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.
“Nazi” is short for “National Socialist”. I’m a socialist who belongs to a nation, that must make me a nazi, right? Why would anyone think that “Nazi” was a specific label chosen by people with very terrible and violent beliefs instead of just a term for people who are socialists? /sarcasm
Words mean things. The labels that people choose to identify themselves with carry specific connotations. You cannot divorce the labels from their connotations by going “well, technically the definition of this word doesn’t specifically state all the baggage that is associated with this term!” And a portmanteau is often more than simply the sum of its parts.
and it’s hard to disagree with dworkin’s views, she explains them so logically, like this on lap dancing
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/lapdancing.html
where is she wrong here?
First “weird tree hugger” says:
Then they say:
Which one is it?
I am not suggesting being “nice” but rather trying to see the other side as also human beings. If you read history you will find that dehumanizing someone is never a good idea, and almost everyone deserves compassion as a human.
A black man befriend a few hundred members of the KKK and they ended up leaving after he showed them compassion. We could learn a lot from that. Source: https://accidentalcourtesy.com/
Would he have gotten as far by just mocking them?
As for Mary Daly, in her book “Quintessence,” Mary Daly writes about how great a future would be where all men are wiped off the planet. Source: https://philosophynow.org/issues/33/Quintessence_Realising_the_Archaic_Future_A_Radical_Elemental_Feminist_Manifesto_by_Mary_Daly
As for Andrea Dworkin…do I even need to say it? She was for women’s liberation what Mugabe was for black liberation: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin
(and rational wiki is NOT nice to MRA and is a liberal site. It’s a pretty good collection of reasons why most pro-sex feminists find her to be appalling.)
Someone also wanted me to point out where feminists use the term “Mommy issues”. Well, here it is:
http://www.debate.org/forums/Society/topic/62988/
and here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Feminism/comments/52zfri/response_to_article_why_ill_never_date_a_feminist/
I could go on but that is a commonly heard insult from SOME feminists, and it would be silly to deny it.
Anyway, you wanted sources, you got them. I apologize for having to go to work and not providing them sooner.
And notice I called no one a name? That is how to interact with people. If you just shout “TROLL!” at everyone who disagrees with you in the slightest it just hurts your cause.
I don’t think many trolls will admit that society is toxic towards women and that such things need correcting. Just saying.
@Pug:
Now you’re gratuitously making fun of regulars’ handles? I think any remaining sliver of credence that you might be here in good faith just went up in smoke.
Especially after that blatant lie.
Ki@Pug
Why is the forum a male space exclusively? was not a trick question. WWTH was asking you why you have presented it as an exclusively male space. There are female incels, and if your forum is feminist and run without hatred towards women then one would naturally expect them to be included.
So, let’s put it another way – are female incels welcome on “incels without hate” and, if not, what’s the reasoning behind that decision?
That’s not a trick question either. I’m interested to hear the answer and I’m well aware there might be a good reason why the forum is men only.
And yes, no-one here objects to male support groups. Personally, I think they’re great – as you point out, modern constructs of masculinity mean men are shamed around emotion and admitting weakness in a way women aren’t, and I think it’s great that men are getting together to help each other through that.
Not a big fan of groups that call themselves male support groups when in fact their “support” consists of a) shaming each other for being “ugly” or “manlets” or “virgins” (the whole concept of “virginity” is crap anyway, but that’s a much longer post) and b) calling for women like me to either be sold into sexual slavery or executed.
With this, you are asking the targets of a hate group to be nice to said hate group. Do you not think that’s unfair? (to put it very mildly) Do you not realize how shitty that makes you seem? It seems too me like you care more about the feelings of the abusers than those of the abused. Seriously think on that.
I want to point out no one is saying it’s bad to convert KKK to non-KKK. not to speak for the regular commenters but I’m pretty sure we agree it’s commendable and remarkable. But Pug, do you think every black person is obligated to do the same?
Here’s a metaphor. I’m happy if someone gives a million dollars to a good charity but that doesn’t mean I’m going to give a million dollars myself or that I’m obligated to contribute any money at all especially if I’m not in a position to do so.
@Sol
Possibly too late you catch you here, but there are other ways to exercise hard without necessarily bulking up. I go for rock climbing myself; my other half prefers pilates. Yoga can easily be a lot of work. Martial arts, especially the non-competitive kind, might work for you too. Cold water swimming is also something worth considering, and might be quite easy to try, depending on where you are in the world.
We just had a discussion in a previous thread when someone proposed giving incels a name as shorthand the way incels call people “Chads” and “Stacies” and “Beckys.” Do you know what consensus we reached? Not to do it. One of the reasons not to do it? Because that’s the kind of dehumanizing thing that they do and we didn’t want to behave like that.
We also never stoop to their level and say they should be killed, raped or tortured. In fact, people have gotten banned for that kind of talk before. It isn’t tolerated here.
Another thing we don’t tolerate is calling them “crazy” or “psycho” or “insane” or other abelist things.
Strongly disapproving of the misogyny of a community and their embrace of mass murders is not dehumanizing. Making fun of their ridiculously wrong takes on what happens to someone’s vulva and vagina when they have sex is not dehumanizing.
And if you’re going to use comparisons to racism to concern troll and tone police, than I’m going to have to hit you with Martin Luther King JR’s famous letter from a Birmingham jail. http://www.africa.upenn.edu/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html
Did you know the most famous and revered civil rights leader was not – contrary to what many white people think today – an advocate for coddling racists and bending over backwards to protest racism without ever making white people uncomfortable? Now you do! Non-violence is not the same as passivity it turns out!
The whole thing is worth reading, but here’s the bit most relevant to you.
The same principle works for any kind of bigotry. Including misogyny. When you scold us for not being nice enough to the people who want to see us raped, murdered, burned with acid, scorned by our loved ones, you are joining their side.
I mean, we already know you are on the side of the misogynists. But you seem to be under the mistaken impression that by not swearing or name calling, you are the one behaving with civility and you are the one in the right. You are not.
Oh, and you know what took the KKK from a powerful and influential to a fringe group that most people hate? It was not befriending them. I was resisting them. It was the resistance of the people in the civil rights that led to the Civil Rights Act and got rid of Jim Crow and made the view that racism is repugnant mainstream. It eventually became socially unacceptable to be a KKK member. Something to be belittled. Something seen as backwards. That’s why the KKK doesn’t have the power it once did. I mean, that’s a simple analysis of the situation, and racism is still alive and well today, but the civil rights movement did make a lot of gains and they didn’t do it by making sure the fee fees of racist white people – or even white people who perceive themselves as non-racist – every step of the way.
Someone here needs to learn their history. And it’s not us. It’s you.
I am 100% confident that mocking misogyny is not immoral and does not set back feminism. I am also confident that concern trolls who want us to please consider that violent misogynists have a point so perhaps we should listen to them and who want us to set aside our own lives and well being to hold the hands of men who want us raped and murdered will be the ones seen as on the wrong side of history.
Oh and just to say it before you make such a claim, men who can’t get a date aren’t a systematically oppressed group. In fact, I would say the ability to cast your personal problems as systemic oppression is about the best indicator of privilege I can come up with.
Also, incel subreddits are not the same as a support group for male abuse survivors. Complaining about how dare Becky date Chad does nothing to help anyone. Although my point was apparently lost on you. So I ask again.
Why is incel a straight male thing? Are straight men the only ones who are socially awkward and can’t find a date? If yes, why? If no, why are you appropriating a term invented by a woman to exclude women and non-straight men from support and help? If incel was about helping and supporting lonely people and not misogyny, why is it men only? Why haven’t women, if we supposedly are the only ones allowed to have safe spaces in this cruel misandric world setting up an equivalent movement? Don’t take one part of my question out of context on purpose and then act outraged when you’re seen as a troll and not someone here in good faith.
Weirwoodtreehugger wrote:
The woman (she is not a girl) pictured is Rachel Oates, an atheist YouTube vlogger who only weighed in on the topic of incels after the murderer in Toronto. Her usual topic is taking down religious apologetics.
The “chad” in the picture is a family member, not her husband.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCC6ue7UYt1yeS621xmTMKrQ/videos (Rachel Oates’s YouTube channel)
Oh, and two random comments as proof that feminists say “mommy issues” on the regular? You couldn’t even find a prominent feminist leader or writer doing so? Weak.
WWTH, you da greatest <3
No, you’re the greatest!
You’re both freaking awesome!
Group hug!
Those are probably misandry for some reason.
actually people were objecting to dignifying them with a name. particularly some people who were dans or loved dans didn’t want that name associated with incels.
anyway, looks like the whole alt right/white nationalist thing is about controlling women’s sexuality and their right to choose a partner from any background. ironic considering just a few years ago the manosphere was doing this really weird thing: criticizing white women for being racist, citing stats that white women were the least to date/marry outside their race. I guess this was some sort of attempt at “gotcha! you think you’re so progressive, ms. white feminist, well turns out you’re the most racist of all”. And also an attempt to get women of color to disavow feminism (so they would run into manosphere arms?)
anyway, it didn’t work.
so now, the cousin of the manosphere – alt right/white nationalism, is showing the true colors of the manosphere. they didn’t care if white feminists were racists or not, in fact, they wished that they were.
@WWTH:
Let’s see, four older women, no man in sight… Clearly they have only survived so long by killing the men in their sleep and cannabalizing them. Plus, look at that decor. No way there aren’t bonbons in there somewhere. And those chairs were probably paid for by massive divorce-rape payments. It’s the (grand)motherlode of misandry.
I don’t think Dworkin was a bad influence on feminism. I think her body of work gives a lot of food for thought. Feminism contains many voices, many of which are disparate. This only shows the great diversity of women and their ideas. A radical voice like Dworkin’s is sometimes needed to wake people up from their go-with-flow, anything-goes complacency. I find radical 2nd wave feminist voices like hers a refreshing change to return to after being bombarded with 3rd wave mainstream sex positive and libfem ideas which in some part look like patriarchal capitalism.
Well … that’s one way of describing Blanche. 😛
Our latest tone-policing, “why can’t you just be NICER to hateful men?” troll reminds me of this video from a series I just recently stumbled across:
(EDIT- Ergh, I can’t get it to embed. It’s “The Ship of Theseus” from the Alt-Right Playbook by Innuendo Studios.)
The TL;DR is that people who are not speaking in good faith will often redefine a term to mask their true intent and make their message more palatable.
aking in good faith will often re-define a label/action/event in orde
Like Pug here deciding that, by his definition, “incel” is not a term that is voluntarily adopted by men who have joined a community dedicated to hatred, bitterness, loathing and entitlement, but a simple definition of any person (nah, any man- women are NEVER socially awkward or have difficulty in finding a partner, y’know) who is having relationship troubles and is feeling isolated. Because with HIS definition, calling incels a terrorist group is totally unwarranted and mean, despite the fact that there have been at least 2 mass killings perpetrated by men who explicitly defined themselves as incels and stated that incel ideology was what motivated their horrific actions. Despite the fact that incels openly celebrate these crimes, canonize the perpetrators, and fantasize about/encourage further attacks on innocent people in order to further their cause. Addressing THOSE issues aren’t the important thing, you see. What’s important is the feelings of those poor, poor men who can’t get a date, and we must be very careful not to attack them.
Or how 1 in 6 is automatically a “men’s rights” organization despite having not one single piece of correspondence which states that they have claimed the title of a “men’s rights” organization. Because they are interested in helping men, they should automatically be grouped in with other people who claim to forward “men’s rights”. Because there are men who want to have sex but currently are unable to find a partner, they should be grouped in with the men who claim to “support” men who are unable to find a partner. Because the more
human shieldsdecent people you can arbitrarily group in with awful people, the harder it will be for us as a society to actually deal with those awful people.Really great comment, @Catalpa. That’s exactly how moderates give cover to extremists in general. One of the ways, at least.
These recent threads are a very good example of why reading here is so brilliant. When I know people are talking bullshit (about freeze peach, and be-nice-to-the-poor-misunderstood-extreme-right etc. etc.) but I struggle to express why it’s bullshit (even to myself sometimes, let alone to anyone else) I read comments like these from Mammotheers and you are just so good at deconstructing and cutting through the crap and asking the right questions.
WHTM FTW.
@Tessa @Jesalin @Shadowplay @Cyborgette
Now that’s an idea I had never considered before. /s
I mean, obviously there are circumstances that make coming out and getting on hormones seem impossible, otherwise I wouldn’t be facing the situation I complained about.