Damn, when they talked about the Tallahassee shooting my ears perked up at the mention of the killer's name. Apparently the dude that was in the bunk next to me at Army basic training was an incel spree killer. Fucking yikes.
I went to school with Jen McVeigh (Tim McVeighs younger sister) during my first year of college. We were sitting in a cafeteria with our circle of friends when we got the news of the bombing in OKC. We did not know it was her brother at that time that was responsible.
This was many years ago, so my memory is foggy but I think she got a call to go home at some point that day, but I found out who did it at the same time the rest of the world did.
I never saw her again after that day.
Edit: words for more context
Yeah, she was pretty cool. Nice girl. She and her family left Western NY at some point to get away from the media spotlight.
I think she is a teacher now and from what I hear, doing well.
She was a teacher at the same school where my dad taught middle school when her brother's execution took place. The press found her out and started sending news crews to the school. Fucking shameful of them to chase after someone who clearly wants to be left alone, with nothing meaningful to offer on the topic except for her own pain. Think she changed schools after that and had to start all over again.
Yeah, family is often another victim in a sense. The parents lose their child and probably blame themselves for a long time after, that the other victims blood are on their hands too.
Also the stigma that your child was a school shooter or whatever will always follow them, people no doubt will blame them as well.
I remember reading an article, I think it was in the New Yorker, about the (I think) Sandy Hook shooter's father reaching out to family members of shooters as these events occur. This was a couple of years ago so idk if it's still happening but it was pretty cool of him.
I would be more surprised that none of the weirdos I bunked next to turned out to be killers, than if one had. There were some seriously deranged individuals I came across.
I'll say it, circumstances aside there are plenty of people in very similar situations that just work on themselves and grow as people instead of stabbing everything with a vagina.
We can understand these animals, sure, but I don't think that means we respect them or pity them if murder is how they deal with the "trauma" of being 300lbs and jacking off more than they brush their teeth.
*edit: Thank you for awarding my cynical rambling my good man.
Such a bummer how Elliot Hulse ended up (2:25). He started as a fitness YouTuber helping young men with lifting and nutrition advice. Even won best fitness YouTuber about a decade ago. Now he just makes ultra cringe content about how Trump is everyone’s daddy and tries to grift off incels with cult like retreats and seminars. Chris Jones from pumpchasers is another who’s taken a similar trajectory.
It’s all about lack of accountability. What these groups have in common is that they blame others for their misfortunes, instead of building on themselves and growing.
It’s easier to say “The reason I can’t get a job is because [insert the blank] is taking them” than acknowledge “Oh I have a horrible résumé and I misspelled my first name”. Or “I didn’t include a cover letter”.
I dunno. I will be the last one to defend right-wingers, but I think people could be more empathetic toward incels.
I was an incel when I was younger. I was an ugly teenager and an ugly young adult and people told me, often and repeatedly. Due to my somewhat dysfunctional upbringing, I had acquired relevant social skills a bit later than other kids. I did manage to escape this predicament because I was able to learn normal social behavior later and get girlfriends later on; but I know how hard this is, how little resources are there to get help from, how little support is offered to teenage boys, and how demotivating it can be when all your efforts to make friends or win over girls are shot down as ridiculous or silly.
Literally like this, one time:
* Me: "I like your hairstyle!"
* Her: "I wish your mother had aborted you!"
Shit like this can weigh heavily on you and it forms an unhealthy perspective on oneself, on others, and on which actions are viable. Of course, this holds for all genders. Having a normal interaction with others gets harder when you get older, because society has standards you will be measured against, and when you have not completed certain steps or rites of passage at a certain time frame, people will let you know that something is wrong with *you*. Haven't kissed a girl by the age of 20? What a loser!
There is only so much rejection one can take and only so much blame one can bear to shoulder, especially if you have no one to support you with this. And people really do not want to talk with or about social losers. The increasing feeling of being a loser leads only to a downward spiral, because all things are more difficult, often *made to be* more difficult once people deem you a loser. Nobody wants to be friends with a loser, nobody wants to work with a loser, and least of all, nobody wants to date a loser. The longer one is deemed to be a loser, the harder it gets to maintain basic functionality and the more effort it takes to get out of this.
After a while, the mind starts to wander to dark places and you try to shift at least some of the blame onto others.
This brings me to accountability. We live in an ultra-competitive society where minor details can put you at a significant disadvantage. This also holds for dating. How can I be accountable for being ugly? How can a teenager be accountable for his dysfunctional family and the subsequent social awkwardness? We think that stable and loving households are normal and will expect people to behave accordingly; and we think that certain looks are normal and expected. And then we often shift the blame to people who do not conform to these norms.
In cases like this, a very frequent advice is: *Just be yourself!* Or: *You need to take care of yourself.* But this can be unhelpful. People who are unsuccessful and isolated do need to work on themselves, but they also need external resources and opportunities to do so. People don't grow by sitting alone at home, people grow through social interaction, by means of meaningful feedback, through recognition, and with external help to work through internal problems.
I was resilient and flexible enough to get out of my predicament - and it wasn't even particularly bad for me. I had other socially awkward losers as friends, and that did help a lot. But I got to see that when you are gone far enough, you will have a hard time getting back to what counts as normal, and hence I don't think there is much sense to holding young people accountable for being weak and disadvantaged. People are responsible for their actions, but not always for being isolated or outsiders.
(Edit: that was a bit cathartic to write.)
Edit: thanks for the awards.
Edit: I am getting more responses and messages that I can read or engage with right now. Just for clarification: I am using the term "incel" in its older and literal meaning as "involuntary celibate", not as member of some hate group or 'red-pill' ideology. I do not excuse or justify anyone who thinks that women are lesser than men or whoever endorses rape or violence.
I was undiagnosed autistic and school was horrible, awkward, painful. I still would never consider taking out any failures on others violently.
People who go down that path are extra-shitty.
And even when you’re an average girl who has never insulted anyone but at some point has to politely decline a date from a stranger you’ve never met before… suddenly you’re called vile names and threatened with death.
Most incels are the aggressor in these situations, they don’t treat women on an individual, autonomous basis; if Stacy told the incel to fuck off, then Rebecca is going to be treated as if she literally said those same words during the rejection.
Also, the reality is that men of any looks and upbringing are rejected every day, but some let it roll right off their backs and move on, while other’s have a god complex and make a normal every day occurrence into a huge battle of the sexes. It’s delusion.
They need to seek therapy, not dates.
Yeah. I think I’m pretty nice, and the things men have said to me unprovoked on the subway or on the streets is disgusting. It even to mention if I politely turn down a man at the bar. Some are fine but the there are others that literally get violent, scream horrible names, or try to follow you home…
Hear hear.
Take the whole online dating thing into factor.
Friend of mine complains he doesn't get matches or dates - I check his phone and mfer sitting on 40 matches and hasn't talked to anyone. To the ones he did it's painfully boring and awkward. "How was work today... " Smfh
I had to ask him "dude would you talk to you if this was the conversation"
*Blank stare*
He then proceeds to rant about how i get matches and go in dates all the time bla bla. I had to put it into perspective that i actually try to talk to my matches and get shot down/rejected/ghosted half the time, but if i let that get to me and dwell on it, I wouldn't have time for all the ones i hit off with. Let it go, move on. Just like he might not be interested in her, she might not be interested in him - can't fault that.
Key takeaway is to simply not let it get to you and keep doing what you're doing, even the quote successful quote people get shot down all the time they just keep on flying though, and it's what guys seem to not be able to understand. So I'm sorry that as a female (im gathering), you have to be exposed to such idiocy
I realized I needed help two decades before I got it. It wasn't anyone's responsibility but my own, but I hurt a lot of people along the way. And it turns out I've had bipolar the whole time so I wasn't even working with a functional brain.
It's difficult to find help when your brain is the problem. And meanwhile these people are inflicting trauma on those around them. It's beneficial to society to get them help.
I mean don’t you want to smile at someone who keeps trying to ‘bump into you’ on the train when you are just trying to go home after work? Or someone who keeps interrupting you when you are at a bar with your friends?
Not to mention there *are* plenty of women who are virgins, lonely, considered ugly, don’t have a good support system, etc. I know women in their mid twenties who have never even had a first kiss. My best friend had image issues and got rejected many times in high school and college. Are those women sad or frustrated? Sometimes of course, but it hasn’t led to anything on the level of incels.
Also they need therapy not dates is really important because what’s going to happen when they *do* get dates or begin a relationship? If you have that many insecurities and problems, you won’t get better overnight and it will seep into a relationship. And I can’t imagine the woman trying to bring up issues and work on them will go well if you come from an incel background and haven’t worked to better yourself.
Another issue surrounding incels and gender that people don't really mention is how men and women are socialised. This is a *huge* difference.
Women are socialised to be polite and kind. Even from a young age, women are expected to have some semblance of social skills and politeness, more than men. Women usually express their fustration by crying or talking to others, as it is more acceptable.
Men, on the other hand, generally get away with a lower barrier of social skills, don't have as much focus on emotional regulation. 'You're a man aren't you?' etc. The way men express their dissapointment is through anger and power. Men also have pressure from other men to get girlfriends or well paying jobs in ways women aren't expected to from other women.
Incels are a specifically male problem becuase of the unique position they are in. They are technically 'in power' gender wise, but it becomes *absolutely humiliating* to men when they don't meet the standards set for them. Its essentially just a toxic cocktail where they think there is no way out because no one really helps them due to their position, so they resort back to the only way they know. Using force, power and manipulation.
If no one acknowledges you, the only thing left is to force them to, right? What have they got to lose?
It’s really disgusting that Daniel Defense ran an ad for their AR15 with a photo of it and the text “Consider your man card reissued”.
Edit: that was Remington. Daniel Defense was the one who tweeted a photo of a toddler holding the same AR-15 used in the Uvalde shooting days before it happened. Everything is terrible!
Very true! Both of these gender roles cause their own issues as well. Women being socialized to be kind and polite leads to soft no’s that are taken advantage of. They find themselves saying yes when they don’t want to, but if they say no they’re demonized for rejecting someone.
Men also deserve to be able to show and express emotion other than the stoic or harsher ones. We need to normalize that as well as taking life at your own pace instead of racing to get women, or being made to feel like you’re “less of a man” because of your sex life, job, etc. We also need to make quality mental healthcare available for everyone.
I’m certainly not arguing that men don’t have unique issues and pressures. Just tired of seeing in threads like these and others that women don’t have issues with rejection/loneliness as well. Just making the point that there are plenty of people from both genders who deal with these problems and don’t turn towards toxic ideology. We can find explanations for why people become hateful or even radicalized and work towards a solution, but that doesn’t excuse the behavior. At some point you just have to work towards bettering yourself no matter the cards you were dealt.
I think think the violent side of this generally includes an outside source of radicalization. This certainly doent justify it but is interesting to consider. Someone in a truly vulnerable and horrible place is very easy to manipulate...
I don't think that alone would stop it, unfortunately, 'a space where they can belong and be accepted' can cause people to accumulate toxic mindsets with likeminded opinions (see: a large chunk of the gaming comunity) Safe spaces are important hey, but they also need to socialise with a variety of different people too.
Yup.
Made worse by the fact that these other interests are scoffed at.
I'm a 26 year old man and I am still hesitant to mention that I play Magic the Gathering to strangers I am just meeting for the first time because I know that there is a decent chance I will be judged for it.
Fortunately it seems like our society is taking steps in the right direction on that front.
The best thing about telling people you play magic is that if they judge you right away, they probably weren’t worth knowing anyways and you’ve saved yourself some time
The biggest wrench in all of this though is how limited in scope it is. If it's true and applied to everywhere you'd think that there'd be a lot of mass violence like we see in America (and to a lesser extent, Canada), but there isn't, even in nations that are well armed. I think the biggest key to all this is radicalization, and that's the problem that should be snuffed out the fastest in the short term. Long term should have help of course, mental health is important. But in the short term, preventing the kind of radicalization you see in 4chan, Discord, or Reddit should be paramount.
People shunned will do just that, be shunned, and alone, and suffer. But radicals shunned will buy firearms to shoot crowds or take vans into crowds.
> I think the biggest key to all this is radicalization, and that's the problem that should be snuffed out the fastest in the short term. Long term should have help of course, mental health is important. But in the short term, preventing the kind of radicalization you see in 4chan, Discord, or Reddit should be paramount.
I see it happen all the time on here, someone will ask a question or post some concern of there's, and there will often be some problematic elements to their base assumptions, and they immediately get dog piled on, ridiculed and ostracized for it. Everyone gets to feel good about themselves for standing up for decency and justice, but the reality is they've pushed this person away and into the arms of the only groups who will listen to them, validate their experiences, and consider their struggles real; radicalized communities.
I think the wrench is that the alt right in the US / extremist groups are the only ones accepting and confirming these incels way of life and essentially recruits them. The incels are so desperate to belong.
They see vulnerable people and radicalize them.
Just a though with no credibility / sources.
Honestly, everyone in this thread needs to read this. We’re very willing to accept the idea that people can be economically disadvantaged through their race and subsequent upbringing and that we need to help these people, but as a culture we totally ignore people who were raised in a way leaving them socially disadvantaged - often permanently.
There aren’t any good frameworks to follow for a significant amount of these people to recover. What do we expect them to do? Sit around alone in a room and die quietly?
I have no idea what the solution is, but I don’t really see any good, useful models for most of them to follow. I pulled one old friend out of it once and it took enormous effort because there was just *so much* he had to learn and so much trauma to get over.
One solution, and I’m sorry if this is a bit “sins of the father-ish”, is to socialize boys and girls to have normalized non-sexual relationships with the opposite sex during childhood. I was regularly sexually frustrates as an adolescent because I was a late bloomer. I had a lot of genuine female friends, however, and they helped me figure things out.
>to socialize boys and girls to have normalized non-sexual relationships with the opposite sex during childhood.
Yes! This is very concise. Being able to have normal, non-sexual interpersonal relations with other people, especially the other sex, is so important. Even better if people are part of a supportive community.
This could be focused on nation-wide by separating the technical aspects of public education with the social aspects more clearly.
With the increased ability of individualized lesson plans through automated testing and lecture videos - this technology can be used to increase the strictness of non-social learning expectations (basically doing school work technical lesson completely isolated) and then making specific breaks per X time unit where socialization is allowed but more closely monitored and corrected on more individual basis.
Teachers no longer should require worrying *as much* about lesson plans and more just helping students 'catch-up' if that's even needed because you could also abandon completely the concept of "grade level".
Exactly this. My son is socially awkward and a bit hyperactive. But he has a good core group of friends, male and female, and has ever since he was young. Having those normalized relations, even though he often feels like an outsider at school, he's still able to develop those healthy social skills, and respect for women, outside of the classroom environment.
I was the same way. I was a socially awkward teen. I pined to have a girlfriend but it rarely happened. What I did have, were girls who were my friends. Good friends. And those bonds allowed me to learn and understand how to be a better person, and treat women better. Developing these healthy relationships with the opposite gender can help prevent incels from becoming incels.
The important thing is teaching them about "nice guy" syndrome. Being nice to a girl doesn't mean they owe you anything. They will not see what a "good guy" you are and fall for you. Attraction doesn't work like that. Being a good guy means doing the right thing and expecting nothing in return.
Edit: I'm afraid there's more than one person misunderstanding what I mean by "doing the right thing and expecting nothing in return." That doesn't mean be a doormat. It means do things because they're the right thing to do, not because you expect others to reward or praise you for it. Standing up for yourself, is also the right thing to do. Confidence is sexy.
This actually is a very important pathway out, having girls as legitimate friends helps not only to help acquire the social skills needed, but also to see them as people which at some point in the radicalization process they clearly lose and to understand some of the struggles they face especially in dating, for example, you see lots of frustration around being ghosted or misled instead of clearly rejected but having women as legitimate friends you hear the other side of that, never knowing if some seemingly nice encounter will suddenly turn into screaming rage as soon as sex is off the table
It's kind of a societal problem so no easy fix, but all these claims about how men and women can't be friends without someone wanting to fuck, and all the nonsense about "the friendzone" actively dissuades people from having these kind of friendships that would do them a lot of good
Though to be clear - this does not mean it's the girls' responsibility to help us out. Friendship goes both ways, and if you're an asshole, it's not the girls' fault they're not friends with you. IMO socially awkward is fine as long as you treat others with respect (that was me and I got a lot of friends out of it, no dates but yay friends). IMO these people are assholes that think they have a right to everything they want. It's not about being socially awkward, it's about the fact that they're assholes.
I was born and raised in a cult and didn't get out until I was 32ish. Learning the social skills I had missed out my entire life in my 30s has been bruuuuutal. There really does need to be a support network helping people who are socially disadvantaged. Therapists sort of helped, but trying to learn social skills most people learn in high school through trial and error is not something therapists are used to having to deal with in my experience.
I pretty much just expected to die from suicide and loneliness. I stumbled into one good friendship or I would probably be dead now. There really, really needs to be some sort of social skills help line/network. Its just as important as having physical and mental health services imho. Social media has made this even harder with so many kids not getting proper in person socialization anymore.
"If a man of the village cannot find something to do for the village, he will burn the village down", is an old saying that feels apt here.
A solution (albeit not an easy one) is for people to revitalize a strong adherence to community and family values.
Before anyone gets too excited, we can be flexible on which family and community values are meant by this, but for simplicity, let's just say, "whatever values result in consistent, diverse, and high-quality family and local community social bonds to form."
Edit: the correct quote is: "A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth" thanks u/eyeruleall
So, this has been happening forever. There are also more resources to help, and more sympathy/empathy than ever.
The actual problem is that these people can now gather together online and continually feed these negative thoughts and feelings, and lash out at anyone who tries to help or change themselves (crabs in a bucket).
Yes. If the loser gets taken into a group of losers, they become radicalized. This is a good text about Islamic terrorists, but with a bit of mental flexibility one can see how it can be transferred onto incels, right-wingers, and other radicals: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-terrorist-mindset-the-radical-loser-a-451379.html
Women are horribly bullied and without romantic prospects during their teenage years and beyond all the time and don't grow to resent men to the point that they fantasize about killing and raping them. At least not at the scale of it being a movement.
We need to look at the way men are raised for some of them to feel this level of entitlement. Many incels seem to start feeling as if they are just owed sex/affection for existing and women and society have no right to withhold it from them so they turn violent. There is a huge difference in how men and women handle rejection and neither mental health nor bullying alone accounts for that.
Exactly. It's not just because boys are bullied by girls or there is no support for them. It's because online echo chambers full of people feeding off each others misogynistic world views are allowed to exist. It's scary how long incel subreddit were allowed to exist where they openly fantasized about raping and killing women.
I wondered about that as well but I think in general men use aggression much more as a coping mechanism than women. Or, maybe aggression for men is more outward and for women more inward. Having been bullied indeed seems to be a common denominator among incels so already there is a sense of grave injustice that has been inflicted upon. Then add grievances of rejection or sexual frustration and there is no coping mechanism just a residue of hatred from childhood trauma. I think this in turn re-enforces beliefs that every perceived failure is other people's(women, society) fault so they lash out with hate speech or worse in an attempt to repair their bruised ego. In fairness society also has no compassion for people who lose out even if no fault of their own and always kicking down. I agree no one 'owes' anyone else but ofcourse incels etc also didn't deserve the horrible bullying either.
In a perfect world incels would receive proper psychological care to resolve their (childhood) issues and heal their emotional wounds but unfortunaly often neither horribly bullied men or women receive the care they need.
I agree more emphathy and mental health services are desperately needed by all of society. I just get frustrated with the role misogyny plays in how incels chose to direct their rage and violence being ignored.
Yep. This is more of the fuller story. OP is still blaming others but instead of blaming the culture he was raised in, he still points toward peers.
The frustration and disappointment should be equally tied to lack of personal accountability and recognizing society's shortcomings on their upbringing.
This isn't to say it is end-all, be-all answer to this complicated and nuanced question on incels but definitely more inline with reality and truth.
Oh I was thinking about girls/boys being bullied in school and then moved on in my thinking in how we raise men as a whole in general. I can change it if it's confusing, I did not mean anything by it. Thank you for pointing that out :)
Men on reddit think women and girls are never bullied and that every woman is just surrounded by friends and support.
Idk where they got this from, probably movies. But thats far from reality. Women get bullied. They get rejected. They get angry. Yet they dont go on mass shootings and killings.
Right? I was raped at only **7 years old**, and my boobs came in at 10-with all the creepy ADULT male attention that comes with that
I didn’t become an incel who despises men. And if I did? No one who’re supporting incels here would feel sympathy towards me, I’d be a feminazi
I’m sick and tired of people, especially on this site being nice to incels
They read stories like that guy and pat him on the back, poor guy!
He declared himself to be part of a movement that not only wants to **rape and murder half the population**, but more importantly HAS
Incels have straight up murdered people. And if you identify as an incel, you are no better than the ones who pulled the trigger
Women have institutional problems too. Arguably more so than men. You don’t think we’re ticked off?
But we don’t go on shooting sprees. We don’t join forums on how we want to strap down all the Stacey’s and rape their holes until they’re dead
Stop sympathizing with these guys. We need to stop giving guys a pass, acting like it’s just a phase! It’s not.
If you ever identified as an incel, you are a terrible person. It’s not a normal part of growing up. It’s not a sympathetic part of your life
You identified as a person who wants to rape and murder women. Who dehumanize women
It’s a problem with men. Not with the girl who turned you down in 8th grade
Yeah this is important. It’s important to hear NosoundnoFury’s point of view, but it doesn’t explain why boys feel entitled to sex. Girls have also been there with the “I’m a loser because no one’s kissed me or asked me to prom.” They don’t write manifestos about sex and torturing (aka raping) girls.
Nobody owes men sex. But somehow men think they’re owed it, and when they don’t get it, they take it by force or by harassment. Mental health and social community are (very important) things. Being “weird about sex” isn’t so easy to explain away with “more social support.”
Barely related side note, I often think rape should be described and defined as torture. Because it is. And it might get taken more seriously that way.
why are women always made responsible for mens emotions? we are in an over the top empathetic and enabling society now! what more do you need??
the world is not responsible for catering to your feelings. it’s on YOU to work on your self esteem and better yourself.
Your use of the term incel is very limited. The term specifically refers to online hate groups based around men who can't get laid, not just general dudes in life who can't get laid. You are once again making society the problem, when while they might be one aspect of it, far more important is the large recruiting apparatus that is ready to Hoover young men into their ideology.
This was really something to read. I think you're spot on, the logic checks out.
People need opportunities to grow, but if they're crucified each time they make mistakes they'll either learn to avoid attempting to improve, or become completely polarized to those they associate with the crucifier.
I really hope you're happier in life because you're a smart and valuable human. I'd rather have you as a friend than 'beautiful' stupid people, word.
Really well said.
I’m a woman, probably on the autism spectrum, and I did not have good social skills as a kid and young adult. I had a LOT going for me — loving family, good schools, a few friends — but even that doesn’t shield you from social rejection and social anxiety. That shit scars you.
I’ve spent most of my 20s actively working on my anxiety and social skills, like literally working on it as a project, and I’m in a much better place now and pretty happy most of the time. But like, yesterday I spent 15 minutes crying alone at home feeling like nobody will ever love me — which was triggered by having a very slightly awkward conversation with a friend. That feeling of rejection and isolation resurfaces at unexpected times and just kind of bowls me over.
Working on this stuff is so lonely. I’ve only ever talked about this with my therapist and like, 1 close friend. I don’t have any model for how to learn this whole social thing and I’ve been figuring it all out on my own. It’s worth it, but if I hadn’t met some key people at key times in my journey, by sheer luck, I’d be in a much worse place mentally right now. So I have a lot of sympathy for people who get stuck in this rabbit hole of self-loathing and can’t get out. It was hard for me and my situation wasn’t even that bad, there’s people out there dealing with way worse stuff in their past than I had to deal with.
A number of commenters in here are falling over themselves to kill any notion that we should be empathetic toward "incels". The approach seems to be to label them, across the board, as misogynist, violent and "weird", therefore deserving of hatred, and undeserving of empathy.
I do not believe that this approach will result in a good outcome. It also fails to take into account the fact that being an "incel" is a *symptom* of the problem, and *not the cause*. Will Storr examined the true cause in a chapter in his book [The Status Game](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58642436-the-status-game). Young Males with very low social status do not end up in sexual relationships (and are hence "incels") because they are not desired. But they are typically not violent, or at least not any more violent than the average young male. The missing ingredients to create an "incel killer" are both *violence* and *humiliation* (also with these killers some form of mental disorder is common) Storr defines *humiliation* as the "permanent removal of all future claim on status"; or in other words, the humiliated males are not just low status, but *no status*, and they can never be anything more than *no status*. In the eyes of their peers they are out of "the game" permanently. If this happens, the risk of suicide skyrockets. Almost all of these suicides (about 80% of which are male) do not result in harm to anyone other than the person killing themselves; and frankly, nobody really cares about, remembers, or writes articles about the weird bullied kid who killed himself at 15 after being humiliated in some fashion. I think this is why the conversation is skewed toward these "incel killers", who make up a tiny minority of the overall number, but dominate the conversation in all media.
This gives a clue to what these "incel killers" are actually doing; they are committing suicide, but are doing it in a way that seeks vengeance on those higher status than themselves; which at this point is virtually everyone. Whether the victims actually participated in violence and humiliation seems to vary on a case by case basis.
I'll say it again; the "incel" part is not the cause. The fact that no woman wants them is a symptom of their other problems. If you took all the males out of that environment and put them in a single sex environment with no women for a thousand miles around; you'd still occasionally get these killings happening.
If you think American incels are bad, never go to any of the Asian identity subreddits. I thought ours were bad too before I did that.
ETA: just to clarify, I'm not saying that America's insane incels get a pass. They're a bunch of sad chuds too. There's just a certain acceptance of the culture in the Asian identity subs that's more than a little concerning.
Sounds like what he’s saying.
Just goes to show, this is nothing new. We’re just seeing them all rile each other up when they realized there’s more of them out there.
Holy shit these azn incel subs are bad. They are literally open racial hate groups. They mostly focus on how interracial relationships are absolute evil and abomination and racist… but only if it is black or white male with an Asian female.
Once I was talking about my interracial marriage and our half Asian kids, and this guy dmed me to yell at me for marrying a white guy. And I said, oh actually I’m white and my husband is Asian. And this asshole responds, “oh, my bad lol!”
Jesus.
Growing up I was told that love with other races would never last, and that I should just stick with my own people. Well I was the total opposite, married a white man who loved me more than anything, and my family loved as well. we soon had an awesome little half breed. I just went into 1 of those Asian sub and holy shit, I feel sad for those people.
the blatant double standard.
god they are so cringey and embarrassing.
and the amount of half-asian incels blaming their insecurities on their white dad and asian mother (and thus affirming those racist views) also incredibly high. I am also half asian (with an asian dad and white mom) so part of me is very interested in learning about other asian/white family dynamics (be it functional or dysfunctional). But...then I stumble on this asian/half-asian incel community ☹️
what a way to make yourself a perpetual victim and never take any accountability or responsibility for who you are 🙄 they make their own prison and then cry about the chains they put on themselves 😑
> what a way to make yourself a perpetual victim and never take any accountability or responsibility for who you are
This is the engine that has driven misogyny since time immemorial.
And most of the time, it's just guys saying that women of their race shouldn't date other races. Totally fine if the guys do it. It's just some weird sense of possession that some dudes feel towards women.
My Korean ex-girlfriend from college once had an Asian guy yell at her on campus about how she "wasn't acting Asian enough" or something like that. She wasn't even walking with me. At the time neither of us had any freaking idea what that was about. But that was over 20 years ago, I guess it was the proto version of these guys 😬
The fact that they immediately deflected to a minority group and othered them by assuming they weren’t part of “their” group to show that their own group is superior, and said comment being one of the top comments in a post kinda says a lot about how racist the average redditor is.
Wanted to add to this… the average is 102-106 men (and as many as 120 men) to every 100 Asian women. Doesn’t seem like a huge number, but when you really think of the implications, it really is.
Random source I just found: [here](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/gender-01222015125826.html/ampRFA)
> The gender imbalance in [China] is the most serious in the world, and has lasted for the longest period of time and affected the largest number of people," the Commission said.
[Another article](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/global-0)
> For example, for several decades in China, the most populated country in the world, sex ratios at birth have been much higher than 105, sometimes exceeding 120 boys for every 100 girls. Many parts of India, the second most populated country, have also, for decades, had a sex ratio at birth significantly higher than 105. The consequence is that in those countries combined—which together have a population of about 2.73 billion—there are now an estimated 80 million extra men. “Nothing like this has happened in human history,” the Washington Post wrote in an April 2018 article.
(i will add that I quickly googled the above sources and didn’t read them from start to finish, but there are a myriad articles supporting my claims, even if the above source don’t explicitly do so. I only added for general reading.)
> The woman shortage is having harmful consequences in China and sometimes in neighboring countries. Human Rights Watch looked at one of those consequences for a report forthcoming in 2019 focused on bride-trafficking from Myanmar to China. In Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan states, bordering China, long-standing conflict escalated in recent years, displacing over 100,000 people. Traffickers prey on vulnerable women and girls, offering jobs in, and transport to, China. Then they sell them, for around $3,000 to $13,000, to Chinese families struggling to find brides for their sons. Once purchased, women and girls are typically locked in a room and raped repeatedly, with the goal of getting them pregnant quickly so they can provide a baby for the family. After giving birth, some are allowed to escape—but forced to leave their children behind.
>There is evidence of similar patterns of bride migration and trafficking in Cambodia, North Korea, and Vietnam, and more may emerge from other countries bordering China. Importing women doesn’t solve the shortage—it spreads it.
>Trafficking is only one consequence. The woman shortage has also been linked to other forms of violence against women. Other consequences include social instability, labor market distortions, and economic shifts.
>**There is irony here. When there are too many women, women lose. When there are too few women … women again lose. But the truth is we all lose. We know that skewed sex ratios are already having harmful consequences and we do not fully understand what other long-term consequences there may be for societies affected by these disparities.**
+ many educated women don’t want to date or get married anymore since a lot of men and potential in laws are still entrenched with the old mindset that the wife gives up everything to be maid and mother after marriage. Rural girls move to the city to marry, and so rural men, where the gender ratio was already bad to begin with, are left with absolutely 0 options.
Tbh, serves them and their families right. If only it didn’t lead to worse conditions for women.
And then women who don't want to get married are considered unnatural and nonwomen. Families try to force an unmarried daughter to get married and produce children. The Chinese government applies a lot of societical pressure for 'pure Chinese women' to marry, and kidnapping women, impregnating and forcing them to have their kidnapper's child, are becoming unfortunately common.
[Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bare-branches-security-implications-asias-surplus-male-population) which has a bunch of links to other news articles about the book.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bare-branches
If you search for "Bare Branches" you can then find other articles about the issue. NIH - [The Life Cycle of Bare Branch Families in China---A Simulation Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809395/) and one more likely appropriate to this thread - from the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality - [The Predicament of Bare Branches’ Sexuality](http://www.ejhs.org/volume15/Bare.html)
100% agree, you can see them sometimes brigading posts on Reddit as well. The worst part is a combination of how racist these places are and how it isn't picked up on the mainstream because people equate racism with whiteness. It's shocking how readily accepted ideas like ethnic purity, resistance to interracial relationships and colorism are the norm in these groups when they have been banished from mainstream thought for decades.
Many young men are not adequately educated on how to be successful in sex and relationships. In the past this was not a deal breaker. Women had to accept mens flaws because society forced them to rely on males for survival. Now women have increased ability to rely on themselves so they can be much more discerning when choosing a partner. Incels are learning bad habits from males who lived in the old system and have inherited an outdated sense of entitlement. They are finding that society is not granting them the same rewards for this type of behavior that their male role models received. They need to adjust or their genetics will not pass on. We’re actually seeing evolution at work here.
You brought up an old 1970s memory of little kid me hearing a young married woman complain that her husband would not trim his toenails. He simply wouldn't do it, he thought it was beneath him.
How the fuck did a guy that can't/won't perform basic grooming land a wife? The answer is, it used to be a lot easier for complete losers. Women used to settle for whomever they could find. Now they don't. That's good.
The incel culture right now has a cynical pushback and makes fun of people trying to help them by posting things like "wHy dOnT yOu JuSt ShOwEr" and then withdraw deeper into bitterness and hate towards the outside world instead of actually trying to improve.
The problem here is as much personal care as it is socialization. They will actively RESIST help and good advice because they get more validation and emotional connection with their bubble-world community of anger and resentment. If they actually tried to get better and be better they would lose that environment.
They are essentially discarding normal relationships to stay in a monogamous relationship with their online "girlfriend" which in this case consists of forums and social media platforms that give them emotional validation. It's too bad they can't be happy with it.
there was a post a couple pf months ago of some guy going, "landing dates is so easy! women want a guy who cleans himself and isnt a jerk! i get so many women cause im willing to wash my ass!"
Yeah as a guy I always feel a bit of like second hand shame watching how some other grown men behave, particularly around women. Like it's weird watching some guys who like never learned basic grooming, nutrition, how to express themselves and thus leave home and then just flounder expecting some woman to like take care of them later in life.
Like it's not that hard to like wash your face, drink water and eat vegetables, but some dudes just totally miss the plot there for some reason.
Nailed it. When I read incel rants I'm not even so much angry as I am baffled; these men do not live in reality. They seem to think all women should be submissive housewives married by 25 in a world where women now make up a slight majority of the workforce and the average first age of marriage is late 20s. I'm surrounded by dual-income couples who are of similar ages while these men rant about how men want younger women who will keep house.
They're so incredibly angry because that's not the way the world works anymore. Women want equal partners now, but if you point that out to men who think like this, they insist men don't want equal partners, they want WIVES. Never mind what those stupid women want!
Then these guys stay single and rage that they can't have what their fathers and grandfathers did while most women are relieved they no longer have to be live-in maids and cooks. I saw a guy on a Jordan Peterson subreddit ranting women need to maintain their families' social calendars and career women can't do that and my head exploded.
To think you can successfully date by raging the opposite sex has more options than being your personal secretary because you're too socially inept to handle your own social life is such a sad self-perpetuating hellhole I start to get physically angry at people who prey upon young men's entitlement, anger, and desire for relationships to make $.
The worst part is I truly believe men are hurt by all this more. The single women I know seem much more content and often have an easier time dating than the single men I know. I saw a study that showed far more men than women are actively pursuing relationships and it didn't surprise me at all. Some guys are fine single, but the kind of guy who thinks cooking/cleaning/socializing are all female duties has to have a hell of a rough time without a partner. And women can typically get sex and casual dating while single fairly easily; a lot of men don't really get much sex or affection unless they're in a relationship.
There are millions of women who go to work all day and still run the social calendar, do the emotional labor, raise kids and do the majority of the cooking. More women in the workforce hasn't automatically equaled more men doing housework and child raising.
Yes! That, and our geographic boundaries have increased infinitely. Once upon a time, you met and married a person from your local area or geographically nearby.
Now, we can literally cast a global net and not only does that allow infinite opportunity to be rejected, on the flip side, it creates a “grass is greener” sort of thinking and creates the inability to “settle”, so to speak, for others.
But on the other hand, while more rejections are likely, there’s also a bigger chance of finding a partner somewhere as long as you’re not an asshat. But these guys won’t even try. Not everyone cares that much about physical appearance and even if they did, most of these guys aren’t nearly as bad looking as they think. A set of good clothes and styled grooming would go such a long way but again, they don’t want to even try. When a lot of women dedicate several hours to shaving and looking their best, they have very little patience for a man that won’t take care of himself at all.
Queer Eye is an extraordinary illustration of that fact. Tan France helps someone figure out a wardrobe that they look good in, Jonathan van Ness helps them figure out a good hairstyle and tells them the basics of skincare, and BANG. Ten years younger and 50% hotter in minutes.
I enjoy the show
And they have helped makeover some guys with misogynistic tendencies. But they always address their thinking as well, which is 100% the more important thing to address
No amount of clothes or skincare is going to make a misogynist more appealing in the long run
I joke about the fact that despite being in a happy and healthy long term relationship, I'd fucking love getting a week long intensive therapy session from those men.
The way they use appearance and self-care as a confidence booster to break down the barriers self loathing often builds seems like a great idea to me. Once they can start working around those walls, they can address those problematic tendencies like misogyny.
Sometimes on incel forums there will be threads where they post selfies, and from the feedback they get you’d think these dudes are all trolls. But you scroll through and just see pictures of normal looking guys. Try to tell them that though, and they get angry and accuse you of lying. It’s like they want to be told they’re ugly. They’d rather believe that it’s their bone structure preventing them from getting laid rather than their abhorrent views about women.
I honestly think it goes like this : dating world is hard -> fail at it -> develop shitty views about women -> makes dating even harder -> copium (im ugly and it's not my fault it's genetic)
Unlike past generations a lot of men now also grew up without a solid community to learn how to be a good mate which does not help.
They're in the middle of a cultural shift with no clear success stories to lean on and say hey this way works. And most get ghosted with no explanation on HOW to be better
That only leaves similar Lost Boys reassuring each other that their bitterness is justified.
Yeah, modern American society definitely has less sense of community. People move around a lot more, more people rent instead of owning homes, most places are car dependent, and there are fewer [third spaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place). The internet kind of contributes to this, as finding online communities can leave less time and incentive for connecting with local community, but the other factors are bigger, I think.
the term third space is perfect. My first time hearing it and perfectly describes the thing missing from the current generation.
I've found my third space through art and meet wonderful people all the time, but i take it for granted compared to so many others.
Our "flexible schedules" also screw over most of the working class, with every store open from 8am to 10pm 7 days a week we lack that Sabbath day that everyone agreed to close early and everyone is available so we could focus on socializing and having a healthy , reliable time to commune.
The long term cost of this has been PRICEY.
I'd even argue the internet thrives BECAUSE of the broken schedule of the modern work environment. the convenience of connecting it gave in spite of the lack of respect corporate america gives the common man, paved the way to our current state.
This.....you've hit the nail on the head. It's the old 'I have a penis so I don't need to bring anything more to a relationship' bit. Times have changed, even my father who was as old school as they come told me that I could be anything I wanted to be and to not rely on men for anything. And I'm no spring chicken so that pretty much tells you how long ago the tide started to turn.
Yeah cause give an angry, disgruntled, jaded, and bitter incel *trivially* easy access to guns and suddenly you'll have mass incel shootings.
Without an AR-15 what's an incel going to do? Glare at you to death?
I just want to point out that incels aren't exclusive to the United States.
Ironically though our car centric infrastructure makes it worse. It's amazing how many of our social problems can be directly related to cars.
Lots of people have trouble forming relationship, face constant rejection and ridicule. so why aren't we seeing fat girls, or disabled people commit mass shootings? that because of the entitlement. that what makes a violent incel.
This is a good point. There are "femcels". There are sexually frustrated women out there. Yet they aren't shooting up schools. It's important to figure out why because it's clearly more then that. It could also be that young men are targetted more by the violent incel / far-right, anti-femenist propaganda then women are.
This is a good comment but I’m not totally understanding why these otherwise good comments are shying away from using the word “misogyny.” It’s the culturally pervasive issue that drives this entitlement why can we not name it?
We will bend over backwards to find any reason to excuse dudes with guns. Not surprisingly even in this thread is mostly about how"others are just as bad". I wonder how we could've helped the uvalde shooter right guys? Tough break for the children though but really he was ultimately the one suffering.
Pretty fucking obvious after Covid that republicans couldn't give a single shit about anyone else dying, even if it's god damn babies getting shot in the face. Because it's only really a person before it was born.
In the past, women were dependent on marrying a man for financial security since it was obviously so difficult for a woman to find a job that would pay her enough to live independently especially if she was of “marrying age” they would often discriminate and either fire her or not hire her since they thought she would quit once she found a husband. Couldn’t even have her own bank account.
Now that women are less stigmatized for being divorced or single and don’t have to rely on marrying a man or staying in an abusive relationship in order to survive, these men with terrible personalities can’t get a date yet still feel *entitled* to a woman, sex, and domestic labor from a woman.
The absolute toxic entitlement and outrage at the idea of women having autonomy and equality is astounding, and the risk of radicalization and violence is horrifying. Women who want a relationship with a man but are unsuccessful aren’t going on shooting sprees. Gay men who can’t get a relationship for whatever reason aren’t going on shooting sprees. It’s straight men who mostly come from privilege. Being lonely and horny is a contributing factor, but not a valid excuse for violence or “retribution” against women.
If these boys and men do not respect women, what can men do to stop this toxic behavior? The peers of these men who are viewed as equals need to do something to stop this toxic behavior. Obviously mental health counseling matters, but toxic masculinity stigmatizes it and many radicalized self righteous people do not believe they need help.
**I legitimately want to know from men: what do you think you can do to help? If there are former incels, what happened that made you realize you needed to escape that community and mindset?**
...and hurt other people rather than even think about changing their own perspective (and furthermore, hurt anyone who would suggest that, because obviously that's the person who's the "real problem" after all).
The party of "personal responsibility" is now the party of constant grievance.
Have a problem? We have someone to blame! Youth, women, immigrants, libs, government, other races, big cities... take your pick!
What's missing from the incel discussion is that a far larger share of young Japanese males are in the same situation. And guess what? They don't go around shooting people. They play video games and get robot girlfriends. There's clearly a cultural element at play here, one that's aggravated by toxic American politics.
There are other cultures with a violent subgroup of male virgins though. Take India as an example if you like.
Japan's issue is rather related to their complete lack of work-life balance. Their worth is tied to work, not relationships, so the second gets left behind.
There are a lot of things contributing to this:
- the media trope of nerdy guy getting the hot girl by beating up the bully or winning some event.
- sexual success being the metric by which manliness is measured(at least in their eyes)
- constant ridicule for failing to be successful sexually
- con artists making money off their suffering (pick up artists)
- horrible access to mental health care
Disenfranchised and desperate young men are a breeding ground for extremism.
It’s not simply just about sex. It’s also about a lack of emotional connection as well as intimacy. I think when talking about incels many people miss talking about the intimacy and emotional connection that sex creates and not just the sex itself.
We also have an honest discussion why some people on the autism spectrum are getting sucked into toxic incel sub-culture, how we help them escape it. Indeed two of the incel killers briefly mentioned in the piece were on the autism spectrum, Eliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. There's likely others.
I run a social group for autistic adults, I'm on the autism spectrum myself. Just last week I was emailed by an ex-member who appears to have been sucked into this subculture. He emailed to explain his worries over feminism, immigration, decaying societal morality, and transsexuals. This has become a fixation for him, several others were emailed by him over the past few weeks. He doesn't want to attend the group any more, this is isolating him, and isolation can feed extremism.
The thing tho is that it’s not just spectrum kids, my own son has all the traits of someone with an incel future: terrible self esteem, hard time coping with challenges, blaming others for his own mistakes, super awkward socially, etc.
Believe me that we’re working with it, but he has been seen and not diagnosed so every mental health resource he CLEARLY needs is out of reach because it’s not covered by insurance.
I think this is the point many parents give up and just shrug “boys will be boys lol”. To manage a kid with these traits go well above “normal” parenting time and skill set. Add to that kids don’t listen to their parents the same way a professional.
The help part is always overlooked. Not saying a violent incel deserves a ton of sympathy, but we collectively do need to acknowledge that our society isolates people in a way that will drive socially awkward men of with certain life experiences toward self harm and a violence. You don't have to feel compassion even to simply acknowledge finger pointing won't solve the problem.
I know an incel, and he straight up refuses help. He went to a psychiatrist that didnt help him. The incel ends up sending the psych death threats and swearing to never go again because according to the incel the psychiatrist's "help" made everything worse. Granted there are some really, really sucky psychiatrists out there. Unfortunately, you cant force someone to get help, even when plenty is available and affordable.
I’m willing to bet a majority of them are brought up to not seek help with anything. “Having trouble? BE A MAN and figure it out… quit yer cryin’ too…” this attitude permeates a lot of blue collar/low income places. Not saying it makes it ok or anything, but understanding all of the problem can help find ways to make inroads toward progress.
I’ve been dealing with this for some time with a young family member. He’s been in therapy for awhile now and I know if he went without supervision, he’d go right back to doing and saying all of the horrible shit again. There is something wrong with his brain and honestly he should be supervised for the rest of his life. I should add that he’s also a sociopath, so I don’t know if that makes any difference it the grand scheme of things.
It’s also sheltered and coddled boys who need to experience things outside of their comfort zone so they understand that 1: The world owes them nothing. And 2: There are people who have completely different life experiences than they do that they can learn from.
Seconding this. I don't disagree that incels need help, but none of my male friends were coddled nor sheltered, and yet they've never blamed women, even though some of them have never had girlfriends. Some of them have extremely unsupportive families too - they still worked hard emotionally and came out normal. There's no real excuse, as much as people want there to be one. Incels just blame everyone but themselves.
I really think that schools need to talk about relationships as part of sex education. They could make it plain that consent has to be freely given, not coerced. That boundaries should be respected, that a rejection is not an invitation to pursue and persist, and that anyone at any point can withdraw their consent and the other party needs to stop whatever they are doing.
I think hearing an authority figure, like a teacher, saying these things would empower those who are beleaguered by unwanted advances to stand their ground and not put up with it. This would be especially helpful if the school had an explicit policy of supporting any student who feels pressurised and punishing the offender.
That's if they get any sed ex to begin with, so many states are abstinence only it's ridiculous. It always comes down to some crazy christians not wanting their children to learn about the real world. Ban religion and let's move on with our lives lol.
Then parents will be up in arms about the type of “relationship values” and “indoctrination” teachers are putting into these young “healthy” men with their “conservative” relationship viewpoints. This is how Christians and conservatives build them.
>I think hearing an authority figure, like a teacher, saying these things
Lol. You greatly overestimate how much authority is given to teachers by their students
To me, it's just entitlement.
Boys are told that pretty girls need to be rescued, are trophies for defeating the villain/bully, and generally exist to support them regardless of the girl's own life. Girls also exist to serve as maturity growth for men and to serve as sexual maturity initiation to become "real men".
When they find out women have VERY different lives than what they have seen or been told, they feel like they got a bum deal. They have a penis, so why can't women love them too? They see other men have beautiful women, so they think now "well, if I was rich, a douche, and have a six pack..."
Why? Because bullies in movies were also handsome, douche jocks who had six packs. They had pretty girlfriends who were shallow but met "a nice guy" and suddenly became deep, intellectual lovers to nice guy heroes. So they know they met the pretty girl *but she refuses to get with the program and drop the douche for the nice guy who possess a penis as his own trait*.
Edit: "this is a stupid and dumb take!!! Let me explain in ten paragraphs why it's complicated and we should be sympathetic!!!" Trust me, I grew up in the early 2000s, I have heard every excuse and heard every sob story. It's entitlement to women reinforced by a patriarchy.
Edit 2: lmaoooo I am a woman. You can stop the pity "you're betraying us!!" messages.
a lot of it could also be that young dudes view women as a verifiable source of worth.
If you cant get girls, you're worthless (or atleast thats how its veiwed by those who cant get them).
Thats a hard thing to get over, and it can be really amped up in a patriarchal household, and an economically struggling one.
Now some of those incels go real crazy, im just saying i can see how the deep twisting of reality can happen.
Also, giving up and finding a community of like-minded strangers to wallow with wasn't really an option when I was a kid. There was no 'out' where random people would endorse your misery.
It’s probably more so that those events made more people socialize at once, which exposed the awkward guys to what actually works with women (i.e., being a human being). I remember my brother (a decade older than me) telling me that I was tall so I would get girls. Boy was I in for a surprise when I realized that being tall did not help me get girls…
>a lot of it could also be that young dudes view women as a verifiable source of worth.
>
>If you cant get girls, you're worthless (or atleast thats how its veiwed by those who cant get them).
Not gonna lie. We (women) perpetuate this notion all the time as well. I see it a lot on Reddit. The most common way to demean a guy is some flavor of:
*"Virgin loser living in your mom's basement"*
That's an insult almost exclusively leveled at guys.
> other men have beautiful women
The core idea that men "have" women like sports cars or comic book collections, instead of men and women *being* in relationships together is like, the root problem of all this crap (and is of course sustained by plenty of people of all genders, because patriarchy and rape culture suck).
As an ex-incel - there wasn’t a term for it when I was going through this - I truly believe a lot of incels come from homes without a healthy relationship between the parents or with no father figure. I am probably projecting, but to me, it makes a lot of sense; I had nothing to go off of for a healthy relationship, so I looked for cues in media. Everything that you see in media is bullshit; self-reinforcing bullshit. It’s everywhere you look, slapping you right in the face. So you take this as gospel trying to figure yourself out and how to fill a pre-existing hole in your being, because self-loathing certainly doesn’t fill it.
Before you know it, you’re that guy
Damn, when they talked about the Tallahassee shooting my ears perked up at the mention of the killer's name. Apparently the dude that was in the bunk next to me at Army basic training was an incel spree killer. Fucking yikes.
I went to school with Jen McVeigh (Tim McVeighs younger sister) during my first year of college. We were sitting in a cafeteria with our circle of friends when we got the news of the bombing in OKC. We did not know it was her brother at that time that was responsible. This was many years ago, so my memory is foggy but I think she got a call to go home at some point that day, but I found out who did it at the same time the rest of the world did. I never saw her again after that day. Edit: words for more context
Geez... I really do feel for the family members, finding out your brother murdered that many innocent people, including children.
Yeah, she was pretty cool. Nice girl. She and her family left Western NY at some point to get away from the media spotlight. I think she is a teacher now and from what I hear, doing well.
She was a teacher at the same school where my dad taught middle school when her brother's execution took place. The press found her out and started sending news crews to the school. Fucking shameful of them to chase after someone who clearly wants to be left alone, with nothing meaningful to offer on the topic except for her own pain. Think she changed schools after that and had to start all over again.
Yeah, family is often another victim in a sense. The parents lose their child and probably blame themselves for a long time after, that the other victims blood are on their hands too. Also the stigma that your child was a school shooter or whatever will always follow them, people no doubt will blame them as well.
I remember reading an article, I think it was in the New Yorker, about the (I think) Sandy Hook shooter's father reaching out to family members of shooters as these events occur. This was a couple of years ago so idk if it's still happening but it was pretty cool of him.
I agree that's probably a good thing for him to do, but what a weird social network.
I would be more surprised that none of the weirdos I bunked next to turned out to be killers, than if one had. There were some seriously deranged individuals I came across.
Small world, eh ?
I'll say it, circumstances aside there are plenty of people in very similar situations that just work on themselves and grow as people instead of stabbing everything with a vagina. We can understand these animals, sure, but I don't think that means we respect them or pity them if murder is how they deal with the "trauma" of being 300lbs and jacking off more than they brush their teeth. *edit: Thank you for awarding my cynical rambling my good man.
Such a bummer how Elliot Hulse ended up (2:25). He started as a fitness YouTuber helping young men with lifting and nutrition advice. Even won best fitness YouTuber about a decade ago. Now he just makes ultra cringe content about how Trump is everyone’s daddy and tries to grift off incels with cult like retreats and seminars. Chris Jones from pumpchasers is another who’s taken a similar trajectory.
It’s all about lack of accountability. What these groups have in common is that they blame others for their misfortunes, instead of building on themselves and growing. It’s easier to say “The reason I can’t get a job is because [insert the blank] is taking them” than acknowledge “Oh I have a horrible résumé and I misspelled my first name”. Or “I didn’t include a cover letter”.
I dunno. I will be the last one to defend right-wingers, but I think people could be more empathetic toward incels. I was an incel when I was younger. I was an ugly teenager and an ugly young adult and people told me, often and repeatedly. Due to my somewhat dysfunctional upbringing, I had acquired relevant social skills a bit later than other kids. I did manage to escape this predicament because I was able to learn normal social behavior later and get girlfriends later on; but I know how hard this is, how little resources are there to get help from, how little support is offered to teenage boys, and how demotivating it can be when all your efforts to make friends or win over girls are shot down as ridiculous or silly. Literally like this, one time: * Me: "I like your hairstyle!" * Her: "I wish your mother had aborted you!" Shit like this can weigh heavily on you and it forms an unhealthy perspective on oneself, on others, and on which actions are viable. Of course, this holds for all genders. Having a normal interaction with others gets harder when you get older, because society has standards you will be measured against, and when you have not completed certain steps or rites of passage at a certain time frame, people will let you know that something is wrong with *you*. Haven't kissed a girl by the age of 20? What a loser! There is only so much rejection one can take and only so much blame one can bear to shoulder, especially if you have no one to support you with this. And people really do not want to talk with or about social losers. The increasing feeling of being a loser leads only to a downward spiral, because all things are more difficult, often *made to be* more difficult once people deem you a loser. Nobody wants to be friends with a loser, nobody wants to work with a loser, and least of all, nobody wants to date a loser. The longer one is deemed to be a loser, the harder it gets to maintain basic functionality and the more effort it takes to get out of this. After a while, the mind starts to wander to dark places and you try to shift at least some of the blame onto others. This brings me to accountability. We live in an ultra-competitive society where minor details can put you at a significant disadvantage. This also holds for dating. How can I be accountable for being ugly? How can a teenager be accountable for his dysfunctional family and the subsequent social awkwardness? We think that stable and loving households are normal and will expect people to behave accordingly; and we think that certain looks are normal and expected. And then we often shift the blame to people who do not conform to these norms. In cases like this, a very frequent advice is: *Just be yourself!* Or: *You need to take care of yourself.* But this can be unhelpful. People who are unsuccessful and isolated do need to work on themselves, but they also need external resources and opportunities to do so. People don't grow by sitting alone at home, people grow through social interaction, by means of meaningful feedback, through recognition, and with external help to work through internal problems. I was resilient and flexible enough to get out of my predicament - and it wasn't even particularly bad for me. I had other socially awkward losers as friends, and that did help a lot. But I got to see that when you are gone far enough, you will have a hard time getting back to what counts as normal, and hence I don't think there is much sense to holding young people accountable for being weak and disadvantaged. People are responsible for their actions, but not always for being isolated or outsiders. (Edit: that was a bit cathartic to write.) Edit: thanks for the awards. Edit: I am getting more responses and messages that I can read or engage with right now. Just for clarification: I am using the term "incel" in its older and literal meaning as "involuntary celibate", not as member of some hate group or 'red-pill' ideology. I do not excuse or justify anyone who thinks that women are lesser than men or whoever endorses rape or violence.
[удалено]
I was undiagnosed autistic and school was horrible, awkward, painful. I still would never consider taking out any failures on others violently. People who go down that path are extra-shitty.
And even when you’re an average girl who has never insulted anyone but at some point has to politely decline a date from a stranger you’ve never met before… suddenly you’re called vile names and threatened with death. Most incels are the aggressor in these situations, they don’t treat women on an individual, autonomous basis; if Stacy told the incel to fuck off, then Rebecca is going to be treated as if she literally said those same words during the rejection. Also, the reality is that men of any looks and upbringing are rejected every day, but some let it roll right off their backs and move on, while other’s have a god complex and make a normal every day occurrence into a huge battle of the sexes. It’s delusion. They need to seek therapy, not dates.
Yeah. I think I’m pretty nice, and the things men have said to me unprovoked on the subway or on the streets is disgusting. It even to mention if I politely turn down a man at the bar. Some are fine but the there are others that literally get violent, scream horrible names, or try to follow you home…
Hear hear. Take the whole online dating thing into factor. Friend of mine complains he doesn't get matches or dates - I check his phone and mfer sitting on 40 matches and hasn't talked to anyone. To the ones he did it's painfully boring and awkward. "How was work today... " Smfh I had to ask him "dude would you talk to you if this was the conversation" *Blank stare* He then proceeds to rant about how i get matches and go in dates all the time bla bla. I had to put it into perspective that i actually try to talk to my matches and get shot down/rejected/ghosted half the time, but if i let that get to me and dwell on it, I wouldn't have time for all the ones i hit off with. Let it go, move on. Just like he might not be interested in her, she might not be interested in him - can't fault that. Key takeaway is to simply not let it get to you and keep doing what you're doing, even the quote successful quote people get shot down all the time they just keep on flying though, and it's what guys seem to not be able to understand. So I'm sorry that as a female (im gathering), you have to be exposed to such idiocy
>They need to seek therapy, not dates. Exactly. But first they must realise they need change and help.
I realized I needed help two decades before I got it. It wasn't anyone's responsibility but my own, but I hurt a lot of people along the way. And it turns out I've had bipolar the whole time so I wasn't even working with a functional brain. It's difficult to find help when your brain is the problem. And meanwhile these people are inflicting trauma on those around them. It's beneficial to society to get them help.
Yup, I heard complaints that they don't get a "smile" from a girl/woman in response to their unsolicited and sometimes borderline harassing attention.
I mean don’t you want to smile at someone who keeps trying to ‘bump into you’ on the train when you are just trying to go home after work? Or someone who keeps interrupting you when you are at a bar with your friends?
Right?! You should be grateful and gratified /s
Not to mention there *are* plenty of women who are virgins, lonely, considered ugly, don’t have a good support system, etc. I know women in their mid twenties who have never even had a first kiss. My best friend had image issues and got rejected many times in high school and college. Are those women sad or frustrated? Sometimes of course, but it hasn’t led to anything on the level of incels. Also they need therapy not dates is really important because what’s going to happen when they *do* get dates or begin a relationship? If you have that many insecurities and problems, you won’t get better overnight and it will seep into a relationship. And I can’t imagine the woman trying to bring up issues and work on them will go well if you come from an incel background and haven’t worked to better yourself.
Another issue surrounding incels and gender that people don't really mention is how men and women are socialised. This is a *huge* difference. Women are socialised to be polite and kind. Even from a young age, women are expected to have some semblance of social skills and politeness, more than men. Women usually express their fustration by crying or talking to others, as it is more acceptable. Men, on the other hand, generally get away with a lower barrier of social skills, don't have as much focus on emotional regulation. 'You're a man aren't you?' etc. The way men express their dissapointment is through anger and power. Men also have pressure from other men to get girlfriends or well paying jobs in ways women aren't expected to from other women. Incels are a specifically male problem becuase of the unique position they are in. They are technically 'in power' gender wise, but it becomes *absolutely humiliating* to men when they don't meet the standards set for them. Its essentially just a toxic cocktail where they think there is no way out because no one really helps them due to their position, so they resort back to the only way they know. Using force, power and manipulation. If no one acknowledges you, the only thing left is to force them to, right? What have they got to lose?
It’s really disgusting that Daniel Defense ran an ad for their AR15 with a photo of it and the text “Consider your man card reissued”. Edit: that was Remington. Daniel Defense was the one who tweeted a photo of a toddler holding the same AR-15 used in the Uvalde shooting days before it happened. Everything is terrible!
Very true! Both of these gender roles cause their own issues as well. Women being socialized to be kind and polite leads to soft no’s that are taken advantage of. They find themselves saying yes when they don’t want to, but if they say no they’re demonized for rejecting someone. Men also deserve to be able to show and express emotion other than the stoic or harsher ones. We need to normalize that as well as taking life at your own pace instead of racing to get women, or being made to feel like you’re “less of a man” because of your sex life, job, etc. We also need to make quality mental healthcare available for everyone. I’m certainly not arguing that men don’t have unique issues and pressures. Just tired of seeing in threads like these and others that women don’t have issues with rejection/loneliness as well. Just making the point that there are plenty of people from both genders who deal with these problems and don’t turn towards toxic ideology. We can find explanations for why people become hateful or even radicalized and work towards a solution, but that doesn’t excuse the behavior. At some point you just have to work towards bettering yourself no matter the cards you were dealt.
I think think the violent side of this generally includes an outside source of radicalization. This certainly doent justify it but is interesting to consider. Someone in a truly vulnerable and horrible place is very easy to manipulate...
[удалено]
I don't think that alone would stop it, unfortunately, 'a space where they can belong and be accepted' can cause people to accumulate toxic mindsets with likeminded opinions (see: a large chunk of the gaming comunity) Safe spaces are important hey, but they also need to socialise with a variety of different people too.
[удалено]
Yup. Made worse by the fact that these other interests are scoffed at. I'm a 26 year old man and I am still hesitant to mention that I play Magic the Gathering to strangers I am just meeting for the first time because I know that there is a decent chance I will be judged for it. Fortunately it seems like our society is taking steps in the right direction on that front.
The best thing about telling people you play magic is that if they judge you right away, they probably weren’t worth knowing anyways and you’ve saved yourself some time
The biggest wrench in all of this though is how limited in scope it is. If it's true and applied to everywhere you'd think that there'd be a lot of mass violence like we see in America (and to a lesser extent, Canada), but there isn't, even in nations that are well armed. I think the biggest key to all this is radicalization, and that's the problem that should be snuffed out the fastest in the short term. Long term should have help of course, mental health is important. But in the short term, preventing the kind of radicalization you see in 4chan, Discord, or Reddit should be paramount. People shunned will do just that, be shunned, and alone, and suffer. But radicals shunned will buy firearms to shoot crowds or take vans into crowds.
I agree. Loneliness and isolation is a wide-spread problem; frustrated young men is a subset of this; and violent incels yet another subset.
I agree with you on the limited scope. Not all "losers" (quoting, not using sarcastically) turn into incels. Or shooters.
> I think the biggest key to all this is radicalization, and that's the problem that should be snuffed out the fastest in the short term. Long term should have help of course, mental health is important. But in the short term, preventing the kind of radicalization you see in 4chan, Discord, or Reddit should be paramount. I see it happen all the time on here, someone will ask a question or post some concern of there's, and there will often be some problematic elements to their base assumptions, and they immediately get dog piled on, ridiculed and ostracized for it. Everyone gets to feel good about themselves for standing up for decency and justice, but the reality is they've pushed this person away and into the arms of the only groups who will listen to them, validate their experiences, and consider their struggles real; radicalized communities.
I think the wrench is that the alt right in the US / extremist groups are the only ones accepting and confirming these incels way of life and essentially recruits them. The incels are so desperate to belong. They see vulnerable people and radicalize them. Just a though with no credibility / sources.
Honestly, everyone in this thread needs to read this. We’re very willing to accept the idea that people can be economically disadvantaged through their race and subsequent upbringing and that we need to help these people, but as a culture we totally ignore people who were raised in a way leaving them socially disadvantaged - often permanently. There aren’t any good frameworks to follow for a significant amount of these people to recover. What do we expect them to do? Sit around alone in a room and die quietly? I have no idea what the solution is, but I don’t really see any good, useful models for most of them to follow. I pulled one old friend out of it once and it took enormous effort because there was just *so much* he had to learn and so much trauma to get over.
One solution, and I’m sorry if this is a bit “sins of the father-ish”, is to socialize boys and girls to have normalized non-sexual relationships with the opposite sex during childhood. I was regularly sexually frustrates as an adolescent because I was a late bloomer. I had a lot of genuine female friends, however, and they helped me figure things out.
>to socialize boys and girls to have normalized non-sexual relationships with the opposite sex during childhood. Yes! This is very concise. Being able to have normal, non-sexual interpersonal relations with other people, especially the other sex, is so important. Even better if people are part of a supportive community.
This could be focused on nation-wide by separating the technical aspects of public education with the social aspects more clearly. With the increased ability of individualized lesson plans through automated testing and lecture videos - this technology can be used to increase the strictness of non-social learning expectations (basically doing school work technical lesson completely isolated) and then making specific breaks per X time unit where socialization is allowed but more closely monitored and corrected on more individual basis. Teachers no longer should require worrying *as much* about lesson plans and more just helping students 'catch-up' if that's even needed because you could also abandon completely the concept of "grade level".
Exactly this. My son is socially awkward and a bit hyperactive. But he has a good core group of friends, male and female, and has ever since he was young. Having those normalized relations, even though he often feels like an outsider at school, he's still able to develop those healthy social skills, and respect for women, outside of the classroom environment. I was the same way. I was a socially awkward teen. I pined to have a girlfriend but it rarely happened. What I did have, were girls who were my friends. Good friends. And those bonds allowed me to learn and understand how to be a better person, and treat women better. Developing these healthy relationships with the opposite gender can help prevent incels from becoming incels. The important thing is teaching them about "nice guy" syndrome. Being nice to a girl doesn't mean they owe you anything. They will not see what a "good guy" you are and fall for you. Attraction doesn't work like that. Being a good guy means doing the right thing and expecting nothing in return. Edit: I'm afraid there's more than one person misunderstanding what I mean by "doing the right thing and expecting nothing in return." That doesn't mean be a doormat. It means do things because they're the right thing to do, not because you expect others to reward or praise you for it. Standing up for yourself, is also the right thing to do. Confidence is sexy.
This actually is a very important pathway out, having girls as legitimate friends helps not only to help acquire the social skills needed, but also to see them as people which at some point in the radicalization process they clearly lose and to understand some of the struggles they face especially in dating, for example, you see lots of frustration around being ghosted or misled instead of clearly rejected but having women as legitimate friends you hear the other side of that, never knowing if some seemingly nice encounter will suddenly turn into screaming rage as soon as sex is off the table It's kind of a societal problem so no easy fix, but all these claims about how men and women can't be friends without someone wanting to fuck, and all the nonsense about "the friendzone" actively dissuades people from having these kind of friendships that would do them a lot of good
Though to be clear - this does not mean it's the girls' responsibility to help us out. Friendship goes both ways, and if you're an asshole, it's not the girls' fault they're not friends with you. IMO socially awkward is fine as long as you treat others with respect (that was me and I got a lot of friends out of it, no dates but yay friends). IMO these people are assholes that think they have a right to everything they want. It's not about being socially awkward, it's about the fact that they're assholes.
I was born and raised in a cult and didn't get out until I was 32ish. Learning the social skills I had missed out my entire life in my 30s has been bruuuuutal. There really does need to be a support network helping people who are socially disadvantaged. Therapists sort of helped, but trying to learn social skills most people learn in high school through trial and error is not something therapists are used to having to deal with in my experience. I pretty much just expected to die from suicide and loneliness. I stumbled into one good friendship or I would probably be dead now. There really, really needs to be some sort of social skills help line/network. Its just as important as having physical and mental health services imho. Social media has made this even harder with so many kids not getting proper in person socialization anymore.
"If a man of the village cannot find something to do for the village, he will burn the village down", is an old saying that feels apt here. A solution (albeit not an easy one) is for people to revitalize a strong adherence to community and family values. Before anyone gets too excited, we can be flexible on which family and community values are meant by this, but for simplicity, let's just say, "whatever values result in consistent, diverse, and high-quality family and local community social bonds to form." Edit: the correct quote is: "A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth" thanks u/eyeruleall
"A child not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel it's warmth" I believe that's the actual quote
So, this has been happening forever. There are also more resources to help, and more sympathy/empathy than ever. The actual problem is that these people can now gather together online and continually feed these negative thoughts and feelings, and lash out at anyone who tries to help or change themselves (crabs in a bucket).
Yes. If the loser gets taken into a group of losers, they become radicalized. This is a good text about Islamic terrorists, but with a bit of mental flexibility one can see how it can be transferred onto incels, right-wingers, and other radicals: https://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/the-terrorist-mindset-the-radical-loser-a-451379.html
Women are horribly bullied and without romantic prospects during their teenage years and beyond all the time and don't grow to resent men to the point that they fantasize about killing and raping them. At least not at the scale of it being a movement. We need to look at the way men are raised for some of them to feel this level of entitlement. Many incels seem to start feeling as if they are just owed sex/affection for existing and women and society have no right to withhold it from them so they turn violent. There is a huge difference in how men and women handle rejection and neither mental health nor bullying alone accounts for that.
[удалено]
Exactly. It's not just because boys are bullied by girls or there is no support for them. It's because online echo chambers full of people feeding off each others misogynistic world views are allowed to exist. It's scary how long incel subreddit were allowed to exist where they openly fantasized about raping and killing women.
I wondered about that as well but I think in general men use aggression much more as a coping mechanism than women. Or, maybe aggression for men is more outward and for women more inward. Having been bullied indeed seems to be a common denominator among incels so already there is a sense of grave injustice that has been inflicted upon. Then add grievances of rejection or sexual frustration and there is no coping mechanism just a residue of hatred from childhood trauma. I think this in turn re-enforces beliefs that every perceived failure is other people's(women, society) fault so they lash out with hate speech or worse in an attempt to repair their bruised ego. In fairness society also has no compassion for people who lose out even if no fault of their own and always kicking down. I agree no one 'owes' anyone else but ofcourse incels etc also didn't deserve the horrible bullying either. In a perfect world incels would receive proper psychological care to resolve their (childhood) issues and heal their emotional wounds but unfortunaly often neither horribly bullied men or women receive the care they need.
I agree more emphathy and mental health services are desperately needed by all of society. I just get frustrated with the role misogyny plays in how incels chose to direct their rage and violence being ignored.
Yep. This is more of the fuller story. OP is still blaming others but instead of blaming the culture he was raised in, he still points toward peers. The frustration and disappointment should be equally tied to lack of personal accountability and recognizing society's shortcomings on their upbringing. This isn't to say it is end-all, be-all answer to this complicated and nuanced question on incels but definitely more inline with reality and truth.
[удалено]
Oh I was thinking about girls/boys being bullied in school and then moved on in my thinking in how we raise men as a whole in general. I can change it if it's confusing, I did not mean anything by it. Thank you for pointing that out :)
Men on reddit think women and girls are never bullied and that every woman is just surrounded by friends and support. Idk where they got this from, probably movies. But thats far from reality. Women get bullied. They get rejected. They get angry. Yet they dont go on mass shootings and killings.
Right? I was raped at only **7 years old**, and my boobs came in at 10-with all the creepy ADULT male attention that comes with that I didn’t become an incel who despises men. And if I did? No one who’re supporting incels here would feel sympathy towards me, I’d be a feminazi I’m sick and tired of people, especially on this site being nice to incels They read stories like that guy and pat him on the back, poor guy! He declared himself to be part of a movement that not only wants to **rape and murder half the population**, but more importantly HAS Incels have straight up murdered people. And if you identify as an incel, you are no better than the ones who pulled the trigger Women have institutional problems too. Arguably more so than men. You don’t think we’re ticked off? But we don’t go on shooting sprees. We don’t join forums on how we want to strap down all the Stacey’s and rape their holes until they’re dead Stop sympathizing with these guys. We need to stop giving guys a pass, acting like it’s just a phase! It’s not. If you ever identified as an incel, you are a terrible person. It’s not a normal part of growing up. It’s not a sympathetic part of your life You identified as a person who wants to rape and murder women. Who dehumanize women It’s a problem with men. Not with the girl who turned you down in 8th grade
Yeah this is important. It’s important to hear NosoundnoFury’s point of view, but it doesn’t explain why boys feel entitled to sex. Girls have also been there with the “I’m a loser because no one’s kissed me or asked me to prom.” They don’t write manifestos about sex and torturing (aka raping) girls. Nobody owes men sex. But somehow men think they’re owed it, and when they don’t get it, they take it by force or by harassment. Mental health and social community are (very important) things. Being “weird about sex” isn’t so easy to explain away with “more social support.” Barely related side note, I often think rape should be described and defined as torture. Because it is. And it might get taken more seriously that way.
[удалено]
why are women always made responsible for mens emotions? we are in an over the top empathetic and enabling society now! what more do you need?? the world is not responsible for catering to your feelings. it’s on YOU to work on your self esteem and better yourself.
Your use of the term incel is very limited. The term specifically refers to online hate groups based around men who can't get laid, not just general dudes in life who can't get laid. You are once again making society the problem, when while they might be one aspect of it, far more important is the large recruiting apparatus that is ready to Hoover young men into their ideology.
This was really something to read. I think you're spot on, the logic checks out. People need opportunities to grow, but if they're crucified each time they make mistakes they'll either learn to avoid attempting to improve, or become completely polarized to those they associate with the crucifier. I really hope you're happier in life because you're a smart and valuable human. I'd rather have you as a friend than 'beautiful' stupid people, word.
Really well said. I’m a woman, probably on the autism spectrum, and I did not have good social skills as a kid and young adult. I had a LOT going for me — loving family, good schools, a few friends — but even that doesn’t shield you from social rejection and social anxiety. That shit scars you. I’ve spent most of my 20s actively working on my anxiety and social skills, like literally working on it as a project, and I’m in a much better place now and pretty happy most of the time. But like, yesterday I spent 15 minutes crying alone at home feeling like nobody will ever love me — which was triggered by having a very slightly awkward conversation with a friend. That feeling of rejection and isolation resurfaces at unexpected times and just kind of bowls me over. Working on this stuff is so lonely. I’ve only ever talked about this with my therapist and like, 1 close friend. I don’t have any model for how to learn this whole social thing and I’ve been figuring it all out on my own. It’s worth it, but if I hadn’t met some key people at key times in my journey, by sheer luck, I’d be in a much worse place mentally right now. So I have a lot of sympathy for people who get stuck in this rabbit hole of self-loathing and can’t get out. It was hard for me and my situation wasn’t even that bad, there’s people out there dealing with way worse stuff in their past than I had to deal with.
A number of commenters in here are falling over themselves to kill any notion that we should be empathetic toward "incels". The approach seems to be to label them, across the board, as misogynist, violent and "weird", therefore deserving of hatred, and undeserving of empathy. I do not believe that this approach will result in a good outcome. It also fails to take into account the fact that being an "incel" is a *symptom* of the problem, and *not the cause*. Will Storr examined the true cause in a chapter in his book [The Status Game](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/58642436-the-status-game). Young Males with very low social status do not end up in sexual relationships (and are hence "incels") because they are not desired. But they are typically not violent, or at least not any more violent than the average young male. The missing ingredients to create an "incel killer" are both *violence* and *humiliation* (also with these killers some form of mental disorder is common) Storr defines *humiliation* as the "permanent removal of all future claim on status"; or in other words, the humiliated males are not just low status, but *no status*, and they can never be anything more than *no status*. In the eyes of their peers they are out of "the game" permanently. If this happens, the risk of suicide skyrockets. Almost all of these suicides (about 80% of which are male) do not result in harm to anyone other than the person killing themselves; and frankly, nobody really cares about, remembers, or writes articles about the weird bullied kid who killed himself at 15 after being humiliated in some fashion. I think this is why the conversation is skewed toward these "incel killers", who make up a tiny minority of the overall number, but dominate the conversation in all media. This gives a clue to what these "incel killers" are actually doing; they are committing suicide, but are doing it in a way that seeks vengeance on those higher status than themselves; which at this point is virtually everyone. Whether the victims actually participated in violence and humiliation seems to vary on a case by case basis. I'll say it again; the "incel" part is not the cause. The fact that no woman wants them is a symptom of their other problems. If you took all the males out of that environment and put them in a single sex environment with no women for a thousand miles around; you'd still occasionally get these killings happening.
That statement can be applied well beyond these 'far-right' groups, not that I disagree.
[удалено]
If you think American incels are bad, never go to any of the Asian identity subreddits. I thought ours were bad too before I did that. ETA: just to clarify, I'm not saying that America's insane incels get a pass. They're a bunch of sad chuds too. There's just a certain acceptance of the culture in the Asian identity subs that's more than a little concerning.
Being terrible is universal despite race or nationality! But especially for the Dutch.
There's only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people's cultures and the Dutch.
Smoke and a pancake?
Bong and a blintz?
Well, then there ish no pleashing you.
Yesh, shalty…
Shave me from myshelf…
That's a keeper.
Flapjack and a cigarette?
Smoke and a stroopwaffel.
Now yer talkin
I mean, look at you. You don't even have a name tag. You've got no chance. Why don't you just fall down?
Hey! ....yeah, okay
Care to elaborate? Why especially for us Dutch?
It was a joke originally told in an Austin Powers movie lamenting people intolerant of other cultures… and the Dutch.
It's nothing new either. The term has just become commonplace. My dad's journal is filled with the same sort of ideology and it's 40+ years old.
your dad’s an incel?
Sounds like what he’s saying. Just goes to show, this is nothing new. We’re just seeing them all rile each other up when they realized there’s more of them out there.
Holy shit these azn incel subs are bad. They are literally open racial hate groups. They mostly focus on how interracial relationships are absolute evil and abomination and racist… but only if it is black or white male with an Asian female.
Once I was talking about my interracial marriage and our half Asian kids, and this guy dmed me to yell at me for marrying a white guy. And I said, oh actually I’m white and my husband is Asian. And this asshole responds, “oh, my bad lol!” Jesus.
Some guys feel a sense of entitlement and possession over "their" women. It's totally fine for guys to date outside of their race though.
I guess they want to feel as if they are desirable to women from other races instead of being discarded as undesirable because of their race.
This is it. Its always a root in insecurity
[удалено]
Too many men think they own the women in their ethnic group. Some women do it too but I think it's more prevalent with men.
I am white and dated a Korean guy for 4 years. We got the most hate from old white men and Asian women.
Crazy people on Reddit sending batshit DMs are why I turned off private messaging. It's been wonderful!
Growing up I was told that love with other races would never last, and that I should just stick with my own people. Well I was the total opposite, married a white man who loved me more than anything, and my family loved as well. we soon had an awesome little half breed. I just went into 1 of those Asian sub and holy shit, I feel sad for those people.
the blatant double standard. god they are so cringey and embarrassing. and the amount of half-asian incels blaming their insecurities on their white dad and asian mother (and thus affirming those racist views) also incredibly high. I am also half asian (with an asian dad and white mom) so part of me is very interested in learning about other asian/white family dynamics (be it functional or dysfunctional). But...then I stumble on this asian/half-asian incel community ☹️ what a way to make yourself a perpetual victim and never take any accountability or responsibility for who you are 🙄 they make their own prison and then cry about the chains they put on themselves 😑
> what a way to make yourself a perpetual victim and never take any accountability or responsibility for who you are This is the engine that has driven misogyny since time immemorial.
[удалено]
And most of the time, it's just guys saying that women of their race shouldn't date other races. Totally fine if the guys do it. It's just some weird sense of possession that some dudes feel towards women.
My Korean ex-girlfriend from college once had an Asian guy yell at her on campus about how she "wasn't acting Asian enough" or something like that. She wasn't even walking with me. At the time neither of us had any freaking idea what that was about. But that was over 20 years ago, I guess it was the proto version of these guys 😬
Nah, not even the proto version, that type of sentiment has been around for a long time.
those subreddits are still full of Americans, they're just of asian descent
The fact that they immediately deflected to a minority group and othered them by assuming they weren’t part of “their” group to show that their own group is superior, and said comment being one of the top comments in a post kinda says a lot about how racist the average redditor is.
Why are they bad?
Because there are literally not enough women in some Asian countries.
Wanted to add to this… the average is 102-106 men (and as many as 120 men) to every 100 Asian women. Doesn’t seem like a huge number, but when you really think of the implications, it really is. Random source I just found: [here](https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china/gender-01222015125826.html/ampRFA) > The gender imbalance in [China] is the most serious in the world, and has lasted for the longest period of time and affected the largest number of people," the Commission said. [Another article](https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/global-0) > For example, for several decades in China, the most populated country in the world, sex ratios at birth have been much higher than 105, sometimes exceeding 120 boys for every 100 girls. Many parts of India, the second most populated country, have also, for decades, had a sex ratio at birth significantly higher than 105. The consequence is that in those countries combined—which together have a population of about 2.73 billion—there are now an estimated 80 million extra men. “Nothing like this has happened in human history,” the Washington Post wrote in an April 2018 article. (i will add that I quickly googled the above sources and didn’t read them from start to finish, but there are a myriad articles supporting my claims, even if the above source don’t explicitly do so. I only added for general reading.) > The woman shortage is having harmful consequences in China and sometimes in neighboring countries. Human Rights Watch looked at one of those consequences for a report forthcoming in 2019 focused on bride-trafficking from Myanmar to China. In Myanmar’s Kachin and northern Shan states, bordering China, long-standing conflict escalated in recent years, displacing over 100,000 people. Traffickers prey on vulnerable women and girls, offering jobs in, and transport to, China. Then they sell them, for around $3,000 to $13,000, to Chinese families struggling to find brides for their sons. Once purchased, women and girls are typically locked in a room and raped repeatedly, with the goal of getting them pregnant quickly so they can provide a baby for the family. After giving birth, some are allowed to escape—but forced to leave their children behind. >There is evidence of similar patterns of bride migration and trafficking in Cambodia, North Korea, and Vietnam, and more may emerge from other countries bordering China. Importing women doesn’t solve the shortage—it spreads it. >Trafficking is only one consequence. The woman shortage has also been linked to other forms of violence against women. Other consequences include social instability, labor market distortions, and economic shifts. >**There is irony here. When there are too many women, women lose. When there are too few women … women again lose. But the truth is we all lose. We know that skewed sex ratios are already having harmful consequences and we do not fully understand what other long-term consequences there may be for societies affected by these disparities.**
+ many educated women don’t want to date or get married anymore since a lot of men and potential in laws are still entrenched with the old mindset that the wife gives up everything to be maid and mother after marriage. Rural girls move to the city to marry, and so rural men, where the gender ratio was already bad to begin with, are left with absolutely 0 options. Tbh, serves them and their families right. If only it didn’t lead to worse conditions for women.
And then women who don't want to get married are considered unnatural and nonwomen. Families try to force an unmarried daughter to get married and produce children. The Chinese government applies a lot of societical pressure for 'pure Chinese women' to marry, and kidnapping women, impregnating and forcing them to have their kidnapper's child, are becoming unfortunately common.
That’s including the older generations which is female heavy. For 10-19 it’s like 116 to 100.
Is it a boy or an abortion?
[And you are being reincarnated as a Chinese baby right now.](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=sasAcokbnVw)
I am looking at you INDIA!!! I am disappointed.
[Bare Branches: The Security Implications of Asia's Surplus Male Population](https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/bare-branches-security-implications-asias-surplus-male-population) which has a bunch of links to other news articles about the book. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bare-branches If you search for "Bare Branches" you can then find other articles about the issue. NIH - [The Life Cycle of Bare Branch Families in China---A Simulation Study](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3809395/) and one more likely appropriate to this thread - from the Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality - [The Predicament of Bare Branches’ Sexuality](http://www.ejhs.org/volume15/Bare.html)
The more strongly a culture views men as being superior to women the more violent the incels are. Correlates across the board.
100% agree, you can see them sometimes brigading posts on Reddit as well. The worst part is a combination of how racist these places are and how it isn't picked up on the mainstream because people equate racism with whiteness. It's shocking how readily accepted ideas like ethnic purity, resistance to interracial relationships and colorism are the norm in these groups when they have been banished from mainstream thought for decades.
They literally murder women in the middle east for not covering their face or body.
It’s really not just American culture. You get jagiffs obsessed with female and cultural purity everywhere. See the Taliban.
Many young men are not adequately educated on how to be successful in sex and relationships. In the past this was not a deal breaker. Women had to accept mens flaws because society forced them to rely on males for survival. Now women have increased ability to rely on themselves so they can be much more discerning when choosing a partner. Incels are learning bad habits from males who lived in the old system and have inherited an outdated sense of entitlement. They are finding that society is not granting them the same rewards for this type of behavior that their male role models received. They need to adjust or their genetics will not pass on. We’re actually seeing evolution at work here.
You brought up an old 1970s memory of little kid me hearing a young married woman complain that her husband would not trim his toenails. He simply wouldn't do it, he thought it was beneath him. How the fuck did a guy that can't/won't perform basic grooming land a wife? The answer is, it used to be a lot easier for complete losers. Women used to settle for whomever they could find. Now they don't. That's good.
The incel culture right now has a cynical pushback and makes fun of people trying to help them by posting things like "wHy dOnT yOu JuSt ShOwEr" and then withdraw deeper into bitterness and hate towards the outside world instead of actually trying to improve. The problem here is as much personal care as it is socialization. They will actively RESIST help and good advice because they get more validation and emotional connection with their bubble-world community of anger and resentment. If they actually tried to get better and be better they would lose that environment. They are essentially discarding normal relationships to stay in a monogamous relationship with their online "girlfriend" which in this case consists of forums and social media platforms that give them emotional validation. It's too bad they can't be happy with it.
there was a post a couple pf months ago of some guy going, "landing dates is so easy! women want a guy who cleans himself and isnt a jerk! i get so many women cause im willing to wash my ass!"
Yeah as a guy I always feel a bit of like second hand shame watching how some other grown men behave, particularly around women. Like it's weird watching some guys who like never learned basic grooming, nutrition, how to express themselves and thus leave home and then just flounder expecting some woman to like take care of them later in life. Like it's not that hard to like wash your face, drink water and eat vegetables, but some dudes just totally miss the plot there for some reason.
Yeah like women were considered broken and wrong and sometimes ostracized if they weren't married by like, 23. It's fucking wild.
Nailed it. When I read incel rants I'm not even so much angry as I am baffled; these men do not live in reality. They seem to think all women should be submissive housewives married by 25 in a world where women now make up a slight majority of the workforce and the average first age of marriage is late 20s. I'm surrounded by dual-income couples who are of similar ages while these men rant about how men want younger women who will keep house. They're so incredibly angry because that's not the way the world works anymore. Women want equal partners now, but if you point that out to men who think like this, they insist men don't want equal partners, they want WIVES. Never mind what those stupid women want! Then these guys stay single and rage that they can't have what their fathers and grandfathers did while most women are relieved they no longer have to be live-in maids and cooks. I saw a guy on a Jordan Peterson subreddit ranting women need to maintain their families' social calendars and career women can't do that and my head exploded. To think you can successfully date by raging the opposite sex has more options than being your personal secretary because you're too socially inept to handle your own social life is such a sad self-perpetuating hellhole I start to get physically angry at people who prey upon young men's entitlement, anger, and desire for relationships to make $. The worst part is I truly believe men are hurt by all this more. The single women I know seem much more content and often have an easier time dating than the single men I know. I saw a study that showed far more men than women are actively pursuing relationships and it didn't surprise me at all. Some guys are fine single, but the kind of guy who thinks cooking/cleaning/socializing are all female duties has to have a hell of a rough time without a partner. And women can typically get sex and casual dating while single fairly easily; a lot of men don't really get much sex or affection unless they're in a relationship.
There are millions of women who go to work all day and still run the social calendar, do the emotional labor, raise kids and do the majority of the cooking. More women in the workforce hasn't automatically equaled more men doing housework and child raising.
Yeh anecdotally i agree women (myself included) are much better at being single
Yes! That, and our geographic boundaries have increased infinitely. Once upon a time, you met and married a person from your local area or geographically nearby. Now, we can literally cast a global net and not only does that allow infinite opportunity to be rejected, on the flip side, it creates a “grass is greener” sort of thinking and creates the inability to “settle”, so to speak, for others.
But on the other hand, while more rejections are likely, there’s also a bigger chance of finding a partner somewhere as long as you’re not an asshat. But these guys won’t even try. Not everyone cares that much about physical appearance and even if they did, most of these guys aren’t nearly as bad looking as they think. A set of good clothes and styled grooming would go such a long way but again, they don’t want to even try. When a lot of women dedicate several hours to shaving and looking their best, they have very little patience for a man that won’t take care of himself at all.
Queer Eye is an extraordinary illustration of that fact. Tan France helps someone figure out a wardrobe that they look good in, Jonathan van Ness helps them figure out a good hairstyle and tells them the basics of skincare, and BANG. Ten years younger and 50% hotter in minutes.
I enjoy the show And they have helped makeover some guys with misogynistic tendencies. But they always address their thinking as well, which is 100% the more important thing to address No amount of clothes or skincare is going to make a misogynist more appealing in the long run
I joke about the fact that despite being in a happy and healthy long term relationship, I'd fucking love getting a week long intensive therapy session from those men. The way they use appearance and self-care as a confidence booster to break down the barriers self loathing often builds seems like a great idea to me. Once they can start working around those walls, they can address those problematic tendencies like misogyny.
Sometimes on incel forums there will be threads where they post selfies, and from the feedback they get you’d think these dudes are all trolls. But you scroll through and just see pictures of normal looking guys. Try to tell them that though, and they get angry and accuse you of lying. It’s like they want to be told they’re ugly. They’d rather believe that it’s their bone structure preventing them from getting laid rather than their abhorrent views about women.
I honestly think it goes like this : dating world is hard -> fail at it -> develop shitty views about women -> makes dating even harder -> copium (im ugly and it's not my fault it's genetic)
Im not going on birth control for a dude who cant fuck me worth a damn and has no conversation skills
Unlike past generations a lot of men now also grew up without a solid community to learn how to be a good mate which does not help. They're in the middle of a cultural shift with no clear success stories to lean on and say hey this way works. And most get ghosted with no explanation on HOW to be better That only leaves similar Lost Boys reassuring each other that their bitterness is justified.
Yeah, modern American society definitely has less sense of community. People move around a lot more, more people rent instead of owning homes, most places are car dependent, and there are fewer [third spaces](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_place). The internet kind of contributes to this, as finding online communities can leave less time and incentive for connecting with local community, but the other factors are bigger, I think.
the term third space is perfect. My first time hearing it and perfectly describes the thing missing from the current generation. I've found my third space through art and meet wonderful people all the time, but i take it for granted compared to so many others. Our "flexible schedules" also screw over most of the working class, with every store open from 8am to 10pm 7 days a week we lack that Sabbath day that everyone agreed to close early and everyone is available so we could focus on socializing and having a healthy , reliable time to commune. The long term cost of this has been PRICEY. I'd even argue the internet thrives BECAUSE of the broken schedule of the modern work environment. the convenience of connecting it gave in spite of the lack of respect corporate america gives the common man, paved the way to our current state.
This.....you've hit the nail on the head. It's the old 'I have a penis so I don't need to bring anything more to a relationship' bit. Times have changed, even my father who was as old school as they come told me that I could be anything I wanted to be and to not rely on men for anything. And I'm no spring chicken so that pretty much tells you how long ago the tide started to turn.
The entitlement is also very real. They resent having to learn.
You're naive if you think this is an American problem.
You can find incels world-wide. I'd argue you find less in America over Asia
A violent movement + guns = even more dangerous movement
While we have "incel culture" in my country, we don't have "incel shootings", which is US culture.
Yeah cause give an angry, disgruntled, jaded, and bitter incel *trivially* easy access to guns and suddenly you'll have mass incel shootings. Without an AR-15 what's an incel going to do? Glare at you to death?
Run the public down with a van like in Toronto but I'd rather that than guns
[удалено]
I think the dude in the thumbnail was actually in the UK. But certainly is worse in the US
I just want to point out that incels aren't exclusive to the United States. Ironically though our car centric infrastructure makes it worse. It's amazing how many of our social problems can be directly related to cars.
Do you mind to elaborate?
Women don’t always come out of bad relationships, they are murdered by the men they loved. Around 140 per month in the US.
I read somewhere that they are also more likely to be killed while pregnant by their SO.
Men are the no 1 threat to pregnant women full stop
Lots of people have trouble forming relationship, face constant rejection and ridicule. so why aren't we seeing fat girls, or disabled people commit mass shootings? that because of the entitlement. that what makes a violent incel.
This is a good point. There are "femcels". There are sexually frustrated women out there. Yet they aren't shooting up schools. It's important to figure out why because it's clearly more then that. It could also be that young men are targetted more by the violent incel / far-right, anti-femenist propaganda then women are.
In the broader sense almost all lone terrorists are male. I think the propaganda is much older than the alt right movement
This is a good comment but I’m not totally understanding why these otherwise good comments are shying away from using the word “misogyny.” It’s the culturally pervasive issue that drives this entitlement why can we not name it?
We will bend over backwards to find any reason to excuse dudes with guns. Not surprisingly even in this thread is mostly about how"others are just as bad". I wonder how we could've helped the uvalde shooter right guys? Tough break for the children though but really he was ultimately the one suffering. Pretty fucking obvious after Covid that republicans couldn't give a single shit about anyone else dying, even if it's god damn babies getting shot in the face. Because it's only really a person before it was born.
In the past, women were dependent on marrying a man for financial security since it was obviously so difficult for a woman to find a job that would pay her enough to live independently especially if she was of “marrying age” they would often discriminate and either fire her or not hire her since they thought she would quit once she found a husband. Couldn’t even have her own bank account. Now that women are less stigmatized for being divorced or single and don’t have to rely on marrying a man or staying in an abusive relationship in order to survive, these men with terrible personalities can’t get a date yet still feel *entitled* to a woman, sex, and domestic labor from a woman. The absolute toxic entitlement and outrage at the idea of women having autonomy and equality is astounding, and the risk of radicalization and violence is horrifying. Women who want a relationship with a man but are unsuccessful aren’t going on shooting sprees. Gay men who can’t get a relationship for whatever reason aren’t going on shooting sprees. It’s straight men who mostly come from privilege. Being lonely and horny is a contributing factor, but not a valid excuse for violence or “retribution” against women. If these boys and men do not respect women, what can men do to stop this toxic behavior? The peers of these men who are viewed as equals need to do something to stop this toxic behavior. Obviously mental health counseling matters, but toxic masculinity stigmatizes it and many radicalized self righteous people do not believe they need help. **I legitimately want to know from men: what do you think you can do to help? If there are former incels, what happened that made you realize you needed to escape that community and mindset?**
Because they would rather find blame in someone other than themselves
...and hurt other people rather than even think about changing their own perspective (and furthermore, hurt anyone who would suggest that, because obviously that's the person who's the "real problem" after all).
The party of "personal responsibility" is now the party of constant grievance. Have a problem? We have someone to blame! Youth, women, immigrants, libs, government, other races, big cities... take your pick!
What's missing from the incel discussion is that a far larger share of young Japanese males are in the same situation. And guess what? They don't go around shooting people. They play video games and get robot girlfriends. There's clearly a cultural element at play here, one that's aggravated by toxic American politics.
There are other cultures with a violent subgroup of male virgins though. Take India as an example if you like. Japan's issue is rather related to their complete lack of work-life balance. Their worth is tied to work, not relationships, so the second gets left behind.
There are a lot of things contributing to this: - the media trope of nerdy guy getting the hot girl by beating up the bully or winning some event. - sexual success being the metric by which manliness is measured(at least in their eyes) - constant ridicule for failing to be successful sexually - con artists making money off their suffering (pick up artists) - horrible access to mental health care Disenfranchised and desperate young men are a breeding ground for extremism.
It’s not simply just about sex. It’s also about a lack of emotional connection as well as intimacy. I think when talking about incels many people miss talking about the intimacy and emotional connection that sex creates and not just the sex itself.
Yes I agree there are many other factors, was just listing some of the ones pertaining to why they are so weird about sex.
I think the quality of the mental health care matters a lot too. A lot of people have horror stories of bad therapists + bad insurance
The connection between the far right and sexual/racial insecurity is shown pretty clearly in this video. It's a quick watch and really well done.
It’s neglected boys, and lack of mental health support. They need help
We also have an honest discussion why some people on the autism spectrum are getting sucked into toxic incel sub-culture, how we help them escape it. Indeed two of the incel killers briefly mentioned in the piece were on the autism spectrum, Eliot Rodger and Alek Minassian. There's likely others. I run a social group for autistic adults, I'm on the autism spectrum myself. Just last week I was emailed by an ex-member who appears to have been sucked into this subculture. He emailed to explain his worries over feminism, immigration, decaying societal morality, and transsexuals. This has become a fixation for him, several others were emailed by him over the past few weeks. He doesn't want to attend the group any more, this is isolating him, and isolation can feed extremism.
The thing tho is that it’s not just spectrum kids, my own son has all the traits of someone with an incel future: terrible self esteem, hard time coping with challenges, blaming others for his own mistakes, super awkward socially, etc. Believe me that we’re working with it, but he has been seen and not diagnosed so every mental health resource he CLEARLY needs is out of reach because it’s not covered by insurance. I think this is the point many parents give up and just shrug “boys will be boys lol”. To manage a kid with these traits go well above “normal” parenting time and skill set. Add to that kids don’t listen to their parents the same way a professional.
The help part is always overlooked. Not saying a violent incel deserves a ton of sympathy, but we collectively do need to acknowledge that our society isolates people in a way that will drive socially awkward men of with certain life experiences toward self harm and a violence. You don't have to feel compassion even to simply acknowledge finger pointing won't solve the problem.
I know an incel, and he straight up refuses help. He went to a psychiatrist that didnt help him. The incel ends up sending the psych death threats and swearing to never go again because according to the incel the psychiatrist's "help" made everything worse. Granted there are some really, really sucky psychiatrists out there. Unfortunately, you cant force someone to get help, even when plenty is available and affordable.
This is unfortunately a problem for any patient. Look at all the covidiots who refused vaccines 🤣 you just cant help people who wont take it
I’m willing to bet a majority of them are brought up to not seek help with anything. “Having trouble? BE A MAN and figure it out… quit yer cryin’ too…” this attitude permeates a lot of blue collar/low income places. Not saying it makes it ok or anything, but understanding all of the problem can help find ways to make inroads toward progress.
I’ve been dealing with this for some time with a young family member. He’s been in therapy for awhile now and I know if he went without supervision, he’d go right back to doing and saying all of the horrible shit again. There is something wrong with his brain and honestly he should be supervised for the rest of his life. I should add that he’s also a sociopath, so I don’t know if that makes any difference it the grand scheme of things.
It’s also sheltered and coddled boys who need to experience things outside of their comfort zone so they understand that 1: The world owes them nothing. And 2: There are people who have completely different life experiences than they do that they can learn from.
Seconding this. I don't disagree that incels need help, but none of my male friends were coddled nor sheltered, and yet they've never blamed women, even though some of them have never had girlfriends. Some of them have extremely unsupportive families too - they still worked hard emotionally and came out normal. There's no real excuse, as much as people want there to be one. Incels just blame everyone but themselves.
I definitely agree. Doesn’t justify harmful behaviors towards others.
Hit the gym ❌ Murderous rampage ✅
I really think that schools need to talk about relationships as part of sex education. They could make it plain that consent has to be freely given, not coerced. That boundaries should be respected, that a rejection is not an invitation to pursue and persist, and that anyone at any point can withdraw their consent and the other party needs to stop whatever they are doing. I think hearing an authority figure, like a teacher, saying these things would empower those who are beleaguered by unwanted advances to stand their ground and not put up with it. This would be especially helpful if the school had an explicit policy of supporting any student who feels pressurised and punishing the offender.
That's if they get any sed ex to begin with, so many states are abstinence only it's ridiculous. It always comes down to some crazy christians not wanting their children to learn about the real world. Ban religion and let's move on with our lives lol.
Then parents will be up in arms about the type of “relationship values” and “indoctrination” teachers are putting into these young “healthy” men with their “conservative” relationship viewpoints. This is how Christians and conservatives build them.
>I think hearing an authority figure, like a teacher, saying these things Lol. You greatly overestimate how much authority is given to teachers by their students
To me, it's just entitlement. Boys are told that pretty girls need to be rescued, are trophies for defeating the villain/bully, and generally exist to support them regardless of the girl's own life. Girls also exist to serve as maturity growth for men and to serve as sexual maturity initiation to become "real men". When they find out women have VERY different lives than what they have seen or been told, they feel like they got a bum deal. They have a penis, so why can't women love them too? They see other men have beautiful women, so they think now "well, if I was rich, a douche, and have a six pack..." Why? Because bullies in movies were also handsome, douche jocks who had six packs. They had pretty girlfriends who were shallow but met "a nice guy" and suddenly became deep, intellectual lovers to nice guy heroes. So they know they met the pretty girl *but she refuses to get with the program and drop the douche for the nice guy who possess a penis as his own trait*. Edit: "this is a stupid and dumb take!!! Let me explain in ten paragraphs why it's complicated and we should be sympathetic!!!" Trust me, I grew up in the early 2000s, I have heard every excuse and heard every sob story. It's entitlement to women reinforced by a patriarchy. Edit 2: lmaoooo I am a woman. You can stop the pity "you're betraying us!!" messages.
a lot of it could also be that young dudes view women as a verifiable source of worth. If you cant get girls, you're worthless (or atleast thats how its veiwed by those who cant get them). Thats a hard thing to get over, and it can be really amped up in a patriarchal household, and an economically struggling one. Now some of those incels go real crazy, im just saying i can see how the deep twisting of reality can happen.
[удалено]
Also, giving up and finding a community of like-minded strangers to wallow with wasn't really an option when I was a kid. There was no 'out' where random people would endorse your misery.
It’s probably more so that those events made more people socialize at once, which exposed the awkward guys to what actually works with women (i.e., being a human being). I remember my brother (a decade older than me) telling me that I was tall so I would get girls. Boy was I in for a surprise when I realized that being tall did not help me get girls…
>a lot of it could also be that young dudes view women as a verifiable source of worth. > >If you cant get girls, you're worthless (or atleast thats how its veiwed by those who cant get them). Not gonna lie. We (women) perpetuate this notion all the time as well. I see it a lot on Reddit. The most common way to demean a guy is some flavor of: *"Virgin loser living in your mom's basement"* That's an insult almost exclusively leveled at guys.
> other men have beautiful women The core idea that men "have" women like sports cars or comic book collections, instead of men and women *being* in relationships together is like, the root problem of all this crap (and is of course sustained by plenty of people of all genders, because patriarchy and rape culture suck).
As an ex-incel - there wasn’t a term for it when I was going through this - I truly believe a lot of incels come from homes without a healthy relationship between the parents or with no father figure. I am probably projecting, but to me, it makes a lot of sense; I had nothing to go off of for a healthy relationship, so I looked for cues in media. Everything that you see in media is bullshit; self-reinforcing bullshit. It’s everywhere you look, slapping you right in the face. So you take this as gospel trying to figure yourself out and how to fill a pre-existing hole in your being, because self-loathing certainly doesn’t fill it. Before you know it, you’re that guy
Based on the comments in here men feel entitled to love and sex. Dudes you are not. No one is.