There’s a conversation I’ve heard a few times, between any of several prominent female MRAs and other men within the movement.
“We need more female MRAs; the guys need hope.”
Or, as related to me by a female member of the MHRM, it goes something like “we need more women like you in the movement” followed by “it gives the guys hope.”
The hope referred to is that of men within this human rights movement that, someday, they might find somebody to love who both recognizes them as non-disposable human beings, and who won’t use the courts, or the police, or simply the public court of male-is-evil female-is-good to dispose of them at the first moment of advantage or convenience. It seems like an awful lot of guys, both within the men’s human rights movement and outside it, are awfully fond of women, and want to love and be loved by one who isn’t malevolent or crazy.
Yeah, that’s right: An awful lot of the supposedly woman-hating “hard core MRA types” really just want a stable, committed relationship.
But, being MHRA, they know they can’t have that. At least, not as long as they remain committed to the radical idea that men, as human beings, live in a world that treats them as disposable, and face a long list of powerful disadvantages in a society which insists they [men] are the all-powerful rulers of the world, in the same breath as men are told to be quiet, go to the back of the bus, do their duty, pay, provide, and when convenient for others, die.
Stepping outside the context of the MHRM for a moment, I saw a homeless man’s sign earlier this year which read: “all I want is to sleep under a roof, and to love and be loved, why is it so hard?”
But getting back to the idea of: “we need more female MRAs, because it gives hope to guys in the movement.”
I happen to think we need female MRAs simply because this is a human rights movement, and humans come in two standard models typically identified as “men” and “women”.
But what about giving hope to the men in this movement who, deep in their bones, want to love and be loved? What about hope for the guys who wish they could find a nice, not-crazy, not passively-predatory woman to settle down and build a family with? What can we do for them to give them some hope?
Guys, it’s time for you to put aside the desire for something that, if it ever existed, no longer does.
Sure, it’s easy to find a woman you get along with. It’s relatively easy to find somebody you like enough to move in with, sleep with, share breakfasts with and all kinds of other domestic contentments.
But the fact remains that even in a loving, trusting, functional relationship between a man and a woman, the law, the family courts, and the consensus of the entire rest of the world is that if you and she come to a serious disagreement, the world will move to protect her (the innocent victim) from you (the bad, bad, bad man).
And that means that a conventionally structured intimate relationship between a man and a woman is one in which she holds a metaphorical gun to his head every minute of every day. She has the power to dispose of him, regardless of who, or even whether, anyone in a disagreement is right or wrong.
A great many men outside the MHRM understand this, which is why we keep hearing so much about a so-called marriage strike. Despite the name it’s actually not a strike in the sense of a temporary suspension during negotiation. What we commonly call the marriage strike is actually a diaspora.
But for those men who really really wish they could meet a nice, compassionate woman like our own Karen Straughan, or Alison Tieman, or Della, or Suz, or like Dianna or Judgy Bitch, then settle down and build a life together, you gents are sadly out of luck. That thing you want does not exist.
Are there more women like Diana or Suz, or Karen, or Della or Typhon, or Judgy Bitch? Sure there are, maybe even as much as 1% of the female population. But the problem remains that in a conventionally structured intimate relationship, you are still living under the barrel of that metaphorical gun.
Some guys might even say “I wouldn’t mind, so long as it’s somebody like this or that female MRA.”
Let’s pick that apart before we swat it contemptuously aside. A woman worth being loved and trusted, who ostensibly loves you, even while she willingly participates in a “relationship” in which she is the fiat owner of the life, freedom, and continued public person as “good man” of somebody she would apparently love?
A sane and moral human being cannot be content as the jailor and owner of their partner, spouse or significant other.
If the person whom you want to love and be loved by is content to hold a metaphorical gun to your neck every minute of every day, then they are nobody you should ever have trust or affection for. Which is why conventional intimate relationships are broken, defunct, and dystopian zombie abuse-relationships, no matter how much illusion and reality denial we may indulge in.
So am I saying we should all give up on even loving or being loved?
Uhhhh, no.
I know a great many detractors and critics of the MHRM as well as the MGTOW movement would characterize it in such terms.
MGTOWs are sad, pale, hairy, flabby, lonely sexless losers – who when not in their mother’s basements live in the wildness in canvas tents and caves, masturbating to internet porn and subsisting on potato peelings and ramen noodles.
That sounds pretty damned sad.
Surrounding the MHRM, and men, going their own way, there is a conception that in declaring himself a human being of equal, non-disposable human worth – a man is electing to leave, rather than join the party. He’s un-inviting himself from some significant fraction of cultural and social life.
All of that is encapsulated by the conception of the MRM, or the MGTOW movement as the sad, lonely loser.
Nothing could be further from reality. But there are two realities in play here. One of them is the “reality” of public narrative. That’s what “we” (the public) all agree, without overtly agreeing, to be real. It’s the story we all, by our silence, accept. The other reality is what an empiricist objectivist might describe as reality. This is a little more challenging, because it’s reality dependent on observation – while even this discussion of it takes place in that abstract space of an online blog; removed from the direct observation an empirically based world view requires.
As a MGTOW, you are not leaving the party. You are the party.
Does following a MGTOW path include having friendships, even intimate sexual relationships with women?
OF COURSE IT DOES!
It just means that those relationships are not patterned in a conventional format.
Does following a MGTOW path include pursuing a challenging and potentially highly paid professional career?
Um duh, yes.
It just means your reasons for such pursuit are your own, and not likely attached to the public perception of social approval, status, and group hierarchy ladder climbing.
Does following a MGTOW path mean avoiding all contact with women, or leaving the job market, or opting out of public life or society?
Aside from responding with “NO, OF COURSE IT DOESNT!” this point merits special mention. For some practising and advocating MGTOW, a flat rejection of sexual friendships, intimate relationships, economic success and of social engagement. This particular conception is understandable as a gut level reaction to populist anti-male culture and law. But this proposed path of escalating disengagement ends with a practitioner literally hiding in terror from participation in his own life.
I’ll say it again: as a MGTOW, you are not leaving the party. You ARE the party.
This is repeated because it’s one of the points repeatedly misunderstood, and misrepresented by both advocates and critics of MGTOW.
A man defining himself as human, demanding equitable treatment within his personal, professional, and legal relationships does not necessitate the universal opting-out that both critics and some advocates of MGTOW predict.
Doesn’t this posited life of poverty, solitude and lonely masturbation sound like either fear, or the threat from authoritarians when faced by the “threat” of individual male noncompliance?
Doesn’t the projected path of sexless poverty, unemployment and basement-dwelling economic parasitism sound just like something out of the venerable, but still excellent, Shaming Tactics catalog?
Are there elements of public, social, and legal life to disengage from as a Man Going His Own Way? Of course, particularly established social and legal conventions binding men to any enforceable status as lesser legal and social entities by virtue of sexual identity. Marriage, for me, springs sharply to mind here.
But does a MGTOW path include cultivating collegial as well as intimate friendships with members of our human race’s other 51%?
Yes, of course. And in a MGTOW practice, those relationships, whether long- or short-term are non-coercive, nonviolent, and based on honesty and compassion for the men and women within those relationships.
Specific details of such relationships are omitted here from this discussion for several reasons. First being the fact that the “Their Own Way” in MGTOW means whatever solutions and practices one MGTOW may employ are personal, and not prescriptive to be imposed or even outlined as some kind of “you should do what I say” manual.
The second reason being that MGTOW is activism, tackling a very large problem, and in opposition to what, for now, remains the major accepted standards of our society. The wider world is beginning to wake up to, and to seriously oppose MTGOW as a movement can learn the details after their shit has been fucked up. Because just as the culture of MGTOW is not prescriptive for men adopting it, it is also not static.
A man going his own way is defining himself, and consciously defining the terms of his relationships to the world, to friends of either sex, to education and employment. The idea of letting existing social conventions eject him from relationships, or employment, or success, in any area of life is really not going his own way. It’s simply giving in to a culture of abuse.
You are neither invited to the party, or the adventure, or the fun, nor are you disinvited. You ARE the party, and whoever refuses to treat you as a human being, rather than the disposable sub-person of the mainstream narrative: they are disinvited, and too bad for them.
This isn’t, by the way, an article designed to give men in this movement hope. Hope is for losers. This is simply a very polite correction to a false characterization driven by the fear of the opponents of this men’s human rights movement, and the subset of that movement identified as MGTOW.
Thank you for your kind attention.
