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.
Ah, the good old Harkness test. So funny, yet so very true (or at least a great starting point to approaching the problem).
@ fran & troubelle
I’m not sure. But I quite like the idea of a Puritan Pony causing mayhem. She’d get along with Luna and the Fetlock-shaming.
Yup. Here she is…
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Whitehouse
She was a notorious figure in my youth. A laughing stock, but with surprising influence. Mainly through being a pain in the arse. In the end the Prime Minister instructed his staff to ‘misplace’ her letters to him.
She had that annoying thing of being ‘worthy’ but totally missing the point. She objected to a serious documentary about the Holocaust because it was distressing. Funnily enough she praised the Goodies as being wholesome family entertainment; so they made a show parodying her that was full of sex and violence.
I don’t have the skills to flesh out a Mary Whitehorse character, but I suspect she’d be reaching for the smelling salts if she saw some of the more adult themed Pony stuff.
@ brony & gipsz
That Harkness test is interesting. It’s probably not a bad model for relationships generally. I have been mulling this over at the back of my mind. There’s a tension (in then philosophical sense, I’m not especially angsty about this). On the one hand I don’t want to get into any sort of shaming in regards to the real world. And within the realm of the the fictional world I suppose I shouldn’t judge any relationship based on informed consent. But I still find something a bit off about the sexualisation thing.
I think ultimately it’s probably just an inherent taboo instinct kicking in. Something about “kids show” and “pornography” appearing together that triggers a reflex.
@Alan Robertshaw
“I suspect she’d be reaching for the smelling salts if she saw some of the more adult themed pony stuff…”
Now THAT’s something I’d like to see Mary Whitehouse experience!
Do I win a fiver?
@ danholme
Argh, I’ve got a stack of work to do today; but now you’ve forced me to dig out the childish academics videos.
“…that’s your mum that is.”
By one of those weird bits of Internet sorcery Facebook has just reminded me that five years ago I was on Bodmin Moor talking to this little fella or gal (not sure how you tell).
http://i.imgur.com/bQZCetR.jpg
“Are you my mum?”
“No, that’s her behind you.”
@Fran, re: ending the nightmare
If I could legally drive, believe me, I’d try. (But I haven’t so much as my permit. Plan to change that over the summer.)
@Alan
Yeah, that rings a bell! Think I read about that on TV Tropes.
@ troubelle
The Goodies were brilliant. It’s heretical to say so but I think they’re much better than Monty Python. The guys themselves get marginally peeved that a lot of things people quote as Python are in fact sketches by them. The Goodies do have the distinction though that someone literally died laughing whilst watching them.
@Franscesca
I’m afraid that instead of purging the fandom of the neonazi they would just start crying about how the “evil SJWs” took away their fandom and go into overdrive with their fanfic and fan art in attempt to ‘reclaim’ it
@Alan
Yeah, I think that’s where I first heard the name of the show–well, in reference to that in one of those Uncle John’s Bathroom Readers.
@Alan Robertshaw I loved the goodies. I was fortunate enough to actually see them filming at Bodiam Castle circa 1974. Or maybe 1973 not sure, but I think I was about 8 so must have been then. I think it was my first ever real-life encounter with anyone ‘off the Telly’ and I was thrilled about it for years. Only discovered Python a bit later as it was most likely on after my bedtime.
@Fabe
Bluh. That sounds less than optimal.
I was hoping it would cause the FiM Fandom to become more like the Steven Universe or Undertale fandoms, where the white supremacists are afraid to show themselves at length.
Guise !
Am back, two days earlier than planned.
Also I’m just rambling ’cause drunk and high and feeling good.
So I did say I’d cut my losses at the first sign of trouble, but this is more like quitting while I was ahead. I met and joined camps with the coolest peeps, two craftsladies living in a truck* like a lotta people you see there do, except way cooler. And I bought a doll for my niece’s birthday from them ! It’s an awesome doll. And they gifted me a cute small cauliflower in a pot wrapped in another of their pieces, cut from the same cloth than the doll’s dress. That was so damn nice and I almost friggin cried.
But mostly they made the entire thing bearable for me out of kindness and it’d have gone real bad if not for them. First off because of the material shit : the weather was very… unpredictable – but they lended me extra blankets so I didn’t freeze my hair off too much in my tent. And they made tea from a thyme shrub they hauled around in the truck, and that did wonders for my hangover, and rendered my stock of tea completely obsolete. In turn I made sure they never had to be more sober than they wanted to, because I had way more beer and pot than my ass alone would need and the entire point of bringing this much was to share with cool folks and that’s exactly what happened so I’m also super happy about that.
But mostly it was being able to meet and spend time with awesome and awfully kind people, something that’s the whole reason I go there, but doesn’t happen that much anymore now that I’ve been ostracized. They figured out I wasn’t okay and came out to help and that means the world.
It was a lot of awesome. Sure, the usual shitty stuff did happen, but nothing too bad. There was no scene and no one harassed me and the only thing I can complain about is that I got that stupid dream where things get better again, and of course I woke up exactly in the same setting as my dream and that made it worse. But no one’s to blame for that. For once, it wasn’t rainy as all fuck from the start, though it is right now and that’s one reason why I took off, because my body was already in major pain and I didn’t see myself going through two days of constant rain. Oh and I got sunburns, because May is the month where you freeze your ass off in the shade but literally burn in the sun. It even made the scars on my arms stick out like a sore thumb and that made me real uncomfortable. Another reason I left is that my cool neighbors had to move their truck to a different spot which I wanted to avoid for the same reason they had to go : it’s where people gather after 3 to keep the party going while the festival proper is off for the night – and they really needed to get some business going. Ain’t a big fan of loud electro all night long so I didn’t move my tent there ’cause I might wanna sleep and no amount of booze and drugs will make an insomniac like me sleep through that, but the prospect of camping alone wasn’t exactly a good one either.
So I quit while I was ahead, so to speak. Plus I still had some money left and that allowed me to offer all of it, which was an almost decent price for the doll and much more than they’d been offered for anything else they sold today. I really wanted to buy it but I’d only have been able to offer an offensively paltry sum (those things take hours and hours to make !) if I’d stayed longer, so in the end that was The Right Thing To Do. Insert smugness or something.
Also they had a cat ! His name is Scratch and he’s got the most beautiful fur I’ve ever seen, black with an amazing brown tint. He kept sneaking into my tent all ninja-like while I was rolling joints in there to keep from the wind, and somehow I only ever saw him after he’d curled up next to me even though I was facing the entrance. I’m a walking cat radar so you know he’s real stealthy.
Anyway, it was good. Also I’m still baked and wasted, and it’s getting late, so I’ma sleep before the glow wears off.
*Dunno if that’s a thing in America ? People roaming around in small trucks and stopping at festivals and the like to operate whatever kind of craft they do, often on a pay-what-you-want basis. I did that for a short while with a friend selling issues of that thing we wrote and published. It’s not easy, but if you’re crafty with finding and recycling stuff on the road and maybe trade favors with others, you can make a life, if not a living.
@Troubelle
Well, the goal is to avoid hypothermia, heh. Not drinking would definitely help, since alcohol makes your body temp drop a bit. Some festivals have a shitty peer-pressure thing going on, where people insistently offer you drinks (as opposed to kindly offering you drinks, which is how it’s properly done) so the trick is to go with friends (or make new friends and camp up with them) whom you trust not to act like that.
As for yer parents, they won’t have a say forever. You ever find a place like that, I hope it’s a cool one and you can have a great time like I just had. It’s like a hole in the world, a warm and kind hiding spot away from the cold, and a place and time to exist without the usual shit. Of course it’s not just festivals and not all festivals – that mostly goes for the small anti-capitalistic gatherings like the one I just got back from. The bigger ones, not so much.
Guise !
Am back, two days earlier than planned.
Also I’m just rambling ’cause drunk and high and feeling good.
So I did say I’d cut my losses at the first sign of trouble, but this is more like quitting while I was ahead. I met and joined camps with the coolest peeps, two craftsladies living in a truck* like a lotta people you see there do, except way cooler. And I bought a doll for my niece’s birthday from them ! It’s an awesome doll. And they gifted me a cute small cauliflower in a pot wrapped in another of their pieces, cut from the same cloth than the doll’s dress. That was so damn nice and I almost friggin cried.
But mostly they made the entire thing bearable for me out of kindness and it’d have gone real bad if not for them. First off because of the material shit : the weather was very… unpredictable – but they lended me extra blankets so I didn’t freeze my hair off too much in my tent. And they made tea from a thyme shrub they hauled around in the truck, and that did wonders for my hangover, and rendered my stock of tea completely obsolete. In turn I made sure they never had to be more sober than they wanted to, because I had way more beer and pot than my ass alone would need and the entire point of bringing this much was to share with cool folks and that’s exactly what happened so I’m also super happy about that.
But mostly it was being able to meet and spend time with awesome and awfully kind people, something that’s the whole reason I go there, but doesn’t happen that much anymore now that I’ve been ostracized. They figured out I wasn’t okay and came out to help and that means the world.
It was a lot of awesome. Sure, the usual shitty stuff did happen, but nothing too bad. There was no scene and no one harassed me and the only thing I can complain about is that I got that stupid dream where things get better again, and of course I woke up exactly in the same setting as my dream and that made it worse. But no one’s to blame for that. For once, it wasn’t rainy as all fuck from the start, though it is right now and that’s one reason why I took off, because my body was already in major pain and I didn’t see myself going through two days of constant rain. Oh and I got sunburns, because May is the month where you freeze your ass off in the shade but literally burn in the sun. It even made the scars on my arms stick out like a sore thumb and that made me real uncomfortable. Another reason I left is that my cool neighbors had to move their truck to a different spot which I wanted to avoid for the same reason they had to go : it’s where people gather after 3 to keep the party going while the festival proper is off for the night – and they really needed to get some business going. Ain’t a big fan of loud electro all night long so I didn’t move my tent there ’cause I might wanna sleep and no amount of booze and drugs will make an insomniac like me sleep through that, but the prospect of camping alone wasn’t exactly a good one either.
So I quit while I was ahead, so to speak. Plus I still had some money left and that allowed me to offer all of it, which was an almost decent price for the doll and much more than they’d been offered for anything else they sold today. I really wanted to buy it but I’d only have been able to offer an offensively paltry sum (those things take hours and hours to make !) if I’d stayed longer, so in the end that was The Right Thing To Do. Insert smugness or something.
Also they had a cat ! His name is Scratch and he’s got the most beautiful fur I’ve ever seen, black with an amazing brown tint. He kept sneaking into my tent all ninja-like while I was rolling joints in there to keep from the wind, and somehow I only ever saw him after he’d curled up next to me even though I was facing the entrance. I’m a walking cat radar so you know he’s real stealthy.
Anyway, it was good. Also I’m still baked and wasted, and it’s getting late, so I’ma sleep before the glow wears off.
*Dunno if that’s a thing in America ? People roaming around in small trucks and stopping at festivals and the like to operate whatever kind of craft they do, often on a pay-what-you-want basis. I did that for a short while with a friend selling issues of that thing we wrote and published. It’s not easy, but if you’re crafty with finding and recycling stuff on the road and maybe trade favors with others, you can make a life, if not a living.
@Troubelle
Plus, I’ve always side-eyed alcohol. It got my dad good while I was just starting school. (He’s been clean for about a decade now, though.) So I probably wouldn’t be doing the non-hypothermia half of that equation, anyway.
Well, the goal is to avoid hypothermia, heh. Not drinking would definitely help, since alcohol makes your body temp drop a bit. Some festivals have a shitty peer-pressure thing going on, where people insistently offer you drinks (as opposed to kindly offering you drinks, which is how it’s properly done) so the trick is to go with friends (or make new friends and camp up with them) whom you trust not to act like that.
As for yer parents, they won’t have a say forever. You ever find a place like that, I hope it’s a cool one and you can have a great time like I just had. It’s like a hole in the world, a warm and kind hiding spot away from the cold, and a place and time to exist without the usual shit. Of course it’s not just festivals and not all festivals – that mostly goes for the small anti-capitalistic gatherings like the one I just got back from. The bigger ones, not so much. Bottom line : be mindful, travel lightly, and keep an eye out for two cool ladies selling rag dolls and necklace lighter pouches.
@Sinkable John
I’m glad you managed to make the best of it…and I’ll see what I can find in the future.
@Fran
No, she isn’t.
@Dalillama
You’re right. I actually questioned myself as to whether I should have used the phrase, but it was late and I was tired and promptly made a poor decision.
I’ll recant.
She’s actually one of my #lifegoals.
ETA:
I got disconcerted when you initially posted that and expected you to post a picture of a glaringly white female Celestia, implying that I am not allowed to want to be like her.
That’s how toxic the FiMFandom is. I was relieved when it was actually just a simple PSA.
@Sinkable John
I am glad you made it throuhh safely.
@Troubelle
When I get an actual place you can live with me if you want.
I cook, clean, take care of myself, and generally like to be left alone so I don’t get sensory overload.
I mean, unless you really want to sit down with me and talk about stuff while watching movies or anime and eat ice cream, I could probably do it.
@Fran
Ugh. Sorry to hear it. I’m not actually part of the fandom and have basically no idea who Celestia is to start with. So I’m the last person on Earth who’d argue with your concept of her human version. Also your version sounds cool, so I wouldn’t anyway.
@Alan Robertshaw
I get the tension too, it’s lots of little things and things I’ve seen.
I was going to mention another subject earlier that might give you something useful for how it can make a vibe. The concept of Neoteny and how it relates to cartoon characters may be a factor, but I was raging at my phone and forgot.
This is a tricky thing to do because we are edging into evo-psych territory. Children’s entertainment is simpler on many levels including social complexity. When I think about the whole experience in the brony community I saw a lot of kinds of feeling-based needs being met. These people were there for a lot of reasons that attracted them to that cartoon. “Why am I obsessed with this cartoon?” was a big one. So there are social and physical simplifications in play.
The stories tend to be simpler and use developmental period-appropriate messages. Ending tend to be positive and uplifting.
Heads are larger relative to bodies. Most of the difference between “children” and “adults” is leg length. Celestia and Luna later in the series are the most “adult” in proportions (compare season one younger-looking Luna with Luna later in the series, I’ve wondered about that). I’m sure there are other things that my perspective misses.
Yes. It’s something I don’t feel I have read enough about to try summarizing any brain science. I’m going to put that one on the list.
@Franscesca Torpedo
I’m afraid my head-cannon is largely self-insertion. I did not tend to feel good about people in general growing up and I’ve noticed I have trouble connecting with The Equestria Girls spin-off. There are many reasons to like the show and I have seen lots of human reflections of the characters from many cultures. Yours looks like they are having a lot of fun and those are very well done. The style reminds me of that from Stephen Universe.
Our Fluttershy mod was of Chinese descent and they had fan art of Fluttershy wearing clothing inspired from lots of parts of Asia. This was one of my favorites.
There’s a great Weird Al song called “Jackson Park Express” about a man having an increasingly creepy imaginary conversation with a woman he shares a brief glance with on a bus. It’s all I did think about when reading this post.
https://youtu.be/FZvgT4pVC_w