By David Futrelle
I‘ve got a piece up on the Elle website about Toronto van attack suspect Alek Minassian and the dangers of future “incel” terrorism.
Here’s a snippet from it:
[T]he incel subculture … takes the bitterness and sadness we sometimes feel when faced with sexual and romantic frustrations and turns this misery into a mode of being. …
Incels hate women, yes, but they hate themselves nearly as much, and the incel subculture not only encourages both kinds of hatred, but it teaches them that there is no way out. This is what makes the incel subculture so poisonous to everyone it touches. It has transformed young men dealing with depression — or simply the ordinary unhappiness of life — into a veritable underground army of angry, bitter misogynists who feel they have nothing to live for and have no hope of improving their lives in what they see as our “gynocentric” society.
If these young men aren’t stopped, there will be more horrors like what we saw this week in Toronto, if not worse. In the forums on incel hangout Incels.me, some are already hailing Minassian as a hero, and looking forward to the next wave of incel terror attacks.
You can find the piece here.
@WWTH
Oh good, thanks for the clarification. Have a red panda blep!
I have found a tactic that works againt the irrational appeal to mental illness, but it does require the ability to become familiar with diagnostic criteria for mental illnesses, which are themselves sets of normal human behaviours that are felt as problems to the people that meet the criteria and/or (and this is the tricky one for various reasons) the people around them.
Demand:
1) The specific diagnostic criteria for the mental illness they claim to see.
2) A sample of communication or other behavior that they believe matches the diagnostic criteria.
3) The logical connections between one and two.
I’ve yet to find anyone able to do this, but the justifications for why they can’t or won’t, or other responses are data for more argument strategies.
@Valentin,
Thanks, it was a long time ago and I have gotten stronger.
Just to add,
For a long time I felt like I was losing it, that there was something wrong with me. Because even though I got criticised by men I did not turn around and take it out on women. And you know what, I lost a lot of guy friends (good riddance) because of this. See misogynists don’t like it when women refuse to hate on other women. As soon I hear a man say awful shit about a woman’s appearance I tell him to “shut the hell up, she’s beautiful”
Misogynistic men want us to join in on the trashing, they want us to hate each other and dissect each other because it benefits them. If you don’t then they feel threatened. As soon as I realised this I decided to be more outspoken in my support of women. In the end I ended up making friends with men who actually like women and see women as equals and would never expect me to hate other women.
I am glad you aren’t going anywhere, WWTH.
Kupo, I love red pandas. Soooooooooooo cute!
Let’s go back to why we talk about that.
* David allude in his article to one of the source for incels, who is self-image problems
* Alan say that while true, it can too easily be misinterpreted and maybe should be silenced
* Itsabeast say it’s too important a topic to be silenced
* WWTH say that it should, because women have it way worse. (I simplify, go read his or her post for details)
* I disagree on the ground that it’s actually strong enough to cause trouble to everyone, not just on women.
At that point, I don’t see the link with feminism 101. I mean, seriously, even if they killed themselves instead of commiting terrorist attack, would that be any better ? In which twisted way feminism 101 is refusing to see that something is causing troubles on men because it also cause troubles on women ?
There’s also the problem that teaching boys (and girl) to like their body isn’t exclusive with stopping teaching boys that aggression is the only solution. Even if we suppose “it’s first an issue of male entitlement” to be true, it don’t mean we should ignore everything but male entitlement, doubly so when some of the other component of the mix are well known to be horribly toxic to everyone.
Hi all, first post here. I’ve been lurking for a while but kind of felt I should say something re Eveloria’s story.
@Eveloria: obviously I can’t say one way or another, but this reminds me of stuff I saw with two ex friends (a married couple) who got into MRA stuff and then alt-right Fascism. It started with rhetoric about “manipulative” women years back; then anti-Clinton stuff, and “skepticism” towards feminism and the need for a women’s rights movement. Then one of them watched The Red Pill “just to be open minded”, and they both glommed onto it heavily.
They have a forum, and other people there were pretty tolerant of this stuff at first. I wasn’t; I was reading Hannah Arendt at the time and was very scared by the propaganda tactics I was seeing from the right. By the time most other folks caught on and realized something was Seriously Not Okay, they were openly defending Milo Y and Kyle Chapman and suchlike.
These are people who I once deeply respected – they got me out of a bad situation one time, they literally let me crash in their hotel room so I’d be safe. Now I’m an out trans woman, they’re Fascists, and we’re not on talking terms (to put it mildly). And all of us used to be pretty mainstream liberals, before things in the US exploded.
Liberal to Fascist took about six months for both of them.
So yeah, this can happen to people you love and respect. They don’t need to start off as bad people, only to have that small seed of hate and a supportive environment for it, and no defenses against letting it grow. It’s how “good Germans” became Nazis and all that.
I really wish I had a decent idea what to do. Maybe introducing your brother to some of the less academic feminist writers might be good? (I got lucky reading Laurie Penny’s “Unspeakable Things” after college, and suspect it’s a good introductory book for people raised to be men.) But, like, if he is on the road to male supremacist ideology, then be warned that the radicalization can happen pretty fast.
Best of luck 🙁 And sorry everyone else if this is tired/splainy/way off base.
Actually I take that back (not really since they didn’t do 1, 2, & 3), one person made a vauge reference to borderline personality disorder once, but they failed to do more than reference a condition with a lot of bias as “crazy women” despite the fact that men and women can meet the criteria equally.
ohlmann,
WWTH didn’t try to silence you – what you did is derail, little bit ironic because that is silencing. this is a issue of women’s safety because of angry, entitled men. and these men blame their behaviour on that they are “ugly” and beauty standards for men. but this is not true. because women have much more harshly beauty standards and they don’t kill or hurt or wish to kill and hurt.
second, when women tell you about what beauty standards for them are like – I think it is important to listen.
Yay for red pandas! Besides cats, those are probably my faves.
Speaking of double standards, anyone notice the way the allegations against Ronny Jackson are being covered. There’s a whole lot of “these are serious allegations, he’s a respected doctor and military man, this could ruin his life” etc. Hillary Clinton and her emails did not get such kind coverage, did they?
Anyway, on the men ruthlessly dissecting women’s appearance thing, I’ve definitely seen it too. My senior year of college I lived in a house with 7 men and 2 other women. So I was around guys a lot. Guys who I had a purely platonic relationship with so we weren’t all that guarded around each other. There were several times I heard the guys picking apart women’s appearance. One time, they were sitting on the porch and critiquing the women who walked by. One of them was a freshman who was the youngest in a set of three sisters who attended the (very small) school. These sisters were well known around campus for being considered very hot. They were all skinny, blonde, upper middle class, pretty. The epitome of attractive in a midwest college filled with suburban middle and upper middle class young people. My friends, who were in my opinion pretty average looking guys, were criticizing her for having weird shaped thighs. I personally did not see anything weird looking about her thighs. But apparently, despite having all the qualities of conventional attractiveness, she was a 2/10 would not bang. These same guys spent a lot of time on the popular early 2000’s site Hot or Not where they would do similar picking apart of perfectly attractive young women. I’ve discussed men’s attractiveness with other women before and everything, but never in that examine men in microscopic detail seeking out any negative thing we can find kind of way. Never. And despite the rep gay men have of being shallow, no gay man I’ve ever been friends with has talked about men that way either.
Now I’m wondering why exactly I was friends with these guys. Oh, youth.
@WWTH
You just reminded me of the site ratemyprofessors.com where you can, for some inexplicable reason, include a score for “hotness.” Only ever saw young, conventionally attractive women critiqued on their hotness on that site. Men and “invisible” women never had any scores. ?
Okay, no one is saying that body image issues in men don’t matter and shouldn’t be discussed. But body image issues are not only not unique to young men, they are worse for women. So why do men choose to deal with their insecurities by indulging in violent misogyny? Because of male entitlement. It’s not that incel’s insecurities aren’t real. I’m sure they are. But so what? I had body image issues to the extent that I had an eating disorder for years. I no longer starve or purge, but having gained weight the past few years, I can hardly even look at myself in the mirror now. I’m worried that if I do gain more weight, I’ll relapse because I’m not sure I could take it. Yet, at no point have I ever cheered on murderers. At no point have I wanted to murder attractive men. Or murder women I think are more attractive than me. Or throw acid on men. Or rape men. All of that is abhorrent to me. As it would be to other women I’ve known with similar issues to me. Why is that? Because men are socialized to view women as objects to be earned. Not as people with agency. Lots of good men overcome that socialization. Most don’t. Most to some extent view women as things put on the planet to fulfill them. Incels, PUAs, religious fundies, etc. all take it to the extreme. That’s the issue.
@Ohlmann
If it helps wait for an open thread, or ask in a thread that has become inactive. That’s what I did when I wanted to vent about some things that were politically problematic, but were problems in the same category as those incels complain of (I often wish I could just shut my sex drive off). It is what it is when it comes to politics.
Someone were smart enough to ask you – as an expert on these dolts – to write about them for an international magazine?
Excellent!
Good piece, too.
David got a shout-out on Talking Points Memo today:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/alek-minassian-elliot-rodger-legacy-incel-comunity
@ ohlmann
Sorry, I thought my use of ‘false equivalence’ would have made it clear I don’t think there’s any truth in that assertion; but to clear up any confusion perhaps I may be permitted to expand on that.
1. There’s no pressure on incels from society as a whole. It’s entirely of their own manufacture for that silly ‘race to the bottom’ game they play.
2. It’s all stupid shit anyway, about factors that no-one will even notice let alone give a toss about. One word: ‘wristcel’.
3. It’s completely irrelevant in any event, because it’s a post facto excuse, not a reason. Women avoid incels because they radiate their toxicity like a misogynistic Three Mile Island. The “It’s because of my eyelids” crap is just cover.
I don’t deny that for the most part women get more scrutiny of their appearance. All I am trying to say is that there is enough pressure on men that there are some men (I am willing to bet way more than the subset of self-described incels) who feel self loathing about their bodies–and that Alan’s “correction” of David’s piece was unnecessary.
@Itsabeast
Nah, it was completely necessary and your grasping at straws to defend incels as just victims of society is not welcomed. These people want me dead (I would say “or enslaved” but I’m definitely < HB8 ). It's insulting that you come in here and say, "yeah, but male beauty standards."
That should be “politically problematic and“, instead of but above.
I just read again Alan’s comment. he never says it is a correction – so why you put it in quotes like that? what Alan put is his comment, his opinion. what is wrong with that?
and he said he likes it, that David’s article is great and what he said is nit picking. which, I think, means quite small things that are not so giant issue.
edit – kupo said it best!
Is that — is that Alek Minassian as Pantokrator? Why?
@kit kat
Welcome back, Ashara Payne! I guess the blockquote mammoth was hungry for your posts 😀
Hi all, long time reader and thanks David for a great article.
I hate to see forums start eating themselves over what seems to me to be a few simple miscommunications.
David is clearly not making an equivalence between beauty standards for men and women, he is saying that specifically in those forums themselves there is such an intense focus on nitpicking appearance flaws to the point of self loathing and hatred. He is making what I think is a very poignant point that one can focus on the externally directed hatred (at Stacies and Chads) but miss probably what is very telling: the hatred directed by themselves to themselves and each other.
And this is important, I think it is what gets young men in the door “why can’t I get a girlfriend, what’s wrong with me?” Men do tend to measure attractiveness in terms of physicality, so it stands to reason the focus in that forum would be on physical flaws.
Once they’re in the door “what’s wrong with me?” is confirmed enthusiastically by their peers and becomes “I’m not attractive to them (normies), it’s not my fault though, it’s theirs” then to “and they must pay”.
Frankly, from what I see, the established members of incel forums are too far gone, we need to reach the young men before they get there. Yes, we need to challenge male entitlement to women’s bodies, amongst other things, but we absolutely must teach them physicality isn’t the only measure of worth.
That is not #whataboutthemenery, it isn’t a zero sum game. It’s important for men, it’s important for women. How it manifests in outcomes either way is desperately tragic.
Sigh :/
Misery loves company?
I may not have grown up expected to meet women’s beauty standards, but I can tell you now they’re far and away above men’s. Even the fussy metrosexual style barely rates, and it’s voluntary.