They failed, so they must not have tried. I think we’ve been over this already.
I think everyone gets so hung on on assigning blame. These guys are fucked up for blaming society for why they can’t get laid (or whatever it is they are frustrated about). But I think society is kinda fucked up for encouraging failures to blame themselves for their failures.
The whole “winners vs. losers” construct plays into this. Winners are happy with what they have. Losers aren’t. If you aren’t happy, then that’s on you. You need to fix it. Don’t blame society. Blame you. These things have been said repeatedly in this thread.
But why does there even have to be blame to assign? Why can’t we just say, “Shitty things happen, bro.” Or “Sometimes we don’t get what we want even when we’re trying. You have to endure and keep trying, but don’t take it too hard.” All the “It’s your fault!” stuff presumes facts that we don’t have. Maybe one guy doesn’t work hard enough, but perhaps another one has actually gone to therapy (some therapists suck), and done all the CBT exercises (CBT doesn’t work for everyone), lifted weights at the gym (physical impressiveness isn’t the end-all, be-all), and learned how to play the guitar (not everyone woman is a fan of guitar players) and it’s still not coming together for him. “It’s your fault!” isn’t helpful to that second guy at all. It just contributes to the frustration.
Some people internalize failure and they become miserable sadsacks who hate themselves for not being good enough. They don’t need to hear “It’s your fault!” because that’s all they hear echoing in their head. But this isn’t how everyone deals with disappointment. Others are wired to externalize and blame The Man (aka “Chad”). Both attitudes are unhealthy when taken to the extreme. BOTH are actually helpful in light moderation. A little sour grapes helps fight off the urge to fling oneself off a ledge. A little self-flagellation keeps you on the self-improvement track. I think we need to insert a little “it’s no one fault” into our internal monologue mix, to moderate all that sadness and anger.
Ours is a society that still trucks in Just World hypotheses. “If I work hard, make good grades, and score high on all of my tests, I can be whatever I want in life.” That’s some bullshit. The truth is most of us do fall short of expectations and potential, despite putting in the hard work, despite our talents. But most of us aren’t full of rage…not because we’re enlightened human beings, but because we are able to find satisfaction in where we’ve landed. People need some space to find satisfaction in their less-than-ideal lives. But if they are constantly hearing, explicitly or implicitly, that their less-than-ideals lives are “loser-ish” and that they only have themselves to blame, that’s not going to happen.
We can’t shut down social media, so that’s not a solution. We can’t equalize outcomes so that everyone gets a significant other or other status symbols, so that’s not the solution either. Teaching young people that there are lots of ways to find satisfaction besides the tropey ways we see through the media MIGHT be one. I cannot think of any well-known positive role model (man or woman) who does not have a significant other, unhappily or no. I can’t see how this does not contribute to the involuntary celibate’s vulnerability to radicalization. When you don’t have positive role models, of course the negative ones will fill the void.
And I know lots of posters here are probably think “Role model, schmole model! I didn’t have one as a kid, and here I am, successful and happy!” Bullshit. We all had SOMEONE we trusted enough to take our cues from, whether consciously or subconsciously. Hell, some of us are still taking our cues from role models (I know when I’m dealing with some jerk at work, I sometimes think to myself, “What would Michelle Obama do?”). I don’t think lack of role models is the ultimate or proximate cause of anything. But it certainly doesn’t help. It’s pretty hard to challenge the idea that only losers don’t have girlfriends/boyfriends when you can’t point to any “winners” who don’t.
I dunno. “Blame” might not be the right word, but I lean pretty heavily toward “responsibility” and “choice.” That is, if someone isn’t having sex and wants to, it’s their responsibility to figure out how to increase their chances of having sex.
Keeping in mind that there are sex workers who will have sex for money, pretty much anyone who isn’t having sex is making a choice not to do so. The reasons can be totally valid–but it’s a choice they’re making.
And by talking about specific, concrete things a person can do to make themselves more sexually attractive, it reinforces the narrative that it’s your responsibility, not that of anyone else, to seek the sexual activity you want. You gotta do it yourself, you can’t blame others for your not getting what you want.
This is not in any way hand-wringing. I think there’s a powerful narrative out there, the incel narrative, that blames women for the incels’ failure to gain the sexual attention they want. That narrative needs to be countered with a clear and correct narrative–and the counternarrative needs to offer legitimate hope that these dudes can change their unhappiness.
I want to thank bump for basically describing my teens, retrospective facepalms and all, monstro for being so right, and “Chad” for being so obviously gay that I considered acting gay so the girls would flock around me, too. :o
The thing is, if you look at Eliot Rodger, there’s no objective reason he couldn’t have a girlfriend. He’s slender and conventionally good looking. He came from a wealthy family. So he was a good looking rich college student. His manifesto, horrifying as it is, is reasonably well written, so he not lacking in brains. If he’d just chilled out and gone to parties and socialized he would have found somebody. But he was consumed by hatred and entitlement. Ultimately, he chose hate over companionship.
Again, you really have to distinguish between these guys and guys who are awkward, have trouble getting laid, and become sad and bitter about it. Incels have much more in common with Da’esh and Neo-nazis than they do with your average awkward ugly guy. (In fact Rodger rages against Blacks in his manifesto.)
I have daughters, including young adult dating daughters, so there’s a little something extra in my heightened awareness of the problem. One can recognize that incels are struggling individuals and also recognize that collectively, they form a movement and a potential hazard.
Er, um…NO ! But you can’t force people into therapy, you cannot drive people into help.
Kinda like alcoholics, they need to admit they have a problem first, or it’s pointless. And they think we’re the problem.
Let’s go with that.
Alcoholics recklessly kill more others every year than do these Incels. Lots more.
You do appreciate that alcoholism is dealt with not only at the individual level but as a public and community health issue. People study and analyze and debate what contributes to the creation of an alcoholic and what can be done to help prevent it, analyze and debate what are the most effective approaches for dealing with one willing to get help as well. Before they cause more harm to themselves and to others.
Doing those things is not about, or excusing, Brett Gerald, one of many drunk drivers who killed others, in his case, seven people including some kids and their mother. Or any other person who deserves to be punished for their crime.
Is that parallel lost on you?
I’m not sure you two are disagreeing, Doc, but I will say that a court-ordered 90/90 (90 AA meetings in 90 days) will not necessarily “cure” an alcoholic. And police do not have the means to identify a crazy incel before he starts trying to kill someone. Holding horrible beliefs without acting on them is still legal.
They do when they know that you don’t have a girlfriend, and haven’t had one in a few years. The think that there must be something wrong with you.
The first time I heard the term incel was when a co-worker asked me if I had a girlfriend. I had been working there for about a week, so I guess such personal questions were okay at that point…
I truthfully answered “no”, and he asked, “why not?” I hemmed about not finding the right match for myself, when one of the servers piped up, and said, “You must be an incel!”
I asked, “wassa an incel?” “Look it up, " She replies. " It fits you.”
I was thinking at the time that it was some sort of insult towards disabetics, that they were dependent on insulin, and the derogatory remark was at the expense of diabetics and some undesirable trait of them that this person felt I shared with them.
So I look it up, first trying “insul”. That took a while, but eventually I did stumble across “incel”, which urban dictionary first defines as “involuntary celibate”. Okay, I can get behind that, I had been without romantic relationships for a number of years. But then urban dictionary goes on to say “who has a horrible personality and treats women like sexual objects and thinks his lack of a sex life comes from being “ugly” when its really just his blatant sexism and terrible attitude. incels have little to no self awareness;”
So yeah, I did see that that was the insult that was thrown at me. I did see that that was an insult that was thrown at many who were not having as much sex as society thought that they should have. I doubt that there are many who took the label upon themselves, that were not already labeled it by others.
I’m not as up on Incel logic as you are, but I don’t see how that follows. It is a great dig at people, a great way of saying that anyone who ever has a bad word about a member of a group is guilty of wanting to murder every member of that group, but it only fits a tiny minoirty of those who we are talking about in this thread.
I disagree that Lamia’s posts are not good examples of someone claiming that anyone who becomes a full blown incel was always full of hate. You can see that Left Hand of Dorkness also said that the only reason that people end up drawn to these communities is because they were already an extreme misogynist.
When people go ahead and make these assumptions, that’s damaging. The idea that these people were just born hating women, and therefore, they deserved everything that has been directed at them is not something that I can agree to.
In any case, yes Lamia’s post, and the followup were not only directed at misogynists, it wasn’t even directed at people who could become misogynists, it was directed at anyone who would even dare to try to understand why they become misogynists.
Hatred and distrust of women? That’s the one I’m using.
But, the disconnect may be that people are using it to define anyone who has anything at all bad to say about any woman, then using that declaration of fact to extrapolate that they are misogynists, and therefore bad.
It’s not support that I think that is needed, but rather, stop beating them down. It sucks to be lonely. It sucks even more to be bullied because you are lonely. It sucks even more that no one will stand up for you, because they are afraid that being associated with you will get them bullied themselves.
Misogynists are bad, mmkay. Full blown self identified incels are bad. Now we have that out of the way.
Now, can we get to the OP, which is “Why are incels so angry?” And to delve into that, we have to understand how people become incels. What gets them on that path, and what keeps them on that path. When simply discussing how people get to where they are, insults are levied, it does not further the discussion, but rather detracts, as it creates a chilling effect as no one wants to put themselves into the crosshairs.
But it is, in the real world. If you don’t have a girlfriend, then people will call you that.
And this is another bit of that passive aggressive thing that prevents honest discussion. No one is turning a blind eye towards those who are full of hate. I am, however, trying to explain that just because someone is full of hate now, doesn’t mean that they always were.
[quote]
It’s not those who are without romance that are buying into the myth. It is those who are saying that there is something wrong with the people who can’t find romance that are buying into the myth. For an example, see the next post.
Once again, the claim that failure comes from lack of effort.
Here’s the thing. Yes, first, people do need to realize that the problem is with themselves, and that is hard to do, when they are told it is not.
Nearly every failed attempt I had at romance ended with the object of my attention saying things along the lines of, “You’re a great guy, but,” or “I had a great time with you, but,” or “You are a really nice guy but,” or “it’s not me, it’s you, don’t change, you’ll find someone.” It was always about chemistry or compatibility, or some sort of “connection” that they were seeking that they were not finding with me.
The only time I was ever called an asshole by a girl in my dating life was with a longer term girlfriend I had in my early 20’s, and that was because I got in a fight with her mother over the Iraq war. We dated for another 3 months after that.
So, with this sort of feedback, how is the socially awkward to figure out what he needs to change about himself?
That is not the claim I was asking for examples of. You said:
I’m asking for you to point to examples, not the Lamia post, of times when someone who society would say is a “loser” is automatically assumed to be a misogynist without some other facts about his opinion of or interaction with women.
I think both would be good, if possible.
India girl, 16, burnt alive after Jharkhand rape
The men that did this probably don’t go by the name incels, but I’m pretty certain the same sense of entitlement, misogyny, and anger is in effect. We might even speculate that these men have been shamed and alienated all of their lives for being low status and socially awkward. Of course we don’t know this, but we don’t know if this is the case for most incels either. Because we really are just spitballing up in here.
Anyway, can anyone think of a solution for this raping girls and burning them alive shit other than throwing the book at offenders so hard it will discourage others from doing the same thing?
well, a good start would be a system where the punishment for gang rape was harsher than this:
They’re absolutely a problem. They’re way more than a potential hazard. I have daughters, I have a wife, and more than that I have some humanity, so yeah, I regard these guys as a huge threat. But one of the ways you deal with people in a toxic ideology is to divert potential recruits away from finding the ideology palatable.
Maybe she didn’t know what it meant. Maybe you were coming across as a real misogynistic twerp. Maybe she was being an asshole. Hard to tell from the story.
Woah, woah, woah, what the fuck? Which post are you talking about? I suspect the situation is a little more nuanced than that, but when you try to paraphrase me without pointing at a particular post, it’s hard to tell what you’re on about.
How about by NOT RELYING ON WOMEN YOU’RE CRUSHING ON TO TELL YOU? It’s not their job to help you fix yourself. Do you notice how passive you are in this story? They just won’t tell you what’s wrong with you! Why not, why are they so meannnnn?
Dude, your flaws are not their problems to fix, they’re yours. What does the therapist you pay for help tell you?
At the very least, it means that every member of the group is okay with hanging out with misogynists. Acceptance of misogynists is not a deal-breaker for them.
And again, you keep asserting, with no supporting evidence, that such misogyny-friendly environments are “the only place that will accept a person”. Sorry, but you haven’t convinced me that there is any sad and lonely non-misogynistic man in any developed society on earth who can find literally no community to accept him that isn’t a misogyny-friendly one.
Now, if what you mean is that those are the only communities that will accept a sad and lonely man who wants to talk shit about women, that’s more plausible. But that kind of sad and lonely man doesn’t qualify for the “non-misogynistic” label.
I don’t see how those alternative interpretations constitute any kind of “excluded middle” between feeling generally frustrated and confused about one’s lack of dating success, and feeling that women are at fault and to blame for one’s lack of dating success. Both of them seem to me to fit squarely in the former category.
Voyager already pointed out various ways in which this could be somebody else’s fault or nobody’s fault at all. I’m actually kind of surprised that in such a situation you would reflexively assume that the cause must be some kind of blameworthy failure on the part of the mailman.
If I blame them for the situation without knowing that it actually is their fault, then that IS being hateful toward them. It’s scapegoating them, it’s taking out my anger and frustration on a (presumptively) innocent person, it’s using them as an object for my resentment and a lazy excuse for not doing the work to figure out the real reason my mail is late. Yup, that’s hateful.
If I know that the late delivery actually IS the mailman’s fault, then no, it’s not hateful to blame them for it. Duh.
But that second situation does not apply to self-identified incels, because lack of romantic/sexual success on the part of men is not the fault of women as a group. Women as a group do not owe any man romantic or sexual satisfaction (and vice versa, of course). So when incels blame women for their celibate status, that is hateful and misogynistic.
In your story, it does sound like she was calling you a misogynist. We would have to take on faith that by calling you a type of known misogynist, she really just meant “someone not in a relationship.” That’s too complicated. It was an insult. You’re not an incel.
Is this a thing now?
I’ve been bald almost my entire adult life but can’t remember ever feeling I was being singled out for being follicularly challenged, at least not overtly.
There was an essay in Harper’s a couple months ago about anonymous accusations of sexual misconduct. It included a tweet that I believe meets your definition. I gather, however, that the article generated some amount of controversy, and the original tweet, and just about all reaction to it, have been deleted. I’m reluctant to quote it here for that reason, but I can send it in a PM if you’d like.
There have certainly been a few misogynists who have posted in this fora and have been part of this community.
You post here.
Therefore you are okay with hanging out with misogynists and acceptance of misogynists is not a deal-breaker for you.
Why not?
In any case we see in this very thread the process how someone less otherwise stable and secure than k9bfriender can be moved towards hanging with Incels and radicalized by them. Others are simply jerks to them. Look at the sort of responses he’s gotten to sharing what was a clear case of being bullied over his status and his simple point that he was not being rejected for being a misogynist but for other reasons. Jerky responses.
Correct. Drinking to excess is not a crime unless you break a law … and we still deal with it as a public and population health concern.
FWIW my take is that those who commit the crimes get punished severely AND one tries to understand why there are apparently so many cases like this (often against minors, sometimes quite young) occurring there to see if one can identify root causes that can be addressed and then figure out how. Not sure what that analysis shows in India. The article you cite links to one with some discussion:
So maybe, a more robust criminal justice and police system that can protect the victims and their families is a start. And organized political action.
Maybe the mindset of those who rape in India is similar to the misogyny of Incels, maybe not. But in both cases the best response is to punish those who commit crimes of violence and to analyze the systems for systems level solutions. In both cases you try to determine the root causes for an increase of something that we want less of and try to something about them. Having the only response be to chime in about how bad the people who do these things are would be inadequate. Agreed?
I think this is fair question, though it does have the weakness that most Incel-centric forums have very misogynistic content whereas this one does not. I feel comfortable saying that most of the folks posting in this thread would stop participating on the board if the SDBM became known as a hate board. But that’s because there are great alternatives to this board. If this was the only board in town (or we perceived it as the only board in town), we’d all probably put up with a lot more shittiness.
If you’re a dude that only has an adversarial relationship with women (including your mother), Incel misogyny is probably something you can easily hand-wave away as “internet tough guy talk” or guys just trolling each other. It’s similar to how many conservatives hand-wave away the racist content on their websites. They will say stuff like, “It’s just a few trolls being trolls.” If these were real life, non-anonymous discussions, people would probably feel more uncomfortable being associated with the extreme voices, but the internet makes it so you can scroll passed posts that you don’t agree with without really disrupting your experience too much.
I think some Incels identify as such because Incel culture is seen as more rebellious (and thus cooler) than, say, ForeverAlone culture–where guys (and girls) commiserate over sorrowful stories involving their personal failures.
There have been a lot of jerky responses in this thread. I’ve gotten PMs from folks who are really hurting over some of the things that have been said. I felt hurt over the reaction I got when I shared my story. I wasn’t being a sadsack. I wasn’t blaming society. But I still got treated in a condescending way…like my perceptions are all twisted and wrong.
I disagree with k9befriender that the involuntary celibates who become Incels are not accepted by other communities. I’m a member of multiple online communities; I imagine most people are because that’s the magic of the internet. I see no reason to think an Incel can’t find kinship on, say, gaming boards or forums dedicated to other topics (politics, for instance). In my opinion, it’s just that involuntary celibates who become Incels just feel at home at Incel places. At Incel boards, there is no “Have you ever touched a girl, bro?” humor. There is no one talking about their romantic conquests or talking about their relationship drama. If you post a story about how much it sucks to live at home with your parents, no one will call you a neckbearded loser so shut up and the posters who try to do this will be instantly punished. People may not even know you’re posting (you may just be a lurker). But you will still feel at home because the discourse is not laden with the landmines that you find in other forums.
Unfortunately, there are not a whole lot of places on the internet that speak to involuntary celibates that don’t eventually descend into Incel shittiness. There are a few, but frankly, they just aren’t very “cool” because the moderation is usually real heavy and the topics that get discussed are kind of boring (IMHO).