By David Futrelle
On Reddit’s IncelTears — a subreddit devoted to mocking and critiquing the toxic incel subculture — someone claiming to be a former incel has posted an account of their escape from inceldom. It’s a throwaway account, but the story he tells seems pretty convincingly true to me.
“In the wake of the horrific events in Toronto,” he begins,
I wanted to share some of my experiences as a former incel, and how I eventually changed my behaviors to become a better person.
Being an incel is awful, it’s an awful predicament, with an unhelpful community to back it up. Often when people describe an incel, the general description is “Involunaty Celebate”, someone who can’t get girls, etc. This is the most glaring issue and the one bought up by the community but it isn’t the only issue in most cases.
When a guy can’t get a girl to save his life there’s usually some undelying social issue at play and that issue has an affect on that individuals entire social life, not just the intimate aspect. You don’t feel important, you don’t feel valued. This starts to play on your self esteem and is partially to explain for the very self-hate low IQ trodding nature of the community.
Unfortunately, the incel “community” only makes this self-hate worse.
The community’s biggest problem is that it does nothing to fix the problem and only goes to reinforce ones already held beliefs. So you’re someone who can’t get a girl, shunned from society (to various degrees) and you go online to find people like you, and when you get there you find false explanations for your problems and an echo chamber of your ideas.
You confide in this group and as a result, you start to inherit some of that group think and ideas. These ideas don’t help you in the real world but rather make things worse, it’s a downward spiral.
So what was it that led him to start questioning incel dogma — and eventually extract himself from this morass? As he explained in a followup comment, he literally got off of incel forums and into the real world, where he quickly found that most of what the incels say about men and women and dating and pretty much everything is just plain wrong.
One of the things I did was get out there, almost in a literal sense.
When I was an incel I never went out. I had never been in a bar, never been to a club, I didn’t know that life in the slightest. So when I went online it was very easy to believe the things you read about bars/clubs/women/chads/stacies/etc because I had no comparison in the real world to call bullshit on one way of the other. The first time I went out to a bar, 20 minutes in and getting a drink I saw a guy, probably 3 inches shorter and twice as round sitting in the VIP section with a bunch of hot girls nearby. Seeing that shattered by worldview because according to the incel community, that guy was doing something that was fucking impossible in their eyes.
I’m not sure that the VIP section of a nightclub is what I’d call a representative sample of reality, but it’s certainly the case that the easiest way to challenge many of the central myths of incel is to simply open your eyes to the evidence all around you in the real world, where you’ll find men of all sizes, shapes, heights, and ages happily paired off with women of all sizes, shapes, heights and ages. You have to be willfully blind to believe that women won’t date short men, or men with improperly angled eyebrows, or men with inappropriately sized wrists (and yes, these are real incel beliefs).
The former incel continues:
After that I kept going out and every time I went out there was always something different, not a single night was the same. Always different characters, different situations, different interactions. I started to see that there wasn’t just one pre-disposed type of person to get a particular girl and I learned that anything could happen, literally anything.
Yep.
I’ve been thrown out of a bar on to the street only to be invited to an afterparty 5 minutes later, I’ve gotten harshly rejected by a girl in front of her boyfriend only for her to run back to me before the bar closes and give me her number. I was in the corner of a bar talking to a girl telling her about where I was from before some drunk guy decided to roundhouse kick me because he thought I was lying about my nationality (that a was fun night). Countless upon countless situations where I’ve walked out of it going “what the fuck just happened”
I guess this is one possible escape from incel. But you don’t have to get into bar fights or get invited to any afterparties — or even set foot in a nightclub at all — to see that incels live inside a collective delusion that only vaguely resembles life on this planet.
Overall, it was just replacing the knowledge I had acquired from places like incel subreddits and forums with real-world experience. You can read PUA and incel forums all day long and get two totally different ideas of nightlife, or you can go out and get another idea entirely.
Yep. All it requires is that you just GET OUT of the incel subculture for a short time — whether you literally start going to nightclubs or simply free yourself from incel thinking long enough to see that what the incels are telling you is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Our former incel admits that this can be more difficult than it sounds.
When I finally came to my senses it involved me throwing out all of my previously held beliefs and ideologies. In theory, it sounds easy but if you’re a Democrat or Republican, imagine making the intellectual leap from one side to the other, it’s like doing that. Here you’ve been told to despise women, despite attractive guys that get those women, despise pop-culture and the things around it, now you have take all that and conclude that it was all wrong and you need to listen to the other side. And all the while you are trying to do this the community that you had around you is pointing to reasons why you shouldn’t make that ideological leap.
Nonetheless, it is possible. This guy did it. Others have done it.
The former incel ends his post with some words for those still caught up in the incel cult:
From this I want to leave a bit of advice for Incels that might read this. It can be hard to embrace advice from a side of society that has ostrizied you. But at the of the day what side do you want ot be on. Give whatever excuse you want but at the end of the day you know where you want to be. My journey from that community took years of standing the corner at parties, getting rejected by girls, getting into fights, it was painful. But from my experience, the pain is worth it.
I’d be curious to hear more stories from former incels who got out. If you’re someone who was once (but no more) under the sway of incel ideas — whether you were a regular on some incel forum or just someone who found themselves being drawn in by their rhetoric, please drop me a note (dfutrelle at gmail) or post your story in the comments below. Tell us what drew you to incel in the first place, how you got pulled in, and how and why you ultimately rejected that way of life.
Hmmm, forgive me for throwing a little salt on this story, but it still strikes me a sharing the underlying entitlement. To its credit, it does recognize that a lot of the ostracism that they feel is more a product of their own anxieties than any actual rejection by women. So holding women in contempt for imagined slights against their egos is ridiculous and this guy recognizes it.
And yet, he seems not to have let go of the underlying angst regarding relationships and masculinity. Perhaps this guy’s eager for companionship and can’t handle loneliness, but if it were merely out of the same need for social validation, then that underlying motivation still needs to be addressed and corrected.
I’m glad he could walk away from a toxic community. I’d still recommend Dr. Nerdlove’s blog to really challenge the assumptions buttressing a lot of toxic attitudes about relationships.
I’ve been reading more about this than is probably good for me. In mental self-defense I’m deliberately trying to learn more about mathematics; it’s challenging enough to distract my attention but accessible enough to not frustrate me.
It’s reminded me of Vonnegut’s “Breakfast of Champions” and Kilgore Trout’s anguished realization that “ideas, or the lack of them, can cause diseases”. They’ve internalized a toxic belief system that allows them to externalize their self-hatred, and become stuck in a feedback loop of belief and behavior that amplifies the noise and drowns out the signal. I will admit, at a certain point I found myself beginning to feel sorry for their misery; a few minutes on Reddit reassured me that they’re doing a bang-up job of that on their own.
On a happier note, my younger son had his seventeenth birthday yesterday. We had a family dinner of delivered Korean food which everyone enjoyed. This morning, he got up, showered, dressed, and is out the door to school. He had an actual terrible early childhood (prior to the adoption), but a decade of therapy and a lot of work on his part have made a tremendous difference. He knows he has challenges but he doesn’t seem to blame anyone – not even himself – for them. I’m unspeakably grateful for that.
@doomcup
Actually, I was just thinking that incels are more like a bucket o’ scorpions. Their stings range from painful to debilitating to lethal. And their inherent nature is to inflict harm on others even when it results in their own destruction a la story about the scorpion and the frog.
Scild,
I’m not saying he’s presently getting too old for the club scene. I’m saying eventually he will be. And there needs to be something in his life when he does one day age out.
Ah. I misread, and agree.
Well at least he escaped and didn’t end up doing something like this to extract revenge on jock Chads and Stacies. Something tells me this guy is going to be outed as an incel soon enough.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/regional-education-boss-arrested-suspicion-123900087.html
OT, but found this interesting article on Alanis Morrisette linked on GamerGhazi:
https://theoutline.com/post/4400/alanis-morissette-very-intriguing-person?zd=1&zi=4icw2le4
Being a 90s kid, I remember Alanis being absolutely huuuuuge in Canada, but being a kid, couldn’t quite relate to the lyrics when Jagged Little Pill was at its peak. I just thought, “Eh, catchy alt-rock tunes.” But as I look back, yeah… Alanis really didn’t get nearly enough credit as she should have for her success. It seemed like every media outlet was trying to take a poke at her or make her a punchline (granted I expect that from comedy outlets like Air Farce and 22 Minutes). But given how utterly massive that album was… you’d think she’d dominate more 90s retrospectives, particularly in Canada, yet I’ve barely heard two words said about her continuing to release music as recently as 2012, with a ninth album on the way (or so Wiki tells me).
I really need to give JLP a listen again. Probably Infatuation Junkie too.
Alanis Morissette made a pretty effective God in Dogma (misandry!)
@Katamount,
Didn’t she get her start on a kids show in the 1980-90’s? ‘You Can’t Do That on Television!’, I think it was. It ran on Nickelodeon in the US back in the 1990’s, when that channel was dedicated to 24/7 kids programs.
Waaaaay back in the days when cable networks were allowed to be assorted niche networks showing all kinds of goofy stuff, instead of blandified into essentially the same network in pursuit of the 18-30 year-old guy demographic. (Because their money is hundreds of times more valuable than anyone else’s, or something.)
Yeah, I never really understood why she wasn’t more highly regarded. She was outrageously talented, and JLP is still one of my favourite albums from the mid-90s.
I still remember her more upbeat kid pop stuff.
It’s a start. Maybe not a big start, but a start. Hopefully he’ll look around and see all the people in non-bar places getting happy relationships. I really, sincerely hope that he keeps learning and growing.
Okay, I’m reading this blog for the first time and frankly, I find it appalling how outright misandristic it is. But hey, hating on men gets the clicks and hence the cash, so why not?
To start, this author throws the term “incel” (involuntary celibacy) around as if every person who is socially awkward and has trouble with intimacy is a misogynistic man with a gun and a “MAGA” hat. Nothing could be further from the truth.
How many men AND women are there who can’t form relationships and have trouble relating to others? Tons. This whole blog equates any and all people—especially men—who have social difficulty with members of one tiny community and leaps scorn and ridicule on all socially awkward men. As if such people don’t have enough BS to deal with as it is.
And also, not even all incels online are like that. Every see the forum “Incels without hate”? They will ban posts that bash women and simply give men who face these issues a place to vent and look for others who feel the same way. So, men should NEVER have any place to talk about their diffculties? Should we just all “man up”? I love how people like the author of this blog love to be against toxic masculinity, but will happily embrace its language when it fits their need.
As for asking how “incels get out,” I was and am celibate and never had a real healthy relationship that worked, but I have had sex. I also have social anxiety and a bunch of other issues. But I never joined reddit/incel or any other such group because I found too many of them to be mean-spirited. Instead I joined a Men’s Rights Group.
Yep, I found support in a Men’s Rights Organization. What is the “evil misogynistic organization” I turned to? This one:
https://1in6.org/
Why am I “Incel”? Because I was sexually abused by my Mom when I was 9-11 and now have trouble with intimacy and have issues as a result of it. But I know, I know: males are always to blame, and talking about my abuse “silences women” and I should just “man up” and blah blah blah.
And yes, 1in6 is a Men’s Rights Organization. They advocate for men to have the right to get help for dealing with sexual abuse in a society that too often insists “men can’t be victims.” When you attack “Men’s Rights” and use the term as a pejorative, you are also attacking them and groups that provide homeless shelters for men and groups working to fight male cancers etc.
Saying “when we say ‘Men’s Rights’ we’re talking about those misogynistic ones” doesn’t cut it. If I use “feminist” as a pejorative I would be called out AND RIGHTFULLY SO, and it wouldn’t matter if I meant only people like Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin or Susan Brownmiller.
Yes, women have it rough in society and yes toxic masculinity exists, and yes I can’t know what it feels like to be a woman and have to worry about getting to my car at night and stuff like that. I get it.
But I am not about to apologize for saying that no woman knows what it’s like to hear a steady litany of “you are a man hence you are evil” while holding the pain of being a little boy who suffered so greatly at the hands of a woman and not being able to talk about it. For awhile I had resentment toward women, but never hate. But I’m dealing with that too and I know that not all women were as screwed up as my Mom.
So, that’s why I’m “incel.” Relationships with a woman is something I am not comfortable with and I will never be the person I might have been had my abuse not have happened.
Countess other men on those forums—even the hateful men—have suffered similar crap but aren’t ready to admit it and talk about the root of their issues. Blogs like this that demonize men and mock these guys just drive them deeper into the shadows.
But anyway, I’m just another “evil male women hater” and blah blah blah so whatev.
Wow, I just took a look at Wiki… Alanis is only 43 years old! I guess all adults look old and wise when you’re 10, but it’s hard to believe that she’s only 24 or 25 in that Dogma GIF. I guess she always came across as wiser than her years.
@Julia:
Damn, I was just thinking about this. I mentioned to a friend once that pro-ana – the communities, not the members themselves – is as pure a manifestation of evil as I had ever seen. My opinion of Incel (as an ideology, distinct from individual incels) is basically the same, because the general thinking and the essential assumptions that undergird the community – the collective self-destructiveness, the body dysmorphia framed as tough realism, the simplistic, Manichean worldview that engenders a horrible combination of hopeless despair and (self-)hatred – are ultimately very similar. It’s one of the reasons I’m not entirely convinced by the line that incels have “chosen” to engage with the community. After all, no one forces anyone to participate in pro-ana, either – but the ideology is powerful and flexible, it preys on very common insecurities, and once it has its claws in you it’s difficult to extricate yourself. It’s sinister – far more troubling, in my opinion, than any other manosphere derivation.
I agree that there are major differences between the two groups, most of them stemming from the fact that generally, incels externalize their hate far more than members of pro-ana groups do. But I think it’s important to remember that incels don’t just hate women/Chads – they hate themselves just as much if not more. The externalized hatred doesn’t replace the self-hate, it’s just an additional dynamic. The big question is: why? Why all the toxic misogyny and misanthropy? With the caveat that I might be completely off-base, let me take a stab at it.
The (left-leaning) media seems to have mostly chalked Incel up to “male entitlement” or something along those lines. While I don’t think that’s entirely wrong, frankly I find it a bit glib and unsatisfying. I think a more concrete explanation is the genealogy of the community – I’m not an expert, but as far as I can tell, they emerged most directly out of online PUA, men’s rights, 4chan, and the manosphere broadly defined. Incels aren’t synonymous with any of those groups, but they come from them – and with the (possible) exception of 4chan, they are all explicitly ideological communities that push an antagonistic form of gender politics. (The details differ between factions, but their worldviews are basically similar in broad strokes.) There’s hence a kind of political valence to incel thinking that was mostly absent in pro-ana communities.
What does all that mean in a practical sense? Maybe not much, but I think greater understanding and precision is always a good thing. I also think Incel might be an early glimpse of some of the downstream effects that the men’s rights movement is having or will have on the broader culture. Because I could see Incel evolving very differently had their antecedents been something other than the manosphere.
Maybe the reason you don’t hear more about Alanis in retrospectives is that it’s hard to fit her music into a theme. Most of her songs fit better into the pensive, folk-influenced female singer-songwriter subgenre, but her biggest and most memorable hit (in America at least) is much closer to mainstream rock.
“I guess this is one possible escape from incel. But you don’t have to get into bar fights or get invited to any afterparties — or even set foot in a nightclub at all — to see that incels live inside a collective delusion that only vaguely resembles life on this planet.”
This line really stands out as an example of why the author of this blog comes across as a giant piece of fecal matter.
How many of those “incel” men have real issues with anxiety, depression, abuse etc that form their opinions? TONS. For them, life on this planet IS that bad.
But hey, as long as people click that “donate” button, why not pour salt on a wound? I mean, it’s not because a blog about men dealing with their issues constructively would EVER get as much cash as one that just attacks “incels” would.
And why “incels” anyway? Pick-up artists are the ones who go out and actually hurt people, same with many (but not all by a long shot) of athletic men who think because they are “on a team” they can get away with anything.
Aside from a few rare cases, most “incels” are just alone on their computers. Talk about low-hanging fruit.
I’ve made several attempts lasting a few weeks to months of stopping to call myself “incel” and staying away from r/incels and r/braincels. It was quite enjoyable for a while.
But at the end of the day, whenever real-life stressors pile up I start to relate all the hateful and derisive statements made about incels to myself again (“What difference does it make what I call myself? I know that I am meant when they speak about incels”), appeals for people to lay off the generalizations and attacks have predictably bad results, I feel confirmed in being included in their hate and eventually call myself incel again.
Also having no other place to go and pulling off a “look what you made me do, now I’m back to posting in incel subs again” show of self-destruction after getting banned from IncelTears.
(Quite tricky to find threads to post in without having to endorse hate aimed at anyone other than myself or the bullies over at IT).
@Pug
Alone on their computers, wishing death and misery upon half the human population. And that collective delusion refers to their opinions of women, mostly. But it also refers to opinions about themselves. Really, they’re wrong about everything they talk about.
Incels are scum. If you defend them, you are scum. Have a nice life.
So, I *briefly* identified as an incel- though, admittedly, this was about 10 years ago, when the community around that term wasn’t as toxic (iirc) as it is now. However, I should note that my case is a little atypical, for reasons that will shortly become clear.
In my case, I’d made it through most of college without successfully dating anyone or losing my virginity, and that was the source of a lot of anxiety and stress. Partially this was due to insecurity that I was somehow fundamentally unloveable; however, in retrospect, a large portion of it was me hoping that getting a girlfriend/getting laid would “fix” my gradually increasing gender dysphoria. Fortunately, I aimed my bitterness and anger largely at myself, rather than women around me (i.e., my general assumption that there was something wrong with *me*, rather than with women in general- which, to be fair, wasn’t too far from the truth: it turns out trying to date someone as a straight dude when you’re actually a lesbian is not a great idea).
What got me out of it was simply experience and persistence- I kept on going out to meet people (largely through swing dancing and other social dances), asking women out, and while I accrued quite a large list of rejections, some eventually said yes. That built up my confidence, I actually did end up getting involved in several relationships with women, and ultimately, a little over six years ago, met my wife at a west coast swing dance.
Of course, I realized not too long afterwards that despite achieving my goal of “getting laid”, it *still* hadn’t made me comfortable with having a male body, and ultimately I wound up transitioning into a happily married lesbian.
@ pug
It would really help, if you’re going to quote people, if you could put the relevant passage in the ‘blockquote’ format. That assists in differentiating between the statement you’re quoting and your own comments on that.
Just highlight the relevant text, and click the ‘quote’ button in the bar atop the comments box.
Cheers.
@Pug,
Hi! Hello and welcome. It seems you have a bee in your bonnet! Let me help you try to let it out.
I can understand your first read being negative, my duck! So I’ll get this out front, first and foremost: Feminists don’t hate men. We don’t hate you for being a man, and we don’t hate any man for the simple fact that they’re men.
(Okay, some feminists might hate men for just being men, but frankly they’re a tiny minority and aren’t representative. Just like not all involuntarily celibate people are Incels of the murderous variety.)
No, we don’t hate men. What we hate are the social roles that men often take and are expected of them, and the social roles expected of women. Some grops of men embrace these roles very tightly – those men are grouped into the Manosphere, but self-label with a number of terms. Men’s Rights Activists, Pick-up Artists, MGTOWs, Incels. They are characterized by enforcing some version of traditional masculine roles on men, and on demanding women assume their traditional social roles without complaint. This blog follows those groups in the Manosphere, their various enforcements of masculinity, and their various demands of (and abuses of) women.
You can want the right to pursue an identity outside of that rigid cast of masculinity – 1 in 6 is a great organization as far as I’ve seen it; it sounds fantastic! I’m very glad you found it, and I hope you can continue to benefit from it, heal, and grow stronger. Its ideals are very feminist, focused on helping men escape those destructive roles they’re given. We focus on women’s issues here for reasons we would be happy to discuss at length with you if you like – provided you are honestly curious about them of course.
You might see some terms in here you might self-identify with: you’ve mentioned “MRA” and “Incel”. We are using the terms they use for themselves; there’s really no other term we can use. When they change how they describe themselves so too can we, but until then I can only suggest you either reclaim the terms from them by loudly condemning their actions, or choose another term for yourself. There are lots to choose from.
I’ll clarify for you: we’re using those terms because that’s what they call themselves.
Stick with 1 in 6! And, about them, I’ll just say: Nowhere in their description do they describe themselves as a Men’s Rights Activist organization, they’re a survivor support network. So you don’t have to use the same descriptor as men who spend all their day on Twitter blaming women for everything! 1 in 6, incidentally, is allied with RAINN, which groups like RoK and other MRA groups have loudly denounced, because RAINN is feminist.
We’re the allies of RAINN and 1 in 6 here, far from its opposition. We think they’re good things. We want sexual abuse to end.
Regardless of where the conversation goes from here, I wish you the best, and for healing to mellow old wounds.
@Pug
I have anxiety and depression. I had hangups about virginity in high school and university. I didn’t seek out a group of self-reinforcing misogynists, blame all my problems on women and come up with stupid playground nicknames like “Chad” and “Stacy.”
These people don’t get any sympathy from me.
Addenda:
It’s not the anxiety or the depression that David is pointing at here – lots of us have that.
It’s the hate. They hate us. They fantasize about pouring acid on our faces and murdering us in ever more elaborate fantasies. Some of them go on to actually do it.
If they were just anxious and depressed, we would have all the sympathy in the world for them. The world is a hard place. Most of us here get that.
It’s when they use that anxiety and depression as an excuse to spend their days fantasizing about our humiliation, degradation, abuse and murder that we get a little testy.
@Makroth:
“Incels are scum”?
So, again, a blog like “incels without hate” where they ban sexist comments are “scum”?
And what do you mean “incels”? Do you mean all people who want companionship, but for whatever reason can’t get it?
And I am not a part of these forums—as I’ve said—and never was but I browsed them and found them mean-spirited yet I sympathized with the feeling of being “under siege”. As a survivor of abuse, I get that.
It is possible to sympathize with the feelings people have while not agreeing with what they’re doing with it. I also sympathize with the people in the Middle-East dealing with imperialism and war. Does that mean I’m a fan of ISIS?
I simply have compassion for people going through crap who have not found a positive outlet.
And calling someone “scum” will only make them less likely to listen to reason.