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.
A bit too harsh, imho. Because a) people would no longer have a truly free choice about whether or not to donate organs (and for me that falls under bodily autonomy) and b) the people who did agree to donate didn’t actually set any conditions for their recipients. I might agree with it if that were possible, as in you could require that your organs only go to those who’d be willing to donate organs themselves.
I’ve heard (vaguely) that there are possibilities of research that could allow us to “grow” organs someday, which would solve the problem better.
A lot of things are not reciprocal. Most people are not saying for example that you should only benefit from social safety nets if you contributed enough to them (sorry, I wish I had a better comparison). And as it stands now (afaik) organ donation isn’t meant as a reciprocal system by the people agreeing to it, either. If that were different, that would be their right, I guess.
Anyway, I’d really prefer it if we could put a lot more resources into research that would make the discussion obsolete, because then we wouldn’t have to get so uncomfortably close to (unintentionally, I know!) talk about people as if they were “walking spare parts depots” for their fellow people, who are under obligation to allow use and harvesting of parts of their bodies. Personally (!), that tends to make me feel really uncomfortable because I feel…objectified, to be honest. Might just be me, but…yeah, bit of an emotional reaction on my part. And I know, I’d be dead at that point, but still the idea of not having the right to control what happens to my body at some point freaks me out.
Therefore I might not be making sense to you (general you) with this, I don’t know.
Yes, it seems clear the modern “pro-life” movement was a reaction against late 20th-century feminism. I’ve also thought, more speculatively, that it’s also related to the capitalist idea of fulfilling someone/something’s potential. Thus, getting rid of potential people, however not-people-yet they are, would be frowned on. (I don’t know if I’m making sense here or if that’s just my weird imagination.)
@wwth –
I’ve also heard Psalm 139 cited as being “pro-life”; part of it says, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made…” (NIV). But this is a poem and not a policy statement. And of course it doesn’t mention abortion.
Definitely in Canada. The best-known cases here are not straight-up adoptions but “residential schools” for indigenous children. These children were taken far away from their families, not allowed to speak their native languages, and in many cases suffered physical and/or sexual abuse. Some died early due to inadequate food and health care.
Someone more familiar with Canadian history, perhaps Katamount, could give more details. I know there are still a disproportionate number of indigenous kids placed in foster care than others, which seems like a way to continue the cultural genocide without directly repeating the old government policies. Of course there are problems in families, such as violence and alcoholism, that would make kids unsafe staying with parents, but it’s best to see if children can at least stay in the community instead of taking them away. And often these problems were caused or exacerbated by the parents’ and grandparents’ experience in residential schools in the first place.
This is something that upsets me, and not whether incels pretend to be sad about people getting abortions because they won’t get to date their hypothetical daughters, of all things.
It’s funny how these brainless idiots say “hurr durr women can’t understand humor” when people call out their sexist jokes but they become hysterical when they’re the ones being mocked, and for valid reasons! This makes me feel alive. God bless the woman who posted the tweet that ignited all these comical reactions from incels. She’s a hero. :’)
The Bible pretty explicitly does NOT consider fetuses to be people.
Like Pie mentioned, Exodus 21:22 basically says “if two men are fighting and accidentally crash into a pregnant woman, causing her to miscarry but otherwise causing no harm to the woman, they must pay a fine to the husband. However, if the woman dies, the men also must be put to death.”
Therefore fetuses are not considered human life under the “eye for an eye” laws of justice in the old testament.
Okay I don’t know how to do the thing where I take a paragraph from my previous comment and put it here because I’m essentially a Luddite. If someone can explain it to me like they would to a literal five-year-old assuming I know literally nothing for example I can barely copy and paste I can only do it when it specifically prompt me to do so. But I specifically said I’m referring to a specific group of people at my mother’s Church. Not just average people who call themselves pro-life I consider those people anti-abortion not pro-life because as I said there have been studies and poles that show a lot of those people seemingly a majority are pro-death penalty. You can’t be pro-life and pro- death penalty that is literally an oxymoron! I mean what the actual f***? How do their heads not explode from the cognitive dissonance?
This group I’m speaking of, is about 10 women and I think three men and they actually make it a point to consistently tell people who claim to be pro-life that they are actually anti-abortion and not pro-life. I am only specifically referring to these 13 people who go out of their way to make more people and fetuses survive and thrive plus trying to change the minds of the absurd anti-abortion people which to be honest pretty much never works.
Some anti-abortion groups hate true pro-life groups( which I am aware are probably less than 1% of the group which call themselves pro-life) more than pro-choice groups because they consider them to be traitors. I used that one woman as an example because yes she is the most extreme example and to my knowledge a good number like the majority of foster children that she took in did go on to lead reasonably happy adjusted lives. I was acquainted with some of them because they went to the church with her that my mom goes to and they she seemed happy and tidy and educated well fed, you know just properly taken care of.
I think the words pro-life in of themselves trigger a knee-jerk reaction in which I consider completely understandable but I don’t think you truly read my comment clearly or at least you missed a bit or two. I specifically said anyone who claims to be pro-life but does not go out of their way to for example provide proper sex ed and contraception to young adults, adopt and foster children when you can afford it, be totally anti-death penalty and anti-violence(yes these people are for gun control I don’t know why you would assume they aren’t). They also are against juveniles being tried as adults for crimes and all sorts of problems that our justice system has with juveniles. Yes the majority of them maybe even all of them have class privilege but so so do I does that make me a shitty person because I literally have not sold everything I own and given it to poor people? Like are you actually serious?
To be clear I’m answering a few people’s comments here so I know some of this is conflated. I think I deserve some enjoyment in my life like pre-ordering huge fantasy hard covers that are pricey and dried Filipino mangoes and Haagen-Dazs sorbet so because I use those luxuries that makes me less moral in some way? I’m a lapsed Catholic I don’t follow the pope for example but I do believe in some form of God and I believe that Jesus was at least enlightened maybe he wasn’t the actual Son of God I am not sure about that but I lean strongly toward he’s not the literal Son of God.
So since I’m a Christian and I haven’t given away all my worldly Goods that means what? That was honestly the statement that bothered me the most. Is that actually something we should expect anyone to do and if so why? These people are using their wealth and privilege and most of them their retirement to be activists for important at least in my eyes causes and yes I do think that’s admirable and I do think consistency is admirable. I believe if you genuinely think abortion is murder how can you ever think it is okay? I don’t think you should dictate it to anyone else which none of the people I’m referring to do but that is how they feel and they have the right to that opinion.
I’m really confused as to why a few people seemed to think this group is bad in any way. They have helped literally hundreds of people in multiple ways. It really seems to me like people saw the words pro-life and we’re like oh those people are garbage and didn’t fully read what I wrote. Anyway I’m going back to bed I’m sorry if I sounded harsh but I know four of these people personally and all of them by face and I know they are genuinely good people who give up lots of their money and time to help people and want nothing in return. Isn’t that what the ideal of activism is?
And just to make sure this is very clear I am talking about the less than 1% of people who call themselves pro-life and actually are I am not talking about anyone else so please if you are refuting my argument to take that into consideration.
Ayup. This was government policy going back to the original Indian Act of 1876. While the residential school system was in decline by the 1960s, there were other policies in place to remove aboriginal children from their parents (known collectively as the Sixties Scoop, which actually lasted into the 80s), parents who themselves were brought up in residential schools.
For those who want more info on just how bad the residential schools were, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its report a few years ago. The TRC website can be found here.
I’ll link the findings page here as well. It contains several PDF documents containing the whole report broken up in to volumes. I have to give credit to the Commission itself for how diligent they were; the actual report itself is thousands upon thousands of pages long. The executive summary alone is 536 pages. I’d recommend at least reading their calls to action, which are concrete and precise. They’ve set up the roadmap; we just have to follow it.
@KatieKitten420
Matthew 19:21- “Jesus answered, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”
[…]
Matthew 19:24- “Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
I’m not saying that to be a good person you have to sell all your possessions and give ask you have to the poor. But the Bible sure seems to say that.
Main point is that people who demand that other people be forced to live according to the standards of the Bible should maybe “first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye” (Matthew 7:5).
They’re bad because they are advocating for the removal of rights from women. Just because they do good things doesn’t mean they can’t do bad things as well. They don’t cancel each other out. You can’t give money to a charity and then expect people to not be angry at you for kicking a dog.
If you’re saying that these women work to uphold ideals of protecting life WITHOUT demanding the compromise of the bodily autonomy of women, then you shouldn’t label them pro-life.
Like how you shouldn’t say that you know a bunch of nazis who are really great people, and then later clarify that you didn’t mean Nazi-nazis, but that Nazi was a contraction for “national socialist” and you’re talking about people who are just socialists. The names of movements mean specific things and if you don’t want to be associated with those things then don’t use that label.
I am happy that we don’t have the debate about abortian here that much. We have the law (which allows it, not completly easy there is a meating that is mandatory before, but it is allowed) and it is not really under presure from any party.
What is very interesting is what is happening in that moment here in german. There is one party, which is using an anti-churchplatform for the next election (only the Baverian one) and this is the ultraright AFD. (To be fair to our churches, they aren’t pro-AFD) Okay our very embarising CSU (they have the christian in the name, so an anti-churchplatform would be very confusing) did probably not win many votes wich their pro-churchideas. So the fair right will use the faith and than go against it, when usful. (Pence is perhaps an execption)
At the whole I think the whole pro-liferetoric is a scam. Sure, the argument about that the child growing in the womb is allready alive is one and I don’t know how much hurt this takes. But prohibiting abortion will not save many lives, it will drive those, who want an abortion underground, and will cost more women their life.
People who are really pro-life will not murder doctors or want an abortion to be illegal but work towards giving future mothers a reason to give birth, help them, show them alternatives… That is really pro-life.
@KatieKitten420
I’m happy to give lessons, but it varies by device. What are you using when you comment? A phone, tablet, or computer? Which brand?
I don’t expect all Christians to do that. But I do think if someone is going to use their religion as their excuse for taking away the right of people with a uterus to bodily autonomy, then they better well be following that religion to the letter of the law, or they are giant hypocrites.
Why should I have to follow their religious laws, even though I am an atheist living in what is supposed to be a secular democracy, but they shouldn’t have to follow every rule in their holy book? Of course you can’t follow ever rule in the Bible, as there are contradictions and it would be pretty much impossible. But that’s why holy books should not be the basis of government laws, isn’t it?
If people who us religion to argue that abortion is immoral just stuck to not getting abortions themselves, fine with me. But they’re not. They are trying to impose it on my body, and sorry, not sorry, I’m not going to play nice when fighting against that.
It’s interesting how that works in their heads, isn’t it? It’s part of why the phrase itself is so empty; I mean, who isn’t “pro-life” save for literal mass murderers? Practically everybody is in favour of life as a concept.
But what these people have done is compartmentalized the fetus and set it aside as “pure potential”. It hasn’t taken a poor action. It hasn’t demonstrated its deficiencies. It hasn’t rebelled against God or parent or clergy. Because it literally hasn’t done anything at all.
In short, there’s no question of its “innocence.”
But the second it becomes its own independent being, then that pure potential becomes expectation. Babies cry. Toddlers make messes. Schoolkids misbehave, act out, use the swears, disappoint people, etc. Their “innocence” is less certain as time goes on. It’s easy to demand they pull up their bootstraps because everyone can imagine a bratty kid they’ve known. It’s easy to imagine an irresponsible parent too and heap all the blame upon their shoulders. And heaven help them if they grow up to become abortion doctors.
None of this is taken out of a humanistic concern. It’s all political gamesmanship, as Republican hypocrisy regarding abortions for mistresses lay bare. It’s about control. About “punishing” women who are sexually active with children they cannot afford to raise on their own.
@ alaniel
Those are good points. I think where organ donation differs from, say, contributory benefits, is that everyone does have the means to ‘pay’.
I’d also base it on willingness to contribute. You wouldn’t be excluded if you couldn’t donate through a pre-existing condition or something.
On the consistent pro-lifers I’ll say this: if they were truly consistent they would apply that concern to the life of the mother. It’s not at all rare, uncommon, or an outlier for a pregnant person’s health to be at risk as the result of a pregnancy, and the discretion for how to handle these cases should be solely between the pregnant person and their health care provider. To be anti-abortion is to be pro-death for those whose lives are put at risk by pregnancy.
“Pro-lifers” lost any and every right to engage in any debate whatsoever the minute they started locking children in cages and ripping them away from their mothers’ arm to put them in concentration camps.
Not that they had any legitimate reason to control other people’s body before, but they entirely lost any credence to their position and the right to so much as speak of it, the minute they went full Nazi against POC.
These people don’t need or deserve to be heard, they need to be defeated. Any engagement in this topic should never be aimed at entertaining their thoughts but for the express purpose of making sure they don’t spread their filth, propaganda and lies to future generations.
@Sheila Crosby:
This so much. The fact that spontaneous abortions happen all the time should be considered our biggest health problem, outweighing stuff like cancer by far, because at least the majority people who get cancer are old and have lived a relatively long life already. But spontaneous abortions are so common that at least 20 % of all pregnancies end that way (the real number is probably higher, since likely a lot of women miscarry super early in the pregnancy without ever knowing they were pregnant). If we count embryos as babies, that’s one out of five poor little children have life cut away from them before it even begins! So much money should be raised trying to stop this!
And yeah you could try to get away from this by saying that “I’m not actually pro life and I don’t actually care about saving all the unborn babies, all I care about is stopping abortions. I’m not pro life, I’m just anti abortion”. But then, how could you even pretend to be motivated by anything other than a hatred of “loose” women?
@Alan: I’m inclined to agree with you, I can’t see any principal reason not to make organ donation reciprocal, unless, as you said, you cannot donate for some reason. Deciding for no reason that you’re gonna keep your organs after you die just because is completely different from, say, not having had much of an income and therefore not having contributed to the welfare system, where there are normally all kinds of reasons as to why you didn’t.
It also doesn’t seem to occur to US pro-lifers that overturning Roe v. Wade would actually open the door for states or the federal government to pass other laws that violate bodily autonomy, privacy, and medical consent. Like, say forced sterilization and hey, forced abortions. Or forced organ and blood donations. Or experimentation without informed consent.
No matter how right wing the courts get, they still can’t overturn abortion legality on the Bible, thanks to the 1st amendment. They need to find some other justification. That justification would likely be that people do not have the right to privately make medical decisions about their own bodies.
You can argue that states won’t go beyond just outlawing abortion. But that would be foolish. We already have a history of eugenics programs and forced institutionalizations and non-consensual experiments.
Isn’t it more likely that they’ll justify it by declaring fetuses to be persons with rights? And carry on with you don’t have a right to make specific medical decisions that kill other persons? (As is obvious from the rest of the thread I’m staunchly pro choice, but I don’t see why pro-lifers would have a slippery slope problem towards no bodily autonomy for anyone.)
This seems to be the incels favourite word for women that isn’t consider a swear or curse. The only time I went on reddit incel the word degenerate was definitely a favourite. I told them I hoped that in a few years they will be thoroughly embarrassed by their attacks on women and was immediately blocked.
Silly me – I thought that keeping it civil and not hogging the thread would protect me from that.
Kupo: Abortion to save the life of the mother should be really black and white. On the one hand you can save 1 life on the other you let mother and fotus die, this is a nobrainer. (It gets a bit more dificult, if you truly can save either the life of the mother or the child, that is a nightmare)
Re spontainous abortians: Can you really do something against miscariages? I have to ask because it would have really helped in my family. (on the other hand, I would have then probably never have been born) I always thought they are a risk that can’t be eliminated.
About the others I was never more happy about how stabile our highest court is.
About the cristian debete, one quote is missing: “Who is without sin, should cast the first stone.” (not knowing were it stands at the moment)
Context for that (because not here, but often religious people don’t see the context for the quote and context is important) Jesus was asked what to do about a adultress, whom the people wanted to stone. He said that and everyone went slowly away.
So the bible is very clear on judging others, don’t do it.
Btw, I find it interesting that Jesus for his time, was very pro-underpreviliged people, rightwings would totaly call him a SJW (sorry for using that rubish term) today.
@ Weirwoodtreehugger: Adding: I get that you’re saying that they can’t base it on the Bible (which wouldn’t work anyway as stated earlier in the thread, since Old Testament law is pretty explicit in seeing fetuses as less than humans, and the New Testament doesn’t deal with abortion, but anyway). But why would they have to appeal to the Bible? Why couldn’t they declare fetuses persons anyway?
That’s the case now, but we haven’t poured an absolute shitload of research money into preventing spontaneous miscarriages, and unless we start to (and keep doing so for a long time), we can hardly know that it’s a law of nature that absolutely nothing can be done about them.
There are lots of medical issues that nothing could be done about in the past.
@WWTH
Well, from a legal standpoint allow me to say that republicans have been doing the equivalent of throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.
I would not advise you to look for the legal ramifications or basis for what the Right is currently doing. Anybody with the slightest bit of knowledge in Constitutional law would vomit at the rulings put out by the deceased Scalia or Thomas.
As far as the legal basis for Republican policy in the last 30 years goes, none of it is sound, most of it is contradictory and almost all of it will be interpreted in whichever way it favors them, regardless of how reckless that interpretation might be.
As an attorney I’ve already given up trying to look for the “logic” in their legal arguments. There is none. They are behaving like toddlers.
Since the nineties they’ve only aimed for one thing and one thing only: consolidating power no matter how many institutions they throw under the bus.
For some causes, yes. For example, if the mother is negative blood type and the baby is positive, there is a higher risk of miscarriage, but this can be mitigated with treatment, which people without good health insurance don’t have the option to do. So if we work towards better health care those people at risk could get the needed treatments. (But pro life people are typically against government spending on health care, which is another tell that life is not the thing they’re protecting.)
A pregnancy is not a person.
Abortion and adoption aren’t equivalent issues because a pregnancy is not a person.
The UN has declared adoption to be a form of genocide.
Women don’t freely choose adoption, even when their pregnancy began as unplanned, unwanted, crisis, pick your terms because a PREGNANCY is NOT A PERSON! No matter how effective the propaganda has been about all of this being a ‘choice’ it is not now and hasn’t been historically. Nobody wants to have a baby to give it away to someone else. Going through the physical and psychological process of pregnancy changes things – giving birth is one of those Rubicon moments in life. The woman never goes back to being a person who hasn’t given birth and isn’t a mother. There is also scads of adoption trafficking industry writing about just how to psychologically torture and coerce a pregnant woman and new mother into making this “choice”.
Not wanting to be pregnant and wanting to “give away” the son or daughter, the PERSON that results from the pregnancy is not equivalent.
Forced pregnancy and forced adoption are inherently anti-woman, anti-child, anti-human and anti-feminist.
Fostercare is a tool of the state to control and abuse the poor and their children. This is also inhuman and anti-feminist.
Adoption as we know it is a product of the twentieth century, not something that has gone on for aeons as most people think. Adoption as we know it post WWII seems to be based on a Nazi eugenics program called Lebensborn.
Now read about the way that international adoption was marketed when the supply of healthy white infants available for adoption trafficking dried up. I can actually pull a quote of an industry paper where they talk about how to market brown babies to the racist west.
But, but, what about the mean, mean mommies who are abusing their kids? I am not denying the reality of child abuse, it is a widespread and pervasive problem, but the foster care system is a TOOL OF THE STATE to CONTROL AND ABUSE the POOR, especially the BLACK AND BROWN POOR. Note that Fostercare doesn’t apply to the white middle and upper class.
ALL of this is about control and abuse of groups that as a society we feel we have the right to CONTROL and ABUSE: women, children, the poor, the black and the brown and bonus points when these categories overlap. So, let’s say it again.
A pregnancy is not a person.
Adoption and abortion are not equivalencies and one is not a “solution” to the other.
Infant and International Adoption is Human Trafficking and a form of Sex Slavery. A lot of unregulated and untracked money is being made in these areas. And finally:
Fostercare is a means of punishing and controlling the poor, especially the black and brown poor.
Application of these actual facts to the usual arguments renders most if not all of them entirely moot and highlights where our actual problems are.