By David Futrelle
The “involuntary celibates” who congregate on the Incels.me forum have previously celebrated such lovely fellows as Toronto van killer Alek Minassian, a self-described incel who murdered ten pedestrians in a symbolic attack against sex-having “Chads and Stacies,” and Elliot Rodger, the incel “saint” whose 2014 murder spree in Isla Vista California helped to inspire Minassian’s rampage.
Now the incels — or at least a portion of them — have a new hero: Canadian self-help guru and angry fussbudget Jordan Peterson,
On Friday. you may recall, the New York Times ran a highly critical profile of Peterson in which the Jung-quoting lobster-hierarchy fetishist offered some thoughts on how to stop young men from taking up guns and vans and massacring as many people as they can. In one of his chats with the Times’ Nellie Bowles — conducted after the Toronto attacks but before Friday’s shooting in Santa Fe — Peterson suggested that the real solution to incel violence is “enforced monogamy.”
Here’s how Bowles described their discussion:
Violent attacks are what happens when men do not have partners, Mr. Peterson says, and society needs to work to make sure those men are married.
“He was angry at God because women were rejecting him,” Mr. Peterson says of the Toronto killer. “The cure for that is enforced monogamy. That’s actually why monogamy emerges.”
Mr. Peterson does not pause when he says this. Enforced monogamy is, to him, simply a rational solution. Otherwise women will all only go for the most high-status men, he explains, and that couldn’t make either gender happy in the end.
“Half the men fail,” he says, meaning that they don’t procreate. “And no one cares about the men who fail.”
I laugh, because it is absurd.
“You’re laughing about them,” he says, giving me a disappointed look. “That’s because you’re female.”
This is the sort of nonsense you might expect in an incel forum, or from some similarly reactionary manosphere hangout. And so it’s hardly a surprise to see many on Incels.me hailing Peterson as a new incel idol. The only real question is what took them so long?
In a post yesterday, one prolific Incels.me commenter brought Peterson’s interview to the attention of his fellow forum regulars, asking “Is Jordan Peterson, our guy?”
More than a few commenters responded with an enthusiastic “yes!”
“What he is saying is exactly what I have always been saying,” declared someone calling himself SaintMarcLepine, the moniker a dark tribute to the Canadian misogynist who murdered 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.
RageAgainstTDL was even more enthusiastic:
This is absolutely brilliant. He is forcing mainstream writers and the public to confront the idea of monogamy and explain why feminism has destroyed it for their own chad-hungry desires.
Peterson is contrarian by nature too. He thrives on disagreement. So he won’t let this go. The more feminists argue they have a right to only fuck Chads, the more he will highlight how damaging this is to society.
The tide is turning.
A wannabe philosopher calling himself TheWitchKing pounded out a thousand-word treatise which could be summarized as “lol, Peterson is triggering the femoids.” Here are a few snippets; I’ve removed, among other things, the author’s extended musings on Peterson’s similarity to Loki, the Norse trickster god.
I usually have little use for Peterson or his philosophy, but I can’t help but admire anyone capable of provocation of this magnitude. … Peterson is striking at one of the most precious values of the modern West: the agency of women when it comes to the matter of sexual selection and reproduction.
With this act Peterson has crossed a kind of threshold … The idea of compulsory monogamy is not some idea that will merely inspire outrage among radical feminists and the members of academia surveying the world from the dizzying heights of their ivory towers. Rather, the idea of enforced monogamy is the stuff of nightmares of every modern daughter of the West. …
Informed by the Enlightenment values that championed the freedom of the individual, the sexual revolution was kind of a dawn for women. What Peterson is suggesting would be tantamount to murdering the light of that new day and plunging women back into the prolonged nightmare they believed that had finally escaped. …
Sadly or happily, depending upon your perspective, the amusement to be had at all of the outraged shrieking is the only good thing that’ll come from Peterson’s scandalous idea.
Mikepence made essentially the same point in a few short sentences:
He really got them riled up with this. Femoids cringe at the thought of being within 10 feet of an ugly guy, she can’t imagine actually being in a relationship with one
It’s almost as though incels are less interested in dating and/or marrying women than they are in terrifying them and/or making them miserable.
Animeincel was equally smitten with Peterson:
Yes he is on our side, and his very very smart. He is just not as aggressive yet cause he know media will slaughter him then. He understands the incel problem 100% and I love him.
Like Animeincel, Weed is convinced that Peterson is an incel ally who can’t quite say that outright just yet:
I think Peterson tries to appear as neutral as possible but deep down he is on our side.
nklfdnblidnfbli wondered if Peterson was directly cribbing from him.
i mentioned enforced monogamy in the incelcast, maybe peterson listened to that and got the idea from me? mainly we need it because almost all girls want only chad and chad is polygynous.
While Peterson was a bit vague as to what he meant by “enforced monogamy,” nklfdnblidnfbli was happy to spell out what he himself meant by the term.
here’s how i think it should work
– people can opt in or opt out of enforced monogamy
– if they opt in they pay lower taxes and get free basic income from the govt
– marriage laws must first be overhauled so that men aren’t disadvantaged and family courts are fair
– in enforced monogamy people must be married to have sex, and if you get divorced you have to go through a 6 month waiting period where you are not allowed to have sex, this is to discourage people from getting married and then divorced for every hookup
Huh. That seems a bit, er, elaborate, but I guess it might increase the odds that dudes who hate women and love murderers will eventually have sex.
All this said. there were more than a few in the thread who weren’t quite so excited about Peterson’s incel turn. Some were turned off by Peterson’s paeans to self-improvement — incels dislike being ordered to clean up their rooms, Peterson-style, nearly as much as they hate being told they need a shower.
Others thought Peterson was little more than “controlled opposition,” blaming his recent rise to fame on the machinations of, you guessed it, the (((Jews))). (Of course Peterson isn’t Jewish, and while he’s not a Christian either, he’s a big Jesus fan whose beliefs have been described as similar to Kierkegaard’s “Christian existrntialism.”)
“Peterson is a gatekeeper attempting to keep men from turning to far rightwing ideologies to correct their problems,” declared WarriorSkull.
He does warn women that he constantly sees career women … end up in their 30’s desperate for children and unable to secure a man for obvious reasons. This isn’t sufficient to make much of a dent in the direction our culture has and will continue to head, but the jews will continue promoting him as a “safe” alternative to rabid leftism.
ElliotRodgerHere put it more bluntly:
Jordan peterson is a f*ggot judeophile. fuck him, he is popular among the MGTOW cucks
In a later comment he added that Peterson “has a horribly ugly jewish wife.”
Starystulejarz compared Peterson to other alleged tools-of-the-Jews like Alex Jones and … Richard Spencer?!?
he is (((((controlled opposition))))) like alex jones, mark dice, trump, lauren southern, richard spencer, they will tell you 15-50% truths and rest is misinformation to brainwash you and keep you in state which jews want you to be (not to wake up and swallow blackpill fully)
Apparently this sort of conspiracy theorizing is contagious, as I can’t help but wonder myself if this little chorus of anti-Semites, all of them relatively new members on Incels.me, are part of an alt-right recruitment squad deliberately targeting angry, troubled men.
Another new recruit, a fellow calling himself rabbiter, kicked back hard at the notion that Peterson was “controlled” anything.
People like Jordan Peterson have helped a lot in moving the Overton Window in the last 3 years or so. We need more people like him. Anyone who criticizes him as “controlled opposition” needs to be sent to a North Korean Gulag.
Unfortunately, I think rabbiter is right that Peterson is nudging the Overton Window rightward — and bringing some of the worst ideas that have been floating around in the manosphere into the mainstream. “Enforced monogamy” is probably not the last terrible incel idea Peterson will bring to his growing audience in the next few months and years as he continues to explore his own inner incel.
@ WWTH
This is sort of related to your point.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/may/22/when-the-media-starts-celebrating-hipster-fascists-something-has-gone-very-wrong
What I worry about are the guys who are “halfway there”. Who may not call themselves MRA or Incel or PUA, but have absorbed some of these ideas.
It might even be “the point” of it all. To push propaganda onto ‘the masses’, the extremists that come from it are collateral damage.
Joe Average who believes half of this stuff – is the one who scares me. “Moving the Overton Window” – isn’t this what that’s all about? Keep shoving things one way, in this case female domestic servitude, they in fact utilize such memes as “Western women have it easy!” “Way better than women in the mid east!” That’s it right there, pointing to, and threatening, worse.
And at the same time pointing to their plans for you as “easy”, in comparison.
It’s a steady creep of ‘breed for the state’ sort of fascism.
And most people might not believe the super “over the top” stuff, – but the other general ideas start to sink in …
Advertising. Locals, guess my new car insurance! –
Hey! It’s Eddie and JoBo!
That alone should work, need more info? –
We got you covered! Chicago!
You know what it is. And now their ad jingle is stuck in your head! 😀
Sorry.
Propaganda sinks in. It may be deliberately outrageous. There’s other stuff stuck in there that’s repeated over and over and over. Women are “hypergamous”. “Women are over emotional”. “All women crave children”. Repeated slurs such as “libtard”. Repeated so much they must get grooved into the brain, even with those who say they don’t take this stuff seriously.
It’s the “halfway” man who scares me. Or the one who comes off as OK, even open minded, but yet he still believes all women are idiots who crave children and suburbia. That’s nothing but straight up Capitalist brainwashing and it works on men via their genitals. As well as a yearning for a mommy figure and domestic servant. That’s how they sucker them in to working for their economic pyramid schemes.
Between us, I’m drinking with my pals again, we have upcoming birthdays which is always a cause for reflection, – we all have had nothing but problems with men.
Defined as, for us, men who want to get married, have kids, and move to suburbia. HARD PASS. No thanks.
Other people said here that their parents are divorced? Us too, and you don’t want to gamble and lose. In the words of T: I came from one broken home, I don’t want to make it two.
Yep.
And plus if you are just not interested ..
The men don’t want to take NO for an answer. They want to get married, have kids, and move to suburbia.
And they assume that you want this too. Because that’s what pretty much all the propaganda they’re fed – has told them.
ETA: while I was checking for typos, no run down meant on people who CHOOSE to live in suburbia!
“Huh. That seems a bit, er, elaborate, but I guess it might increase the odds that dudes who hate women and love murderers will eventually have sex.”
It is elaborate, and in the incel system that’s a merit. Whether or not this arrangement gets girls for incels, it’ll certainly deliver something they value far more, which is lots of rules and an incentive to worm around them.
We were discussing this more, two creepy things ..
Our Miss T and her exH once went to a friend of his house. Friends child nearly runs into the road, T scoops him up and brings him back indoors. Where her exH and his friend, who were oblivious to the child, see her holding the child and “looked at me with some kind of weird lust in their eyes”.
Er.
And she’s not a (stereotypical) mommy sort. More like – Hey, weren’t you in a Whitesnake video? 😀
She is very pretty and did in fact date a fairly well known musician.
We (me and the other Z) are hotties too 🙂 and the men do flock to you but also expect you to turn into a Stepford Wife.
And it’s not so much that you’re a “party girl”, may have been somewhat, when younger; moreso that you are weird. Or outside of conventional norms. Especially in regards to marriage, kids, all that, a conventional path or ideas.
Rest assured we are self sufficient and educated as well. Another vaguely creepy thing, when we were talking about the paths we chose, and why you chose not to have kids, other Z said: I’m not here for that.
oo
@Ooble
Thanks for your kind words. It’s always hard to know what to say when someone is grieving, but when it happens to you, you discover that “I’m sorry for your loss” really means something. it’s a connection to the world outside your little broken snowglobe. It’s good to be reminded that there’s kindness out there. Strangers on the internet can be really helpful. I don’t want to talk to my family about how I went through my friend’s incredible collection of Tarot Decks last night, and cried for a half an hour. It’s not a secret, it’s just not much of a conversation starter, you know?
@FelixRay
I under stand that. It makes people close to you uncomfortable to hear about your pain, which makes it hard to bring up. I even had some people ask me not to talk about it (which really makes a person feel unsupported!).
From a random person on the internet: I hope you find little comforts to help you through each day. Take care.
@FelixRay, I often fail to say anything because I don’t have the right words – but I would like to say that you sound like a perceptive and compassionate person and fwiw another internet stranger wishes you solace. I’m sorry for the loss of your friend.
BTW, “stary stulejarz” is in Polish, and it means “an old guy with phimosis”. Seems like that whole incels.me forum is trolls trolling trolls.
@FelixRay:
I’m sorry for your loss.
In my expetience, the secret of anonymous internet strangers is that their opinions do matter to us, especially when we’re vulnerable or isolated. We see this all too often with hate mobs, but it applies just as well with more positive emotions. The support of strangers can help in tough times, and I hope mine can help you here.
Please don’t feel that you need to keep your sorrow bottled up.
So – catching up
@Dvärghundspossen:
YAAAAAY! That is awesome news! Congratulations.
@ FelixRay
I am sorry to hear about your bereavement, and was really moved by your account of the life you made. It’s hard as hell to lose someone, but better to have had something worth missing than not at all. All the very best to you.
Jordan Peterson… oh dear! I find him more scary almost than the incels on the internet, because he has this astonishing veneer of respectability and “academickiness” (on the model of “truthiness” which makes it almost look like the ideas he trots out are worth entertaining for a second or two.
The older I get the more I realise that no really crap idea has ever gone away. If someone somewhere can make money spouting it or sponsoring others to spout it on their behalf, it will come roaring back from the depths of human turpitude where we thought it had been safely consigned.
No. The solution to incels is NOT to marry them, and any flaky female that does get hitched to these sorry sacks of crap should immediately divorce then tell other females that those men are not worth marrying.
I always thought that >overt< racism died in the 70s. Even in the South, it became socially unacceptable to just come out and say it by the 80s. (dog whistles were ok of course) The 90s racists I knew still only talked about it when they felt safe. But now it seems like its back and in the open again. Confederate flags proudly displayed and not just by rednecks. Throw in the Gadsen flag and starting to see a revival of the POW-MIA flag as well. That last one was fairly common in the 80s but honestly makes no sense these days except as some sort of American stab-in-the-back posturing.
Not really sure how to win a fight when the battleground isn't ideas but the fact that hate just feels good to them, makes them special.
@FelixRay, all my sympathies <3 you're a good egg, and a good friend to those you care about. I hope the year to come brings you happiness and peace. Feel free to come here and talk about it whenever you want to or feel like you have to share with someone.
@Dvärghundspossen, congratulations! That's so awesome. I hope it works out even better than both of you suspect.
#On Peterson
Most PhDs I know are adult learners and struggled to get their degrees while holding down jobs and raising kids; they do their theses in the late hours of night and work all day to pay the tuition and bills. They earn their degrees and work damn hard. That effort instills in them a sense of humility alongside the pride of accomplishment – they know that it isn't innate intelligence or a gift that lets them succeed, it's hard work and the support of those who care about them.
Some PhDs I know don't fit that. They have the wealth to be able to coast on their own without working at the same time, either through gifts from family or just their own personal wealth. Some, through student loans and the supplementation of family. But they rely on being in the "in-group", knowing professors and deans, giving them generous test scores and project reviews as they move through education. For these people the thesis defense is more like a hazing ritual than a defense, and there's a general assumption among the staff that the person will graduate with distinction before they ever get to that point. They're handed their laurels before they've ever graduated.
This latter kind of PhD knows the right sounds to make, and is certainly intelligent – you can't go through that sort of education without soaking it in. But the sense of humility is lacking, and that's even more vital than anything else one might get from a higher education. The first and most important critic should be ones' self, and a higher education is supposed to give you the tools to do that. This latter kind is missing that faculty. It makes them dangerous idiots.
I’m not saying that Peterson’s one of these. Maybe he fought hard for his letters and he’s viciously self critical. I don’t know if he’s riding on the coat-tails of the old boys’ club. But he sure smells like it.
#Rehabilitating
I’m of two minds on this, and they’ve largely been discussed. I absolutely don’t think that we should focus on this at all. The victims and targets of these people should be our concern, period. Put on your own oxygen mask first, etc.
But I’m also aware of the fact that this won’t stop until rehabilitation happens, and the only ones who are acutely aware of the problem and have motivation to do something about it are us, too. We can say that it’s their responsibility to fix themselves, but we all know it ain’t gonna happen.
In the end I think the only effective long-term solution is to regain some semblance of reality in the media and in education. This current crop of cryptofascists can wither on the vine, we need to look to the next generation to make sure the blight doesn’t spread beyond this year’s miserable harvest. Vote, speak, get engaged. If you can steer someone right, do it, but don’t prioritize that over helping the targets of their hate.
That last bit is a lesson to them, too, after all. Show kindness to others in public, welcome immigrants, smile when people use languages you don’t know. Embrace diversity and compassion, in public. When seen alongside their vitriol, you’ll win the argument without saying a word, and nudge them either towards absolution or irrelevance. Either way, you win.
Still thinking on it though. It’s a salty pickle.
Interesting about Peterson’s marriage. He gets called a “beta cuck” because he has talked about his wife in loving ways on his podcasts. Even indicating that she “mercy married” him. The thing is that they were childhood friends and neighbors and he tells a story how he fell in love with her as a child and wanted to marry her even then. However they didn’t actually get married until they were near 30 or already in their 30s (can’t recall). So then the “beta cuck” accusers come out and ask, “what was she doing all those years?” and take guesses that she rode the carousel and married a Chad and after Chad divorced her (for good reasons of course), or she frivorced him, she fell back on Peterson as the Plan B Backup Beta.
Also, her name is Tammy, which to me sounds Stacie and Beckyish so expect to see a Tammy archetype make its way soon, as more and more incels, mgtows and spherians become acquainted with Peterson’s love story.
Whoa, hold it — you, an intelligent, educated, left-leaning person, are against free tuition for higher education?
You’re just about the last person I expected to hear work-ethic “suffering builds character” right wing capitalist Calvinist crap from. Especially one breath before also attacking the “good ol’ boys club” sort of power-gatekeeping disease that is such a problem in the academic, political, and business worlds. (Same club with its fingers in all three pies.)
Or am I somehow misunderstanding?
I’m absolutely for free tuition, @Surplus, but it’s not the world we live in right now.
I do believe that hard work creates a better perspective than being handed all of the things you want on a platter; I don’t believe that money has to be a part of that. It just happens to be so in the world we’re in right now.
It’s more to do with the old boys’ club and the sense of entitlement it brings. People who are in that club get carried across the finish line and don’t have the same skills as those who have to climb through the rocks to get there.
I’m 100% for breaking down that money barrier – because the people who can’t even participate in the race ’cause they can’t afford it are being kept out for no good reason. They deserve the right to join in, too.
I hope that clarifies, and thank you for asking me to do so! I didn’t say it very well, and you might be pointing out some gaps in my own thinking, too. Thank you.
Sliding scale for higher education. If someone has access via family to loads of money, they should pay, and that money can be used to put poor people through college.
Well, I can agree with “free tuition for everyone is good, free tuition only for special privileged people is bad”. As for the “character-buildingness” of hard work, at a bare minimum I cannot support that as a requirement just to have basic necessities, nor (as you seem to agree above) can I support uneven access to the opportunity to perform useful work. I am somewhat skeptical of the whole “hard work builds character” line of thinking in general, though, because that’s always been very useful propaganda for privileged gits who live in the lap of luxury on the profits they make off other people’s hard work. Everyone from feudal lords to plantation masters to fatcat CEOs builds that into their politics, and every one of those has an ulterior motive.
So, this is circular, right? Feminists only want to fuck Chad, thus whomever a feminist (or a woman in general) fucks is a Chad. This is how incel works. Even if some woman fucked one of their ranks, it doesn’t disprove the bullshit, they guy was really a Chad all along. Rather like Peterson’s oeuvre, the idea is to cover all bases, so that you’re always correct and always ‘oppressed’ no matter what
Speaking of, side note, I think it’s important that we label people like Jeep (stealing that from Katamount, I think) as incel. He’s not celibate, involuntarily or otherwise, but neither are the folks on those forums. It’s not about how much sex anyone has, but the nihilistic entitlement. In that sense, they’re identical
“Hard work builds character” is nonsense – like, what’s “character” mean in this context, anyways? Meaningless noise. I prefer to think of it as practice making perfect, and adversity forcing one to be mindful and humble.
I think we’re in agreement!
I also want to agree that we really need to tie Jeep to the Incels. They all go in the same bucket.
@abieganski
Oh wow, a meta boner-update there. Thanks for translating!
Also, it looks like you were in moderation, so welcome, assuming you’re new! Or welcome back if you’ve been around a while. 🙂
Buttercup Q. Skullpants
Buttercup, that’s the feature, not the bug. The concern isn’t the threat a disaffected man poses to his own wife and kids – they are his property, after all. It is the threat he poses to other men and their wives and children.
If the two options are men venting their rage on society OR men venting their rage on their families, then, by all means, send them home to beat their kids and rape their wives.
I’m learning a lot from this conversation. Not least that I once again was far too narrow focused in looking at a problem and thereby overlooking the obvious. Thank you for pointing it out wwth, hambeast and Scild (and any others that I might be forgetting).
You also made me realize that I really need to fight harder against the cynicism I feel towards this, thinking pushback on a wider scale will never happen anyway. It’s self-defeating, so I need to work on that, instead of giving up so quickly.
Unrelatedly – in case anyone still reads this thread – there is something I’d like to tell you:
I had an experience yesterday that made me realize that I sometimes come across as hostile or arrogant even when my real emotions are not at all like that. So, I decided that I should be more clear, even if it proves unnecessary. So, dear Mammotheers, as clear as I can say it: I don’t comment all that often, but I read this site a lot. I think this place is awesome and kind and welcoming and mindful and considerate. I like you. I like being here and reading your thoughts. And I really respect you, your life experience, your insight and your thoughtfulness from which I learn a lot.
I would interact more, but I’m kind of…shy, in general, around people. And I’m never sure if it’s “my place” to just take part in casual conversations, since I feel I’m still new and a lot of you guys know each other for quite a while already.
So sometimes/often when I post things, I am so concerned that they are “good” and “useful” contributions (to match the level that some of you discuss things on) that I fear I might come off as an arrogant, lecturing know-it-all. I really don’t mean that. I’m crap at communicating clearly and apparently very good at sending unintended messages, so – after yesterday’s experience – I thought, I’d take the time to make my real feelings and attitude very clear.
And, should I accidentally come across as something else and you feel like telling me so (you obviously don’t have to), then please do so. I might be hurt and sad and think “how the hell did I send that message?”, but I promise I’ll do my best to understand and do better.
(And if all this should turn out to be awkwardly unnecessary…all the better, but after what happened yesterday, I’d rather be safe than sorry, because I really like it here. :-))
@Alaniel,
(I love the new nym, by the way). I just wanted to say quickly that I always appreciate your posts, as they’re thoughtful and nuanced, and I think the conversation you and others had up-thread has been great. Not a great topic, but great contributions from everyone.
I don’t think anything you’ve ever said here has been questionable, or arrogant. And please feel free to join in any casual conversations, but only if you feel like it <3
@Alaniel, you’ve always been one of my favourites here! I don’t take your comments with the tone of arrogance that you worry about, so from me at least you have nothing to worry about.
I understand your anxiety towards your tone, and the fact that you sometimes come across wrong. I do that too. I sometimes come across as being uncompassionate, uncharitable, aggressive, and arrogant, in real life and in text. I’ve had no solution for this beyond just being careful, for myself at least.
Your new nickname is great, i really like it!