Yeesh. At first I thought that meant “Soviet Citizen”, like some kind of pro-Russian group. But then I remembered what it actually means. Jesus H. Christ, talk about some weird fucking ideas. The ones that use their own invented system of grammar and legalese language are the weirdest, like :David-Wynn :Miller. That specific guy is really more of a sufferer of Howard Hughes-type OCD than anything truly political, and he’d probably be very talented if that energy were channeled into something like music or art. Sadly, he channeled it into craziness.
These days, though, incels seem to be racking up a higher body count than SovCits.
You, as a person that has only seen the incel group from the outside, see that it is “organized misogynistic hate.” That’s all you see, that’s all you care about, and that is how you judge any and every member of the group.
If someone comes across the group without that in mind, then they may see that there are some people that are a bit hateful, but see that most of the people are just people that get them.
Many groups are not labeled, “For Incels, by Incels.” They are not advertised as “Hate women? Come join us!” They are just groups of people on an internet forum, expressing their opinions.
If 95% of the people in a forum are pretty good guys, who may feel that their problems stem from society more than from themselves, is that a hate group? If 5% of the people occasionally say some rather anti-social things, does that mean that the other 95% have to leave the group?
I’m not talking about redit or the “main” incel groups, as having briefly glanced at those, it is hard to seperate what is posted by people who actually feel that way, and what is posted by trolls trying to rile people up. And I certainly would not want to make the mistake of brushing everyone in a group by what the people who are not even a part of the group, who in fact have as their goal to make the group look bad, say.
Maybe? I mean, it seems like you are assuming that most self-identified Incels are full dues-paying members who are committed to the cause rather than casual members who just like the over-the-top rhetoric because rage feels better than pathos. Sure, some of them are like cult members. But some of them just like the beat of the Incel song while not knowing or caring for all the lyrics.
Back in my early 20s, I was a fan of a couple of non-PC message boards. Nothing as provocative as Incel, but nothing I am proud of participating in now. I did not gravitate towards those places because I felt understood there. It is just that I “got” what was being discussed, which made the discussions more entertaining.
I think a lot of Incels self-identify as one because they hang out at Incel spots on the internet and participate in Incel rant fests. They are not wearing the Incel t-shirt or marching in the street for Incel power. Being accepted by the group may be a big part of their participation. But I think the participant’s perception that he fits in is just as important, if not more so.
That’s a good reminder that we in this thread don’t know that much, though it’s probably others know much more.
But I think that’s why it’s important to talk about ways to combat known issues (like loneliness) and why it’s important to try dispassionately to talk about incels. Because expressing contempt is valid and justified but not necessarily effective.
A single person’s blood spattering is of course too often, and the recent Toronto attack killing ten was horrific.
And let us still keep this in perspective. How many of these dysfunctional angry men have spattered blood other than their own as a result? Too many yes but still very few. Meanwhile suicide is the second largest cause of death for adult males up to age 34, ahead of homicide.
If you don’t think that there are many socially isolated, lonely, angry, self-loathing, dysfunctional young men among those many offing themselves, then I’d simply disagree.
I don’t see it as any sort of goalpost shitfing. If someone has difficulty with social issues, the communities that will accept them are limited. That they are driven out of many communities, or at least informed that tiehr social concners are not welcome in them, then yes, they will seek out the communities that will accpet them and allow them to discuss their social difficulties without being put down for it.
Lamia specifically made the claim that if you cannot find a community to accept you, it is specifically because you are an extreme misogynist, and therefore it is your own fault that no one would put up with you.
Right, but there are different types of misogynist. There are those who are just a bit frustrated by their continued failed attempts at forming a romantic connection, and then there are those who actually hate women. By refusing to understand that there is a massive gulf in between the two, by equating any sort of frustration in dating with misogyny, you push people towards that.
Right here in this thread, only a few posts up, and repeated in my previous reply in this post, is Lamia doing the exact thing that you say you don’t see happening. He specifically says that it is because they are misogynists that they are not accepted in any other communities. He was not the only one in this thread, and he is not even close to the only one I’ve seen online or in person.
And religious extremism can be worked on by followers of that religion. That’s a tough nut to solve too, but at least you have people in the community that are respected by the mainstream, people that can be role models, people that others can go to and see that they have had similar experiences, and how they got through their difficulties. There are no adult virgins that are respected in that way. There are no role models for the socially awkward.
I agree, but the current mainstream thought is that anyone who has set foot upon the path of thinking that the problem may not be themselves, it may be other people has any right to any respect. If they see incel-like “logic” they lash out, and call the person a misogynist, a woman hater, someone who advocates for violence against women and all that.
Their thoughts may be wrong, but IMHO, the reaction to those thoughts is worse, and does push people further towards radicalization.
Well, this is the big fail here. Every, and I do mean EVERY, definition of incel on the web specifically refers to their misogynistic hate( though maybe not organized ). When the SLPC is tracking you as a hate ideology, you have a bit of a labeling problem.
If you call yourself an incel and you don’t subscribe to those sort of views you may not be a hater, but you’re Godwinizing yourself and are thus kind of an idiot. Words mean things. Label yourself a Nazi and I’m going to assume you’re a piece of shit. Same thing if you call yourself an incel.
:dubious: You appear to be conflating the term “incel” with the broader category of “guys who feel bad because they don’t get dates”. They are not the same thing.
Yes, people who self-identify as “incel” are voluntarily buying into an explicitly hateful and misogynistic ideology that openly and constantly denigrates and wishes ill on women. There may be a few exceptionally clueless guys in self-identified “incel” communities who somehow genuinely haven’t noticed this phenomenon. But most self-identified “incels”, like most self-identified neo-Nazis or white supremacists, are perfectly well aware of what their movement stands for and have no problem with that.
Feel free to show me one of these alleged self-identified incel forums that only have about 5% of people who are “a bit hateful” and “occasionally say some rather anti-social things” while the other 95% are “pretty good guys” who simply “get” what it’s like to feel lonely and isolated.
Yeah, Incel does not mean everyone who is involuntarily celibate (which is why I use the term as proper noun). Incels have a very different mindset from people who just haven’t hit a homerun yet.
Again, you’re trying to elide the difference between (1) “having difficulty with social issues” and thus having “limited” options for community acceptance, and (2) not being accepted by ANY community except a bunch of self-identified bitter resentful misogynists. There is, as I said before, a huge fucking difference.
If literally the ONLY community that will accept you is the self-identified bitter resentful misogynists, that’s not the same thing as merely “having difficulty with social issues”.
Definition issues again. I would not call a man a “misogynist” just because he was “a bit frustrated by continued failed attempts at forming a romantic connection”, and I don’t understand why you would.
If such a man is blaming or resenting women in general for his romantic failures, then he is someone who “actually hates women”, and he is a misogynist.
As I said, I’m not “equating any sort of frustration in dating with misogny”. ISTM that the only way to get that out of what I said is if you’re using “frustration in dating” as a euphemism for “blaming and bitching about women in general for your lack of success in dating but not necessarily wanting to actually murder them.”
You are the one explicitly claiming that a man who is “just a bit frustrated by continued failed attempts at forming a romantic connection” is “a type of misogynist”, which I don’t at all agree with. (Unless, as I said, you’re using “just a bit frustrated” as a euphemism for “just a bit hating on women”.)
I didn’t say the incels were “evil”, and I certainly didn’t say they were evil on account of just being born evil. That’s a strawman position that you keep attributing to others.
I have said that incels “aren’t nice people”, but that’s not the same thing as being inherently evil. Incels are members of a violently misogynistic group. That’s not something they were born to, it’s a choice they’ve made. It’s also possible for them to choose to leave the group and put its toxic ideology behind them, although as I’ve already said, that’s not an easy thing to do once they’ve made being an incel a part of their identity. I’m all in favor of encouraging young people to not join hate groups in the first place and to get out if they already have, and to your credit you’ve made some suggestions for how society might actually do this. Others here seem more interested in throwing the incels a pity party.
But here is the thing, not everyone calls themselves an Incel. That is not a term that was come up with by frustrated adult virgins, it was a term that was come up with by someone else to label frustrated adult virgins.
Not all groups that are called incel by others call or consider themselves to be such.
The first time I ever heard the term was when someone spit it in my face. I certainly wouldn’t self identify with the group of people on redit and such that call themselves incels, but I could certainly agree that I spent an unfortunate amount of time as an involuntary celibate. And, it’s not really self identification when you have been labeled it by others.
I can’t parse it any other way. Could you explain how those words could mean anything other than that the reason that they would not be accepted in other communities is because they are extreme misogynists? I really don’t get how it can mean anything else.
No, I am not. I am pointing out that, very specifically, the people who feel bad because they don’t get dates can turn into self described incels because there is no other label that society will allow them to adopt.
It is a process of radicalization. After they have been radicalized, sure, there may not be much left to work with. And there are those who don’t need any help, they are just hateful people to start with. But the majority of the people that get caught up in this are not hateful people, they are just people who have poor social skills who find other people with poor social skills, and use poor social skills as the basis of forming a social community. Yeah, not gonna be all that healthy.
And just as it’s fine to hate self identified Nazis, but it’s not fine to call someone a Nazi and then use that as an excuse to hate them, the same applies. I doubt there are many, if any people who called themselves an incel before someone else called them one.
I said nothing about self-identified incel forums, in fact, I said the exact opposite, in that they are not “For incels, by incels”, or “Hate women, come join us”. Now, these forums may be described by others as incel forums, because there are people on them that are complaining about their social difficulties, often concentrating on romance, but the people are just people, not self identifying as incels. Yet, they are called such by people outside the group, because there is some misogynistic content by some members.
Lamia, I don’t believe people choose to be evil, mean, not very nice, unpleasant, obnoxious, or however else you want to phrase it all by their lonesome. There are always external reasons why some people grow up into happy, healthy, non-hateful individuals and why some people grow up to be the opposite.
Making this about “choice” is indeed making this a simplistic moral issue rather than complex psychosocial issue. And it does not point us to a solution. We don’t convince people to give up theit shitty beliefs by simply telling them they are shitty. We have to try to make it so that those shitty ideas never take hold in the first place. And this does require some compassion.
I honestly don’t understand why you think there’s a massive gulf. What is your basis for saying this? The latter doesn’t walk around wearing a shirt that says “I hate women for no damn reason”, right? You’re creating a dichotomy here that seems arbitrary.
Another way to look at it: what’s the difference between a misogynist who is partnered and sexually fulfilled and a misogynist who is single and sexually frustrated? The only difference I can think of that the partnered misogynist has someone close to him that he can control and invalidate on a regular basis. The single one can only imagine how he’d do that if given the opportunity.
We aren’t just talking about unhappily single guys, for the umpteenth time. We are talking about people who subscribe to a particular philosophy that is very much misogynistic and antisocial. It seems these distinctions need to be emphasized more for clarity, so perhaps this is why posters are talking past each other.
I don’t think it’s fair to ignore the people in this thread who aren’t being jerks and name-calling, because that’s falling prey to the same broad brush generalizing you’re accusing the other side of doing. All in all there has been some constructive dialogue, not just pitchfork waving.
That said, I will reiterate that it’s unreasonable to expect people to not have harsh words for people who express sexist views. I mean, on a message board full of anonymous people, incel logic looks indistinguishable to what the so-called Real Misogynists say. So should we soften our tone when responding to any of these posters so as not to radicalize the potential incel? I think that is asking too much of people, and it also will not solve anything.
So what is the solution? And should we apply this same solution to people who are at risk of being radicalized by racist hate groups? Where does that leave minorities who want to feel accepted in most online communities, for instance? Shouldn’t we be worried that black and brown folk–having to read post upon unchallenged post about how inferior they are to whites–will become alienated and even radicalized too?
No, for single men who do not define themselves or their worth based on their sexual inactivity.
If the only communities that will accept you are the ones that accept losers and other social outcasts, and as part of being a member of a community of losers and social outcasts, some of those people are misogynistic, then I don’t really see what you are getting at. It is specifically because the communities that are not full of losers and social outcasts call you a loser and cast you out that you are left to the communities that will accept you. The communities that accept you are going to be more accepting of other types of people as well.
That’s nice of you. But you are not the world, and you are not mainstream thought. It is perfectly acceptable to call someone a misogynist because they are frustrated by continued failed attempts at romance. That you don’t do it is nice for you, but it does happen.
See, now you are doing it. If I say, “Man, women just don’t get me, I don’t know what is up with them.” that’s blaming, that’s even resenting, but it’s not “actually hate[ing] women.”
It is not that odd that you would consider that any frustrated person that externalizes his problem as a person that hates women, as that is a common mindset.
That’s pretty much exactly what I said, and that was pretty much exactly how you replied. That you would put blaming and bitching so close to “murder” is a bit odd. Have you ever bitched about the mail coming late, and how you blame the mailman that your stuff isn’t here yet? Would you put that in the same sentence as murder, as you did just now?
No, I am explicitly claiming that a man who is “just a bit frustrated by continued failed attempts at forming a romantic connection” is called “a type of misogynist”, and that furthers the radicalization.
I take it you are making some sort of implication there. But, thank you for perfect the example of the type of presumptive passive aggressive attitudes that drive people away from mainstream thought.
Assuming that you are accusing me of being “full of compassion for men who think women owe them sex and deserve brutal punishment for failing to provide them with it.”, please cite that post.
Now, do I have empathy for people who struggle with their social lives? Absolutely. Do I also have empathy for people who have found themselves on a path towards radicalization? Sure. Do I think that there should be some things done to divert people from this path, both for their own sake and for the sake of society? Yes.
Do I have compassion for men who think women owe them sex and deserve brutal punishment for failing to provide them with it. No. Unless you can show what post I did so, I would appreciate it if you would retract your accusation.
Got a cite for that? Because AFAIK it isn’t true. The original coining of the word “incel”was an act of self-identification, albeit with a very different meaning. And then it was taken over by “manosphere” groups, also as an act of self-identification.
I’m not claiming that there aren’t people who apply the term “incel” as an insult to lonely folks who don’t actually support the incel movement, just as there are people who apply the term “Nazi” as an insult to folks who don’t actually support Nazi ideology.
But that doesn’t mean that the terms “incel” and “Nazi” aren’t also, and most importantly, terms of self-identification.
That seems to me to be pure horseshit. “Society” is not refusing to “allow” any lonely virgin to “adopt” any “label” they may fancy, from “lonely virgin” to “confirmed bachelor” to “solitary” to “shy” or anything else. Society is certainly not forcing lonely virgins to self-identify as part of the incel subculture.
Cite? Because it seems to me that when people are expressing hatred towards women, yes, they are being hateful people. Society is not somehow forcing them to endorse or express that hatred.
I agree with you that lonely men who don’t express hatred and bitterness toward women should not be stigmatized as “incel” or “hateful” or any other derogatory term. But as soon as they voluntarily participate in promulgating hateful views, yup, they’re hateful.
I agree with you that it’s wrong to call anybody a member of an ideological movement that they’re not actually supporting. But having one’s ideology misidentified by somebody else doesn’t in any way give anybody a pass for voluntarily adopting that ideology thereafter. Just because I’ve been incorrectly called a Communist doesn’t mean that I have to actually go join the Communist Party, or that it’s anybody’s responsibility but my own if I choose to do so.
:dubious: Could you please quote or link to some of the “complaining” and “misogynistic content” that you think shouldn’t be called “incel”?
Because there’s a limit to the extent that one can use self-identification to duck responsibility for explicitly expressed views. I don’t approve of calling somebody a Nazi, for example, if they don’t support Nazi ideology. But if somebody’s walking around with a swastika banner and shouting “Blood and soil!” and “Death to Jews!”, they don’t have a leg to stand on if they try to complain about people calling them Nazis.
For the millionth time. These. People. Do. Not. Want. A. Romantic. Relationship.
The fact it keeps being stated in such sympathetic terms on this board is reason number 873483 women like myself rarely post here. We are the ones whose lives are more likely damaged by those you’re so quick to dismiss as simply in need of a date for movie night.
Let me help you out, and I’m just gonna pull from one website y’all should be familiar with that actually looks at all this.
Want twitter accounts, reddit accounts, or other websites? They are a real danger and the base is toxic masculinity and not loneliness. They are looking for a world they believe is owed to them simply for being born with a penis. They propose everyone should be given a number ranking and no one can fuck above that ranking. Oh! And if you’re a woman, having sex at all takes your number down by one. If you see yourself in this group, get help immediately. I don’t mean diet, exercise, or whatever. I mean intense therapy because you’re a step away from dangerous. We study Nazis and White Supremacists (groups that are very closely tied with Incel and MGTOW) to see how to counteract without all this handwringing about the poor poor fascists. The same should be done here.
But those are the only people we are( or at least I am)talking about. I’m not talking about people who others label Incels, I’m talking about who label themselves Incels. Hence this massive disconnect with you in this conversation. We’re talking past each other.
See above. I think it is pretty clear Lamia has only been referring to self-identifying Incels.
Got a cite for that? Because AFAIK it isn’t true. The original coining of