Incels

[Theninetieswerebetter]

Is anyone watching ‘Untold’ on Channel 4?

I worry for my DD’s future

The movement is huge and has been very underreported. A lot of recent murders can be put down to incels. Not all men are incels but all incels are men.

I have girls and I am very worried for their future.

www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-advances/article/incels-violence-and-mental-disorder-a-narrative-review-with-recommendations-for-best-practice-in-risk-assessment-and-clinical-intervention/6A934637D21AEE4C1D90FAF5FB63D769
a good fairly recent article.
@GothicViolence google seems to suggest it's not limited to mostly white but that could be bias in reporting.
i do agree that other cultures might have more family involvement so uncles and neighbors to help young men navigate the changing times (jobs expectations etc.)

Yes, this is largely true. I’ve done some research on these groups with colleagues. The majority of self-identified incels readily admit to not having a father in their lives. There is a lot of messaging that often happens with single mothers and their sons that can contribute. Some of it is overt, with them making negative statements about men due to their own bad experiences and to perceiving their sons as boys instead of future men. Or repeatedly telling them things like “you must be x kind of man, not y” without explanation or nuance. But much of it is also subconscious and harder to potentially address, such as the cases of single mothers with single sons and no partners, which often leads to enmeshment and codependency between mother and son.

It is also untrue that all/most incels are white. Incels come in every race, and often they’ll split into groups based on race/ethnicity so that they can address the issues that they perceive as being unique to their group. For example, “blackcels” or “Asiancels.” There are actually significant incel groups of Asian and Indian men that specifically want to date white women and, viewing skin colour and height as two major issues for them, discuss skin-bleaching and even limb-lengthening amongst themselves. It’s all quite fascinating and extremely sad.

I've never seen/heard an incel and have been left wondering as to why he's single.

There's often learning difficulties/ Mental illness present with badly channeled aggression. Monkey with a grenade type.
Same men nearly always lack in friendships too. We humans sense the "bad eggs".

It's actually quite bewildering listening to incels blame the unrealistic women, their own jaw size or lack of riches, when they always sound like horrible, spiteful, angry morons.

@QueenCamilla the link to the cambridge article discusses the body dysmorphia and mental health issues. i was surprised to read they seem to suggest a link with adhd and autism.

I had a classmate. A bullied boy with Asperger's. I danced with him at school dances to help him feel better about those events and I remember other girls helping him out in some awkward social situations.
We stayed friends into young adulthood. He made a lot of money in programming, was the first to marry and have kids.
He was too nice and reliable a guy to be left bitter, angry and alone.

Oh, I'll have a read - I like the science of body&mind and the "Clinical Intervention" part makes it sound particularly valuable. I do get tired of social sciences bulldozing their way all over the place these days.

Got any data on that?

You tend to see a lot those in their 20s who couldn’t be arsed suddenly panic when they hit their 30s and they realise they want children.

LOL, well now that you've made an extremely vague and unsupported but ominous statement, I'm convinced.

@echt lanegoodwin.com/how-to-be-more-masculine/
although more narrative than fact and data based. It discusses the view.
I’ve not found more scholarly articles but I gather this is what a good male role model provides.

Yup, I watched... horrific stuff.

It's all a self fulfilling prophecy I thought... they feel isolated, socially un-skilled, maybe they've had a bad experience (who hasn't), so they isolate themselves further, find a group online that makes them feel heard, welcomed, accepted... so they invest more time in that than real life, so real life by comparison becomes shittier and harder to navigate... round and round it goes.

I thought the UK lad 'D' really struggled once brought out into the real world, like he could hear how ridiculous and nonsensical some of the things he was saying really were, and the belief started to crumble.

I don't think there is one cause, you could lay the blame at the existence of the internet, after all without it it would not be possible to isolate oneself to the degree some people do. It would not be possible to cram together a bunch of people with such a toxic ideology and keep perpetuating it, without chat rooms and forums and social media.

I do think most people struggle, once out of education, to make new friends. If you don't leave the town you grew up in, but everyone else does; if you don't work and so don't meet anyone; you don't go out and 'do' something you're interested in, then you won't meet other people with similar interests... then it becomes harder and harder to engage with real life and meet new people.

I really doubt the 'lack of male role model' argument - the number of people who grow up without that must be huge, the number of people who do have a male role model but it isn't a dominant masculine alpha male type must also be huge. They're not all incels, no where near.

I wish I knew what the answer was... I have no clue. I see anti-incel stuff on SM, but I see it because it's what I want to see. If I were an incel, I wouldn't want to see it so I would not see it. SM is an echo chamber, you'll only see what you want.

Actually, I think @GothicViolence makes a valid point, even if it's only surface-level thinking.

I haven't read RTFT or all the replies to the above poster, but it must be confusing for young men now. There's much more awareness of MH due to the high young male suicide rate, marketing that it's okay for men to cry etc.

Yet society still pushes the opposite back on men. I read multiple threads about men that are called wet, spineless, need to grow a backbone etc. The language is very derogatory.

The problem comes when the majority of people take everything they see online rather literally, without bothering to apply critical thinking or nuance. This is why people like Andrew Tate became so popular - he makes one point which contains a 1% truth, twisted to fit his narrative. The incel's interest is piqued and then they blindly accept everything that idiot says like it's gospel.

The right (i.e. wrong - confused, lazy, lacking critical thinking) type of man takes these new ideas about what a man should and could be, and then mixes it with the ideas from AT and it becomes toxic.

The patriarchy, yet again, has taken something positive and twisted it against women. Women want an equal, a grown up, we don't want a caveman, lacking emotional intelligence and jumping straight to aggression when they're upset. We see that we're not just service humans to men anymore, and unfortunately AT appeals to the lazy bottom feeders that are still stuck in the past, feeling entitled to women who cook, clean, and shag them while also calling themselves 'feminists' i.e. I expect my woman to work full time and pay 50/50 too. Best of both worlds for them, or so they think.

But women are pushing back and want true equality, so these men end up with no woman at all which drives their hatred. Incels themselves are too far gone, but some understanding about HOW they get there and how confusing it must be with the conflicting and changing idea of what a man 'is' and 'should' be needs to be explored I think.

Can you reference any of this to empirical based, peer reviewed research?

Wouldn’t be hard to find something more scholarly than that as it’s nothing more than an untidy mish-mash of unsupported generalizations, double-standards (being independent makes a woman a c*nt but makes a man attractive), non-sequiturs and straight-out misogyny.

Lane Goodwin seems to be an insufferable twat with an unearned superiority complex, I am not sure why you would take anything he says seriously.

Why panic as there is no cliff edge!

"Shitlibs", "soy", "longhouse"...ooh, it's like I've gone back in time to 2015.

If you want other humans to like you, don't be a cunt. "Simples", as they used to say back in the day.

I have some sympathy for incels as individuals. They are deeply unhappy individuals who feel that there is something fundamentally wrong with them that makes them unlovable. That's very sad.

But they certainly don't help themselves. They make no attempts to improve themselves and instead somehow manage to blame everyone else for perceiving what they self-describe as an inadequacy as an inadequacy, e.g. saying their wrist is too narrow and that's why they can't get a girlfriend, except it's the woman's fault for caring about wrist size, never mind that women won't have noticed their wrists at all and will have been put off by instead by their terrible social skills.

For what it's worth my husband has tiny wrists, smaller than mine, and is hot as hell. I only noticed his wrists years into our relationship when I tried his watch on and I couldn't tell you how little I cared.

I'm not sure what the root cause of it is. I suspect there have always been sad, angry men on the fringes of society and the main difference now is that the internet gives them echo chambers where their feelings are validated and amplified. I don't think the best way of tackling it is through legislation, though. I also don't think it's quite as huge a problem as the media would like to scare people into thinking, though it certainly is worrying.

Oh, and to PPs saying incels are majority white, there are large non-white components too.

Hi mods, I accidentally reported this post whilst scrolling! Apologies. I don't know how else to say it was by mistake. X

In Islam we remove our body hair, wear make up, dresses and show physical affection to other men. But hey ho, according to you thats damaging feminisation.

This was on ages ago and I watched it .. I just don't get these incels.. it makes me so angry .!

What utter rubbish. What does "less masculine" even mean.

I think I can guess, but then I've been married to a "less masculine" man for almost 40 years. At least I think you would call him less masculine - a talker who likes women as people, who has great emotional intelligence and who isn't an aggressive macho arsehole.

Lots of women prefer a man like that, rather than some kind of "alpha" male.

At the very least I’d expect something about vaccines too.

I think you also have to look at societal expectations. A man alone gaming in his room is seen as some sort of weirdo. He should be going to the gym, hanging out with other “lads”, dating etc etc. That’s how society thinks men should be living when single. But why is it an issue if someone just prefers to be gaming? We’ve placed a “shame” onto that, which then leads these men to look for someone else to blame for that shame. There is also usually some neurodiversity at play, which we’ve become better at accepting when they’re children, but not so much when they reach adulthood. We expect them to just suddenly become “normal” men. Society has rejected them in the first place because they don’t fit the mould. It’s really not that surprising that they find each other online and this is how it spreads.

The scary thing is, I could identify my son in many of the characteristics here, ASD, bullied, socially awkward, lonely, desperate to be liked. Has lashed out occasionally when it all gets too much. I'm a single mum, his dad rarely sees him and makes it clear he's not the son he hoped for. He's a gamer, young for his age (early teen), not many interests outside of that and those he did have have died off due to covid, finances, being "not good enough" for the team or to progress upwards. He's a very sweet boy who just wants to be liked but I could so easily see him drifting toward this type of outlook. Not to say incels aren't deeply scary, often offensive and dangerous individuals, but I do wonder what they were like as youngsters.

I'm not the person you were asking, but I'll answer anyway.

My husband isn't an aggressively ambitious type, but he is very good at his job. He gets on well with most people, men and women (less well with the type of man you seem to venerate), has good people skills and is clear thinking and intelligent. As a result of all that he does very well in all the client companies he has worked for, has his contract continually renewed and is very, very well paid. He's basically at the top of his game.

Hope that helps.