Rolling Maleness and Masculinity Discussion Thread

Thing is, there is an equal amount of women and men in the world, and there's also female 'unattractive, awkward nerds'. Aaaaand there's prostitutes. There's quite honestly no such thing as being 'involuntarily celibate'.

What is the Cat People story?

the self-awareness of treating people low-level cruelty and reveling in one's own lack of empathy seems to be a relatively new socially acceptable method of going at people, as opposed to being something people do more anonymously and in a solitary way. well they still do, ultimately, but it feels different now. it's coalescing more. i see it with people i know especially red pill types, one of them being a cartoonist (whose work was actually posted on the right wing cartoon thread) who has completely flown off the rails and now explicitly states he loves being hated. it feels similar to what adam was just talking about with his ex roommate.

Cat person, a New Yorker fiction that went viral

Xp obv

xpost agree. Before that behaviour was more solitary or I guess more isolated (stalking, beating/killing women who one had some sort of relationship with). Now it's a game. You get points.

soref this is full of lazy thinking bullshit

tend to think that a lot of ppl who post to incel forums are correct to believe that there is no hope for them, that they are mostly unattractive, awkward nerds (a lot of them on the autism spectrum) who inspire a vague revulsion in other ppl

This is total garbage. I know from my basement dwelling zit popping nerrrrrrrrrds and they know how to get laid and even find happy LTRs and breed despite being "unattractive, awkward" and probably living on some point of the spectrum. The incel movement is about hating women, hating other men who get along with women, and from there it's on to hating everybody regardless. IMO this has nothing to do with what these people look like or their perceived awkwardness.

are "incels" broken? sure. lots of people are broken. lots of people are, specifically, broken in such a way that drives them to believe that they're right and everybody else is wrong. if you've found a way to fix people like that that actually works, you'd be the first.

I think they kind of intentionally 'lean in' to horrifying women, because it's more comforting to of make it a choice that they themselves have made - when they identify as 'involuntarily celibate' they are also silently identifying themselves as 'voluntarily disgusting' and so regaining some agency, as they think (correctly imo) that they'll disgust women anyway? I don't know what you do to stop these guys hurting women though, besides trying to shut down forums where justification for misogyny and retribution against women proliferate

― soref

god, everybody says, believes, does, disgusting things every once in a while. everybody hurts people they love. functional people learn, eventually, to take appropriate responsibility for that shit.

Cat person, a New Yorker fiction that went viral

This was worth reading.

Yeah, nothing about feelings of inadequacy, unattractiveness, disgust or any developmental disorders are unique to just men. But I guess if you don't consider women autonomous, complicated individuals then this doesn't really matter.

I am very glad there was so much backlash to that Walk Up and Not Out bullshit. The onus should never be on girls or victims to make sure a peer doesn't murder them.

My husband’s cousin is a piece of shit garbage person who I would not be surprised to find out is an incel.

He has learning disabilities, is on the spectrum and also has some delusional thinking. His family consistently cites these things as the reason why he’s a dick. But it’s not - he’s just an asshole with zero redeeming qualities. He had a doormat girlfriend for years but when she was finally able to leave him and he started trying to date - Jesus Christ the shit he would tell us.

- he would list all this stuff he wanted in a gf - basically a super model who would bend to his every whim - and when I tried to delicately ask what he would be bringing to the table he just looked at me like I was the idiot
- he eventually got a second gf but that ended when he got mad at her for putting her dying sister ahead of him

He thinks the world revolves around him and that he should have his pick of any woman he wants and she should only be interested in things he likes, he shouldn’t have to learn new things, and he is free to do what he wants whenever he wants but she should be prioritizing his every need.

Whenever anyone has tried to intervene in this fucked up thinking he just gets mad and stops the conversation. My husband cut off contact with him a few years ago and I couldn’t have been more relieved.

I would not be shocked if he committed a hate crime against women.

xp

I'm not just talking about feelings of inadequacy, unattractiveness etc though, I'm talking about actual inadequacy, unattractiveness etc (and 'inadequacy' specifically in terms of meeting the criteria for what is considered attractive for your gender) I'm not trying to suggest that women feel inadequacy or unattractive any less than men do, or that the latter are any more 'complicated'?

I think wrt developmental disorders, there is something 'un-masculine' about them that means someone with those issues is less likely to conform to society's ideas of what is attractive in a man? i.e women would be more likely to consider developmental disorders and the traits associated with them as off-putting in a potential male sexual partner than men would consider developmental disorders and the traits associated with them as off-putting in a potential female sexual partner.

Oh sorry, that second statement of mine was directed towards actual incels who consider women inanimate status symbols.

That Gary Younge article is good. Adding it to all the other articles calling for men to start taking responsibility for how the patriarchy and old ideas of masculinity is only hurting them as well.

There are people in my life who consider themselves well outside the range of conventional physical attractiveness and have constructed these personal narratives around various mythological attributes that they use to guide affirmations, personal style, etc, and it gives them quite a bit of glamor and authority that they might otherwise lack. All of these people are either biological women and/or queer but that could just be the company I keep. Are these people “actually” unattractive or inadequate? I don’t think that’s a good approach. The stories we tell ourselves matter and incels seem intent on telling themselves they were robbed of their glorious patriarchal heritage. So I disagree with soref’s approach here.

Well + Minassian and Rodger both didn't even really fall "well outside the range of conventional physical attractiveness", nor were they in e.g. particularly dire financial straits.

xp wrt whether a particular person is “actually” unattractive, I'd say that's determined by whether people are (sexually/romantically) attracted to them or not? that's the sense in which I was talking about attractiveness

Soref I’m saying that there are people in this world who’ve done the work to not give others perceptions so much power over them and their sense of self worth. Why just accept the measure of desirability as if it were external, static and unchanging, determined solely by others? Or why accept the most limited and brutal standard of desirability and internalize it?

There's quite honestly no such thing as being 'involuntarily celibate'.

eh this is bullshit. you can be dealt a bad hand in so many ways by being born into bad circumstances or not lucking out in the gene pool.

i mean let's say you are born with perpetual sadface and parents are abusive towards each other, you might have some problems connecting to others when you grow up

sciatica otm, there are lots of "jolie laide" examples out there (the reason we don't have a masculine term for that quality is probably because that is like half of all dudes) - the truly unattractive quality in all the incel types is their egocentric view of the world and complete disinterest in everybody else.

Adam's also right though but these self-appointed "incel" cats are on a different tip

add to that inheriting depression, if you have low self esteem it's far more difficult, or addictive tendencies, alcholism, etc. these can be things beyond our control that drastically effect our lives.

uh no resting sad face and mean parents and a tendency towards addicition is not what I meant. I thought you were talking about, like, certain types of dysplasia and such.

Soref I’m saying that there are people in this world who’ve done the work to not give others perceptions so much power over them and their sense of self worth. Why just accept the measure of desirability as if it were external, static and unchanging, determined solely by others? Or why accept the most limited and brutal standard of desirability and internalize it?

I mean, I guess a person can declare that by their own subjective standards they are most desirable person in the world, even if no one actually desires them, but this seems like it would be fairly meaningless? and even demonstrate the 'egocentric view of the world and complete disinterest in everybody else' that Tombot sees in incels?

I think you have completely misunderstood what sciatica and I are getting at. there are ways to live in your own skin and project attractiveness without being a narcissist.

uh no resting sad face and mean parents and a tendency towards addicition is not what I meant. I thought you were talking about, like, certain types of dysplasia and such.

― El Tomboto, Saturday, April 28, 2018 3:38 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark

these are all genetic things you can inherent. anyways relationships aren't just based on looks, they are based on social behavior, attitude, subtler visual cues, etc. my point was there are things beyond our control that go past "attractive y/n" that factor into getting (and especially maintaining) relationships.

Thanks Adam. I guess I consider most of those to be generally surmountable, though yes, they can be inherited and they suck.

Just for example, though, how many of the incel community would expect us to look up their word for themselves, and find them worthy of sympathy, but wouldn't be remotely interested in googling what "jolie laide" means, much less give the time of day to any woman who might be labeled as such?

I've wasted enough time on this topic. These fucking schmucks can all go self-immolate in one of those forests where regular fires are necessary for renewal and the overall health of the ecosystem.

Soref go watch a John Waters movie or two and then we can continue this conversation.

Adam: Even if you're depressive, alcoholic, etc, you can see a prostitute. I feel for people who are having trouble maintaining relationships - I have too, and have been celibate for long periods at a time - but with the way society is organized, everyone gets to have sex if they choose. But we don't get to have exactly the sex life that we want, which is extremely frustrating. But also, we've JUST gotten to a point where women are allowed to enjoy sex at all, and it's not as if it's just 100% acceptance and loads of orgasms all the time for them too, to put it mildly.

this is another big problem with the incels, "go see a prostitute" is not useful for a lot of them because they're looking for meaningful emotional connections, and, crucially, they can't differentiate between that and sex. there's this like raw inchoate terror of being "friendzoned", like the worst thing in the world for them is having a female friend. i do sometimes have difficulty wrapping my head around how fucked up that is, and i understand many different varieties of fucked up.

https://media2.fdncms.com/stranger/imager/u/large/26093556/1524664300-1524664273_tmp_sexworkerwomenfagen.jpg

That has nothing to do with what I wrote.

Elliot Rodger not really physically unattractive from what I've seen.

'violent men' need to go to jail, I hope we're not discussing how to help violent men get laid easier.

What are the stats on the % of Americans who solicit sex workers? (IRL encounters only.) Personally, as someone who often goes long stretches without sex, I can't imagine ever getting to the point where I feel the need to pay for sex, but that might just be the ol' catholic guilt acting up

BTW, many xps, but I think most people you ask would not consider masturbation as constituting a "sex life" on its own.

idk if that was in response to me but that was not at all what I was saying, I was just replying to the posts upthread about how incels are just hopelessly unattractive dudes

i know that growing up i received a lot of fucked up messages (from like everywhere) about the things that men are supposed to want and supposed to do and supposed to be w.r.t. women. I was raised under the assumption that normal people fall in love and get married and that they do it young. i was also a weird kid who got teased a lot. and i also spent a lot of nights as a preteen obsessing over how much i hated myself because girls didn't like me. and i played a lot of video games that were full of heroic male protagonists who were rewarded with beautiful ingenues falling at their feet e.g. final fantasy. and i posted on message boards with a lot of video game nerds like me. so this whole thing feels very "there but for the grace of god" to me. I don't give a fuck about whether or not these dudes get laid but there needs to be someone who can step in and somehow reverse all this damaged/damaging thinking. and i think saying they're beyond any possibility of help is cowardly.

xposts to fred

soref and ogmor deserve a better board

no, crüt, I was responding to the tweet about 'violent men' :)

I guess a person can declare that by their own subjective standards they are most desirable person in the world, even if no one actually desires them, but this seems like it would be fairly meaningless?

This seems like such incel logic to me: desire is not particular, idiosyncratic and relational but rather generalized, immutable and, most importantly, dominant. Either everyone desires me, or no one does. Regardless, my point in responding to soref in the first place was that “desirability” or the lack of it isn’t a useful indicator for whether men go down this road (a point others have also made today); more often it seems like a post-hoc justification—often a dysmorphic or just bizarre one—for attitudes of entitlement, inheritance and generally seeing others as property. Many people not born male, straight, tall and lithe have found ways around conventional notions of attractiveness and desirability in order to have successful, grownup, satisfying relationships. If you really want to ask the question, in good faith, well then what do we do with all the ugly dudes? maybe we can look to other constructive examples rather than fretting over yet another excuse for self-absorbed men to be antisocial and violent.

Frederik how much do you imagine sex workers charge

Not as much as they deserve

Trying to imagine how you think this relates to the discussion, and it's honestly creeping me out.

Well yr theory of universal sex access is idiotic, was my point.

Hesitating about posting this because it feels way too personal, but going to go for it.

It seems odd that anyone is having trouble understanding incels, it seems like such an inevitable thing to happen, but I guess it's just that I have personal experience in this area.

I was a virgin until the age of 23. By that point I'd spent four years going out clubbing, taking all manner of drugs, doing lots of very social stuff. I couldn't get laid simply because I had extremely low self-esteem, could not fathom anyone ever being attracted to me, and had no idea whatsoever how to do flirting. It felt like everyone else understood how to play this game and the universe had decided, unfairly, to make me the one person who would always try and fail. Actually (mainly due to the drugs) I didn't have much of a sex drive anyway, but wow was I lonely, perhaps that's what scared everyone off, I was only really looking for a serious relationship, sex was still a complete mystery then. So yeah, I was frustrated and, just generally miserable, and it fed into a self-destructive nihilism, a feeling of being short-changed by the world, just having a relationship seemed like the whole point of being alive and every attempt I made at it ended in failure.

And yet I never ended up as one of these assholes, I guess because my parents managed to instill in me basic respect for women and I only really encountered mysoginistic attitudes from the lad culture of the time, which I found totally repellant. But not everyone has that headstart, my family is unusual and my friends were never sexists, plus there wasn't such a body of fucked up stuff out there for me to find.

I truly believe that these guys are involuntarily celibate - not sure why we should bother questioning that. The point is that they are an easy target to feed mysoginistic hate and be shaped by it, and what if anything can be done about that? Everyone needs love and understanding in their life, not just nice people. The empathy failure here doesn't begin and end with the incels themselves.

(BTW I also agree that these people, simply through being white cis-het men, are expecting and getting way too much attention, but their not understanding this is kind of the point anyway)

i agree that there is a larger problem and that we should address it. i just don't think addressing the larger problem needs to start with these shithead babies, particularly given that they will personally fight any attempt to address the larger problem.

this kind of tweet keeps popping up

let's not start using the term 'poor' as if it's a valid concept. it isn't. no one is owed money. we already *have* a word for those who call themselves 'poor': 'thief' pic.twitter.com/ljmdKgzzaW

— St. Rev ☯️🏴😻 (@St_Rev) April 26, 2018

it's a provocative thought, even interesting, but simply wrong. wealth and sex/love are simply not equivalent. an incel who longs for genuine sexual attraction is not equivalent to a poor person longing for wealth. sexual attraction, romantic attachment etc are so immediate, uncontrollable, fixed—they are not things that can be "redistributed," in any real sense. some things are not supposed to be "democratic," they just dont work that way

even if we must take the incel predicament seriously (and, like, should we? should we take their words at face value?), I just can't find much consolation for them: life is difficult and love is not for everyone. most people have many unfulfilled desires, physical or psychological attributes they don't like about themselves and can't change, etc, but they dont lash out by killing people and blaming women. many of these guys have easy, if sexless, lives going for them & they should seek fulfillment in other spheres of life.

sciatica has been way otm itt