where religion is concerned.
Likewise, some MRAs are atheists (if you don’t like calling Benjamin an MRA, use Phil Mason or Jordan Owen instead) and some MRAs are religious (Theodore Beale, for example, as RosaDeLava points out.) They, too, are a mixed bag.
On the other hand, I think what you’re doing is simply choosing to define the terms ‘feminist’, ‘MRA’ and ‘religious’ so that they don’t overlap, and therefore making your own statements a truism. The problem with this is that it facilitates poor communication and makes it far more likely that you’ll just confuse people, because that isn’t how those words are usually defined.
Let’s unpack those words. What do you mean by ‘feminist’, ‘MRA’ and ‘religious’? What is your understanding of those terms and what sort of people belong to each? How do you handle the people who sit at the overlap of those terms as they’re normally used?”
No, you can’t play this bullshit “there are no rules” game. You’re like those silly communists and libertarians who keep dodging and weaving any accusations against their idiotic ideologies by claiming “Well, there is more than one type of…”
Feminists: Traditional riles were/are oppressive to women, and we need laws and movements to help them.
MRA’s: Traditional roles were/are oppressive to men, and we need laws and movements to help them.
And religious means those who follow religions.
How is this difficult to understand?
Policy of Madness:
“It changes the context. MRAs blame women for wars, basing this on the almighty female butt power, but the reality is that wars take place for geopolitical reasons unrelated to the shape of women’s butts, and are prosecuted by men.
You are so, so, so stupid.”
How am I stupid if I don’t believe in what you wrote, you silly little thing.
kirbywarp:
“You don’t seem to have heard. Vox Day (Theodore Beale) is both an MRA and very religious. ‘Red Pill Women’ is a subreddit full of… well… red pill women, who are MRAs seeking to enforce ‘traditional’ gender roles. Hell, red pillers are usually very traditional, and some are religious.
Roosh, although he isn’t explicitly religious, very much wants to reinstate gender roles from a PUA perspective.
Some MRAs are religious and some are not, but religion appeals to them because they want to reinstate traditional gender roles in order to once again control women. The things they bring up, like men dying in war or having to be the wage earner in a relationship, are things they only care about because they feel that women aren’t holding up the other end of their fantasy bargain. They would be perfectly happy with male-only soldiers (and many of them argue that women are too weak to be soldiers and would lower morale and cause sexual deviancy), as long as women back home were nicely submissive.
I know a number of religious feminists in real life, but their religion is progressive and moderate. They believe in a god of some sort, but they don’t buy into the whole ‘wife serves husband, husband serves jesus’ hierarchy. It’s just a personal belief in something more than the mundane world.
If you really think all of Feminism and all of MRAism are against religion, or if you think their approaches to religion are identical, then you just prove you have no idea what you’re talking about.”
No, I don’t care about individual minor exceptions, if such exceptions exist. It’s like communists who are religions. I’m sure they exists, but that’s not communism because communism is incompatible with religion.
The very essence of feminism and MRA ideology is to oppose the natural order which most religions uphold.
You have to twist and turn a religion beyond reason to get it to agree with this “there is no difference between men and women and both should do the same thing” world-view.
——–
“I’m starting to wonder if Dar’s equivocation is really just ‘both of these groups aren’t in line with my personal beliefs, so they’re the same in every way as far as I’m concerned.’ ”
Yes, when both groups share the same beliefs, which happen to be opposed to mine, then I do oppose both and call them out both.
EJ (The Other One):
“I think that’s exactly what it is. It’s like the neoreactionaries defining democracy and dictatorship as identical because neither of them is a hereditary monarchy, or hardline Zionists defining liberalism and Nazism as identical because both oppose the subjugation of the Palestinians.
In other words: We’re surrounded. They’re all in it against us. The sin of one of them is the sin of all of them. And they’re all necromancers.”
How amusing, the circle jerk has already developed.
Sometimes they are true, and both are alike. During WWII the West often grouped Nazi Germany and the USSR as both “anti-democracy dictatorships”. Were they also delusional?
And by the way, the Nazisms never really cared much for the Palestine issue. They even made deals with Zionists for Jews to go to Palestine.
weirwoodtreehugger:
“Dar,
First of all, citation needed on the gender roles being natural thing. As many have pointed out, if it’s so natural for women to be submissive homemakers who don’t want an education and only want to have sex after marriage, why is it that “traditional” cultures have to work so hard to keep us in line?
Also, feminists actually have better opinions of men than non feminists. There’s been research.”
Citation needed? You also want citation that the Sun is hot and that rock is hard?
Look at human history. look at traditional societies uncorrupted by Western feminism. Look at many close primates.
Look at a man’s and woman’s naked bodies and how different they are. I wonder why, if they’re both meant to do the same thing. How come men don’t have lactating breasts and women big muscles to fight and hunt with? Hmmmm….
There is a book called “Brain Sex” by Anne Moir and David Jessel, that looks at the effects of brain differences between men and women and of hormonal differences.
What do you want? A specific gene that has the words “This is a woman; she is to rear children” written on it?
I’ll write a longer response later, but for now:
Dar, you never actually answered my question. Which specific religious sect are you a follower of?
The Church Of I’m Not An MRA But.
HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH HAH!!!!!
That’s a question that answers itself!
@Dar
Wait, so men aren’t really forced to go to war? Is that what you’re saying? 😛
So… what if they didn’t? Did you ask the women of ancient Babylon for their opinions? What they thought about their position, whether they were happy with it or not, doesn’t change what their position was (which I don’t know about, so I can’t make an assesment). I’m sure many peasants who lived in monarchies were all for divine right – you wouldn’t say they held a whole lot of power because of it, would you?
Also, for fucks sake – traditional roles are opressive when people are forced into them. If my parents had forced me to be “masculine” to go against traditional roles, they’d have opressed me. Sometimes opression is plain to see, and sometimes it’s more subtle, but using your power over people to determine what they should be or do is to opress them.
Then, please, pray tell, what is the traditional order? In what way do all human societies differentiate men and women? And, please, include the ones who rejected “male” and “female” as being the only genders.
So humans are exactly the same as gorillas! Golly, I’m so sorry I forgot that!
I mean, I’ve seem people say that feminists should go to the Middle East to liberate the women there, but this is the first time anyone told me to go free gorillas!
@Dar:
No, the President can’t just snap his fingers and implement all the policies he wants. Obama’s faced numerous legal and political roadblocks, including a hostile Republican Congress that’s determined to undermine him at every step. Bush wasn’t confronted with the same lockstep opposition from Democrats in the wake of 9/11. Yes, Obama’s made some foreign policy missteps, but nowhere near as disastrous or fueled by personal vendettas and extra-constitutional shenanigans as his predecessor. If you think he’s exactly the same as the Republicans, it means you can’t be bothered to understand either party’s platform.
As for why MRAs are worse than feminists, it’s because MRAs are so way, way off-base in their views on how the world works, from history to economics to gender relations and sex. Everything they say is based on stereotypes and a world that only exists inside their heads. Go into any RedPill or PUA or MRA forum, you’ll hear a constant refrain of AWALT! AWALT! and a reductive view of human relations that thinks dating can be expressed by numbers and formulas. Then read some of the threads here. Lazy generalizations and biases are quickly called out and rebutted by people with real world knowledge. People aren’t allowed to get away with cognitive shortcuts and errors around here.
MRAs don’t have the same level of intellectual honesty. They sit around encouraging each other to be terrible people. How to abuse, dread, gaslight, and cheat on their unsuspecting wives. How to weasel out of contributing in any way to their families. They compete to see who can be the most obnoxious troll. Even the most mild criticism is framed as outrageous abuse, equivalent to being raped or murdered. Getting laid (but only by conventionally attractive women) is promoted without irony as the most pressing human rights issue of the 21st century. The rhetoric coming out of MRA forums is far more violent and hateful than any rhetoric I’ve seen here, where “go step on a Lego” is considered the ultimate curse.
That you think MRAs and feminists are in any way equivalent suggests you don’t have much discernment. You’re like someone who wolfs down food without tasting it, and can’t tell the difference between filet mignon and month-old bologna.