By David Futrelle
In today’s mailbag — well, technically, today’s comment moderation queue — a self-described Russian socialist informs me that describing the people who congregate on the Incels.me forum (now Incels.co) as incels is oppression.
Russian socialist here.
It’s kinda funny how western mainstream left uses word incel (involuntary celibate) to attack everyone who don’t like them.
He’s responding to a post of mine about people who identify themselves as incels, and who post on a forum run by self-identified incels with incel in its title.
Fun fact: all of tras people and homosexuals are in fact involuntary celibates, because they cannot to produce children normally.
Celibacy means abstaining from sex. It’s not a fancy word for “infertile.” Also, trans men can get pregnant and have babies if they have working uteruses, same as cis women.
And there is a lot of unlucky women what are also incels.
This is true — and indeed the term was invented by a “involuntarily celibate” woman — though at this point I can’t imagine many women still use the word “incels” to describe themselves, considering what male incels have done to the term’s reputation.
Using word incel against alt-right is like using N-word against Alt-right. You can try to justify it, yet you are still a bad person for doing so.
Incels call themselves incels. Calling them what they call themselves as is not oppression.
You know what is oppression — at least according to someone else who tried to post a comment on an incel-related post on this blog today? Laughing. Not just laughing at incel illogic. Laughing period.
“SJWs” do ruin comedy. And that’s a good thing.
Not true and also not true.
You know what laughter is? It’s the sound our monkey ancestors used to make as an “all clear” signal to tell other members of the tribe something was safe, like if they thought a rustling in the bushes was a predator but it turned out to be the wind.
Nah. If it ever mean that, and I rather doubt it did, it doesn’t mean that now. Laughter cam mean a lot of things. I laugh at trolls who say ridiculous things. Babies laugh playing peek-a-boo.
In today’s world nobody is safe except the predators. Every pleasure comes at the expense of somebody else’s pain. If somebody has it in them to laugh, to be happy, to feel safe, they’re an oppressor.
Nobody deserves to laugh until everyone can.
Wow. If this person isn’t straight-up trolling, they really woke up on the wrong side of everything today. Everyone laughs. Even the most oppressed people on earth laugh; indeed, many oppressed cultures have rich traditions of humor. You know who doesn’t have much of a sense of humor? People who decide that they’re oppressed despite not being oppressed. Like incels and Men’s Rights Activists and Jordan Peterson fans.
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Screw you. We use the term to call ourselves because we want it to get a good meaning. We want to repossess it from those who use it as a bad word to shame us. You aren’t any better a person than we are. Nobody deserves the kind of treatment that you give incels, MRAs, MGTOWs and similar. We exist for a reason, and we will exist as long as there is a need for us. And oh boy there is. Not in your idealistic garbage world, but in an actual real world. What’s wrong with having invented a name for lonely depressed virgins who are mad at society? What’s bad with said name being short? So take your “article” and shove it
Okay, I’ll be that guy.
Properly, celibacy is abstention not from sex but from marriage. You will find the word used that way in the third act of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST: Jack, after Lady Bracknell has refused to let Gwendolyn marries him, somewhat spitefully refuses to let his niece Cecily marry Algernon, and says “Then a passionate celibacy is all that any of us can look forward to.” When Catholic priests and nuns take vows of celibacy, they are promising to never marry. Avoidance of sex is implied in that, but it is not quite the same thing.
Abstention from sex is chastity. This is sometimes used as synonymous with virginity, but there is a distinction. You cannot recover your virginity, but you can recover your chastity, if you stop having sex.
@Turan
I didn’t know that distinction. I was under the impression that they were the same thing, just with different connotations. Thanks for clarifying.
So, should incels start calling themselves inchasts (involuntary chastites)? It isn’t as easy to say.
@Turan, @Naglfar: I think it might be even more complicated— chastity is abstention from improper sexual activity, i.e. when some guy in a legend boasts of his wife’s chastity, he usually means she’s not cheating on him (and possibly that they refrain from sex on religious holidays) not that their marriage is sexless.
I see a troll!
@Samurai Gandhi
Are you just sad your subreddit went down?
Well, maybe you should do some good actions if you want the term to have a good meaning. Terms don’t usually take on good meanings when the people who self-identify as them support violent terrorism and misogyny.
There is a reason that terms like “fluffy kitten” have good meanings. Kittens don’t kill random people for no reason, and if one did the other kittens wouldn’t then worship them.
We’re not shaming people who aren’t having sex. We’re mocking people who turn their lack of sex into misogyny and terroristic violence. The term incel no longer means a person who isn’t having sex. It is a specific term for a misogynistic subculture of entitled young men.
I can’t speak for other commenters, but I’m not a misogynist who calls women “foids” or wants to rape women. I also don’t worship mass murderers. I’m not saying you do, of course, but I am saying that if you call yourself an incel you are associating yourself with people who do. Sort of like how if someone calls themself a Nazi, even if they don’t kill anyone I will mentally associate them with the deaths of millions.
The only treatment we do here is mocking and discussing. Maybe you don’t like it, but we’re not the ones supporting violence and rape. We’re not the ones who threaten to shoot up theaters when movies we don’t like are playing. We just don’t go to those movies. I would say nobody deserves the kind of treatment incels give to women, like when their beloved Eliot Rodger killed people.
Pray tell, what is that reason? I can’t see a need for internet misogyny and aggrieved entitlement.
The problem is not with your kind being lonely or depressed or virgins, or having a name. There is no problem with the name being short. I have struggled with depression and mental illness for most of my life, and I know it sucks.
The problem is, incel ideology is not helping you. It’s a barrel of crabs, and it’s keeping you down. Incels refuse treatment for depression that could help them, instead trying to drag more people in.
The problem isn’t with being lonely. I feel lonely sometimes, but I don’t turn into a raving misogynist. The problem is that incels actively avoid anything that could help, and choose to spiral deeper and deeper into a world disconnected from reality. It’s an echo chamber. They blame women for problems, then become violent and cause harm to themselves and/or others.
If you want to no longer be lonely or depressed or if you want relationships, try to separate yourself from incel ideology. Stop reading incel forums. Try to find a therapist, either online or in person. Stop blaming women for everything you don’t like in the world. Try to make some friends who aren’t incels. In the real world. Get out of the house, and go to events in your community. Be respectful of other people there. Don’t give up.
It is possible to get out of inceldom. Others have made it. Read their stories and learn from them. I don’t want anyone to be depressed or lonely. But being an incel is not the solution to your problems.
You probably don’t care about what I just said, and I’ll be a bit surprised if you read this far. But please, take this advice. You are not a lost cause. You can get out of this.
@Moon Custafer
Which is why monastics take both vows; having vowed celibacy, all sexual activity is defined as improper, thus chastity calls for refraining entirely.
Bruh. I had to read that twice to make sure I had that right in my head. People really walk around thinking this? Seriously? Bruh. Please. It’s okay to smile dude. There’s nothing wrong with feeling safe, though many people who aren’t white, heterosexual Protestant cis-men don’t get that luxury.
These guys are really stretching now, aren’t they? Do they want their unjustified misery to spread that badly?
I’m a lonely depressed virgin and as an anarchist I am pretty mad at society. Hell, I’m even aro, so part of my identity is built around the fact that I don’t have sex. I’m not an incel because incel ideology is toxic bullshit that deserves to be mocked.
Incels aren’t mad at society, they’re mad at women. They love society, they just wish they were born before the civil rights movement, back when authorities made sure women and minorities “knew their place.” They’re sad losers upset that being a white cishet male doesn’t give them as many special privileges anymore.
Stop blaming women for your life, you’ll be a happier person. Hell, if you unlearn your misogyny and start treating women as equal, someone might even go on a date with you someday. Being an incel means you will always be alone, depressed, and full of hate.
@Samurai Gandhi
People like you are the reason people like me can’t even look at code involving “mapcells” without being reminded of horrible things. Fuck off.
BTW, your handle is the most boring thing I’ve seen all day.
I’m a straight man who had no romantic or sexual success until I was thirty-eight, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. But I was never an incel, because I am not a misogynistic, death-worshipping wannabe rapist. I’m just lonely.
@Samurai Gandhi
Incel’s are not some poor, oppressed minority group; they are a Neo-reactionary hate movement of misogynistic, male chauvinist hate mongers who want to blame women for any and all problems in the world, think women are “lesser” or “inferior” because they are women, want to persecute women and strip them of their rights to be in bondage to patriarchy and embody aggrieved entitlement of sour grapes dude bros who take umbrage with the fact that women have choices over their bodies, feel entitled over women’s bodies, and who think that it’s acceptable to advocate and threaten to sexually enslave, torture, treat violence, torture, rape and murder women just because you don’t have sex.
And you, as a part of the aggregate Incel movement and it’s ilk, also demonize and terrorize non-whites, non-Christians, and LGBT people because you want to make more enemies to lash out and hurt people because women don’t want to have sex with your toxic, myopic, malevolent ass. And frankly I don’t blame them if THAT is what you embody.
The only reason Incels, MGTOW’s and their fellow ilk is that they and you are a Neo-reactionary hate mob who feels threatened by the idea and reality that all people are equals to you and your not entitled to force yourself upon women, and instead of taking a piece of self reflection and trying to be better adjusted people; you churlishly throw tantrums and concocted notions and conspiracies divorced from reality and commit atrocities and advocate grotesque ugliness because you think you have some arbitrary and nonsensical right to do so, which you don’t. Humanity and society doesn’t need the likes of your and your comrades of toxic militant unreasoning and malice.
It is a regression, it is cancerous, it’s harmful (to put it mildly), it’s dangerous, and it’s immoral. And none of that is anything to be proud of, nor worth fighting for or supporting, much less be a part of. All it is; is a suicide cult of grave makers and enslavers of women and anyone else they decide they consider “the enemy”, much the same as White Fascism, Nazism, and the other various groups that identify as “Alt-right”.
To throw your hat in with these baleful groups; is to deny humanity in others and thus in turn; in yourself.
I’m severely depressed and have been so for most of my life, in large part due to the world being shit, and as a result I have a mean tendency to resent happy people for having what always seems out of reach to me. And hell I’m not exactly quiet about it all the time.
Even I never said “Nobody deserves to laugh until everyone can.”
For his sake I hope this dude is trolling, because otherwise he needs help.
The incel community lost any claim to sympathy when it lionized Elliot Rodgers as a martyr. If you’re part of a group that treats an entitled, brutally misogynistic mass murderer as a hero, then you don’t get to claim victimhood