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That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of

That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. Those of us who have access to that are privileged. I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more radicalized. I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough. It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel alone and wounded. IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021, it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well, without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.

benlivengood 5y ago
At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch. Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
- birdyrooster 5y ago
  Feminism is a front for white supremacy
  - NationalPark 5y ago
    How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the defining features of the last few decades of feminist writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the most prominent feminists are Black?
    - birdyrooster 5y ago
      Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality has been debunked using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released just before she released her work into the world back in 1989. If you want to see the debunking head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc (Antonio Moore) Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data. Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US. It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
  - dang 5y ago
    Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do this. Actually I just banned your account, but decided to unban it after looking a little bit closer. If you keep posting like this, though, we're going to have to. We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
2lwxxtj 5y ago
>That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. That's not a truth about life, it's an opinion.
- brianxp 5y ago
  it is, I notice that me or even people in my family who often times tend to show anticonformity behavior need some love. Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting) Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
  - 2lwxxtj 5y ago
    To be clear, "(almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy," is a falsifiable statement of fact. You can go out and measure something to find out whether it matches reality. On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.
jfengel 5y ago
Masculinity isn't toxic. It becomes toxic when it blames women for its problems. Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman. That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag. Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.
- BlargMcLarg 5y ago
  Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for one): * Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all * Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
  - NationalPark 5y ago
    I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and grassroots activism here, and all the complications and inconsistencies that implies. If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women). But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> the existence of so many "incels" Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past? I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?
- ratww 5y ago
  I'm guessing it's just the fact that the internet happened.
- 2lwxxtj 5y ago
  Yes, there are more now than in the past. https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/figure1newlymanincel-w640.png https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/figure1newlymaninc...
thelean12 5y ago
> if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite. It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that? Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc. I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?
- dnissley 5y ago
  I think the answer would go along the same lines as answering the question "whose fault is it that you can't get a job?" when aimed at an identity category such as women or minorities. Basically: society has failed them in some form or other.
  - thelean12 5y ago
    I'm not convinced it's the same. When talking about dating, there are a bunch of stuff that you can do that boils down to "make yourself a better person." See: my list above. It's obviously not guaranteed, and many are more genetically gifted than others, but it seems way more manageable of a task than your example. You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
    - dnissley 5y ago
      Yeah, for the most part I agree, I just think that it's possible to frame the fact that a lot of guys simply being at a loss of how to go about this can be framed as a societal failure of some kind. These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today. My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about. I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much! I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely. It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.
quonn 5y ago
David Burns would disagree and I‘d recommend his books to those who want to read them. :)
watwut 5y ago
Women get to be single and lonely too.
troway357924 5y ago
"I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity." "The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.

benlivengood 5y ago

At least in the bay area there are plenty of cuddle parties for platonic physical touch. Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.

birdyrooster 5y ago
Feminism is a front for white supremacy
- NationalPark 5y ago
  How do you reconcile that with the fact that one of the defining features of the last few decades of feminist writing has been intersectionality? And that some of the most prominent feminists are Black?
  - birdyrooster 5y ago
    Kimberle Crenshaw's theory of intersectionality has been debunked using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that was released just before she released her work into the world back in 1989. If you want to see the debunking head here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6g6D3Cc-Wc (Antonio Moore) Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data. Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US. It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
- dang 5y ago
  Would you please stop posting ideological flamewar comments to HN? We ban accounts that do this. Actually I just banned your account, but decided to unban it after looking a little bit closer. If you keep posting like this, though, we're going to have to. We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

2lwxxtj 5y ago

>That's one bitter truth about life: (almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy, but it's not something anyone is entitled to. That's not a truth about life, it's an opinion.

brianxp 5y ago
it is, I notice that me or even people in my family who often times tend to show anticonformity behavior need some love. Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting) Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
- 2lwxxtj 5y ago
  To be clear, "(almost) everyone needs some amount of physical intimacy to be happy," is a falsifiable statement of fact. You can go out and measure something to find out whether it matches reality. On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.

jfengel 5y ago

Masculinity isn't toxic. It becomes toxic when it blames women for its problems. Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman. That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag. Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.

BlargMcLarg 5y ago
Modern feminism has actually been fairly two-faced on what it really wants. At this point, I can't tell whether feminism would prefer (given constraints only allow for one): * Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all * Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
- NationalPark 5y ago
  I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement, the way it's often portrayed in conservative editorial writing and cable news. We're talking about 50+ years of academic scholarship and grassroots activism here, and all the complications and inconsistencies that implies. If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women). But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> the existence of so many "incels" Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past? I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?

ratww 5y ago
I'm guessing it's just the fact that the internet happened.
2lwxxtj 5y ago
Yes, there are more now than in the past. https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/figure1newlymanincel-w640.png https://ifstudies.org/ifs-admin/resources/figure1newlymaninc...

thelean12 5y ago

> if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite. It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that? Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc. I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?

dnissley 5y ago
I think the answer would go along the same lines as answering the question "whose fault is it that you can't get a job?" when aimed at an identity category such as women or minorities. Basically: society has failed them in some form or other.
- thelean12 5y ago
  I'm not convinced it's the same. When talking about dating, there are a bunch of stuff that you can do that boils down to "make yourself a better person." See: my list above. It's obviously not guaranteed, and many are more genetically gifted than others, but it seems way more manageable of a task than your example. You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
  - dnissley 5y ago
    Yeah, for the most part I agree, I just think that it's possible to frame the fact that a lot of guys simply being at a loss of how to go about this can be framed as a societal failure of some kind. These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today. My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about. I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much! I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely. It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.

quonn 5y ago

David Burns would disagree and I‘d recommend his books to those who want to read them. :)

watwut 5y ago

Women get to be single and lonely too.

troway357924 5y ago

"I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity." "The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.