It’s a self-defined group. Their misogyny co-exists with their racism, anti-Semiticism, conspiracy theories, and self-hate, any one visit will show that.
A lot of them claim to be autistic. It’s hard to miss that, they bring the subject up all the time and it’s usually included when they list their own faults. They call each other “autists” to be insulting.
This kind of being an unhappy celibate requires a lot of ancillary stupidity and hatred, which attracts condemnation, which they process as people hating on them because they don’t have sex. I think it’s important to note all of this, because we don’t necessarily have to take their word that the virgin shaming they experience is actual virgin shaming.
If you look at other groups–ISIS killers, Neo-Nazi gangs, crazy militia groups, violent nineteenth-century anarchists, Communist revolutionaries–they’re all overwhelmingly male.
But not exclusively male.
In all those groups, you’ll find some women wielding the gun, or throwing the dynamite, or whatever the weapon of choice is.
Incels are distinct because their murderers are exclusively men.
I still don’t think it’s a mystery, though. They’re not killers because they’re sexually frustrated. They’re killers because their sexual frustration has glommed on to a specific ideology.
Asking why there aren’t female Incel killers is like asking why there aren’t black Klan killers.
First of all, how long has this “incel” movement been going on? Exactly how many men have killed as members of the movement? There is no reason to think that some small number of women might be motivated to kill because of being rejected by men. I’m sure some already have. The fact that they aren’t members of the current male-oriented movement or haven’t formed their own, similar, movement yet isn’t really relevant. Give it time.
While there are women in every other terrorist movement I can think of, there are precious few terrorist organizations/movements started by women. I find it highly unlikely that some women, rejected from Incel shittiness by virtue of their gender, are gonna start their own Incel movement and go out and kill.
Sure, some women have committed murder in response to rejection, I’m sure. I’ve seen no evidence that any woman has ever done so as part of a movement that encourages violence against men, and as a terroristic action intended to sow terror among men in general. Can you cite any counterexamples?
That’s not how women are blamed. Women are blamed when people say “Come on, give him a chance”, or “Why not go out on a date with him, just once?” or “Golden State killer motivated by breakup with ex-fiancee”. How about we turn that around to “Woman listens to her gut and refuses to go out with a sociopath”.
It is their right…particularly white and Asian men. And its a woman’s responsibility to keep the peace. We teach it to them. In preschool, if a boy wants a toy a girl is playing with, he takes it. If she cries, she is told she needs to “share.” If its two boys, he’s told “Bobby was playing with that.” In middle school if a girl comes to school with her shoulders exposed - she is sent home - her shoulders are “too distracting” for the boys and they can’t concentrate.
I’ve had multiple run ins over my daughter…some boy doesn’t treat her well (her cousins, the son of a friend, a classmate) and I say she doesn’t need to play with them. Then she and I get told she is being “mean.” (You should see the look on a mom’s face when I say "no means no and your son needs to learn to respect that even if he is just six). In high school, a kid was horsing around and came down on her foot. When she showed up after the weekend, it was in a cast and she said “its broken” He looked at her. She said “you could say you are sorry.” She got reprimanded by his mother for making him feel bad about not apologizing (which he never did) - that’s some broken entitled shit.
(Black men and boys will get blamed for everything - and are angry because they see the pass being given to other boys for being boys.)
The “prevention” aspect of this goes deeper, I think, than sex. We know that there are sexually frustrated people who do not turn their anger out and attack others. And we know that those who turn their anger out and attack others are not necessarily sexually frustrated. So is there an even more fundamental problem and the sexual frustration is just a symptom? I think so.
Research into terrorism shows that social isolation plays a huge role. Those who are socially isolated are more vulnerable to directed outside influences (someone luring them into joining cult-ish groups) and also to just non-directed societal messages. These folks are more prone to radicalization of all sorts.
Social isolation also causes or is closely correlated with significant physical and mental health issues, including early death and suicide, even for those who aren’t radicalized. Loneliness, isolation, lack of emotional and social supports, these things are big problems and they are growing.
And I do think that virgin shaming as a nasty societal gotcha can play a role. On the internet, in particular, we often link “loser” and “lack of social skills” and attack people who are irritating as being virgins, lacking girlfriends, having small penises, or otherwise lacking sexual prowess. I don’t think this is harmless. I think this pretty explicitly links sexual experience with not being “a loser.”
People hear and are influenced by society’s messages.
Even if all virgin-shamers are women (and I’m sure they’re not), criticizing those who do it is not the same as blaming women. Condemning the action, and those who choose to engage in it, is not the same as blaming a whole gender.
I am not aware that anyone is saying that women should give incels a chance, or go out on a date with them, just once.
And it seems a bit of a stretch to say that mentioning the trigger event is blaming it on anyone. “Armed robber kills clerk in liquor store hold up” isn’t blaming the event on liquor store clerks.
That doesn’t sound to me like blaming it on the woman either, and is thus not much of a turn around.
Perhaps, but what is the relevance of the distinction? If virgin-shaming is part of the cause - I am not convinced it is - why is it condemnable coming from men, but not coming from women? If it is contributing to the problem, we ought to be able to discuss it no matter where it is coming from.
If you are saying that women are not at fault for the fact that incels are angry virgin losers, I agree completely. If you are saying that virgin-shaming is part of the problem, then let’s hear why, as well as an explanation of why it can’t be mentioned if it comes from women.
This is backwards. The inability to relate to women caused the Pick Up Artists phenomenon.
For young men sex is a biological drive. It is just like hunger or thirst. Imagine you had just enough food to survive but not enough to satiate you so you were constantly hungry. Then imagine there was a group of people who had unlimited supplies of food. This group of people had a policy that they gave out lots of food for free everyday but only to fat people. If you approached these people and asked for food you were mocked and insulted and occasionally one of the fat people would beat you up for asking the wrong person. Being deprived of something they want so much would make anyone angry. Some people who lack self control, empathy, and morality get violent because of this anger.
It is human nature to demonize people we are angry at. Thus there is rampant misogyny and hatred because of the anger.
Pick up artists should be part of the solution because it gives young men concrete steps to improve their ability to communicate with women. The men who it appeals to are already filled with misogyny because of their preexisting anger.
You still aren’t getting LHoD’s point. Her point is that for a man to not be a virgin (heteronormatively speaking), some woman has to have sex with him. When we blame virgin shaming, there is a logical line from that to “if these guys weren’t virgins they wouldn’t be shamed” to “women should put out to solve this problem.”
You may not see it, but many women do because we are the unspoken doers of unspoken expectations. In many many men’s lives - underwear just appears clean, food just shows up, dishes are magically done, kids somehow get through three years of braces without Dad even knowing where the orthodontist office is. If you were raised in a household where Mom just did, is it any surprise that you expect women just to meet your needs without complaint?
Personally, I think that’s what needs to change. We need to raise our boys differently. We need to raise them to do for themselves the business of life, and to respect the agency of women. That’s hard to do when your preschool teacher lets you take a toy from a girl and then tells the girl she needs to “share.” Or when you are seventeen years old and underwear still magically appears. Or when Mom has taken you to almost every doctors, dentists, and orthodontist appointment of your childhood, even though she and your dad both work full time jobs.
I think some of the proposed “solutions to the incel problem” are a form of virgin shaming. They are basically saying “virgins are involuntarily celibate, which is a long form way of saying they’re incel, which means they’re basically one rejection away from a mass murder”. The best that can come from that attitude is being condescendingly fake-nice to someone, and the worst is fearing and ostracizing them as being dangerous.
Forgive the flaws in this analogy, please, and focus on a single dynamic.
In the late 19th century, there was a racist massacre in Wilmington, NC. White people murdered a lot of black people and launched a coup against the government, with profound implications for the South for decades to come.
When asked what caused this racist violence, one common answer was, “Black men were catcalling white women.” (It’s a little more complicated than that–lemme be simplistic for the sake of the analogy).
Now, maybe some black men WERE catcalling white women. And if they were, that’s a shitty thing for them to do.
BUT IT IS NOT THE CAUSE OF RACIST MURDERS. And if you’re trying to end racist terrorism, you don’t do it by telling black men to stop catcalling white women. Doing so is blaming black men for the actions of white terrorists, and that’s not an okay thing to do.
Back to this case. Incels are murdering women. If we’re trying to figure out why, and we say, “It’s because of virgin-shaming,” we’re doing the same thing as blaming black men for the Wilmington Racist Massacre.
I have, a lot. Here’s a quote, straight from Twitter about Shauna Fisher, who supposedly spurned Dimitrios Pagourtzis before he killed her during the Santa Fe HS shooting “That gurl shana bears some responsibility for rejecting his love”. If you’ve never seen it, that’s because you’re not noticing it.
When I say turn it around, I’m talking about turning away from blaming the killings on being triggered by a woman. Turn away from making the woman the trigger to showing how the woman escaped.
Who is shaming virgins, and in what context? My understanding (again secondhand, never having experienced it myself) is that it’s primarily an insult directed at men by women. Is this incorrect?
Maybe I’m not being clear. That’s not my point.