Now, I know I can be a broken record about this topic. But I don't intend to flood this sub with the topic.
Instead I would like to make this post a sort of compendium of several of the best articles/pages/pages I've read on the topic that can help people get an understanding for what the issue is so that we can hopefully come up with ways to remedy it.
First off. Some reading. These are three articles I feel are invaluable.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/08/31/radicalizing-the-romanceless/
The number 1. If you don't read any others. This is the one you need to read. It explains a bit about the mindset of incels. and why they end up the way they do. and it also explains how other movements have pushed them away.
http://lukemuehlhauser.com/the-plight-of-shy-male-nerds-in-a-feminist-world/
This number two. is in regards to the messages that young men get from left leaning pro-feminist sources. and how that is actively harmful to them.
And finally.
https://whoism3.wordpress.com/2012/11/17/confessions-of-a-reformed-incel/
This is the final and probably hardest to read. But it has a perspective that a lot of people don't understand. And that is that for incels. Sex is just one part of the puzzle. And how human connection is what most crave This is summed up IMHO by one line.
No one has held me, touched me, hugged me in such a long time. Humans need physical contact. I don’t feel human.
It should also be added that many of these issues come from men being given counterproductive advice from left wing feminist sources.
http://archive.fo/20FMn http://archive.fo/HgB5d
(funnily enough I was banned by the author of these for reposting the first into a mens sub they mod.)
But we'll continue on.
onto the "nice guy" effect. Now I'm sure we all know "nice guys" as one of the articles I linked above states.
I have a long-running frustration with the way these guys are talked about, especially by women. The number of times I've seen them called entitled, the race to use the "insert niceness tokens into the woman-machine!" analogy, the overuse of this image - it screams "unempathetic".
This again has it's roots in the shaming of male sexuality and the messages that society sends.
As a favorite comment states.
Yeah, I think one of the really pervasive messages that you get in modern society is that women don't want men to bother them. Obviously they don't intend to be universal--there are times and places and situations where they want attention from men. And yes, a lot of the time, the problem is that they don't want attention from men they don't respect.
And I guess for some men, they have experiences that tell them that sometimes women do want to be approached, and sometimes women do want to be complimented on their physical beauty, and sometimes women do want to be seen as sexy and invited to have sex. Maybe they had experiences when they were teenagers where horny girls just took over. Maybe they just didn't feel that the messages applied to them. Maybe they don't give a shit and are just willing to take any amount of being called a creep if sometimes it works.
But that's the problem, right? You and I care. We want to be good people who respect women. We want women to like us and respect us. We want to be the good guys who don't objectify them, and who always treat them like fellow humans instead of pieces of meat. So we hear that women don't like being objectified, and we feel uncomfortable saying anything that suggests we noticed their looks. They say they want to be treated as equals, and we feel like we should avoid anything that feels chivalrous. We hear that they feel uncomfortable being hit on in a certain situation, and we worry about hitting on them in any situation. We don't want to be the guy she rants about tomorrow. We want to be the guy women trust and feel safe around.
But that's not what women want in a partner. As much as they protest guys treating them like meat, they want their boyfriends to need them right now. As much as they say they don't want to be objectified, they want their lovers to think they're sexy as fuck. And as much as they say they are uncomfortable being hit on, they love it when a guy is forward and confident about hitting on them.
But see, we don't get those messages. Really, the whole idea of women having sexual desire still remains pretty taboo. So we just get the rants.
And to continue on with the exploration of shaming.
for the sake of balance here's an article from a female and more feminist perspective on the matter.
https://polyamorydiaries.com/stop-shaming-men-for-having-a-sex-drive/
Which has this great quote on the topic.
Sex-positive, feminist blogger Emma Lindsay explains it best:
When we shame someone like Ken Bone for, essentially, getting turned on by women we are perpetuating rape culture. When we call men “creeps” for having extremely normal biological desires, we emotionally stunt them, so they are unable to negotiate for said desires in good faith. If men weren’t ashamed to be seen in their desire, they wouldn’t mind having sex with women with brains and emotions. They wouldn’t be so fascinated by the promise of sex objects unable to judge them. They wouldn’t hate themselves, and by extension women, for making them hate themselves.
(I didn't link the article that was taken from because I felt it was a bit too off topic)
Basically. I feel like this shame many men are being fed towards their own sexual desires is one of the main contributors to their inability to "ask" for what they want.
And I think the current discourse doesn't help either.
Every time I see the word "entitled" levied against a lonely man, be they an incel or a "nice guy"
I can't help but think "why is it so wrong that this person wants to have sex?"
They're not wrong or bad for wanting this. They're not entitled. The term is so overused that it's lost it's original meaning.
They just want the same thing as nearly everybody else. To have a few orgasms, and to touch/hold another human being in an intimate fashion.
Yet we approach these people as if they're monsters for being frustrated at not being able to fulfill the exact same desires we all have.
and what's worse. IMHO is all the people that try to say that "this is just the way it is, and there's nothing wrong with living a life of abstinence and sexual frustration"
Treating sex and love like it's a drug addiction they need to break. while hypocritically partaking in it themselves.
Can you imagine if went to a rehab center only to find out that all of the doctors and workers there openly did all of the drugs you were being told to stay away from?
Now this is not to say that I think women should be “blamed” for men not having sex, nor do I think anyone owes sex to anyone else.
But. if it weren't so easy for men to be inherently labelled predatory for their perfectly natural desires, and there weren't such grievous consequences for being tagged as a "creep" Maybe a lot of these unfortunate trends would start solving themselves.
And I think this should be a good segway into my next area.
and that is that sex is part of society. It's in our ads. it's in our media. And hell after a certain age. people just start coming in pairs. and I won't get into things like the ability for a couple to save money by renting a single bedroom apartment. Or how couples can support one another in things like education, job searches, living expenses and etc.
single people can't do this. Which isn't a problem if you see being single as a choice. IE, until you consider that there are people who don't want to be single.
and this shit is ever present. You can't escape it.
But try to imagine what it would be like if, for whatever reason, those more gratifying moments never arrived. Imagine that, while everyone else your age appears to have figured out love and dating and sex, you stayed more or less stuck in time as a psychosexual teenager. Imagine, say, being in a movie theater in 2005.
https://www.elle.com/life-love/sex-relationships/a33782/involuntary-celibacy/
Basically If you're on a diet and crave some steak with mashed potatoes for lunch, you can reason with yourself to opt for the salad instead. But if you don't eat anything for days or weeks, you're going to suffer from very real and very severe physical problems and no amount of mental strength and "self-acceptance" is going to change that. Same with physical intimacy. You shouldn't need sex to validate yourself. But the complete lack of any physical contact has real and measurable effects on your brain chemistry.
Now. I think for brevity I'll end it here. But some of the topics I would like to add on at a future point are essentially that of "how and why young men are ending up here" (I believe it has a lot to do with men and boys being left behind in education and etc.)
and how "body positivity movements stopped at men"
[–]TheDoctorCoach 5 points6 points7 points (5 children) | Copy Link
[–]Forgetaboutthelonely[S] 2 points3 points4 points (4 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (1 child) | Copy Link
Yes, exactly this. Except apparently people here think suggesting this kind of supported self-improvement is just Ayn Rand 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps' right wing bullshit.
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[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (16 children) | Copy Link
That's what the other guy said, even made a whole post about me. See other comment about sex not being a finite resource or a zero sum game, getting laid does not take that sex away from someone else like getting paid does.
It will mean more people are having sex. At the moment we are nowhere near any kind of saturation point where everyone is constantly fucking, to the point noone can even get in on the action, despite what all the incel propaganda might have you believe.
Nor are we near any sort of saturation point for marriage. The problem is not lack of workers or lack of jobs, it's a lack of matching them together. It's a recruitment issue, i.e. a severe lack of it, not a supply and demand one. The answer to it is not to force everyone into jobs they're not happy with.
[–]Aaod 2 points3 points4 points (15 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (14 children) | Copy Link
Are all bosses are asking for ivy league graduates? Every single job in your country requires that does it?
So all girls, are requiring close to male perfection are they? It's not like the vast majority of the bell curve consists of women who'd be happy with a guy who puts in some effort to learn to be charming but respectful, to have a career that gives them drive and purpose but isn't necessarily loaded. No, they're all after the apex chads aren't they, every single one of em.
Yes, not everyone can be a 1% ivy leaguer, everything is a bell curve and there is a glass ceiling that most of us will come up against, yes because some of life is a lottery and for circumstances outside our control. That doesn't mean we shouldn't all aim to get as close to our ceiling, our potential as possible, that if we can't be a 1%er then we should just give up.
[–]Aaod 2 points3 points4 points (13 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (12 children) | Copy Link
Ah the 70/30 or 80/20 rule. Well hey I must obviously be a top 30% guy then despite being 5'8" and a 6 to 6.5 in looks. All my opinions must be biased and well, what can I do except accept my privelege.
I'm interested to know how the "system" should be fixed and what your definition of "fixed" is.
[–]Aaod 1 point2 points3 points (3 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (2 children) | Copy Link
And what does parity and normalness look like?
[–]Forgetaboutthelonely[S] 1 point2 points3 points (7 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (6 children) | Copy Link
Another false equivalency. I didn't break through survivorship to become some kind of fucking billionaire. I toiled for years, perhaps a decade with my poor mindset and poor understanding of women, and now I still have to play the numbers and fail a lot, just to have a few relationships with a few women more or less around my 'level', and sometimes find a girlfriend. Being able to get a job that I'm qualified for is enough, noone needs to be a billionaire- the level where survivorship bias does apply.
And here's the crux - so many of you believe the hype, that game will get you to some promised land where you have passive income, where you can fuck all the 10s and basically anyone you want, without trying. That is most mens marker of "success" and it's a fantasy.
[–]TC1827 5 points6 points7 points (6 children) | Copy Link
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[–]Forgetaboutthelonely[S] 3 points4 points5 points (4 children) | Copy Link
[+]Snagglet0es1 points [recovered] (3 children) | Copy Link
Dude, it isn't rigged. I know it's a real fucking struggle, I know because I've been through it myself, I thought I was unfuckable, broken, that there was just something intrinsicly wrong with me, but I helped myself out of the hole. There are plenty of girls out there of all different beauty, intelligence, personality, views, some of whom will be in any incels ballpark if they would just turn off their computer, go outside, drop all their hatred, and learn to connect with other human beings without any expectations.
My intent to help comes from not trying to add to the stigma, but also not engaging with the ideology. Every incel believes two fundamental axioms - 1) I'm completely unfuckable, and 2) that will NEVER change. It is my destiny, nothing I can do will change it so why even try.
They bring in all sorts of theory and "evidence" and filter it through their epic, hubble telescope-sized, confirmation bias lens, but at the base of it, it's an ideology based on FAITH - an unwavering faith that their romantic situation will NEVER change. Even ones that do change, they just 'no true scotsman' it, "oh well he wasn't a true incel, he succeeded cos he had this jawline, or because he's smart, or because he's dumb, or x y z". They will just create a new reason to explain why that situation doesn't apply to them, on an ad hoc basis (the no true scotsman fallacy).
If someone truly believes that it's not just very difficult, but literally metaphysically 100% impossible, what can you say to that? There's literally nothing. Arguing with "true" incels is like arguing with religious people because it's based on this unshakeable faith. You throw all the argument and evidence you want at Incels or Christians, and it bounces right off. All you can do, is keep signposting them to the true solution, and hope eventually it filters through, and they go put it into practice for themselves.
And in response to your other comment, looking on meetup for one activity that you already like is not trying everything you can in good faith. It's making a token effort then using the failure of that to confirm your pre-existing bias that it's all futile. I take your point about a demographic - but unless your city has a lot of people (and women) that fall inside your current interests, you're going to have to EXPAND your demographic.
And yes, that will involve going out and getting involved in activities, that you don't currently have an interest in doing. I'm sorry, yes it's scary as fuck, it involves risk, but there's no way round that. Try stuff that is outside your wheelhouse, but give it an actual try not just go once and say "well noone talked to me so that group sucks" and give up. If you've tried something for 2-3 months and it sucks then hey, it's probably not for you. It doesn't have to involve drinking, it doesn't have to be fucking american football, but it will have to be something other than board games and internet. In making actual effort to go out and expand your interests you become a more well-rounded and social person, you're expecting it to somehow happen the other way round.
Ideas- book clubs, dance classes, astronomy, orchestras or bands or open mic nights, table tennis, badminton, outdoor or indoor swimming, running clubs, crossfit, anything that involves volunteering- they are glad of people, soup kitchens, going to old folks homes or hospitals to chat to people who are lonely, charity work, fundraising, LARPing, martial arts, axe throwing, kayaking, bowling. There are so. many. freaking. things. you can be doing, that give you access to some kind of community, especially in a city, but you have to search a lot further than just meetup(dot)com. Also none of these guarantees you to make any friends, but they put you in the position to make it *possible**.* I also think most incels would benefit from seeking out group therapy, it's not for friends, in fact that's usually against the rules, but it teaches you about relating to other people in a controlled environment.
P.s. please don't reply to me in a line by line take-down quoting of each thing. Respond to it as a whole please. Also, start telling me reasons why these things are possible, or could be possible, and stop giving me reasons why they're not. Or I won't reply.
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