With surveys reporting that an increasing number of young men are subscribing to these beliefs, the number of women finding that their partners share the misogynistic views espoused by the likes of Andrew Tate is also on the rise. Research from anti-fascism organisation Hope Not Hate, which polled about 2,000 people across the UK aged 16 to 24, discovered that 41% of young men support Tate versus just 12% of young women.
“Numbers are growing, with wives worried about their husbands and partners becoming radicalised,” says Nigel Bromage, a reformed neo-Nazi who is now the director of Exit Hate Trust, a charity that helps people who want to leave the far right.
“Wives or partners become really worried about the impact on their family, especially those with young children, as they fear they will be influenced by extremism and racism.”
Divorce is in many case the trigger. The MGTOW-community was/is a lot of divorced men who feel mistreated by society, and blame women for it.
I remember being excited and thinking maybe I had found my people when I first heard about MGTOW thinking it would be dudes who realized maybe dating wasn’t for them and instead were just focusing on improving themselves. Then I looked at their subreddit and no, just a shitton of misogyny.
There’s an old adage that you should never make life policy decisions based on how you feel in the moment. The MGTOW guys, even the “best” of them are stuck in a perpetual reaction state and thus their policy and mission statement are less actual tactics for finding comfort and peace, and more a reaction designed to elicit a response from other people.
It’s a tantrum. They’re all throwing a tantrum.
If you’re actually making your own decisions about if you want to date or not, you just do it, you don’t need to wear it like a uniform, you don’t actually need community support outside of whatever actual social circle you [should] already have in life. The MGTOW movement, even in the most charitable possible light, is massively performative and expecting some kind of attention. This is why they get increasingly vocal and toxic, they’re like the 11-year-old kid who packed all his favorite belongings in a checkerboard bindle over his shoulder and is at the front door shouting “I’M REALLY RUNNING AWAY NOW! FOR REAL! YOU’RE ALL GONNA BE SORRY!”
That’s the worst part of MGTOW. It’s a nice premise, and then they just dumped toxic waste on it.
Self improvement is a trap and misogyny is the scapegoat. “I have a nice car/house/job/makes lots of money now but still women won’t fuck me, they must be evil!”. It’s always all about becoming some übermensh but never about finding a social context, which is what these men actually need.