“Incel”

Incel/PUA/porn/TRA are all just different forms of misogyny. The common thread is that they think women owe them, and any women who disagree deserve to be harmed.

Nailed it, Indominus.

There are three sorts of blokes on reddit: Incels (Never got laid) MGTOW (Got laid once) and Redpill (Got married and she ran away screaming)
I weep for my chromosome.
Source: aGCguy(Reddit)

Yes very good enjoy WH though the conclusion seemed to be "shit this is scary" and no one knows what to do about it.

link to Woman's Hour discussion:
www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007qlvb/broadcasts/2018/04

"This week Alek Minassian was arrested and accused of killing 10 people in Toronto when he drove his van into them. Just before the attack, he posted praise on social media for the 'incel rebellion' - an online community of men united by their inability to convince women to have sex with them. The incel rebellion is just one of a number of men's rights groups that have been accused of vulgar sexism, under the umbrella collective of the 'manosphere'. We hear from Mike Wendling an assistant editor at BBC Trending, and Ruby Lott-Lavigna an online journalist who's spent time undercover exploring the manosphere and the people behind it."

-Really important points discussed in this segment.

I can't click on them either. I want to take my boy and move to..there is nowhere is there?
I was thinking about this all night, how in a few short years, we have gone from a situation where you had to go to a dodgy part of town and walk into a sex shop to buy porn vids ( and in the UK hardcore porn was illegal so I don't think it was easy to get) to a situation where 11 year olds can click twice and see hardcore God knows what. It's SUCH A huge change.
Even 10 years ago you couldn't get porn on a phone. 25 years ago you couldn't get it on a pc.
Now, somehow, men watching porn has become just..a given. They all do it. Those women who come on here and say how their hubby would never disrespect women like that? Everytime he's alone-yeah, he watches porn on his phone.
And I'm getting less and less ok with it.
I was looking at DP's Internet history last night while he was asleep to see what he looks at. ( No I don't feel guilty, he stays in my house where my kid lives).
I found that he looks when he's at his own place, and that it's only "Lesbian" porn, which is pretty much what he told me, but I still hate it.
Thing is, if I said "you know what, I don't want you to do that anymore" most people would think I was being utterly controlling and awful. Like it's his human right to view Susie fingers Clare! Why is it ok for me to use my imagination when I wank but men need to see strange women contort themselves, and yes, have painful things done to them?? ( He didn't watch anything violent thank Christ-I would have to sack him)
Why IS violent porn the most popular?
I feel really depressed about the whole thing. I wish I was a Lesbian. A real one, not like Susie and Clare.

I can't even click on the links on this thread, I know enough already and can't cope with being even more depressed and terrified by reality. And I've done over 20 years working in child protection so hardly faint hearted.

interesting discussion about Incel and the power of the internet currently on R4 Women's Hour.

18 or so!

Jesus. I'm keeping my kids off the Internet wherever possible. I managed to get to 10 or so before I ever went online. At this stage I think the risks are starting to outweigh the benefits. If they want to find stuff out they can have the encyclopaedia britannica.

It is an old book but everyone should read Dworkin's 'Pornography: Men Possessing Women' - its not an easy read but well worth it. Free on the net too.

You can access it free here

nd if you are over the age of 30 at the moment- unless you're a bit of an internet nerd

Known about them for a very long time, well over the age of 30 and I doubt I'm an internet nerd. I am a feminist and have been actively feminist since the age of 14 - these men are a threat and indicative of a pervasive misogyny. Yes, they are the extreme end but i suspect some of the attitudes (entitlement to sex) are held far more widely than most would imagine and have been since I was young and going clubbing etc. I have long seen porn as a problem, I've never been 'ok' with it, it has ALWAYS had wider implications than just those who use it or who participate in it. It is inevitable that attitudes to porn affect attitudes to women en masse and as porn has become more mainstream and far more violent we end up with 'incels' and widespread low and high level sexual harassment; rapes in crowds in Cairo, Grooming in Rotherham etc. the rise of revenge porn, sexual harrassment in work environments, websites dedicated to upskirt photos or photographs of womens bodies taken without permission and so on and so forth. Now, unsurprisingly we have unprecedented numbers of young women transitioning to male gender - I wonder why? Surely they are happy to be women in such a sexualised, pornified, culture? Who wouldn't want to be the beneficiary of all this violence? Incels are almost a logical conclusion at the extreme end. My concern is that actually barring actions like these a lot of the incel point of view isn't nearly as extreme as we would hope.

I have long said (and been ridiculed) that porn affects culture adversely and that it isn't ok; it isn't ok for the women involved in making it, it isn't ok for the women in relationships who are affected by it and it isn't ok for all the women in society at large who are affected by the attitudes it breeds. I think we can see it isn't ok as even pornographers have said they are having to create ever more violent and darker versions of porn to keep up the increased demand for more brutal, savage images. How in the world of fuck can that ever be ok?

Sara Pascoe is writing a book about porn at the moment- I’m looking forward to reading it. I liked Animal a lot- despite a rather desperate attempt to be populist that grated a bit.

Heres a relevant article by Julie Bindel
www.independent.co.uk/voices/kim-wall-peter-madsen-snuff-porn-submarine-inventor-submarine-swedish-journalist-a8322076.html

Great post babel
I used to be fine with porn but I am getting more and more convinced it is at the root of the backlash against women now.

A lot if what is out there is degrading and violent. And not at all about pleasure, in fact it seems to be about women's pain.

It's not ok, it's misogynistic in the extreme yet we can't talk about how to put structures in place to protect society from the damaging effects of it because we end up in this binary "porn is good/bad" debate.

Meanwhile men get to watch the abuse of women in an unfettered normalised way.

Bowl that is an excellent post and puts into words exactly as I feel.

At the risk of sounding like Mary Whitehouse (who actually had a point) I think our children are being corrupted. Properly corrupted - by porn. These impulses and the dark side of sexuality were always there of course but now they are encouraged and kids are exposed to them far far far too young before they have formed their own sexual selves and the tentacles of this are creeping out to affect all of us.

So young women minding their own business walking down a road in one of the safest cities in the world are murdered. I don't know how anyone who produces or promotes porn can sleep at night. I couldn't.

For people on Twitter, @HadleyFreeman is, as ever, solid as a rock on this. An example-

“No, it's a name that perpetuates the idea that if a woman shagged them then their anger wouldn't exist. It's bullshit. Call them, as per Maron, unfuckable hate nerds. Don't call them by the name with which they find each other online or one that wrongly diagnoses their problem.”

There is ethical porn out there, but it’s a tiny minority of what’s on offer. Again if you go to the landing page of any of the main tube sites you’re not seeing consensual erotica - the vast majority of it is abuse dominated.

And don’t forget that all the search algorithms and ‘what’s on the front page’ algorithms work on popularity - what’s popular is what’s front and centre and that reinforces itself.

The market for ethical porn is a tiny slice. What you see on those landing pages is what people are looking for. And it’s 99% dominance, choking, dp, rape simulation, and abuse.

Again I dont doubt that there is a small slice of the market that’s totally ethical and consensual. But most of it isn't, and that stuff is what teens are exposed to before they have the maturity of mind to understand how damaging it is.

It normalises abuse. A whole generations first visual exposure to sex is abusive. It’s reinforced by the narrowing of female gender stereotypes (long swishy hair and specific makeup and clothes are about al that’s tolerated for girls these days) by pop culture, by advertising. I mean good god by the behaviour of public figures up to and including the leader of the free world who openly admits to grabbing them by the pussy.

All this is linked. It’s all manifestations of the same underlying switch back to a highly gendered society where he men are in charge and the women are attractive fucktoys who do what they’re told.

It is a deeply worrying time to be a woman.

I am always very wary of porn apologists. Particularly women porn apologists.

They are on a continuum with the men when I was a young woman who convinced girls that it was physically dangerous for men not to have regular sex.

Well I'm in despair this morning following messages I've seen from friends on social media railing against the 'injustice' of Bill Cosby's conviction. This is a man who admitted purchasing sedatives with the aim of subduing women.

This is a screenshot taken from incels...

You cannot tell me that this has nothing to do with porn.

SGB there 100% is ethical porn out there but I don't think that's necessarily the issue.

These men have completely unrealistic expectation of women that they have gleaned from online forums. Women as playthings. Women as non-sentient beings who are only there for mens pleasure etc. I think that a lot of porn plays into that.

I don't necessarily think that most porn is harmful to adults who are emotionally balanced and haven't learned about the magical dick growing powers of female virginity from 4chan. The reality is that porn is harmful to kids- ethical or not- but it's too easy for them to get their hands on and base their weird opinions on it.

Incels tend not to be in favour of porn, though. (If they had a wank a day, they'd be happier.)
Also, there is steady growth of indie/ethical porn (the definition of ethical porn is that performers are properly paid and everything is pre-agreed), a lot of which shows negotiation and mutual enjoyment. The horrific misogyny of the incel/MRA/PUA dicks has more in common with religious misogyny than porn: it's all about ownership of women and removal of their human rights.

Anyone want to go a bit cross eyed over 4chan views of the world and politics?

Incels are 'black pill' ideologists. Elliot Rodger used the term himself.

Its a development of the concept of red pill, blue pill from the matrix.

historiesofthingstocome.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/red-pill-blue-pill-green-pill-black-pill.html?m=1
Red Pill, Blue Pill, Green Pill, Black Pill

This will make you go somewhat cross eyed in its explanation.

I'd say its got a point about how the world is being manipulated through online means (its a complex description of the use of propaganda really).

Its point is that incels as black pillers acknowledge themselves as losers but take no responsibility for it, and instead lash out at the world. They are proud to be losers. Being a victim or loser is central to their identity and their politics.

At some points in this, I found myself scratching my head, but if you can get your head around it, I think its worth doing so. It does a lot to explain current political patterns. I do however say, this isn't a new thing; rather just a new way of explaining a problem with extensive use of propaganda in society which tends to arise in authoritarian political climates. Its a result of political fractures and rising unrest. But this article puts it into is the language of the internet and its culture.

Oh I absolutely agree with you SGB on the toxic atmosphere around reproductive rights for women in the USA - that political bent uses a pro life stance to punish women. If they were truly pro life they’d be fully funding programs that make sure that all children have a good start when born. But they don’t - it’s reproductive control, pure and simple.

Still stand by my opinions on porn though - I think it’s all tentacles of the same monster - women as possessions/sub human/to be punished. It’s all linked. If there was truly respect for women then porn would predominantly show mutual pleasure not abuse.