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.
@weirwoodtreehugger
I should clarify that my above position is almost exclusively based around seats that don’t pen anybody in. The busses that I commute on have been converted to maximize standing area, so there’s only two seats where it’s at all possible to do that to someone. Fully agree that it’s polite (and pragmatic) to move out of an aisle seat when there’s room to do so. Also applies if the seats are as such that you can’t help but touch your neighbor (also see: mind your bubble).
I’m with weirwoodtreehugger on this one… if there’s an empty row of seats, move to it. I do that all the time, on any public transport… honestly, I’m surprised that more people don’t.
Why not?
I really have no words for the incel, because there’s nothing to say. That’s just gross.
Yeah, I always wonderd about the “do I move to an empty seat or no” conundrum, partially because I worry too much about unwritten social constructs. I know staying where you are would bother some people, but I’m thinking of someone like my mother, who thinks very strange things are rude because she’s an older lady who gets upset when I burp because it’s not “lady like”, so I think there’s a wide variety of preferences when it comes to this. And because I myself am confused, I don’t blame anyone for either leaving the seat next to me or staying.
It’s possible that this guy isn’t wearing any deodorant and smells, and the woman is rushing off the bus because of that. Or she forgot her oven was on. Honestly, I’m pretty sure she wasn’t thinking “feminism tells me I should be afraid of this person”. This dude realizes that women were afraid of men before feminism, right? Women have been afraid of dudes for a loooooong time, and usually for good reason. Men are less violent now than they’ve ever been, which is saying something about how men used to be.
He … broke her heart, by changing seats.
He relates nothing that she does that gives the impression that she had her heart set on him before he changed seats. In fact, prior to the seat-changing, she takes no action at all in the narrative. So he got the idea that she was pining away for him because she … didn’t actively try to repel him? Because she just sat there minding her own business like any normal commuter?
It really demonstrates how entitled to women these dudes feel. If a woman does not actively reject him, he assumes that she is willing and available. The moment she does actively try to evade him, his internal narrative is not that he did something to creep her out or frighten her, it’s that he broke her heart. Even as she is trying to get the hell out of Dodge, the story he tells himself ties her to him. She can’t even escape cleanly. He feels so entitled to her that he imagines that she has pledged her heart to him.
HAH HAH one of the (very few) comments is gold:
“at what point did u actually talk to her?” asks a commenter, to which the OP replies:
“i do not speak to femoids”
Yeah, dude, she totally was going to follow you home like a lost puppy and have wild sex with you while you steadfastly refused to even speak to her as if she were human.
Random thought: I think we should all call ourselves freemales. Free from sad males like that.
Oh yeah I read Elliot Rodger’s manifesto at the time and it was clear he had serious mental health problems. He never even spoke to any girls and refused to attempt to socialise even with guys. He seemed to think that girls would somehow magically just have sex with him with zero effort on his part. It’s all very sad and scary.
Looks like incels are as bad at writing fiction as MGTOWs. Let me see if I can salvage anything from this dreck.
As the bus got closer to the end of the line, it began to empty out. Pretty soon it was just me and the girl sitting next to me. I glanced at her and her nostrils flared in what looked like annoyance, so I got up to move. She glanced at me from the corner of her eye, tracking me as I went. When I sat down in a seat behind and to the side of her, she rested her head against the window, her face reflected against the winter night’s darkness. One of her eyes seemed to glow red, but that must have been a car’s tail-light.
We got off at the same stop. She pulled her hood down far enough to cover her face and hurried away from me, ducking into an alley. I walked to my place, up the rickety outside stairs to my third-floor apartment. As I fumbled with my keys, I felt hot, carrion-scented breath on the back of my neck.
She followed me home.
I think I get it: he thinks that she really liked him and wanted to have sex with him, and when he left the seat she was devastated that he wasn’t interested in her. Could that be it? I do remember reading something recently about men projecting their interest onto women such that if they like a woman they think she feels the same way back. Explains quite a lot tbh.
DAYUM, LindsayIrene, I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your fiction!!!
I’d be frightened if strange women followed me home and tried to have sex with me, personally.
Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy sex with women and am not an Ace, but that whole scenario sounds like something from an erotic horror story.
I know I’m extremely beautiful, but come on, people…
I’ll usually move to an empty seat, unless my stop is coming up. It is normal to do that.
It was tempting to feel some sympathy for a guy with such a paranoid, self-hating internal dialogue… until that last bit.
@Freemage:
Touche.
Actually, though I’ve simetimes changed seats for my own personal comfort as a bus or subway emptied out, I’ve never had the slightest inkling that this was a requirement, or that it depended on the attractiveness quotient of whoever I sat next to.
That idea is weird beyond reckoning- that he says it as if it were common knowledge us a but scared, tbh- it almost telegraphs that he was sending creep vibes out to our erstwhile heroine of the moment.
If anything, I have sometimes felt that moving might be oercueved as an insult – as if I were reacting to a. Bad smell or something, so I avoid it unless it’s really a tight seat
Actually, though I’ve simetimes changed seats for my own personal comfort as a bus or subway emptied out, I’ve never had the slightest inkling that this was a requirement, or that it depended on the attractiveness quotient of whoever I sat next to.
That idea is weird beyond reckoning- that he says it as if it were common knowledge us a but scared, tbh- it almost telegraphs that he was sending creep vibes out to our erstwhile heroine of the moment.
If anything, I have sometimes felt that moving might be percieved as an insult – as if I were reacting to a bad smell or something, so I avoid it unless it’s really a tight seat
I don’t have a car so I always take the bus or maybe get sometimes lift from strangers – that is more common where i live, people do it often, it is illegal technically, but for a bit of money, less than taxi, they can take you. Sometimes even free.
I dont remember if i have been in this situation on a bus actually, but it is in my nature to move to where there is personal space as soon as i can so i probably did it.
For the people who mentioned it, 100% moving behind her, watching her back from his eye – this is the most creepy thing, and also very obviously creepy. Maybe i am synical but i think the reason she ran is she was scared by his behavour. Which i understand and agree, he acted scarey…
also, Brazierlord, if you’re reading, hers a tip for you. There’s a slight, albeit infinitesimally small one, given your approach to socializing, chance that you might have had some kind of relationship with the women in question, had you remained sitting next to her and struck up a conversation with her.
I mean, sure it’s a long shot, but marginally more likely than her spontaneously following you home and ravaging you in mom’s basement
Instead spending all their time on the internet whining about women, these sadsacks should go out and work on self-improvement. Get a hobby. Develop opinions. Learn about how the real world works. Become cultured and interesting. Stop seeing women as sex objects but as real people with opinions and desires and needs and wants of their own. Cultivate friendships with some women.. Stop being so damn creepy and sex obsessed. Then maybe some women will want to be with you in a sexual relationship.
I am all too familiar with the brainweasels that say “people are watching you, judging you, any minute now they’ll accuse you of something terrible”, so I had a bit of sympathy.
And then he … started blaming feminism for this woman not spontaneously acting like his fantasy purely because it was his fantasy? No, that is not a brainweasel thing, that is a monstrous entitlement and no idea how human interactions work thing.
And then “I do not speak to femoids” (FEMOIDS? WTF?) was the cherry on top. She’s supposed to intuit he wants sex and give it to him without him even deigning to speak to her? And somehow it’s feminism’s fault this didn’t happen, and not the fact that it’s completely implausible on every level imaginable?
I don’t even know what to say about mr incel guy’s fan fiction, so instead I’ll chime in and say I’m all for giving my co-travellers some space on buses/the subway as soon as the opportunity arises. (And because I have to overthink everything, I’m always vaguely worried that I’m insulting people by implying I’d rather not sit next to them. But instead of blaming feminism, I just pull myself together, move seats, and enjoy being able to stretch my legs without bumping into anyone.)
@Darius
HALT, CITIZEN.
I AM FEMOID THX-1138, OPERATING NAME ‘FRANSCESCA TORPEDO’.
WHERE IS YOUR BIOCHIP? COME WITH ME. YOU ARE DETAINED UNTIL YOU SHOW ME YOUR BIOCHIP.
Ok, completely off topic but theres something unbelievable on ROK right now. Some fucking урод is making a film where woman never got the vote and its full of so much violence to women and its really fucking disgusting. Just read it for yourself. If someone has gone through the trouble to make this movie, to be this violence i actually think hes properly dangerous in rreal life.
If you are an abuse survivor best not to read it. He has a FB page for his movie. I dont have FB but people who do should report this guy
http://www.returnofkings.com/120574/what-the-western-world-would-look-like-if-women-were-never-granted-the-right-to-vote
Maybe also someone can tell to david to write about this…
Well, there’s your problem.
@Ashara
You are correct.
Everyone else here is too well-grounded to fully grasp his complete lack of grasp on reality.
He thought that her tracking his movements was because she liked him rather than because she was gauging his intent after he drew attention to himself by moving.
@Valentine
As a black person, I am deeply ashamed for the black woman who allowed herself to be part of that mess.
Like, I’m fucking cringing over here. Ugh.
You thought it was bad for one reason, but it’s like a fucking maelstrom of awfulness. It’s not just violent to women, it’s godawful racist shit.
@PaganReader
The incel (urp [swallows back vomit]) who pointed out that he should have said something to her may yet have a hope of escaping that dungeon of dreadfulness.