politics

Listen man i gotta hate somethin in order to live

The rise of "inceldom" as a social phenomena was inevitable with the destruction of non-transactional social spaces and general alienation brought about by capitalism.

It's tempting to think that these people are struggling exactly because they're horrible misogynists, but historically tons of misogynistic people have still had sex and relationships. Bluntly, even the Golden State Killer was married at one point, and had children.

Life is materially and socially worse for a lot of people. I've made this same post basically every time this comes up, but where are the places where people can just hang out publicly, without being harassed by the cops or expected to spend money they might not afford to spend, just to socialize? If you cannot meaningfully socialize, you have little hope of getting a relationship or even just sex.

For many USians at least (can't speak for other countries) dating starts to suck waaaay more ass once you're out of school. The post-school options people are generally aware of are: Dating apps (which suck ass and seem to be a potent vector for extreme mental illness), bars and clubs (which cost money and suck if you don't drink or you have anxiety about being compromised around strangers), and that's basically it.

Lack of social spaces necessarily produces lack of sex and relationships. It will get worse before it gets better.

I'm guilty of saying "I have a bf" as a knee jerk reaction to random guys invading my space like inviting themselves to sit with me or something ngl.

But just as much I don't bring my bf up around guys who give off a particularly energy. I'm scared they'll lash out if they find out I'm "not theirs for the taking" and instead i just get away as quickly as I can.

Every friend i have who dates men has a story like this. (god I realise that sounds like him lmao)

Don't know how I feel about having to engage and teach feminism to the later group when I'm scared to even be honest around them.

::: spoiler dumb rant

I wonder how many people have spent some time on incel forums. I have, though I never self-identified as an incel (I only looked at these forums out of curiosity while I happened to be dating someone) and an interesting thing about them is that they spend way more time than you would think not talking about women. Yeah, they mostly talk about women, but there were a lot of threads that were like "When I go to the grocery store, everyone gives me strange looks. They think I'm disgusting and they're probably right."

I think people ignore how these incel communities are an indoctrination process that prey on the severely mentally ill, racial minorities, and actual children. It's not just an evil that bursts from someone's heart when they spontaneously choose to be a reactionary after getting turned down twice. It's a somewhat-elaborate ideology that people, often minorities of some kind, are taught to believe, using their histories of trauma (as in spending a 7+ years being bullied, not not getting laid) as "evidence" that the world is just like this, maybe even on an evolutionary basis, and they are encouraged to hold on to this false consciousness by their peers standing in so-called solidarity with them. These same peers make a contest of who can devise the most soul-crushing posts to encourage catastrophizing and suicidality in each other ("rope fuel"), but I guess that's what false consciousness gets you.

I don't really know what my purpose in saying this is, I just tend to feel bad for the people abused by this cult, and yes, that's with having read some of their repulsive fantasies (though obviously I struggle to feel bad for the specific people who post those). Obviously they need re-education. Obviously. But I think your prospects of re-educating someone are going to be pretty poor if you don't understand their motivations and their context. You can't just fucking Ludovico Technique Mao into their brains and overwrite what is there. Reaction and false consciousness are a knot to be untied, and you can't get past the problem by trying to cut through it instead of unraveling it.

In revolutionary circumstances, fascists should be shot on the basis of practical expedience. Once the dust is settled, if you have the resources to imprison someone and you still choose to execute them, you're a sicko. If you can re-educate them and you choose to have them rot in prison, you're a sicko. Treating people, including the followers of a reactionary movement, as just an uncomplicated evil that exists only for you to inflict pain or death on it is itself reactionary. As communists, yes, quite a number of people will need to die as a matter of winning the revolution, but when we have someone who can be a good member of society -- and that means basically everyone, even the people we both dislike -- and we choose to treat them with cruelty out of our own ignorance or a malice we might not even acknowledge exists, we've already begun to take the wrong path.

On average, who do you think was the bigger reactionary? One of these not-fucking fuckers, or Emperor Puyi? The one who collaborated with the KMT and Imperial Japan and opened the gates to a marauding occupation China that I'd need to CW to say anything about? Who has done more to "deserve" punishment? This may be controversial, but I think it's Puyi. So what did Mao do with him? Shoot him? Torture him? No, most of you reading this know that he was re-educated and Mao saw it as a meaningful victory for the CPC that they were able to turn this depraved figure into a good citizen of the new China. Mao was right, and the CPC and WPK were right to take the Americans they captured in the Korean War and do their best to re-educate them, despite knowing the US military was a heinous organization full of wildly violent racists. [Don't tell me there was a draft, there is no equivalency between some prison time and slaughtering countless civilians.]

I will repeat Marx's motto until I die: "Nothing human is alien to me." It should be the aspiration of any communist, even if we all acknowledge that many of those people need to die* nonetheless, that's just the nature of a revolutionary war. Not a single death should be because they "deserve it," but only because the rest of us need it to happen to end the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, to protect our vulnerable comrades, etc. etc.

But most of all I just wanted to procrastinate from finals. And before you ask, no, I did not watch the video.

incels belong in the gamer pit if they can't be rehabilitated

I don't get why incels exist tbh when you can go into literally any kink community right now and find 5 people that want to sub for practically anyone in like 10 minutes.

It really strikes me as being at least partially self inflicted, like the sex is just supposed to happen with nothing else involved? It strikes me that there's some sort of knowledge or effort barrier that they refuse to cross or that they don't understand or mistake the correct steps involved in getting from A to B.

If they're gonna sit there and annoy the shit out of me, i'm gonna annoy the shit out of them back. I'm in this for retaliation against the right, consequences be damned.

IMO this just comes across as Feminist tailism. Are incels (as in the original definition of incels, not Tate adjacent men) failed by the patriarchy? Yes. Is it correct to still reject them, keep them away due to the danger they pose? Also yes. To any degree to which incels have ever organized with each other as communities of men who are frustrated with being denied their slice of the pie, they're a reactionary force and opposing them has been the right move.

Incels represent a crack in the reality of Patriarchy. They are a reactionary departure from its logic. In rejecting the project of claiming women, abusing them, and upholding their place as men, they negate patriarchy, yet they are far from a progressive splinter since they still define themselves in the shadow of what they actually expect masculine self actualization to mean, doing those exact same things. The negation of the negation of the original incel is the current incel, the Tate adjacent types, that actually come back to hegemonic masculinity with redoubled force, the "sigma males" who are even more antisocial than the prototypical patriarchs the original incel failed to become.

If the feminist movement attracted incels through its promise of abolishing the patriarchy, they would have to abandon the label and radicalize their view of gender. It's on them to catch up; slowing down and trying to make space for them inside feminism is putting the cart before the horse.

I still remember when incel referred exclusively to the pro-SA demons on 8chan and a short list of other forums

I think nowadays the term incel has long been divorced from the literal "involuntary celibate" definition

People like Andrew Tate and Destiny gives off so much incel energy despite probably having a higher body count than 99% of men

I'd be lying if I said I was never an incel, dating can be extremely hard for an introvert. I was never the misogynistic type though even if I was frustrated and wondering what's wrong with me. Misogynists will hate women whether they have sex or not, and they deserve equal hatred. It's also very true that the sexual activity and dating life of men is sadly correlated to their value as a man by the patriarchic system. It's perfecly valid to have difficulty in dating or not wanting to date at all as a man.

I don't talk about it much but I was a late bloomer and didn't sleep with someone until I was 25 and I haven't been (outside of a few dates) with anyone since and I'm well over 30. This was a good read. I often beat myself up that technically I'm an incel, even though I'm not interested in seeing anyone or wanting sex.