I am a 25-year-old, I live in Lebanon which is a socially conservative patriarchal society and was damaged by 15-year sectarian civil war from 1975-1990 as a result Lebanon has been divided among religious sects. I was raised by my conservative parents, they were strict on somethings but also lenient on somethings.

As a young boy, I grew up watching cartoon network and saw how female characters were empowered but often times the cartoons would demonize feminists that they are grifters like in The Powerpuff Girls (which I secretly liked watching and had a crush on blossom, and didn’t openly admit to liking it) episode “Equal Fights” was my first exposure to feminism the main antagonist was a misandrist straw-feminist who manipulated the girls into hating men just so she can make more money, she did have a point that female superheroes & villains were scarce. I remember male characters in cartoons are often portrayed as the butt-monkey & dumbasses and they always get beaten up by female characters. I also grew up playing a lot of fps games and often times the male characters were very bad ass, stoic, rarely smile & scowled a lot, aloof, overly muscular think of characters like Max Payne, Duke Nukem, BJ Blazckowicz, Doomguy.

In my family I never had a sister, in Lebanon interaction and ties to extended family is a crucial part of Lebanese society. I am the youngest in my nuclear family so there was a 10 year gap between my brothers and one the youngest in the extended family my paternal female cousins were my age I often interacted with them I often felt a little out of place with them, and there were two male cousins my age but one of them is always in Australia so I rarely see him, and the other grew up in a very strict & reclusive environment.

Throughout my childhood I was heavily bullied from 1st grade to 10th grade despite changing schools, I was bullied by both the boys & the girls, and yes they were cruel and unempathetic but I didn’t care about my personal hygiene & had poor social skills, I also had concentration issues and often day dreamed in class, I suspect having ADHD & possibly high functioning autism. Because of the bullying I became very insecure, as I recall my middle school experience was the worst I was also bullied by the teachers as they were very unprofessional, I also had huge crush on girl at the school she rejected me in a really harsh way (although she was never a bully) and to be honest I acted creepy towards her, it left me devastated and had fantasies in shooting up the school but I would never do that because to me life is sacred and believe in the idea of the right to life, liberty & personal property . The thing about Lebanese schools is that they offer no mental health services ie school counsellor not even physical health, and school administrators are authoritarian and if a student does not perform very well in their classes, they would get beaten up by both the teachers & their parents. I also remember in Junior High we had that mentally insane math teacher who onetime embarrassed me Infront of the whole class making me a laughing stock which almost made me want to beat her up but didn’t because the principal would have possibly injured me. In 10th grade I moved to an all-boys school and the first year was pretty tough with the bullying as I used to be physically weak and my classes were very difficult.

In 2012 which was 11th grade, I started questioning my beliefs on Islam and due reasoning and logical evaluation I left Islam to atheism, and slowly my political views started becoming generally more progressive like supporting more personal freedom for everyone, equality, more rights for women, LGBT, and dark skinned people. My best friends father is an atheist at that time and he was the first person I came out to as an atheist, and he slowly introduced me to Anarchism & Leftist theory. I also discovered the Skeptic™ Youtube atheism the first one being Thunderf00t and saw how he debunks religious nuts. I became an atheist edgelord buying Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s books and watching their lectures. Then I signed up to an atheist social media platform called atheist nexus made a lot of internet friends and met a girl on this site she was in my age group and she recommended The Amazing Atheist aka TJ Kirk and Pat Condell, I really liked TJ he was very entertaining never liked Condell that much I found him to be boring. I then became apathetic towards atheism.

Every time I see a couple PDA it made the sight painful even if two people kiss be it in a movie or cartoon it was painful. One time in late 2013, I was hanging out with a friendly acquaintance and he was very frank with me that I have poor social skills & being so would make me permanently loveless and he told me that women want a man who is better than them this was a subtle exposure to hypergamy (part of the red pill ideology) and this made me become romantically hopeless. Moreover, I remember in 2009 I used to read posts on yahoo answers about dating advice and the answers were people saying that women want men who are bullies, and that nice guys finish last. I remember one time asking my brother for dating advice and he told me that women always shit test you, despite the fact that the women he dated are bad, his first gf was a clingy jealous girl that even attempted suicide, his 2nd fiancé being rude , and his wife being rude due to coming from a dysfunctional family. And my eldest brother’s wife being frivolous. You might be thinking how relevant these are, I tell you that this is very relevant to me getting sucked into the MGTOW pipeline because they helped reinforce it. In addition these women who I talked about are traditionalists.

In 2014 I decided to go again on youtube and revisted TJ and he made a video against feminism saying that men have issues and feminists do not address them, I did somewhat agree with the video but brushed it off quickly. I also did hear about gamergate, I was apathetic and thought Anita Sarkeesian had a point but demanding hundred grand was showing that she was a grifter.

In the summer of 2015 Lebanon had waste management crisis as a result there was garbage everywhere on the streets of Lebanon and due to the hot weather of a temperature of 35°C to 42°C (95°F to 107°F) the smell was extremely bad that it smelled like the city morgue, and to add insult to injury the electricity crisis which has been ongoing ever since 2007 has increased from 3 hours/day to 15 hours/day. A movement called “You Stink” was created as a response to the crises as well as political corruption and not having our basic needs met like a social safety net, healthcare, education, social justice, women’s rights, civil liberties, better internet & telecommunications services etc. I joined the movement and befriended the activists and get along well with them I even developed romantic feelings to a girl from the movement I will call her Samantha. The You Stink activists liked me a lot and I was somewhat popular with them I still was very insecure. I used to be an Ancom at that time but I didn’t have a strong foundation of it and didn’t know how it would really work.

I still had that Nice Guy™ Syndrome with me, and I would feel frustrated at the fact that I am a kissless virgin, and whenever some of the activists would tease me about it I my blood would boil with rage. Also the You Stink activists are also feminists including Samantha, everytime there was a talk about feminism I would derail the topic saying that men suffer from patriarchy and they would get frustrated from my ignorance and tbh they were right I was ignorant, I wasn’t a very good feminist ally at that time.

After the election of Trump, I started slowly shifting to right, anti-feminism, & the men’s rights movement. I decided to revist TJ Kirk’s video on feminism that I watched back in 2014. And in 2017 I started binge watching Anti-SJW videos from the algorithm first it was Jaclyn Glenn, the Mr Repzion, Shoe0nhead, Sargon of Akkad, Hunter Avallone, Paul Joseph Watson. I even was sympathetic to Richard Spencer (Alt-Right) and thought that punching him as well as other NeoNazis was wrong. I remember when someone disagreed with me on feminism I would become a snowflake , while hypocritically project my own insecurities on feminists that they are snowflakes.

I was already going through a rough time I was suspended from University for bad grades, I was socially insecure by comparing myself to other men and feeling unmanly because I was physically weak. I was also posting misogynistic horseshit on my facebook page that the You Stink activists started distancing themselves from me. Also I quarreled with my parents for refusing to continue my master’s degree and I also hate computer science and should have never listened to them because I faked going to university. And because of posting inflammatory misogynistic shit Samantha who is a feminist unfriended me and hates me from that this made me devastated as I was working a job that only paid 2.5$/hour which I hated and boss was a piece of shit, and it was also Ramadan and my former boss was an Islamic Fundamentalist so I had to fake fast and this was making work harsher. I got fired, I found MGTOW by Sandman on youtube and it resonated with me and deluded myself that I was single by choice. My misogyny became far worse and I did admit on facebook to the activists that I do indeed hate women extremely, one guy who was a Chad (a year younger than me) but also a bully to nearly everyone threatened to beat me he for the misogynistic posts on facebook. This made me hate nearly all the activists and I considered them a bunch of SJWs. I then tried to find other communities but I didn’t fit in with them due to my misogyny negativity, and lashing out.

Because of MGTOW, I was miserable, irrational, misanthropic, distrustful of everyone, bitter, cynical, jaded, resentful, very aggressive, rageholic, stubborn, paranoid, gynophobic (with the exception of my female relatives). The problem was that I was reveling in my own misery and other negative emotions. I was taking my anger out on women and even defenseless animals. I was so paranoid if a woman or girl sat next to me I would sit elsewhere for fear of me getting #metooed. I even remember my mother telling me that men are overprivileged and women are underprivileged and I never listen to her.

I even believed women should not be allowed to vote because they don't take responsibilities and only want equality when it suits them and chivalry when it suits them, and that they have less options so they will find it hard to settle with Chad, and feminism was a reaction to women having beta husbands and wanted to go with Chad. I did post only twice on r/incels & incels.me . But something inside me was telling me that patriarchy is anti-freedom, I still preferred the idea of sex bots. I was also sympathetic to incels as well as Elliott Rodger and Alek Minassian massacres eventhough I was against their actions, still they lose me when they wanted to legalize rape and shariah, and their extremely toxic crab mentality, and horrible advice "Go Rope" and everything else is “cope”, but I’d rather smoke dope. Moreover I learned that women are attracted to Looks Money & Status from FaceandLMS and women are attracted to men who are preselected by other women that's the reason why women say they want an experienced man and not virgin. I almost got sued for defamation because on facebook I made a slut-shaming post, but thanks to my best friend he halted this.

By summer 2018, my cousin from USA came over to visit while being very close with each other she told me that her husband is a control freak, toxic, and only married her to become a US citizen, this made me think a little more critically. And she told me how my uncle (her father) was abusive to his family especially his ex-wife due to his Islamism.

One day I was helping out my mother with cleaning the house and we hired a temporary cleaner for a couple of hours being very cheap, so while helping I slipped and partially dislocated my kneecap which hurt severely, because I do strength training I went on froums.bodybuilding.com to get some advice on what to do and if I should work my upper body instead, I also said that I have been suffering from my kneecap being sloppy and I was misdiagnosed by an incompetent doctor that it is healthy, the comments where basically bullying me because I live with my parents and I replied that jobs in my country pay very little and are not enough to for one to live on their own the minimum wage in Lebanon is 400$, electric bills are 80$ and still we get power outages everyday so we have to get back up generators and the backup generator providers have a lobby so they keep us suffering from outages and charge us exorbitant prices so that is another 75$, internet is 40$ and slow and there are overage fees, food is at least 200$ a month, rent is at least 300$ for a one bedroom apartment, and there are also property and real-estate taxes, I’m not counting medical bills & car insurance. Their responses were “You parents can afford a maid , you are being lazy, and a whiny entitled snowflake” “Stop with that victim complex, why are blaming the doctor” this was super infuriating mind you that the cyber bullies where men in their 30s and 40s. Thing about bodybuilding forums are where you find Red Pillers, MGTOWs, Incels, MRAs, and I don’t understand why are grown men bullying a 20 year olds and teens, went to an orthopedist and diagnosed with patellar subluxation, the only solution is surgery and I can’t afford surgery.

One day I met an old friend who likes to debate and always plays the devil’s advocate and I always enjoy debating him, the topic of gender came up and he criticized MGTOWs,Incels,PUA,TRP,MRAs and showed me that they are not part of the solution but part of the problem, and their problems and issues stem from toxic masculinity, he didn’t convince me but there was a lot of common ground, he did plant seeds of doubt.

One day I was browsing youtube and I found a small channel by the name Tim Horn, he is a progressive gamer who debunks right wingers and watched two videos of him debunking Ben Shapiro, PragerU, Dave Rubin, thing is that even when I was a MGTOW I always hated Ben Shapiro, PragerU, Rave Dubin. He also did cite a study showing how American healthcare is ranked the worst among the developed world. I then found Creationist Cat by Vadim Newquist and debunks anti-SJW in a hilarious way. I also revisted Dusty Smith and he exposed the Anti-SJWs for being hypocritical. I then found Shaun and I learned how I and many people were getting manipulated and how the SJW doom eternal outrage was fake. I also befriended a girl & a guy (they don’t know each other) and whenever the topic of feminism came up my ass would get handed to me. One day I met a guy who saw my post on my old account on the “You Stink” movement which I wrote in 2016 and he wanted to establish a separate group and we meet up and one day on his facebook page he shared a video by Philosophy Tube on Anarchism, I liked the video and went to his youtube channel and learned how rebellious women were tortured and considered witches during the renaissance. I then discovered Contrapoints video on incels and I was perplexed by having better answers than the generic advice, as well as finding non-compete’s video on Toxic Masculinity. I also saw how anti-feminists were triggered by the Gillette ad, although I was still adopting the MGTOW label. But when the Christchurch massacre happened and saw the video I was “That’s it I am completely done with this”.

Ever since I fell down the MGTOW rabbit hole I was becoming the monster, and I started hating my MGTOW self, even though it motivated to go to the gym and workout. Till now fitness and strength training have become my passions, and I have built some muscle mass especially on my shoulders, traps , and triceps, although I still have that beer gut that I can’t get rid of with high body fat % of 22% , going to the gym has kept me somewhat sane throughout my phase. Speaking of muscles, I realized that toxic masculinity doesn't mean that all masculinity is toxic, it means the negative traits associated with being a man like "Man Up" , "Boys don't cry" , "Men can't get raped" , "Cuck", "Soyboy" , "Beta" , "Men don't get abused by a woman" etc. By the way those red pilled alpha males are actually very insecure about their masculinity and a confident doesn't need to subjugate women or be afraid of strong intelligent woman, doesn’t measure his self-worth by how many women he scored with, what car he drives, doesn’t push weaker people down & bully them.

As of now I am friends again with the Activists and my relationship with them is much better than in 2015-2016. Since 17 October 2019, it was the first day of the Lebanese revolution I met my pals again from the 2015-2016 movement, and I have been very active in the revolution.