Uh-oh, does this mean a rise in ‘incels’?

Christopher Ingraham tweets a link to an article that he wrote for the Washington Post has gone through the data compiled in the General Social Survey and says that the number of young men who have not had sex during the previous year has nearly tripled in the last decade and has now reached 28%.


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The impossible dream of the ‘incels’

I only heard about the people who call themselves as incels (standing for ‘involuntarily celibate’) late last year when I wrote about them after their 40,000-strong Reddit group was banned from the site. What started out as a support group for men who could not find women who were willing to have sex with them turned into rampant misogyny, even on occasion leading to the advocacy of rape.
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The problem with men

We live in a world dominated by men in pretty much every area of life. Hence anyone who argues that the state of men is in danger has a pretty tough row to hoe. And yet, that is the alarm that some people are sounding, that in our efforts to create gender parity, we are overlooking the fact that many men are currently really struggling to cope in contemporary US society and that the trends for them are not good.

To have a serious discussion about this, we have to first get beyond the more absurd exaggerations of people like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

[W]ho could forget the “Tucker Carlson Originals” special “The End of Men,” which introduced the world to “bromeopathy,” the patriotic practice of bathing one’s testicles in red light? That special also featured hand-wringing about “soy boys,” paeans to raw-egg slonkers, and homoerotic montages, apparently filmed on Alex Jones’s bocce court, that looked like Abercrombie & Fitch ads directed by Leni Riefenstahl. Again, it’s easy to brush all this off as a campy, desperate ploy for attention, which it was. But “The End of Men” also made an argument: American men are being systematically emasculated by some sort of ill-defined global cabal, for the purpose of slowing down birth rates in “the West”; only “well-ordered, disciplined groups of men,” presumably after being armed and restored to testicular health, can “reëstablish order” and restore Western civilization. This is the sort of thing that seems funny until it doesn’t.

The more serious aspects of this issue are discussed by Idrees Kahloon in the January 20, 2023 issue of The New Yorker.
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The link between machismo and climate change denial

Not being well versed in popular culture, I had never actually heard of Andrew Tate before his Twitter exchange with Greta Thunberg made news headlines last week. I was in a discussion group where the topic of the tweets came up and one of the participants enlightened me on who he was and the odious views he espoused, adding that he has become ‘the Jordan Peterson for the incels’.

Rebecca Solnit goes beneath the surface of the Twitter exchange.

There’s a direct association between machismo and the refusal to recognize and respond appropriately to the climate catastrophe. It’s a result of versions of masculinity in which selfishness and indifference – individualism taken to its extremes – are defining characteristics, and therefore caring and acting for the collective good is their antithesis.

“Men resist green behavior as unmanly” is the headline for a 2017 story on the phenomenon. Machismo and climate denial, as well as alliance with the fossil fuel industry, is a package deal for the right, from the “rolling coal” trucks whose plumes of dark smoke are meant as a sneer at climate causes to Republicans in the US who have long opposed nearly all climate action (and are major recipients of oil money).
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The mind of an incel revealed

You may remember the case of a driver who used a van to plow into pedestrians on a busy street in Toronto on April 2018 and killed 10 and injured 16. A judge has lifted a publication ban on a four-hour interview that he gave after being arrested, where he says that he was inspired to start a revolution by online videos made by so-called ‘incels’, the term that involuntary celibates give themselves.

The attack traumatized Canada’s largest city, and cast a spotlight on the so-called “incel” online subculture of men united by sexual frustration and a hatred of women.
…

In a nearly four-hour interview after his arrest, Minassian told police officers that he was virgin who had never had a girlfriend, admitted to using the van as a weapon and said he wanted to inspire more attacks.

Asked how he felt about the death of 10 people, he replied: “I feel like I accomplished my mission.”
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New film explores the life of an incel

I read this review of a new film Cuck that has as its central protagonist a white nationalist ‘incel’, the label that involuntarily celibate men who are resentful that women spurn them, give themselves. Incels have been blamed for some of the mass shootings that the US regularly incurs.

It’s a character study determined to provide insight into the types of racist, sexist lunatics who spread fear and hatred via the barrel of a gun and, at least as a portrait of what makes these individuals tick, it’s as timely as it is depressing—and horrifying.
…

Before it heads down more contrived avenues that exacerbate its dearth of surprises, Cuck crafts an authentic vision of sexually aggrieved white nationalist psychosis. The crazy person in question is Ronnie (Zachary Ray Sherman), a California twentysomething who lives at home caring for his mom (Sally Kirkland, crowing like a prejudiced, pious loon) and, more frequently still, sitting in his dark bedroom, decorated with American flags and pamphlets for the military that won’t let him in because he failed his psych test. Habitually situated shirtless in front of his laptop, pizza and soda always within reach, Ronnie watches online video after online video of right-wing commentators—including his favorite star, Chance Dalmain (Travis Hammer)—ranting about the dangers of liberalism, immigration and diversity.
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Creating the lone wolf terrorist

The investigative public television series Frontline has partnered with the investigative journalists at ProPublica on a series that they have called Documenting Hate where they chart the recent actions of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups. Their first episode Documenting Hate: Charlottesville premiered in August and I reviewed it here. Yesterday they showed the second episode Documenting Hate: New American Nazis and you can see the full episode online here.
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Another incel killing?

Since the shooter who caused the deaths of two people at a yoga studio killed himself, it is going to be a while before his motives can be gleaned from other sources. But initial signs point to this possibly being another rampage by a racist far-right misogynist, someone who shared the ‘incel’ (involuntarily celibate) mindset of rage against women because they will not have sex with them.
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Short film about an incel

I have written several times before about the so-called ‘incels’ (which stands for involuntarily celibate) who blame everyone else but themselves for the fact that women do not want to have sex with them even though they think that they deserve it. Their frustration has led some of them to go on murderous rampages.

Via Andrea James, I came across this tense short (about 14 minutes) film about an incel.

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