Frosty

You have to be careful how these kinds of arguments are presented, that you do not fall into a fallacy of association (B comes from A therefore all A produce B). It's a perfectly reasonable question in my mind. There's a really good 7 part Norwegian documentary, translated as "Brainwash" and covers a variety of social and biological issues, the last part addresses nature vs nurture and there's some good evidence presented that certain naturally occurring preferences can only be controlled and manipulated by parents while the child is young, and once the child leaves the influence of their parents they will tend to associate with peers who align with their natural tendencies and they'll lose their parental influence. This works for some traits better than others, intelligence (IQ) is certainly one that it does. Links to the video series can be found here http://www.reddit.com/r/TheRedPill/comments/1vuho8/the_documentary_that_made_scandinavians_cut_all/ It's translated into English but please don't let that put you off, it really is a very eye opening documentary, if you find the nature vs nurture part interesting I'd certainly recommending watching all other parts.

The humour that's found in violence against males is a huge barrier for getting people to take seriously the symmetry of gender in violence, you'll notice that it's mostly women that find it funny. Another big issue is this taboo of men defending themselves against women, as a man the idea of defending yourself against a women who is being violent is daunting because it's seen as wrong by so many people, even if it's legitimate self defense. Paul Elam and co talk about a female getting slugged in a clear case of self defense in this video and still there was hysteria about a woman getting injured. Things like the dominant aggressor policies in the violence against women act (VAWA) mean that if you're a domestic violence situation and you're attacked by a female partner then you call the police, you're more likely to be arrested, even if you never laid a hand on her and simply want to defuse the situation. World gone mad.

Stefan is set to be a speaker at the Men's rights conference in Detroit on the 26th-28th June, however the event organizer Paul Elam has recieved notice from the venue that they've received death threats against the staff and event attendees, they're asking for 24/7 coverage of a minimum of 7 guards and an insurance policy to cover against potential damages. You can find the story here: http://www.avoiceformen.com/a-voice-for-men/threats-of-violence-and-death-against-doubletree-hilton-in-detroit-over-mens-conference/ Obviously this is a heinous attempt to silence free speech and threatens a great talk by speakers such as Stefan, I thought it would be in the best interest to reach out to his fans as early as possible to help spread the news, there will likely be a donation drive to help cover the additional security costs in order to keep the conference on, that will appear on the avoiceformen.com website in the next few days, please consider donating, thank you.

As for numbers, I don't know with any certainty. My own anecdotal experience says that most are not statist, in fact there's a strong interest in objectivism and libertarian philosophies. However I will say that MGTOW theory, if you want to call it that, when extended to its most extreme is to ghost or drop off the grid, there's generally considered to be different degrees of MGTOW up to and including going Galt which we've had accounts of, men just dropping off the grid because they don't like being taxed or being forced to provide for women through the state. I've actually started doing this myself, I earn a good wage and save a lot of money each month, have all the luxuries I want, being a bachelor with next to no financial responsibility gives you a very free life with a lot of spending cash. So generally speaking I avoid taking on more work and responsibilities, I've made sure to keep my pay raises fixed at the rate of inflation to keep my wage static against the market, I've enough experience to jump into middle management and take on more work and responsibility but I've refused to do so from several offers so far. My strategy for the future is to only take pay increases when they directly mirror decreased hours so I can essentially work less for the same wage, my brother has this same approach and already dropped back to 4 day working week. I really dislike that my money is robbed from me and given to other people to raise their children and provide healthcare for fat, lazy idiots who kill themselves smoking and drinking. It's what made me interested in libertarian philosophy. MGTOW is very individualistic, but at that extreme MGTOW is very much anti-state, there were some great articles on this topic at mgtow.com but the site was recently revamped and they've disappeared.

The whole point is that it's paradoxical, it's to outline that it cannot happen, I'm try to make a point that you've ignored or don't understand. The point is that no one has suggested any method for eradicating the initiation of force immediately, I've asked you to provide some method for this and you've not provided anything. I've not ignored the moral consideration altogether, that's a blatant lie. in fact I've explained several times that we're in agreement with the initiation of force being immoral as an ideology, where we disagree is how to arrive at that goal and the practical concerns that has in an imperfect world. I've provided examples of libertarian parties efforts vs slightly less libertarian parties and the difference is night and day, almost no one is supporting maximum liberty, where as we have actual change by instead voting in a compromise, people are happier to make smaller changes and if the change is beneficial then there's a good chance they'll continue to make smaller changes in future which add up to a big change they'd not necessarily be willing to jump to straight away. You could bash your head against that particular wall of trying to only make changes to meet your exact goals rather than having some compromise in between, and maybe never get anywhere. Getting to a free society through incremental means is better than always suggesting major changes with no compromise and never getting anywhere. I agree with your analogy in pure terms of morality, but not in practicality. And again I've agreed with you over and over (which you seem to be ignoring?) that they're both immoral. The difference is in ability to effect change. If I see a rape occurring then I'd attempt to stop it completely and immediately. However with government I have no option to do so, i've asked several times what this might be, and you've not responded. I made the distinction that to "allow" these things you must be inferring that I have the ability to stop it but simply chose not to, which is wrong and it's the basis for why your assertion that these positions are conflicting, they're not. And i've stated several times (which I think you've also ignored) that if anyone does have a way of stopping the immoral use of force immediately when it comes to the state, I'm all ears and will gladly help. I never said immorality is tolerable, I'm making the case that in the absence of being able to jump straight to a perfectly moral world, trying to achieve that world through incremental steps is better. You see this as a black and white issue, but in reality immorality is a sliding scale with perfectly moral at one end, arbitrarily evil at the other end and shades of grey in between. You would only be "tolerating" a less immoral system if the option of a perfect one existed, which I've said over and over again that I'd happily take if it was an option - asked you several times for how to achieve this, and it's gone ignored. My statement for "tolerating" immorality is, and always has been, a conditional statement based on our ability to get to a perfect morality. It's my expectation that if I personally do not decide to vote that nothing will change and we'll remain in this completely immoral system, but if I decide to vote for a party which is trying to give us back some of our freedoms and make us more free than we are now, that it's a move in the right direction. To think otherwise is to classify all shades of immorality as equal and to ignore the very real practical benefit in reducing immorality in instances where you cannot remove it all together. And what are the out come of those choices. 1) Nothing happens, or it gets worse (I've not voted for 12 years and things are getting measurably worse). 2) Things get worse by voting for less freedom. 3) Things get better by voting for more freedom. I've only ever seen policies which reduce freedoms and increase control, they win by appealing to people by offering them something (free healthcare, guaranteed bank accounts, etc) and increasing taxes (force), however UKIP actually have a manifesto that talks about reducing taxes, massively reducing spending, increasing free trade, and cutting something like 2 million government jobs. Which are all good changes. I agree with what you're saying if you're voting in parties whose policies and goals are to increase power, I'd expect that from them, but now we're starting to get parties which are advocating for the reduction of government and a reduction of power, is it fair to say that if they're elected they'll fight to increase their power? I'm not so sure this makes sense. If they're elected it's because people believe in what they're advocating for, if that's freedom then doing the reverse and creating less of it by trying to get more power it's simply going to alienate their voters and get them kicked out. UKIP are a breath of fresh air because they're actually offering policies which go against the grain of modern politics, they may not follow through with them, that's always a possibility and if they don't I wont vote for them and go back to withholding my vote. One thing is for sure, me withholding my vote certainly doesn't make any practical change in reality to our freedom, where as voting for a party who advocates smaller government does make a practical change - you could argue they'll do a complete 180 on their policies but that doesn't make much sense to me and remains to be seen.

They're not comparable, one cannot be used as an analogy for the other. A political system is obviously more complex. Morally they're both wrong but that's not sufficient to make a comparison between them. I'd disagree that better is necessarily subjective, there are many things which are objectively better for everyone. If I were to put people into a large box and fill it with water to drown everyone, that's objectively worse for the survival, health and happiness of everyone, removing the water is objectively better. A 3rd party can in fact make someones life better without their consent. If you're asleep and your boiler leaks Carbon Monoxide which knocks you unconscious and is about to kill you, and I force myself into your house, forceably remove you from the house without your consent, would you not agree that I've made your life better, in that I've likely just extended it significantly, despite not being able to consent. No my argument is that if we cannot or do not have a method for solving the problem instantly that the next best thing is to solve it through gradual change. And that if we ever do have the chance to solve it immediately, I'd be happy to help effect that change. It's not anxiety of not being able to effect change of something on a scale bigger than ourselves, it's the logical conclusion that reality does not mirror our ideals, not everyone is smart enough or educated enough to understand the immorality and corruption of government and that's a practical roadblock you have to deal with when making changes for the better. If there has to be a "meantime" then it's objectively better to have less rape in that time. I've not used that to justify that action instead of total removal of force, I don't see the immediate total removal of force as an option given the constraints of reality. What do you mean by "allow for it"? You mean to not take action to stop it. OK so how do we do that? You're in no way allowing something to occur that you have no method of stopping. If I could stop all initiation of force in the world with a click of my fingers or though any other means then I would. The practical reality is that we cannot do that, we can slowly make change over time, and the evidence of this is that libertarian parties which have extremely big changes in their manifesto gain almost no traction, where as less libertarian (but still more than the establishment) stand a real chance of being voted in, such as UKIP winning the Euro elections. Again I'd be happy to revise my opinion on this if anyone has any suggestions for instantly fixing the problem, meanwhile I think that helping reduce the force against society from the government by voting for that change is a good thing. I find it hard to believe that anyone is against the reduction of the use of force in the absence of being able to stop it entirely.

This is not comparable to rape. Obviously I do not advocate the gradual stop of rape. I'm not making an argument of ideology, I'm all for removing state coercion as soon as possible, I'm simply making an argument of practicality, you're not actually paying attention to the practical constraints that exist in the real world. There have been several attempts at UK libertarian parties and they've never got off the ground, I certainly couldn't choose to vote for one in the election, that's because suggesting radical changes to an entire country among other things is a daunting thought for many, especially those who have become reliant on the state, or at least feel reliant on the state. It's of more practical value to vote in government that's more libertarian focused like UKIP and then prove to the public that this government can make life better for everyone, and once they've seen an improvement and we've associated those benefits with that government they can push for even more changes. Ideologically I agree with you, in a perfect world we'd instantly educate the entire planet, we'd instantly switch to a better form of governance with maximum liberty and we'd all live happily ever after. Screaming back to reality for a second, it's obvious that voting in democracy simply doesn't work this way, given a choice of: 1) Not voting at all 2) Voting for a worse government 3) Voting for a better government I'm going to vote for a better government, to vote to get SOME freedoms back, the moment there's a libertarian party on the ballot paper who actually stands a chance of winning, my vote will go to them, currently that's not the case. Having a more libertarian government allows people to get used to some of these changes and once they normalize those changes you can push for slightly more extreme ones, let them normalize that and continue until we're free. People are more accepting of gradual change over time - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boiling_frog If you have a better practical idea of how to completely flip all of the bad policies over immediately without waiting, then I'm all ears.

It's not the first video focused on gender symmetry in violence. This is also relevant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_yXdkvwFBY There's also another one set in a park which shows the same thing but my google-fu fails me right now, I'll update the post when I find it. *edit* found it!

I feel my opinion is particuarly relevant to this thread. I'm a 30 year old male in the UK who has never voted before, I consider myself fairly smart but dislike the whole political system. I think that voting for parties and politicians instead of specific policies or positions is completely ridiculous. I'm also not 100% convicned that democracy is the way to go, I think it's ultimately going to lead to a leftist and corrupt governement. I did for the first time ever vote this year, it was for UKIP primarily because they're the closest thing to a libertarian party in the UK, I think moving to vote against the EU and return control to the country is the first step towards more liberty. it occured to me recently that voting directly for what you want is pointless, you have to vote for small changes, show those changes are beneficial over time then vote to push your agenda more and more over time. As much as I'd like a true libertarian party to get into power and completely reverse policy in the UK, I'm aware that it's simply not pracitcal and I'm increasingly starting to believe that even given the option to make drastic changes or subtle ones I'd probably lean toward subtle ones. The more I genuinely think about it, the more I draw parallels between my study of atheism, I don't think kicking away the crutch of support that religion gives theists is actually a good idea, it's best to be removed gently over time. Sames goes for politics, I'm so ecstatic UKIP won the EU elections but I'm already anticipating a really strong showing at the next general elections and suspect that the following GE after that we have a decent chance of a win, the growth of UKIP and their win in the elections is something we've not seen for over 100 years, it's a significant political movement. You cannot In fact Barrage The Farage.

The article is somewhat misleading, with DayZ specifically there is what is known as "perma-death" or permanent death, the idea is that all character progress is lost and you have to start from scratch, which is unusual for a game these days but the raised stakes in the game is part of the attraction for many players. It makes encounters with enemies extremely tense which is made worse because encounters if you're a good player tend to be infrequent, this all adds to the appeal and novelty. The real meat of the problem is concerning the players ability to discern fantasy from reality, if they genuinely believe the fantasy world is real and their actions are affecting real people, there would be good argument for psychopathy. However the world isn't real, nor are the consequences, a leveled headed human is able to distinguish between the fiction of a game and the fact of reality and apply different moral standards to both. Do I apply real standards of morality to my opponent in monopoly when I take his last asset and make him go broke? No, of course not, there is clear logical and social differences between reality and a game.

Thanks for the recommendations I will get to them as soon as I've finished my current mountain of books, I'm trying to power through Atlas Shrugged right now but I'm extremely interested in reading MRA authors, I have Men On strike on order at the moment.

For sure, there's some men using this label who have ideological and political goals to "starve the system" to affect change, but it's worth keeping in mind that this isn't core to MGTOW. I actually find it interesting on an intellectual level, I've gone through a deep interest in many interesting areas of life, starting with atheism, then skeptical and critical thinking in general, then a move towards feminism and ultimately mens rights as largely opposed to feminism, MGTOW, and then more broadly philosophy and now politics. It's refreshing to see MGTOW addressed by crtical thinkers and philosophers (or people interested in philosophy) since it gives a much more rational and measured reaction to this social change.

I wanted to necro this thread since it addresses MGTOW and it's something I'm interested in and that Stefan has recently begun to acknowledge and discuss in his videos as a growing and active part of the manosphere, I also didn't want to just start an entirely new discussion. I am a MGHOW and I wanted to address some inaccuracies in the OP. First of all MGTOW is not a sub-movement of the mens rights movement, it wasn't invented by the MHRM it had it's origins in a completely separate part of the internet with only minor ties to the MHRM. I would disagree that MGTOW is an ideology, it has also been called a movement and a cult by many others which I argue is also wrong. If you read the introduction forums for many of the online MGTOW spaces, you'll find a very common theme that men had gone their own way long before they'd discovered the actual label, they'd noticed many of the issues for men and fathers by either direct experience or observation of them in family or friends and come to this conclusion individually. Obviously at this stage it did not have a name, it was just an internal model that marriage, children and even long term relationships were too risky to pursue in modern society and just not a good deal for me. I've spent a lot of time analyzing my own views and those of other MGTOWs and it really can't be seen as anymore more than a descriptive label, what it describes isn't precise but generally speaking it's the abandonment of traditional relationship structures and biological imperatives, we are men who see problems with society, if we were so inclined to fix it we'd probably become MRAs (and some of us certainly do) but generally speaking either do not think the MRM can make meaningful change in our lifetime, or simply view the notion of fighting society to fix these problems isn't likely worth the effort. Anyway I consider myself a MGTOW, I'm also a somewhat apathetic MRA, a libertarian, atheist and generally consider myself a reasonably good critical thinker, skeptic and becoming a big fan of FDR, if you have any MGTOW related questions I'll happily try and answer them.

Fraud is inherently linked to deception or misrepresentation, copying alone cannot be fraud. If you were selling someone else's copyright material to others, or representing it as your own original work then fraud would be applicable, however not all copyrighted materials that are copied are done in this context. Morally I do not condone these actions, but would support copying for personal use. Fraud is part of that distinction which makes my world view coherent with regards to copyright.

This is where I stand on this issue, I don't see any good way of demonstrating potential future loss of income to any reasonable standard. I also personally consider information to be covered by free speech, speech is a subset of information and so all information can be represented fundamentally in speech. From a practical standpoint, I believe regulating something like the distribution of information is fundamentally impossible, so I'm not sure how important the discussion about IP really is. The upshot for people "harmed" by copyright infringement is really somewhat of a self correcting problem, if there is a genuine demand for some particular type of information that people are willing to pay for then consumers will always pay producers of valuable information, otherwise the producers will disappear and cease to produce that information. Despite information getting easier to copy, faster to copy, more portable and in greater quantities we still see continued growth of information providers, I think this is good evidence the above theory is correct.

Property and ownership are human concepts codified in law, there's no legal systems I'm aware of that currently considers children property of parents. Could we in theory own our children? Sure, if enough people agreed to write that into law, at one point humans owned slaves. Concerning the moral issues of doing this, I believe morals are subjective so I have no answer other than my own opinion, which is that people should be free, including children, that precludes ownership.