The hidden crisis that's fuelling the 'incel rebellion'

[Initech]

Two weeks ago, a man climbed behind the wheel of a rented van, and used it to commit the worst mass homicide in Toronto’s history. In the hours before Toronto Police began to clarify details of the attack, the rampant speculation suggested that Canada was poised to revisit the terror scare that led to the 2015 passage of the draconian Anti-Terrorism Act and the Zero Tolerance for Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. But when it was discovered that the alleged killer Alek Minassian was, in fact, a geographically Caucasian male who seemed to subscribe to the deeply misogynistic “incel” (involuntarily celibate) culture, the emerging opinions on how to deal with others who share his ideology went in a completely different direction.

Rather than a substantial conversation about the crisis of angry and disaffected young white men turning to mass violence, two general outlooks have emerged. One of them is the shoulder-shrugging belief that there really is nothing to be done: As long as they haven’t grown beards and claimed affiliation with religious extremists, they are merely weirdos and psychopaths who will glom on to any irrational reason to act on their violent impulses. Another, which stems from the deeply pathological belief that the path to manhood is tread through a woman’s loins, is that inceldom can be cured by getting these wayward young men laid. And this belief, which a generation ago would have been reduced to the notion that “hiring a prostitute” could solve the incel problem, has recently transformed into a truly dystopian notion that “sex redistribution” could perhaps be an answer.

But here’s what’s being missed in the conversation: the men who call themselves “incels,” and the broader internet sphere of men who cluster their identities around having been done wrong by women, are not interested in mere sexual companionship. Their loneliness, angst, and the feeling of lost power are a pitiable cover story to a problem with white male subcultures that reaches back several years and into some of the darkest corners of the internet. What began as unchecked toxic culture in fringe websites and forums has metastasized into varying ideologies of self-perpetuating hatred and violence. Ignoring this toxic culture—or brushing it off with pat or ridiculous answers—would be a mistake.
http://www.macleans.ca/society/the-hidden-crisis-thats-fuelling-the-incel-rebellion/

This is a long piece but well worth the read. These people are dangerous and scary.

[KT2000]

1. so much hate has been unleashed

the internet echo chamber is feeding the nuts who feel their twisted and illegal views are OK.

[gratuitous]

2. It is a toxic culture

But beyond the advice to them to grow the fuck up because you're not the center of the universe, I got nothing.

[marybourg]

3. And maybe, turn off the video games,

with their deeply misogynistic culture, and go to the park and throw a frisbee to the dog. Every week-end.

[Blue_Adept]

12. Women make up 42% of the gaming market in 2017

Or are we back to blaming movies and video games for everything again as the easy out?

[elehhhhna]

26. Porn makes them think wejust fall on our backs because they're dudes.

Ever notice there's no kissing in prn btw?

[Loki Liesmith]

28. Porn doesn't make anyone think anything.

[ChubbyStar]

36. The brain is the largest sex organ in the human body

So yes, thinking is involved. It may be basic thought processing but thinking happens.

[dawg]

37. I think that porn makes them believe that women just fall on their backs ...

for *other* men, just not for them.

And that fills them with rage.

[Bradshaw3]

4. Yes, but I think it's part of a larger problem

There are lots of white males, including a lot around my age (64), who suffer from what I would call adult male infantalism. You see them riding their showroom Harleys posing like one percenters, wearing their sidearms and knives and acting like jerks whenever they feel like it.

It used to be that you were given advice to grow up and eventually most did to some extent. But now these types think we are supposed to celebrate these "men" who conflate their their childish behavior and childish obsession with "toys" as somehow childlike and admirable when it is the opposite of being what a man is. I wish they would all grow the fuck up but don't think that is happening.

[gratuitous]

5. I think we have always had these types with us

But the internet has allowed them to get together across greater distances and in greater numbers, and they all reinforce each other with their tales of woe. I remember in my callow youth feeling like an incel, fretting over not getting any attention from women, and being jealous of the guys who had some social skills. It was an awful six months or so, then I turned 14, and put away childish things (as the good book says).

These guys? Not so much.

[safeinOhio]

6. "social skills"

Bingo

[RKP5637]

29. I've often wondered why a woman would want to have anything to do with these jerks, young or

old. And some look like they have some serious mental health issues along with other problems. Knuckle dragging throwbacks.

[yardwork]

40. I've noticed the same, especially among well-off white men.

Entitled infantile behavior right on the edge of rage. Personally I think it's the hate radio and Faux news.

[Bradshaw3]

41. I agree and also about right wing media

Their profit motive and power consolidation is based on keeping people afraid and angry. We are seeing the fruits of that in everyday life like never before.

[Iggo]

7. The people who told them what's important and how to get it fucked up royally.

I don't know how to fix that.

[Initech]

16. Something went very wrong in the last 10 years.

I feel like we're in that alternate universe from Back To The Future Part 2 after Biff stole the Delorean. Something got hijacked along the way and we need to set out to fix it.

[RKP5637]

30. Yep, it is ... like an invasion beam has set off a lot of aberrant behavior. n/t

[TeamPooka]

8. a bunch of jerk offs that need to jerk off.

[apnu]

9. "... inceldom can be cured by getting these wayward young men laid ..." WRONG!

Getting these men personalities and social skills is the cure. Its not about getting laid. Its about angry men who are assholes and they're mad that women don't want to sleep with an asshole.

The problem is assholery, not busting a nut.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

10. What a bunch of excuses.

[ck4829]

11. "Incel" violence is just the tip of the iceberg

Under the surface is treating women like property, toxic masculinity, using violence as an immediate solution to your problems, etc.

It's not a lack of women saying "yes" to them that bothers the "incel".

It's the very concept that a woman can say "no" to them which irritates them to no end.

Simply put in mathematical terms:

Outrage that a woman can say "no" to you > Violence against perceived slights against you

I wonder just how deep this goes, just how much we see this being normalized.

[Initech]

17. It started with Gamer Gate.

Gamer Gate was treated as a joke and now it morphed into the Incel movement. Same group of losers with a new name and a new identity, only much scarier than that. Where does it go from there?

[malaise]

22. You nailed it

In their sick heads women are subservient and grateful.

[Yavin4]

13. The parallels between Incels and Islamic terrorists are astounding.

Which shows that it's not religion that motivates these men to kill. It's something else.

[RKP5637]

31. Yep, good observation. Take away the location, country/nationality, and it seems the same. n/t

[Blue_Adept]

14. There is NO one size fits all cure for this

It really is a thing that hits individuals in very different ways as they fall into this grouping.

[stevenleser]

15. Good read. Like Islamic terrorists, and whomever else, I think its worth trying to figure out how to

stop this. Obviously the whole "sex redistribution" idea won't work for reasons the article describes well, but it would be interesting to see if there was some sort of intervention that could work.

[Garrett78]

18. A very good read. I encourage everyone to read it in its entirety.

[smirkymonkey]

19. Thanks for posting this.

Good article. Sad situation.

[flotsam]

20. Total Horseshit

Until the author can explain what the fuck the term "geographically Caucasian male " means. Sounds like sociological bullshit if ever I have heard it. If he moves to Scranton Pennsylvania does it change the outcome or is the author full of shit?

[marble falls]

21. Do you really think this article hinges on "geographically Caucasian male"? .....

BULLSHIT. The article is important, maybe you need to read the entire thing.

[flotsam]

23. I could shit care less

If you start with horseshit I simply cannot be bothered to find an article about fringe (and fucked up) morons pertinent...

[marble falls]

24. Whats with your hostility, ace? Women troubles? Read the article and have your question answered.

[Iggo]

25. So it's a tiny bit horseshit, and you skipped the rest.

Got it.

[Hekate]

44. Reading comprehension is your friend

[Loki Liesmith]

27. Incels are an insignificant problem

A vanishingly small sector of the population that have received outsize attention.

[Hekate]

45. Unless they terrorize or kill you

[stevenleser]

47. And again, parallels to Islamic terrorists. Those are a very small percentage of the population and

of Muslims.

And they are insignificant as a result... unless they terrorize or kill you or someone you care about.

So they aren't insignificant. And trying to figure out a way to de-radicalize them is a worthwhile effort, in both cases.

[ismnotwasm]

32. Feminists, and feminists HERE know about these fuckers for years

No fun to be a Cassandra I guess. My point is they’ve been brewing for a long time. Gamer gate should have been a clarion call. But no. Women were not listened to or taken seriously enough. When we said “rape culture” we were told there is no such thing. When we said “patriarchy” we got eye rolls. When today, we say “toxic masculinity” we get a lot #notme #notallmen pushback.

We tried to tell people. Yes we did.

[MuseRider]

38. +1000

It is not fun now either, mainly IRL, not so much here anymore. Maybe it is and I am just not here enough to see it.

We saw it coming a LONG time ago. We also knew the first steps would always be, "Hmmmm, what are the women doing to provoke this?" "They want sex? OK there are ways to see that they get that". NOPE!

When rape is still misunderstood by so many how can we even begin to tell people and be heard that this is NOT a women's issue. We are the victims but we are not the cause nor can altering our behavior solve this.

The article was pretty good explaining a lot of that.

[ismnotwasm]

39. Yeah. I agree.

The internet gives these little shits a platform and a way to vent and organize. The people who are hurt or dead from them don’t think it’s a minuscule problem at all.

[MuseRider]

43. Is there any connection

with this and the raping and burning alive we are seeing? That has to be something much more than just a motivated and cruel power struggle.

[Hekate]

46. Someone more deeply attuned to China and India would have to explore that. What I know is...

...they are both patriarchal cultures with no social safety net for old people aside from sons. Female infanticide was always fairly common, as girl children were a drag on the family economy, needed a dowry, and moved off to their husband's homes at marriage. Given the opportunities offered by modern medicine, i.e. ultrasounds and safe abortions, selecting for sons was a given, and the current crisis was predictable.

In India, where the whole notion of manhood is deeply tied to marriage and family, millions of young men are not imagining that they are being denied that status (and the sex that goes with it). Unlike American "incels," who suffer most from palpable personality defects and focus on the denial of the sexual act, these young men have good reason for their rage at a situation created by their parents' generation's personal selfishness, although most probably cannot see it quite that way. All they see is that they and their very large cohort are being denied a basic human social need (wife and children) -- and the easiest target to lash out at is anyone female.

[dawg day]

33. Tired of "sympathy for the 'incel'"

Some white men-- even those comfortably married to the women they love and with teenaged daughters-- keep expressing sympathy for these guys who believe that they are "deprived of their rights" by women who won't have sex with them on demand. I don't get it. Most decent (and plenty of the indecent, LOL) men of any color or income level manage to have relationships with women (or men if that's what they want). They do this by being someone a woman wants to be with, which #1 means "someone who wouldn't rape me if he gets a chance, or kill others if he doesn't get to rape".

What separates them from the slaveholders who raped women is simply the ability to do so. This is nothing new, and sympathy is profoundly mistaken. These men should try to be good people instead of resentment-oozing piles of misogyny. But of course, what they want isn't "sex" in the sense of mutual physical enjoyment. It's power. Their idol Trump has the power because he has the money and the ruthlessness-- he'd be one of these guys if he hadn't been born rich.

[moriah]

42. I have sympathy for "pre-incels" -- the boys who were bullied for...

... not losing their virginity, who have been victimized by the same culture of toxic masculinity that harms all of humanity.

Boys who were taught their value as men came from "scoring".

Boys whose socially awkward adolescence wasn't helped by the stereotypes teen boys are taught about relationships, if not by education then by media and observation.

Boys who become lonely men who are too afraid to risk rejection to ask girls out and try, or when they do their insecurity shows through and they're dumped by healthy people not willing to try to fix another person's hangups, and used by women who feed on insecurity.

Men who should look at that pattern and see the issue is that placing value on "scoring" is crazy, and perhaps should try to just work on themselves and maybe a healthy woman will be attracted to them, but need to hear someone say it.

Cuz there's a lot of those guys out there who aren't necessarily corrupted by that incel crap yet.

---

Not people who instead place all blame on the women for every failed relationship when the truth is for both genders that the only common denominator in an individual person's dating history is them, or see themselves as entitled to sex from women, or kill people.

Make sense?

[stevenleser]

48. I dont have sympathy for them, nor do I have sympathy for Islamic terrorists. but stopping them one

way or the other, I think, is an important and worthwhile effort.

[lindysalsagal]

34. I'm wondering if the loss of jobs that required physical & skilled labor

Leave those men out of society. Just a thought.

[GaYellowDawg]

35. They're a bunch of whiny, entitled assholes

Their anger comes from the fact that the world, and more specifically women, doesn't cater to whiny, entitled assholes. Boo hoo. They're also angry because, surely, this turn of events couldn't be their fault. It must be the world's fault!

Bunch of dumbasses.