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.
@Brony
For sure, and that was a good article, thanks for the share.
The rest of this comment is not necessarily a response to you as such, just your comment is a jumping off point.
I’m an activist, my paid work has been largely in the gender pay gap, but also in domestic violence and workplace harassment. There’s barely a week goes by I don’t get “what about the men?”. Yes, it is often a derailing tactic and for a long time frustration with that had me retorting with quick witted responses to shut that sh#t down, but then I found I was excluding all space for conversation about men. There is a need for some space, not all of course, it’s about managing the difference between derailing to subtract from understanding the issue, and conversing to add to understanding the issue.
Online, perhaps that’s more difficult, you don’t know me and can’t see my engagement in the conversation as a whole, just a snapshot of thought which you’ve perceived to be about men. (Not you or me specifically, a generalisation here).
On this issue, about incels to be clear, not beauty standards, it makes no sense to not consider the motivations of this group, the values, beliefs, and where they originate, on the basis of “well, they’re men’s problems, men can solve them”.
Like anything I work in, sadly and frustratingly, the reality is men won’t solve them, for a number of reasons, but I think primarily because they don’t see the harm affecting them, but women. That’s a nonsense of course, patriarchy harms men too – incels harm men too. The harm is not as significant for men as for women though, so they’re “women’s problems” and I’m “not all men”, so it’s not men’s issue, not my issue. And so on and so forth (yes, I’m preaching to the choir) and ultimately they cop out. It’s like the number of neighbours who ignore the violence next door because it’s not my business.
We can get frustrated with that, that’s ok, and I do too, but the reality is it’ll be a long time to achieve change if feminists don’t talk about or do anything around men and their issues. And we do: toxic masculinity, dismantling gender roles, and yes even unachievable beauty standards and valuing people for their humanity, not the size of their thigh gap or their penis.
This conversation started because someone took issue with a perceived false equivalence being made between men and women’s beauty standards. I agree there’s no equivalence, but that doesn’t mean beauty standards for men, when it comes to incels, are irrelevant and any conversation should be shut down.
I’m now hearing the relevance of beauty standards, as perceived by incels is not a topic for a feminist forum. It’s derailing. It’s better on an open thread. I’m a meninist/ MRA for mentioning it. It’s a men’s problem, therefore men need to fix it.
Really?
There is a need in feminism for some space for men’s issues not simply as an appreciation of men’s problems, but rather as their issues affect women. It’s about managing the difference between derailing to subtract from understanding the issue, and conversing to add to understanding the issue. I appreciate many on the forums caution and understand the suspicion, but overdoing it to where no space is allowed is problematic too.
male beauty standards: try not to look like a gamer slob? is that what they are complaining about? take a shower and put on clean clothes every day or 2 days and don’t smell like mold/stale Doritos? What exactly are the standards they’re complaining about because I nowhere see pressure on men to look hot or super fit all the time, half the time, even a fraction of the time. Even male romantic leads in movies are not 8-10s most of the time, and they are often times considerably older than the female romantic leads. Even when the couple is clearly middle age and older, the male lead will sport gray hair while the female lead has her gray dyed out.
saw I Feel Pretty and really could not et what the Renee Bennett character was on about. She already looked “pretty”. Not gorgeous but i’d say slightly above average for her era and state, country. But the kicker was; the guy that became her bf looked “worse” than her and she was worried about him seeing the real her! OK maybe if he was an 8 I could perhaps see why she’d be worried, but the guy was below her in the looks totem. so even a movie like that, who’s final message is supposed to be “empowering” and about self acceptance and body positivity, is putting out this b.s. message that cishet women should worry about their looks even if their bfs are worse looking than they are. and these incels are crying about “impossible male standards”?!?! what impossible male standards? where?
men invading womens’ spaces. that’s the TERF vs Trans civil war debate. scanned a few blogs but haven’t researched sufficiently to form an opinion yet. but it’s an ongoing, for decades already, debate.
There’s no such thing as a looks totem. Nor is there a universal numerical scale of attractiveness – whether 0-10 or 1-100.
@idli
And I quite like the gamer slob look, and the not so subtle aroma of once fresh Doritos, so that doesn’t pass the muster 😉
We do give men a lot of free reign to be themselves, even celebrating them a la Dad bods.
________
Anyway, just thought I’d share something delightful I came across with regards women and what we do with involuntary celibacy – no murder sprees, we get PHDs and hairy legs! ?
https://mobile.twitter.com/caitlinmoran/status/989074194435584000
well he was below her in my totem.
Sigh, are “dad bods” considered hot? what about mom bods?
are incels a subset of mgtow or do they oppose mgtow on ideological grounds?
Finally got a chance to read David’s article, and (amongst the other D: stuff there), am seriously wondering about their urgent need to label everything with a -cel suffix. Wristcel, Aspergerscel, ethniccel, Christcel!?! What the heck ARE some of these things supposed to be here?
I mean, wristcel I can figure out what that’s supposed to mean for the so-called attractiveness stuff, and the Aspergers stuff for not being able to figure people out, but the rest of it? What do ethnicity and being Christian have to do with involuntary celibacy?
Or am I missing the obvious here somehow?
@idli
Apparently.
Definitely not.
From what I gather they each see each other as pathetic losers, but name one area of the manosphere who don’t feel that way about every other? Which only goes to show they’re right about something, at least.
Sigh :/
@idli sambar revolution
@idli sambar revolution
You are stereotyping incels as young, male, jobless, lazy, gamers with poor personal hygiene who still live with their parents.
I feel that the ideology they espouse is repulsive enough that there is no need to impute these characteristics to incels in order to try and make them sound even more repulsive.
I want to pick up on a point that’s coming through, and then I’ll go back to listening.
It’s really easy, I think, to conflate “incel” with “failson.” This is wrong on several levels; not least because “failson” is a problematic concept to begin with.
Sadly, it is common in our age to see young men with depression, video games addiction and no job. I’m not a sociologist, but as someone who’s struggled with some of those myself, I can see how those three factors reinforce one another and make it difficult to escape. This is a pathological thing and I feel it’s wrong to blame those young men for their own suffering. It’s especially wrong in cases where the young men has managed to find and hold down employment but it’s considered to be too low status for their parents’ liking.
However, regardless of how I feel about the social concept of the failson, it’s wrong to conflate them with incels. Many (possibly most) failsons are not incels; we know this because failsons are a large group and incels are a small group. Some failsons have progressive politics and many have romantic partners. On the opposite side of the fence, many incels are in employment, and therefore don’t fit the description of failsons.
There are men who wear week-old clothes and stink of mold and cheetos, and yet who manage to live according to feminist principles. (I’ve met some of them.) There are also people on incel forums who complain about the fact that they work an office job, have to shower every day, and still haven’t been given the hot obedient porn-star girlfriend that they deserve.
These are different groups. One deserves our sympathy, the other doesn’t. Let’s not conflate them; the world doesn’t need more collateral damage.
Christcell and ethniccell probably mean that they think they can’t get girlfriends because women are into Muslim “bad boys“. Would it surprise you to learn that they are also islamophobic? Probably not.
maybe by ethniccel they mean what this therapist is saying
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/minority-report/201804/the-incel-movement
” And for some, they’ve also have had the additional burden of being ostracized for their ethnic background.
Twenty-five-year-old Alek Minassian is of Armenian descent living in Toronto. Facebook claims he made posts associating himself with the “Incel Rebellion” before he rented a truck and used it to kill ten people in Toronto on Monday. He surrendered to authorities and faces 10 counts of murder and 13 counts of attempted murder.
Chris Harper-Mercer was biracial (his mom is African-American) and a self-professed Incel growing up in rural Oregon. In 2015, the 26-year-old shot and killed nine people at his community college before killing himself.
Elliot Rodger was half Taiwanese (mother is from Taiwan) and was referenced in Minassian’s FB post. The 22-year-old Rodger (son of the Hunger Games movie producer Peter Rodger) became notorious due to a YouTube video titled, “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution” where he outlined his intent to kill men and women due to his sexual frustration. He also wrote a 150 page manifesto linking himself to the Incel movement before he killed six people near UC Santa Barbara and then taking his own life.
And 25-year-old Marc Lepin, the killer in the 1989 École Polytechnique Massacre in Montreal was the child of an Algerian immigrant father. Lepin espoused anti-feminist rhetoric and physically separated men from women before killing fourteen women. He left a suicide note blaming feminists for ruining his life (This occurred before the term Incel was coined in 1993).
What I find intriguing and unifying is that in all four of these separate tragedies, the perpetrator was an ethnic minority living amidst a predominantly Caucasian majority culture. Ethnic minorities face immeasurable challenges in assimilating to a society other than their own and the sense of being a “perpetual foreigner” can pervade even the most assimilated individual when racist or invalidating comments are made.”
@sigh
Friend, this commentariat is not the feminist police. We don’t speak for all of “feminism” here. If you want to use your platform as an activist for a feminist space for men’s issues, that’s great.
But you’ve been here for what, one day? You’re not in a position to tell everyone else who’s been here what kinds of conversations are productive in this space, and what kinds of conversations are not.
Yah male femimists are free to solve them. And men in general.
Question: what men’s problems are caused by Stacy, or at least which problems are in her power to fix? Because let me tell you, the day that I can control men, (real control, not that weak “pussy strings” shit that sexists bleat on about), is the day that I accept a drop of responsibility for any of their problems.
Incels are like the guy who gets yelled at during work, so he comes home and smacks his wife because she’s late for dinner, or breathed funny, or made any small mistake, when he’s “feeling stressed”. When she is even less able to solve the problem than he is!
My guess:
Christcel: “I’m a devout Christian and feel insecure/marginalised/oppressed because modern mainstream culture treats that as somewhat antithetical to being cool and/or masculine.”
Ethniccel: “I’m ethnic minority in Western society and feel insecure because of racism that I’ve largely internalized and projected to the conventionally attractive white women I want to date.”
I’m not sure that was the right message to take away from Great Expectations.
Christcel: “I’m a devout Christian and feel insecure/marginalised/oppressed because modern mainstream culture treats that as somewhat antithetical to being cool and/or masculine.”
more like Christians are pissed they don’t control the cultural narrative in this country anymore and they have to share space now with other religions, and the non-religious.
Breaking News!
The Original Night Stalker, East Area Rapist, Golden State Killer of the past so many decades has finally been caught!
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/04/26/joseph-james-deangelo-golden-state-killer/553070002/
@Mooncustafer LOL!
@Sigh There is definitely a place for feminist discussion of what we can do to support men. But I don’t think it’s this forum by its very nature, and it is especially not this particular post. I can’t speak for anyone else, but at this moment in time I am struggling to feel sympathy for this guy, whatever his issues with his body image were. I don’t really care what issues he had. He just killed people because no women would have sex with him. This act was deliberately designed to intimidate women into allowing themselves to be raped (which is what it would be) and he is being cheered on by a bunch of people who think it will be easier for them to rape women in the wake of his actions. I think we are a bit beyond “feeling shit when I see a picture of Chris Hemsworth”.
And as I said before, we can only “support”. If we start taking decisions for men about what masculinity “should” look like, then that is sexism. I’m not suggesting we leave men to go to hell in a hand basket. I am saying they need their own agency, just as we do. I strongly feel it is completely inappropriate for women to sit around drawing conclusions about how men feel about projections of male body image. That’s like when men tell us “how women think”. When I say “men need to sort this out” I mean “men need to be allowed to come to their own conclusions”
I’d also add that women are continually being expected to empathise with men and make allowances for them – and are criticised for not doing it – when they are not expected to do the same for us.
While I’m sure that’s not what you meant, it came off that way.
That would be a very, very strange and contradictory intellectual position for a “Christian” to hold, seeing as the “cultural narrative” most strongly associated with Christianity in the Western world condemns any form of sex outside of marriage as being immoral, and incel ideology is entirely about sex outside of marriage.
(And of course, we know from the Epistles that the early Church strongly advocated for voluntary celibacy. But that is another debate entirely.)
Welp, whadayaknow? “Bonnie” slipped from his lips as he raped, killed, terrorized an entire state for almost 4 decades. Another manosphere type who doesn’t take rejection well?
Included in this video is the press conference with detectives sharing the breaking news and info.
“(And of course, we know from the Epistles that the early Church strongly advocated for voluntary celibacy. But that is another debate entirely.)”
Yeah I don’t get why these incels don’t become Buddhist monks or something. Even stoics. There’s nothing shameful about celibacy and traditional monkhood provided (and still does) a place for incels to embrace. alchemize and transmute their circumstances.
I guess really the reason this caught me on the raw is that I’m being asked to be a caretaker of men’s feelings on a post which is about a man running people over and killing them because he thought women should be caretakers of his feelings
Anyway. This all sounds like I’m trying to pile on/police you, and I’m not intending that. Sorry if it comes off that way – you’re entitled to your point of view and I hope you will keep posting. I just have a lot of feelings right now (and WWTH already used my best gif for that)
Haha I will shut up now
It seems like @idli sambar revolution just written what WWTH wrote but much more problematic and strange.
@DawnPuritySeeker
I’m not sure what this is referring to? I’m responding to others comments on what should and shouldn’t be discussed, on this thread.
I didn’t, don’t, and haven’t here. I want to understand and resolve women’s issues, to do that I need to understand men’s role, or in this case incels. I’m not sure how to be clearer than my last comment on that, the bits you didn’t copy and paste.
No, about four years.
Ok. I have to be an active commenter to have an opinion about aspects of the discussion I contributed to being misjudged and shut down. If that’s the way it is, ok.
And you are perfectly free to decide upon your own activism, that’s fine with me.
I’ve decided differently because they won’t, and we’ll continue to suffer. I’m not sure why that’s unreasonable or inappropriate.
I’m not sure if you mean responsibility as in blame, or responsibility as in figuring out what’s causing the problem and supporting solutions, the latter is what I was talking about. And you do the latter everyday, I’d suggest. Talk about men’s issues: toxic masculinity, gender roles, child raising, pay gap, male power, patriarchy, etc etc.
Damn straight! But there’s a vast difference between what I said and ‘women solving the problem’.
My question back to you is, do you think that man can be rehabilitated? Do you think society/men can be too, so he never gets to that place? And if so, what is your role in that? And women, and feminism?
To me, you, women and feminists can choose whatever role you have the energy/time/resources for. As for feminism, as you say, it has no police! (But it absolutely thinks about and activates for men’s issues, where they intersect with women’s). I’d never shame anyone for their choice, but I’d ask not to be shamed and shut down for mine.
Especially not on such a flawed premise as me ‘wanting to use my platform as an activist for a feminist space for men’s issues’, which cannot reasonably be concluded from any comment I’ve made on this thread, or any other.