Huh? I think you are mixing up two conversations.
I was not suggesting that it’s not widely used as an insult. I just pointed out to you that it is also widely used self-referentially.
But the post of mine that you quoted just above was not about that. It was a response to someone who claimed that it means anyone who is celibate and would prefer not to be.
I am perhaps misreading him, but I believe Jay_Z is arguing exactly that.
Even if they don’t complain, and simply admit that they don’t have a romantic partner, nor had one for a long time, that label has a tendency to come out.
I don’t really think it can be used positively at this point.
Also, I don’t think that EVERY instance of someone complaining about dating issues is incel. That is another thing, too broad a brush. I read women complaining about men in dating all of the time, that doesn’t make them misandrist. It depends on how far it goes and how often.
Wow, it’s as if we’re the same person. Except I’m not left handed. Acquaintances, co-workers who were curious (or nosey) about why I didn’t date completely didn’t get it. You’re decent looking, employed, well-educated, and polite; there are lots of women who would want to go out with you. Maybe they would have, too, had the anxiety turned me into a weird, needy creep. Unfortunately, it could easily become a vicious circle. If I became single again, I don’t know that it would be any different. Fortunately, if I become single again I’m likely to be too old to care much at that point.
Do you have any examples? Because I have never seen that at all, unless you’re counting obvious trolls.
@Jay_Z: but the point is that it’s not being used positively or even neutrally. That’s why the OP doesn’t make sense. He seems to think it is a neutral term. He literally has the term “Good incels” in the title, like such a thing exists.
Definitionally, it “could” be used positively.
I agree that it is not being used positively and is not likely to change. The self selected are viewed negatively. It is also being used, negatively, in a wider sense to shame the socially awkward or any man that has any sort of complaint about gender dynamics. So, in practice, it’s a slur that has widened from its original usage.
My understanding is that the “blame” goes to:
They see themselves as being unable to compete with the “Chads” – tall, handsome, wealthy, socially-connected, confident guys, whom they believe are the only types of guys that women will willingly have sex with.
Yeah. If you want a curated collection of the misogyny, bigotry, self-loathing and just general dysfunction that permeates the lowest depths of what’s sometimes called the online “manosphere”, including the self-identified “incel” community, you can find one in the archives of the We Hunted the Mammoth blog.
You’re nit-picking based on the semantics of the words. It’s not just a contraction of the words “INvoluntary CELibate”, it’s a whole way of thinking/mindset and an unorganized group of men who subscribe to it.
Nobody actually uses it as a contraction- when “incel” is used, it’s meant specifically to refer to the members of that group/adherents of that mindset. You could say that someone is involuntarily celibate and that doesn’t mean the same thing as “incel”.
It’s kind of analogous to getting hung up on the idea that the Proud Boys are actually grown men, not boys, and having some kind of issue with that.
That pretty much nails it from what I understand. Fundamentally the problem is that they think they’re owed sex, and that the reason they’re not getting it is because women prefer other guys, who are more or less the stereotypical jocks of yesteryear.
They’re right in a sense; women don’t want to have sex with them because they’re creepy weirdos with toxic ideas, not because they’re short, ugly, etc… And they’re usually very hung up on the attractiveness of the women they think owe them sex as well- they think they’re entitled to sex with hot women like you see on TV/internet. Most of these guys, if they could lose the toxic mindset and aim a bit more in their own league, could be getting laid all the time. Not with stunning Shakira/Dua Lipa/Margot Robbie women, but with more normal women.
I envy your lack of exposure to toxic environments. Of course, I also didn’t say “just for being single”, but perpetually single.
I don’t know why you seem to be disagreeing here. I didn’t say it wasn’t widely used by people about themselves. I said that it is also something that is used as an insult.
Unless you are saying that it’s never used as a insult, I’m not sure what you are trying to say here, or what you think your cite is relevant to.
I don’t frequent incel communities, or visit them at all, so they may very well call themselves incels all day long. “What up, incel?” “Oh, my incel!” and so forth and I wouldn’t know. However, outside of those communities, the vast majority of the time I have encountered that term is when it is being used to label others, maybe sometimes accurately, but always derisively.
So yes, in the context of “incel” as an insult rather than a self described label, it means “people perceived as inept losers who can’t get laid.”
Sure it is, but to someone who wants to insult others, it’s not a distinction they find all that important to make.
And I didn’t deny that it’s used self-referentially, so I’m not sure why you felt the need to point that out.
I’m not sure that’s the claim being made. I think that the claim being made is that it is a label that gets used against anyone who is celibate.
I’ll let him speak for himself, but I didn’t get that impression.
Well, I am left handed.
I suppose the difference is that in my 30’s I found myself too busy with too many things to care at all about relationships, and I’m pretty sure that most casual acquaintances assume I’m gay, so no one bothers me about not having a girlfriend.
That I can cite for you? No. This has been all in real life.
You said this:
Which I took to mean that you think it is principally used as an accusation, and less often self-referentially. That’s what I was responding to in saying it’s widely used self-referentially in the subculture.
In any event, apparently we’re not in any disagreement about usage.
I would add that they also think the “Chads” are having a ridiculous amount of sex, which frustrates them to no end. They think that the 70% of women they deem fuckable are constantly on the “cock carousel” with 20% of men. It deeply offends them that women they see as “less deserving” than them (and assigning numerical “value” to people is huge there) get to have sex when they don’t, especially since they think sex is something men need and women endure/give out for status or money.
The core of it all is seeing all relationships as deeply, entirely transactional and sex as the fundamental currency. Near as I can tell, they live in that paradigm like a fish lives in water. Anyone challenging it is dismissed as a total bullshitter.
There may be an additional claim that as an insult it is now applied indiscriminately and inappropriately. But the post that I was responding to said:
This is an explicit appeal to the etymological fallacy.
The next passage in that article kind of gets at the meat of what @Velocity seemed to intend with his OP, and describes that the term has been hijacked to only define a subset of the “involuntarily celibate” (emphasis mine):
Since the reddit/incel etc. group effectively co-opted the original usage, I’m not sure of the standing of those who claim that the co-option is somehow the final word on the subject.
I suggest that we make the distinction of the small-i incel versus the Capital-I Incel™, just as we often make the distinction between the “nice guy” versus the “Nice Guy™”. Note that even in this very thread, many posts spell the word with a Capital-I and many others don’t.
Language is used the way it’s used, which is tautological, but something that folks might be underplaying. There is precious little use of the word “incel” to mean what Alana intended for it to mean. Folks who say it’s thoroughly co-opted are describing, not prescribing, its usage.
The coiner of a word cannot control or dictate how usage evolves over time, as she concedes. I mean, maybe it will one day get reclaimed. But that has to actually happen and take hold as a spontaneous consensus, just like any other word. I don’t think anyone here is trying to prescribe usage, we’re just stating our observations of how we see it used in the wild. Usage is the determinant of meaning.
IME means" in my experience". And having spent a significant amount of my life in toxic environments like food service, construction, and landscaping, my experience is that it is used far more as an insult than self referential.
But, that’s real life, which some may argue is even more important than online, but doesn’t come with as easy citing and annotation.
So, yes, I carefully did not disclose my relationship status among co-workers, as either they would want to take me out to the club or bar and “get me laid”, or they would become insulting over the fact that I couldn’t.
I found that letting people assume I was gay was far preferable than admitting that I leaned towards heterosexuality, but just didn’t get on romantically with women.
Now, I probably felt some level of bitterness about this, but it wasn’t about not dating, it was about the social pressures that if I wasn’t dating, something was wrong with me. I was perfectly fine on my own, and while I’m not the most experienced in the world, I have had sex, and to be honest, I kinda prefer my own cooking.
In the end, I do think that some people who are just perpetually single get pushed towards incel communities by social pressure. They are told that something is wrong with them, and so the seek out peers who won’t tell them that there is something wrong with them. It’s not the healthiest validation out there, but people do tend to group up with people who validate their feelings, rather than insult them.
As I said, he can speak for himself, but I see it as the exact opposite, in that those in this thread are talking about the dictionary definition, and he is talking about how it is actually used in the real world. You are trying to say that it only refers to this particular group of people, with these specific traits, and that may be the accurate use of it, but it gets used against far more people, anyone who demonstrates any of the traits.