By David Futrelle
Incels aren’t really very good at the whole “humor” thing. Last week, I wrote about the “Imaginary Girlfriend” meme in which an earnest stick-figure woman declares that if she hadn’t been aborted she could have grown up to be every incel’s dream girl. “Sorry I couldn’t be there for you,” she says. “But my mom had other plans … would have liked to have a lot of kids with you.”
*Shudder*
To me, the meme looked more like the work of a troll doing a pitch-perfect parody of incel logic than an actual incel meme, but a lot of other people thought it looked real, and it certainly could be. One of these people tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/BobbieA10284800/status/1018114427705585665
Well, long story short, some incel found the tweet and posted it to the Braincels subreddit. And the incels there, not all of whom knew what she was referring to, lost their shit.
![fuckbitchesman 36 points 1 day ago Baby killing whore. Burn in hell. permalinkembedunsavereportgive goldreply [–]Zyklon_Bae 23 points 1 day ago Women are soulless Golem. permalinkembedsaveparentreportgive goldreply [–]Bobodzadza 14 points 1 day ago Fact](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/07/dr7ct8yiu.png?resize=499%2C444&ssl=1)
Huh. Not having a baby when you don’t want to have a baby seems pretty logical to me.
One fellow fantasized about beating her up — and her liking it.
This lovely fellow suggested genital mutilation:
Still others reminded us that most incels are only a step or two away (if that) from being straight up Nazis.
Lovely.
Naturally she gained some new fans on Twitter as well, some of whom also appear to be Nazis or near-Nazis.
Ending your genetic line and damning yourself to Hell to own strangers on the internet, such a typical white woman thing
— YUNG W!GNAT (@gnat_w) July 17, 2018
https://twitter.com/Archeon_/status/1019045553139838977
https://twitter.com/FashKermit/status/1019260806779809792
I’m still not sure why posting a picture of a delicious looking Arby’s roast beef sandwich, intended to suggest that a woman is a “roastie” who has had so much sex that her labia have mysteriously grown larger and more roast-beef-like, as if that’s really a thing, is considered an “own,” even by these idiots. Sex is good; Arby’s roast beef sandwiches are good. The two of them together would be fantastic, with the only real drawback being the slight danger of getting horsey sauce on a tender area.
It remains funny to me, in a sad sort of way, that incels — whose personalities are basically a collection of red flags — have managed to convince themselves and each other that women hate them for their looks.
Okay again for the 18th time someone please I’m begging you show me where I said abortion was definitively moral or there should be any way to make it harder I specifically said not only me but the people I’m speaking of do not want to make abortion harder in fact they would be fine with it being easier because or else you end up with women dying with wire hangers in their vaginas I just woke up but no people are being reactive because of the topic and assuming I’m saying things that I’m not saying like not into actually words that I’m not saying you are putting words in my mouth I never said I asked if abortion was I never said it was then I said Thank you to people who are nice to me because what should I do thank the people who were mean to me what I honestly don’t understand what is expected for me there I didn’t tell people they shouldn’t speak that way I said if they want me to learn something from what they’re saying they shouldn’t speak that way. They’re grown-ups obviously they can say what they damn well please who am I to tell them not to anyway I literally just woke up and I am still appalled by people just it seems purposefully misunderstanding me. I never said pretty much anything you just said I said in that long-ass comment Catalpa. And I don’t under understand how they’re exactly the same because they disdainfully called normal pro-life people Pro birth because that’s all they give a f*** about and they think yes maybe abortion can be immoral depending on the situation but like I said 18 thousand times they want women to be able to acquire it because if a woman can’t acquire one it doesn’t stop her she do what I said before or literally throw yourself down the stairs or take poison and my mom has three degrees she’s aware of it so why do people keep saying things I didn’t say?
STOP DIGGING.
I’m sorry, what? You didn’t say anything I said that you said? I can go back to the other pages of this thread, you know.
You said that your pro-life family members were admirable, and implied that the rest of the commentariat should also find them admirable. You said that people who believe that abortion is murder and that all abortion is wrong are admirable.
You said that your ‘admirable’ and ‘true’ pro-life family members believe that abortion is wrong unless the mother’s life is in danger.
You said that they think that women who have abortions should have been more careful with their contraception, because only the pregnancies that have the potential to be lethal for the mother are ‘reasonable’.
Guess what? Publically talking about how something is bad and immoral is also trying to prevent people from doing that thing, even if you don’t try to pass a law against it! Saying “hey, rape jokes are really shitty” is probably going to make people around you think twice about rape jokes, even if you don’t pass anti-rape-joke legislation. That’s how social pressure works.
You said that you thought that pregnancy was no big deal anyway, that a fetus just becomes a baby and that pregnancy is mostly pleasant.
Sure, you said a bunch of No True Scotsman things about how your family are ‘true’ pro-lifers and totally don’t want to prevent women from obtaining abortions. Guess what? They still fucking decide to identify as pro-life, despite the pro-life movement being entirely about denying the reproductive rights of women. You want me to admire that? Do you want me to admire the ‘true’ incels who are just sad that they’re too ugly to be dated but TOTALLY don’t want women to be killed/enslaved? Do you want me to admire the ‘true’ All Lives Matter people who are just worried about all lives and TOTALLY don’t want black people to just shut up about being viciously oppressed? Do you want me to admire the ‘true’ Gamer Gaters who just care about ethics in video game journalism and TOTALLY don’t want to harass all women out of video game culture and development? Do you want me to admire ‘true’ Men’s Rights Activists, who just really care about men’s rights and TOTALLY don’t want to just shut down any feminist movement? Do you want me to admire ‘true’ White Nationalists who just want to appreciate European culture and TOTALLY don’t want to exterminate other races?
No. Fuck that. If someone identifies as a part of an abhorrent group that is expressly formed for the purposes of abhorrent things, they’re getting nothing but scorn from me. I don’t give a shit about how much they TOTALLY don’t agree with all the abhorrent shit the group stands for and does. They still decide to be a part of that group, which says to me that they’re not so different from the others, they just apparently care more about optics than some of the others. And anyone who wants me to admire that shit can kiss my ass.
@Katiekitten420 – I don’t know if bringing my personal experience into this will help, but I understand getting defensive when criticized. I don’t respond well to criticism either, and it makes me stressed out… especially at work, where both my bosses have questioned my diligence and mental capacities (albeit when under stress themselves) when I’ve made simple mistakes. Then, when they make legitimate critiques, it feels like an attack, so I have to work harder to calm down the defensive reflexes. It can be a vicious cycle.
But from what I read here, no one’s not attacking you.* This is important. They’re attacking the idea that a so-called pro-life stance is benevolent. The words “pro-life” might sound good, but they’ve been used to limit women’s freedoms.
You were also defending your mother’s friends, which makes sense. They’re probably good in many ways. But it doesn’t mean that people will accept that they’re right to use the term pro-life. Personally, I don’t know whether they spread harmful myths about abortions. They could be. Even then, you don’t have to hate them. My mother has some homophobic ideas, as I wrote, but I don’t hate her. It does distance me a little from her, unfortunately.
*There was one comment from a non-regular commenter about not wanting to “hold your hand through this” (paraphrasing) that sounded harsh to me, but it wasn’t the majority. Anyway, I’m sorry that you were upset.
This is getting…frustrating. You seem to be beating around the bush a lot and then acting very shocked when people read your words for context.
You continuously defended these people who are run of the mill judgemental, that think any abortion outside of their strict idea of what is right and good is immoral or bad. They clearly don’t think women can make good choices for themselves. This is ignoring the part about young people being soooo irresponsible.
Again, they understand abortion when it fits their narrow view of unfortunate circumstance.
This has been explained many times but I feel like humanitarian would be much better fitting than trying to take the name of an extremely well known political movement, and then getting confused when people think they’re part of a very well known political movement.
This just had me confused because I don’t know how you can possibly know the personal circumstances of so many people, what they’re thinking in their brains unless you were in the room watching them have sex and listening to their conversations leading up to it. Shit, I had no idea how many people in my school were on birth control or what method of contraception they used. Maybe my close friends would share that info with me but enough people for me to judge young people as a whole? Nah. This is also the fault of parents/schools/ government for not making contraception easily available to young people. Telling young people not to fuck when everything in their hormone filled bodies is telling them to fuck is not a failing on the kid’s part. When I lost my virginity it was a fucking mission impossible scenario just trying to get my hands in a single condom.
And it’s kind of inherently a moral position or judgement to compare abortion to purposefully killing a thinking, feeling animal in my opinion. If you think torturing it would be wrong, how would murdering it not be wrong? You may disagree that it’s a moral judgement but…that’s how I see it.
Anyway, you can make moral judgments without specifically saying THIS ACTION IS IMMORAL. We make tons of moral judgements all day every day in ordinary conversation.
Dear lord please let the formatting on this be okay.
Whoops, I lost my temper and used some swear words. Now my comment is just going to be read as an attack and completely ignored. Or possibly used to ‘prove’ how the commentariat is unfair and mean. Darn.
Oh, well. Trying to be polite and civil and charitable and clearly explain what the issue is while providing analogies to try to make the point more easily digestible also didn’t manage to make a single dent in things either. So I suppose there’s just nothing that can be done. The only thing that will be acceptable is “Oh, of course your loved ones are perfect and would never cause harm, not even unintentionally! Pro-life people (the ‘real’ ones of course) are great! No need to examine any of your personal views any further!”
Katiekitten420
Mmhmm. Maybe ask yourself a bit more about just how you came to be so ignorant of the realities of pregnancy. Could it possibly have something to do with the sort of education (or lack thereof) you got from your mom and her circle of #not-all-pro-lifers?
It gets worse. What happens when such pregnancy myths are internalized by a woman, and then she has a pregnancy that proves difficult, or discomforting, or even takes a dangerous turn?
She’ll self-blame, thinking it’s something wrong with her rather than the information she had…
@KatieKitten420 – You know what? I’m out. I don’t know how to explain this to you, you clearly aren’t ready to hear any of this.
You ask us to show you where you say ‘these things’ and to ‘not put words in your mouth’… Where? Seriously, I am QUOTING YOU. Everyone is quoting you. I even gave you the page number!
Words mean things. What you say *means things*. It might not mean what you thought it did, because we are all coming at this from a different perspective. But if someone is interpreting what you said in a way that it seems like everyone else agrees with, then perhaps your meaning is not coming through.
Or, perhaps, you’re just wrong.
If you want to continue the conversation, I am going to need you to quote me (or anyone) where we ‘put words in your mouth’. (Or, really, anything you want to reply to.) And then explain what you mean, or how you think we twisted ‘my mom thinks abortion is morally wrong but doesn’t want it legislated’, because as multiple people have said… Social stigmatisation WORKS. That’s why we do it.
Blockquote but either using the button in the reply window (you’ll have to have javascript enabled) or by typing [blockquote]TEXT[/blockquote] replacing the []s with s.
Otherwise, I am tapping out on this, I was *hoping* my comment where I quoted you specifically and gave resources would give you something to engage with.
Instead, I get a single run on sentence about how we are so mean to you. You have got a lot of our time, and you aren’t listening, and it is very frustrating.
Because right now, it looks like you’re angry that people keep telling you that Words Mean Things, and that you can’t just wave a magic ‘intent’ wand over your words and have us all skip away happy into the sunset.
This shit is serious.
Pro-choicers and forced-birthers aren’t going to be friends dancing in a meadow, because one side sees people with uteri as fully functioning people with control over their own bodies, and the other does not.
It might be time for you to step away from this thread now, and think about what was said and how you reacted.
Re: Catalpa – I KNOW. I haven’t sworn, but I feel like I have been brushed off as well. aaaaaah
Re: A.Noyd – that is why I linked to a bunch of sex-ed. I’m pretty concerned with how much KatieKitten knows, especially if she thinks the only thing that can go wrong with pregnancy is morning sickness which is also nbd.
A friend had extreme morning sickness her entire pregnancy. Also, your sense of smell ramps up to 11, so if something that would upset her stomach was anywhere around her, she knew.
It was not a good pregnancy, and not a good time for her. And she wanted the baby.
Re: Surplus – There’s also the problem of postpartum depression, where someone who has given birth is just depressed. It is so stigmatised, because didn’t you want this baby? Parents are happy and bubbly and run around in fields with their kids who are perfect!
*deep sigh*
No I actually am not feeling agitated anymore I was having a bad day the other day and this on top of a lot of other things got me more upset than I should have been. Like I said I completely understand the hostility especially for people whose lives it’s very strongly affected but I don’t get why the two words pro life in of them selves are worth more than the actions people take and I also don’t understand why not being Pro choice personally adamantly in public means you want there to be restrictions when I specifically stated that is something they have petitioned the Vatican about because they don’t want restrictions. They realize that doesn’t stop abortions it just makes women die and harm themselves within the ocean when that’s what they believe how are you saying that they are for restricting abortion when they quite explicitly stated that would just kill more women. I said this like you said I can scroll back and see what I said and I said this earlier but I don’t know how to make the little block thing. And honestly I appreciate the links you shared and the information you’ve given me I have no anger or hostility toward you but it really seems to me that you are cherry picking. Why not mention the part that I just stated along with what you put in the little box. This is a personal issue to my mother and everyone. They wouldn’t really bring it up in public at all they would think it was inappropriate in most cases. They think it is personal not social or political
And yes I do know what the people in my high school did that was the first time I was popular and I literally had hundreds of friends and I know when a good half of them lost their virginity and how in the circumstances surrounding it. That’s a thing teenagers tend to share at least that’s how it worked for me. You can think I’m a liar if you like but yes I spoke to about Id estimate between 100 + 200 teenagers in high school and college about the circumstances under which they lost their virginity. Hell lets even round it down to a hundred so I’m positive. Yes because as you say getting condoms could be an adventure and very difficult some people were very horny and just didn’t bother. That happened often enough.I don’t know why you’re telling me that it didn’t happen.
Okay thank you for teaching me the block quotes thing I’m going to use it in about half an hour. I’m working on and off right now and like I said I overreacted earlier. No one especially anyone who gave me information do I have any hostility or anger to I have thanks and gratefulness to you. I’m getting very I don’t know what the word is extra LOL maybe because I’m just so utterly confused. Thank you again everybody not just people who are nice
No-one here is going to find forced-birthers admirable. Holes. Digging. Stop.
If they don’t bring up their views in public, then how do you know about them?
One of them is my mom 2 practically raised me and I went to church with the others for years till I started High School and had dinner with them on Sundays until I decided that organized religion just didn’t really work for me. When I started High School me and my mom had a huge drag Down fight because I refuse to go to church anymore cuz I thought the Catholic church had caused far more harm than good
Ah, so women shouldn’t be told that abortions are immoral by random people on the street, but being told such things by their family and the members of their close social circle is totally fine and definitely won’t cause any kind of social pressure on them. Yes, that makes complete sense.
@KatieKitten
I started writing this post and then stopped and then started again. First, really? You’ve never heard of pregnancy related health problems, sometimes severe? You’ve never heard of death during childbirth? Hint, this still happens. You’ve never heard of post-pregnancy related problems, including as a poster above mentioned post-partum depression but also what is still called childbed fever – and yes, still kills people.
These are the bad ones, but even a pregnancy that falls into the normal range can still be difficult and I find it hard to believe that this is just unknown to you. Which is why, among other reasons, I shut up.
But the circumstances of one hundred to two hundred people who lost their virginity? And whether or not they used birth control based on how “horny” they were? I think that my BS detector just broke.
Listen KatieKitten, if you want to be pro-life, be that. You will have a lot of company – even if it is woman hating company. But beware because you are a woman and based on your posts a young woman. Women get judged and punished for everything, everything. There might come a time that the shoe is on the other foot and you find all of the judgment women face turned against you.
It seems what you really want is for us to agree that abortion really is killing cute little babies but under very, very limited circumstances, it might be the lesser of evils. Well, we can’t do that and people have explained extensively, cogently and kindly why that is and what the benefits are to you to examine what you think and why. Why are you so unwilling to do that?
They take the action of aligning with a group whose sole purpose is to restrict the rights of people with uterine. They take the action of calling themselves pro-life. They take the action of calling abortion wrong except in very specific circumstances which are a) personal and b) none of their god damn business.
They tell others, to the point where you know extremely specific details of ten (!) different women’s views on the topic and it has obviously very heavily influenced your views. Influencing people’s views towards believing a pregnancy is a life, towards believing it should only be used in a specific subset of situations they deem worthy, while never taking the care to ensure you even understand what a pregnancy entails, those actions place social restrictions. This keeps getting explained and keeps getting ignored.
And, once more, having a stance that abortion is only okay in some circumstances is not and will not ever be a feminist stance. It is inherently misogynistic. There is no part of that stance that I or many others here will agree with.
My bodily autonomy is infringed upon when people like your friends (and no, they’re not special or unique; all the “pro-life” people I’ve heard argue their side say these exact things) continue to voice their opinions of other people’s choices, especially when they attempt to make it seem like they really do care about the welfare of the pregnant person.
You’re not going to convince us your friends are somehow progressive or worthy of admiration for this view of theirs. Are they worthy of admiration for other things? I don’t doubt it for a second. But that’s not what you’re here asking us about.
And really forced birthers okay at least that is not even really like anything I said I have no desire to have children my mom couldn’t care less. Honestly she thinks the world is overpopulated. None of these people want to force anyone to have babies at all! I don’t even understand where you got that from! Everything else that people have disagreed with I sometimes feel like they cherry-picked things but they’re not just out of the blue but that forced birthing statement I have no clue where you even derived it from any of my words. And also I actually asked my mom(I live with her) when I woke up a little about this cuz she was running out the door she said immoral isn’t the word she would use about abortion she would say it’s a sin yes but swearing and working on the Sabbath and many things that she does are also sins. By her faith humans sin as part of their nature, they can’t help it. Of course since it’s considered part of being a human it doesn’t make you a bad person. I actually don’t believe in the concept of sin since I was 14. But point being never once have I said anything even has an implication of forcing people to have babies. My mother and I assume the other people I spoke of would find that repugnant.
Katie I promised myself I wouldn’t reply unless you quoted me, but this was (I think???) directed at me.
Pro-life sounds good.
It is not good.
Therefore we call it what it is, forced-birth. That is what it is. Denying abortions means forcing a birth.
This is another point where Words Mean Things, and I refuse to say something that sound good when it drives people into poverty, along with all the other horrible consequences of a denied abortion.
Forced birth is the description the left uses to describe the same position the right describes as pro-life: that a woman should not terminate her pregnancy (which they usually hand wave away the “sometimes there are exceptions” point), and, whether through legal, physical, or psychological force, should be made to give birth.
Okay to be clear I already accepted that I was clearly ignorant and misinformed in a lot of cases so I don’t understand why you would just say I’m lying. I have no reason to lie about that specific inane tiny thing that has almost nothing to do with the conversation. Maybe this is not typical I have no idea but yes it was my high school and college life. We were very very open about sex. Yes I did know the circumstances of how most of my friends all through high school and college lost their virginity I don’t understand why that is so unbelievable. I also think their actions were perfectly reasonable I did the exact same thing more than once.
I’m not stating that why all or most or even a significant percentage of abortions happen from those events because I have no idea of the statistics involved. But yes I do know many people who definitely were very careless early on in their sexual experience. If you think that’s a lie, do you. I was just trying to use it as an example to explain why I believe what I was told.
And like I said I have literally only known 2 pregnant women well in my whole life. I’ve known a third woman somewhat so I honestly do not know the effects of pregnancy on a person that is also just true and if you don’t want to believe that that is also fine. I have always been scared of the responsibility of another life so I actually actively avoided reading articles and information having to do with pregnancy I was going to say I just wasn’t interested but now that I think on it I definitely purposefully avoided articles in Cosmo and other inane magazines like that when stuff like that. If you’re going to tell me I’m ignorant or wrong or even messed up in the specific ways for believing some of these things that I have come to understand but if you want to call me a liar you’re just wrong I’m sorry but you are you can believe it all you want it has no effect on me but I’m not lying and I don’t understand why you would think I am if I was lying how could I get information that you make me less ignorant about this?
What really shocked me here is that people have seen me commenting here for literally I think 4 years and I’ve said tons of ignorant things but no one is doubting that I’m truly asking and good face and the truly want to know but now people are obviously not believing that and thinking I’m literally lying and trolling and stuff. Why? Why would I do that after 4 years of really enjoying the community here and never doing that before like what motivation could I possibly have?
No, it’s exactly what you’re here promoting and demanding that we find admirable. You’re just trying to dress it up as something more palatable.
I find the “Oh, it’s a sin, but that doesn’t mean it’s like, super bad or something!” thing to be such a cop-out when people get called out on being prejudiced against other people’s personal choices that are none of the person’s damn business.
“Oh, being gay is a sin, but, you know, so is lying.”
“Oh, abortion is a sin, but so is working on the sabbath.”
You know why? Because I never see anyone go “Oh, murder is a sin, but so is swearing, so, really, murder is no big deal! Everyone sins, after all!” If the category of something being a ‘sin’ is meaningless, then there’s no point in bringing it up in the first place. And if there’s a sliding scale of badness of ‘sins’, then it’s a weasel phrase that’s used to avoid consequences and have plausible deniability of putting the sin on the low end of the badness scale.
It’s basically the equivalent of “Oh, I was just being ironically racist/sexist/bigoted!”. Around people who are genuinely racist/sexist/bigoted, the irony is suddenly dropped (and the ‘sin’ is one of those bad ‘burn in hell for eternity’ ones), and around people who are progressive and potential consequences for being bigoted loom, it’s suddenly ‘don’t get so worked up, I was just being ironic, I don’t really think that!” (‘oh, no, I don’t think that people should be punished for the ‘sin’, there are plenty of sins that I do too!”)
I swear if I hear “hate the sin, not the sinner” ONE MORE TIME…..
Thank you Kupo I honestly didn’t know what that I meant I thought forced birthing referred to the quiverfull type of people. What you just told me about is repugnant and I think most people would find it so including my mother. Yes she thinks abortion is definitely not ideal but she also wouldn’t want a woman to suffer through something that she truly didn’t want that would result in a baby that she resented. The woman has three degrees one of which is a PhD she’s not stupid. And like I said she’s completely aware that making any more restriction we just put more life in danger why is that part not important when the two words pro-life(and the way she describes it as she is pro-choice politically but pro-life personally just by the way) are so intensely important but her actual wants for women to not die or be hurt are completely irrelevant or at least that’s how it seems I’m really not trying to be snarky or obnoxious.
Okay I’ve decided what I’m going to do now is reread everything people have said and some of the links here and things I found myself and when I get home I will write something coherent and hopefully reasonable. And no I don’t want anyone to agree with me that as someone said abortion is bad accepting very specific cases. Because I’m not claiming that. Even from the beginning I specifically said I was not sure. Now about 100 posts ago give or take 10 I definitely stated I definitively believe that there is nothing immoral about abortion. I’m honestly appreciative and glad about the things that I have learned from people but I do feel like because this topic is so incredibly vital especially right now with our travesty of a government people occasionally have knee- jerk responses or it is completely possible I misunderstood certain cases which is why while I’m working I’m going to go back over every comment now that I’m not emotional or agitated and can take things in easily. As I’ve said before I ask questions here because I think the people here are intelligent and informed so if I believe that then now that I’m in a rational mood I think it’s a good idea 2 go back and read everything again because I feel like this is escalated to a point it shouldn’t.
This is not what I intended at all and I’m honestly a bit confused as to how it got this ugly. I apologize for the part I had in that because it’s not what I wanted at all I wanted information but I’m not rational sometimes I guess that was not a day I should have brought that up. I hope there won’t be no lingering animosity in the future.