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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.
@Lenona
You are saying that the only relationships they can have are long term relationships. This format is not for everyone. The enforcement of LTRs is part of the same aspect of the patriarchy as slut-shaming, as PoM pointed out.
You’ve also segregated your advice by gender. What about boys who want LTRs, or girls who want casual sex? It is patriarchal to frame sex as something women give to men when women can seek it out of their own free will as well. And of course not everyone is a man or a woman.
I tried to edit that last post, but it wouldn’t work. I wanted to add:
Of course, conservatives would say “isn’t it obvious what the benefit is?! You’ll be giving your husband a priceless gift that he’ll be deeply touched to get!”
Except, of course, the bride is not likely to get the same gift. Which many a religious bride, at least, is very likely to resent – and she also has reason to believe he might cheat on her, given his double standard. If I were under pressure by friends and family to starve myself thin, there’s no way I’d marry a man who didn’t do the same for me. (Also, any doctor will tell you that obese people very often have problems in bed – not just position problems.)
Almost all of those risks also apply to teens having sex as a part of a relationship as well, you’re aware?
It seems like you’re arguing more for having abstinence only or at least abstinence-heavy education.
Telling teens not to have sex isn’t going to help them. Telling teens not to have one-night stands also isn’t going to help them.
Teens should be taught about the importance of consent, communication, safety, and comfort for all people involved in sexual activity, so that they have the tools to make better-informed decisions. They don’t need to be lectured about specific sex acts that are Bad and Wrong for teenagers specifically.
… What the fuck? I’m pretty sure that if you asked teen boys, almost none of them would wish that they would be married off at their current age.
I’m also not jazzed about you equating “marriage” with “all the sex that horny teen boys could possibly want”, since consent is still required, even when people are married. It’s not a contract for men to have all the sex they want any time they want it.
@Nagfljar : the problem of the argument is that beautiful and erotic does not entirely coincide, at least for some people, with some people finding specific stuff both highly erotic, attrative, and ugly. Or maybe just for me ?
About the debate on one-night stand : I do believe that teenage years is when people should experiment the most, in no small part because I believe youngster to heal more easily. One-night stand are probably too heavily fetishized in popular culture, but they are pretty innocuous in themselves. Saying to teenagers that one night stands aren’t the gold standard is reasonable, advising against them seem too far for me.
@Lenona
That is a relief to both myself and my wife of 44 years. 😛
In their twenties? I mean, there’s some evidence that menarche has been pushed down in age the last half-dozen decades or so, but claiming that men’s puberty is similarly precocious but to a greater extent (since you’re saying 13 years of age your claim is therefore a full decade, more or less) is to the best of my knowledge unevidenced. Or to put it another way, your assertion about medieval times is incongruous with history (although one needs to point out here that history is longer and deeper than any single statement).
Apart from that pet peeve of mine, I feel a need to ask whether this epidemic of teenage one night stands that would necessitate an inclusion of its discouragement exists. Could we not merely have sex ed that stresses consent and bodily autonomy and watch teenagers make bad choices at odds with with what we’ve told them generally rather than specifically?
@Lenona
The term “obese” is pathologizing and offensive, can we not use it?
@Ohlmann
I agree, things can be both erotic and ugly/grotesque, but I don’t think that having non-standard numbers of arms and heads is inherently ugly. It might not be what we consider normal, but there are lots of cultural depictions of deities that are considered to be attractive (divine, even) that have multiple heads or more limbs.
@Feline
I don’t think it does exist outside the minds of conservative fearmongers. If there is an increase, it’s probably due to increased sexual liberation and freedom.
As a former teen girl and as one of the few, or maybe even the only commenter here who is aromantic but not ace, I’ve just got to say
It’s erasing as hell to frame sex as something damaging to young women outside of an LTR.
I had my first sexual experiences, including my first PIV sex outside of relationships starting at age 18. In fact, it wasn’t until age 23 that I had sex that was part of a relationship. The only damaging thing about it was that until I realized (in my goddamn thirties) that I was aro is that I felt there was something wrong with me for not having lasting romantic relationships. Because that’s what patriarchy and heteronormativity tells people, especially women we’re supposed to have and want.
The sex? I always felt totally fine about.
“You are saying that the only relationships they can have are long term relationships.”
Of course not. Short-term relationships are not the same as one-night stands. And yes, any type of relationship can be traumatic for one reason or another.
Feline, as I understand it, in medieval times, boys and girls alike were expected to marry in their early-mid teens, even if girls weren’t ALWAYS lucky enough to get husbands under 30. (And yes, they often had the legal right to refuse, but many were understandably too scared to go against their parents’ wishes.)
Otherwise, I like your last paragraph – it’s sort of what I was trying to say.
@Lenona
So, if you think short term relationships are fine, where do you draw the line? And what about aromantic allosexual folks like WWTH?
Any historians here please correct me if i’m wrong, but IIRC, early marriages were more of an upper-class thing, to cement political alliances (and the couple usually wouldn’t live together until the wife was old enough to have a reasonable chance of safely carrying a pregnancy to term). Middle-class men usually couldn’t afford to support a wife till their late twenties or early thirties; their brides tended to be a bit younger than them. Working-class couples generally both worked and saved up for marriage, and on average wed in their mid-twenties.
About the only time period I’m aware of where teens marrying each other was fairly common was North America in the 1950s, due to a resurgence of social conservatism combined with a booming post-war economy that made it feasible to start a family earlier.
Nope. This is a myth. Late teens to early twenties was the norm and typically spouses were in the same age group. Sometimes aristocrats married that young, but even then the marriages weren’t usually immediately consummated. Even without contemporary medical science, medieval people still noticed that childbirth was much more dangerous for very young girls.
Also, it was common for couples to live together and have sex before they got around to the official church wedding since many towns did not have clergy around full time and year round.
@WWTH
Thank you.
I was having a bit of a google about marriage age through history; but I just ended up watching this again.
The edit function conked out again.
Weirwoodtreehugger – I am very glad we live in a century when anyone can say no to marriage, parenthood, or relationships of any kind. I like living alone. I just wonder how often girls get to hear that it’s OK to go against the grain, whether the grain is liberal OR conservative. I like to say that the trouble with BOTH sex and abstinence is that when you’re a teen, either one can delude you into believing you’ve found true love when you haven’t – which easily leads to heartbreak. That is just one reason people shouldn’t marry at 18, even though the law allows that.
Btw, the syndicated columnist Ellen Goodman, in a 1984 column about the drinking age, hinted that we’d be having a very different debate about drinking and adulthood in general if, in 1971, we’d raised the draft age to 21 instead of lowering the voting age to 18. She finished with:
“What then of the voter who says that anyone old enough to die for his country is old enough to drink in it? Tell him 18 is much, much too young to die for his country.”
I also wonder, why is it that, before the 20th century, when adolescence didn’t officially exist and young men were expected to do men’s work starting in their early teens, they STILL couldn’t vote until 21? Or did that have to do with the fact that so many back then didn’t finish high school anyway because doing so wasn’t as important back then?
@Lenona
Please don’t both sides this. There is a huge difference between the general liberal/left position, that people can have sex before marriage if they want, and the conservative position, that girls cannot. I haven’t heard anyone on the left saying that teens have to have sex if they don’t want to or that people can’t be abstinent, but I’ve heard a hell of a lot of conservatives try to force abstinence on everyone. It’s really damaging that you keep trying to say abstinence-only education is “just as bad” as non-abstinence only.
If individuals want to abstain for whatever reason, that is their right and I have no qualms. The issue is with systems that try to foist it upon everyone else.
Incels make me ill. Their pseudonyms, their jargon, their attitudes and beliefs, everything about them makes we viscerally sick when I read these posts. My brain wants to reject the words and ideas and I can’t because I’ve already seen them.
Sex really isn’t all that important. Not for me anyway. I feel sexual attraction but I’m aromantic and don’t like being touched so it never happens.
Ahha, teenage years – such fantasies Incels have. My secondary school was a bit rubbish, but we knew who was having sex, because they were the girls who were pregnant by 16 and their boyfriends. Teens ap their lips about sex but not many of them were actually having sex. Our utter lack of knowledge was obvious in our Sex Ed classes at 13 (biology) and 15 (PSE). The overriding atmosphere in those lessons was embarrassment. We were awkward, spotty, confused and laughing to hide blushes.
@Lenona
Holy Stereotypes, Batman! Seriously, go back and reread this paragraph, and consider why I, as a queer person, am about ready to scream at you right now. Then apologize, stop talking, and maybe learn something.
AARGH! Just stop, ffs. This isn’t bloody true either, you have no.idea what you’re on about, just please stop.
Sooo…the male equivalent of the old “any girl who fails to go to her senior prom will be irrevocably damaged for life”?
@weirwoodtreehugger –
Seconding that, my own (admittedly amateur, but relying on peer-reviewed articles and published books by credible historians) research also points to this.
Even in 1760-1960 Quebec, where the church put significant pressure on people to marry young so they could get down to the business of being fruitful and multiplying ASAP, median first marriage age was early-mid 20s.
O/T: Dolly Parton came out in favor of BLM and didn’t mince words about it. Wonder how her fans will react given which demographics tend to listen most to country music.
https://consequenceofsound.net/2020/08/dolly-parton-black-lives-matter-writing-will-interview/?fbclid=IwAR1hRKziGSuCSiJbRKc_FvgSj50d-iQBn8rPGZ1cyJ9vDPqNPdSgojSvTJs
Naglfar, I was merely thinking of a college freshman patient of Dr. Miriam Grossman, described in her 2007 book Unprotected. (I admit, I didn’t read the whole book.) Note that the patient, who had depression, had never had sex before college:
…During our initial meeting , Olivia described the short – lived relationship, her first experience with intimacy. “ When it ended, it hurt so much,” she said, weeping. “I think about him all the time, and I haven’t been going to one of my classes, because he’ll be there, and I can’t handle seeing him. I was so unprepared for this…Why, Doctor,” she asked, “why do they tell you how to protect your body—from herpes and pregnancy—but they don’t tell you what it does to your HEART?”…
(I think it’s fair to assume that in this particular case, she wouldn’t be that upset over the break-up if they’d been a couple but never had sex.)
Again, I don’t pretend to know whether or not she would have been more resilient had she had sex at a much earlier age. I CAN believe that she just might have treated the break-up in a more matter-of-fact way at 14. But she obviously needed more sex ed than anyone was willing to offer, and why shouldn’t she have been given a truly comprehensive sex ed course – WITHOUT having to ask for it? That way, she would have been truly informed before making any choices that just might hurt her grades in the long run.
@Paireon
Dolly’s been fairly vocal about other progressive political topics as well—she’s pro-LGBT rights, for example, and so I’d guess that either her fans haven’t caught on or she is wealthy enough that she doesn’t worry too much about losing bigoted fans. Good for her for speaking out though, she has a position of influence and some people might actually listen.
@Lenona
I know that breakups can be hard, and ideally more emotional support would be provided in schools as a whole, but one person’s experience is not generalizable to everyone. I prefer long term romantic relationships but I don’t assume that everyone does just because I do.
Miz Dolly is a treasure. She’s an actual rags-to-riches success story, but she doesn’t think she made it to the top all on her own, and she dances with who brung her.
I love that she’s so straightforward and blunt about what she believes. You don’t need a decoder ring to figure out her stance on something.
@Lenona
I’m sorry, but what the hell are you talking about?
You’re providing an example of a college-aged woman who was very upset about an intimate relationship ending, in order to support your rambling assertion that teenagers should be told not to have one-night-stands? How does that follow at all?
A college-aged person might be a teen, but they would be on the tail end of it, 18 or 19. What age, by your reckoning, are people “adult” enough to engage in one-night-stands without breaking their hearts? Does it magically occur when they become 20?
And your excerpt states that this woman was upset over the loss of a (short) relationship. That, to me, does not indicate that this was a one-night-stand, which is typically not considered a ‘relationship’, so much as an activity.
So essentially you’re saying that young teens should be ordered not to have one night stands because an individual adult woman got her heart broken by something that was decidedly not a one-night-stand?
That’s not very convincing.
@ Vicky P
And she has a book charity.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/feb/28/dolly-parton-gives-100-millionth-free-book-to-children