“MEN are best when they are focusing on themselves and not on women”.

“They lose their creativity, their drive, their focus when they think about women and sex all day. I think men are realising how much better life is when they don’t have to deal with these women or care so much about them and what they think.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of MGTOW (Men Going Their Own Way) — a community of fellas who believe they need to “eliminate the biggest obstacle” that is stopping them from living their best lives.

Those darn, pesky, money-sucking women.

As Mack Lamoureux at Vice put it, these men have “had enough, and they’re taking their balls and going home ... To them, the feminist movement has all but ruined our society, and it just doesn’t make sense to participate in the dating game because women have been, in their eyes, programmed to ruin a man’s life.

“Around every corner they seem to see one-dimensional women who are just out to take their well-earned money and stick them with kids who aren’t theirs ... Also false rape accusations: They are f***ing terrified of those gosh-darn prevalent false rape accusations”.

The words at the top of this post come from (the presumably musty bedroom of) Smitty6, one of the 15,000 members of the MGTOW group on Reddit which is described as “men going our own way by forging our own identities and paths to self-defined success; cutting through collective ideas of what a man is.”

Many of the posts in these threads are like the rousing battle cry from the end of Braveheart, tinged with a little old-fashioned lady-hating:

The MGTOW community takes some inspiration from “the herbivore men” of Japan — men who have no interest in getting married or finding a girlfriend (surveys of single Japanese men conducted in 2010 found that 61 per cent of men in their 20s and 70 per cent of men in their 30s considered themselves to be herbivores).

The MGTOW group repeatedly references pop culture when explaining their ideology — Fight Club gets a bit of airtime and they often refer to The Matrix — particularly the moment where Keanu’s character Neo chooses to reject his blinkered “blue pill” life in favour of the awareness offered by the “red pill” (speaking of which, if you want to go down another misogynistic rabbit hole, check out The Red Pill community).

Charmingly the MGTOW movement is a little bit like a video game — there are four different levels for members to achieve.

Level 0 — Situational Awareness: the member has “taken the red pill” and embraces the idea that gender equality is a lie and propaganda.

Level 1 — Rejection of Long-Term Relationships: the man rejects long-term relationships but will still partake in short-term relationships and sexual encounters.

Level 2 — Rejection of Short-Term Relationships: the member won’t participate in hook-ups or any form of short-term or sexual relationships.

Level 3 — Economic Disengagement: a member at this stage refuses to earn more money than is necessary for sustaining life. He views the government as tyrannical and is trying to actively drain money from the bureaucrats.

Level 4 — Societal Disengagement: this is as far as a mainstream MGTOW can go. Here the man refuses to interact with society. Basically, going full-hermit.

Unfortunately it’s not that easy to completely ditch the ladies — they still have sexual urges (also, please note that homosexuality is utterly frowned upon). Thankfully there are some forms of sexual release that are deemed acceptable as you’re progressing up the MGTOW chain and tactics are discussed on the forums. Some men prefer one night stands, others rely solely on masturbation, and some routinely visit sex workers. The old adage “You don’t pay for the sex, you pay them to leave” is a popular sentiment on the forums.

Celibacy, which they refer to as Men Going Monk, is another option. This comment from user rorick on the topic is a cracker:

Myself, I hate getting associated with women in any form, be it relationships or sex, moreover i [sic] can’t have sex with a girl that i don’t love. I’m kind of old school here, or may be that is how i was born. Therefore for me to have sex i need to love her, so to love a girl i should throw away all my logical thinking and turn myself into a mangina, which i never wanted to be, hence i stayed virgin.”

Dr Tristan Bridges is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the College of Brockport and works with the scholarly journal Men, Masculinities, and Methodologies. Bridges’s work deals in depth with gender issues specifically focused on masculinity. Vice asked him to explain MGTOW and the history of similar movements in the “manosphere” from a scholar’s position.

“When we look at the historical record that’s what it shows: Men start to get pissed off and want to talk about masculinity and change masculinity right after there has been some sort of transformation in femininity,” Bridges said.

“When these kinds of things come up, I think historians would say something significant has happened with respect to gender inequality that men are feeling their position of privilege is challenged and this is a cultural reaction that takes place after that happens.”

Morpheus, who is the moderator of the Red Pill forum (which has a similar ethos to MGTOW) echoed these sentiments when he spoke to Business Insider — though he speaks about it on a more personal level.

“The road to our forum is paved with bad experiences, men who have never been loved, have loved and lost, men who have tried and failed, or men who succeeded and were taken advantage of.”

A female blogger named Alicia who has written about the manosphere extensively went on to tell Business Insider that she’s “tried to empathise with some of these guys for a long time, because it’s clear that many of them are suffering so acutely.

“They want female attention and for one reason or another, they’re not getting it.”

She said she wasn’t too bothered by the groups when they were smaller in number, but the growth is a concern.

“As they grow online, the real danger is in exposing this stuff to younger boys,” she said.

“When you’re 15, girls are weird and you’re looking for answers. [These sites] claim to have them.”