By David Futrelle
Well, here’s a new one, courtesy of some dude posting on the incel forum Truecels.org.
It’s amazing that something so brief can be so wrong in so many different ways. I don’t even know where to begin with this one, so I won’t.
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@Voxpoptart
This is going to sound harsher than I mean it, but I don’t remember “incel” ever being a positive (or neutral) term though.
Yes. Humans are social animals and of course it’s perfectly natural to feel depressed, frustrated, or even aggrieved when lonely or otherwise lacking wanted intimacy.
Incels should remember that when they get described as “entitled” it’s not because they’re lonely, sad, or even mad. They get called entitled because they are toxic or otherwise not good for a girl and they don’t care. That “screw you and what you need, I DESERVE it” attitude is their problem- not their hurt, not their negative feelings.
[OT note: damn I still suck at gravitar].
Hey, whoa. Not every guy who’s never had a partner and is depressed about it would be a bad boyfriend. My own girlfriend (who’s 32) has flat-out said that her 26-year-old self would happily have taken K. home for a ride, and she tried to fix him up with an age-appropriate friend of hers (who looked at a photo and said “I don’t want no skinny white guy”). He’s a decent friend to multiple women; he’d be a fine boyfriend. He hasn’t had the right combo of luck and self-presentation and self-awareness.
That happens to many people of all genders and orientations. It happened to me, and when I did get my first girlfriend I was alright — very much a fixer-upper, but a kind and funny one who was usually willing to be taught stuff. We’re still friends.
Again, to stay clear, K doesn’t hang out at incel forums. He just takes the word’s original (female-coined) definition literally, and feels it fits him. I’m working with him on that, and have shown him WHTM, but I don’t think his literalism is weird or inexplicable.
^This is what would make your friend a bad boyfriend.
Personally, I would be EXTREMELY leery of dating anyone who identified as an incel, even in the “no really I have no idea about the connotations of the word or the mass murderers or the celebrations of rape and murder that incels engage in, I’m just really sad about being a virgin” sense.
Not because I think that someone who is a virgin would automatically be a bad boyfriend. But because someone who considers said virginity to be a horrible injustice inflicted upon them to the point that it affects their very identity, is likely to consider any girlfriend of theirs to be a means to an end, something that will cure them of their undeserved affliction, and not as an individual person in her own right.
And I think that coming onto a thread that features an incel complaining that not enough women get forced into sexual slavery and deciding to whine about how it’s not faaaaair to the poor poor men who DON’T consider women chattel, no really, they just like the term incel for 100% innocent reasons, really illustrates the kinds of priorities that you hold.
So, this is OT re the term incel, but it’s definitely a feminist issue:
I just read this interview with Dolph Lundgren on account of him reprising his role as evil Russian boxer Ivan Drago for the latest Rocky/Creed movie, and also being in Aquaman.
A number of years ago, Lundgren revealed in a radio show that his dad used to beat him when he was a kid, in particular if he didn’t ace every single test in school, since his dad had his entire career layed out for him (so that’s basically the background to him having straight A:s throughout school, going to MIT on a scholarship, only to drop out after a year and go into action movies instead). He hadn’t said anything while his dad was still alive, but went public about his childhood after his dad died.
In this recent interview he talked a bit more about how he went to therapy for the first time a few years ago, because his new girlfriend talked him into it. And he’s had this problem his entire adult life that he’d sometimes get panic attacks in the middle of the night, thinking that he was about to get beaten. The therapist told him that’s because he’s had PTSD his whole life from the abuse he suffered as a kid. So he talked in the interview about how it’s great that there’s more and more focus on violence against women, but we should also pay more attention to male victims of violence, and how you can need help, therapy, support etc even if you’re a man, being a man doesn’t mean you have to bottle it all up.
Like, this is a serious men’s issue. But all those manospherians David quotes, it’s not just that they don’t care about these issues, they actively work to make things worse with their contempt for weakness! Every man who’s somehow perceived weak is a pathetic “cuck”.
@Alan Robertshaw on 1933 Hipster cafe in Germany
Amusing, but to be pedantic, anachronistic. As Wikipedia says:
The Nuremberg rallies were held from 1923 to 1938. 1933 is the date Hitler came to power. Anyone in Europe, let alone Germany, who didn’t know what “national socialism” was in 1933 was presumably a hermit!
@Voxpoptart
Not at all. But as I said, “entitlement” isn’t about being depressed about not having a partner. It’s only human to feel depressed, or even mad. As you said it happens to people of all genders and orientations. People only get called entitled when they stop caring about how they are effecting other people and start DEMANDING things with no regard to the other person’s needs or wishes.
As to K, keep in mind that we don’t know him personally.
@Voxpoptart @heebee
You don’t need to point out that some men who find it difficult to meet women to date, or who even might mistakenly identify with the term incel for a while, are really okay guys. We know that.
The issue is that the vast majority of men (I’d say around 99pc) who identify as incels are completely unashamed entitled misogynists. We’re talking about them. Those incels; the majority of incels; the ones who would post celebrations all over the internet if someone walked into my workplace today and shot me and my young female colleagues through the head. We don’t need to say “Of course #notallmen….” in every post; that qualifier is understood.
You need to stop the whole “but not all of us!” thing. It obscures the issue we’re discussing. If 99pc of beetles are black and 1pc are white, I’m not going to say “but not all beetles!” every time I say how difficult it is to see beetles in the dark.
@voxpoptart
Curiously, Heebee also felt the need to point out that incel was apparently coined by a woman. I’m not sure that the origin of the word is at all relevant: what matters is how it is used now. Y’know, by a bunch of people who get all excited about murder, rape and slavery.
Wait, wait. You showed him this site? And the articles about incels? The ones where time and time again the are quotations from and links to page after page after page of self-declared incels celebrating rape and murder and wishing for a future where they can rape and murder at will and own sex slaves? And observed that the word ‘incel’ has entered the public consciousness as a result of actual real world spree killings? And after all that, he still thinks that it is ok to identify as an incel, and you don’t think this is weird and inexplicable?
What the jibbering fuck would it take to convince the two of you otherwise?
I am not going to be one to advocate for social Darwinism, but I am glad these people are not reproducing. I was reading an article over the weekend how controlling conservatives are with regard to the votes of their wives, and how many like to mail in their ballots so they could fill out their wives vote. One of the commenters even bragged about doing this to their children as well.
How about if you can’t stand another person having autonomy, then don’t fucking marry them or have children?
Yeah I’ve also read that the word ”incel” was coined by a woman blogger, who merely used it (about herself) to mean sad and lonely and without intimacy. But meaning is use. If enough people start using a word in a new way, that becomes the new meaning.
I know what this example trying to say, but IMO it misses it’s mark because it doesn’t sound like the beetles can choose whether to be white or black, while identifying as an incel is obviously a choice.
Vox, whether or not identifying as an incel is an honest mistake, knowing when it’s an honest mistake or not requires either a lot of time, or mindreading. You sound to me to be basically lamenting that women are not mindreaders capable of intuitively knowing whether red flags are real or not. And your friend K sounds like the kind of guy whom 20 or 30 years ago maybe would eventually form a relationship with a friend, but relationships beginning from friendships have been pretty well soured by a bunch of entitled dudebros whining about “the friendzone.” Just another way in which these assholes make the world worse for everybody, including men.
(Hell this thread started with an incel complaining that SS makes fathers economically secure enough that they don’t have to sell off their daughters, ffs. Something tells me that Anondumb is just self-aware enough to realize that no father would wish him upon his daughter without facing starvation, so #father’s rights, I guess?)
Yep, language evolves.
Words don’t have a “correct” meaning. This is part of the problem with derogatory words – if a group is denigrated, any word used to describe that group will eventually be a used as a derogatory term. For example, the word “spastic” – originally a medical term, now a derogatory word. “Retarded” is another. Quite a few terms which are now horribly racist were originally invented as descriptors. Doesn’t make them any less racist now.
Words mean what you intend them to mean. It doesn’t matter who invented the word “incel” or what it meant then. Now it means “violent misogynist who thinks women owe him sex” and, if you are calling yourself an incel, that’s what you’re saying you are whether you like it or not.
If you don’t want people to think that’s what you are, you need to call yourself something else. Go around saying “I’m gay!” and people will assume you mean “homosexual” rather than “happy and sprightly” because that’s what it means now. If you say “but I meant I was happy, because that’s the original meaning and therefore the correct one” you will sound like an asshole and no-one will understand what you mean.
Sometimes you just have to accept the change.
O_O
I’m starting to see why conservatives are so worried about “voter fraud”. ?
Time to fix the voting process. Let’s be careful not to lose faith in our system though.
Did you know that “gay” originally meant happy?
But if I go around telling people that I’m super gay, they’re going to think that I’m telling them I’m really into ladies, not that I’m just having a really great day.
Maybe for me, the obscure and archaic definition of the word really expresses how happy I am. But that’s not what everyone else is going to think, because the original definition has been changed to something that is widely understood to mean something else. If I’m fine with everyone thinking I’m gay as in the sexual orientation, then I’m free to keep telling people that, of course. But I’d be a an idiot to expect them to interpret my labeling in the archaic sense of the word.
TL;DR if your buddy wants to identify as an incel and use the word to mean something completely different from what it’s understood to mean, then he’s free to do so. But he’d better expect people to react with “oh jeez like that spree killer Elliott Roger? Um, I just realized I have a pressing appointment to get to, gotta go, bye!”
I actually think we’re getting closer to what these guys actually want when they’re straight-up taking aim at New Deal policies like typical conservatives.
That’s a sobering thought. I think WWTH mentioned before that employers knew an increase in minimum wage would largely benefit everyone, but wanted social hierarchies because they explicitly wanted to exert control.
I can somehow see that being the endgame to all these conservative policies.
Re: husbands controlling their wives’ votes
Actually, my first thought when I first heard of mail-in ballots was something similar to what that article says.
Trigger Warning
Allusions to domestic violence
Right after Clinton was first elected president I went to visit my grandmother in Colorado Springs. We went to some party and a friend of hers was incredibly excited. Why? Because her abusive husband had passed away a year and a half before and this was the first time in her life that she had ever been allowed vote. While I definitely like the idea of mail-in ballots, I am reminded of this story every time I hear anything about voting, and it always makes me worried.
OT: So the guy who killed Heather Heyer is going to plead that driving a car into a crowd of protesters was self-defence.
I suppose it’s at least one step better than claiming “justifiable homicide.”
@Dvärghundspossen:
Yes, I’ve read this too: this was the article I heard it in:
https://www.elle.com/culture/news/a34512/woman-who-started-incel-movement/
Wow, to be living in that parallel universe where that “incel” movement took off, huh?
But every guy who makes a conversation on bigotry/slavery/abuse/etc. all about his dating woes sounds like someone who values their own ego over other people’s distress. And that’s not a very good trait in a romantic partner if you ask me.
@Voxpoptart
re “I don’t want no skinny white guy”
For a single woman who isn’t white, that is a pretty reasonable statement. Especially given what you’ve already said about the guy. K’s variety of brokenness tends to hide resentment underneath – with the indoctrination white men get, it’s hard to avoid.
Now multiply that x100 if K starts dating a woman of color, with him probably having an implicit belief that she should act as his live-in therapist, servant, and sexual entertainer. It could get very toxic and dangerous for her, and even if not it sounds like serving K’s interests much more than hers. (Sorry if that’s the wrong impression I have, but that’s what I get at a glance.) Pity dating for a random lonely guy is not something most self-assured adult women will waste time on, and TBH just the fact that I was offered to be set up like that would give me some red flags.
@Red R Lion
Whyever not? It’s fundamentally broken. Or rather, it’s fundamentally designed to ensure that democracy doesn’t actually happen and that rich white men remain in charge.
@Diego Duarte
Of course it is. Conservatism is about conserving existing hierarchies, always has been, always will be.
So, are you (and they) aware that “incel” is a contraction of “involuntarily celibate”? The implication being, someone else is unreasonably depriving them of the sex they should be getting? That’s entitlement right there. The clue is in the name.
I don’t agree with this. “Involuntary” does not necessarily imply any deliberate withholding at all. It simply means that one is in a situation that they would not be in if they had the option.
I do agree that, at this point, the word has taken on such enormous cultural baggage that it’s beyond saving – much like (say) the phrase “Make America Great Again.” There’s nothing for it at this point but to surrender it to the crazy folks. But I’m not on board with this idea that there’s entitlement embedded in the word itself. It depends on how it is deployed.
Please abide by the comments policy and don’t use “crazy” talk.