Jake Davison, who shot five people dead in a Thursday night shotgun spree before turning the gun on himself, didn’t leave behind a manifesto.
The 22-year-old Plymouth (UK) virgin was more of a YouTube guy, posting assorted rants on the site bemoaning his life and offering his opinions on women (cruel and picky but not, he thought, very smart) and his future prospects (not good, he was sure; he felt old and ugly and washed up at the ripe old age of 22).
He scattered his opinions across Facebook and Reddit as well, launching into tirades against his mother, whom he called “vile” and “abusive.” (All of these accounts have been shut down as of this writing, but you can find traces of what he said in the press coverage of his murder spree; meanwhile some of his videos have been saved and reposted on the Incels.is forum.)
His mother was the first person he shot in his murder spree; in the end he killed two women, two men and, most horrifically, one three-year-old girl.
Most of Davison’s rants — whether about women or his own seemingly worsening life — could almost have been pasted word for word from incel discussion forums. He may have been fervent in his beliefs, but he wasn’t original.
He lamented that he had missed the joys of teenage romance, something that he would never be able to recapture.
“Let’s say I get with a woman my age,” he declared.
She’s had a million relationships. Likely been destroyed and broken and torn apart by a fucking Chad. She’s probably completely incapable of loving anyone like she did when she was 16, 17, 15, when she first got with that fucking Chad.
This weird glorification of teenage love (and teenage girls) is common among incels. (I’ve written about this in a number of posts, and will elaborate on Davison’s obsession in a future post.) It’s not clear how Davison was able to reconcile his fantasies of underage sex with his Qanon-style belief that the government is full of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who need to be put down. Davison was not only an incel but was also something of a Trump-worshipper and gun fanatic who dreamed of moving to the US some day, so it’s not all the shocking to see QAnon-ish conspiracy theories mixed up in his brain with thoughts of Chad and Stacey.
But if we set aside his Trumpian enthusiasm — fairly atypical for incels who are generally not very political –most of what he set forth in his posts and videos was standard issue incel. The biggest difference I can see between Davison and your typical incel is that he actually carried out his fantasy of a Elliot Rodger style “day of retribution.”
Despite his weight worries (he was a bit plump) and his belief that he was ugly and getting uglier, Davison was a fairly typical-looking young man, a sort of Seth Rogan-esque stoner dude who might have had a chance with women had he only trimmed his beard a little more often. It would have helped a lot more if he hadn’t been quite so angry and misogynistic and self-loathing; like most incels, Davison blamed his looks for his lack of success with women, though the real problem was all the poisonous bullshit stuffed in his head.
The most energetic coverage of the shooting spree comes in the British tabloids — among them The Sun, which described incels as “a sinister death cult of miserable, sex-starved loners linked to a string of terror-style attacks.”
A little over-the-top, but … true.
Davison is picking up fans on Incels.is, with some comparing him positively with Elliot Rodger, the original mass-killing Incel “saint.”
“What a hero,” wrote MisterMeme. “I hope he is in heaven rn.”
“We were past overdue for a new ER, [Elliot Rodger]” added Metabuxx.
“Yes I can say it this time,” Lookscel cried out.
ONE OF US! ONE OF US!
A new ER
“It was a long drought but finally it’s ER season again,” added CrackingYs happily.
Over on The Black Pill Club, another incel hangout, one especially edgy commenter wrote that he had “read that a 5 year old whore is among the dead which is very pleasing to hear.” (Actually, she was three years old, which is even worse.)
That’s about all I can take on this right now. I will be back, probably tomorrow, with more thoughts on incel obsessions with “teenage love.”
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@Vucodluk
I am so sorry for what was done to you. Your childhood makes mine seem idyllic. I’m very happy you’ve grown regardless – learned and dreamed and found things that make you happy. You deserve every happiness.
@ Surplus
That is just mesmerizing.
@ Vucodlak
Like everyone else, sorry you had to go through that. I hope you have had friends and support.
(Hearing stuff like that has often made me feel bad about my experiences, because by comparison, my siblings and I were not really abused, but all of us have issues. Then this realization hit me when I was talking to a woman who had been badly abused and listening to her talk about doing things with her friends. I realized that making sure we had no friends, that she was the sole source of comfort and the only person to confide in was in fact Mommie Dearest worst act. She was the reason we had things to confide after all. Not abuse per se, but…)
@ epitome
Thanks. Just one thing: “But I hope you’re doing well and you don’t think that being single now reflects badly on you”?
I am not concerned with how it reflects on me. I want a relationship for its own sake, not to brag about or so I can look good. So I got that going for me at least.
@ StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
To ask someone else a personal question, I’ve noticed you talk about how you have near total control over the men in your life and all before, and I am curious: What is this sponsored artist thing and how does it afford you control?
@.45
I combine BDSM and fetish intimacy with performance art (though my performance art is for very limited audiences that my sponsors and I choose). It’s not just play for me (though nothing wrong with those who like it for that) but creative self-expression that means a lot to my heart.
My arrangement with my sponsors provides me with an apartment, transportation and takes care of expenses. I don’t have any sexual relationships with men outside of my art and have two very dear and trusted women assistants who screen my guys and after I select them, they train them so that by time that get to me they know exactly what I want and I know they consent and desire what we have as much as I do. I have a stable of four right now but want six, which I think is a good number and will let me do some cool stuff creatively.
@Ohlman & others.
Before you start blathering about ‘long-winded trolls’ with atrocious writing skills, you might want to proof-read your own offerings. Of you could accept that if people are writing late at night and not submitting a written paper for formal assessment, some typos and grammatical errors are probably okay. Have you ever been called upon to submit any papers for formal assessment – post school-age, that is?
Also, for your information, yes I do hold down a job and the only thing keeping me out of the workplace is a little disruption known as ‘pandemic’. Luckily, I am in a position to work from home.
Also, the fact that you refer to me as ‘he’ in spite of my username, suggests that your motives for being so muscular, competitive and hyper-aggressive in your abuse of me is grounded in issues other than what I am writing about.
If you let that mask slip, you could have a hard time opining on other sections and categories of this blog. If you have an issue with me or my identity, you might do well to try to keep it semi-masked at least here. Okay, ‘Bruv’?
As regards the issue of redemption for those who have taken the wrong path. I have never said that someone cannot choose to turn away, only that if they are filled with these skewed perspectives of the world (incel tends to cascade down into other areas of life, it is a world-view grounded in a negative, nihilistic outlook on life). This is what qualifies it as an ‘ideology’, therefore any act of violence committed against others in the name of incel ideology could rightly be identified as an act of terror and prosecuted as such.
People can choose not to act on their worst impulses, though changing the outlook could only really be attempted within the context of a safe space. Such potential safe spaces could exist within the context of something like a Prevent programme, as is applied to fundamentalist and far-right manifestations of ideological violence.
Something else worth thinking on: without the solid foundations of what is generally known as ‘toxic masculinity’ (a blanket term for how men generally behave), there would be no basis for incel ideology to flourish. It is, after all, an outgrowth of hyper-virilised, Cocky, over-confident strutting social peacocks that pollutes the public space as to what men are supposed to be.
@StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
I think that if they’re genuinely nice men they will accept the reality of the situation and try to reconcile themselves to not meeting society’s ideals, without misplacing his hurt and pain on to the woman he is attracted to. Who knows – they could actually become good platonic friends.
Okay, you’ve seen my answer, so can you give me your guess?
(I can’t guess your guess, so I’ll leave it to you … but go ahead).
I hope that my new appearance here has not caused long-standing commentators like that aggressive man who called me a troll and littered his disparagement of writing style among his own typographic, syntactic and grammatical errors, or any actual contributors to the debate, for that matter.
My being here poses no threat to anyone – I was drawn in by a link I saw to a questionnaire about differentiating between what incels say and what gender critical people say about trans people. This is why I looked at this topic and why I read up on what happened last Thursday.
@AnhedoniAmelia
I guessed you would say something that somewhere worked in this kind of thing:
If I reject a man as a sexual partner, it’s not because he didn’t meet “society’s ideals”. He didn’t meet *my* desires and ideals. Feminism centralizes women’s choices and our right to make them, especially about who we have sex with. To me your answer seems to sneak in again this crap again about some societal thing. Yes, cultural norms about what makes a cis man attractive and desirable are strong but I like what I like because *I* like it. And besides my relationships definitely don’t line up with society’s ideals anyway.
@StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
Failure to adapt and adjust to a given reality would be a personal short-coming. As it happens, my feelings of rejection were inevitable given my particular and uncommon circumstances.
It would perhaps have been more of a problem if I had managed to appear to fit in as there would have been relationships and possibly offspring who would then have at least played a part in what I’ve been going through.
I think that if someone fails to measure up in any given way, then they owe it to themselves and the people around them to adjust themselves to that reality. The alternative? Well, the most extreme outcome are those who allow themselves to be consumed by the bitterness and hatred and we all know how dreadful that is.
I take on board everything you say about women having complete, total and utter self-determination in these matters along with all others. I think that applies to all people, but it is more stark for women because of the historical antecedents of patriarchy and other forms of oppression.
People can still feel hurt and injured without hating out upon the whole world though, can’t they? It doesn’t make us bad people to have negative feelings about ourselves for these and others reasons (thanks, normative society!), it is what we do with those feelings that matter.
We have a moral obligation to not let it consume us. We owe it to those around us especially, but also to ourselves, to deal with our internal state in such a way so that it is non-Harmful to anyone around them.
My earlier couple of posts were disorganised and rambling (should write them up in Pages and then edit really), but this could have been the uncanny effects of Bloody Marys and Cabernet Sauvignon.
So, while in spite of what I’m going through in terms of certain things I have recollection and memory of my earlier attempts at fitting in to be something I am not, I know that there are internal shifts in my mind that is diffusing all that stuff anyway.
I seriously suspect that undergoing the process that I am has enabled me to put my failed attempts to be something am not into perspective. I was never really programmed to be perfomative as a cis male and with that inernalised expectation gone, the rest of it drains off and becomes kind of insignificant. It arguably wasn’t real in the first place, because it was not predicated on who I am really.
I’d typed out more, but I’ve removed it as this has gone on long enough and I think is saying what I mean it to say.
@Big Titty Demon
Seemingly prefixed to innocuous means that they are not innocuous, but that their failed PR machine tried to position them as such.
When I said ‘seemingly’-‘innocuous’, I was drawing attention to the fact that they most definitely are NOT innocuous once you learn a little bit about them. You know, just like saying ‘seemingly-pleasant; young man. It implies that closer inspection reveals whatever it is to not be innocuous. Apologies if I failed to make that absolutely clear.
It is well understand how MRA–>MGTOW–>INCEL are interlinked as a kind of pipeline to extremism.
Is this a wilful misunderstanding? It seemed rather clear to me.
@IgnoreSandra
You seem to not be seeing what I am writing, let alone what I am as a person. Also, sorry that you felt you had to use a sexualised taunt because of my use of words. I’ve had it before, at a time when it was unavoidable.
I’m not sure what you think you see me as, but it doesn’t seem pleasant, to say the least. You cannot know me, you cannot know what I’ve been through, what I continue to go through.
If you have suffered at the hands of people who truly are incel-esque misogynistic women haters, then I am truly sorry for you and I appreciate that it will have been painful, frightening and something that should never have happened. I hope you can accept this from me, as it is sincerely meant.
@Other Contributors to this thread
Some general points I wanted to say a few words on:
Also, when I elaborate on a point to say what I mean, quoting George Orwell at me as a taunt (does anyone on the internet ever read anything by George Orwell other than Nineteen-Eighty-Four?).
No, child-abuse is not an excuse for Incel ideology, nor is child-abuse necessarily a part of every person who embraces Incel ideology,
Also, in my very first post, I mentioned the toxic male role model of a hostile step-father. That would play much, much more influence in the entrenchment of incel ideology than anything the mother could ever do. It is, after all, the father figure that models masculine behaviour and not the mother, so the responsibility would traditionally fall to the male parental role model.
No attempted back-door misogyny by blaming Mommy then.
If this is the first generation wherein men had to be ‘nice’ to enter into relationships, then I would have to say that this generation, like all preceding it, has failed in that goal spectacularly.
I have to say – this is all very Lord of The Flies in the way people are rounding on me and bullying me. Very school playground. Perhaps this is what forced me into my shell and out of contact with people generally.
I appreciate those who have responded without snarky, remarks, those who have not deployed sexual insults against me (I’ve always been picked on for my facility with language and the way I spoke for as far back as I remember).
Hope people realise than I’m not evil incarnate, that I don’t harbour the toxic views which motivated the atrocities in Plymouth last Thursday. I was trying to dig deeper and I was probably clumsy in my first attempts at doing so.
I am truly sorry if I have caused anyone distress over this.
Patriarchal society and male privilege does allow, enable an alternative, unfortunately, and it’s aggrieved entitlement whether violent or by whining “Nice Guy” complaints.
Part of my personal resistance to that enabling of aggrieved entitlement is being unashamedly open about not caring one bit about how a man feels if he does not meet my standards as a sexual partner. I also reject and openly mock the idea that my “standards” are “high”. They are mine. I want what I want and I’m allowed to want itm. If I’m attracted to only a tiny percentage of my would-be suitors, I don’t care. By being forward about that (and even celebrating it), I’m engaging in an act of resistance. It’s my assertion of autonomy. I loved and found so compelling the Jessica Valenti “I bathe in male tears” episodes. I only really learned about it years later but I love it. I don’t mind anyone of any gender or orientation *who respects my autonomy*. Their tears aren’t what we’re talking about here but I love thinking about the tears of entitled men when they learn about who I select as partners, why, and what we do together. Yes, height and muscles matter to me. Yes, I take great pride in saying that openly (which I by the way sometimes do literally, with great pride, standing on my platform, whip in hand, in my studio when I grant an audience to a suitor.) My art is my resistance. (Tough shit to the incel creeps!)
@ staceysmartypantsremoved^2
Thank you for giving me an excuse to post this. It’s distressingly topical, and perhaps of general interest to people here.
https://www.shamsiahassani.net
Shamsia is Afghanistan’s first female graffiti artist. Her work is well worth a look. We are now so worried about her though.
(This whole thing is a nightmare. As well as the human tragedy we’re also trying to organise an airlift of cats, dogs, and donkeys.)
@AnhedoniAmelia
You’re still missing the point that there is nothing physically wrong with these men that are making them so unappealing they can’t find love. they are normal looking. disabled and people with deformities find love all the time. Which is why I told you about my friend who got attacked by the dog. Incels are incels because they choose to be hateful and no one wants to be with a person as bitter, insecure, and a hateful as an incel. It has nothing to do with there looks but has everything to do with their personality.
@.45 – Very sorry, I wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean to imply you’d want a relationship just for social status. What I meant to say was that no one’s a worse person for being single.
@StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
I have to say, I think that your self-determination, your assuredness in who you are and what you want are really impressive, especially in view of what is arrayed against women’s self-determination with all the imposed expectation, the subtle and not-so-subtle loading of coercive expectations. I sometimes think that we in the (ahem!) “civilised” West are not so very far removed from the Taliban and their ilk as we would like to think we are.
I have not heard about the ‘bathing in tears’ thing, though I have seen it used as ‘bathing in the tears of liberals’, or Brexiters (UK politics, EU Exit referendum) locally, saying ‘bathing in the tears of remoaners’ (meaning people who wanted to stay within the trading block.
Consciously breaking free of the repressive norms and expectations – at any time in life (in my case), has to be a good thing, because it can help to gradually chip away at the over-arching, dominant power of those who would remain in charge forever.
So yeah, I think that anyone who can follow their dreams and break free of the ties that bound us has to be a good thing.
Genuine question: I believe I was the first to reply to you, do you feel I was bullying you? I genuinely tried to phrase in a way that was not attacking you but rather 1) questioning your initial assertions and where they came from and 2) pointing out the sexism in some of your statements. I admit 2) came off more harshly than I intended (I actually edited it from something harsher and should have given it more time and edits). I should have made it clear I didn’t think you were being intentionally sexist; however, it is simply a fact that your statements about motherly and fatherly roles in abuse are sexist in nature. I apologize for being a bit testy when I replied (sexism tends to affect me in that way) but not for calling it out. I will try to avoid that kind of reply in the future.
In any case, if I made you feel bullied in my post addressed to you I would like to understand that better so I can learn from it. I’ve been accused on here of starting pile-ons and I’m still trying to understand how to better phrase my posts so as not to encourage that kind of behavior. I truly don’t want anyone to feel bullied or ganged-up upon (except maybe Mark, but then he seems to enjoy it so maybe not him, either). (Sorry, not trying to deflect, just trying to add a bit of levity.)
@Kubo
Hi, no – I do not feel or think that you were bullying me. I think you made some interesting, thoughtful and pointed observations.
My later submissions concede my clumsiness and mistakes in my initial postings. I think that I have been able to get closer to what I was trying to say, hopefully removing misconceptions and fears that were perhaps justified on the basis of my initial writings.
I’d like to say that I do appreciate people who are able to respond in a way that is constructive and requires me to reflect upon what I have written and, where necessary, to clarify what I have said.
Thanks for writing back and again, no, I do not feel you were bullying me at all. One individual who intermittently reiterated their remarks was the real focus of my attention there
Other people who arrived at conclusions about me based upon the ambiguities in what I wrote, i have tried to address and clarify what I was saying and I hope they take it in the good faith in which it was intended.
No, you’re response was very much appreciated. Thank you.
Thank you. I’m passionate and committed deeply to what I do and how I live and I love it but it takes not just determination and assuredness but a lot of really hard work. For every 30 minutes spent actually in person with my guys there is like days of preparation, building my outfit, arranging the logistics for the particular interaction, and rehearsing where I stand, how I move, testing the whole set up, testing and checking our sound system in what is in everyday language essentially our studio, the speakers and my mic, mundane things like checking batteries and so on. And that’s not including the long-term commitment of my health and fitness routine, logistics of coordination with my sponsors, and all the emotional energy of the careful and caring communication so that everyone can feel safe knowing all involved have not only consented but are truly happy with what we are doing.
You were. Very. Reading’s not just for books – try reading the room sometime. It is surprisingly useful.
You are a random anon on the internet. Doubt you’re important enough to anyone here to cause actual distress, rather than just irritation. Still, the expression of regret is appreciated (and pretty rare to see done correctly) so well done on that.
@AnhedoniAmelia
Toxic masculinity is not a concept that deserves air quotes, and it is generally (but not always) what men do. There are fairly obvious historical & political reasons for why toxic masculinity is as common as it is.
Merely because something is common does not mean it is unreal.
I cannot fathom the meaning of this sentence. It is unclear due to the addition of far too many commas and descriptive words. My best-faith interpretation in context is “Normative masculinity is non-toxic and includes no misogyny. Incels are the primary example of men behaving in a misogynist way.”
Responding to my best-faith interpretation as your meaning is unclear, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong, again for fairly obvious historical and political reasons I’ll get into soon.
Spotlighting this for instructional purposes.
Happiness, and what peace I possess, does not come through comparison. It comes through looking at myself and accepting that I deserve to like myself no matter what others think of me. No one will be liked by everyone. It is inevitable that someone will dislike you.
Seeing that, or seeing not living up to what you perceive as social norms, as a reason to need to “measure up” is actually one of the reasons incels are what they are. They have in their heads an idea of what they “need to be” in order to have a happy life and justify themselves to others but also know at some level that no one lives up perfectly to social norms. So they circle that, and circle that, and circle that, and hate themselves more every circuit – then they displace their hatred on to women rather than consider anything might be wrong with their priorities or goals or mindset.
Ooh, a direct response to me! Even though a lot of the previous points have responded to stuff I talked about…
Ho hum. This is where we get into “she said, they said”. I think I’ll stand on what I’ve said previously, what other commenters have expanded upon. The core of why incels are a problem is their choice to be vile people. You cannot come here with a quarter-baked theory that “all incels are abuse victims and nothing could possibly prevent their willful violence” and expect everyone to just forget it and move on.
Taunt? I said something quite genuine, if rather rude. But something being rude does not make it wrong. Speak plainly – or to put it another way “Stop jerking off with a thesaurus”.
I see you as a person who posted several long comments arguing that murderers are not responsible for their actions – rather that some childhood abuse you’re imagining they had is to blame. Even now you are continuing to double down and doing your level best to paint those who see what you’re doing and have specific objections to your actions as vile villains out to harm you. Attempting to evade accountability is both not cute and harms your capacity for reason in the long term.
You are alluding to suffering abuse of your own here. It has no relevance. My complaint is connected to a specific action you undertook.
Ok then.
Number one: “If”. There isn’t a woman alive who hasn’t suffered at the hands of misogynistic woman haters. In my personal case I used to be beaten by my brother, who absolutely fits the definition like a glove. This is without mentioning the numerous times I have been sexually assaulted by men. But even if I hadn’t, “misogynistic woman hater” is normative masculinity because normative masculinity is toxic masculinity. (More on that later)
Number two: “At the hands of”. The implication here is that one needs to have undergone physical violence for their suffering to be valid. If that wasn’t what you intended, tough – communication is both communicator and interpreter. To be harmed by someone, they do not necessarily have to lay hands on you.
Number three: “who truly are”. Carries the implication that I may be mistaken in my identification if, say, my judgment were to be impaired. Such as by…
Number four: “it will have been painful, frightening” Stressing what you imagine my emotional state may be. Just because someone is emotional about a topic does not make them wrong, and just because someone is detached does not make them right. Being right makes me right, nothing else.
…Why would whether or not I accept that you said something be relevant? Yeah, you said it, you have a vested interest to try and appear more rational than me at this time due to your stance that I didn’t read what I read and see what I saw.
Being perfectly honest here: Taking that stance gives me good cause to doubt the sincerity of every word you utter. It is one thing to say something off the cuff that implies something you didn’t mean to imply – it is quite another thing to say quite clearly that misogynist woman haters are the outcome of child abuse and can’t be helped and then try to pretend you didn’t say that even though everyone can quite clearly see that you did.
I’m not asking for an apology. I don’t care for such things. I am noting that I doubt you in everything you say as a result of using the old rhetorical trick of saying something unacceptable and then pretending you didn’t when called on it.
And now we enter a portion of your post I affectionately think of as “Let’s respond to things IgnoreSandra said & seemed pretty important to her that I need to comment on but lets divorce her from it because she may seem more reasonable if she’s presented as being a sarcastic foul-mouthed bitch who can think instead of just as a sarcastic foul-mouthed bitch”.
Willful mischaracterization of what I said gives me a similar reason to doubt your sincerity. I was calling you a liar. That does not make it a “taunt” – just a statement of fact.
“We have always been-” ah fuck it, you won’t get it. Point is, this is not consistent with what you said and therefore I disbelieve it, though it would be good to hear the revision if I didn’t have good cause to doubt your sincerity.
“Child abuse isn’t a reason for incel terrorism, but non-nuclear families are!”
…You do realize this is worse, right? I didn’t get to it back then, but I did notice the “hostile stepfather” thing.
Kids don’t need a “male role model” or a “female role model” or exactly two parents. They need to be raised in a safe environment where they are loved, respected as people, cared for, and encouraged to learn and grow by the adults in their lives. This is honestly settled science.
And btw, a kid being raised by an adult who resents or hates them? We’re back to child abuse.
I did not say “nice”. I said “LIKABLE”. Calling these the same thing is like saying the Wright Flyer & a Cessna are the same thing because they both fly and have propellers, right?
What is the difference between nice and likable? You’re “nice”. You’re unfailingly polite on the surface, “well-spoken”, and I’m quite sure you act like the perfect gentleperson in person. But you’re not likable – you lie, a lot, and pretend you didn’t. You don’t seem to have very much you care about rather than being right or being able to think you are. Your reaction to a mass shooting was “Lets listen to what the mass shooters claim makes their actions inevitable and present this as fact uncritically”.
You know what’s likable? A guy hesitating when reaching for my hand so I can reach back on my own and make it very clear that I want him touching me. A girl who just loves The Owl House and can talk for hours about the sapphic subtext of the show and how it makes her so gosh darned happy. A dear friend of mine who knows everything there is to know about Metal Gear Solid because they engaged in the series’ politics and can think of nothing more interesting and then switch to conversing about feudal samurai in a single beat. A partner of mine who is so honestly awestruck whenever they see me it makes me feel like a goddess.
I also did not say “The first generation”. I said “The first generation of western men in a few hundred years“. After all, the Mig-21 & F-80 are the same thing for sure!
I limited my terms quite intentionally. For starters, the West is not the entire world. I know about the West, I don’t know about the rest of the world so I won’t presume to speak on it. For second, the institution of male dominance over women has only been around for a relatively short time historically speaking – men needing to be likable instead of merely breathing is human normal that we are returning to.
Failed? “Who are you, that you do not know your history?”
As recently as about forty or fifty years ago, women could not own property or have bank accounts or all manner of things that made life without a man literally impossible for a woman. These barriers and the violence inherent in them have been to some respect lifted, and this means that men who refuse to be likable are no longer necessarily gift-wrapped a woman to abuse and women may now say no to men with more certainty. This leads to happier relationships overall as relationships are no longer founded on “Be together or die” but on mutual compassion and consideration.
Incels are one of the sets of men who refuse to see us as human beings to be engaged with as human beings. The common complaint of incels is they are not given a woman (And I am not exaggerating, many of them argue for such foolishness as state-mandated sexual partnerships).
“Why is everyone telling me that I’m wrong? They must be bullying me! Also whether I read Lord of The Flies or a synopsis, I did not understand it.”
Oh fuck fuck fuck I forgot a paragraph.
Normative masculinity is often toxic masculinity because most of the rules in normative masculinity date back to a time when women quite literally weren’t allowed to be except as an extension of a man due to how recent that time was, and these masculine norms reflect that.
If you’ve ever thought of normative masculinity insisting men be “providers” and thus some men getting really upset or insecure if their non-man partner earns more money or sometimes just has a job, that is the most famous example. There are others.
Yes. Yes. 1000 times yes.
The sense of entitlement is inherent in masculinity.
@IgnoreSandra
I appreciate that yes, you have gone through this stuff and that pretty much nobody born and raised as female has not done so. Awareness of this is growing i mainstream society, albeit far too slowly and far too late. Hopefully, a time will come when men are not free to harass not just women, but also girls who are clearly and categorically still children. Yes, in the UK, we do have men who will actually try to engage with school children, even though they know that they should not do so.
I cannot know that experience, because I was born as a male, raised to be such and also ‘dealt with’ when I ‘failed’ to live up to that expectation. Gender role policing is a huge burden of oppression against women and girls, though perhaps trivially some may say, it can also inflict a certain degree of damage on those born as male who do not fit that particular pattern.
I put ‘toxic masculinity’ in air quotes, not because I doubt the validity of the construct, but rather, i felt rather self-conscious using it in view of the fact that being raised male, I cannot have experienced the full extent of its’ baleful influence.
I did experience the impact of not fitting in to the path determined for me, which though having similarities, is not the same that a a girl / woman would have experienced by a very important and significant way. I appreciate that women and girls growing up will have been on the receiving end of the very worst that toxic masculinity has to bring to bear in terms of oppression, so much so that having been brought up as a boy, I can never truly comprehend. I admit ignorance on that, but I’m trying to understand.
I feel it is important to emphasise that understanding the possible causes for something is not excusing that something – especially when it comes to indiscriminate murder of entirely innocent people.
Make no mistake: I think that those incel forums should be shut down, so that there is no echo chamber for people to be drawn to. I think that there should be programmes in schools and maybe universities that are able to identify when young men are gong down that route and I think that there need to be interventions patterned along the lines of the UK Prevent programme that aims to stop radicalisation in its tracks, before the rot takes hold and starts damaging people’s minds. I also (somewhat unfashionably, and could get me in hot water), think that the pervasive toxic influence of pornography should be nipped in the bud and throttled in its’ dissemination. From what I have read from people who are qualified to speak on this subject, it is quite corrosive on the minds of young heterosexual men who pattern their expectations of real world relations on the often cruel, malignant unreality portrayed within it.
I am not going to call for an outright ban on it (I seem to have made myself unpopular enough as is) and besides it is not for me to deny those people with a sexual identity and value something that they may want. I would say that the more extreme and toxic variants of it should be removed though. I believe that my thinking on this corresponds quite closely to female academics who write on the subject and who are by definition, victims of its’ ugliest excesses.
Also, on a lighter note, I sometimes use words when I don’t have to (simpler or more accessible ones sometimes being more appropriate), but what does ‘thesaurus’ mean? is it a something bit like a look up dictionary that gives synonyms and antonyms for a given word? I like language, I like words, so sometimes I may slip in a word or two that isn’t strictly necessary, though it is never done with malice aforethought.
I think I should take a BA in English LIt., tbh – a healthy distraction could be a good thing.
@ StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
Ok, that’s all outside my wheelhouse, so I’ll just sit here being mildly amused at how you apparently bang multiple Chads for a living. I mean, you’re basically a Manosphere type’s worst nightmare. Thanks for answering.
@ epitome
No, sorry, I meant my reflection comment as matter of factly, not accusingly or anything.
@.45
That’s certainly and definitely not what I do.
Yes, I have multiple partners, as I said, but I don’t “bang” any guy. Not all sexual relationships include what is usually meant by that term “bang” and when I was gracious enough to answer your question, I didn’t give any indication that mine do so I do not like your assuming that. You should apologize.
Yes I am and I take great pride in that.
I take the utmost pride and joy in being the worst nightmare of one particular brand of misogynist, the “NiceGuy”(TM). I despise them and receive great joy from their misery.
@ StaceySmartyPantsTwiceRemoved
My apologies. As I said, outside my wheelhouse. I did not mean to be offensive.
Anybody else here watch the Cinema Therapy channel on YouTube?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Dyu1Fr047U
In this episode, Jonathan (he’s the therapist of the pair) points out that Jacob in Twilight is a fictional example of incel culture. Not a comparison I would’ve thought of, but I always enjoy people thoughtfully discussing pop culture.