You might think that incels and pickup artists would be the deadliest of enemies, hating each other and agreeing on nothing.
They certainly have their differences; the very notion of pickup artistry challenges what incels call “looks theory,” the belief that women care almost exclusively about men’s looks, and only have sex with chiseled, genetically blessed pretty boy Chads (and/or their own dogs), not guys with middling looks and aviator goggles and an assortment of routines to amuse and hopefully bamboozle the “sets” of women they approach.
But incels and PUAs agree on most things relating to women, both groups accepting without reservation most of the shibboliths of “red pill” thoery, from the belief that western “sluts” are ruined by too much sex with men other than them to the idea that women “hit the wall” sometime between their twentieth and thirtieth birthday, turning suddenly from hot babes into withered old crones. Incels and PUAs also share an inability to fully grasp the concept of consent.
And they have similar ideas about feminists, whom one incel recently defined as “self-hating women who want to be men.” In a series of posts on the Incels.is forums, one Lv99_BixNood asked his incel colleagues
Ever notice how feminists try their best to turn women into carbon copies of men? Wearing pants, getting tattoos and pixie cuts, working men’s jobs, engaging in casual sex, using foul language, being loud, arrogant and “independent”. Female “empowerment” is measured by how masculine women are, if there’s even a shred of femininity left in them it’s evident they’re still “oppressed”.
This dude is working off of some really retrograde stereotypes of who feminists are — and what defines a man. Sure, there are some feminists who are happily butch. (There are also some butch women most feminists would regard as anything but feminist.) And a whole lot of feminists who are thoroughly femme. Gender is a complicated thing.
Why? Because being masculine is hip and cool while being feminine is looked down upon, in feminist societies even more so than in traditional “patriarchies”.
This would be a terrible irony — if it were true.
All feminists ever accomplished was making it socially acceptable for women to look and behave like men. They hate being women, so aping men is the pinnacle of “female empowerment” for them.
Saying something again and again doesn’t make it correct.
All the “feminist issues” they used to rant about relate to this cause: they wanted to work men’s jobs because working is something men do.
Because clearly, never before in history or prehistory have women done anything but laze around eating bon bons and/or their historical or prehistorical equivalents.
They wanted to wear pants because wearing pants is something men do.
When I have to leave the house, maybe.
They wanted to have casual sex, because casual sex is something men do.
I’m pretty sure feminists who have casual sex do it because they like sex.
They wanted to get short hair, tattoos and swear like a sailor because all of these are things men do.
Yeah, look at these masculine creatures with their mannish short hair.
The only man I’ve ever seen who could rock a Louise Brooks without shame is Emo Phillips.
Oh, ok. He-Man too.
And of course that avatar of traditional masculinity Prince Valiant.
As for tattoos, women and men have decorated their bodies in elaborate ways for millenia; in South Asia it’s women much more than men who get henna tattoos applied for special occasions.
Remember when feminists say incels hate women it’s pure projection. No matter how much we hate women, nobody hates women more than they themselves
No, I’m pretty sure no one hates women more than you guys. Probably not even the PUAs.
But the PUAs, or at least some of them, also think that feminism is an attempt by women to become just like men. In a post on his now-defunct blog (helpfully archived on TheRedArchive), the far-right racist PUA known as Heartiste offered a remarkably similar theory of feminists as ersatz men in his typically overdone prose. Drawing on a comment from one of his fans, he declared feminists to be
Masculinized Phenotypic Morphs … masculine women who use the ideology of feminism to rearrange normal society into a twisted slutscape that serves the interests of less attractive women who fail at extracting commitment from high value men. …
Masculinized feminism-congenial women want an unnatural order instituted that grants them the shame-free sexual freedom inherent to men while simultaneously restricting any expression of the natural sexual impulses of men themselves.
So says you.
I don’t think I would have remembered this particular post from Heartiste had not one of Lv99_BixNood ‘s colleagues posted a link to it. Future cultural historians may want to use this as proof of the direct linkages between incels and PUAs.
And also the National Review. Heartiste ended his rumination on “masculinized” feminists by quoting what he called a “rare moment of ballsiness” from the conservative magazine:
Feminism has become something very different from what it understands itself to be, and indeed from what its adversaries understand it to be. It is not a juggernaut of defiant liberationists successfully playing offense. It is instead a terribly deformed but profoundly felt protective reaction to the sexual revolution itself. In a world where fewer women can rely on men, some will themselves take on the protective coloration of exaggerated male characteristics — blustering, cursing, belligerence, defiance, and also, as needed, promiscuity.
It’s Lv99_BixNood’s theory in slightly smoother prose. (And, though Heartiste doesn’t mention it, it was written by one Mary Eberstadt, a suspected woman.)
Heartiste, not content to merely quote, decides to elaborate on what he sees as the implications of the NR piece. Or. as he puts it, “to reword the conclusion of this NR statement for endarkening clarification.”
“In a world where fewer ugly, unfeminine, financially self-sufficient women can or need to rely on provider beta males, some will themselves take on the protective coloration of exaggerated male characteristics — blustering, cursing, belligerence, defiance, and also, as needed, promiscuity that leaves them feeling gross and unloved the next morning after Jack has slipped out the back.”
He continues:
The view is coming into focus now.
Loudmouthed feminists are more often than not:
ugly,
out of shape chunksters,
unfeminine androgynes,
older, Wall-victim spinsters,
spiteful, LSMV misfits…who simultaneously loathe and envy the natural freedom and energy of male sexual desire. Because feminists are losers in the sexual marketplace, (and because they know it), they seek to tear down the organic, biomechanically-grounded social and sexual orders and replace them with bizarre androgynous dystopias that help them feel better about themselves.
I’ll take a “bizarre androgynous dystopia” over anything Heartiste has to offer.
Heartiste may not be fond of incels but his theory of feminism is virtually indistinguishable from that of Lv99_BixNood. Peas in a pod.
Follow me on Mastodon.
Send tips to dfutrelle at gmail dot com.
We Hunted the Mammoth relies on support from you, its readers, to survive. So please donate here if you can, or at David-Futrelle-1 on Venmo.
It’s so weird how badly they want feminists to be unattractive, when every single feminist I know is at the baseline, conventionally attractive, and in many instances, drop dead gorgeous. They’re in cool bands, they are published authors, they own their own small businesses. They joyfully ride the dick carousel, often the puss-a-whirl, and absolutely love their lives and are totally self-sufficient and content people who know who they are and won’t compromise that for anything.
one of the worst things I can imagine is being a man. And that’s just because I’m not a man. I like having my vagina and my tits. I can’t imagine being trapped in the wrong body. Or feeling wrong in my skin like that. It’s a similar thing about why I have so much sympathy for Transgender people. Because I can’t imagine being in wrong body like.
Love the misogyny and transphobia combo. It is lovely. If lovely is defined as “extremely discomfiting and odiferous” of course.
Like, yeah, a lot of feminists are conventionally pretty and a lot aren’t. It’s a distribution of human characteristics, that makes humans cool (even if our genetic diversity is disconcertingly minimal in the “not quite as bad as cheetahs, but that’s a low bar” sense).
These guys fixation on reducing everyone (including themselves) to current beauty or behavioral standards deprives them of a lot of fun meeting and knowing people as they are. They want everyone to fit the mold, even if it means people have to go around, spending all their energy policing themselves in physicality and mentality to try to fit a mold that fits like the world’s itchiest Chewbacca onesie.
And yet somehow they aren’t the ones that hate feminists (and trans men)?
Also, some Trans men are very conventionally pretty, doesn’t make them not have dysphoria (or euphoria: everyone has a different experience).
Yeah, the teenage boys who looked up my skirt and laughed about it while fifteen-year-old me was walking up an open staircase from the basement to the first floor of a department store were wearing pants. And after that incident, I was uninterested in wearing skirts or dresses.
Other things that men do that I’d like to do: walk the streets after dark unafraid, make more money than the average woman, be free from the societal message that my looks dictate my worth, and enjoy respect.
Huh. One of the few silver linings of this pandemic is how rarely I need to wear real pants anymore, but ok.
I love how they always insist promiscuity was only ever a male trait and it’s feminism that “created” promiscuous women.
Who were the promiscuous men having sex with?
Honestly with everything they write incels demonstrate why they don’t deserve ANY pity.
And they really really really want to believe this myth that there is any link between a woman’s looks and being a feminist. They want to believe all feminists are unattractive despite plenty of attractive women in the public eye being proud feminists.
Because they cannot imagine a woman preferring a life of greater autonomy. So they tell themselves the only women who don’t want to have to depend financially on men are those who aren’t able to.
“ biomechanically-grounded social and sexual order”
What does this even mean?!
Something gender-essentialist and transphobic.
Short hair while looking hot AND feminine? I have one name to add:
That is all.
As a separate thing…
Transsexual women are men who just really wish they could be women because they hate being men.
Feminists who hate themselves as women and just wish they could be men.
So, as a transsexual feminist …?
I feel like I might just be psychic TNT to these dopes.
By their own philosophy though only a small subset of men truly demonstrate masculine traits (the alpha males) while the rest are cuck betas who need to be trained in masculinity in order to attract women. So… if these traits only apply to 10% of men, how come they are apparently inherent and something women are jealous of?
I also hugely enjoy the idea that boys and girls emerge from the womb destined to either wear skirts or pants (trousers, to my British eye) and cut their hair in a certain way, and anything else is a PERVERSION.
It’s really not that long ago – the Victorian era – that both boys and girls wore dresses and smocks, with their hair in ringlets or a long bob, till at least the age of five or so. There are plenty of family photographs of boys dressed in this way.
I was in the workforce in the seventies when a friend was hauled up before her boss to be lectured about wearing a smart pantsuit to the office, because “it unsettles the men”.
Another time I was in the elevator with her, she was carrying an umbrella, and a man (presumably unsettled by the pantsuits she continued to wear) sniggered at her and said “isn’t that a MAN’S umbrella??” And she looked at him and said “I can’t see any balls”.
We are still good friends to this day, and she still doesn’t take any nonsense!
Okay, for once one of these douchebags came close to making an actual point. (But who made “being feminine” uncool? Hint: It wasn’t the feminists, at least at first.)
In my youth, and even out of high school for a while, I was trying to be the “Cool Girl”. The tomboyish one who insisted on being treated like “one of the guys” and would dismiss certain feminine activities or styles as “girl stuff”. You know why? Because the Patriarchy drilled into my head (and others) that femininity was weak and worthless and if I wanted the guys to respect me, I had to look and act and dress like them. Of course, it still didn’t stop some of my friends and peers from hitting on me (which I always found baffling because I’m not pretty at all… though at least a few of them are attracted to tomboys, so…) and it didn’t stop me from being an awkward nerdy kid with few friends who was basically a social outcast until high school.
Feminism, or what I perceived of it at the time, kind of pushed me in this direction, but I was already being shoved there in the first place. And it was feminism that finally helped me snap out of it. I’ve yet to see MRA or Migtoe groups help misogynists, just make them even worse.
Okay, I need a softcore (or hell, hardcore) erotica story and/or comic with this title, stat. (Band names are overrated and never used.) Let the Slutscapades begin!
@Kat
For me, it was hearing about “Friday Flip-Up Day” in kindergarten or first grade that made me never want to wear skirts. I was still forced to wear dresses every Sunday, but usually below knee-length and I almost always wore tights with them, usually dark ones.
@Steph
Seriously. Who are all these Hot Stacies turning them down to sleep with the Chads of the world if all feminists are ugly hags?
@Crip Dyke
No mention of Demi Moore? The way I looked at her in Ghost should have been a BIG
redrainbow flag that I was bi, but I somehow ignored it, just like all the others.Double posting, but my other one was pretty huge. This whole topic made me want to post this song by Tori Amos:
I’ve always taken… slight exception to those lines because it almost seems to feed into the stereotype of women “resorting” to “lesbianism” because there aren’t enough good men available (though I don’t think Tori really meant it that way), but goddamn if these words don’t apply in the face of the misogynistic Manosphere. If all that’s available is a bunch of shitty MRAs, Miggies, and PUAs, then maybe the ladies would make better “men” and women should turn to each other for support.
But luckily, there are real, decent men in the world, the guy running this blog being one such example. The douchebags out there want to believe that they’re in the majority and every other guy is just as hateful as them, but outside their little circlejerks, even your average “moderately sexist” guy doesn’t believe a fraction of the bullshit they spew.
Do gay men hate the men who will have sex with them as much as so many straight men hate the women who will have sex with them?
I continue to be amazed that some men think that what THEY find attractive is a universal truth. I’ve had long hair. I’ve had short hair. Mr. Parasol likes both on me, because as he says, “I love YOU, not your hair.” About the only preference he’s expressed is to ask me not to wear makeup a lot because (first) he doesn’t think I need it, and (second) he thinks lipstick and foundation taste yucky, and he doesn’t want to have a “yuck” reaction when he kisses me. I’ve never been a big makeup user, so I’m just as happy to save it for the really special occasions.
@Crip Dyke: Sooo many examples of gorgeous women absolutely rocking short hair. Recent example is Jessica Henwick in the new Matrix film (which I haven’t seen yet, so apologies if her character in NB)
Ugh, I’d forgotten how wretched and preening Heartiste’s prose is. It’s the literary equivalent of the leopard skin hats and peacock eyeliner worn by PUAs.
Heartiste and ilk believe that if they call feminists ugly and barren, the rest of womankind will be cowed and fall back into line. They’re forgetting that this tactic is old as mothballs, has never worked, and only serves to call attention to why feminism is needed in the first place.
It never even occurs to them that their “biomechanically grounded sexual and social order” has literally nothing in it for women. The reward for diminishing ourselves would be…well, still getting called unattractive and slutty and fat the moment we do something these men don’t like, plus a lifetime shackled to an abuser who can never be appeased. I guess that’s why they want to impose harsh social sanctions to force everyone into this oh-so-natural state of existence.
[Emphasis mine]
Pro tip, dude: when you claim that something is “pure projection,” it kind of undercuts your point when you immediately follow it up by admitting that y’all are indeed guilty as charged. That makes it an accurate description, regardless of whether or not the person making the claim also does the same thing…which in this case, they pretty clearly don’t.
So feminists are projecting when they say incels hate women, and this is proven by incels… hating women, but less than women hate women?
I can only assume incels are projecting when they think people hate them, because no one can hate incels as much as they hate themselves.
Also, after seeing historical paintings and more recent drawings of men with short bob type hairstyles, I used to think that would probably look weird in real life. Then I saw a guy (in his forties, I think) with hair like that, and it was just… hair. I’d imagine all “weird” hair choices would be like that: you’d get used to looking at them after a bit. Clearly not, for a subset of people.
Edit: Ninja’d by Gaebolga.
As a side note, did anyone else catch the racist meme reference in the username “Lv99_BixNood”? The phrase “bix nood” comes from a cartoon by white supremacist cartoonist Nick “A. Wyatt Mann” Bougas (who also gave us such gems as “around blacks never relax,” “hey rabbi whatcha doin’?” and the antisemitic caricature that later became Le Happy Merchant). In the cartoon, it was originally part of a string of gibberish that was meant to be a parody of AAVE, the joke being that Black people supposedly spend a ton of money on pagers despite being unintelligible (hey, the cartoon is from the ’90s).
Also, speaking of that bob haircut, Disney’s version of Mowgli is another dude who rocked it.
Question for the fashion clueless:
What actually is the difference between a bob and a bowl cut? They look the same to me, and I’m not sure if it’s me or them actually being the same.
@Sarah:
They joyfully ride the dick carousel, often the puss-a-whirl, and absolutely love their lives and are totally self-sufficient and content people who know who they are and won’t compromise that for anything.
Let’s not forget the ones riding the Biplanes…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMSrc-UnKPs
…and the Flying Ace Aerial Chase:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPPtpfWGI_0
(For context: Kings Island in Mason, Ohio has a Peanuts-themed kiddie section called Planet Snoopy.)
Not award winningly relevant, but I only found out recently that they’re called pagers because in t’olden days, if you wanted to speak to someone you sent a pageboy to let them know. Hence ‘to page’ meaning to invite someone to talk, and thus ‘pager’.
Probably everyone else here already knew that.
Judging by how long pants have been a common and unremarkable item of clothing for women, I’m going to guess this particular incel fought in The Great War.