Not having sex doesn’t make you into a narcissistic, misogynistic sociopath. It’s the latter that leads to the former.
There are many reasons why someone might not have or get sex. Being a narcissistic misogynist sociopath is one. Being deformed from birth is one. Being autistic/Asperger’s is one. Being blind/deaf/mute is one. Being 4 feet tall is one. Having social anxiety is one. Having clubbed feet is one. Having Down’s Syndrome is one. Being of the “wrong race” is one. Having a terrible sense of fashion is one. Not being able to speak the local language is one. Being broke is one. Being too fat or skinny is one. Lack of courage is one. Not being in the “in-group” is one. Being surrounded by people who are simply better, smarter, more talented or athletic is one.
** Velocity** thinks we should:
:eek:
I completely disagree with this. This implies that for the last few decades our society has been getting worse over the past few decades, when it has actually been getting better.
Society is less dangerous for women, minorities, and children than it used to be. Society listens more to people who are oppressed and harmed. Society is paying more attention to white male privilege. Things aren’t perfect, but they are definitely better.
If there’s an entitlement problem, it’s the privilege entitlement that white men had in the past and are trying hard to cling on to.
Decades ago, people used to get away with much worse shit than they can get away with now, if they were members of the right group.
Would Eliot Rodger have been able to get married had he been born several decades earlier? The author of the article is painting the picture that the incels of today were hyper-controlling husbands before the emergence of feminism. I don’t sense she’s interested in the possibility some of them may have been too socially inept or dysfunctional to marry in a time society heavily promoted doing so in young adulthood.
Maybe. He came from a family with money. Back then there were a lot more women who would seek to get married and stay married regardless of their husbands’ character because they couldn’t survive without a husband.
Maybe not. He was so stunted socially perhaps even with the odds so much in his favor he still wouldn’t have been able to manage it.
It’s hard to say.
And back when violent misogyny was the dominant cultural ideology he wouldn’t necessarily have needed an internet to reinforce his beliefs, because most men around him would have had similar views.
This may have to be an “agree to disagree” thing - perhaps because we may be going by different definitions of “entitlement” here. Over the past few decades, there has been a rise in “You are amazing, you are awesome, don’t let anyone tell you differently, believe in yourself” Oprah-type humanism. The notion of “human rights” has also expanded (I recall a television ad in 2008 saying that it was a “violation of human rights” for people not to have HVAC heating provided for them in cold weather.) Elsewhere there is a growing “rah-rah-rah” culture about the individual deserving this and that. It’s true that such messaging was probably not aimed at frustrated white men, but it should be no surprise that some frustrated white men took that messaging to apply to them anyway.
Oh, we’ve definitely had some of these folks around here. I’m surprised that the OP thinks this is “fresh” insanity, because when Elliot Rodger made the news in 2014 I recognized that he shared views with people I’d encountered on the SDMB and other forums.
I’m sorry, but this is just ridiculous. Telling people to have confidence in themselves and believe in themselves and consider themselves valuable human beings worthy of respect is not “entitlement culture” that promotes anti-social behavior.
Yes, as technology and economies progress, the minimum standards of life for all humans in a society do grow. We have an obligation to ensure that the people around us don’t fall too far behind. Enjoying the fruits of societal advancements and resenting them being shared with the people around you—that’s entitlement.
When everyone around you has indoor plumbing, it is unjust for you to have to shit in a hole in the mud.
If you have any perspective, then you will feel that people who are falling behind are missing out on something they deserve.
Because they are so accustomed to the entitlement and privilege they were born into, that they have no sense of perspective on what it is exactly that the people around them are being deprived of. They either don’t bother to find out, or don’t want to believe when they’re told what the inequalities in society are that the people around them are suffering from.
Check out our recent discussion on the two black men who were arrested for hanging out at a Philadelphia Starbucks. There are people who simply will not look outside their own little bubble to understand what minority groups suffer and how it affects them.
Someone could check every box on the list and they’re still not getting my sympathy the minute they decide that the solution to their personal problems is to murder people.
Thanks. I’ve been waiting for that comment. :rolleyes: I’m surprised it took 28 posts for someone to nitpick me. And BTW, at the end of the OP, I said, “Okay. It’s not new.” Carry on.
And remember, Elliott Rodger specifically complained about people he believed were inferior to him getting what he didn’t get. He was not a believer in equality. He believed blacks and Asians were ugly and that women were stupid and immoral and should have no free choices in life. He wanted to enslave the women of the world under his personal fascist regime. This is not in anyway relatable to pleas for equality.
The Men’s Rights Activists and Pick-Up Artists communities are not about seeking equality in society. They are about their own superiority.
For clarification, I am not promoting the violence, of course. But I am pointing out that the societal “recipe” for addressing the incel issue (if there even is such a recipe) hardly adds up to anything good.
The societal approach is basically, 1) mock incels for not getting laid, 2) give them Internet with which to gripe together, 3) put them in a country with 300 million guns, 4) act surprised when something like Elliott Rodgers happens, then 5) rinse and repeat (yes, it’s true that the Toronto attack involved a vehicle, not a gun, but I expect future incel attacks to revert back to the gun method.) That is hardly a recipe for solving the problem.
There is a highly sexualized culture in which people believe or assume that others around them are getting laid and laid often (that’s what society would have us believe, even if it’s exaggerated,) in which getting laid a lot is praised, in which not getting laid is taken as an implication that “something is wrong with you” and in which virgins are mocked for being virgins. Given this culture, it should be no surprise that not being able to get laid would lead to immense anger and resentment in some people.
Then add to that the fact that there are indeed some relationship dynamics that are questionable or bad (for instance, many women who prefer white men over minority men - that *is *a legit gripe if an incel is a minority man, to a certain extent) and also the fact that a lot of sex or lack thereof has to do with factors that can be outside of one’s control, or very difficult to attain - i.e., wealth, status, height, outward looks, an intangible ‘it’ charisma factor) - and that adds fuel to the fire.
Finally, there is a vicious cycle at work. If an incel who can’t get laid gets angry or complaining about it, that is likely to make him or her even less attractive, which then worsens his or her prospects for getting laid. Faced with that downward cycle, it shouldn’t be surprising that they eventually hit a low point where they feel the only way they can express themselves is to lash out with violence to make a statement.
The fact that Elliott Rodgers and the Toronto attack happened isn’t surprising; what is surprising is that, given the sizable number of incels, the number of firearms in America, and social dynamics at work, that there aren’t *more *such attacks every year.
Why do you think a post taken out of any context from a different thread has anything to do with a statement that “Nothing posted in this thread defends the vitriol spewed or the violent actions taken by those referred to in the op”?
I did not participate in the other thread you linked to about vehicular attacks, or Velocity’s answer to a specific question of how to deal with it (apparently arguing against mocking the issues and for taking the concerns seriously) and without the context of having done that cannot judge if that is “defending” them or not. But it was not in this thread and has nothing to do with what don’t mind me quoted.
True - however, many of the people in the aforementioned categories aren’t getting sympathy from society even if they are perfectly law-abiding citizens.
I’m pretty sure that being “involuntarily celibate” is merely the corollary to being “enthusiastically repellent.” The whiny entitlement (an entitlement to someone else’s body, no less), the callow insistence that if they don’t get what some other people do it’s a fundamental flaw in society, the assumption that rejection is always and entirely due to one or more of the myriad character flaws inherent to women and the misogyny that goes along with it, the utter lack of introspection, and especially the casual conflation of sexual urges with violent impulses, all come from a poisonous psychosexual dung heap that most people can recognize quickly and at a distance.
Societies generally make implicit bargains with its members. One of those implicit bargains can be summarized as- “doing x,y and z or having a, b and c will almost certainly ensure you participation and some level of success in the mating/dating game." Note that this almost always an implicit bargain and not an absolute guarantee.
So why are “incels” angry? Well, because this ‘implicit promise’ has not been kept for them.
BS.
They can and do have “some” level of success already.
But they don’t want just “some” level of success. They define anything less than their specifically desired level of success to be failure and an abrogation of natural rights. No, seriously, this is part of the screed. It’s not enough to have sex (many already do). They have to have sex with women they consider desirable. It’s not enough to have a decent job and lifestyle. They have to be multimillionaires with fancy cars and houses. It’s not enough to be considered a decent human being. They have to be acknowledged by others as being worthy of worship (which manifests visibly through their women, cars, etc).
Check many of the quoted online posts from these folks. There are complaints about “only” getting lucky with women they consider undesirable. This isn’t about sex or the lack thereof. That’s just one outward manifestation of the deeper issue.
Defending them on the basis that a lack of sex can create psychological problems is missing a continent sized forest for the trees.
Please elucidate. How is this promise being conveyed to people like Rodger and Minassian? By their mothers, who told them how handsome they were and how someday they’d have to fend off the girls with heavy machinery? By popular fiction that teaches female rejection is something to be overcome rather than accepted, perhaps as a lesson? Not really believing it. Are there no societal messages about patience and self-improvement? About how being disdainful of women and viewing sex only as a transaction is apt to lead to rejection? The promise you’re referring to seems to exist mainly in their own toxic internet groups, where they tell each other how things should really be.
Also: “involuntary celibacy” seems completely voluntary once you add in the part about doing xyz or having abc. There’s no evidence that any of these hateful violent PPDHs ever thought about their end of the supposed bargain.
And, if they’re angry about the broken promise, why are they directing their anger at women their age or younger instead of the supposed authors of the broken promise?
Also, who cares? There was no promise, just an expectation they had that hadn’t yet been fulfilled. They’re spoiled infants, only dangerous to both individuals and society as a whole.
Have we had genuine “incels”? Or just their MRA kissing cousins?
Not that it matters much, I suppose - it is all a continuum of toxicity. It’s just that, naively perhaps, I’d assumed that genuine incel-spouting ideologues would be relatively rare. I mean that is just such an extreme form of whackadoolery, you’d kinda hope they’d be a pretty uncommon breed.