"Men Going Their Own Way" - The family is doomed

[AdamC]

 

In my mind the bitch shield thinking gives me an image of a woman as a helpless victim to her impulses that arise from her brain - unable to control what comes out of her mouth and later on never admitting that she could ever have acted in an inconsistent / abusive / passive aggressive way. Why would anyone want to deal with that crap just get some pussy?

Be grateful for "bitch shields" since, as

, women use them to keep themselves safe.

And the issue of "bitch shields" can only come up because you want the woman behind them. Otherwise, what do you care about her "bitch shields"? Why would you deal with that crap?

[AdamC]

 

Perhaps bitch shield is just misslabeled passive aggression.

1. Ambiguity and cryptic speech: *Just get it!..*  What's wrong? *Nothing*

 

I think you're on to something here...

"Shit tests" might be on a spectrum from passive-aggressive to passive-assertive. If the "just get it" theory is correct, then a woman rarely wants to be actively assertive because then she'll be leading and implicitly devaluing the man. This she really does not want to do because she wants to feel protected without prompting for it. But she still has her doubts – will always have doubts – and so she "shit tests" somewhere on the spectrum depending on her current level of crazy.

Regarding the passive-aggressive end of the spectrum...

It's passive-aggression because she's not being upfront and honest about her concern/"shit test." (She'll never admit to her testing; you don't get to prepare for the exam.)

You pass "shit tests" by not caring about them – since there's nothing for you to care about. She's not giving you any honest information to work with, so why would you attempt to work? She's testing for that oh-shit-mother-is-upset response. She wants to know if you're easily unnerved. Go wrestle with an alligator, tussle with a whale, handcuff lightening, throw thunder in jail, murder a rock, injure a stone, hospitalize a brick, act so mean you make medicine sick. Go do anything other than attempt to rescue her from one of her moods.

It's just a mood. It'll pass. You're her Man. She has girlfriends. Calmly hand her her phone. Only care about what is in your control.

If you're so easily unnerved by a passing mood, then how well can you really protect her? = The rationale for her periodic "shit tests"

[AdamC]

Long post... somewhat repetitive and rantish...

How you handle or rebuff humiliation as a man will be a deciding factor for female appreciation. Since the world has it's fair share of humiliators out there in positions of power. A man that can handle humiliation with grace (for himself), without complaining will be seen as a good catch by some women.

This clearly puts some men in a difficult quandary of course. Learn to handle humiliation and rejection and get women’s appreciation or don’t and isolate yourself from them. Perhaps that thinking is little simplistic, but I think it often fits for men at different points in their lives, depending on their relationship status. It's all part of the risk and reward culture that men are expected to partake in. I think Warren Farrell discusses this at length when he says, "men's weakness is their facade of strength; women's strength is their facade of weakness".

"Women's traditional support systems support women being vulnerable;
men's traditional support systems support men being invulnerable. This
creates a paradox; the support men get to be invulnerable makes them more
vulnerable; the support women get to be vulnerable makes them less
vulnerable. It is just one example of how women's strength is their
facade of weakness and men's weakness is their facade of strength." -- Warren Farrell, Father and Child Reunion

The various branches of the "men's movement" (MRA/MGTOW/PUA) are helping men cope with the challenge of testing and rejection. And learning how to approach women requires high degrees of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and situational empathy. I wonder if much of the popularity of PUA is that it has given men permission to access the touchy-feely psychology stuff without stigma and under cover of being "alpha."

In podcast interviews, Dr. Robert Glover, author of No More Mr Nice Guy, has said girlfriends and wives have called to thank him for curing their partners' of Nice Guy Syndrome i.e., a passive/pleasing, shame-based self. I haven't read the book yet. Here are links to the podcasts: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]

I'm still not entirely convinced that 'some' of these cultural expectations are unreasonable. Providing a woman with resources whilst she produces and nurtures our children is a very reasonable trade-off I think.

Totally agree. These basic expectations of both men and women are not in least bit unreasonable.

But these expectations have been caricatured ("hyper-agent"/"alpha"/"patriarch" and "hypo-agent"/"victim"/"feminist"), both sexes have played up to the caricatures for their own "profit" thus attracting more entrants. The states ("Apexual/Male Disposability" pyramids) have, of course, cashed in.

Regarding resource-provision and trade-offs... Perhaps I've caused confusion about what is meant by "Male Disposability."

A man will sacrifice for his biological family. That's not what is meant by "Male Disposability." "Male Disposability" is about the demand that a man sacrifice for other non-biologically-related individuals and families. It's the difference between voluntary charity and state welfare programs.

So a man will naturally sacrifice for his biological family, but he has to be propagandized into sacrificing for other, non-biologically-related individuals and families. And I'm going to suggest that men have never really been directly propagandized to do that, rather women's fears have been manipulated by propaganda such that men couldn't allow themselves to be seen by women as not responding to their fears. "Apexual" statism is the manipulation of the male protector instinct via women, and that's why the Typhon's "Harem Patriarchy" makes so much sense. Women have been corralled by their fear and desire for protection by a few "patriarchs" (not "men" but male-bodied apexuals who have more in common with each other than they have with "men") where men (men who more or less still identify with other men) are disposing of themselves in a crazed competition to get into the harem. This mirrors the church's "where the women go the men will follow" strategy.

AVoiceforMen: The Patriarchy at Feminism's Core, Part Deux:

TyphonBlue: “The problem with traditionalism is the Apexual. What I mean
by that is, when these men get to a position of power, they have no
sense of any sort of fraternity with other men. So when these powerful
Apexuals gather – what are they going to do with it? They’re going to
give it to women to create a virtual harem for themselves. The
phenomenon of Apexuality (as I describe it) is based on male
disposability: you have no worth outside of your function in the
hierarchy because you’re disposable otherwise.”

TyphonBlue: “It’s
male disposability that creates Harem Patriarchy. As soon as these
Alphas acquire enough power, what do they do with it? They create for
themselves a harem. By ‘empowering’ women with boonies, with cushy jobs
and welfare and healthcare – gender-based healthcare – and all these
other gender-based government services. It’s just a huge harem.”

At the level of society, "Male Disposability" isn't talking about the expectations of any one woman or even "women" as a group or class. Rather it's talking about how "Apexual" other-sacrificing elites (and their radical feminist foot soldiers) exploit the legitimate fears that women have of being left without protection – and thereby also exploiting men's fears of failing to be seen as capable of providing that protection. As you suggested earlier in the thread, this fear of failing drives men to seek even more opportunities to signal protection provision. It's that desire to signal protection that leads to the one-upmanship ("white knighting") via the shaming ("Man up!") of MGTOWs or any man that isn't doing his duty to "women" or "society" i.e., to non-biologically-related individuals and families.

I'll hazard a guess that Perpetual War (maim don't slaughter) is the most efficient vector of attack in order to set up an "Apexual" "Harem Patriarchy." War takes the men away from the home and leaves women feeling defenseless. After enough wars, women, as a group, were helpless against the poison of radical feminism and the welfare statism that promised to fix their broken men. Radical feminism attacks women with the idea they are only powerless victims, and then misidentifies the villain as "men" as a group (a group that can't even see themselves as a group let alone act as one). But the villain is the "Apexual" sociopathic elite. There is no "patriarchy", there is only the "Male Disposability" state. It's likely men couldn't see this attack on women (or themselves) for what it was because it was made under the colour of reasonable female protection. It has always been so reasonable.

But the reasonableness of that protection is now being challenged at every possible level – within the family, within the workplace, within the media, within society, historically, and personally e.g., men asking themselves deep existential questions about what all this female relationship pestilence is for? What a piece of work is a man without a woman? How noble in MGTOW, how infinite in felicity! ...

A man will sacrifice for his biological family. What else but a threat to this family will make a man sacrifice? Men are highly practical. No man is going to go into berserker mode without a credible threat. Therefore, frighten the women (the wife, the girlfriend, the cute girl next door). Then the man has to "Man up!" to protect them no matter what the stated reason – their fear is enough. So absent these reasons and the resulting "Male Disposability" for the protection of other families, there likely could be no state. Thus Apexual sociopaths need to create perpetual wars and propagate self-flagellating "original sin" fantasies in order to make people "other" themselves and thereby make it easier to "other" others.

However, I do think that as people develop
more universal ethics and as child rearing improves that the sort of
things men and women find attractive in each other will change. We kind
of live in a state of nature for now, for which some of those
attractions are frankly reptilian and largely unnecessary in the modern
world.

Now that evidence of the effect of fatherlessness is widely distributed, and perhaps even accepted, I think we can agree that parenting can't improve without men having first healed themselves such that they can start new families. How can childhoods ever improve without the involvement of fathers? How can fathers parent effectively if they can't choose high quality women to parent with? How can they choose high quality women if they don't have high standards? How men they have high standards without going "MGTOW" for a while and getting their heads together? How can they take these timeouts if "blue pill" men and radicalized women keep attacking them with self-serving "Man up!" shaming?
 
MGTOWs (men who, through delayed gratification, are building up their self-worth and setting far higher standards for female selection) are relieving women and society of the yoke of radical feminism. MGTOWs  may in fact be the best thing to happen to non-radicalized women.

Rather than crushing the spirits of men under the weight of the "Apexual/Male Disposability" hierarchy, radical feminism has only pushed men right out of it. Ooops!

. And now we're seeing the inevitable – but highly disturbing – demonization, shaming, and out-grouping of MGTOWs – both by "blue pill" men and radicalized women. Why? Because women want continued protection and even further provisioning (which still manages to sound reasonable) and "blue pill" men don't want to accept how much they've invested in getting inside the harem (which just sounds weak).

 

[PatrickC]

Really fascinating synopsis Adam. You really added to some very interesting thoughts I'd already gleaned from Farrell and GWW.

However, I do think that as people develop more universal ethics and as child rearing improves that the sort of things men and women find attractive in each other will change. We kind of live in a state of nature for now, for which some of those attractions are frankly reptilian and largely unnecessary in the modern world.

Now that evidence of the effect of fatherlessness is widely distributed, and perhaps even accepted, I think we can agree that parenting can't improve without men having first healed themselves such that they can start new families. How can childhoods ever improve without the involvement of fathers? How can fathers parent effectively if they can't choose high quality women to parent with? How can they choose high quality women if they don't have high standards? How men they have high standards without going "MGTOW" for a while and getting their heads together? How can they take these timeouts if "blue pill" men and radicalized women keep attacking them with self-serving "Man up!" shaming?

This is an interesting point of view that I hadn't really considered before. But ironically kind of find myself in at the moment. Certainly I think men as do women need to make better choices in their partners as a means to improving that quality overall. However, meeting philosophically minded women is pretty rare frankly. But then again this may well be about my choices, so the jury is still out on that one (for me at least). Which is perhaps exactly your point, that in taking time out from relationships we are more able to re-evaluate those choices and desires more rationally.

Thanks Adam, I have really enjoyed your insights and thoughts on this topic and wish you all the best.

[AdamC]

This is an interesting point of view that I hadn't really considered before. But ironically kind of find myself in at the moment. Certainly I think men as do women need to make better choices in their partners as a means to improving that quality overall. However, meeting philosophically minded women is pretty rare frankly. But then again this may well be about my choices, so the jury is still out on that one (for me at least). Which is perhaps exactly your point, that in taking time out from relationships we are more able to re-evaluate those choices and desires more rationally.

Thanks Adam, I have really enjoyed your insights and thoughts on this topic and wish you all the best.

And thanks for your replies, xelent.

Your replies have really helped me to appreciate the value of sharing and discussing my research into men's issues. Having "empathy for men" is a very challenging and (evidently) animating idea for me. 

I notice I didn't respond to your earlier disclosure. I'm in a similar situation with regard to romantic relationships. I've taken a time-out whilst I work with a therapist to process (very, very gently, and very, very slowly) how shame has shaped all of my relationships (including the therapeutic relationship) – and now also to process the effects of fatherlessness – something that, until very recently, I had previously denied was worthy of any contemplation whatsoever. This denial likely the result of a series of isolating core beliefs: I am unworthy of a father and his contemplation of me; I am unworthy of any man's contemplation of me; I am unworthy of my own contemplation of me; I am unworthy. Shame. I haven't yet fully connected with the sadness of all that, to the loss of potential.

AVoiceforMen: Mother of Violence

TyphonBlue: ...there's a distinct correlation between violence and the lack of father involvement in raising children. [When] there's a huge cult of motherhood and the father has almost nothing to do with raising children, [there's more violence in society]. There's an intersection of various factors. [When] women are playing the hypoagent, playing the victim to get what they want out of life – that naturally imprints upon their children – and then you have that combined with boys who are raised without a really strong sense of the masculine, which is what an involved father would give them. So they have a very fragile male identity. And in combination with that, because they don't have an involved father, because they don't have that emotional resonance with the masculine, they feel like they're expendable. On a fundamental level they feel like they're worthless unless they go out and find an identity. You've got all of these boys who have a sense of having no identity, feeling like they're completely expendable in service of an identity – and what do they go do? They go beat the crap out of each other to try to get an identity. Or strap bombs to their chests and blow themselves up to be a martyr.

JohnTheOther: ...they're doing this violence in service to somebody else's needs, particularly a mother figure or a wife figure...

TyphonBlue: The problem with a lot of these [fathers] is they don't have intimate connections with their own fathers. So it's really easy to get in between a man and his relationship to his children because he doesn't really understand it, he thinks it's "woman's work." I really wonder about the whole "wait 'til your father gets home" thing, and how that estranges the father – basically he becomes a tool or an instrument of the mother's wrath so she can maintain the positive relationship and whatever is negative accrues upon him.

TyphonBlue: There's this lack of intimacy between fathers and their children, lack of emotional intimacy, lack of father involvement, and that's what is creating this violence with boys... they don't grow up with the sense that the masculine is valuable, or a sense of a connection with the masculine, and then they are unleashed on the world. They've learned all this victimhood rhetoric from their mothers so they can drop immediately into "I'm a victim, I'm a victim" that justifies all kinds of violence towards other people, and so suddenly you get these war zones... ...you get a lot of enforcers because you get those young men that want to "roll", they want some skulls to bash in to feel like they're men.

TyphonBlue: ...depending on a woman's benefit is where a man is on the scale of good-to-bad. And I think what fathers can do is give children the opportunity to develop their own sense of a moral compass, as opposed to it being defined by outside factors... ...an involved father lays the emotional foundation for being able to define yourself... ...what teaches boys to see themselves as disposable is this lack of intimate connection with their father, this lack of being valued by their father, and taken care of by their father... ...which indicates to his son that he has value and he's getting value from his masculine role-model, which in turn insulates against treating himself as disposable, or allowing other people to treat him as disposable, which in turn insulates him from being proxified.

JohnTheOther: ...to have a rudderless identity where your identity is dependent on fulfilling somebody else's needs at the cost of your own safety or the cost of your own mortality.

TyphonBlue: ...a guy, preferably the father, who shows his son that he is valuable, doesn't necessarily show him how to be a man but that it's valuable to be a man. And then the son can find out what it means to be a man, for him.

[AdamC]

AdamC, you make a very interesting and clever analysis (thanks for all the sources too!). However, I do not see the connection you make between avoidance of relationships and shame. You say failed relationships cause shame (universally?) can you please explain?

You are welcome, and certaintly, my statement needs far more explanation. Answering your question presents me with an opportunity to test my understanding of shame. I hope to post a full reply sometime next week.

It was precisely my own process of overcoming shame that revealed I had no good intentions towards my previous partners, but mainly childhood needs - which is perhaps what makes that shame legitimate.

I can say something similar with respect to my attempts to satisfy unmet needs: I was doing the best I could with what little I had. And I'm really glad for it all because it gives me so much raw experience to process. And some of it was very raw.

[AdamC]

However, I do not see the connection you make between avoidance of relationships and shame. You say failed relationships cause shame (universally?) can you please explain?

Shame can be understood as a state following relational failure. By failure, I'm not referring to the final ending of a relationship (though that can add to shame if one is shame-prone); rather I'm referring to the repeated failure of repair within rupture-repair cycles:

Shame by Robert Karen (.doc)

"We've looked at our videotapes," Michael Lewis, a professor of pediatrics and psychiatry at the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, in New Brunswick, New Jersey, says of his studies of shame in childhood. "Mom says, Oh, don't do that, that's awful." She seems to be voicing a negative reaction to the child's behavior and not to the child's whole being. But on closer examination Lewis saw that the mother's face showed elements of disgust, what he called "an incomplete-disgust face." What she was conveying, in effect, was, You disgust me. "We're finding that thirty to forty percent of mothers' prohibitions are accompanied by this incomplete-disgust face. And this is in laboratory situations, where they know they're being videotaped. I would say that the middle class, in moving away from physical punishment, utilizes more withdrawal of love. We think we have moved to a higher plane because we don't punish the kids, when in fact we may be humiliating them instead."

When an infant seeks to engage a parent, when his coos and smiles and efforts to make eye contact fail, he looks down forlornly and experiences what looks very much like shame. The fundamental purpose of all affects, as the affect theorist Silvan Tomkins saw it, is to amplify or call attention to the situation that triggers them. "It's like the relationship between pain and injury," he said. "If we had no pain receptors, we could have injury and do nothing about it." Thus, when the baby turns away in disappointment as his mother fails to respond in the expected way, or, worse, as she reacts with anger or distress because she sees that he has just wet the new comforter, the baby's shame is an adaptive reaction. It keeps him from making a bad situation worse by continuing to seek attunement in the face of a hopeless situation. And because he eventually associates what he has done with the feeling of shame it has evoked, that feeling helps him to learn about acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Psychologists disagree, of course, on whether to call these early painful feelings shame, since at this stage no self-evaluation is involved. But certainly dealing with shame and its boundaries is soon a constant factor in the socialization of the child, because standards and rules are everywhere, and he has a lot to learn in a very short time. From toilet training to eating behavior to how and with whom to display anger or affection, the boundaries of the acceptable are progressively narrowed. But the child does not necessarily feel personally tarnished by this training: the shame remains situational, not a permanent part of his being. And besides, he is showered with rewards for his efforts to change and for his achievements. He joins the A team, where no one throws food on the floor or makes in his pants. Meanwhile, ideally, his underlying impulses are not entirely suppressed. They are merely directed into acceptable channels.

But, inevitably, certain aspects of the child's emotional makeup cannot find an acceptable channel. What is he to do if belonging to the A team means that he must never express certain feelings? What if his mother turns icy when he gets angry, is unable to respond to his sadness, smirks when he acts disappointed, or lectures him whenever he's fearful or wants to be held? In such cases his very feelings become stigmatized and to a certain extent he is stuck with his shame.

A young woman is having some friends and acquaintances over for a rare brunch. Only six of the ten invited were able to come. The poor showing is a humiliation for the hostess, who is ashamed in front of the remaining guests: she fears they can see how unpopular and disregarded she is. The hostess does not know three of her guests well – they are acquaintances from her department at work – and they do not seem to be mixing much with the others. They are more successful people, "really going somewhere in life," as the hostess sees it, and now she feels a fool for having invited them, having reached out for people who have no interest in her. In fact, she is quite certain that despite their cordiality, they came only to be polite. For a moment the encroaching shame panics her. She finds herself talking excessively. She wants to explain, to be liked despite it all, to make the group coalesce into a successful party. She makes excuses for the food, for her decor – "It's only temporary." She feels bad for having betrayed herself like that, laughs nervously, hears herself laugh, suspects that her merriment sounds forced and unnatural. Her guests seem uncomfortable. She wishes the whole thing would end. Later, when everyone's gone, she's sure they're thinking, "Oh, God, that was really stupid."

This fictional experience typifies the kind of shame that haunts the life of "Polly," a young woman interviewed by the psychologist Susan Miller for her groundbreaking doctoral research on shame, which later became a book, The Shame Experience (1985). Polly is an archetypal shame sufferer. Although she harbors the hope that she will be famous and glamorous one day, she feels like a nobody. She sees herself as the sort of person who cares for people who don't care for her. If she doesn't react the way others do, if she hears a complaint or a harsh tone, she is quick to think, Uh-oh, something is wrong with me, my deformity is showing. Hers is a core sense of shame, a condition that some psychologists now trace back to damaging early experience.

"The child's sense of being someone who counts," Miller says, "comes in large part from the parent's capacity to empathically tune in to that child." Without that consistent reassurance the child begins to doubt the value of her efforts to engage, of the love she is trying to give, of her very being. "Polly seemed to have had the kind of parent who in some basic way never saw the child, or saw a distorted image of the child based on the parent's own needs."

Heinz Kohut had argued that the parent is a kind of mirror for the child, which gives her a sense of herself and her feelings before she has the capacity to achieve this on her own. "If there is no clear reflection," Miller says, "the self has a great deal of difficulty achieving any definition."

Polly's mother never provided this helpful mirroring. She tended to focus on details – the fit of the child's clothes, the smudge on the face, the posture – rather than on Polly herself. When she did attend to Polly, her actions seemed false, as if, in a way Polly could never articulate or even be certain of, her mother was not fully there. Insecure about her ability to draw others' interest to her, Polly developed a tenacious shameful self-concept – that she was inherently uninteresting. Unhappily, in Polly's case the concept contains some truth. Because she had only a tenuous faith in the validity of her feelings, which her parents had so disregarded, "she developed a very conventional, compliant personality, trying so hard to fit in with everyone that she would ultimately be chosen by no one."

A relationship is a delicate fabric of non-verbal information flow between two people which regulates each of their attachment systems through their relational right-brains (

). Each time there's a misattunement of this flow (a millisecond of gaze that isn't returned, a subtle twisting of the body in attempt to reach out, a hotflush of discomfort at something said), the fabric is ruptured. Such ruptures are inevitable as we repeatedly come in and out of relationship. The quality of the relationship is dependent upon how quickly ruptures are repaired.

Relationships grow stronger through successive repairs. If one has enjoyed a securely-attached
relationship during childhood, then one is far more likely to expect a
rupture to be quickly repaired, and will have no hesitation in reaching
out with, or receiving, attunement. But if one is shame-prone from
having an insecurely-attached childhood, then one naturally hesitates
given that, historically, such ruptures were seldom repaired:

 

Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:

In a social context, hopelessness is the result of not being able to put
things right. It is not having negative thoughts about oneself – a
crucial element of depression is that it also involves the feeling that
there is no way of redeeming the self, of recovering others' good
opinion or love. This is the 'disruption and repair' cycle. When stress
and conflict between people occur, as it inevitably will in every
relationship, it is crucial to learn that the positive relationship can
be restored. This is at the heart of the attachment between parent and
child and is the core of emotional security and self-confidence.

High
cortisol children don't expect to be able to deal effectively with
other people's negative feelings. Their teachers rate them as less
socially competent than other children for the very same reason – they
manage negative feelings and difficult situations either by withdrawing
or with aggression. Because they don't expect ruptures to be repaired,
they don't turn to others. Because they have not been taught to focus on
solving problems step by step, they cannot imagine any solution. They
are truly stuck with negative feelings that they don't know how to
disperse, other than by running away.

The missing experience of
having feelings recognised and acknowledged by another person,
particularly of having strong feelings tolerated by another person, is
provided by the therapist. Most important of all, when therapist and
client fail to understand each other, or disagree about something
important and there is 'rupture' in the relationship, the therapist
demonstrates that relationships can be 'repaired'. This cycle of rupture
and repair is the key to secure relationships. Knowing that no matter
what breakdowns in communications occur they can be repaired is the
source of confidence in a relationship and the knowledge that regulation
will be restored. Slowly, through these types of experience with a
psychotherapist, a new muscle develops, an ability to be heard and to
listen, to listen and be heard. Emotional states can be shared, both
verbally and non-verbally.

Psychobiological
Approach to Couple Therapy: Integrating Attachment and Personality
Theory As Interchangeable Structural Components by Stan Tatkin (.pdf)

Interactive regulation involves two or more nervous systems in close physical proximity maintaining or trying to maintain attuned, implicit (nonverbal) communication (Beebe & Lachmann, 1998; Beebe et al., 2003; Schore, 1994, 2002b). At its best, interactive regulation involves a series of non-conscious micro-moments made up of fast-acting somatosensory experiences within and between individuals, resulting in fast-acting adjustments and error corrections. If successful, interactive regulation results in a mutual perception of attunement. If done badly, however, the result is varying degrees of mutual dysregulation, which if unrepaired quickly, will lead to heightening arousal and eventual threat response.

 

Misattunement (and thus shame) doesn't only run in the direction of neglect. An angry, crying baby will experience as much distress because of her mother's attempt to shift her out of her current state with excessive smiling or even laughter (to which the baby will turn her head away as if to say "That's not it! I'm upset, not happy! That's too much of the wrong kind of stimulation! You're only adding to my pain by not seeing me!") as she would if she were to receive no response at all (

: "There's no reparation and [the baby] is stuck in a really ugly situation"). To avoid causing the baby shame, what is required of the mother is a contingent, empathetic response.

Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:

The attempt to escape from feelings has its origins in a babyhood in which the baby's feelings have not been identified and responded to in a contingent way. Babies in this situation can't take their own regulation for granted. They are confronted prematurely with their own raw needs, lacking the ability to meet them by themselves. This seems to leave a sort of unfinished business for the baby. As he or she grows up, the adult still longs to be properly taken care of, to be understood without words, to have all wishes fulfilled by magic, and to have needs anticipated without saying anything. Without an actively responsive and sensitive mothering experience, the baby can't identify with the parental attitude and apply it to him or herself. It isn't possible to generate the attitude of self-care and awareness of one's own feelings if someone else hasn't first done it for you. (That is why self-help books are of little use.) You need to have an experience with someone first – then you can reproduce it.

Going back to the baby of the second paragraph of the Shame article ... The failure to be responded to an attuned way during early childhood is the cause of "toxic" or "core" non-verbal relational shame. The earlier these relational failures occur in childhood, the deeper and more toxic the shame. Being unable to regulate himself, the baby had reached out seeking his mother's regulation. Her lack of attunement meant he was left in a dysregulated state. He wasn't met in relationship; his feelings weren't fully felt and empathetically mirrored back to him as being tolerable and therefore acceptable. Because at that young age he is his feelings (he's too young to have thoughts), and his feelings are evidently too much for either he or his mother to bare – he experiences a profound loneliness and unworthiness.

Why Love Matters by Sue Gerhardt: How Affection Shapes A Baby's Brain:

Self-hood is very tied up with the ability to manage emotions in a consistent way that others can recognise and comment on. When others notice that 'you're always so calm/controlling/persistent/quick to act/absent-minded/stoical or practical', they are commenting on your style of emotional management. The sense of self is very dependent on this feedback from others. We need to know how others see us and develop a consistent 'personality' or style of emotional management. But if the parental response is consistently negative or absent, we can feel wiped out, invalidated and basically bad. It becomes much harder to think about feeling without a framework of ongoing support and the sense of self becomes increasingly tenuous.

Given enough of these failures in repair after rupture (the reaching out for regulation), to create some sense of his self, and to defend what little remains of his self-worth, he will develop an adaptive interpersonal coping strategy and script decision with regards to attachment: Moving Towards (Anxious/Angry/Preoccupied/Ambivalent Attachment); Moving Against (

); Moving Away (Avoidant/Dismissing Attachment)

Interpersonal Process in Therapy: An Integrative Model by Edward Teyber & Faith McClure

Ultimately, clients' compromise solutions to their core conflicts will not succeed. The client can block the developmental problem (turn against self) and try to rise above the core conflict by moving toward, away, or against. However, these compensatory maneuvers will not resolve the client's problems – no matter how successful the client becomes through these interpersonal coping strategies. As they repeatedly employ these interpersonal styles – even in situations where they are not needed or are not effective – they will engender problems in current relationships, and create personal stress that often contributes to health crises.

Let's examine three reasons why the client's compromise solution will not succeed and then explore what can be done to help the client instead.

First, the "tyranny of the shoulds" places unrelenting demands on the client. These can be heard, for example, when clients enter treatment exclaiming, "I can't do all of this anymore! I can't be a perfect parent, a great spouse, and the most productive person in my office. I can't be everything to everybody anymore!" An individual's quality of life is diminished by these unrealistic expectations. They are depleting and fatiguing, and diminish the potential for personal and professional growth, even if these unrelenting demands they place on themselves (and on others) do not provoke a crisis that brings them to treatment. The struggle that comes from not having had a "secure base" in order to later feel secure in venturing into new relationships with flexibility is palpable in clients severely bound by "shoulds."

Second, clients sense of entitlement and being special will usually fail as well. For example, pleasing clients will not be able to win the love or approval of everyone they need. Expansive clients will not always succeed or be able to make others defer to their demands, and detached clients will encounter criticism from others or situational pressures that force them to compete. Inevitably, clients attempts to become special and rise above their conflict will lead to conflict at work and at home.

Typically, clients enter counseling when situational life stressors, developmental transitions in adulthood, or aging/illness have caused their interpersonal coping strategies to fail. Therapists help clients change when they grasp he pain that clients suffer when their attempts to be special and rise above their conflict fail; Kohut writes eloquently of the narcissistic wound that is so painful to clients' core sense of self. Even though the demands that clients place on themselves and others are unrealistic, it still can be excruciating when their interpersonal coping strategy fails. Tragically, a few individuals will even attempt suicide in response to such a failure, and others will contemplate it. Why are some clients driven to such an extreme response? In a word, shame.

The interpersonal coping style that many clients have adopted is the basis of their identity and their primary source of self-worth, but it is a brittle substitute for the genuine self-esteem they lack. From these clients' point of view, they are their ability to please, to achieve, or to remain superior and aloof. Such clients overreact to seemingly insignificant events (for example, gaining three pounds over the holidays or losing their patience with a trying two-year-old). This overreaction occurs because their entire sense of self is threatened when their interpersonal coping strategy fails and their shame-based sense of self is revealed by their mistakes – which they frame as "failures."

Shame anxiety is likely the underlying cause of various manifestations of the approach-avoidance conflict. The three coping strategies (Moving Towards, Against, Away) are all ways to avoid coming into "true" or "real" relationship for fear of relational shame.

The Moving Away strategy ("introversion") is about staying out of relationship in an attempt to regulate oneself using Autoregulation: "My needs are way too much for even me to tolerate, and so I must deny their existence as best I can." Shame is experienced when startled out of "alone time" and into relationship, revealing relational inadequacy.

The Moving Towards strategy ("extroversion") is about using others (often by caretaking) in an attempt to regulate oneself vicariously using External Regulation: "My needs are too much to be ever satisfied, so the best I can do is to meet other people's needs." There's proximity-seeking in the moving towards style but only a very superficial relationship. Shame is experienced when alone.

The Moving Against strategy is pre-emptively combative so as to make relationship almost impossible: (Julie: "I think the so-called borderline rage isn’t necessarily a defense only against their own core shame, but can also develop as a defense against other people’s projected shame. When you think about the kind of environment a BPD-sufferer survived growing up, it’s kind of a battleground for who can project their shame onto whom first, and sometimes this shame can come in veiled or sugar-coated forms or mixed with elements of truth. In the moment, it can be VERY hard to sort out which parts or communications if any are valid and accurate and which are projections and subtle manipulations. If there’s any doubt about the content, it can actually be better to simply fly into a rage and reject everything wholesale than to risk absorbing whatever part of the message may essentially be poison. Rather than swallow the shame pill you are being offered, you puke it back in the other person’s face. The problem arises when you do this reflexively whenever you get the slightest whiff that someone may be trying to shame you, even when that isn’t actually what’s going on.")

Psychobiological
Approach to Couple Therapy: Integrating Attachment and Personality
Theory As Interchangeable Structural Components by Stan Tatkin (.pdf)

INSECURE ATTACHMENT: THE AVOIDANT

Psychobiologically speaking, insecure attachment refers to a compromised safety and security system within a primary attachment dyad. This compromised safety and security system, often attributed to insensitive caregiving, creates an ongoing psychobiological burden, such as interpersonal stress, and involves arousal and neuroendocrine systems that are too often engaged in threat.

The avoidants’ reliance on autoregulation provides them with a false sense of autonomy and self-reliance. Their autoregulatory skills may give them the impression they have won their independence; however, their self-reliance is really an adaptation to neglect and therefore cannot be true independence. In actuality their fear and shame around dependency form a “do it yourself” attitude toward everything and everyone. Although appearing to be engaged in interactive regulation, avoidants often autoregulate while interacting with their primary partner much in the same way narcissists can interact while using others as self-objects. The dissociative properties of autoregulation often give the impression of interaction when, in fact, the interacting partner is engaged in self-stimulating and self-soothing. 

The avoidant’s tendency toward one-mindedness greatly contributes to repeated, misattuned, unrepaired moments in adult primary attachment relationships. For instance, an avoidant may ignore or fail to detect conflicting social-emotional information, originating both internally and externally, due in part to defenses against negative experience (avoidance of unregulated or dysregulated affects) and due in part to deficits in right brain, frontolimbic social-emotional processing that cannot respond properly or fast enough to detect errors and make rapid adjustments (Schore, 2003a). 

Finally, as mentioned at the beginning of this paper, attachment organization and personality structure interact with the peripheral nervous system, neuroendocrine system, and musculoskeletal system in response to interpersonal stress. This manifests in the body, face, and voice as expressive attempts to move toward or away from a primary attachment figure. The avoidant’s reflex is to move back and away, particularly when approached. These movements occur in both separations and reunions, big and small. The recoil reflex is non-conscious and immediate and can be expressed in a variety of ways to avoid, withdraw, comply, ignore, or attack the intruding partner. Approaches by the attachment figure can be visual, vocal, tactile, and even olfactory (Tatkin, 2009a). Due to the avoidant’s default autoregulatory state and difficulty with shifting out of that state, intrusions can be startling and experienced as attacks. In addition, the non-mutual nature of the avoidant’s early attachment experience leads him or her to anticipate approaches as non-reciprocated demands. Similar sensitivities to approach have been noted in both narcissistic and schizoid personality disorders (J. Masterson & Klein, 1995).

INSECURE ATTACHMENT: THE ANGRY/RESISTANT

Extreme forms of angry-resistant insecure attachment contain both clinging and distancing defenses, marked by considerable anger, fussiness, ambivalence, and negativism. As with the avoidant, the angry-resistant partner struggles with separations and reunions; however, the experience of distress with both is much more acute. The angry-resistant partner experiences fussiness and ambivalence while in the presence of a partner, anger just prior to and during separation, and anger upon reunion. These individuals often report feeling surprised and baffled by their own angry reactions to separation and reunion (Tatkin & Solomon, in preparation). Their partners often report unavoidable fights started by the angry-resistant in anticipation of being left or of being approached with something positive. 

The angry-resistant features of fussiness, anger, negativism, ambivalence, and problems with separations and reunions bear a remarkable resemblance to disorders along the borderline spectrum, especially more an unresolved loss or trauma is involved. The negativistic response to positive approach resembles Fairbairn’s anti-libidinal self in response to the libidinal self (exciting object)—an immediate sabotage to an anticipated positive event in order to defend against disappointment (Fairbairn, 1966; Rinsley & Grotstein, 1994). Indeed, the caregiving style of the angry-resistant child is preoccupied, often irritable, and overwhelmed. Preoccupied caregivers themselves have difficulty with separations and reunions. At times emotionally available and at other times not, the preoccupied caregiver is inconsistent with his or her attention, patience, and self-regulatory functions. Mahler noted that preoccupied mothers during the rapprochement period often elicited clinging behaviors by their toddlers, who could not
emotionally refuel due to the mother’s low libidinal energy or inattentiveness (Mahler, 1974b; Mahler, et al., 1975). Sroufe and others found preoccupied mothers who were unable to physically calm their infant, prematurely put them down or withdrew from them in frustration (Duggal et al., 2001; Slade, 2000; Sroufe, 1985). 

Adult angry-resistant partners have a reflex response that moves toward and then abruptly back away from their primary attachment partner. They commonly report feeling like a burden, and like the toddler, anticipate being dropped prematurely by a frustrated other. Their sadness and longing for their partner during separation is replaced by an angry reaction upon reunion. Positive approaches by their partner are both longed for and rejected, in much the same manner as reunions. 

The adult angry-resistant partner also tends to be highly verbal and at times tangential, overly expressive and histrionic, can often perseverate on personal injuries, and tends to rely on external regulation. Whereas the avoidant has trouble shifting from autoregulation to interaction, the angry-resistant has trouble shifting from interaction to being alone. Both have trouble tracking and managing implicit, nonverbal right brain activity that arises in the form of body sensations, images, implicit memory, impulses, and the like (Schore, 2003a). The angry-resistant’s strategy for managing implicit somatosensory experience is constant interaction, whereas the avoidant’s strategy is various forms of autoregulation. 
 
DISORGANIZED ATTACHMENT 

In contrast with organized insecures who are products of insensitive parenting, type D’s, or disorganized insecures, are products of scary parenting. Their presentation is not unlike that of lower level personality disorders, such as borderline, which have a high prevalence of psychotic and paranoid ideation, post-traumatic startle, and instantaneous re-experiencing of relational trauma. In a relationship, these disorganized/disoriented partners react to almost ubiquitous, ambient threats and rapid misappraisals of meaning and intension. They commonly misread neutral faces as negative and hostile and react instantly and strongly to threatening prosodic cues and threatening movements and postures. Lagging behind these more implicit, nonverbal cues are sensitivities to dangerous words and phrases.

Chronic dysregulation is the intersubjective experience of disorganized couples. Their daily interactions are, to a large extent, managed subcortically (hyperactive amygdala and hypoactive hippocampus), with a highly kindled threat response and a disabled high right hemisphere error-correcting system. Despite the acute and chronic mutual dysregulation, disorganized partners often see in one another their only hope for reparation, safety, and peace, and for that reason often hold together.

[MarkIX]

 

Whenever I have suggested that they hold the corrupt women in their lives accountable they get very mad at me. That would be their decision, and that decision is to do nothing.

 

Could you give me an example of what this might look like and what might be a likely outcome?

 

[Kevin Beal]

 

 

Whenever I have suggested that they hold the corrupt women in their lives accountable they get very mad at me. That would be their decision, and that decision is to do nothing.

 

Could you give me an example of what this might look like and what might be a likely outcome? 

 

If, for example, you were treated like you were disposable (male disposability) by your mother then you could RTR with her explaining that you have certain feelings about it and that you aren't wanting to have relationships where you are treated like you are disposable ("I feel frustrated when you simply expect me to do difficult or dangerous tasks, and/or praise me for it").

The likely outcome is probably denial if she's the type to treat you as disposable, or she could shut down and say that you are hurting her feelings, or maybe it will be a productive, positive and bonding experience, idk. In any event it will make it personal and (hopefully) cause actual change instead of what happens with most activists where they don't really accomplish anything. This way they actually do something about male disposability instead of just talk about it. 

Does that answer your question?

[MarkIX]

 

 

 

Whenever I have suggested that they hold the corrupt women in their lives accountable they get very mad at me. That would be their decision, and that decision is to do nothing.

 

Could you give me an example of what this might look like and what might be a likely outcome? 

 

If, for example, you were treated like you were disposable (male disposability) by your mother then you could RTR with her explaining that you have certain feelings about it and that you aren't wanting to have relationships where you are treated like you are disposable ("I feel frustrated when you simply expect me to do difficult or dangerous tasks, and/or praise me for it").

The likely outcome is probably denial if she's the type to treat you as disposable, or she could shut down and say that you are hurting her feelings, or maybe it will be a productive, positive and bonding experience, idk. In any event it will make it personal and (hopefully) cause actual change instead of what happens with most activists where they don't really accomplish anything. This way they actually do something about male disposability instead of just talk about it. 

Does that answer your question?

 

Thank you for your considered reply

Not that I'm a MGTOW, but I am going to give you an example from my own life.

My sister complained that I had twice visited my dying father without telling her. Her claim was that my visits affected her because my father was harder to deal with after I visited (she lived near the Hospital). After this conversation I didn't visit my Father for two weeks, when I was finally decided to see my Father it was too late he died the day before I was going to visit him. From this example can you suggest what possible benefit there would be to interacting with my sister?

[MarkIX]

 

 

 

 

Whenever I have suggested that they hold the corrupt women in their lives accountable they get very mad at me. That would be their decision, and that decision is to do nothing.

 

Could you give me an example of what this might look like and what might be a likely outcome? 

 

If, for example, you were treated like you were disposable (male disposability) by your mother then you could RTR with her explaining that you have certain feelings about it and that you aren't wanting to have relationships where you are treated like you are disposable ("I feel frustrated when you simply expect me to do difficult or dangerous tasks, and/or praise me for it").

The likely outcome is probably denial if she's the type to treat you as disposable, or she could shut down and say that you are hurting her feelings, or maybe it will be a productive, positive and bonding experience, idk. In any event it will make it personal and (hopefully) cause actual change instead of what happens with most activists where they don't really accomplish anything. This way they actually do something about male disposability instead of just talk about it. 

Does that answer your question?

 

Thank you for your considered reply

Not that I'm a MGTOW, but I am going to give you an example from my own life.

My sister complained that I had twice visited my dying father without telling her. Her claim was that my visits affected her because my father was harder to deal with after I visited (she lived near the Hospital). After this conversation I didn't visit my Father for two weeks, when I was finally decided to see my Father it was too late he died the day before I was going to visit him. From this example can you suggest what possible benefit there would be to interacting with my sister?

 

I should point ou at my experience with my father was that he was barely able to move and couldn't hold a conversation for very long. It is definately my opinion that finding him hard to manage was simply anotherone of her lies.

[Kevin Beal]

Honestly, I don't know what you should do.

I don't think you need to confront her necessarily. I just get frustrated with activists who talk a big game but don't really bring those same values into their personal lives. 

Not that I always do that, but I do think it's valuable and I'm getting better at it

[MarkIX]

 

Honestly, I don't know what you should do.

I don't think you need to confront her necessarily. I just get frustrated with activists who talk a big game but don't really bring those same values into their personal lives. 

Not that I always do that, but I do think it's valuable and I'm getting better at it

 

Sorry for the delay  in my reply. The point I was making is that it is very easy to judge a situation from imperfect knowledge but seldom helpful. Being in the position I am in it seems both from an emotional and logical angle that I have nothing to gain by talking to my sister ( and my mother incidentially) form where I stand it doesn't look like that much of a stretch to include a great deal more women in that equation. I think MGTOW has merit if looked at from certain environmental perspectives.

[Frosty]

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.

[PatrickC]

Welcome to the boards Frosty. Yes I was aware of ideas around the concept of MGTOW were being discussed as far back as 2007, probably much earlier even. I remember listening to some quite old podcasts around that time. From my brief exploration it seemed to emanate from Australia mainly. Which wouldn't surprise me given the Leftist/feminist mentality over there.

 

I would agree that for most guys MGTOW is not an ideology, that it's just a way of thinking and doing things for yourself primarily. I certainly don't mind using the tag myself. I just think there are some quarters where MGTOW is being shepherded ideologically, towards vulnerable men that haven't perhaps processed their relationships with women very well.

 

That said I still find the most interesting content out there (bar philosophy) these days to be MGTOW. Some great thinkers too.

[Frosty]

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.

[PatrickC]

Yes, recently I've been listening and reading, too what to some is often considered the more darker side of the manonsphere, With authors such as Jack Donovan (The Way of Men) and Simon Shepherd (All About Women).

 

Whilst I don't agree with all their positions they both have some really interesting things to say about masculinity and femininity. They don't associate directly with MGTOW or the MRA (MRM), but If you haven't read them already, I highly recommend them both for future reading.

[Frosty]

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.

[Omega 3 snake oil]

 Many of the MGTOW's argue for the state (many are Communist/Socialist sympathizers), but just like Feminists, they want the state to fund what they, as men, want and desire, even at the expense of women and children.

Are many MGTOWs/Zetas socialist/statist? I never got that impression.

[Kevin Beal]

Are many MGTOWs/Zetas socialist/statist? I never got that impression.

Both Barbar and Stardusk are on the left and Barbar has claimed that it is a left right issue and that more regulation is necessary.

[PatrickC]

Barbar is worse than Stardusk. But that said, both these chaps have dominated the YTube market recently regarding MGTOW, whilst deliberately ignoring the real momentum behind their ignorance (and nihilism). Whilst I have no interest in politics myself, I can certainly see when people try to employ supposed 'apolitical' reasons to an idea. It has always been a classic leftist trick, even if it was an unconscious one for many of them perhaps.

[Frosty]

Are many MGTOWs/Zetas socialist/statist? I never got that impression.

 

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.

[PatrickC]

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.

 

This is what I broadly consider to be the real MGTOW. Albeit that my own ambition is to save as much money and earn more as I go along, in case I do decide to have a family at some juncture. But that said, it would still be considered as my own individual choice as Frosty suggested of course.

[LanceD]

Isn't it a good thing if statists are finding more reasons to have less children? As long as the peaceful parenting movement continues to grow and the statists continue to produce less people, and less successful people, freedom will win purely based on numbers.

[Frosty]

Well it would be a good thing, if that was demonstrated to be true, I don't think anyone has made a good case for MGTOWs being statists, they stand for individual freedom above everything else. Most of he issues that MGTOW have with society are down to the control the state has over divorce, family courts and other institutions that make marriage, long term relationships and fatherhood toxic to men.

 

It's certainly true to say that even those who are statists are just misguided, that MGTOW more than anyone have good reason and investment in dismantling the state and gender bias laws and courts, becuase they feel oppressed by the state. Along with the MRM in general they make a great target to spread libertarian principles to, because they'll likely have a predisposition to support absorbing them principles.

[MrCapitalism]

Have you guys seen the "MGTOW Manifesto"?

 

This is advertised as the founding document of MGTOW

 

 

MEN GOING THEIR OWN WAY (MGTOW)

The goal is to instill masculinity in men, femininity in women, and work toward limited government!

By instilling masculinity in men, we make men self-reliant, proud, and independent.

By instilling femininity in women, we make them nurturing, supporting, and responsible.

By working for a limited government, we are working for freedom and justice.

Women having "other qualities" is not interesting to men because we don't need them! Femininity will be the price women pay for enjoying masculinity in men!

This is the aim of "Men Going Their Own Way".

By holding this point of view, we are helping other men and, more importantly, we are helping boys grow up to become men.

This goal is to take away everyone's "right" to vote on other people's affairs thus rendering it impossible for political organisms and ideologies to impose their personal will on everyone else. It is not about reinstalling patriarchy or revoking female voting rights or making socialism illegal. It might have this as a side effect - but not directly and not as a political ideology. Only the future will show what happens and by going our own way we are preparing men and boys for that future.

It is important for men to have a practical approach to implementing our strategies.

PRIME STRATEGIES FOR ACHIEVING OUR GOALS

We have 3 main strategies:

1. Instilling masculinity in men by:

- Demanding respect for men
- Serving as good male role models
- Living independent lives
- Fighting chivalry

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

3. Limited government

In order to be independent of society, and live within it, while at the same time work for limiting governmental influence upon our daily lives, men will:
- Go Their Own Way
- Support other men
- Legally reduce any taxpaying
- Truthfully act out any duties in accordance with their conscience
- Use any rights to the benefit of other men as well as themselves


It is those 3 strategies that come together in one.

MEN GOING THEIR OWN WAY

This is the logo:
.






.
Every man supporting this idea is welcome to use the logo in this or similar contexts.

What we do as activism or the way we behave personally are the main tactics.

- Use of a logo which symbolizes the strategy.
- Run one or many web-sites and fora that promotes this.
- Run one or more web-sites which tells the truth about feminism.
- Provide stickers, T-shirts, etc., with various statements such as "Chivalry is dead!".
- Writing articles supporting our product.
- Producing music promoting our product.
- Hold international events and local meetings.
- Establishing men's clubs.
- Boycotting certain products.

You will basically be alone doing this. There is no organization supporting you. You just go your own way and do what you believe is right. You are never obligated beyond your own conscience. True masculinity is also about accepting the rights of other men and not letting them down for any short term personal benefits.

The men's movement does actually cover a much larger picture. By instilling masculinity in others, as well as yourself, you will actually be improving the lives of everyone, including women and children.

IF IT’S NOT RIGHT, GO YOUR OWN WAY!

Take care brother!

The MGTOW logos and the MGTOW Manifesto are public domain, explicitly designated so by their creators (the men of MGTOW) to be used by anyone for the purpose of promoting MGTOW. May 1, 2006

 

http://no-maam.blogspot.com/2001/02/mgtow-manifesto.html

 

This site has an excellent e-book on the subject that I am rereading.

[PatrickC]

Many thanks for the links MrCap. I'm taking some interest in this topic. Do you mind sharing more about how it's helped and inspired you?

[MrCapitalism]

Many thanks for the links MrCap. I'm taking some interest in this topic. Do you mind sharing more about how it's helped and inspired you?

Sorry it's taken me so long to respond, it's a very difficult question for me to answer.

 

The first answer that came to my mind was: "it hasn't," I don't find the message particularly inspiring or helpful. Unfortunately, I think I'm drawn to it because it seems to be accurate.

 

after mulling over it for a week, I think I can try another answer. It helps to put things into perspective. I'm a "Nice Guy" born and raised. It's helped me to realize why I think this way, how I was taught to think about it, why it gets me the results in relationships that it does, and where I fit in the grand scheme of the dating market. This site in particular (NO-MAAM blogspot) I think does a great job of presenting the material from a nice guy perspective, and as such is supportive and justifies my learned mating strategy, even if it is a failure.

[PatrickC]

Thanks MrCap for explaining your position on it. There is certainly a lot of ambiguity within the manifesto, which would certainly give a philosopher pause.