By David Futrelle
Incels seem to think that they are the only people on earth who have problems. They regularly claim that women are literally incapable of feeling real depression, feeling sad only when they’re temporarily denied the adoring attention they’ve come to expect. As if that’s how any of this works.
On the Braincels subreddit today, one incel brain genius argued that female “depression” — yes, with scare quotes — is “voluntary.”
Incels constantly complain that no one understands their pain, that no one else goes through what they go through. In fact, innumerable people go through the exact same things — feeling loneliness, despair, hopelessness — and somehow manage to do it without getting murderously angry and dismissing the problems of everyone else on earth as imaginary.
I’ve dealt with clinical depression, spending years of my life untreated and basically fumbling around in the dark. I’ve been close to a number of women (and men) who have also dealt with clinical depression and/or other mental illnesses, in some cases worse than mine even at its most severe. They all got better after they got help, though it sometimes took years. We all feel bitter at times, but none of us lashed out at the world and assumed that no one but us ever felt like shit or had to deal with real issues.
Incels, your depression is real, and not your fault. But it’s also not the fault of women, or feminism, or your height, or any of the other convenient scapegoats you like to yell about online. Your ideology is toxic. It makes your life worse. It makes the world worse. Unlike your depression, it’s something you chose. You don’t have to allow that shit into your head. It’s voluntary, and as long as you choose to believe it your life will remain shitty. Get off of Braincels. Get off of Incels.me. Get help. Fix yourselves.
Apart from the moral considerations it bugs me that they’re stating the law wrong. The US may be one of a handful of countries that isn’t a party to the 1951 treaty, but it has signed up to be bound by the Convention.
I won’t do a big lecture. I’d just invite people to look up Article 31, and the preamble on ‘Unity of Family’. It’s pretty self explanatory.
@Ohlmann: that is SUCH a perfect picture of one of my worst abusers. Yech.
Agree so, so much re self confidence and moderation. And this society fetishizes confidence – pumps men’s egos like there’s no tomorrow, while making women feel inadequate for not loving themselves enough. Prescribing confidence is so, so much part of the framework that perpetuates abuse IMO.
And huh. I tend to write villains of this sort as fragile, self-aware, and self-hating, with a side of needy emotional abuse towards people close to them. Maybe I’m doing it wrong? I will research this. Some day. Maybe.
@ Catalpa
‘…midwives get it right most of the time.’
Some people are born with ambiguous genitalia.
@Cyborgette : the thing is, we tend to see other humans as much closer to our own though than they are. Which is why someone who hate bigot think bigots are self-hating and aware of being a bigot. Meanwhile, the right-wing moochers think poor people are all moocher too, and the intolerant bigot think that left wing activist are secret bigots.
RE: the gender-at-birth thing
I think it’s unfair to get upset about doctors/nurses/midwives for stating ‘It’s a *insert gender here*’ because, really, after hours of labor and/or surgery, most mothers and transfathers (is that a word?) probably wouldn’t first and foremost be worried microaggressive language. Not having had a kid myself, I might be off base here, but I assume the healthy-and-breathing-andomgwherearethepainkillers thing might be more important.
Gender-at-birth (or even prenatally assigned gender) is not a gender diagnosis anyway, just usually just a physical fact of genitalia. It’s a best guess, really, and it’s up to the parents to let the child know that they will be loved and safe whatever their gender identity. I don’t think having medical professionals adding a totally inclusive disclaimer to the announcement of physical sex after birth will help much to aid that right now. There needs to be a better understanding of gender identiy in wider society before people would accept that as it’s meant rather than as a sign that those pinko OBGYNs are trying to turn all your kids into genderqueer SJWs.
In the case of intersexed children, that is a physical state that is not altogether common and has its own health issues to consider – certainly meaning no disparagement of intersexed people. I have no idea what challenges they face, nor the protocols for intersexed newborns and couldn’t speak to those issues without more knowledge.
Re: flexitarian haruspex
I believe you are misunderstanding what exactly ‘gender at birth’ is. Being gendered at birth slots children into how the world will interact with them for the rest of their lives.
Suddenly all of their clothes are blue, or pink. People will comment how strong the blue clothed baby looks, but about the beauty of the one in pink.
The toys they have to play with will be chosen from specific (again, usually colour coded) categories. Action, war, tools, cars, bbq for the little boys, while the girls get dolls, pretending to be a mommy, cooking, and cleaning toys.
Basically, I could just go on with how being assigned a gender before a person can even articulate their own works, but we all live in the world. We all know how it works.
Places are removing the gender marker in identification where it is unnecessary. Perhaps it is unnecessary here, as well?
And yes, you are going to find that to people that this matters to, this always matters to them. Especially if they are a trans-dad, though I would probably use the term ‘dad’ myself. Because someone who identifies as trans will typically have put a lot of thought into how being assigned a gender based on genitals is bullshit, and would dislike their child going through the same thing.
And if ‘gender at birth’ is just ‘a child’s sex’, USE THAT TERM. Gender =/= sex. Your entire post used the *gender*, but you were talking about someone’s physical sex.
The amazing thing about gender is that we each get to decide how we interact with it! It is something that we get to define, for ourselves. We also get to play with gender expression, which may or may not have any bearing on how we see our own gender, we could just be messing with gender rolls/expectations/the binary itself.
Just trying to have a laugh here, in the midst of all the bad things going on…
@ David,
The statue! HA I remember it.
Doesn’t have to be a stone sculpture either, they are also jealous of temporary cardboard “statues” :
https://www.reddit.com/r/Braincels/comments/8s94kv/just_be_a_doctor_bro/
I Are Jelly of Cardboard. <– Free screen name suggestion for any lurkers. Excuse me, Alpha lurkers.
@ Rhuu
No, I knew what part of the gender-vs-sex I was using. I was trying to go with the language of the discussion. I thought my meaning was pretty clear – obviously it was, as you gathered enough of what I was saying to tell me not to mix up words.
I’ll be more careful of my semantics in future, but that’s kind of the core of the issue at hand anyway: you knew what I meant, you just didn’t like how I said it.
I hear what you’re saying about the inherent ridiculousness of assigning GENDER at birth. But if the parents have already bought all ‘girl’ or ‘boy’ stuff for their kid, chances are the doctors telling them ‘It’s a person, congrats!” isn’t going to make them redecorate, much less consider the possibility of their kid being trans or otherwise non-cis. Doctors telling parents the sex of their child at birth has jack shit to do with the larger social context, except to continue using categories that apply to a majority of the species.
There ought to be a box to tick on the hospital intake papers about how folks would like the doctor to speak to them about their newborn’s bits. I just think that getting mad at the doctors simply for their general language, in this context, is extreme.
@Haruspex
I’m not sure who you interpreted as being mad at doctors for assigning a gender at birth. I’m not particularly any more angry at doctors than I am at anyone in this world of gender essentialism, inequality, and transphobia. I agree with you that having doctors refusing to assign a gender isn’t magically going to fix the whole system. (Although doctors being more aware of intersex people and not unilaterally deciding to perform surgery on a baby so it can fit into one of the two arbitrary boxes we have available sure would be helpful. Thanks for bringing up intersex folks for me, Kevin. I forgot to include them in my previous post.)
That was not the problem I brought up in my post, though. I was just wondering why Knitting Cat Lady decided to add “in the vast majority of cases, the assigned gender is right!” to her post explaining what afab means. I don’t think she’s wrong, per se, I just think that the implication of “oh, trans/nonbinary/intersex people are a statistical aberration” (as I interpreted it) was unnecessary. Though I phrased it less accussingly in my first post because I wasn’t sure that was what she meant and wanted to ask for clarification.
I can’t speak for Rhuu but I was under the impression that you were unaware of the difference between gender and sex and were therefore unaware of the complex issues around assigning gender at birth. I guess you’re just a jerk, though. Glad we cleared that up.
@ Catalpa
Some countries now do allow for a third ticky-box on birth certificates, which would allow doctors and parents to take a “wait-and-see” attitude towards babies with ambiguous genitalia, and also provide a retroactive option for anyone who subsequently realizes they’re NB.
Unfortunately, I think this mode of thinking goes far beyond merely the human dreck that is the “Braincel” forum. There’s a mode of thinking that depression is just a function of life circumstance, like if you’ve been laid off or gone through a break-up or something. I know this because I had that knee-jerk reaction when I read that Clara Hughes–the most decorated Olympian that Canada has ever produced–had suffered from depression. I thought to myself “Wait, she’s competed and won six medals in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, which is more than most competitors can ever dream of. She has nothing left to prove to people. What could she have to be depressed about?” Then I had to realize, as a guy who suffers from depression himself, depression isn’t a function of circumstance. It’s a function of brain chemistry. Of course circumstance can set it off, but it’s the way you’re thinking about circumstance. Even if you’ve accomplished a lot in life, a depressed person will still feel like it’s insufficient because the chemicals in your brain are not balanced to look upon it with a greater objectivity. I’ve been struggling with it myself for years and I still sometimes here that little voice in the back of my head that tells me “It’s not good enough. You’re not good enough.” But therapy and 225mg of Effexor have kept that voice to a bare whisper, thankfully.
But if I can forget that fact, even for a fleeting second, having depression as I do, the rest of the world certainly thinks that more often. And I’m glad Clara Hughes has the courage to tackle the stigma head-on as she does.
@ Kupo
Thanks for the namecalling! And here I thought we could discuss things without getting personally offensive.
I stood corrected and amended my phrasing, but I think the point I made was a fair one.
I was at a con in Edmonton last weekend. One of the dealers was someone I’d known for years, lived in Australia for some time, back in Canada now. A fun person, loves drawing cute stuff (like ewoks), and someone I’d arranged commissions from a couple of times. This is a person who draws cute bacteria.
She also was selling a book of art on her table called ‘Depression Lies!’
Yeah, I think I’ll trust her on her own mental state over Mister Incel here.
Me, I’ve looped around the whirlpool pulling me in a few times; nothing as bad as some of my friends, but enough I think to give me a glimpse of just how destructively self-sustaining that kind of thinking can become. It’s not something I would wish on anybody.
(I tried posting this once already but no dice, it seems. If this ends up as a double-post, apologies)
@ Kupo
Thanks for the name-calling! And here I thought we could discuss things without being personally offensive.
I stood corrected, you’ll note. Without being rude. And also, the point I made remains valid.
@flexitarian haruspex:
If it’s any help, I thought that the point you made was both impolitely made and also innately impolite. As such, yes, kupo wasn’t particularly kind in the way she pointed it out – but she wasn’t inappropriate in this.
Semantics isn’t a minor point. I’m not a psychologist, but it is my understanding that how we phrase things is literally how we think about them. If we want to change how people think about issues, we need to start by changing the language they think about them in.
In any case: you don’t get to say “I wasn’t being rude.” That’s for the people around you to decide. C’mon, I know you know this.
@flexitarian haruspex:
I did know what you meant, but I didn’t know that YOU knew the word to use. So yes, I didn’t like how you said it. Because you didn’t say what you meant?
It feels like your ‘standing corrected’ is to say that I am just nitpicking. As EJ (the Other One) has pointed out, changing how we use language can help us to change how we think about things.
So no, I don’t think the point you made remains valid at all. If you wanted to use the incorrect term because that is how you had interpreted the discussion beforehand, you should have made a note as to why you were using it. Since you did not, well… Here we are.
(Also you were rude, you assumed you knew what I thought. I only went off of what you *said*, didn’t assume how you thought about anything.)
(Also tone policing? If you’re unfamiliar with that, here’s a link to explain.)
@ Catalpa
I re-read the thread, and it turns out I missed the bit about AFAB and all, so I think I misinterpreted later posts to be coming more out of left-field, and that was why I thought it was ‘getting mad’ at the doctors for a fault with the larger societal context of gender identity. I see your point, and agree with it, especially concerning intersexed people. I thought the medical community (at least in the US) stopped performing unilateral sexual assignment to intersexed infants already, and I find it reprehensible that it’s still a problem.
@ EJ, Rhuu
Look. You guys get a lot of trolls, so I get the insta-defensiveness surrounding anyone not using social academic language and semantics, but this is a storm in a teacup.
Rhuu, believe it of not, I’m on your side when it comes to respecting all genders, the distinction between physical sex and gender, and all that jazz. I just have more of Patton Oswalt take on casual discourse – especially when the semantics used seem more at issue than content. Sure sometimes semantics is super important, but this isn’t a legal document or an academic research paper. It’s comment on a blog post. If connotation matters, so does context. I think it’s pretty plain to see that, even if I had meant the literal denotation of gender-at-birth, I obviously support the rights of people who don’t fit the cisnorms. But if that point didn’t come through strongly enough, that’s where I apologize.
On the note of assumptions made, I’d like to point out that you could easily have asked for clarification first before judging me to be insufficiently woke and in need of a lecture. And now we are nitpicking each other – But really, it’s water under the bridge as far as I’m concerned.
I’m sorry I was vague. It was an intentional choice because I thought the context I gave in the rest of my post was sufficient to flesh out my ideas. I failed at that. But I have since clarified and tried to respond in good faith to corrections, even if I come off as abrasive. It isn’t intentional, but is probably the result of trying not to sound as annoyed as I am. It’s actually pretty difficult not to be sarcastic when people have already shown me contempt for a pretty minor infraction.
Wow, maybe when you use the wrong words (and this isn’t an issue of not correctly using academic terminology, but common vernacular), and someone replies to what you said rather than what you meant, you could not be so smug and condescending. You’ve admitted that you completely misunderstood what was even being said, which added to the appearance that you were confused by the difference between the two terms, but you fail to take any responsibility for your error and instead lash out against someone who kindly tried to help clarify the thing you admit you misunderstood.
@ Kupo
I literally apologized about three times. I admitted fault and my misunderstanding. I ‘took responsibility.’ What are you even angry with me about now? I was honestly being honest and open in the last post, and you call me condesending and smug. I can see there is nothing I can do to appease you, so maybe you should focus your energy somewhere the fuck else. Clearly, I’m too far gone for your purity tests to fix.
@flexitarian haruspex
There is a reason I was explaining things, because while this is small, it is not minor.
It’s not that we’re trying to apply some sort of purity test, it’s that you admit your mistake, but then say that it wasn’t a big deal.
This is obviously is important to me, otherwise I wouldn’t have posted an explanation in the first place.
Like, I get that this is just a post on a blog. But maybe check and see how many times you minimised your mistake?
Terry Crews gets it:
I guess that Incels are just the extreme end of that. Generally I laugh at the most over the top misogynist comments, but the fact that Incels appear to be deadly serious means that there must be LOTS of men who think similarly, just not quite as extreme. I really try not to dwell on that.
Sure. I’m good if you’re good.
I was depressed as fuhhhhhhhh then I grew 2 inches at age 26 and it literally changed everything for me. Anyone looking for a life changing confidence boost definitely check out heightify.com. They sell subliminal tracks that increase height at any age, which I didnt even think was possible.