So, what if we don’t agree that being bullied not only be people in social circles, work circles, even family, along with the weight of society in general has nothing to do with people feeling marginalized?
Oh.
Yeah, I get that it is something that you don’t want to talk about, and will dismiss any attempts of bringing it up, but does that really mean that it is something that should be dismissed, or is it just something that you don’t want to talk about?
What the fuck, y’all?
Does that help?
Edit: looking over my posts, I said I wouldn’t feel bad if you called a LITERAL MURDERER a loser–at least, I wouldn’t feel bad on his behalf. Is that what y’all are upset over?
Right, I get what you are saying, but you are also trying to say that you don’t think that mocking frustrated people hurts, and that is what I am disagreeing on.
That specific statement. That one right there, is the one that I disagree with. Not the only cause, maybe not “the major” cuase, but an important part of the cuase, definitely.
Would you mind quoting what gave you that impression? Was it something like this?
or was it this?
There are many human beings who are in a situation where the behavior of other people they have to deal with isn’t just due to who (and how) they are, it’s systematic and political.
Some of them happen to be male people who don’t experience any meaningful sexual interaction. So to rephrase the previous sentence to refer directly to them alone: there are many males who are in a situation where the sexually selective behavior of other people they encounter isn’t just due to who (and how) incels are and behave – the sexually selective behavior they complain about really is systematic and political.
Now, having said that, I think it is important to also note that the people that incels encounter are usually also dealing with systematic and political reactions and pressures on their own behaviors, so for these self-defined incels to act as if all the women they encounter are 100% responsible for choosing their own behavior, and not reacting to the same kinds of social-political pressures that shape the behaviors of incels – that’s internally inconsistent.
Incels aren’t unique in that inconsistency. We have huge rafts of social segments who behave as if they themselves are sanely and reasonable reacting to structured social situations (oppressions etc) but that the people whose behavior they tend to identify as problematic (e.g. oppressive) are not reacting to any outside pressures but instead are simply selfishing choosing their behaviors and could choose otherwise (without undue consequences, or at least that’s the implication of blaming them).
But if they aren’t unique in that, they’re reaching for the bottom rungs in reasonableness. Women (via feminism) have explained enough of the exact precise female behavior that incels complain about that they (incels) have no recourse or excuse for not taking those explanations into account.
No, this
I disagree. You say you don’t think it is a good thing to do, you may say that it’s a crappy thing to do, you may even say that it’s not okay.
But you also say that it is not something that should be taken into consideration when you are talking about what causes people to move away from mainstream thought.
As far as pushing them to murder, no, that takes much more to get to that point, part of the reason why it is pretty rare. As far as pushing them to take comfort with other Incel’s who will agree with them rather than mock them, putting them on that road towards potential violence, I do think it is a major factor.
However bad these outcomes might be, they’re better than “joins incel movement, blames all women, maybe murders some”.
You seem way to sanguine about the potential of sex ed. We spend 13 years trying to pound math into kids heads and yet most adults are awful at it. I don’t think that a semester of sex ed can teach anything but maybe a few of the biological facts if we’re lucky.
What is needed is a culture change so that teenage and young adult experiences with sex are discouraged rather than encouraged. I doubt that a complete reversal is possible but it can be ameliorated by changing hook up culture into one where committed loving relationships are more valued than hook ups. The culture tends to swing back and forth and hopefully it is almost ready to swing back.
The incel terrorist phenomenon is like the Islam terrorist. There is a very large group of loser men who are no threat to anyone and are good decent people. Then there is a percentage of those men whose frustrations turn them to misogynists. Some of those misogynists will fail at pick up and become incels. Some of those incels then will become terrorists. The internet has allowed the transition to each stage to be quicker and easier. Each stage needs a different solution.
A message that most people shouldn’t be having sex as teenagers would help keep virgins from thinking of themselves as losers. Mainstreaming of pick up techniques would give frustrated virgins hope and a path to follow. Better moderating of online spaces would prevent incels from coming together and encouraging each others hatred. Better police monitoring of incel sites would identify potential terrorists and get them help or locked up.
Intervening at the top would help the most but would be the hardest.
Those posts were followed by one in which I said I think it’s a very minor piece of the puzzle, having changed my mind on understanding the much broader definition of virgin-shaming that people were using.
I’m happy to debate that, if necessary, but it’s pretty irritating when folks are repeatedly misrepresenting what I said.
Look it up. I recommend Pinker.
Never said they weren’t. The fallacy is in thinking merely saying “it’s biological” is some kind of get-out-of-actual-morality card without any real further argument offered.
No, but it does satisfy any purely biological urges. Everything else is psychology, and that’s not “biological urges”, that’s programming.
Why should sexual activity in the sexually mature be discouraged? If anything shame and stigma associated with sexual activity should be discouraged. Safe sex and responsible sex ought to be the message.
It’s that, plus it’s seeing the engine that powers the whole thing. You recognize the institutional biases and accept them and abide by them. You’re not going to challenge it at all.
There are 150 or so million males in the USA, over 3.5 billion around the world. ‘Several’ is down in the background noise. They are common criminals - no more, no less.
It’s not that I’ve often hear men being shamed for virgins, and most of it has been on-line, but in my experience it’s overwhelmingly men shaming men, not women shaming men.
What is the evidence that such a swing back (if it is truly “back”) would do anything to ameliorate it? Heck, I think there’s a better chance that it would exacerbate it.
Is that what you say about the murders at Hebdo, or the Oklahoma City Bombings, all other terrorist murders? If not, why do you need to minimize this sort of terrorism but not other sorts?
I don’t think the causes for the Incel are that hard to grok. Take any emotionally unstable, socially inept and marginalized testerone-filled young man being raised in the pressure cooker of status-conscious suburbia and give him access to guns and unlimited internet access. Which mindset is he likely to develop? One that longs for world peace and kittens and puppies for everyone? Or one that is homicidal and self-destructive?
We don’t see women with the latter mindset because women are less likely to be THAT emotionally unstable and socially inept. They also don’t have as much testorone and are much less likely to find appeal in guns and violence. And I know this might be an unpopular opinion, but I don’t think women have to work that hard to get sexual attention. Many guys will holler at anything that moves. Even if a girl never closes a deal with a guy, she will at least have a decent chance of hearing “you sure are pretty” by the time she hits her mid-20s. And she can hear those words even when she is socially inept and not all that diligent with her grooming and hygiene. I know this from first hand experience.
True, many of us grew up with major social strikes against us and we aren’t killers. The same is true for the majority of misfits today, so that hasn’t changed. The thing that has changed is the media. It both exaggerates and promulgates problems in ways that didn’t exist 20 years ago. The guy who shot up the school in Texas was scorned by a girl. But was he an Incel? Well, he had been in a relationship previously, so I would say he isn’t a protypical one. There are a whole lot of Incels out there if being scorned is sufficient to catch the label. And I can’t help but think the next shooter will be treated the same way even if he does not fit the Incel narrative all the way. Cuz Incel hate is so hot right now. I worry that it is causing us to miss the forest for the trees.
The forest being that we have too many guns out there and too many poorly socialized angry young men with too much time on their hands.
Here’s a couple of problems with that (and I, too, would prefer to see legal sex work available in the US):
Legal prostitution still costs money. Some of these guys don’t have any. Others don’t want to pay for it.
Legal prostitutes have standards. I’ve yet to hear about any system with legal prostitution where the women can’t refuse to service certain people (whether that’s evidence of STD’s or indications of violence)
The result is that while it will alleviate some of the problem (we hope) it will not take care of all of. I’m all for incremental improvement, but I don’t think it’s quite as easy as “legal sex work”.
I didn’t see anyone talking about getting out of morality.
I disagree that the need for sex as part of connection is programming, and that need is not met by masturbation.
Incels don’t just want biological satisfaction - they want girlfriends.
I think the idea of making prostitution more available also misses the point. Incels don’t want prostitutes either. They want what they think everyone else gets automatically, and they can’t get it because everyone else doesn’t get it automatically. You actually have to leave the basement, and real life isn’t like porn.
Regards,
Shodan
I apologize if you feel that I was misrepresenting what you said, I was actually just disagreeing with it. I do not feel that it is a minor part of the puzzle, I think that societal expectations and the inability to live up to them a very major piece of the puzzle as to what causes socially awkward men to seek out a social group that will accept them. It is not just the individual asshole that calls someone a loser because they don’t have a girlfriend, it is not just the individual who uses the concept of a virgin as something to be shameful in order to slur someone that they do not feel is manly enough.
The whole of society is made to make someone who is unable to make that romantic connection feel as though they are lessor, and not as good as someone who can; from our media to our social circles to individuals, people perceiving you as a creep because you just don’t know how to be less creepy is going to cause you to withdraw from those who call you a creep.
People don’t live in a vacuum, and while they are certainly responsible for their own actions and agency, at the same time, to discount the effect that society has on an individual is to completely ignore, what is IMHO, the major part of the problem.