Men Going Their Own Way, Another Lair of Misogyny Terrorism

An undercover dive into the online ghettos of organized extremist misogyny

Men hurt women. It is a fact. It is an epidemic. It is a public health catastrophe. It is normal. ~ Laura Bates.

The above quote from Laura Bates’ book, “Men Who Hate Women; from Incels to Pickup Artists, the truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all” definitely gave me pause for thought. What did she mean? How could hurting women be considered normal?… Today?… In the 21st century?… In the developed nations of the west? Wasn't raping and pillaging a normal part of the past?

And then I realised how hard she had hit the nail on its proverbial head. Violence against women is so ubiquitous that we view it as par for the course in life. A woman is abused by her male partner and society views it as a private matter. A woman is raped by a man and we ask her why? Do we normalise sexual and relationship violence against men in the same way? A man is raped by a man and we literally fall apart in empathy and rage. You’ve only got to read threads about Outlander to know this is true.

A few years ago, concerned with the normalisation of male violence against women, I decided to start following the Men’s Rights Movement, a movement I had become aware of organically just through recognising patterns of speech among the men who raged at me online. At first, it was a sort of morbid fascination, a reaction to online abuse. But as I learned more and delved deeper into the different philosophies that exist in what we now call the manosphere my interest turned to activism. It is increasingly apparent that women and girls are at increasing physical risk from the misogyny of the far-right and it’s become my goal to shed some serious light on the danger too many women are blissfully unaware of.

The Men’s Rights Movement formed in the 70s as a response to feminism and what proponents believed to be a removal of the rights of men, especially fathers. Like feminism, it has branched off here and there and today it is most associated with Men’s Rights Activists/Activism (MRA). This branch of the movement has certainly retained the focus on father’s rights but has also begun to intertwine with more extremist anti-women sub-cultures; Incels (Involuntary Celibate), Pick-up Artists (PUA) and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW).

These groups (and sadly there are more) overlap in their ideologies but are underpinned and expressed in various ways by the same deep-seated misogyny. It is a relief that this form of right-wing, anti-establishment, and predominantly white male extremism has finally been given a name and is now on the watch lists of security agencies around the world: Misogyny Terrorism. This is male supremacy at its ugliest and most dangerous and as I began to delve into each anti-female incarnation I found new and frightening levels of extreme.

In my first piece in this series, I introduced Justin; newly separated father of two, angry that his wife had left him, and resentful of the child support the government now expected him to pay while the courts determined how much access he even had to his children.

Justin — my male persona created for this series — had engaged comfortably in the male-centred domestic violence and fathers rights groups, the most accessible lair of misogynist terrorism. Here, in comparison to what I’d seen elsewhere, was an almost soft misogyny; a palatable one; everyday sexism with a generous dose of blatant misogyny which while ugly wasn’t unlike the sort of misogyny comfortably bandied around largely unchecked on social media.

As Justin, I’d laughed with other MRAs each time a feminist was booted from a group. I’d joined in with their cries; feminism is cancer! Violence has no gender! It was harder than I thought to be a misogynist, and I had to be vigilant. There were a few times MRA-me nearly slipped and I had to remind “Justin” that he was not me, his feminist alter-ego. Yes, Justin, I would say to myself. The glaring hypocrisy is frustrating. No, Justin, no. You cannot point this out to them, you’ll blow our cover... frustrated man remember… angry, rejected male ripe for radicalisation ok? Please stay in character. And we’re rolling…

As anticipated it wasn’t long before an opportunity arose for Justin to enter another lair of the manosphere where men who wish to harm us lurk. I had noticed a man on Facebook patrolling an MRA thread. He seemed to have recruitment in mind so I placed “Justin” in his path posting a comment expressing frustration with “the system” and his ex who was milking it for all it was worth.

“Is it any wonder men are joining MGTOW in droves?” said Paul, the recruiter.

“What’s MGTOW mate?” asked Justin, hoping the use of the Australian colloquialism mate wasn’t laying it on too thick in my efforts to sound blokey.

Justin was told he’d receive a private message, and when he did it contained a list of recommended forums, discord channels, and subreddits where Justin could go to “free himself from the gynocracy that obviously had him by the balls.”

Men Going Their Own Way

Like “men’s rights activists” the name of this next group was certainly appealing. In fact, it seemed somewhat odd that such a simple concept as men being independent and doing their own thing even needed an official movement. I also had to wonder why, if these men are so free of sexual relationships with women, they needed user names like “thickdickwarrior”?

At face value, there was nothing overtly threatening about MGTOWs. Rather than hurt women, they appeared to just want nothing to do with us. No marriage, no sex, and (bar your own mother) no interaction at all unless absolutely necessary.

The misogyny was of course glaring. The entire philosophy is built again around the idea that feminism has messed up the “natural order” of things and that this new gynocentric world is designed to suck men of both their soul and their bank accounts.

Cash-strapped Justin was keen therefore to find out what MGTOW had to offer in helping him break free of his ex-wife's money-grubbing ways and forge a new path for himself as a free man — and maybe get some great fishing and footy tips along the way.

But where were the discussions about men that were not in fact discussions about the women the MGTOWs had broken free of? Were they really free or were they really just as obsessed with women as every other misogynist cell?

The key, as with all extreme misogynist groups, was in their victimhood. Misogynists you see are completely blind to the social system of patriarchy. To a misogynist, and in this case a MGTOW (pronounce mig-tau), literally everything can and should be blamed on women — women who they shun and yet who in their manifesto are one of the three things they are still insistent on controlling.

2. Instilling femininity in women

- We will hold women equally accountable to men and ignore and shun those who refuse to take any responsibility for their own circumstances. Thus we induce women to take a complementary position with men instead of a competitive position, as is now the case.

Feminine qualities we want from women: - Nurturing - Supportive - Responsibility - Respectfulness - Honesty ~MGTOW Manifesto

I know what you’re thinking — it’s mind-boggling cognitive dissonance to claim to be completely free of women while a third of your manifesto is focused on how to control them.

Such irony would be laughable if not for the threat such groups present. Of course, their claim to have disengaged from women implies the opposite is true and that they pose no threat at all. But, in reality, on the various forums I visited it was rare to come across an MGTOW who actually had disengaged from society, much less women. And, concerningly, a lot of the men who claimed to be MGTOW were also espousing Incel and PUA views. Migs, as I like to call them, were clearly confused about what going their own way actually meant.

Levelling up

There are 4 levels of migtauism but the first step, no surprise, was to take the red pill — the matrix reference now synonymous with men who’ve woken up to the truth about women and the secret female cabal running the world.

Once a man has swallowed the red pill the next step is to commit to level one; the rejection of long term committed relationships with women — specifically marriage which is deemed legalised slavery.

This wasn’t hard as essentially migs are men who have been rejected by women anyway. They’re either MRAs crying foul over child support, have failed dismally as Pick-Up Artists, or have decided to fake their involuntary celibacy as a celibacy of choice.

Which brought me to level two; rejecting all sexual relationships with women, known as “going monk”. It’s obviously not hard to reject something you’re not getting anyway. It seemed to me that Migs skip level two though and go straight to level three which is all about rejecting the system, you know, “sticking it to the man”. Again, the irony didn’t go unnoticed. Then came level four, the ultimate MGTOW level, the truly going your own way level, becoming a “ghost” and literally walking away from everything, alone, and celibate.

It seemed as though MGTOW forums were really just a melting pot of all misogynist cells and the “Ghosts” who had attained top-level Mig status and gone literally off-grid — were nowhere to be seen. Whether it was because they really had wandered off into the sunset with the ethereal tones of the ocarina echoing the good, bad, and ugly in their ears, or whether it was because such monastic pursuits really were undesirable for the ten of thousands of men who claim to be going their own way, but are clearly not, who can tell.

The one thing that really stood out as desirable for these men was first and foremost financial preservation. The anti-government sentiment typical of the white and male supremacy was oozing from these apparent hard-working men. Many discussions revolved around how to avoid paying tax and thereby not contribute to the services being offered by governments to women, particularly single mothers and victims of male violence. Because of course, most women lie about these things: paternity, rape, and domestic violence. “How many of us are footing the bill for other men's kids?” was a regular lament, which at first Justin and I took to mean partnering with women who had children from previous relationships, but was, in fact, referring to the rampant hypergamous habit of women to mate with alpha males then hit more affluent beta-males with paternity. “Demand DNA tests” was the advice on offer. Just because Justin had two kids when he was married didn’t mean they were his.

At this point, I wondered what I had to gain by being Justin. Apart from being asked to share a detailed story about my awful suffering at the hands of women in order to be accepted into a MGTOW channel I didn’t really need him. And to be honest, my interest in engaging with these men was waning. But I was about to enter a much nastier level of misogynist terrorism, so I kept him on hand, in case my presence was challenged, and began to look for the ultimate misogynist terrorists, the Incels, who hated women with such vengeance that they had already plotted and carried out multiple murders in the US, Canada, and the UK.

To be continued….

This is part of a series written after an undercover dive into the manosphere and the places where MRAs, Incels, MGTOWs, and PUAs lurk to mobilise against women in acts of what is now know as Misogyny Terrorism. If you’d like to follow the series follow the author, Sarah J. Baker, or the tag, “misogyny terrorism”

Read part one here…

© Sarah J. Baker 2021. All Rights Reserved

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