Incel demands that depressed women “stop appropriating male culture” because women can’t really be depressed

By David Futrelle

Incels insist that no one else can understand their particular brand of loneliness and misery — and that goes double for women. Indeed, they insist, women can’t be “involuntarily celibate” like them because, unlike true incels, women can always find themselves a Chad (or at least some beta cuck) to have sex with.

And because of this, many incels go on to argue, women can’t really suffer from depression either. When women claim to be depressed, they’re just doing it for attention, or as a way to add some drama to their lives.

In a recent post on the Braincels subreddit, a fellow calling himself NoobSoyboy set forth what he sees as the crucial differences between male (real) and female (fake) depression. He started with the ladies:

Female depression teehee: – My boyfriend is not texting back after 5 min – Chad doesn’t want to fuck me – I wasn’t invited at that party – Listening to sad songs – All my friends are busy – Posting on Tumblr – Cutting herself for attention whoring – Eating Ice Cream – Everyone checks out on you and supports you

“Teehee.”

On to the men:

Male depression: – Spend years rotting
– Has never felt intimate human touch – No girlfriend – No friends – Insomnia – Suicidal and homicidal – Alcohol, drugs – PTSD and chased by demons – Nobody gives a fuck and you’re told to fix yourself if you seek help, no support at all

Never mind all those people who have tried over the years to offer incels help, only to have their reasonable suggestions rejected outright.

I wish those roastie would stop making depression look like a fucking joke, females can’t be depressed , stop appropriating male culture you fucking whores.

Yep, in his mind depression belongs to men and men alone. In the past, we’ve seen assorted groups of angry dudes declare all sorts of things — from video gaming to Ghostbuster movies — to be sacred male spaces that women should not be allowed to “invade.” But I don’t think I’ve ever seen any of these angry dudes stake a claim to a mental illness.

Depression, I need hardly remind you, is actually far more likely to strike women than men. According to the Mayo clinic, women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression than men and far more likely to try to commit suicide. (Men succeed at suicide more often because they are far more likely to use more lethal methods.)

One reason that men are so much less likely to be diagnosed with depression is that they’re less willing to seek help for it; they’ve been taught to hide their sadness because showing this sort of “weakness” is seen as unmanly.

But that’s not the whole story. Cis women deal with a host of biological and social factors that cis men don’t face. Cis men don’t suffer from the extreme form of PMS called premenstrual dysphoric disorder, a form of depression; they don’t suffer postpartum depression.  (Trans folks of all genders, I should note, are many times more likely to suffer depression than their cis counterparts, mostly because of the bigotry and abuse they face on a regular basis; roughly 40 percent attempt suicide.)

I’ve been dealing with chronic (and sometimes quite severe) depression for decades, and I’ve known numerous others — both male and female — who have also suffered from this debilitating disease. From my own personal experience — as someone who has suffered it and who has watched others suffer from it — I know that depression is every bit as real for women as it is for men.

In the discussion spawned by NoobSoyboy’s absurd post, several women offered similar rebuttals to his, er, theory — describing in detail their own struggles with severe depression and anxiety. But most of the Braincels regulars weren’t much interested; even acknowledging the basic fact that women can suffer depression like men is too much for them, as it undercuts their contention that incels are the most pitiable creatures on the planet.

Commenter after commenter echoed NoobSoybot’s delusional “argument.” As one put it:

Women have no idea how it’s like to be depressed.

Female Depression: “I’m doing bad in school and I didn’t get invited to that party, it’s okay I’m calling my boyfriend and my 3 best friends over to try to comfort me”.

They equate basic sadness to depression. Honestly nothing works out for me so getting bad grades for something I studied for and not getting invited to something is just a normal day.

Their depression is my everyday existence.

Another commenter attacked one of the women who posted about her depression.

I wouldn’t be depressed if I could easily have sex with those of the opposite gender despite being ugly and low value just because of my genitalia. If I woke up a foid tomorrow, I would he able to easily cure my ailments and quickly. Women being depressed is hilarious. You have so much advantages over men and yet you still bitch. …

Fuck me you women seriously cannot put yourselves in our shoes. You won’t ever admit that you have it easy compared to us.

The comment with the most upvotes? A wall of text by someone called tallchad devoted to the proposition that “females just don’t understand what the general feeling of depression is really like,” especially for

males who struggle romantically, like when you try and explain to them what’s the matter for instance they simply cannot fathom what its like to experience such an awful feeling.

Never mind that several women in that very discussion made abundantly clear that they understand depression all too well.

It’s completely alien to them, they haven’t felt anything like it, and why would they? Their lives are literally scripted out for them like something out of the truman show, the female will experience way much more that the average male may never get to experience, just because of the privilege of being born female (you don’t even need to be an attractive female anymore).

Not only is none of this true, but even if it were true it wouldn’t leave women immune to depression. Having your life “scripted out … like something out of the truman show” actually sounds like a nightmare; indeed, the plot of The Truman Show revolved around Truman’s horrific discovery that he’d been imprisoned from birth in a fake, scripted world — and his attempt to escape it.

More to the point, though, depression can strike anyone, regardless of how perfect their life seems. Yes, depression affects poor people more than rich — because they tend to have more stresses and fewer resources — but hot young heiresses can be as miserable as any incel, because depression is a disease. Chads and Staceys can get cancer, too.

The female experiences everything, from … males way out of their league all the way to having a nice house and having a betabux provider that buys them the new shoes she wants whilst she stays at home or works a comfortable office job.

Incels live in a fantasy land. It’s not possible for most mothers to stay at home to raise the kids any more; they’re far more likely to run themselves ragged working and doing the bulk of the childcare (if they’re not raising the kids on their own). Many of these women work on their feet all day; women make up the vast majority of nurses and health aides.

Meanwhile your average male has failed at every hurdle, all the support is on women because of the gyrocentric nature of society, and frankly, he feels like he’s been left behind, then for the next 50-60 years he’s working a low wage job being barked orders by sociopaths … . 

This just in: all men have shitty jobs; no women ever have shitty jobs.

What does the most damage is that [men] can’t find a life long partner, this is what hypergamy has done, the average male’s looksmatch equivalent has had so much positive reinforcement growing up that she thinks nothing can stop her from marrying someone way above her looks level, she ends up in a perpetual cycle, getting pumped and dumped by chad because he doesn’t want to commit (and why would he lol) then onto the next one, then onto the next, etc. etc. until she hits the wall and has to settle for a betabux provider.

None of this is true. According to one recent survey, the median number of lifetime opposite-sex sex partners for straight men between the ages of 25-44 was 6.1; for their female counterparts it was 4.2. (I’m guessing the difference between those two numbers has to do with the tendency of men to exaggerate and women to downplay their sexual activity, and also due to the small percentage of the female population that engages in sex work.) The “cock carousel” is a myth.

So the average male is left with limited options, he can either rope or keep coping and trying until he’s cold, dead, rotting away and underneath the ground, but to do this he must continue working 60 hour weeks, and these weeks continue to grind him down… effectively like a huge axe cutting away his mental state, he gets left utterly devastated by years of emotional neglect, his goodness being sucked out of him, he sees no goodness in the world anymore. It just keeps getting worse and worse, until the rope finally looks more appealing.

This is what the world looks like to someone who is seriously depressed. It’s not reality. Depression distorts your thinking; incel ideology compounds this distortion, making depression worse. Incel ideology functions much like a disease, harming everyone who takes it seriously. If you’re a young man dealing with depression, incel sites are the absolute worst places in the world to seek help.