It also conflates loneliness with celibacy and uses it to justify male anger. Men who get angry bc they’re not having sex are angry bc they think women owe them sex, which is the problem. I have never once seen a young woman get angry about not getting laid.
"One in three young men haven't had sex in the last year," complains Galloway on Morning Joe. He says that lonely broke young men are "the most dangerous people on the planet." The implication is that they deserve to get laid. That's incel. So glib. So creepy.
Relatedly: in the minds of incels, young women can have sex whenever they want with whoever they want. Because when they picture a woman, they picture an attractive platonic Barbie type—not the bajillions of women who don’t look extraordinary or have physical flaws.
I don’t think men are more lonely than women when they’re young; they’re just angry about it because society has told them that they deserve sex and companionship and women OWE it to them.
So it’s not about re-programming young people to have more sex, it’s about teaching young men to stop viewing women primarily as sexual objects and learn to relate to them as equal humans. (If they do that, sex will likely follow!)
And if they view women as equal humans, they might stop using unrealistic beauty standards as a screener or thinking that less attractive women should be more grateful to have them
That bell hooks observation routinely comes to mind: “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves.”
Which excuses nothing about incel behavior towards women, these guys don’t know how to emotionally self-regulate and the direction they’re heading is poisonous.
I think this is right and largely ignored/misunderstood.
Men (young men especially) are taught by toxic masculinity that everything is hierarchical. And every relationship is competitive. Including how much sex you have.
Women are taught to seek community. That’s a big difference
putting it bluntly, men tend to overestimate their willingness to "fuck anyone" and fail to understand that even "miss right now" needs you to chat them up a bit before last call
Yeah, I think that's more of a problem than the Barbie doll fantasy. The guys in question claim they'd be willing to fuck anyone, but they're not interested in dating or being seen in public with women they don't find attractive, or even deal with the indignities of waiting around for last call.
I think some of them are picturing a woman in the "anyone" category swiping right and agreeing to come over to their place to "play video games."
They assume (probably incorrectly!) they'd be able to do that and not be murdered and have an orgasm, and don't think about the woman's perspective.
yah men and women both are not necessarily averse to such arrangements, but very broadly speaking you need to have some reason to believe the experience will be pleasant and that requires more than just swiping right and saying 'come over'
It has forever stayed with me this survey where they asked dating people what their biggest fears were and the women all said "Personal safety" and the men said "Fat women".
Somehow, I think a lot of guys react to dating websites and bars as if they're places to order a free prostitute the same way they order a beer. They are mostly thinking "how can I get some really soon, like right now?". For most women I know, that isn't "dating" and can be scary and unsatisfying.
Dan Savage’s old advice to teenage boys holds up: if you want girls to be interested you have to be interesting. Put some care into your dress, grooming, fitness. Develop hobbies and interests, do social things and get comfortable around other people. You’ll do better sexually and otherwise.
The funny thing is the incels will do this but their personalities have been rendered so absolutely repugnant by their chosen social circle that they become what they most feared: unfuckable
I've been teaching for 20 years (2nd career for me). When I first started I saw a lot of this among students. Then for a while it seemed to mellow and I started feeling a measure of hope for the young men in my classes. But it has come roaring back. Trump + TikTok* have been a toxic mix.
*I am always cautious about blaming social media, but there's no way to overlook it in this particular case. There was a time I lived in blissful ignorance of the likes of Andrew Tate and when I first heard his name being bandied about I had no clue. But, yikes...toxic doesn't begin to describe it.
If they were equal, we wouldn't be talking about men always needing to do things to achieve sex. We would be talking about ALL people needing to do things to achieve sex. If you can't make a coherent sentence without any indications of gender, then we can never BE equal.
Whereas women are taught that if they don't have a partner, there's something wrong with them. No matter how you slice it, it's always the woman's fault and men are blameless and owed something just for existing.
This 100%, and I think men are also told from a lot of directions that trying to improve themselves in any way or grow as a person is weakness or some kind of capitulation.
Yes—more specifically, they get messaging from the Peterson/Tate types that casts self improvement and maturity as a betrayal of one’s true masculine nature, and further intimates that women secretly want a selfish violent meathead and are in denial about this obvious fact.
Indeed. This is goofy, but I remember hearing "My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner" in an Austin Powers movie, and that was the one and only time I heard about the concept of *relentless* self-improvement, and that got me started. :) We need more of that, everywhere.
Ding ding ding. I have been on and off single and lonely for many periods of time in my life and while certainly prone to my fair share of "what is wrong with me" navel-gazing especially when younger, I always thought it was my own problem to solve.
Also men have been taught that sadness is weakness and therefor unacceptable, so every kind of negative emotion gets funneled into anger instead of something more appropriate for the situation.
Seems like basically every study shows men are far more lonely than women and the main reason is they are not allowed to have close bonds except when they have the excuse of bonding with a sexual partner or having a family
