Sorry, missed the edit window. This is their own response, FWIW:
Actually, I think you’re one of them because you just claimed that a few whackjobs on the Internet are “a big chunk of population” and represent “the tip of an iceberg”. That’s True Believer talk.
I think you’re agreeing with me? Marriage is a bad deal for a lot of men. Not all or even most, but a big chunk. But a lot of them were brought up thinking that they need to get married. It’s not too surprising that when expectations conflict with hard reality, there’s going to be a lot of noise. Especially with a contingent of young men.
Then you’ve misread what I’ve said, and I take offense to you lumping me in with them.
Yeah, I was surprised by that too. Offhand, there were only a couple that struck me as offensive. I LOL’d at several of them.
But they aren’t saying the reverse. They’re putting a very different emphasis on it. “Women are bad because they won’t submit to me in a traditional male-dominated marriage.”
If they merely said, “We don’t feel like getting married; men have no more need of wives than airplanes need treadmills,” we’d all shrug and move on. But they’re going farther, and making it nasty. And so we’re enjoying the pointless pastime of talking nasty about them behind their backs.
It’s like the churl who says, “I’m not talking to you,” loudly, directly to your face, over and over, every time the two of you are in the same place. “I’m not talking to you!” Well, stop doing it so damn loudly!
Just the “big show” part.
Also, I’m not sure it’s just young men. I mean, literally: I’m not sure. There is this:
But then there’s this:
Limited resources in education? Why, yes. Here in Texas the Republicans have been cutting funding to education for some time. I’m not a parent but know that my own school district has some really excellent magnet schools. But enrollment is limited because these schools cost more.
See that the schools offer better educations for everybody. Don’t bitch about taxes, even if you haven’t spawned. Don’t steal from one group to benefit another.
That same Texas legislature has been cutting funding for women’s health. Partly to avoid letting a penny get near any organization that might also terminate pregnancies. But also just to be cheap. So all women *aren’t *living the feminist dream.
Concerned about the messages society sends boys & men? What about the ones girls & women get? (No, you wouldn’t have noticed.) For every message a man gets about his duty to have a family, women get a dozen. Also admonitions to be beautiful & thin & athletic & a great cook–and also to have an exciting, glamorous job.
It is every human’s duty to grow up & get a life. If your job isn’t thrilling or you’re in a romantic slump, get a hobby. If those “messages” are too much, turn off the TV.
I guess I’m not sure what you’re getting at. The message I get from the “man on knees” icon is they don’t want to be in that kind of relationship. You, I’m guessing, see it as misogyny.
I see it as a reaction to 40+ years of feminism. Maybe someone saw one too many “I BATHE IN MALE TEARS” tank-tops. (Ages 0: +)
What is respecting women?
What is respecting men?
When one person misreads the intent of another person’s expressed opinions, it doesn’t HAVE to be the fault of the reader. It could be that the opinion is expressed poorly. I can imagine that it’s a fine line to tread, between wanting to be scrupulously fair in your analysis, and wanting to avoid coming off as a True Believer. Personally, my opinion of where you stand on that line has been vacillating between the two positions for most of the thread.
To me, it looks like you strayed from that line in post 45, when you said that you think it likely that the yahoos who decided that page of posters was a good symbol of the reasonableness of their position represent “the tip of the iceberg,” without offering any analysis of what leads you to think that. For myself, I’m not yet prepared to consign you to the “True Believer” category. But I also don’t think it’s necessarily offensive that anyone else would be prepared to, based on what you’ve written here.
Some aspects of it are clearly very healthy. Like not having your self-worth being determined by the other sex (in fact, not letting anybody dictate your life priorities). Every man should define his own success, which is not dependent on female validation (and quite a bit of female shaming going on in this thread).
Opting out of the whole miserable corporate rat-race and going fishing instead, sounds like an excellent life choice when the work is soul robbing, the hours are long, and the reward not falling in your own hands. I’ve kinda taken that road myself (not opting out of chicks though), I’ll be fucked if I’m going to work my ass off and pay 50% in tax. It’s the lives of quiet desperation eating up the soul of countless men – just don’t. Say no.
Opting out of marriage also seems a sound choice, if only a fraction of what you hear coming out of the USA is true (men being forced to pay child support for bastard children; men not being allowed, or only rarely allowed, to see their children, monthly alimony payments in the thousands of dollars, etc.) Not to mention all the completely ridiculous nonsense you heard with expensive rings (three months salary for a diamond ring? What the fuck for??!), gigantic and expensive weddings (which the brides’ parents are supposed to pay for?! What the fuck for?!), bridezilla going bananas, destination weddings, and what not (I heard the other day, you have Wedding Planner Consultants. Like this is an actually full time profession – it’s impossible to explain how completely bonkers that sounds). Many women seem to want a wedding, not a marriage. And with no-fault divorces what’s the deal anyway? You can just live together, a marriage doesn’t equal love. Unless you’re Christian and are looking for divine sanction there’s no point to it anymore.
Family courts are fucked. Not just in the US/UK. One thing I’ve heard a number of times, is that in France it’s illegal to perform your own paternity tests on your own (presumed) children. Don’t know the truth of it, but if correct then it is fucked indeed. I’ve never ever heard of a woman being convicted of paternity fraud (a crime many times worse than rape), but plenty of men being forced to pay of kids not their own.
The general denigration of traditional masculine values. If society doesn’t value, or indeed actively despise, what you are, then you’re well served to turn your back on society.
But just in general, define your own self worth and what priorities you have in life seems to be the central aspect of it. Can’t see how anybody can disagree with those tenets.
Fwiw, I have a lot of sympathy for this mindset - exempting the ‘hatred’ - and I guess I’ve been living that way for 20 years or so.
For me, it’s just about a ‘quiet life’.
The quote about boys in lower school is exactly how I feel - girls and boys are intrinsically different and the latter are punished for natural energy or ‘exuberance’.
It’s out and out sexism - ‘you must behave more like girls’.
Fwiw, first lesson of the day should be to make 'em run around until they fall over - then they can concentrate better 
It’s a shame the schooling matriarchy is so inflexible and ignores what the stats say about boys performance (falling further and further behind girls).
They left out the part where the body pillow gets tired of putting up with his sorry ass and runs off with the sofa cushion.
I know a great group of people who are really concerned about the harm that strict gender roles cause.
They want movies and TV to focus on fully fleshed out characters, not just gendered stereotypes. They want a successful life to be defined by living to your own personal values, rather than by how well you got some gender mould. They want to reexamine the kinds of relationships we have, not just rushing into marriage for the sake of it, but rather seeking authentic, loving relations (or sometimes quick, sexy flings) in whatever form works. They want to rethink the roles of gender in parenting, encouraging both parents to play an active role and encouraging workplaces to accommodate that. They want to destigmatize sex, removing the mass of judgements around who is and isn’t having it.
These are, of course, the feminists. Feminists and men are natural allies in breaking down strict gender roles and encouraging people to find the kinds of lives the want and the kinds of relationships they want, while encouraging everyone to take responsibility for their financial security and their children.
So any group that claims to be fighting for gender equality while demonizing feminism and taking potshots at women- well, they are pretty hard to take seriously.
“We don’t like the way things are and we want to imagine a better future” is one thing. “We don’t like the way things are and we want to go back to an imagined past when we just happened to be on top” is less convincing.
Exactly. The common thread with these people is how entitled they feel. They think that because they were born with white skin and a penis, they should be handed what they want instead of having to go and work for it. They see other people with good jobs and good relationships and they think “That was supposed to be mine!” And they think those other people stole their entitlement.
These people need to be slapped a couple times and have reality explained to them. They need to be told “Nobody stole anything. Nobody was given anything. Those people got good jobs and good relationships because they went out and worked to get them. While you sat there and expected somebody to hand it to you.”
It is their obnoxious stereotyping that annoys, what would a female version look like?
Don’t get married women, you don’t need a man to support you and turn you into a slave. He will spend long hours at the office ignoring you and your kids, and then to unwind he will hire thousand dollar an hour escorts and snort coke off their asses leaving you and the kids to beg food stamps to eat. He will come home and demand food to be cooked, and when you are slightly late will beat you. Then he will cheat on your with anything vaguely female including your friends and sister, and will rub it in your face just to feast on your sorrow and pain.
That would be just as fucking ridiculous as what they are claiming women, er I’m sorry emasculating harpies are all like.
Are these the same feminists which carry around mattresses and make a career out of destroying innocent men’s lives based on false rape accusations, or are we more into the kind that tweets Kill All White Males for fun, or perhaps the kind that wants to have women’s quotas for lucrative posts?
What’s with all the white men this, white men that. There’re no black men here? Asians? Indians? It’s all white men?
So given a bit of ambiguity, and with no other contextual knowledge, you lump me with a bunch of misogynists.
Let me be clear, in any case. The number of people that actually label themselves as MGTOW is probably very low, and not much more than the 6,000 subscribers of the Reddit forum (which is where it seems like this is coming from).
These are the noisy tip. The iceberg is a large mass of disenfranchised men. They aren’t part of any club. They just got a crappy education and a crappy job, and maybe are taking drugs for ADHD or depression or something. They’ve gotten a poor life outcome and aren’t really sure why. Some of them turn to blaming women for all of their ills; others (probably the majority) are more reasonable, but whether they find a scapegoat or not makes no difference in the end.
I’m speculating a little but the stats on education and crime don’t lie. I suspect there’s quite a few of them.
I’m sorry to hear that your state has such backwards policies, but I don’t think it has to do with the topic at hand.
Of course I notice it to some extent. I already mentioned one of them–the connection between modeling and anorexia. I’m glad to see there’s a certain amount of pushback.
I don’t think you’re right that women have it 12 times worse, though I’m also not sure how one would even quantify that. Even supposing it were true though, one should take into account a person’s ability to deal with it. If men were emotionally weaker, and less able to shrug off negative messaging, then it might be wise to look into the problem a little.
That’s a little like telling fat people to just eat less. It would be fine advice if it could be followed, but the evidence suggests that it can’t, and that maybe other solutions are in order.