I’m going to begin with a small personal note. One of the regular readers here – one of the rare females who gets it – that I have known on-line for several years (going back to the Niceguy’s forum) emailed me recently noting that some people had commented on my absence from the on-line world. The reasons for that are more mundane that some people might be thinking – life, as it has a tendency to do, shucked me out a couple of jokers to try to fit into my hand.
Early in the summer I experienced an episode of having 4 strokes one evening. I was on vacation in Washington state and ended up in one of the hospitals in Bill Price’s home city. As a result of Bill doing me an extremely large favor while I was incapacitated, we finally met face to face – which was a great pleasure for me, despite the circumstances leaving much to be desired.
The largest of the 4 strokes was in the language processing area of the brain, leaving me unable to form a sentence or even say my own name. At the hospital all I could do was to take my ID out of my wallet and point to it. When I tried to write down some of my family’s phone numbers, I got all the digits right, but could not get them in the right order. Fortunately I was visiting friends who provided the needed information to the hospital personnel.
To make a long story short, my recovery has been – to me, at least – nothing short of miraculous. Fortunately, my motor skills were not affected and I didn’t lose control or use of the muscles on one or both sides of my body. Compared to what might have been, my circumstances are so favorable that when anyone asks me how I am doing – my only response is “FANTASTIC!!!” So, if anyone has the urge to offer condolences – save them. I fell into a dung heap, and came up smelling like a dozen roses.
Congratulations for my excellent luck are the only order of business on the table for me.
I related that story as a sort of sideways introduction to a whole lot of thoughts inspired by the September 28, 2011 edition of Paul Elam’s (and other’s) A Voice For Men radio show. Anyone who hasn’t listened to it yet really should do so – http://www.blogtalkradio.com/avoiceformen/2011/09/28/men-going-their-own-way
The topic for that evening was Men Going Their Own Way. Paul started out the show talking about how much he hates the acronym MGTOW. There is no phonetic way to pronounce it, so it must either be spelled out or the words spoken individually. He prefers the term “Zeta Male”, which may be useful to reduce the concept to a sound bite in order to explain to someone who doesn’t know what is going on – what is going on. In some ways it is like the term “Marriage Strike” – a catchy term that people remember and eventually come to understand that it means something a little more than it actually says.
Except, MGTOW isn’t like that – it is exactly, and only, what it says. It is too simple for a lot of people to grasp.
It is the social, and cultural, equivalent of men hanging out a “Gone Fishing” sign, closing and locking the door, and disappearing to mental and emotional whereabouts unknown. And the most salient and significant characteristic is that those men who have done this don’t feel much need to explain or justify where they went – they just left.
So, for Paul’s benefit and for anyone else who finds the acronym MGTOW a bit of a mouthful, and doesn’t want to try to explain all the “Game” and “Red Pill” terminology and background which underlies it, I would offer the simpler alternative – “Free-Range Men.”
Paul went on to explore the phenomenon emerging in Japan of the men that are being called “Herbivores” or “Grass Eaters.” No one started out a few years ago and said “Hey, I have a great idea – I’m going to start a mass movement of the men in this country and I am going to call them ‘Herbivores’.” Men, millions of them, individually and on their own initiative, decided to “leave” the cultural values of their own culture behind. And, what coverage I have seen of the phenomenon gives me the impression that these men are fully aware that they don’t really need to explain or justify what they are doing – they are just doing it, and leaving everyone else to figure out how to get the load hauled that these men are now refusing to be the human mules to haul.
Explaining what MGTOW, or what being a Zeta Male or Herbivore, is all about is a bit like Lewis Armstrong responded when someone asked him what “jazz” was – “If you have to ask, it’s probably going to be really difficult to explain.” But, Paul does an exceptional job of capturing it’s essence -
“Those men are taking a look at the realities of their lives as it relates to women, and are taking the action of embracing lives of indifference toward women”- and, toward the traditional values of the host culture as well.
Because all this discussion is taking place in the context of the gender war, most discussions about men always circle back to women and how they are affected. The problem is that this obsessive, compulsive, focus on women – their wants and their needs – has blinded people to the reality of what is happening. It is like people are looking out at the ocean and saying “Hey, see that little wave out there? Doesn’t it seem to be getting bigger?”
When asked about the herbivore phenomenon, a 22 y/o college dropout describes it as a “diverse group of men who have no real desire to live up to traditional social expectations in their relationships with women, their jobs, or anything else.” Simply put, they have stopped going the culture’s way for men and defined their own. And worse, for women and the culture, they “… don’t care AT ALL, about what people think about how we live.”
It is the “anything else” in that sentence which should make the average so/trad/con’s blood run cold.
Paul goes on to point out that these Herbivores are leading lives of “Personal Abundance, according to their own tastes.” And, Captain Capitalism points out that men here, in the US, are doing it too.

Once we pay our taxes to subsidize other people and other people’s children, we still have the majority of our money to spend on ourselves. More importantly we have the majority of time to spend on ourselves. And better than that, society has advanced to the point there are LIMITLESS intellectual, physical, video, artistic and other pursuits to pursue and enjoy a happy, fulfilling life. We got our pals, we got our friends, we got a life.
And that (and you need to sit down for this) IS WITHOUT YOU!
No nagging, no crying, no drama, no divorce, no child support, no “my child comes first” BS, no jumping through hoops for sex, no abuse, no slapping, no flaking, no psychotic behavior, no mind games, no half my assets, no nothing.
You’re gone, you’re outta here, you’re irrelevant.
Congratulations! You “won” the battle and men have surrendered! Now leave us alone.

Let’s get out a measuring stick and see if we can get a sense of how big this cultural tsunami which has been building for the past 50 or more years is going to turn out to be. Don’t worry about the Grass Eaters, Herbivores, Zeta Males, Men Gone Their Own Way, or Free-Range Men – they have figured out in which direction the higher ground lays and have headed for it. It’s everyone else standing on the newly-expanded shoreline thinking how convenient it is for them that all these previously hidden treasures of the deep are now lying totally exposed, and are so busy watching their feet that they can’t be bothered to look towards the horizon, that need a clue.
So, let’s try to give them one, shall we?
All these males, who are part of “the movement which has no name”, who have individually decided on the best course of action for THEIR OWN LIVES – women and their own cultures can go hang – are the Phoenix rising from the death throes of their cultures.
And, let us hold a preliminary coroner’s inquest, even though the body has not stopped twitching yet.
Everything that men have done for the past 20 years or so has been covered over by the term “backlash”, popularized in 1991 by Susan Faludi in her book “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women” This hyperbole, this hysterification, of the fact that social change wasn’t occurring as quickly as some women wanted, is totally indicative of the the Solipism of the Female mind – any and all actions of men must only be considered in light of how they affect women. Some people claim that “the movement which has no name” (is “TMWHNN” any better than MGTOW, Paul? ) is only a “backlash” against feminism.
Nope, folks, this is not a bug of feminism, it is a feature.
These men, whatever you choose to call them, are EXACTLY the kind of men that feminism set out to create. The fact that women, cultures, and governments don’t know how to factor such men into their cultural survival is not those men’s problem.
Remember a couple of years ago during the first period of the now on-going “global financial crisis” when Harriet HARM-MEN made the statement that “If Lehman Brothers would have been Lehman Sisters, then none of this would have happened.” In other words – all that nasty competition between men is to blame and the world would be a better place if it was gotten rid of.
The Grass Eaters of Japan are the implementation of that theory, and the preliminary indications are that Japanese women don’t really like the result all that much. These men are not part of a “backlash” against feminism, but rather the result of the collision between feminism and the traditional cultural values which feminism purports to oppose – while at the same time desperately hopes will continue because they provide both the continued rationale for feminism and for the continued survival of women and their children.
Now, never mind that men who spend their lives as “salary-men” in a culture in which death from overwork is so common that they even have a name for it – “Karōshi” – after retirement became such an annoyance to their wives, now that they were not acting like pack mules supporting wifey’s consuming habits, that they were called “wet leaves.” And, never mind that the definitions of “sexual assault” and “sexual harassment” have been so broadened that if “the person being convinced instead feels coerced, it’s sexual assault” that men are still demanded to engage in pursuing women – if relationships between men and women are going to still continue to be formed – “manning up” as it were.
Except, the Grass Eaters aren’t doing it – and they are not the least bit concerned about the bloviations of the likes of Bill-Bennett-San.
Paul went on to ask why there was such an apparent reaction in Japan while the western cultures have swallowed the cultural-poison-pill of feminism with barely a hiccup. While I think what he said was very valid, I think there is a hidden part of the picture that people have to look for if they are going to find it.
OK, Roll Call – sound off.
Who isn’t here?
We know who is here, because they just announced themselves. We don’t know who isn’t here because… well, because they AREN’T here.
Bueller? Bueller?
There are dozens of reasons why a western response, and particularly an American one, will look quite different than a Japanese response. One of the biggest is that Japan is an extremely conformist culture, while the United States in particular was populated mostly by renegades. The American character is fundamentally different than the Japanese character.
Another hugely significant reason is population density. The population/area ratio is more than 10 times for Japan than for the United States – 870/sq mile in Japan, and 82/sq mile in the US.
Putting these two characteristics together – in the US one has to search 10 times as much area to figure out who isn’t there. And, if they never signed up in the first place, then their name isn’t even on the roster – which makes it that much more difficult to track them down.
Bueller? Bueller?
Now, in Japan, the tradcons used the same attempts at shaming men into following in their traditional mule, or man-bot, role that western cultures have used. They call them “Grass Eaters” with connotations of passivity and lack of effort and “Manning Up” that led older generations of men to work themselves to death.
The biggest problems for the so/trad/cons is that they are eating their own, practicing cannibalism. The persons hurt the worst by the current system are the same ones who follow the so/trad/con way – like Twogunner in this comment.
But, the problem comes in when the cannibals realize that men are practicing free-agency and are not signing up to be cannibalized by the tradcon values. And, when some Bill-Bennett-San or Kay Hymenzipped tells them to “Man Up” – they aren’t around to listen.

I just returned from a 10-day motorcycle trip through Colorado, Utah, and Arizona. Shortly before I left I was talking to a guy about which motorcycle I was going to take – the big one, (Thunderbird – 1700 CC) or the small one, (Bonneville – 865 CC.) He asked my how I got “the wife’s” permission to buy 2 motorcycles. I told him – “no wife, no one who thinks they have the power to give or withhold ‘permission’ from me.”
After 10 days, 2700 miles, 3 rainstorms, and 1 snow storm, I decided that a good name for the US version of “the movement which has no name” might be something more like “Rock Eaters” or “Wind Eaters.” Over the years I have known a lot of men who like putting their faces into the wind and seeing what lies beyond that next hill – or the one after that, or the one after that one. I have a friend who just turned 60 – whose 60th birthday party I made extremely memorable by stroking out in the middle of it – who has never been married and spend most of the past 35 years as an engineer on multiple ships all over the Pacific Ocean. Damn, he has had an interesting and fun life!! And, he never had to ask permission to do that, either.
In the USA, with its “Wild West” history, and its “Don’t Fence Me In” philosophy, there is a type of man known as the “Ramblin’ Man”, or as I tend to think of him, a “Free-Range Man.” They are a fundamentally different type of men than those men who organize school districts or public water supply districts, and the second type of man is often hugely threatened by the first – which is why they do everything they can to get them tied down to a resident “warden” – the only escape from which is the financial devastation of divorce court.
Now, one would think that a culture interested in preserving itself would value the second type of man – a man like Bill Price – over the other type of man. And yet, we live in a culture which reserves its harshest punishment for the men who would try to be good fathers.
I have come to the conclusion that the Internet was invented in order to give the Chattering Classes a more effective means of chattering. Eventually, it starts to seem that there are only a dozen “conversations” recycled endlessly with different titles.
One of the most tiresome of these is the argument about “activism.” There is a significant group of men whose definition of “activism” sounds remarkably close to “why haven’t you already taken the action to make the world the way I want it to be, and save me the trouble of doing it?” – in other words, a slightly different permutation of “manning up.”
It’s as bizarre a conversation as arguing with a compulsive gambler about “manning up”, or a compulsive adulterer about being a “Promise Keeper.” It seems that most scumbags assume that all men are as big a scumbag as they are, and arguing with them is truly an exercise in arguing with an idiot – they drag you down to their level, and beat you with experience.
A fundamental question which comes to mind when confronting people like this is – why should I spend the time and energy to make your world the way you want it to be, when a fraction of that energy already expended has made my own life the way I want it to be?
One of my favorite quotes is that no one ever looked back from their death bed and says “Oh no! I wish I had spent more time at the office.” When I was lying in a hospital bed 3.5 months ago, unable to make a coherent sentence come out of my mouth and not certain that I would ever wipe my own ass by myself again, it certainly never crossed my mind that I wished I had spent more time at the office; or arguing with pig-headed so/trad/cons, idiotic feminists, or newly minted MRAs whose major contribution is to piss on what everyone who has come before them has tried.
The saddest thing to me to contemplate is that guys like Bill Price are much better people than I am. He “manned up” and fought the good fight in the family courts for the sake of his children. What kind of screwed-up culture punishes him so severely for trying to keep it going, and rewards deadbeat-non-dads like me with visions of complete double rainbows?

The Spearhead is a reader-supported site, so if you enjoy our content please consider a donation to keep us online now and in the future. Thank you, your support is appreciated.