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By David Futrelle
It’s not a secret that incels are obsessed with underage girls and the allegedly pure joys of teenage sex. Now they seem to have collectively decided that any guy who doesn’t manage to have sex in high school has lost out on something so magical that he is essentially scarred for life; he might as well rope, as they like to put it.
In a recent post on the Incels.co forums, an incel called Personalityinkwell declares, in all caps, that
SEX IN HIGH SCHOOL IS EVERYTHING
everything else is pure cope. …
The only thing that matters is having good genes/good parents so you can be a JB [jailbait] slayer, everything else is GIGACOPE.
Other incels expand on this theme. Mylifeistrash declares that
it’s the harshest pill
that you only got one shot in life and your genetics determined it all
no amount of self-improvement cope or money maxxing will ever make up for your teenage years
AmIjustDreaming agrees,
No amount of money or any other cope can make up for missed teen love. I’m almost 26 and the teenpill still gets to me. While I rotted playing video games, everyone else was having their first kiss, sex, teen love. It will fuck you up forever.
“Only teen love can make up for missed teen love,” laments LOLI BREEDING.
“Highschools need to offer euthanasia at the last day of school,” adds _wifebeater_.
The anger, naturally, stokes the incels’ feelings of entitlement.
“Its such a crime that we never got to fuck prime girls,” complains Ropemaxx.
And it’s not long before they start talking about the age of consent in the Phillipines.
Even aside from the pedophilia, an undercurrent in almost all incel discussions of sex, this is all just bullshit. There’s nothing magical about having sex as a teenager; it’s exciting, to be sure, but it can also be awkward and even a bit embarrassing, as no one knows what they’re doing at first. Sex can actually be a lot better for everyone once both partners have had a little more (or a lot more) experience.
And sex isn’t everything; it’s certainly a pleasant part of life, for those who are into it, but you can live without it. And lots of people do, living through “dry spells” than can last years. Not having sex in high school doesn’t make you special; it doesn’t even make you all that unusual, given that the average age at which Americans have sex for the first time at is 17, with the percentage of high schoolers having sex dropping below 50% in recent years.
That’s right: MOST PEOPLE in high school aren’t having sex.
Yes, it sucks to go through high school dateless. But there are worse things in life. And you have the rest of your life to make up for lost time. Move the fuck on, dudes; stop fixating on something you cannot change.
There are some guys whose lives basically peaked in high school who spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture what they felt the day they scored the winning touchdown. And they won’t shut up about it. Incels are doing something similar, only backwards, fixating on their sexual failures in high school and never shutting up about them. I can’t decide which group is more pathetic, but I know that neither the aging jock or the aging incel is going to be happy until they clear the resentment and self-hatred out of their heads and start living in the present.
Polk High!
I didn’t have sex in high school. Honestly, I didn’t care then and I don’t have regrets about it now. At the time, I had better things to do, and never once in retrospect have I thought my life would be better had I had sex in high school.
That’s only if you can move on instead of moaning about the past.
The incel is more dangerous and more pathetic IMO. The aging jock is probably unhappy, but it’s probably more likely that he’ll eventually move on and find something else to do, unlike the incel. And the aging jock seems slightly less likely to go on a terrorist rampage.
They always think that only sex will validate them but then also they always think that sex only equals intercourse.
@Stacey
This belief seems very widespread outside the manosphere as well, especially in fundamentalist/conservative circles (e.g. the “saddlebacking” incident). And in my experience a lot of people don’t think oral or manual stuff counts as sex.
This is just getting back to basics. Or at least it’s what incels where harping about when I first heard about them, and it comes up every now and again.
So, yet again: Openly slutty, yet a virgin until 26 because I was too busy focusing on education and career. First time wasn’t anything special and didn’t change my life that much. From my current perspective, I don’t particularly think that it would have been somehow different or life-changing for he better if I had gotten laid in high school. But hey, maybe it’s different for other people. I’m not a delusional, entitled teenage boy and obviously can’t speak for those who are. ?
Though if they’re harping about it again, it might mean there’s a bunch of new younger recruits. Kind of sad.
@Naglfar
Those kind never even make it anywhere near my realm.
When you put ‘pill’ as a suffix to every word in the dictionary, it kind of loses its meaning.
@WWTH
Whatpill dopill youpill meanpill?
All joking aside, it does annoy me how they attach it like that. Sort of like how it annoys me that they attach “cel” to the end of so many words.
I think it might be a good idea for everyone, whether they read this forum or not, or whether they have sons or not, to find ways to communicate the following to teen boys:
“First of all, teen boys lie to each other all the time about how much experience they’ve had. Second, pursuing one-night stands is sort of like buying lottery tickets – you get a thrill for a short while, but then you have to start all over again, because you’re not willing to pursue a full-time job or a long-term relationship, so you’ll just become increasingly angry and frustrated, since what you really want is fun without the work. Third, if women can tell that you don’t want a long-term relationship, why would you expect them to want a short-term relationship? Especially with someone who doesn’t like work in general?”
Not to mention that it’s kind of amazing that any modern young incel could ignore the very real danger of having to pay child support. Reportedly, that IS why teen sex has gone down a bit, at least.
And as I’ve mentioned, a young woman has every right to privacy and discretion. Just because she’s NOT entitled to a phone call after a one-night stand doesn’t make it civilized for the man to go bragging to his classmates – or on Facebook. So if the average incel is hoping to do just that, well, again, he shouldn’t be surprised when women sense that and reject him, over and over.
Bottom line: I have never heard of a self-described incel who said that what he really wanted was to get married, some day. Which suggests that incels have no real interest in love or giving – or, at least, teen incels have trouble grasping the idea of a relationship that lasts even a year and that might even include emotional give and take.
That reminds me of a song … https://youtu.be/wE-FNDxoqFE
And another song. https://youtu.be/jrxI_euTX4A
There’s a cycle I go through when I read articles about incels.
1. I feel sorry for them because they’re obviously in so much pain.
2. Then I remember that they’re suffering because of their own poor decisions and unpleasant personalities.
3. I also remember that these guys are choosing to be miserable instead of getting the help they need.
4. I wind up feeling less sorry for them.
5. Still, I hope they deal with their problems, to spare both themselves and everyone they might victimize. Incels still have the potential to become better, happier people if they only try. At least I hope they do.
Does anyone else have a similar reaction?
P.S. Thanks for writing about incels, David. You never know when you might actually reach one of them.
I didn’t even realise I was a lesbian until three months before the end of my time in the upper sixth (I just thought I was asexual before that and was perfectly content with it) and as it was a shithole homophobic school in a shit hole town I decided I could wait a few months and start having all of the sex that my free university education was gonna supply me with (that sorta happened. If you squint a bit) oh the 90’s. You certainly were the Gay Nineties for me. *gets lost in reverie*
Yo, incels. 41-year-old cishet white man who’s still a virgin here. Gonna tell it to you straight: No, no it’s not. My life is far from perfect, true, but losing my virginity a quarter of a century ago is unlikely to have made me much happier now. Stop blaming your looks and/or women (especially women) for your loneliness and unhappiness. I don’t, and weirdly enough it actually helps me be at least a bit less unhappy.
The main reasons why you’re unhappy are such: 1- The world we live in is crappy, even for many otherwise privileged folks like you and me. 2- You’re entitled little assholes with shit personalities bitter over life not giving you on a silver platter more than the likely significant amount you likely already have, and are too lazy and/or cowardly to either accept it or work for it. 3- Point number 2 plus lack of introspection leads you to blame anything but your own putrid inner landscape for your woes, so instead of working to improve yourselves you go the easy way of blaming stuff you can’t change or others not changing to suit your selfish, lazy, arrogant needs. 4- You’re so lazy and entitled you’d rather wallow in a self-destructive, self-loathing pool of misery, with frequent lashing out at the outside world (especially women) because it’s easier for you to do than anything constructive.
Look, I know what it is to live in a society that seems to put “alpha males” on a pedestal, and I know what longing for companionship is. But you’re doing it wrong. What you seem to want is a creepy Stepford-ish Japanese-made* loli sex robot rather than an actual, fully fleshed-out (pardon the pun) human woman, and lemme tell you, even if you got that, your lives would be just as empty and unfulfilling except for bragging rights that only other empty losers would accord value to. Oh, and you’d have someone to boss around and abuse, but as it turns out that’s also a terrible thing and hardly reason to be proud. Going from bullied (for those of you who were bullied, who I suspect is a quite lesser number than you’d think) to bully is a shit life goal.
*Not a dig at the Japanese, they’re actually working on making fully functional sex robots.
Well, shit, high school has only been around for, what, 150 years, tops? One wonders how our ancestors could have survived when they were never able to have high school sex.
Kind of like scandals and ‘-gate’. That also annoys me.
As for the incels. AMAB here, didn’t ‘lose my virginity’ till i was 28 which didn’t change my life all that much. What did change my life a lot was proper therapy, a healthy romantic relationship and a job that’s really satisfying (and where my disability is not an issue).
@Lenona: Whoa whoa hold on there.
I personally am very much not into one night stands, but some people are, and they’re perfectly happy with them and don’t see them as a lazy replacement for a long term relationship. To suggest that is a form of slut-shaming in my opinion.
There are a lot of problems with the sexual education most teens receive, but I don’t think that “they should be told to avoid one night stands” is at the top of that list.
The incels should be less worried that they never got to have sex with “prime” women/children, (honestly always astonished they believe girls who are functionally underdeveloped are the “natural” choice of mate for grown men) and be more concerned that they are going to miss out, potentially FOREVER, on the magical joy of making a true and meaningful connection with someone. Whether it’s romantically, in a friendship, having a good relationship with their family, or simply sharing enthusiasm for a hobby or piece of fiction, their scorched earth policy in response to not getting exactly what they think they want must poison their whole existence.
I mean, I worry about all sorts of irrational stuff, and life is suffering and all that, but MY GOD they take wasting their life obsessing over pointless bullshit to a new and extremely self-indulgent level.
You didn’t have sex in high school, so now your life is ruined. All you can do is try to cope with your problems. And coping is losing; roping is your only real option. Do I have the incel ideology correct? (Of course I do. It’s not complex.)
You might want to question this ideology. It’s extraordinarily limited and can only lead to misery.
Incels are a death cult. Do you really want to die just because you’re afraid to experience rejection.
That make me puke. Maybe it’s not the worse thing they said on rate, but the pure, undiluted hatred so early in my morning is really nausea inducing.
Also, thoses guys have ruined their life, but I would hazard to say that they have ruined it themselves and would not have done better with sex.
Wow, another scar ? I am already a bit of a patchwork, so one more does not mean a lot.
Hmm, with pseudos like “Loli breading” or “wifebeater”, you know you deal with lovely nice persons.
And that is a lot of copes. Probably them secretly wanting a cope of tea or something like that.
@ battering lamb
I’ve got an interminable blocking of a right of way case on at the moment and all parties have started referring to it as “Gate-gate”.
@personalpest
Sort of. I don’t really feel sorry for incels, but there is some stretch of time where I feel like we could maybe reach them, before remembering that they would never allow it and that they somewhat want to be miserable, as their world view depends on it.
@Battering Lamb
Yes, this as well. That one I find especially annoying because AFAICT I can tell it is derived from the Watergate scandal, but in that case Watergate was just the name of the hotel, nobody calls the scandal “watergate-gate.”
And of course there’s the right wing outrage machine spinning everything into “-gates,” like GamerGate, ComicsGate, AnimeGate, etc.
@Penny Psmith
I agree. Society already heavily discourages relationships that fall outside of a long term monogamous cishet structure, and this is part of a broader cultural issue that won’t be solved by reinforcing part of it in teens. In pretty much every study, abstinence only sex ed increases the instance of sex and unprotected sex in particular, so it would be much better to explain safety than try to discourage sex in people who will try it anyway.
@ naglfar & battering lamb
What would you have to call a scandal involving contaminated water?
There’s your problem. If you don’t socialize with non-online people, you won’t get the benefits of non-online interactions.
That’s reductive, I know. Not everyone has the option to socialize in high school; outcasts are a thing. But incels don’t even try. They think their wrist circumference determines their fate, and hole up with their radicalizing friends in Call of Duty (or whatever) and soak in incel ideology. It’s sad because most outcasts are happy to leave high school and get out of that pressure cooker, and open up their socialization options, while incels just keep looking backward instead, as though high school were the best time of their lives.
@PoM
This is how I felt. My life got much better post-high school, and I admit I never fully understood the idea of high school being the best years of one’s life. Somehow, despite incels also having a bad time in high school, they’ve bought into that myth and as such can’t move on.
I’m curious how much of their world view on this is based on teen/high school coming of age films. They seem to think that’s what everyone else’s high school experience was like, despite it being very obviously fiction. Those movies are often problematic in a multitude of ways, but incels have taken it to a whole new level.