As a former teacher, this was such a tricky issue in general. Teachers got in trouble for letting kids go to wandering during class (especially if you weren’t permanently employed). It’s all about instructional minutes and keeping them out of trouble. (We had one student start a fire in the boys’ restroom and even then we didn’t restrict bathroom privileges.)
I started a one student at a time process, then I’d have boys take 20 minutes so they could go wander the hallways. So I instituted one girl, one boy separate passes. This way, the boys only penalized each other. (Funny how my young ladies took no more than 5-8 minutes.)
I also had one HS junior boy who was always late to his class, which was the class after lunch. Apparently, he couldn’t have bowel movements at school and would run home at lunch.
There really isn’t enough time for basic bodily functions during the school day.
I think that’s part of the problem for him — he’s talked only to other incels, who have taught him that women are to be feared or hated. Before his interview/interaction for this article, he hadn’t spoken to a woman other than his mother “for years.” That’s not somebody who needs to go back to his isolated life. If it were possible to arrange, having him be around women (multiple, not alone anytime soon) more or less all the time might help him become a functional part of society.
Is it weird that the media keeps doing this thing - where they publicize a subculture (good or bad), in the name of “education” of course, and then it only helps the subculture to spread to a wider audience… I mean, that very thing happened with punk. All this pearl clutching over punk in the early 80s, only made scenes grow… same with white supremacist groups. They kept interviewing violent white supremacists, and it drove at least some recruitment…
So why should people he sees as less than human be the ones who turn him around? Why put themselves in danger to “save” him? What kind of BS is that to put women through?
The responsibility for change is on him, but if you can tell me how he might change his mind about women without directly interacting with women, I’d love to hear it.
That’s on HIM. Just like it’s not the responsibility for people of color to change the mind of racists, etc, it’s NOT the responsibility of women to change men. Maybe OTHER men need to do the heavy lifting here and take responsibility for their misogynistic friends. Most of us have shit to do and don’t have to time to “educate” some men into believing that we are human beings like them.
This! Just not allowing this to go unremarked upon when we hear other guys talking shit about women would be a good start. It is not women’s jobs to fix men. Period.
I agree, but I still haven’t seen an answer to what I asked. How will he learn to be part of society without being a part of society? How will he learn to interact with women without interacting with women?
At this point, the people around him have failed him, including his mother. Just telling him he needs to do better doesn’t help anyone. Women don’t have a responsibility to “fix” men, but society as a whole does have a responsibility to fix the parts of society that are broken. So how are we - the parts of human society that consider ourselves functional - going to help the poorly-functioning parts, like this guy, get better?
Did you ignore the part of my comment where I said:
Maybe OTHER men need to do the heavy lifting here and take responsibility for their misogynistic friends.
Or are men NEVER the ones who need to do this work? Because emotional labor is for women? Men are part of this society, too, and are harmed by gender stereotypes, too, so it seems that men would be just as invested in fixing this shit as women, but since they are also the primary beneficiaries, they have little to no interest in doing so. That’s just a start. We could also completely change how we socialize our children, but I guess that’s too hard, so we can’t talk about that… so, we’re back to women being the only ones who have agency and must be the ones to “fix” this problem. Well fuck that. Men need to do their part. Full stop.
None. I’m so sorry that happened to you. That’s just fucking awful. And that should remind us that this is not some intellectual exercise… this has real world consequences for real human beings…
No. I didn’t miss that. Is the society that helps him to consist solely of men? He’s already part of something like that.
Perhaps we’re talking past one another here. I really haven’t disagreed with much of anything you’ve said. But my initial post was in reply to a comment that he should “keep away from women.” Men should be the ones leading the way to getting incels to be part of society, but if the process never involves any women, it’s not going to be successful.
We learn to speak a language by speaking that language. We learn to interact with others - men, women, children, elderly - by interacting with those others. Right now this guy has learned how to be a misogynistic asshole be being around and imitating other misogynistic assholes. If we want women to be safe around him and others like him, at some point he and the others will have to be around women. Men will have to lead the way for that, but the “keep away from women” is not going to help things get better.
Most of us have shit to do and don’t have to time to “educate” some men into believing that we are human beings like them.
