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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.
@Paireon
It’s possibly a political thing. A lot of conservatives or people who grew up in conservatives backgrounds might not pay attention to consent because they have been trained not to (and consent can be about non-sexual stuff as well like hugging etc).
@Lenona
If you aren’t for abstinence only sex ed but people think you are, maybe see what in your writing is making people think that. Or respond directly to specific things people have said rather than quoting books by people we’ve never heard of.
@Feline, to continue the less contentious strand of this thread, here to agree with your points on premodern western European marriage, especially the bit about haystacks. Marriage was contracted between husband and wife alone; a priest witnessed and blessed but wasn’t necessary to the contract. So people could get married by themselves by saying the words of consent, and I have read a case record in which a couple did so in a hurry in the actual haystack where they went on to consummate the marriage. It’s in the record because one of them, I think the man, got cold feet after and disputed whether they’d definitely committed to marriage, but plenty of other marriages might have started in similar situations and lasted.
Oh, yes, and it didn’t surprise me at all when Elizabeth Smart, in May 2013, said that the education she’d had before her kidnapping only made it harder for her to escape. From the Christian Science Monitor:
…Rescued kidnapping victim Elizabeth Smart said Wednesday she understands why some human trafficking victims don’t run.
Smart said she “felt so dirty and so filthy” after she was raped by her captor, and she understands why someone wouldn’t run “because of that alone.”
Smart spoke at a Johns Hopkins human trafficking forum, saying she was raised in a religious household and recalled a school teacher who spoke once about abstinence and compared sex to chewing gum.
“I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, I’m that chewed up piece of gum, nobody re-chews a piece of gum, you throw it away.’ And that’s how easy it is to feel like you know longer have worth, you know longer have value,” Smart said. “Why would it even be worth screaming out? Why would it even make a difference if you are rescued? Your life still has no value.”…
@Naglfar –
Actually, that’s just the thing – my own milieu is fairly liberal/kinda-centrist/mostly open-minded (which is still a bit to the right of my own positions as I’m pretty certain I’m a very open-minded centre-left social democrat), and yet I can easily see why even here talk of consent is necessary – Quebec was hit pretty hard by the Me Too movement*, and there was a even a brand new batch of abuse allegations in May/June, including one that was woman-on-woman. At least there’s discussion about it… Let’s hope it goes beyond just that.
@A Distracted Medievalist – Yeah, IIRC there were some rules concerning marriage, but technically the couple could declare that they were married first, even in private, and it would be considered binding. They still at least usually sought a priest to bless the union afterwards but that was more of a cultural formality/norm than an obligation.
*Captain Obvious moment here: that is a Good Thing. Abusers should have to face the music.
@Lenona
Are you just using this thread to post rambling, free association, stream of consciousness thoughts, or do you actually have a point?
re: Dan Savage, that’s guy’s a breath of fresh air for people who, like him, are only halfway out of the deeply problematic morass that most people grew up with. For those who have gotten further out (and I don’t think anyone is truly 100% out of it) or were never really there, it’s easy to be unimpressed by his supposed wisdom.
And now for a classic 90’s song relevant to the conversation.
@ Lenona;
I feel like I’m reading the “R” rated version of a 1960s “Betty and Veronica” comic…
Lenona, can you just, like, stop with the very long quotes from various sources and just say straight out, and in as brief a manner as possible, what you think?
What should sex ed include, and why?
That’s a simple enough question, right?
So, for example, if you think it should include the lesson that ONSs are bad and LTRs are good, why do you think that is important, and how do you suggest to disentangle it from slut-shaming and aro-erasure?
If you cannot just answer this without starting a multi-paragraph ramble about some thing you read in the 90s or whatever, maybe just generally stop and think why that is.
Right now, reading you is downright tiring.
@Snowberry
I think I’m more unimpressed because of the sexism and transphobia. He seems to have a lot of derision aimed at women, as he regularly seems to expect women to do extreme things for boyfriends/husbands, and has contempt for LGBT people that aren’t gay white cis guys (he’s notoriously biphobic, transphobic, and aphobic). So that’s why I stopped reading him.
(On another note, are folks here familiar with the Little Red Schoolbook? I expect Alan must be; I learned about it via the 70s episode of Back in Time for School and then looked it up and found a PDF online. It was advice about various aspects of life for teens, with a big emphasis on questioning norms and rules, and while it’s still a product of its time in many ways, it’s relatively open and accepting about sex, and I’m sure would have really been something that kids back then would not have read elsewhere.)
I’m confused why we need to protect teens from heartache at all costs.
I’m concerned/curious where this positions LGBT kids. Lenona’s plan and “evidence” rests firmly on a cishet model, with the only acknowledgement of queer people being a bunch of stereotypes about gay folks.
Aren’t there already too many fans of The Eagles?
@Naglfar: I haven’t read him much, but I was unimpressed by his simplistic solutions to things which we as a society need to have deeper conversations about.
@Policy of Madness:
For those who have experienced both, bullying is usually much worse than heartache. Heartache is a learning experience (though sometimes people learn the wrong things from it) and bullying only teaches things which no one should ever need to know in a world where people take it much more seriously.
But since we still don’t (collectively, not always individually) take bullying all that seriously, and occasionally even spin it as a “positive”. ? I don’t really think it’s about protecting them from heartache so much as it’s used as an excuse to “protect” teenagers from their own autonomy.
lenona
sorry a bit late to reply to an earlier part of this conversation but as a young woman by biggest bug bare with men was when they tried to get me into relatonships. I wanted friends with benefits and many men couldn’t respect that.
@Snowberry
I feel the same way. He never addressed any underlying issues.
Dolly isn’t much listened to by mainstream country fans these days. What’s popular with them now is men singing about partying and guitar-solos ripped off from hair metal. Dolly’s listeners tend to be more people who are into Americana, who are usally not MAGAs.
@ penny psmith
Oh wow, now there’s a memory.
From a legal point of view that book is famous because the subsequent court case gave us this oft repeated quote:
“What should sex ed include, and why?
That’s a simple enough question, right?”
Besides all the technicalities of biology, disease (you’re not opposed to teaching about that, even when the students really, really don’t want to hear it, right?) and what the LAW says and why, I would say these lessons are needed:
1. If you’re part of a heterosexual couple, regardless of which one you are, if YOU don’t want a pregnancy, it’s YOUR job to make sure TWO contraceptives are used, Every Time. Preferably three. (Sorry, men. Yes, you have to pay your half for those contraceptives, too.)
2. Even if you plan to save sex for a heterosexual marriage, you still can’t rush into sex once you’re married. Unless, of course, you like the idea of having a baby every year. I.e., for most couples, there IS no Hollywood-style, carefree sex, because diseases can threaten everyone – even monogamous couples. Those who don’t know this watch too much TV.
3. If you’re friends, you can talk. If you can’t talk, you’re not friends. That doesn’t bode well. (The same goes for conservative engaged couples who are too embarrassed to ask “have you been to see the doctor for STDs and where is the proof,” and who get infected on the wedding night. Or when someone doesn’t want to spend time with you outside of the bedroom – and you weren’t expecting that.)
4. If you have to get drunk to have fun, it’s not fun.
5. Loneliness is not love, and it’s not an excuse to get involved with someone who will make you unhappy or worse. Life is too short, and we fall in love with the people we spend time with and we become vulnerable when we sleep with them (sometimes), so it only makes sense to look for all sorts of serious incompatibilities early on – such as attitudes toward money and other people’s money.
6. Sexual incompatibility is no trivial matter, IF you want a long term relationship. How you solve that problem is up to you.
7. Harlan Ellison once said: “Love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled.” Maybe not always. But can you say “I would love you and stay with you even if you were suddenly in a wheelchair”? If not, it likely wasn’t love.
8. Porn is no more bad for you than romance novels are. Both will likely make you unhappy in the long run, since they’re not realistic. Same goes for watching too much TV, In general.
9. Exploiting other people, whether you meant to or not, is just plain mean and childish. This is why one has to learn what other people tend to think of as exploitation, even if you don’t. (That doesn’t just apply to sex, of course.)
Re: Dan Savage. I’ve never liked him. His biphobia and transphobia have always grossed me out.
@LindsayIrene
I don’t know too much about country music (though I like some bluegrass), but this sounds rather unpleasant. Hair metal should stay in the 80s.
@Lenona
What does any of that have to do with why teens shouldn’t have one night stands? You keep jumping to new talking points whenever your previous one gets called out instead of responding to criticism.
What if you’re not, though? What about kids that aren’t straight, or aren’t interested in monogamous marriage?
And what if you don’t? Some people don’t, and that should be respected.
I’m not sure if unrealistic things make people unhappy. If people expect that reality will be like that, they’ll be disappointed, but if people recognize that media doesn’t mirror reality they should be fine. I like science fiction despite it being fictional, because I realize that. Doesn’t stop me from wanting some of the things in it, but I know it’s fiction.
As for porn, I think the bigger danger is that since many people don’t get sex ed, porn serves as their education and shows a lot of unsafe sex, lack of consent, and other things that sex ed should explain are not to be done IRL or are simply unpleasant.
Here’s why you appear to be , shall we say, sex negative; you are suggesting that teens be warned against sex, because it might be traumatic if things go threat they shouldn’t (according to you) . However, that’s true if any endeavor. You might as well say that kids shouldn’t attend school because if things go wrong it might be devastating for them.
You haven’t provided any explanation as to why you believe sex (and you’ve already established that it’s not just one-night stands) is the one stand out experience that kids need to avoid at all costs.
Has it ever occurred to you that a sub par sexual encounter or relationship might not be so damaging if we did not drum it into them that there is only one type of relationship and one kind of outcome that is acceotable, long term committed sexual romances?? , and thereby deviation from that is bound to lead to unhappiness. That’s just one line away from the toxic , joy draining incel stance covered in this blog post.
If course it’s very possible that I’ve muddied up your statements. As others in this thread have noted, your posts tend to be evasive and vague, yet weirdly over specific on tangents and tediously over-wordy. It’s hard to keep up and parse it all.