The Incel Rebellion
Longtime EMandLO.com reader Dave on the Incel Rebellion:

On April 23rd, 2018, a lone male drove a delivery style van down a crowded Toronto sidewalk, killing 10 people and seriously injuring dozens of others. First thoughts from the media and the general public were that this might have been a terrorist attack, based (sadly) upon other tragic events over recent years. Upon further investigation, it was concluded not to have been a terror attack. But is that actually accurate? Terror can come in many forms.

The perpetrator of this crime was a 25-year-old, single guy named Alek Minassian. We quickly learned that his motivation for the attack was his status as “incel,” or involuntarily celibate. So what did his sex life, or lack thereof, have to do with this young man snapping and looking to kill as many people as he possibly could?

Incels hate women. They blame women for not wanting or desiring them, for not having sex with them, for rejecting them. But incels also hate men who are sexually successful with women. The women who reject incels are called “Staceys” and the sexually successful men are referred to as “Chads.”

The Incel Rebellion seems to have been started — or at least popularized — by Elliot Rodger, the 22-year-old virgin who, in 2014, went on a killing spree that ended in his own suicide. Elliot blamed his virginity on his rejection by Staceys. But Rodger was rich and fairly good looking, which usually correlates with some measure of romantic success. So why did every woman he pursued reject him?

Is it possible that he was an immature, socially inept creep? That’s what I’d put my money on.

After doing some research on incels, it is clear they have a warped, sexist sense of self. Because they want to fuck a Stacey, they feel they deserve to fuck said Stacey. When they get rejected, they don’t take it very well. Like grown, male versions of Veruca Salt, they scream to themselves, “Why can’t I get what I want?!” Desperate for validation about these feelings, they search the internet in search of others with similar problems and perspectives. And thus begins their dark descent.

The internet is an amazing world: information on whatever you’re looking for is just a few keystrokes and mouse clicks away. Looking to network with fellow crocheters? You got it! Want to find other people who keep dreaming about aardvarks?  No problem. Are you a cannibal looking for someone with a death wish who will gladly let you eat their penis before finishing them off? The Internet can bring you two together!

Yes, for all the good the Internet does, it has a definite dark side. It fosters fear and loathing. It allows incels to find each other, wallow together in their despair, bond over their “unjust” treatment, and turn their self-hate outward into active misanthropy. It’s easier to blame someone other than themselves, so they blame the Chads and Staceys of the world.

Almost every heterosexual guy faces rejection in his life, especially early on.  I remember when I hit my teens, I discovered — surprise, surprise! — an intense and  growing interest in girls. All I could think about was smelling them, touching them, being with them. But the girls didn’t seem to return that interest. So what was an awkward, average-looking, skinny teen boy supposed to do? I needed a game plan. My first course of action was to develop my body: I took up weight training, guzzled protein drinks, chewed protein tablets . . . I did everything the bodybuilding ads said would make me successful with women. And it worked! My body rocked. But guess what? The girls still weren’t interested in me.

It took me years to figure out why. It wan’t my looks, it was my personality. I was a shy kid, and the muscles hadn’t made me any less awkward. I’d developed my body, but not my persona. Women weren’t the problem, I was. I eventually realized I needed to make changes on the inside — that it was up to me to improve my lot in life. I learned how to speak to girls, to get to know them, to make them — and myself in the process — feel comfortable. I eventually lost my virginity at 18.

But did that mean I never faced rejection again? Of course not! Rejection is a fact of life — whether it’s rejection by romantic interests, job opportunities, loan offices of banks . . .  Just because you want that hottie/job/loan doesn’t mean you’ll get it. Don’t take their rejection personally; understand that obviously this is not a person who was suited for you (no matter how how much you want to fuck them); and just move on, repeating that old saying like a mantra: “plenty of fish in the sea . . . ” Take comfort in the fact that the rarefied Chads and Stacies of the world are just that — rare. Which means there are plenty of average, everyday people that you — as an average, everyday person yourself (who’s not a creep) — can date and eventually have sex with.

Unfortunately, some young straight men — especially those at risk of becoming incels — find these concepts hard to grasp. Again, they possess a misogynistic sense of entitlement: I’m attracted to her so she should automatically be attracted to me, gosh darn it. This makes them lazy: they don’t develop their interpersonal skills or learn the art of conversation (texting has helped things much). So alone and lonely — buttressed by a bunch of angry, anonymous, likeminded strangers online — they take the easy, unrealistic way out: expect the entire world to change around them instead of the other way around.

Reddit and weep:

 

You can more hatred of sexual women in
The Slut Shaming of Stormy Daniels



12 Comments

  1. Since privilege and entitlement keep coming up in this discussion, I’d like to point out that there’s more than one kind of privilege out there, and I always see it at play in the contempt heaped upon the involuntary celibate. I don’t have a handy term for it like “male privilege” or “white privilege,” but, basically, incels are always shat on from above: their critics enjoy the privilege of inclusion. Whether it’s a high-school mean girl telling him he’s a gross loser or a scholar of feminism telling him to check his male entitlement, the incel’s critics are always doing much better than the incel himself.

    A woman telling an incel that virginity doesn’t impact masculinity is like a rich man telling a bum that money isn’t everything. A feminist telling him to check his entitlement is like the rich man telling the bum to stop whining and get a job. It’s patronizing and unhelpful.

    Think of incels as emotionally destitute the way a homeless man is materially destitute. If you’re not going to give him a handout, or even better a job, at least refrain from holding your nose and making a face as you walk past – even though he really does stink.

    1. We hear you, but it just become very difficult to have sympathy for those who take no responsibility for their own states, blame everyone but themselves, propose draconian misogynistic laws basically making women sex slaves (see above attachment), and contribute to an online culture that actually encourages mass murder.

      1. This is where I think the personality disorder that Johnny proposed comes into play. The distorted ways of thinking described here all seem to point to that. And it’s worth repeating that the average incel is probably just a sad sack instead of an extremist member of an online forum. Personality disorders are a hard nut to crack – it’s tough when someone has a deep, fundamental flaw in the way they conceive of the world.

  2. What about the inpops (involuntarily poor people)? What should we do?

    I suggest a world-wide communist revolution to solve all “unfair world” problems.

  3. I just read “Whoever Fights Monsters,” a sickening catalog of perversion and gore by FBI profiler Robert K. Ressler (whose work is the basis for the Netflix show Mind Hunter).

    Ressler is adamant that most bizarre murders (i.e. not the revenge ones or the profit ones, but the seemingly-senseless stranger murders) are sexual in nature – even the ones that involve no overt sexuality, such as driving a van into a crowd of people. He pointed out that sexual dysfunction, often accompanied by a history of sexual abuse, is almost ubiquitous among perpetrators of these murders (who, with rare exceptions like Eileen Wuournos, are pretty much always men).

    The takeaway: sexual dysfunction fucks with a man’s head BIG TIME. Most involuntarily celibate men never cross the line into violent crime, but what about the ones who are predisposed to mental illness? That’s who you’ve got to worry about.

    I also read “The Gift of Fear” by security expert Gavin de Becker. Where Ressler profiles the killer after the crime, de Becker predicts crimes before they occur. His advice to women regarding potentially dangerous men? In a word, AVOID. You prevent violence by identifying its precursors and getting the hell out of there.

    So, profiler Ressler tells us that sexual dysfunction plays a major part in violent crime. Predictor de Becker tells us to avoid problematic personalities once we identify them. That adds up to a pretty grim outlook for incels – the one thing that could make him feel better is a woman, which is a red flag, so for precisely that reason women must avoid him for their own safety? Welp, they’re fucked. Like I said, I don’t have a solution to this.

    1. Johnny,

      The one thing is that who knows if being with a woman would help an incel. Their mantra is already screwed up so really said woman would take the abuse their insanity creates. Also, I have no doubt that incels have very HIGH standards for girls, not just any average looking woman with low self esteem will do. They want the cream of the genetic crop and deserve it. It’s a dangerous concoction of low self esteem combined with high narcissism that others have caught on to that they want to wallow in. They need deep psychological help, not sexual partners.

      Like religious fanatics, they just want to blame someone or something for how they feel about themselves and like those groups, should be monitored for their extremist tendencies.

      1. Now that you mention it, in the case of the murderous ones, the emotional tumult that can come with romantic relationships would probably only add fuel to the fire.

        But I don’t think the average incel is a mass-murder, or even a member of an online hate community. I think the average incel is just a schlub with pitifully low self-esteem and paralyzing anxiety.

        By the time it gets to full-on misogynistic incelhood, yeah, they’re probably not pulling out of that. They’d need a combination of counseling, and – here’s the hard part – sex. No amount of counseling is going to cure what ails them. And I wouldn’t recommend any woman get near them at that point.

        Agreed with monitoring the online groups. I bet that’s already happening.

  4. The damage wrought upon the male mind by involuntary celibacy can not be overstated. There is no reassuring platitude, no re-arrangement of values, no consolation prize that can assuage the incel’s pain. There is no firmer repudiation of a man’s value than wholesale rejection by women. If you think that’s a warped perspective, then I already know this about you: you are at least somewhat successful in love; someone loves you, or has loved you; you are sleeping with someone, or at least you have slept with someone; for you, there is either success in the present or at least slim hope for the future.

    Masculinity is a tricky concept for feminists, who tend to find it problematic. Men tend to just not feel that way, and disputing the concept does nothing to help an incel. Incels may be biologically male, but in their situation, it’s impossible to feel like a god damn MAN. And that’s absolutely crushing to the ego.

    The hatred that incels feel for women is what happens when their love dies from starvation and rots inside of them. For all the shit they talk about hating women, they crave love. They want sex, but they also want a woman to like them, to love them, to want to spend time with them. They want to have a girlfriend, go on dates, and share a laugh with a woman. Instead they have to sit by and watch as “Staceys” and “Chads” have all the fun. It kills them inside.

    So, why can’t incels just do what OP did – hit the gym and become more outgoing? Why can’t they just do what I did – get into PU to massively increase success? I think it’s because their problems go further than an inability to get laid. Their sense of inadequacy and defeat is total. Incel status is a visible symptom and agonizing symptom of a fragile personality. I’m not a shrink, but to me it looks an awful lot like some form of Cluster C personality disorder.

    I don’t have a solution to this. I file this dilemma under “unfair world” – not everyone gets what they want, or even what they need. I wouldn’t expect a woman to hook up with a guy she finds unattractive, is what incels are. All I know is that these guys are in real pain.

    1. Boil that down to two words: toxic masculinity.
      Everyone has psychological pain, everyone struggles against the unfairness of life. I would say gender stereotypes and rigidity are what feminists consider problematic (and in truth “feminist” would be better interpreted, and possibly received, as meaning humanist.) It seems like the problem stems from an internalized warped cultural belief that a man cannot be considered a MAN lacking sexual experience and therefore is worthless. Furthermore anger and violent response is the culturally-allowable masculine coping mechanism. Certainly it is a multifaceted problem, but it is symptom of our cultural disease that usually festers quietly just below the surface of polite society in collective beliefs and preconceived notions.
      In reference to celibacy/virginity I feel like Em&Lo have already provided some valuable answers to this dilemma (especially point 3) in article: https://www.emandlo.com/dear-em-lo-im-a-fifty-year-old-virgin-with-a-small-penis/

      1. “It seems like the problem stems from an internalized warped cultural belief that a man cannot be considered a MAN lacking sexual experience and therefore is worthless.”

        Mating is waaaaay too deep and primal a thing for this to just be “an internalized warped cultural belief.” I think that’s a dismissive view to take of a perspective that is pretty much ubiquitously held among men. And women! Involuntary celibacy perpetuates itself. Women don’t want the guy that no woman wants. This is where the finger-wagging rhetoric fails the sniff test: would you be willing to challenge YOUR preconceived notions and culturally held beliefs about what’s socially and physically attractive and go on a date with an incel? Of course you wouldn’t, and neither would anyone else. Because human attraction is more complex (or maybe a lot more basic) than socially held beliefs. There is no persuasion that can overcome the crushing disappointment and sense of failure that comes with involuntary celibacy.

        Like I said, if you think this is all just bullshit, then I’d wager a thousand bucks that somebody loves you and you’ve never walked a mile in those particular shoes. I don’t think the average incel is a rage-filled, van-rampaging maniac. I think the average incel – male or female – is generally a sad sack whom I pity more than scorn.

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