Men Going Their Own Way:
An Alt-Right Take

mgtow [1]2,024 words

Many organizations and movements on the Right can be construed as push-back against Cultural Marxism. While the Alt Right certainly does do this, I wouldn’t include it in this group. In a world without Cultural Marxism, you can still have an Alt Right (although at that point, we’d probably drop the “Alt”). This is because we stand for things more than we stand against them, for example, a positive white racial identity, peaceful ethno-nationalism, and more or less traditional, commonsense values beyond that. 

But what about organizations that are almost entirely blowback against Cultural Marxism? I believe that folks on the Alt Right should foster positive relations with as many of these groups as possible. One such group is Men Going Their Own Way, or MGTOW.

Essentially, MGTOW consists of “meninists” or men who have to differing degrees checked out of traditional monogamous heterosexual relationships. This is in large part a response to the growing power and autocracy of the feminist left, which has, indeed, sabotaged the Western men when it comes to marriage and raising children. Some of these men belong in the manosphere and aim for little more than ephemeral dalliances with women. Others, like cynical, once-bitten monks, have sworn off women entirely. Furthermore, I detect little homosexuality in the MGTOW. As advertised, it is about men going their own way . . . but without women.

Here is their statement of purpose from their website:

M.G.T.O.W – Men Going Their Own Way is a statement of self-ownership, where the modern man preserves and protects his own sovereignty above all else. It is the manifestation of one word: “No.” Ejecting silly preconceptions and cultural definitions of what a “man” is. Looking to no one else for social cues. Refusing to bow, serve and kneel for the opportunity to be treated like a disposable utility. And, living according to his own best interests in a world which would rather he didn’t.

My first impression upon researching this topic is a feeling of solidarity with the men involved. Sympathy too, but certainly not of the condescending kind. (Lord knows, if a few things had not gone my way in life, I might be “going my own way” as well — I consider myself very lucky in that regard.) The MGTOW website provides a history of the movement, a nice round-up of the manosphere, a blog, videos, testimonials, links to books on Amazon, and, shockingly for me, a live chat(!).

Of course, the official literature of the movement clearly spells out what MGTOW is all about. All of it is reasonable and well-researched. Particular essays I liked included Schopenhauer’s take on women, the “Sexodus,” Parts 1 and 2, and one entitled “The Water Fountain,” which uses a playground as an analogy for some of the more self-defeating aspects of chivalry in the modern world.

But it is in the forums where one finds the quickest route to the Truth. Some conversation topics are quite positive and involve technology and gadgets and other cool things that men in general like to riff on. Others, however, include “Blue Pill Hell,” “Marriage and Divorce,” and the aptly-named “Relationshits.” In these, one will find the starkest anti-woman, anti-marriage pronouncements possible. A prominent warning reads:

The MGTOW Forums are for registered red-pill Men only. There are no exceptions. All females may exit immediately.

Not sure if this is meant literally, this being the anonymous internet and all.

Anyway, here is where men vent, and they vent a lot. A good deal of it is grotesque hostility towards women, yes, and fairly indefensible too. Here is a typically lurid quote:

So sure, get married and have four kids. BOOM you are now $1 million in the red and stuck with lazy, stay at home land whale with a vagina stretched beyond recognition.

Money gets brought up a lot as well. One poster’s signature reads “Marriage is grand. Divorce is 500 grand!” Another poster once posted a meme comparing over-the-hill Hollywood actresses when they were young and hot versus how they are now. No misogynistic epithet is off the table here, it seems. MGTOW also has derogatory terms for men who still adhere to the normative culture of marriage and kids and don’t realize they are being had, namely, “manginas,” “beta simps,” “white knights,” and others. This is similar to how some on the Alt Right disdainfully refer to mainstream conservatives as “cuckservatives.” When a professor named Brad Wilcox from Prager University tried to criticize MGTOW last May for its anti-marriage stance, the scorn and derision on the forums had no end. Most notably, they referred to him as a “turd-flinging monkey.” These are men who will not be swayed.

I admire that about them, even if I don’t quite agree with everything they say. Because behind all the cynicism and resentment is equal parts truth and pain. Cultural Marxism and feminism have enabled women to the detriment of men when it comes to marriage and child-rearing. And many of these women do not hesitate to use their ill-begotten power to the fullest. The MGTOW forums are rife with these kinds of stories: men dealing with divorce, separation from children, garnished wages, tax difficulties, and a general loss of rights and prestige in our society. I have personally known two men whose lives for a time were all but ruined due to the whims of unstable wives. I have no doubt there is much justice behind the decisions of the MGTOW crowd to simply say no to women, to “tune in and drop out” to appropriate part of a Timothy Leary slogan. Because feminism presupposes a class-like struggle between men and women, men are now actually starting to fight back. And according to some of them, it’s the best thing they have ever done. Once free from the matriarchy some of them find they are more productive, more active, healthier, and in general, happier. Furthermore, they are now untouchable by the enemy. How can a feminist attack a man who refuses to have contact with women?

Despite this, however, I find the rise of MGTOW troubling. I cannot speak for everyone on the Alt Right in this case (especially since there is some overlap between the two movements), but I would imagine that many would share my apprehension. Most on the Alt Right share a white racial identity and a concern for the future of whites as a race. If enough white men drop out of the gene pool, especially young men who are bright and literate enough to appreciate all the literature found at mgtow.com, then the race faces an additional threat to its survival.

There is something else, too. The MGTOW forum reminds me a lot of the 1980s television program Married . . . with Children, only without the laughs. The forum is not funny, of course, but the ignominious pratfalls from grace that many of these men have suffered coupled with the abject dysfunction of their former lives and the crude contempt with which they hold their ex-spouses is, by nature, comic.

Here is a snippet of dialogue from Married . . . with Children which I will take to my grave with me. After getting Husband to say something she wants to hear, Wife whines, “You don’t sound like you mean it.”

Husband then grimaces and says, “That’s because I don’t mean it!”

Cue the laugh track. You have the classic send up and smack down of a good joke. Wife fancies herself something special, then slips on a banana peel and goes splat on her bottom. It’s funny. But imagine actually living in such a circumstance. Imagine having such loathing for your spouse that you can’t even be bothered to conceal that from her. This is what it is like reading through some of the conversations on the MGTOW forum.

As I have written elsewhere, comedy as truth is a terrifying thing.

A 1950s science fiction author could do a lot worse for an apocalyptic novel than by making the very last men on Earth a Pythagorean cult of he-man woman-haters who categorically refuse to get busy. A plot could be contrived to have a some of the last few nubile women to infiltrate the cult and seduce the religiously reluctant men. Of course, one of the women falls in love with one of the men. They consummate, but soon a second woman falls in love with him as well and steals him from the first woman. The first woman, in a fit of jealousy, then becomes swayed by the idea that humanity needs to go extinct and works with the elder cultists to achieve this nefarious end. As a result, the adulterous couple and their sidekick robots must race out of Techno-City to the site on Venus where the computer-operated thermonuclear rocket bombs are programmed to . . . well, you get the picture.

I assume also you see where I am going with this. If taken to its professed extreme, the Men Going Their Own Way crowd must end up as villains, and not even charismatic ones. As intolerable and obnoxious as leftist, feminist women have become, we still need to ask the question: are we going to propagate as a race, or not? It seems that the MGTOW crowd already has their answer, and it is not yes. And that is terrifying.

Of course, I would not dare lecture any of these men on what they should do with their personal lives. If eschewing the company of women makes them happy, fair dinkum. But what I would like to do, as a person who hates cultural Marxism as much as they do, as an avowed enemy of their enemy, as a potential ally on the Alt Right, is to ask them something.

Is it really a good idea to proselytize? People in the forums have been exulting about how the MGTOW movement has been growing as of late, especially after their little dust up with Prager U. But perhaps the goose and the gander are a tad at odds here. I can see MGTOW as a necessary haven for some unfortunate men who’ve been married with children and then victimized by an increasingly anti-male and, let’s face it, anti-white society. But when they brand themselves as a positive alternative for the broader population of men, especially young men involved in the manosphere, that’s when they start to step on the toes of the Alt Right. They seemed more concerned with themselves in the here and now rather than the future. They’re defining themselves by the very thing to which they are reacting. They seem more anti-woman than pro-man. And the very idea of being in favor of both men and women is laughed out of the room. Good relations between the sexes is only way to keep the race going, and they don’t seem to care. It’s almost like they’re giving up.

The Alt Right is concerned with white populations who are not producing at replacement levels and living in countries that are being swamped by waves of non-assimilating immigrants. This is a really important thing to be concerned about, and you don’t need a GPS to figure out where our future is headed. It’s bad enough that many young white men are effectively wasting time with sexual hijinks in the manosphere while their Muslim or Hispanic counterparts are busy having kids at age twenty. The last thing we need is for them to start spouting “marriage is slavery” or some other nihilistic mantra from MGTOW and effectively not having children.

Again, this is not saying that what the MGTOW crowd is doing with their own lives is wrong. Rather, it would be wrong if all or even most white men did what the MGTOW crowd is doing. I think this is a reasonable assertion. On the website’s history page, one can find the following pronouncement:

Great men of history have already given enough, so the modern man can afford to take a century off.

No, we can’t. At least the white ones can’t. If enough of us were to take this century off from reproducing ourselves, you can bet your $500,000 divorce we wouldn’t live to see the next one.