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“You say you want a revolution”: Incels, Ideology, and Charles Murray
For those that are unaware, Incel is a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate,” and encompasses men who fit just what that description implies, but also a range of other behaviors and opinions. The term was originally coined by a female Canadian university student as a reference, and the name for an online support group, to people of both genders that struggled to garner romantic relationships. Incels today are almost all men and are quite far afield of the original version of that term. In addition to their virginity, they have a developed system of thought on women, society, and romantic life.
To put it bluntly, the vast majority of Incels consider women non-human. The kindest might deign to mark them as animals, or human-like creatures, hence the common use of the term “foid” (female humanoid). In their minds, women are incapable of love, loyalty, selflessness, real strength, or rational thought; they live to engage in casual relationships with high-status men (“chads”), and when they are inevitably made worthless anatomically and physically by this, spend the rest of their lives with desperate low-status men who provide them with money while they have children born of countless extramarital affairs. But maybe women who chose not to follow this path are slightly more highly regarded? No. Not even a little. Unmarried women are unimaginably selfish evildoers who live to lead on an endless stream of innocent men, and those that chose not to have children deserve instant death because they haven’t fulfilled the one purpose that women have in the world as breeding sows.
Educated women, career women, and the vast majority of women over the age of 18 are given to similar contempt. The first two groups because they had nothing to do with their own success, which was earned solely from their bodies and looks, and the third because all women over that age (often much younger) are regarded as “used up”, having already had hundreds of partners. Simply put, their “femoids” have no intelligence except cunning, no worth except as objects, and no reason to exist outside of the biological imperative. In keeping with this lovely and totally rational system of thought, female survivors of sexual assault are the lowest of the low, and in incels terms not only deserved what happened to them but enjoyed it, labeling it a violation only when it happened at the hands of an unattractive man.
“Soyciety”* perpetuates this state of affairs, and helps to keep Incels, as well as their MGTOW, red pill*, and black pill* brethren, down. Incel history posits that until the early 20th century, men had been in absolute control of every civilization that ever existed, and that the West made a mistake in granting women wider rights and equal status with men. Societies like Saudi Arabia, where women are treated as property and have little to no say in everything from government to their own personal lives, are the ideal from which the West has strayed, and will eventually overtake the West. Men are second class citizens and should unite to rise up and take back their traditional rights in order to put history back to rights, consigning universal suffrage and consent laws, among many other things, to the past. They are enthused to use concentration camps (which would double as breeding centers) and widespread sexual assault as weapons in carrying out that revolution, which would be easily won when all men realized the truth of their ideas, and because women are so inferior in physical strength and intelligence.
Naturally, there is also a healthy amount of racism mixed into Incel beliefs. Most buy into the standard “Jews run the world, Rothschilds are hiding under my bed and stopping me from getting women, using capitalism to enslave me” line. They also have a deep obsession with height, skin color, race characteristics, and canthal tilt; women are hypergamous (always seek to marry those of a higher genetic and social position) and thus Incels are denied their “looksmatch”, as is almost any man under 6” who doesn’t look like he just stepped out of a Harlequin romance novel. It should also be noted that their ratings of women are wild, with most supermodels falling into the 5-6 range on a 10 scale, in large part because they either don’t look like 2-D Japanese anime girls or because they lack the features that make men attractive (height, strong jaw, etc).
Of course, in a society like this, especially when women are beings of such evil, Incels are incapable of having romantic lives. Some try to blend in as socially normal, while others run to the other extreme, becoming NEETs (not in education or training) who take up residence in their parents’ basements and/or live off of government benefits. Few have hobbies beyond viewing adult material, video games, “blackpill” philosophy, and spending hours on Incel and related forums (many of which encourage pedophilia and the grooming of younger female relatives, hence they are often hosted on servers outside the US). They occasionally report on their interactions with females in the real world, largely adding up to detailed first-person narratives about a history of anti-social, abusive, and sometimes all-out criminal behavior. A few, both in the US and abroad, have committed large scale violence, like school shootings, and estimates put their numbers anywhere from the thousands to the hundreds of thousands.
What causes this phenomenon? Incels have received a lot of press, even internationally, in the last few years, and the majority of those detailed reports hit the nail on the head; untreated mental illness, closeted homosexuality, poor family relationships, and/or simple malignancy are the main ones. But I would like to posit another, which is both economic and philosophical. Charles Murray, in Coming Apart, argued that men in “Fishtowns”, areas of low economic development with poor social cohesion or community formation, were vastly more likely to turn to drugs, crime, dependency, and suicide than counterparts from higher economic statuses with more coherent communities. I think Incels fit into this, but not in a neat, tidy way.
Some percentage of them, in addition to the other issues listed above, do choose to become Incels because of the impact of the factors Murray explored, in the same way, that their counterparts might choose drugs. Bad backgrounds will always have an impact. However, some measures of incels come from “Belmont” rather than “Fishtown” and have a variety of options presented to them in life, a pretty great amount of privilege in some cases. And I think their anger, and Incel status, flows from a sense of entitlement. Life has not been perfect since childhood and when they see others of the same background, and even worse ones, flourishing, rather than seeking to find the font of their romantic (and other) issues, they shift blame. Many tales are told in Incel forums of young men dropping out of high school and college because all was not as they expected; women didn’t throw themselves at them, courses were challenging (although all “foids” will obviously pass because of their sex), and social lives took effort. In essence, they absorbed and idealized a warped picture of 1950s America (one which conveniently cut out a lot of the casual racism and some women’s dependency on drugs as the post-war society demanded that they give up jobs which had given their lives purpose), and feel that they deserve a white picket fence, three kids, a dog, and a loving wife. Society, romantic norms, and evil women like me, who chose careers over marriage with kids (and engage in male pursuits like boxing and higher education), are the root of their problems and must be eliminated in order to re-establish paradise.
I’ll end this on a slightly preachy note. If you have a child, grandchild, or friend that you think might be falling into an ideology like this, please reach out to them. Communities like those centered around Incel ideology are borderline cults, and they do as much damage to their members as their members seek to do to women at large. Some men get out, but other men end up ruining their lives (and others’) in pursuit of fulfilling Incel thought, and any time that can be prevented from happening is a wonderful thing.
* “Soyciety” = Present-day society, which has been robbed of ‘manly’ virtue by allowing women equal rights and status to men. The soy moniker is based on the argument that soy introduces high amounts of estrogen to the body, and Soyciety also sometimes encompasses the argument that elites are using chemical means to ‘feminize’ society through chlorinated drinking water, vaccines, etc.
*”Red Pill” = “The incel red pill can be explained by the 80/20 rule, which says that 80% of women desire just 20% of men. This means that the vast majority of men will never be desirable and consequentially will never find sexual fulfillment and happiness.”
*”Black Pill” = “The Red Pill’s nihilistic cousin. The idea behind “redpilling” is that men recognise that the world is unfair and stacked against them in favour of women. From there, they can game the system by becoming an “alpha” male, going to the gym, treating women poorly, and so on. The black pill rejects this, saying that there can be no personal solutions to systemic problems, and that the world was, is and always will be stacked against men who are “genetically inferior”, and that women are inherently wired to prefer men with particular kinds of facial features, bone structure, and body type.”
Published in General
I think that the whole reproductive is rational from a big-picture perspective, but rather irrational in the application. And in my view there is a reason for all this.
God said, go forth and multiply, and this was a command with many intrinsic effects on being human, and this was good. And then humanity fell, and this command became twisted and abused. And this is why we see, for example, the rape of the Sabine women (and its interesting after affects), and the partly-literal Rape of Nanking.
And a chance to join MENSA and feel superior while you drink that coffee.
I am glad for average people and for smart people. Geniuses aren’t all they’re cracked up to be and some of them are pretty cracked.
I don’t actually drink coffee, so I have to rely on other people for the information. 😁
Pshhht! Mensa. They practically let anyone in. Now, the Triple-Nines…
Edit: Actually, scratch that. Forget about the Prometheans, too. It’s the One-in-a-Billion Club you want to aspire to. Too bad you can’t join us.
If a group of people decide society is the enemy, they are going to engage in horrific acts toward that society. Someone running with Incel ideology is not going to care if they kill all of us. I’d imagine they would probably fantasize about putting someone like KirkianWanderer through torture out of a horror movie. Again, ISIS has a very similar appeal – sex slaves, leaving like a barbarian warrior, being powerful and terrifying, etc.
The real question is how to deal with them.
I propose a strategy based in biochemistry – competitive inhibition. Make society more attractive and rewarding to the Incels, and you will pull away their members, weakening the incel community. Obviously, we here believe society has something to offer. Lay it out, make the case, and win them over. In the process, you are likely to gain a deeper appreciation of society.
That makes me feel less weird for being a non-coffee drinker. I was shamed by a Russian host mother about it for a whole week.
Two brains cells just bumped together and I remembered John Calhoun’s experiments with mice.
Here’s a quote from the wikipedia article:
Not an exact parallel, but there seems to be some similarity between the “Incels” and “the beautiful ones”. I wouldn’t say “absence of scars”, just that the scars aren’t physical.
Lucky me! You’re very much not wrong (what a comforting thought), and at best I’d probably be chained up in some Incel’s Mountain Dew and tendies smelling basement, after their glorious revolution. More likely I’d be dead, because I’ve got a mouth (and a decent right hook) when I’m well and truly pissed.
That’s part of a very good plan, but I think there’s also some serious untreated mental illness and attitudinal issues (delusional degrees of entitlement mostly) at play here that will prevent some percentage of Incels from every ‘coming to the light’ and/or has to be addressed in some way for it to get through. Most lonely, virgin men don’t cope by fantasizing about sexual assault, concentration camps, or flat out killing the entire opposite sex, so clearly there are individual issues (common through the community) that need dealing with.
You share a trait with the Elizabethan Cat and that makes you feel less weird?
@arahant, are you going to straighten her out or should I?
KW. you are unique.
I am eccentric.
Arahant is weird.
Nobody’s perfect.
I tried, I really did! My dad is practically coffee dependent, so it wasn’t for lack of exposure. I actually do have to drink coffee when I have migraines, to help trigger my prescription meds, but I resent that so much, especially since I’m normally already very nauseous by that point. (Coffee ice cream is great, though, and I will occasionally submit to an espresso if I’m in Italy or France).
You are? I always thought eccentric was “weird with money”.
Eccentricity isn’t just a set of behaviors. It is a philosophy.
Given some of your other proclivities (not liking the taste of alcohol, for one instance), you may be a supertaster. How are you on the brassica family (cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts), especially when boiled?
You do make me laugh, tinman.
Could you do it with a mate blend infusion or strong tea? Mate has plenty of caffeine.
I thought it was a mathematical concept related to a highly skewed orbit. At least in your case.
Well, this topic turned out to be a touch more contentious than my alert let on. I blame the evolution of language. Using “incel” to describe the socially speaking lower classes is useful. Using it to describe a buncha nutcases on the internet (uh, separate from the Percival/Arahant whackjobs, who are nutcases in a different way) It seems to me that you’ve got a large segment of the population which is broadly discontented with the way the dating market works, and then you’ve got a narrow group of jerkwads that congregate on 4chan. Probably; with the kind of things you’re throwing about I don’t like trusting secondary sources.
But back to that larger discontented segment of the population. When the comet hit the culture in the ’60s they threw out all the rules of love and relationships. What they actually did was erase the written rules and fall back on a complex web of unwritten ones. As Dooley Wilson will remind us, the fundamental things apply as time goes by. As a practical matter that means that people who are worse at reading subtle social cues and confused by implicit regulations (I’d call them ‘men’ for short, but we’re dividing the sex into parts; a footrace among the legless will still have winners and losers), such people are going to be left out. Which brings me back to the language; the whole “involuntary” part of incel is much more useful in describing these sorts of folks than creeps who choose to embrace their status.
Yes, there was a class of people left out by the more explicit rules society went with before. But in that case you at least knew why. Leave a chump with no explanation and eventually he’ll figure one out, whether it’s true or not. And then if you’ve got the internet willing to reinforce and double down on his crackpot theory…
While I support the right of everyone to pursue whatever life they think will make them happy, I tend to think our society oversells the idea of careers providing meaning and fulfillment in life to both women and men. Plenty of people work hard (and take on mountains of student loan debt) to land their “dream job” only to find themselves miserable (and lonely), while others find happiness and meaning in their lives while working blue-collar jobs or being stay-at-home mothers. All work and no play make both Jack and Jill dull people.
Now that you mention it, it does seem like just one more segregated victim group with a chip on its shoulder and a delusional excuse. BLAYM: Beleaguered Lonely Angry Young Men.
You would challenge their authority, and tyrants cannot abide a rebel. I’d imagine you’d be running some rebel movement against the incels, or die fighting them, not end up in their dungeons. This is making me think of a scene with Eowyn and Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings movie…
I have some understanding for the Incel movement – at least in terms of bathing in hatred. Let’s just say that my high school career had a chance of ending in blood, and leave it at that. The reason I used the biochemistry analogy is the groups are always in flux, like biological molecules. The point of the competitive inhibitor is to shift the tendency, the equilibrium point, away binding the normal target to binding the inhibitor. Here, we peel off the less involved Incels toward normal society. People become less attached to incel groups, more people leave than join, and it starts to lose credibility as a movement when people are considering joining the group, as it is tiny.
In the end, you can’t stop someone from choosing to be evil without a corresponding level of control. People still choose to be members of the KKK or Identitarian or alt-white groups, despite the fact that society as whole views racism to be the greatest evil ever to exist. That’s why we have laws and a justice system – if you act on your incel/ISIS/KKK/antifa dreams, you go to jail. On a personal level, practicing self-defense means their ambitions of going out like a supervillain are likely to be cut short.
This is not directly related, but I’ve wondered if a form of damnation of memory would be advisable in mass killing cases. Instead of their name being published they are officially renamed Garbage-(random alphanumeric code) and their bodies sent to the landfill or ashes flushed down the sewer. Their birth names are never used in legal documents or press releases. Their assets are confiscated to provide for their victims.
Didn’t we used to just call these chowderheads losers, and move on?
It reminds me of all the KKK focus a few years back, after Charlottesville. It was a big issue, we needed to address it, etc. Until we did a headcount, and realized that for tens of thousands or a hundred thousand chowderheads, in total, re-making society to address fringe chowderheadedness was the wrong approach.
Disaffected comes in many forms.
I see what you did there.
Damnatio memoriae. It didn’t work for Ἡρόστρατος. The BLM knuckleheads pulling down statues of Columbus and Washington won’t be able to do it either.
I’m fine with forgetting their names, as long as we lock them up first.
The passive voice leaves out some important information.
Not a huge fan when boiled (other than broccoli, although I always put salt and a good amount of pepper), but I like broccoli and Brussels sprouts roasted and cabbage in dumplings.
I have once or twice. I think I do it that way mostly because that’s how my dad does it (yay congenital migraines!), and even water makes me nauseous when I have an attack, so it wouldn’t necessarily make a big difference.
I totally agree with you. I do a lot of things other than work on career/school (two sports, painting, work with a couple volunteer programs, languages, activities with friends, church, dating, etc.) and it’s finding balance that helps make happiness.