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.
Yep, we’re all into castration jokes here – you can’t move for’em /sarcasm
Ah yes, the jungle theorem.
It’s funny. I was visiting some friends in another city over the weekend, and they introduced me to a buxom, cheerful Scandinavian woman. Clearly, being both conventionally attractive and full of energy, she would be the arch-typical woman. Seeing as I have had and still do have a minor cough (systemic immuno-defeciency of mine), her loathing of my presence was obvious. The fact she constantly kicked and slapped me, clear. Her attempts at wrestling, borne from a primitive, primal direct to curb weakness from the face of the Earth. Her constant eye balling of my jugular vein merely a prelude to a cunning slaughter.
No, wait, no.
That was all a game.
Besides, really. I have a different question:
Why is there such horror at weak men, Oh Fedora?
You do know that we can go back & read what you actually said, right?
There’s a persistent whiff of smoke in here – must be Blackhead’s pants on fire, again.
Fedora: “Bad things happen to us all and we recover- as long as we do not adopt a victim persona.”
Does that mean that, in your opinion, we shouldn’t try to stop those bad things from happening?
“One of the biggest problems I have with feminism is that it encourages people to see themselves as helpless victims- which completely destroys them.”
No. Feminism encourages people to come forward and denounce what’s wrong, like being harassed because you’re a woman. But you’ll probably won’t even consider this to be a problem because you lack empathy.
Yeah, it’s terrible how feminism’s main campaign at this moment involves pressuring Facebook to allow people to post jokes making fun of men with prostate cancer.
In imaginary backwards land.
Giving a teensy-weensy bit of acknowledgement to Hatsy here; I think certain STRANDS of feminism, that I occasionally encountered in my teens (but not really since then, maybe they’ve died out, maybe that’s just because I move in different circles nowadays, who knows) do tends towards the “women are poor little helpless victims of the patriarchy” way of thinking, which does tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
But that’s totally not what ALL feminism is about.
Hat ignored my question. Except if he tries to say that Hitler sent the young men out in the war explicitly to die and not you know conquest. *confused-stare*
I don’t think there should be any stigma for victims, and I don’t expect victims to always put on a brave face and act stoic all the time. Victims should feel free to grieve, to discuss their pain, and to demand basic human dignity from others. I think the pressure people put on victims to “be strong” or face everything with a stiff upper lip causes the real damage. Offering support and compassion helps build victims back up.
Here is another area where the MRA’s are huge hypocrites. They demand feminists stop discussing rape culture and violence against women, because that just gives survivors a “victim complex”. However, right now MRA’s are making a huge deal about Facebook taking down pages that joke about violence against women. They are being huge drama kings and pretending to be victims, and that’s okay. But a woman talks about rape or dv, and all the sudden she’s too whiny and should stop feeling sorry for herself.
Gloomy Haberdashery: You see this is the point. Manboobers claim to get this hollywood style attention and yet I do not quite believe it. Why?
Because you are
1: an ignorant moron with no observational skills.
2: a shut in who never goes out in the real world
3: a liar
I’ve spent time hanging out on the streets, in places from coast to coast of the US and Canada (I’ll leave out the non-English speaking places, because even where I speak the language I am not, usually, ear-fluent enough to catch specifics of direction/slang on the street; when not directed at me).
I’ve see all sorts of women, pretty, not pretty, skinny, not skinny, young, old, etc. being harassed. The most common elements: more than one guy in the harassing group, and the woman is alone.
That’s it. They weren’t pretty, they weren’t “slutting it up”, they were just women, who seemed to be alone.
So your prentense that it’s all about the looks is, from my observed experience, wrong.
Nobody can read minds. A man smiles. Is he ‘objectifying’ you or is he just in a good mood?</i
Dude, this wasn't smiles. This was, "Hey baby, I got something for you to ride!"
It was, "I got something better than coffee to put in your mouth".
It's been men masturbating at them on the subway.
It was not, "smiles". It also wasn't friendly. And they knew it. Whenever someone (male) turned to give them a response, they'd back down. When a woman reacted, it was, "hey get a sense of humor!"
So your, "interpretation" is based on fantasy.
Is it possible that all of these conspiracies that men seem to be bringing against you exist only in your own mind?
No, I don’t think the lies and fables you are telling us exist only in our minds. I can see them on the pages here.
I wonder if you would be prepared to ask your sisters to stop posting castration jokes?
Says the dude defending the abuse of women as, “funny”.
See feminists have to actively discourage (as opposed to merely denoucning it when it happens), but “masculists” get to encourage beating women… that you see is funny, but castration jokes are an affront to dignity, and opposing them is required to show one doesn’t hate men.
Nice “I win, you lose” you’ve got going there.
You write as is this was your experience. I am sure you are sincere, although I am not sure how common
Because the other women (and men) talking here about it were… wrong? Fishing for compliments? Pretending to be “hollywood beautiful”.
You are being dishonest. Your entire routine on this has been, “you are all making shit up”, mixed with, “if it did happen you are all misunderstanding those nice men who just want to pay you a compliment.”
Which is it? It doesn’t happen, because we are all uggos, or it does, and we just don’t understand what it means?
He saw the job of breeding as more important than working.
The devaluation of reproduction is your ideology- not his.
Strange sort of feminism you ascribe to Hitler. Women are good for breeding. I guess it was because he was fighting wars, and so the men he disposed of proves his feminism? Lock the women into the kitchen and the nursery because they are the equal of men?
This could have been spoken by any modern feminist.
Hear that guys, Code Pink, and NOW think men are only good for sending to war; which is why they protested to force Bush to go to war in Iraq.
Oh wait, they were against it.
Never mind.
As we all now know this amounted to the same thing.
So… voting for someone who wasn’t Hitler = supporting Hitler, because he used the parliamentary system to exploit Hindenberg’s political weakness, and then staged a palace coup. Why, if they voted for the communists that would be just like voting for Hitler, because he used the threat of communism to make his hold on power stronger.
Whoa… I see it now, everyone who left Germany was actually a Hitler supporter, because that reduced the opposition. The more of their property they abandoned the better (because it could be seized). Stalin was a Hitler supporter, and Churchill, and Roosevelt: They waged war against him, which provided the external enemies he said he needed.
EVERYONE IN THE WORLD LOVED HITLER!
brz: Really? Why? I haven’t realized having said anything particularly offensive.
Apart from the stuff about lynching?
I’ll bet other people can think of other things.
Ok, so WW means Western Women (fed up with all these YAFAs you constantly come across on the Internet) but then, I’ve just read a MGTOW member bitterly complaining about AW/WW. Does AW stand for Asian Women? If so, where is the Asian pliancy they keep pining for? I guess when these suitably submissive ladies come to a freer country, they learn fast. So you have to dump yours (with an alimony) and go buy yourself a fresh one… who’ll learn fast.
These guys sure do live a life of cruel disappointments. And a pile of AW must end up being way more expensive than a WW, what with all the trips to and fro…
Actually, they use AW to mean American Woman.
The appeal of Asian women is not that they are biddable it is that they are feminine. Asian women often resent the implicit racism of the feminist Asian slave myth. It IS possible to be feminine and strong, believe it or not.
Does anyone else see Fedora’s name and groan? Show of hands, who hear said you cn,t be feminine and strong at the same time? I guess radfems have issues with the idea of make-up and fashion, but I know we have at least a couple fashion fans here. And frankly, the radfem “oh you do X feminine thing, you’ll see someday that you only want it because patriarchy, you poor deluded thing you” is INCREDIBLY patronizing.
Second show of hands, who wants Fedora to go bother someone else? Or, you know, read a book or something that isn’t bothering anyone.
::waves hand::
Dreary Haberdassery is overdue for modding, methinks.
I admit that, because of my dysphoria, I actually feel somewhat “validated” when someone calls me stereotypically feminine in some way. It’s like a breath of fresh air; I’m constantly reminded of my maleness and masculine traits, so I feel better when people perceive feminine aspects of my personality, appearance, and behavior, even when their comments are inherently negative. I hope I’m making sense.
In any case, though, I and many others realize that femininity isn’t inherently weak; only oppressive gender norms say so. Yet another example of TBF not actually reading the shit we say.
Aaliyah — I get it, “you look like a [child of ‘opposite’ gender]!” gives me a bit of joy, despite being meant as an insult.
Things that are more likely to make you either bash your head into a wall repeatedly, or drink, than anything Fedora may say — http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page
I am sorry.
I doubt he’s still awake but SIR PECUNIUM!! I have one for you! http://www.conservapedia.com/Torture
They can’t even like, get their shit straight. Unsurprisingly, torture is bad when “those people” do it, but when we do it we’re um, controversial (somehow, that controversy being settled and pecunium being out of the lecture circuit is probably one job he’d love to lose)
The amazing atheist! *dies*
http://www.conservapedia.com/Rape
Someone please save me from this rabbit hole. I really don’t want to know how deep it goes.
Holy. Fucking. Shit. I just found Joe’s source of ASSDATA, complete with Marx. http://www.conservapedia.com/Feminism
I will now stop spamming this thread and spam twitter instead.
@ Aaliyah
Many feminists have similar backgrounds to the MRM.
I myself grew up rather ‘pretty’ and was a quiet and thoughtful boy. As a result I was given a miserable time by the girls in my school and learned that it was safer to deal with my own sex.
If you think about it a world where boys are free to read poetry is also likely to be a world where builders do not whole whistle women. I wish it were possible for feminists to see this.
I wonder if the feminists in moldy hat’s head, the ones that he keeps arguing with, actually exist somewhere. They’re certainly not here, and it’s rather odd to read what appears to be half of a conversation.
Argenti, if you think that’s amusing, check this out:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Conservapedia:Conservapedian_mathematics
TIL: Complex numbers are LIBERAL DECEIT!