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.
@JS:
Thanks for that. It’s made my morning. (Also, how did I not know that Katie Mack was on twitter? I should be more with it.) I shall show it to everyone I know in the field.
@EJ
80 Days is a great game, basically an interactive novel or gamebook in the best sense. There are routes where you can get back to London in under 60 days if you are playing for speed, but I usually think of getting back too early as missing interesting side trips along the way. There are interesting storylines for all of the cities.
edited to add: 2 other great non-steampunk 19th century exploration games are The Curious Expedition and Renowned Explorers: International Society.
And then there is Sunless Sea, which is hard to describe.
All creepiness aside–if someone is moving around me on the bus, I watch them. You know, in case they lose their balance and fall into me on the bus. Or because I’m thinking about whatever else and just looking at something moving. Or because the guy next to me moved and I’m wondering if he just wanted space or if I’m smelling weird.
And 90% of people take off because
1. They’re about to miss their connection
2. They’re late for work/school
3. They need to pee
Seriously, it not about you.
Does anyone know how many black people there were in Medieval Europe? I had the impression that it was a much smaller percentage than, say, African Americans today, but obviously not zero because people move around for all sorts of reasons.
And even if it were zero, that’s no reason why you can’t have a black person in Medieval roleplay. I’ll tell you a secret: I’m not the lady of a manor. It reminds me of Vox Day’s gladiator game where you couldn’t play as a woman because there were no women warriors ever (eyeroll) so you could only play as a man, dwarf or troll.
@ Sheila
It appears there was a higher proportion of black people living in Elizabethan London than there is today. There were also more non-Brits. Ironically we know this because of contemporary documents whinging about foreigners coming over and nicking all the jobs. Although in fairness there’s also a document reporting some black traders complaining about the ‘cold and moyste air which doth offend us’. So basically, business as usual.
There’s been a significant black presence in Britain since at least AD 43 though.
Try that pic again…
http://www.mirandakaufmann.com/uploads/1/2/2/5/12258270/6599961.jpg
Yet another young man blaming his social anxiety and deep rooted inadequacy on feminism (aka females).
I expect he is ‘joking’ in the last part – he is *probably* aware that women do not follow men to have sex with them, but it is a dead giveaway as a fantasy.
It never ceases to amaze me that such a person can be attracted to people he despises so much, but this is so common in the manosphere as to be practically the gold standard. Even when I have read of ‘love’ it is so conditional and rigid.
I would feel sorry for them, but I always remember to feel sorry for the women and girls in their lives more.
PoM said:
So good. I agree. Having awkward conversations with people who might be physically trapped, with you sitting in the aisle seat and preventing them from leaving, is not okay.
Some buses don’t come very often (i’ve definitely lived in a place where it was once every hour) so it isn’t like someone can just get off and wait for the next one. This can mean that someone is both physically trapped by the searing arrangements and by the schedule.
Even if the bus comes every 10 minutes, it’s not like the next one is guaranteed to be creep free. The woman (i am assuming, because of incel, that the target reads as a woman) might also be in a part of the city that they don’t know, and doesn’t want to get off and wait for the next one.
Edited to add: thank you to everyone saying that they wished more people would take an empty seat not next to people when it opens up. I typically take the window seat anyway, but on those busy bus occasions i will try to remember to move when it gets emptier.
Re: that movie thingy
I’m not particularly judgmental as to what people get off to, but given the fact that this drivel is the guy’s “artistic vision”, and that he chose to share it with “fellow RoK fans”… yeah…
@Oogly:
Oh, definitely the cute manga one. That one looks the fiercest and least likely to take shit from anyone.
@Franscesca:
Southern Spain, pre-Ferdinand and Isabella, begs to differ with your racist troll interlocutor. And Moorish culture was actually beneficial to medieval Europe…most of which was in the Dark Ages where it was ruled by bigoted white assholes. African Muslims brought science, math and medical innovations with them, as well as religious tolerance and legal protections for those not of the ruling class. Moorish architecture was also innovative and stunningly beautiful. The Alhambra palace being but one example of it. And when the Moors were driven out, Spain went backward in a hurry, sinking into the same ironically-named Dark Ages as all the rest.
(Okay, so technically the Moors were Moroccan and brown, not Sub-Saharan and black. But they’re African and definitely not white, so they still count, right?)
@Moggie:
‘nother artistic rendition. This one’s called “The Irritating Gentleman”:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/images/hb/hb_2002.62.1.jpg
I know I saw another one of a masher hitting on a girl in mourning, sitting in a train compartment. Unfortunately, the Google Mammoth is so far uncooperative…
Here you go:
http://33.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mcabx3KGAh1rv2dfko1_1280.jpg
I’ve been seeing this used as a meme base a lot lately.
@Franscesca
Maybe some day you can make it to the Philly Ren Faire. Diversity is encouraged! The theme this year is “working together”. Well, “working together” and pirates.
@guest:
‘at’s the one. I don’t know why it was so hard to find. I must be having an unusually dense morning.
@Bina I sympathise–just started a new job, and I spent most of yesterday asking all the dumb questions (‘how can I get my email on my phone? how do I use the scanner? why can’t I change the password on my computer?’).
That picture reminds me of this, which is in keeping with the general public transport etiquette theme I suppose.
@guest:
Those are not dumb questions at all. Better to get the basics out of the way first. They’re what everything else hinges on, right?
I talk to people on the bus sometimes, but if there’s space available I will move to the other side and talk across the aisle.
That League of Gentlemen clip is so ridiculously British.
And the incel reddit has some oddddd rules:
How exactly do you enforce that second sentence?
Zenobia Augusta:
Nothing says “working together” more than “pirates”!
Anyway, what’s all this talking on the bus? As a Londoner, I have to insist that this is just not done! Unless you’re drunk or a murderer, of course.
I swear some of these posts are actually some pranksters making fun of incels. This one sounds really like satire at points.
But thanks to those incels being a rather “special” bunch this is impossible to tell, because even if this one was satire, there are plenty of actual incels thinking like this.
Poe’s Law, it’s an annoyance.
Maybe I just can’t follow thought patterns like these and think this comes from someone who actually believes that.
@Franscesca Torpedo:
Really, that is so stupid it just deserves a one-word response.
“Othello”
(Okay, maybe not strictly medieval, but really. They might have heard of this city in Egypt called Alexandria? Named after Alexander the Great? One of the most active ports on the Mediterranean since the fourth century B.C.? Or that other city/empire and great Roman rival, Carthage, in what is now Tunisia? The Roman Empire at its largest covered the entire Mediterranean coast, including the African side. So much of this crap is basically Van Däniken-level racism by personal incredulity.)
Just wow
@Everyone, regarding Nazis in Fandoms
So I grew curious as to whether the Touhou Project fandom contains any traces of naziphilia.
Much to my total lack of surprise, I found this:
It’s a picture of the aforementioned Marisa (one of the player characters in the Touhou games) heiling her sieg.
I don’t know what I expected. Should’ve seen this coming, really.
Nothing is safe. Even your ostensibly benign shmup games about witches and priestesses is contaminated with this crap.
ETA:
I expect someone to remark, Silly Fran, don’t you remember that time Hitler created the SS 501st Fighting Little Girl Witches Battalion? 😛
ETA2:|
@Jenora
I made the mistake of mentioning something like that once to these imbeciles and received a lengthy lecture about how North Africans are Not Real Black People; only Sub-Saharan Africans with Really Dark Skin are Real Black People.
I am certain it was probably a white dude telling me that, too.
He must have been giving off a weird vibe, or staring at her. No two ways about it!
I don’t ride public busses on a regular basis, but it does seem like giving other people a little breathing room would be the polite thing to do.
Many years ago, my sister and I took a Greyhound bus from Port Authority, NYC, to St. Louis, Missouri. My parents were divorced, and we spent 6 weeks during the summers with our father. We usually flew, but dad didn’t want to spend money on the airfare this particular summer, I guess. The bus ride took 24 hours, straight through. We ate a lot of Burger King… Anyway, sis and I tried to sit together…mainly because…I was 14, but she was only 12, and kind of nervous and frightened about the whole trip. Well, after one stop, we weren’t able to sit together. When the bus finally stopped again, we met up, and she told me she was nearly gagging due to the smelly, unwashed guy sitting next to her. Maybe this incel had the same problem?
Off topic: My home internet provider disconnected service, because they claimed we (husband and I) have been sending out bulk, automated emails. We have NOT been doing this…we wouldn’t even know how!
I was going to ramble on about Kush and its relationship with Egypt, and how a lot of what we call ‘Egyptian’ is actually Kushite (and vice versa) and about how Kush ended up running Egypt after they drove out a dynasty of occupiers (from what is now Libya) and restored all the culture we associate with the place today and all the black pharaohs etc. But it would take a library to do that subject justice; so I’ll just post this.