Manosphere glossary
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Revision as of 00:47, 4 June 2014
This is a guide to some of the more common buzzwords, terms of art, neologisms and memes current among men's rights activists, pick-up artists, Men Going Their Own Way, and other such misogynist internet kooks from the plethora of phallocentric crank movements and websites occasionally referred to as the manosphere.
- Alpha: Alpha male, a thing some men think they are.[1] Alphas are men who get a lot of sex, or who get it with the women they want, often because of being a "bad boy".
- Bad boy: A man who acts like an asshole towards women, being keyed into the revelation that they will reward him with sex for doing so. Whining about bad boys and women's perceived preference for them is a perrenial theme among betas, nice guys, love-shies and incels, who see this dynamic as the cause of their own failures with women. Don't be surprised if it also comes with a heavy dose of racism.
- Beta: A guy who is somewhat inept with women and relationships, either because he isn't cool, tough, confident or handsome enough to be an alpha, or perhaps because he doesn't buy into all this alpha/beta pick-up artist shit at all.
- Blue pill: A reference to The Matrix, in which taking the blue pill means going back to everyday life as a sheeple and believing nothing is wrong. In rampantly anti-feminist MRA communities (who identify as "red pill"), "blue pill" is used (as a noun or verb) to refer to men who don't buy into the theory that women control society and feminism is actively robbing men of their rights and freedoms.
- Creep shaming: Something women do when they reject or comment on a man's unwanted sexual advances in a way that shames him, sometimes (though not necessarily) by calling him a creep. Making a big deal about creep shaming will, of course, distract from whatever the man did and whether it was indeed creepy.
- Equalism: A term trotted out by guys who insist that they're not MRAs while rehashing the same old anti-feminist talking points as every MRA.
- Feminazi: A self-explanatory snarl word for feminists, popularised by Rush Limbaugh and very common in MRA and "red pill" circles. It really doesn't take much to fulfill Godwin's Law at these sites.
- Friendzone: The state of being friends with a woman without her reciprocating with sex. This is apparently insufferable to many incels with a sense of entitlement. Of course, "friendzoning" a guy is usually a coded way for a woman to tell him that she just doesn't want to date or have sex with him, whether or not she actually wants to be friends with him. Ironically, the men who condemn this indirect form of rejection also tend to condemn more direct rejections too (see creep shaming).
- Game: The (sleazy) art of seduction, as practised by pick-up artists. Game involves various conversational and psychological techniques to break down a woman's resistance (no, really, that's the basic idea) and make her receptive to having sex, whether she intends to or not.
- Herbivore men[wp]: A phenomenon noted in Japan during recent years, of men eschewing social expectations to pursue relationships, marriage or a family, concentrating instead on a single life. Men Going Their Own Way are obsessed with the herbivore men, whom they insist are part of their own movement, regardless of the differing social and cultural factors at play in Japan — even going so far as to speculate about why feminism has such a notable impact in Japan.[2][3] In fact, the social pressures to marry in Japan (and many other cultures) are very un-feminist and apply to both genders, though men are somewhat better placed to defy these expectations.
- HB1-10: A scale for ranking a woman's attractiveness. "HB" stands for "hot babe". A HB1 is an ugly woman and a HB10 is a hot woman. Alternatively, women may just be referred to as numbers without the 'HB' part (e.g. "last night I banged a 7"). Similar number ratings may also be applied to men as an estimation of their perceived attractiveness or sex appeal.
- Hypergamy: The perceived tendency of women to marry men of a higher socio-economic status than them.
- Incel: Involuntary celibacy, or a person who is involuntarily celibate (i.e. not getting any), usually blaiming it on society, women, feminists, the popular kids, etc. While there are obviously many ordinary people who experience sexual frustration and rejection, self-identifying "incels" tend to exhibit a bizarre misogynistic worldview, claiming for example that it's "cruel" for women to have sex with some men while rejecting others, or to dress attractively while not being sexually available (like, to every guy who's interested).
- Kino escalation: A "game" technique, which involves stepping up a verbal seduction by touching the woman. Without asking her permission. Then increasing the amount or intimacy of the touching. (She won't notice it, honest!)
- Loveshy: A purported social or psychological condition which renders some men unable to pursue relationships or sex due to social anxiety, awkwardness and shyness. The concept has been popularised by — and is most heavily associated with — Love-shy.com. Essentially, it's another self-pitying variation on incel with some added self-diagnosis and pseudopsychology.
- LMR: Last minute resistance. Sometimes when a pick-up artist is trying to close the deal, as it were, his chosen "target" may say or do stuff to indicate that no, she actually still doesn't want to have sex with him. Various "game" theories and techniques are devoted to overcoming this kind of last minute resistance and achieving something approximating consent so that the PUA can carry on in the direction he's going.
- Mangina: A pro-feminist man, or one who is seen as collaborating with the perceived matriarchy. This can include any man who isn't stereotypically macho enough, or any man who doesn't share the MRA movement's hostility toward women.
- Men Going Their Own Way: A subset MRAs who react to the feminazism and female supremacy they imagine to be going on in society by boycotting women altogether. So instead of having girlfriends or wives, they just congregate online to complain about how women are all such bitches and brag about how easily they could laid if they wanted to. Unlike incels, their celibacy is voluntary (or so they would have you believe), but there's little else to separate the two identities.
- MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way (see above).
- Misandry: Hatred of men, a characteristic frequently attributed to feminists, women who don't succumb to clumsy attempts at seduction, and society at large.
- MRA: Men's rights advocacy, or men's rights activism; a.k.a. the men's rights movement. At the (mostly) benign end of the spectrum are groups and individuals that have some valid points to make (for example, on issues such as disparities in divorce outcomes and child custody, or enforced militaria service for men in spome countries). However, these groups often play host to men with disturbing views about feminism and women in general. The more outspoken men's rights groups, including incel, MGTOW and "red pill" communities, are toxic dens of misogyny.
- NAWALT: "Not all women are like that", a common and reasonable response to MRAs' claims that all women are like that (i.e. evil man-hating bitches). MRAs who are used to this kind of response will just dismiss any criticism of this kind, citing it as example of the NAWALT argument, as if this refutes it. Ironically, "not all men are like that" or "not all MRAs are like that" have become common defences within the MRA community when faced with severe criticism, especially in the aftermath of the misogyny-inspired Isla Vista massacre of May 2014. This in turn prompted the "#YesAllWomen" social media hashtag used by women to share experiences of sexism and sexual victimisation.
- Negging: A ubiquitous "game" technique in which the pick-up artist entices his prey by treating her like shit. Because that's what women want, right?
- Nice guy: "I'm a nice guy — how come girls don't want to sleep with me?" This is a familiar lament among frustrated and entitled incels and MRAs and the phrase "nice guy" is most often used as a pejorative for men who play this card. The problem here is that the guy usually isn't as "nice" as he thinks he is, and this delusion can mask anything from token shows of chivalry in the hope of sexual favours to more overtly stalkerish and passive-aggressive behaviour toward women. Even Isla Vista killer Elliot Rodger described himself as "the perfect guy" and "the supreme gentlemen" shortly before embarking on his violent rampage.[4]
- Omega: Below alpha, beta and the various other imaginary rankings on the sexual hierarchy. A man who has no prospects whatsoever of getting laid.
- Pick-up artist: A guy whose lifestyle is devoted to getting laid, through various dubious strategies and mind games ("game" techniques).
- PUA: Pick-up artist (see above).
- Red pill: The state of having woken up to the reality that it's men, not women, who are discriminated against in human society. As with "blue pill", it's a reference to a famous scene in The Matrix and is used among the more militantly misogynistic and conspiracy theorist manosphere groups.
- Seduction: A term used by pick-up artists, presumably in an attempt to make their sleazy activities sound sophisticated and, well, seductive.
- Target: In pick-up artist parlance, a woman whom the PUA has set his sights on. We might call her instead a victim.
- White Knight: A man who comes to a woman's defence in an argument, as if rescuing a damsel in distress. The white knight is perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be doing this in the hope of garnering female attention or approval, and may also be accused of being "blue pill", beta, a mangina, etc. etc.
External links
- Glossary from /r/TheBluePill at Reddit
- Another glossary from We Hunted The Mammoth (formerly ManBoobz)
Footnotes
- ↑ According to researchers at the Institute for Studies
- ↑ Herbivore Update! thread at MGTOW forums.
- ↑ "Japan’s ‘herbivore’ problem...likely our future", Erudite Knight.
- ↑ Elliot Rodger's Retribution video