By David Futrelle
Check out my piece at the Globe and Mail today about shutting incel forums the hell down. Here’s a snippet:
[I]f appeals to shared humanity are out, is there anything else we can do? We may not be able to win back those who have plunged too deeply into the incel rabbit hole, but we can take steps to limit their ability to recruit new members. Incels aren’t born; they’re made. Sure, most new incel recruits start out embittered and lonely. But they are radicalized by their incel peers on a relatively small number of message boards devoted to the incel ideology.
So we should take a page from the anti-fascist activists who’ve done so much to kick back against the so-called “alt-right” over the last year – not only by confronting the fascists in the streets but also working diligently behind the scenes to take away their platforms online.
You can find the piece here.
🙁
Bullying did only one beneficial thing for me. It probably caused me to read a lot more than I otherwise might have. Where I was, in elementary and middle school, they forced everyone outdoors for recess. Then went back inside themselves. There was almost no supervision, and if you hung around the one or two adults who remained outdoors so that nobody would dare attack you (but if an adult didn’t see it it was “your word against theirs”, so you were fair game if you went very far from an adult) you’d a) get bored and b) likely get lectured about how you should be out playing and getting exercise or something.
Add in that they forced people outdoors even in 20-below weather, which even with a decent winter coat gets pretty miserable pretty fast especially if you aren’t exerting yourself, and it didn’t take me long to figure out a way to sneak back inside unobserved, where there was a) heat and b) no bullies.
I ended up spending a lot of time in various school libraries, as they were the least boring room to spend 20 minutes unsupervised in…and also sometimes getting into trouble for this, even though I was quiet and out of everyone’s hair that way, because it was “against the” (stupid-ass!) “rules”.
I also ended up reading stuff that was probably intended for girls. If it sounded interesting I read it. Maybe this helped me empathize more with people who aren’t male … and maybe instead of requiring everyone to spend 20 minutes in bitter cold being beat up and having snow ground into their faces it would have been more “character-building” or (insert currently fashionable excuse conservative types use for justifying the suffering of others here) or whatever had they required everyone to read at least some books with viewpoint characters (and authors!) of a different sex …
I missed yet another troll, but this time I was busy watching Avengers: Infinity War, rather than my usual being asleep in a different time zone, so I’m less put out.
I did want to say that, although this commentariat are regularly spectacular individually and collectively, I want to honour WWTH and Scildfreja (I would fully name you both if I were confident of doing so accurately, but I’ve had some wine) because they both regularly rock.
As far as Infinity War goes, if you’re a fan of the franchise, it will be rewarding. If you’re dipping your toe in the water (eg you liked Black Panther, but haven’t seen any of the rest), world of no. This is a film for the fans, in the right way. No time is spent catching people up.
But be warned, this is not a feel good film. They know the fan capital they have (hence no exposition), but they are fully prepared to spend it. I’ll say no more.
No, no “but”s, we won’t accept any excuses this time!
Except that one. 🙂
@cyborgette
I in turn am very sorry to hear THAT. I wish you a pile of loving kitties and a big hug from the person of your choice.
Aging Chad went fast from
“Unrestrained peer policing teaches you character and respect for community standards”
to
“I’m done with this dogpiling echo chamber environment, you just lost me to the dark side”
Hey – he got his unrestrained peer policing.
Didn’t like it, maybe he’ll think before saying stupid things in future.
Back to that Robin Hanson guy, holy crap.
https://twitter.com/NerbieDansers/status/990330997395861504?s=19
Gentle rape.
He said gentle rape.
Gentle rape.
http://31.media.tumblr.com/eefa07229dbe5867f1678a1938361387/tumblr_nr0s1pS38L1rtta3uo1_500.gif
“I didn’t mean unrestrained peer policing of me, you – you women!”
Authoritarian bullshit from people on the right, one expects – that’s what the right is all about, after all. It will always (unrealistically I know, but it will) disappoint me when I see it from people who claim to be/see themselves as being on the left, though, because I can’t help feeling they (well, we, ’cause I should include myself there) ought to know better. How can you (for example) grasp the fact of oppression on class lines, and in many cases (not enough, obviously) grasp it on race lines, and yet be blind to oppression on sex/gender lines? (Or vice versa, come to that – we’ve discussed e.g. class and race bias in some instances of feminism, of course).
Yeah, a lot of blokes seem to default unquestioningly to an authoritarian model. I see it soooo much and so often in environmental/ecological threads about population levels and growth rates – so many people, and overwhelmingly men, who have an ill-concealed hard-on for coercive measures to force those stupid women to stop having all those (brown … ???) babies; blokes who go quiet or just ignore it when somebody points out that it’s well-established that the best, most real-world effective way of reducing population growth rates is to improve women’s access to education, to reproductive healthcare, and to economic stability. Can’t go making life better for womenz! Can’t go recognising their rights and agency and supporting their access to choices! Got to make ’em do what more powerful (white) men know best that they should do, that’s what! I swear, some of these people – consciously or not – are so strongly drawn to the idea of controlling women that they cling to an “acceptable” arena in which to advocate for this and can’t get their heads round the fact that it would be more effective to enable women, for women to have more socio-economic clout and the medical toolkit to make their own reproductive decisions.
Ugh, sorry for the OT ramble. It’s morning here but I’m seriously sleep-deprived for a while now (stresssssssss……… tooooo muchhhhh stresswsssldfohgsss).
(On a totally unrelated but happier note, though, I’m so proud of Spawn#1! She is getting so good at being independent and doing all this adulting – so much adulting – in ways that are totally different from me and that I would never have even thought of but which are looking right for her. So proud! 🙂 )
Biggest buzz you can ever get, isn’t it. 😀
Oh hey, I went out to comedy and y’all vanquished the troll without me. What a shame; having read his stuff I can think of a few things I’d have wanted to say to him.
Back to Hanson, then:
Let’s do the checklist of ways in which just this one sentence fragment is wrong:
A) Rape as a discussion point – “Let’s take this traumatic thing that’s happened to you and take control of the conversation, generalising it out to some other point I wanted to discuss.” This is deeply insensitive and can, to put it mildly, fuck off.
B) Domain blindness – “Most men would not mind this thing that rarely happens to men.” A better scholar would ask about women’s attitude towards it, as would a decent fucking human being.
C) Naturalistic fallacy – “currently, most men have mindset A, so mindset A must be morally right.” This ignores the possibility that most men might currently be wrong.
D) Oppression Olympics – “It is better to have unpleasant thing A happen to you than entirely different unpleasant thing B.” This obscures the fact that they are both bad but very different.
E) False dichotomy – “It’s a choice between thing A or entirely different thing B.” This misses the fact that it’s not actually a choice: you can have both, or neither.
F) Argumentam Ex Recta – “I can speak on behalf of most men despite having carried out no survey of their attitudes in this matter.” Maybe most men would rather be cuckolded; he can’t know because he hasn’t done the research.
G) Generalising from the self – “I think having another man sleep with my wife is wrong, therefore it must be universally seen as bad.” Lots of men get on very well with their wife’s boyfriends, especially if she has consistent taste in men. Some men even get off on it.
H) Bait and switch argument – “Most men would not mind being raped, so now let’s discuss male-on-female rape.” This avoids both having to discuss male-on-male rape, and having to argue about whether most men would mind being a rapist. It’s dishonest, whether intentionally or not.
Have I missed any?
If I heard this coming from an undergraduate, I would be disappointed in them. In fact I have often heard it from undergraduates, normally the shitty entitled ones who think of themselves as Rational and aren’t prepared to do any real work. Hanson is a legit researcher who’s worked in AI as well as economics, he should know better.
A man-person who is very dear to me has had both of those things happen to him. He’s been pretty clear about this: the rapes were much much worse. Take that anecdata, Mr Stupid-how-dare-you-be-an-academic-oh-my-god-Hanson.
@opposablethumbs, hooray for the kid-person, and props to you for obv doing the parenting thing right ???
@Mr David Futrelle, it’s fab to see so many “check out my piece in…” type titles in the sidebar. As others have said, the reason for it sucks, but it’s great that your knowledge and insight is getting out there where it belongs ?
If my wrists were any thicker, the mass impact from facepalming would cause me concussion.
@Shadowplay yup, and thank you Mish! <3 (I have to say, though, I think she deserves more credit for surviving this household than I or her other parent deserve for maybe not completely messing up :-s )
I've been seeing quite a few articles in the Grauniad – sadly none by David and none with his exceptional knowledge and understanding of the subject, but at least they were mostly not too bad. I wish they'd publish one of David's, though.
@violet
Thank you, too. I’m actually lucky enough to have two huge loving floofbabies, and get hugs from them pretty regularly. 🙂
Oh, that’s par for the course for Hanson. Like, it’s scarcely an interesting argument at all unless it features rape dismissal, casual minimization of violence, justification of racism or classism or sexism, or something involving eternal punishment for no reason whatsoever.
He enjoys making arguments about those things. He uses those sorts of things to argue for economic policies and general ethical principles. I wasn’t arguing when I called him an author of the modern alt-right; his bilious blog has long been considered the core of reactionary neoconservatism, and you can trace a thick, red, slimy line between him and Charlottesville.
Go read some of his blog if you are able to, folks. Dig back to 2008 or 2010 or so, when this was all starting to get cultural traction. That’s the breeding ground for what passes as Alt-Right “philosophy”. Nihilosophy, maybe. Sexual Market Values, Utilitarian wank fantasies, gambling-based predictive engines, all of it. I’d call it libertarian but that would be too kind, and too wrong – Hanson knows that the end result of capitalist libertarianism is autocracy, and he would rather skip the middle step.
Conservatives generally want to rewind back to, like, the 1950’s, to an imaginary golden age when they thought things were good. Hanson and his ilk are the same, but would rather go back to the 1750’s.
Even though I attended George Mason University way back in ’93 and ’94, finding out he was a grad from there just makes me go “ew.”
But thinking about it now, I do recall it being very status-quo and super white. >_>
Scild, I’m confused about this whole conservative, right, alt-right, alt-lite thing.
Wouldn’t conservatives be of the view that celibacy outside marriage is a good thing? Wouldn’t they be of the view that (outside marriage) nobody owes anyone sex? Even if they aren’t practicing Christians aren’t they generally informed by Christian “values”? Is the “alt right” alt because it rejects conservative values and embraces what conservatives might call “libertinism”?
If they are all arguing for a return for some golden past (whether 1900’s or 1700’s) would they not embrace traditional marriage and family values? If that is the case how could they get on board that celibacy before marriage is bad thing? Particularly the more Christian influenced of them, who’s prophet/savior/god was celibate his whole life?
Also, what about gay male incels? They could argue that a lack of sex was due to the majority of the male population being hetero. Let Robin do a “thought experiment” on solving this problem.
@ Surplus,
Sorry to hear about these things 🙁
But, at least you found the library!
Are you in Canada? I was thinking about the cold. And it’s plenty cold here in Chicago.
Self and drinking buds here (in Lower Canada 🙂 ) do not remember much bullying at school. Some of what we do remember, were kids who weren’t really like an “organized” or “thoughtful” bully, – they were just straight up kids who wanted to beat on people.
“..having snow ground into their faces…”
Yes, we all do remember some of these types of things.
Our pal T here says it’s OK if I tell you the following….
Because people came to help too. And it is kinda funny, since she was ok…..
It’s not nice to laugh…
She was ok though, and it was back in the day when she was in jr. college. I think about this tale too, because when comparing notes about our younger years, we all did the same and “hung out with friends”. There wasn’t all this angst over “romance”.
Prior to “this incident” her weekend “hanging out” included going out with a bunch of friends to something (she referred to as) “the axe murder house”.
I think it’s this:
http://www.hauntdetective.com/hauntings-legends-folklore/chicago/southside/66-grimes-girls
How that factors into this is, they were walking around in there, and she had “white ankle boots” on, which wound up with a “strange purple stain on the heel”.
Had on the same boots for school on Monday. Attended the College of DuPage. Locals will know this, anyone else can look it up. And I can try to describe the one building there….
This has like a 3 storey staircase. Pix of this can probably be found online. It’s a huge stair case.
And our Miss T here managed to fall down the entire thing!
There are pretty large “landings”, at the various floors. How in the hell did you manage this?
I just kept going……
Remember, it’s not nice to laugh……
This would be a pretty blonde girl too, or what they’d call an HB9 or 10. And slim. Slim does not necessarily = graceful.
I AM UBER CLOD!!! <— she's yelling, watching me type this.
And remembers it all in detail, what she was wearing, "the white boots with a purple stain from the axe murder house", and "books went flying" and "was so embarrassed" and "did I break a leg here?" Wound up "in a heap" at the bottom of this staircase.
But on the upside, I think this is the best part: "All kinds of people rushed to see if I was OK and picked up my books and things".
🙂 YAY! That's a happy thing, anyway.
It's too bad there wasn't more video then, how in the hell does someone fall all the way down such a large staircase? It must've been spectacular!
T: It was.
I’ve been a lurker for some time, and may I congratulate you wonderful people on your takedown of the Aging Chad guy.
I thank you on behalf of my younger adult self, working in media sales, being “taught” by these middle-aged gents that flirtation with my boss will get me ahead in my career, and sitting attentively (faking it until I made it, actually, because they spewed antiquated, narcissistic bullshit most of the time) while they gifted me with their “pearls of wisdom” would surely reflect well on my part of their “team”. Cough. Sorry, I tend to run on when I’m shuddering. Back in the 80’s, as a new college grad, daring to have an opinion of my own was cute and such, but a silly woman didn’t know how the world worked, and couldn’t be left on her own to solve any problems. Now smile and look up in awe, dammit!
I would come home every night to my husband, who was closer to my age and not nearly as fossilized in his opinions, and ask why business administration and journalism majors hadn’t listed Flirting with Male Bosses/Putting up with Patriarchal Bullshit for Females as part of their curriculum. Perhaps I could re-think my course of study, eat, sleep and drink calculus until I could understand it, and major in engineering like my cousin. She didn’t seem to have douches like this in her workplace, although I’ve since learned they exist everywhere.
As the 20th Century came to a close, these same mansplainy geniuses, Guardians and Gatekeepers of Art and Social Discourse, without whom the literary and artistic world would grind to a halt, decided they didn’t like computers at. all. These things were what the film Future Shock warned us about, so they had to be destroyed, or at least heavily controlled by these gents, as soon as they could figure them out. Because these infernal contraptions made them feel inept, out of the loop, and kind of dumb. And These Guys Are Not Dumb, Dagnabbit!! Ahem, sorry.
My former child-self thanks you as well, because you called him out on his recommendation that bullying by male youths will get children “in line with proper social behavior”. Bullying won’t rid society of Incels, in fact, it will likely create more. Bullying may eliminate some suffering by mentally ill victims, but this is because said victims commit suicide, thereby eliminating their suffering. Anyone suggesting bullying as a fix for childhood social problems must’ve attended the Mengele Training Institute for Teachers or something as horrid.
The scrapes and bruises inflicted on my girlhood self by bullying boys only added to the bruises, bumps and black eyes inflicted by my dear old alcoholic dad, which made me generally jumpy, depressed, detached, daydreamy and suffering from PTSD.
I suggest anyone actually recommending bullying (what an absurd thing to say) read A Child Called It. This man survived his bullies and abusers, but did hearing some creepy kid suggest he jump into the SF Bay and kill himself really provide any benefits or make him stronger? IMO, No!
Anyway, sorry for the ramble. I’m the mom of Milennials, and either a Late Boomer or Early Xer myself. I relate more to Xers, as my siblings were born at that time, and I’m tired of having to apologize to people born in the 1940s for being a toddler when JFK was shot, thus not remembering where I was when it happened.
Thank you all, and thank you David, for all you do.
@idli, Hanson isn’t an incel. He’s a crypto-fascist. He, and most fascists are in support of celibacy outside of marriage and traditional no-divorce marriage.
They’re also giant hypocrites who are happy to give lip service to those ideals while looking the other way – our outright accepting and defending – adultery, provided that it’s the man doing the cheating. In those circumstances it’s just a man who has needs, and his mistress just being a greedy harlot.
Incels are in support of a lot of those ideas too. They think that in a traditional system they’d get the wife that “they’re owed.” Like, they honestly just want a traditional wife-slave that does their dishes and laundry and is obligated to have sex with them for fear of being homeless or dead. They think they’re owed that.
That’s where their “government mandated sex slavery” garbage comes from, in my opinion. They think that before feminism made divorce more acceptable, women basically paired off because they had to. This was often the case, really – women could have a hard time staying independent without, like, starving, getting raped, or being burned at the stake. They want to go back to a system when women were so terrorized and abused by society that the abuse of a hateful husband was at times the better option.
So, y’know. Put’em in the sun cannon.
The funny thing is, there’s no guarantee that the incels of today would have fared any better back in whichever era they favor. Even when father’s arranged the marriages and the women were basically the property of their father’s and then husband’s, it didn’t mean every man could just point to the woman he wanted and that would be that. The father would still have to approve the marriage. And the HB10s of the the day would be from wealthy families and get hooked up with the Chads of the day.
Just to pick one era, how about Tudor England?
Here’s the first paragraph on the first link I clicked
https://www.historyextra.com/period/tudor/love-and-marriage-in-tudor-england/
Hmm. It seems that before feminism, there were still expectations for men in courtship and marriage. Who’d have thought?
Oh, but look.
I’m sure there were plenty of instances of families coercing their daughters to marry, but given that incels are the misfits of any society they are in, why would any father be dying to hand his daughter off to one? Even in the good old days, men still had to get women to agree to a relationship.
But hey, at least women back then were sure to be virgins until marriage, right? The time travelling incel would surely not have to suffer the presence of the dreaded roasties.
Oops.
Ok. So there were some roasties. But at least the incel will have his whole adult life to find one 14 year old to marry before she can come into contact with any old timey Chads. After all, back then it was totally normal for 40 year old men to marry adolescent girls. That’s the natural way of things. It’s only mean ugly old feminists who made that socially unacceptable. Right?
Womp womp.
But let’s say an incel did manage to find a partner. At least she would be devoted only to providing sex and stroking his ego. Before feminism that’s all women did!
Uh-oh. What’s this?
I mean, not to be all overly rose colored glasses about life before feminism. Men did have a lot more privilege in the past than they do now and women lacked a whole lot of rights. However, patriarchal structures cannot be maintained unless men carry out their own responsibilities and the past was hardly the misogynist utopia of submissive eternally youthful beauties they always seem to think it was.
I were wondering a bit about that myself. I’ve kicked around a fair number of places where arranged marriage is the norm and girls, while commodities to be married off (to be fair, so are the boys), are VALUABLE commodities. They’re not given to just anyone as asks. The groom and his family has to pay – both up front and long term.
Given as incels aren’t exactly keen on the idea of paying for women in any way, shape or form – how the hell would going to an arranged marriage style society make any difference at all?
@ Shadowplay,
Can you tell us more about these places?
Sure. Kurds, Yesadi, Masaii, or Pashtun? 😛
All pretty similar, and not terribly far off the medieval situation WWTH laid out. Don’t think of them as families – think of them as companies. Marriages are treated like mergers and aquisitions, and a wise family diversifies it’s interests.
It’s a way of evading the fairly strict social stratification (in none of those communities does the stratification rise to the levels of restriction of Hindi society, but that I leave to the expert here if anyone wants to know) – you’re a farmer as has a son who wants to be an engineer? Your younger sister is married to one, so there’s his “in.”
That’s part of the ongoing payment I mentioned – it’s both separate from and considered part of the bride price, and it works both ways. A good potential for ongoing “payment” by either family will get a lower initial bride price, maybe even close to zero. It’s never zero – the girl’s innate value (which, yes, includes beauty and virginity as well as her skills, sorry) has to be compensated for.
It’s usually the wives (or principle wives) who arrange the marriage – the husbands just agree and reap the benefits. How’s that for misogyny?! 😛