A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle.

We’ve heard this phrase of speech for ages. It was old when I was young, which though it isn’t as long ago as it feels, was still long enough. It, however, has been largely considered and acceptable statement.

But when you say the equivalent: A man needs a woman like a fish needs a bicycle, something odd happens. He’s less of a man. Of course a man needs a woman, what would a man be without a woman. After all, behind every great man is a woman (presumably telling/making him great).

And behind every great woman is a man sick of her shit. Or was that beautiful woman? I can’t remember.

For those not knowing, MGTOW are Men Going Their Own Way. They’ve got a derogatory names applied to them, like man-baby, most of which imply that they refuse to grow up, settle down, be responsible adult men. But what they are, at heart, is men who have decided like the fish with its bicycle, they don’t really need a woman in their life.

And they get called misogynists.

For the longest time, I was curious about this. So they don’t want to date women (at least not long term)and they don’t want to get married. Given my own experiences when marriages attack, or at least divorces, I can hardly blame them. On an objective level of looking at facts, a man has better odds in most casinos than he does at the wedding chapel. But just because a man doesn’t want the hassle of loosing when the alternative is to not play the game, but rather live a rather simple and easy life of living for himself, I failed to see how this was a hatred of women. Hatred of biased systems, sure, but of women?

There is an old meme, and I couldn’t find it, but it goes like this. A man and woman are out to dinner in a fancy place and the woman says “just to let you know, I’m not giving it up in the first few dates” (or something like that). The man just smiles and replies “that’s okay, I’m not looking to have sex with you.” To which the woman in shock replies “why not, is something wrong with me!”

I don’t want to fuck, but how dare you not want to fuck me.

There’s a clear sense of entitlement. Women don’t need men, women can not want to sleep with a man, but yet men are supposed to need women, and to want to sleep with any woman. And if they do not need a woman, do not want to sleep with a woman, then there must be something wrong, and since most people do not want to believe badly of themselves, it must be the other person. If he doesn’t want me, then he must hate me/women/etc.

I was watching a video about eco-feminism. At one point one of the eco-feminists put forth that women and men needed to work together, to bring forth the natural of women and the civilization of men, to find a balance.

Which struck me as a bit odd. While there is this…idea that women are more in-tune with nature (for some reason, despite the fact that women largely resided in “society/civilization” and it was men out in nature farming and hunting) and that men are less connected with nature because they built civilization/urban areas (largely for women to reside in while they went off to labor). Yet a lot of what I have read in the history of the sexes was that women were the civilizing force on men, who naturally were brawling beasts who rutted, hunted, and fought. Women were the bringers of the civil, they civilized men…but yet women are the more natural and evil civilization was of men…who without women reverted to a natural state.

If you’re confused, good. I am too.

It ends up being like “a man needs a woman, like the oxen needs the yoke.”

So women are fish with unneeded bicycles, but apparently men are supposed to be oxen in need of domestication. And when men throw off this domestication, when they reject their place in society, well…

They must hate women.

Did you know, that the essential founder of the men’s rights movement started out as a feminist?

He did, in fact he intially walked with the biggest names of feminism like Gloria Steinem. They were, arguably, friends. And he got into it because he believed in gender equality, and believed in the destruction of gender roles as western society knew them. But something interesting happened.

Men were supposed to keep their gender roles.

I wish I still had the article I read this in, because it was brilliant. But even as feminists were destroying female gender roles in society, they expected men to retain their gender roles. Patriarchy was evil, to be sure, but that didn’t mean that hubby shouldn’t keep up with work, paying the bills, and all the other duties of men. Men do more hard labor than women? That’s fine. Women should be able to do what they want, but society needs hard labor and why should men not keep doing it for the good of society?

But when the man who started it all wrote a few books about male gender roles, how they were bad for men, and how they needed to be changed…something funny happened. All those big name feminists who were his friends…suddenly weren’t his friends any more. He stood up, pointed out how society was harming men…he did for men what feminists were doing…and he became a misogynist. It’s a very interesting story.

Now, we’re something on our third or forth generation since the 60’s and it’s glorious feminist explosion. We not have the ideas that there is a “toxic masculinity” out there which “harms men as much as it does women.” There is much talk about how men need to “change, reject the “masculine narative” they’ve been taught and find a new way to be men, better men.”

Ironically, men have done just that with the MGTOW thing. Because, truthfully, “masculinity” has become toxic. Oh, not the “rutting, hunting, fighting” masculinity that so often has and is viewed as a terrible mark of what monsters men are, but the other masculinity. The one that is our assigned gender role. Carreer, marriage, fatherhood, these things. By now, if it isn’t our fathers, it’s our brothers, or friends we know who have gotten divorced, saddled with alimony and childsupport and so forth. A woman can insist that her husband rise and be prominent in the company, and then after years of marriage divorce him because “he was never home to help me.” But a man who doesn’t spend all his hours trying to rise though the workforce, can be left because he is not successful. A stay at home dad can be stripped of his children that he raised full time, because his wife leaves him for not being “man enough.” A dad who never got to see his children because he worked so much to provide for them…also wasn’t man enough.

I know this from personal experience. One of the reasons my mother had for leaving my father was because he was never there, never home. Truth is, he worked on nuclear plants and was responsible for the design and maintenance of crucial parts. Parts that if they failed, could lead to not only a disaster, but a chain of disasters which could wipe out not just the state we lived in, but several around us. And she had married him, not only knowing what his job was…but according to some because of what his job was and how well it paid (at least those that believed less of her). Lives depended upon his labor…but he wasn’t there so he wasn’t a good husband and fuck off.

When it gets down to it, every man not only has heard these stories, he’s probably lived a few or has a best mate that has. You hear women everywhere crying “where have all the good men gone,” but you never really hear men say that. They never ask “where have all the good women gone.” Why?

Because, honestly, most have lost faith that there are any. The rallying cry of men that has been growing is not “where are all the good women” but “bros before hoes.”

Because, really, why spend hours and hours working, slaving away at a job when you can just work enough to get by? Why have the stress of wondering how you’re going to pay for everything your family wants when, you can pay for what you want. Why spend hundreds of thousands on a house, going into debt, when you can spend mere thousands, maybe even hundreds, on some rent with a couple of friends. Friends who will join you for halo or wow, rather than insist that you give up those childish things, because there’s stuff you need to do around the house….after you spent all day working.

My ex told me not too long ago that “part” of the reason she left is because i complained about my life being shitty, being depressed, and that i was more interested in playing video games than “making it better.”

There was a bit of irony to this for me. My life had gone shitty because of some stuff she’d done, my suicidal depression had quite a bit to do with her, and I buried myself in video games because they were chaotic enough to push the suicidal thoughts away, at least temporarily. I had to use them because every time I’d gone to her to help me, asking really only to know that there was someone who gave a shit about me, I was rebuffed repeated till it culminated in “this is why I don’t find you attractive” when I asked for a hug…while using all my will power to to take a knife to my vein. The only reason I am alive today after that is my faith…but given the suicide rates of men in my age group…I suspect that mine is an all too common story with the far worse end. and I suspect many a living man has faced much the same.

There’s been talk recently of how men and women perceive signals differently. Many of the woman I work with commented about how every guy they acted friendly to thought they were interested in them. I heard some psychologist talking about that, how when women act when they want to be friends is interpreted by men as sexual interest, and how ironically women interpreted men showing sexual interest as merely wanting to be friends. I can’t speak to the latter, but I can explain the former.

Men work, on a basic level, a lot like the Heathen religion. Gift for Gift, loyalty for loyalty, the brother bond. Or, in more modern terms, the bro code. Buy a man a beer, and he is your friend for the night. Buy him a case of beers, and you could be friends for life. Fight along side him in a battle, and you will have his loyalty.

Because while in the sexual game, it’s supposedly every man for himself, out side of that men tend to want to form bands, mates, groups that work together to overcome and accomplish. And these groups can get very, very tight, with very strong emotional bonds. The kind that make you leap out of a ditch into a hailstorm of arrows or gun fire to drag your buddy back to safety even when you know he’s probably already dead.

So when a woman comes up and acts “friendly” she is engaging in the actions that men do to each other to prove loyalty, friendship, and to earn either their way into the brotherbond, or to get someone to join their brotherbond. And a man looks at that and says, subconciously “ah, she speeks our tongue, perhaps she wishes to be part of us.” And, because she is a woman, a deeper part says “she speaks as we speak, perhaps we can trust her to pass on our line, the greatest act of shared loyalty.”

On top of this, most women act incredibly hostile to men. Not in a throwing punches kind of way (though domestic violence reports show that about 50% of physical violence is done by women to their male pattern). But in a social setting, very much so. Go to any bar and you will see the girls there in groups. And these groups will often work to prevent any of their members from going home with a guy. Most guys see these groups and despair, because to the male eye, it is like facing the shieldwall. One woman, you could take so to speak. You could engage her in conversation, get to know her, but a group. You are one man, and at least one of them will not like you and shall sway her friend that you desire away from you.

It’s one of the things pickup artists train for. How to divide, conquer, distract, and get away with a girl. They are viewed as horrible misogynists who “trick” women into sleeping with them.

Few look at the unfortunate implications of that statement.

That a man has to trick a woman into being with him. Many view this as an onus upon the man, but it goes deeper than that. The only way a man can get a woman is to trick her. In other words, she views herself as so much better than a man, that she would never deign to lower herself to him. Why would a princess lower herself to a pauper?

I think, honestly, it says something worse about women that they have to be tricked into giving love, than it does for a man to trick to receive love.

But often it does seem like the zero sum game. If you trick a woman for love, you are a misogynists who hates women. If you decide you do not need women, you are a misogynist who hates women. You’re not a real man if you don’t settle down. You aren’t willing to support a woman as she becomes all she can be, and you’re sexist pig often enough if you want her to show that same support.

She doesn’t want to fuck you, but how dare you not want to fuck her. You horrible person, how dare you devalue her by not wanting to make her the object of your desires, you sexist pig who objectifies all women with your base, ugly, sexual, desires.

Why on earth wouldn’t you want to play that game. Why on earth would a man want to go his own way? You must hate women, that’s why.