There’s nobody quite so sensitive to the subtle oppression of men in contemporary society than the guys who hang out on Involuntary Celibacy forums online. Which is perhaps why they spend so much of their time, er, consciousness raising about the critical issue of fat women who have sex.
On the Incels subreddit, the regulars return to the topic again and again in innumerable threads decrying the fat girl menace. Their central complaint: Fat women are able to have sex with pretty much any man they want, while similarly fat men lead lives of not-so-quiet celibacy.
“Must be nice being a fat woman,” writes someone called ASS_F.
Still get an enormous amount of dating options. Can still date perfectly decent looking men. Can fuck lower tier or drunk Chads. May even be able to shag a model every now and again.
Fellow Reddit incel mcfill1 agrees:
Women have the opportunity to be disgusting slobs and still date up.
Alas, the incels complain, this option is simply not available to men. As Afroaway00 puts it,
all women are attractive to at least some men. they can be midgets, obese, extremely tall, doesn’t matter. only men can truly be unattractive.
ZyrrosLooks explains the supposed SCIENCE behind this supposed fact:
The most funny thing of all is that fat levels affect much more unforgivingly men than women.
A difference between 12 and 16% bodyfat in a woman makes almost no difference in attractiveness. On a man it can be the difference between chad and under average, night and day. Men are expected to have very lean faces, and thus have much much harsher requirements on being lean than women.
So even in the ONLY thing that women require to be attractive, men have it much harsher, its ridiculous.
Indeed, ijustwantsomefriendz adds, with a dollop of transphobia on top,
All a woman needs to be fuckable is have a vagina
(We’ve met ijustwantsomefriendz before; he’s the guy whose incel subreddit “flair” declares that “females deserve the rope.”)
But even the fattest women get endless affirmations from thirsty men, incels complain. Usingthistoshitpost informs his fellow incel Redditors that
I was on meetme last night and 9 out of 10 of the girls on there were obese, disgusting slobs. And here is the kicker, the majority of them have orbiters and men telling them they are THICK and beautiful.
While most incels agree with usingthistoshitpost that these fat women are “disgusting” — and one even says that he doesn’t “consider them humans” — incels are also furious that these “disgusting,” inhuman, sex-having women don’t want to have sex with them. A fellow called DeLaNoochie indignantly reports that he
Thought it would be a piece of cake landing a porker. Boy, was I wrong. It’s unbelievable how much power they have. Everyone hates on them but plenty of guys fuck them. Hypocritical bastards. And they make it tougher for guys because apparently they’re sought after. Wtf
Gosh, who could possibly have imagined that “porkers” wouldn’t want to have anything to do with guys who call them “porkers?”
Even setting aside the horrific misogyny for a second, you may have noticed that pretty much none of these incel beliefs about fat women, fat men and sex have any basis in reality whatsoever — with the exception of the thing about fat women not wanting to date them.
Yes, fat women have sex. Sometimes they even — quelle surprise! — have sex with the sort of conventionally “hot” guys that incels would denounce as “chads.” But guess what, incel dudes, fat guys have sex too, sometimes even with the conventionally hot women you dudes call “Stacies.” (Hell, fat, broke, middle-aged blogger dudes who rarely leave their apartments have sex.)
None of this should be a revelation to anyone. Just take a look at the couples you see walking together through the nearest park; I guarantee you’ll see more than a few fat guys holding hands with women of all shapes and sizes. Most Americans, regardless of gender, are classified as overweight or obese today; the overwhelming majority of them have had sex.
The widespread manosphere belief — seemingly shared by most incels — that 80% of women are having all the sex with only 20% of men, with the rest of the men living sad, celibate lives, has absolutely no basis in reality; I don’t think I’ve ever seen any manospherian even try to provide statistics to back it up. Because those statistics don’t exist.
Incels claim that fat or otherwise less than “perfect”-looking men are treated much more harshly than women; the rest of us know that’s ridiculous. Women are fat-shamed from girlhood to old age, often when they are as far from fat as I am far from skinny. (I only started to get shit about my weight after I started writing about misogynistic men.) Women and girls are three times more likely to develop anorexia than men and boys.
Again, none of this is news to anyone who lives outside of the reality-distortion field of the incel subculture. Incel ideology is a mixture of misogyny and self-hatred that’s as toxic to believers as it is offensive to everyone outside their not-so-charmed circle.
Some man-loving women prefer dudes with chiseled bodies; others — perhaps even most of them, according to one possibly less-than-completely scientific survey — prefer their men with a bit of pudge.
But very few women are into bitter incel assholes who hate themselves nearly as much as they hate women. Most incel dudes — at least going by the pictures they sometimes post — are fairly average looking. It’s not their looks that keep them celibate; it’s the poison that fills their brains.
Talking about my problems or about getting professional help in a setting like this feels like I’m trying to imply those problems are an adequate or understandable justification for being a part of a subreddit like r/incels and that’s not something I believe at all. We’re all dealing with shit in life and overall I’m extremely privileged. Plenty of people deal with much worse than I do and do so in a better and more constructive way. As hard as it might be to believe I genuinely don’t want to derail everything and make it all about myself, blabbering about my personal problems in an effort to gain some online sympathy points.
I was simply interested in talking about what might motivate some people to go to r/incels and what those people themselves might think they’re doing there. I obviously can’t speak for everyone there but I’d like to think I’ve got at least something to add on the topic.
@ afroaway
I’m curious about the roots of your misogyny.
One thing I’ve noticed with bigotry is that there’s usually a paradox. It’s people like yourself who feel inadequate or self loath identifying a scapegoat whom they secretly admire for some perceived trait. So they must then turn that trait into a negative.
So for example the thinking seems to go:
Jewish people are cleverer than me. Clever = devious.
Black people are physically superior to me. Physicality = brutishness
The incel thing seems to be:
Women are more socially adept and popular than me. Social skills + popularity = Chad chasing + vacuousness.
This seems especially demonstrated with the fact women are now demonstrating sexual agency and success in relationships on their own terms. Which incels seem to hate because of course it’s the one thing they’re particularly incapable of. Hence the attempts to revert to some golden age where women were prohibited from living their own lives and making their own choices.
I’d be interested in your take on this. Am I on the right track? Is the misogyny fundamentally rooted in envy?
Look at this fucking guy claiming not to hate women and yet trying to use a group of mostly women to throw himself a little pity party, regardless of how we might feel about that. Talking about how, sure, he’s actively making the world a little worse for women, but he’s doing it so that he can wallow in self hatred, so it’s somehow less misogynistic? Like using us as tools doesn’t show his complete lack of understanding that we are human beings? I’m going to go ahead and not bother reading another word this guy has to say.
I mean, the quote David posted above is pretty misogynistic. Only women find men truly ugly; men do no such thing to women? Pretty misogynistic right there.
Oh, r/ incels is now a private subreddit…
Seems like some people really don’t like the fact that bloggers like David are dragging their bile out for the world to see.
This troll’s a tool using others as tools for his selfish gain.
I agree. I think it’s an example of the type of misogynistic comments I make. It’s not something I believe is actually true but that feels true. It mostly represents my insecurities. I think the fact that men’s insecurities, at least as far as incels are concerned, are so strongly related to women goes back to male entitlement. Insecurities born from not having “something” that you think you should have, only in this case that something are actual breathing human beings.
@Alan: I think you’re quite right on that. I think the envy that produces the misogyny for us incels is an envy of not just sexual freedom but more importantly of desirability. You’ll find that a common refrain on r/incels is that women can’t be incel. Because there will always be someone who finds them attractive. Obviously this isn’t borne out by reality because plenty of women struggle with loneliness but it’s something that incels very strongly feel. I think the talk of reverting back to some golden age or the rather islamophobic call to all become muslim, as if all muslims think like that, is mostly meant as a way to shock.
I don’t say that to excuse any of it but because it runs counter to the way we incels talk about prostitution. Prostitution, just like some imagined past where everybody had arranged marriages, is also a situation where a women will sleep with you without enthusiastically consenting to it. A prostitute, just like a woman in a forced marriage, is there for another reason than sexual attraction. And that angers us. Most incels balk at any suggestion that we see a professional. Because she wouldn’t be attracted to us.
I can’t argue against this. I’ll try to keep things general and not about me because I legitimately don’t want this to be pity party. I enjoy talking about this topic and examining incel behaviour, including my own, in a detached manner. That’s still an incredibly egotistical reason to invade this place like I’m doing. I can’t blame you at all for ignoring what I have to say.
Here’s away’s comments on Reddit
Y’know, Afroaway, if you spent even a thousandth as much time calling out pro-rape and pro-murder comments as you do #NotAllIncels-ing, maybe you wouldn’t have to #NotAllIncels.
As it is, you’re just coming across like the Sean Spicer of Reddit.
Well, thanks PaganReader, you’ve doomed me into going down the rabbit hole. Because I’m bored and curious.
Mostly so far, I’m just seeing the same shit he’s saying here. Pretending that people are cherry picking the misogyny in incel and pretending like the misogyny that does exist is harmless venting and doesn’t have consequences for women.
I did find this little gem
Apparently the important part of female sexuality being repressed and male entitlement to our bodies, time and emotional labor is that it might make men insecure to be settled for. Hahahaha!
This dude really is one of those people who makes me think of that Margaret Atwood quote. “Men are afraid women are going to laugh at them. Women are afraid men are going to kill them.”
Shorter Afroaway: ME ME ME ME I’m only an incel in the sense that I post on /r/incels, but I’m going to refer to “us incels” and “we incels” a lot anyway ME ME ME ME
You’re not an incel so stop referring to yourself as one. You’re voluntarily celibate. Women don’t exist for you to use them, to beat yourself up or any other purpose. Your self-esteem problems are your problems, and your performance here is exploitative. You take a reasonable tone but your statements are not reasonable, not civil, and highly misogynist.
My biggest problem with the term incel is that it makes their lack of success in dating into something that happens at them. It feels very much to me like they’re trying to equate not being successful at getting laid to being r***d. It’s disgusting.
Yeah, I made it through 4 pages before I got too bored and had to give up and almost the whole time was spent doing the notallincels thing. I didn’t see a single post actually calling out any of the misogyny though.
I’d like to point out one other thing. He says he’s on there because he can make himself out to be a victim without any pushback, not because he hates women.
Here’s the thing. If you’re a victim because women aren’t dating and/or fucking you, this means the women are the victimizers. They are wronging you by not wanting you.
That there. That’s entitlement. Feeling sad because you’re lonely and horny. Acceptable and understandable. Feeling like a victim because of it. Whole other story.
There’s a few out there that don’t fully indulge in the nonsense and know there’s “more to the story” so to speak. This is one of those cases.
Not really, it’s a sign of wanting to know the reasons behind your actions and self-reflection. Call it whatever you want, but it’s the important ‘first step’ one takes towards recovery and just generally choosing to act in a much better way in order to improve your life. It ALL starts with the self, no other way around it.
I disagree with this. You wouldn’t say the same about abuse victims. They’re staying in the relationship due to the cycle of abuse. So there is more to the story than some default “they’re accepting it and giving it a silent pass, thus the abuser is taking their silence as assent.” Just not true. There is a difference between being a murderer and watching a murder happen and not doing anything about it. I’m going to assume right away someone might say something about it being a bad analogy, and that I still disagree with but won’t comment any further on that specifically before anyone makes that claim.
Point is, this isn’t meant to “justify” or “excuse” behavior, it’s meant to be an explanation behind the causes of why someone chooses to act a certain way. Yes, it’s a choice in the end. But the parameters to the situation vary from person to person. So for someone to say something like:
“I have plenty of experience with self loathing. Yet I somehow managed to not join a hate group.”
So everyone suddenly comes prepackaged with the same messages and programming and thus manage to not join a hate group? Please guys, stop that. As the stickied thread on the Blue Pill subreddit says: “But for some users on here it is getting to the point where they are becoming the same things that they claim to stand against. What is the difference between hating women and hating TRPs, MGTOW and Incels? “But… But… They started it!!!”…. doesn’t matter ‘who started it.’ Hate is hate.
Did you really just equate standing by silently while someone abuses women with being the actual victim of abuse?
@black-cat-inc
This is an extremely inappropriate and inaccurate comparison. Abuse victims are victims. This man is freely choosing to contribute and bolster misogyny, which hurts women, a group he is not a member of.
@ black cat Inc
Ooh I’m afraid I’m going to have to disagree with you there (doing quite a bit of that lately).
Hate is another thing that’s morally neutral. It’s what and why you hate that determines whether it’s a good thing or a bad thing.
To put it in trite terms, there’s a world of difference between “I hate Illinois Nazis” and “I hate women”.
There is a difference, yes, but both are illegal. You’re not innocent if you stand by and do nothing.
No I wouldn’t. Because being an abuse victim is not the same thing as joining a hate group.
You obviously have no idea how abusive relationships work. The abuser breaks down the self worth of the victim, isolates them from friends and family and starts the abuse slowly. Usually with controlling and intense behavior that can be sold as romantic and “he just loves me too much.” It’s not like abusers advertise in their OK Cupid profile that they are abusive and only those who consent to being victims of abuse need respond.
When it starts to get bad, abusers usually threaten not just the life of the victim but of their kids and their pets. It’s not necessarily simple to just walk away. Oh, and BTW, the most dangerous time for abuse victims is when they leave. That is when they are most likely to be murdered or severely injured.
Abusers may take their victim staying in the relationship as consent to the abuse. But that doesn’t mean it is.
You really need to get educated on this topic before you ever attempt to make an analogy like this again.
Still doesn’t work. If someone witnesses a murder, and for whatever reason doesn’t try to stop it, they still didn’t go out of their way to seek out a murder to watch. If you must make an analogy to murder, it would be more accurate to say it’s like going to a website where they know a murderer is going to be filming the act. I don’t know if that happens in real life, but it is the subject of many horror movies. Such as The Den or Megan is Missing.
Also,
A look at his comment history suggests he’s been “self aware” about his motives for being on r/incels for quite sometime and has no intention to actually go beyond this.
Seems like a comment of mine got removed. Or maybe I did something wrong when I tried to edit it.
Anyway, that comment-history doesn’t paint a completely accurate picture because you can’t see the comments I made on r/incels. That’s where you’ll find my worst comments.
I have to disagree with your reading of my comment weirwoodtreehugger. I explicitely stated that the issue of male insecurity was only tangentially related to the repression of female sexuality. Obviously, the repression of female sexuality is far worse for women. I was merely stating that parts of the repression of female sexuality can also inspire anxiety and insecurity in men. It’s related to the fear of getting settled for. Now, like I mentioned earlier, I believe that anxiety and insecurity goes back to male entitlement. But that, sadly, doesn’t mean it isn’t felt. And as an insecure man, there are occasions where I’d like to talk about those feelings and insecurities. That doesn’t mean I want to erase the far greater problems women face or am trying to one-up them. But I also don’t think I should be having that conversation in a place like this. It’s far more logical to discuss how the repression of female sexuality hurts women. After all, they are the primary victims.
I linked to a thread on Reddit in the now disappeared comment to illustrate my point but now I’m not sure if that’s allowed. But there is a thread on the FrontPage of r/purplepilldebate about women having relationships out of convenience. Now the person behind the thread is someone from the manosphere who quite obviously struggles with the same insecurities I do but there are a some comments in there by women about how they at times felt pressured to date men they didn’t feel attracted to. Pressured to give them a chance or to see if attraction would grow. I think it’s fair to say that goes back to the repression and control of female sexuality. The consequences of that are obviously worst for women. But there’s also some things for men like me to feel anxious and insecure about in those comments. That doesn’t compare to what those women must have felt themselves but that insecurity and anxiety is still there. The comment you quoted weirwoodtreehugger was simply discussing those kinds of anxieties and insecurities.
To be clear, I think very few people are incels. So few that the word doesn’t really justify existing. Most, if not all, of the people in r/incels are voluntarily celibate. I take incels to be more of a chosen identity, not a condition.
Yes, this is what the misogyny comes down to. In order to feel like a victim I have to make women in the victimizers. I actually touched on that in an earlier comment. That’s why I said it goes back to male entitlement. Also, I think victim might not be the right word. Because even when I’m on r/incels I feel like I deserve the terrible situation I imagine myself to be in. And I’m not the only one who feels that way. I think feeling powerless is more important than feeling like a victim.
Oh and I forgot to reply to the part that was actually addressed to me.
What makes you think I’m programmed or prepackaged not to be a bigot? It would be quite easy for me to one. I have many insecurities and would love to have an easy answer for why I have them. Conveniently, I’m constantly bombarded with messages that I should hate other women, I should hate people of color, I should hate Muslims. I should hate fat people. I should fear trans women. I should blame immigrants for my problems. Etc. Etc. I choose not to.
Don’t mistake that for boasting. Not being in a hate group is actually some pretty basic being a decent human being 101 stuff.
@ kupo
Just out of curiosity do you live in one of those states with a ‘good samaritan’ law?
I won’t derail this thread but at a more appropriate time I’d love to pick your brains on that if you’re amenable. Over here we don’t have what used to be called ‘misprision of felony’ anymore. With the exception of certain terrorism and child protection offences not only is it permissable to stand by and watch, you don’t even have to inform anyone even if you know a crime may be about to take place (in practical terms it crops up a bit with journalists).
Yap all you want, Afroway. Still doesn’t justify being in a hate group. I’m not buying that an incel group is the only possible place you can talk about your insecurities.
The more you try to justify it, the worse you look.
What the fuck is this even.
Just wanted to point out that I’m not the victim of abuse. I’m no victim at all. I appreciate where you’re coming from black-cat-inc but I think you’re being too forgiving. I’m basically deciding to handle what are all told pretty common problems in an unproductive and toxic manner. There really isn’t anything in my life or upbringing that would excuse my behaviour. I was raised well and did have access to the right programming.
What’s also important to realize is that self-awareness is not the first step to recovery. It’s no step at all. Self-awareness alone doesn’t keep you from harmful behaviour. If it isn’t followed by decisive action self-awareness is useless.