No, this isn’t a post about rape. In fact, it’s about the opposite. It’s about walking away, maybe running away. Specifically, it’s about the right to run–specifically, men‘s right to decline to trust, to eschew focus on relationships, and to refuse to open themselves to women beyond anything but the most superficial levels of interaction.

Why?

Because the same folks who dismiss, or outright advocate for false accusers, the same folks who rail against due process for men in criminal and family court, who claim both moral superiority and their own right to turpitude with impunity, who push men around, knock them to the ground, step on them, and kick them when they’re down – those same folks have the screaming audacity to act shocked and appalled when men feel maligned, get fed up, pick themselves up, turn their backs, and walk away.

My opinion of your sniffing response at men who don’t want any part of you anymore is simple: Kwitcherbitchen, ladies. It’s your own damned fault. You have no business complaining.

In recent weeks, there have been more than a few volatile discussions on the topic of the MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) movement. I’ve been part of similar discussions in the past, and what I learned is that other women with any real understanding of the evolution of Men Going Their Own Way, and women who are willing to acknowledge why we women may not be justified in complaining about it, are few and far between.

At best, what I’ve heard from other women on this topic is often hypocritical, considering the decades we’ve had of feminists teaching women to hate and fear all men on the chance that some might be dangerous. Admonitions like “not all women are like that,” and “don’t let a few bad eggs spoil your opinion,” are empty when offered to male survivors of habitual or chronic abuse by women, or on women’s behalf.

At worst, there is a hurling of denial, accusation, and resentment, with complex versions of “how dare you withdraw respect,” “how dare you reject our judgement” and “how dare you deny our control,” all of which are nothing more than a demand that men not learn from experience. Most of these responses stem from a sense of ownership–an ownership which feminist advocacy seems to feel it is entitled to in the realm of relationships, social interaction between sexes, and most emphatically, over sexual interaction.

The general social and legal treatment of males has begun to remind me of a book I studied in a high school literature class: Richard Wright’s Black Boy. The passage that comes to mind as a highlighting parallel is the recounting of Wright’s first job interview.

“Do you want the job?” the woman asked. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, afraid to trust my own judgment. “Now, boy, I want to ask you one question and I want you to tell me the truth,” she said. “Yes, ma’am,” I said, all attention. “Do you steal?” she asked me seriously. I burst into a laugh, then checked myself… I had made a mistake during my first five minutes in the white world. I hung my head. “No, ma’am.” I mumbled. “I don’t steal.” She stared at me, trying to make up her mind. “Now, look, we don’t want a sassy nigger around here.” “No, ma’am.” I assured her. “I’m not sassy.”

Wright goes on to describe his incredulity at the senselessness of the woman’s expectation that he would honestly answer such a question, but I remember at the time that I read the story feeling outraged at the woman’s implied assumptions in asking. The question suggested that being black meant he was suspect. The rest of the discussion demonstrated that sense of superiority among racist whites which lead to the treatment of all blacks as children, as mentioned in the text following the conversation. Further, the candid presentation of the insult represented by the initial question, “Do you steal?” struck me in its callousness, cruelty, and elitism. This woman felt entitled to treat Wright as an inferior being simply because of the darkness of his skin. To her, his ability to form and adhere to a moral code was questionable, and his emotional response to mistreatment and misjudgment irrelevant, all for no better reason than because he was black. After reading Wright’s recounting of the discussion, I felt a sense of impotent disgust and anger at the folks who chose to embrace such a heartless, barbaric outlook. I wondered: what the hell was wrong with these people, that they could live this way, think this way, talk this way, right to the faces of their fellow human beings?

In the past, the treatment of our fellow human beings in this manner was widespread and overt, supported in society by political writing full of made-up reasoning and lame excuses, well exemplified in a quote from John C. Calhoun’s February 6, 1837 Senate Speech.

I may say with truth, that in few countries so much is left to the share of the laborer, and so little exacted from him, or where there is more kind attention paid to him in sickness or infirmities of age. Compare his condition with the tenants of the poor houses in the more civilized portions of Europe—look at the sick, and the old and infirm slave, on one hand, in the midst of his family and friends, under the kind superintending care of his master and mistress, and compare it with the forlorn and wretched condition of the pauper in the poorhouse…

The statement overflows with condescension. The hypocrisy of a politician in the service of a nation begun with one group’s quest for freedom from the control of others who viewed them as inferior, arguing for the control of others he views as inferior, shines a glaring light on the arrogance and pomposity of the culture of supremacy. One must assume oneself to be grand before one may consider one’s acts of aggression against and oppression of others to be a kindness. One must fully immerse oneself in the murky bog of intellectual bigotry before one may presume to hold others with such falsely “benevolent” contempt.

I see the same thing in today’s feminist attitude toward men, shown by the treatment of them as borderline animals with violent tendencies and barely contained sexual impulses, instead of as fully established human beings. Wright’s white employer treated him as dishonest, stupid, and lacking in either the emotional makeup to be offended at the assumption, or the right to act on it. Despite their frequent denials, Feminism almost universally paints men with equally sweeping, bigoted generalities. Males are treated as potential criminals: batterers, muggers, mashers, molesters, rapists, murderers; portrayed as inept, as deadbeats, as lacking emotional maturity and sensitivity, and as intellectually inferior, all to excuse subjecting them to the very same disdainful and authoritarian treatment from which the civil rights movement has actively sought to relieve minorities throughout history. Even those feminists who don’t talk this way overtly still fervently deny the existence of, obfuscate, and/or give cover to the ones who do.

Feminist advocacy has pushed men into a corner, restricting them to narrowly defined, impossible to fulfill roles. In conflicts between men and women, men are designated by various laws as perpetrators, presumed guilty until proven innocent. In family court, men have become nonpersons, nonparents, interlopers begging for any share in the existence of their children – for crumbs from the table of parental involvement – seen as undeserving of regard or relationship, yet fully responsible for the well-being of the families from which they have been expelled. In education and the workplace, males of all ages are targets for both harassment and persecution, using female-centered human resource and behavioral policy to give women control over even the most minute aspects of interaction. Literally, everything men say, and everything they do not say, can and will be held against them. In daily life, men are subjected to disparaging humor of a type which women need not tolerate, and men are routinely treated with suspicion which women would not abide. Men are treated to shaming of natural behavior in ways which women have fought to escape, objectification which women refuse to accept, and pressure to conform to standards of instinct-control and self-denial which women have been protesting for generations. Every exposure to female scrutiny and behavior, from the simplest everyday interaction to the complexities of various relationships, presents men with the threat of unwarranted censure under the feminist rules of intersex engagement.

The widespread female attitude of superior contempt, combined with activism which has successfully advocated the bypassing of human rights for men in the pursuit of female interests, and the application of double standards in every aspect of male-female interaction, has pushed some men beyond the point of reasonable tolerance. In response, they (and they are growing in number) have chosen to withdraw from the arena of male-female relationships in every way, opting out of collaborative personal investment in any woman. Such vulnerability could result in being used, abused, accused, adjudged, and enslaved. Why face the risk?

Now, after heaping pressure, resentment, bitterness, anger, hatred, blame, shame, and lies upon men as a group, after bawling first for equality, then for preferential treatment, now for absolute power, after shoving men to the side in the pursuit of self-interest, the femosphere has the gall to be offended at the rejection represented by MGTOW.

The basis for protest seems to be the assertion that, just by virtue of our existence, men owe women some level of regard. It’s not supposed to matter that women are currently abusing feminist-won power, successfully using various false allegations as a weapon in disputes as a means of shutting down fathers who seek to maintain family relationships following divorce or separation, and even absent these gross abuses still routinely, even unthinkingly, use it as a tool to control every minor interaction with men—even, most ironically of all, using it as a means of garnering attention and sympathy from other women.

Men are expected to ignore not just the very real danger of being subjected to anything from public censure to prosecution and imprisonment with no recourse, but to everyday maligning of their character and unthinking, axiomatic expectation that they must “prove” themselves to be “good” men in the face of possible lies and other misconduct toward them.

Even though men are treated as perpetual suspects, and despite abuses they may have encountered in past interactions, they’re supposed to presume innocence for every woman they meet. Even though men have collectively been objectified, marginalized, and devalued, they’re expected to offer social respect for our sex, acting on the assumption of altruistic nurturing and higher moral disposition, with no supporting evidence other than the difference in genitalia. After decades of feminist protest against traditional relationship roles and demands for sexual equality, men are required to accept a set of rules of engagement imposed for the purpose of treating female sexuality as a commodity, while simultaneously ignoring the mercenary, exploitative motive behind the hoops through which they’re being ordered to jump.

Somehow, despite feminist assertion that women are entitled to pursue sexual gratification with the same enthusiasm and indifference they’ve attributed to men, men are still expected to make all of the effort, leaving women free to approach interaction with the attitude of, “What’s in it for me?” While feminist advocacy has fought to free women from the presumption of female sexual consent within a relationship, the same group continues to assert the demand for male consent to sexual interaction–if he doesn’t want it he’s inferior and if you push it on him he was, what, asking for it?

The choice of men to ignore these expectations, to refuse to cater to the rapacious nature of female dating criteria, flies in the face of the existing entitlement franchise women have seized. Far from acknowledging the iniquitous degree to which women, under modern social norms, have taken all this as if it were their birthright, feminist advocates treat this resistance by men as a form of insubordination, claiming that by withdrawing their much-abused trust and intimacy men are somehow denying women control over our own sexuality. The argument, reduced to its basest level, is that in order to ensure female sexual freedom, men cannot be allowed equal right to say no. Feminists claim total, uncompromisable proprietary ownership and control of consent agency.

This, broken down to its simplest form, is a demand that straight men submit to women’s will and become nothing more than slaves.

Ladies, what honest, compelling reason can you offer to counter the existing circumstances which provoked this defensive movement? Would you seriously advise anyone to place his heart back into the meat grinder that human courtship has become under the management and regulation of modern feminism? What reward potential can you possibly offer which has not been previously ruined by other women? What protection can you assure which has not been eradicated by feminist activism? What comfort do you have that is more than lip service?

My answer to all of the above, the only honest answer I can form, is: none.

This is a bed women made, not a circumstance inflicted upon us by men. If women’s concern over the growing distance between the sexes is genuine; if they have any motivation at all to regain the regard and interest of men; hell, if women want even the honest respect of men (as opposed to the genuflecting respect of sycophantic men who, if we were honest with ourselves, we’d admit we can’t stand)–if women want any of that, what women first need to realize that it’s not men’s job to address any of it. It’s on women.

If women don’t want men going their own way, women should quit pushing men around. If women can’t quit pushing men around, they’re going to have to accept that eventually, “around” rightfully evolves into “away.”

That’s the choice: Make the effort to earn back the regard, the trust, and the consideration to which past generations of women were accustomed… or accept the adversarial role into which feminists have unceremoniously shoved us, but expect to give up the privileges previously associated with being “the fair sex.”