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.
I am not sympathetic to them whatsoever. Dvärghundspossen covered all the basic points that would make sense to me, if they really were caring about the potential babies.
They don’t though. Here in Germany we see a rise of pro-life ideology as well and it’s the same damn crowd that laughs at refugee children drowning in the see right now. And it’s the same crowd that’s moaning about refugees getting so many kids (those kids will probably save our social system at some point, because our german middle class is too damn afraid to even get children anymore…) They do not care about the babies.
Even if it’s “nice white babies”… as soon as they are born they don’t matter anymore. Right wing parties moan about abortion rights and the next thing they do is propose laws that would make daycare a lot more expensive and would put a massive burden on single mothers. And then there are the men who want abortion rights gone, but start to play the victim as soon as their girlfriend becomes pregnant and wants alimony payments for the kid when the relationship goes down the drain.
Getting rid of abortion rights is supposed to be punishment. If you open your legs and get pregnant accidentally… serves you right. They make motherhood into a punishment. And if you get an unsafe back alley abortion and die in the process… serves you right, too. What they say is not fueled by compassion of any kind. It’s fueled by hate. That’s what it’s all about.
No, pro-lifers make me completely furious and I can not tolerate any of their bullshit.
@Dvärghundspossen
I was half expecting a suggestion that if people were sad about abortion ending lives and thought it should be made illegal, then maybe they should be doing something about gun ownership, too. I’ve probably spent too much time around fora full of second amendment fetishists though.
Doesn’t have to be permanent or surgical, either. There are a few promising looking means of temporarily or reversibly stopping sperm production on the way. RISUG is one I remember hearing of way back when, and whilst it is still in phase 3 trials it seems to be making progress.
Its too bad no-one seems very interested in the hormone-based long term male contraception projects. I suspect there’s a two-fold problem, firstly that long term contraception already exists for women, and as feeeeemales must take responsibility for everything, why should a man have to do anything? Secondly, I strongly suspect there’s a cultural issue around ‘shooting blanks’ and being symbolically castrated, because of course toxic masculinity gets everywhere.
I’ve been following this particular one like a hawk. It seems the most promising out there at the moment, but it’s a painstakingly slow process to get it to progress, because there’s just not enough funding… again, because there’s not enough demand. And in comment sections of articles on RISUG I have seriously seen men who complained that they wouldn’t even consider it, because it involved getting a needle shoved into their genitals 🙁 And there have been trials on male hormonal birth control, but they were cut short because of side-effects like depression. Side-effects a lot of women on the pill experience for years and years.
I have all my hopes set on projects like that. I have horrible reactions to hormones and an IUD is anatomically not possible… which leaves me with zero reliable contraception methods.
“She should get her pussy sown shut?”
You can get seeds for that sort of thing nowadays? Isn’t genetic modification wonderful?
@Talonknife:
I think they do, or they like to pretend to so they’re justified in believing their opponents are utterly depraved. Like during the recent campaign here in Ireland to repeal the Constitutional ban on abortion one of their favourite snarl-phrases was “abortion on demand” like, I dunno, people wanted to open drive-thrus or something ?
Okay part of this may sound bad like immoral or messed up I’m not sure. A couple people have said that to me wow more people who have said I understand what you’re saying. I honestly have more respect for people who are truly pro-life not anti-abortion, meaning they want lots of support for single mothers for example. They are all against the death penalty, they adopt children if at all possible and a number of other things actively Pro things that help lives not just about abortion. I know a group like this through my mother’s Church. My mom was a Catholic nun she got the Mother Superior to let her leave the convent to marry my father.
So I was raised very Catholic. I’m talking Church at least 3 times a week, two masses and Sunday school at the very least until I was 12. So for me personally I would be very uncomfortable having an abortion if it was not for health or trauma reasons and even then I’d still be somewhat uncomfortable but would probably still be capable of having an abortion in that circumstance. If it was just because I made a careless mistake, like I forgot to take my pill or something, I honestly would have to be in the situation to know what I would do. I do not think abortion is murder, I think that concept is ridiculous. I do believe you are killing something that has potential to be a human. How many weeks is it when it’s a zygote or something? Isn’t it like eight? That’s not murder but it is killing a zygote by definition. Whether you think that’s morally wrong or not depends on you and I feel like that’s completely your business and not mine or the government’s.
I don’t think I’m capable of being a mother I don’t think I’m responsible enough but if I was to get pregnant through my own carelessness I would probably have the baby and look for some people who has been trying to get pregnant for ages and had fertility problem cuz those people tend to want a baby desperately so I think they will be good parents in most cases. But I’m still pro-choice as a whole. Like I think it should be every woman’s choice what to do with her own body. So that’s my two cents on whether or not abortion is immoral or murder or whatever.
But the thing some people have told me is a f*****-up way to look at things is that I can in a way admire someone who is truly pro-life like I defined above and since they truly believe it is murder they honestly don’t believe in exceptions for rape because it’s still murder in their eyes. The only time they think of it as a viable option is when there is going to be a death regardless. And the people I’ve spoken to find the mother’s life more important than the fetuses because they are already alive and living so since they are pro-life in the way I spoke on they want to save the mother’s life if they have to choose. Because I don’t understand how you can think it’s truly murder but then say well if you got raped murder is fine, in that case how do two wrongs make a right? Rape is horrible but murder is also horrible. If you honestly believe abortion is truly murder, no ambiguity, how does adding murder to rape make things more morally upright?
I guess I understand why someone might find that point of view disturbing but at least they’re consistent. They think life is utterly sacred and you always protect life no matter what, at least they’re consistent and I can respect that.
What do people here think of that point of view, do you think because they’re consistent even if you don’t personally agree with then that its admirable? Do you think that being actively pro-life(for example one of these women has taken in 37 foster children in the last 46 years my mom told me) is admirable? Again not just anti-abortion actively pro-life. From what I’ve seen most people who call themselves pro-life or also for the death penalty which is a complete oxymoron and those people are total hypocrites.
She and others in the group I mentioned uses her wealth and class privilege to make children’s lives better and maybe in some cases even saving lives because foster children sometimes have a really horrific time of it in the system. Anyway I’m rambling now so I’m going to bed everyone have a lovely day.
Logically, if anti-choicers really, really believed that a zygote was 100% human, they’d treat spontaneous abortions as an emergency and spend most of their time raisin money for research to save those zygotes. Sponaneous abortions are much more common than elective ones.
@Mark Jeffrey
That’s why they call it a ladygarden!
I think it was Gloria Steinem who said, “If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.”
I’ve also read about a theory concerning the lowering of crime rates in the US over the last 3 or 4 decades…it may be linked to abortion being legal. Because women had the option to abort, they weren’t forced unwillingly into resentful motherhood they were unprepared for and unlikely to be effective at.
@Katiekitten420
(because intent isn’t magic, I’d like to say now that this post might get a bit grumpy, and it wasn’t intended as an attack on you and apologies if it seems that way)
Really? Just out of interest, have any of these folk ever thrown acid over NRA staffers or arms company execs? No? So much for consistency.
They have a pretty warped notion of life being sacred, too. ‘Forced Birther’ is a more accurate term that ‘Pro Life’. Once that baby is out and breathing on its own, most of em couldn’t give two shits for what happens next. They don’t care about how unpleasant or short the life of the child or the mother will be. Hell, in the US they probably don’t give a whole lot of thought to the child’s education or healthcare either.
That’s potentially pretty admirable. I use the weasel word potentially, because I don’t know what sort of lives those children have gone on to live. In the medical world, interventions often come with the notion of ‘quality-adjusted life years’. If an intervention results in a short life of pain and suffering, it probably isn’t worth it. If those children went on to live reasonable lives, then great: she’s walked the walk as well as talking the talk, and the world is in some way a better place as a result. Not everyone comes out of fostering and adoption in a good way, though.
She is also a) privileged to be able to do such a thing, and b) very much in the minority. If more forced-birthers were lining up with adoption certificates rather than yelling abuse, destroying property, assaulting people, demanding additional pointless unpleasant and invasive medical procedures and trying to make abortion illegal without offering any alternatives or help, I’d be looking at them in a different light, that’s for sure.
Finally, please do remember that pregnancy isn’t an easy thing. You don’t just go around as normal for 9 months, pop out a baby like you’d just had a particularly big sneeze, and then carry on with life as if nothing happened. It can have major health implications which can last years or even for the rest of your life, even with excellent medical care. All the offers of adoption in the world won’t fix your prolapsed vagina, your slipped disks, your nerve damage, your joint issues, your stretch marks, or even deal with the mental health problems associated with bearing a child you did not want, or giving away a child you are unable to care for.
@Sheila Crosby
Not if they’re driven by religious ideology, because in the case of spontaneous abortions goddidit and that’s ok.
Responsible gun owners don’t let fetuses in their household access guns.
@Lumipuna
I’ll bet you two grains of gold that there’s a libertarian out there who will disagree with you.
They’ll probably also be fine with abortions though, which avoids the issue entirely.
No, I would find anyone who is “consistently” pro-life to be a horrifying monster. But I don’t believe any of them actually exist. Do you know why?
Because being pro-life means taking the stance that bodily autonomy is a lesser right than anyone’s (or any fetus’) right to life. Therefore, all those people who die because they can’t get kidney transplants, liver transplants, stem cell treatment, etc, they were all MURDERED by selfish people who refused to undergo a major and body-changing medical procedure in order to save a total stranger.
If anyone is “truly” pro-life, they should advocate that unwilling people should be able to be dragged off the street and have any non-life-sustaining organs removed in order to be given to those who need such things to live. One kidney, a section of their liver, bone marrow, skin grafts, blood, etc. You don’t need it to live and someone else does, so we’re going to force you to provide it.
We can’t even take organs out of fucking CORPSES if they didn’t give consent prior to their death. Any pro-lifer who advocates for taking away rights from actual living human women before dead bodies is in no way internally consistent and therefore they deserve nothing but scorn for their position.
@ David:
… indeed….
re abortion, I’ve had this discussion with three conservatives…. Starting with the premise that “it’s about the children”, I counter that if it’s about the children, why do they vote to cut the programs that pay for 30-some % of the births and 60-some % of the pre-natal care. Every time, this slippery slope leads to the premise that, I truly believe, is the basis for conservative anti-choice thinking:
Poor women shouldn’t be having sex”
(note, a complete analysis available upon request… it doesn’t take long to get there….)
Re: organ donation, I believe organ donation should be opt-out instead of opt-in. When you die, your usable organs will be harvested unless you ask that they are not.
@ talonknife
I whole heartedly agree. I also think it should be reciprocal. If you’re not on the donor register, you can’t receive an organ.
That’s nearly been introduced in a few countries now (being on the register gives you a priority rather than excludes anyone totally) and that’s resulted in a big increase in registration.
@Obble Ten points to Gryffindor.
@ Dormousing_it:
I’ve heard that – I’ve also heard another suggestion which is that lead in the North American atmosphere peaked in the 1950s (leaded gasoline was at the height of its popularity) and violent crime in North America peaked in the 1970s, and that there may have been a generation of young adults who all had just a *bit less* impulse control than they would have, due to the lead exposure affecting brain development. (The subsequent decline of crime being due to the most violent of that particular generation getting caught and imprisoned/killed in fights, and the kids who came after them suffering less from lead exposure).
@ Talonknife, Alan:
I’ve realized recently that they need so many people to volunteer to donate organs, because so few will actually die under the specific circumstances where their organs can be reused (you pretty much have to be brought to hospital still breathing, with fatal injuries to your head, and none to your torso).
Back when I was a teen in the ’80s, I saw a political cartoon that really summed this up perfectly. It was two panels long.
Panel 1:
A very pregnant black woman is standing on the left while a fat, old white man was clutching a bible and saying “the miracle of life!”
Panel 2:
The mother is now standing and holding her young child’s hand, and the white guy has a snarling look of hatred on his face, pointing at her and saying “sniveling little welfare cheat!”
Any anti-choice person who doesn’t also support policies that take care of children whose families can’t afford to care for them are just a bunch of fuckers who don’t actually give a shit about babies and are just using that issue as cover for their desire to control women.
Well, given that they believe people who get abortions are evil baby-murderers, they probably do think they’re doing it for the hell of it. Or for the chance to murder babies. Because they’re evil, QED.
That’s exactly why you’re one of the best commenters here; positing a solid application of incel “logic” that self-owns the fuck out of them.
I wish I knew how to insert a gif worthy of your post.
…I also wish I knew of a gif worthy of your post.
I’ve long had a fantasy of showing up at an anti-choice rally with a poster that has pictures of 8 zygotes – all either human or chicken – and asking the protesters which ones were people and which ones were breakfast.
I wish I could remember what the article was called so I could read it again. Around 5-10 years ago I read a piece about the history of the anti-abortion movement. It was around the time of Griswold v. Connecticut that the movement in the US took off. For those who don’t know, it’s a less famous Supreme Court case than Roe v Wade but just as important if not more. The court ruled that states can’t outlaw hormonal contraception. It was this, that sparked religious sects to take up birth control and abortion as a political issue. Before this, many religious people did believe BC and abortion was wrong, but many sects didn’t expressly forbid. It was also not considered one of the most important issues. What the Catholic church and many Protestant sects were taking issue with was not abortion, which they damn well knew existed before it was a legal and safe medical procedure, but the feminist movement and its focus from the 2nd wave on on connecting reproductive rights with women’s equality.
Tl;dr the anti-choice movement is specifically and anti-feminist movement. Not a pro-life movement. It became an issue for everyday Christian laypeople/congregants only because politically motivated people within various religious sects decided to turn it into a issue in the 60’s and 70’s.
More theologically adept Mammotheers, correct me I’m wrong, but I’ve also read that it doesn’t say anywhere in the Bible that life begins at contraception. It’s my understand that the closest it comes to discussing abortion at all is to say that it’s a crime to kick or beat a pregnant woman in a way that causes her to lose the pregnancy, but only after the quickening. Or when the fetus can be felt to move. And IIRC, even though it’s a crime it was maybe more of a property crime than a murder? Again, I’m reaching from the depths of my memory and didn’t research to confirm, so correct if I’m wrong.
I’d also not agree that adoption is necessarily a moral and pro-life act. One of Evangelical Christian’s favorite conversion strategies is the adopting of children so they can be raised in the religion. Evangelical adoption practices are often incredibly shady and bordering on stealth genocide. Betsy Devoss’ Christian adoption and fostering agency Bethany has been accused of taking children from Haiti after the earthquake so quickly that some of the children were no actually orphaned, but separated from their parents, who were then unable to get their children back. It should deeply concern us all that Bethany is one of the agencies that took in some of the children separated at the border due to Trump’s family separation policy. I can almost guarantee that some of these children have been given up for adoption or will be given up for adoption rather than being reunited with parents. There’s also a long history in this country of indigenous children being given to white Christian families to raise as part of the effort to destroy indigenous cultures and replace them with European Christian cultures. I expect the same is true in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
Anyway, I agree with others. Pro-life people are rarely consistently pro-life. If ever. Another thing that they don’t care about, for people who are so obsessed with how precious children are, is that many of the things they buy are made in factories by children under brutal working conditions. I’ve also noticed that financially well off pro-life Christians are not expected by their church to give away most of their wealth to the poor for food and shelter. Some charity, sure. But a truly consistently pro-life Christian should give everything away above and beyond what they need to survive. They don’t. They believe in a capitalist Jesus, despite the Bible, for all its contradictions being pretty consistently clear that Jesus would not have been pro-capitalism. Capitalism directly flies in the face of most of what the Bible teaches, but Christians in capitalist countries seem to not mind that. Even though capitalism is responsible for a shit ton of death and suffering. So there’s also that.
ETA: Aww, thanks Gaebolga!
@weirwoodtreehugger
I seem to recall that god had to breathe life into you, eg. you gotta be born and then start breathing spontaneously. Can’t find a reference to that now, though. Jeremiah 1:5 talks about being formed in the womb.
Exodus 21:22. Its a property crime against the father, who may demand compensation.
Many modern western folk religions, especially the american one, are inspired by christianity but diverge pretty radically from it, because theology is complex and self-sacrifice sucks and I’m sure jesus would have said ‘fuck b*tches, get money’ if he’d thought about it. You could try pointing them to 2 Timothy 4:3-4, but at best you’ll get a response like “The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” and no-one will see the irony.
It’s telling what it is that they’re willing to joke about and where they suddenly drop their ironic jokey pretenses and suddenly get super serious about Western Civilization!
“Top KEK! This Pepe gas chamber meme where the victims are feminists is great! Wait… a woman is glad her aborted kid can’t date me! How… DARE that @&^%#! Such… DEGENERACY!”
See, this is what gets me about these guys; for people so hung-up on all things “Western”… they don’t actually do anything to celebrate the history or cultural practices of nations or societies that are traditionally referred to as belonging to “the West.” Like, I don’t see them ruminating on local history or engaging in an art form like painting, poetry or music. Whenever they do, it’s always farcical claptrap like Ben Garrison cartoons or that Jon MacNaughton guy. On occasion, a Paul Joseph Watson will make a video decrying Miley Cyrus or rap music in favour of what’s traditionally revered as classic artists like Wagner (it’s always Wagner with these people) or Shakespeare (as if PJW reads Henry V in his downtime), but it never goes deeper than that. More often, they’re just indulging in the same corporate brand loyalties that everyone else does.
The Beaverton had an amazingly bang-on satire article headlined “Study: Anglo Canadian culture revealed to just be a series of brand loyalties”
That’s really what it has devolved into with the decline of Protestant congregations and the collapse of the Orange Order in Ontario. There was nothing to fill that gap except raw consumerism. No community or tradition, just go to Tim’s, root for the Leafs, shop at the Bay and reminisce about the Canadian Tire Scrooge Guy. In a sense, that was always the bedrock of the culture, given the influence of the HBC and Eaton’s etc., but in my various travels about Toronto, that’s what I’ve really been looking to find; a sense of neighbourhood identity and history among the disparate sections of town. Because the thing about Toronto is that it started as basically a few square blocks on the shores of Lake Ontario; as it grew, it slowly swallowed up the various rural villages that popped up around it, each of which had established their own identities. North Toronto. Willowdale. Islington. Riverdale. Leslieville. Leaside. Then as immigration brought in other cultures, they started to establish their own neighbourhood identities. The Polish community in Roncesvalles. Little Italy around College Street. Little Portugal along Dundas West. Chinatown at Spadina. A lot of these places have put a lot of effort into preserving their identities, with varying amounts of success. The murals in Islington are incredible. Riverdale’s bridge across the Don has become an icon of the community. Roncesvalles has preserved a lot of its older landmarks like the Revue Cinema along with its Polish festivals.
Do the local Proud Boy contingent (and sadly they do exist) ever actually have anything to do with any of it? Of course not! Because “the West” to these goons is little more than excuse-making for their social license to be belligerent assholes to those they consider “inferior.” You ask me about what’s degenerate, that behaviour is what I consider degenerate, not rap music or women joking on the internet.