To Be concerned about the spread of red pill ideology?

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A younger male relative that I am close to has recently fallen under the influance of certain online male commentators or activists who preach red pill ideology, which appears to be extrapolated from evolutionary psychology and reduces relationships between the sexes to something purely transactional and women to little more than sex objects whose only value is their repoductive use, beauty and youth. I did do some investigating reading some forums, watching youtube videos of men who are mgtow (going their own way), pick up artists and men who just seem to live for hating women. I've heard statements that women are not really people the way that men are, that women are not capable of rational thought and operate purely on instinct to gain the most resources for themselves and their children and so on.

There is a channel on youtube which can't go a minute without refering to women as 304's which is code for "Hoe" and they openly use that language about women in the videos and the misogyny was awful. I reported these videos to youtube and to ebay who had their adverts running before them but have heard nothing back. According to many of these channels women are worthless beyond the age of 25, 35, 40. There are attitudes that women should not be allowed to work, to vote to hold political office and that all the evils of the world are due to the stupidity and inate badness of women (where have a heard this before I wonder?).

Some of it does appear to be the result of trauma in men who may have been badly treated by a specific women or had their heartbroken which leads them to say they are done with women and relationships. Thats totally fine, I see it on here are well that there are women, perhaps lots of women who decide to opt out of relationships after suffering abuse or broken trust or even just deciding coupled life isn't for them, and obviously men have that right as well (I believe women only communities and even political lesbianisim has been a thing in radfem circles since the 70s). What I don't see is women making 1000's of youtube videos that obsess about women, that stir up misogyny, encourage extremist views, that feed certain mens hatred and fear of women. Also while these men claim to want to have nothing to do with women they are still for the most part obsessed with gaining access to sex with women especially very young women, admittedly I can't imagine they are having much success here but the whole attitude is malign and predetory and there appears to be real rage towards women they perceive as rejecting them or not having sex with them. They say women's standards are too high and that they should lower them to find a man ignoring the fact that many women would often choose to stay single rather than be with a man she doesn't want to be with, surely that kind of freedom is a basic human right for both sexes?

I do think that men are in a difficult phase at the moment, that some of them are struggling to adapt to women's continuing emancipation, that there are areas where men and boys are being failed in education for example. I don't think its a bad thing that men what to be able to talk about their issues and how to be a good man, have a good life, the freedom to choose different paths in life that might not involve being a husband or father that is fine, I don't believe it needs to be a zero sum game. The problem is that in the online space it seems impossible to have that without it degenerating outright hatred of women, dehumanising of women and threats against women.

Its tempting to ignore this as it feels like its something that just happens in dark corners of the internet but when you actually look its massive and probably popping up on the social media feeds of your sons, brothers, husbands and friends.

This has been brewing for decades. Read Marilyn French "The women's Room"" that caused uproar back in the day. Cosmopolitan magazine. My mother married in 1955 sacked when she became pregnant at a solicitor office. Ten years later she cut her hair short, raised her hemlines and started what became a series of flirtations.

Music, cinema, TV reflected this revolution .

My father was left baffled and confused . My mother too. She said she was born too early

I mean under the mantle of red pill, you could put roosh v, who is essentially a rape apologist, and then rich cooper, who is more about traditional conservative values, or Jordan Peterson, who is a dubious, but accessable psychologist. It's a very broad body of content, and as such you have to discern what is a popular male view, and what is batshit crazy. Red pill is here to stay though, and the vast majority of men can identify with at least some of the content. That's how it gains credibility. I'm happily married for 15 years, and I've consumed a lot of red pill content, if only to contextualise what my life would be like not married. It provokes me to be grateful for what I have, and has reminded me of that when we've passed through rough patches.

I think that this is probably true in late tweens and through people’s twenties, but starts to swap around after that.

True, but incels tend to be young….
though by the time they do get older they take pleasure in seeing women becoming “devalued” as they age…”see how you like it” kind of thing.

@FilterWash because complex things like human beings and their relationships aren't black and white and it rarely does anyone good to pretend they are?

The fact they've bought into ideologies doesn't mean they weren't good people or are capable of being good people again.

Was everyone in early 1900s Germany just born evil? Or where they probably a more realistic mix of good and bad who bought into an evil ideology because it looked good or offered them something on the surface?

People will be lead into believing things for as long as we are people. Writing them off as 'always was, always will be bad' means we make the mistake of thinking bad things can't happen because good people don't do bad things - when we all know they do.

I nearly said this about the title...I don't consider red pill to = incel.

I can't keep up with the constantly changing definitions but I don't think it's right to link, for example, JP to incels.

You've misunderstood me. I don't believe that most people are 'always' good or bad. The point is they do good or bad things, and referring to some kind of essential 'soul' as good or bad is unhelpful.

Many German (and Polish, and Bulgarian, and Austrian) people did not buy into Nazi ideology. Many of them even lost their own lives in their attempts at resistance.

Those who went along with it and did terrible things - it's not a question of saying they were intrinsically bad people. But the things they did and believed and perpetuated were terrible, and it doesn't make sense to keep saying "they were basically good people".

Look at what people actually do and say, not what you'd like to believe they 'are' in some essential core.

I think the point they make is that in a random group of 10 men and 10 women, most of the men would date most of the women whereas most of the women would only date 3 or 4 of the men.

Have sex with rather than date, I think. The incels think this is because women are shallow, grasping bitches who are only interested in the best-looking and/or wealthiest men. Whereas actually it's almost certainly more that women don't see men as sex slot machines and don't prioritise getting laid over meeting someone they actually like and have a connection with.

Whenever the subject of extreme mysogony comes up why is the fact that there is a skewed gender imbalance get overlooked? Even by these Incels themselves? Admittedly the ratio is not as bad as China, the Middle East or India (where you hear about rape murders on a different scale). Fact is there is a surplus of men, some of them may feel aggrieved or frustrated.

Also, when I think of an Incel Richard Richard from Bottom or Kevin the teenager come to mind. But women can also be Incels as well along with LGBTQ (see femcels or gaycels). Just the extreme mysogonists get noticed

good people don't do bad things - when we all know they do.

This just doesn't mean anything or make any sense. What does it mean to say someone "is a good person" if they do terrible things? In what sense are they a good person? Is this a religious belief?

Absolutely!

Yes I'm seeing a lot more of this recently. I honestly think it comes from porn and the rise of stuff like Only Fans where real girls are even more accessible, but still just out of reach.

I believe the guys who say women's standards are too high are the same ones who are looking for porn star levels of attractiveness in women.

I think they believe if they won a huge amount in the lottery their love life would take off

@DeaconBoo Sorry I'm not suggesting that women should take on all the childrearing (along with everything else), only pointing out the massive holes in their argument against the existance of the gender pay gap.

(Not at all, OP - I was agreeing with you about how men see women!)

I don't think you can even link JP to the red pill either? I actually quite like him. Clean your room!!! "If women aren't picking you it's because they're right." Is hardly something the red pill gang are going to like the sound of hearing. If anything I think JP is a realist (or at least before his illness). A reality that isn't always nice to hear for either sex, but still a lot of truth in the things he says.

Why is it happening? Gut feel is that it's happening for two reasons -

(1) The internet is great at spreading insane ideas

(2) Economic inequality. Go back 60 years and as a man, so long as you were fit and healthy and not an absolute moron, he could get a steady manual job, buy a house, and find his female equivalent and support her and the kids. That same person now is probably in a house share, or still with parents, and working for deliveroo. And he's angry and frustrated. His female equivalent has no interest in dating a man who cannot provide for her and is a ticking time-bomb to boot.

Women hating is the new acceptable prejudice - totally lawful and allowed to happen with impunity. These wankers are bad enough but it makes me want to cry when I see young women rabidly and naively supporting the erasure of their own rights under the banner of ‘inclusion’. These incels and similar nutjobs are dangerous and are being supported indirectly by our own state institutions including the education system, academia, the police, politicians and the law.

Frankly we are fucked. And state sanctioned fucked.

These are perceptive points. This revolting INCEL ideology first encroached into my consciousness when Elliott Rodger perpetrated the Santa Barbara sorority shootings. He left behind him a hate-filled, misogynistic screed - referred to as his 'manifesto' - in which he vowed retribution against the women he'd perceived rejected him and the PUA (ie men who get sex) whom he hated almost as much as the women. What then happened was that other INCELS started revering this inadequate little oik as some kind of demi-god: the 'Supreme Gentleman' whose actions have spawned at least two copycat shootings we know of. These people need calling what they actually are. Terrorists.

The problem is that these sad sacks who hang out in mum and dad's basement can now find each other from those very basements, conversing and validating themselves through contact with others whose views are just as revolting as their own. On their own they're pathetic: as part of a movement they are unbelievably dangerous. And as the PP quoted above rightly points out, all this rot and toxic effluvia is seeping out from the underbelly of the internet and into society itself. Their brand of misogyny is slowly being validated: once more it's becoming increasingly acceptable to make these utterances in public.

As to the trans-rights activist movement and its apparent determination to erase women - with the consent of at least some of us - is it fair to say this is just another side of the MRA coin? I think so, yes. That isn't to say that all trans people are necessarily complicit or even comfortable with it; I think it's been co-opted to further a more extreme, sinister agenda against women (note the threats that so often go along with even mild dissent). It could well be that MRAs have misappropriated TRA for their own gain, to their own benefit and to the detriment of everyone else, including trans people.

The problem is that no one seems particularly scrupulous about separating out these strands, or of disassociating themselves from the more aggressive ones and saying 'not in my name'. So trans people end up fielding the same prejudices as women have always had to navigate, and when women stand up and say 'no', we (as always) come in for a vast proportion of the blame. Suddenly, radical feminists are the enemy. Well that's hardly shocking. We've been here before, and not so very long ago, either.

I can't help but agree with the above poster's last statement. Just when it seemed we were making a few tiny strides of process, they've found effective ways of persecuting us some more and ramping up the misogyny to a level many of us haven't seen before in our lifetimes. Seems way too much to ask for that men will simply leave us alone.

I agree with a lot of what @Kerrangutan has said. I think community plays a huge part in what we can see happening. These days the culture and society that most people exist in is very different to anything that most humans have lived in historically. Social media is a huge unprecedented shift too. I think the extent to which community is an essential need is underestimated. A lot of young men are finding it absent in healthy ways, and because(I believe) it's an unconscious need they don't realise exactly why they are being pulled in the directions they are, and assume it's that there is truth and value in the dogma they are being spouted. It's all the same stuff as extremists, cults etc. It plays on people's intrinsic need to belong to something meaningful. When local meaning (living in close knit families/villages/workforces like the mines) is lacking these things gain so much traction. Add in increased numbers of men being absent/poor fathers and you see the effect magnified in each generation as women cannot be expected to do all the leg work of raising good men, men are required to pitch in and set a good example of what being a man is.

I feel awful for the victims of these sort of men, but I do feel sorry for the men too. They have completely missed out on huge swathes of what is wonderful about life as they have been dragged down ideology rabbit holes that current society made it hard to resist. Feeling sorry doesn't mean I think they should be coddled though. I'm not sure what the solution is other than raising children better, but you can't make people do that.

I recently read an article about how to try and reduce school shootings in the US. The author explained that it was generally overlooked that lost of these horrible crimes were essentially suicides. Because the young decide to commit suicide in a way that is so violent and devastating for those around, that aspect understandably becomes the focus. But that in terms of preventing them, we need to be understanding the mental health needs of the perpetrators from a suicidal perspective, as that is their underlying issue. I don't know to what extent I agree, but I thought there was definitely something useful in there to think about.

I think its because it draws into it a lot of different types of men who might not otherwise align e.g.:

Incels
Traditionalists: who prefer the idea of a world where a womens place is in the home probably because they dont want to do the child rearing and housework
Some religious types: who truely believe God is telling them men are more important than women and women should subjugate to them
'Nice men': the ones who moan 'women never go for nice men' who basically mean if they do something nice for you you are then obligated to sleep with them
Men who watch too much porn
Men with poor social skills, who are at a low point in life etc
Men with more violent tenancies than the norm

etc etc

I think thats why its so large, because its been marketed and designed and formed in such a way that it appeals to a large consumer base and so many many men are consuming it, even though the average fundamental Christian might not normally agree with men who watch too much porn and think that women should be up for rough sex whenever they demand it etc.

Any movement that is based on sweeping assumptions of 'women are like THIS and men are like THIS' (unless it's a physical description or based on solid data) is somewhere on the 'mens' rights' spectrum, in my opinion.

It would be great if we could break free of sex stereotypes but people seem oblivious to the fact that they even hold them (and most people do, to some extent - MN is hardly exempt from this). I'm not saying it's easy - if you've seen a
few people of the same 'group' (race, sex, religion, whatever) sharing some characteristics then it's easy to extrapolate to the whole class. You need to consciously question yourself when you do this. Plus add the entanglement of socialisation based very strongly on sex stereotypes - how girls and boys are treated differently even from birth (or while in the womb!) - and it's a quagmire that's really hard to get out of.

Agree. Dismantle the set of stereotypes masquerading as 'gender' - some of which are nothing more than clever marketing ploys - and you'd tackle a lot of the uncomfortable pain and angst that currently comes under the umbrella of 'gender identity'. That's why I find it baffling that anyone sees the feminist critique of gender as in any way new. This is what feminism has always done, pretty much from the days of Mary Wollstonecraft and probably long before then.

There are some people - recent examples are on this site - who simply see the desire of dismantling damaging gender stereotypes - and they are damaging; about this I'm under no illusions - as trying to restrict others' choices. The fact that they're not necessarily completely free choices seems to escape them. But it's also possible to know you've fallen victim to gendered assumptions and stereotypes, and still to be caught by them anyway. Like shaving, or hair-colouring, or wearing any kind of cosmetics. To a degree, I'd say most of us were susceptible.

You can raise your kids without the 'pink is for girls, blue is for boys' bunkum and your kid will still come home from school and complain other boys laugh at him for liking Frozen because it's 'girlish'.

Entrenched cultural assumptions are really hard to unpick, I agree. But buying into them to the extent that we dilute medical language for eg., to be inclusive of something elusive and based on nothing other than shifting, ideological sands with no solid basis, is another thing again.

I had an ex-boyfriend when I was in my mid-teens (he was about 10 years older) who would, now, be an incel.

He was an absolute wanker. He thought he was incredibly hard done by, he saw himself as an innocent victim, and a great champion/supporter of women. In fact he was a borderline paedophile with all sorts of weird fetishes who treated women as sex objects (mostly masturbatory objects in reality) and felt incredibly sorry for himself.

He once said that he thought it was a huge waste to kill yourself if you didn't also take the opportunity to take loads of other people with you. I think that tells you a lot about the mindset.

(He has in more recent years (I learn via twitter) been diagnosed as autistic, but I have no idea how legitimate that diagnosis is.)

Just had a peek at something on Reddit. Apparently Ukrainian women will be grateful if men take them home. They're better looking than American women . 🙄

Jeezum crow. That site is horrible.

@FilterWash my point was that writing off people who fall for ideology as 'bad people' is wrong because if we just see them as 'the bad people' then we think it will never happen to our brothers or sons because they are 'good people'. When actually it can and it does.

It's the equivalent of believing pedophiles are ugly old strangers who sit in white vans in residential areas when in fact it's more likely the pedo is your fun-loving uncle who plies you with sweeties and always gives the best hugs. You're creating this boogeyman when the reality is far more obscure and complicated.

But my main point was actually that humans aren't black and white and our psychology is usually far more complicated than that. Being drawn into something harmful / toxic can happen to anyone, even good people. Religious cult victims. Domestic violence victims. Anti-vaxxers. Flat earthers. Drug addicts. Suicide bombers. Rarely did they WANT to be the things they've became. They wanted something else being offered and were slowly chipped away at.