A discussion of the contributions of the Christian religion to Enlightenment values and the rights of individuals--especially those of women--seems to me out of place in a thread about incels. It's true, though, that the conduct of many Catholic priests serve as examples of the potentially harmful results of sexual frustration, though primarily to children, not women. So perhaps there is a connection of a sort. — Ciceronianus

@ChatteringMonkey isn't the one who brought religion into the discussion. That was @Christoffer. Then you stuck your head in, spouted out some unsupported and provocative statements, and followed up with "Just sayin." Methinks the laddie doth protest too much.

I quite understand that you'd rather not be an advocate for the claims that were made about Christianity. There's no reason to be concerned about that, really. It's quite alright.

I quite understand that you'd rather not be an advocate for the claims that were made about Christianity. There's no reason to be concerned about that, really. It's quite alright. — Ciceronianus

I don't know enough about @ChatteringMonkey's claims to have an opinion. They seem plausible. I intend to follow up with the source he referenced. Unlike many here on the forum I don't have any antipathy toward religion. I suspect you can't separate it from other social factors when considering social history.

As a non-philsopher these days, this thread has been way more informative than I had anticipated. I went in with zero expectations and left with a lot to think about. I learned a lot, as Clarky would say.

So the interesting thought here, which I think someone else has expressed in this discussion already, is that what is lacking is shame. — Jamal

Shame is something that the society has put on to people by condemnation... which in the modern case is then viewed as oppression and hence the "positive" victimhood. I'll try to explain what I mean by this.

The emphasis on the "involuntary" aspect of not having sexual relations with women, especially being less attractive than other males physically, is something that underlines this modern positive victimhood. Fighting against the oppression of social norms is seen as being positive, especially when it's something you cannot change (like your appearance). Also what you mentioned as identity politics plays a part here as identity isn't confined to the traditional ones anymore.

Above all, when that condemnation is seen to come from certain groups, liberals, feminists and perhaps in this case the "picky" women themselves, that is something positive and encouraging. It's like when Hillary Clinton referred to the Trump supporters as deplorables, it was the best thing ever to happen to Trumpsters and for Trump. Besides, Trump's rise itself started in earnest with his remarks on Mexicans being rapists, which spurred general condemnation and hence intense media focus. Condemnations creates focus.

Similarly in this case, would there even be this thread if this internet group hadn't evoked condemnation and disapproval? Asexuality would not stir up similar debate. This is how internet and the algorithms of the social media work. We could be talk about a larger and more prevalent issue of loneliness, but that likely wouldn't be so interesting.

And I'm interested in what creates incels. How do you go from being normal to the resentment pit?
9h — fdrake

Part of it is sweeping generalisation and essentialising. Someone mutters a mere hint of anti-feminist or mysoginistic rhetoric and boom, people jump to conclusions like hopscotch. One becomes defined by what may have been a singular momentary thought or consideration.

The other part is attitude. If some does indeed have a consistent, enduring and caustically negative attitude towards dating or is preoccupied with lamenting over the quality of their sex life, people like to have words for such phenomena especially if they have seen a lot of people with the same behaviour. We by our very nature love to categorise everything from people to places to things into near little groups.

Well, why not then start with the obvious: the internet. The ability there to find your own echo chamber. — ssu

Probably the same reason flat earthers ramped up out of no where. In this hyperconnected era, thoughts and ideas run viral like wildfire. I doubt in a pre-internet era such echo chambers are that easy to come by. It would be like finding the other needles in a haystack.

But now the internet algorithms hastily match-make between groups with similar ideologies. On one side this is great for unifying like minded individuals. On the other hand it fuels cognitive bias and "justification by numbers".

Look how many of us there, thus we must be onto something/ correct. And that is a dangerous precedent

To be consistent with that standard, you'll have to agree it's ok for me to claim to be a member of the black power movement. — T Clark

Firstly, its not for me to determine your claimed membership to a group. The one to approach in that case is the group itself and what they accept as criteria.

Secondly there are groupings based on innate characteristics of members - like groups for cystic fibrosis sufferers, groups for women, groups for the elderly, groups for certain ethnicities. So if you don't share these traits you can be an Ally or supporter of course but it's not like you can insist you have cystic fibrosis or are 85 years old when you don't and aren't just to be a member of the group.

Other groups are based on behaviours and beliefs. Like religions, language groups/dialects, sports teams fandoms etc. Nothing prevents one from joining any of these groups because the criterion can be met and is not innate nor biological.

I don't see how this relates to my earlier points. This seems tangential.

All I said is when a society behaves or is biased towards one groups favour. Any alternative groups are easily defined. Eg. Feminism exists much more easily and effectively as a movement in counter to an overtly mysoginistic society than it would if the society was already completely equal between sexes. If every had equal and fair treatment, what need would there be for any movements?

Do you see a way to thread the needle here without steering into right wing nut job territory? We were also pretty close when trying to humanise "pre-incels". — fdrake

Close to right-wing nut job territory? I don’t think so.

What’s better than submitting to the cancelling mob with self-censorship is thinking things through and speaking your mind. If you’re not a right-wing nut job but what you say makes people think you are, then those people are the problem.*

But I’m the wrong person to ask. I don’t much like joining things.

* It’s a bit more complicated than that.

What, other than a tendency toward self-destructive and self-loathing behavior, is keeping these guys from succeeding at least at minimal levels? Are they as inept in their occupational lives as they are in their after-hours lives?

Are they just surprised to discover Thoreau's insight--most men lead lives of quiet desperation--actually applies to them? Or is their problem that their desperation just isn't quiet enough? — BC

My take it that this whole community-forming around misogynist values is a way to cope with their desperation yes.

The idea that they themselves are responsible for their situation, and feelings of inadequacy and low self-esteem that come with that, is probably to hard to bear for them. And so they invent stories and a community around those stories that can serve as rationalizations that shifts the blame somewhere else.

EDIT: Put in more Nietzschean psychological terms,
either 1) you try to overcome your situation and learn some social skills and start self-actualizing (not everybody had the mentality to do this)
or 2) you spiral further down a path of lowering self-esteem, depression and inaction (from the perspective of the individual this probably the worst)
or 3) instead of this continued inward directed laceration, you let your resentment become creative and active, and create new standards of valuation wherein your situation isn't considered that bad

Look Ciceronianus, coming here on a philosophy discussion board and telling someone he is just wrong in a demeaning way, without any argumentation or explanation as to why, is just bad form. I don't know what you expect from this, other than signaling "you must be stupid, I'm so smart".

Probably the same reason flat earthers ramped up out of no where. — Benj96

Flat earthers are actually the best example of this click bait culture, which dominates the internet.

An argument that can be shown to be false simply by going on to the seashore on a clear day and watch large ships sink into the horizon (and not become tiny specs) because of the Earth's curvature makes the topic easy to talk about. And that's the whole point. As internet groups go, those that are talked about rule. The "notoriety" of the Flat earthers are harmless, not so with other issues.

It's like Ali G interviewing the surgeon general and saying not all people will die... and the doctor believing he really is so clueless. Trolling is fun.



This phenomenon can be seen even here in PF. Just look at how much discussion threads and how long they have been about antinatalism. Antinatalism hits all the similar points. An absurd, easy to comment issue, which creates debate and hopefully heated opinions. Ten months ago @Baden decided to merge the antinatalism stuff together, but just look at how many threads on the bizarre topic there are.

From the perspective of a gay man long gone from the dating scene, it does seem like these (mostly young?) straight men have a bad case of self-loathing, which in itself is odd and surprising-- that straight white men would be filled with self-loathing--if that's what it is. — BC

I've no idea why it's so commonplace. My intuition asks that if self loathing is commonplace, what makes so many cis het white men hate themselves? If I knew that I'd be writing an exploitative self help book.

For what its worth, a gay mate of mine has no trouble finding sex through dating apps, but partnerships seem elusive.

The healthy way to deal with that lack of success is to try harder, seek help from friends and professionals, join social groups and other such things. But many aren't healthy and many lash out. — Hanover

I get the feeling that this, as partner finding advice, is quite dated. The last few conversations I had with women about "men approaching you in social venues" is that it's seen as highly intrusive, bordering on... creepy. Consent through dating app swipe seems to be needed for them. Or alternatively, they need to be the one to approach a bloke.

I of course don't know how commonplace this is. (Sample size 6 cis het women).

They were cancelled? — Jamal

Yes!

It's because our system doesn't assure success for too many people. — Hanover

My Internal Twitter is screaming at you for this.

Ensure success? What, like women finding partners is a matter of men performing a role? Where is their agency and choice! Male entitlement belongs in the dustbin of history, this is not a good look.

I don't believe my Internal Twitter. My only reason for telling you what it says is to highlight what happens if you say things like that in public. You get uncharitably shat on...

Since the community that these young men feel is most important in their lives is made up of remote individuals who are free to ratchet up the extreme opinions without any personal consequences, they never meet the healthy opposition that they would have met in the old-style community of people, most of whom they would not have chosen to associate with. — Jamal

I'm willing to bet that what can happen when you speak up about frustrations/anger at loneliness and romantic failure also contributes to making insular those awful communities, virtually. You get social shunning. People from your life disappear when you appear to have a problematic opinion. Social media etiquette IRL.

My Internal Twitter is telling me that what I just said construes those feelings of resentment as the responsibility of women to address. But it doesn't, if it's true it's simply tragic, no moral obligations involved

One might look at the defining features of such a group and the direction in which it seeks to influence society.

The incel is male, and self-defining as disempowered ( because 'involuntary') as a sexually active person. This immediately implies that there is a male need/right to heterosexual sex that society, (women specifically,) ought to provide and does not.

Incels demand vaginas like wheelchair users demand ramps, and parents of infants demand changing facilities, and black people demand fair policing. If one felt great sympathy with this deprived group, one might suggest state funded sexual social workers, to fill their needs. No one seems to have suggested that here , though. Ordinary private prostitution is the other obvious option for a freedom loving capitalist society, but again, that hasn't been put forward here, and is not indeed considered a solution by the movement itself.

What is left to agitate for, but the enforced subservience of women such that they do not have the right to refuse? This is called "rape culture".

Part of it is sweeping generalisation and essentialising. Someone mutters a mere hint of anti-feminist or mysoginistic rhetoric and boom, people jump to conclusions like hopscotch. One becomes defined by what may have been a singular momentary thought or consideration.

The other part is attitude. If some does indeed have a consistent, enduring and caustically negative attitude towards dating or is preoccupied with lamenting over the quality of their sex life, people like to have words for such phenomena especially if they have seen a lot of people with the same behaviour. We by our very nature love to categorise everything from people to places to things into near little groups. — Benj96

I agree with the first bit. It's easy to be essentialised for one "bad look" in public. Or someone uncharitably shitting on you being taken as truth. I also agree with the second bit, and as a tendency it bugs me.

Incels: a misogynist hate movement so extreme they approve of enslaving and raping women. Living embodiments of rape culture as @unenlightened and @Baden astutely point out.

Bloke who gets frustrated with lack of romance in their life: not a threat, could fester if they don't check themselves.

Incels: a misogynist hate movement so extreme they approve of enslaving and raping women. Living embodiments of rape culture as unenlightened and @Baden astutely point out. — fdrake

Really? I haven't explored that online grotto. I just thought incels were disgruntled angry men who can't get a shag. They really want to enslave and rape women?

what makes so many cis het white men hate themselves — fdrake

I think it's because most men growing up initially assume that everyone will have a partner. That there's a match for every person. This is ofc an ideal. Women believe similar also growing up - prince charming or such.

However it dawns on us as we mature that that is not the case. And not everyone manages to secure a partner nor the ability to have children even if they really want to.

For some this is devastating and the worst possible case scenario. For others they're fine with it and believe that life can be fulfilling without having a wife/ husband and children.

In the case of the former, people rationalise why they aren't in a relationship for all sorts of reasons. Often ones from self loathing or low self esteem. But perhaps more dangerously, they also rationalise why they deserve/demand or are entitled to one. How it is somehow societies fault and they are the victim.

Some men genuinely believe it's their unalienable biological right to have children. Which if course it is not. Having children is either accidental or mutually agreed but never forced (or should not be, morally speaking).

Having such an self proclaimed entitlement makes women the enemy in a society where they have their own rights to not have a husband nor have children.
And I think single women are often more likely to opt for no partner and children over settling for an undesirable partner.

Really? I haven't explored that online grotto. I just thought incels were disgruntled angry men who can't get a shag. They really want to enslave and rape women? — bert1

I wouldn't say all incels are like this. Ofc not. Some are just disgruntled. Some aren't even incels their entire life and it's just a phase they go through before finding a happy relationship with themselves and with a woman.

Having said that, just as dabbling in incelship can be mild and temporary. It can also be extreme and permanent. And probably there are some malevolent and caustic men in the incel sphere that do indeed propagate a handmaid's tale dystopia where men ought to have total control over women. That having sex is their right.

This is of course the vast minority of cases, the most extreme scenario. But one that likely does exist to some extent

Some questions relating I wish more people would ask. :

1. Is it true?
How many of the incels are really celibate, is it really involuntary, and how can you tell, other then their own self-stigmatization?

2. When I type 'incel' into the search box, the picture that comes up is of a robust, good-looking young man. If he can't get a date, it's not because of his face.
So, what is the reason?

3. Who is being oppressed, in what way, by whom?
At what point in history did it become the social norm to demand physical attractiveness in men? And if women can - and are as a matter of course expected to - make an effort to improve their appearance to attract masculine attention, why is it such an unacceptable imposition on men?

4. What is it the members of this self-designated group actually want from society? What are they demanding? Is that something society owes them and is capable of granting?

5. Is any of that subculture really about loneliness, sadness, low self-esteem or lack of confidence?
That's how the 'movement' started. It was hijacked and sensationalized. Weaponized in more up-to-date jargon. For what purpose?

Incels: a misogynist hate movement so extreme they approve of enslaving and raping women. Living embodiments of rape culture as unenlightened and @Baden astutely point out.

Bloke who gets frustrated with lack of romance in their life: not a threat, could fester if they don't check themselves. — fdrake

:up:

I think this is step one for understanding and dealing with the situation. Conflating those two groups isn't helpful. Both may experience self-loathing but the characteristic trait of incels is that they see women as animals to be used and abused for their pleasure and resent any social structure that prevents that.

My Internal Twitter is screaming at you for this.

Ensure success? What, like women finding partners is a matter of men performing a role? Where is their agency and choice! Male entitlement belongs in the dustbin of history, this is not a good look.

I don't believe my Internal Twitter. My only reason for telling you what it says is to highlight what happens if you say things like that in public. You get uncharitably shat on... — fdrake

Incels demand vaginas like wheelchair users demand ramps, and parents of infants demand changing facilities, and black people demand fair policing. If one felt great sympathy with this deprived group, one might suggest state funded sexual social workers, to fill their needs. No one seems to have suggested that here , though. — unenlightened

@BC

Heterosexual men are of course not entitled to women, but, for the vast majority of men, they do require relationships with women for more meaningful, fulfilled lives. That is both a social and biological reality. The question then is how to best structure society for that to occur.

The flip side, not being discussed because this is a thread about the incel, a male creature, is what women may need for happiness, which is the matter for another thread. But, I will say that women tend to be more emotionally expressive toward other women than men are to men and they may feel less isolated because of that, but I'll wisely defer to women to speak for women.

Dating is a social construction that is obviously informed by biology, but the human mating dance isn't like the peacock's in that it is all biology, but it is also a social construct. What that means is that we can look at different cultures over different times and see how dating has occurred and then we can ask ourselves which has been most effective. These social constructions are not created as @unenlightened points out through state sponsered committees, but they emerge through different means.

How they date in traditional Indian society versus how they date in the rain forest versus how they dated in middle America in the 1950s versus how Muslims, Mormons, Jews, the royal family, the underclass, etc. varies greatly, and it constantly changes. What we're used to in secular Western culture has also seen great change recently. A dating culture typical in my lifetime involved finding a large room that could house available men and women, playing rhythmic music, and dousing it with alcohol. Compare that to what the Southern Baptists might have been doing in their planning an ice-cream social, certain Indian cultures in employing a match-maker, or even those that might purely arrange a marriage.

In Western society, in the past not so many years, we've moved to an online dating culture, which likely advantages some and disadvantages others. In the catalog dating world, you can be assessed on black and white credentials, which helps some and others not. This swipe right / swipe left world may not be the best one in terms of assisting the greatest number in finding happiness.

It is an interesting phenomenon that you can have literally tens of thousands of men and women
ostensibly looking for the same thing, yet so many are unable to find what they seek. That points to a poorly constructed dating culture at least for some.

This isn't to suggest that we should blame the women for not just being more willing to satisfy men because the women are no more to blame for the social constructs than the men. This is just to point out that dating culture is a social creation, and it may just be we're in a particularly challenging time for many men to succeed in it. My expectation is that some creative soul will arrive at a way to assist the incel in their pursuit of happiness. Typically when there is a demand, someone arrives at a way to fill it.

But, sure, an incel doesn't have the right to be a dick to women for his failures, and a woman has nothing to apologize about for in rejecting these men, but I do think there might be a systemic problem if there is a growing number of guys who are stuck in what they feel to be an impenetrable (unintended double entendre) lonliness.

I actually asked the spokesman of the the Incel-movement these questions, and he told me that they want nothing less than world-domination.

In their analysis, sexual reproduction, and the evolutionary downstream-effects in terms of social status, are the cause of a lot of hardship in men.

Therefor they want to abolish sexual reproduction (and as a consequence also women) to tackle the problem at the root-cause, and in doing so prevent a lot of pain, not only for men living now, but also in all future men.

To achieve this goal, a-sexual reproduction via cloning of men, should become the only legally allowed way to create offspring.

Since this can only really work in a globalized world if it is implemented unilaterally across the globe, world-domination should be the first goal of the incel-movement.

I suppose many women have told you how cute you are, so I don't need to.

Don't take it to seriously Vera Mont, It wasn't meant that way.

1. Is it true?
How many of the incels are really celibate, is it really involuntary, and how can you tell, — Vera Mont

We can't ignore the fact that sex has a price in some instances. Sex work exists everywhere, all nations - one of the oldest professions on the world and ofc there is tourism based around the areas or nations that have it legalised.

The Internet and strip clubs also cater not to sex itself perhaps but definitely to a lot of kinks and fetishes and teases.

So, involuntary? No. Not definitively. An obstacle. For sure, definitely for some as it becomes a financial, legal issue and personality concept of ethics/morality for such men.

Probably the most succinct way I can put it is that sympathising with incels--in their developed online form--is akin to sympathising with white supremacists because black people won't be their slaves or with neo-Nazis because they can't put Jews in concentration camps. There is a point where compassion is not the appropriate response.

Okay, I"ll re-iterate why this shouldn't really be a concern other than for the incels themselves maybe.

Social power, the ability to influence large amount of people and maybe sway culture and values in certain directions, is what is relevant here.

I would argue that Incels will never gain any amount of social power to sufficiently alter the culture so it would become damaging to women and our culture as a whole... because they are almost by definition socially inept, unattractive etc. and we have some kind of biological preference for the attractive and the successful.

The idea that Incels might come to pose some kind of danger to society is purely hypothetical, it's not going to happen. People don't take them seriously, it's mostly a sad phenomenon of evolution in combination with our alienating culture.

There is a point where compassion is not the appropriate response. — Baden

Compassion may not be appropriate sure, especially if it is seen to exonerate, permit, validate or encourage such harmful ideals.

But understanding them is not an issue. Offering healthier alternatives based on the understanding again also not a bad thing. If we ignore something entirely it goes left unchecked.

I think most people would prefer to know what's going on and how threatening an ideal may be rather than to simply dismiss it hoping or assuming it'll go away by itself

Sure. But what healthier alternative and in what context exactly? And what reasoning are you offering to suggest it would be effective?

Any alternative groups are easily defined. Eg. Feminism exists much more easily and effectively as a movement in counter to an overtly mysoginistic society than it would if the society was already completely equal between sexes. If every had equal and fair treatment, what need would there be for any movements? — Benj96

I don't agree with this, but this is not the place to take it up.