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.
@SSJ:
Male feminist here, I’ll take a look.
Hmm, let’s see… Kill 90% of men, leave the remaining 10% for manual labor and breeding purposes, leaving the only real people of this world (women) in control and guarenteeing True Equality(tm)?
… uh, sounds reasonable? Why?
Although, on the other hand, it’s just the one woman that believes this. I’m not sure we can trust her to pull off this completely necessary genocide of the male portion of our species. We need at least one… no… two other women who believe the same thing. Then we’ll be in business.
Are crackpot theories the answer to all our problems? Uh, NO. Because I’ve never seen one that worked yet.
Ah, begging the question are we, SSJ?
Allow me to fill you in: No, we feminists don’t want to kill all men. And no, one article (From August of last year) about one person who made a video saying they think killing all men (or most men) is a good thing not going to convince us to change our Feminist Hive Mind (All Hail Katie).
Saying that this one woman represents all of feminism is like saying that Paul Elam or Vox Day represent every single person in the manosphere, and their beliefs are the group’s beliefs. To be quite frank, Feminism is a big, vast group, with a vast number of individuals with individual ideals, thoughts, and world views. One individual doesn’t represent the whole, just like one drop of water doesn’t represent a lake or an ocean. The internet makes it easy for some of those little water droplets make their voices heard, but it doesn’t mean that the entire lake or ocean agrees with it, nor does it mean that that water droplet is a representative of the entire body of water.
I sincerely wish you manosperhian types would stop marching in here trying to hold us accountable for something one woman said a while ago that you’re still huffy about, so you can hold aloft your notion that sexism against men is a thing (it’s not, bee-tee-dubs. Sexism [or racism, homophobia, ableism, ect] is an institutionalized system of oppression, not “this one lady said something mean about me/all men!”. It’s women not getting equal pay, getting blamed for their own rapes, ect., and having it all be commonplace and pretty fucking regular. “Men are afraid women will insult them, women are afraid men will kill them.” as the saying goes.) and claim yourselves victorious in a battle only you are fighting.
Seriously.
The fun thing is that if you look at Femitheist Divine’s youtube channel, you’ll find this as the first line in her about tab.
But hey, she’s a woman, so therefore feminism must answer for her. And she has an idea that relates to gender equality, and it has to do with murdering men! This totally proves that feminists are the evil straw people you always claimed they were.
We all to the manosphere, any time a woman does something bad or something they don’t like, she’s automatically a feminist.
A woman cut them off in traffic? She must be a feminist!
Or if a woman is, to them and their sad peens, “unbangable”.
“You’re just a feminist because you’re fat and ugly and men won’t fuck you!”
Whereas if I pulled out those terrifying old comments about removing girls’ voiceboxes at birth, or how “men must communize the c*nt”, I’d drown in the onslaught of “Not All Men!” “Not All MRAs!” “Fringe wackos don’t represent us!”.
So, SSJ, have you stopped beating your wife yet?
Can I marry the Femitheist after she castrates and kills me?
I liked this part:
Isn’t that basically what AVFM is? And look how that turned out.
Sorry for spamming the comment section here, but this article is pretty amazing. It’s like she’s discovered every straw-feminist, straw-atheist and straw-“evolutionist” ever, and thought: “ooh, sounds nice”.
@SSJ:
Yep, echoing what others have said here:
Misogyny is about the institutionalized belief that women are inferior to men. It’s seeing everything traditionally regarded as feminine as weak, bad, or downright evil. It’s believing that women are naturally subservient to men. It’s believing that men are the natural decision-makers, whereas women are followers. It’s the “bros before h**s” mentality that you have expressed quite proficiently on this thread.
It’s about restricting women’s bodily autonomy and personal choices in the name of “preserving the moral backbone of this country”. It’s about restricting women’s access to high positions in society. It’s about shutting women out from certain lines of work and hobbies. It’s about making women feel unsafe in public places, in their homes, everywhere. It’s about seeing rape and domestic abuse as no big deal, and usually the victim’s fault. It’s about misogynistic men sending the message “know your place, or we’ll do something bad to you. Oh, fuck it, we may just do it anyway, just because we can.” And as long as society tolerates misogynistic ideas and behavior, they’re right.
Misandry is some random woman saying something you personally take offense to. It is not institutionalized, it is not seen in every aspect of society. When men are belittled and insulted, they’re being compared to women; That’s not misandry, that’s misogyny coming back to bite “unmanly men”, whom hateful, patriarchal brodudes see as acceptable casualties in their personal gender war.
Misogyny is a real issue that penetrates so many of the truths we hold as self-evident because of social indoctrination that unlearning it is a life’s work. Misandry is something that white dudebros came up with in order to shut up all discussion on gender issues. And it is pretty damn insulting to try to equate the two.
As for your link, every woman who says something you don’t like is not a feminist. The person you linked to is not a feminist, and her thoughts are not feminism-y in the least. The fact that you think so just shows that you still haven’t bothered to do your homework on feminism, and are still parroting the manospherian straw-feminist “kill all men” fairy tales.
And one individual expressing such beliefs is not a terrible threat to the whole masculine gender. Get over yourself.
I predict that MRA types will be beeping and honking about that as long as they have been about ‘male tears’. Maybe even Valerie Solanas.
“Hey, this extreme non-feminist outlier proves our points! Jackpot!”
MRAs support Ayaam Hirsi Ali, she is a real feminist dealing with real issues and fighting against the injustices in the middle east.
“Middle East”? You don’t even know where she’s from, do you?
But yeah, cool, I’ll add her to the list of “feminists we are allowed to like according to MRAs”.
Also apparently there’s an MRA approved list of issues feminists are allowed to work on, otherwise they’re horrible misandrists.
Because when I want to know who a “real” feminist is, a group of angry anti-feminists are the first ones I consult!
“Yeah, there’s this one feminist who’s in a very vague area that’s a better feminist than you, neener, neener, neener!” (Bee-tee-dubs, she’s from Somalia, and she’s a former Muslim, who was subjected to some of the more extremist acts, like female genital mutilation.)
There they go again, trying to tell western feminists that they should be off doing things in “the middle east”. Can you stop trying to impose your Jingoist bullshit on Feminism? Some of us know that we can’t do jack chicken shit for women in those areas beyond give our support to them and do what they ask of us to help.
Some of us weren’t raised in their culture, some of us aren’t Muslim, some of us aren’t even a person of color, so we don’t have the right to stand up and declare that we’ll “save” them. Every time a westerner steps foot into a situation like this with a “Great White Savior” complex, shit tends to get bad quick. Sit your ass down and listen to the women and/or feminists from those countries and hear what they have to say.
And no, our issues are not any more “real” because we live in a “first-world country” (I despise that phrase). We still have issues we’d like to work out too. This isn’t the fucking Oppression Olympics, everyone has issues and we’re allowed to talk about and do something about them. Just because someone has it “worse” than you do doesn’t mean you have to sit down and take all the bullshit you deal with in stride.
However, that doesn’t mean you get to derail conversations with your problems, or the problems of anyone else. Start your own in your own space.
If that hurts your fee-fees and makes your boner sad, we honestly don’t care.
Whoops. Wrong word. : P
http://modernwomandigest.com/male-member-size-dangers/
I guess having a small penis can be blamed on the patriarchy??? yeah *** those guys….
Dude… why you bringing this weak shit here?
“I’m just going to ignore everything you had to say last time and just re-necro the thread and post another article! Maybe that’ll work!”
One, that article is not from (again) one woman with one opinion. She doesn’t represent all of feminism. Stop trying to say we’re all bad people because one feminist said something to hurt your fee-fees.
Two, different people who are attracted to penises have different preferences of what penises they like. One woman’s article about a study doesn’t mean that all women want a big dick.
Three, I smell projection.
Paradoxical, did you look around the site? It’s… Like nothing at all. There are no serious articles. It’s not even a feminist site. It’s kind of hilarious as hell, this is so weak.
I believe the site is a sock or something like that.
I thought Woody was the saddest, most pathetic troll we’ve had. But I think we’ve got a new contender.