Men Going Their Own Way thinks women are destroying the world

Culture By Lindsey Kline

They call themselves “Men Going Their Own Way,” and a great number of them have vowed to swear off relationships with women forever.

Tens of thousands of men from all around the world stand behind this movement. The way they see it, it simply doesn't make sense to take part in the dating game because women are just instruments to ruin men’s lives.

For men, the MGTOW movement reveals a welcoming community that will coddle your masculinity after women cripple your pride. For women, the crusade is an indication of just how deeply you can be despised for ensnaring men in romance and relationships.

On their Reddit community and website forums, the MGTOW talk of their triumphs in overcoming the glamorization of love and marriage. They discuss disgust with women’s deceit and help one another along in paths to self-defined success. These platforms are dedicated to what its members see as each man's fight for sovereignty of himself.

The movement began over 10 years ago when a small group of older gentlemen sat down to organize a revolt against marriage — which they believed was a shit deal for most men. They hammered out a manifesto for men who want to opt out of the typical path of society — getting married, getting milked for money, and then giving up your baby gravy to pop out a few children, even if you didn’t want any.

Solaris, one of MGTOW’s earliest adopters, stumbled upon the movement after reflecting on the many women who had exploited him. He Google searched “WOMEN SUCK,” and clicked on the first link to find a site exclaiming: “WOMEN SUCK, AND SO DO JEWS AND HOMOSEXUALS.” Solaris clicked out of this first site, and found the second one much more reasonable.

It was called the Nice Guy site, and contained the mournful cries of young men who had been endlessly friendzoned by women in their lives. “A lot of men are sold on these very Disney-esque versions of relationships,” Solaris says over Skype. “We’re brought up to believe that if we always tried our best, and were beacons of kindness and generosity in a world filled with thugs, we would inevitably find a girl who would love us and accept us for who we were. Well that's a myth. A fraud. A big damn lie,” he says.

So around 2005, Solaris joined the early membership of Men Going Their Own Way and soon took over their Nice Guy forums. On the forums, conversational topics range from false rape accusations, to the menace of feminist movement, to whether the boys prefer their women (that they most certainly won’t be marrying) to be shaven or hairy.

According to the group's website, MGTOW is founded upon all kinds of chauvinistic principles. They take meninism (an opposition to feminism which views women’s rights as a direct detriment to men) to a whole ‘nother level. In studying the maxims of their movement, you’ll find a countless number of campaign principles that they believe reveal the depths of women’s treachery. Among them are:

A woman does not think in terms of logic or reason, but rather has a Rationalization Hamster in her brain

“The Rationalization Hamster is endlessly, feverishly spinning the hamster wheel which helps her rationalize and justify her thoughts, behavior and actions regardless of how counterintuitive they may be,” explains the MGTOW website. In fact, this buffed up rodent is so powerful that no amount of reasoning can stop the hamster from spinning. “The dialogue in women’s heads has no place in reality,” they warn.

“For what it’s worth, I’ve definitely met women like that,” Solaris says in defense of the Rationalization Hamster theory. “They’re these women who think, ‘Oh, I’ve done something wrong; it must be somebody else’s fault.’”

Female oppression is a myth; men are actually being oppressed

Before you can even open your feminine mouth to debate this belief, the MGTOW subreddit has prepared some statistics for you. The Real Sexism Project cites a number of figures that indicate sexual discrimination is exclusively inflicted against men, such as “men lose custody in 84 percent of divorces,” “men are over 165 percent more likely to be convicted of the same crime than women,” and “men get arrested in 85 percent of all domestic violence arrests, even though women are the perpetrators in most domestic violence cases.” That’s just science, silly women. Not that their hamsters could comprehend ...

The wage gap is more of an “accomplishment gap”

Solaris will argue that at this point, the wage gap has essentially been debunked. But according to the author of the MGTOW’s history page, the wage gap exists as a fair reflection of an “accomplishment gap.”

He claims that because men are more likely to take idiotic risks, they have been more successful than women in the history of invention. For example, men invented the airplane and afforded women the luxury of boarding an aircraft. But while feeble-minded ladies can’t explain the basic operating principles of a jet engine, you can count on them to complain when the flight is delayed. According to MGTOW, many modern women don’t even seem to believe that the Earth is round either, even though men proved this centuries ago.

Women are infected with “Baby Rabies” and scheme to get themselves pregnant against a man's will

Men Going Their Own Way is warning you, “she has a plan to get pregnant and you are not a part of it.” As irrefutable evidence of women’s dastardly tactics, MGTOW cites a damning Jerry Springer-esque talk show discussion. This plot is intended to extort you for child support payments. “There are virtually NO limits to what she is capable of – and WILL do – including reaching into the garbage to fertilize herself using the contents of a discarded condom,” the page claims.

While a rational man like Solaris agrees this can’t be the case with all women, he explains to me, “I have plenty of buddies who are married, and when their wife says ‘I want to have a baby,’ my buddy will respond, ‘Okay… Is this a 2-way conversation?' And the answer is usually, no.”

A real man is one who is unshackled by a female

Women will only treat men like “a utility, disposable tool, ATM machine, sperm donor or human wallet,” the MGTOW site explains. A real man is one who has not fettered himself to a female, and is immune and unaffected by her charms, looks or manipulations. Rise above, boys.

In discussing these principles with Solaris, I confess that I find them hilarious because they’re the most unreasonably misogynistic ideas I’ve ever heard. He excitedly responds, “I’m so glad that you brought up unreasonableness! See, at one point we realized that being polite and reasonable had basically gotten us nowhere. So we went out there, we were completely unreasonable, and it served the community well because people finally started paying attention.”

But Solaris also believes that these stereotypes have a basis in reality. “The MGTOW page takes more of a ‘GOTCHA’ take on these issues. We’re suspicious of the girls who come to us claiming that they’re the Virgin Mary; that they’re as pure as the driven snow. Women aren’t unicorns or special snowflakes. They’re humans, and they’re entirely capable of bad shit. The site is essentially telling women, ‘You thought you were fooling us, but we’re onto you,’” he says.

This conception that women are disingenuous is a major element to the Men Going Their Own Way movement. And even though many members swear off sex and relationships to evade female falseness, chastity is certainly not a requirement for entry. “There’s no one true path to going your own way,” Solaris says.

This is a shame to many proud women and feminists, who stand in stark opposition to the rhetoric of MGTOW. If the Men Going Their Own Way were strictly celibate, they wouldn’t be out of ladies' lives, but they’d at least be out of their gene pool.

[originally published September 19, 2017]