MGTOW and TRP

Started by Sheoldred, February 09, 2015, 08:55:20 AM

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Sheoldred

Just recently I've managed to come across a whole wide array of videos and video authors on YT that propagate a new type of movement(although some say it isn't a 'movement') called MGTOW(Men Going Their Own Way) and a closely related group labelled TRP(The Red Pill).

When I first listened to some of the videos I rejoiced - the experiences recounted by various authors, like Sandman for example, seemed to resonate with me. The dating world is a fairly cruel place to some who aren't in the most favourable position in one way or another. Undoubtedly this goes for both, men and women. It is also understandable why some men who consider themselves MGTOW decided to go their own way, just as the name implies. When you feel like you've wasted anywhere near 10 and more years of fruitless relationships it tends to change your views.

However, the more I delved into their videos and the more I shared with a few female friends of mine the more uncomfortable I became. Namely, for a movement that has 'going their own way' in its name it certainly loves to obsess over something that they are trying to get away from in the first place. If you look up MGTOW on YT you'll see that most videos are about women. Not just about women but about how bad they basically are.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, in this case it feels like men are flocking under the banners of MGTOW and TRP because hatred of women is what unites them. And this feels wrong to me. At first I thought that MGTOW is about men, not women. There's barely any videos about anything but women and how the government conforms to them. Every video has to mention women. But why? Isn't it about men going their own way(literally!? The name of the movement suggests it is fairly neutral.

Why am I so interested in this movement and its growth? Like I mentioned before, I can relate to the experiences of men who consider themselves MGTOW. However, when I tried to think a little deeper I discovered that I've also had many sour experiences with my male peers as well. In fact, while I was never directly bullied, I'd say I suffered more at the hands of other males. So while I had my fair share of bitter lessons with women I can't say I've had it any better with men when it came to friendships. I believe that for quite a few decades now our society has been raising very egocentric generations of both men and women. MGTOW seems to paint all women with a single wide brush, however, and doesn't even touch upon the horrible things men do. Unless they're 'manginas'.

None of the MGTOW threads or videos talk about males abusing other males in various ways unless its the so called 'manginas' that are mere thralls to women. No talks about how to handle your life without women without actually mentioning women. It becomes a bitter irony - the movement claims that women cannot live without men and will certainly regret not settling with them earlier before they hit the 'wall'. That is, their 30s-40s when their 'market value' drops dramatically because all women have to offer is their looks. Yet the amount of content that discusses women made me wonder at some point - maybe its them that cannot live without women?

What makes it more ironic is that the more radical MGTOWs exhibit the very same traits they ascribe to women. They say women are self-entitled and have very high standards but they themselves won't settle for any less than a 18-26 year old who is at least an '8'. They think women are narcissists but they're rather narcissistic themselves because they define themselves as the stronger sex because women are the weaker sex that are incapable of sustaining the infrastructure and so forth. Even more irony because at some point I heard in a video that MGTOW is about defining yourself without allowing the society and women define who you are. Why use women as a crutch then?

Feels like MGTOW could be something great. But despite being a fairly new movement iirc, it is already starting to show signs of decline, becoming the male counterpart of radical third wave feminism that they claim not to be. After all, there is a fine line between simply going your way and deliberately going out of your way to criticise something you are trying to get away from in the first place.

I was wondering what do the members of Elliquiy think of these movements?

Here's an article that also criticizes the movement for those interested:

http://www.doctornerdlove.com/2014/09/the-red-pill/

Oniya

The idea of 'going your own way' and 'not letting other people define you' could indeed be a good thing.  There is a need in society for more signs that say 'Yay, our side!' and fewer that say 'Your side sucks!'  Unfortunately, it sounds like these people need to start making some new signs.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Caehlim

Well honestly there are millions of sources that tell you how to be a MGTOW.

That video about stamp-collecting. The one teaching how you to hang-glide. An article on 15th century sword-fighting techniques. A recipe book. Unless you're doing something with a partner, then anything you do to follow your own interests is going your own way.

The reason that I think these movements focus on such negative things is twofold.

1) Dating/attempted dating is presumably a large part of a person's life to end up in a movement such as this. Therefore one of the big changes they need is to break these habits and get out of the environments in which they do these thing. Thus they create these messages to convince one another and themselves that they don't want to date.
2) They haven't yet found other interests upon which to focus, which is why they're still dedicating their time to the MGTOW movement. Otherwise they'd probably be making videos and media about whatever new interest they had found to replace this previous expenditure of their time.
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Valthazar

There's a lot to be said about not doing things in order to impress women.  Those are good lessons.

But I think a lot of these overly militant "MGTOW movement guys" are the ones who have crashed-and-burned when it came to dating women, and feel some degree of jealousy towards men who do date successfully.  So they feel the need to criticize women to somehow justify the fact that they are voluntarily opting out of being involved with women.

Also, while there are a ton of shallow women out there, there are a lot of sweet and friendly ones too.

Sheoldred

Quote from: Caehlim on February 09, 2015, 09:48:19 AM
Well honestly there are millions of sources that tell you how to be a MGTOW.

That video about stamp-collecting. The one teaching how you to hang-glide. An article on 15th century sword-fighting techniques. A recipe book. Unless you're doing something with a partner, then anything you do to follow your own interests is going your own way.

They actually have videos like that?

Thing is when I type in 'MGTOW' in YouTube, which I believe is one of the main sources of info for a lot of men like myself then all I get are videos about divorce and husbands being left behind and women this and women that. It might suck you into a place you don't wanna be in, misrepresenting MGTOW entirely by the end of the day.

Of course it could be just that I messed my own YT up by stumbling upon the female hating videos first and now YT bumps those for me but perhaps somebody could check and type in MGTOW in their YouTube search and see what comes up? For me its basically rows of Sandman videos and all he ever talks about is women. He does make good points sometimes but it feels like an obsession on his part.


Quote from: Caehlim on February 09, 2015, 09:48:19 AM
The reason that I think these movements focus on such negative things is twofold.

1) Dating/attempted dating is presumably a large part of a person's life to end up in a movement such as this. Therefore one of the big changes they need is to break these habits and get out of the environments in which they do these thing. Thus they create these messages to convince one another and themselves that they don't want to date.
2) They haven't yet found other interests upon which to focus, which is why they're still dedicating their time to the MGTOW movement. Otherwise they'd probably be making videos and media about whatever new interest they had found to replace this previous expenditure of their time.

Collective hate tends to grow rather than shrink sometimes and turn into an ideology of its own with a concrete set of ideas that had no place in the movement in the first place. Getting things out of your system is good(totes what I did here :P) and I hope that's what is happening but it does have that inherent danger of becoming chronic hate. There's some threads of reddit I noticed where some men admitted to being misogynists and that they simply cannot get over it because their views are so skewed. I could link one of those. Am I allowed to link reddit here? I'm asking, just in case.

And yes, I'd love to see more videos that have nothing to do with women and that have the MGTOW label on it because I am quite interested in seeing how men handle their lives, what 'life hacks' they have to share with us and so forth. Life hacks that aren't lame date tips.

Oniya

#5
I think what Caehlim was saying is that you don't need to have a movement to teach people to 'go their own way'.  You go your own way by getting up and going.  The vids you find by searching 'MGTOW' are vids made by people who are still sitting around complaining that they are about to go their own way.

Now, here's a guy who knows how to go his own way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pACPBcGfq3Q
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
O/O's Updated 5/11/21 - A/A's - Current Status! - Writing a novel - all draws for Fool of Fire up!
Requests updated March 17

Hemingway

I came across some MGTOW videos a few weeks back, and they were, frankly, pretty reprehensible. 'Misogyny' gets tossed around a lot, but some of the views I heard expressed in those videos would qualify by any definition. Like accusations that the only thing all women want from me is to marry them, then divorce them to 'take their resources'. Or statements explicitly suggesting women "can't be human". Not to mention they're only too happy to attack men who don't conform to the rules of their little clique.

The people whose videos I watched really seemed to have more in common with the 'radical feminists' they were railing against than they might care to admit.

consortium11

There's a fair amount of crossover between MGTOW, the "Red Pill" lifestyle and PUA's so things I'll say will likely touch on all three.

(And yes, I fully appreciate the seeming irony of MGTOW... a group basically around "cutting themselves off" from women and certainly under no circumstances ever having sex with them... and PUA's... a group all about having sex... crossing over, but they certainly do. Both are basically reacting in different ways to the same stimulus; one divests themselves of what they dislike completely, the other pretends to be something else in a hope to "succeed"... using the term very loosely... at it. It's not even the weirdest crossover I'm going to mention).

As a general rule I try to separate ideas themselves from the people to speak (or even originated them). Someone can be the biggest... I generally try not to describe people in such ways but "arsehole" is probably the most accurate word... on the planet but that doesn't mean their ideas or wrong... or even if their specific idea is wrong that the general idea behind it is also incorrect. So whenever I watch, listen to or read about MGTOW I try to avoid basing my entire opinion on MGTOW on the fact that the people behind it invariably turn out to be... well, there's that word again, arsehole. And even doing that, even ignoring how toxic and malicious such people appear to be there's not a huge amount of value I can find in MGTOW.

Having already lumped MGTOW and PUA's together let us once again go to strange pair of bedfellows... if one considers the intellectual position behind extreme lesbian separatism and MGTOW there's no much to slide between them. Both, rightly or wrongly (and I'd say wrongly), see a world that is biased against their sex/gender (I use both to account for all positions within the movements) and have decided the best way to solve it is to take the whole "the personal is the political" to the extreme; if men/women are the cause of such great evil in the world then to prevent evil being done to you cut yourself off from men/women as much as possible. In fact the only real difference is that the lesbian separatists "decided" to become lesbians (as the name suggests) while the MGTOW crowd didn't "decide" to indulge in a little man love themselves... and instead tend to have... let's be polite and say "really, really stupid" views on homosexuality.

I have little sympathy with either position.

To break the golden rule and actually split the political and the personal, MGTOW's political position is basically taking their ball and going home. And that's it. They, rightly or wrongly (and again I'd say wrongly), see a world heavily and deliberately biased against men and so decide to try not to engage with that world. Great. If this was a movement with millions of members then it would still be a fairly stupid way of dealing with problems... when it's a movement of youtube videos and forum posts it's spectacularly ineffective. As much as our egos would like to imagine life as some John Galt fantasy where we all withdraw our labour and show how rubbish the world would be without us, that's not going to happen... whoever your nomination for the smartest/most important person in the world is, if they suddenly disappeared does anyone really think the world would fall apart? It becomes even more silly when you browse over anything the MTGOW crowd say and 3/4 of the time it's shouting at feminists. That's not so much "going your own way" as "going a bit down the hall and then constantly trying to get the last word in."

That said, there is at least some purity to a "screw it, I'm leaving" position. If you take the wider Men's Rights Movement one completely valid criticism is that while MRA's can sprout dozens of statistics (frequently true) about the ways in which life is hard for men... be it suicide rates, current earnings comparisons etc etc... they rarely if ever do anything about them. One doesn't have the be the biggest supporter of feminism (and as anyone who's followed my posts here can tell you I'm pretty dismissive of certain more recent strands) to be able to identify the succcess femenism has had... from getting the vote onwards. The Men's Rights Movement in roughly its modern form has been going since the 1970's... what campaigns or successes does it have to shout about? Increases in paternity leave in recent years (and I should note that's arguably also a feminist success; it allows a woman who's had a child to return to work while the father stays home without taking as serious a financial hit)? That's about it. I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason certain MRA's are happy to talk about how there are so few shelters for vulnerable men while being so reluctant to set one up is because that lack of shelters gives them a stick to beat feminists with. Compared to that, there is some merit in a position that doesn't pretend to be about changing the world, instead simply getting away from it.

On the personal level it's a horrible way to govern human interaction. And it borrows rather a lot (you'll see a theme here) from the more extreme wings of feminism that view all men as being "evil"... either inherently or because of the insidious effects of a patriarchy which they cannot escape... and/or use the "all men are capable of rape and thus the undercurrent of all interactions between a man and a woman is that he could rape her" and/or a whole bunch of other pretty damn extreme stuff. From what I've seen of MGTOW videos they're not just complaining about a system that favours women, they're seeing pretty much each and every woman as an evil Jezebel intent only on exploiting men. The extreme feminists will talk about how an undercurrent of rape applies to all interactions... the MGTOW crowd are pretty much saying the same thing but substituting rape for "alimony/child support payments" or false rape accusations. It's such a foolish position that it's hardly worth bothering to break it down.

As far as I can tell there is precisely one thing of worth to MGTOW and the whole "Red Pill" thing... and it's something PUA's have noted and worked on (hence their inclusion). You shouldn't value your own existence on how other people regard you... especially not how members of the other sex do. You're worth far more than that. Your self-worth should be based on far more than your relationship status. PUA's picked up on it (somewhat hypocritically considering that virtually the entire point of being a PUA is to define yourself by how you do with women) because there's something fairly attractive about having the confidence to know that it doesn't really matter if you get the girl or not and it's certainly not attractive to obsess over one (and I'm not talking the extremes of obsession complete with shrines, candles and badly written poetry) or to define yourself utterly by whether you "get" her or not. That's largely my issue with PUA as a culture/lifestyle... hell, even as a technique. I think it could do a lot of good if they became the person PUA's present them to be... confident, happy, sure of themselves. But PUA's don't. They pretend to be.

This touches on the whole "nice guy" thing... another point of similarity between MGTOW/Red Pillers and feminists. Both tend to have a lot of contempt for the "nice guy". The "nice guy" is the one who's attracted to a girl but is content only to be friends despite wanting more. He'll never press the issue though... that wouldn't be "nice". And as he pats her head and listens to her cry and complain after another failed relationship with a "bad boy" who mistreated her he sits there and thinks "Why do you keep going for bad boys? Why don't you go for me? I'm nice". But he never says it and six months later the cycle repeats again.

To the MGTOW/Red Pillers he's an example of how "pussy whipped" the world is, an example of a man who's given up their masculinity in a vain hope of pleasing a woman, an example of how pathetic modern men are. To the feminists the "nice guy" is an example of the entitlement culture and mindset they claim men have; when the "nice guy" says he's "nice" what he's really saying is "I was nice to you therefore I'm entitled to have sex with you." They see it as indicative of a worldview where women are sexual dispensing machines; you point kindness coins in, you get sex out.

I think there's actually a certain amount of strength to both views, although both still miss the mark widely. In my mind the "nice guy" isn't saying "I'm nice therefore I deserve sex"... he's saying "I'm nicer then these other guys you go with who always end up hurting you... doesn't it make sense to go for me?". And there's a certain rational strength to that position... which would be great if relationships and attraction were decided by rationality alone. They're not. But that's still not enough to label a "nice guy" pathetic or an example of what's gone wrong in the world. It is, at the end of the day, simply someone being nice.

So where does that leave us?

If you hear something about how bad the world is for men from a MGTOW type then double check the source but don't dismiss it out of hand; there are some things in this world that are pretty damn rubbish for men. But then don't just use it as a quick fact to pull out when debating with/shouting at feminists. Do something about it.

And don't define yourself purely by how you do with women be it in terms of one night stands or relationships. Everyone is far more than simply their relationship status. You may also find this also tends to work the other way; as long as you're still out and about the less you care about whether you "get the girl" or not, the more likely you are to get her. But again, you shouldn't be that bothered if you don't. It's deeply unhealthy to define yourself entirely by other people's opinion of you. That's not an excuse to go out and be a right arsehole while screaming "La La I don't care what you think of me"... it's just a reminder that happyness doesn't come from other people's thoughts of you.

Beyond that? Stay the hell away from those groups and that mindset. It's a nasty, crude, toxic position that tends to corrupt everything it touches. It's relationship with the extreme side of feminism is basically the horseshoe principle in action... they're not opposites, they're virtually identical.

AndyZ

History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new. - Ecclesiastes 1:9 NLT




There's two pretty standard bits here.  One of them has already been touched on by Oniya, but I doubt she'll mind if I put down my own spin.

The very concept of taking The Red Pill in The Matrix has not only been done to freaking death, but has proved itself meaningless.  The whole concept of The Matrix was meant to be about accepting the pure, hideous truth for what it was no matter what it was...and many people who loved the first one vehemently deny that the Wackowskis ever made sequels.



Those of us who are freaking weird don't really need to explain to people that we're freaking weird except inasmuch as that people notice and usually get confused when we don't match into their particular expectations.  Everyone is like that to some extent, and it makes people different, but it doesn't make you any better or worse when everyone else sees things differently than you do.

Back in the 90s, we had nonconformists who all conformed in their nonconformism.  It didn't take long for the words conformists and nonconformists to die out when people pointed that out.

I can't find the comic strip that originally said this, but here's one that's close.



Yelling for people to "Wake up" or other such is most often done as pure exasperation.  When people have something to say, it's best done when simply stated without the derision.




The rest of this crap is not new either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rules

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game:_Penetrating_the_Secret_Society_of_Pickup_Artists

It's all good, and it's all in fun.  Now get in the pit and try to love someone.

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Sheoldred

Quote from: Oniya on February 09, 2015, 12:14:16 PM
I think what Caehlim was saying is that you don't need to have a movement to teach people to 'go their own way'.  You go your own way by getting up and going.  The vids you find by searching 'MGTOW' are vids made by people who are still sitting around complaining that they are about to go their own way.

Now, here's a guy who knows how to go his own way:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pACPBcGfq3Q

I don't entirely agree. Sometimes even intelligent people can get stuck in some routine. The mainstream media does have a very strong influence on many lives and coupled with certain style of parenting there is no guarantee a guy will on day go 'hey, maybe I don't actually need a woman in my life' all by himself when all his friends and colleagues and siblings are telling him he needs a woman. At the very least he'd be caught in between and even then assuming he finally comes to the conclusion that he'd be better off alone he'd discover this sooner if he had somebody who reached that conclusion earlier talk to him about it. Sometimes we need someone to point us in the right direction or at least hint at something we're doing wrong or that there are alternative ways.

In which case MGTOW could have easily taken the chance to actually teach younger men to deal with break-ups and how to be happy without a woman in your life because it isn't all that easy, especially when you're young. Internet porn is also a bad alternative that has its own risks.

Welll, in a way they are helping men deal with their break-ups but they're doing so by antagonizing women and dehumanizing them, so that's simply turning their inward hatred outward rather than somehow abolishing it.

Florence

Movements claiming to have a noble goal, but really just being a bunch of men complaining about how women ruin everything seems to be a running theme lately.

I'll avoid naming names, because I'm sure that would risk derailing the conversation, but I'm confident most reading know which movements I'm referring to.

In general, I've noticed this problem where men will raise complaints which range wildly from perfectly valid to absolutely absurd. Yet, rather than actually doing anything to fix them, they simply complain about them, and use them as a go-to retort for anyone espousing anything resembling feminist opinions.

That, in a nutshell, has been why I have almost a knee-jerk aversion to anything that claims to be 'for men', because it seems like 9/10 times it's really 'against women'.
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