I think it’s a mistake to conflate “incel” with “adult virgin.” The former is someone who participated in the forums dedicated to this toxic ideology.
Calling yourself an “incel” is comparable to getting a membership card for the KKK. It means you’ve bought in and aren’t really worthy of the benefit of the doubt.
So, even though I check many of the boxes on the applications, I’m not one because I’m not a complete asshole? Works for me! And I expect you lot to slap me around if I start becoming one. You have before. 
Their belief is that many women end up in short term flings with high value men, but they never land monogamy with those high value men. Meanwhile the high value men have multiple sex partners.
Then when the women are older they become bitter because the high value men they want are finally ready to settle down, and are settling down with higher quality women in their league.
Their view is the system doesn’t work. Low/medium quality men are invisible, low/medium quality women end up chasing men they cannot get monogamy with.
Point taken. Just natural to examine my own frustration and project that onto those who may share some small aspect of it. And trying to find any hopeful explanation for what they’re going through. I can be a bit Pollyannish that way, sometimes.
For those others in the thread who have tried to describe the thoughts and motivations of literal Incels, how many have actually read their own words (and not just Rodgers), and how many are just parroting the standard beliefs that they’re entitled to supermodels and obsessed with status. We’re all speculating on some basis or another. I don’t want to ask for cites. I haven’t read an Incel forum, and don’t really want to understand it.
I think there are as many explanations for people’s behavior as there are people. What motivates someone to start something like Incel is different from what motivates someone else to follow it. I can’t always explain why I do things, I doubt we’ll ever really know why anyone else does what they do. If other people here are offering the most nihilistic explanations for them, maybe it’s my nature to try to offer something hopeful or charitable, no matter how tenuous. And before anyone takes me to task for that, I abhor that this would manifest in violence or harm to anyone.
What do I think is going on? I guess my only answer is that it’s complicated, and the truth is usually somewhere in the middle.
I wonder if this stemmed, paradoxically, from a contradictory equality notion that “what works for women works for men” and also the belief that women have it very easy when it comes to relationships and getting laid. He may have felt that since women get asked out by men or asked for their number even when just minding their business at the supermarket or sitting outside a cafe, that he could do the same and get the same results - not understanding that men and women are different, perceived differently, and what works for one gender does *not *work for the other.
No need to make assumptions. It’s an online phenomenon. their beliefs are publicly posted.
That pretty much covers it. There are many reasons for being single. Being an asshole can be one of them. Most possible reasons aren’t for being an asshole . But incels are assholes.
I have no idea…I’ve never, ever heard of any guy just literally sitting somewhere and waiting for women to come up to him. Rodger was a handsome guy but that shit wouldn’t even work if you were movie-star, George Clooney handsome. The only way it would work is if you’re famous and people know who you are by sight and want to come up to you and talk to you. Otherwise it doesn’t matter how good looking of a guy you are. It doesn’t matter how cool you are. It doesn’t matter how well you’re dressed, none of that matters if you just sit there passively. I have never, ever heard of any man using this approach and thinking that it would yield any results.
Roger also wrote about seeing numerous counselors and mentor type guys, older guys who tried to teach him how to talk to women and how to make friends. It obviously didn’t work. There is nothing you can do with a guy like that. As I have said, he was prescribed medications by a psychiatrist but refused to take them.
Elliot Rodger could have been born into a royal family, had an arranged marriage with a beautiful woman, and had 5 mistresses on the side, and he still would have been fucked up beyond belief and in all likelihood he still would have killed people. Harry Thaw is one very famous historical case of a rich heir who was a profligate playboy and still deeply fucked up and unhappy, and he ultimately wound up murdering a romantic rival in a jealous rage. You can give guys like this money and women and whatever the hell they want, they will still be fucked up unless they follow the course of medication prescribed by a qualified psychiatrist. (Obviously in the late 1800s and early 1900s, this was in its infancy, so there was really never any hope for a guy like that.)
I think figuring out the root causes of radicalization is always going to be tricky, because (as Robot Arm pointed out) there may be as many causes as there are people.
But I do think we are living in an increasingly lonely and alienated society. And people who are prone to seeing themselves as the group that is losing power are probably more prone to lashing out than people who see themselves as gaining more power.
I agree with those in the thread who think that “virgin shaming” is a thing, and it doesn’t have to be a thing where anyone knows that Smitty J. Smithers is a virgin. What does happen, I think, is that when someone is casting about in their brains for the “loser” to be the butt of a joke, they think of the lonely, probably overweight, basement dwelling, virgin male playing video games and eating Cheetos. That is, I think, the archetype of “loser” right now. The handy shorthand. So if you check off any of these boxes, the loser attack feels targeted. And the more personal the characteristic, likely the more targeted the person feels. If it’s something he feels he is rather than something he does, then he likely feels that his entire identity is being mocked.
We see this in other ways, right? It’s part of the connotation of many insults. They carry useful (from the POV of the person using them), damaging baggage with them. Basically a dozen insults for the price of one if you can use one that plants a specific image in someone’s head, and I think “loser” kinda has that ready image right now, at least on the internet.
I don’t think you actually read what I wrote if this is your conclusion. Can you go back to see where I said some of these guys might be frustrated because the deck is stacked against them and some are probably sociopaths?
I take issue with reducing all self-identified incels as people who are just in need of a relationship. Can we agree that anyone who is knee-deep in this shit likely needs more than that?
It’s not a leap, but it’s different than saying their unmet need is a relationship. Which is what I responded to in your post.
What is the anorexic’s unmet need? Is it feeling thin and beautiful? Or it something else, more rooted in low self-esteem and a lack of control? Society does play a role in encouraging disordered eating and to some extent, the thin is best beauty standard contributes to this pathology. But you can tell an anorexic they are skinny and beautiful all day long to no avail. All the external validation in the world will not change their disordered thinking.
Do I think incels are like this? No because I don’t think they are all mentally ill. But what I’m saying is status is kind of like weight to N anorexic. At a certain point, maybe incels refuse to see themselves as anything but “fat”; it becomes their entire identity and the focal point of their existence. Perhaps their “need”, in a sense, is to feel like the world is against men like them, just as an anorexic “needs” to feel like food is their enemy.
Or perhaps that’s completely wrong. I don’t know because I don’t know any incels.
What I will say is that Elliott Rodgers seemed to sabotage his own chance at dating by being passive to the extreme. He’d sit somewhere in public and seethe because no one approached him. Now if you were to ask him, he’d probably attribute this all to him being short and Asian. But a normal person would see this as absurd. I would not be surprised if a lot incels do this kind of this as well:unconsciously do something guaranteed to get bad results and then use those results to support their “this is an unjust world” narrative. This doesn’t make them psychos, but it does mean there could more going on than just a failure to date successfully.
I’m surprised that you would say this, to the extent that I’m wondering if I’ve very badly misunderstood you. (I welcome correction if I have.) Incels pretty much by definition claim that the women who won’t date them are to blame for all their problems, but people who are filled with rage are not going to be magically cured by getting a romantic partner. Until the rage-filled person does some serious work to deal with their own issues, having a romantic partner isn’t going to help much (if at all) and the partner is likely to end up as a convenient target for all that rage.
I believe that virgin-shaming exists, because a couple of people that I like and respect tell me it does, even though I was a virgin for a very long time myself, can remember getting teased a whole lot for it, and have been celibate for long stretches since, while continuously being exposed to other sexually active people and pop culture, and while I for a time dealt with self-generated feelings of humiliation,have never thought to think of myself as being shamed by others, much less as a victim of bullying, much less as an oppressed “other.” This is possibly because I’ve been exposed to modern psychotherapy, but perhaps not. I think maybe Mister Rogers and Sesame Street were enough.
The reason I think it is important to distinguish (what Broomstick calls a “pissing contest”) between virgin-shaming and the assaults routinely committed upon other marginalized minorities, is not because I’m trying to compare them. It’s because the demented, misogynistic, murderous “incels” are trying to compare themselves to other marginalized groups in order to normalize and justify their disgusting misogyny and murder. We’ve seen that in this thread. And they don’t deserve this consideration. And sorry, part of the reason they don’t deserve this is because while some forms of continuous institutionalized abuse and oppression do (or at least might) justify a violent response, virgin-shaming doesn’t even belong on the list. Unhappy virgins who still, after commencement, feel stigmatized are worthy of sympathy and help (again, I recommend therapy–it helps). They also should seek out other mature adult friends who don’t indulge in juvenile teasing. That would be approximately all of them.
Please, even if you are an adult virgin who feels humiliated enough to externalize this and feel that you have been victim-shamed by anyone who merely asks an intrusive question about your sex life, or even if you have suffered something much worse than any example offered so far in this thread (there has not yet even been a documented teasing), stop promoting virgin-shaming as a concept that allows “incel” maniacs to use it as a justification for their behavior.
Adult virgins who are not “incel” misogynistic monsters, and are nonetheless unhappy and feel shamed no doubt will be angry. But they’re not who I’m talking about: this thread is not about them at all, it’s about something else entirely: the “incels” borrowing of their very real pain to justify misogyny and murder.
Some highly attractive women can date multiple men, too. I would need to see data to conclude that hordes of women would rather share boyfriends than date someone who makes less money than them. This sounds like a comforting fiction or exaggeration that unhappy single guys tell themselves so that their less pressure on them to actually hope and try. Pointing to bower birds doesn’t exactly erase this impression either.
And I say this as a black woman—a demographic group that is NOT highly prized in the dating department. Do you know how tempting it is for single black women to lay down and cry about how difficult it is to date? The statistics and commentary out there are downright demoralizing. Black men in prison, black men getting killed, black men dating interracially, men of other races will ignore you, the unbalanced gender ratios in higher education. The beauty standard that is biased against dark skin and kinky hair. The chauvism and sexism that mark you as “intimidating” if you come across too smart. And don’t have the nerve to be overweight, girl!
So much negatively out there that can really fuck with a person’s mind. But at a certain point, you have to stop putting so much stock in it and consider that there are literally billions of people on the planet. We’re not bower birds; we’re a species that is so resourceful, adaptive, and resilient that we inhabit pretty much every place on the planet. I can’t see how our species would’ve become so successful if the female half is instinctively unable to accept anyone except the highest of high status men. It just makes no sense on its face.
I’ve visited the incel fora many times, and I remain concerned for the people behind the most raw posts, the ones who aren’t obvious trolls and shit-stirrers and sadistic creeps fueling the misery of others for fun.
You have to keep Poe’s Law in mind in places like that, right? I would imagine some trolls are skilled enough to blend in with the miserable for as long as they feel like.
Yeah, I think you’re misunderstanding me a little. I’m not saying these guys would be normal, happy, healthy people if only they had a girlfriend. They would likely still be obnoxious, unpleasant individuals.
I’m saying the young men who turn into Incels have an absence of status symbols that are meaningful to them. Despite their misogyny, they are longing for the status symbol of a girlfriend. Because that’s what Chad has. They hate Chad, but they actually want to be Chad. In their mind, Chad will always have a Stacey. They hate Stacey, but they want Stacey. Even though she’s a mean girl to them, they want her because she symbolizes “success”. Maybe they would still rage against Stacey even if she was slobbing them down every night. But I can’t see why they would cuz where would the rage be coming from? I can believe that some of them are just inherently ragey, but not most of them. I can believe that some of them have spent their entire lives hating women, but not most of them. For most of them, the women-hating and blaming is a front to cover insecurity and self-loathing.
You don’t see non-single people on Incel forums, at least not in heavy concentrations. Seems to me if it was only about misogyny and blaming women for everything, you’d expect these places to be attractive to a more diverse set of nutjobs. But if you have seen one Chad-and-Stacey style rant, you’ve kinda seen them all. Ain’t nobody but Incels got time for that.
It would be interesting to see if guys continue the mindset once they do find girlfriends (assuming this is a thing that happens). If they do, then that would indicate that there is something irreparable wrong with them. But I suspect that they lose the need to participate in Incel forums once they establish a meaningful connection with the opposite sex and no longer feel like a “loser” in this particular arena. However, I’ll concede that I’m probably being overly optimistic (like Robot Arm :)) by thinking that a lot of these guys could transition out of this shitty mindset with just a few tweaks to their milieu. I’m not an expert and don’t personally know any Incels (though I am familiar with their internet screeds).
Of course who is “high status” or “attractive” to one is not to another, and what is attractive to even the same woman can vary from moment to moment.
What you wrote sounds like you are buying into the idea that some individuals actually are objectively 8s or 9s and others 4s and 5s. I’d be surprised if you actually believed that.
My guess is that most of us in satisfying relationships feel that our partners are at least 8s or 9s (we are not blind to flaws) and that part of what makes them that high is that they see us that high (even if others do not). Or in the case of a playa, can fake that. I have no idea and no concern how beautiful my wife is to anyone else … I only know how beautiful I see her. (Well, if they don’t see her as beautiful there is something wrong with them …) Okay, I care that she sees herself that way too. Many I think do not love because they see the other as high status; the person has high status because they are loved. Status is subjective and variable.
I doubt these are men who are giving a believable message that they value the women they meet. Good job, money, tall, handsome … won’t make that person high status in that case.
And you can link to the parts where they say they’re entitled to supermodel girlfriends that they only want because it will impress other guys?
Did you read page 2 of this thread?
So what is the approach? If they follow any sort of advice from pick-up artists, they get mocked as pushy misogynists who foolishly think there’s one magic approach that will unlock a woman’s desire. If they back off they’re stupid idiots for thinking that a non-traditional approach might ever work. What would you tell them to do, besides shut up and go away so you don’t have to know about them?
:smack: I have never connected it with Poe’s Law. Thank you.
I agree. I don’t think we’re just talking about normal guys who have just never been laid. These guys are social deviants not just because they have never touched a girl, but because their poor social and coping skills keep them from touching all areas of success, as they define it.