By David Futrelle
Today, someone posted a picture of the world’s oldest wombat to the Braincels subreddit under the headline “It’s over for wombatcels.” Because, you see, the world’s oldest wombat also happens to be a virgin, making him also the world’s oldest wombat incel.
While most of the commenters made jokes, one fellow was strangely heartened by Patrick the Wombat’s inability to score.
![DFWAggie 15 points 5 hours ago I'm not sure if this is cope, but I honestly enjoy knowing that many animals die virgins. Strange, but it gives me a sense of inner peace. permalinkembedsavereportgive goldreply [–]Nightstalkerr_ 11 points 4 hours ago Nah bro their brains are wired differently they don’t need sex, and it’s not as important as it is to humans. So yeah this is cope bro](https://i0.wp.com/www.wehuntedthemammoth.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/cf7r8tf9yg708h-9.png?resize=508%2C545&ssl=1)
“Cope,” by the way, is how so-called incels describe strategies they come up with to, well, cope with their bitterness about their ongoing celibacy; incels, being the perversely miserable sorts that they are, look down their noses at it, preferring instead to wallow in their own largely self-made misery.
But you know what, DFWAggie? Taking comfort from a wombat’s virginity might be a little weird, but hey, if it helps to cut through the bitterness and to remind you that unwanted celibacy, while unfortunate, isn’t actually the end of the world, go ahead and indulge this particular cope all you want. “Cope” is good.
Radically off-topic, Slate takes a trip down Misandry Memory Lane to report on the Greatest Upset in Quiz Show History…
… no, really!!
The central idea of Maslow’s Hierarchy is that people pursue more fundamental desires first. You don’t strongly worry about being in danger if you’re starving, you don’t strongly worry about love if you’re in danger, you don’t strongly worry about self-improvement if you’re unloved, etc, etc.
There is so much to criticize in there. Like, ignore for the moment that it’s wrong on its face – that a starving person’s deepest concern might in fact be their loneliness. Nevermind that. He placed spirituality and benefit-to-society at the top of his pyramid – Self-Actualization. According to Maslow, the poor, lovelorn, anxious, or doubtful person can’t effect meaningful change in the world. Stupid and arrogant.
Just the methodology of how Maslow did his studies was ridiculous. The guy apparently focused on the healthiest and most exceptional people in his studies – like, literal celebrity achievers. Dude wrote “the study of crippled, stunted, immature, and unhealthy specimens can yield only a cripple psychology and a cripple philosophy”. Called the top-achiever people the master race.
It’s wrong from top to bottom, and it’s built on an arrogant, wealth-makes-right, fundamentally bigoted framework. Maslow’s trash.
Dang! I didn’t know Wombats got that big!!
Is that the Wombat Overlord?
@Scildfreja
Holy shit I didn’t know that. He sounds like an actual Nazi. O_o
I would say human touch is a need, at least up until a certain point of human development. What springs to mind are several examples of children being neglected in orphanages suffering from long time psychological disorders. Obviously there’s more to it than physical contact being withheld from them, such as physical, emotional, and mental abuse, but children who have no physical contact as babies and children have been shown to have lasting negative effects from it. So they aren’t dying without it, but they’re being permanently scarred from it.
Speaking as someone who doesn’t like to be touched though, I don’t think human touch is as much of a need past a certain age. Though I love to hug my animals, so the need to touch stuff is still there. I just don’t need to touch people. Human connection is probably a secondary need though, since loneliness is killing us. No one is going to die from loneliness like they would starvation, but it can lead to some bleak health outcomes.
Unlike loneliness, there is not a wide epidemic of people killing themselves and dying early because they never boned (to my knowledge). Humans desire for social connection is much stronger, I think, than sexual desire, whether it comes from romantic relationships, friends, families, or pets. It’s why incels are all so miserable– they have all this sexual desire and yet no worthwhile social connections, so they only see the value in the former and none in the latter. When it is the latter that would probably make them happier.
@TB Tabby
If I wanted to keep people absolutely reliant on my group’s approval, plus constantly agitated and miserable, so they’d be more likely to, for instance, commit crimes that suit the group’s agenda… well, that’s pretty much exactly how I’d do it.
Incidentally, the “crabs in a bucket” metaphor… it’s strange, isn’t it? Presumably real crabs aren’t actually maliciously trying to sabotage each other. If their described behaviour does actually take place, I’m assuming they’re trying to climb over each other to escape the bucket – using whichever crab’s nearest the top as a ladder, so to speak. So it’s less tall poppy syndrome, and more a bunch of hangers-on gravitating to whoever’s doing well at a given moment, accidentally causing them to fail.
I can give you babies’ need for contact, plus wombats! Here is George the wombat, who is happily still alive and thriving after being rescued. He’s now in the wild, but when he was being cared for, he adored his human parent, as you can see here.
My friend discovered she had a wombat living in her garden when it rushed her one day and headbutted her. They are seriously strong!
@Wannabikkit, just hailing you to say I love your username. “wannabikkit” is right up there in my favourites, along with “glubs”. Never fails to make me smile 🙂
@ mish
Hand to hand wombat.
@Alan
You get an onion for that.
Also re touch and loneliness. I’ve seen stuff decrying “PC culture” for making it harder to get the contact, and I hate that idea, because I was massively touch starved for most of my life *because of patriarchy and violent male culture*.
Even people who love and need touch may not WANT to be touched, or may not seek it out, because of trauma. Or because it’s linked to sex that they don’t want, because they’re scared that they’d be creepy or hurtful, because asking men would be seen as gay or asking women as lesbian… Because people who want to touch you in this society so often mean you ill.
A society that did not have such high rates of trauma and abuse would also have much, much less touch starvation. Because people who needed and wanted touch would not have to be afraid to ask.
I think that positive, wanted touch is… Well, if it’s not strictly a need, it’s definitely something that is a healthy, beneficial thing for a large number of people, sort of like exercise. And it’s shitty that our culture has lumped almost all forms of physical affection solely into the realm of romantic/sexual relationships. It’s ESPECIALLY shitty because it translates all of our awful, rape-culturey expectations into all forms of physical affection.
Personally, I know I’d do a HELL of a lot more cuddling with people, if it weren’t generally assumed that prolonged bodily contact comes automatically bundled with sex.
omg Alan that was inspired
Back in the day, one Australian gaming magazine industriously propagated the rumour that there was in development an Australian fighting game called Mortal Wombat.
Seconding, thirding, fourthing and n’thing the proposal that the vast majority of humans would be happier and better off if it weren’t generally assumed that prolonged bodily contact comes automatically bundled with sex as Catalpa points out.
Not everybody wants this, obviously, and people vary enormously, but I bet the desire/maybe need for physical affection outweighs that for sex for most of us social-species human animals, most of the time (v infants, rugby teams, families, other great apes, many other social animals …)
“hugs give dolphins” (aka endorphins, one of those silly in-jokes from when the kids were little, and who doesn’t like dolphins anyway)
Since TEH AMINAL SEXXY was mentioned:
http://humoncomics.com/archive/animal-lives
Yes, animal sex can get very weird…
@Cubist
Sorry, Isabella Rosselini got there wayyyy before:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2C28D7E7EF0004BB
I highly recommend the whole film (titled Green Porno), because the get-ups alone are amusing enough to keep you watching.
As for the idea of close contact being so necessary… I dunno, I’m kinda zealous about my personal space. Prolonged closeness actually gets kinda awkward in my experience.
@Virgin Mary
Ummm, could you specify what exactly you mean when you say that had you been born male you probs wouldn’t be asexual? Because the way you put it makes it kinda sound like you were put off the idea of (straight) sex because you saw it as domination play, but I don’t think that’s quite what being ace is…
@Valkyrine
Ehhh, I dunno. I mean, I’m ace because I’ve just never wanted sex, but I’m no big fan of gatekeeping sexual identities.
Personally, I think that if there are people who are sex-repulsed because of trauma or anxiety about the fucked-up dynamics surrounding sex, then they can identify as asexual too, if they want. Asexuality is just a lack of sexual attraction, imo. It doesn’t need to be a lack of sexual attraction that is entirely innate and has no other reason. Our experiences shape who we are as people. I’ve had enough “But are you sure you’re reaaaally asexual?” thoughts myself that I’m not going to try to force those little bastards on others.
Of course, it’s also possible that Virgin Mary meant that he wouldn’t have realized he was asexual because of the socialization pushing him into thinking that, as a man, he NEEDED to have sex.
This came to mind while laughing at the headline… Is a female wombat called a womanbat, or batwoman?
@Catalpa
Yes, I really don’t personally like gatekeeping either. The “am I really ace” thing is something I have been struggling with too, and it’s likely to get stronger now too, since I apparently haven’t been able to mature enough to form my identity/personality to even have an understanding on my sexuality.
I’m just a bit concerned that saying it gives ammo to idiots like my brother to dismiss asexuality as “not real” or as some kind of “condition”. 🙁
Eh, the people who pathologize asexuality will always do so, it doesn’t matter if the asexual community is formed 100% of totally pure, always-knew-it, born-this-way asexuals who never had sex or masturbated. There will still be fuckers who assume that it’s not “real” and actually just some kind of health condition.
I’d rather have an inclusive, welcoming community than one dedicated to trying to please people who will always hate us.
For clarity, I have no problem with masterbation, but penatrative intercourse always seemed wrong to me as I have the wrong bits. I love cuddling, I would love to be able to do that all day long without fear of it getting out of hand.
I tried to get into sex, I told myself so many times, oh, this us something people enjoy, you won’t know unless you try… But I don’t really want to eat snails either tbh.
The women in my family were socialised to believe that sex is not meant for your own pleasure, but to appease someone else, like your tired stressed out husband when he comes home from work and needs to relax, all he needs is a hot meal and some nookie and you get a peaceful life and a roof over your head. That isn’t even a turn on, that’s seen as duty, lay back and think of England!!!
As I male I would have been socialised to see sex differently and wouldn’t have been so turned off by it.
@Podkayne
Right? They look so confused. They do the bite on the back of the neck and the mounting and then get this look, like hey, wait a minute, something else is supposed to be happening here. I know that spaying and neutering is a good thing. I especially know this as an unofficial rescuer of cats, but in these instances, I do feel a bit rueful.
Why would anyone doubt the existence of asexuality? I only read about it as a stated philosophy a couple of years ago, but it made complete sense to me and I thought of people I’d known over the course of my life to whom it clearly applied. What would be the skin off of anyone’s nose?
Because “sex is a basic human need” (a sentiment which has already been defended on this very thread), and “everyone has a sex drive, because evolution/biology/etc!” and “you just need to give it a tryyyyy!”
I suspect that part of the sentiment may stem from the fact that sex is considered to be something “dirty” in our culture, and if asexuals say that they don’t want it, other people hear “I’m better than you, you filthy sex-wanting animal”, and defensively respond to that sentiment with “all humans want sex, you’re just lying or you’re not really human!”.