“Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is an anti-feminist, mostly online community advocating for men to separate themselves from a society which they see as harmful to men, and particularly to eschew marriage and cohabitation” (Wikipedia).

We may employ a life-history approach to derive the fitness consequences of giving up the investment into mate competition. The fundamental units of natural selection, the basic things that survive or fail to survive, that form lineages of identical copies with occasional random mutations, are called replicators. DNA molecules are replicators. They generally gang together into large communal survival machines or vehicles. The replicators are the genes within organisms, with each organism’s body serving the purpose of a ‘survival machine’ for its genes.

The gene combinations which help an organism to survive and reproduce tend to also improve the gene’s own chances of being replicated, and, as a result, “successful” genes frequently provide a benefit to the organism. An example of this might be a gene that increase reproductive fitness proxy. This helps the gene spread, and also helps the organism.

Through embryology, genetically wired neural mechanisms trigger sexual desire/mating penchant. These mechanisms can evolve through changes in expression or function of key genes in sensory pathways or central circuits.

The only evolutionary interests of the existence of organisms (replication vehicles) is reproduction and survival (this subordinate to the precedent). There are evolutionary trade offs between survival and reproduction. For example, the cost of reproduction means the tradeoff between current reproduction and survival (for future reproduction). Because current survival increases future reproduction, it is essentially the tradeoff between current reproduction and future reproduction.

Any behavioral propensity (e.g mutant allele) that entails self-complacency to mating failure/sexual ostracism will be purged/culled by selection (i.e. maladaptive trend) , since the genes that induce such behavior/conformity will not be replicated in future generations.

Men Going Their Own Way claim are advocating for men to separate themselves from women, and this community claims to prefer living their lifes as voluntary bachelors. For which they have decided to dissociate themselves completely from women (not that females have deprived them of their company), as an estimated and autonomous solution to sustain a happier existence in a gynocentric social system:

“The ‘core’ level ideal of MGTOW is generally considered to consist of refraining from any long-term committed relationship with a woman. Therefore a slayer that ‘pumps and dumps’ women but never commits could technically be considered to be a MGTOW. Some MGTOWs brand themselves as volcels (voluntary celibate).” (incels.wiki/w/MGTOW).

It is not plausible to assume that any significant population of males would evolve to ‘going their own way’. The truth is that such a dynamic suggests a systemic decline in effective female availability (with implications for sub-fitness replacement), and it tends to evolutionary instability in large populations. Thus, vast majority of self-proclaimed mgtows (i.e. voluntary bachelors) are unmated due to sexual conflict.



One of the reasons why most males (Being Incels/TFLs the only male community on manosphere fearless to disclose their mating status) don’t visably complain about marginalization through female choice is for lack of a sympathetic audience (borne out of limiting dynamics in dimorhic sex), where they fear such complaint will only serve to validate their grievances in the form of social reproachment/punishment (which focuses selection pressure).

Systemic polygyny – strong sexual selection- (absolute feminine license giving free rein to their mate preference functions to choose a narrow male population subset) is not solvable without the communal contest of broad male consensus, only male collaboration stands out as the only operative force to change the system towards monogamous trend.

The mgtow mindset (i.e do nothing) nullifies the possibility of an inversion of the conflict, and fortifies the female agenda consisting of preserving the prevailing status quo. The male passivity is the female triumph over sexual conflict (although there is really nothing glorious in maintaining a floating polygenetic system that leads, via replacement subfertility, to population extiction).

Ultimately, the nexus of human conflict reduces to balancing selection dynamics in time varient fitness strategies which weigh against male success (for limiting reasons of dimorphic sex) – understand that, and you understand everything there is to understand about human condition problems.

Indeed, as male selectivity is not limiting, the only real ‘solutions’ must be culled from sexual conflict (ie. they are female pessimal).

Some mgtows consider that the real path to happiness is paved with money, not romance. What is again a nonsense. Money is a function of direct benefits, and thus can only be justified through fitness proxy in female choice(which is no longer sensetive to direct benefits, given welfare state dynamics have eroded it’s selective value as a significant factor in female choice).

Such voluntary bachelors need not only represent repudiated males, but could also describe short-term strategists* (i.e. highly attractive males) whose evolutionary optima is not served by long-term investments, so long as more profitable options present themselves (which is why these kinds of males tend to pair off only at an age after their physical attractiveness has dimished – or eliminated – such options). Which would make us wonder why a group of short-term facultative men (highly attractive males) would need to be grouped in online communities to preach advice to others (clarifying that male optimal evolutionary fitness lies far from a monogamous mating) other equally sexually coveted men (i.e. favored/privileged for female choices).

*If honest signals of male quality (i.e physical attractiveness) were equivalently attainable, they would no longer be meaningful, and females would no longer privilege them. Thus, handicapping focuses selection such that success must be indicated with relative ease more than exceptional effort or prolonged difficulty(as someone else has already been kind enough to point out). But when individual phenotypic plasticity does not allow the resolution of mating failure (morphological polyphenisms are restricted to a few modifiable variables), male inaction/indolence cannot be the route to follow.

First, let us consider that high fitness free-riding males (short term strategists which impliy high genetic quality benefits – think of the archetypal, hot ‘bad-boy’ whose selective value is bound by apriori sensory biases in female sexual choice) are effectively selfish replicators who need invest minimally, thereby enjoying a high ratio of fitness:mating effort – posing a best response in any population of long term strategists(paternal investors – think of the archetypal homely male bread-winner, who is frequently duped into subsisting the offspring of his ‘bad-boy’ betters), or naif male co-operators who are incompetent as assessing strategic ‘reputations’ in any game with variable costs/payouts. True, but it depends upon what one means by ‘alone’ (what the mating implications are).

Still, we should not assume that all males have an equivalent lattitude of choice. Given that the problems under consideration are sexually dimorphic, do you honestly think you can relate to the males who have been (and will likely continue to be) alone for their entire lives?

If female problems of mate (male) availability can be characterized as an existential dimemma (cognitive dissonance from a conscious unwillingness to trade off between evolutionarily conflicted mate benefits – this is what females mean when saying they won’t ‘settle’) of female choice, the same cannot be said of female availability with respect to male choice, as male function is not limiting (as has been pointed out in this blog already).

So, if females find themselves without long-term mates, it is a problem of entangled selectivity (excepting anomolous ugliness on their part), where their receptivity tends to genetic quality, and thus (ironically) the very kinds of males who tend to short term mating(as an optimal evolutionary strategy).

As has already been noted, females do not effect active solutions to problems that entail sharing a small male population (which must be the case given their greater selectivity and limiting function) – these problems resolve stochastically.

Thus, tey are single for reasons of female selectivity (ie. they must share a select population of choice males, which, obviously, tends to short- term matings). Not the same thing at all, as the ‘bachelors’ under consideration.

That phenotypic varience is empirically culled by the forces of selection(chance and opportunity), is observable, and well known to science.

It’s proper to assuming ‘bachelorhood’ in the mate-deprived sense (ie. where a tendency to solitude implies a fitness disadvantage, and thus can *not* be evolutionarily strategic).

Very different from the case of those single men with mating options who prefer to avoid the stable LTR commitment to enjoy a dissolute life of multiple mating (short term relationships, hookups/one night stand relationships) and high frequency on mate rotation, sleeping with many women and not committing to anyone.

Since we should not expect such tendencies would ‘evolve’, evident frequencies can only be reasonably explained by evolutionary flux in the fitness landscape which weighs against the success of handicapped organisms.

So, these passive ‘choices’ mgtows are inferring, are nothing more than the subjective manifestation of steep gradients in a hostile fitness landscape (no one ‘chooses’ to be a loser, regardless of how they care to rationalize it).

There is no problem/concern of life-history which is not entangled in sexual dimorphism – there is no escaping this, if one accepts evolution (which you obviously don’t). This would imply that they are mutant of a kind where it is difficult to see how one might evolve via sexually mediated replication. If they have already confessed to a prior sexual interest in females, so they are clearly not such a hypothetical mutant. More likely, they are rationalizing an absence of choice as a self- determined outcome, in forming a tenuous psychological anchor (to sanity).

Friends with benefits scenarios tend not to last for the same reason there is high relationship turnover – female selectivity privileges a small population of attractive short term strategists (and thus implies an affinity for sharing males), who have an evolutionary tendency to short term mating.

Their problem it’s not so much that evade their problems and not try to remedy them with group actions (which would, ironically, be a *less* pathological response, as it acknowledges some possibility of resolution as incel community do), but that they have habituated deterministic quantities in (poor)life-history outcomes (as a psychological ground to sanity), to a point where they can no longer destinguish between active and passive choices.

Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t even begin to describe this problem. By this, I should clarify to mean that even blaming others for real problems at least consciously acknowledges life history trials as the real problems they are, rather than as rationalized ‘choices’ (‘passive’ choices). Passive choices should evolve through some expectation of profitable outcomes that are mediated by strategic inaction.

In the supposed case of someone like mgtows, it is assumed that a long history of unfortunate outcomes have broken this dependency making the relationship between choice and outcome increasingly spurious, and thus habituation maps volition to these unfortunate outcomes as mechanism of homeostasis – but that does not make make them a life ‘choice’ in any meaningful way.

That bad shit happens doesn’t make it a choice, no matter how your diseased brain has learned to adapt. It is simpler just to consider this as no longer being able to destinguish between choice and outcome (since active choice corresponds with more profitable outcomes).

If these ‘good things’ are mediated by some factor of strategic volition(action/inaction), then yes it does (as far as the evolution of ‘choice’ should be concerned). But we shouldn’t expect sentinent organisms would evolve a greater tendency towards bad choices (which imply unsuccessful life-history outcomes) – this is the consequence of a shifting fitness landscape acting upon diseased brains.

The indication that people like you can’t successfully reproduce (existentialist explanations of free-will are confounded by selection pressures), despite following from reproductively viable parents, shows that evolution is operating selectively.

The fact that western populations are tending towards sub-fitness replacement also shows that the fitness landscape can shift/deform dramatically over relatively short intervals of evolutionary time.

The mgtow mindset fits with several psychological defense mechanisms – unconscious psychological mechanism that reduces anxiety arising from unacceptable or potentially harmful stimuli. (e.g. denial, displacement, etc.) that can occasionally operate in some human brains to alleviate cognitive dissonance

In the psychology of human behavior, denialism try to deny their own reality as a way to avoid a psychologically uncomfortable truth, when a person refuses to accept an empirically verifiable reality.

Displacement is an unconscious defence mechanism whereby the mind substitutes a new aim for goals felt in their original form to be dangerous or unacceptable.

Among the purposes of ego defence mechanisms is to protect the mind/self/ego from anxiety or social sanctions or to provide a refuge from a situation with which one cannot currently cope.

An ego defence mechanism becomes *pathological* only when its persistent use leads to *maladaptive* behaviour such that the sexual/reproductive fitness of the individual is adversely affected.