Yes, exactly. I’ve been pointing this out for years.

Guys who feel rejected and marginalized are relegated to spaces where it’s mostly an echo chamber of other guys like them. Most of these guys are vulnerable due to social isolation, loneliness, and the mental health issues that inevitably result (which is an empirically established fact within the field of psychology, so I’m tired of hearing people act like it doesn’t fucking matter).

Predatory “manfluencers” know this, so they go to these spaces to poach and radicalize “loser virgins,” basically by negging them and saying that they can “coach” them on how to not be a loser. “Be like me, get laid, then you’re no longer an incel and people will finally like you.”

It’s a lie, obviously, but it works on large numbers and that’s why you see this huge uptick on disillusioned outcasts getting absorbed into these toxic spaces.

But whenever I call that out, people say things like “Why should I have any sympathy for these sexists,” which not only partially conflates the “losers” with the predatory abusers manipulating them, it also ignores the chronology of the whole thing. These guys aren’t born misogynist. They get radicalized, because they were vulnerable. And people ignore that my argument is directed towards addressing that vulnerability which fosters wide-spread radicalization; not to accepting misogyny from people who are already radicalized.

Or they accuse me of some sort of victim blaming, as if I was trying to say that women get abused because they reject men. That’s a severe distortion of what I was saying. Abuse is not excusable. But it can be prevented, and part of that prevention should be preventing widespread radicalization by giving young men spaces where they feel appreciated and like they belong, so that they don’t wind up in the echo chambers where they get poached by the manosphere.

Or people say “Why should we help someone who even would be radicalized?” But that ignores the psychology of radicalization. It can happen to anyone who’s placed in a vulnerable position for long enough, and social isolation is one of the major indicators for at-risk individuals. Everyone has their psychological limit; some people just never get pushed anywhere near theirs. That needs to be recognized as a privilege. Someone might be incredibly strong psychologically, but if they’re isolated long enough and constantly subjected to ridicule and scorn, then they very much can reach their breaking point. And that’s when the abusers sweep in with their negging and their bait-and-switch to get these guys hooked on the bullshit they’re selling.

Or I make any of these arguments, and people don’t even listen and just assume I’m trying to justify misogyny and abuse, and they label me as an incel (because who else would think about this?), and since they equate “incel” with the abusers who prey on them, that’s a socially sanctionable label, and therefore my own isolation and mental illness become a moral failing on my part, which everyone holds against me.

And I swear, if I wasn’t psychologically stronger, I could very much have wound up radicalized in the same way. I almost did a few times. The initial negging and carrot-waving can be very insidious and hard to detect early on.

But since I’ve been abused myself by toxic machismo assholes, I had a deep-seated burning hatred for them. I would never join them. I’d literally kill myself first, and I almost have a few times. So even though everyone else hates me and rejects me because they think I’m already one of them (just for being lonely and isolated, imagine that!), and that makes me precisely the target demographic that those abusers try to radicalize, I’ll never be one of them.

So I’m caught somewhere in the middle, with no friends, trying to objectively look at the problem and describe it with clarity so that people smarter than myself can determine how to adequately address it.

And simply because I don’t parrot the same vitriol that everyone else does, and choose instead to identify the root of the problem so that a real solution can be found, I’m flamed for it and the cycle of isolation continues.

Edit:

BTW, I don’t know anything about MGTOW, but I’d say most men’s lib movements often get co-opted by the far-right because liberal and leftist guys are strongly discouraged from participating in any sort of community like that.

Even if it starts in a healthy way, people label it as part of the manosphere, so all the healthy guys leave, and the only ones left are the ones who are unstable/vulnerable and the ones who want to prey on these easy targets. The latter are usually the die-hard sexists which the movements ultimately wind up being known for.

Edit 2:

Yeah, it looks like Wikipedia says MGTOW is part of the manosphere and dominated by the far-right, even though a cursory inspection seems to indicate that it’s just a bunch of men choosing not to prioritize dating and romance in their lives.

I don’t know enough about it to say one way or the other, but I wouldn’t be surprised if men who decide they don’t need women in their lives are labeled as misogynist (even though men who do believe they need women in their lives are also called misogynist… go figure…)

I don’t have time or energy to read or respond to your entire comment because honestly who does.

One thing that really irks me is the “its impossible to meet women in public because they treat you like a creep when you approach them to find a date”

Women don’t like being treated like a romantic prospect pff the hop, but a lot are happy to meet new people. The important thing is not to approach anybody like a romantic prospect when you don’t know anything about them, because they know you’re doing it exclusively based on how they look.

The interactions that have seen the most success are the ones that aren’t presumptuous. Just talk to people in general like you’re trying to make friends rather than date and take it from there based on whether they actually seem interested in your company.

But a woman can say “I want a man who can cook!” And yet men can’t say “I want a woman who can cook!”

Not exactly like that. You’d say something like “I want a woman who’s into food” and if she can’t cook she’s obviously not into food. Framing it in terms of what a potential partner can do for them instead of what a partner likes to do for themselves seems kinda tacky, tasteless, gives people the ick, whatever it is people say about red flags or whatever.

But if a man says “I want a woman who makes six figures and pays for dates,” people call him a cuck and say he’s not a real man.

I’ve never heard of this happening. And I know plenty of people who will only date women with university educations who have high paying white collar careers (and plenty of women who have that as a strong preference or prerequisite for the men they’ll date).

People are allowed to have standards. It’s just weird when the standards are framed in terms of service towards a partner rather than something they can do for themselves.

Normal: I want someone who has their life together.

Weird: I want someone who can help me pay my rent.

Weird: I want someone with a car I can borrow from time to time.

Normal: I want someone who can maintain their car.

Weird: I want someone who can fix my car.