Men Going Their Own Way

MGTOW is the curious philosophy behind a growing online community of men committed to "protecting their own sovereignty above all else." Their main tactic? Completely withdrawing from a "feminized" society they feel left them behind.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Emily and this is Bridge and you're
listening to stufh Mom, never told you so, Bridget how
you doing today? I'm doing good, full disclosure. I'm fighting
off a bit of a cold weekend full of shouting

(00:28):
and throat clearing. So off my voice party. So my
voice sounds a little bit um raspy, sounds like Kathleen
Turner kind of smoking. That's why sounds cigarettes this time exactly. Yeah,
that's good. So this is the authentic way party. Your
face off is what we're saying right now. Whatever that

(00:50):
means to you. Dancing on tables encouraged. So we've got
a topic today. We've got a hell of a topic.
It's got a hell of a topic. Um, I don't
even know if I should really say why. This is
a topic that's sort of near and dear to me.
But I have a close friend, a close friend of
many many years. Um, we have kind of drifted apart.
He is someone who I'm pretty solidly on the left

(01:11):
when it comes to politics, and he is really I
don't know if you've noticed, I'm a pretty liberal. He's
a little bit just sort of I don't even know
what you would call him. A little bit like Libertarian
off the Grid and he you were talking to me
about this article that I read and Reason about how
young men in their twenties and thirties more and more

(01:33):
of them are not working and just sort of playing
video games all day, and which to me sounded, yeah,
like you think that's I thought you were like over
emphasizing the video game thing like this sounded like a
stereotype that correct. I was immediately defensive over when we
first started talking about this, right, It's like, this isn't real.
That's exactly what I thought. I thought, you know, this

(01:53):
is some anecdotal like like they're saying like, oh, well,
maybe young men are just in their basements playing video
games mom's basement, and which sounds it sounds absurd, or
it just sounds made up. It sounds like a very
easy trope. But actually the research according to this this
article and Reason really bears that out that more and
more men are are dropping out of the workforce, more

(02:16):
and more of them are living at home or with
a family member, and more and more of them are
spending their time on what they call leisure activities, which
includes video games. Um, and what I thought was fascinating
is that these guys. You might think like, oh, if
that was your situation, you'd be really sad and broken
up about it. But actually these guys are self reporting
higher levels of happiness and you know, satisfaction in their

(02:38):
situations than previously unemployed men. So basically, young men are
a certain section of young men are staying home, living
with mom and dad more and playing more video games
and sort of in a kind of way, dropping out
of society. But they're cool with it. And there's a
very political and gender component to this. Correct, And this

(02:58):
is this is known but as their acronym, right, men
going their own way? How do you how? That's how
YouTubers are talking about it. That's how I would have
thought it was men going their own way, Which sounds great, right,
do your thing, you but when you when you dive
into the weeds about it, it has it's it's very

(03:19):
much tied to a feminist backlash. Right, These are men
who see society as no longer really welcoming to them. Correct.
And so whereas these guys who aren't working and like
playing video games and mom, mom and Dad's basement, they're
the guys who are going their own way, are sort
of taking that idea a step further, saying we are
turning our backs on society. Feminists have made society a

(03:43):
living nightmare for you know, your average red blooded American male. Therefore,
we are turning our backs on it. We don't they're
not engaging in any relationships, right, I don't jump on
you there no. Part of part of their their ethos
is explicitly do not have relationships with women. And it's
interesting because you know, as people, as humans, we have

(04:05):
a lot of us have sex drives, and so they
have found all these ways to get around that where
they will have one night stands or use sex workers,
or they talk a lot on the forums about masturbating
and sort of how they have used different ways of
getting around not of not having to have a relationship
with a woman, but still be sexually satisfied. Right as

(04:27):
I was reading up on this, I found myself so speechless.
I really didn't know how I was going to have
a conversation about it, because it is this is a philosophy.
This is a strident philosophy that's like sort of an
extreme part of the men's rights movement. Correct. What's interesting
is that so it's very similar to the men's rights
movement and that it came from this this um visceral

(04:49):
disdain for feminism. But it's different in that, you know,
whereas men's rights followers they might think of themselves as
pushing back against feminism and what they see as unfair
gender norms or what have you, via activism and things
like that, people who follow men going their own way,
they're reacting to that by just dropping off of society
saying no thanks, done to engage with the female population,

(05:13):
explain and simple. And what I find interesting is this,
and I have to I have to first say, having
fallen down the rabbit hole that is YouTube videos from
the Bigtow community and the reddit threads on the tail,
oh my gosh. So I have to acknowledge that this
is a philosophy of which there's a broad spectrum of subscribers. Right,
so there are people who I think women are. You know,

(05:35):
there's more of the benevolent sexist involved in Bigtow that thinks,
you know, this society needs to somehow cherish women, but
that's not their role, right that that women have gone
in a different have become that society has become mainstream
feminized right, and they want they want to return to
men are masculine, women are feminine, and that's what here's

(05:57):
what that means, what's right. And then there's also the
more extreme, very violent sounding wing of subscribers of this
philosophy who think women are evil. They are sucky buses
that want to drain you of your resources, and that
is their only purpose in life, is to ruin your lives.
Like a lot of it sounds like the projection of

(06:18):
past pain through heartache or breakups or watching, you know,
family dynamics in their own home. I've heard a lot
of MiG Tao YouTubers talk about their their upbringing being
um having reflected this role of woman as the woman
who has taken freedom, money, and love away from the
father figure in the life these people and I do not.

(06:40):
I don't feel like we have a very We don't
have a lot of overlaps in our political ideology, I
would imagine. But I found myself sort of feeling sorry
for some of them. When you look at the posts
that are on the Reddit community, for instance, a lot
of them are angry and violent, but a lot of
them are just really sad. It's a lot of men hurt.
It's a lot of men describing, you know, relationships gone

(07:02):
bad where women have mistreated them in a relationships, cheated
on them, they're paying alimony, you know, they're paying for
a kid, they're not sure, it's there's it's these really
these stories that really just really sounds sad um, you know.
And one of the things I found very interesting is
that it's so easy, Like I can easily imagine having

(07:23):
a person or a gender or something to blame all
my problems on, and you know, my relationship that fell apart,
or my my partner who treated me badly, or you know,
all of that. If I could blame it on you know, women,
I could see that being very seductive. I could do
that being a ideology that would be easy to fall into. Yeah,
And what I found surprising is when I was doing

(07:45):
the research around this podcast, it's not just the sexual
politics here of like women as being these alluring, evil
seductresses who wanna, you know, just get you to put
a ring on it and then drain you of all
your resource is. And so men should resist the sexual
sort of attraction that women are putting out there because
it's all a trick. It's all of guys, but also

(08:07):
what you opened the episode with is that undercurrent of
real economics that do not definitely, especially working class men
very well nowadays. Absolutely so, I have to say one
of the articles that I read when I was doing
this research for this show was from a source that
I I honestly cannot bad mouthful enough. They're awful and
don't read them, but they're terrible Bright Bart such trash,

(08:30):
which is now in the White House. Correct that is
that is a Steve Bannon, former head of bright bart
Man who championed in UM the harassment of folks like
Leslie Jones on Saturday Night Live by that awful guy
Milo things like that. So so really a terrible, terrible outlet,
but they were one of the first outlets to really

(08:51):
talk about UM this trend with men, and they called
it the sextus. In this article on bright bart one
of the things that I actually, as awful as they are,
one thing that I have to say I kind of
identified with or that resonated with me is this idea
that we're not we're not dealing with boys in a
way that is helping them grow into successful, well rounded,

(09:13):
healthy adult men and economically viable and competitive men, writ
large exactly and it starts, and you know what's crazy
is that that bright Bart article reminded me of the
Atlantic magazines Hannah Rosen The End of Men, the End
of Men. So she writes this book, The End of Men,
which comes from and I want you to talk more
about that bright Bart article, but I have to just

(09:34):
plug here that this same argument is being made with
very but drawing very different conclusions. That our society, from
grade school on up, is in some ways economically transitioning
from an economy that used to reward strong, burly men
who could make a middle class living through things like
trucking and manufacturing and all the things that don't run

(09:57):
wants to bring back from the past. They used to
enable blue collar men to bring home the bacon and
fill that traditional gender role. We have now shifted slowly
but towards a service based economy that rewards empathic leadership,
that rewards collaboration and communication. And our education system has adjusted,

(10:19):
you know, respectively, which tends to reward the kinds of
little kids that can sit quietly and be nice to
each other and be kind and be empathic. And that
just turns out tends to be at large a female
or or you know, woman like, girl like human being totally.
Those are definitely qualities that we associate with women and
little girls. And so what I was thinking that I thought, well, gee,

(10:41):
our women really sort of better at these things? Or
is that just what we say because you know gender roles.
But actually they've done studies and so there was one
study pretty recently by the Hay Group division of corn Ferry,
and they indicated that women are eight percent more likely
than men to be seen as consistently emotionally competent. Eighteen
point four percent of women dead and strate the competency

(11:01):
consistently compared to just nine point nine percent of men. Uh,
and so, and women are forty five percent more likely
than men to be seen as demonstrating empathy consistently. And so, really,
what it is is that women and girls are being
taught the value of what they call soft skills communicating,
working in a team, having a positive attitude, listening skills.
These are not skills that, for whatever reason, men are

(11:24):
are are for internalizing the way that women are. Women
are ahead of ahead of men in this in this regard.
And so if we are switching to an economic system
that really, you know, prizes these things, and we in
fact are because if you look at the statistics, employers say,
you know, sought skills are just as important, if not
more than having hard skills like knowing how to you know,

(11:45):
do this or do that. And so these men, I
think can be I don't think that we're preparing men
to thrive in our society, and I think that they
this is gonna be thought of as a reaction to
that and feeling really marginalized and so isolated. Yeah, and
this is straight out of Hannah Rosen's original article The
End of Men in The Atlantic Magazine. She says, man

(12:06):
has been the dominant sex since well the dawn of mankind,
but for the first time in human history, that is changing,
and with shocking speed. Cultural and economic changes always reinforce
each other, and the global economy is evolving in a
way that is eroding the historical preference for male children worldwide.

(12:28):
So people used to somehow politically unabashedly say that they
prefer men or little boys, and that has become like
that is the retroactive sort of pendulum swing has gone
in the opposite direction. And so all of these alt
writers and men's rights activists and MiG Tao folks are screaming,
you know, the PC police have turned our society upside down,

(12:51):
and feminism is aggressive and angry towards men, and extreme
radical feminists have ruined our ability as men to be
spected and treated right. And this is this is like
a fascinating underground look at how the Migtao community sees
their role as opting out, you know, in this society.

(13:13):
I'm out and it actually, when I was starting to
read our notes though this, I was reminded of the
moment that I decided I was going to break up
with an old boyfriend of mine, a college age boyfriend
of mine, and I wonder what he would think of
MiG tao. I wish I could talk to him about it,
but then again maybe, But we were on a cross

(13:35):
country road trip with a girlfriend of mine from college,
my boyfriend at the time, and another guy friend of ours,
so it was four of us, and so as him
and his fraternity brother in the front seat, and it
was me and this other girl who was a college
age girl who was my classmate at the time and
my teammate at the time, And I remember us looking
at each other in the back seat as the guys

(13:56):
were talking about their love of video games and listen,
there's no the wrong with a good video game, right.
I played D sixty four like any true blooded millennial
American myself. But they talked about this fantasy that they
were talking about, like, I wish we could go back
to the good old days of I think they were
putting this in the reference of summer vacation because we

(14:18):
were on a road trip in the summer pre college
year three or four. Ah, and they said, I just
wish that I could like play video games all day
and then someone could just like spoon feed me as
I continue to play video games. So not only is
that hard, like so disturbing on so many levels, but
it really it underscores the recent article that we opened
the show with, because that's exactly what like in my mind,

(14:42):
that sounds horrible and pathetic and sad. Yes, these guys,
it's for them. They are reporting that that is the
dream that they are the society. And what's interesting about
this article, I mean, I don't know. I I shared
it with a friend who was an avid gamer, the
friend I described earlier, um and he had issues with it,
and so know I'm no gaming expert. Do not write

(15:02):
in if you're what I'm about to say is not correct,
because oh god, I meant to I'm about to get
like but no, I mean they they interview these um,
these well known video game developers in the article, and
they talk about the ways that video games have gotten
to be very, very complex, and that they do they

(15:25):
do take more time to complete, and like some of
them are expansive. We're part of the game is just
exploring this vast universe, and that's part of the game.
So you know, when I was younger, you think of
a video game, is you know, you Mario, can't you
save the Princess? Maybe you know my brother could beat
Mario when we were growing up, like very quickly, like
in an afternoon. Some of these games take seventy hours

(15:45):
to even complete. And it's like things like that where
it's not surprising to me that that feels like a
decent way to list. It's an alternate reality in the
literal sense, and they're really brilliant people whose jobs are
to make this alternate reality as amazing and as cool
as possible, even cooler, one might say, than the real world.

(16:06):
If you're coming from this perspective. And I remember that
moment when I was listening to these two guys talk,
one of whom I was dating at the time, and
I just looked at them. I was like, are you
talking about a mom? Is that what you're talking about?
You want a mom to spoon feed you? Well, I
think he was talking about it this like future ideal
girlfriend of it's not me, This was not this was
the friend. But I was just like, is that really

(16:27):
appealing to you? And we had just come from his
parents house and his mom had prepared this amazing spread
of delicious cuisine from their country of origin. We had
this amazing, delicious meal. But and and and then we
left the house and they were fantasizing about being able
to play video games and just have a mother like
figure spoon feed them. And I was like, I turned
to my girlfriend in the back and I had tears

(16:49):
streaming down my face. And I've got like six more
days in the car with these two, and I am
breaking up with my boyfriend. I just decided not bear
witness to that agreement that that would be a cool
way to go on with your life, because I viscerally
reacted totally. And I think that's so that that might
be something that is like rooted in our experiences as

(17:11):
man and women, right, because this article really drives home
the fact that these guys are happy about this is
what they're doing with their lives. And you know, if
you're not work anger, if you're under employee, video games
can offer a kind of mimicry of work life where
you have to complete task road activity exactly and then exactly.
And so it's part of me when you said that

(17:32):
it's that sounds awful, but also I can kind of
understand it. Well, it makes you, God, we're gonna get
so much game or hate on this, but it makes
you realize why the public streaming of video gameplay and
why people would watch other people playing video games because
it is excelling in that own in that domain. And
to someone who's not into gaming, I might think like, wow,

(17:54):
that feels like a waste of time. But I know
that that's just my judgment and my values that are
being that I'm sort of bringing to bear on that.
So I think it's it's really kind of a stretch.
It's been a stretch at least for me ver to
try to wrap my head around this and hopefully come
at this topic with some empathy because it's concerning. I
find it really concerning that I want these young men

(18:18):
just as much as I want young women to be
able to thrive in our total real society and to
have a sense of belonging in love, which I think
all people really should have. And yeah, I mean I
I completely agree. Part of me in reading up about this,
it just made me very very sad, and so I
think one of the things that we should really dive
into is the sort of organizing principles of this lifestyle,

(18:39):
which I think that we should do. After a quick break,
so we were just talking about men going their own
way and the ways that men are sort of finding
various ways to drop out of society, whether it's via
not working and playing video games all day, or it's

(19:00):
apprestly you know, shutting women. Uh So, men going their
own way they have this, it's it's a loose sort
of term, but they do have a guiding set of
principles that they call levels. And so if you want
to be a very successful follower of men going their
own way, here's what you got. Sorry, can we just
identify the irony here of this duality between going your

(19:24):
own way and they're being prescribed rules how to do.
If you're really going your own way, shouldn't you be
shouldn't you be making that way on your own without bizarre?
I mean, I get what they're actually doing is they're
organizing a community because people need connection. You hear that
Mick Tow's you need connection, And it's obvious because people
are doing it, they're connecting online. But I find it

(19:45):
really ironic that this this idea of like shunning society's
expectations of what it means to be a man, and
like opting out means let's all opt out together in
the same exact way. Yeah, yeah, that is a cultural irony.
But I just head point yeah, no, good flag. So
let's talk about these levels. So level on level zero

(20:06):
is just basic situational awareness around gender. You've taken quote
the red pill, and if you don't know what that means,
we'll get into it in a second. You've embraced the
idea that gender equality it's just propaganda and a lie. Um.
Then you move up to level one, and that is
rejection of long term relationships, and so that means, you know,
you might have a short term relationship, Um, but you're

(20:28):
not going to have, you know, a long term girlfriend
or or female partner. And I was listening to some
MiG Tau's the mayor of MiG Taos on YouTube, and
he was discussing the sweet spot for short term relationships,
which is dump them after about three months when they
stop like putting out. That's that's what he was saying,

(20:48):
us saying, women put out as much as they'll ever
put out in the first three months of dating because
they're trying to woo you. They're trying to make you
fall in love with them, like the evil sucubus women
that they are. So after three or four months, that's
when you should always break up with all women. That
was his philosophy on that first I have so many questions,
like how did they crunch the numbers on that, like three?

(21:08):
Where is that three? Like what is that three month
figure coming from? I'm very curious. Nothing. Yeah, it's it's
based on nothing, I'm sure. So that's good to know
what you called it, like the honeymoon face. What do
you know you've you've got honeymoon face. But isn't it
mildly sociopathic to be like, have a relationship but not

(21:29):
more than three months. Like take these women who have
invested some time in you, and you've like, you've got
to have some emotional investment, maybe not to hang out
with someone for three months and not and then an
emotional attachment. Then there's really nasty rhyming words around blank
and dump women Like this is this philosophy of like

(21:50):
shunning long term relationships, But it doesn't mean you can't
have you know, sex with them and then drop it
like it's hot ghosting cultures. So then once you've, once
you've mastered the art of you know, dating women for
three months and then dumping them, then you move on
to level three and that's economic disengagement. And so I
think what's interesting about that is it really plays into

(22:12):
just what we were talking about before, sort of recognizing
the ways that this this movement is grounded in a
kind of economic politics and not just gender politics. So
the economic disengagement level means that a member at this
stage refuses to earn more money that is necessary for
sustaining life, He views government as tyrannical and is actively
trying to drain money from bureaucrats, and so another hallmark

(22:34):
of this lifestyle is this sort of limited government libertarian
um bent that it has, where you know, I make
money to sustain myself and then none of that money
can be taken by anybody, whether it's a you know, scheming,
a scheming succubus female or the government. It's kind of
aligned with this idea that affirmative action is anti men

(22:56):
and anti white, sort of seeing any government program are
wealth redistribution and that you are the agent of your
own life. It's an extreme libertarian view which says I'm
going to earn enough money for me, but not for
anyone else, and I'm not gonna even if someone does
earn their own money or stand on their own feet

(23:17):
like some of the big taus I was listening to
UH and reading up on on YouTube and read it.
You know, they say I'm not going to pay for
anything for anyone else. It's like this lack of um dependency,
Like it's almost not just a fear of it's like
not just a phobia of, but like a refusal to
be involved in any dependent relationship, right, and like a

(23:39):
hostility toward relationships that are that are that way, right, Yeah,
which were curious really relationships period, which some of the
debate online was around, and I'm curious to hear from
men who are listening who like, there's this underlying assumption
in all of the big Tau philosophy that I've been
reading up on that says anyone who wants to be

(24:01):
in a relationship or wants to have a child must
be female. Underlying assumption that men are never voluntarily engaging
in child rearing or procreation or relationships. And that is
my mind. It's mind boggling. And it also to me,
goes against one of the sort of arguments or or
or chief complaints that a lot of men's rights folks

(24:23):
make that like in in custody situations, perhaps that our
court systems are biased towards women, and so a lot
of men's rights activists probably rightly like I had, I
did some preliminary research on this and found a lot
of studies that say, like, conflicting things, but it does
seem like our court system, just anecdotally, I can confirm,

(24:43):
seems to be biased towards the woman, and a lot
of men are pushing back against that and saying no,
like I want to have my kids, I want to
raise my kids. I want to be around my kids,
and so that does seem to be a strange. Yeah,
there's an understandable reaction here from the world that you
know on the whole. Obviously, every pretty much every other
episode talks about how, uh, the fight for women's equality

(25:05):
still has a long way to go. But that doesn't
mean there aren't ways in which men are wrongfully discriminated
against totally parts of our society. I think paternity law
is definitely a part of that, or or alimony and
looking closer at child custody battles, definitely there's some arguments
to be made there. Yeah, And I think when you
think about things like how domestic violence when when men

(25:26):
are victims, or rape when when men are victims, I mean,
it's still a trope in our popular culture where men
being raped is supposed to be funny, and it's it's
not funny like that, that's not a joke. And I
think we ask why we have this stigma against rape
victims in general, but particularly male rape victims. And you know,
when their stories about you know, an older female teachers

(25:47):
sleeping with like a young man, there's always someone who's like, oh,
she must be having a great time, and it's like, no,
those kinds of attitudes are really making it hard for
male rape victims to speak up. And so I think
that there are ways that men are treated unfairly in society,
and I think we should be talking about those. But
in my mind, I think that there's no reason why.
I mean, if if as a feminist, if I want

(26:07):
to smash the patriarchy, that, in my mind that fits
under it's a big tent, right, And if I want
to smash the patriarchy, that will help men get free
to And so the patriarchy makes victims of us, all right,
like women aren't. It's not great for women, it's not
great for a man. Nobody is winning under the patriarchy.
And so if our if our goal is to get
rid of it and have more flexibility around gender roles

(26:30):
and who can do what and and how genders are treated,
then surely men will be better off. Isn't it funny
that to borrow a term like what we're really trying
to do by getting rid of patriarchy and patriarchal structures
that limit gender roles is enabled both men and women
to go their own way. Really what it's all about?
So I think it's I mean, I would love to

(26:51):
see a live debate between like MiG tail men's rights feminists,
like on stage, like that should be a thing that happened,
because I would too. I think some extreme empathy here
can go a really long way, and that there are
ways in which men and women are both prejudiced against
in our society. And I'm thinking of an Audrey Lord

(27:13):
quote here. I think, who says, let's see, I am
not free while any woman is unfree. That's what it is,
even when her shackles are very different from him. And
so you can take that take you know, she slash
he there, you know, take the gender frame out of it.
But really, gender roles are constraining for both men and women,
and going your own way makes sense in a society

(27:36):
that prescribes very stringent gender roles. But it shouldn't require
demonizing the entire of the of the world that is
female or identifies as female. Right, And I think that there,
I mean to quote Bell Hooks, feminism is for everybody, right,
Like feminism, I think I see feminism as helping men. Yeah,

(27:57):
I think it helps everybody. Right. There's I feel like
there's no one who is who is not well served
when we have a wider understanding of gender roles and
we are sort of more free to be ourselves. I
can't agree more. I'm just cracking up thinking about a
Make Tow subscribing person. Listen to us quote Bell Hooks
and Audrey Lord. We all agree we're at that page. Well,
something that I found fascinating about that. I mean, it's

(28:19):
it's funny, but it's also kind of true. There's a
really great article on the New Statesman a few years
ago by Laurie Penny that I completely personally identified with
about whether or not women, younger women would be better
served by kind of purposeful single hood. The article is
called maybe you Should Just be single, and basically she
argues that in heterosexual relationships, women are sort of groom

(28:42):
to do most of the emotional labor in relationships, and
so if you're if you're in a heterosexual relationship as
the woman, you're the one who is you know, doing,
if you're not doing most of the child the stuff
around the house, you are the one who was sort
of project managing it. So even if your partners helping,
they're helping because you're saying do this, do that? Do that,
and that still takes work. You're the one who's clicking

(29:03):
the meals, You're the one who's remembering the birthday card,
remembering you know, like at the flowers, what have you.
And that if you think about all of the time
that women spend kind of like putting into into into
relationships in this way that you are a young person
or a creative person, you actually might be better served
putting that energy into yourself and saying I'm gonna be

(29:24):
a writer, I'm gonna be a painter, I'm gonna be
an activist, I'm gonna be a singer like or I'm
gonna just work on myself and and and take care
of myself and so part of me. Maybe this is
why two sides of the same coin totally. I think
there's a milder, like less extreme MiG Tao subscriber who says,
that's exactly what I'm doing. I'm opting out of relationships

(29:45):
just like you said, level four, opting out of long
term relationships because I want to focus on myself. And
I think that's when things get up to level what
is it, level three economic disengagement and then level four
to go back to that level when that's when I
think we go away from the main stream young male
or female who's like, Yo, let's have casual sex because

(30:05):
I'm working on my writing career. You know what I mean.
Isn't that just called being a young emerging adult that
there's nothing that radical about that? So I think it's
definitely a spectrum, and it gets weirder. So level four
is pretty much the most extreme. So when you get
to level four, they call it societal disengagement. This is
as far as a mainstream man going his own way

(30:26):
can go. Here the man refuses to interact with society.
And I just find that, I mean that is so
telling that you are the highest level that a man
can get to. Who is a man going his own
way is disengaging with society? You you're not like you're
And I think, yeah, like that being an ideal I
find fascinating. And that's on their website. Levels. Yeah, so

(30:49):
this is like I want to know who the cult
leader is behind this, because that's where idealogue and ideology
and philosophy turns into a cult. When you're actually actively
encouraging people to self hard. Social isolation is harmful for
your mental health. We cover that our first top can
we be friends? Right? You have to be engaged as
a human basic needs. So this idea of not just celibacy,

(31:12):
but disengagement financially, economically, socially from society is a really
dangerous thing in a world where we still have mostly
young men getting crazy arming up, locking and loading and
going out there and shooting a bunch of yeah and
and something I found really fascinated to kind of build
out that point again. In the Reason article, this economist

(31:36):
at George Mason University, Tyler Cowan, makes this point that
if men, particularly men who are unemployed or underemployed or
or you know, not educated, if they didn't have things
like video games or whatever to sort of occupy their time,
they could be out in the streets causing real chaos.
And so he says, in terms of behavior and performance,
variances for men are always higher. That is, men are

(31:57):
more likely to exhibit extremes of character and behavior, both
positive and negative. The whole generation of men obsessively playing
video games during the prime decades of life might not
be ideal, but most would agree it is preferable to riots.
And on the one hand, that's kind of scary But
on the other hand, I mean, is it the worst
thing in the world. Like, I can sort of understand

(32:18):
why it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world
to have men feel the need to drop out of
society in these various ways, whether it's video games or
through men going their own way. I still feel like
that's not great, Like we want to people. But if
they're underlying life philosophy is that the whole society has
become what is it, gin centric? Centric, idea centric, y'all. Yeah,

(32:42):
the idea that like society is just women are ruling everything.
We're in charge of everything, we make all the rules
for everything in the direction of that society. Yeah, wouldn't
I mean, how are we seeing the same world and
coming to such different conclusions. I don't understand. You know,
we're running stuff now the world damn said it so
must be true. So I mean, I think if that's

(33:02):
their underlying philosophy, then maybe it is better off that
they're not engaging. Maybe maybe it's better that you're not
in the dating pool with men who believe that. Yeah,
I mean, you know that the alternatives I think to
just sort of shunning society and saying I'm not going
to be involved in it at all. Are men who
treat women really badly, men who use women for sex

(33:23):
under sort of looking forward guys, Yeah, under the guys
of something else. You know, people like pick up artists,
people who their whole point is they just wanna, you know,
have sex with women. And I'm not saying that book
the pickup artist book, Um do you remember that. It's like, um,
it got really big when I was in college. Tucker Oh,
Tucker Max, Tucker Max, And he was like one of

(33:45):
the loudest, most vocal pickup artists on the Internet in
early two thousand's. So I think guys liked Tucker Max.
And the pickup artist sort of world is very active
part of the men's rights movement, but do they get
a long So there's actually a lot of drama between
the pickup artist world and the men going their own
way world. Pick Up artists feel that men should be

(34:09):
sleeping with women, you know, they should not be having
emotional attachments to them, but they do feel like they
should be having sex with women as many as they can.
And so pick up artists they see men who are
men going their own ways as kind of losers who
are pathetic who are saying. You know, basically, pickup artists
believe that women having sex with women or getting women
to have sex with you can be gamified, and that

(34:31):
men going their own way are too lazy to sort
of learn learn the compete, to compete exactly. They're like
losers basically, Yes, yeah, that's interesting how it's funny that
they see women in the same light of being out
to get yet exactly, but you know, one type of
male wants to compete and gamify it and objectify women

(34:54):
in the process, and one says, no, thank you. This
whole world is stacked against me. It's a very depressing
a way of viewing the world, which is is like
passive not active, like you mentioned the very beginning, there's
no activism here. It's the world is stacked against me.
I'm a I'm a dude. All the cards are not
in my favor, and I'm opting out in this world

(35:14):
that is oppressing men. And one of the things I
I that struck me when I was doing like scrolling
through the men going their way own way communities is
how many men seem to express this kind of almost
terror around saying the wrong thing or doing the wrong
thing around women and and sort of being like, oh,
I'm going to get branded as a creep or a

(35:35):
rapist or pedophile, pedophile, and and sort of this this
real anxiety around how to have a healthy relationship with
a woman and sort of being so scared and kind
of flummuxed by this that they're like, it's not worth it.
It's not worth being branded a creep, a pedophile, a rapist.
It's not worth you know, trying in a society that's
not going to give you the benefit of the doubt.

(35:56):
I think that's where there's some legitimacy tonists that we
should talk about when we come back. All right, let's
take a quick break and we'll be right back with
more bigtow fun for your listeners. And we're back, And

(36:16):
this has been kind of a mind melter for me.
This just sort of blew my mind to come to
find out, um, just how visceral to backlash to gender
equality can be. And we are going to talk in
a minute about how this is historical and how this
isn't all that surprising, I suppose, but I think it's

(36:37):
important that we acknowledge the very real financial crunch that
young men in particular right now are facing in this
economy and our witnessing especially in the first five or
so years of their careers, like women outpacing men totally.
That's especially true for younger women. And you know, when

(36:59):
you're in your twenty these are the times when you're
just starting out. This time studies always show this. This
time is very foundational for for folks in their professional development.
So if you have a rocky start, you're more likely
to sort of struggle for longer. But if you start
out with a college degree, making gains professionally when you're
in your twenties, like that period is so foundational, and

(37:20):
we really are seeing Dr Meg j has a great
ted talk on that how the twenties are not a
throwaway decade. In fact, it's a really important decade that's
foundational to relationship building and economic viability, which is complicated
by the fact that women have been earning more undergraduate
and graduate degrees than young men for almost thirty years now. Yeah,

(37:41):
women are really outpacing men when it comes to getting
college degrees and a fetition college. And in this article
that uh here from Reason dot com, economist Eric Hurst
mentioned that when they started tracking this unemployment and a
lack of sort of professional viability the first start of
your career among men versus women back in two thousand.

(38:03):
Between two thousand and twenty fifteen, they found the percentage
of lower skilled men aged one to fifty five who
had a job dropped from eighty four percent to to
seventy seven percent, which he said was quote a massive
change relative to historical levels. So really, just like we
go back to Hannah Rosen's argument in the End of Men,

(38:23):
her book, her article in The Atlantic, and you've got
to watch her ted talk. The economic downturn, the Great
Recession was very hard on men, especially blue collar working classmen,
and he noted that twenty two percent of men in
their twenties who did not have a college degree in
two thousand fifteen had not worked a single day during

(38:43):
the previous year. Wow, fifteen was a rough year for
men in their twenties who left a college degree. And
if more and more men are are not finishing college
and more and more women are, you can sort of
see how that sets into motion this a lie that
can feel very unfair, where the debt, the death does
seem stacked against you. And then you couple that with

(39:06):
the rising popularity and mainstream element of feminism right now,
it's a very vocal, general quality movement. That's great. I
think there's a great component to a lot of that.
And I can also see how would be very threatening
to uh working class former coal miner who's been out
of work and who doesn't have the tools in this

(39:26):
economy to become a skilled uh laborer in the service
economy that we now have, you know, thinking take me
back to the to make your America grid again, right
could now the guards are stacked against me, and I
don't identify as this being progress. So I just I
can see the appeal of the Midtown movement um and apparently,

(39:48):
like you we were talking a little bit off air
just now, there's a historical coupling between feminisms rise and
the men's rights backlash. There definitely is. And so I'm
sure that a lot of these men go their own
way types probably think this is a brand new thing,
like they've come up with this exciting new way of
sticking it to the feminists, But actually men making their

(40:10):
own counter movements as a response, as a direct response
to feminist gains, you know, women's rights, those kinds of
things has a lot of grounding and historical precedent. This
happens pretty regularly. According to Dr Tristan Bridges, Assistant professor
of sociology at the College of Brockport, who works on
a journal called Men Masculinities and Methodologies. She says that
when we look at the historical record, that that's what

(40:31):
it shows. Men start to get piste off and want
to talk about masculinity and change masculinity. Right after that
there's been some sort of transformation and femininity. When these
kinds of things come up, I think historians would say
something significant has happened with respect to gender inequality and
that man are feeling their position of privilege as challenged,
and this is a cultural reaction that takes place after
that happens. And so one of the things they talked

(40:51):
about is UM. In the during the Suffragette movement, they
had a lot of men's clubs that sprang up in
response to that UM in the eighties and nineties who
had the mytho poetic man's movement that started as a
response to Second Way feminism and really championed men um.
So this is not a totally new phenomena, right, And
this idea that it has a very new life online.

(41:13):
That's what I think is very unique about this. So
the whole we mentioned earlier, this idea of red pill
versus blue pill, that comes straight out of the Matrix,
which if there's any movie that signals the new world
of online reality, it's the Matrix in my opinion. And
there's also a conspiracy component to that that I think
is really entasing. So in the movie, right, Neo the

(41:33):
the main character who has got kind of a god
complex in this movie anyway, he's definitely the one has
offered the red pill or the blue pill, and the
red pill is the truth pill, right, the truth like
you will be here, Yeah, the red pill. If you
take the red pill, you have So here's here's like
the actual quote from the movie, you take the red Pill,

(41:55):
I gotta do it in a in a Laurence Fishburg
voice was like, I don't sound like you take the
red pill. You stay in Wonderland, and I show you
how deep the rabbit hole goes the chosen One, And
so in what they deem is a broken system, they
the migtaut sort of subscriber is Neo, this person with

(42:17):
potentially a messiah complex, but in their mind, they're the
only ones that see the world correctly. They see the light.
So it does feel like a new movement, even though
historically men's rights movements have often cropped up as a
reaction to an emerging and changing definition of the female
role model. But this one feels very different in its

(42:37):
isolation and its life online. It's it's sort of like
a detachment from the truth that they see this guno
centric you know what is it, miss Andrey world that
we're living in, and they're opting instead to live a
life of isolation, solitude, anti woman, or sort of just
opting out of engaging with women for all the problems

(42:59):
that with that. And one thing I find really interesting
about that is that when you go to the like
the reddit subreddit for Men going the Wrong Way, not
only is it filled with these you know stories that
I described earlier of men with terrible problems with women,
but it's also talking about video games, talking about you know,
like mountain biking. It's it's clearly these are people who
are using online communities too kind of tap it does

(43:24):
everyone needs social interaction. They're sort of creating their own
kind of men's only club on places like Reddit, but
then infusing that with this aspect of like, oh, hey,
did you guys see the big fight last weekend? Also
I hate women right Like it's a weird combination of
both kind of normal community building and also anti feminism.
Sorry you're you're absolutely I'm just so jazzed about this.

(43:47):
I want to jump in here. Because they would argue
that they don't hate women. They would argue that it's
dangerous to be near women and be involved with women
because you're going to be accused of rape when you
didn't do anything wrong, and you're gonna be you're gonna
end up having to pay child support for a child
you never consented to have with anybody. You're going to
be called a pedophile if you sit next to a

(44:07):
kid on an airplane. Like that's the world that they
see as being dangerous and stacked against them and out
to get them. And so, you know, I think there's
a wide spectrum of sexism that underlies all of that.
Whatever you're basing you know, someone's character on their gender alone,
that that's you know, that's gonna be prejudicial. But I

(44:28):
get it. I I don't know. I just I'm like,
I'm pretty speechless about this topic, even that we just
talked a lot about it, because I'm left feeling conflicted,
like do we reach out to the men in our
lives who we suspect your parts of Like, how have
you dealt with this with your friend? Um? That's a
great question, Um, I think with my friend, and I

(44:49):
hope he doesn't listen to this. You know, I love you,
but Stopp's gotten weird. Uh, you know. I think for me,
I just want to remind my friend and all of
these men that society can be scary, society can be heavy.

(45:09):
I under I understand, even though I'm like a lefty feminist,
I understand what it feels like to feel like you
don't know how to compete in this world. I understand
what it feels like to feel like if you say
the wrong thing, everyone's gonna be calling you were racist
and trying to get you fired. I understand. I understand that.
I understand that that is scary and big and vast,
and exploring that can feel like a mind field. I

(45:30):
get that we have a lot of similarities there, and
that I think that as women and as people of color,
we often feel that way about society. Society is heavy
and scary. But you can't just retreat from society like
you like. We are all in this together. And I
think when you say, you know, I'm taking my ball
and going home, that it doesn't work like that. We're
all in this together. We all get scared, we all

(45:50):
it's it's it's scary for all of us to explore.
And so if you are listening, my friend out there,
I want you to know that that you're not in
this alone, even though it feels that way, but that
the answer is not retreating from society. The answer is
figuring it out together. And to do that we have
to be we have to stay in society and in
communication with one another, right and we can't and we

(46:12):
can't assume the worst of each other because there are
plenty of bad people out there, men and women who
would want to take you for all your worth. Definitely,
but to say that all women are or all men
are is not fair either way exactly, or that you
have to, you know, have no contact with women because
of because of that, and I think that you know,

(46:33):
women listen, it's really here in these streets, women deal
with really scary stuff from men at insane levels every
day and we're still out there, you know, trying to
make it work for us. And so there's an element
of being willing to be vulnerable that's essential to relationships
at large. And I'd say that relationships are worth it.
At the on our deathbeds, what do we all talk about?

(46:55):
We talked about the people on our lives and spending
more time with them. Nobody wishes they spent more time
at work. Nobody wishes I would argue that they spent
more time beating that next level in the video game.
Although maybe you know, gamers proved me wrong. But I
think the relationships in our lives, good, bad, ugly, many
or few are the foundation to a meaningful life. And

(47:17):
I think that what you just said, just like gave
me chills because when I think about my friend, that's
all I want, and all of these men like like
I hope, I'm I don't mean to look at these men.
I want to have empathy for them, and I really
am not trying to make fun of them and be like, oh,
you guys are such losers. And that's how I feel.
I genuinely it worries me that people are missing out

(47:37):
and having a full, meaningful life. That includes healthy relationships
that are romantic, that are sexual, that are professional, that
are social, that are familial, all of them. And it
makes me sad to think of someone who is so
afraid and anxious like taking that away from them, because
I think society is better when we're all happy and
fulfilled and loved. I love it. I think I think

(48:03):
it's real. I think it's it's scary what happens when
we turn away from each other. So like you're saying,
let's turn towards one another, even when it's real and ugly,
I adore you. Bridget um. Okay, y'all, this was a
weird episode. I think we can all agree this was
weird as hell, So please get weird with us. We

(48:23):
want to hear, we want to hear, we want to hear.
I'm sure our Twitter feeds about to get weird when
this one goes out. So what the hell do y'all
think about this? Send us a tweet at mom Stuff podcast,
shoot us a message or post on Instagram and stuff.
And I've never told you, And as always, you know
we love reading your emails. Hit us up in our

(48:43):
inbox at mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com