No no, of course not; the vibrator reference was just a feeble attempt at a joke. Shoulda smileyed it.
Yes. And furthermore, they want it not so much for the sake of any intrinsic pleasure they’ll derive from it as for the sake of impressing their peers and increasing their perceived status.
Disclaimer that has become obligatory in this thread: Of course, the people I’m talking about here are the ones who are self-identifying as part of the “incel movement” and promoting “incel” ideologies of misogyny and hate.
I’m not trying to disparage well-meaning and non-misogynistic men who simply happen to be unsuccessful at sex and relationships, whom a number of posters in this thread maintain should be included in the designation “incel”.
Just following up on this point I missed earlier: It’s good that people want to learn how to improve in dating, or any other aspect of life, and it’s an excellent idea to seek helpful advice, either from a professional counselor of some kind or from people who know you that you can discuss things openly with.
But nobody should ever be expecting any potential date who turns them down to provide them with feedback or critiques or explanations or anything else about why they turned them down. That person doesn’t owe you any information except a polite and honest answer as to whether they’re willing to go on a date with you.
Some people can be rather demanding about seeking feedback from the people who reject them, with the same mindset of “well how can I improve at attracting people if I don’t know what it is about me that’s turning people off?”
The thing is, though, that people who don’t know you well have no way of knowing how you’ll react to honest feedback or criticism. Most people who’ve turned down requests for dates at some points in their life have had the experience of dealing with a “negotiator”, somebody who treats rejection as the first step in a bargaining process that they hope they can eventually leverage into getting a date after all. Other people who’ve been rejected are very insecure about criticism, even when they’ve explicitly asked for feedback, and respond to it with antagonism or even acts of retaliation. These people are at best annoying nuisances and at worst genuinely dangerous.
The person who turned you down for a date cannot tell whether you might be one of those people, and you should not be expecting them to risk giving you feedback about why they rejected you when they can’t be sure you’re not one of those people. Just because you’d like some feedback as additional data for your self-improvement program doesn’t constitute an obligation on their part to take that risk.
What Kimstu says - don’t expect the women who turn you down to tell you why. Ask a dating coach, ask a platonic female friend.
And it might not be something about you that needs to be “fixed”, or about your approach. Sometimes, sometimes most of the time, they just aren’t interested.
Plus, “tell me what is wrong” sometimes has an implied “if I fix it then you will go out with me” and that’s creepy.
I work in health and aging policy, which is an area where loneliness and social isolation have been a big deal for a while because it’s killing people.
Most mentally ill people don’t commit violent acts, so “being crazy” is not a sufficient explanation. And I think “a couple of outliers” is lowballing the phenomenon somewhat.
Marc Lepine in 1989 murdered 14 women and injured 14 other people in his misogyny-fueled shooting spree. Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 in his 2014 rampage. Both of them are frequently lauded on online incel forums. Minassian’s Toronto attack explicitly involved homage to Rodger, and Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz is known to have posted admiringly about Rodger online too. Both of them are now also lauded on online incel forums.
It is a very common response to try to deflect concerns about misogynistic terrorism onto issues of mental illness. But misogynistic terrorism, like white supremacist terrorism and radical Islamist terrorism etc., is an ideology and a movement in its own right, independent of the individual mental problems of the people who commit mass murder in its name.
And of course, there are also all the “random” mass killings committed by men out of anger over a dispute with their wives or girlfriends, who are usually among the first victims of the killings. (And that’s not even considering all the “mere” single-victim killings of women by husbands, boyfriends, exes or other male connections who are angry with them.)
Men killing women out of aggrieved entitlement and resentment that they aren’t getting something that they feel they are “owed” from women—sex, obedience, a continued relationship, whatever—is a serious and systematic social pathology. It’s not just a matter of one or two random “lone nuts” who might just as easily have murdered random strangers over a dispute about barbecue sauce. It’s about the misogyny.
And insanity. Sane people don’t go on murderous rampages. Violence coming out of “aggrieved entitlement and resentment” is not sane behavior. You have provided three examples (Cruz is only a partial hit) spread over 29 years, and the first was before the incel “movement.” This tells me, as if I didn’t know already, that violent misogyny is not new, but I see that the internet is feeding it. What we are faced with is a need to address it and a method how. I don’t think the worst got there because they were ridiculed, but a solution for deflecting the young’uns is ridicule from their peers. Not from Chads or Janets, but from guys like me who can relate to their difficulties.
Sure, though we tend not to see as much recognition of this fact when the resentful murderous rampagers are, e.g., Islamic jihadists.
As with all forms of terrorist violence, what we need to combat misogynist terrorism are two simultaneous approaches:
recognition that people who commit and encourage such crimes are voluntarily espousing a hateful and violent ideology, which is not excused or justified no matter what individual mental problems or sincerely felt grievances they may have;
awareness that a minority of mentally ill people are sometimes vulnerable to being radicalized into hateful and violent ideologies, and that we need to combat the toxic movements that are radicalizing them, as well as treating their illnesses and trying to address the root causes of their resentment and unhappiness.
I don’t know if we can say the internet is feeding it or if we can say that the internet is making it possible to identify it. Maybe someone going online and leaving a manifesto or just facebook posts make it easier to see the misogyny where years ago we would have had to guess.
The VT shooter wasn’t Incel. Neither was the Newtown shooter or the Oregon shooter. But they were all socially isolated angry young men. And the self-identified Incels who are killing up folks are NOT discriminating against men and women. That’s why (to me) it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to just fixate on the misogyny of the Incel movement.
I think you’re too focused on the specific examples I gave, like sports or religion. There are a thousand axes like that; city/country, winter/summer, morning/evening, cats/dogs, Coke/Pepsi. My main point was that it would be helpful to know, and not have to spend years guessing.
Yeah, of course, but I’m not sure you can have one without the other. If there’s someone I want to spend time with, and she doesn’t, that’s gonna hurt a little. If I ask and get turned down, and I’m not disappointed, then I probably wasn’t very hopeful to begin with.
All excellent points. I don’t think I ever have asked someone who turned me down why they did so; certainly don’t remember having done so. This particular sub-topic was started by comments about wondering what a woman sees in another man, particularly someone who’s faults (to put it mildly) are glaringly obvious. I’d never directly ask a woman that, either. My point was just that there are reasons why it would be nice to know, or to be able to figure it out.
And you’re right about discussing this with people I can be open with. I’ve done that, but I’m not sure I act quite the same with someone I want to date as I do with friends I’ve known for years.
I am not vexed that women do not give feedback. I am making an observation that there is no feedback to be had. I am actually trying my best to describe with objective dispassion a guy who may share a name with myself, but not the last decade plus.
And all of this is essentially true if I am blaming women for not giving feedback. I am not. I am simply stating that there is no feedback to be had. As there have been posters here, and in the wide world, who have stated that it is the person’s responsibility to fix their own flaws, which I agree with, it also does need to be pointed out that those flaws are hard to detect.
Once again, I am not assigning blame for this, especially not towards women, and it does feel as though your post is in the tone that I am.
The term did originate from outside what is now known as incel culture. It was originated by someone that wanted to claim it as her own, to describe herself and other people like herself, and it got co-opted by others. It has long sordid history that I don’t feel like entirely digging into, much less repeating, but it is certainly not that clear cut.
As I said earlier, for the first few seconds after reading up on what an Incel was, I though it wasn’t a bad description of myself, until I read the rest of what is said.
Have you read the entry in “urban dictionary?”. Do you think that that was written by someone inside or outside of the culture?
Yeah, that was what was after the "but"s. Lack of chemistry, compatibility, romantic interest, others I don’t feel like trying to dig up to remember…
I see that as a bit harsh. There are some misogynists on this board. If you do not criticize and challenge them every time they make a post, does that mean that you are okay with misogyny?
My experience with online forums involved in such matters is limited to dating advice blogs and forums that I read a bit on, but never participated in, more than ten years ago. I’ve not ever visited the reddit incels, nor any forum that markets itself as towards incels. However, on these dating advice forums and blogs, I did see a decent amount of misogynistic content. Usually in treating all women as though they are the same, both in how to attract them, and in why they aren’t attracted to you. Complaints about women, spoken in general, were fairly frequent.
I also saw people giving useful advice. I didn’t see people getting beaten on because they had a sad story of striking out, yet again.
That some people on the forum were more blaming and even hating towards women didn’t change the fact that there was actually positive content to be had out of it as well.
For an exaqmple, there are those who feel that the NRA is a terrorist organization. The people in it do not feel that way. Who is right?
No, I am using it any time you suggest that there are two, and only two, options, when there are in fact, a nearly infinite number of options in a wide spectrum across several axies.
That’s because that’s not the claim I am making. I am only making the claim that people will not be accepted in communities like this one, where, no matter how dispassionately I try to objectively describe the difficulties that a guy I just happen to know well had, I get feedback that I’m vexed, or that I’m blaming women. Same is going to be for most general purpose and specific forums. They don’t want to hear about some loser striking out on a date again. The forums that don’t beat on people because they post stories about rejection are going to contain more misogyny than those that do beat on people because they post stories about rejection.
I am re-writing this paragraph because I used some specific posters as examples, but realized that that is probably against board rules, but not really meaning to be generalized, there have been some posters here who have complained about their personal problems. They are usually beaten on by other posters until the mods ban them for their own good.
I still don’t think that it is necessarily hateful, but at least you are here saying that it is natural.
I have no idea here. I feel that if you say, with dripping condescension, “It’s about time” to anyone who is running late for anything for any reason, that that is pretty much putting them on the spot and calling them out for inconveniencing you.
Then there are quite a number of hateful and mean people out there. You even say that it’s natural, so they outnumber those who are not.
I think that you are using a very loose definition of hate here. Like a “I hate mondays” level of definition, to the point where the definition means nothing. The definition of hate that I am using is to feel intense or passionate dislike of someone.
Sure, it’s not hateful, but it is certainly blaming. If you showed up late, and I said, “It’s about time.” Would you not feel on the defensive, as though you need to justify why it was not your fault that you were late?
Your “because” there is entirely an assumption on your part made out of whole cloth and preconceptions.
I was making a comparison, showing that a person who doesn’t resent men who date women, may resent misogynists. The reason for the comparison was specifically to show that it is not because he is dating the women that one wants to date, but because he is beating women.
Maybe it was poor communication on my part, but it makes this, and the rest of your post, completely unrelated to what I was talking about.
See, all of this assumes that one resents misogynists only because they are dating women. And not because they are beating women. That is so far away from what I said, I really have no reply.
No, they don’t, not at first. But people do follow examples.
Once again, you are assuming motives completely on your own here.
Would you assume that any one who was concerned and comforted you and wanted you to get out of the abusive relationship was doing so only because they wanted to get some pussy? You have here made that assumption here, would you do that in real life too?
Literally have never been in that position before. However, if you are in general asking about judging people, I just had to hire a couple of people, and had far more applicants than I had positions. Yes, I can articulate exactly why I hired one over the other. I even have evaluation sheets with charts and graphs.
I’m the opposite. I have tons of filters that I’ve developed for dealing with people IRL. Here, however, I still have some filters, sure, but I don’t mind being a bit more argumentative than I try to be IRL.
For instance, IRL, I have relatively recently had the epiphany that when someone says “I don’t understand why…”, what they don’t mean is “I want to understand why…”, what they mean is “I don’t want to understand why…” They actually just want to complain about it, and my attempting to explain why comes across as argumentative.
And it is only while composing this post that I realize that I made a fundamental error of communication here in this thread. I was operating under the thread title meaning of “I want to know why are incels so angry.”
I’m good. I do run a business, though, and it has a higher priority. I’m in the middle of doing a restructuring and a buildout, and I needed to get everyone’s employee evaluations done before I allowed myself to spend time here. I certainly do appreciate the kind words though, thank you.
OTOH, I don’t know that I have much else to contribute to this thread.
It’s true that incel terrorists aren’t killing exclusively women, not always even primarily women. But the reason they’re killing is because they’re angry at and about women. Specifically, because they believe that they’re not getting what they’re “owed” from women.
The reason they’re also angry at some people besides women (i.e., the “Chads” and “normies” who aren’t “incel”) is ultimately because of women: namely, they think that women are unfairly favoring and rewarding those other guys.
Yes, the “incel movement” is crucially and fundamentally about misogyny. Trying to downplay or dismiss the misogyny as just one facet of “they hate everyone” is being in denial about its essential nature.
monstro, I’m not sure what “Vermont shooter” you mean, but the Oregon shooter left a lament about being a virgin and not having a girlfriend, complaining that “society likes to deny people like me these things”. The Lafayette shooter who massacred people in a showing of the Amy Schumer movie Trainwreck in 2015 was an outspoken misogynist and anti-feminist. The reason for “fixating” on the hatred for women is that that’s what the “incel movement”, and a lot of other aspects of the so-called “manosphere”, is all about.
I hope you and Robot Arm don’t have any regrets about participating in this thread. It is damn hard to talk about this stuff without the negative feelings bubbling to the surface.
Since you have shared your epiphany, I’ll share mine: People often act a little funny once they find some success. They often will come up with a narrative that paints themselves as hardworking and deserving. They overlook all the luck they had or the external assistance they received getting to that lofty mountain top. And they forget that no one controls the feelings they experience when they do experience failure. YES, a person can control what they post on the internet. But the feelings of bitterness, sadness, disappointment, hopelessness, and anger are not reflections of moral character defects. You can’t shame a person out of them. A person doesn’t make themselves have them. And people really do deserve a safe space to air these feelings–a space that is free from the Judgy McJudgersons who think “sad sacks” should shrivel up and die already. No one has said those exact words in this thread, but the idea is definitely floating out there. I think if the “good” involuntarily celibates are expected to police the Incels, the “good” normies (for lack of a better word, sorry) should be expected to stomp on Internet Tough Guys who play the “pull your own bootstraps!” card whenever someone dispassionately discusses the frustrations of life. And not just relationship stuff, but all the stuff that wears down the ego. I hang out on subreddits where specific woes are discussed that don’t get mentioned anywhere else. 'Cuz if they were discussed out in the open, the torches would come out from the WHY AREN’T YOU HAPPY LIKE ME crowd? There’s hate everywhere nowadays. It just isn’t as intense or scary as what you find on your typical Incel board.
Angry young men tend to have hate for specific groups–groups they ain’t a member of and whose members they feel are threat to their happiness and success. This of course would include women. Is there a specific reason why we should elevate their misogyny above their other shitty notions? Racism is a problem in our society, but I wouldn’t point to the recent crop of mass shooters as evidence of this.
People have been complaining about internet hotbeds of racism for awhile now. You see Incels do the same racist shit-talking you see in mainstream forums. What this tells me is that haters gonna hate. People who lack status and who are feeling bad about it usually get their kicks out of bullying or dehumanizing others. I’m not sure it’s any more complicated than this, but I’m open to hearing other ideas.
If I don’t ever criticize or challenge their misogyny, and if I’m comfortable hanging out in a forum where other people routinely don’t criticize or challenge it either, then yes, that strongly suggests I’m okay with misogyny.
If misogyny is consistently challenged and criticized on a forum by the community in general whenever it appears, then of course not every member has to pounce on every single appearance to refute it separately.
But if misogynistic ideas are typically not challenged or criticized by forum members, or if the community in general is hostile to occasional attempts to challenge or criticize it, then that does call into question the views of participants who are willing to put up with that.
What you seem to be missing is the fact that, IMO, one or both of the two categories I’m using in those cases include the “nearly infinite number of options in a wide spectrum across several axes”.
Likewise, if I say that today is either Tuesday or not Tuesday, I’m not in any way “excluding” the various options of Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, because all of those are covered by one of the two options I named. To claim that I’m “excluding the middle” because I didn’t mention that it might be Monday, for instance, would be just plain wrong.
Well, it’s what you said. For example, back in post #395:
:dubious: Has it not occurred to you that the reason posters in misogyny-friendly forums don’t “beat on” people for posting stories about being rejected by women is because they are using those stories to feed their misogynistic members’ confirmation bias about how shitty women are?
They don’t mind hearing complaints about being rejected by women precisely because that reinforces their cherished notions about women being dumb greedy cruel shallow selfish opportunistic cunts who are no good to men.
Non-misogynistic men talking about their frustration with romantic failure are “accepted” by misogynistic communities in the same way that cruise ships dumping food are “accepted” by sharks. The sharks don’t care about the cruise ship in any way, they just want to feed on what it’s giving them.
I hang out r/news (I would say I do 90% of my redditing there and at r/politics). There are many racist posts in r/news. I do what I can to challenge those posts, but I work a full-time job. When I come home from a long day at work, I don’t want to be embroiled in arguments with hateful bigot trolls. I just want to be entertained and informed by the news of the day.
So I agree with k9bfriender that simply posting in a forum populated by misogynists does not mean you endorse misogyny. If a forum became dominated by misogynists, I would bail. But there are some boards that I participate/lurk in that have an Incel tinge without being full-blown Incel. I figure someone has to be a moderating voice.
Yup, there are a lot of perpetrators of racist terrorism out there, and there is indeed a lot of overlap between racism, misogyny, and other bigotry in the “alt-right” climate that spawns a lot of them.
Well, we’re talking here about people who themselves have elevated their misogyny above their other shitty notions, by self-identifying first and foremost as “incel” or “men’s rights activist” or some such, rather than “patriot” or “race realist” or “nationalist” or some other non-gender-related form of bigotry.
Yes, I think that when a large number of people are deliberately broadcasting their preference for a particular form of bigotry as their primary ideological identification, we’re entitled to take that seriously, rather than just dismissing it as merely one aspect of “they hate everybody”.
I would definitely point to the mass shooters who explicitly endorse racist ideology as “evidence of this”. Especially the mass shooters who make racism their “banner issue”, such as the Charleston shooter.
I’m certainly not claiming that misogynists, or racists, are single-issue haters or that getting rid of misogyny would make all problems go away. But I think it’s being willfully oblivious not to recognize misogyny as a primary driver in the acts of people who are deliberately promoting misogynistic ideas and self-identifying with misogynistic “movements”.
Kimstu, I need empirical evidence before my mind can make the leap from “Angry guys who kill tend to be misogynistic” to “Misogyny makes angry guys kill.” As dropzone said, I think these killers are cray. Most crazy killers are fueled by a conspiracy theory of some type. But it’s the craziness that’s the real driver. Not the specific conspiracy theory.
And no, personally, I don’t think mass shooters are emblematic or symptomatic of society’s racism. Race-biased policing is, along with hiring/housing discrimination, hate rallies, hate crimes, and citizens who think black people need to stop complaining about all of the above. But not lone crazed gunmen looking to end their lives in a blaze of glory. Were young guys going on shooting sprees in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, when the country was a giant shitpile of overt racism AND misogyny? I’m not thinking they were, but if you’ve got data or anedotes I’ll consider them.
I don’t worry about being a victim of mass shooters because I’m a woman or because I’m black. I worry about them killing me because I’m a human being who simply exists. These guys hate everyone. They hate the entire social order. The misogyny and racism are just convenient ways of expressing that hate when you are a white (or white-passing) male.
However, if these guys were being more discriminating with their violence, I would probably be more worried about the specifics of their hate. Not gonna lie about that.
I guess we’re not understanding each other very well. Thanks for tolerating my questions though.
[QUOTE=monstro]
Kimstu, I need empirical evidence before my mind can make the leap from “Angry guys who kill tend to be misogynistic” to “Misogyny makes angry guys kill.” As dropzone said, I think these killers are cray. Most crazy killers are fueled by a conspiracy theory of some type. But it’s the craziness that’s the real driver. Not the specific conspiracy theory.
[/quote]
By now it may be acceptable to say that beliefs are motivating factors, without signs of mental illness, but it’s an evolving concept. It involves constant reinforcement and a support system of sorts for those beliefs. School shooters for example are not assumed to be mentally ill - they may be, they may not be, but the shooting itself is not evidence. What they do have are emotional beliefs or extreme overvalued beliefs that have taken over their sense of self.
