Farewell Fairness...Farewell Standards...Farewell Curiosity...
Terry Newman reveals how Canadian journalists go their own way
We pay lip service to the ideal of diversity but often exclude diversity of thought or opinion – or class. That is particularly true in Canada, where state-funded media and sycophantic journalists at times disguise opinion as reporting or fail to do basic due diligence when covering the news.
That is why we are especially grateful for Canadian writer and academic Terry Newman, one of those rare independent thinkers who sees the world as it is – and who endeavours to make it stronger, more wise, more tolerant, and more accepting. Terry does not placate pundits or politicians from either side of the aisle, nor is she willing to sacrifice her integrity or the pursuit of truth for the veneer of virtue.
In this piece, she reveals the implicit biases of much of the reporting done on opposition leader Pierre Poilievre, whose YouTube channel was found to be using the "MGTOW" tag to attract male viewers. Maybe, she dares to suggest, even the disenfranchised and disgruntled are worthy of outreach.
Look for Terry on her new Substack, Rapport, launching October 14th at noon.
Farewell Love and all thy Laws Forever
Sir Thomas Wyatt
Farewell love and all thy laws forever;
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more.
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore
To perfect wealth, my wit for to endeavour.
In blind error when I did persever,
Thy sharp repulse, that pricketh aye so sore,
Hath taught me to set in trifles no store
And scape forth, since liberty is lever.
Therefore farewell; go trouble younger hearts
And in me claim no more authority
With idle youth go use thy property
And thereon spend thy many brittle darts,
For hitherto though I have lost all my time,
Me lusteth no lenger rotten boughs to climb.
- 1557
If Thomas Wyatt had written this poem today about abandoning the pursuit of love, I am not sure what audiences would make of it. Wyatt describes love as a “baited hook” and a “rotten bough” he no longer wishes to climb. He tells love to go spend its “brittle darts” elsewhere, having been pricked by its sharp repulse. Bemoaning the loss of time and the authority love once had over him, he has come to instead value liberty and the pursuit of intellect through philosophy.
We can disagree with the speaker about whether the prospect of pursuing romantic love is worth it, and we can certainly disagree with the generalizations about women that his complaints seem to imply, but regardless, we sympathize with the man, and understand that he must have arrived at these feelings through his own lived experience. We identify with him. We have all been there. It is the authenticity, honesty, and vulnerability in these lines, I would argue, that has made this poem still popular five centuries after it was written. It speaks to a significant universal experience.
I wonder if Thomas Wyatt would be labeled MGTOW today. Or perhaps he would be called an incel or alt-right. Would Wyatt, had he lived to publish his work, release his book of poems online only to have a Twitter mob declare, within an hour of release, that it was dangerous and misogynist? And would this mob succeed by way of threats at pressuring his publisher to take it down? I fear the answer is yes.
Canadian media has behaved over the last week as if Pierre Poilievre had been discovered secretly colluding with ISIS, but despite my very onlineness, I had never heard of MGTOW until last week, when a Canadian reporter for Global News, Alex Boutilier, published an article reporting that the tag #mgtow had been found hidden on a number of Poilievre’s YouTube videos, 50 in all.
The Canadian media circled the discovery like a great white, leading Poilievre, in an instant, to loudly distance himself from the group in the House of Commons. Trudeau, meanwhile, stood in judgment not only on the group as a whole, but on Poilievre’s detestable association with it. Politicians will be politicians, of course, but we should at least have higher expectations for the journalists that bring us this news. From that standpoint, Boutilier’s coverage of this discovery should strike everybody as incredibly lazy, but I fear we have become so insensible to this sort of shoddy, shorthand reporting that it doesn’t stand out in today’s media climate at all.
In his article, Boutilier frames the discovery thusly: “Pierre Poilievre’s official YouTube videos included a hidden tag appealing to misogynistic online movements that Canada’s intelligence agencies view as a danger.”
Note the flash words “hidden”...“appealing to”...”misogynistic”...“danger.” Note how ominous and urgent it all sounds.
First, I could not find evidence of his claim that Canada’s intelligence agencies view MGTOW as a danger, but it could be true.
More to the point, Boutilier clearly expended more energy uncovering hidden hashtags on Poilievre’s YouTube videos than in conducting any research into the group itself, because he appears to have done no more for his piece in regards to trying to understand the MGTOW movement than Google a quick definition, derived from the Southern Poverty Law Center in the United States. The Center defines them as “a mostly-online movement comprised of anti-feminists who attempt to cut women completely out of their lives.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the movement “overlaps with more aggressive forms of male supremacy.”
It is not clear from Boutlier’s piece, or the Southern Poverty Law Center, what wave of feminism precisely these men disagree with, or what points they have articulated in that direction, or how living a monastic life is male supremacy, or what these men’s varied reasoning is, but what seems true is that MGTOW men have chosen to disengage from romantic relationships with women, much like the speaker in Wyatt’s poem.
Boutilier then goes on to say, “It’s difficult to quantify the size of the movement, and its overlap with other forms of misogyny both online and in the real world. But online spaces connected to the ‘manosphere’ have proliferated in recent years.” Observe the logical stretches and leaps in that one sentence. In another life, he could have worked for the circus. He goes from acknowledging ignorance about the size of the group, to ignorance about how much, if at all, its members “overlap” (whatever that means) with other forms of “misogyny” (a term he never defines), and then adds a non-sequitur about the recent proliferation of something called a “manosphere,” and while I have no idea what a “manosphere” is, darn does it sound alarming. He has said nothing, though, literally nothing, about this group or its members. It’s all hearsay and insinuation.
The piece seemed determined, at all costs, to establish that MGTOW was a homogenous, uncomplicated group, that its members have no right to a public forum in which to share their lived experiences and perspectives, and that any politician reaching out to or engaging in any way with its members is a politician to be shamed. Like so many topics these days, even the thought of communicating or engaging with these people or their views was deemed “dangerous.” This is journalism?
All of these dark insinuations and shadowy implications left me wondering about the facts. (It should be the journalist who is most interested in facts, I suppose, but since he isn’t, someone has to be). I wonder about the actual size of this group, their age ranges, their stated reasons for joining, whether they consider themselves MGTOW for very long or whether it is a passing phase, and if the group has high turnover.
I was so curious, in fact, that after reading Boutilier’s article, I decided to search for more information about MGTOW or “Men Who Go Their Own Way.” I found a podcast called Stoic Solutions, hosted by Justin Vacula, with a MGTOW guest speaker in episode 57 who goes by the name of Sunrise Hoodie. Listening to this interview was an illuminating experience. I felt as if Sunrise Hoodie had jumped directly off the page out of Wyatt’s poem. He and the host even discuss Seneca.
Before I begin, I am going to point out something that I know should be common sense. As in most online and offline groups, members have varied opinions and do not operate as a hive mind. I will not pretend to exhaust every opinion ever articulated by anyone who has ever identified as MGTOW in this piece. Nor am I going to deny the almost certainty that some members of the group hold views I would find abhorrent (just as most groups have members whose views are abhorrent). I will, however, give this man a podium, and allow the reader to hear some of his thoughts and views directly, without the corrupted framing of dismissal and fear.
According to Sunrise Hoodie, a 24 year-old MGTOW content creator, MGTOW is “a philosophy that is first and foremost a philosophy of men that are leaving a lot of things behind in society that they’ve been expected to pursue. They are leaving these things because they are no longer proving to have as many benefits as they either once did, or they’re proving to be too dangerous.”
Sunrise Hoodie goes on to say, “For me, it’s more of a spiritual path, and it’s more of a monk, monastic-like living, not that I completely shun social relationships with people and don’t go out in public and don’t go to work. I’m not a hermit, by any means at all.”
Like many Hollywood films and much cultural criticism, he critiques the idealization of the American family dream in the face of employment uncertainty and historically high divorce rates. Instead, he thinks it is better to focus on improving himself and helping others, to perfect wealth his wit for to endeavour. He says, “Society is becoming a lot more unpredictable. The world’s becoming a lot more unpredictable and dangerous. Job prospects are dwindling…Why would I want to get into a car that has a 70% chance of crashing?” The 70% that Sunrise Hoodie is quoting is the percentage of women who initiate divorce. The number from the ASA study is actually 69%.
“A lot of people still don’t care. They still want to get married because for them the satisfaction of seeing that marriage succeed is actually worth the risk of potential divorce. I don’t want to run the risk because I love my peace of mind and also I didn’t want to run the risk because I want to be able to benefit a broader scope of people in life.” He will in trifles set no store. “You can have your little kingdom and your white picket fence and your two and a half kids, and send them to college and all this stuff and the dog and the 401K, and you know, the nice Range Rover and Escalade and take them to soccer practice. You can live that life, or you can potentially reach even more people, you can become an expert at something and really be a help not only to yourself but to the community.” For liberty is lever.
This is a man whose membership in MGTOW makes him a pariah, in the House of Commons, in mainstream media, and on social media. To me, he sounds like a pretty standard Sociology undergrad from the early 2000’s – philosophical, earnest, disillusioned, a bit confused, and highly critical of consumer culture and materialism, certainly not deserving of such pointed disdain. Maybe there is something to learn about men in society today through his insights. Did Alex Boutilier know this? Does the Southern Poverty Law Center? Does JustinTrudeau? Does Pierre Poilievre? Do any of them care?
At one point, the host and Sunrise Hoodie discuss how men often enter MGTOW. Vacula says,
“You talked about before how anger might be a driving force in many individuals as they go through red pill rage. For Stoics, anger is this distant concept, something we should not seek to harness to bring into a battle that can really obstruct our thoughts and lead to some negative consequences. Can you talk about the red pill rage that some have experienced?”
Sunrise Hoodie responds, “Red pill rage is a pretty common concept often referred to as a stage within MGTOW. There’s a thing called red pill cycle. It’s assumed that man goes through red pill rage shortly after a certain trauma in his life, or an injustice, typically involving a woman, maybe a break up, maybe a divorce, maybe a lawsuit, maybe something that went on in family courts, so they’re enraged with the system, because they see the reality, they see the injustice, they see things as they are, which is the definition of taking the red pill. This red pill rage is often what fuels a lot of men into MGTOW…They want affirmation for the emotions that they're feeling, like anyone would, so they consume MGTOW content, they listen to videos, they pound their fists on the desk, and they say, finally, this is the justice that I’ve been looking for, and I think that this is a healthy period to go through.”
Of course we all understand this, that pain and hardship lead to states of confusion, resentment, and even rage. And thank goodness men finally feel free to express these feelings. We have been encouraging them to do this for so long. They used to just bottle them up. Sunrise Hoodie explains how important this social outlet has been for so many men: “I’m amazed with the MGTOW community…Because while I’m trying to reduce stress and things I don’t like in my life as much as I can, no matter what, you need an outlet. And opportunities like this to discuss things are really beneficial and really helpful, and I think every man has been craving it. They've been craving a forum like this, and every person throughout history, especially now.”
So what happened? When did men expressing feelings become undesirable? Are men only encouraged to express feelings when they’re politically correct? Or nice? Or friendly? Maybe men should never express feelings that may hurt other people’s feelings? Some of the members of this group have experienced traumatic events, divorces, custody battles, intense fights with romantic partners, heartbreak, possibly even physical abuse. They clearly need an outlet, a place to express and work through those experiences and feelings. We shouldn’t let them? We should hate them?
There are women’s groups that express a desire to no longer couple with men. These groups are called “feminist.” “Angry Wimmin” are a group who apparently had badges that read, “Kill Men Now, Ask Me How.” In a video about them, Sheila Jeffries begins by singing, “Men grow bold, as they grow old, they all lose their charms in the end. All men are wankers…women are a girl's best friend.” According to Jeffries, “[Feminists] have to be enraged. I still have the rage, and I still carry the rage. Rage is absolutely fundamental. Not anger. It’s not strong enough.”
It is not difficult to find generalizations and hateful comments about men made by women everywhere on the internet. And that’s fine. These are people expressing strong feelings based on lived experiences. Women sometimes hate men. Men sometimes hate women. Now that we are no longer living in a heteronormative world, God willing, men will hate men, and women will hate women. The forceful expression of intense feelings is an utterly normal and expected part of human experience, provided it eventually leads to a new beginning, or a transformation, or a healthier mindset. If it’s accepted when women do it, it should be accepted when men do it, unless it involves actual threats of physical violence, which are always unacceptable.
This rageful discourse may be a necessary first step for both sexes, but according to Sunrise Hoodie, it is by no means the end goal of MGTOW. Speaking about his own experience and the experience of other men, he points out, “The problem is, if you're only in this red pill rage, you can't go from the ‘freedom from’ stage to the ‘freedom to’ stage, so you're leaving a world where you’re living this quote-unquote ‘injustice,’ where the rage was created, and now you have this freedom. You have this access to a new world, and this is ‘freedom from,’ and for many it's leaving rage…I get a lot of emails about red pill rage, and I get a lot of emails from men who say I can’t get out of red pill rage…It's stifling, because you can sprint on rage, but you can't run a marathon on rage. You have to run a marathon on something that's steady. I have to say, I went through a red pill haze of sorts, I just needed explanations and I was searching.”
Vacula, the interviewer, then says, “So it’s a look at understanding, okay, I’m feeling that anger, but what can I do about it? How can I be productive? Being nasty towards others isn’t a great thing to do, or making such generalizing statements, you know, things like, ‘Oh women have no value whatsoever,’ you know statements like this that I've heard, those certainly aren't the ones you’re employing in your content, but you see in some YouTube comments, or some people who just are really angry in making their content, or going about the world in this constant state of rage, it doesn't seem to be a good state to be in. I certainly wouldn't want to be in that.”
Sunrise Hoodie responds, “I liken it to Star Wars: ‘anger breeds fear, and fear breeds hate, and hate breeds the Sith lord.’ Well, I’m gonna cut that anger off when the time comes, because I don’t want to be a Sith.”
Sunrise Hoodie is making extremely important points here. The red pill phase in MGTOW is explicitly understood to be, ideally, temporary. Periods of rage or depression or self-imposed isolation are mostly temporary. Every human being knows that. Members may only be engaging with the rage aspect of MGTOW for now, while they work through those feelings. But that’s the problem with online discourse - everything seems permanent. A single comment thread across a single three-day period in which several men express rage at women is treated like a stable and permanent conduit into their essential and unchanging souls, and the media and politicians and Twitter mob alike all react to that thread as if the people involved must be judged completely and forever for uttering unacceptable thoughts, these revelations into their true and eternal character. But online discourse isn’t like that at all. It’s a moment, a moment in time. A week, six months, a year or two - a period of pain. A period of loneliness. Like a sonnet. There is a reason these groups tend to be made up of young men. Because when they get older, they tend to heal. They move on. They find new strength. That sort of nuanced understanding of human nature is apparently uninteresting to journalists like Alex Boutilier.
In fact, if we assume the participants in MGTOW are largely wrong - they have misguided ideas about women and love and relationships, and they have misplaced rage - do we not want to help these men, as much as we can, to get through this period of anger and hate, whether they choose to have romantic relationships or not?
Pierre Poilievre, the man who couldn’t distance himself from this group fast enough, is a father and husband, married to Anaida Poilievre, an intelligent woman who gave an outstanding speech the night he won the leadership race for the Conservatives. It was she who first approached the stage and began his victory speech for him, something I have never seen before in any leadership race. What great role models! What a positive depiction of a man who has dedicated his life to love and family. If the public dislikes MGTOW because they proclaim they are no longer interested in women, would not them coming across a family man like Pierre, and his intelligent wife, be an opportunity to convince them otherwise? The more MGTOW men look up to a family man like Pierre Poilievre, the more some of them may move beyond their feelings of resentment and isolation. Is this not something we should encourage? In fact, should not every politician embed MGTOW hashtags into their YouTube videos, among the #lgtbq and #blacklivesmatter hashtags? Or do we prefer that resentful, angry young men continue to simmer and wallow in silence and isolation, barred from public discourse and severed from proper role models?
We recognize the value of expressing universal feelings of rage and disillusionment in a poem published in 1557 which we still enjoy today, but we do not allow men in 2022 to go through the same process of emotional expression and healing through online discourse. Perhaps if MGTOW men were better poets, we would give them more slack.
My purpose in all this is not to forward a full-throated defense of MGTOW, particularly. There are obviously varied reasons for membership, and varied values and ideologies among its members. My purpose was rather to offer a view of this group that lies in stark contrast with the intensely simplistic one provided by Boutilier’s piece, with the hope of revealing something of what I believe has gone very, very wrong in contemporary Canadian journalism.
There are a few things I see in society right now that scare me.
One is the refusal to let people speak, especially disenfranchised groups, with the rationale that letting people speak is dangerous, instead of democratic and possibly therapeutic. No one would disallow women to discuss men in any way they pleased, and they would not be labeled misandrists by the press, no matter how awful their online rhetoric toward men was. Our progressive society is cherry-picking which disenfranchised groups are permitted to voice their “truth” and which are not.
Second is the quick and thoughtless labeling of groups by elite members of society who control knowledge production, this coupled with the tendency to lump groups and ideologies together and assume they are pure, homogenous, and without nuance.
Third is the dissolution of all journalistic standards and objective methods, for the sake of an individual journalist trying to prove a point they wanted to prove already, for their own personal and political reasons, rather than actively attempting to counter their own biases. It has gotten to the point that almost every journalist jumps into the Twitter ring each morning to forward their own personal and political goals via whichever outlet they work for, and everyone knows it. Perhaps the pressure to get an article out quickly in our 24/7 news cycle prevents the luxury of taking time to properly research and accurately represent the complexities of individuals and situations. We now have more information at the touch of our fingertips than we have ever had throughout history, but despite this, analysis has become increasingly shallow.
Fourth is the disturbing lack of empathy we show for people who are suffering and/or who we disagree with. In this case, the lack of empathy reveals a sexual double standard. Like women, men have traumatic experiences. Men are not inherently devils by virtue of their sex, just as women are not inherently saints by virtue of theirs.
And finally, fifth, I wonder where curiosity has gone among journalists. If something sounds too simple, is it not a natural professional instinct to go out and discover whether there are nuances and complexities we may be missing? Is that not precisely the role of journalism in such a complicated and dizzying world?
Instead, our press has taken on the role of moral authority in Canadian society, seeking out and punishing those it deems immoral without first seeking to understand the complexities of what is going on or the broader social issues. What incurious and fearful creatures our press would have us become.