By David Futrelle
Evolutionary Psychology is a problematic discipline to begin with, relying heavily on simplistic evolutionary “just-so” stories that for some mysterious reason always seem to reinforce the most reactionary notions about gender and human nature.
But if you add a dollop of incel ideology to the Evo Psych stew, you get something truly horrifying. Over on the Incels.me forum — a reliably repugnant forum popular with some of the world’s worst “involuntary celibates” — one commenter recently tried to use evolutionary biology to explain why rape was not only justified but something close to a sacred duty for all men who want to “advance our species.”
“It is Your Biological Duty to Impregnate Females,” ItheIthe began.
As a male, your evolutionary and biological impulse is to impregnate females and spread your seed. Each and every one of you is responsible for advancing our species. That is what you are here for. If you fail to do so … [y]ou have done nothing to pass on your genes … You are among lowest form of life there is.
Weird, because there are plenty of people who have contributed mightily to human civilization without ever having kids, including Jane Austen, Susan B. Anthony, Beethoven, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Debbie Harry, Haruki Murakami, and, er, Betty White, to name just a few on this giant list I found after literally ten seconds of Googling.
Also, what the fuck does it matter if you “advance our species” or not? Live the best life you can. Try to be decent to other people and nice to pets and other animals. Life is tough enough; don’t burden yourself with weird and grandiose expectations on top of everything else.
However, because the purpose of existing is to pass on our genes and advance your species, the true alpha male is the male who has the most children. He did the most to advance our species.
Donald Trump has five kids (that we know of). Neither he nor any of his terrible children are doing anything to “advance our species.” (Barron might turn out ok; we don’t know yet.) Indeed, there’s a good case that he’s dramatically increased the risk that our species might destroy itself and much of the world with it through nuclear war and/or unchecked global warming. His ignorant recklessness is one of the main reasons the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday clock is now set to the truly scary two minutes to midnight.
Up until this point, ItheIthe has mostly just been wrong. But his argument is about to get very, very ugly as well.
Morals are real, because we need them to function as a unit. However, morals do not apply to females, as they are evil and cold-hearted, as well as good for nothing.
ItheIthe went back on that last bit pretty quickly after he remembered where babies come from. But first:
They are biologically inferior to us, and we, as morally, emotionally, and physically superior, are free to do what we please with them, as we would with any other species we dominate, such as cattle or oxen.
It’s a little hard to take someone’s “science” seriously when he thinks women are somehow a different and inferior species from men.
Since females are only good for reproduction, there is morally nothing wrong with raping a female – as long as you don’t pull out – to ensure you do your biological responsibility and pass on your genes.
Well, that’s horrifying, but at least he remembered the basic facts of reproduction (even if he has forgotten about the existence of trans women and infertile people).
This is not only okay to do, it is your biological responsibility. The only exceptions are: 1. A female in a “relationship” because societies function better without adultery, and 2. Virgin females because they are extra valuable for a “relationship”. All other females are in bounds.
I guess traditionalists can feel grateful he’s remembered that whole “virgin/whore” dichotomy.
Once again, females are biologically inferior to males. Males are good at all the physical labor that is required to uphold infrastructure and housing. Women are not. Men have made virtually all the advances in science and technology. Women have not. Men have many productive hobbies and interests. The only thing women do is try to seduce males.
At this point I’m pretty sure he’s never talked to a woman outside of his family, or cracked a book outside of a math textbook or video game guide.
That is proof that being used for reproduction is their only purpose. In third world countries, especially African ones entrenched in wars, rape happens all the time and no one gives a fuck.
There are people in all countries — rich or poor, peaceful or war-torn — with some pretty fucked-up ideas about rape; hell, our shithead president brags about sexual assault. But there is no society on earth in which “no one gives a fuck.”
Society here only pretends to give a fuck because we pretend to be romantically monogamous. But we’re not, the average female has like 30+ partners lifetime and therefore has romantic value.
I think there must be a word missing at the end. Surely he doesn’t think women have any “romantic value,” whatever that means.
More to the point, the average American woman doesn’t have dozens of sexual partners over her lifetime (not that there’s anything wrong with that). As I pointed out only a month ago in a slightly different context, incels and MGTOWs and other misogynistic douchebags tens to wildly overestimate how many partners women have. In fact, according to the CBC,, the median number of (opposite sex) partners that American women between 25 and 44 had over their lifetimes (as of 2011-2015) was 4.2; men had 6.1.
Virtually everything these guys think they know about female sexuality stems from fantasies rooted in misogyny and their own insecurity.
The only thing it is good for is passing on genes. There’s nothing wrong with the rape of these females.
Referring to a woman as “it” — the cherry pit on top of this incel shit sundae.
I’m not saying I’m going to rape a female, I’m just saying there’s nothing wrong with it, since females are unworthy of us.
Says someone whose biggest accomplishment in life is posting 3,993 messages on Incels.me under a fake name.
I would not only say that rape is acceptable, I’d actually encourage it as your biological and primitive responsibility to rape a female and advance our species, as long as that female fits those brief conditions.
And on this thoroughly reprehensible note, ItheIthe’s wrapped up his latest contribution to the advancement of the human species.
ItheIthe’s argument got a mixed response from his fellow incels. While some commenters hailed it as “high IQ” brilliance, others dismissed it as the “autistic rant” of a cuck with an extremely poor understanding of biology.
“The reason incels exist according to evolutionary biology is simply because they are cucked by Chad due to his outstanding genetics i.e. survival of the fittest according to Darwin,” wrote warriorgenetics, perhaps the harshest critic.
As far as your autistic rant about raping women just LDAR [Lie Down and Rot] bro let your inferior genetics end with you if you can’t out compete Chad in this cuck or be cucked world we live in.
But others found ItheIthe’s post, well, inspiring.
“If rape was legal it would be definitely better for us,” wrote someone called mentalcel.
Currently chad and high status men are using law against to keep their women … Women are far from making rational decisions … their choice of men is not even good for the society.
“Rape isn’t even a big deal,” wrote armis, “they just get upset because it wasn’t Chad or Tyrone doing the raping.”
“What’s the point of dehumanizing the enemy if you don’t want to abuse them?” asked Atavistic Autist.
I think foids can count themselves lucky if all they get from an incel is rape. That is, unless foids would prefer death to having an incel touch them.
While more than a few of the commenters blanched at the idea of rape, some of them still found ItheIthe’s assessment of women persuasive.
Someone called engineerescortceller declared flat out that he didn’t think rape was “good morally” But at the same time he agreed with ItheIthe that “females”
simply care about Chad and not much more. Men on the other hand (maybe because many are born ugly?) want to fulfill themselves in other ways.
Females are the most egocentric and hateful beings on the planet. Their goal is to get Chad, get babies and pass them. If you get in the way of their plans they’ll try to destroy you and they will wish you death.
I believe that’s what the regular psychologists would call “projection.” Hatred and self-loathing are a terrible mix — and the incel movement is an amplifier of both.
He is REALLY trying to convince himself there.
I wonder if that means that incels think that men should start EATING women?
@AuntieMameRedux
Wow re: Robert. Yeah, even “nice” men IME tend to have some really messed up attitudes.
(CN: more everyday misogyny)
e.g. At one of the jobs I had before I started transition, I had a boss who was one of the gentlest, sweetest men I’ve ever encountered. After a life of being abused by angry men, I liked him a great deal, because he kept a positive attitude and tried to solve problems through communication. He almost never assumed bad intent.
And yet, during a meeting, I got to see him defend the practice of paying women less for the same job. It was creepy as hell. Two of the developers present were women, and I could see their faces harden.
That was where my trust in him, both as a person and as a professional, really started breaking.
(And honestly I should have confronted him on it when I could next talk to him privately, but that is water way under the bridge.)
Re: Amanda. I have the feeling that a lot of predatory people are attracted to those who are already survivors; it’s something that’s happened with me several times TBH. It may not all be conscious (“I can protect her/fix her/save her from herself!!!”), but regardless it’s quite creepy and something to be careful of IMO.
calmdown: in a simple model of fitness, half of the population is biologically inferior, because that’s how medians work.
But that’s a garbage model if individuals interact with each other, so it doesn’t even work for bacteria in a petri dish. When individuals interact, the fitness of an individual depends on who’s around. For example, kill all the females and suddenly males don’t pass on their genes.
For the record no one is strong without working for it. In general women aren’t taught how this works, but it works exactly the same as for men: proper training, plenty of food, with enough protein…or a lifestyle that produces the same effects. Consistency in training is a must.
I could go into detail and debunk the most obvious fallacies about women’s strength, but it is almost always interpreted as
victim blaming or some such. Suffice it to say I’m a veteran and am as strong as most men my size(lean 175#, not quite 5’7″).
Be kind to yourself.
Do research.
You can do it.
Good luck.
STOP RIGHT THERE, BUCKWHEAT.
Just because you have an impulse, you are not morally compelled to act on it. I have an impulse to rob a bank; doesn’t mean I should.
The same applies for “imperative”, which is what I think he meant. There are no moral justifications compelling you to act on your sex drive for the greater good of humanity.
“Our” genes? I’m no geneticist, but even I know that the vast majority of human DNA is identical, and only a tiny fraction of it is responsible for individual variations (it’s what incels are always moaning about with the few millimeters of bone business). Within a few generations, “your” genes will be so diluted and mixed in with other people’s genes as to be unrecognizable. In what sense are they “yours”, then? What are you passing on that you own, that has any physical permanence, that’s so precious you simply must force it into a woman or the human species will die out?
I mean, let’s see…this guy is really bad at logic, unable to relate to women, has a bad grasp of reality, is astoundingly selfish and cruel, would be a horrible parent, and is at least a wannabe rapist, if not an actual one. I think the human race would advance much faster without his genes, thank you very much.
But raping random women isn’t destabilizing and dysfunctional to society?
Morals are real, you guys! Therefore we should be allowed to commit crimes!
Thank you @K4tt. I’m trying. <3
While I certainly understand your reasoning on this score – and you absolutely do need to train for the emotional charge that comes with being in a dangerous situation – you don’t need to train for both the emotional stability and the muscle memory simultaneously. And in fact, when learning a new physical skill, it’s often better to start out practicing the motions slowly and precisely rather than going straight into full-speed, full-force training, because it’s easier to learn the motions right when you’re doing them slowly and methodically; once your body knows how to move, you can practice moving more quickly and with more force.
It’s a lot easier to increase your speed with moves your body already knows than to go back and try to unlearn/relearn moves that got mapped wrong.
Just something to think about based on my experience.
@Cyborgette
That is the problem. Men we know, men we like and think are all right – sooner or later reveal some pretty dicey attitudes that all come down to a combination of women are inferior and we own them and we hate them and anything in pursuit of keeping the status quo is all right. I do think that a lot of these attitudes are passed to all of us unconsciously, but I still have no idea what to do about it or even how to think and feel about it. It almost seems like more of a betrayal when you come across this in a man you like and trust like your boss. Because contrary to what the manospherians think, feminists don’t hate men as a general. If women hated men things would be a lot different around here.
It is like that Tiptree story that was recommended here a while back: “we live in ones and twos in the chinks”. This is true not only literally, but psychologically and emotionally.
I agree that people who have already been abused or traumatized give off some kind of signal to predators and that it can be largely unconscious on both parts – not always though. I think some predators know exactly what they are observing. Thank you for responding. The every day misogyny freaks me out worst of all. Because I don’t want to fear the people around me.
Thanks @Gaebolga. I will do that and it makes sense. I will separate the actual skills from the emotional part too.
@kupo
I’m guessing that to somebody who hasn’t actually been the target of that stuff themselves, it comes off as somewhat abstract, rather than ‘Hi, I once hated you and could’ve ended up harming you!”
@AuntiMameRedux
Thank you as well. 🙂
Yes – the betrayal always hurts. And they don’t even seem to realize they’re betraying anyone. Maybe because of that basic failure to understand we’re human. You can’t betray an object, so they’re not betraying us, QED! *cue eyeroll*
And hmm, I don’t remember which story that was, but the quote is very real and feels close to my heart. Thank you for sharing it.
@Buttercup Q. Skullpants:
I believe that something over 99.8% of all DNA is identical across all humans. And to get that nearly 0.2% difference, you have to find two of the most isolated groups of people in the world that haven’t interbred with anybody outside their tribe in centuries, and compare them to each other. You pick two random people, and the DNA differences are almost certainly to be well under 0.1%.
We also share almost 99% of our DNA with bonobos, 96% with chimps, and a quick google search gives that we share 70% of our DNA with zebrafish, and something on the order of 50% with pretty much all multi-cellular life on the planet, including plants. There’s a huge chunk of DNA just associated with what’s required for quasi-reliable DNA reproduction, and everything more complex than a virus is going to have that.
That said, long term everybody ends up either an ancestor of most of the planet, or of nobody. (I attended a talk by PZ Myers back in 2012 which was all about just how heavily chance and luck are involved in evolution. But most people are crap at thinking about probabilities, and many don’t like to think about how much luck is involved in their lives.)
@ auntie mame & gaebolga
Firstly I’m envious of your raccoon access. I have tracked some down here though. Rather counter-intuitively, they live at the Screech Owl Sanctuary.
As for learning self defence techniques; yes, it’s very important to separate getting the technique right; then conditioning yourself to use it in practice.
So initially, slow, low power, exaggerated movements. Build up to speed, full power, economical movements.
Once you can do the technique, repeatedly practice it under stress.
There are various ways of doing this; but a common one is to get people physically exhausted (to replicate the physiological responses to a threat) then do something like random eyes closed attacks, ie have the student stand relaxed with their eyes closed, then suddenly attack them, and repeat.
It’s the latter that’s the hard part. I could take you through the entire Krav syllabus in a long weekend. But it would be more useful to show you one or two fundamental techniques, then get you to you repeat them time and time again until you just react automatically.
@ weatherwax
I too would love to read your book.
BTW @Alan
Finally got around to watching the video. Sadly I knew most of it already by bitter experience, by sight and sound if not by name. I even got to see an extremely pushy “salesman” do several stages of that routine at my apartment door just last week.
Going to note since this was a campus education thing BTW. When I was checking out colleges, I turned down SUNY Stony Brook because of one of their rape prevention practices – they put combo locks on all the women’s bathrooms in the dorms. I was waaay uneducated on feminism at the time, but thought this was a stupid approach that inconvenienced women and treated them like children.
Nobody else I talked to about it understood one iota of where I was coming from. I’ve only gotten confirmation in the last few years that I wasn’t barking at the moon.
Society: “You have to rely on men to protect you… From men!”
Might as well expect a pack of wolves to be your bodyguards.
@ cyborgette
Heh, I love wolves, to the extent if friends want to annoy me they put on “The Grey” and then leave me to rant. You’d probably be quite safe with wolf bodyguards.
Totally get what you mean though. I think very few women won’t be familiar with the scenarios in that lecture from personal experience.
ETA: Gershon btw is in your neck of the woods and teaches the percussive stuff as well as the contextual.
Alan: again, thank you. And mm, noted. This is good. Thank you kindly.
And fair enough re wolves; they deserve better than that comparison.
As pointed out above, the “Evolution = Morality” idea is absurd both from an understanding of evolution and morality. It is just a thin justification for the belief that “You aren’t a real man unless you have lots of sex” Incels are an extreme example, but I there are a lot of guys who feel like they have no human dignity if they can’t get sex. It is irrational and absurd but still extremely common in the USA. Though I’m sure you’ve noticed. Usually when feminists mention “Toxic Masculinity” that is the first thing they are thinking of. Obviously redpill and blackpill take that that to an extreme. Those communities reward people who think up more and more extreme versions of it; but the basic version is present throughout the culture to varying degrees. I just keep finding myself wondering how “Getting Laid = male dignity” became a part of the culture in the first place. Porn? James Bond? Locker room talk?
@Cyborgette:
Here’s a story from Tumblr that you might find inspiring: http://madlori.tumblr.com/post/137895826170/so-i-used-to-be-a-martial-artist#
(Note also that you presumably bring to the table a firsthand knowledge of how outside plumbing can be hurt.)
@Katamount
Now that you mention it, I noticed that even one famous porn star admitted that there’s alot of racism in the industry (Lisa Ann I believe) and I can’t really watch that stuff as much anymore because I keep noticing those stereotypes. So much so that I’m very tempted to agree with TERFs and SWERFs that porn is an inherently harmful thing after all.
Back to Japan, hentai is arguably worse because when I visit some sites I notice that the things people fight about are usually adultery and ugly people depicted in their media, nevermind that for some reason the real “barely legal” stuff is the popularity of underage girls stuff. You question them about it and they come up with the excuse that it’s “all fictional”, and legally they’re right I guess, doesn’t stop me from skipping most of the garbage. Again, just like video games I start wondering if porn does mess with people’s minds after all as many claim.
What’s the common denominator between porn and video games?
Toxic masculinity.
That is where the problem is located.
@Surplus
That reminds me of a video I rewatched about one thing that caused the Gamergate fiasco is that the industry cashes in from the (male) power fantasy that it gives the players, so the same thing could be said of porn I guess.
@Full Metal Ox
Thank you, today has been a rough day and that was fantastic. ?
@Aleph
I get where you’re coming from (oh boy do I) but please don’t agree with TERFs and SWERFs, they are overall thoroughly awful human beings. SWERFs backed SESTA/FOSTA , which has already lead to more sex workers being murdered. And I can vouch especially for TERFs being horrible, what with campaigns to goad trans women to suicide – including against some whom I know personally.
IOW, please don’t joke about this. It is very, very not funny.
@Cyborgette
As the RationalWiki article about them says, I’d have to be a masochistic male to be a TERF ally, and with me being fascinated with extremists in general I once spent hours reading Tumblr and blog posts they make, only to come out with a sense of dread and feeling very sorry for all the sexual minorities the movement goes after, as if their lives weren’t hard enough already. Truly surreal, so thanks for the reminder.
Also my apologies if I came out as offensive or dismissive (I wasn’t trying to joke), that wasn’t my intention at all other than to share what I’ve observed in my years of internet misadventures.
They do not understand zygotes and that the ovum from the female also contains DNA. They believe that sperm are tiny homunculi which are passed on father to son, ie each son is practically a clone of their daddy. That’s what most folk believed in the middle ages. Loads of women got put to death and children murdered if they didn’t resembke their father. It was a sign of assumed infidelity.
I liked @Specialfrog’s take on this:
I am doing my part by being short. 😀
…Back in CEGEP (pre-university college), I took an Intro to Psych class where the prof was a fan of evopsych and spent about 2 classes discussing it.
It was full of gender assumptions and simplistic explanations. For example, when he discussed cheating in relationships, he said that men tended to cheat for “quantity” while women for “quality,” because reproductive strategies. Even to 17-year-old me, it seemed like a simplification of a pretty complex topic.
He also said, in an aside, that he didn’t agree with someone who published a book arguing that rape was a “normal” reproductive strategy (or the like). It wasn’t saying it was good, but… justifiable?? This was by another evopsycher. The prof was all, “No, that view doesn’t make sense… It’s just that some people are violent, so they want to get sex by violence,” which also seemed simplistic and didn’t touch on social forces like militarism and patriarchy.
…I was a bit suspicious of this school of thought already, but the fact that someone would use it to defend rape… ugh. It reminds me of the incel bullshit above.
And otherwise the prof had views that made sense (to me): putting stress on scientific methods, privileging practical things like cognitive therapy, not being a big fan of Freud, etc. But this evopsych crap seemed to be warping his thinking. Frustrating.