“It’s exhausting,” said Joelle Emerson, who runs Paradigm, a company that designs diversity strategies. “It’s created divides that I didn’t anticipate.” One radical fringe that is growing is Mgtow, which stands for Men Going Their Own Way and pronounced MIG-tow. Mgtow aims for total male separatism, including forgoing children, avoiding marriage and limiting involvement with women. Its message boards are brimming with activity from Silicon Valley, Mr. Altizer said. Cassie Jaye, who lives in Marin County and made a documentary about the men’s rights movement called “The Red Pill,” said that the tech world and the men’s rights community had “snowballed” together and that the rise in the number of people in Mgtow is new. On the Mgtow message boards, members discuss work (“Ever work for a woman? Roll up your sleeves and share your horror story”), technology (“The stuff girlfriends and wives can’t stand — computers, games, consoles”) and dating (mostly best practices to avoid commitment). “I think there are a lot of guys living this lifestyle without naming it, and then they find Mgtow,” said Ms. Jaye, who calls herself a former feminist. Mr. Altizer leads Bay Area Fathers’ Rights, a monthly support group for men to talk about the issues they uniquely face. He became interested in the community after a divorce and said his eyes were opened to how few rights men have. As for the numbers of women in tech, the effort for parity is absurd, he said. “I’ve been on the hiring side for years,” Mr. Altizer said, adding that he is not currently hiring people. “It would be nice to have women, but you cannot find applicants.”
Women working in Silicon Valley are facing a blacklash following a series of scandals involving sexual discrimination and harassment. Men’s rights activists claim that numbers at their meetings in the sector are rising, with many identifying as “contrarians” to signal their opposition to “diversity dogma”. Those holding such views have been galvanised by the case of James Damore, an engineer fired by Yahoo after he wrote a memo arguing that women were biologically less capable of engineering than men. Last year, two male employees of Google sued the firm for gender discrimination.