Marriage and MGTOW

It’s not secret that marriage rates are on the decline in developed nations. The forerunner of this trend, Japan is having a population crisis as many people are not only not having children but not engaging in relationships or even having sex. Here in America, family court laws and the resulting horror stories have started to move men away from marriage and in some cases relationships period. While gay people are celebrating their national ability to make their relationships legally recognized others are running as far away from the institution as possible. These men have congregated online and they have a name: MGTOW. It’s a movement, it’s a way of life, it is something to be, it is: Men Going Their Own Way.

MGTOW men are primarily straight, white, and they’ve had it with women and their habits with men. They’ve also had it with the way society treats men overall. When you explore the popular subreddit  or any of the videos on Youtube (example below) you find that much brain power has been devoted to coming up with theories and ad hoc opinions in regards to women, sex, sexuality, and why women treat men the way that they do. Some of those truths can ring true while others seem outlandish and unfair. These guys tackle, kids, men’s rights activists, male feminists, the school system, family court, attractiveness and the friend zone. Rather than continuing to engage in a culture that seems to not want men they oblige the culture by removing themselves from dating. It’s not that they aren’t having sex (some do, some don’t) but they don’t engage in traditional relationships and they don’t get married. At the cross-section of women and men things have gotten complicated. For decades there was a fairly easy script to follow. When we date it has to do with fantasy, in some ways, we don’t date the person that we’re dating, we’re dating their fulfillment of our fantasy of them. Thats why, when things change, and reality comes crashing into our fantasy, too often breakups and divorce follow right behind.

The biggest thing I noticed was that they cherish their freedom. For these guys, the male habit of walking in the door, giving the wife the paycheck, and watching football with some beer is simply no longer an attractive option. For MGTOW, the freedom, options, choices, and lack of emotional entanglement makes this way of life preferable. The community is fairly exclusionary. If you look at the MGTOW.com forums what to do with gay MGTOW is a source of discussion especially as for many MGTOW (they refer to themselves that way) gay men have already jumped off the heterosexual merry-go-round. If I were straight I would probably join the movement. I find many of the ways in which women and society writ large use men a disposable bodies and cash machines for their own end. In the balance of equality, things are still lopsided in ways you might not notice. Women are still favored in family court and divorces (although that is finally beginning to change) and overall in the struggle for equality there are many women who would like their cake and to eat it as well. MGTOW don’t just say no, but hell no.

In a larger way I find the phenomena interesting. Our society is still only 40 years out from the larger push for women’s equality and the details of how that works is still very much being worked out. In the 2012 documentary, Divorce Corp, they studied how scandinavia handles divorce as compared to how we handle divorce in the U.S. and the changes were stark. Women were expected to have their own money: alimony was rare and expenses for children and visitation were split. Lawyers reported only 2-3 divorce cases per year. The entire process is handled by mail with the local authorities and it was not considered to be a dramatic process. In some way, they have achieved a more true equality than we have achieved and they have done so with a certain grace and ease that we expect from their culture. It’s a culture that I think even MGTOW could approve of overall.

I think MGTOW is a good idea. Men are learning not just to invest themselves wholly in relationships and to give up their whole lives for women. I don’t know if that means completely eschewing marriage and children entirely but I think the appeal comes in a simple plea from men: We’re people too!

To get a sample of MGTOW watch the video below: