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.
@Alan
A legal derail would be preferable to the public self-flagellation going on in here right now. I looked it up and my state has a good samaritan law around drug overdoses. http://apps.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=69.50.315
My understanding is of you’re witness to a crime and don’t report it, you’re implicated. Obviously you don’t need to put yourself in harm’s way, so you’re not required to stop the act. Now, my understanding could be incorrect, as I’m generally pretty ignorant of the law. We’re really only taught about the big stuff and the laws relevant to licenses we need to be tested for, so I know food safety laws and road laws and not much else. Oh and what they taught us in DARE, which was basically that drugs make you turn violent and are always illegal and morally wrong and here’s a teddy bear dressed like a cop.
Nope. I equated the fact that in both cases, there is more to the story. And in the case of someone standing by silently while people hate on women (not abuse women, mind you), there are REASONS behind it. And those reasons definitely contribute to why they choose to do so. Again, not an excuse, but rather an explanation. How else are we to know why serial killers do what they do? One of the reasons is lack of empathy. Okay… that doesn’t mean we’re excusing their actions, it just means we’re trying to understand it. Understanding is step 1 (and people vary in how long it takes for them to reach and STAY on that step).
So, my point is, trying to change without understanding is like trying to figure out what you want to do with your life without getting to know yourself.
Sure, they are victims the FIRST time -or- when they have very little other choice (no child chooses to be born in an abusive family, for example, and they are dependent on them for survival) -or- in extreme cases where making the choice to leave is worse in the short-run. Grown adults though tend to get in abusive relationships because they are repeating patterns they’ve developed due to their past. That’s *still* a choice. But it is a difficult one to make a different choice, for them to just up and leave, due to their levels of [insert numerous variables here].
THAT’S what I’m comparing, the definition of analogy is not that you have to compare both situations perfectly or that both are on the same level of extremity. It’s that, in some important aspects, they are similar. So a person who chooses to join a hate group is also doing so because of [insert numerous variables here] and it’s hard for them to change because of it. Simple, yes (“just stop doing it”). But hard (“It’s difficult for me to do this right away because i have to unlearn a bunch of crappy beliefs I have internalized”).
True. I’m making an exception here because this afro guy is not showing abysmal levels of asshole-ishness and in fact admits to a lot of wrongs he’s done. I find that’s the beauty of moral principles, they don’t always apply 100% to every case.
See my paragraphs above.
I know.
You are being quite hurtful with your comments because you don’t know what I know or don’t know about abusive relationships (or if I have witnessed some in my own home or not).
That aside, tons of people who join hate groups *also* have no self worth. How it broke down for them, I do not know. Is it self-inflicted to a degree? I’m quite sure, and in many cases it is mostly self-inflicted. But it’s not really for you to decide how easy or hard it should be on someone to change themselves.
The rest of your comment also focuses on the extreme forms of abusive relationships. There is a spectrum, do not forget. There is emotional abuse and verbal abuse as well, both of which I’ve been through and it still took me more than a decade to recognize and undo it. No, I didn’t join hate groups either, but I still understand why some extremely unhappy people do.
Which is why he’s one of the ‘better’ ones. It takes some people quite a while to shed the self-hatred.
We all are as no one is 100% good or 100% bad, people are ‘mostly good’ or ‘mostly bad’ depending on their actions, and some days that’s totally reversed. I’m saying that you cannot judge everyone’s actions because it’s just “not what you would do” since everyone is not born with your level of self-awareness, or your moral compass, or your [insert whatever else here].
> I’m saying that you cannot judge everyone’s actions because it’s just “not what you would do”
Wrong wording since you can definitely judge someone’s actions. I mean, you don’t need to be so harsh about where they stand on their level of self-development just because your journey looked different, unless they are truly and directly hurting others to a degree in which I do not see afro doing.
We all contribute to the ‘badness’ in the world to varying degrees. No one’s an island.
…and here comes the double down.
I’m not going to be nice to people who belong to groups that cheer the death of little girls and worship mass misogynists.
No one else here is likely to either.
It’s funny that you should talk about “choosing” to be in abusive relationships, because the kind of rhetoric you’re engaging in, this insistence that no matter how horrible men are to women, women should reach out and try to be understanding, is the exact sort of messaging that makes women think that they deserve to be abused or that if they just stick by their abuser, they can fix them. This kind of thinking is pervasive in our culture and it is misogynistic as hell.
Yeah, I value my safety more than I value the hurt feelings of men who join misogynistic groups. If you’re waiting for me to apologize for that, you’re going to be waiting a damn long time.
black-cat-inc
Jesus. What a lovely thing to say in general, as well as specifically to me, a survivor of partner abuse.
@ kupo
That was interesting cheers. Very different here. To give the law school example, if you see a blind child walking towards the edge of a cliff you don’t even have to shout a warning. Generally you are only liable for acts not failure to act.
I suppose it does tie in a bit with the discussion here about what makes you complicit. As mentioned, generally you’re under no obligation to report a crime or intervene either before during or after the fact. And there’s no obligation to cooperate with the police here.
We do have a thing called ‘joint enterprise’. It’s a controversial law though. So for example if I’m out with a gang of mates and I say ‘give me your wallet’ whilst my mates just stand with me, does that make them accessories?
This is getting sleevier by the second.
And you are free to do so. That doesn’t mean what I say makes no sense. But honestly, it’s not about being nice necessarily. It’s more about NOT being as aggressive as you would to someone who actually worships a mass misogynist. Slight but important difference.
It’s not about trying to be understanding as a way for you to show you care about them or sympathize (that’s your own interpretation). “Being understanding” is different from “understanding.” Knowing why someone is doing something is different from accepting their behavior.
So in other words:
– It’s great that you realize your wrongdoings, now try to put these realizations into action. It’s gonna be a long road.
is not:
– I totally understand, i’m sorry you had to go through that, please try to be better. I will help you so stick around. (BS that I’m not proposing.)
And going in the other end:
– you should be ashamed of yourself (he is, being an ‘incel’ has a lot to do with shame after all) and it’s fucked up that you are a part of this shit group (he knows and has admitted it)
It being a choice at the end of the day has nothing to do with ‘loveliness’. It is ugly no matter how you look at it.
I’m thinking IP check may be in order.
OMG who is black-cat-inc and why is this person so victim-blamey and so sympathetic to abusers?
@Viscaria
All the hugs. It’s absolutely not your choice to be on that situation and don’t let this asshole tell you otherwise. I’m done addressing them direcyly, it’s just too gross to blame DV victims for their abuse.
@Alan
If one person asks me to hand over my wallet alone it’s very much less threatening than one person asking me to hand over my wallet while their three friends stand there, so I would argue that they’re accessories.
Now, back to the murder thing, I don’t necessarily agree that someone who doesn’t report a murder is wrong for doing so. They may feel in danger, which would be completely understandable. But at the same time, if someone is able to do something about someone else being harmed, and no harm will come to them for doing something about it, I think they’re morally obligated to.
I don’t think people gravitating to abusive relationships because of repeating patterns that may go back to early childhood and other compounding issues like low self-worth, often caused by others and not themselves, are in any way similar to men like me deciding to post on r/incels. There might very well be men on r/incels suffering from serious traumas or who experienced the bullying a lot of us claim to have suffered but for most I’d say that it’s simply suffering from a narcissistic injury. It’s really a disservice to victims of abuse to compare incels to them. And it makes us look even worse by being compared to actual victims.
Very similar to the people claiming the left is “intolerant” for not engaging with avowed white-supremacists and right wing bigots. But the consequences of this line of thinking go much further back and run much deeper. I don’t think any of you should reach out or be understanding. I guess I’m trying to reach out and say “this is how this kind of mind works, if any of you are interested”. Saying it like that makes me realize how utterly self-absorbed that sounds. Expecting others to be interested in the workings of my mind.
@ black cat Inc
Have we met before with you using a different name? The reason I ask is that you’re quoting back something I argued with some ‘troll’ a while back. Not suggesting you’re trolling of course and it may be you came up with the concept independently. It’s hardly a novel idea after all.
For anyone with better search skills it was the thread where I argued “I understand most shark attacks occur in less than three feet of water” turned Jaws into a film about a cop forced to shoot his best friend.
ETA kinda ninja’d by peevee and POM
Nope! Men who are a danger to women don’t wear signs advertising this fact. They will deny they hate women. They will deny they are predators. But if you know to look for them, there are red flags. Such as engaging in apologia for rape or violently misogynistic rhetoric. Such as not respecting boundaries. Such as dehumanizing women and diminishing their pain. All behaviors that Afroway has displayed. Many of the men who display these red flags are not dangerous. But the men who are dangerous tend to show it in small and socially acceptable ways like this. I choose not to risk letting men like that into my life and I won’t be alone with them.
But the social programming that women get to prioritize being polite and nice over looking out for our own safety is strong. I resist it more easily than some because I just happen to be kind of ornery. I choose to aggressively push back against the misogynistic red flag bearers in the hopes that it will help empower other women to not die from politeness. I do it because I want to do my part to create a culture in which misogyny is not acceptable, excusing misogyny is not acceptable and women are not expected to overlook danger signs for fear of not being perceived as nice.
That is why telling me to not be aggressive is not going to go over so well.
Why is it my job to say this?
You may tell this to manospherians if you wish. Don’t expect the rest of us to do so. This is not a free therapy of insecure men site. This is a site that chronicles and mocks internet misogyny and the alt right.
I’m new, I promise. Lurked around all day yesterday, very interesting content, full of knowledge. Also a woman.
Hmm? I never blamed a victim. Also, EJ on the last page said he sympathized with afro…. afro is not an abuser either. Why are you putting words in my mouth and twisting the situation?
Honestly, they are totally different situations, but the underlying theme (which is what I’ve been emphasizing) is that they”gravitate” towards what they believe to be normal. how anyone can deny that or say is victim blaming is beyond me.
Abusers disgust me, I grew up with a a full blown narcissistic parent. But I’m past the hate. I just stay away now and know how to tell when someone is a narc.
You make an interesting point though about it being narcissistic injury. Hmm…. I tend to think that because men have been lied to for so long about how they should be (like all these dangerous masculine traits that are promoted which are more harmful to the world than the traits associated with femininity, unfortunately… resulting in violence, unhealthy competition, dominance over women, etc.) they’ve internalized those beliefs so strongly that when the outside world begins to change via feminism, they really do not know what to do with themselves and turn into a hate machines. it’s sick. But I still “get it.”
Hugs gratefully accepted, kupo! It was some years ago now and I have mostly put it behind me, so I wasn’t hit too hard by what b-c-i said. More just taken aback.
To anyone else reading this who has been in an abusive relationship or is in one now, please know that we support you and we know that it is not your fault.
@ kupo
Same here; but of course it’s the whole dichotomy between morality and law.
The joint enterprise thing is controversial here because it’s often used to criminalise people for being ‘black and scary’. If you and I were out for a stroll and I unexpectedly decided to mug someone you may well just stand there in shock and surprise, but you’re unlikely to be prosecuted. Some people obviously don’t get the same benefit. No easy answers I guess.
I don’t know that they’re the same person but Blackcatinc does remind me of That_Susan. The concern troll who wandered over from Judgybitch to scold us for being mean.
https://www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/2016/10/24/red-pill-director-cassie-jaye-hits-a-new-low-with-her-appearance-on-a-white-supremacist-podcast/comment-page-6/#comment-1016453
It’s not. Last thing I want to do is tell people what to do. Which sounds ironic because I think the way I’ve typed things definitely comes off that way. However, I think that my approach is more effective, and so I’m making the argument that “it’s better if we say it this way” which is really along the same lines of saying that language is important and how we approach situations is also important.
As an anecdotal example, I have a cousin who can be an asshole sometimes. His own girlfriend has trouble with his assholishness and when she responds emotionally to his hurtful words (I’ve witnessed), it rarely ends well. One time he made a pretty douche-y comment about a kid to the kid’s face, I went up to my cousin and told him “that kid has been bullied in school, it’s really not right of you to say things like that to anyone, let alone someone who’s even more likely to be hurt by it”…. my cousin later apologized to the kid. See what I mean?
Now I know that wasn’t my job and that he should know better PERIOD! But I’m saying that it works. And that, at the time he made that comment, he obviously “didn’t know better.”
Hmm… yeah, I see your point. But like you said, I just don’t think all incels are dangerous. One can make horrendous comments against humanity and still not be a danger. It’s the intention behind those comments that matters, and it’s usually the intention that’s harder to read.
I understand. Although admittedly I personally do not find it very empowering to push back. It’s more empowering to tell others that they have the power to change themselves and their actions. My power doesn’t come from fighting, it comes from letting people choose for themselves after I have given them the information they might have been missing, NOT the sympathy.
This definitely made me laugh though, because you’re right, it’s not free therapy. And my “understanding” ways have gotten me in trouble before. Even so, I do not agree with the approach. I think being “too” anything is not good. Too understanding or too aggressive, either method lumps all people and cases together, like they’re a ‘monolith’ much like men and women are separated by gender norms. It doesn’t sit right with me for those reasons.
Uh huh.
http://media.tumblr.com/7d07a0ed5e34ae1ba2580d3057e7e52f/tumblr_inline_mhkcjceIfs1raj8mk.gif
Do you assume that people here haven’t tried your approach before? You said you were new here. I’ve been here for a few years and have also read through a lot of the archives. Giving the manospherians the benefit of the doubt that they may be decent people has never proved to be anything but a waste of time and energy and an exercise in futility. Once someone is far gone enough to regularly visit and comment on manosphere sites and then come here to troll, they are not reachable by us. They can only help themselves. Often times the sob stories they tell are suspect. They just use them to manipulate. You might be able to get a family member to apologize for something, you may even get them to actually learn and change but you’re not going to help a manosphere troll see the error of his ways. Although I should point out that apologizing doesn’t mean much unless the person was sincere in their apology, understands why what they did was wrong and most importantly they change their behavior and don’t reoffend.
Afroway apologized to us for making the thread all about him. He said he would stop posting. Well, he came back and continued to talk about himself. So the apologies meant fuckall.
That’s the point. Go read Shrodinger’s rapist https://kateharding.net/2009/10/08/guest-blogger-starling-schrodinger%E2%80%99s-rapist-or-a-guy%E2%80%99s-guide-to-approaching-strange-women-without-being-maced/
I can’t know which men who display the red flags will do violence to me or other women. The ones with the intent to that won’t say so directly. So I will treat any man who displays red flags as a threat. This doesn’t just have to apply to gendered violence. Any member of a marginalized group should be able to view any member of a privileged group the same way without being scolded for it.
Anyone else want to take this? I am all out of spoons for the day and can’t deal with this shit.
@Alan
I agree. What’s morally right shouldn’t necessarily be enforced by law, and I can see how that law would be abused.
WWTH: Susan with a mix of mrex disingenuity mixed in. Not to mention the timing of Afroaway and black-cat’s appearances at virtually the same time.
Yes, I’m suspicious, and I think an IP check is necessary.