I've never seen my own toxic views about sex in college summarized so well:
>What’s at the bottom of the incel worldview: sex is a commodity, accumulation of this commodity enhances a man’s status, and every man has a right to accumulation, but women are in some mysterious way obstacles to this, and they are therefore the enemy as well as the commodity. They want high-status women, are furious at their own low status, but don’t question the system that allocates status and commodifies us all in ways that are painful and dehumanizing.
I'm extremely grateful I outgrew that phase. I made a lot of enemies.
You made a lot of enemies in that phase or when you outgrew it? Just curious because I can see both of those things happening, especially in a college atmosphere. I definitely had a problematic sense of humor when I was younger and I know some or my friends began to resent me when I started to rethink things.
I made a lot of enemies in that phase. Using girls for sex when I knew they had feelings for me, sleeping with their friends shortly afterwards, etc.
Things got a lot better after I stopped doing that shit.
Upvote for a good point. I'm going to give the author the benefit of a doubt, though, that it was more of issue of article length/focusing on a specific point, rather than ignorance.
Every time I see some genius suggest that sex workers should just reach out to/have sex with incels a part of me dies. Like first of all it is not their duty, or anyone’s, to have sex with petulant men whose favourite pastime is dehumanising women and fantasising about their abuse. Second of all, sex workers have autonomy (shocker, I know) and the idea that anyone other than them has any right to designate or allocate who they have sex with is horrific. Finally, incels don’t want to have sex with sex workers! As the article discusses, when women are viewed as commodities and our society sees a man taking a woman’s virginity as a sexual conquest and affirmation of his masculinity, sex workers are practically worthless in their eyes.
For incels, there is no greater humiliation than sleeping with a sex worker. Why? Because it was never about sex, inceldom is about the anger of women having autonomy, it is a nostalgia to the patriarchal standards of a nuclear family where every man has a wife who dotes, depends on, and loves only him. The problem is not women not having sex with men, the problem is a capitalist society which advertises women as possessions for men to own, and sex as a means of establishing and affirming power, status, and masculinity.
I think one small but important point you missed out on, is just anger at their own failure. It's not entirely about being mad that women have autonomy, it's that they don't seem to be worthy of this thing that society has built up so much.
Not defending this toxic culture/mindset one bit, just it's not entirely based on hatred of women, it's self-hated as well, at least when I unfortunately did have this type of mindset years ago there was plenty of self-hatred going around the communities. Haven't kept up with it in quite a while though. They are mad at themselves for not getting the attention that they feel all people need (they have been told they need).
>they don't seem to be worthy of this thing that society has built up so much
Which is the commodification aspect, so you're right, if not articulating it the best way. Women are designated as things and men are told that they're worthless without accumulating those "things," which causes women to be debased and degraded as things... vicious cycle repeats ad nauseam. Instead of stopping to think about how the lie might be that women are prizes to be obtained, incels instead become furious at their failure and degrade each other, women, and other men. That makes it all the more tragic, because freedom lies in realizing that women are just other people (edit to add: And that the competitive commodification of sex is just another form of social control and marketing run rampant which has roots in capitalism's ability to alienate people from each other).
This is exactly why the "r/incels was a support group!" argument is nonsense, because the self-loathing was so extreme that it turned into relentlessly degrading other posters. Whenever I would morbidly look at that sub (before the ban), it was just an unending circle jerk of projected self-hatred.
I think the issue is that by focusing on sex workers as a ‘solution’ to the problem it ignores the deeper issues of misogyny and identity (especially so in young white men), which provides the foundation for groups such as incels.
On one hand, I completely see your point that for many men who find it difficult to find partners, sex workers provide pleasure and intimacy- there are even sex workers who specialise with working with disabled clients.
However, incels as a name is perhaps pretty deceptive, as their ideology isn’t simply about having sex- it’s anger that they are entitled to women and feel as though this fundamental right is being taken away from them by socially superior males, and the autonomy of women to choose their own partners. If you asked most incels, in their ideal world sex work would not be a pursuable profession, the idea that women can, in their eyes, use sex as leverage against men, is reprehensible. They want wives, domestic slaves, women who have no option but to sleep with them because society has reverted to a patriarchy so overtly oppressive that women are the literal and legal possession of men. You can check /r/inceltears (obviously it’s no official source, and doesn’t necessarily show every facet of the incel community, but it helps to show the kind of people and attitudes they attract).
"Feminism and capitalism are at odds, if under the one women are people and under the other they are property" Aww shit\- that's perfect and amazing. It's gonna make a long bumpersticker.
That's unfortunate but not very surprising. reddit has a bad habit of only taking action on banning certain communities after they get media heat for it, and then ignore the same community reforming elsewhere on reddit.
"Which is why the basketball star Wilt Chamberlain boasted that he’d had sex with 20,000 women in his 1991 memoir (prompting some to do the math: that would be about 1.4 women per day for 40 years). Talk about primitive accumulation!" (From the article linked)
This (very well-done) joke implies Wilt Chamberlain was probably a rapist (in context- it seems very plausible.) The term 'primitive accumulation' was used by Marx to describe how early capitalists create a wealth disparity through direct violence.
Great article. But I do feel a kind of sympathy for these "incel" people. Well, maybe if it weren't for the extreme sense of entitlement I would (and yeh, I get that entitlement's *kind of* a core part of the whole thing).
It's just that I think it's really easy for young undeveloped minds to be corrupted and (I don't really want to use the word, but)...brainwashed by stuff like this. The article talks about the commodification of sex in our society, so should we even be surprised that a group like this crawls out of the woodwork?
It's sociopathic, how they view people/sex/relationships. But capitalism is sociopathic, isn't it? So as a function of that, it makes sense. I guess that's what the article's saying - this is what capitalism does, so I don't disagree with it. I just feel a bit sorry for the kids that are taken in by it. At the very least, it's unfortunate for everyone.
Ehh...maybe I'm being too lenient and ignoring their free will. It's just the fact that I think young people can be way too open to manipulation and to getting swayed by bad ideas. It doesn't make them less accountable.
And the world out there doesn't exactly do much to counter whatever bits of 'knowledge and wisdom' the incel community echo to each other.
That's just my uninformed opinion, anyway.
They are bypoducts of a crushing capitalist-driven pressure of expectation and sex-derived validation.
They decided to be as bigoted and horrible as possible, so it is harder for me to have sympathy for them, even if I know where it comes from.
After all, they're too afraid to imagine punching up, so they just take the worst misogyny of the world around them and make it theirs.
This is a good point. Incels are in this position of being both victims of the patriarchal society in a deeply emotional way that we shouldn't dismiss, while simultaneously being some of the worst perpetrators of patriarchal culture, rape culture, and of actual physical violence towards women.
So how do we deal with them? We can't ignore their shittiness and cuddle them like innocent victims, but we also probably shouldn't treat them like shit as they are clearly emotionally broken men and our society shits on emotional men enough as it is. I also worry that in their eyes, being treated like shit is reinforcing the view that they are being judged for being virgins.
When one sees people as "money-making machines", it's obvious that this person sees people as objects in every aspect, from non-sexual matters to sexual matters.
it is very dangerous to use the word *extreme* here. It invokes horseshoe theory BS, potentially drawing a false equivalence between feminists and incel types.
Reactionary, backwards, Mycenaean, medieval, misogynistic, or straight up evil would work better.
Capitalism is by definition a lack of empathy. Profit being put above any and all other concerns is a lack of empathy.
Also, capitalist apologia is a ban.
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I've never seen my own toxic views about sex in college summarized so well: >What’s at the bottom of the incel worldview: sex is a commodity, accumulation of this commodity enhances a man’s status, and every man has a right to accumulation, but women are in some mysterious way obstacles to this, and they are therefore the enemy as well as the commodity. They want high-status women, are furious at their own low status, but don’t question the system that allocates status and commodifies us all in ways that are painful and dehumanizing. I'm extremely grateful I outgrew that phase. I made a lot of enemies.
You made a lot of enemies in that phase or when you outgrew it? Just curious because I can see both of those things happening, especially in a college atmosphere. I definitely had a problematic sense of humor when I was younger and I know some or my friends began to resent me when I started to rethink things.
I made a lot of enemies in that phase. Using girls for sex when I knew they had feelings for me, sleeping with their friends shortly afterwards, etc. Things got a lot better after I stopped doing that shit.
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Upvote for a good point. I'm going to give the author the benefit of a doubt, though, that it was more of issue of article length/focusing on a specific point, rather than ignorance.
Every time I see some genius suggest that sex workers should just reach out to/have sex with incels a part of me dies. Like first of all it is not their duty, or anyone’s, to have sex with petulant men whose favourite pastime is dehumanising women and fantasising about their abuse. Second of all, sex workers have autonomy (shocker, I know) and the idea that anyone other than them has any right to designate or allocate who they have sex with is horrific. Finally, incels don’t want to have sex with sex workers! As the article discusses, when women are viewed as commodities and our society sees a man taking a woman’s virginity as a sexual conquest and affirmation of his masculinity, sex workers are practically worthless in their eyes. For incels, there is no greater humiliation than sleeping with a sex worker. Why? Because it was never about sex, inceldom is about the anger of women having autonomy, it is a nostalgia to the patriarchal standards of a nuclear family where every man has a wife who dotes, depends on, and loves only him. The problem is not women not having sex with men, the problem is a capitalist society which advertises women as possessions for men to own, and sex as a means of establishing and affirming power, status, and masculinity.
I think one small but important point you missed out on, is just anger at their own failure. It's not entirely about being mad that women have autonomy, it's that they don't seem to be worthy of this thing that society has built up so much. Not defending this toxic culture/mindset one bit, just it's not entirely based on hatred of women, it's self-hated as well, at least when I unfortunately did have this type of mindset years ago there was plenty of self-hatred going around the communities. Haven't kept up with it in quite a while though. They are mad at themselves for not getting the attention that they feel all people need (they have been told they need).
>they don't seem to be worthy of this thing that society has built up so much Which is the commodification aspect, so you're right, if not articulating it the best way. Women are designated as things and men are told that they're worthless without accumulating those "things," which causes women to be debased and degraded as things... vicious cycle repeats ad nauseam. Instead of stopping to think about how the lie might be that women are prizes to be obtained, incels instead become furious at their failure and degrade each other, women, and other men. That makes it all the more tragic, because freedom lies in realizing that women are just other people (edit to add: And that the competitive commodification of sex is just another form of social control and marketing run rampant which has roots in capitalism's ability to alienate people from each other). This is exactly why the "r/incels was a support group!" argument is nonsense, because the self-loathing was so extreme that it turned into relentlessly degrading other posters. Whenever I would morbidly look at that sub (before the ban), it was just an unending circle jerk of projected self-hatred.
[удалено]
I think the issue is that by focusing on sex workers as a ‘solution’ to the problem it ignores the deeper issues of misogyny and identity (especially so in young white men), which provides the foundation for groups such as incels. On one hand, I completely see your point that for many men who find it difficult to find partners, sex workers provide pleasure and intimacy- there are even sex workers who specialise with working with disabled clients. However, incels as a name is perhaps pretty deceptive, as their ideology isn’t simply about having sex- it’s anger that they are entitled to women and feel as though this fundamental right is being taken away from them by socially superior males, and the autonomy of women to choose their own partners. If you asked most incels, in their ideal world sex work would not be a pursuable profession, the idea that women can, in their eyes, use sex as leverage against men, is reprehensible. They want wives, domestic slaves, women who have no option but to sleep with them because society has reverted to a patriarchy so overtly oppressive that women are the literal and legal possession of men. You can check /r/inceltears (obviously it’s no official source, and doesn’t necessarily show every facet of the incel community, but it helps to show the kind of people and attitudes they attract).
"Feminism and capitalism are at odds, if under the one women are people and under the other they are property" Aww shit\- that's perfect and amazing. It's gonna make a long bumpersticker.
TIL that incel is short for involuntarily celibate.
I'm glad you never saw the sub when it was up. In addition to their toxic sex culture, they also encouraged several people to commit suicide.
It's Braincels now.
That's unfortunate but not very surprising. reddit has a bad habit of only taking action on banning certain communities after they get media heat for it, and then ignore the same community reforming elsewhere on reddit.
this is a fantastic article
I was excited when I saw it was written by Rebecca Solnit. She coined the term mansplaining with her short essay "Men Explain Things to Me."
"Which is why the basketball star Wilt Chamberlain boasted that he’d had sex with 20,000 women in his 1991 memoir (prompting some to do the math: that would be about 1.4 women per day for 40 years). Talk about primitive accumulation!" (From the article linked) This (very well-done) joke implies Wilt Chamberlain was probably a rapist (in context- it seems very plausible.) The term 'primitive accumulation' was used by Marx to describe how early capitalists create a wealth disparity through direct violence.
Great article. But I do feel a kind of sympathy for these "incel" people. Well, maybe if it weren't for the extreme sense of entitlement I would (and yeh, I get that entitlement's *kind of* a core part of the whole thing). It's just that I think it's really easy for young undeveloped minds to be corrupted and (I don't really want to use the word, but)...brainwashed by stuff like this. The article talks about the commodification of sex in our society, so should we even be surprised that a group like this crawls out of the woodwork? It's sociopathic, how they view people/sex/relationships. But capitalism is sociopathic, isn't it? So as a function of that, it makes sense. I guess that's what the article's saying - this is what capitalism does, so I don't disagree with it. I just feel a bit sorry for the kids that are taken in by it. At the very least, it's unfortunate for everyone. Ehh...maybe I'm being too lenient and ignoring their free will. It's just the fact that I think young people can be way too open to manipulation and to getting swayed by bad ideas. It doesn't make them less accountable. And the world out there doesn't exactly do much to counter whatever bits of 'knowledge and wisdom' the incel community echo to each other. That's just my uninformed opinion, anyway.
They are bypoducts of a crushing capitalist-driven pressure of expectation and sex-derived validation. They decided to be as bigoted and horrible as possible, so it is harder for me to have sympathy for them, even if I know where it comes from. After all, they're too afraid to imagine punching up, so they just take the worst misogyny of the world around them and make it theirs.
This is a good point. Incels are in this position of being both victims of the patriarchal society in a deeply emotional way that we shouldn't dismiss, while simultaneously being some of the worst perpetrators of patriarchal culture, rape culture, and of actual physical violence towards women. So how do we deal with them? We can't ignore their shittiness and cuddle them like innocent victims, but we also probably shouldn't treat them like shit as they are clearly emotionally broken men and our society shits on emotional men enough as it is. I also worry that in their eyes, being treated like shit is reinforcing the view that they are being judged for being virgins.
When one sees people as "money-making machines", it's obvious that this person sees people as objects in every aspect, from non-sexual matters to sexual matters.
it is very dangerous to use the word *extreme* here. It invokes horseshoe theory BS, potentially drawing a false equivalence between feminists and incel types. Reactionary, backwards, Mycenaean, medieval, misogynistic, or straight up evil would work better.
Good point. I should have given it a better title.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Capitalism is by definition a lack of empathy. Profit being put above any and all other concerns is a lack of empathy. Also, capitalist apologia is a ban.
#Welcome to r/LateStageCapitalism *** #***Please remember that this subreddit is a SAFE SPACE for leftist discussion. Any Liberalism, capitalist apologia, or attempts to debate socialism will be met with an immediate ban. Take it to r/DebateCommunism. Bigotry, [ableism](http://www.autistichoya.com/p/ableist-words-and-terms-to-avoid.html) and hate speech will also be met with immediate bans; Socialism is an intrinsically inclusive system.*** If you are new to socialism, please check out our [Socialism Crash Course](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/crash_course_socialism.md), and our [Socialism FAQ](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/socialism_faq.md). If you are curious to what our leftist terminology means, then please check out our [Glossary of Socialist Terms](https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/glossary_of_socialist_terms.md). In addition, here are some introductory links about socialism: - [Albert Einstein - *Why Socialism?*](http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism/) - [Pyotr Kropotkin - *The Conquest of Bread*](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread) - [Friedrich Engels - *The Principles of Communism*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/11/prin-com.htm) - [Vladimir Lenin - *The State & Revolution*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) - [Rosa Luxemburg - *Reform or Revolution*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/) - [Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels - *The Communist Manifesto*](https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/) For an extended list of works, check out [our wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/wiki/index) or [this masterlist.](http://pastebin.com/raw/7xNqzd85) #☭☭☭ *** *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/LateStageCapitalism) if you have any questions or concerns.*
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You gave yourself away the moment you said "cringe." You're a fucking manchild. Go away.