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[Kagus]

I caught the attention of someone in a chat group I'm in where they were asking for relationship advice, and we ended up having a long discussion today about healthy vs. unhealthy methods of interacting with people.

Long story short, I thought I was very slowly getting through, but then they turned around and started spouting some very disturbing incel-adjacent misogyny and the puzzle pieces finally fell into place. I'm no therapist, and I need to look out for my own sanity in the middle of everything else. I ended up just blocking him, but not before he started crowing about how his way is the far healthier and correct option of maintaining relationships at all costs, and graciously showed some pity for me and my brainwashing by emotion-driven feminist agents.


It's one thing to feel sad because I couldn't help, but I feel like I somehow got him even more entrenched in that cesspit. And that feels a lot worse.

[scriver]

It is, in fact, possible to have good handwriting without someone smacking your hand over every mistake.


I was lying in bed this morning and thought up the perfect metaphor to describe my childhood and 20's: Imagine a child confined from birth and forced to live in a small box. The box is big enough for a child, but inadequate as he grows. He's not allowed out of the box however, and so as he grows his limbs and spine grow gnarled and crooked. When he reaches adulthood, he is allowed out of the box, but his body is deformed and useless, and he can't do anything but envy the healthy people around him. To have any chance whatsoever of living a normal life, he has to un-deform himself, snapping his own bones and resetting them in an arduous and painful process. Nobody can help him with this process, because nobody else knows about the box and cannot relate. Over the course of more than a decade, the bone breaking and resetting process feels almost complete, but the child can never be sure if his achievements are ever anything more than superficial imitation, as he doesn't naturally know what his skeleton SHOULD look like, and instead was forced to imitate the size and shape of the people around him. Because the child cannot see inside himself, or see inside of others, the comparison is always guesswork, so it is impossible to know for sure if he has succeeded in rehabilitating himself, or if he's just created a twisted imitation of a natural human shape using his own body. It may be impossible to know for sure.

Box bros

[hector13]

Well you generally don’t change people’s minds by telling them they’re wrong, and it’s like that across the spectrum of extreme thinking.

Apparently the best way to do it is to listen to them and ask questions, but it’s not really your job to do that, and it does take quite an effort to do it.

[Kagus]

That's what I was trying to do, although I will admit I was being rather firm in my statements about how trying to trick/manipulate someone into telling you something is not a part of a healthy relationship. He agreed, but in the sense of "Of course; that's why I need to manipulate her now so I can get us back to having a healthy relationship where that won't be necessary anymore". I kept trying to make it clear that that's not what I meant, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.

It... Really only got worse from there.

[bloop_bleep]

Why aren't leftist, democratic movements taking advantage of the energy of lonely troubled young men the way bigoted and fascist movements are.

Especially since leftist movements can actually fix their problems, whereas fascists will just make them struggle to extract fleeting dopamine from anger and make them more hateful and lonely.

[Egan_BW]

Why aren't leftist, democratic movements taking advantage of the energy of lonely troubled young men the way bigoted and fascist movements are.

they do; it's just that when they become leftists they stop being troubled. or men

[MrRoboto75]

Why aren't leftist, democratic movements taking advantage of the energy of lonely troubled young men the way bigoted and fascist movements are.

Especially since leftist movements can actually fix their problems, whereas fascists will just make them struggle to extract fleeting dopamine from anger and make them more hateful and lonely.

Because the left generally believes incels should fuck off n die.

[hector13]

The left believes incels should adopt more sensible beliefs regarding the ladies.

[Great Order]

Why aren't leftist, democratic movements taking advantage of the energy of lonely troubled young men the way bigoted and fascist movements are.

they do; it's just that when they become leftists they stop being troubled. or men

Funnily enough I've always thought I could have easily gone down the incel route without the proper guidance away from it, and I'm now one of the forums Not!Men

[MrRoboto75]

The left believes incels should adopt more sensible beliefs regarding the ladies.

Odd way to describe burying one's head in the sand and hoping the problem goes away.

[heydude6]

The left believes incels should adopt more sensible beliefs regarding the ladies.

Odd way to describe burying one's head in the sand and hoping the problem goes away.

Gotta +1 Mr Roboto here.

As a general rule, I believe people should be treated with a basic amount of dignity no matter who they are. Incels though, are a very popular punching bag and it disturbs me how often people will go out of their way to provoke them. It's not a way to treat a human being. Regardless of how they treat others, you shouldn't stoop to their level.

[Vector]

You're correct that the left isn't especially worried about procuring, supplying, and guaranteeing brides.

The presented solution to that problem from the right is "make women a captive audience through legal controls and normalizing trafficking. Increase resources by press-ganging the trans mascs and cisgender lesbians into heterosexual Womanhood. Involuntarily incarcerate and sterilize defectors."

What I think most incel heterosexual and cisgender men fail to understand is that there is a large population of gay and trans men in the same boat of being unable to find bonded relationship; along with the large proportions of cisgender and especially trans women who struggle to acquire affection without violence and ridicule for daring to want anything; the large numbers of immigrants, prisoners, and disabled people who are involuntarily sterilized for State interests, their capacity for continuation permanently stolen by force. All of us together receive violence instead of love.

The leftist solution is solidarity, which means learning from others facing similar problems and trying to do something reasonable and humane, together, about it. For example, one could work together with trans men to destigmatize things like, say, being a man who is short, and all the other ways in which trans men must navigate the intensely hostile terrain of masculinity. Bonding might be possible between the late bloomers who missed out on teenage dating... and those who were forced to navigate the field while wearing the opposite body to the one in which they wanted to be desired. Almost every nasty slur that can be weaponized to attack a cis man's body and capacities describes qualities we believe are intrinsic to and unchangeable for trans men.

But as far as I can tell (when last I checked) the incel community, which is different from simply the collection of all persons who are involuntarily celibate, is largely disinterested in dropping their privileges in order to work together in common cause; and claim that they are the lowest, most disadvantaged of people, and that no one anywhere is treated more cruelly.

Indeed, if we only asked for solidarity across the least icky line possible, I've been reliably informed that cis women cannot be incels. But the argument for this conflates sex and rape. Joining the left requires, at a minimum, a belief in female personhood to ride.


PS: I agree that calling random people incels as a slur is 1. ridiculous and 2. wrong. I'm writing above based on my experience with men I have met in real life who explicitly called themselves incels, were active in online incel communities, and who attempted in explicit terms to call me in as a surrogate mother and unpaid weekly therapist.

People are messy. The community needs to get its shit together, figure out less destructive modes of mutual aid and community care, and get productively organized. I recommend watching or reading Densha Otoko ("Train Man") to start, and following up with Fire Island.

[MrRoboto75]

A) I don't think you're going to have groups who had real violence and discrimination leveraged against them to take "this guy is lonely because short no really he's one of us" seriously.  We're already there as the bulk of "incel problems" are considered pathetic/"their problem".

B) Honestly young people in general aren't fucking and building families like previous generations, the stats get worse every year and frankly nobody gives a shit.  A good part of it is really the ever tightening noose of economics draining literally everyone of time and money to actually build and maintain relationships much less family.  The other half being a good part of, at least in the US, is a suburban hellscape with little to no spaces that aren't either work or home, and the spaces that do exist are miles away and you need a car to get there.  Not to mention most all hang out spots cost money just to exist there.  But let's blame individuals, not how society is fucked from day 1.

[bloop_bleep]

I am not talking about coopting incel beliefs. The point is letting men know the root of their troubles, why they're stressed and anxious day in day out, why they're lonely with few friends or chances at connection, why the world seems to require so much of them -- being tall, masculine-looking, able to provide for a whole family in this shitty deal for the working class.

These lonely young men are, yes, suffering, even from before the wife procurement nonsense, and they try to find something to turn to, and fascists are there waiting with open arms.

[Vector]

My genuine belief is that it's because the fascists start targeting them at ages 12 - 14.