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.
In theory, this is one of the most offensive things that anyone has ever said about me or my immediate family in the 20+ years that I’ve been online,
In practice, it made me laugh like a drain.
How can so many points be missed in such a short paragraph? And just how wilfully ignorant to you have to be to write it with a straight face?
There are any number of things that might prevent my children existing. I might never have met their mother (a very real possibility: we just happened to be in the right place at the right time), and of course there are the odds against this particular sperm meeting this particular egg to creat this particular child, which are infinitesimal. And she might have miscarried the result.
So why would it make any practical difference if, for whatever reason, the pregnancy had been halted through medical intervention? What happens in the early stages of gestation is entirely down to the mother – it’s her body, and therefore her choice.
As for your comment that she can’t possibly love the gorgeous, clever, funny, beautiful children that she gave birth to, that’s so far beneath contempt that it’s plunged straight through the earth’s core and out the other side. Just how smugly self-righteous do you have to be to make that kind of claim about someone you don’t know and have never spoken to?
I’m still laughing. And genuinely shaking my head in wonderment. You, sir, are a buffoon.
You know, you do have to give Dar a teeny bit of credit for addressing all of his detractors on this thread. Most MGTOW trolls down here in the dank caverns of WHTM only deign to speak to male-identifying posters.
Dar, here’s an example of your logic:
Dar: “All X are Y!”
Us: “Actually, these X are not Y.”
Dar: “Those aren’t real Xs! They don’t count! They’re too minor! Feminist!”
When you try to claim that a universal proposition is true, and someone comes up with a counterexample, no matter what size, they have just disproved your universal proposition. That’s why statements starting with “All….” are rarely accurate.
Even if we can modify the proposition and agree that “Some X are Y”, then “Y is natural” is still problematic. First of all, there’s disagreement about which behaviors are natural and which are culturally determined. Secondly, it doesn’t follow that “Natural things are good and desirable”, much less “we should structure our society around them”. Look up “Appeal To Nature”. It’s a fallacy, and you’ve based your entire argument on it.
Actually, on second thought, what you’re arguing might be an even more fallacious subcategory: Appeal to Dar’s Personal Preferences.
At any rate, this “Me So Logical” card you’ve been waving around seems to be a forgery.
So, I was thinking about this bit a little more (I’m still kinda sleepy and I think I’m coming down with something, so my wit isn’t as sharp as I’d normally like it), and this kinda needs to be said:
EVERY WORD in the English Language, or any Language for that matter, is fucking “made up”.
The only reason that the words that we speak have meaning is because people who speak the language agreed they have meaning. And language is constantly evolving and changing and growing with various influences and dialects.
Hell, “YOLO” wasn’t considered a word (in a manner of speaking) until recently (in a manner of speaking), neither was “Googling”, and even Oxford adds new words to the dictionary every so often!
So this idea that words are somehow “made up” and are therefore “bullshit” is, in fact, bullshit.
I think the appeal to personal preferences fallacy might be the worst one. Especially since it’s the foundation of all reactionary ideology whether it’s traditional right wing or manosphere. I’m reminded of our troll Mark who thought women shouldn’t be allowed to dress skimpily simply because it offends him. I’m reminded of every manospherian who takes personal offense to a woman being fat,having short hair, having dyed hair, wearing glasses, aging etc. I’m reminded of Kim Davis. And so on.
It’s just such a mind bogglingly entitled mindset.
“Ask yourself WHY do they hate transsexuals?”
I refuse to attempt to get into Brennan’s fucked up head.
I suppose that is a one line response, but I just got up, I’m bruised and sore after aerials (trapeze is fun, trapeze bars leave knee bruises), and I really just don’t feel like trying to give a crash course in trans 101 to a fool. Thank you all for trying, I appreciate it 🙂
I’m gonna go make coffee, and some breakfast, in the kitchen, and then lug 20+ lbs upstairs a few times (tanks need water)
Actually, there’s a counter example to this bullshit about nature and exceptions and such — fish out of water right? Catfish, as a species, with maybe a few exceptions that I don’t know of, can survive out of water well enough to flop from one pond to the next. Not “can do it if they must”, but walking catfish flopped their way into that name, and the rest can breath by swallowing air. This is catfish, not some obscure species you have to be an aquarist to know, but one that shows up on dinner plates.
imgur.com/gallery/VnFjJYf
Fail. Try two!
http://i.imgur.com/VnFjJYf.jpg
Lungfish, too.
(Between the whole palaeontologist bizzo and living in one of the very few places with wild lungfish, I could go on all day about the buggers. Short version: THEY’RE REALLY NEAT.)
Only a few minor tiny examples! The rest of the English language is BIOLOGY!
Are onomatapeas made up or natural?
Alan: Depends. Do people have to be brainwashed with government propaganda in order to use them?
@Alan: It’s only natural that the French (and every other country with a language other than English) have different onomatapeas for things, because it’s only natural that someone has to be wrong, and thus, it should (naturally) fall to the French.
Scented Fucking Hard Chairs — I almost bought a lungfish years ago, but I didn’t have a tank big enough to devote to it. They are cool fucking fish. But I figured he’d just scream EXCEPTION to them, whereas catfish… I have five tanks, three contain some species of catfish, the other two are my brackish puffer, and my axolotl (sorry Katz, but the powers that be have decided I’m not allowed to breed in their house)
@ Paradoxy
Ooh, ouch! (but as a Brit, appreciated) 🙂
@ Buttercup
My favourite one is Kerrang, the heavy metal magazine.
Also…
ARGENTI IS BACK! How’s Nivi? How are you? Is Puff still Puff-like?
I probably have no right to be this super happy to see your nym and avatar around again, but…
ARGENTI IS BACK!
:Dances off into the rain. Rain. So much rain. No pretty moons for us, because rain.:
Hi contrapangloss!!
Other than being oh so sore after aerials yesterday, I’m fine. Nivi has done axolotl puberty, and is now a nice round girl axolotl whose silly fingers have their nice dark “I’m a grown up” tips. Puff is still an idiot, yes. He’s gotten big, pushing 2″, I’ve finally had to stop letting him nibble me after he decided to go at me like I was food 🙁 But then he managed to get stuck in his feeder cone, twice, so the cuteness of having to rescue him from “oh my gods FOOOOOD” made up for it. And idk if I’ve really been around much since I got him, but my menagerie now includes a Russian Tortoise, and he’s awesome, took awhile but he’s taken to letting me pet his head and hand feed him.
The family fuzz balls are good too. With a newish addition — a stray calico adopted us! She’s an outdoor kitty, I sorta doubt she’d be keen on the confines of indoor life, but she mostly hangs out in our yard, meows for food and rubs against legs. My brother built her an insulated kitty house for winter after we had a massive downpour and we were all “I hope Cali found someplace dry”… so I guess we have two cats now!
Aww. Oh well, we put a hamster in our terrarium anyway.
Hamsters are probably better pets really — you can pet them, and they’re willing to move more than is strictly needed. Nivi has got to be the laziest thing in all creation! Adorably cute, but the only thing they’ll move quickly for is to snap up food.
@catalpa
You said it was a rhetorical question, but I’m going to take a stab at it anyway. Was it the devil?
Actually, I believe that the answer the antifeminists give is that some of us women can’t admit our own inferiority. It hurts our feelings. So we rail against our lack of power. But deep down, we know that we shouldn’t have any. It’s the whole “She doesn’t know what she wants” argument.
@Argenti: It’s great to hear you’re doing well. I missed you!
We’ve had an aquarium, ourselves. Because we left the kiddie pool out overnight once this summer, which was apparently Too Long, and we found ourselves the surprise parents of a whole passel of tadpoles.
So we’ve been raising frogs all summer, but not by design. Just released the last of the tadpoles: they had grown legs. I was taking the pump off the tank when a teensy frog jumped onto it. It was less than an inch long, and still had a bit of a tail. I put it outside, and then a bit later I almost stepped on a second one, about the same size.
I’m watching where I put my feet, for now.
Because wimminzes are naturally Teh Stoopid, hurr hurr hurr…
Honestly, I hate that kind of ‘splaining. Because (a) I’m not stupid, and (b) I know what I want, and (c) it is not what these people think it is, nor should it be. If anyone’s being unnatural, it’s themselves…by forcing their bogus concept of “natural” onto everybody else.
And the supreme irony of seeing that fallacy perpetuated here is that it’s all being done on computers. Which are anything BUT natural, and the very first of them were all programmed by us mentally inadequate feeeeemales. Dude, if you have a theory about what’s natural and what’s not, don’t expound it over the Internets! You just end up looking like a hypocritical jackass, which of course you would have to be to do that and not see the irony in it all.
Ugh, troll’s line breaks are just too much.
How are you liking Doctor Who so far, Argenti? Beloved and I had a blast last series, and really enjoyed these first two eps.
(Also we’re enjoying Steven Universe.)
@Falconer – I’m envious of your frogs. Our kiddie pool only hatched hordes of mosquitoes this summer.
@WWTH
It’s astounding how opinionated and judgmental they get when the world refuses to structure itself around their needs. I was reminded of that mindset this morning, when Twin #2 was drooling over the prospect of ice cream cake (their birthday is coming up in a few weeks). Twin #1 made a horrible face and said “Yuck.” Twin #2 got very offended and said “DON’T YUCK MY YUM.”
In that regard, manospherians haven’t progressed beyond the level of a 3 year old. They’re constantly yucking other people’s yums.
@Buttercup: Feeding the froggy fish was an important part of the day.
Our kiddie pool also spawned swarms of mosquitoes. There were times when we couldn’t use the back yard at all.
“Don’t yuck my yum” proves kids have it right. That is basically the solution to everything.
Also, twinsies? You both have a set? Pictures of the cuteness?
Falconer — d’aww, tiny frogs! And you brought them in and raised them? That’s extra sweet.
Moffat has so far not pissed me off this season, and I like what’s he’s done with Missy, maybe his days of gapping plot holes are behind us? I’m eh on the Dalek episodes though, seems like a big way to start (as opposed to end) a season, I mean, that’s kinda a huge character to kill off, but we’ll see. Conclusion: interested but wary.