As bad as most of the misogynistic ideas I write about on this blog tend to be, they at least have a certain perverse logic to them; if you accept their deeply flawed premises, at least long enough to try to parse the arguments, the conclusions make a sort of rough sense.
But when I wander into the online worlds of the so-called “involuntary celibates” I can quickly lose my moorings. Most incels are hugely depressed, and as I know from my own experience dealing with depression of varying degrees of severity over several decades, deep depression not only distorts your thinking; it also can make you weirdly self-obsessed, assuming that everything that happens in the world has something to do with you — both with your own imagined failings and with the alleged injustices the world supposedly imposes on you.
When you combine all this with the standard bad ideas of the misogynistic manosphere, incel “logic” can quickly become very strange indeed.
I say all this as a sort of introduction to this little “true story”I found on the Incels subreddit, a story that starts out with an awkward not-quite-interaction on a largely deserted bus and ends with a plot twist I have to say I never saw coming.
So let’s take a look at the post titled “Feminism’s fault I’m incel,” (archived here) by a fellow calling himself Brazierlord.
I was sitting next to this girl on the bus the other day and as the bus starting emptying out, I stood up to change seats like a good male is supposed to. I would be labeled as a danger to females if they saw me continue to sit next to that innocent female when I could easily move – obviously I was preparing to stalk her and rape her as soon as we got off the bus.
Obviously what he means by that last bit is that the others on the bus might consider him a bit creepy if he continued to sit next to the girl in question when there were now plenty of open seats. But his choice of words here, while meant sarcastically, make him seem even creepier than he intends.
So I stand up and I see her look at me through the corner of my eye. I move to the seat behind and at angle of -45 degrees from the horizontal to her. The entire time she is tracking me. Once I am seated she looks away and lays her head on the window.
Maybe she’s “tracking you” because you’re “tracking her” as you move to a new seat.
We get to our stop and she glances back at me. I am standing at this point and she hurries off the bus and nearly breaks into a run in the opposite direction.
Either she’s in a hurry, is nervous about being out alone, or our narrator really is giving off a creepy vibe.
So far, this seems to be a relatively straightforward story of a guy who may be giving off more of a creepy vibe than he realizes.
Then we get this:
If it weren’t for feminism I wouldn’t have changed seats and she wouldn’t hate me for breaking her heart. She probably would have followed me to my apartment and asked me if she could have sex with me and I wouldn’t be a virgin anymore
WHAT.
What the fuck are you talking about?
You didn’t break her heart. At best, she barely noticed you; at worst, you creeped her out. That’s it. Everything else is going on in your head, and nowhere else. Women do not follow strange men to their apartments to ask them for sex because they happened to sit next to each other on the bus. This is the sort of fantasy you come up with when you can’t imagine actually interacting with a woman as a real human being.
Get off of r/Incels and into therapy. Please. For your sake, and for the sake of every woman you sit next to on the bus.
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/639/190/ce5.gif
Ugh. I suggest that this dude move to a desert island stat and stay there. Because feminism.
This! This kind of crap (the incel story) is one reason I carry a stun gun. Creepy! Yet it is TEH eeevil feminists who portray men as creepy sex hounds! Uh-huh…
@Nequam: I second that Lucy GIF
Oh come on, there’s no way this guy is serious! I’ve seen people with a shocking lack of self-awareness before, but nobody can become such a flawless parody of themselves by accident!
Dr. Thang, I have two words for you: “Donald Trump”.
Isn’t “It’s feminism’s fault I’m incel” incel’s only story?
Okay, so I know this is an incredibly minor point in a deeply unhinged fantasy rant (frantasy?), but:
Why the hell did he feel the need to move? I’ve sat on busses, and, as the they emptied out, I never felt the need to move just because someone happened to be sitting next to me.
It’s not inherently creepy to stay where you are, is it?
Seriously…is it? I’m actually curious now.
…God help me, I’m actually wondering if Delusion Lad picked up on some social cue I’ve been missing for decades…
I dunno, maybe that last bit is supposed to be a sarcastic joke but if so I don’t understand what the point of posting the story is in the first place.
Brazierlord posts a lot of weird stuff that’s seems pretty sincere.
But who knows? Incels are confusing.
http://i.imgur.com/lPp7jTN.jpg
Friend saying you’re ironically stalking her is still stalking.
Wow.
That’s some self-obsession that young man has going on, right there.
Wow. Even at my worst, I don’t think my ability to model other people was this bad. Either he can’t tell wishful thinking from reality, or he’s a would-be stalker who hasn’t worked up the nerve yet.
Yikes. Mostly wow, how sad, but that ending tho.
Yeah, no need to change seats, I think that actually makes things kind of creepier? I don’t ride the bus anymore but I used to ride it a LOT, in a major US city. CHOOSING a seat next to someone when the bus is nearly empty is kind of creepy, yes, but just keeping your seat as a full bus empties out =/= creepy (unless you’ve got some secondary creepiness going on, like leaning/sleeping on them (which happens quite a bit) etc.)
And, if I’m understanding the narrative correctly, Mr. Incel moved to a seat behind and to the side of the woman, putting himself in her blind spot while allowing him to observe her freely. And, since he’s on the aisle and she’s in the window seat, he can easily get up and follow her once she moves to exit the bus.
Isn’t all that a whole lot creepier than just staying put?
Yeah, why would women feel unsafe around strange men when those men might be just like this dude, who assumes we’re just dying to have sex with him because we happen to be in public? How is that creepy?
*headdesk*
The whole incel thing is just so bizarre. How did they get convinced that not having sex is basically the end of the world? Do they not realize that lots of people don’t have sex and don’t spend all their time whining about it on the internet?
I’ve been reading Elliot Rodger’s manifesto, and I completely believe this InCel could very well be sincere.
“When I was eight years old I was happy, because I did not yet know that girls would conspire to break my heart over and over.”
For 141 pages.
If this guy didn’t want to come off creepy, he could have either 1) Stayed put, or 2) Picked a seat in front of her.
He wanted to stare at her. He knew what he was doing. Her being aware of his creepiness isn’t an indictment on feminism, it should be a life lesson in how not to act creepy.
And him knowing the stop she got out on rather tells,me it’s not the first bloody time, either.
As a bus rider, I’m going to have to say that yes, you should get up and move to an empty seat if one becomes available. It’s not creepy to stay put, but it is rude. Those seats aren’t very big and it’s a tight squeeze. Even if neither manspread, you are usually touching. It’s very physically and psychologically uncomfortable to be penned in with a stranger. I have claustrophobia and start to get anxious. When the seats start to open up, I look at the person who’s sat next to me and look towards the empty seat, hoping they’ll take the hint. They fucking never, ever do. So it’s either sit there all upset, getting increasingly miserable. Or awkwardly squeeze past them so I can take the empty seat myself.
I can’t understand why someone wouldn’t take an empty seat if one was available.
So yeah, if anyone reading this is failing to move over when the bus empties out, please reconsider. No one likes to feel pinned to the wall. This is particularly true if you’re a man and the passenger you’ve sat next to is a woman. But it applies to any gender combo. How hard is it to move over and give someone a little breathing room?
Anyway, after getting that off my chest, on to the actual incel crap. I thought feminism was bad because it turned women into sluts? I thought we were all roasties with thousand cock stares? Misogynists really need to get their story straight. This dude seriously thinks that before feminism women routinely followed strange men home to have sex with them? Did he see a porn set in a medieval village and take it for a docudrama?
Moving so that he was in her blind spot was creepy, no wonder she ran when they both got off the bus at the same spot. Or possibly she was desperate for the loo and wanted to get home, and it was nothing whatsoever to do with creepy-incel-guy.
I use public transport as often as I must, when I can’t scrounge a lift (mixed anxiety and depression, and packed busses/trains is a fun combo, for a given value of fun). I have been known to find another seat when the bus starts to empty out, usually because the person sitting next to me is making me twitchy, or because I’m in pain. I might even smile politely as I stood and mention the nerve damage in my back before limping off to another, empty, seat. I would not then stare at the person I was formerly sharing a seat with for the rest of the journey. Because that is rude. And creepy. And I have better things to do, like nap and listen to music.
@Gaebolga
That was exactly my thought. If you feel you have to move, don’t move into the person’s blind spot. I loathe people lurking behind me.
I couldn’t watch the debate where Trump kept moving behind Hillary as she was speaking, it was like biting cotton wool while scraping fingernails down a chalkboard. It was polystyrene squeaking as it breaks.
I don’t like it.
Sometimes I sit and wonder why I’m alone
Then I blame it on the matriarchy
Without it that chick over there’d be beggin’ to bone
But feminism compels her to parch me
That…wow. That is a classic example of framing a one-sided story.
He leaves out (or glosses over) all of his actions that might make the reader go “uh, dude, pretty obvious it’s not her, it’s you” – from the sitting behind her in her blind spot (“I move to the seat behind and at angle of -45 degrees from the horizontal to her.”) to standing up and waiting for her to get off before him (“We get to our stop and she glances back at me. I am standing at this point “).
And then, to remain the shat upon hero, he attributes all of her intentions to evil feminism in a false attribution error*.
Seek help indeed.
*what am I saying – this is the default for these guys. After all, the MRA/MGTOW/Incel movement was built upon, and is a textbook example of, false attribution error.
EW GAWD!
I, er, uh…. hm.
What?
Like I understand having social difficulties and fantasizing about scenarios that implausibly go in your favour, but it’s a whole other thing to treat those fantasies as plausible realities. When you convince yourself that the “natural order” of things is one where you get what you want simply by virtue of you being you, of course you’re going to think that everyone and everything is conspiring against you because of course you’re not going to get everything you want.
Also, nthing the “it’s not that creepy to stay sitting beside someone.” Sometimes I’ll move when a better seat opens up (e.g. I prefer front-facing to side-facing seats) but most of the time, eh.
I used to worry a lot about seat “etiquette” when I started commuting on transit, and more specifically I worried about sitting next to people I thought were cute because… reasons? But I quickly learned that, shit, it’s just a bus seat, calm down. You’re not entering into a contract or obligating anyone to interact with you. Just mind your personal bubble and people will for the most part ignore you.