The History of the Men’s Rights Movement According to Fedrz
Ferdinand Bardimu says: "A few days ago, Chuck, David Brandt, and I asked Fedrz to fill us in on the history of the men’s rights movement as he knew it. Here’s what he had to say":
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Well, I don’t know if I am perhaps the best guy to give a complete history of the MRM. I have only been around online for about 5 or 6 years now. After fooling around on forums for a while, I started becoming an activist by spamming porno forums with my yahoo group. I was pretty low-class back then (not much has changed, eh?). For ancient history, you’d have to get Zed to talk of all his experiences, because he’s been around since before fire was invented. Ragnar as well has been around for a while, and is one of the original MGTOW guys. From what I understand from Zed, many of the “smarter” people in the MRM used to have to talk in sort of a “code” with eachother, and much of the more intellectual things were actually passed from man to man via e-mail rather than publicly on a forum.
I was around for perhaps a year or two before MGTOW made their debut, and it was sorely needed. I had pretty much abandoned the MRM already by that point – although, I am a bit of a hothead with a big mouth, so it is perhaps not fair to blame everything on others… lol, not everything.
It was not very intellectual though. Making generalizations would get you the boot. Making even the slightest un-PC argument would get you the boot – unless you could back everything up with ”peer reviewed research.” That was about the only way you could make any case that went against the general views of society. It was silly, actually. Kind of like asking a Jew to defend himself in a Nazi court, and only allowing him to use peer-reviewed arguments approved by a Nazi University. Of course, for every peer-reviewed study you could find supporting your argument, there were 25 more opposing your argument. Everybody would sit around pissing their pants, worrying about what people would think about us, so writing a few opinioned paragraphs on a forum would require quite a bit of effort, finding links and of course, an out had to be given several times during your spiel – ie. "Not ALL Women Are Like That…" Mostly, I found MRM forums to mainly consist of people finding articles from the MSM and posting them on a forum, followed by a long string of PC one-liner comments such as “Good Article! Great Find!” or “Tsk, tsk, how misandric!” It was really about the only thing that would keep in good standing. Certainly asking questions like, “but why are things this way?” and trying to explore such notions, would get you into hotwater in a hurry.
Also, the MRM consisted of many people who didn’t want open criticism of feminism, because feminism represented “equality,” and that would make us look bad. Many of the more prominent people within the MRM were openly identifying themselves to be feminists, and actually defending the whole hate movement. ”Not ALL feminists are like that! Some of us are ‘Equity-Feminists!’”
So, as I remember the MRM when I first found it, MRA’s called themselves “egalitarians,” and what was politically correct to ask for was “our piece of the equality pie.” Basically, trying to show that men were victims too, asking for sympathy. That the sympathy never came, and we were obviously getting our asses handed to us time and time again, could never be properly examined, in my opinion.
Another feature that became evident time and time again, was that the women that showed up “to help” were a complete disaster. They would shut down any conversation they didn’t like, often by befriending forum members and then pitting one against the other. We had to walk on eggshells, and several times, a woman would get all emotional and threaten to leave and no longer support us… and then the Captain Save-a-ho’s would come out of the phone booth and chastise the evil bastard who upset everyone’s favourite woman.
Many women were there making sure we knew that “there were still good women out there – look at me! I treat my husband with respect, and love him to bits, and he is always happy with me.” In other words, “It’s sad that you’ve gotten kicked in the balls by the past 25 women you’ve met, but you are just picking the wrong women – don’t give up hope, and certainly don’t stop trying to find that tootsie roll in the big pile of turds that is society!”
Others would show up and and talk about their big tits, or what kind of panties they were wearing… tantalizing men to be their allies through their sexuality.
Others would convince men that nothing was worth doing unless all the women agreed… if the women didn’t agree, then we certainly would never be able to sell it to society. So, if a woman opposed you, that was that. Time to shut it Mister!
Another womanly feature in the MRM was Sorenstam Syndrome, where a woman who merely voiced support for men, and did a few minor things to support “the cause,” was automatically highlighted as a fierce warrior, far and above more valuable than the men who were doing much more. Nobody knew who the 5th place guy was, but we certainly knew the woman who was 95th out of 115 – and she was extremely valuable, and her voice would be given much more weight than it was worth.
Once the women showed up “to help,” you could pretty much set an egg-timer to watch the destruction that followed.
Like Angry Harry says, “Having a woman help with the MRM is like having a 5 year old help you put up wallpaper. No thanks!”
And, worst of all, everyone only hung out on these forums. It was totally impotent, and certainly things were not moving forward intellectually.
So, a few guys – like Zed and Ragnar, got together – they even travelled to meet eachother, and they discussed what could be done about the situation. One thing they apparently observed was that men were so pigheaded and stubborn, and undermined eachother so much, that it was like each Man was Going Their Own Way. And thus, the term MGTOW was born. It is left as “MGTOW” on purpose, so that it is unpronounceable – slicksters that they were!
MGTOW did not neccessarily mean “marriage strike” in the beginning, although it certainly had large elements within it that supported that. What I understood it more to mean was “Go your own way! Get off these restrictive forums! Start your own blog! Say what you want to say, and don’t give a shit about the rest!”
And, that’s how I entered into the fray with MGTOW.
We were just a few ragtag bloggers, and we were quite under-educated in many ways, coming out of the PCness that had been bashing us up the side of the head. There was quite a bit of anger in the beginning, and we were certainly not the nicest of people – we spent a lot of time telling people who didn’t like what we had to say to simply “fuck off!” Fred X called everyone a femcunt about 60 times in each article, and Eternal Bachelor was a good writer who skewered people left and right… and we all basically supported a free speech policy, even to our enemies… but… that also gave us free speech, and man did we use it to attack anyone so stupid to come and white knight us. There were a lot of pissed off guys out there!
But, what we did agree to was to link to eachother, and to support eachother. And we did. Anyone who started up a MGTOW blog instantly got a shout-out from us to the rest of the community, and recieved a link on the sidebar.
This “each man for himself” mode made a “free market of ideas.” Some bloggers made it, and others didn’t. But, the result was that our intellectual ability went through the roof (after we calmed down a bit). Many politically incorrect things started to be examined and researched. The whole notion of “equality” began to be examined, and so on. History began to get talked about sometimes, and politics questioned. We began to form our own “Studies of the Sexes.”
And then “Game” entered into the picture, and it supported many of the observations and arguments we had been making… namely, rather than asking for sympathy and begging for a few scraps from the table of equality, things began to come together in an explainable way of why things had developed the way they did, and how this whole sordid mess was created, and why so many of the earlier arguments were completely useless – such as demanding male equality in the home and family being a complete fantasy due to biological circumstances like hypergamy. If you had tried that argument before, you would have found yourself under quite a bit of attack for not being an “egalitarian.”
And, well… that’s the way I seen it develop since I’ve been involved. In my opinion, the two neccessary ingredients that were missing, have now been provided. The first was MGTOW turning men’s weakness of pigheadedness into a strength instead of a hindrance, and the second is the introduction of Game’s knowledge of Sexual Dynamics, which supported so many of our own ideas and observations.
In fact, I think we now have what is neccessary to create a serious body of intellectual work that will stand the test of time. Now we just have to keep building it… and we will… because we are men!
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Additional Comment Made by Ragnar:
Just stumbled upon this blog and thanks Fedrz for writing the History of MGTOW. Allow me to correct a minor thing. It was Meikyo and I who got together in Hickory N.C. in October 2004. Zed was invited and supposed to come also, but was unable due to illness. The MGTOW manifest was written by me according to the notes Meikyo took on our meeting. It was originally posted on the now defunct “Our Board” as “My Way” or “Men Going Their Own Way”.
Today it has been revised several times. Basicly the wording (spelling, my errors) and a few additions were made. Jadedguy did a lot of rewriting and commenting. We moved to a board set up by Zed, we actually had several boards which all seem to be defunct by now, but MGTOW lives on in the minds of men.
-
A small comment to some ideas presented here. The talk was about womens rights. Basically men make society by bonding and standing shoulder by shoulder to defend it. This means that men have all the negative rights as they are the makers of civilisation. We give women some positive rights in order to make society function better.
These rights can clearly be discussed and changed by men. Women can leave our society if they do not like it. This is the only negative right women have. When they stay in Our Society they must abide by Our rules!
Don’t ever forget that we, the men, are the makers of civilisation.
We, the Men are “We the People” – period!
Ferdinand Bardimu says: "A few days ago, Chuck, David Brandt, and I asked Fedrz to fill us in on the history of the men’s rights movement as he knew it. Here’s what he had to say":
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, I don’t know if I am perhaps the best guy to give a complete history of the MRM. I have only been around online for about 5 or 6 years now. After fooling around on forums for a while, I started becoming an activist by spamming porno forums with my yahoo group. I was pretty low-class back then (not much has changed, eh?). For ancient history, you’d have to get Zed to talk of all his experiences, because he’s been around since before fire was invented. Ragnar as well has been around for a while, and is one of the original MGTOW guys. From what I understand from Zed, many of the “smarter” people in the MRM used to have to talk in sort of a “code” with eachother, and much of the more intellectual things were actually passed from man to man via e-mail rather than publicly on a forum.
I was around for perhaps a year or two before MGTOW made their debut, and it was sorely needed. I had pretty much abandoned the MRM already by that point – although, I am a bit of a hothead with a big mouth, so it is perhaps not fair to blame everything on others… lol, not everything.
It was not very intellectual though. Making generalizations would get you the boot. Making even the slightest un-PC argument would get you the boot – unless you could back everything up with ”peer reviewed research.” That was about the only way you could make any case that went against the general views of society. It was silly, actually. Kind of like asking a Jew to defend himself in a Nazi court, and only allowing him to use peer-reviewed arguments approved by a Nazi University. Of course, for every peer-reviewed study you could find supporting your argument, there were 25 more opposing your argument. Everybody would sit around pissing their pants, worrying about what people would think about us, so writing a few opinioned paragraphs on a forum would require quite a bit of effort, finding links and of course, an out had to be given several times during your spiel – ie. "Not ALL Women Are Like That…" Mostly, I found MRM forums to mainly consist of people finding articles from the MSM and posting them on a forum, followed by a long string of PC one-liner comments such as “Good Article! Great Find!” or “Tsk, tsk, how misandric!” It was really about the only thing that would keep in good standing. Certainly asking questions like, “but why are things this way?” and trying to explore such notions, would get you into hotwater in a hurry.
Also, the MRM consisted of many people who didn’t want open criticism of feminism, because feminism represented “equality,” and that would make us look bad. Many of the more prominent people within the MRM were openly identifying themselves to be feminists, and actually defending the whole hate movement. ”Not ALL feminists are like that! Some of us are ‘Equity-Feminists!’”
So, as I remember the MRM when I first found it, MRA’s called themselves “egalitarians,” and what was politically correct to ask for was “our piece of the equality pie.” Basically, trying to show that men were victims too, asking for sympathy. That the sympathy never came, and we were obviously getting our asses handed to us time and time again, could never be properly examined, in my opinion.
Another feature that became evident time and time again, was that the women that showed up “to help” were a complete disaster. They would shut down any conversation they didn’t like, often by befriending forum members and then pitting one against the other. We had to walk on eggshells, and several times, a woman would get all emotional and threaten to leave and no longer support us… and then the Captain Save-a-ho’s would come out of the phone booth and chastise the evil bastard who upset everyone’s favourite woman.
Many women were there making sure we knew that “there were still good women out there – look at me! I treat my husband with respect, and love him to bits, and he is always happy with me.” In other words, “It’s sad that you’ve gotten kicked in the balls by the past 25 women you’ve met, but you are just picking the wrong women – don’t give up hope, and certainly don’t stop trying to find that tootsie roll in the big pile of turds that is society!”
Others would show up and and talk about their big tits, or what kind of panties they were wearing… tantalizing men to be their allies through their sexuality.
Others would convince men that nothing was worth doing unless all the women agreed… if the women didn’t agree, then we certainly would never be able to sell it to society. So, if a woman opposed you, that was that. Time to shut it Mister!
Another womanly feature in the MRM was Sorenstam Syndrome, where a woman who merely voiced support for men, and did a few minor things to support “the cause,” was automatically highlighted as a fierce warrior, far and above more valuable than the men who were doing much more. Nobody knew who the 5th place guy was, but we certainly knew the woman who was 95th out of 115 – and she was extremely valuable, and her voice would be given much more weight than it was worth.
Once the women showed up “to help,” you could pretty much set an egg-timer to watch the destruction that followed.
Like Angry Harry says, “Having a woman help with the MRM is like having a 5 year old help you put up wallpaper. No thanks!”
And, worst of all, everyone only hung out on these forums. It was totally impotent, and certainly things were not moving forward intellectually.
So, a few guys – like Zed and Ragnar, got together – they even travelled to meet eachother, and they discussed what could be done about the situation. One thing they apparently observed was that men were so pigheaded and stubborn, and undermined eachother so much, that it was like each Man was Going Their Own Way. And thus, the term MGTOW was born. It is left as “MGTOW” on purpose, so that it is unpronounceable – slicksters that they were!
MGTOW did not neccessarily mean “marriage strike” in the beginning, although it certainly had large elements within it that supported that. What I understood it more to mean was “Go your own way! Get off these restrictive forums! Start your own blog! Say what you want to say, and don’t give a shit about the rest!”
And, that’s how I entered into the fray with MGTOW.
We were just a few ragtag bloggers, and we were quite under-educated in many ways, coming out of the PCness that had been bashing us up the side of the head. There was quite a bit of anger in the beginning, and we were certainly not the nicest of people – we spent a lot of time telling people who didn’t like what we had to say to simply “fuck off!” Fred X called everyone a femcunt about 60 times in each article, and Eternal Bachelor was a good writer who skewered people left and right… and we all basically supported a free speech policy, even to our enemies… but… that also gave us free speech, and man did we use it to attack anyone so stupid to come and white knight us. There were a lot of pissed off guys out there!
But, what we did agree to was to link to eachother, and to support eachother. And we did. Anyone who started up a MGTOW blog instantly got a shout-out from us to the rest of the community, and recieved a link on the sidebar.
This “each man for himself” mode made a “free market of ideas.” Some bloggers made it, and others didn’t. But, the result was that our intellectual ability went through the roof (after we calmed down a bit). Many politically incorrect things started to be examined and researched. The whole notion of “equality” began to be examined, and so on. History began to get talked about sometimes, and politics questioned. We began to form our own “Studies of the Sexes.”
And then “Game” entered into the picture, and it supported many of the observations and arguments we had been making… namely, rather than asking for sympathy and begging for a few scraps from the table of equality, things began to come together in an explainable way of why things had developed the way they did, and how this whole sordid mess was created, and why so many of the earlier arguments were completely useless – such as demanding male equality in the home and family being a complete fantasy due to biological circumstances like hypergamy. If you had tried that argument before, you would have found yourself under quite a bit of attack for not being an “egalitarian.”
And, well… that’s the way I seen it develop since I’ve been involved. In my opinion, the two neccessary ingredients that were missing, have now been provided. The first was MGTOW turning men’s weakness of pigheadedness into a strength instead of a hindrance, and the second is the introduction of Game’s knowledge of Sexual Dynamics, which supported so many of our own ideas and observations.
In fact, I think we now have what is neccessary to create a serious body of intellectual work that will stand the test of time. Now we just have to keep building it… and we will… because we are men!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Additional Comment Made by Ragnar:
Just stumbled upon this blog and thanks Fedrz for writing the History of MGTOW. Allow me to correct a minor thing. It was Meikyo and I who got together in Hickory N.C. in October 2004. Zed was invited and supposed to come also, but was unable due to illness. The MGTOW manifest was written by me according to the notes Meikyo took on our meeting. It was originally posted on the now defunct “Our Board” as “My Way” or “Men Going Their Own Way”.
Today it has been revised several times. Basicly the wording (spelling, my errors) and a few additions were made. Jadedguy did a lot of rewriting and commenting. We moved to a board set up by Zed, we actually had several boards which all seem to be defunct by now, but MGTOW lives on in the minds of men.
-
A small comment to some ideas presented here. The talk was about womens rights. Basically men make society by bonding and standing shoulder by shoulder to defend it. This means that men have all the negative rights as they are the makers of civilisation. We give women some positive rights in order to make society function better.
These rights can clearly be discussed and changed by men. Women can leave our society if they do not like it. This is the only negative right women have. When they stay in Our Society they must abide by Our rules!
Don’t ever forget that we, the men, are the makers of civilisation.
We, the Men are “We the People” – period!
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