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I’m not sure I’m a MGTOW but I support the general principle – I’ve been arguing the case against feminist unfairness and its philosophical / logical inconsistencies for decades. I’m homosexual – I don’t know how that sits with MGTOW. I was very active in gay law reform as a tennager in the ’80s, but I ditched the movement in my early 20s because it remained insular and tyrannous towards itself – when you have no rights that’s a valid position, but to continue with it once you have rights is something altogether pathological and toxic. How can one say “I want equality – to be accepted as part of the wider world” but then continue to demand “but I have to be treated differently and live in an isolated community“. And, like feminism, there is a uniform of the body and of the mind – you must look like this, act like this, think this, live here… otherwise you’re not a valid “gay” – I hate the term “gay” – it focuses identity on only sexuality and “the lady protesteth too much methinks” – its not “strong”, its just saying it is . “Homosexual” is too “clinical” and we’re not an illness – yeah, well, heterosexual is not that catchy either and not an illness… You’re point is? Being touchy about it – neurotic – gives away the underlying insecurity. I didn’t fight to throw off all the stereotypes – fight my own upbringing, put my family through the struggle to reconcile it, and challenge the wider world’s prejudice – only to accept a whole new set of stereotypes in this season’s fashionable colours. I’m still a man first.

Anyway, that disclaimer out of the way…

I’ve been very interested in the mens movement of late. Its about time it got some traction.

This is something I posted to Karen Straughn but thought I’d share it here (with a few edits) – I hope it gives some food for thought.

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I really appreciate your point of view – you make sense and put forward valid points. I do however find most of the MRM/MGTOW arguments to be reactionary rather than revolutionary – a response to feminism rather than a true alternative position. Much like the (valid IMO) argument that men’s identity and value is insidiously, unnecessarily and unfairly welded to heterosexuality and women’s needs (men are defined by / in relation to women), I see some of the arguments for men’s rights originating from the same economic and modern-occidental assumptions found in feminism (feminism being a tangle of economics, puritan morals, and unresolved Victorian artefacts). Women and feminism is still the subject – ironic, because much of feminism itself has traditional male qualities at the heart of it. A reaction to a reaction. MRM is arguing its case as a counter to feminism but argues from the same flawed foundations.

I’m wondering if you’ve investigated a biological / evolutionary / primatological approach to some of your arguments – looking beyond modern occidental civilised culture to a more basic biological approach to some of your arguments. There is new evidence emerging, new arguments and explanations being posited, and a different view of who we really are beginning to form. It challenges so many of the assumptions at the basis of our modern economic Western view of existence and, because these assumptions are the basis for feminism, it challenges feminism too.

To get started, there is a wonderful lecture by Christopher Ryan given at the Sydney Opera House – “Is monogamy unnatural?” (The talk itself was for the Festival of Dangerous Ideas and was titled  “If you want fidelity, get a dog!“). It’s free to download from ABC (Australia) Radio National’s Science Show (The ofirst and longest running science programme in the world (Even your own David Suzuki admits its true)): http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/is-monogamy-unnatural3f/5516302

Two books I recommend are:

Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan, & Cacilda Jethá

The Bonobo and the Atheist by Frans de Waal

I think they give an excellent perspective for evaluating feminism/gender/society and ourselves. We split off from the genus Pan a few million years ago – we’ve only been “civilised” for about 10,000 years – its in this time before we became “civilised” humans that we evolved as a species and as men – what can that Environment of Evolutionary Adaptiveness tell us about ourselves and how can it undermine the nonsense anti-science of feminism? Traditional systems are collapsing, men are getting done over, and feminism makes no logical sense because the whole premise of the argument is a false one.

I’m wondering if you’ve investigated a biological / evolutionary / primatological approach to some of your arguments – looking beyond modern occidental civilised culture to a more basic biological approach to some of your arguments.

I have. What got me started was several MGTOW bloggers wrote about r/K selection theory
(Here’s a Wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R/K_selection_theory .)
and applied it to the social changes going on world wide in industrialized nations.

I was already well aware of the experiments involving too many rats in too small a cage — and the alarming parallels with human behavior in crowded cities. Many MRM/MGTOW bloggers have picked up on that too. (Here’s its Wiki article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_B._Calhoun and the original movie documentary is on YouTube.)

We all know something ain’t right. Science is offering a good start to explaining why.

Social cycle theory may be less than scientific ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_cycle_theory ), but I find it compellingly believable. I put us in the decline stage.

I’m homosexual – I don’t know how that sits with MGTOW

I don’t think MGTOW have an opinion on that. Because it’s not an opinion.

How can one say “I want equality – to be accepted as part of the wider world” but then continue to demand “but I have to be treated differently and live in an isolated community[?]“.

That’s a very interesting question and there is an answer. Let’s use being gay as an example. Gays are also a group that want “equality”, equal rights etc. and I am often stopped at my local market by a person with a clipboard asking if I will support gay rights. So I stopped and c~~~ed my head and asked “what rights don’t gays have?”.

“Well… the right to get married for example.”

To which I would reply: “marriage is for gays”. Now the gay person I said that to was troubled by my answer and furrowed their eyebrows a bit, but how was that a problem? I support gay marriage 1000%. It’s straight marriage that I have a problem with.

The reason it’s a problem is because when you actually give the special group “equality” they can no longer be “special” anymore.

We see this in women all the time. That’s what “equality” means. It means no more special or differential treatment. When this is enforced, the group pretending to want “equality” is forced to self-reflect and realize that equality may not be what they wanted in the first place.

In the case of women, feminism convinced them that they were RAISING their status to being “equal” with men. But when you strip all special treatment away from a woman and hand her a shovel to get in the back of the line like everyone else and start digging or crawling into sewers…. she realizes “equality” means LOWERING her status to being “equal” with men.

••••

She was never “oppressed”… she was privileged. And they still expect this privilege simply because they were born with a vagina. A big gaping realization feminist theory. Oops. They f~~~ed up by asking for equality and now they are more miserable than ever.

Equality for gays means: no more “gay pride day”.

That “special” Sunday is now just like every other Sunday.
That’s what “equality” for gays would really mean. Are they sure they want it?

…. and then I go about my Sunday shopping giving that gay rights supporter something to think about.

I do however find most of the MRM/MGTOW arguments to be reactionary rather than revolutionary

No MGTOW can pretend it’s “revolutionary” because MGTOW have existed for centuries. But if it’s not revolutionary, how do you explain the outrage, strong objections and reactionary responses to men en masse deciding to do absolutely nothing? If it’s not revolutionary, why did we receive an email last week from someone congratulating us on setting feminism back 60 years – inspite of all the billions of dollars poured into (and wasted on) feminism? How is it possible for MGTOW to have even more of cultural effect than Men’s Rights Activists who make all this effort charging into battle but MGTOW are making a difference? You will find out when the garbage stops taking itself to the dump. Of course it’s revolutionary. In fact, everyone should be praying they never see it. Because if MGTOW really goes mainstream, you certainly will have a revolution on your hands.

Thank you for being conscientious about where you post, but you can post anywhere, really. The sections just exist so that someone can find something in the realm they are looking for. And appreciate your inspiring thought giving others something to think about.

Basically r-strategists – at the extreme – spit out a lot of eggs and sperm indiscriminately relying on sheer volume to fertilize the eggs, then rely on chance and sheer numbers for that offspring to survive to adulthood – there is no parental investment beyond this – salmon are a classic example (in fact most fish and reptiles are r-strategists).

K-strategists are the opposite – at the extreme – they mate for life, are monogamous, they produce one egg and internally fertilize and gestate it – they give live birth to one immature offspring and spend large amounts of time and energy protecting and feeding it until it is adult. Mammals are I think universally K-strategists. Mammal comes from the Latin for breast because it is the defining feature of our Class “Mammalia” – we suckle. This makes the mother central – biologically – to species survival.

That is basically where the theory should stop. But, add in a bit of male-dominated anthropology (that portrays males as vicious blood-thirsty uncooperative psychos) and a dash of feminism and you get the “CAD/DAD” hypothesis (taught to me in Evolutionary bio). It goes like this:
Humans are monogamous (assumption against evidence)
and women don’t like sex (assumption against evidence)
because women bear the main  responsiblity for child-rearing (ignoring we are social animals and live in strong family groups)
therefore women are choosey about partners (a social artifact maybe – modern not EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptiveness)? – did our ancestors understand or care about paternity?)
men are however highly sexed (why would male behaviour be so inconsistent with female behaviour?)
therefore women are looking for good “DADs” to have children with – who will provide (where’s that close family group again?)
so in response, as part of an interspecies cross-gender “arms-race”, some men “trick” women into sex with promises of fidelity – what a “CAD”.

That is one of the consequences of taking r/K Theory too far, and its mainstream thinking! F~~~ that! No responsibility on the female at all – just man shaming.

Here’s a comment I posted somewhere else on this topic:

I remember one discussion question [at Uni] that gave a scenario to which we were to apply our “learning” about CAD/DAD. In it a young female agrees to sex with a young male after the latter promises to be true to her etc. (claiming to be a “good” DAD). She falls pregnant. Then he leaves her to get it on with her best friend, of course he makes similar protestations of fidelity, and makes her pregnant too (really a “bad” CAD). Of course all the students responded that he was a CAD and regurgitated the theory on cue. I responded to them with:
“What about these young females though? They all fall pregnant – they have heard of contraception haven’t they? It should be that both parties take precautions but with such high stakes for the female as stated by the therory one would think she’d be more cautious. This would fit in with the “arms race” argument related to “CAD/DAD” – a way of protecting herself from the CAD. Also, adolescent girls getting pregnant out of wedlock is not exactly virtuous behaviour itself from a western moral point of view.
Is this falling pregnant a deceitful tactic of the female to keep the male from departing? If so, is it a version of the cheater theory for K-strategists? Would we call it “MUM/BUM”?”
I wonder about these things.”

As men, if we’re serious, we have to watch for a male-dominated explanation that may distort the reality as much as we have to watch for distortions from the feminists. Men have been portrayed as violent war-mongers when the underpinning evidence is pure speculation. There’s also subtle lies told: Chimps are out closest living relative. NO! A lie. Genus Homo has one species (sapiens) and is most closely related to the genus Pan which has two species (Troglodytes and Paniscus: Chimps and Bonobos). We are equally related to both. Add to that, that chimp aggression (and bonobo peacefulness too) is over-stated and caricatured – they’re not hyper-violent all the time. Comparing us exclusively to chimps is an attempt to substantiate a view of men as violent uncontrollable thugs (it maintains the traditions of early Savanna Theory (and completely ignores females too (they get off the hook))). Put a couple of thousand male chimps in a stadium and watch the bloodshed. Put a coupe of thousand men in a stadium and not much really happens: Its beyond chimps to do this level of socialisation; its in our nature as men to be this social.

On overpopulation- it is a huge problem any way you want to cut it. But any talk of limiting the birth rate gets a serious backlash. I actually support China’s “one child policy” – having big families is not a “right” or against “freedom” when the consequences are as large as complete collapse of society and untold environmental damage. There is not such thing as freedom in society; there is only license (sad, but true).

“The reason it’s a problem is because when you actually give the special group “equality” they can no longer be “special” anymore.“

Yep – that was pretty much my point.

I’m suggesting that MRM is responding to feminism making feminism the issue – feminism is flawed  perhaps because they argue from a false premise – that leaves us in danger of arguing from the same baseless assumptions. Assume everything they say is absolutely wrong – challenge all the assumptions made about men no matter where they come from. Somewhere along the line, society told women they were one thing and us another thing – assume they were wrong about both.

ANd ban marriage – absolutely. But, if some adults are entitled to it (it does come with some benefits) then all should be entitled to it. Personal story: My partner of 13 years (ex now), I had to take to Emergency at a large city hospital. We put my relationship down on the form as “partner” – the nurses crossed it off and put “friend” – legally they had to. And, once he went behind those doors I had no right to see him, be informed of his condition or make any decisions for him – unless the nurses were generous – I shouldn’t have to go through that. However, if I shacked up with a girl for 6 months I would have that right. There are reasons for it.

So of course the road ahead of us I can see as just as difficult a time. For me it is not about power over women, but more of getting the gender roles back in line and the respect men deserve for their effort.

Euphemus? I was looking for an online handle years ago and settled on it. I like that it sounds like “euphemism” which is sort of what a handle is.

Also, I have a passing interest in Greek mythology and ancient Greek culture – those guy’s were super smart. Greek mythology is really their version of psychology – Freud nicked “narcissism” from them for example (Narcissus didn’t fall in love with himself; he fell in love with the image of himself – big difference). And, the big-5 personality traits in psych come from the old Greek ideas of personality types – “the humours” – which go back even further still. The Greeks knew the Earth was spherical and orbited the Sun and they got the distance to the moon pretty accurate considering they had no telescopes etc. Amazing. We have a lot to learn from history.

Euphemus makes an appearances a few times. He was the helmsman on the Argo – Jason and the Argonauts. As a god/demigod he was known to “walk on water” – the mythical Jesus was not the first to pull that stunt! He was also a real man: The Archon of Athens circ. 400BC. He was ambassador to Syracuse (?) during the Peloponnesian Wars and tried to get them to side with Athens against the Spartans. Its during this debate that he came up with this gem:

For tyrants and imperial cities, nothing is unreasonable if expedient, no one a kinsman unless sure; but friendship and enmity is everywhere, a matter of time and circumstance.

Basically he said: “Athens is a tyrant and when we’re this big and powerful, we call the shots – whether you are our friend or not depends on what you can do for us.” Basically: “Might is right.” Ironically, the Spartans sided with them and they beat the s~~~ out of the Athenians!

Also, the Roman for Jupiter is Luppiter; The Greek is “Zeus”.

I feel uncomfortable talking about “gay” stuff – this is not really the forum for it – its really about hetero guys breaking the chains and working out their identity as men. I don’t want to distract from or encroach on that. But, its true I have a perspective similar to what you guys are trying to work out and that came from reconciling my sexuality against my masculinity. I came out when I was 14 and that forced me to evaluate what being a man meant – I really had no choice but to face it. Thing was – and its something you guys are taking on – I worked out that masculinity was seen to be defined by women. It went like this: If I’m homo then I’m not a real man (this was everyone’s – even my own – reaction) – unpacking that then, real men are heterosexual – restated, real men have sex with women. How could I be a man if no women were involved? I decided to be a man regardless – My masculinity is not defined by women.

That’s not the story for all “gays”: A lot of them do the flip and become feminised. They become passive, or effeminate – see themselves more closely identified with femininity. The “gay” culture can be a lot like feminism (they fight from the same handbook) the homo/gay distinction I make is a lot like the woman/feminist distinction: If a woman disagrees with feminism then she has “internalised misogyny”; If a homosexual disagrees with the “gay” agenda then he suffers “internalised homophobia” – I kid you not, this has been leveled at me starting back in the 1980s! Same passive-aggressive slipperiness: If I disagree with them its not because I have fault with them, its because I have fault with myself – I don’t hate them; I hate myself. My response? Oh, f~~~ off!

I’m not immune from female agro either – I read some of the stuff MGTOW report and know exactly what they mean. When I “came out” it was the girls who were most hostile. I wasn’t a camp, passive, girlish – I was still a boy – and they were hostile. The boys were basically cool about it – a few stupid jibes here and there – they were more inquisitive (not sexually inquisitive) than they were hostile. The girls however saw me as a triple-threat: 1) I was male and comfortable with that; 2) I didn’t want anything they were offering; 3) I could supply what they were offering at a discount price. They were pathological with their hatred. When I told that to “gays” I was shamed into silence – its misogyny, isn’t it?

That continued into adult life too: Women didn’t know what to do with me when I didn’t act passive, didn’t buy into femininity, acted like an ordinary guy who wasn’t interested in fashion, decorating, or Kylie Minogue, and where their feminine wiles didn’t have any effect on me. It was also difficult to do me for harassment too (another weapon in the arsenal defused). The damsel in distress routine never washed with me either. They were not my friend.

Rather than take my experience of coming out personally – making it subjective or only about sexuality – I realised it was a masculinity issue that gave me sympathy for men generally. I hope I’m no patronising you by saying this, but I see you guys as sort of coming out too by shaking off the chains binding your identity as men to your relationship to women. What are you when you’re not a husband? Or a boyfriend? Or a father? Are we still men? And, what does that mean? I had to work that out 30 years ago.

ADDED: The alternative lifestyle angle – yeah, in the early days their was a lot of talk about redefining how we would structure our lives and relationships. There was a real effort to work out how to live without traditional marriage, the nuclear family, and kids. Add to this, that a lot of us were rejected by our biological families too (not me thank god) and it became more necessary. The whole idea of marriage was not an issue in the early days: We really didn’t want to be bound up in this traditional model. We wanted to redefine our relationships as men and the idea of “family”. Partners / lovers were not possessive – open relationships were pretty normal. Family was who you chose to be family and included close friends, lovers (the two were not always mutually exclusive), and biological family. Then AIDS came along and the party was over. A lot of really good men who’d trail-blazed this stuff were infected before they knew it and they died in their thousands. The whole thing became a lot more conservative and mainstream and marriage equality became a big deal. It was linked to AIDS: A guy’s partner, who he’d nursed for moths, would end up in hospital in a coma in the last stages of the illness – then the law kicked in – he was not legally next of kin so along came the partner’s parents who had kicked their son out on the street and disowned him 20 years earlier – they would bar the guy access, take the body, and hold the funeral and not allow the guy to the funeral. If he had no will then they would take half the house, the businesses and all other property. If they had a will then the parents would contest it. This happened often enough and it destroyed these men’s lives. You think an ex-wife is a bitch – image a mother-in-law who thinks you’re mentally deranged and sub-human and was happy to throw her own son out on the street and damn him to hell (literally). This really motivated the marriage equality movement.

I’d prefer to see no marriage at all – I’m still old school. Women are the biological primary parent and they should bare the primary responsibility for children. I agree that if a woman falls pregnant she should notify the father within 7 days and give him 14 days to refuse paternity – she needs to do it herself or rely on her biological family. Everyone should be able to chose their next of kin – regardless of the gender and sexual relationship between the parties – it could be a lover, a parent, a sibling, cousin, or even your best friend. Some of the strongest relationships I’ve seen are between male friends and brothers – why shouldn’t you chose a brother to your next of kin? Defining relationships by sexual contact relies on monogamy being our default state and that just isn’t so – we need to p~~~ off this definition of relationship imposed by default by society.

Now that’s enough I think.

Thanks for the reply, I’m really enjoying reading about this MRM/MGTOW stuff – its so good to see I am no longer alone.

You’re very angry for good reasons. That anger can be daunting at first. I’m not telling you to change, just to be aware of the audience perception – it is what caught my attention in the first place. “Why are they so angry?” Now I know – fair enough, so you should be.

If I could give any warning it would be to avoid strict adherence to the “red pill” imagery. MGTOW is not as easy as swallowing a pill – its seems a bit more like peeling a “red onion”. As discussed on one thread: Throw the women off the site by all means and leave Mr KeyMaster to do his noose trick with the unrepentant “blues”, but give the men who come here a chance – don’t test them first – this is all very daunting and a new guy might need some time to adjust.

The great thing about this site is the honesty and intimacy. Men need men: Boys need men, young men need older men, men need mentoring. Fraternity. When you shacked up with women what happened to all your male friends? You know the guys you used to just hang out with? Be friends with? First maneuver of the bully: Isolate the target. They’ve kept you away from the only group capable of understanding a word you say: OTHER MEN! This site is a testament to it. You get on here and pour your hearts out, make yourselves vulnerable, talk freely in your own voice (even about masturabtion), and you’re immediately understood. Its been a long time for some of you. Men think differently – we’re wired differently – men are the only ones who really get you.

I have been inspired and moved by your stories – you’ve been through hell. Although I’m a Man Going My Own Way, your posts reveal I’m on a different trajectory. I don’t have to deal with personal gynocentrism / pussy-hunger, whereas this is, quite rightly, a difficult task for you. And, I’ve not had to deal with marriage and kids and divorce. You’re disentangling your sexuality from your masculinity but its a different process for you than it was for me. I don’t think my presence makes that easier for you, and I don’t think I have much to offer you in this important regard.

It may be the pussy that got you away from your male support, but I think it might be fear of gayness (I’m trying to steer clear of certain words starting with “homo”) – fear of being seen as manginas (or even f~~inas (I love that term)) – that keeps you away from each other. I’m not saying you have to go down on each other or dance naked around a fire, but I do wonder if a lack of close male relationships – of fraternity – where you can communicate in person with other men like you do on this site – is not part of your loneliness – the loneliness that keeps you hungry for pussy companionship. That’s perhaps another pill for another time – you have enough to deal with.

You don’t need a male only space; you need a straight-male only space.

So I’m off. Thank you again. You’re a surprising bunch of very intelligent men. Its been an honour. There is hope for a revolution after all.

PS: Don’t tell any gay I said you should have a “straight-male only space” – you thought feminists were difficult… “Hades hath no greater fury than a f~~~~~ scorned” – that was for you KeyMaster.

Then again, I think I just answered my own question. They need help because all they have is LGBTABCDEFG and there’s nothing they can do about it. They can’t go to Christian circles because of the maltreatment. Their only hope is leftist media, which is of course gynocentric dialled up to eleven. So, they’re screwed. However, they at least get to have their sex and fun with people that they trust and trust them, so they may bond and have intimacy.

So, despite all that, they actually don’t need to be MGTOW because again, relationships are still a refuge for them.

I was doing something today about homosexual men. There’s an article by a woman who says that men are basically in trouble because male models are paid a fraction of female models. However, it’s gay men who dominate the industries for women. They dominate fashion design and hair dressing. So, suck it.

In fact, I’ve always wondered about this because I would love a job where I get to play with the hair of gorgeous women, or dress them up in clothes I design. Think of the possibilities!

Women love gay men though, not just because they dress them and do hair, but because they compliment wildly, and can say things that straight men can’t. I knew a girl in highschool who remarked that she loves gay men. She regaled an experience where a gay man came over for dinner but when he saw her he doted on her gorgeous skin. She wasn’t exactly a troll either, though she was definitely overweight, at least in her chest area.

In fact, I would find gay men a threat because of the safety and trust in this community. Straight men feel the need to keep homosexual men at a distance because of their healthy boundaries. It’s an instinct. Yet, with straight men, that need isn’t there, so straight men can get closer. We’ll also be monitored for our sexuality and masculinity. We’d be judged by a narrative. So, it would threaten our thinking.