I would exercise a certain amount of caution in believing what any of these actors say. Bannon has gone from being at the heart of government, to being chucked out of the White House, to presently only having the MyPillow guy and various fringe InfoWars people as an audience.
And that Spectator article is written to someone who seems to have very little in the way of qualification and who has written one book pushing a return to a traditional view of masculinity, just the kinds of credentials that would lead him to push the idea of masculinity being in 'crisis'.
While its great you're looking into this, can I second chrisstiles on being careful with sources? I wouldn't go to either of these myself, especially not the Spectator.
People are starting to do academic research on the phenomenon though and here's a short summary of some of that research
To clarify, I don't see them as sources, I see them simply as examples of actors with power, influence or media access potentially leveraging, manipulating or normalising Incel ideology (proto-ideology?) for their own interests.
I used to think hardcore supporters on the Trump forums like TheDonald who promoted violence were mad but not dangerous, yet we all saw how that turned out ... with the right manipulation and prompting.
The Incel forums are a quantum leap in terms of derrangement and hatred.
I would exercise a certain amount of caution in believing what any of these actors say. Bannon has gone from being at the heart of government, to being chucked out of the White House, to presently only having the MyPillow guy and various fringe InfoWars people as an audience.
And that Spectator article is written to someone who seems to have very little in the way of qualification and who has written one book pushing a return to a traditional view of masculinity, just the kinds of credentials that would lead him to push the idea of masculinity being in 'crisis'.
While its great you're looking into this, can I second chrisstiles on being careful with sources? I wouldn't go to either of these myself, especially not the Spectator.
People are starting to do academic research on the phenomenon though and here's a short summary of some of that research
To clarify, I don't see them as sources, I see them simply as examples of actors with power, influence or media access potentially leveraging, manipulating or normalising Incel ideology (proto-ideology?) for their own interests.
I think the point is that you can't expect them to be accurate sources on 'incel ideology', 'incel culture' or even their ability manipulate or leverage either. There are all sorts of reasons why they may want to distort or outright lie about all of those (or even to what extent any of those things exist or work).
I am rereading Dune at the moment, and OMG the misogyny, the poorly disguised racism full of noble savages in need of an off world saviour, the eugenicist world view. You are barely aware of the toxicity of the media you grow up with sometimes.
I note people don’t tend to talk about involuntarily celibate women.
I think (aside from the aforementioned idea that women don't want sex) there is an idea that a woman who wants sex can generally find a willing man. I... honestly don't know whether that's true or not.
There is some comment about female incels if you read the sites or the information around. This is a Guardian commentary from Arwa Mahdawi from February 2020 (link) asking why we are only concerned about male incels. Arwa Mahdawi writes a weekly column called the Week in Patriarchy for the Guardian. It's worth reading in full, but makes many of the points made above and interviews the woman who started the original incel site, which she handed over to others when she moved on:
... most people who follow the news have heard of incels. Far fewer people know that a woman coined the term. Even fewer realise there are thousands of women who identify as incels, or “femcels”. <snip>
The fact that femcels have not been on violent rampages is the most obvious reason they are not discussed. However, gender stereotypes also come into play.
<snip>
The idea that men “need” sex and women submit to it is deeply ingrained. A lot of incels seem to think femcels are just “entitled women who play the victim to get sympathy and attention from men but refuse to lower their standards”. As we all know, when men suffer, it is a tragedy of murderous proportions; when women suffer, it is a farce.
Thinking too that straight women don't ask men out on dates very often. One reason being that while a woman would like to get to know someone better over coffee, in the heterosexist dating game there's an assumption about her being desperate for sex if she has to ask a man out. Or an imbalance of power because she is deviating from the conventional norms and taking on a masculine aggressor role. The expectation is that a smart woman should be able to get a man to ask her out.
Every aspect of dating is underpinned by the same outdated contradictions and assumptions. That a man should pay for everything if he wants to have sex with a woman. That women should only offer to pay for themselves on the third or fourth date. That women don't need sex in the same way men do, or can get sex anytime they want, or that they are saving themselves for the right man (virginity is a highly gendered symbolic) or frigid or sluts. You'd think all these caricatures around sexuality would have been discarded by now, but they come up all the time in popular culture.
In South Africa, polygamy is legal in traditional culture despite many feminist critiques. A proposal to make polyandry legal so that woman can have several husbands has led to outrage from those who defend polygamy for men, because women's sexuality is supposed to be non-existent and subverted gender roles would destroy traditional cultures. Polyandry is practised all the same by a small percentage of women: they approach the prospective husband's family for permission, pay lobola as a male bride price and organise shared living arrangements for co-husbands and children.
I am rereading Dune at the moment, and OMG the misogyny, the poorly disguised racism full of noble savages in need of an off world saviour, the eugenicist world view. You are barely aware of the toxicity of the media you grow up with sometimes.
I don't remember when I noticed that Paul Atreides was basically T. E. Lawrence, but it certainly wasn't on first reading.
More generally, whilst I enjoy much of the 70s and 80s TV comedy, I have to view it firmly though a lens of "of its time" not to have my ghast firmly flabbered by the endemic casual sexism.
I am rereading Dune at the moment, and OMG the misogyny, the poorly disguised racism full of noble savages in need of an off world saviour, the eugenicist world view. You are barely aware of the toxicity of the media you grow up with sometimes.
I don't remember when I noticed that Paul Atreides was basically T. E. Lawrence, but it certainly wasn't on first reading.
More generally, whilst I enjoy much of the 70s and 80s TV comedy, I have to view it firmly though a lens of "of its time" not to have my ghast firmly flabbered by the endemic casual sexism.
I was born in the 1980s, and felt like I spent a good deal of early adulthood delousing myself of a lot of crap I absorbed as a kid. It definitely screwed up my expectations about relationships.
Far-Right groups who hate everyone who isn't a straight male WASP, or at least have very firm views of the roles of such people in their ideal society (Gilead anyone?);
General societal misogyny that bridges the gap between the two.
You're at least half right.
Part of the topic here is involuntarily celibate males (ICMs) Who, if I have the terminology right, are not "incels" unless they make a choice to adopt incel ideology which blames their situation on women.
Born and encultured (because we all know that nature & nurture interact) with desires that they lack the means to satisfy in socially-approved ways, the ICMs have been dealt an unlucky hand in the game of life. Seems reasonable to see them as victims. Until they turn their frustration outward to make demands of others, and become incels (which my spellchecker keeps changing to "uncles"). Who then oppress by their claimed entitlement to what should be given freely As victims are sometimes wont to become oppressors given the opportunity
Part of it is online groups with definite views. Left, right, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-animal welfare, whatever. Who can easily become online hate groups, as dissenting or moderate voices are discouraged and go elsewhere.
And there's a clear connection. We all know that socialisation by internet isn't the real thing. (And that those who are under-socialised desperately need not to be locked down).
The polarising impact of the internet should be a serious concern. (Said he, sitting here in rural Ireland typing stuff to in-some-way-like-minded people elsewhere instead of meeting his neighbours).
It's your third category where I think you miss the mark.
I guess there are other misogynists. You do get men who really don't like women , and prefer to interact in all-male groups. Just as you get women who prefer society without men. But while having preferences for the type of company you keep is legitimate, people who are really unable to appreciate the other sex are missing out on something. Are in some way damaged people - it's not a healthy trait, IMHO.
And then the fourth ingredient is those who hold a (no doubt politically incorrect) view of men and women as being more different or more suited to different roles than your own political doctrine holds them to be.
But don't confuse that with hate. People hold different ideas on the progressive-traditionalist spectrum, and if we could all be a bit kinder to each other instead of demonising each other the world would be a better place.
Look. If someone is going to try to tell my daughter she shouldn't do X, Y or Z, or should do A, B or C, because she's a woman, or otherwise makes assumptions about her based on her gender, I don't really care whether they hate women or not. They're still working to her detriment and the detriment of women in general. Their internal motivation is a matter of supreme indifference to me.
Promoters of apartheid used the same arguments. "We don't hate black people" they'd say, "we just think black and white people are more different than your own political doctrine holds them to be. So they shouldn't be treated the same".
If someone treats me like crap because I'm a woman, I don't give a rat's ass why. As a wise friend used to say, "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining."
And then the fourth ingredient is those who hold a (no doubt politically incorrect) view of men and women as being more different or more suited to different roles than your own political doctrine holds them to be.
But don't confuse that with hate.
Different roles for women because they are somehow suited to them is right up there with separate but equal facilities for Black people in the level of bullshit involved. Separate is never equal, and the view that women are intrinsically different in ways that suit us to certain roles always carries with it the subjugation of women and women's roles to men and men's roles. Men and women who believe such things may not go around screaming hateful things, but they are perpetuating ideas, practices, and laws that harm women.
Born and encultured (because we all know that nature & nurture interact) with desires that they lack the means to satisfy in socially-approved ways, the ICMs have been dealt an unlucky hand in the game of life. Seems reasonable to see them as victims.
<snip>
And then the fourth ingredient is those who hold a (no doubt politically incorrect) view of men and women as being more different or more suited to different roles than your own political doctrine holds them to be.
If someone treats me like crap because I'm a woman, I don't give a rat's ass why. As a wise friend used to say, "Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining."
Different roles for women because they are somehow suited to them is right up there with separate but equal facilities for Black people in the level of bullshit involved. Separate is never equal, and the view that women are intrinsically different in ways that suit us to certain roles always carries with it the subjugation of women and women's roles to men and men's roles. Men and women who believe such things may not go around screaming hateful things, but they are perpetuating ideas, practices, and laws that harm women.
I think you're both missing @Russ' larger point, which is that any mistreatment women receive is very much beside the point of the real issue, which is analyzing in minute detail how men are feeling. Men are, after all, the only people who matter.
Putting sarcasm aside, the fragility of not being able to stand it when not everything is about me ME MEEE!!! goes a long way towards explaining incels, MRAs, MGTOW, and the whole alphabet soup of other semi-professional misogynists. @Russ' suggestion that the solution to any problem arising from their attitude and sense of entitlement is appeasing them seems like the kind of trap that results in abusive relationships.
Born and encultured (because we all know that nature & nurture interact) with desires that they lack the means to satisfy in socially-approved ways, the ICMs have been dealt an unlucky hand in the game of life. Seems reasonable to see them as victims.
.
I found Russ' attribution of victimhood to the identified group particularly strange coming from him as he usually objects to such attribution, if the group is actually a marginalised one.
The thing is, they're not. For all that I've been in the involuntarily single category in the past, and for all I know how unpleasant it is (my God, I wrote a couple of albums' worth of mournful songs inspired by it during that period), no-one is actually victimising them; no-one is depriving them of anything they have an actual right to. It's a shitty hand to be dealt but no-one in the game nicked your good cards or owes you any of theirs. Thinking that they are victims, of an unholy alliance of muscular men and shallow but malicious women, is exactly what distinguishes an unhappy lonely person from a malevolent Incel.
It's a shitty hand to be dealt but no-one in the game nicked your good cards or owes you any of theirs.
Hang onto that thought, Karl.
[sealioning gambit from poster with long history thereof - L]
The distinction between being wronged (because someone has crossed a moral line) and merely being unfortunate is important (for moral philosophy, which is to say for any statement about what is right and wrong).
And I've no objection at all to you identifying anybody as victims. My (probably too oft-repeated by now) objection arises when feeling substitutes for thought. When taking sides with those one sees as victims replaces having universally-applying principles of moral conduct.
Their internal motivation is a matter of supreme indifference to me.
Nothing wrong with an attitude of wanting to help people deal with effects but not caring about the causes. If your indifference is genuine, that's fine.
But grasping onto pseudo-explanations ("misogyny") leads to thinking that you're tackling causes when you're not. Intellectual laziness is not indifference.
@Russ seems to think that misogyny only counts if you actively want women to suffer. Being a bigotted old twit who thinks women's brains overheat, poor things, and shouldn't be engineers for their own sake, my dear girl, should have their views respected.
@KarlLB I read it as a refusal to acknowledge the reality of misogynist violence. Which again brings us back to the point of this thread, how to take violence against women seriously enough to do something about ending it.
Russ, you have been warned previously on this board for sealioning using definitions in this way. Please stop this line of posting at once. Can I ask others not to respond to his post please?
Because you have previous for this I'll be drawing it to the attention of admin.
@Russ seems to think that misogyny only counts if you actively want women to suffer. Being a bigotted old twit who thinks women's brains overheat, poor things, and shouldn't be engineers for their own sake, my dear girl, should have their views respected.
Or something like that.
Hosting
KarlLB, I think you must have got lost on your way to the Hell board. Personal attacks aren't allowed on this board - C3 applies. Please don't get personal with other posters. I think you may not have meant this to read as a personal attack but it does read that way.
Thanks,
Louise
Epiphanies Host
Which again brings us back to the point of this thread, how to take violence against women seriously enough to do something about ending it.
And systemic problems require systemic solutions. It is a good thing to prosecute individual violent acts - whether we're talking about violence against women, or racism, or homophobic violence, or whatever - but individual targeting of the worst offences isn't sufficient, because every "really bad" violent crime is underpinned by hundreds of "bad" ones, and thousands upon thousands of low-grade incidents.
I don't think you can attack this low-grade base (on which the worse offences rest) without changing how people think.
(Does anyone have an idea to what extent misogynistic violence overlaps with general violence? I suppose I can imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a misogynist, and I can also imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a thuggish bully and she's smaller than he is. The latter case doesn't need to be misogynistic: he might be treating the woman in exactly the same way he'd treat a similarly-sized smaller, weaker man. Is that all part of one big thing, or a separate thing?)
@Russ seems to think that misogyny only counts if you actively want women to suffer. Being a bigotted old twit who thinks women's brains overheat, poor things, and shouldn't be engineers for their own sake, my dear girl, should have their views respected.
Or something like that.
Hosting
KarlLB, I think you must have got lost on your way to the Hell board. Personal attacks aren't allowed on this board - C3 applies. Please don't get personal with other posters. I think you may not have meant this to read as a personal attack but it does read that way.
Thanks,
Louise
Epiphanies Host
Hosting off
For confirmation, it wasn't meant to be a personal attack. I can see how it could be read as one.
Which again brings us back to the point of this thread, how to take violence against women seriously enough to do something about ending it.
And systemic problems require systemic solutions. It is a good thing to prosecute individual violent acts - whether we're talking about violence against women, or racism, or homophobic violence, or whatever - but individual targeting of the worst offences isn't sufficient, because every "really bad" violent crime is underpinned by hundreds of "bad" ones, and thousands upon thousands of low-grade incidents.
I don't think you can attack this low-grade base (on which the worse offences rest) without changing how people think.
(Does anyone have an idea to what extent misogynistic violence overlaps with general violence? I suppose I can imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a misogynist, and I can also imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a thuggish bully and she's smaller than he is. The latter case doesn't need to be misogynistic: he might be treating the woman in exactly the same way he'd treat a similarly-sized smaller, weaker man. Is that all part of one big thing, or a separate thing?)
Russ, thank you for your apology which we take as a commitment to avoid such posting styles in the future, and remind you that if you fail to do that then further action will be taken.
Comments
To clarify, I don't see them as sources, I see them simply as examples of actors with power, influence or media access potentially leveraging, manipulating or normalising Incel ideology (proto-ideology?) for their own interests.
I used to think hardcore supporters on the Trump forums like TheDonald who promoted violence were mad but not dangerous, yet we all saw how that turned out ... with the right manipulation and prompting.
The Incel forums are a quantum leap in terms of derrangement and hatred.
I think the point is that you can't expect them to be accurate sources on 'incel ideology', 'incel culture' or even their ability manipulate or leverage either. There are all sorts of reasons why they may want to distort or outright lie about all of those (or even to what extent any of those things exist or work).
Especially as it was released in the seventies.
But women aren't supposed to be so base as to actually want sex
I think (aside from the aforementioned idea that women don't want sex) there is an idea that a woman who wants sex can generally find a willing man. I... honestly don't know whether that's true or not.
Not so much, but if you read the history in @Curiosity killed 's post the term was originally coined by a woman.
Every aspect of dating is underpinned by the same outdated contradictions and assumptions. That a man should pay for everything if he wants to have sex with a woman. That women should only offer to pay for themselves on the third or fourth date. That women don't need sex in the same way men do, or can get sex anytime they want, or that they are saving themselves for the right man (virginity is a highly gendered symbolic) or frigid or sluts. You'd think all these caricatures around sexuality would have been discarded by now, but they come up all the time in popular culture.
In South Africa, polygamy is legal in traditional culture despite many feminist critiques. A proposal to make polyandry legal so that woman can have several husbands has led to outrage from those who defend polygamy for men, because women's sexuality is supposed to be non-existent and subverted gender roles would destroy traditional cultures. Polyandry is practised all the same by a small percentage of women: they approach the prospective husband's family for permission, pay lobola as a male bride price and organise shared living arrangements for co-husbands and children.
I don't remember when I noticed that Paul Atreides was basically T. E. Lawrence, but it certainly wasn't on first reading.
More generally, whilst I enjoy much of the 70s and 80s TV comedy, I have to view it firmly though a lens of "of its time" not to have my ghast firmly flabbered by the endemic casual sexism.
I was born in the 1980s, and felt like I spent a good deal of early adulthood delousing myself of a lot of crap I absorbed as a kid. It definitely screwed up my expectations about relationships.
You're at least half right.
Part of the topic here is involuntarily celibate males (ICMs) Who, if I have the terminology right, are not "incels" unless they make a choice to adopt incel ideology which blames their situation on women.
Born and encultured (because we all know that nature & nurture interact) with desires that they lack the means to satisfy in socially-approved ways, the ICMs have been dealt an unlucky hand in the game of life. Seems reasonable to see them as victims. Until they turn their frustration outward to make demands of others, and become incels (which my spellchecker keeps changing to "uncles"). Who then oppress by their claimed entitlement to what should be given freely As victims are sometimes wont to become oppressors given the opportunity
Part of it is online groups with definite views. Left, right, pro-life, pro-choice, pro-animal welfare, whatever. Who can easily become online hate groups, as dissenting or moderate voices are discouraged and go elsewhere.
And there's a clear connection. We all know that socialisation by internet isn't the real thing. (And that those who are under-socialised desperately need not to be locked down).
The polarising impact of the internet should be a serious concern. (Said he, sitting here in rural Ireland typing stuff to in-some-way-like-minded people elsewhere instead of meeting his neighbours).
It's your third category where I think you miss the mark.
I guess there are other misogynists. You do get men who really don't like women , and prefer to interact in all-male groups. Just as you get women who prefer society without men. But while having preferences for the type of company you keep is legitimate, people who are really unable to appreciate the other sex are missing out on something. Are in some way damaged people - it's not a healthy trait, IMHO.
And then the fourth ingredient is those who hold a (no doubt politically incorrect) view of men and women as being more different or more suited to different roles than your own political doctrine holds them to be.
But don't confuse that with hate. People hold different ideas on the progressive-traditionalist spectrum, and if we could all be a bit kinder to each other instead of demonising each other the world would be a better place.
Look. If someone is going to try to tell my daughter she shouldn't do X, Y or Z, or should do A, B or C, because she's a woman, or otherwise makes assumptions about her based on her gender, I don't really care whether they hate women or not. They're still working to her detriment and the detriment of women in general. Their internal motivation is a matter of supreme indifference to me.
Promoters of apartheid used the same arguments. "We don't hate black people" they'd say, "we just think black and white people are more different than your own political doctrine holds them to be. So they shouldn't be treated the same".
Different roles for women because they are somehow suited to them is right up there with separate but equal facilities for Black people in the level of bullshit involved. Separate is never equal, and the view that women are intrinsically different in ways that suit us to certain roles always carries with it the subjugation of women and women's roles to men and men's roles. Men and women who believe such things may not go around screaming hateful things, but they are perpetuating ideas, practices, and laws that harm women.
I think you're both missing @Russ' larger point, which is that any mistreatment women receive is very much beside the point of the real issue, which is analyzing in minute detail how men are feeling. Men are, after all, the only people who matter.
Putting sarcasm aside, the fragility of not being able to stand it when not everything is about me ME MEEE!!! goes a long way towards explaining incels, MRAs, MGTOW, and the whole alphabet soup of other semi-professional misogynists. @Russ' suggestion that the solution to any problem arising from their attitude and sense of entitlement is appeasing them seems like the kind of trap that results in abusive relationships.
You could just stop there, because it's entitlement that is the root problem.
Person A is entitled to expect person B to interact with them in a civil and respectful fashion.
That's just about it for entitlements. If A is the minor child of B, then A is entitled to expect reasonable support and nurture from B.
Otherwise you're not entitled to shit.
I found Russ' attribution of victimhood to the identified group particularly strange coming from him as he usually objects to such attribution, if the group is actually a marginalised one.
The thing is, they're not. For all that I've been in the involuntarily single category in the past, and for all I know how unpleasant it is (my God, I wrote a couple of albums' worth of mournful songs inspired by it during that period), no-one is actually victimising them; no-one is depriving them of anything they have an actual right to. It's a shitty hand to be dealt but no-one in the game nicked your good cards or owes you any of theirs. Thinking that they are victims, of an unholy alliance of muscular men and shallow but malicious women, is exactly what distinguishes an unhappy lonely person from a malevolent Incel.
Hang onto that thought, Karl.
[sealioning gambit from poster with long history thereof - L]
And I've no objection at all to you identifying anybody as victims. My (probably too oft-repeated by now) objection arises when feeling substitutes for thought. When taking sides with those one sees as victims replaces having universally-applying principles of moral conduct.
Nothing wrong with an attitude of wanting to help people deal with effects but not caring about the causes. If your indifference is genuine, that's fine.
Or something like that.
Russ, you have been warned previously on this board for sealioning using definitions in this way. Please stop this line of posting at once. Can I ask others not to respond to his post please?
Because you have previous for this I'll be drawing it to the attention of admin.
Thanks,
Louise
Epiphanies Host
hosting off
Hosting
KarlLB, I think you must have got lost on your way to the Hell board. Personal attacks aren't allowed on this board - C3 applies. Please don't get personal with other posters. I think you may not have meant this to read as a personal attack but it does read that way.
Thanks,
Louise
Epiphanies Host
Hosting off
And systemic problems require systemic solutions. It is a good thing to prosecute individual violent acts - whether we're talking about violence against women, or racism, or homophobic violence, or whatever - but individual targeting of the worst offences isn't sufficient, because every "really bad" violent crime is underpinned by hundreds of "bad" ones, and thousands upon thousands of low-grade incidents.
I don't think you can attack this low-grade base (on which the worse offences rest) without changing how people think.
(Does anyone have an idea to what extent misogynistic violence overlaps with general violence? I suppose I can imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a misogynist, and I can also imagine a man shoving a woman around because he's a thuggish bully and she's smaller than he is. The latter case doesn't need to be misogynistic: he might be treating the woman in exactly the same way he'd treat a similarly-sized smaller, weaker man. Is that all part of one big thing, or a separate thing?)
For confirmation, it wasn't meant to be a personal attack. I can see how it could be read as one.
I think there is considerable overlap.
Alan
Ship of Fools Admin