An explicit appeal to the etymological fallacy is not a claim about usage.
This obvious is a claim about usage, and may be true. I think the distinction between a broadening of meaning and indiscriminate use of the word as an insult becomes muddy here.
I looked at his list of characteristics. I have almost none of them. I was close to my low point at the time of the study; I’m sure he would have seen me as an outlier. I’m digging into it a bit, but so far I’m seeing too many absolutes. When I see “absolutely all” my BS detector goes off. I do wonder how much it’s been studied since; supposedly this was the only book on the subject when it came out.
70%? I think you’re being too kind to them. 70% of women they see in movies, perhaps, but if they actually thought 70% of real women were interesting a lot of them wouldn’t be having the problems they’re having.
When I was in college a long time ago a lot of us weren’t connecting, but none blamed women and the attitude was that it will happen someday, mostly if we try harder, not that there was a feminist conspiracy killing our sex lives. That’s the difference.
It’s no wonder that some people use incel as an insult. Incels are so obnoxious that they are ahem asking for it. Nobody ever used “sexually frustrated” as an insult, after all.
They don’t think they are interesting, they think those women are dumpy gross trash and are still getting laid. That is the cosmic “unfairness” thay eats them alive.
Why? What end does it serve? What good does it do to dilute the incel label when it is serving a valuable purpose right now delineating a particular type of person?
None of the parade of unfortunates you list would get labelled an incel based on just their circumstances. Some of them have other labels (the Chinese men would be shengnan (剩男）, ‘leftover men’, for example) but no-one’s going to call a paraplegic who can’t get a date an incel.
So, what purpose does it serve to label all these disparate people “good incels”? Seems kind of condescending, IMO.
So incel is the good stereotype. Got it.
Type =/= stereotype.
If I say “gamers are people who like playing video games”, that’s delineating a type, not a stereotype.
Based on incel ideology, aka “the blackpill”, as I understand it, (and inceldom is an ideology, a uniquely misogynistic, derranged and toxic one):
Only men/boys can be incels, or truecels, all women claiming to be incels are fakecels. (Ofcourse, women can still believe and espouse blackpill ideology, even if they are formally kept out of the club via gatekeeping.)
Incel is an insult the same way calling someone a racist, sexist or misogynist is. All those terms can simultaneously be descriptive but also cause a lot of offense when directed towards somone, the biggest difference is many more incels might be ok with being called so due to self-identification with the term (at least historically and online).
On Reddit, incel is my experience rarely used as a generic insult or even an insult towards somone sexually inexperienced. If somone wants to insult somone (most likely a man) for (percieved) sexual inexperience they will simply call them a virgin (among other things like limp dick and basement dweller)*, a much more common insult IMO.
There can be no “good incels” as the OP defies them since every “good incel” is like decribing a “good Nazi”. In other words a true follower of their respective ideologies. Incels are primarily misogynists and Nazis are primarily racists.
*Neckbeard was once popular as well but I don’t even remember the last time I’ve seen it used.
Yes, this is the defining ethos of inceldom.
There’ve been men who couldn’t get laid since time immemorial. Nothing new about that. Some of those people responded to the situation by blaming women and forming an internet clubhouse to talk about how much they hate women. They called themselves ‘incels’.
It would be unwise to forge a group of “good incels” of people who already don’t identify as incels. By identifying with those concepts they would be primed to join the “bad” group as soon as they had a bad day or got discouraged.
I would fully say it’s a valid social question to worry about people who simply cannot find a partner for whatever reason (for example the burn victim posited in the OP). It should be acknowledged that in the dating world, some people are inevitably going to feel left behind through no fault of their own, and are at risk of radicalization. I have no idea what the solution is, I’m just empathetically noting that it’s a real problem.
Incels are indeed very much like racists. Racists claim to only want to explore “realistic differences between races” and incels claim only want to explore “realist gender dynamics”.
But it becomes very very clear within seconds what they’re both about.
Ok, I read through a good bit of the book. I skimmed, like I’ve done all my life, so I’m sure I missed some things. Some of the men is his study seemed to see themselves as victims. I was mainly curious because of my debilitating anxiety around approaching women for dates. His “love-shy” subjects had little in common with me beyond said anxiety. I enjoyed organized baseball and backyard football. I had plenty of guy friends (I did have female friends as well, especially as I got older). I was successful in my work before I got married. People of both genders looked at me and said there was no way I should have any trouble finding a girlfriend. My take is that his sample size was limited (confined to a handful of colleges and metropolitan areas, and that he generalized too much. I don’t know if the guy is still with us (he was born in 1940). It would be interesting to see a similar (and maybe more rigorous) study exploring how many “love-shy” become incels and what factors drive it. I thought he asked interesting questions, but came to some questionable conclusions.
FWIW, I think a discussion on things like virgin shaming and any other ill treatment that (male) virgins may get simply for not having or being unable to have sex for whatever reason is worthwhile. Using the “incel” concept towards this goal is not going to work though unless you can time travel back to the 90s.
I’m also against anyone calling somone an incel simply for being sexually inexperienced or for any other reason except for displaying or espousing sexist or misogynistic ideas.
Why would they call him “limp dick”? That’s not a problem many guys who want sex but can’t get it have.
Agreed. “Shyness and Love” has some promising insights into the “incel” phenomenon, but they’re buried under a mountain of pseudoscience and flawed reasoning.
Dr. Gilmartin died in 2016.
Looking back, I think I used to have rather incel-ish ideas. A sort of satisfying self-pity and anger at more “successful “ guys who seemed to make meeting girls effortless. The fact that I was one of the very few non-Catholics in a very Catholic school never crossed my mind, and an attitude of “if women don’t like me, then they’re idiots and deserve the bad guys” did take root. Thankfully I’ve grown up a lot (still single though) since then, but I wasted too much time on that crap.
TLBDR (Too Long, Boring, Didn’t Read)
Guys like that are to be both pitied and watched carefully as with any dangerous cult.
I just realized that talking about how I could never get a date but not feeling entitled or blaming it on women could be construed as “virtue signaling”. My apologies.
An old-school term, for sure, which is probably why it still gets used here once a month or so.
https://boards.straightdope.com/search?q=neckbeard%20order%3Alatest
Not at all. It’s helpful to talk about one’s own experience, and it’s also helpful to distinguish between folks who take responsibility and those who don’t. Young dudes need role models of older dudes who aren’t assholes about being single.
If folks can’t talk about the option to own one’s shit, it’s that much likelier that young dudes won’t own their shit.
I was partly referring to the discussion of “virtue signaling” above in a less than serious way, but I really did think what I said could be construed that way. Now that I think about it more, though, I’m not really sorry. Also, I’m not single anymore. If I were, I’d probably have whined so much on this board that I’d have become a pariah. Not that I wouldn’t have taken responsibility, but once in a while I would feel the need to bemoan my sorry situation.
Now you’re way beyond virtue signaling into just boasting…