Written by Men Going Their Own Way is a popular movement in which men encourage other men to live selfishly and irresponsibly. That’s how I would define it. It is, in most cases, just a bunch of men discussing cheap pick up tricks while complaining about how women have become whores. Let me break down why MGTOW is part of the problem that MGTOW incidentally identifies.
Ironically, the grievance that women have become whores and are not of marriageable material because they give away for free what a man who marries her must pay for, is facilitated by what MGTOW preaches. Yes, I am aware that MGTOW isn’t a monolithic movement and that most of the problems they experience are more or less in relation to Western women in the United States and Britain. However, the solution they give is merely one that compounds the stated grievance further. Namely, that since women are whores, men should have as much sex as possible with as many women as possible and never settle down. How does that change the dynamic of which they complain about?
It’s hard for me to understand how manhood an be about being victims to a ‘feminized’ world. MGTOW would have us believe that men are the victims to other men who pander to a feminised agenda which aims to empower women to the exclusion of men. In response to this agenda, men should use woman as much as possible to gratify their own desires and avoid commitment at all cost. Instead of having a family and fathering children or providing for wives, men should use their resources to ‘enjoy’ their lives. To what aim? Well, no one ever discusses that part!
Rather, manhood is about responsibility. In fact, so is womanhood. This notion that adults should still behave like kids and act as though the world is a candy store where all they should do is indulge themselves, is the real problem. Adulthood requires adults to be responsible and in Western societies this is becoming a thing of the past. A hedonistic worldview has always preceded the collapse of civilisations as they amass wealth and their populations live far too comfortably. MGTOW simply lacks proper analysis of their societies. They are mostly uneducated men who are upset that they can’t keep marriages together or have long-term mates. That’s because they have all been sold an illusion. That illusion is ‘romance.’
The difference between marriage in a decadent society and a society that is concerned about survival is that the motives to enter a union are vastly different. In the evolution of our species marriage, pair bonding, was a survival strategy. Yes, there were romantic inclinations, but at the heart of it, if you didn’t pair you wouldn’t survive. The closer people live to that reality the more successful they are in their marriages. In opulent Western societies, marriage is a romantic ideal, not a practical measure that ensures the functioning of that society. There is no need for a woman to be chaste in a society where there is no need for her to ‘belong’ to a man in wedlock. There are safety nets for single Moms where unknown men support those women in order that those women may be free to sleep with any number of men. In other societies, women don’t have that safety net and her best chance at marriage- survival, is chastity.
While economic and social realities might facilitate marriage in a society structured along those lines, the behaviour of Western men can similarly facilitate marriage. But are Western men or any men for that matter up for the challenge? The irony of MGTOW is that while they, on the one hand, encourage men to sleep around, they frown on women who do the same. It is a valid point that men and women are not the same in this regard but it is only logical to note that if men sleep around, assuming they are straight, the other party in the equation would be women. If you demand women be chaste, shouldn’t you be chaste as well? The way a man really respects himself is by not sleeping around. If you really want to be a high value man, you won’t cheapen yourself with the very ‘whores’ you frown on. What you should be doing is remaining chaste just like that chaste woman you want to marry. There’s no point bemoaning a system of which you are in fact a key player.
As a woman, I just want to not be in a society in which men think they can enslave me. Everything else follows from this basic self-interest. And that is not exactly guaranteed.