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.
Yeah, it’s become a tradition for him now, @Ashara! Always the same dumb responses from the snarly MRA’s, but it still makes me laugh every time. And thanks, @Violet; you’d think I’d know that considering I follow him on Twitter, but I am not a clever pony.
He actually did some quite interesting 90s-style exploration of insecure stalky men. Incels, this is what I think of when I think of you (except I like Richard Herring)
Oh my gosh, Violent. I don’t know if I was ready to handle quite that much 90’s.
When modern dooders talk about waifus, though. That sketch is pretty much it ain’t it.
urgh, that Dankula thing
I’ve had the people I live with pissing in my ear about that one coz I don’t agree it’s an atrocity enough. Casting aside the content for a sec, the argument that ‘If they come for someone’s free speech and you condone it, when will they come for YOURS?’ – they HAVE been coming for my free speech, and others’, systemically and socially for my whole life. Yeah, some things have been technically illegal for most of that time but people sure-as-shit ain’t been getting justice based on that. My ‘meh, cry me a river’ attitude isn’t good enough but theirs about injustices I care about is just them being chill and ‘logically’ ‘unemotional’.
@*Sigh*
The shifting of the focus from the problems of a minority group by members of a majority group is definitely a pattern. I was able to pick up on it after I became more competent at helping out.
It doesn’t have to be an aggressive MRA, it’s very often a well intentioned person who doesn’t see the larger pattern where suddenly the original focus is abandoned.
For problems women and female people face common examples include:
*Shifting from female genital mutilation to circumcision.
*Shifting from rape to false accusations.
There’s a good example in a post at The Mary Sue in the form of a troll going by “Radical MGTOW”
https://www.themarysue.com/incel-misogyny-as-terrorism/
I was in a Quora thread recently with a man who wanted to understand how feminists could say they were for equality when they did nothing about men’s problems. I think I actually got him to some degree of comprehension; it helped a lot that he seemed confused rather than belligerent. It reminded me of me about thirty years ago, trying to understand how to justify affirmative action. A good friend managed to explain it so it made sense to me.
Back in the gay urban community of San Francisco in the late 1980s, there was a fashion of shaving one’s scrotum and buttocks. It was interesting to me how quickly some gay men normalized and internalized this; peer pressure is a hell of a drug. The bear movement started out, in part, as a reaction to strict body image standards that privileged slim and smooth over all other possible configurations.
They also don’t want their own spaces/days because they want to invade women’s spaces, days, movement. They want specifically to impose on women. I remember when an MRA recorded himself calling a domestic abuse hotline to say he and his son were in danger from his wife and he needed to stay in a shelter. The idea was to prove that the worker wouldn’t be help a man. Of course, the hotline worker was actually helpful and sympathetic. She told him that while the women’s shelter wouldn’t be able to take him, but that they would provide a voucher for a hotel room. He kept asking why he couldn’t just stay in the shelter instead of a hotel. IIRC, the hotline employee started to get weirded out and the MRA eventually hung up. Then he put the recording on his website as proof of great misandries in the evil, evil domestic violence feminazi industry. Never mind that the hotline wanted to do all they could to help. Never mind that a private hotel room is better than a bed in a crowded shelter. He was mad because his fictional male abuse victim couldn’t stay in a woman’s space.
It just says it all about misogynists. They’re like a small child who isn’t interested in a particular toy until his sister starts playing with it and then he throws a tantrum and demands mommy takes the toy away from sister and give it him. It’s not about helping men. It’s about rage that women don’t want to devote all of their time, energy and space to making men comfortable and happy.
I have a colleague who runs meetings for men in meatspace where they talk about male problems and stuff. I don’t know the details but I know he’s good friends with women running separatist women’s circles so it’s likely not some MRA bullshit.
Re: feminists doing stuff about issues men face. They kind of already have, and continue to do so.
e.g. The insults and harassment that do apply to men – a lot of it is attacks on their masculinity, presentation, or hetero and cisgender cred. Boys get bullied for being too femme etc., men get paid less if they’re openly queer in the workplace. Queer men get harassed for being attracted to men; trans men face horrible abuse for “not being real men”; straight cisgender men who are affectionate, caring, gentle, or less interested in sex than others, get their motives and validity questioned by other men. When men face harassment, it’s very often rooted in misogyny – hatred of women, and by extension anyone who looks, acts, or is seen as more like a “woman” than the masculine ideal.
Feminism is for women, but feminist work against toxic masculinity has helped more men than MRAs ever will.
@cyborgette
Yes indeed. The manosphere is not interested in actually helping men. Never has been. Where are their phone lines for male abuse victims? Their help for men who are suicidal? The lawyers putting in class action lawsuits? the funding for prostate cancer research? the groups, the fundraising? the advice and support for single dads? help for teenagers? Nowhere. Because they aren’t about supporting men; they’re about hassling women.
Women put all of those networks and legal rights in place for women. Over generations, because they were desperately needed, and all of them had to be fought for, a lot of them had to be funded out of our own pockets, and all of them continually face a torrent of disapproval, anger and threats of closure. And now the manosphere says: “Why haven’t we got the same stuff? It’s not fair! Take it away from them!”
It’s time for this again right:
@Starfury
That is so incredibly telling about the comfortable bubble they inhabit. This is the thing that gets their blood boiling; social and legal consequences of what is tantamount to genocide incitement. And these people have the gall to stand on the legacies of Mill or Paine to defend their bullshit.
This Jackass-reject is not Joseph Howe pleading for the right of a free press after being charged with libel by obviously corrupt politicians. He’s not William Lyon Mackenzie having his printing press smashed by Samuel Jarvis. He’s a shitty YouTube “comedian” getting in trouble for saying hateful shit. Pretending he’s anything else is an insult to those that actually put their lives on the line for free speech.
@Brony
I’ve mentioned my obnoxious co-worker around here before. In addition to working himself up over Dankula (of course), he also plays the “What about the menz?” gambit when it comes to the Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women Inquiry. Why? “Because more of the aboriginal homicide victims are men!”
Even granting that statistic (I haven’t seen it be confirmed), it’s the unique set of circumstances that aboriginal women have to face that set this Inquiry in motion. Domestic abusers tend to be men, and fleeing that abuse is what opens them to the risk of being kidnapped or killed. Furthermore, those that turn to sex work to survive are not only at an even greater risk from the Robert Picktons of the world, but the cops will ignore them full stop.
His response is naturally entirely utilitarian. “More dead men means dumb inquiry bad! Trudeau sucks!” I was just waiting for “When’s International Menz Day?” to follow (thankfully he didn’t.)
I don’t think my coworker is an MRA by any stretch, but he’s internalized too much of their nonsense for comfort.
@Brony
Radical MGTOWs posts were in moderation when I caught up on the thread a few minutes ago, so they might get yanked soon, just FYI.
Scildfreja Unnyðnes
I think that it sort of lines up – except that it’s far too specific/explicit – with more recent, more technical, research on differences between right v left wing, conservative v liberal attitudes. Most people say much the same things about ideas and images that arouse empathy or disgust in quite predictable ways. However, when their brains are imaged while people view disgust or empathy-arousing materials there are significant differences between the groups.
http://www.businessinsider.com/liberals-and-conservatives-process-disgust-and-empathy-differently-2018-1/?r=AU&IR=T
Right wingers/ conservatives are much more strongly driven by disgust, and they confine their empathy to much smaller circles or groups of people, than left wingers/ liberals do.
@Katamount
I remember reading that. It’s a very common pattern. For the well intentioned ones I tell them the appropriate thing to do is start that conversation elsewhere and get attention for it independently. I consider it theft of political effort and momentum.
@Kupo
I realized that after the fact. I may hunt for another example but it’s obvious in every comment section on this issue that I’ve seen so far. I’m currently reading about a museum for victims of lynching in America and the race based version is right there too.
@Cyborgette and @Scildfreja Unnyðnes
Thank you very much for your thoughtful replies. 🙂
Cyborgette I’m sorry to hear about your ex-friends. That sounds really awful to deal with.
It’s kind of nice to know that I’m not totally paranoid even though it’s a tough situation. I will certainly take all your advice to heart whenever I’m talking with him about these issues. Mostly I just don’t want to lose my little brother, to hate or anything else so that’s what I’ll stay focused on.
Ooh. Speaking of men wanting to impose on female spaces, it’s take your child to work day today. Formerly known as take your daughter work day. Until people started complaining about how it left boys out. Never mind that boys are already socialized to believe any career they want is open to them and they didn’t need to have careers modeled for them in the first place. We just wouldn’t want girls to get something boys don’t get. That would be awful!
RE: HRC. I can’t even put a number on the amount of times I’ve read trolls in comment sections refer to her as ‘grandma’. Examples: “Go home, grandma!”. Go check yourself into the old folks home, grandma!”. So, combining ageism with sexism.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but HRC isn’t an actual grandmother, is she? I don’t remember reading anything about Chelsea giving birth.
Now, turning to the Rotten Tangerine, who, sadly, is an actual grandfather…I don’t think I’ve ever heard any commenters anywhere refer to him as ‘grandpa’.
I’m plenty old enough to remember when HRC was First Lady. IMO, the beating she took from the media was beyond the pale. Does anyone here remember Hairband Gate? She was mocked for wearing a hairband! Does anyone really believe the media would have been half as tough on her, if she had “stayed at home and baked cookies”, in her own words?
@Mary Wollenstonecraft:
Hello. The book sounds much like an elaboration of the old Madonna-whore complex, as applied to fascism.
@Robert Walker-Smith:
That’s interesting, about ‘bears’ in the gay community. I’ve wondered about that subculture for some time, as an outsider looking in.
I think the incels focus so much on appearance for two reasons. First, young men are socialized to place a great deal of emphasis on the attractiveness of their partners. They think they must have “arm candy” to be respected by their peers. “Bangability” isn’t about women at all. It’s about peer review.
As a result of this focus on attractiveness, they think women are the same. The truth is that for many, and probably most women (once they are out of their teens and living in the real world, anyway) looks are a very secondary consideration. I know that it was always secondary for me, and my most recent crush was a man who was objectively ugly (I mean he looks a lot like the guy the alien Mikey was using as his human suit in the illegal immigration scene at the beginning of Men in Black). He was fairly short and a bit on the pudgy side. He was also, funny, fun, smart as hell, had an interesting intellectual view, and was able to interact with women as if they were people. I’d have slept with him in a second if he’d shown any interest, except he was happily married—to an absolutely gorgeous woman.
The other reason they spend so much time talking about how ugly they are, is that that is not something they can be expected to change. It is so much easier to hate women for the perception that women are as shallow as they are.
I agree with David that the ordinary unhappiness of young men is being bathed in a toxic sludge that is turning some of them into monsters. I fervently hope that most of them grow out of it. The trouble is that by wallowing in anti-women beliefs they are setting up a positive feedback situation. The more they dislike women and only want them for sex, the more easily this attitude becomes obvious to women, who reject them,
and so on.
Not a happy or healthy situation, but honestly, there has always been a fairly large population of men who didn’t really like the women in their lives. This just makes the situation more obvious and easier for women to recognize.
I wonder how this will all turn out?
@ Dormousing_it
Although Milo has referred to him as ‘Daddy.’ (Shudders.)
@Dormousing_it
HRC is a grandmother, Chelsea does have a child. She talked a fair bit about her experience as a grandmother in What Happened, although I don’t actually remember the assigned sex of the child.
Not that this makes that dismissal of her any less gross, because it doesn’t. I’m seriously in awe of her ability to keep going in spite of all the bullshit that’s been thrown at her over the past three or four decades.
CNN is reporting that Cosby has been found guilty on all three counts of sexual assault.
Breaking news – Bill Cosby has been found guilty on all counts.
@mcbender:
Thanks for the correction. I couldn’t be bothered to look it up. I believe my point still stands.
@Kevin:
Yeah, that’s unbelievably foul.
Been reading all these comments and all I can say is
?itemid=5688699
And offer hugs.
Dudes (and society in general) have mocked and bashed women and girls about their appearances, etc (“market value”) and have more sympathy, support and believe guys who have been rejected or have “hurt feelings” than women/girls who have been harassed, abused, raped and murdered 24/7 but when women and girls have their own spaces and talk about bodies, empowerment, etc. Cads be like “what about men?”
http://www.mysocalledperfectmarriage.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/shut_up_018-300×300-180×180.jpg
Yeah they can shut up and take all the seats forever.
Just like white people (and people in general) need to shut up when people speak about violence against non-white people. Whites are mostly doing the bashing, killing and getting away with it and when non-white people speak up about this; they be like “what about us?”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XmCT4-doLZk
I also like to add, it doesn’t matter if a woman is ugly, fat, non-virgin and/or over 30, etc. That doesn’t make her less of a human being. If someone is saying otherwise then tell them to shut up, they’re being heartless a-holes.
This all reminds me of a SRS post about a woman who told her story about some a-hole who said women in other countries have it worse so western females need to shut up and when she said she’s from a 3rd world country he completely shifted the conversation saying males in the western world have it harder. They’re not even trying to hide the fact they just want women/girls to shut up anymore.
I’m cautiously happy, but fear Cosby and his legal team are going to file appeals until they find a misogynistic judge who will turn over the verdict because some of his other victims testified.