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.
Dar, you seem to be very confused as to how MRAs feel about traditional gender roles.
The reality is that MRAs very much support a return to traditional gender roles. The reason they bring up men having to fight and die in wars is not because they want women to make up an equal part of the military (LOL!) — it is because they want women to accept that since men have traditionally had to be the ones to fight in wars, they should be happy with traditional gender roles being forced upon them.
MRAs very clearly and consistently state that traditional gender roles are what they want to return to, and that it is feminism that is what they see as oppressive to men.
In other words: you are an MRA. (As if your perfect-for-a-website-titled-“WeHuntedTheMammoth” argument about naked-bodies, lactating-breasts, and big-muscles-to-hunt-and-fight-with didn’t make that abundantly clear.)
Dar,
Yes I want a citation. Looking at society doesn’t cut it because that doesn’t tell us whether gender roles are socialized or inherent. Hormone levels don’t tell us much either. Correlation isn’t causation.
Gorillas aren’t humans so I’m not sure why you think they’re evidence. But if you must go down this road, bonobos aren’t patriarchal and they’re closely related.
@Dar: you know that there is a difference between rearing children and bearing children, right? What excludes men from rearing children, exactly? Frankly, given our current ability to surgically alter the sex of an individual, what is to exclude men from bearing children? Very recently a transgender man gave birth, I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Beatie
Such as the Muoso? The Ede? The Chambri? None of these societies have come into contact (to use a less loaded term than yours) with Western feminism, and they have egalitarian social structures.
Why does it follow that because men and women have different bodies, particular societal roles must result? If you view human bodies as simply utilitarian tools best suited for only one function, like can openers and wrenches, that might make sense, but most of us find it a bit reductive to be thought of as objects.
Do I hear bagpipes?
Oh, look, another dreary “I’m not an MRA, my views just happen to perfectly align with theirs” reactionary cluttering up the glossary thread.
Must be a day of the week.
Some early Christian communities were communist (There’s a clue in the name) and there are still some today. It’s all based on some Bible verse. I once had a court case arising from the fallout from one of these groups going their separate ways. It was quite interesting implying Bible text into contracts.
Kibbutz are pretty communist and I believe some Jewish people are religious.
*is feminist*
*is prepping to teach her New Testament survey class*
*works for a church*
*is surprised to find out she doesn’t exist*
Kibbutzim were very, very secular though. Some of them even raised pigs as a deliberate “fuck you” to the Rabbis.
Wow, I had a massive teal dear that just completely vanished. Damnit.
here’s a concise version
@Dar,
Traditional gender roles were never natural. They came about around the time that agricultural societies were a thing. Before then, civilizations were often non-monogamous and the whole village would raise a child. The value of owning farmland (and having to figure out who your descendants were) changed all of that. And the best way to ensure who’s child was who was to control womens’ sexuality. And thus the patriarchy and gender roles were born!
https://sites.google.com/site/itsawomanschoice1/history-of-polyamory
For your discussion about primates, let me remind you that our closest cousins are the bonobos.
“Another similarity with humans is increased female sexual receptivity. The tumescent phase of the female’s genitals, resulting in a pink swelling that signals willingness to mate, covers a much longer part of estrus in bonobos than in chimpanzees. Instead of a few days out of her cycle, the female bonobo is almost continuously sexually attractive and active.”
http://www.primates.com/bonobos/bonobosexsoc.html
Emphasis mine. Notice how biology and mating habits of bonobos flies completely against ‘traditional gender roles’. Last I checked, bonobos just enjoyed fucking; they didn’t go on the internet and complain that “female bonobos are the most decadent sluts since the fall of Rome.”
Do you realize how unusual it is in the animal kingdom to not have ‘mating seasons’? Being continuously sexually active is something we evolved to do. So do tell, what did the monkeys do that was so in line with traditional gender roles?
Oh and as for that book Brain Sex? Here’s a review that basically proves that the author was biased as fuck:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/30091982?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Isn’t it funny (and not the least bit surprising I’m sure) that “men and women are just different” often magically turns into “men are superior to women”?
Early Mormons lived very communally in their Western US settlements. They’ve since mostly assimilated back into American culture, but it used to be that they viewed communal living and anti materialism as part of their religion. I would say Marxism is arguably incompatible with religion and definitely incompatible with theocracy. That doesn’t mean religion is only compatible with capitalism though.
So anthropologists correct me here, but we don’t have any written records or direct observations of the cultures that lived for the vast majority of humanity’s existence. We can draw conclusions based on archaeological evidence, but there’s lots of questions we just can’t answer from that evidence, especially about abstract things like societal attitudes towards sex.
The Shakers were another sect that lived communally and valued men and women equally.
Is this thread, about men going their own way, the most necro’d thread here? Because that’s pretty funny.
RosaDeLava:
“Wait, so men aren’t really forced to go to war? Is that what you’re saying?”
No you clueless twit. Whe did I write that? That’s what your mirror-mirror image, the MRA’s believe.
—-
“So… what if they didn’t? Did you ask the women of ancient Babylon for their opinions?”
We go by behaviour. We’e now going to assume things? ALL those billions of women all oevr the world through=-out history were opporessed and yearning for equality, waiting for a few, mostly Jewish lesbian American women, to come free them?
—-
“Also, for fucks sake – traditional roles are opressive when people are forced into them.”
And who said they were being forced?! That’s the whole point, they weren’t forced, they were people’s natural inclinatons.
I didn’t need anyone to force me to be attracted to the opposite sex. but using your idiotic feminist logic, my attraction to the opposite sex (unless she’s a feminist), is learned otherwise I’d be attracted to the same sex.
—-
“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.”
The traditional order is where the sun is damned hot, rock is hard, and women take care of the children and men do the hard work outside away from the home. THAT natural order, that you feminist keep whining about.
Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
“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.”
“missteps” YOu all murdering tens of thousands of innocent people, a “misstep”? You call destroying two nations a “misstep”? how vile.
Tell me again how you democrats and liberals are just oh so superior to the right-wing.
—-
“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….”
Everythign you just wrote about MRA’s can apply just as well on feminist, as some of your fellow travellers on this thread are proving.
—-
“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.”
They ARE the same. Both want to do away with those traditions and laws they feel “oppress” them, and create some bullshit fantasy “egalitarian/equalist” utopia.
—-
“Such as the Muoso? The Ede? The Chambri? None of these societies have come into contact (to use a less loaded term than yours) with Western feminism, and they have egalitarian social structures.”
Oh, we’re going by that charlatan Margaret mead, now?
—-
“Why does it follow that because men and women have different bodies, particular societal roles must result? If you view human bodies as simply utilitarian tools best suited for only one function, like can openers and wrenches, that might make sense, but most of us find it a bit reductive to be thought of as objects.”
Because the bodies are not isolated from the minds and hearts and souls. It’s no use for men to have bigger musklces without being more aggressive and more likely to fight. it’s no sue to women to have the pregnancies and lactations without also having the emotional make-up to tender children.
A women with a man’s psychology or a men with a women’s, would not be as effective in their roles.
littleknown:
“Dar, you seem to be very confused as to how MRAs feel about traditional gender roles.
The reality is that MRAs very much support a return to traditional gender roles. The reason they bring up men having to fight and die in wars is not because they want women to make up an equal part of the military (LOL!) — it is because they want women to accept that since men have traditionally had to be the ones to fight in wars, they should be happy with traditional gender roles being forced upon them.
MRAs very clearly and consistently state that traditional gender roles are what they want to return to, and that it is feminism that is what they see as oppressive to men.
In other words: you are an MRA. (As if your perfect-for-a-website-titled-“WeHuntedTheMammoth” argument about naked-bodies, lactating-breasts, and big-muscles-to-hunt-and-fight-with didn’t make that abundantly clear.)”
No, you’re about as wrong as they come.
I’ve been banned from MRA’s discussions for “misandry” for praising men being men.
The MRA’s don’t protest women int eh military. They protest women in the military having it easy. As “equalists”, they want women to go through the exact same training as men.
weirwoodtreehugger:
“Dar,
Yes I want a citation. Looking at society doesn’t cut it because that doesn’t tell us whether gender roles are socialized or inherent. Hormone levels don’t tell us much either. Correlation isn’t causation.
Gorillas aren’t humans so I’m not sure why you think they’re evidence. But if you must go down this road, bonobos aren’t patriarchal and they’re closely related.”
You’re being coyly stupid.
You might as well ask for scientific studies as to whether most people are really attracted to the opposite sex. Maybe most people are really attracted to the same sex but were forced by the “hetero-archy” into being straight?
When we see a pattern opf behaviour almost universal across nearly all of human societies all over the world through human historym, and even see the same behavious in other animals, then it becomes clear to any rational (i.e. non-feminist) person that that is natural.
isidore13:
“@Dar: you know that there is a difference between rearing children and bearing children, right? What excludes men from rearing children, exactly? Frankly, given our current ability to surgically alter the sex of an individual, what is to exclude men from bearing children? Very recently a transgender man gave birth, I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Beatie”
Becvause the two are tieed, obvuiously. We’re not sea horses.
Women soend 9 months pregnant, give birth, and are subsequently very close emotionally to the babies and are better arond them, while men not so much. The babies themselves are close to their mothers.
You’re going to deny the mother-child bond too?
Ah ofcourse you will. You’re a feminist, and feminists hate motherhood.
As for the transsexual. That’s a female-to-male transsexual, so natural has the internal female organs.
Besides, as feminists you’ve no business brining up transsexuals as you feminists hate them for “reinforcing gender roles”.
Alan Robertshaw:
“Some early Christian communities were communist (There’s a clue in the name) and there are still some today. It’s all based on some Bible verse. I once had a court case arising from the fallout from one of these groups going their separate ways. It was quite interesting implying Bible text into contracts.
Kibbutz are pretty communist and I believe some Jewish people are religious.”
That’s a very very VERy loose defition of communism.
Communists themselves disagree:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1920/abc/11.htm
Moocow:
“@Dar,
Traditional gender roles were never natural. They came about around the time that agricultural societies were a thing. Before then, civilizations were often non-monogamous and the whole village would raise a child. The value of owning farmland (and having to figure out who your descendants were) changed all of that. And the best way to ensure who’s child was who was to control womens’ sexuality. And thus the patriarchy and gender roles were born!”
Bullshit!
And the proof are all those non-agricultrual hunter-gatherer societies that continued (and continue) to exist, where men and women play different rles as well.
That “It takes a village” nonsense you can peddle somewhere else. Where is the written sources for that mythical feminist societiy of your of 10,000 years ago?
Again, more of the usual feminist assualt on parenting.
But thank you for showing us the marxist roots of feminism.
—-
” ‘Another similarity with humans is increased female sexual receptivity. The tumescent phase of the female’s genitals, resulting in a pink swelling that signals willingness to mate, covers a much longer part of estrus in bonobos than in chimpanzees. Instead of a few days out of her cycle, the female bonobo is almost continuously sexually attractive and active.’ ”
So what? When did I write women don’t enjoy sex?
You and your circle-jerk friends here keep resorting to straw-man arguments.
—-
“Oh and as for that book Brain Sex? Here’s a review that basically proves that the author was biased as fuck”
Doesn’t prove anything except that the reviewer if the one who’s biased. Her very langauge proves her to be a whiny feminist who can’t think straight. She accuses tor authors of being “against equality” and trying to show women as “inferior”, when ALL they do is show how different the sexes are. If YOU read the book you’d know that.
But to a feminist, that’s enough to be “sexist”.
You might need fifty posts to make your point, but I only need one GIF to make mine:
http://i.imgur.com/wtuNfhb.gif
http://replygif.net/i/1339.gif
Boy, oh, boy you’re making shit up to feel like you’re right. That’s tragic.
No, for real – are you saying that men aren’t force to go to war and they go because it’s their natural inclination? Because it sounds like you’re saying that.
HEARTS PUMP BLOOD. STOP ACTING LIKE THEY ARE MORE RELEVANT THAN LIVERS. And souls or souls’ influences in the real world have never been observed. At least two of these things have fuck all to do with your argument.
As for the whole utility of gender roles – Dude, you’re creating a dichotomy that has no bearing with the world we live in! We don’t behave like gorillas, and we don’t behave like bonobos. Our social structure is much more complex, and we we need people to have jobs other than “take care of children” and “beat the shit out of things”.
What is the best gender for a doctor? What is the best gender for a grocer? What is the best gender for a teacher? What is the best gender for a cleaner? What is the best gender for a politician?
And you’re not arguing with us – you’re arguing at us. You make assumptions about what we believe and we want us to argue for them, but that’s not how it works.
What? I thought feminism was incompatible with religion. Now feminists are all Jewish. Which is it?
Women have always worked. Please stop getting your history from old TV shows. The Flintstones is not a documentary about Paleolithic people. Leave It To Beaver does not reflect what life was like for the vast majority of people.
You really seem to not know one thing about cognitive neuroscience. That’s really not how it works. By your logic it makes no sense that Andre the Giant was a really sweet guy while pocket sized Charles Manson led a murderous cult. By your logic, abusive mothers shouldn’t exist.
Women’s brains do get a flood of oxytocin after giving a birth. But on the other hand, fathers have a drop in testosterone levels after becoming dads http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/feb/14/father-reduced-testosterone-men-sex
So it’s not a gendered thing. Of course, with a lot of neuroscience research, they’re finding the correlations but aren’t understanding causation yet, so we have to be careful.
I’m being coyly stupid? You’re the one who’s declaring your opinion to be the truth with nothing to back it up. You’re all circular logic and no facts. We’ve already explained to you that your idea of natural gender roles are neither on display in every culture or present in every other animal. So stop trying to use that as evidence. You’re ignorant about anthropology, history, biology, and probably every other subject. Don’t expect anyone here to take “because I said so” as satisfactory.
BTW, attraction and arousal can be and are measured so it’s laughable that you’re finding the notion so ridiculous and impossible.
Nobody said that Paleolithic cultures are feminist. It’s just that you seem to think they were like The Flintstones, and no. Not so much. Actually, very little is known about any culture that didn’t leave anything written behind. What we do know is that very few of them had stable enough settlements that would have allowed for women or anyone else to stay home a lot. Most of life would have been consisted of obtaining food. They didn’t have grocery stores 100,000 years ago.
Does anyone remember this story?
http://www.livescience.com/40530-etruscan-warrior-prince-is-a-princess.html
Sadly, even people much more intelligent than Dar here misinterpret evidence because they are influenced by assumptions about gender roles. So, no. Gender roles are absolutely not identical across all times and cultures.
Funny how misogynists like Dar like to claim that women being submissive homemakers is just “natural law”, yet they believe women need to be physically forced to act in a way that is consistent with their nature. It’s like words don’t mean a fucking thing to them.