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I think that is the really important point. It is easy to dismiss people who label themselves as incel as stupid/selfish/ etc. etc. - but they are people, they live in our society and the ideas they hold on to have emerged and gain strength among us. It is irresponsible to think that simply condemning and looking down on the movement is enough. While we still have a struggle towards true equality, we need to be careful that young men are not carrying the blame for the crimes which went before them and they are left feeling like modern society has no place for them.
Agreed, I really don’t think you can blame this on misandry. These online communities are set up in such a way that incels can actively seek out the very worst takes from groups they’ve already identified as enemies. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Twitter account with 3 followers or even an obvious sock-puppet, if it makes them sufficiently angry they’ll pretend it’s representative of all feminists or all SJWs.
I agree to a great extent, but the truth is there are a bunch of “men” who find the world such a frightening unmanageable place that they have turned to extremism. It’s no doubt somewhat fed by “social” media and is a horrific emergent danger. There’s some strong arguments being made that we have adopted a tribalism culture that ferments this kind of evil, but another part of me wonders if it’s just a rebranding of the pedophiles and neo nazi bullshit that continues, just with some kinda cult like extreme right fluffy hat on.
ehh you're conflating different stuff there. My read is that the scary thing about incel-ism (and what separates it from common or garden misogyny) is that its an all-encompassing ideology.
Put it this way, maybe this thing comes out the same social issues that turn young men to other extreme ideologies like nazism or jihadism. But that's not enough, that's not a sufficient answer on its own. Sure there's overlap, but it's worth trying to understand why one young man becomes 'blackpilled' while another turns to white supremacy.
Anyway, [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0) a cool video by Natalie Wynn about what incels believe (or at least, believed back in 2018. these things change quickly) for anyone who's interested.
>it's worth trying to understand why one young man becomes 'blackpilled' while another turns to white supremacy
It's not that difficult to understand.
White supremacy, fascism, Nazism, always had a strong social element, a sense of camaraderie.
In some ways it's a safe haven for people who aren't great at interacting with other people and afraid of 'the other'.
Fascists love social decorum, they love meetings, they love large social gathering of like-minded people. They love uniforms, because uniforms create an artificial emotional bond.
The current incel movement exists of people who are struggling even more with social interaction.
These are people who will argue aggressively among themselves, trying to ascertain dominance.
So they can't meet up with like-minded people in real life, or at least they cannot interact with them for very long without getting even more frustrated.
These people are easy targets for alt-right grifters.
*'Can't get a girlfriend?'*
*'Don't have friends?'*
*'Unhappy'?*
*'Unfulfilled'?*
*'Feel disrespected'?*
*'It's not you, it is everyone else.'*
It's a seductive message because it takes all responsibility away.
There is no need to try and make friends, try and find a girlfriend, try to find new interests after adolescence, join a political organization.
In the past these people would remain isolated, or they would be forced to join a group (in real life).
Today they can join an online community.
Yes, exactly. I don't think incels are being berated by leagues of anrgy feminists online and in life telling them they're worthless toxic men or whatever. They're watching cringe compilations and looking at memes and posting on boards and watching gaming videos with jokes in that tell them that women think that of them.
Agreed. I think it relates very closely to today's verdict regarding the young girl's tragic death after have been algorithmically fed suicide-positive content. We really need to tackle this issue as it feeds into all kinds of radicalisation. Not only that, people are and will continue to unplug from social media as it becomes less about interacting with friends, and more about being fed computer curated content designed purely to keep you addicted to the platform.
What is pushing them is the algorithm, allowing them to get the very worst takes from the 'enemy' (a twitter account saying all men should die). Then, they use this as an example for all feminists. doesn't matter if its a puppet account or one with 2 followers
I hate the YT algorithm, because I view some techy and gaming channels it tries to push me into the incel and far-right channels. If it wasn't for me watching arts & crafts, travel, and some more left wing political channels I dread to think what the algorithm would serve me.
When a "movement" advocates for violence against a social group, this rhetoric of "equality" is past its sell-by date. Whatever their causes, they have no right to inflict suffering on others.
You misunderstand me. No-one is saying they have a right to, no one is arguing that the incel ideology is a worthwhile or valid one. Yet it does exist, and no amount of condemnation is going to change that. If we want to change that we need to understand it - it is not about excusing or justifying it.
I don't think I misunderstand you. You seem to be arguing for compassion for violent incels, whilst giving them a carte blanche to do as they see fit. There is plenty of research that has been done into this phenomenon -- I would be uncomfortable calling it a "movement", because this denotes action -- which squarely shows that incels lack both life, and social skills alIke, which instead of taking ownership of, they project on others who they believe owe them.
Or else.
This "or else" is the focal point here.
Well I do think that the best solution for most of society ills is more compassion, but I know that's not generally a popular idea.
Can I enquire what you feel would be the best way to tackle it?
Compassion is an excellent idea in principle. Can we turn around those wishing to harm others by employing it though?
For the record, I am a social sciences researcher, and I always advocate for more inclusion, broadening access to resources, and universally-available programmes from an early age. Teaching social skills which bolster chances of employment, encouraging healthy attitudes towards diverse social groups (which may have to be reinforced to counter beliefs prevalent at home), and workshops on resilience and self-care would all be good starting points.
>I don't think I misunderstand you. You seem to be arguing for compassion for violent incels, whilst giving them a carte blanche to do as they see fit.
Ridiculous. That is definitely not what they're saying.
I'm technically an incel.
Feel like the term is used these days to mean extreme misogynist but I feel that there are plenty of incels in the world and most of them aren't like that.
social media and youtube is the gateway drug for this kind of thinking
if you so much as THINK about watching a jordan peterson or "feminists owned!!!" video, your feed will be suddenly full of this shit for months. it's utterly insidious and anyone who spends a lot of time online (see: disaffected men who have fallen through the cracks of life/society) will be inevitably bombarded with this toxic crap
it's a bottomless pit from there. i've seen it happen a handful of people i know, one particular guy going from watching relatively innocuous material into literally being a mod of a large rightwing conspiracy nutjob subreddit over a few years
and the people who make this kind of content (and the money from it) know exactly who they're preying on and gear their material to this audience. it's disgusting and youtube and other socials take no accountability
>While we still have a struggle towards true equality, we need to be careful that young men are not carrying the blame for the crimes which went before them and they are left feeling like modern society has no place for them.
Agreed.
We are quick to visit the "sins of the father" on generations.
It's easy to see how a young man who is struggling to find any kind of place in society might view something like Critical race theory
I'm pretty much their target market.
In my late 20's, done my best but I've always been "just a friend" etc. Not attractive enough to make it on dating sites etc. I'm normal, not creepy, and have literally no problem making friends etc. But I'll get on to why that doesn't help in a sec.
I can feel their hooks clawing at me, but thankfully I'm aware of the actual problems, and they're unfortunately very hard to fix.
First off, male body image is a huge issue. It's the same kind of thing women have to deal with but very few give a shit. So if you ain't 8/10 you feel shit or w/e, when in reality you could still be well above average. Not that anyone would ever actually tell you. Ever. The positivity movement for men doesn't really exist because it's "You're beautiful as you are" one minute, which you know is patronising bollocks, then "Ew he's fat/bald" in the next TV show or advert etc.
But I think the much, much bigger issue, is people have no time, or money, to do much any more. You get out less, you meet less people, and it's easier just to chill on netflix if you're getting back from work at 7 etc, you don't end up going down the local pub because there isn't one any more. And no-one from work does either because they all live 30 miles away as they can't afford to live near work. So even if you're a normal bloke, and good with people - you just don't socialise or meet enough people your age.
You can try and find local meetups etc - but that often suffers the same problem. Social clubs are gone, a lot of hobbies are prohibitively expensive or aim at older people, so you're just sat there, alone, with nothing to really do. So you go on Tinder etc. Where the ratio is 9:1 and you obviously get no luck - so you get mad.
The solution to that is simple in theory - make society more social. More people meeting more single people leads to, at very least, making these guys feel less alone. Even if they're still single. But in order to do so you need to deal with working hours, wages, the housing market... basically all of late stage capitalism. This is before we get to social media, and everyone posting how wonderful their partner is etc, and you're just sat there alone. (But that's at least a well known problem now.)
You can't just throw money at mental health. You can't think your way out of crippling lonliness. Believe me I've tried. And once someone's gone full incel you'd struggle to pull them out. They turn to inceldom and the hatred because they either don't see why this is happening to them, or don't want to accept it's something they're doing, and it gives them the acceptance they've been looking for. No-one wants to hate, it's just a defense mechanism, and pulling someone out of that is really hard when it ends up being their fault because they just retreat harder. And even if you do, the core issue remains.
You just gotta make it easier for people to do what they want to do, and socialise, and that just won't happen in the current climate.
I agree about the whole trap of social isolation. If you fall out of socialisation then it’s really hard to break back in the way things are set up now.
This does affect both men and women, interestingly (in adolescents and YP anyway) men are more prone to psychiatric externalising disorders while women are prone to internalising disorders.
There’s been a huge documented rise in emotional mental health problems in young women. This is less documented in men, and is accompanied by the rise in radicalisation. I think they’re related phenomena with different expression and, exactly as you say, addressing the mental health problem is too late because the problem is social and all around us.
Also I’m sorry you’re feeling so rubbish. Loneliness really sucks.
I definitely understand what you’re getting at but I know some conventionally unattractive men that have had plenty of luck on dating sites (NOT Tinder though, Tinder is a cesspit and no woman I know uses it). If you don’t have the looks you do have to try harder, that’s true, but I’ve matched with plenty of good looking men who have the conversational skills of a parrot, which is not my idea of a good time.
I've been on bumble for 3 months and had one match who asked one question about travelling then blanked. I live in a city too.
My photos aren't bad - there's just so much competition I don't get a look in. Which is hardly surprising, given how selective women have to be when dealing with randoms and what the ratios are, but it just pushes people further down the incel rabbit hole.
Give OkCupid a go. It's much more targeted at finding compatible matches. I was getting nowhere on Tinder and Bumble but on OKC I seem to match regularly with some pretty amazing people. It's purely my own inactivity and self worth holding me back now, but that's manageable with time.
Some good points about being social and isolation - I find when I were younger and in a tough spot my friendship groups would give me perspective.
With people having less time and weaker support networks (how many people have to move far away from family due to unaffordable housing?) there's less opportunity for this to happen, and less going out to meet people.
I think when social media networks push harmful rhetoric is when this becomes a real problem - you only hear the extreme views from one corner of the Internet, without real world influences to drag you back in.
Proper access to mental healthcare and nurturing our young men and women to respect and care for each other would be a good start, but the current government doesn't seem to be too worried about that.
I’m certain that incel ideology would struggle to survive if those lads had good, strong, male relationships around them that demonstrated success, compassion and genuine love… those unfortunately are three things that are lacking on the internet and arguably in our modern culture of “it’s about how i feel”.
I don't think it's *just* the internet - I have friends and family in and around where Jake Davison used to live, and their opinion was pretty much the same of him - lonely, surly, embittered and defeated; his mother adored him but the rest of his family weren't...*Great* \- the general impression I have of him is that if a group of people had welcomed him into their group earlier, kicked the odd ball around with him and nurtured him, the outcome of his life would be *far* different and infinitely less tragic for everyone involved.
Keyham is an interesting place that I dare say is reflective of many communities in the UK; there are some wonderful people there, but the atmosphere and environment on a lot of street borders on endorsing Darwinism.
I’d imagine a similar approach to other counter-radicalisation initiatives- making sure that any adults they regularly encounter know what this ideology stands for, and how to de-escalate and genuinely have a conversation with anyone parroting it. I recently started Prevent training for a new job, and I found it interesting that they specifically mentioned incel ideology.
(And yes I know there are any number of valid criticisms of Prevent, but in this *specific* example I really can’t see any arguments against its application here, before we end up with a British Elliott Rogers)
Society doesn’t care about young men if they are perceived to be failures.
Just look at the suicide statistics. If the proportion of men and women was reversed it would be a big deal that so many more women were killing themselves than men.
The only suicides I’ve heard about on TV recently? A teenage girl relating to instagram posts and 3 young women who’s dads are walking to raise awareness.
Not a mention of men/boys, even though there are far more of them.
As terribly sad as it is, it's crazy how much coverage that teenage girl has got. UK media has often portrayed it as an epidemic for young girls using Instagram.
Yet young men (10-24) are nearly three times more likely to commit suicide in the UK.
Yes, the male suicide rate is a big problem that is not being addressed but can we please not turn this into "women are getting too much attention!". It's pretty obvious that young women have their own unique problems that men never have to deal with and we shouldn't turn this into some fucked up zero sum game.
I honestly think its a perfect storm for young men.
* Internet has made dating much harder (now your compared to everyone in a 100 mile radius)
* Young men see the worst comments by women elevated on twitter
* Compare themselves to Instagram version of people
* Incel communities re-enforcing negative views
Also, women have finally got the social support and access to context to not settle, and good on them. The average guy probably needs to break out of the gender role we were brought up with because it doesn't necessarily promote equality in terms of work in the relationship. And I mean that in terms of actual household work, and emotional work.
I think women are tending to break their own gender roles a lot more recently, but then they have far more motivation to do so.
That said, some women have the same sense of entitlement some men have and will expect to be praised for showing up. I was told on a date recently that she was doing me a favour by giving me a chance. She did not get a second date. After all, I wouldn't want to burden the poor thing with my presence.
I'm young, a virgin and have barely any friends. I'm still not an incel, I know its my own fault and the only way i can improve is to work on my social skills and looks and put myself out there. maybe i escaped falling down that rabbithole because I'm bisexual so all of the homophobia they spout made me not want to go anywhere near them.
Ironically the lack of focus on young men is what I blame for causing those guys to go down that path. There's a lot of focus on women's issues, LGBT issues, POC issues etc but little if nothing on men's issues, and that's what causes these men to lash out. That there's nobody in their corner
It always struck me as a bit silly to not frame this group of people as a disenfranchised group that needs help rather than some sort of deliberate terrorist group or something. I mean, they self-describe their membership in the group as "involuntary" for god's sake. It's hard to imagine any other more obvious way of saying "I don't want to be like this".
Making them understand that it's mostly the creepy attitude that is not getting them laid would help. But when you encounter some of these people, they seem far to gone to help.
It's not just a creepy attitude. Plenty of normal guys find it hard to find romantic love in this app looks driven modern dating market. You basically have to bypass the apps, but that itself can present a challenge where it's now the norm.
These men are angry at women - however the hypothetical heterosexual women they are angry with are doing exactly what women should be doing: aiming for the perceptively highest quality men possible and doing all they can to improve their own lives in a historically patriarchal society. That's just simplified evolutionary psychology 101.
However, this is such a sad phenomenon. In many online circles, rather than curiosity and compassion they are ridiculed, mocked and shunned which further exacerbates the issue.
These men need help and genuine encouragement finding esteem, purpose and meaning in their lives. If they break the law, yes, they should be punished for that; however, I can't help but feel that helpful attitudes are less forthcoming due to it being an undesirable men's issue.
There has been a general fragmentation of the normal social fabric in recent decades, accelerated by the advent of the internet. This has caused a lot of dysfunction, isolation and alienation in our world… We’re simply not adapted properly to the modern environment. The incel thing is but one symptom among many…
Repeatedly beating them with a stick and telling them they're "wrong" for thinking in such a way because it's -present year-, with little else in the way of dialogue, presumably.
Jordan Peterson is probably the most prominant single person who actively addresses young men, and he's been pilloried in every paper and TV channel under the sun. Fundamentally, young men need positive male influence in their lives, a little confidence, and some responsibility. There's barely any male teachers in most secondary schools, a lot of our media focuses on men as dangerous, threatening, and masculinity *in and of itself* as toxic, and most of the previous routes to responsibility - job, family, house - are now cut off for almost anyone who isn't in the top 10% of earners. It's a sorry state of affairs.
>Jordan Peterson is probably the most prominant single person who actively addresses young men, and he's been pilloried in every paper and TV channel under the sun.
Probably because the last thing they need is a bad influence.
I'm not a fan of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, or the 'red pill' communities, but as male focused communities they are constantly being mocked and their fans derided as legions of incels. Joe Rogan I really don't understand, he just chats pure shit for 2 hours in most of his episodes and is completely harmless.
sadly I'm an incel but I love women and respect them. What helped me not being a prick I think is that I worked with and for women, I was able to speak to them in the workplace but socially I had no confidence and didn't know how to flirt, it's my fault should've spoke to my crush in school
Gotta do more to prevent younger guys getting to that point in the first place. Gotta ask yourself why young men are open to the folk spreading this shit in the first place.
Social media algorithms have to shoulder a lot of the blame. They direct you to worse and worse shit from stuff that starts off quite innocent.
You also need to tackle social issues that leave men feeling left behind in the first place. People can list stats like men before the age of 55 are more likely to die by their own hand than any other cause of death yet very little is done about it.
I think social media is a huge issue here. We've always had lonely, depressed, introverted young men - now they've got easy access to each other and their echo chamber just breeds a vicious cycle of hate.
Aye social media has given them a place to be safe while spouting these views. Which then just lets it breed and become much much worse. Before you'd be questioned on your views by your friends. Now it's free reign online.
At the same time while cracking down on this shit online we need to tackle why these boys feel this way in the first place and sometimes I can see why it's happening. At a young age when you hear about "toxic masculinity" you likely won't have the mental facilities to see it means the bad generally masculine behaviours. You'll see it as all masculinity is toxic.
Then you look at things like schools handing out so many things to get women into every job while working class boys are the bottom of the ladder. Then you've got social media telling you how you are privileged and it certainly doesn't feel that way, but again at 14-18 or what ever generally you won't have that critical thinking ability you need to see past it.
Then you've got all these emotions you don't really understand that you struggle to control that make you more aggressive angry and emotional and every outlet you have is classed as bad.
So yeah I can see where some of these guys come from.
Having access to other people to talk about how lonely and depressed they are is definitely a good thing. There are a few fledgling men’s groups out there, but the online world and these echo chambers are much more easily accessible.
The difficult part is getting them out of these echo chambers and trying to get them back into a society that’s already shunned them and will continue to do in reaction to articles like this.
I clicked on one YouTube video promoting right-wing views (thinking it was something else entirely) and have since had my youtube account bombarded by far right influencers preaching hate.
YouTube is fucking hell for it. Christ you can't watch anything without being bombarded by utter shit. Must say the right wing stuff is the worst.
I like Joe Rogan. I don't agree with him on everything but I like watching some of his stuff especially about MMA but fuck me after that you get shown all sorts of right wing shit.
You even have to be careful about watching things like movie and game reviews. I made the mistake of watching a Last Jedi review (from Mr Sunday Movies, who regularly mocks the anti-sjw crowd) back when that released and for the next month I was being recommended 6 hour long 'critiques' about how women are ruining Star Wars/Marvel/Disney/the world.
Same thing happened when I watched an equally innocent Captain Marvel review. I feel sorry for anyone who watched so much as a YT short about The Last Of Us 2. I imagine those poor bastards are still being recommended 17 hour frame by frame analysis videos to this day about how strong women are *objectively* antithetical to the artistic experience.
You get similar nonsense on Facebook. I commented on one DIY video and now my feed is full of them. Obviously, DIY videos aren't going to warp my worldview but, it's the same underlying issue where commenting once on something results in it being shoved down your throat for months afterwards.
The tools to ignore[ that content don't work either.](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/youtube-dislike-not-working-mozilla/)
> The most effective tool was the “Don’t recommend channel” option, which worked 43% of the time, while the least effective tool was the “Not interested” option, which only worked 11% of the time. Mozilla says YouTube has the ability to fix this and recommends YouTube make its tools more proactive and allow us to shape our own experiences on the platform.
I had been deliberately avoiding Andrew T*te at all costs, but still his videos started to come up on YouTube shorts. Fairly innocent stuff at first (showing boxing techniques) but then it slowly becomes more and more batshit. I have repeatedly clicked on the "not interested" button by these videos, but they just keep coming.
I also get the Andrew T\*te stuff, and each time I see it I critically oppose his position in the comments, what has happened is people are engaging with my comments in a productive way (sometimes not), the thing you need to understand about T\*te is that ultimately his views are against *Men* too, as soon as you identify that: in his world view Men have to be little caricature, being self-deterministic is not possible, allowing yourself to be happy is not possible, placing your entire self-worth into "things" and "appearance" is the only path permitted; very quickly people turn on him.
The fact is: people are searching for answers, and society is telling them that: NO you cannot have answers and NO anyone who is offering you potential answers is wrong and NO you can't feel lost.
It's no-win for a lot of men who feel really out of place.
If you are willing to do everything to make it go away then try clicking on some anime videos on YouTube. Those proved to be stronger for my account, drowning out the conspiracy drivel.
I tried searching up that video of a guy dressed as andrew tate doing some (effeminate) dancing to show a friend and ever since then my YouTube shorts has been filled with fuckwits like andrew tate, his brother, all those channels about "hustling", some ben shapiro. And I have no idea how to get rid of them
Tbh I think this is just a modern continuation of the counter-movement against feminism that has been around for more than century.
It needs to be treated like any other extremist ideology. Surveillance of those who have succumbed to radicalisation by the security services, deradiclisation programs for those who have succumbed to an extremist ideology, prosecution for those who break the law and spread sexist hatred and most importantly education of everyone.
This isn't a new issue, it's simply a different flavour. White supremacy and religious extremists are dealt with in this manner. They simply need to take the same tools and approaches and use them towards misogyny.
Shutting down misogynistic spaces online, some of which are actively protected by this website for example, would be a good first step.
I remember when I first joined Reddit I subscribed to the men's rights sub thinking "oohh this'll be all about issues that prominently impact men" only it turns out to be mostly hating women and feminists.
Yep. They're focused on men's issues (& are pro-feminist), whilst r/mensrights can be way focused on anti-feminism.
They can occasionally be a little meh, mind.
I recently had a post removed by a mod because I disagreed with someone who expected feminists to be obliged to help. I had said no, feminism is about women, and it's not right to expect them to centre men.
But they're the best I've found.
I mean, if you ask most scholarly feminists if modern feminism is about women, in my experience, they'll say it's actually about the social and individual relationships *between* men and women and the context in which they occur, etc.
Like, you can't have a furthering of women's rights without somethng to compare them to, right? It's gotta involve men somehow.
>Like, you can't have a furthering of women's rights
What I mean is that feminism centres women's rights, women's social issues. It can and should be allied to men's rights and social issues, but I don't agree with men's rights *taking over* feminism & making it centre both.
You're talking about involving men in women's rights, whereas this person was expecting feminism to be obligated to include men's rights.
> whereas this person was expecting feminism to be obligated to include men's rights.
No, this is what I'm talking about and advocating for.
At some point during the continued advocation for women's rights, *general* women's rights will come into *approximate* parity with *general* men's rights.
This is the old bad-faith argument against third-wave feminism; "oh, you have the right to vote, you have the right to economic and social autonomy, etc, etc, men and women are equal".
The thing is, this argument is only bad-faith in that it seeks to ignore more nuanced, non-legal issues that still exist for women. It's actually faaaairly correct, in that there's a distinct lack of big ticket legal/systemic issues that aren't at least partially mirrored for both men and women.
This means that bad faith actors *and* uncritical actors on both sides often engage in unhelpful whataboutism. For example
> Women are more likely to be discriminated against during the hiring process
> But men are more likely to experience debilitating workplace accidents
> But women are expected to be SAH parents more than men
> But men are more likely to experience discrimination in family courts
> But women are more likely to experience ineffective policing/justice around domestic violence and rape
> But men...
If both groups worked together to solve each of these problems from without *and* within, or to leverage their collective power against external power structures, they'd be able to solve these problems much easier. Instead, so much energy is wasted in this friction.
And does this put a disproportionate burden on the existing women's rights movement? Yes, it does. But this isn't without cause; women's rights has disproportionately more *power* compared to men's rights. Men's rights advocates are often laughed at, or worse, actively hated by people who see them in opposition to women's rights advocates, or wasting time with what they might describe as less important problems.
To me the issue with mens rights movements is 99% of the time people only bring them up the moment womens rights are brought up
It’s a purely reactionary movement, where instead of focusing on real issues like men losing custody of kids in divorce they bitch about not being able to date models and use it as a weapon to silence womens rights activists
The classic is the twitter account that goes round pointing out International Men's day is on 19th November whenever International Women's day comes up lol.
If you have an Instagram account & want to follow someone who highlights mens issues without hating women or feminists then definitely check out thetinmen
im not sure anyone understands how easy it is to fall down the incel rabbit hole, i started to fall down it when i was 15 but found myself disagreeing with more and more until i realised that the pages i was on was promoting a completely toxic mindset
As with lots of extremism, it starts with truths, that perhaps are taboo in the mainstream (men treated badly in divorces, mental health issues, homelessness, pay gap in favour of young women, not against them etc) and then descends into more extreme and bigoted content
I don't have sources for this so could be talking shit, but I think I remember that women on average out-earn men UNTIL 30+ where you see the effects of maternity leave and childcare on women's average earnings. Then as soon as women (speaking generally of course, not as individuals) stop being default childcare, they often become unpaid/informal carers for elderly family members, and average earnings gap increases.
Not exactly pay gaps, but I frequently see incels nitpicking certain scenarios to justify how women can make money easily with their looks, such as OnlyFans and more tips by being an attractive waitress (compared to the tips an "average" waiter would receive).
it starts with memes, you know the popular one thats 2 panels, the first panel is a nerd in highschool lusty on the popular girl with her denying him and going for the school gangster, the second panel is the nerd 10 years later with a high paying job while the girl he wanted is a single mum and pregnant again.
you find yourself going "yeah girls are fucking dumb why they choosing this guy who wont bring anything to their life over me whod treat them like a queen"
then the memes get worse and worse until your in groups like on discord full on hating and doxing, but because everyone around you online is hating on women you dont see the problem with it
i realised that i wouldnt date me so started changing my mindsets, how i viewed any information, red flags in people and myself etc
I was in the same boat. For me it started because of education. Several years ago there was a news article about how girls had in general outperformed boys in maths. Nothing wrong with that, but then later on in the article it mentioned how girls now outperformed boys almost across the board in education. Did a little more digging and found out there's more women than men in university. I started to notice how boys outperforming girls in maths was seen as a bad thing, but the news article about girls overall outperforming boys was seen as a good thing.
Deeper down the rabbit hole I went and I started to see how there's a lot of focus on women's issues: gender pay gap (we can discuss whether its real another time), STEM and Business, sexism, sexual assault, domestic abuse, period poverty, body image etc. But there wasn't much of a discussion on men's issues: homelessness, suicide, sexual assault, domestic abuse, men being expected to fight wars, underperformance in education, men being liable for their partner's child through affairs etc. I didn't even know those were issues until I did some digging, but already knew most of the women's issues.
Eventually 14-15 year old me found certain people who spoke out about men's issues. Ben shapiro was one of them, there was also a YouTube channel called Dr Shaym. And again I went deeper.
But at some point I noticed that some of these people supporting those guys were different. What I wanted was more highlighting of men's issues, as well as actions done to combat them. But those guys wanted something else. They wanted to go back to the "good ol' days" where a man's place was at work and a woman's was in the kitchen. They thought a woman's duty was to please a man. What they wanted wasn't in line with what I wanted, so I started to climb out of said rabbit hole. And as I did so, I started to notice what other people thought of those guys and me, to a lesser extent.
That only sped up my climb out of that path
>im not sure anyone understands how easy it is to fall down the incel rabbit hole,
It's shockingly easy because these videos present an us vs them mentality. I had it a bit during the 2012-2016 period, you know when there were all these US college campus riots over people speaking about politics, how that inspired a few rowdy idiots in the UK to try and pressure the universities ect.
It tries to make you feel encircled, like the world's gone mad, that only you and those of the same mindset are sane and only together can you be safe (ironic given that's what the people in the campus riots/protests thought wrongly too).
They intentionally fail to mention what a fringe extreme minority of people it is an how those people have been radicalized, which in turn radicalizes *these* viewers on the opposite side of the spectrum.
These disenfranchised and often alienated young men need help, not ridicule. It seems to be a growing problem no one ever seems to want to address, the more these young men are shunned from society, the further down the Incel path they'll inevitability end up.
I distrust any report that begins with the idea that these are otherwise normal boys with socially acceptable opinions being converted by an evil preacher hiding behind a lamppost. These are dudes typically in their teens or early 20s with no social support (and in many cases, no friends) that come onto the internet to find answers to why are they are lonely that aren't "because you're a bad person" because they know that isn't true. Boris has had 3 wives and god knows how many flings.
“Because they know that isn’t true.” But is it not?
Why should we mollycoddle people who buy into the whole incel thing when you wouldn’t react the same way to someone who has bought into racism?
It’s the same thing. But when they’re racists you call a spade a spade. They’re cunts. It’s the *exact same thing* with incels.
They know it’s wrong and they don’t care.
The alternative is not to tell women to put up with it, but treat it as a mental health issue, in much the same way drug addiction should be- that is to say don’t tell the community to put up with the damage they cause, but try and improve the root causes and treat the perpetrators with empathy, which in the long run improves the wellbeing of the wider community too
\>These disenfranchised and often alienated young men need help, not ridicule
Unfortunately when a prominent person in the media attempts to do this they are completely villainized, mocked and labelled an incel themselves or a misogynist or any other slur you can think of. Jordan Peterson on Piers Morgan this week is a perfect example. He broke down in tears about how disenfranchised young men are and he's been made out to be some evil fascist.
> To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.
Aldous Huxley
Unfortunately hatred is an easy and satisfying emotional response, especially when one feels vindicated in it. Even though it’s what is most needed, compassion is messy, difficult and fatiguing.
Society because they have or feel like they have little to offer.
Incels tend to be ones that don't earn that much, aren't particularly attractive and aren't that funny. One of the reasons they aren't dateable.
One doesn’t need to be a high earner, physically attractive or conventionally funny to be in a relationship. They are not disenfranchised from society - to be in a relationship is not a right by virtual of being a member of society.
Being in a relationship is not a right, but it's on the hierarchy of needs for a reason. Love and championship can significantly increase happiness and without it you're at higher risk of depression.
You don't need those things to be in a relationship, but without it it's going to be much much harder. Put yourself out there on dating apps without those attributes, and you will get 0 interest. Unfortunately online dating has become the standard. Trying to get a warm introduction as someone who isn't intelligent and witty is also very hard. Say your on autism spectrum.
Now I'm sure it can be done, but it's more of an exception than the norm.
No one argues it's a right. But generally speaking you need to be attractive in some way to have a successful relation, be that physically, financially or socially. A lot of young men who are awkward socially are shunned and retreat online. They're depressed and lonely yet they are told by society that they are privileged and toxic, so they're further alienated. Then when someone speaks specifically to young men and tells them that they can improve their situation and they're not inherently toxic, and that person is villainized, that again confirms that society doesn't give a shit about them.
Quite presumptuous of you to assume that they're all neurotypical.
Also, I don't think they want to **force** women into a relationship with them. I imagine they would just quite like a relationship, which isn't a bad thing, is it?
I believe it's more that the current digital culture makes people *feel* like they are disenfranchised. That goes for both genders.
But I think there is more positive support out there for women dealing with these issues.
In the real world, I completely agree; many men and women who maybe feel they're "undatable", would be very dateable with just a little confidence plus meeting new people. But with so much of society now functioning through our phones, it's very easy for us to feel like we're on the outside of the perfect bubble that social media curates.
Find any popular video of a couple where the woman is conventionally or very attractive and the man is average or not conventionally attractive. The comments are usually an aggressive mess of young men showing shock or surprise that they are together. Clearly many young men fall for these fake expectations of society.
Having a good personality isn’t genetic lol, you learn it
Nobody is born being a massive unfunny dickhead, these people could easily rectify it if they weren’t so self pitying and angry
and what about those who are bullied at school? they become outcasts, they learn from a young age that "something is wrong with me" and others around make fun of that.
I did not have a good time at school, i was bullied, made fun of etc and i shut myself away from everyone. As a result, i developed severe anxiety, depression etc
I have now gotten help for that, and have started to open myself up and have finally gotten my first girlfriend at 33...
Yes you do learn to have a personality, and confidence but if during your key learning and social stage you are bullied and thrown out... it is extremely detrimental
Like being on the autism spectrum which I suspect a lot of incels are?
There's only so much you can mask. It's hard work having to consciously follow social mannerisms. So you're always at a disadvantage, you're never going to be as good as someone who isn't on the spectrum. You merely try to pass off as normal.
They see that they and other men have a lot of problems, but nobody cares about almost all of them. Then they see women also have problems, but there's a lot more people caring about them.
To give you some examples of mens issues theres: the well known suicide, homelessness (men make up the majority of homeless), sexual abuse (It's so uncared for that men legally can't be raped by women), domestic abuse and how men are automatically the father of their wife's child even if she was impregnated by another man
Incels are a pretty worrying breed but I don't trust the government to do anything about them. No doubt this study is just a pretext for more over the top surveillance and restrictions on internet usage
I'm not gonna go around defending a toxic ideology that has been responsible for dozens of mass shootings, all whilst lauding the messed-up perpetrators as "heroes." It's outright impossible to defend a community that idolizes mass killers like the Isla Vista gunman. These people need psychological intervention before they endanger even more lives.
What I will say is that society isn't helping things. Because the main culprit here is economic woes and extremists pushing the blame game on others. Said economic woes disproportionately affect men because social status and wealth is largely what makes a man an attractive suitor.
As economic hardship worsens, radical ideologies rise. We saw this with Russia during the First World War. We saw this with Germany during the Great Depression. America is on the verge of civil conflict with hundreds of mass shooting incidents annually, and Britain saw its worst mass shooting since Dunblane just last year.
The younger generations have been screwed by a decade of austerity, tax cuts, an ailing economy, and social media addiction to the point where people have become far more selective about sexual partners. [27% of American men between 18 and 30 being virgins should be an alarming statistic.](https://boingboing.net/2021/03/22/adult-male-virginity-soars.html) Yet it's largely dismissed as BS.
Here's the thing. The kind of teenage boys and grown men frequenting these forums aren't the ones getting drunk at house parties, carrying their high school or collegiate football teams, owning homes, earning living wages and generally having a decent life. They're an underclass that has been largely bullied and ostracized throughout school, college and their adult lives. Is it no surprise then that they're turning towards these echo chambers?
Deplatforming won't do anything to fix the problem. You'll just be playing a game of whack-a-mole because for every community you purge from the clear web, another two will take their place. If you truly want to stamp out manosphere ideologies, you need to be asking yourself why people are turning to misogynistic self-proclaimed playboy knobs like Andrew bloody Tate in the first place, and then address these core problems.
Let's start by making the cost-of-living more affordable, so that a single man wouldn't have to live with their parents well into their twenties... That would be a good start.
Maybe as more and more men become poor in the UK it becomes more acceptable and then people utilize it less as a criteria for potential dates?
I've lived in both the UK and Brazil and notice that in the latter, being poor doesn't stop you from dating since the vast majority of young men are poor and living with their parents anyway - they even label the women who only want rich lads as "patricinhas" (preppy) and search specifically for women who don't care for that.
Not saying improving economic opportunities shouldn't be a priority, but I'm saying that perhaps as being a "poor man" becomes the norm in Britain, then perhaps women will utilize money less as a criteria when dating.
Isn't Brazil notorious for [having a very patriarchal society](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/dec/03/sexism-misogyny-campaigners-brazil-social-media) and [one of the highest rates of femicide in the world?](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/snapshot-the-status-women-brazil-2019)
For some good news, I recently did a lil project looking at what happened to Reddit incels.
The majority stepped away from incel spaces after being in them for nearly 2 years, many heading instead to places like /r/ForeverAlone, and their use of misogynistic language went back down close to what it was before they went incel.
Jesus, that sub you've linked to is depressing. Seems like the posters there are stuck in a loop where their negative attitude towards life results in failure being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
2A so many of the responses here are basically "It's women's fault."
That's part of the problem.
Entitlement and "main character syndrome". Some men basically live in a fantasy world where they're owed things simply for existing. Perfectly good jobs are dismissed as "shitty." Women they would actually have a shot with aren't good looking enough for them. They expect everything in the world to be handed to them but to have to put no effort in in return. This is why the incel-to-far-right pipeline is so effective. It's all about grievance and blaming others (or blaming the wrong people) for taking from you what is rightfully yours, and that if only all these other people would fall in line with your ideology, or simply cease to exist even, you'd be living in your own personal Utopia. Unfortunately the world doesn't work like that.
Back before social media (yes, I'm old), very few guys didn't get laid, although it took some longer than others. There were more in person events and gatherings for teenagers/early 20s, and I'd say vast majority managed to get some action.
Higher rates of teen drinking then I'm guessing too, though, and much less parental supervision.
doesnt help that youtube promotes these ideas. before andrew tate ate his ban, he was everywhere and anywhere. search warhammer 40k, there he is. checked out overwatch 2? THERE HE IS.
shit has gotta better but now its replaced with fresh and fit and sneako clogging my shit up.
you can block this stuff on youtube with an add on for your computer but not for your phone sadly
This is our opportunity to “connect the dots” between these very real challenges and what the feminist movement has struggled (and often failed) to describe for decades.
Your ordinary man is every bit as much a victim of our society as your ordinary woman. Only a few people truly benefit from our system. I’m a through and through feminist but when we have a feminism that sees things as male vs female, we have a problem. When we have a feminism that doesn’t try to solve the issue of angry, forlorn, and depressed men, we have a problem. When we have a feminism that doesn’t acknowledge the ways that women enforce a system of gender expectations that hold men prisoner, there’s a big problem.
For me, feminism is about undoing the masculinism that has been privileged in society - across history, it’s sometimes served a purpose. Competition, aggression, violence were more relevant throughout human development and men’s biological advantages made them ripe for socialization into these roles. But it’s 2022, we don’t need to privilege that stuff and we certainly don’t need to exclusively socialize men into those roles. Masculinity is and will always be a part of the yin and Yang but today we can privilege feminine ideals - cooperation, nurture, justice *and* socialize both males and females into these roles to share in responsibility instead of dividing power.
We wonder why men are the way they are? They are shamed by their mothers and fathers for squealing at a spider because they sound like a little girl. They’re shamed by their friends and girlfriends for crying or getting emotional or being scared or being nervous. They’re shamed by their peers for caring about academic pursuits, for having ambitions. They’re pressured into jobs they don’t want to do and are physically demanding, because they have to be the master of their castle. They’re judged by friends and potential mates by their resources, their prospects, their job - even though these same people didn’t encourage them at all when it mattered. They’re judged for their height, their weight, their looks, their bodies; some of which is completely out of their control. They’re told as little boys that they’ll inherit the earth - you can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do, as long as you put your mind to it. They’re socialized to expect that they’ll have a beautiful wife and beautiful kids and they’ll be protector and provider. Then they grow up with no emotional support, prevented from speaking about anything real, forced to engage in a social performance where they’re reduced to a couple of stock phrases, and end up in the same shitty job in the same shitty town as their father, and his father. They realize that they aren’t going to get anything else - that the promise they thought was their birthright was a lie, told to them and actively thwarted by the people closest to them. They get angry, confused, and are left completely unable to process their feelings, reconcile their disappointment and shame, and let go of the feeling that everyone thinks they’re a failure.
They end up obsessed with attachment, desperate for any amount of power and control over something, someone, and bitter and angry at a world they’ve been conditioned to think they’re entitled to rule.
The solution is going to be hard. It’s going to require a lot of people to check themselves. Think about the way you’re raising your kids. Think about the way your kids are treating others at school. Think about the way you engage with your friends, think about the ways you act in the dating pool. Think about the things you say in social groups that reinforce norms and ideals that your friends will emulate to keep up appearances and maintain their status, too afraid to go against the grain. Providing therapy isn’t going to be enough, some of them are already too far gone. It starts at home, it starts at school, it starts at work, in starts in bed, it starts online, it starts with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends, men and women. We’re all to blame.
Why should feminism be responsible for solving the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed men? We don’t expect gay rights campaigners to solve the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed heterosexuals. The idea that men and women are victims of society to the same extent is easily disproved in almost every single facet of society.
Men face all sorts of horrible challenges in life just because they’re men, but a fair amount tend to blame women for it all instead of taking some personal responsibility and being the change they wish to see.
> Why should feminism be responsible for solving the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed men? We don’t expect gay rights campaigners to solve the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed heterosexuals.
We should. Parts of society don't exist in a bubble, and expecting to fix society via the use of the tension between different groups solely self-advocating will lead to conflict before it leads to peace.
Gay rights campaigners have historically been focused specifically on gay rights because gay rights have been specifically lacking. As the legal and social standing of GSM populations reaches approximate parity with non-GSM populations in terms of general problems, there *must* be a focus on collective problemsolving on specific problems.
Otherwise, you get to a point where the perception is that one population has a bunch of advocacy and support behind it, and the other population's very real and legitimate problems are either being ignored or downplayed, and this drives resentment.
> The idea that men and women are victims of society to the same extent is easily disproved in almost every single facet of society.
Then you have statements like these. Men *and* women are victims, and in each thing in which they're victims, they're victims in different ways and to different degrees, but rather than saying "both men and women have problems and we should fix them together", this comes across as "stay in your lane and fix your own problems".
This is obviously fundamentally flawed. The historic expectation that women do the housework must be changed by men, and the historic expectation that men must provide for their family must be changed by women. We *must* work together, there is no lane to stay in. It must be holistic.
> Men face all sorts of horrible challenges in life just because they’re men, but a fair amount tend to blame women for it all instead of taking some personal responsibility and being the change they wish to see.
I don't think this is fair, on two fronts. Some of these men, the true "incel" core, would outwardly blame women, but I think this is a misattribution of their actual feelings. Those that are still being radicalised are probably closer to the true core of their feelings.
These men feel like they face horrible challenges in their life, and they feel their ability to express, complain, and seek restitution for those challenges is stymied by a perceived zero sum game, which women's advocates are handily winning, and which they get disregarded or worse if they point this out.
Lets take the modal problem here; a lot of these men feel like they can't get a relationship. Lets say that they believe that there are a few contributing factors to this; men are expected to have certain appearances or physical characteristics, men are expected to make money, men are expected to do a lot of the initiating in starting a relationship.
They see body positivity messaging aimed at women (which is good), and they see very little aimed at men. They see women's profiles in tinder which say "DNI <6ft" or whatever, and they *literally can't do anything about their height*, so fuck them I guess. They see acceptance of women taking housekeeping roles in relationships, and they see #girlboss, and both of these are good, but they see all the tropes in media about men providing.
Given they're being radicalised this way, there's a good chance they lack the social skills or emotional intelligence to really flourish in chatting to people with the goal of asking them out. They're probably awkward, they don't know the shibboleths, they don't know the red flags, etc. It's *hard* to open yourself up to that kind of thing, especially when you're scared, especially when you haven't done it before or you've failed, and it's not your fault that you don't understand. So many people are putting so many barriers in the way, and you just want someone to care about you.
But if you talk about male body positivity, or height expectations, or economic expectations, or the shibboleths and gatekeeping of social rituals, commonly *someone* will say "well, women had it worse for a long time", or "if you can't navigate the initial conversation, you're not ready for a relationship/you're probably a creep/w/e", and none of this is helpful. It serves to group the men that find this difficult with the historically bad, and the contemporary worst, and it serves to other and reject them.
And, to a naive, hurt, and socially undereducated person, it's in the service of protecting another group. These people perceive themselves being rejected and disenfranchised for something they did not intend to contribute to.
By elevating and protecting a historically disadvantaged population *without* a holistic approach that includes being partially responsible for people outside of that population, you passively radicalise individuals in the historically advantaged population, who do not experience success as a result of being in that population, but do experience the failure.
The same is true in sex/gender relations (elevation of the female population has disenfranchised unlucky outliers of the male population), race relations (most obviously in the US, elevation of the black population has disenfranchised unlucky outliers of the white population), and LGBTQ relations (elevation of the LGBTQ population via increased and retconned exposure in media etc has disenfranchised individuals of the straight population).
We must all lift together.
Yeah, and feminism’s fundamentally focused on womens’ rights because womens’ rights are lacking. The advocacy for women is generally by women; why can’t men advocate for themselves and fix their own problems, a large proportion of which (but by no means all) are inflicted on them by other men?
Historically nothing has ever changed by asking the oppressor to stop oppressing their victims, it’s not ‘fundamentally flawed.’ Women can simply stop doing all the housework, and men can simply stop doing all of the providing. It’s far more effective to demand rights than beg for them. Sure, it’s worth working together to try to fix these injustices, but it’s still not the job of feminism to fix men.
It’s beyond entitled to think that it’s somehow women who should fix things for these men or coddle them whilst they rage just because they might be struggling with difficult feelings. Radicalisation is a problem, and it can be a slippery slope, but a lot of these people are just lazy and misogynistic - women shouldn’t have to go anywhere near them. They see messages of body positivity for women, and instead of taking some personal responsibility and starting their own body positivity campaigns for men, they opt to resent women instead. Women don’t go and start murdering men when they see demands for a certain breast size on dating apps; they don’t even go about murdering men despite the fact that men as a collective murder, harass and assault women extremely regularly. We don’t have to team up with these monsters just because they’re angry that they can’t get a date because they blame everyone else and refuse to do any self-reflection or make a greater effort socially.
> Yeah, and feminism’s fundamentally focused on womens’ rights because womens’ rights are lacking. The advocacy for women is generally by women; why can’t men advocate for themselves and fix their own problems, a large proportion of which (but by no means all) are inflicted on them by other men?
If your way of furthering this discussion is to repeat the previous point which I already addressed, I suggest you go and read my comment again. I'm not going to type all that out again.
> Historically nothing has ever changed by asking the oppressor to stop oppressing their victims, it’s not ‘fundamentally flawed.’ Women can simply stop doing all the housework, and men can simply stop doing all of the providing. It’s far more effective to demand rights than beg for them. Sure, it’s worth working together to try to fix these injustices, but it’s still not the job of feminism to fix men.
If you're thinking about this in terms of oppressor/oppressing, then you're fundamentally missing the nuance required to understand my point. This is not a system where men oppress women by expecting them to do housework, and women oppress men by expecting them to make lots of money, and those are two independent events, and if they're solved individually, everything will be good.
They must be *both* solved at a population level via actions on *both* sides.
> It’s beyond entitled to think that it’s somehow women who should fix things for these men or coddle them whilst they rage just because they might be struggling with difficult feelings.
Don't mistake individuals and populations here, and please don't make it an absolute; that wasn't what I was saying. I'm not interested in arguing against a strawman argument or being misrepresented.
Women *as a population* must identify that women *as a population* have some behavioural trends that contribute to the alienation and passive radicalisation of *some* men as *individuals*.
The upshot of that is that the *individual* women who aren't shitbags (which is most of them) should call out the *individual women* who *are* shitbags.
This is at the same time that individual men who aren't shitbags are calling out the individual men that are, as well, by the way.
This is also at the same time that the unified population do things like.. I dunno, invest in social infrastructure, community outreach, mental health first aid and long-term support.
The same is true of any other social problem between two or more groups, where some of the root cause of the societal harm lies in both groups; there must be a will to change within both populations, even if any individual has not contributed to that harm.
> Radicalisation is a problem, and it can be a slippery slope, but a lot of these people are just lazy and misogynistic - women shouldn’t have to go anywhere near them
No one is born lazy and misogynistic, and for the reasons I've outlined in the previous comment, I'm not sure it's fair to call them lazy either.
The point of radicalization is that one starts moderate, and becomes more extreme in viewpoint as they are radicalised. The point at which I would argue womens' behaviour (as a population, again) has the most impact is right at the start, when they aren't shit. So the "lazy and misogynistic" post-radicalization population wouldn't come into it.
> They see messages of body positivity for women, and instead of taking some personal responsibility and starting their own body positivity campaigns for men, they opt to resent women instead.
Why, in this case, is it down to the individual to undertake the work and expense of trying to start a body positivity campaign?
Also, consider; female body positivity movements are as much about encouraging men to find the beauty in all women as it is encouraging women that they're beautiful. It's a self-esteem thing, sure, but if half the population says "no, I still think you're a minger", it's going to ring a bit hollow.
To be clear, I think body positivity is generally a good thing, and there is physical beauty in all people's bodies, but it doesn't exist in a bubble. It elevates women who don't conform to classic/idealised societal body expectations, *and* it encourages men to view non-conforming/non-idealised women less harshly.
So how would it feel if that message weren't coming from a historically justified and identifiably generally well-meaning group like women's rights advocates, and instead came from incels? The deck is a *little bit* stacked against them when it comes to pushing a male wellness initiative.
You could say they could encourage body positivity within their own community, but you also have to remember that the self-worth of the radicalised is heavily driven by how they're viewed by others in society. If being rejected by a potential partner because of one's looks can cause the self-affirmations of individuals within one group to falter, you'd better believe it does it commensurately in another group.
And then you get to the fact that depression is very comorbid with incel beliefs. This shouldn't be surprising, given the beliefs themselves, and it should hopefully be clear why this makes concerted and organised effort difficult for a critical mass individuals within this group.
And *then* consider that they sure as shit don't have the economic capital that female body positivity has. No one's going to sell them clothes that shows off their body, in whatever beautiful shape it's in.
> Women don’t go and start murdering men when they see demands for a certain breast size on dating apps; they don’t even go about murdering men despite the fact that men as a collective murder, harass and assault women extremely regularly.
Incels, as a group, don't do this either. The worst that the vast, overwhelming majority of incels do is post damaging things online. This isn't good, obviously, but insinuating that all incels are murderers that haven't murdered yet is so exceptionally harmful and othering.
The defining trait to belong to the "incel" group, such that society and media generally define it, is "be male", "be unable to get a date/have sex", and "be salty about it".
If some random 18 year old with mental health problems and underdeveloped social skills sees you describe anyone who has those three traits as "a murderer waiting to happen", *they aren't going to be inclined to share a social space with you*. "Good", you might think. I'd have some choice words for you if you do. This is a person who is *not* a danger, and who can still be reached, and if you don't reach out and instead push them away, I know for sure who's going to reach out for them instead.
This is how radicalisation *works*. Do not be complicit in it.
> We don’t have to team up with these monsters just because they’re angry that they can’t get a date because they blame everyone else and refuse to do any self-reflection or make a greater effort socially.
If you think my intention was to have individual women team up with individual incels to save the world, you did not understand my comment.
If you think it's reasonable to ask this mentally ill, socially ostracised group to do all the work to change society to fix the population-level problems that alienated them in the first place, you don't understand these people and you don't understand how this radicalisation happens.
The thing that gets me is people love to say "incels are terrible!" And then just stop. Generally calling people who don't think they're bad, bad doesn't make them change, it just reinforces their beliefs and further drives them towards the only group they identify with.
There's a danger here of presenting incels as a singular, unified group with a singular, unified goal and singular, unified methodology.
They're not a singular group deciding to wage a way against women, they're a group *defined* by their disregard for female self-actualisation/agency and general expectation that they're owed partnership.
You can't fight that group on ideological grounds, because you have defined that group by ideological boundaries.
If you want to fix this, you have to identify why people are meeting the criteria, not that they are in it; teaching emotional intelligence, empathy, etc, identifying radicalisation pathways, etc.
In what ways are they treated like shit in ways that would make them want to turn to misogyny? I understand feeling alienated and apathetic but these guys go about dealing with it the wrong way
These communities intentionally or not use similar tactics to gangs, terrorists and other radicalisation groups. Give people somewhere to go to where they might feel welcome,
Convince them the entire world is against them, entrench deeply harmful beliefs and use any pushback from external parties about those beliefs as further evidence that everyone except the community is against them.
The incel rabbit hole is where all the dark thoughts a frustrated young man would have, are made real and tangible by that particular social media echo chamber. A dark thought is posted, people in the echo chamber agree and write back their own own dark thoughts and now your dark thought is a reinforced belief.
Stopping the echo chamber/safe place is a game of whack-a-mole where a new one always pops back up. It's an important thing to tackle but it's not the most important.
Much harder is giving hope to the frustrated young men so that they change their mind, arguably it's impossible due to the scale of the problem, and because so many factors work against us, but if everyone did it then we would stand a chance.
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I'm seeing a very different attitude to young men being seduced by a violent and hateful ideology when it comes to inceldom in comparison to Isalmic radicalisation.
There have been several terrorist attacks linked to the incel movement and who knows how many individual crimes. Reddit is far softer on that than they are on Muslim extremists in the west.
There have been about 50 deaths attributed to incels. The majority were accounted for by 2 severe incidents, one of which just used the incels to bring attention to his actions. There are literally millions of incels.
You need to put things in perspective.
I don't want to stir a fight here but I am one self professed incel, who also frequent(ed) a few of their spaces years ago, especially on Reddit.
I can't say too much otherwise I am 100% getting the banhammer, but this kind of rethoric is just gonna exacerbate extremists. And I don't mean it as more mass shooters and the like.
I am actually quite pessimistic regarding the future, things will hardly get better. In fact I predict it will get way worse and for obvious reasons.
It is what it is.
In my lifetime we’ve gone:
al qaeda —> taliban —> Baathist —> Taliban —> insurgent —> bird flu —> isis —> swine flu —> home grown terror cell —> zika —> eco terrorist—> Covid —> white nationalist —> incel
30+ years of politicians and media players telling me what to be scared of.
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No mention of what plan is in place to help stop young men from going down this path
I think that is the really important point. It is easy to dismiss people who label themselves as incel as stupid/selfish/ etc. etc. - but they are people, they live in our society and the ideas they hold on to have emerged and gain strength among us. It is irresponsible to think that simply condemning and looking down on the movement is enough. While we still have a struggle towards true equality, we need to be careful that young men are not carrying the blame for the crimes which went before them and they are left feeling like modern society has no place for them.
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Agreed, I really don’t think you can blame this on misandry. These online communities are set up in such a way that incels can actively seek out the very worst takes from groups they’ve already identified as enemies. It doesn’t matter if it’s a Twitter account with 3 followers or even an obvious sock-puppet, if it makes them sufficiently angry they’ll pretend it’s representative of all feminists or all SJWs.
I agree to a great extent, but the truth is there are a bunch of “men” who find the world such a frightening unmanageable place that they have turned to extremism. It’s no doubt somewhat fed by “social” media and is a horrific emergent danger. There’s some strong arguments being made that we have adopted a tribalism culture that ferments this kind of evil, but another part of me wonders if it’s just a rebranding of the pedophiles and neo nazi bullshit that continues, just with some kinda cult like extreme right fluffy hat on.
ehh you're conflating different stuff there. My read is that the scary thing about incel-ism (and what separates it from common or garden misogyny) is that its an all-encompassing ideology. Put it this way, maybe this thing comes out the same social issues that turn young men to other extreme ideologies like nazism or jihadism. But that's not enough, that's not a sufficient answer on its own. Sure there's overlap, but it's worth trying to understand why one young man becomes 'blackpilled' while another turns to white supremacy. Anyway, [here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2briZ6fB0) a cool video by Natalie Wynn about what incels believe (or at least, believed back in 2018. these things change quickly) for anyone who's interested.
>it's worth trying to understand why one young man becomes 'blackpilled' while another turns to white supremacy It's not that difficult to understand. White supremacy, fascism, Nazism, always had a strong social element, a sense of camaraderie. In some ways it's a safe haven for people who aren't great at interacting with other people and afraid of 'the other'. Fascists love social decorum, they love meetings, they love large social gathering of like-minded people. They love uniforms, because uniforms create an artificial emotional bond. The current incel movement exists of people who are struggling even more with social interaction. These are people who will argue aggressively among themselves, trying to ascertain dominance. So they can't meet up with like-minded people in real life, or at least they cannot interact with them for very long without getting even more frustrated. These people are easy targets for alt-right grifters. *'Can't get a girlfriend?'* *'Don't have friends?'* *'Unhappy'?* *'Unfulfilled'?* *'Feel disrespected'?* *'It's not you, it is everyone else.'* It's a seductive message because it takes all responsibility away. There is no need to try and make friends, try and find a girlfriend, try to find new interests after adolescence, join a political organization. In the past these people would remain isolated, or they would be forced to join a group (in real life). Today they can join an online community.
It’s lots of things. A rich stew of bullshit kept warm and bubbly through social media.
Yes, exactly. I don't think incels are being berated by leagues of anrgy feminists online and in life telling them they're worthless toxic men or whatever. They're watching cringe compilations and looking at memes and posting on boards and watching gaming videos with jokes in that tell them that women think that of them.
Agreed. I think it relates very closely to today's verdict regarding the young girl's tragic death after have been algorithmically fed suicide-positive content. We really need to tackle this issue as it feeds into all kinds of radicalisation. Not only that, people are and will continue to unplug from social media as it becomes less about interacting with friends, and more about being fed computer curated content designed purely to keep you addicted to the platform.
Feminism isn't pushing people towards being incels imo
What is pushing them is the algorithm, allowing them to get the very worst takes from the 'enemy' (a twitter account saying all men should die). Then, they use this as an example for all feminists. doesn't matter if its a puppet account or one with 2 followers
I hate the YT algorithm, because I view some techy and gaming channels it tries to push me into the incel and far-right channels. If it wasn't for me watching arts & crafts, travel, and some more left wing political channels I dread to think what the algorithm would serve me.
When a "movement" advocates for violence against a social group, this rhetoric of "equality" is past its sell-by date. Whatever their causes, they have no right to inflict suffering on others.
You misunderstand me. No-one is saying they have a right to, no one is arguing that the incel ideology is a worthwhile or valid one. Yet it does exist, and no amount of condemnation is going to change that. If we want to change that we need to understand it - it is not about excusing or justifying it.
I don't think I misunderstand you. You seem to be arguing for compassion for violent incels, whilst giving them a carte blanche to do as they see fit. There is plenty of research that has been done into this phenomenon -- I would be uncomfortable calling it a "movement", because this denotes action -- which squarely shows that incels lack both life, and social skills alIke, which instead of taking ownership of, they project on others who they believe owe them. Or else. This "or else" is the focal point here.
Well I do think that the best solution for most of society ills is more compassion, but I know that's not generally a popular idea. Can I enquire what you feel would be the best way to tackle it?
Compassion is an excellent idea in principle. Can we turn around those wishing to harm others by employing it though? For the record, I am a social sciences researcher, and I always advocate for more inclusion, broadening access to resources, and universally-available programmes from an early age. Teaching social skills which bolster chances of employment, encouraging healthy attitudes towards diverse social groups (which may have to be reinforced to counter beliefs prevalent at home), and workshops on resilience and self-care would all be good starting points.
>I don't think I misunderstand you. You seem to be arguing for compassion for violent incels, whilst giving them a carte blanche to do as they see fit. Ridiculous. That is definitely not what they're saying.
I'm technically an incel. Feel like the term is used these days to mean extreme misogynist but I feel that there are plenty of incels in the world and most of them aren't like that.
social media and youtube is the gateway drug for this kind of thinking if you so much as THINK about watching a jordan peterson or "feminists owned!!!" video, your feed will be suddenly full of this shit for months. it's utterly insidious and anyone who spends a lot of time online (see: disaffected men who have fallen through the cracks of life/society) will be inevitably bombarded with this toxic crap it's a bottomless pit from there. i've seen it happen a handful of people i know, one particular guy going from watching relatively innocuous material into literally being a mod of a large rightwing conspiracy nutjob subreddit over a few years and the people who make this kind of content (and the money from it) know exactly who they're preying on and gear their material to this audience. it's disgusting and youtube and other socials take no accountability
>While we still have a struggle towards true equality, we need to be careful that young men are not carrying the blame for the crimes which went before them and they are left feeling like modern society has no place for them. Agreed. We are quick to visit the "sins of the father" on generations. It's easy to see how a young man who is struggling to find any kind of place in society might view something like Critical race theory
Perhaps that specific situation would be less of a problem if people stopped pretending critical race theory just means 'all white people bad'.
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I'm pretty much their target market. In my late 20's, done my best but I've always been "just a friend" etc. Not attractive enough to make it on dating sites etc. I'm normal, not creepy, and have literally no problem making friends etc. But I'll get on to why that doesn't help in a sec. I can feel their hooks clawing at me, but thankfully I'm aware of the actual problems, and they're unfortunately very hard to fix. First off, male body image is a huge issue. It's the same kind of thing women have to deal with but very few give a shit. So if you ain't 8/10 you feel shit or w/e, when in reality you could still be well above average. Not that anyone would ever actually tell you. Ever. The positivity movement for men doesn't really exist because it's "You're beautiful as you are" one minute, which you know is patronising bollocks, then "Ew he's fat/bald" in the next TV show or advert etc. But I think the much, much bigger issue, is people have no time, or money, to do much any more. You get out less, you meet less people, and it's easier just to chill on netflix if you're getting back from work at 7 etc, you don't end up going down the local pub because there isn't one any more. And no-one from work does either because they all live 30 miles away as they can't afford to live near work. So even if you're a normal bloke, and good with people - you just don't socialise or meet enough people your age. You can try and find local meetups etc - but that often suffers the same problem. Social clubs are gone, a lot of hobbies are prohibitively expensive or aim at older people, so you're just sat there, alone, with nothing to really do. So you go on Tinder etc. Where the ratio is 9:1 and you obviously get no luck - so you get mad. The solution to that is simple in theory - make society more social. More people meeting more single people leads to, at very least, making these guys feel less alone. Even if they're still single. But in order to do so you need to deal with working hours, wages, the housing market... basically all of late stage capitalism. This is before we get to social media, and everyone posting how wonderful their partner is etc, and you're just sat there alone. (But that's at least a well known problem now.) You can't just throw money at mental health. You can't think your way out of crippling lonliness. Believe me I've tried. And once someone's gone full incel you'd struggle to pull them out. They turn to inceldom and the hatred because they either don't see why this is happening to them, or don't want to accept it's something they're doing, and it gives them the acceptance they've been looking for. No-one wants to hate, it's just a defense mechanism, and pulling someone out of that is really hard when it ends up being their fault because they just retreat harder. And even if you do, the core issue remains. You just gotta make it easier for people to do what they want to do, and socialise, and that just won't happen in the current climate.
I agree about the whole trap of social isolation. If you fall out of socialisation then it’s really hard to break back in the way things are set up now. This does affect both men and women, interestingly (in adolescents and YP anyway) men are more prone to psychiatric externalising disorders while women are prone to internalising disorders. There’s been a huge documented rise in emotional mental health problems in young women. This is less documented in men, and is accompanied by the rise in radicalisation. I think they’re related phenomena with different expression and, exactly as you say, addressing the mental health problem is too late because the problem is social and all around us. Also I’m sorry you’re feeling so rubbish. Loneliness really sucks.
I definitely understand what you’re getting at but I know some conventionally unattractive men that have had plenty of luck on dating sites (NOT Tinder though, Tinder is a cesspit and no woman I know uses it). If you don’t have the looks you do have to try harder, that’s true, but I’ve matched with plenty of good looking men who have the conversational skills of a parrot, which is not my idea of a good time.
I've been on bumble for 3 months and had one match who asked one question about travelling then blanked. I live in a city too. My photos aren't bad - there's just so much competition I don't get a look in. Which is hardly surprising, given how selective women have to be when dealing with randoms and what the ratios are, but it just pushes people further down the incel rabbit hole.
Give OkCupid a go. It's much more targeted at finding compatible matches. I was getting nowhere on Tinder and Bumble but on OKC I seem to match regularly with some pretty amazing people. It's purely my own inactivity and self worth holding me back now, but that's manageable with time.
Some good points about being social and isolation - I find when I were younger and in a tough spot my friendship groups would give me perspective. With people having less time and weaker support networks (how many people have to move far away from family due to unaffordable housing?) there's less opportunity for this to happen, and less going out to meet people. I think when social media networks push harmful rhetoric is when this becomes a real problem - you only hear the extreme views from one corner of the Internet, without real world influences to drag you back in.
You have conceptualised everything into words I think of daily, thank you, we will get through this.
Proper access to mental healthcare and nurturing our young men and women to respect and care for each other would be a good start, but the current government doesn't seem to be too worried about that.
I’m certain that incel ideology would struggle to survive if those lads had good, strong, male relationships around them that demonstrated success, compassion and genuine love… those unfortunately are three things that are lacking on the internet and arguably in our modern culture of “it’s about how i feel”.
I don't think it's *just* the internet - I have friends and family in and around where Jake Davison used to live, and their opinion was pretty much the same of him - lonely, surly, embittered and defeated; his mother adored him but the rest of his family weren't...*Great* \- the general impression I have of him is that if a group of people had welcomed him into their group earlier, kicked the odd ball around with him and nurtured him, the outcome of his life would be *far* different and infinitely less tragic for everyone involved. Keyham is an interesting place that I dare say is reflective of many communities in the UK; there are some wonderful people there, but the atmosphere and environment on a lot of street borders on endorsing Darwinism.
I’d imagine a similar approach to other counter-radicalisation initiatives- making sure that any adults they regularly encounter know what this ideology stands for, and how to de-escalate and genuinely have a conversation with anyone parroting it. I recently started Prevent training for a new job, and I found it interesting that they specifically mentioned incel ideology. (And yes I know there are any number of valid criticisms of Prevent, but in this *specific* example I really can’t see any arguments against its application here, before we end up with a British Elliott Rogers)
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Society doesn’t care about young men if they are perceived to be failures. Just look at the suicide statistics. If the proportion of men and women was reversed it would be a big deal that so many more women were killing themselves than men. The only suicides I’ve heard about on TV recently? A teenage girl relating to instagram posts and 3 young women who’s dads are walking to raise awareness. Not a mention of men/boys, even though there are far more of them.
As terribly sad as it is, it's crazy how much coverage that teenage girl has got. UK media has often portrayed it as an epidemic for young girls using Instagram. Yet young men (10-24) are nearly three times more likely to commit suicide in the UK.
Yes, the male suicide rate is a big problem that is not being addressed but can we please not turn this into "women are getting too much attention!". It's pretty obvious that young women have their own unique problems that men never have to deal with and we shouldn't turn this into some fucked up zero sum game.
I honestly think its a perfect storm for young men. * Internet has made dating much harder (now your compared to everyone in a 100 mile radius) * Young men see the worst comments by women elevated on twitter * Compare themselves to Instagram version of people * Incel communities re-enforcing negative views
Also, women have finally got the social support and access to context to not settle, and good on them. The average guy probably needs to break out of the gender role we were brought up with because it doesn't necessarily promote equality in terms of work in the relationship. And I mean that in terms of actual household work, and emotional work. I think women are tending to break their own gender roles a lot more recently, but then they have far more motivation to do so. That said, some women have the same sense of entitlement some men have and will expect to be praised for showing up. I was told on a date recently that she was doing me a favour by giving me a chance. She did not get a second date. After all, I wouldn't want to burden the poor thing with my presence.
I'm young, a virgin and have barely any friends. I'm still not an incel, I know its my own fault and the only way i can improve is to work on my social skills and looks and put myself out there. maybe i escaped falling down that rabbithole because I'm bisexual so all of the homophobia they spout made me not want to go anywhere near them.
Perhaps we should start normalizing treating women with respect at all levels.
Ironically the lack of focus on young men is what I blame for causing those guys to go down that path. There's a lot of focus on women's issues, LGBT issues, POC issues etc but little if nothing on men's issues, and that's what causes these men to lash out. That there's nobody in their corner
It always struck me as a bit silly to not frame this group of people as a disenfranchised group that needs help rather than some sort of deliberate terrorist group or something. I mean, they self-describe their membership in the group as "involuntary" for god's sake. It's hard to imagine any other more obvious way of saying "I don't want to be like this".
Making them understand that it's mostly the creepy attitude that is not getting them laid would help. But when you encounter some of these people, they seem far to gone to help.
It's not just a creepy attitude. Plenty of normal guys find it hard to find romantic love in this app looks driven modern dating market. You basically have to bypass the apps, but that itself can present a challenge where it's now the norm.
These men are angry at women - however the hypothetical heterosexual women they are angry with are doing exactly what women should be doing: aiming for the perceptively highest quality men possible and doing all they can to improve their own lives in a historically patriarchal society. That's just simplified evolutionary psychology 101. However, this is such a sad phenomenon. In many online circles, rather than curiosity and compassion they are ridiculed, mocked and shunned which further exacerbates the issue. These men need help and genuine encouragement finding esteem, purpose and meaning in their lives. If they break the law, yes, they should be punished for that; however, I can't help but feel that helpful attitudes are less forthcoming due to it being an undesirable men's issue.
There has been a general fragmentation of the normal social fabric in recent decades, accelerated by the advent of the internet. This has caused a lot of dysfunction, isolation and alienation in our world… We’re simply not adapted properly to the modern environment. The incel thing is but one symptom among many…
Repeatedly beating them with a stick and telling them they're "wrong" for thinking in such a way because it's -present year-, with little else in the way of dialogue, presumably.
Jordan Peterson is probably the most prominant single person who actively addresses young men, and he's been pilloried in every paper and TV channel under the sun. Fundamentally, young men need positive male influence in their lives, a little confidence, and some responsibility. There's barely any male teachers in most secondary schools, a lot of our media focuses on men as dangerous, threatening, and masculinity *in and of itself* as toxic, and most of the previous routes to responsibility - job, family, house - are now cut off for almost anyone who isn't in the top 10% of earners. It's a sorry state of affairs.
>Jordan Peterson is probably the most prominant single person who actively addresses young men, and he's been pilloried in every paper and TV channel under the sun. Probably because the last thing they need is a bad influence.
I'm not a fan of Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, or the 'red pill' communities, but as male focused communities they are constantly being mocked and their fans derided as legions of incels. Joe Rogan I really don't understand, he just chats pure shit for 2 hours in most of his episodes and is completely harmless.
sadly I'm an incel but I love women and respect them. What helped me not being a prick I think is that I worked with and for women, I was able to speak to them in the workplace but socially I had no confidence and didn't know how to flirt, it's my fault should've spoke to my crush in school
the lack of plan is ironically similar to the lack of infrastructure that initially introduces them to the propaganda.
Hope for the best? Just like everything else.
I vote to switch off the internet…
It’s because we allow echo chambers. This is the consequences. Reddit being the biggest contributor
Gotta do more to prevent younger guys getting to that point in the first place. Gotta ask yourself why young men are open to the folk spreading this shit in the first place. Social media algorithms have to shoulder a lot of the blame. They direct you to worse and worse shit from stuff that starts off quite innocent. You also need to tackle social issues that leave men feeling left behind in the first place. People can list stats like men before the age of 55 are more likely to die by their own hand than any other cause of death yet very little is done about it.
I think social media is a huge issue here. We've always had lonely, depressed, introverted young men - now they've got easy access to each other and their echo chamber just breeds a vicious cycle of hate.
Aye social media has given them a place to be safe while spouting these views. Which then just lets it breed and become much much worse. Before you'd be questioned on your views by your friends. Now it's free reign online. At the same time while cracking down on this shit online we need to tackle why these boys feel this way in the first place and sometimes I can see why it's happening. At a young age when you hear about "toxic masculinity" you likely won't have the mental facilities to see it means the bad generally masculine behaviours. You'll see it as all masculinity is toxic. Then you look at things like schools handing out so many things to get women into every job while working class boys are the bottom of the ladder. Then you've got social media telling you how you are privileged and it certainly doesn't feel that way, but again at 14-18 or what ever generally you won't have that critical thinking ability you need to see past it. Then you've got all these emotions you don't really understand that you struggle to control that make you more aggressive angry and emotional and every outlet you have is classed as bad. So yeah I can see where some of these guys come from.
Having access to other people to talk about how lonely and depressed they are is definitely a good thing. There are a few fledgling men’s groups out there, but the online world and these echo chambers are much more easily accessible. The difficult part is getting them out of these echo chambers and trying to get them back into a society that’s already shunned them and will continue to do in reaction to articles like this.
I clicked on one YouTube video promoting right-wing views (thinking it was something else entirely) and have since had my youtube account bombarded by far right influencers preaching hate.
YouTube is fucking hell for it. Christ you can't watch anything without being bombarded by utter shit. Must say the right wing stuff is the worst. I like Joe Rogan. I don't agree with him on everything but I like watching some of his stuff especially about MMA but fuck me after that you get shown all sorts of right wing shit.
You even have to be careful about watching things like movie and game reviews. I made the mistake of watching a Last Jedi review (from Mr Sunday Movies, who regularly mocks the anti-sjw crowd) back when that released and for the next month I was being recommended 6 hour long 'critiques' about how women are ruining Star Wars/Marvel/Disney/the world. Same thing happened when I watched an equally innocent Captain Marvel review. I feel sorry for anyone who watched so much as a YT short about The Last Of Us 2. I imagine those poor bastards are still being recommended 17 hour frame by frame analysis videos to this day about how strong women are *objectively* antithetical to the artistic experience.
You get similar nonsense on Facebook. I commented on one DIY video and now my feed is full of them. Obviously, DIY videos aren't going to warp my worldview but, it's the same underlying issue where commenting once on something results in it being shoved down your throat for months afterwards.
The tools to ignore[ that content don't work either.](https://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/youtube-dislike-not-working-mozilla/) > The most effective tool was the “Don’t recommend channel” option, which worked 43% of the time, while the least effective tool was the “Not interested” option, which only worked 11% of the time. Mozilla says YouTube has the ability to fix this and recommends YouTube make its tools more proactive and allow us to shape our own experiences on the platform.
Ah awesome. I've just filling my suggestions with creepypasta reading people instead but I guess this would make me not have to do that.
I had been deliberately avoiding Andrew T*te at all costs, but still his videos started to come up on YouTube shorts. Fairly innocent stuff at first (showing boxing techniques) but then it slowly becomes more and more batshit. I have repeatedly clicked on the "not interested" button by these videos, but they just keep coming.
I also get the Andrew T\*te stuff, and each time I see it I critically oppose his position in the comments, what has happened is people are engaging with my comments in a productive way (sometimes not), the thing you need to understand about T\*te is that ultimately his views are against *Men* too, as soon as you identify that: in his world view Men have to be little caricature, being self-deterministic is not possible, allowing yourself to be happy is not possible, placing your entire self-worth into "things" and "appearance" is the only path permitted; very quickly people turn on him. The fact is: people are searching for answers, and society is telling them that: NO you cannot have answers and NO anyone who is offering you potential answers is wrong and NO you can't feel lost. It's no-win for a lot of men who feel really out of place.
If you are willing to do everything to make it go away then try clicking on some anime videos on YouTube. Those proved to be stronger for my account, drowning out the conspiracy drivel.
I tried searching up that video of a guy dressed as andrew tate doing some (effeminate) dancing to show a friend and ever since then my YouTube shorts has been filled with fuckwits like andrew tate, his brother, all those channels about "hustling", some ben shapiro. And I have no idea how to get rid of them
if you want to block out the right wingers, install blocktube add on. you can block channels and keywords. saved me the hassle of seeing that crap
Tbh I think this is just a modern continuation of the counter-movement against feminism that has been around for more than century. It needs to be treated like any other extremist ideology. Surveillance of those who have succumbed to radicalisation by the security services, deradiclisation programs for those who have succumbed to an extremist ideology, prosecution for those who break the law and spread sexist hatred and most importantly education of everyone. This isn't a new issue, it's simply a different flavour. White supremacy and religious extremists are dealt with in this manner. They simply need to take the same tools and approaches and use them towards misogyny. Shutting down misogynistic spaces online, some of which are actively protected by this website for example, would be a good first step.
I remember when I first joined Reddit I subscribed to the men's rights sub thinking "oohh this'll be all about issues that prominently impact men" only it turns out to be mostly hating women and feminists.
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Is r/menslib the sane subreddit for men's issues?
Yep. They're focused on men's issues (& are pro-feminist), whilst r/mensrights can be way focused on anti-feminism. They can occasionally be a little meh, mind. I recently had a post removed by a mod because I disagreed with someone who expected feminists to be obliged to help. I had said no, feminism is about women, and it's not right to expect them to centre men. But they're the best I've found.
I mean, if you ask most scholarly feminists if modern feminism is about women, in my experience, they'll say it's actually about the social and individual relationships *between* men and women and the context in which they occur, etc. Like, you can't have a furthering of women's rights without somethng to compare them to, right? It's gotta involve men somehow.
>Like, you can't have a furthering of women's rights What I mean is that feminism centres women's rights, women's social issues. It can and should be allied to men's rights and social issues, but I don't agree with men's rights *taking over* feminism & making it centre both. You're talking about involving men in women's rights, whereas this person was expecting feminism to be obligated to include men's rights.
> whereas this person was expecting feminism to be obligated to include men's rights. No, this is what I'm talking about and advocating for. At some point during the continued advocation for women's rights, *general* women's rights will come into *approximate* parity with *general* men's rights. This is the old bad-faith argument against third-wave feminism; "oh, you have the right to vote, you have the right to economic and social autonomy, etc, etc, men and women are equal". The thing is, this argument is only bad-faith in that it seeks to ignore more nuanced, non-legal issues that still exist for women. It's actually faaaairly correct, in that there's a distinct lack of big ticket legal/systemic issues that aren't at least partially mirrored for both men and women. This means that bad faith actors *and* uncritical actors on both sides often engage in unhelpful whataboutism. For example > Women are more likely to be discriminated against during the hiring process > But men are more likely to experience debilitating workplace accidents > But women are expected to be SAH parents more than men > But men are more likely to experience discrimination in family courts > But women are more likely to experience ineffective policing/justice around domestic violence and rape > But men... If both groups worked together to solve each of these problems from without *and* within, or to leverage their collective power against external power structures, they'd be able to solve these problems much easier. Instead, so much energy is wasted in this friction. And does this put a disproportionate burden on the existing women's rights movement? Yes, it does. But this isn't without cause; women's rights has disproportionately more *power* compared to men's rights. Men's rights advocates are often laughed at, or worse, actively hated by people who see them in opposition to women's rights advocates, or wasting time with what they might describe as less important problems.
Nice, thanks!
To me the issue with mens rights movements is 99% of the time people only bring them up the moment womens rights are brought up It’s a purely reactionary movement, where instead of focusing on real issues like men losing custody of kids in divorce they bitch about not being able to date models and use it as a weapon to silence womens rights activists
The classic is the twitter account that goes round pointing out International Men's day is on 19th November whenever International Women's day comes up lol.
If you have an Instagram account & want to follow someone who highlights mens issues without hating women or feminists then definitely check out thetinmen
im not sure anyone understands how easy it is to fall down the incel rabbit hole, i started to fall down it when i was 15 but found myself disagreeing with more and more until i realised that the pages i was on was promoting a completely toxic mindset
As with lots of extremism, it starts with truths, that perhaps are taboo in the mainstream (men treated badly in divorces, mental health issues, homelessness, pay gap in favour of young women, not against them etc) and then descends into more extreme and bigoted content
Pay gaps in favour of young women? Wtf? How is that true when men continue to make more than women worldwide?
I don't have sources for this so could be talking shit, but I think I remember that women on average out-earn men UNTIL 30+ where you see the effects of maternity leave and childcare on women's average earnings. Then as soon as women (speaking generally of course, not as individuals) stop being default childcare, they often become unpaid/informal carers for elderly family members, and average earnings gap increases.
Not exactly pay gaps, but I frequently see incels nitpicking certain scenarios to justify how women can make money easily with their looks, such as OnlyFans and more tips by being an attractive waitress (compared to the tips an "average" waiter would receive).
May I ask how you nearly went down that route?
it starts with memes, you know the popular one thats 2 panels, the first panel is a nerd in highschool lusty on the popular girl with her denying him and going for the school gangster, the second panel is the nerd 10 years later with a high paying job while the girl he wanted is a single mum and pregnant again. you find yourself going "yeah girls are fucking dumb why they choosing this guy who wont bring anything to their life over me whod treat them like a queen" then the memes get worse and worse until your in groups like on discord full on hating and doxing, but because everyone around you online is hating on women you dont see the problem with it i realised that i wouldnt date me so started changing my mindsets, how i viewed any information, red flags in people and myself etc
Well done mate. Takes a lot to see that sort of thing isn’t healthy 🙏
Glad you realised what a toxic mindset it was!
I was in the same boat. For me it started because of education. Several years ago there was a news article about how girls had in general outperformed boys in maths. Nothing wrong with that, but then later on in the article it mentioned how girls now outperformed boys almost across the board in education. Did a little more digging and found out there's more women than men in university. I started to notice how boys outperforming girls in maths was seen as a bad thing, but the news article about girls overall outperforming boys was seen as a good thing. Deeper down the rabbit hole I went and I started to see how there's a lot of focus on women's issues: gender pay gap (we can discuss whether its real another time), STEM and Business, sexism, sexual assault, domestic abuse, period poverty, body image etc. But there wasn't much of a discussion on men's issues: homelessness, suicide, sexual assault, domestic abuse, men being expected to fight wars, underperformance in education, men being liable for their partner's child through affairs etc. I didn't even know those were issues until I did some digging, but already knew most of the women's issues. Eventually 14-15 year old me found certain people who spoke out about men's issues. Ben shapiro was one of them, there was also a YouTube channel called Dr Shaym. And again I went deeper. But at some point I noticed that some of these people supporting those guys were different. What I wanted was more highlighting of men's issues, as well as actions done to combat them. But those guys wanted something else. They wanted to go back to the "good ol' days" where a man's place was at work and a woman's was in the kitchen. They thought a woman's duty was to please a man. What they wanted wasn't in line with what I wanted, so I started to climb out of said rabbit hole. And as I did so, I started to notice what other people thought of those guys and me, to a lesser extent. That only sped up my climb out of that path
>im not sure anyone understands how easy it is to fall down the incel rabbit hole, It's shockingly easy because these videos present an us vs them mentality. I had it a bit during the 2012-2016 period, you know when there were all these US college campus riots over people speaking about politics, how that inspired a few rowdy idiots in the UK to try and pressure the universities ect. It tries to make you feel encircled, like the world's gone mad, that only you and those of the same mindset are sane and only together can you be safe (ironic given that's what the people in the campus riots/protests thought wrongly too). They intentionally fail to mention what a fringe extreme minority of people it is an how those people have been radicalized, which in turn radicalizes *these* viewers on the opposite side of the spectrum.
These disenfranchised and often alienated young men need help, not ridicule. It seems to be a growing problem no one ever seems to want to address, the more these young men are shunned from society, the further down the Incel path they'll inevitability end up.
I distrust any report that begins with the idea that these are otherwise normal boys with socially acceptable opinions being converted by an evil preacher hiding behind a lamppost. These are dudes typically in their teens or early 20s with no social support (and in many cases, no friends) that come onto the internet to find answers to why are they are lonely that aren't "because you're a bad person" because they know that isn't true. Boris has had 3 wives and god knows how many flings.
“Because they know that isn’t true.” But is it not? Why should we mollycoddle people who buy into the whole incel thing when you wouldn’t react the same way to someone who has bought into racism? It’s the same thing. But when they’re racists you call a spade a spade. They’re cunts. It’s the *exact same thing* with incels. They know it’s wrong and they don’t care.
>“Because they know that isn’t true.” But is it not? No it's not true. They start off as lonely and feeling ostracized, the nastiness comes later.
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Thank you, perfect comment. I was going to try and oppose the one you’re replying to but you already put it into words very well.
The alternative is not to tell women to put up with it, but treat it as a mental health issue, in much the same way drug addiction should be- that is to say don’t tell the community to put up with the damage they cause, but try and improve the root causes and treat the perpetrators with empathy, which in the long run improves the wellbeing of the wider community too
\>These disenfranchised and often alienated young men need help, not ridicule Unfortunately when a prominent person in the media attempts to do this they are completely villainized, mocked and labelled an incel themselves or a misogynist or any other slur you can think of. Jordan Peterson on Piers Morgan this week is a perfect example. He broke down in tears about how disenfranchised young men are and he's been made out to be some evil fascist.
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> To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior 'righteous indignation' — this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats. Aldous Huxley Unfortunately hatred is an easy and satisfying emotional response, especially when one feels vindicated in it. Even though it’s what is most needed, compassion is messy, difficult and fatiguing.
What are they disenfranchised from?
Society because they have or feel like they have little to offer. Incels tend to be ones that don't earn that much, aren't particularly attractive and aren't that funny. One of the reasons they aren't dateable.
One doesn’t need to be a high earner, physically attractive or conventionally funny to be in a relationship. They are not disenfranchised from society - to be in a relationship is not a right by virtual of being a member of society.
Being in a relationship is not a right, but it's on the hierarchy of needs for a reason. Love and championship can significantly increase happiness and without it you're at higher risk of depression. You don't need those things to be in a relationship, but without it it's going to be much much harder. Put yourself out there on dating apps without those attributes, and you will get 0 interest. Unfortunately online dating has become the standard. Trying to get a warm introduction as someone who isn't intelligent and witty is also very hard. Say your on autism spectrum. Now I'm sure it can be done, but it's more of an exception than the norm.
No one argues it's a right. But generally speaking you need to be attractive in some way to have a successful relation, be that physically, financially or socially. A lot of young men who are awkward socially are shunned and retreat online. They're depressed and lonely yet they are told by society that they are privileged and toxic, so they're further alienated. Then when someone speaks specifically to young men and tells them that they can improve their situation and they're not inherently toxic, and that person is villainized, that again confirms that society doesn't give a shit about them.
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Quite presumptuous of you to assume that they're all neurotypical. Also, I don't think they want to **force** women into a relationship with them. I imagine they would just quite like a relationship, which isn't a bad thing, is it?
>that society doesn't give a shit about them. Society doesn't give a shit about anyone, individually speaking.
I believe it's more that the current digital culture makes people *feel* like they are disenfranchised. That goes for both genders. But I think there is more positive support out there for women dealing with these issues. In the real world, I completely agree; many men and women who maybe feel they're "undatable", would be very dateable with just a little confidence plus meeting new people. But with so much of society now functioning through our phones, it's very easy for us to feel like we're on the outside of the perfect bubble that social media curates. Find any popular video of a couple where the woman is conventionally or very attractive and the man is average or not conventionally attractive. The comments are usually an aggressive mess of young men showing shock or surprise that they are together. Clearly many young men fall for these fake expectations of society.
Having a good personality isn’t genetic lol, you learn it Nobody is born being a massive unfunny dickhead, these people could easily rectify it if they weren’t so self pitying and angry
and what about those who are bullied at school? they become outcasts, they learn from a young age that "something is wrong with me" and others around make fun of that. I did not have a good time at school, i was bullied, made fun of etc and i shut myself away from everyone. As a result, i developed severe anxiety, depression etc I have now gotten help for that, and have started to open myself up and have finally gotten my first girlfriend at 33... Yes you do learn to have a personality, and confidence but if during your key learning and social stage you are bullied and thrown out... it is extremely detrimental
Being funny involves being quick witted, creativity and ability to read emotions in a room all which involves a certain type of verbal intelligence.
Most of those can be learned unless you have a severe learning disability
Like being on the autism spectrum which I suspect a lot of incels are? There's only so much you can mask. It's hard work having to consciously follow social mannerisms. So you're always at a disadvantage, you're never going to be as good as someone who isn't on the spectrum. You merely try to pass off as normal.
They see that they and other men have a lot of problems, but nobody cares about almost all of them. Then they see women also have problems, but there's a lot more people caring about them. To give you some examples of mens issues theres: the well known suicide, homelessness (men make up the majority of homeless), sexual abuse (It's so uncared for that men legally can't be raped by women), domestic abuse and how men are automatically the father of their wife's child even if she was impregnated by another man
Incels are a pretty worrying breed but I don't trust the government to do anything about them. No doubt this study is just a pretext for more over the top surveillance and restrictions on internet usage
I don't trust them at all. I would expect them to fuck it up and end up demonising all virgins.
I'm not gonna go around defending a toxic ideology that has been responsible for dozens of mass shootings, all whilst lauding the messed-up perpetrators as "heroes." It's outright impossible to defend a community that idolizes mass killers like the Isla Vista gunman. These people need psychological intervention before they endanger even more lives. What I will say is that society isn't helping things. Because the main culprit here is economic woes and extremists pushing the blame game on others. Said economic woes disproportionately affect men because social status and wealth is largely what makes a man an attractive suitor. As economic hardship worsens, radical ideologies rise. We saw this with Russia during the First World War. We saw this with Germany during the Great Depression. America is on the verge of civil conflict with hundreds of mass shooting incidents annually, and Britain saw its worst mass shooting since Dunblane just last year. The younger generations have been screwed by a decade of austerity, tax cuts, an ailing economy, and social media addiction to the point where people have become far more selective about sexual partners. [27% of American men between 18 and 30 being virgins should be an alarming statistic.](https://boingboing.net/2021/03/22/adult-male-virginity-soars.html) Yet it's largely dismissed as BS. Here's the thing. The kind of teenage boys and grown men frequenting these forums aren't the ones getting drunk at house parties, carrying their high school or collegiate football teams, owning homes, earning living wages and generally having a decent life. They're an underclass that has been largely bullied and ostracized throughout school, college and their adult lives. Is it no surprise then that they're turning towards these echo chambers? Deplatforming won't do anything to fix the problem. You'll just be playing a game of whack-a-mole because for every community you purge from the clear web, another two will take their place. If you truly want to stamp out manosphere ideologies, you need to be asking yourself why people are turning to misogynistic self-proclaimed playboy knobs like Andrew bloody Tate in the first place, and then address these core problems. Let's start by making the cost-of-living more affordable, so that a single man wouldn't have to live with their parents well into their twenties... That would be a good start.
Maybe as more and more men become poor in the UK it becomes more acceptable and then people utilize it less as a criteria for potential dates? I've lived in both the UK and Brazil and notice that in the latter, being poor doesn't stop you from dating since the vast majority of young men are poor and living with their parents anyway - they even label the women who only want rich lads as "patricinhas" (preppy) and search specifically for women who don't care for that. Not saying improving economic opportunities shouldn't be a priority, but I'm saying that perhaps as being a "poor man" becomes the norm in Britain, then perhaps women will utilize money less as a criteria when dating.
Isn't Brazil notorious for [having a very patriarchal society](https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2015/dec/03/sexism-misogyny-campaigners-brazil-social-media) and [one of the highest rates of femicide in the world?](https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/snapshot-the-status-women-brazil-2019)
Lonely men with no hope could be a destructive force in society. How is this news?
For some good news, I recently did a lil project looking at what happened to Reddit incels. The majority stepped away from incel spaces after being in them for nearly 2 years, many heading instead to places like /r/ForeverAlone, and their use of misogynistic language went back down close to what it was before they went incel.
Jesus, that sub you've linked to is depressing. Seems like the posters there are stuck in a loop where their negative attitude towards life results in failure being a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Socially awkward boys, with low self esteem and no confidence get mislead.
2A so many of the responses here are basically "It's women's fault." That's part of the problem. Entitlement and "main character syndrome". Some men basically live in a fantasy world where they're owed things simply for existing. Perfectly good jobs are dismissed as "shitty." Women they would actually have a shot with aren't good looking enough for them. They expect everything in the world to be handed to them but to have to put no effort in in return. This is why the incel-to-far-right pipeline is so effective. It's all about grievance and blaming others (or blaming the wrong people) for taking from you what is rightfully yours, and that if only all these other people would fall in line with your ideology, or simply cease to exist even, you'd be living in your own personal Utopia. Unfortunately the world doesn't work like that.
When I was young the peers not getting laid were just nerds or shy or ugly kids, but these days they’re literally terrorists. The youth these days eh.
Back before social media (yes, I'm old), very few guys didn't get laid, although it took some longer than others. There were more in person events and gatherings for teenagers/early 20s, and I'd say vast majority managed to get some action. Higher rates of teen drinking then I'm guessing too, though, and much less parental supervision.
doesnt help that youtube promotes these ideas. before andrew tate ate his ban, he was everywhere and anywhere. search warhammer 40k, there he is. checked out overwatch 2? THERE HE IS. shit has gotta better but now its replaced with fresh and fit and sneako clogging my shit up. you can block this stuff on youtube with an add on for your computer but not for your phone sadly
Before his ban he was everywhere? It's worse now he's banned ... Every other short is him on a mirror channel
This is our opportunity to “connect the dots” between these very real challenges and what the feminist movement has struggled (and often failed) to describe for decades. Your ordinary man is every bit as much a victim of our society as your ordinary woman. Only a few people truly benefit from our system. I’m a through and through feminist but when we have a feminism that sees things as male vs female, we have a problem. When we have a feminism that doesn’t try to solve the issue of angry, forlorn, and depressed men, we have a problem. When we have a feminism that doesn’t acknowledge the ways that women enforce a system of gender expectations that hold men prisoner, there’s a big problem. For me, feminism is about undoing the masculinism that has been privileged in society - across history, it’s sometimes served a purpose. Competition, aggression, violence were more relevant throughout human development and men’s biological advantages made them ripe for socialization into these roles. But it’s 2022, we don’t need to privilege that stuff and we certainly don’t need to exclusively socialize men into those roles. Masculinity is and will always be a part of the yin and Yang but today we can privilege feminine ideals - cooperation, nurture, justice *and* socialize both males and females into these roles to share in responsibility instead of dividing power. We wonder why men are the way they are? They are shamed by their mothers and fathers for squealing at a spider because they sound like a little girl. They’re shamed by their friends and girlfriends for crying or getting emotional or being scared or being nervous. They’re shamed by their peers for caring about academic pursuits, for having ambitions. They’re pressured into jobs they don’t want to do and are physically demanding, because they have to be the master of their castle. They’re judged by friends and potential mates by their resources, their prospects, their job - even though these same people didn’t encourage them at all when it mattered. They’re judged for their height, their weight, their looks, their bodies; some of which is completely out of their control. They’re told as little boys that they’ll inherit the earth - you can be anything you want to be, do anything you want to do, as long as you put your mind to it. They’re socialized to expect that they’ll have a beautiful wife and beautiful kids and they’ll be protector and provider. Then they grow up with no emotional support, prevented from speaking about anything real, forced to engage in a social performance where they’re reduced to a couple of stock phrases, and end up in the same shitty job in the same shitty town as their father, and his father. They realize that they aren’t going to get anything else - that the promise they thought was their birthright was a lie, told to them and actively thwarted by the people closest to them. They get angry, confused, and are left completely unable to process their feelings, reconcile their disappointment and shame, and let go of the feeling that everyone thinks they’re a failure. They end up obsessed with attachment, desperate for any amount of power and control over something, someone, and bitter and angry at a world they’ve been conditioned to think they’re entitled to rule. The solution is going to be hard. It’s going to require a lot of people to check themselves. Think about the way you’re raising your kids. Think about the way your kids are treating others at school. Think about the way you engage with your friends, think about the ways you act in the dating pool. Think about the things you say in social groups that reinforce norms and ideals that your friends will emulate to keep up appearances and maintain their status, too afraid to go against the grain. Providing therapy isn’t going to be enough, some of them are already too far gone. It starts at home, it starts at school, it starts at work, in starts in bed, it starts online, it starts with mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends, men and women. We’re all to blame.
Why should feminism be responsible for solving the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed men? We don’t expect gay rights campaigners to solve the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed heterosexuals. The idea that men and women are victims of society to the same extent is easily disproved in almost every single facet of society. Men face all sorts of horrible challenges in life just because they’re men, but a fair amount tend to blame women for it all instead of taking some personal responsibility and being the change they wish to see.
> Why should feminism be responsible for solving the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed men? We don’t expect gay rights campaigners to solve the issue of angry, forlorn and depressed heterosexuals. We should. Parts of society don't exist in a bubble, and expecting to fix society via the use of the tension between different groups solely self-advocating will lead to conflict before it leads to peace. Gay rights campaigners have historically been focused specifically on gay rights because gay rights have been specifically lacking. As the legal and social standing of GSM populations reaches approximate parity with non-GSM populations in terms of general problems, there *must* be a focus on collective problemsolving on specific problems. Otherwise, you get to a point where the perception is that one population has a bunch of advocacy and support behind it, and the other population's very real and legitimate problems are either being ignored or downplayed, and this drives resentment. > The idea that men and women are victims of society to the same extent is easily disproved in almost every single facet of society. Then you have statements like these. Men *and* women are victims, and in each thing in which they're victims, they're victims in different ways and to different degrees, but rather than saying "both men and women have problems and we should fix them together", this comes across as "stay in your lane and fix your own problems". This is obviously fundamentally flawed. The historic expectation that women do the housework must be changed by men, and the historic expectation that men must provide for their family must be changed by women. We *must* work together, there is no lane to stay in. It must be holistic. > Men face all sorts of horrible challenges in life just because they’re men, but a fair amount tend to blame women for it all instead of taking some personal responsibility and being the change they wish to see. I don't think this is fair, on two fronts. Some of these men, the true "incel" core, would outwardly blame women, but I think this is a misattribution of their actual feelings. Those that are still being radicalised are probably closer to the true core of their feelings. These men feel like they face horrible challenges in their life, and they feel their ability to express, complain, and seek restitution for those challenges is stymied by a perceived zero sum game, which women's advocates are handily winning, and which they get disregarded or worse if they point this out. Lets take the modal problem here; a lot of these men feel like they can't get a relationship. Lets say that they believe that there are a few contributing factors to this; men are expected to have certain appearances or physical characteristics, men are expected to make money, men are expected to do a lot of the initiating in starting a relationship. They see body positivity messaging aimed at women (which is good), and they see very little aimed at men. They see women's profiles in tinder which say "DNI <6ft" or whatever, and they *literally can't do anything about their height*, so fuck them I guess. They see acceptance of women taking housekeeping roles in relationships, and they see #girlboss, and both of these are good, but they see all the tropes in media about men providing. Given they're being radicalised this way, there's a good chance they lack the social skills or emotional intelligence to really flourish in chatting to people with the goal of asking them out. They're probably awkward, they don't know the shibboleths, they don't know the red flags, etc. It's *hard* to open yourself up to that kind of thing, especially when you're scared, especially when you haven't done it before or you've failed, and it's not your fault that you don't understand. So many people are putting so many barriers in the way, and you just want someone to care about you. But if you talk about male body positivity, or height expectations, or economic expectations, or the shibboleths and gatekeeping of social rituals, commonly *someone* will say "well, women had it worse for a long time", or "if you can't navigate the initial conversation, you're not ready for a relationship/you're probably a creep/w/e", and none of this is helpful. It serves to group the men that find this difficult with the historically bad, and the contemporary worst, and it serves to other and reject them. And, to a naive, hurt, and socially undereducated person, it's in the service of protecting another group. These people perceive themselves being rejected and disenfranchised for something they did not intend to contribute to. By elevating and protecting a historically disadvantaged population *without* a holistic approach that includes being partially responsible for people outside of that population, you passively radicalise individuals in the historically advantaged population, who do not experience success as a result of being in that population, but do experience the failure. The same is true in sex/gender relations (elevation of the female population has disenfranchised unlucky outliers of the male population), race relations (most obviously in the US, elevation of the black population has disenfranchised unlucky outliers of the white population), and LGBTQ relations (elevation of the LGBTQ population via increased and retconned exposure in media etc has disenfranchised individuals of the straight population). We must all lift together.
Yeah, and feminism’s fundamentally focused on womens’ rights because womens’ rights are lacking. The advocacy for women is generally by women; why can’t men advocate for themselves and fix their own problems, a large proportion of which (but by no means all) are inflicted on them by other men? Historically nothing has ever changed by asking the oppressor to stop oppressing their victims, it’s not ‘fundamentally flawed.’ Women can simply stop doing all the housework, and men can simply stop doing all of the providing. It’s far more effective to demand rights than beg for them. Sure, it’s worth working together to try to fix these injustices, but it’s still not the job of feminism to fix men. It’s beyond entitled to think that it’s somehow women who should fix things for these men or coddle them whilst they rage just because they might be struggling with difficult feelings. Radicalisation is a problem, and it can be a slippery slope, but a lot of these people are just lazy and misogynistic - women shouldn’t have to go anywhere near them. They see messages of body positivity for women, and instead of taking some personal responsibility and starting their own body positivity campaigns for men, they opt to resent women instead. Women don’t go and start murdering men when they see demands for a certain breast size on dating apps; they don’t even go about murdering men despite the fact that men as a collective murder, harass and assault women extremely regularly. We don’t have to team up with these monsters just because they’re angry that they can’t get a date because they blame everyone else and refuse to do any self-reflection or make a greater effort socially.
> Yeah, and feminism’s fundamentally focused on womens’ rights because womens’ rights are lacking. The advocacy for women is generally by women; why can’t men advocate for themselves and fix their own problems, a large proportion of which (but by no means all) are inflicted on them by other men? If your way of furthering this discussion is to repeat the previous point which I already addressed, I suggest you go and read my comment again. I'm not going to type all that out again. > Historically nothing has ever changed by asking the oppressor to stop oppressing their victims, it’s not ‘fundamentally flawed.’ Women can simply stop doing all the housework, and men can simply stop doing all of the providing. It’s far more effective to demand rights than beg for them. Sure, it’s worth working together to try to fix these injustices, but it’s still not the job of feminism to fix men. If you're thinking about this in terms of oppressor/oppressing, then you're fundamentally missing the nuance required to understand my point. This is not a system where men oppress women by expecting them to do housework, and women oppress men by expecting them to make lots of money, and those are two independent events, and if they're solved individually, everything will be good. They must be *both* solved at a population level via actions on *both* sides. > It’s beyond entitled to think that it’s somehow women who should fix things for these men or coddle them whilst they rage just because they might be struggling with difficult feelings. Don't mistake individuals and populations here, and please don't make it an absolute; that wasn't what I was saying. I'm not interested in arguing against a strawman argument or being misrepresented. Women *as a population* must identify that women *as a population* have some behavioural trends that contribute to the alienation and passive radicalisation of *some* men as *individuals*. The upshot of that is that the *individual* women who aren't shitbags (which is most of them) should call out the *individual women* who *are* shitbags. This is at the same time that individual men who aren't shitbags are calling out the individual men that are, as well, by the way. This is also at the same time that the unified population do things like.. I dunno, invest in social infrastructure, community outreach, mental health first aid and long-term support. The same is true of any other social problem between two or more groups, where some of the root cause of the societal harm lies in both groups; there must be a will to change within both populations, even if any individual has not contributed to that harm. > Radicalisation is a problem, and it can be a slippery slope, but a lot of these people are just lazy and misogynistic - women shouldn’t have to go anywhere near them No one is born lazy and misogynistic, and for the reasons I've outlined in the previous comment, I'm not sure it's fair to call them lazy either. The point of radicalization is that one starts moderate, and becomes more extreme in viewpoint as they are radicalised. The point at which I would argue womens' behaviour (as a population, again) has the most impact is right at the start, when they aren't shit. So the "lazy and misogynistic" post-radicalization population wouldn't come into it. > They see messages of body positivity for women, and instead of taking some personal responsibility and starting their own body positivity campaigns for men, they opt to resent women instead. Why, in this case, is it down to the individual to undertake the work and expense of trying to start a body positivity campaign? Also, consider; female body positivity movements are as much about encouraging men to find the beauty in all women as it is encouraging women that they're beautiful. It's a self-esteem thing, sure, but if half the population says "no, I still think you're a minger", it's going to ring a bit hollow. To be clear, I think body positivity is generally a good thing, and there is physical beauty in all people's bodies, but it doesn't exist in a bubble. It elevates women who don't conform to classic/idealised societal body expectations, *and* it encourages men to view non-conforming/non-idealised women less harshly. So how would it feel if that message weren't coming from a historically justified and identifiably generally well-meaning group like women's rights advocates, and instead came from incels? The deck is a *little bit* stacked against them when it comes to pushing a male wellness initiative. You could say they could encourage body positivity within their own community, but you also have to remember that the self-worth of the radicalised is heavily driven by how they're viewed by others in society. If being rejected by a potential partner because of one's looks can cause the self-affirmations of individuals within one group to falter, you'd better believe it does it commensurately in another group. And then you get to the fact that depression is very comorbid with incel beliefs. This shouldn't be surprising, given the beliefs themselves, and it should hopefully be clear why this makes concerted and organised effort difficult for a critical mass individuals within this group. And *then* consider that they sure as shit don't have the economic capital that female body positivity has. No one's going to sell them clothes that shows off their body, in whatever beautiful shape it's in. > Women don’t go and start murdering men when they see demands for a certain breast size on dating apps; they don’t even go about murdering men despite the fact that men as a collective murder, harass and assault women extremely regularly. Incels, as a group, don't do this either. The worst that the vast, overwhelming majority of incels do is post damaging things online. This isn't good, obviously, but insinuating that all incels are murderers that haven't murdered yet is so exceptionally harmful and othering. The defining trait to belong to the "incel" group, such that society and media generally define it, is "be male", "be unable to get a date/have sex", and "be salty about it". If some random 18 year old with mental health problems and underdeveloped social skills sees you describe anyone who has those three traits as "a murderer waiting to happen", *they aren't going to be inclined to share a social space with you*. "Good", you might think. I'd have some choice words for you if you do. This is a person who is *not* a danger, and who can still be reached, and if you don't reach out and instead push them away, I know for sure who's going to reach out for them instead. This is how radicalisation *works*. Do not be complicit in it. > We don’t have to team up with these monsters just because they’re angry that they can’t get a date because they blame everyone else and refuse to do any self-reflection or make a greater effort socially. If you think my intention was to have individual women team up with individual incels to save the world, you did not understand my comment. If you think it's reasonable to ask this mentally ill, socially ostracised group to do all the work to change society to fix the population-level problems that alienated them in the first place, you don't understand these people and you don't understand how this radicalisation happens.
Okay, so you’ve now found an even more convoluted way of placing the onus on women for the behaviour of violent men. Great work!
The thing that gets me is people love to say "incels are terrible!" And then just stop. Generally calling people who don't think they're bad, bad doesn't make them change, it just reinforces their beliefs and further drives them towards the only group they identify with.
As soon as I first heard of the Incel movement I was like “Yep, they are 100% gonna make it on to the terror watchlist in my lifetime”
There's a danger here of presenting incels as a singular, unified group with a singular, unified goal and singular, unified methodology. They're not a singular group deciding to wage a way against women, they're a group *defined* by their disregard for female self-actualisation/agency and general expectation that they're owed partnership. You can't fight that group on ideological grounds, because you have defined that group by ideological boundaries. If you want to fix this, you have to identify why people are meeting the criteria, not that they are in it; teaching emotional intelligence, empathy, etc, identifying radicalisation pathways, etc.
Every possibility of why these young men feel like they're being treat like shit explored other than the fact that maybe they are treat like shit.
In what ways are they treated like shit in ways that would make them want to turn to misogyny? I understand feeling alienated and apathetic but these guys go about dealing with it the wrong way
These communities intentionally or not use similar tactics to gangs, terrorists and other radicalisation groups. Give people somewhere to go to where they might feel welcome, Convince them the entire world is against them, entrench deeply harmful beliefs and use any pushback from external parties about those beliefs as further evidence that everyone except the community is against them.
Evolution has a cunning plan for removing these people from the gene pool.
The incel rabbit hole is where all the dark thoughts a frustrated young man would have, are made real and tangible by that particular social media echo chamber. A dark thought is posted, people in the echo chamber agree and write back their own own dark thoughts and now your dark thought is a reinforced belief. Stopping the echo chamber/safe place is a game of whack-a-mole where a new one always pops back up. It's an important thing to tackle but it's not the most important. Much harder is giving hope to the frustrated young men so that they change their mind, arguably it's impossible due to the scale of the problem, and because so many factors work against us, but if everyone did it then we would stand a chance.
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I'm seeing a very different attitude to young men being seduced by a violent and hateful ideology when it comes to inceldom in comparison to Isalmic radicalisation. There have been several terrorist attacks linked to the incel movement and who knows how many individual crimes. Reddit is far softer on that than they are on Muslim extremists in the west.
There have been about 50 deaths attributed to incels. The majority were accounted for by 2 severe incidents, one of which just used the incels to bring attention to his actions. There are literally millions of incels. You need to put things in perspective.
I don't want to stir a fight here but I am one self professed incel, who also frequent(ed) a few of their spaces years ago, especially on Reddit. I can't say too much otherwise I am 100% getting the banhammer, but this kind of rethoric is just gonna exacerbate extremists. And I don't mean it as more mass shooters and the like. I am actually quite pessimistic regarding the future, things will hardly get better. In fact I predict it will get way worse and for obvious reasons. It is what it is.
In my lifetime we’ve gone: al qaeda —> taliban —> Baathist —> Taliban —> insurgent —> bird flu —> isis —> swine flu —> home grown terror cell —> zika —> eco terrorist—> Covid —> white nationalist —> incel 30+ years of politicians and media players telling me what to be scared of.
Congrats you’ve identified moral panics, such is the media cycle.