Negging, by XKCD. I think there’s a lot of truth in the final couple of panels: people who are willing to join a hateful, violent ideology are motivated more by internal character flaws than by anything external. That they can’t admit that is one of the worst of those internal character flaws.
No, you aren’t.
I don’t know that I agree with this. Are you saying that a bully has no responsibility for the actions that the victim of his bullying takes?
There is agency on both sides, but it is limited when you are the one under attack.
Far more “losers” take their own lives than the lives of others. If everyone tells you are a loser, why not?
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Eh, it’s the media, and the media is very rarely a healthy place for social issues. On most of these shows, the guy is pretty dumb, and the only reason that he is capable of even functioning is because of his wife. I don’t see those as healthy role models for the man, the woman, or any family.
It may seem that way, but I’m not seeing it. I’ve, since the last thread on the subject, read through some of the incel like forums, and I didn’t see anything about supermodels. I do think that this is one of those things that is assumed about them, but with little substance. I only read a few threads on a couple forums, as it is not something that I enjoyed, but I’d like to see where this assertion that I keep seeing made comes from.
The person who came up with the term was a woman to describe someone who was celibate, but not entirely through choice. She came up with it to describe herself. My understanding of how it changed is that it didn’t catch on as a self described thing, but was turned into an insult to level at the “losers”. At some point, those losers decided to own the label, rather than allow it to be used as an insult against them.
Well, you are talking about a single entity and a single incident as a triggering force. You certainly cannot say that Hebdo is responsible for ISIS. However, if you look at the history of the formation of ISIS, then you would see that it was far more than a single cartoon in a single paper that led to the attacks. It was decades of oppressive policies towards people that left them with little power and hope (along with killing of family and friends in the violence involved in wars) that drove them towards radicalization.
Virgin shaming is not the cuase of Incels, but it certainly is one of the factors that lead to that radicalization.
This is actually more true when you see that many of the men recruited into the ranks of Al Qaeda or ISIS or other radical groups are also sexually frustrated young men.
And it also holds true that these groups are providing something to the potential radicalizee that they are not able to get elsewhere. Whether that be food and clothing, a sense of belonging, or just the ability to rant about their problems without being told that they are a loser.
I don’t know that I can agree to this. There are a wide range of reasons why someone may find themselves in the company of others who also are called “losers.” I do think that the virgin shaming culture does push people towards these communities, as the toxic masculinity in many groups prevents them from sharing social circles with such losers. If such losers are tolerated, they are made very aware of their place in the social hierarchy.
If they are leading people on in hatred, then absolutely. If they are enthusiastically following, then sure. If they are just there because they can’t find anywhere else to be, maybe not so much.
But, I will say that a universal declaration that there “are no innocent members of an Incel community” is actually the specific type of thing that pushes people further from the mainstream and encourages their radicalization.
There is nothing more powerful than the powerless, with nothing left to lose.
How many Incel murderers have there been? Are there enough to make any sort of conclusive statement like that? Nearly all serial killers are men, if there were only a few serial killers, odds are, they all would have been men.
The thing that the groups that you mentioned have in common is that they are relatively large. Certainly much larger than the Incels.
Not a bad analogy. I suppose part of the question is, is someone really a misogynist if they hate everyone?
If Incels are a reaction to anything, it is not a reaction to women who will not sleep with them, but to the culture of toxic masculinity that tells them that they are losers because women will not sleep with them.
Prior to the internet, they pretty much just kept to themselves, often committed suicide, maybe turned to crime or hurt someone or other, but not in any way that really put the onus on their “loserhood” as a cuase. Most just shuffled through life, not harming anyone, never acting out in a violent way, never being noticed.
The internet is a recruiting tool for all sorts. ISIS knows this. It starts small, with things that people agree with. “It’s hard to find a girlfriend.” the opening statement says. Sure, and I nod my head. Then after a few other axioms to which you really cannot disagree, you go to a bit of a stretch of the conclusions of those axioms, and once you have accepted those, it’s not that hard to move to pure delusion.
It’s many, many women’s lived experience that when a guy says “She made me do it” (where ‘it’ is anything from abuse to murder) there are many people who agree. You’ve never seen it, but that doesn’t mean it’s not right there in front of you.
One way to prevent people from radicalizing is that, when they say something that is a mixture of truth and falsehood, acknowledge the truth part while negating the falsehood, rather than rejecting the whole statement in its entirety.
And in cases of domestic violence, it’s an easy message to internalize, whether the victim is male or female:
We got into a fight, but I provoked them.
If I had done x, they wouldn’t have done y.
I should not have said a, that set them off.
You can blame a component of a problem even if it’s only a component of the problem. Mocking and ridiculing the resentful, frustrated, and violent doesn’t help. And unlike financial inequality where you can borrow from China and write a check sexual inequality can’t be mitigated.
Also unlike financial inequality, the cure to sexual frustration is in your own hands.
I mean, I’m being a little flippant here, but only a little. Loneliness is a real thing–but lack of friendship is just as much a component of that as is lack of a sexual partner. But you don’t see anyone shooting up a bar because nobody will go drinking with them, do you?
Again, NOBODY THINKS MOCKING FRUSTRATED PEOPLE WILL HELP. That’s a straw man. Some folks, like me, think that specifically mocking a specific frustrated person isn’t going to be a major cause of turning someone into a murderer–but nobody thinks it’s a good thing to do.
It’d be super if, going forward, that straw man didn’t rear its hayfilled head.
If I could flesh that out, the larger reality is that “slut” exists as a term for a woman, but not a man. Therefore it makes sense to have a movement to counter the labeling of sexually active women, and it makes sense to have a movement that is more accepting of men who aren’t sexually active. Both of these would be countering ideas of social norms that stem from our most august institutions all the way down to the nearest middle school.
But it is not a matter of incels just wanting sex, they are picky about the women they would have sex with, and resentful that women in general have an easier time getting it. There is no way to satisfy them that does not include somehow penalizing women to level the field.
Absolutely. That goes in my steps 2 and 3.
True things:
-Most folks, and nearly all young people, want to have a sex life that involves another person.
-Like, REALLY want.
-When this want isn’t being met, it can be stressful and miserable. Like, Sorrows of Young Werther miserable.
-Some people have a lot of sex and a lot of sex partners, while others have no sex and no sex partners.
-There are specific, concrete steps a person can take to increase their chances of getting laid.
-Masculinity is socially constructed to include a “gettin som” element, and that’s some bullshit.
-There are specific, concrete steps a person can take to increase their chances of getting laid.
False things:
-The people who are having a lot of sex are bogarting all the sex and should stop.
-The people who are refusing to have sex with a particular person should reconsider their decision.
-The desperate, sometimes overwhelming desire to have sex is connected to a right to have sex.
-If someone mocks you for not gettin some, you deserve revenge.
-All’s fair in love [and war]–therefore, the specific steps you take to get laid don’t really matter so much, so pickup artistry is hunky dory.
Note that my “true things” list is mostly factual, and my “false things” list is mostly values-based. That’s a feature, not a bg–because it means that we can address those values directly, and try to persuade folks of a different set of values.
Different values:
-The amount of sex other people have isn’t your business, and the amount of sex you’re having isn’t other people’s business, so you and they can fuck off with those value judgments.
-You get 100% choice to refuse to have sex with anyone, just like they do with you; sex only happens when both of y’all agree. (The good news is that most folks want to have sex, so if you keep looking and keep your options open and don’t fixate and take some basic measures to make yourself attractive, you’ve got pretty good chances).
-No matter how overwhelming your desire to have sex is, though, you might not get to have it, and if so, that really sucks, but nobody owes you sex.
-If someone mocks you for not gettin some, they’re a jackass, and leave it at that.
-Wanting sex doesn’t entitle you to treat people like shit. Choose ways to make yourself attractive that don’t exploit other people.
“Caused” is a bit , well, not-even-wrong, but besides that, this doesn’t contradict what I said.
The online incel community are basically a *reaction *to PUA tactics not working for some men (because they’re shitty people and all the peacocking and negging and “Game” in the world won’t disguise that) - one of the primary Incel forums used to be PUAHate (I believe it’s resurfaced as SlutHate but I’m not gonna check)
Oh, spare me. All the incels I’ve ever encountered seem to have at least one perfectly functioning hand to type with. They can use that. There, the pure biology part is sorted, even though Appeal To Nature is fallacious bullshit anyway.
Well, it might if it wasn’t also bullshit - that’s the very thing that riled the incels up.
The brain is part of nature. So I’m not seeing how an “appeal to nature” is a fallacy. Biological drives are real. Humans are biological.
And for some, masturbation doesn’t satisfy all their desires. Now, I don’t think anyone is entitled to anything but I can see why people are resentful and frustrated when they see others with what or who they want. That’s where LHoD’s ideas on education come in. People need to be taught productive techniques to mitigate frustration.
To preface my thoughts, here is my situation:
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I’m am a prime candidate for ‘recruitment’ into the incel movement. I’m a single man who’s spent literally decades in a friendzone and is arguably a virgin. I currently have no close female friends. I’m the full gamut of ‘unattractive’ that characterizes that ‘type’ and don’t even bother dating or meeting people because there’s no point; it wouldn’t go anywhere.
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I haven’t spend one single second in or near any online community for incels, men, or humans (except arguably this message board, which may have humans) and thus I don’t have a single bit of firsthand information about how such communities work (though I’m perfectly willing to wildly speculate).
So.
In my opinion, the ‘birth’ of the average incel starts with a man who can’t get laid. They look around, and notice two things:
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Society expects them to get laid. Virgin males are losers. Manly men have women hanging off them. All around them a man’s literal worth is tied to their sexual activity. (For women, I speculate that their appearance is a reasonable analogy - nobody expects women to constantly have sex, but they are expected to be constantly beautiful, all the time. From the outside it seems to be a comparable type of societal pressure.)
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Pop culture promises that they’ll get laid. In virtually all movies, TV shows, and stories, male protagonists ‘get the girl’. Typically this happens without the man having to court the girl - it just happens, magically, that the woman loves him by the end of the story no matter what happened in the middle. This is constant - protagonists, winners, awesome people ‘get the girl’.
Now, you can say that this is all stupid; you can say that men should ignore the shaming and you can say that it’s dumb to conflate fiction with reality. And you’re probably right; we should all reject all contact with other humans and ignore all forms of entertainment besides macrame. But whether or not they should, some men don’t. They notice, and internalize, that virgins are losers. And if they don’t want to be a virgin, a loser, they need to get laid. And if they’re main characters in their own life they will get laid - no matter how they act.
Again, you don’t have to be impressed by such beliefs. But it’s not hard to see how a person could come to have them.
Once you have a man who holds such beliefs, there are a few ways it can go. My approach has been to accept that I’m a loser and a non-protagonist. Thus being a virgin is not just okay, but expected! Hey, what can I say, it’s an easy and effective approach, and I’m really really lazy, so there you go.
Other people don’t accept that they’re shitsacks, though - they are manly men who deserve a woman/sextoy. Society says so! So they get unhappy, and they get angry, and they get bitter. And…maybe that’s the end of it. Maybe they just become unhappy men who go through their lives lonely and depressed but try to hide it because they have to hold down a job and pay the bills. The end.
Enter the internet.
It’s one thing to be unhappy, bitter, and angry alone. But misery loves company, and there’s no message more appealing than ‘it’s not your fault’. Like happens, well, constantly, the internet allows minority groups to find others like them to group together and talk with. Trekkies, bronies, scrapbookers, puppy lovers. And lonely men. The internet allows them to gather and talk without the outside world reminding them that they’re a weirdo minority who should shut up and go away. (Especially those puppy lovers. Freaks, all of them.)
So a dude finds himself in a group that sympathizes with him and tells him it’s not his fault. Of course this group doesn’t tell him that he’s wrong that protagonists deserve to win sex; that would be crazy. Anybody who watches movies knows that’s wrong. No, the group tells them they deserve sex, but that it’s not their fault because something outside their power is blocking them. Something must be, or else they would be having sex. Netflix says so!
Somewhere along the line they’re introduced to the concept of ‘incels’ - perhaps with their initial group, or perhaps at the behest of somebody who’s both in their group and an incel group.
I hate the term ‘incel’.
“Involuntary celibate” - it’s such an innocuous term, isn’t it? Lots of people are involuntarily celibate. Most babies, for example. A lot of teens. Many people. It’s a term that a reasonable, calm person could easily apply to themself. I mean, I’m celibate, and it’s not like I’m rejecting offers. Even if I wanted to have sex, right now here in my cubicle, it couldn’t happen. So yes, I’m involuntarily celibate.
Similarly. I’m in favor of life. I think that casual random murder is a bad thing. So, at first blush, a reasonable person would say that I should be happy to accept the label “pro-life”, and perhaps join pro-life groups, and maybe embrace their cause.
Yeah, right. Like “pro-life”, “incel” is a weasel term - one that’s deliberately confusing, deliberately too-inclusive in order to both entice people to be more willing to adopt it, and to deceive outsiders into thinking that the group is ‘merely’ a group of normal men who happen to not be getting any.
Once in an incel group, as has been mentioned the societal pressure shifts. Women are at fault. They are to blame. There is (maybe) a conspiracy against you. It’s certainly not your fault you’re celibate, you unshowered basement-dwelling prince. It’s involuntary. They’re doing it to you. They are the enemy.
And we know how to treat enemies.
Not all incels have killed anybody, or tried to kill anybody. But the group is a terrorist breeding ground, because it is pushing ideas that directly and forcefully lead to the outcome of treating women as enemies. And while I’ve never been part of Isis, Al Qaeda, or the Nazi party either, I suspect they’re the same - paint some group or another as enemies, for whatever reason, and have your members keep reinforcing each other and riling each other up until they’re willing to act on the hatred.
So that’s how I think you build an incel - gradually. It’s a continuous development; they’re not a terrorist when they adopt the label incel, so technically not all incels are terrorists - but looking it at that way muddies the issue. It is a terrorist movement, even though it has not-yet-radicalized members. Maybe some of them will never radicalize. Maybe most won’t. Doesn’t matter - it’s still a terrorist group.
And I have no idea what could be done about it. The entire process is a nigh-inevitable result of three things:
- marginalized people
- the ability to gather and talk
- even one person with angry/violent ideas to prod others to further anger (who can then prod yet others).
It’s impossible to get rid of all the angry hate-filled people. And at this point it’s not going to be possible to stuff the internet back into the bottle; the genie is out of the bag. So then, what? Stop telling men that virgins are loser and winners, protagonists get the girls? Good luck with that; you have all of pop culture for the past hundreds of thousands of years arguing against you.
I support legalization of sex work. Hopefully this will get a lot of traction. I respect the law and will never pay for illegal Escorts. I do not blame any women for their choice not to be in a relationship with me or anyone.
I would never associate with InCels – they are dangerous lunatics.
I don’t think this truly addresses the issue though. There’s a huge difference between paying someone for sex, and someone willingly entering into a sexual relationship with you. (Again, incel-dom is about a lot more than just sex, but since sex is the topic in this comment I would address it only)
What I’m not getting here, LHoD, in light of a lot of your recent posting history, is why you seem to be excusing mockery of individuals. My knowledge of the movement, if it can even be characterized as such, is minimal and second hand. So, why do you think it is ok to mock an individual for not getting laid, but not the group? Or maybe I misunderstand you and you could clarify.
I think that would help.
I am not saying anyone has right to sex. But everyone has a right to advocate for their interests. If there was a strong enough movement for legalizing Escorts, they would likely become legal.
Of course the law is the law – I would not pay for illegal service.
Once again, InCels approach to the issue is wrong in every way.
Oh my god.
We really should talk about this someday, when I can read it and not risk exploding into a million little angry female/wife/mother bits. But I don’t think today is that day.
One of my teaching instructors, a woman whom I respected greatly, told us that if we fail to make our point, blaming our students wasn’t the solution.