9 ms·

so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic succes

by serf 6y ago

so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. Pretty shitty, given that the title 'incel' is rarely self-appointed in comparison to the amount that its' bandied about by those who seek to insult by mockery or phrase. This points to an over-simplifying of the language. People who have poor romantic luck and charisma ARE NOT ALWAYS THE SAME as people who gather around social outlets online in order to share 'toxic and misogynistic' opinions -- but public opinion and media are referring to both parties as 'incels'. This means that the simply unlucky and uncharismatic folks are being pigeon-holed by society and the media to get out of the 'incel' title simply to stave off comparison between themselves and the bad incels. It's weird that a pro-sex movement finally won over the hearts of the public by demonizing and chastising those unfortunate enough to not have found a sexual partner. I wish people (and the media at large) would make a larger effort to mention that someone can be involuntarily celibate and mentally stable and balanced. The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry is a trend that will force a lot of people into life-changing mistakes more promptly than they would have been before the social pressure that equated routine sex with a partner as an indicator of mental stability and trustworthiness.

scythe 6y ago
>so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. I don't know where the actual incel community hides now that Reddit banned pretty much all of their incarnations. 4chan relentlessly mocks them, Tumblr won't tolerate them, Facebook's real-name policy surely scares them away, and Twitter is just... Twitter. It was easier to define what an "incel" was when there was a big group of people rallying under the term "incel". The /r9k/-misogyny ideology lives on among people who reject the term, but the keyword is a ghost town, like Gamergate before it. If we want to consistently refer to this group of people, the name should probably come from outside, since they recycle names so often.
Causality1 6y ago
It's an evolution of the gender insult duality. Ten years ago it was sluts and permavirgins. Now it's thots and incels.
tekdude 6y ago
The 'incel' term is a specific identity though: it refers to both the person's romantic circumstances (involuntarily celibate) AND certain beliefs about the causes of those circumstances (blaming women/feminism/Disney/Tinder/etc...). This term was coined years ago, though, from INSIDE the community. I remember reading articles about people calling themselves 'incels' in the early 2010s (can't remember exactly where, maybe Psychology Today). This was before it became a huge community on Reddit/4chan, before the shootings, and long before it became a term used in major newspapers, magazines, and TV news shows. Even back then, there was differentiation between people who are just involuntarily celibate and those that identified themselves as part of the 'incel' community. The easiest way to tell is to ask why they think they're involuntarily celibate: the 'incels' typically blamed outside societal forces (see above), while non-'incels' talked about their own issues ("I'm shy", "I have social anxiety", "talking to women scares me", "I'm not good at talking to people", etc...).
- guskel 6y ago
  Incels refer to the specific beliefs associated with the incel community as "The Blackpill". According to incels, the incel term does not refer to the beliefs, but simply the state of being involuntarily celibate, whereas being "blackpilled" means believing in the ideology associated with the incel community.
SpicyLemonZest 6y ago
I agree that some commentary has an unfortunate undercurrent of virgin-shaming, but "incel" was never in common use as a neutral descriptor. Most people familiar with the term today have only ever seen it used as a reference to that particular subculture; the more general uses from the early 2000s are virtually unheard of, to the point that most people I've talked to about it think the /r/incels subreddit invented the term.
meheleventyone 6y ago
Isn’t it 180 from that. The term incel is one developed online by toxic young men dealing with their lack of romantic success through misogynistic ideology. And it’s not really something that changed in recent years but is many years old. There are plenty of people who can deal with finding sex and romantic relationships hard who are not incels.
- flir 6y ago
  Co-opted, rather than developed, but that's a minor detail.
  - washadjeffmad 6y ago
    Backstory, for context: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45284455 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45284455
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
ngold 6y ago
It's the same reason anti fascist turned into antifa. I think at least the majority of people are anti fascist. But cutting it down to a meaningless word turns the word itself into a weapon to be used to bludgeon.
claudiawerner 6y ago
I'm partially with you. The article goes on to say: >Like the movements against vaccines or circumcision or GMOs, orthotropics spoke to its newfound adherents’ reactionary desires, affirming their skepticism of authority and faceless establishments; promising to restore a stolen masculinity; and recounting a simple but exhilarating narrative that pitted modernity against the best interests of the human race. Does it make any sense for opposition to circumcision at birth in the absence of complications to be compared to anti-vaccination and anti-GMOs? It seems as though the sentence is written to say that all of these are 'promising to restore a stolen masculinity', but I can't see how anti-GMO ideology works in that framework, and I'm not entirely convinced the anti-circumcision argument is all about that. "Incel" is probably a debatable term that's thrown around a lot; while there is undeniably a community of misogynistic men who blame their misfortune in the dating world on modern society and its women, there are also those who are simply involuntarily celibate - no further qualification needed. Perhaps they accept that the problem is themselves, or they think it lies elsewhere - but neither of those necessitate the description of all 'involuntarily celibate' people as misogynists who are mad about 'Stacy' and 'Chad'. Worse still, to say you want to be in a relationship but are not, or you'd like to have sex but can't, thanks to the toxic online 'incel' community, certain connotations will be attached - whether you're an a male ('incel') or female (the less commonly used term, 'femcel').
- api 6y ago
  Anyone grouping anti-circumision alongside anti-GMO and anti-vax is almost certainly American. Circumcision is far less common even in Canada and is rare outside Orthodox Jews in some European countries. The association of circumcision with modernity is also weird given that it's an incredibly ancient practice that has been questioned much more in modern times. America has this peculiar custom of always circumcising by default regardless of religion, though it's been fading a bit over time. My kids were both girls but we did talk about it and the hospital told us we would have to elect to circumcise rather than electing not to. That's apparently a change.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    Circumcision at birth in the absence of any problems has never made sense to me; it's not common in the country where I live, and it's a little scary that it's almost common practice in the US. From the downvotes I'm getting on my parent comment, I'm guessing people may think I'm pro-circumcision, but I think it's being anti-GMO and anti-vaxx that's unreasonable from my point of view. I can't think of any good reason to circumcise boys in the absence of medical problems - other than the slightly reduced risk of penile cancer, but that's a very rare form of cancer, and even so, we don't remove tonsils from healthy children, nor do we amputate their limbs to reduce the risk of canacer. If someone (especially the downvoters) could explain what the advantage of circumcision is, I'd be at least interested to hear it.
notahacker 6y ago
> The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry The momentum is driven largely by the 'incel' online movement, and the large proportion of the world's population that isn't sexually or romantically active in the way they'd like to be but isn't interested in their nonsense can happily not associate with that movement and not be associated with that movement. The only way you start getting pigeonholed as angry is if you start imagining a 'pro-sex movement' that inexplicably hates you... (I'm not even sure what the 'pro-sex movement' is. Evolutionary biology? The traditional family? The 1960s? The current emphasis on genderfluidity and consent? none of those seem particularly hostile to the idea that people might be involuntarily celibate.)
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  If you wanted a support group now as an involuntarily celibate person, what would you do?
  - notahacker 6y ago
    Probably call it 'singles club'...
    - guskel 6y ago
      But surely being single is different than lifelong singleness and lack of intimacy. In fact many singles continue to date and have sex.
      - notahacker 6y ago
        > In fact many singles continue to date and have sex. Sounds like the sort of people that those who are worried about their lifelong lack of intimacy should be meeting!
        DangitBobby 6y ago
        They were doing that!
oblio 6y ago
> pro-sex movement What's this?
- throwaway435634 6y ago
  People who think sex should be a positive thing rather than being an embarrassment and that people should be free to say they enjoy the kind of sex they enjoy (within consent and the law obviously.) Anti-shame, in other words.
  - klipt 6y ago
    Not everyone is consistently anti-shame though. There are a lot of people who oppose slut shaming but, with great lack of self awareness, use prude or virgin as insults.
colmvp 6y ago
My experience online is most time a guy complains about their frustration in not finding someone there's like zero sympathy... except in places where one probably don't want to hang out namely misogynistic subreddit/forums. I can totally see why some guys become radicalized when a good portion of society DGAF.
- noir_lord 6y ago
  Not sure why society should care (beyond preventing people been radicalised into becoming a danger I guess). There are lots of pressures on people to conform in one way or another to goals and ideals that are largely unachievable - none of them are an excuse for driving cars into crowds. From the limited interactions I've seen online most incels don't realise they aren't unattractive physically but by nature of their personality which causes a vicious feedback loop. When I was younger I didn't have a huge amount of success with women (I was by nature shy and introverted, still am to an extent) but I realised early that was my issue and no-one elses, things improved as I matured and became more confident in who and what I am but had they not I'd still have been happy enough - I was for years after all.
  - DangitBobby 6y ago
    > Not sure why society should care (beyond preventing people been radicalised into been a danger I guess). Some people are going to be without a partner for life, despite their desire for one. Maybe they are profoundly ugly, or not very smart, just kind of a boring (or annoying) personality, or a mix of the above... It's not always going to be an issue that they can fix. And as a result, they feel unloved and alone, sometimes worthless. It seems pretty obvious to me why society should care about this in more than just the supremely selfish "how does this hurt me" way.
    - claudiawerner 6y ago
      It seems to me that the best help from the individual's perspective would be to consult a therapist, and from a social perspective, to dismantle the idea that one's worth is determined by having sexual partners (and the converse, that some peoples' lack of worth is determined by 'too many' partners). Some (perhaps many, or even most) in the incel community seem to think they are entitled to not only a partner but a partner that will fit a certain specification. I'm all for sympathy and understanding. But what kind of sympathy can regular people give without falling into the logic that everyone is entitled to a partner? How should we prevent that sympathy from turning into pity, which feeds the narrative that there is necessarily something wrong with not having a partner? As a society we are able to do various things that go beyond sympathy for a wide range of individual misfortunes - we can assist the poor (throgh welfare programs and charity), and we can anonymize university applications and make buildings and media accessible to those with physical problems. I think part of why incels don't get much sympathy is because there's nothing society can do about that problem to help any particular individual. It can also be hard to empathise with; everyone has been single at some point, and on the whole, most peoples' experiences dictate that it's probably not as bad as being poor or disabled.
happytoexplain 6y ago
As "antifa" does not, in practice, mean "anybody who opposes fascism", "incel" does not, in practice, mean "anybody who is involuntarily celibate".
spaetzleesser 6y ago
I tend to agree. I was an incel for quite significant parts of my life. Probably due to some autistic traits I never understood how the whole dating thing worked. Thank god things have improved for myself but this is something you basically can't admit in public without being ridiculed. I remember the time when "introvert" was also something to be ashamed of. I really wish society had more sympathy for people who don't fit in socially. With all the progress we are tying make not demeaning people for their race or sexuality it still seems OK to bash socially awkward people.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Jetrel 6y ago
  To interject with something that's hopefully an insight: I think the reason most people punish other people for social awkwardness is because - in their eyes, it falls on the foul side of Hanlon's Razor. I.e. they think that someone is being socially awkward to deliberately make people feel unpleasant, rather than being awkward because it's something they just can't help. It seems to span the full spread of social awkwardness - all the way from just being weird, down to being a jerk. I've seen people who are jerks not because they want to be, but because they can't help but run their mouth when they're in the wrong emotional state. I've also had at least one friend who'd frequently do really rude things like suddenly walking away mid-conversation, and it wasn't because he wanted to insult us, but it was because his ADHD was redlining so badly that he had to seek any other available stimulation, even if there wasn't any available. At this point, I'm honestly convinced most human malfeasance is just manifestations of various mental illnesses, and I really wish we'd approach it with a therapeutic, rather than punitive, approach. We might actually fix things, if we did.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
cannedslime 6y ago
These days if you are critical of mass immigration or other far left talking points you get called an incel. Its absurd.

by serf 6y ago

scythe 6y ago

>so, after the past few years incel has shifted from "involuntarily celibate" , to "young men who congregate online and who explain their lack of romantic success through a toxic and misogynistic ideology." , NYTimes definition mid-article, not mine. I don't know where the actual incel community hides now that Reddit banned pretty much all of their incarnations. 4chan relentlessly mocks them, Tumblr won't tolerate them, Facebook's real-name policy surely scares them away, and Twitter is just... Twitter. It was easier to define what an "incel" was when there was a big group of people rallying under the term "incel". The /r9k/-misogyny ideology lives on among people who reject the term, but the keyword is a ghost town, like Gamergate before it. If we want to consistently refer to this group of people, the name should probably come from outside, since they recycle names so often.

Causality1 6y ago

It's an evolution of the gender insult duality. Ten years ago it was sluts and permavirgins. Now it's thots and incels.

tekdude 6y ago

The 'incel' term is a specific identity though: it refers to both the person's romantic circumstances (involuntarily celibate) AND certain beliefs about the causes of those circumstances (blaming women/feminism/Disney/Tinder/etc...). This term was coined years ago, though, from INSIDE the community. I remember reading articles about people calling themselves 'incels' in the early 2010s (can't remember exactly where, maybe Psychology Today). This was before it became a huge community on Reddit/4chan, before the shootings, and long before it became a term used in major newspapers, magazines, and TV news shows. Even back then, there was differentiation between people who are just involuntarily celibate and those that identified themselves as part of the 'incel' community. The easiest way to tell is to ask why they think they're involuntarily celibate: the 'incels' typically blamed outside societal forces (see above), while non-'incels' talked about their own issues ("I'm shy", "I have social anxiety", "talking to women scares me", "I'm not good at talking to people", etc...).

guskel 6y ago
Incels refer to the specific beliefs associated with the incel community as "The Blackpill". According to incels, the incel term does not refer to the beliefs, but simply the state of being involuntarily celibate, whereas being "blackpilled" means believing in the ideology associated with the incel community.

SpicyLemonZest 6y ago

I agree that some commentary has an unfortunate undercurrent of virgin-shaming, but "incel" was never in common use as a neutral descriptor. Most people familiar with the term today have only ever seen it used as a reference to that particular subculture; the more general uses from the early 2000s are virtually unheard of, to the point that most people I've talked to about it think the /r/incels subreddit invented the term.

meheleventyone 6y ago

Isn’t it 180 from that. The term incel is one developed online by toxic young men dealing with their lack of romantic success through misogynistic ideology. And it’s not really something that changed in recent years but is many years old. There are plenty of people who can deal with finding sex and romantic relationships hard who are not incels.

flir 6y ago
Co-opted, rather than developed, but that's a minor detail.
- washadjeffmad 6y ago
  Backstory, for context: https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45284455 https://www.bbc.com/news/amp/world-us-canada-45284455

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

ngold 6y ago

It's the same reason anti fascist turned into antifa. I think at least the majority of people are anti fascist. But cutting it down to a meaningless word turns the word itself into a weapon to be used to bludgeon.

claudiawerner 6y ago

I'm partially with you. The article goes on to say: >Like the movements against vaccines or circumcision or GMOs, orthotropics spoke to its newfound adherents’ reactionary desires, affirming their skepticism of authority and faceless establishments; promising to restore a stolen masculinity; and recounting a simple but exhilarating narrative that pitted modernity against the best interests of the human race. Does it make any sense for opposition to circumcision at birth in the absence of complications to be compared to anti-vaccination and anti-GMOs? It seems as though the sentence is written to say that all of these are 'promising to restore a stolen masculinity', but I can't see how anti-GMO ideology works in that framework, and I'm not entirely convinced the anti-circumcision argument is all about that. "Incel" is probably a debatable term that's thrown around a lot; while there is undeniably a community of misogynistic men who blame their misfortune in the dating world on modern society and its women, there are also those who are simply involuntarily celibate - no further qualification needed. Perhaps they accept that the problem is themselves, or they think it lies elsewhere - but neither of those necessitate the description of all 'involuntarily celibate' people as misogynists who are mad about 'Stacy' and 'Chad'. Worse still, to say you want to be in a relationship but are not, or you'd like to have sex but can't, thanks to the toxic online 'incel' community, certain connotations will be attached - whether you're an a male ('incel') or female (the less commonly used term, 'femcel').

api 6y ago
Anyone grouping anti-circumision alongside anti-GMO and anti-vax is almost certainly American. Circumcision is far less common even in Canada and is rare outside Orthodox Jews in some European countries. The association of circumcision with modernity is also weird given that it's an incredibly ancient practice that has been questioned much more in modern times. America has this peculiar custom of always circumcising by default regardless of religion, though it's been fading a bit over time. My kids were both girls but we did talk about it and the hospital told us we would have to elect to circumcise rather than electing not to. That's apparently a change.
- claudiawerner 6y ago
  Circumcision at birth in the absence of any problems has never made sense to me; it's not common in the country where I live, and it's a little scary that it's almost common practice in the US. From the downvotes I'm getting on my parent comment, I'm guessing people may think I'm pro-circumcision, but I think it's being anti-GMO and anti-vaxx that's unreasonable from my point of view. I can't think of any good reason to circumcise boys in the absence of medical problems - other than the slightly reduced risk of penile cancer, but that's a very rare form of cancer, and even so, we don't remove tonsils from healthy children, nor do we amputate their limbs to reduce the risk of canacer. If someone (especially the downvoters) could explain what the advantage of circumcision is, I'd be at least interested to hear it.

notahacker 6y ago

> The momentum lately to paint all involuntarily celibate people as mentally unstable and angry The momentum is driven largely by the 'incel' online movement, and the large proportion of the world's population that isn't sexually or romantically active in the way they'd like to be but isn't interested in their nonsense can happily not associate with that movement and not be associated with that movement. The only way you start getting pigeonholed as angry is if you start imagining a 'pro-sex movement' that inexplicably hates you... (I'm not even sure what the 'pro-sex movement' is. Evolutionary biology? The traditional family? The 1960s? The current emphasis on genderfluidity and consent? none of those seem particularly hostile to the idea that people might be involuntarily celibate.)

DangitBobby 6y ago
If you wanted a support group now as an involuntarily celibate person, what would you do?
- notahacker 6y ago
  Probably call it 'singles club'...
  - guskel 6y ago
    But surely being single is different than lifelong singleness and lack of intimacy. In fact many singles continue to date and have sex.
    - notahacker 6y ago
      > In fact many singles continue to date and have sex. Sounds like the sort of people that those who are worried about their lifelong lack of intimacy should be meeting!
      - DangitBobby 6y ago
        They were doing that!

oblio 6y ago

> pro-sex movement What's this?

throwaway435634 6y ago
People who think sex should be a positive thing rather than being an embarrassment and that people should be free to say they enjoy the kind of sex they enjoy (within consent and the law obviously.) Anti-shame, in other words.
- klipt 6y ago
  Not everyone is consistently anti-shame though. There are a lot of people who oppose slut shaming but, with great lack of self awareness, use prude or virgin as insults.

colmvp 6y ago

My experience online is most time a guy complains about their frustration in not finding someone there's like zero sympathy... except in places where one probably don't want to hang out namely misogynistic subreddit/forums. I can totally see why some guys become radicalized when a good portion of society DGAF.

noir_lord 6y ago
Not sure why society should care (beyond preventing people been radicalised into becoming a danger I guess). There are lots of pressures on people to conform in one way or another to goals and ideals that are largely unachievable - none of them are an excuse for driving cars into crowds. From the limited interactions I've seen online most incels don't realise they aren't unattractive physically but by nature of their personality which causes a vicious feedback loop. When I was younger I didn't have a huge amount of success with women (I was by nature shy and introverted, still am to an extent) but I realised early that was my issue and no-one elses, things improved as I matured and became more confident in who and what I am but had they not I'd still have been happy enough - I was for years after all.
- DangitBobby 6y ago
  > Not sure why society should care (beyond preventing people been radicalised into been a danger I guess). Some people are going to be without a partner for life, despite their desire for one. Maybe they are profoundly ugly, or not very smart, just kind of a boring (or annoying) personality, or a mix of the above... It's not always going to be an issue that they can fix. And as a result, they feel unloved and alone, sometimes worthless. It seems pretty obvious to me why society should care about this in more than just the supremely selfish "how does this hurt me" way.
  - claudiawerner 6y ago
    It seems to me that the best help from the individual's perspective would be to consult a therapist, and from a social perspective, to dismantle the idea that one's worth is determined by having sexual partners (and the converse, that some peoples' lack of worth is determined by 'too many' partners). Some (perhaps many, or even most) in the incel community seem to think they are entitled to not only a partner but a partner that will fit a certain specification. I'm all for sympathy and understanding. But what kind of sympathy can regular people give without falling into the logic that everyone is entitled to a partner? How should we prevent that sympathy from turning into pity, which feeds the narrative that there is necessarily something wrong with not having a partner? As a society we are able to do various things that go beyond sympathy for a wide range of individual misfortunes - we can assist the poor (throgh welfare programs and charity), and we can anonymize university applications and make buildings and media accessible to those with physical problems. I think part of why incels don't get much sympathy is because there's nothing society can do about that problem to help any particular individual. It can also be hard to empathise with; everyone has been single at some point, and on the whole, most peoples' experiences dictate that it's probably not as bad as being poor or disabled.

happytoexplain 6y ago

As "antifa" does not, in practice, mean "anybody who opposes fascism", "incel" does not, in practice, mean "anybody who is involuntarily celibate".

spaetzleesser 6y ago

I tend to agree. I was an incel for quite significant parts of my life. Probably due to some autistic traits I never understood how the whole dating thing worked. Thank god things have improved for myself but this is something you basically can't admit in public without being ridiculed. I remember the time when "introvert" was also something to be ashamed of. I really wish society had more sympathy for people who don't fit in socially. With all the progress we are tying make not demeaning people for their race or sexuality it still seems OK to bash socially awkward people.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Jetrel 6y ago
To interject with something that's hopefully an insight: I think the reason most people punish other people for social awkwardness is because - in their eyes, it falls on the foul side of Hanlon's Razor. I.e. they think that someone is being socially awkward to deliberately make people feel unpleasant, rather than being awkward because it's something they just can't help. It seems to span the full spread of social awkwardness - all the way from just being weird, down to being a jerk. I've seen people who are jerks not because they want to be, but because they can't help but run their mouth when they're in the wrong emotional state. I've also had at least one friend who'd frequently do really rude things like suddenly walking away mid-conversation, and it wasn't because he wanted to insult us, but it was because his ADHD was redlining so badly that he had to seek any other available stimulation, even if there wasn't any available. At this point, I'm honestly convinced most human malfeasance is just manifestations of various mental illnesses, and I really wish we'd approach it with a therapeutic, rather than punitive, approach. We might actually fix things, if we did.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

cannedslime 6y ago

These days if you are critical of mass immigration or other far left talking points you get called an incel. Its absurd.