»My Wallet, My Choice« – Mimicry of Marginality In an Online Community of Male Separatists

Backlash and hostility towards feminism are on the rise, as demonstrated by the growth of the ›manosphere‹: a loose network of men’s social media communities who argue that men are the real victims of sexism and feminists conceal these facts (Ging 2019). One manosphere group, »Men Going Their Own Way« (MGTOW), argue that heterosexual relationships are oppressive to men and consequently should be avoided. In this paper, I take a discourse-historical approach to critical discourse studies (Reisigl/Wodak 2016) to examine how MGTOW construct themselves as marginalised or oppressed. I identify four salient discursive strategies: appropriation of feminist discourse; role reversal; statistics; and self-presentation as unpopular.