Man Going His Own Way, apparently.
So it’s another day ending in “y” and our old MRA sparring buddy Dean Esmay has gotten himself worked up about something again. This time, he’s pig-biting mad at “paranoid … YouTube MGTOW Sectarians” who have had the audacity to tell him, a married man, that real MGTOWs can’t get married.
Given that MGTOW stands for “Men Going Their Own Way,” and that the main thing these guys want to get away from is women, you might wonder why anyone calling himself a MGTOW would get married to one of those awful lady things.
But it turns out that some self-described MGTOWs “go their own way” by marching to the chapel to get married to the women they are afraid will ruin their lives.
And this has caused a rift in the MGTOW movement, such as it is, with a small number of “married MGTOWs” like Esmay facing off against those in the MGTOW world who think that men should totally separate from women … except if they want to date them, or live with them, but definitely not marry them!
Blimey, this “going your own way” thing is trickier than I thought!
Now Esmay has decided to throw himself into the thick of it by posting a rambling, furious 4100-word screed on A Voice for Men accusing those who think MGTOWs shouldn’t get married of spreading an “indefensible false allegation leveled at innocent men” that “just might get you imprisoned or killed.” (Emphasis in original.)
Yes, that’s right. Esmay thinks that those who disagree with him on just who can call themselves MGTOWs … ARE GOING TO GET SOMEONE KILLED.
Let’s try to unpack his, er, logic, shall we?
Esmay starts off by offering his own take on the little rift that has formed between the handful of self-described MGTOWs, like him, who have aligned themselves with A Voice for Men, and pretty much everyone else who calls themselves MGTOWs. As Esmay sees it, these other MGTOWs are indulging in
a conspiracy theory that goes like this: scheming MRAs somehow discovered that “men’s rights” was going down in popularity but “Men Going Their Own Way” was growing, so Paul Elam suddenly decided he cared about MGTOW and got busy writing about it, but in an attempt to make it more mainstream and palatable, Paul Elam tried to tell MGTOW they can be married. But thankfully, alert and vigilant True MGTOW On YouTube exposed the dastardly plot and now all know the truth: Marriage and MGTOW never! Can’t be done! Un-possible! Only that lying monster Paul Elam and his cult followers say different!
As someone who’s been watching all this on the outside for several years now, this doesn’t seem like a conspiracy theory in the slightest. If you set aside some of its hyperbole, it seems like a fairly accurate description of what has gone down. You may recall, for example, the outcry amongst MGTOWs when Elam and his pal Peter Wright self-published their own little guide on the subject this past March.
But to Esmay it’s all a pack of lies. Correction: a pack of WOMANISH lies.
To be blunt, all that is an incredibly womanish lie; it’s dense, multilayered, and carefully crafted so that every reasonable discussion of it can be torpedoed by changing the subject, shifting the goalposts, and other Rationalization Hamster moves. Those who defend this lie, this indefensible false allegation leveled at innocent men, are also guilty of marginalizing the work of other Men Going Their Own Way who are certainly not named Paul Elam, and some of whom can’t even stand Paul Elam.
Did I say “womanish?” I meant “girlish.”
I honestly suspect that most of those promulgating this conspiracy narrative are the products of single mother homes, because they’re such girlish brats so much of the time, and their narrative is such pathetic gossipy schoolgirl drama and backstabby lies.
As Esmay sees it, no furshlugginer YouTube MGTOWs are going to tell him and his pals what MGTOW is or isn’t! Instead, he’s going to tell them:
The goal of movement MGTOW was to help individual men find themselves and find what they wanted, and help that individual man craft the best way to get it—for himself, in his own way.
Really? That’s what MGTOW is all about? By this expansive definition, I’m a MGTOW, and so are my cats. (Well, they would be, if they were dudes.)
But never mind, because Esmay is working towards his crescendo. Take it away, Mr. Married MGTOW:
This idea—that a married man may not be MGTOW—is a lie. It is an abusive lie that is sometimes harmful to the men who hear and believe it.
Apparently, any time anyone expresses an opinion contrary to his own it is not only a “lie” but is actually a form of abuse.
It is also spitting straight into the face of those who first founded the Men Going Their Own Way movement on the internet, some of whom remain active to this day. It is a betrayal of MGTOW. It is a subversion and hijacking of it. It is a redefinition, and a toxic one. And it should not be allowed to stand.
Dean then turns his invective-o-meter up to 11:
Why should it not be allowed to stand? Why should we not just accept that the popular YouTube set have helped MGTOW “evolve” to its current state? First because the original MGTOW have yet to leave the stage. Second, because the YouTube Sectarians are misleading people, including themselves in some cases. And their advice is dangerous.
Yes dangerous. Not to society, but to themselves and their followers. They’re a bunch of damned fools who are going to get themselves or their friends killed. And yes, I do mean that literally.
I would repeat that last bit about people getting killed, and put it in bold. But I don’t need to, since Esmay has already done so himself:
Repeat: if you say that there is no benefit to marriage to men, you are a dangerously ill-informed fool who is likely to get yourself or others killed.
Repeat again: the man who tells you that there is no benefit or protection to the marriage license just might get you imprisoned or killed.
It’s rare to see an MRA actually acknowledge that there are certain benefits to marriage; they’re much more likely to be railing against it at the top of their lungs.
But how the hell could suggesting that “MGTOWs can’t be married” possibly lead to anyone getting “imprisoned or killed?” Esmay explains that even though
marriage is generally a bad deal for men, cohabiting with a woman without a marriage license frequently, and indisputably, reduces your rights and renders you more vulnerable than if you got the state-approved piece of paper.
Esmay tells the story of a friend of his who committed suicide after being denied access to the children he’d had with a woman he’d been living with.
It’s a sad story, to be sure, but how exactly Esmay figures that his friend’s suicide is somehow the responsibility of “YouTube MGTOW Sectarians” railing against the idea of married MGTOWs and not, for example, the result of MRAs railing against marriage in general, I could not tell you.
Esmay thinks that “if you are telling men there is never any benefit to a marriage license, you are lying to those men and may get those men killed with your lie.”
But the fact is that MRAs and others in their general vicinity make exactly this argument all the time. Consider, for example, the thrice-divorced Men’s Rights blogger who, several years ago, wrote an angry post titled “Gay Marriage? How About NO Marriage!”
Modern marriage, in case these Einsteins haven’t noticed, has all the sanctity of a ten dollar hooker. Matrimony has devolved into just another throwaway institution in a throwaway culture … an institution that is currently the most prolific source of oppressive discrimination against them? …
What remains of marriage is not salvageable. It’s water that can’t be decontaminated; a cripple that can’t be healed. And the best thing to do is to put it out of its misery and start the whole shebang over from scratch. …
MRA’s should do the decent thing with marriage and pull the plug.
And who wrote that? A blogger by the name of Paul Elam, on a little blogspot blog that he later turned into the A Voice for Men that we know and loathe today. (And he was proud enough of this post that he reposted it on the new and allegedly improved AVFM.)
Dean, I hate to tell you this, but your former boss at AVFM seems to be one of the “abusive,” potential death-causing “MGTOW sectarians” you’ve just devoted more than 4000 words to railing against.
Marriage is anything but bad for men. On average it increases their expectancy by something like five years.
The MRA battle cry might as well be “Words don’t mean things!”
Christ, somebody actually married this misogynist scumbag?
I love the smell of a circular firing squad in the morning.
At least Esmay isn’t angry or appealing to fear. Those are emotions, and as we know from coldly logical MRAs only women are subject to emotions.
Wait I thought dean quit acfm, what did I miss?
Dean Esmay proves once more that men are the more rational and level headed ones.
Seriously. Feminists and women in general are constantly accused of being over emotional, but I think that was the most melodramatic thing I ever read.
Hey Dave, thanks for your work; I’m glad to know that there are fellas like you out there.
This post reminds me of the article I published in the Huffington Post earlier this summer, where I mention MGTOW. I got a slew of hate mail, hate tweets, even texts with gun references, from the MGTOW followers. It seems that the paragraph in which I mention MGTOW had a flaw in it – that the founder is not in fact Sandman, as I mention in the article, though everything in that paragraph I took from their website. I get hate mail because of nit-picking, not because of what I actually wrote about. I’m pleased to see that there are almost 2000 likes on my piece, though I warn you not to read the comments. 😉
http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/leah-morrigan/modern-dating-frustrations_b_7538254.html
Did anyone notice the picture accompanying Dean’s rant? It’s a cat, sniffing tiny sausages.
First, seconding SFHC, words apparently don’t mean anything to these guys. Are these labels just handy fictions to guide their internet rantings.
Second, I love all this talk of the “sanctity” of marriage. I’m sure that religious-sounding term just reflects their desire for gender roles to be respected or for love to fit some 1950s Leave it to Beaver type family, but it’s really stupid. Marriage is what two people bring to it. Some people might think there’s some religious component to it, like a god blessing their union, but generally it’s just a legal contract and a commitment to one another.
I really detest the notion that the sanctity of marriage couldn’t be violated so that people stay with abusive spouses or the two people in question are miserable.
All this to say, I actually don’t see a problem with people getting divorced. I think it’s healthier for people to have choices instead of feeling the need to uphold some notion of sanctity.
I’m beginning to suspect that in a year’s time Esmay won’t be in the manosphere at all. Over the last few months he’s melted down in a spectacular way, and it’s hard to believe that if he keeps the current trajectory he’ll be able to hold onto any portion of either the MRA-adjacent ideology or the respect of any of its members.
Also, I read this
and thought “Yeah, this is guy who is bitter that he doesn’t own his wife and can’t hurl abuse at her however much he wants” without realizing that’s a quote from Elam. Of course it is.
Which makes it especially funny when he says things like “womanish lies” and “girlish brats” in the same rant.
I’m so confused. So this esmay guy likes marriage? Doesn’t like it? And will getting married get people killed or will not getting married do it? I wish these dude would put down the thesaurus once in awhile.
Dean Esmay is a very paranoid man..
David, have you seen this post from AVFM? I am not surprised that they follow tl;dr. Apparently, female viagra will increase false rape accusations. These men are really scared, aren’t they?
http://www.avoiceformen.com/mens-rights/female-viagra-may-increase-false-rape-accusations/
I thought he’d parted from AVFM? Clearly, going his own way from that doesn’t mean what we think it means either. My eyes started sliding off that tidal wave of gibberish quite early on, but if it’s railing against Paul, why’s it there anyway?
Incidentally, top use of the word “blimey”.
painteyelash:
I refuse to go to AVfM, even through the various link-redirect sites. What’s the argument there, since I’d think that, if anything, a woman would have to convince a patriarchy-soaked jury and judge that using the drug didn’t mean she consented for all sex of all kinds with any guy–something that can be difficult now if she wears make-up. Or sexy clothing. Or regular clothing. Or exists in a space where there are men.
Dean Esmay: Man Going His Own Way From Men Going Their Own Way!
Hmmm…MGHOWFMGTOW. That’s an awful lot of alphabet for a single-serving bowl of soup.
Also, I wonder how his wife (if in fact he has one) feels about his use of “womanish”, “girlish”, etc., as insults. Did he have to step away from the computer with both hands up, stuttering “N-n-n-no, dear, of course I don’t mean YOU! You’re not like all those bitches! You’re my special snowflake!”
I’m confused by all the incredibly sound logic of the MGTOW people. To be fair, of all the anti-feminist groups out there this is the one I pay the least attention to (I fear I will die of pity if I stare too hard), but how are MGTOW people spouting ‘womanish lies’ and ‘girlish brats’ when I believe their philosophy is to stay the heck away from females and avoid their influence.
Are you females broadcasting radio waves? Can I get that mind-control tech installed in myself too (don’t worry I will only broadcast to seals)?
And clearly the MGTOW folks can’t win either way. You can get married and OPPRESSED, or you can discard marriage and DIE. Talk about a lose-lose situation! I say they should totally embrace Bromance for real to stave off their inevitable non-marriage depression and give each other pep talks for the rest of their lives to prevent the onset of preventable death.
Oh wait…. they are already doing that….
Did Dean ever really explain why not getting married will kill men?
I mean, I know he talked about how his friend committed suicide after he was denied access to the kids he and his girlfriend (?) had (And, while it’s sad that his friend committed suicide, we’re only getting Esmay’s version of events, and he’s biased as fuck and a third-party observer in this case so excuse me if I take that with a grain of salt), but I fail to see how this effects MGTOW who live on their own or with a relative.
MGTOW who don’t get married and live with a girlfriend aren’t going to get “killed”, or any other hysterical fever dream Esmay’s cooked up, if they have a mutual understanding with the woman they live with. Some women don’t want to get married. Some women don’t want to have kids. Some women are willing to live with these guys, and that’s the most terrifying bit.
Maybe “womanish” means “things actual women don’t do, so they’re just sort of woman-ish.”
1) I third the, “Didn’t Esmay and AVFM break up?”
2) Why…whhhhyyyy would any woman get married to someone who’s an MGTOW?
3) A big thank you to this site, David, and the commenteriat for exposing me to the fact that these DBs use the word “hamstering”.
This has allowed me to place it in the same category as “sheeple”, et al (that is, when I hear/see someone use it, I know that I can probably mute their voice into a Charlie Brown teacher “WhaaWaWaWa, WaWawaaa…”).
4) re: the guy who lost all rights to the children he had with a woman while they were cohabitating: I have yet to see this happen without there being some serious issues. I have never – not once – seen this spontaneously happen borne of the whims of a malicious court.
I have seen CPS take entirely too active a role in the matters of families experiencing difficult times and/or who would have been better served by education rather than removal / threats of removal (as well as, sadly, more than a few times when CPS seems to completely ignore actually dangerous parents), but the courts seem *much* more cautious about taking away all access to children in a custody dispute.
@PI:
That was the explanation. He’s just being super hyperbolic. He’s implying that because his friend was in a situation where he wasn’t married, therefor more men will end up in a similar situation if MGTOWs convince everyone that marriage is off the table.
That’s not how it works, but it was his explanation.
@freemage
Their argument seems to come down to the fact that this drug increases sexual desire in women so therefore somehow makes her consent less consent-y and she could later accuse them of rape because the drug made her do it. Also, it apparently has bad side effects when taken with alcohol like causing the person to pass out, although I fail to see how this is an issue (my silly woman brain-n-all) since if she passes out maybe don’t have sex with her?
And then the comments are pretty much like, whhaa whhaaa what is this world coming to when women want to enjoy sex?!?!
This particular commenter needs a fucking history lesson:
“But I think our ancestors had a good empirical understanding of human sexual behavior that led to their practices of shaming sluts, shunning bastard kids and making their daughters marry as young virgins.”
Did he not remember the part where Christians spread their slut-shaming doctrine to the less “civilized”?
And TIL that erectile dysfunction is some kind of matriarchy conspiracy to get men to have sex with their wives:
“When a man takes viagra it’s to get himself prepped for sex with his wife. Nearly no single men who are still looking for sexual partners need viagra, and of those who do take it, recent studies have shown that, short of actual medical conditions(blood pressure comes to mind), all the man needs is a partner that will actually stimulate him in order to perform(if somebody could find that study it would benefit this topic, I only vaguely remember it).”
@DexX – I’ve wondered if that’s a causal or just a correlation (better social connections and a spouse on you about your health/safety vs men who have less healthy/more dangerous lifestyles/habits being less likely to marry).
Most of my browsing time is constricted to (a) when I’m waiting for the dog to go in the morning (b) hiding in the bathroom or [c] the brief interlude between when I wake up and when my kids wake up during which I drink coffee while looking at my laptop.
For the first two, I’m on my phone and am being actively called away by either my dog or children/animals searching for me. For the latter, I’m usually actively on woot while telling myself, “If I get up right now, I might have time for 20 minutes of yoga…”
Either way, the research never happens.
“Another point about the potential for blackouts. Let’s say a woman is taking this drug, she has some drinks then drives home. While driving she has a partial or possibly a full blackout. She’s become a danger not only to herself, but also to the other road users near her as well.”
Because no drugs in the history of all drugs have this potential side-effect. . . .
@cupisnique:
Hell, that situation is bad even without the drug. Don’t drink and drive, people. Don’t drink and drive.
re: “female Viagra”: I just think it’s a stupid fucking drug, nevermind what MRAs and MGTOWs think of it.
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/08/why-flibanserin-is-not-the-female-viagra/401789/
@mockingbird:
From the link.
wat.
@Kirby
That’s like a parody of all-male panels on women’s issues.
… Which, themselves, are like a parody of patriarchy in general.
It’s Poe’s Law all the way down.
Gosh mgtows and Mras are so emotional and sensitive all of this just boils down to “I can’t own and control women anymore and this makes me sad”
Don’t they have better things to do like go to the garage and fix my car? Fixing cars calms men down its science ya know. (source: actually I just pulled it out of my anus because I like seeing men work on cars and I’m sorry I’m parodying Biotruths)
Poor woman she probably doesn’t know that Dean is a mgtow and I don’t get it why marry someone you hate so much? Aren’t these the same guys who complain about us only going for the a-holes? If we are evil then why do they want to be anywhere near us, etc? Why not go for the good ones or better yet each other? Aren’t they being hypocrites?
I saw some memes the avfm wanting birth control pills but we can’t have female Viagra? So are women enjoying sex misandry now? We should put female Viagra in the welcome package.
“(And in the alcohol-safety study submitted to the FDA, oddly, 23 of the 25 participants were men, meaning the effects of drinking while on the drug still aren’t fully understood for the women who will be taking it.)”
FFS, it’s bad enough that general medications don’t get tested on women, but they couldn’t even manage to do it for a female-targeted drug?
Oh, any time a supposedly anti-marriage “MGTOW” tells me that men are eschewing marriage, I ask him why it is that all supposedly “MGTOW” websites have links to buy books showing how to get away with human trafficking, aka spending a year’s salary buying a wife from a poor country, and how to intimidate her into not divorcing you once you’ve paid all of the tariffs.
Also, I like to slip them a little of this action:
https://www.pinterest.com/pin/346003183850111505/
Bit O/T but we’ve got rather a fascinating case going on here at the moment. Well, fascinating for lawyers anyway.
Woman pretended to be a man, cultivated a relationship with another woman on Facebook and arranged to meet up for sex on several occasions insisting the complainant wore a blindfold.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/09/woman-allegedly-tricked-into-sex-with-friend-pretending-to-be-man-lesbian-court-told
And here I thought the MRA battle cry was “nobody is allowed to disagree with me!!” It’s so amusing to see them get along so well with their manly man logic.
@reallyfriendly
I’d say save your pity. The MGTOW somehow manage to spout some of the most vile, disgusting misogynistic crap, even when compared to most MRAs.
“The goal of movement MGTOW was to help individual men find themselves and find what they wanted, and help that individual man craft the best way to get it—for himself, in his own way.”
“I choose my choice!! I choose my choice!! I choose my choice!!”
@Alan Robertshaw
Sounds like a classic case of rape by fraud to me.
The solution to Dean’s problem is to lose the MGTOW identity. Unless he has “MGTOW” tattooed on him, what’s the big deal?
Paul must be hard up for content if he’s letting Dean post another of his bizarre rants.
Apparently, “Going Their Own Way” = Not Marrying Those Beastly American Sluts.
(Never mind that the obedient peasant girl they bought from overseas is most often just looking for a way into the country, and is planning to divorce them at the earliest opportunity.)
Once again, it’s time for an immortal quote from the spiritual patriarch of the MGTOW movement:
“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
Speak truth to power, Brother Esmay.
I sort of shrugged at the original… since when have MGTOWs been GTOW anyway?
I haven’t heard good things about the so-called female Viagra. (I don’t know why it’s called that – there are already medications to treat vaginal dryness, which to me would seem more comparable with erectile dysfunction, as both are physical issues affecting sexual performance. Sexual desire seems a much more complicated thing.)
Anyway, that said, it also annoyed me when a columnist blamed feminists as well as the drug company for pushing for its approval. He (and it was a he) made feminists seem like a monolithic force… before somewhat retracting this and writing that some feminist groups had opposed it. Still, the “feminist hivemind” trope was trotted out for a good airing (says e_o_i, mixing metaphors like there’s no tomorrow).
This whole MGTOW thingy is hilarious. Hard to believe that it’s a real movement. Sounds like something you’d see on SNL.
Esmay is being hypocritical though. How can you be married to a woman but claim to be going your own way?
Re:cohabitation, MGTOW, and WGTOW;
Cohabitation *is* dangerous for men. No matter how much MRAS try to spin it, marriage entitles men to 50% of a woman’s possessions, which is far greater than the 0% that they’re entitled to if they only live together. A conniving, gold-digging woman could easily leave a man destitute by simply making sure that everything is in her physical possession before she dumps the guy.
Of course, the same game could be played by the man. Cohabitation is simply an institution that rewards the most ruthless game player in the relationship. The legal protections of divorce came about for a reason, and that was to protect *everybody*.
Different-sex cohabitation has all the cons of marriage with none of the benefits. People don’t get the health boost from cohabitation that they get from marriage. People don’t get the financial boost from cohabitation that they get the marriage (in fact, often they struggle financially, as they pay double the taxes, and often double the insurance costs, plus other “cohabitation fines”). Meanwhile, cohabitation usually involves the same amount of compromise and loss of independence that marriage takes, especially for the woman. Annd there’s usually less commitment, even though many people who split from a cohabitation say it involved the same amount of pain as a divorce. So what the hell is the point of it?
If you’re not ready for a serious commitment to a man, you’re not ready to live together! Protect your independence by living seperately until both of you are fully ready to commit. Independence is never painlessly regained once lost.
Also, heed this quote;
“Never make someone a priority when all you are to them is an option.”
-Maya Angelou
Well @mrex, my fella and I have been happily unmarried and cohabitating for 19 years as of Sept 20th. So… meh? We feel we benefit plenty, thanks.
Course here, we’re considered to be common-law which means if we split, one of us could very well be entitled to spousal support; however, any property remains in the ownership of the person whose name is on the title – there is no division of assets like in a legal marriage. Joint property of course is different, and shared equally. Child custody/support is the same as for married couples, as it should be.
I’m not sure how either of us could make sure we had all the things before we split up, so we left the other destitute. How would that work? I can’t just have his car in my physical possession and keep it, for example. He can’t just snatch my iMac and go ‘nyah nyah’ and I make a sad face because now it’s his, and why didn’t I pay for cloud storage, dammit?? Why??
Aren’t marriages that started with cohabitation first better off? I always figured you shouldn’t get married unless you know you can live together successfully. But, what do I know?
So once I read this rant from this guy who was basically defending Elliot Rodger saying that women are always prone to emotional outbursts and accusing us commenters (in a pretty calm, but angry thread) of being overly sensitive and overly emotional in our reaction to a fucking mass shooting. So I pointed out what was incredibly obvious to me, that going out and shooting people because they don’t like you is about the biggest emotional outburst I could possibly think of.
@wwth – I had a big reply based on statistics I’d read a while ago, but then I decided I should check if there were better sources than years-old memory. Turns out the internet is good for something! http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/11/divorce-cohabitation-stud_n_4936928.html
Basically the statistics I remembered must be the ones referenced that didn’t control for the age variable. 🙂
I know I feel much better knowing all Mr. Alpine’s quirks…marriage is something to be entered with both eyes open…(he leaves dental floss on the coffee table…disconcerting, but something I can live with :p )
@SFHC But if words don’t mean things, then what can we glean from someone configuring the words “words don’t mean things” into that order, for what I can only assume is the fun of it or some kind of postmodern art since words and their role in communication would be fish yellow disregards contemplative if specialty palliative moose?
The sad thing is, I think “fish yellow disregards contemplative if specialty palliative moose” is about on par with “Read legal etchings before you knead kegel stretchings”. Well, I guess the latter rhymes, so it has that going for it.