I've always seen the unfortunate suffering of "I want someone but no one wants me" as a part of "survival of the fittest", in which case it would be the genes coming from either a bad background,...
I've always seen the unfortunate suffering of "I want someone but no one wants me" as a part of "survival of the fittest", in which case it would be the genes coming from either a bad background, bad upbringing (producing weak/twisted minds), or just bad genes in terms of appearance.
Nature can be cruel, obviously. That doesn't mean humans have to be too, though.
And disclaimer: I'm an asexual, aromantic woman. Even if I did get married, I'd still choose not to have kids. Even in a good economy where I could afford to have them. My depression, anxiety, and ADHD already produce three child-me's that I have to take care of. That's more than enough.
I'm going to take a contrarian stance and say: yes, in a way? People don't need sex to survive biologically, but neither do people need food beyond bland calorie gruel or shelter beyond a prison...
I'm going to take a contrarian stance and say: yes, in a way?
People don't need sex to survive biologically, but neither do people need food beyond bland calorie gruel or shelter beyond a prison cell that's heated above freezing. But we mostly agree that people need more than just mere biological survival: people need to thrive spiritually. Most people would that agree that people have a right to education, healthcare, internet, etc.
Sex is a cornerstone of human dignity and health. We need it much like we need friendship and love; it's a form of human contact that affirms our capacity to be desired, to be touched, to be desirable, to be touchable. To be deprived of it entirely is psychological and spiritual torment.
...no one is under an obligation to have sex with anyone else.
Mentioned in the essay, and this is true. Herein lies one of the fundamental inequities of life: that something people so desperately need to feel fulfilled as humans is mainly produced through the mutual desire which produces consent — but the various other inequities of life inevitably render some people simply undesirable.
I have friends who work as male prostitutes, mainly for gay male clients. It's interesting how they see their work as therapeutic. They work with men who struggle to be desired by anyone else; so their job is to make them feel desired. One of them works with a man with cerebral palsy who's unable to masturbate; their monthly session is that man's only way of achieving any semblance of sexual pleasure and release.
I also remember that was a gay man who I'd occasionally see on Tinder and Grindr who had suffered extremely severe burn injuries. Though attractiveness is subjective, almost virtually objectively his injuries had rendered him completely physically unattractive. Without exaggeration, he looked like a ghoul from the Fallout games. I thought it was brave that he kept putting himself out there, and I always wondered if he ever experienced any success on the apps. I also imagined how lonely he must've felt through no fault of his own: no gay man, except someone with a pathological fetish for burn injuries?, would find him physically attractive; likely very few gay men would consent to sex with him. Yet I also still wonder to this day: does he not have a right to sex? To be desired? To be touched?
A hypothetical "right to sex" would necessarily be in opposition to everyone's right to not have sex. So even if we completely accept and legalize sex work, sex workers still have the right to...
A hypothetical "right to sex" would necessarily be in opposition to everyone's right to not have sex. So even if we completely accept and legalize sex work, sex workers still have the right to deny service. It sounds a bit misguided to turn one of the most intimate expressions of human affection and desire into something that is guaranteed by law.
I don't disagree. I think that the greatest fundamental inequality is not that of wealth but that of beauty and desirability. Wealth is just a means to desirability: even Jeff Bezos was willingly...
A hypothetical "right to sex" would necessarily be in opposition to everyone's right to not have sex.
I don't disagree. I think that the greatest fundamental inequality is not that of wealth but that of beauty and desirability. Wealth is just a means to desirability: even Jeff Bezos was willingly to effectively give up 38 billion dollars to be with the busty Latina of his fantasies. This is a game that must naturally have losers.
The right to healthcare only holds because we don't allow doctors the right to refuse treatment unless there's alternative care.
Another less extreme parallel is how solitary confinement is considered cruel and inhumane, and yet everyone has the right to not socially interact with someone. Fortunately, the bar for having social interaction with someone is much, much lower than having sex with them.
Being outside is sufficient to negate solitary confinement, which goes way beyond merely removing someone from public spaces. Allowing someone to be in those contexts does not require anyone to...
Being outside is sufficient to negate solitary confinement, which goes way beyond merely removing someone from public spaces. Allowing someone to be in those contexts does not require anyone to engage in the kind of intimate acts we are talking about here.
Solitary confinement is generally meant as punishment against prisoners who are already removed from society. The right to participate in public events and locations is markedly dissimilar from a provision against solitary confinement. Because of that, I don't believe that is a helpful comparison.
Ehhh, I'm way hotter than the Koch brothers but I can't control senators. Bezos might have made that stupid decision, but it was still his decision that he was in control of, and the woman he...
Ehhh, I'm way hotter than the Koch brothers but I can't control senators. Bezos might have made that stupid decision, but it was still his decision that he was in control of, and the woman he slept with didn't obtain the power that he relinquished. What you're describing isn't beauty granting a person more power than money, you're describing beautiful people being treated as an extremely valuable commodity. Sure, a lot of power or money may be expended to "obtain" them, but it's not transferred to them in that exchange.
Usually when we're discussing a right to healthcare, we're not discussing any individual doctor's decisions. We're discussing who pays for it. I'm not sure who you're referring to when you say "we", and I'm sure it varies from country to country, but in the US I'm pretty sure that no individual doctor is required to treat any specific patient. Medicare accredited hospitals cannot refuse to treat emergency patients due to lack of ability to pay, but that's not really the same thing. And I think that actually is a pretty good metaphor for how sex should be treated. There should be no external barriers to it - ex. sodomy laws or inaccessible birth control - but no one should be required to provide it. The only barrier to having sex should be finding a willing adult to do it with.
What did you mean by simply undesirable? And how is it simple from your perspective? The author of the essay laid out a pretty compelling rationale for why it is much more complex. That our...
What did you mean by simply undesirable? And how is it simple from your perspective? The author of the essay laid out a pretty compelling rationale for why it is much more complex. That our desires are a result of the political intersections of our experience.
it's an interesting piece, with a lot of interesting points, but it's a bit over the place, without, i think, enough length to be exhaustive or tie together all of its points in the most coherent...
it's an interesting piece, with a lot of interesting points, but it's a bit over the place, without, i think, enough length to be exhaustive or tie together all of its points in the most coherent fashion. ultimately, i think the title and opener detract (c.f. @unkz's comment—the danger of 'hooks', aside from being aesthetically bankrupt, is that it's easy for them to frame, inappropriately; or to distract); in specific, it says:
The term can, in theory, be applied to both men and women, but in practice it picks out not sexless men in general, but a certain kind of sexless man: the kind who is convinced he is owed sex, and is enraged by the women who deprive him of it
but i don't think the piece is actually about entitlement qua entitlement; it is more about the preceding and surrounding moral and social dynamics, and in this respect the broader 'theoretical' definition is actually the far more relevant and so the framing feels reductive. (some sample references—not necessarily the best, just what comes to mind and is reasonably savoury—/r/femcelgrippysockjail and philosophical advice about the friend zone)
if i stretch a bit, i might take issue with some subtler aspects of the organisation (don't take this too seriously, i haven't thought it through much). it almost says: elliot rodger is gross and bad because of his violence, racism, etc., and so is in some cosmic sense actually not owed sex. whereas gay men are, abstractly and cosmically, owed non-shallow and non-discriminatory sexual attention from other gay men; and ditto trans lesbians w.r.t. cis lesbians. (oh, and by the way, the enlightened queer oppressed-class is self-reflective in ways the mainstream is not.) yet, both of these meta-groups are harmed in the same ways by such-and-such interesting dynamics. i don't even necessarily disagree with this! but it's left as subtext and some of the more dicy pertinent moral implications therefore underexplored, and in particular the dichotomous framing—wherein we on the one hand have a meta-group which is broadly morally righteous and on the other a meta-group which is broadly morally unrighteous—is unhelpful; i think it would be more constructive to make a more holistic examination of the outgroups (both the possibility space and the realised elements), or else ignore them entirely in favour of the ingroup dynamics that create their plight
The author of this piece subsequently wrote a book on this. I don't think this is a fair interpretation? The author points out (quite reasonably) that being a creep made it much harder for him to...
it's an interesting piece, with a lot of interesting points, but it's a bit over the place, without, i think, enough length to be exhaustive or tie together all of its points in the most coherent fashion
it almost says: elliot rodger is gross and bad because of his violence, racism, etc., and so is in some cosmic sense actually not owed sex.
I don't think this is a fair interpretation? The author points out (quite reasonably) that being a creep made it much harder for him to attract a partner. From the article (emphasis mine)
Could it also be said that Rodger’s unfuckability was a symptom of the internalisation of patriarchal norms of men’s sexual attractiveness on the part of women? The answer to that question is complicated by two things. First, Rodger was a creep, and it was at least partly his insistence on his own aesthetic, moral and racial superiority, and whatever it was in him that made him capable of stabbing his housemates and his friend a total of 134 times, not his failure to meet the demands of heteromasculinity, that kept women away
whereas gay men are, abstractly and cosmically, owed non-shallow and non-discriminatory sexual attention from other gay men; and ditto trans lesbians w.r.t. cis lesbians. (oh, and by the way, the enlightened queer oppressed-class is self-reflective in ways the mainstream is not.) yet, both of these meta-groups are harmed in the same ways by such-and-such interesting dynamics.
I think the thing the article actually explores is
lots of people would like to have sex (as an individual preference, and generally individual preferences should be respected provided they don't infringe on other people's, I don't think this relies on any sense of cosmic justice?)
almost everyone exercises taste-based discrimination in whom they have sex with
some people get a rough deal here, because it is much harder for them to have sex with people. The example around the sandwich metaphor (e.g. if a class of white children refuse to share a sandwich with ) explores this to some extent – generally we support individuals expressing their preferences, so it's wrong to force people to have sex with others, but it does create an outcome where some people face structural discrimination in the sex market
The relevance of gay people is that heterosexual sex is not really something political in society, and straight people don't really have to think about sexual norms very much. Gay people however are very used to their identity being questioned, and the way they have sex being subject to lots of scrutiny (e.g. in the media) so are in many ways more reflective on how they have sex?
Relevant paragraph on the Sandwich metaphor
Rebecca Solnit reminds us that ‘you don’t get to have sex with someone unless they want to have sex with you,’ just as ‘you don’t get to share someone’s sandwich unless they want to share their sandwich with you.’ Not getting a bite of someone’s sandwich is ‘not a form of oppression, either’, Solnit says. But the analogy complicates as much as it elucidates. Suppose your child came home from primary school and told you that the other children share their sandwiches with each other, but not with her. And suppose further that your child is brown, or fat, or disabled, or doesn’t speak English very well, and that you suspect that this is the reason for her exclusion from the sandwich-sharing. Suddenly it hardly seems sufficient to say that none of the other children is obligated to share with your child, true as that might be.
Yeah, the idea that women are somehow incapable of choosing not to date someone based on their personality seems littered throughout the incel mindset when it's a HUGE contributor to their failure...
Yeah, the idea that women are somehow incapable of choosing not to date someone based on their personality seems littered throughout the incel mindset when it's a HUGE contributor to their failure to actually effectively socialize with women (and therefore to ever have sex with them). Rodger's a great example bc from the pictures I've seen, he was not a bad-looking guy. I'd have swiped right if there weren't any red flags in his profile. But he was a massive creep, with a personality and outlook on life that was basically one big red flag (and one that proved to be prescient). So many of the incel crowd refuse to even consider that women could care about personality because it destroys the comforting fantasy that their failure to attract a partner is entirely based on things they have no control over.
The other thing I find really weird about incels is that they see an extremely intimate relationship as a solution to their problems when most of them have relatively few friendships in their...
The other thing I find really weird about incels is that they see an extremely intimate relationship as a solution to their problems when most of them have relatively few friendships in their lives (female or otherwise) which would probably be a better starting point.
It’s perhaps revealing of the mental processes at play. Friendships seemingly aren’t seen as part of the process, despite being key to finding the right person to develop an intimate relationship...
It’s perhaps revealing of the mental processes at play. Friendships seemingly aren’t seen as part of the process, despite being key to finding the right person to develop an intimate relationship with or building a network of connections to better be able to find that person. Instead the expectation is that relationships will spontaneously materialize out of thin air as a result of proximity to a desirable individual.
I wonder how much of this is a result of the common trope in popular media (especially movies) where exactly that chain of events occurs: guy exists, meets attractive woman by chance, woman is suddenly enraptured by him for no apparent reason.
One may also surmise that these individuals simply don’t value non-transactional friendship and perceive it as a waste of time, which might explain how they ended up sitting where they are.
That said, this is all armchair psychoanalysis so who knows.
I think the problem of seeing romantic/sexual relationships with women as the solution to their problems and struggling to form strong friendships is not unique to incels (though they are a...
I think the problem of seeing romantic/sexual relationships with women as the solution to their problems and struggling to form strong friendships is not unique to incels (though they are a particularly acute and toxic form of it). I think a less obviously septic version of the same mindset is a huge contributor to the "epidemic of male lonelinesss" we keep seeing news articles about.
I saw a clip from a podcast that your comment reminds me of. There were 3 guys and 3 girls around a table. One of the guys asks the women who of the 3 guys there they think is the most attractive....
I saw a clip from a podcast that your comment reminds me of. There were 3 guys and 3 girls around a table. One of the guys asks the women who of the 3 guys there they think is the most attractive. But he demand they make their judgement purely off of looks. One girl rates him poorly and he starts yelling about how she's breaking his "rule" and is rating him poorly because she doesn't like him as a person. All of the people at this table were reasonably attractive.
Just another example of a man demanding women use some arbitrary set of rules to judge them.
It's impossible to remove personality as a factor, even if you're only judging looks. Even if you can manage to block out prior perceptions based on personality, (big if), facial expressions, body...
It's impossible to remove personality as a factor, even if you're only judging looks. Even if you can manage to block out prior perceptions based on personality, (big if), facial expressions, body language, and personal touches all directly impact the way that you look. Someone with a thin blue line tattoo is going to look unattractive to me, even if their features are quite pleasant. Is that a personality thing, or a looks thing? Well-done eyeliner is attractive to me on literally anyone, but that's a choice and a skill. Is that a looks thing, or a personality thing?
Do incels reject the possibility of hiring prostitutes for sex? Do they reject the possibility of having sex with women who are average or less than average in appearance? One of the things that...
Do incels reject the possibility of hiring prostitutes for sex? Do they reject the possibility of having sex with women who are average or less than average in appearance? One of the things that jumped out to me about the Rodgers story was his desire for, and the sense that he deserved, the most attractive women.
In my experience incels do tend to ignore these options. They ignore the existence of unattractive or undesirable women, to the extent that many claim there's no such thing as a female incel...
In my experience incels do tend to ignore these options. They ignore the existence of unattractive or undesirable women, to the extent that many claim there's no such thing as a female incel (despite the fact that incel was originally coined by a woman to describe her own experiences). Some straight-up admit that they don't think women can be incels because any woman can go and get herself r*ped. But they also straight up refuse to consider sex with women who won't meet their arbitrarily high standards. Which, I mean, I'm not gonna complain about not getting hit on by incels, but it does make the hypocrisy clearer.
I don't know what their justifications are to themselves for not hiring sex workers are, but I suspect it's a similar issue -- they don't just want sex, they feel entitled to sex from women they see as attractive and valuable, and they don't see sex workers that way.
To think that rape is a form of sexual activity that should be acceptable to, and cancels out incel-hood for, women, yet have these impossible standards about which women are acceptable to them...
To think that rape is a form of sexual activity that should be acceptable to, and cancels out incel-hood for, women, yet have these impossible standards about which women are acceptable to them for sex -- that is seriously messed up. It seems like they actually want to stay incels and feel like martyrs for it.
I've spent a little bit of time on their forums, and that's exactly what it seems like. The self-hatred and hatred of women comes first. The rationalizations come after. Any options for not being...
I've spent a little bit of time on their forums, and that's exactly what it seems like. The self-hatred and hatred of women comes first. The rationalizations come after. Any options for not being in that situation would disrupt the rationalization, and is therefore dangerous. I honestly believe that for most of them, if an attractive woman with a fetish for this sort of thing showed up and offered to sleep with one of them for free, it would just make him angry.
Re: sandwich metaphor That's why we hate communism though, isn't it? Because the alternative is you subject the sandwich'd kids to violence so everyone gets a bite. In reality it's much simpler...
Re: sandwich metaphor
That's why we hate communism though, isn't it? Because the alternative is you subject the sandwich'd kids to violence so everyone gets a bite.
In reality it's much simpler than that: you explain to the child that this is one of many many many areas in life where we don't get what we want, where it isn't fair, where we'd like for things to be different, but where ultimately we have to accept that we won't get what we wan, but we can ask and we can boost our chances.
In real life, this is every resource from exclusive trips to CEO positions to mansions to food on the table -- it isn't going to be fair and equitable and we won't get it, but we can try.
We can make our own sandwich. We can befriend the kids and maybe they'll share. We can trade them stuff. We can choose to accept not everyone gets a sandwich, and talk to our therapists/priests/parents/partners about how much it hurts and to better appreciate things we do have and to accept the unfairness without anger and without hate.
It seems very odd to me to live in a world where absolutely nothing is fair anyway and demand fairness by being unfair to women who don't want to share their sandwich with these brats
Because food is needed to survive, I support government provisions of simple sandwiches for everyone, without taking better sandwiches away from people who have more. However I don't really think...
Because food is needed to survive, I support government provisions of simple sandwiches for everyone, without taking better sandwiches away from people who have more.
However I don't really think it's necessary for government to pay prostitutes to sleep with incels. Masturbation is an alternative
And anyways Elliot Rodger didn't want sex or sex with prostitutes: he wanted blond white sorority girls. In this analogy, they're not asking for food or even basic sandwiches, they're demanding to...
And anyways Elliot Rodger didn't want sex or sex with prostitutes: he wanted blond white sorority girls.
In this analogy, they're not asking for food or even basic sandwiches, they're demanding to have that exact one that this particular type of child has. Even if we could Star Trek molecularly duplicate that child's sandwich it wouldn't be good enough.
And that's why it's crazy pants.
But. Recently we had that discussion on Man vs Bear, where the writer stressed that what a lot of men want, and is unable to find, is closeness, in the strict structure of the patriarchy. So, had these young men been able to see more clearly, I think they would have been able to better express how isolated they feel, how powerless they have been rendered, and how terribly lonely they are in a society where basic human touch and kindness and attention from the opposite sex has become a commodity hoarded by the powerful.
Just, pushed into extremism and tunnel vision and violence.
I have an alternative take on this: it's about racial resentment and equality in dignity in the eyes of others. In the gay community, I've met and gotten personally acquainted with multiple gay...
I have an alternative take on this: it's about racial resentment and equality in dignity in the eyes of others.
In the gay community, I've met and gotten personally acquainted with multiple gay Black men who experience incredible levels of racial resentment and self-hatred because they experience routine rejection from white men they consider to be in their "league". For them, the suggestion that they should "settle" for a non-white man amounts to, so to speak, accepting to sit in the back of the sexual hierarchy bus.
I'm not saying that this right or not, only that it's more than eating one sandwich vs. a nicer sandwich. It's about the opportunity to eat that nicer sandwich.
(I had an ex-friend like this, but I had to end the friendship because it became evident that the resentment of others+self would often manifest as unacceptable toxicity and anger — even if the world were unfair to him.)
This whole thread is wild to me. "I don't have sex with Black men" (unsaid part: "because they're Black men") is so obviously racist that I don't understand why we dress it up as merely personal...
This whole thread is wild to me.
"I don't have sex with Black men" (unsaid part: "because they're Black men") is so obviously racist that I don't understand why we dress it up as merely personal preference.
To me there's a bright line difference between "I am not attracted to this individual person" and "I am not attracted to this race".
Right, exactly, it's the delusional "right" to have sex with individuals who are "worthy" of their status. I mean, the most charitable way I can dress this up is the universal cry of "there is...
For them, the suggestion that they should "settle".....
Right, exactly, it's the delusional "right" to have sex with individuals who are "worthy" of their status.
I mean, the most charitable way I can dress this up is the universal cry of "there is inequality and I don't like it".
i don't see how that's in conflict with what i wrote. one is a moral judgment and the other is an examination of social dynamics—they are orthogonal and complementary
I don't think this is a fair interpretation? The author points out (quite reasonably) that being a creep made it much harder for him to attract a partner.
i don't see how that's in conflict with what i wrote. one is a moral judgment and the other is an examination of social dynamics—they are orthogonal and complementary
I've always seen the unfortunate suffering of "I want someone but no one wants me" as a part of "survival of the fittest", in which case it would be the genes coming from either a bad background, bad upbringing (producing weak/twisted minds), or just bad genes in terms of appearance.
Nature can be cruel, obviously. That doesn't mean humans have to be too, though.
And disclaimer: I'm an asexual, aromantic woman. Even if I did get married, I'd still choose not to have kids. Even in a good economy where I could afford to have them. My depression, anxiety, and ADHD already produce three child-me's that I have to take care of. That's more than enough.
I'm going to take a contrarian stance and say: yes, in a way?
People don't need sex to survive biologically, but neither do people need food beyond bland calorie gruel or shelter beyond a prison cell that's heated above freezing. But we mostly agree that people need more than just mere biological survival: people need to thrive spiritually. Most people would that agree that people have a right to education, healthcare, internet, etc.
Sex is a cornerstone of human dignity and health. We need it much like we need friendship and love; it's a form of human contact that affirms our capacity to be desired, to be touched, to be desirable, to be touchable. To be deprived of it entirely is psychological and spiritual torment.
Mentioned in the essay, and this is true. Herein lies one of the fundamental inequities of life: that something people so desperately need to feel fulfilled as humans is mainly produced through the mutual desire which produces consent — but the various other inequities of life inevitably render some people simply undesirable.
I have friends who work as male prostitutes, mainly for gay male clients. It's interesting how they see their work as therapeutic. They work with men who struggle to be desired by anyone else; so their job is to make them feel desired. One of them works with a man with cerebral palsy who's unable to masturbate; their monthly session is that man's only way of achieving any semblance of sexual pleasure and release.
I also remember that was a gay man who I'd occasionally see on Tinder and Grindr who had suffered extremely severe burn injuries. Though attractiveness is subjective, almost virtually objectively his injuries had rendered him completely physically unattractive. Without exaggeration, he looked like a ghoul from the Fallout games. I thought it was brave that he kept putting himself out there, and I always wondered if he ever experienced any success on the apps. I also imagined how lonely he must've felt through no fault of his own: no gay man, except someone with a pathological fetish for burn injuries?, would find him physically attractive; likely very few gay men would consent to sex with him. Yet I also still wonder to this day: does he not have a right to sex? To be desired? To be touched?
A hypothetical "right to sex" would necessarily be in opposition to everyone's right to not have sex. So even if we completely accept and legalize sex work, sex workers still have the right to deny service. It sounds a bit misguided to turn one of the most intimate expressions of human affection and desire into something that is guaranteed by law.
I don't disagree. I think that the greatest fundamental inequality is not that of wealth but that of beauty and desirability. Wealth is just a means to desirability: even Jeff Bezos was willingly to effectively give up 38 billion dollars to be with the busty Latina of his fantasies. This is a game that must naturally have losers.
The right to healthcare only holds because we don't allow doctors the right to refuse treatment unless there's alternative care.
Another less extreme parallel is how solitary confinement is considered cruel and inhumane, and yet everyone has the right to not socially interact with someone. Fortunately, the bar for having social interaction with someone is much, much lower than having sex with them.
Being outside is sufficient to negate solitary confinement, which goes way beyond merely removing someone from public spaces. Allowing someone to be in those contexts does not require anyone to engage in the kind of intimate acts we are talking about here.
Solitary confinement is generally meant as punishment against prisoners who are already removed from society. The right to participate in public events and locations is markedly dissimilar from a provision against solitary confinement. Because of that, I don't believe that is a helpful comparison.
Ehhh, I'm way hotter than the Koch brothers but I can't control senators. Bezos might have made that stupid decision, but it was still his decision that he was in control of, and the woman he slept with didn't obtain the power that he relinquished. What you're describing isn't beauty granting a person more power than money, you're describing beautiful people being treated as an extremely valuable commodity. Sure, a lot of power or money may be expended to "obtain" them, but it's not transferred to them in that exchange.
Usually when we're discussing a right to healthcare, we're not discussing any individual doctor's decisions. We're discussing who pays for it. I'm not sure who you're referring to when you say "we", and I'm sure it varies from country to country, but in the US I'm pretty sure that no individual doctor is required to treat any specific patient. Medicare accredited hospitals cannot refuse to treat emergency patients due to lack of ability to pay, but that's not really the same thing. And I think that actually is a pretty good metaphor for how sex should be treated. There should be no external barriers to it - ex. sodomy laws or inaccessible birth control - but no one should be required to provide it. The only barrier to having sex should be finding a willing adult to do it with.
What did you mean by simply undesirable? And how is it simple from your perspective? The author of the essay laid out a pretty compelling rationale for why it is much more complex. That our desires are a result of the political intersections of our experience.
it's an interesting piece, with a lot of interesting points, but it's a bit over the place, without, i think, enough length to be exhaustive or tie together all of its points in the most coherent fashion. ultimately, i think the title and opener detract (c.f. @unkz's comment—the danger of 'hooks', aside from being aesthetically bankrupt, is that it's easy for them to frame, inappropriately; or to distract); in specific, it says:
but i don't think the piece is actually about entitlement qua entitlement; it is more about the preceding and surrounding moral and social dynamics, and in this respect the broader 'theoretical' definition is actually the far more relevant and so the framing feels reductive. (some sample references—not necessarily the best, just what comes to mind and is reasonably savoury—/r/femcelgrippysockjail and philosophical advice about the friend zone)
if i stretch a bit, i might take issue with some subtler aspects of the organisation (don't take this too seriously, i haven't thought it through much). it almost says: elliot rodger is gross and bad because of his violence, racism, etc., and so is in some cosmic sense actually not owed sex. whereas gay men are, abstractly and cosmically, owed non-shallow and non-discriminatory sexual attention from other gay men; and ditto trans lesbians w.r.t. cis lesbians. (oh, and by the way, the enlightened queer oppressed-class is self-reflective in ways the mainstream is not.) yet, both of these meta-groups are harmed in the same ways by such-and-such interesting dynamics. i don't even necessarily disagree with this! but it's left as subtext and some of the more dicy pertinent moral implications therefore underexplored, and in particular the dichotomous framing—wherein we on the one hand have a meta-group which is broadly morally righteous and on the other a meta-group which is broadly morally unrighteous—is unhelpful; i think it would be more constructive to make a more holistic examination of the outgroups (both the possibility space and the realised elements), or else ignore them entirely in favour of the ingroup dynamics that create their plight
The author of this piece subsequently wrote a book on this.
I don't think this is a fair interpretation? The author points out (quite reasonably) that being a creep made it much harder for him to attract a partner. From the article (emphasis mine)
I think the thing the article actually explores is
The relevance of gay people is that heterosexual sex is not really something political in society, and straight people don't really have to think about sexual norms very much. Gay people however are very used to their identity being questioned, and the way they have sex being subject to lots of scrutiny (e.g. in the media) so are in many ways more reflective on how they have sex?
Relevant paragraph on the Sandwich metaphor
Yeah, the idea that women are somehow incapable of choosing not to date someone based on their personality seems littered throughout the incel mindset when it's a HUGE contributor to their failure to actually effectively socialize with women (and therefore to ever have sex with them). Rodger's a great example bc from the pictures I've seen, he was not a bad-looking guy. I'd have swiped right if there weren't any red flags in his profile. But he was a massive creep, with a personality and outlook on life that was basically one big red flag (and one that proved to be prescient). So many of the incel crowd refuse to even consider that women could care about personality because it destroys the comforting fantasy that their failure to attract a partner is entirely based on things they have no control over.
The other thing I find really weird about incels is that they see an extremely intimate relationship as a solution to their problems when most of them have relatively few friendships in their lives (female or otherwise) which would probably be a better starting point.
It’s perhaps revealing of the mental processes at play. Friendships seemingly aren’t seen as part of the process, despite being key to finding the right person to develop an intimate relationship with or building a network of connections to better be able to find that person. Instead the expectation is that relationships will spontaneously materialize out of thin air as a result of proximity to a desirable individual.
I wonder how much of this is a result of the common trope in popular media (especially movies) where exactly that chain of events occurs: guy exists, meets attractive woman by chance, woman is suddenly enraptured by him for no apparent reason.
One may also surmise that these individuals simply don’t value non-transactional friendship and perceive it as a waste of time, which might explain how they ended up sitting where they are.
That said, this is all armchair psychoanalysis so who knows.
I think the problem of seeing romantic/sexual relationships with women as the solution to their problems and struggling to form strong friendships is not unique to incels (though they are a particularly acute and toxic form of it). I think a less obviously septic version of the same mindset is a huge contributor to the "epidemic of male lonelinesss" we keep seeing news articles about.
I saw a clip from a podcast that your comment reminds me of. There were 3 guys and 3 girls around a table. One of the guys asks the women who of the 3 guys there they think is the most attractive. But he demand they make their judgement purely off of looks. One girl rates him poorly and he starts yelling about how she's breaking his "rule" and is rating him poorly because she doesn't like him as a person. All of the people at this table were reasonably attractive.
Just another example of a man demanding women use some arbitrary set of rules to judge them.
It's impossible to remove personality as a factor, even if you're only judging looks. Even if you can manage to block out prior perceptions based on personality, (big if), facial expressions, body language, and personal touches all directly impact the way that you look. Someone with a thin blue line tattoo is going to look unattractive to me, even if their features are quite pleasant. Is that a personality thing, or a looks thing? Well-done eyeliner is attractive to me on literally anyone, but that's a choice and a skill. Is that a looks thing, or a personality thing?
Do incels reject the possibility of hiring prostitutes for sex? Do they reject the possibility of having sex with women who are average or less than average in appearance? One of the things that jumped out to me about the Rodgers story was his desire for, and the sense that he deserved, the most attractive women.
In my experience incels do tend to ignore these options. They ignore the existence of unattractive or undesirable women, to the extent that many claim there's no such thing as a female incel (despite the fact that incel was originally coined by a woman to describe her own experiences). Some straight-up admit that they don't think women can be incels because any woman can go and get herself r*ped. But they also straight up refuse to consider sex with women who won't meet their arbitrarily high standards. Which, I mean, I'm not gonna complain about not getting hit on by incels, but it does make the hypocrisy clearer.
I don't know what their justifications are to themselves for not hiring sex workers are, but I suspect it's a similar issue -- they don't just want sex, they feel entitled to sex from women they see as attractive and valuable, and they don't see sex workers that way.
To think that rape is a form of sexual activity that should be acceptable to, and cancels out incel-hood for, women, yet have these impossible standards about which women are acceptable to them for sex -- that is seriously messed up. It seems like they actually want to stay incels and feel like martyrs for it.
Pretty much. They turn on any of their kind that end up having sex.
I've spent a little bit of time on their forums, and that's exactly what it seems like. The self-hatred and hatred of women comes first. The rationalizations come after. Any options for not being in that situation would disrupt the rationalization, and is therefore dangerous. I honestly believe that for most of them, if an attractive woman with a fetish for this sort of thing showed up and offered to sleep with one of them for free, it would just make him angry.
Re: sandwich metaphor
That's why we hate communism though, isn't it? Because the alternative is you subject the sandwich'd kids to violence so everyone gets a bite.
In reality it's much simpler than that: you explain to the child that this is one of many many many areas in life where we don't get what we want, where it isn't fair, where we'd like for things to be different, but where ultimately we have to accept that we won't get what we wan, but we can ask and we can boost our chances.
In real life, this is every resource from exclusive trips to CEO positions to mansions to food on the table -- it isn't going to be fair and equitable and we won't get it, but we can try.
We can make our own sandwich. We can befriend the kids and maybe they'll share. We can trade them stuff. We can choose to accept not everyone gets a sandwich, and talk to our therapists/priests/parents/partners about how much it hurts and to better appreciate things we do have and to accept the unfairness without anger and without hate.
It seems very odd to me to live in a world where absolutely nothing is fair anyway and demand fairness by being unfair to women who don't want to share their sandwich with these brats
Because food is needed to survive, I support government provisions of simple sandwiches for everyone, without taking better sandwiches away from people who have more.
However I don't really think it's necessary for government to pay prostitutes to sleep with incels. Masturbation is an alternative
And anyways Elliot Rodger didn't want sex or sex with prostitutes: he wanted blond white sorority girls.
In this analogy, they're not asking for food or even basic sandwiches, they're demanding to have that exact one that this particular type of child has. Even if we could Star Trek molecularly duplicate that child's sandwich it wouldn't be good enough.
And that's why it's crazy pants.
But. Recently we had that discussion on Man vs Bear, where the writer stressed that what a lot of men want, and is unable to find, is closeness, in the strict structure of the patriarchy. So, had these young men been able to see more clearly, I think they would have been able to better express how isolated they feel, how powerless they have been rendered, and how terribly lonely they are in a society where basic human touch and kindness and attention from the opposite sex has become a commodity hoarded by the powerful.
Just, pushed into extremism and tunnel vision and violence.
I have an alternative take on this: it's about racial resentment and equality in dignity in the eyes of others.
In the gay community, I've met and gotten personally acquainted with multiple gay Black men who experience incredible levels of racial resentment and self-hatred because they experience routine rejection from white men they consider to be in their "league". For them, the suggestion that they should "settle" for a non-white man amounts to, so to speak, accepting to sit in the back of the sexual hierarchy bus.
I'm not saying that this right or not, only that it's more than eating one sandwich vs. a nicer sandwich. It's about the opportunity to eat that nicer sandwich.
(I had an ex-friend like this, but I had to end the friendship because it became evident that the resentment of others+self would often manifest as unacceptable toxicity and anger — even if the world were unfair to him.)
This whole thread is wild to me.
"I don't have sex with Black men" (unsaid part: "because they're Black men") is so obviously racist that I don't understand why we dress it up as merely personal preference.
To me there's a bright line difference between "I am not attracted to this individual person" and "I am not attracted to this race".
Right, exactly, it's the delusional "right" to have sex with individuals who are "worthy" of their status.
I mean, the most charitable way I can dress this up is the universal cry of "there is inequality and I don't like it".
i don't see how that's in conflict with what i wrote. one is a moral judgment and the other is an examination of social dynamics—they are orthogonal and complementary
Betteridge's law of headlines applies as always: no, obviously nobody is entitled to sex.
I knew the law, but not the name. Thanks for that little tidbit of information.
A bit old, but I found it to be a really interesting piece.