Someone did effectively say that – this topic was several dozen comments longer before the mods cleaned it up.
Bully for you. I don’t recognise it, either, so bully for me, too. As a straight teen I was pretty geeky, but also happy. I went to an unusual high school, but society’s agenda was still all around me. I somehow managed not to seethe with resentment at my female classmates, let alone consider ways of getting violent revenge on them.
I’m not sure how you reach that conclusion. The ones who follow through on the movement’s call to terrorism and make the news are very few in the context of a population of hundreds of millions (but still too many, given the damage they cause).
If it crosses their minds, it’s because American society constantly bombards them with messages to that effect. In the vast majority of cases, though, it’s nothing more than a fleeting thought immediately dismissed – not worthy of expression (or implication) in a mainstream Internet forum, let alone an incel one. It takes other cultural and political factors and personal shortcomings to push a person into that territory.
No-one’s talking about denying its existence – I brought it up in the comment to make it clear what I was acknowledging the narrative of the sad excluded nerd. My point was to note that in every Incel topic on this site, someone obliquely pleads for understanding of the Incels on the basis of that person’s shared personal experience of being a sad nerd.
What I hoped would be denied here was another derail by a commenter who wanted to make this topic all about him and his bad experience as a teenager, so that we might focus on the real core causes of a guy going incel. As usual in these topics, my hopes were dashed (at least until the mods cleaned things up).
Remember back in 2018 when a bomber terrorized Austin, killing 2 and injuring 5? He left behind a 25-minute audio confession that our chief of police described as follows:
On the recording, Conditt “does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate,” Austin Police Chief Brian Manley said. “But instead, it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point.”
I was floored by the sympathetic tone of his statement, and it frankly has caused me to give Manley major side-eye ever since. What within him led him to come across as something akin to an apologist for this (apparently*) indiscriminate killer?
*I say “apparently” because the recording was never released to the public.
There are so many possibilities, including the way we are trained to believe that white boys who do violence are lone victims, while anyone else (especially Black or Brown) is an organized “thug” or “terrorist”.
As others have mentioned, it’s deeply ingrained in the culture and narratives we create. And then we perpetuate them at the expense of actual victims. Including those of the perpetrator himself (or as is becoming increasingly obvious themselves, because these guys aren’t “lone wolves”).
What are you basing that on? Based on the thousands of undesired come-ons experienced by myself and every other woman, I’d say that deep down most men do unconsciously feel this way, yes. They likely don’t even realize they feel this way, but that’s what rape is after all- a resolution of power and entitlement. Every man who has ever hit on me (with a few exceptions that I can count on one hand) clearly felt he deserved to have me sleep with him.
Not all men, etc, etc. I’m sure everyone here is swell.
That’s the bit I get hung up on. When you marinade a population in our cultural programming, do you get
or does it look more like
because if it’s the former – if incels are an island – then fair enough, let’s just wall off that island. No one wants to be wallowing around in that unpleasantness if they don’t have to. But if it’s the latter – if incels are just like normal men, only more so – then I would say we do have to, even if (in fact, because) it is uncomfortable.
That’s not because incels, or lesser jerks, deserve sympathy. It’s because men (boys) in the marginal zone need to understand that they exist on a continuum, and can move along it in either direction. Otherwise we’d be saying to them “no normal man thinks what you’re thinking; you belong to that other group”.
I recognise there are other points of view on this – and the BBS consensus does lean toward the hear-no-evil approach – but I fall pretty hard on the Hannah Arendt sunlight-is-the-best-disinfectant side.
Of course it’s closer to the second, and I’d wager most here would agree. The incels (and other “manosphere” types – really a better label for that red zone) are at the extreme of a spectrum. I’d take it further and say that the people who show up in these topics trying to portray incels mainly as poor sad sex-deprived and socially awkward nerds (always like themselves or their younger selves) tend to fall into that “hmmm” area – I certainly see women here responding to them with the on-line equivalent of a side-eye.
Again, no-one’s saying that the state of poor sad sex-deprived nerdom can’t play a part here. What we are saying to these folks that: 1) this topic isn’t all about your experience having been or being in that state; 2) that state doesn’t necessarily bring one into incel or even “hmmm” territory; and 3) there are other core determinants that can push one toward the “hmmm” and incel/manosphere side even putting that state aside.
The simplistic narrative that incels are just socially awkward guys who were unlucky enough to fall in with an unhealthy crowd has gotten more than enough sunlight, and has kept the real and very toxic root causes in the shadows.
[small pedantic note: “sunlight is the best disinfectant” is a quote associated with Louis Brandeis]
This case truly had it all. The first victim was Black, and the immediate reaction of the police in the early days of the investigation? Let’s tell everyone maybe HE did it! Never mind that there was no evidence of bomb-making activity/materials in his home. And the immediate reaction of the local Fox affiliate? Let’s dig into the victim’s life, and make a cryptic reference to him having previously faced charges of some sort (the reporter involved subsequently admitted the charges were unrelated, and that superiors had insisted they be mentioned in the story).
He had nothing to do with any of it (other than getting blown up by a “very challenged young man”).
No, it isn’t. Stop pretending that somehow this is about sex.
It’s about misogyny. Toxic masculinity. This sort of thing may be a joke to you. It’s not a joke to those of us who risk being harmed by these assholes.
I don’t have a link to hand, but I know that over the years I’ve read the result of a number of different studies showing that if you change the wording on how you ask questions about sexual assault to men, they admit to a lot more than if you use the legal terms that they know would get them in trouble.
For example: “Have you ever given a woman more alcohol than she asked for in the hope that she might sleep with you?” gets a much higher ‘yes’ response than “Have you ever done anything to force a woman to have sex with you?”
Also explicitly feminist “terror” groups like Rote Zora, though they were purely into property damage, not causing injuries. Gotta revive that one - they never official disbanded, after all…
Right? He is 23. On the average timeline, you would have graduated college and started trying to start your career. He should have left all that stuff behind 5 years before.
The society he lives in continually reinforces misogyny. It’s entirely unsurprising that he (and many other men, to varying degrees) would not “let that stuff behind.” This is not a problem of an immature person who can’t get laid. It’s a problem of structural misogyny.
Neither what I meant, nor what I said. For what it is worth, this young man’s case is likely to be a confluence of issues, and not a single big one such as structural misogyny (which I agree is part of what lead him down this path). What I was getting was emotional maturity being a component.
He wanted to blow up cheerleaders and identified as an incel, meaning he saw himself as not getting his due from women, none of which is owed to him. He’s a violent misogynist. Time we start calling these things what they are. This is the same reason that uprisings are happening all across the country, because we have a problem calling things out as they actually exist.
This is not a problem of an immature person who can’t get laid. It’s a problem of structural misogyny.