Talk:Men Going Their Own Way/Archive 5

Proposed merge with "Mens Rights Movement" article
[Oppose merge] MGTOW advocates ways of living and ways of understanding the nature of interpersonal relationships, but is not really about "men's rights" per se. As said above by another editor, MGTOW is not a movement, but a lifestyle. In general, the men's rights movement is about advocacy for men and change at a societal level, while MGTOW is at an individual, personal level. MGTOW is not about rights... it describes a way of living. It is about the individual man and how that individual behaves and thinks for himself, and advocates dealing with the way things are, not how one wishes they were, understanding the way things are and coping with the way things are. Many MGTOWs of course are interested in men's rights; there is some natural overlap of interests, and many are active in men's rights, but MGTOW is not a "Mens Rights" thing, it is different in nature and does not fit under the "Men's Rights" rubric at all. Marteau (talk) 02:25, 27 December 2015 (UTC)


 * [Oppose merge] You have to wonder if the person/people who suggested the merge even bothered to read the article at all. Nomnompuffs (talk) 03:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)


 * [Oppose merge] Multiple sources in the text make it clear that MGTOW and the MRM (men's right movement) are both separate and different.  MGTOW simply make use of the rights which men already have.  —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight(talk). 17:08, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Some MGTOW may also incidentally be men's rights activists, just as some MGTOW may incidentally be animal rights activists. But being a men's rights activist is neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for the definition of MGTOW. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight(talk). 17:30, 27 December 2015 (UTC)


 * [Oppose merge] it's pretty clear that these two things, though similar in some respects, are definitely distinct. Reyk  YO!  17:32, 27 December 2015 (UTC)


 * [Oppose merge] It's not the same thing. Seeing no support, I plan to remove the tag. Chrisrus (talk) 04:37, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I removed the tag, but it was restored by USER:Gamaliel on the grounds that "give time for other parties to participate in the discussion". Yet (s)he who placed the tag should rightly have given their reasoning on the talk page at the same time as they added the tag.  Tags without such reasoning should be removed or cannot be seen as a properly made proposal.  If USER:Gamaliel sees merit to the proposal, let him explain here when reverting my tag removal when I do it again, soon. Chrisrus (talk) 07:17, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

Recommended reading
For reference, an archive of the originally submitted version of the article can be found at this location. For people new to this page, If you are unfamiliar with the subject matter, please inform yourself about the subject matter by reading this original version, before making any edits. Thank you very much. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight(talk). 01:55, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Reasons why men go their own way (to be incorporated in the article)

 * Divorce statistics: high prevalence of divorce, high prevalence of female-initiated divorce.
 * Unenforced prenuptual agreements
 * Emotional sequelae of divorce: male suicide.
 * Asset division after divorce
 * Alimony
 * Child support
 * (lack of) Child custody


 * Paternity fraud
 * Lack of reproductive rights: Spermjacking, etc.
 * Violence against men: Domestic violence. Female on male rape(?). Stalking, etc.
 * False rape accusations
 * False domestic violence accusations
 * Lack of benefits in marriage: A wife has no legal obligations in marriage. No obligation to have sex. No obligation not to cheat, not to cuckold.  There is nothing a husband is legally entitled to in marriage.  No fault divorce belongs in this section(?).


 * Downsides of cohabitation: encroachment on male living space ("the prospect of having your personal space rearranged, and even being driven out of your personal space (which you're paying for) and into the garage isn't very savoury."), common law marriage, palimony, etc.

"Research shows increased scientific and artistic productivity in men who do not marry. As Christopher Orlet observes in his New English Review article Bachelorhood and Its Discontents, Some years ago a noted Japanese researcher analyzed the biographical data of some 280 famous mathematicians, physicists, chemists, and biologists and discovered that all peaked professionally in their twenties, at which point their careers spiraled downward. Married scientists suffered the worst decline in productivity. However, those who never married remained highly productive well into their fifties. "Scientists tend to 'desist' from scientific research upon marriage,” the researcher told an interviewer, “just like criminals desist from crime upon marriage." One theory suggests married men lack an evolutionary reason to continue working hard (i.e., to attract females). Though it likely they similarly lack the prerequisite time and solitude. Some believe that the contributions of the many celibate medieval monks (such as Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham, Desiderius Erasmus, Michael Servetus) were essential in preserving and building European culture through the medieval age and laying the foundation for the Renaissance and the Enlightenment."
 * Substitute goods and services: self-improvement, hobbies, sports, video games, porn, sex toys, sexbots, prostitutes, escorts, massage parlors, artificial wombs, etc.
 * Decreasing wages: mancession, more difficult to support a household, etc.
 * Personal productivity:


 * [NEW SUGGESTION] Alienation due to vilification of men in feminism and popular culture.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.234.152.63 (talk) 16:40, 26 December 2015 (UTC)


 * This is pure WP:OR without adequate secondary sources stating the reasoning behind this. And besides, that's better for a demographics articles than one on this "movement" or whatever it is. Be neutral, not a puff piece. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:15, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Few issues
Just a few issues I noticed in a brief read-through: I'll add more as I encounter them. I will make a few bold edits in a moment.  Eve rgr een Fir  (talk) Please &#123;&#123;re&#125;&#125; 00:41, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Lead sentence is very long and complex. Ideally should be simplified. We don't have to hit every detail, just the main ones.
 * Too many bold terms. I know MOS:BOLD suggests we bold redirected terms, but there are too many, especially given the length of the article. They are visually distracting. The bold terms in the basic concepts section should be removed imho.
 * The phrase rejects gynocentrism in favor of a value system of male self-determination and self-preservation in the lead seems problematic. Do they reject the entire concept of gynocentrism? Or do they reject what they perceive as gynocentrism in Western society? Or are we talking about gynocentric philosophies and worldviews like feminism? This needs to be clarified. Perhaps just removing "gynocentric" and specifying what is meant.
 * Too many sources in lead. Put them in body of article.
 * Breitbart News is not considered a reliable source generally. Unless we're discussing something about Breitbart News as a media outlet (WP:ABOUTSELF), they should not be used as sources for claims about others. See 1, 2, 3.


 * I tried to declutter some sources in the lead a little bit. I agree about breitbart, so I didn't hide that citation yet to leave it as a marker until there was more discussion. I had the same thought about the gynocentrism sentence. What are people's thoughts on changing it to,


 * ...a personal philosophy which rejects perceived gynocentrism in favor of a value system of male self-determination and self-preservation, and who consequently choose a lifestyle which avoids legal and romantic entanglements with women, including, at the very least, marriage, cohabitation, and procreation.


 * Bold here is just to emphasize changes, not to be bolded in the lead. Permstrump (talk) 01:27, 29 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The lead is a headache, there's hidden section headers I think in there so it makes zero sense to work on. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:17, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

Issues arising
Some comments on how this article could be improved:


 * Dependence on primary sources: I think there are sufficient third-party reliable sources to establish the notability of this article, so there's no question of this article being removed, but there's a lot of stuff within this article that is solely sourced to primary sources, and needs to be either provided with reliable secondary sources to support it, or should be removed from the article for lack of sourcing. I've made a start on doing some of this


 * "MGTOW believe" statements: We cannot say what these people believe: we can only say what WP:RS say that they believe, in WP:NPOV style. All statements using this form of words should be replaced by WP:NPOV equivalents that attribute these statements. Also, can we please not refer to these people as "MGTOW"? It's an awful neologism. Call them "members of the MGTOW movement" or something similar.


 * Over-quotation of cited sources: Many of the sources cited are quoted at length, with much more material quoted than is necessary to support the point they are being quoted to support. These quotations should be cut down to only the essentials needed to demonstrate support for the particular statement being supported by that cite.


 * External links: The external links section had grown excessively. For the time being, I've simply removed it. Wikipedia is not a web directory: if we are going to link any websites in the external links section, we should only link websites that have been cited by multiple independent reliable sources.


 * Avoiding synthesis: where we cite sources, they should explicitly mention the "MGTOW" phenomenon by name. We can't use statements that refer to societal trends in general without naming this topic, and somehow associate them by inference with the subject of the article. I suspect quite a lot of the article will get trimmed if this is followed.

-- The Anome (talk) 16:45, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * * "where we cite sources, they should explicitly mention the "MGTOW" phenomenon by name" -- or various synonyms of MGTOW including "marriage strike", "marriage boycott", "sexodus", "herbivore men", "grasseater men", "failure to launch syndrome", etc. —MaximumGrossTakeOffWeight(talk). 17:09, 28 December 2015 (UTC)


 * Sources that mention it by name is fine, but you can't do the latter, as that's either original research (if you can't provide a source for the correspondence between the terms), or synthesis if you combine statements and conclusions from multiple sources to draw your own conclusions. It's much better to have a small, well-sourced article that follows Wikipedia's guidelines that can be expanded later, than to have a lengthly, rambling one that will end up having most of its material deleted over time. I suspect this article will be about half to a third of the current size once all these issues are addressed, but it will be a much better article for doing so. -- The Anome (talk) 17:21, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
 * It would also be helpful if the sources cited the actual sources, instead of inflating the sources by quoting layer after layer of blogs requoting the source (while not explicitly providing the end source). For example, the Google trends increase is stated and cites pjmedia but the pjmedia piece doesn't explicitly state that but instead is quoting a bit that is there from justfourguys.com which is a dead website now. Frankly, that looks like outright trying to mislead people about the sources on the topic here and it will backfire if this is intentional. I don't even want ot try to figure out how the Brietbart piece fits into the Sunday Times citation about Google trends as a part of me will just delete that whole thing until people quit doing that when literally nothing in those layers of sources supports the google trends fact. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 10:33, 30 December 2015 (UTC)