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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.
Touching is sexy. I love the feel of my guys’ shoulders, back and chests and love my hands on them. Heavy petting sounds like 1950s conservative creep and the fact it comes from that mindset to me kind of back handedly shames me for the fact that I already think touching a male body that way, especially if it’s done as part of our kink performance art, counts as sex.
Why can’t we just like what we like? If people are communicating and enjoying each other everybody else shut up.
@Naglfar, I actually hadn’t thought of that (>.<) so now I have emailed.
Yes, it's gobsmackingly arrogant and high-handed. The thought of being trapped with someone like that is frightening – I hope she gets the fuck out. She needs to get good escape advice from someone like Captain Awkward!
@Weird Eddie, yes. He thinks claiming to have been ‘calm’ gives him free rein to just fucking ride roughshod over anything she wants, thinks or cares about.
@Alan
I think that cartoon couple in the pool are kind of cute. All they’re doing is just sort of holding each other and the hearts are supposed to show they’re attracted to each other.
What that awful and repressive sign is saying is “don’t act on your attraction to the person you’re attracted to”
@Alan Robertshaw
If we add another neutron to heavy petting I assume we get radioactive petting.
@Stacey
Maybe, but I think it is also suggesting that in public, other people are watching and may not want to be a part of one’s love life, and may not consent.
Even though I don’t personally mind other people being affectionate in public, I know some people do and I don’t want to inadvertently hurt them.
I snorted my coffee….
I think it’s pretty clear that the unfixable man’s wife is formulating an escape plan, and that’s why she’s on the phone to unknown parties and out of the house a lot.
@Naglfar
Then they don’t have to watch. “Watching” makes it sound like it’s something someone actively is choosing to do. And the way the cartoon is drawn the couple aren’t being overly affectionate. She isn’t pulling him close to her and trying to get into his arms. He’s not pulling her close to him. They aren’t even petting, whatever the hell that is supposed to mean.
There’s a line on PDA that it’s not respectful to cross, because it pulls unwilling third parties into one’s sex life. The couple in the picture clearly haven’t crossed it, but if one is running one’s hands all over one’s partner, that line has been crossed, and telling people “don’t watch me while I basically have sex right in front of you” is disrespectful and violating the consent of others.
@Penny Psmith
Light petting: hands outside of clothes
Heavy petting: hands inside of clothes
Light petting: what cats like
Heavy petting: what dogs like
@ Policy:
PDA … public displays of affection….
I was doing braintwisters trying to notch “personal digital assistant” into your comment 🙂
I’ve always assumed that heavy petting was just an older/more formal name for what is now termed “outercourse”.
@Alan
I did not know that, but I bet Mr. Parasol would be chuffed to know that (assuming he doesn’t already). As you may’ve guessed, he’s the one who bought the DVD. PIFs/PSAs are of great interest to him.
On the topic of PDA, I confess that Mr. Parasol and I were once that semi–obnoxious couple who kissed a lot at a gathering of friends. I plead honeymoon fever; we’d only been married about a month at that point, and were also still snogging briefly at red lights because we were so happy to be together. We’ve gotten a lot more subtle since then.
@Weird Eddie
Same here. I’ve also heard it jokingly expanded as “public display of awesomeness.”
I did see the term “heavy petting” as a teen, and I was born in ’88 – it was in some sex-ed book – but I don’t think I’d ever heard people say it so I found it funny. To me, “petting” was totally non-sexual – something you did to cats and dogs. (Ugh, now I’m reminded of the incel “dogpill” again.)
@Alan
Oh, yes! That is relevant to my interests, thank you for the link.
@Valentin
Don’t forget Aromantic people. Lenona also seems to think that Aromantic people don’t exist.
@Cats in Shiny Hats
And although she hasn’t said it outright, she also probably doesn’t feel too warmly towards polyamory.
@Stacey : I am one of the person that generally speaking would prefer to not see people show their affection in public, and the “just don’t look” just don’t seem pertinent because :
* for me, there’s no exactly a ton of difference between people touching each other and people having sex. I can understand people being on the “should be allowed to have sex in public” camp, but I am in the opposed camp of “please keep your couple life private”
* as PoM said, it can be involving stranger in your couple life, and that’s something not be done without consent
* in the average pool I have visited, I might have to look at the spectacle simply to not run / swim into it. Some specific person like pool safety officer might need to look in permanence to make sure you’re safe. Point dependant on how the pool is architectured and where you are, of course.
Because I am not a complete monster and can understand different people having different opinions, and also because some couple guenuingly don’t have anywhere private to go, especially if they are young, I do understand that there is a bit of leeway about that
I would also state that if I can’t normally get to see a couple while doing normal activities, that couple can do whatever they want. That may seem self-evident, but I guess a lot of conservatives are more like “if I can find you in less than a week while using dogs, torchlights and helicopters, then it’s not private !!! think of the children !!!”.
Cats In Shiny Hats,
I tried to point out to her that aromantics exist, but she just ignored it. I guess if something can’t be made to fit the narrative, best pretend it doesn’t exist!
@WWTH
That’s right, you did. My apologies.
@Naglfar
I’m so late to responding to this, my apologies. I wrote a composite phrase of different sayings as a joke to emphasize the silliness of it.
My relatives’ phrase consisted of a long ‘yup’ for emphasis and that’s basically it. From what I can recall, at least.
@NautaliaC
Ah. I was a bit confused earlier, but at least it makes more sense than much of Lenona’s writing.
Cats In Shiny Hats,
Nothing to apologize for! I was just adding to your post.
content warning, trauma discussion
O.T. waaayyyy o.t., but I need to unload. An earlier discussion featured an example of an intoxicated person stumbling on to railroad tracks; I have no input there, but….
My last career was in support of the rail road industry, and I had a detail which required me to parse material for rail safety PSAs. Part of that detail included editing incident and accident film from on-board cameras. Please be cautious around the rails. Please.
There was material in those films that would not be educational, it would be traumatizing.
One of the accidents involved two teenagers fishing from a long “open-deck” rail road bridge. By the time they heard the train horn, they were already dead. They simply could not run fast enough to get off the bridge before the train hit them. One got hit, the other jumped to their death. Through sheer unholy bad fortune, I knew the train driver and one of the teenagers. My point here is, the PSAs often do have very valuable information. The way I suggested the rail road use that example was, set it up as a mathematics problem, e.g. given the speed, distance, length of bridge, “how fast do you think you would need to run in order to make it off in time?” (spoiler alert, it was a 100-yd dash in 14.8 seconds, running on oily railroad ties with open-air spaces between them)
Burn.
I know not everyone knows how to formulate an argument so sometime it’s hard to distinguish problems with structure and logic versus the content of the argument if that person is difficult to read. Since I’m on my phone for the bulk of the day, I can’t make large arguments simply due to inconvenience. But, I do like adding flavor and levity to the conversation if it’s welcome!
@ Weird Eddie
Another big tragedy of rail line accidents is that the person struck is often charged damages for having stopped railway operations. It seems heartless of the rail line, but it’s how it works. If the person was killed and their estate is nothing, then the railway collects nothing, but if the person survives they can be sued for big bucks and criminal charges can be pressed. There was an accident on the Pope Lick trestle in 2016 where a young woman was killed and her boyfriend survived, and the railway had him arrested and sued him for damages.
But staggering-drunk people are not the typical victims of railway accidents. It’s people who are sober but have bad judgment when it comes to trestles. They think they can run when they hear the train but the train is going very fast and can’t stop when the operator sees them.