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You're not going to convert or treat incels by treating their misogyny, or anything that they do as a symptom of feeling hopeless. It's through open but restrained discourse encouraged through moderation of those communities, and splitting up the community of Incel people between those who are sad and those who are fanatically, wildly angry. Then trying to slowly reach out to that group to let them know about the support options that are available. Every time you attack them you feed their state of hopelessness. "You're right I'm awful and there's nothing about it I can change."
I don't think that's really what the message of incels is. Its more "Fuck you for thinking people like me are awful, we are entitled it our own odalisque."
We’ve all seen jokes about people who ask “yo, what’s up?” and the response is a person comically reciting their life story over hours and hours.
You should visit Finland. We don't really do small talk here, so if you ask someone how they're doing, they will give you a story (or a silent stare).
Anywho, compassion is good, even when applied to people who subscribe to really abhorrent ideologies. I've made a lot of progress with my racist extended family just by taking their apparently sincere fears seriously. If that's what unpaid emotional labor is, then we should all be doing it.
Presumably, your family has paid you in other ways by, you know, being your family. And raising you. And all that.
+1
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
So, what are the societal roots of the incel phenomenon, and what can be done to stop it and groups like it?
This was the question raised by the OP. What are we supposed to talk about?
It is unhealthy to approach to family and friends as if they are a vending machine to hand out emotional validation when you hit the button. Eventually, you are going to wear them out and damage or destroy the relationship.
If you are a person with unusually high emotional needs, say for example someone struggling with depression or a similar mental illness, understanding that is crucial to maintaining healthy, balanced relationships.
I’m reminded of a tweet: if you think you don’t need therapy, tell your best friend you are thinking about it and see how relieved they look.
Inkstain82 on
+18
BeNarwhalThe Work Left UnfinishedRegistered Userregular
We’ve all seen jokes about people who ask “yo, what’s up?” and the response is a person comically reciting their life story over hours and hours.
You should visit Finland. We don't really do small talk here, so if you ask someone how they're doing, they will give you a story (or a silent stare).
Anywho, compassion is good, even when applied to people who subscribe to really abhorrent ideologies. I've made a lot of progress with my racist extended family just by taking their apparently sincere fears seriously. If that's what unpaid emotional labor is, then we should all be doing it.
Re: the bolded, I would agree with the caveat that 'as long as you're sure you're the right person to be doing it / as long as you have the emotional space in your own life to do it'
For instance, personally, I'm an expert on depression, the way it affects the brain, retraining the brain, what medications can help, etc. That being said, no one should ever ask for my advice about depression because I still suffer from it - I still get stuck in that way of thinking sometimes, and if they catch me at a bad time I might actually give them destructive ideas rather than constructive advice! So, to be safe, I have a blanket rule now of "I cannot be an expert on depression at this time - but I can certainly point you to one!"
Do the best you can for your fellow person, of course, but make sure you actually CAN handle it - don't overestimate your ability or your capacity, or you'll both end up the worse for it.
We’ve all seen jokes about people who ask “yo, what’s up?” and the response is a person comically reciting their life story over hours and hours.
You should visit Finland. We don't really do small talk here, so if you ask someone how they're doing, they will give you a story (or a silent stare).
Anywho, compassion is good, even when applied to people who subscribe to really abhorrent ideologies. I've made a lot of progress with my racist extended family just by taking their apparently sincere fears seriously. If that's what unpaid emotional labor is, then we should all be doing it.
Your family is your
family I presume they haven’t had extensive conversations about how they either want to castrate you for having what they want or force a collar on you and turn you into their living sex doll.
If they have run the fuck away already.
I feel like way too many people are ignoring the second most important characteristic of an incel which is a hatred/loathing of women. They have already helped to get people killed. How can you really believe just listening or kindness is going to change that? Black people have done the listening/kindness thing for years and guess what it got us until we started agitating in mass for change.
LoisLane on
+5
MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
When we talk about criminal justice reform, one of the things we talk about is dealing with people who have killed other people. There are many more plain old regular murderers than there are incel murderers. Similarly, most incels never kill anyone, although a few have. I taught some regular murderers, in my brief prison-teaching jaunt. They had done a really bad thing.
Is there a discussion about the victims of incel violence that you think would be productive, and that we haven’t had but should’ve?
We’ve all seen jokes about people who ask “yo, what’s up?” and the response is a person comically reciting their life story over hours and hours.
You should visit Finland. We don't really do small talk here, so if you ask someone how they're doing, they will give you a story (or a silent stare).
Anywho, compassion is good, even when applied to people who subscribe to really abhorrent ideologies. I've made a lot of progress with my racist extended family just by taking their apparently sincere fears seriously. If that's what unpaid emotional labor is, then we should all be doing it.
Presumably, your family has paid you in other ways by, you know, being your family. And raising you. And all that.
Ah, well they still have a lot to pay for, if we're thinking about it in transactional terms. But I don't really believe in tit for tat in human interaction.
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Most incels don’t kill anybody. All incels participate and support in a movement that created the killers.
Telling them their behavior is wrong is not telling them we don’t care about their pain.
Sure, understanding a movement can help defeat it. But it’s only one tool, and extremist groups are particularly good at judo-flipping those attempts at understanding into mainstream exposure and acceptance.
Confrontation, delegitimization and deplatforming are just as important as understanding.
Why not just tell them we care about their pain first and then when they're listening help tell them their behavior is wronging them? These communities are created because of public ridicule over the things they typically enjoy. You can't tell people with no esteem that society needs them to be a certain way because their first instinct will be "Fuck society"?
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
What can be done to stop these groups is within the bounds of the OP - it's just that the most obvious solutions are not particularly nuanced and the entire discussion in that area is worth on average one post. There's not much to discuss about the group overall other than how ruthless we want to be in dealing with them.
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
We don't do much to help groups of people who self harm. It's only when they lash out that people care.
If anorexic individuals were shooting up yoga studios there'd be a lot of, "Why?"
Probably easy to identify or make assumptions about incels and the isolated communities. Everyone has felt a little left out at some point, so perhaps they do get too much empathy.
Why not just tell them we care about their pain first and then when they're listening help tell them their behavior is wronging them? These communities are created because of public ridicule over the things they typically enjoy. You can't tell people with no esteem that society needs them to be a certain way because their first instinct will be "Fuck society"?
Because many members of these groups are experienced emotional manipulators and will use your caring and listening as a tool to legitimize themselves.
Focusing an anti-incel campaign around listening and understanding cedes the ground that they became incels because society didn’t give them enough caring and understanding, which is their fundamental recruiting tool.
I truly struggle to see how you could become an incel when the main factor of being an incel seems to be to hate women for their own failures.
They don't merely hate women. They also hate men - at least, they hate people they perceive as chads and alpha males. Go deep into black pill communities and they hate themselves, too.
But to answer the question 'how could somebody become an incel?,' here's a brief and simplified recipe:
1) Teach young men that they're not allowed to seek physical affection or emotional intimacy from anybody except a sexual partner.
2) Teach them that aggression is one of a short finite list of emotions they're allowed to express. Bonus points: give them a steady diet of video games and movies that normalize violence, especially heroic male violence.
4) Expose them to a steady diet of media images that systematically show people who are thinner, taller, whiter and prettier than average, so they develop body image problems.
5) Make sure #2 has a gender imbalance, so their perception of what the average woman looks like is particularly warped, leading them to believe that women who look like actresses and models are normal.
6) Wait until they hit puberty, then give them mixed messages about whether they should embrace or repress their strong sex drives.
7) Feed them cultural messages that male virginity is shameful; that finding a woman to have sex with is one of primary goals of man and if you haven't done that by some arbitrarily young age then it means you've failed in your masculine mission.
8) Tell them that they reason they're deeply sexual frustrated and angry all the time is feminism.
The best part of this is that 1-7 don't require 4chan, voat, MRAs, incels, or any other recent emergent movements. All of those steps are already part of hegemonic Western masculinity. By the time an incel gets on 4chan, he's already well-indoctrinated in 1-7. All the incel movement has to do is give it a scapegoat.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
What can be done to stop these groups is within the bounds of the OP - it's just that the most obvious solutions are not particularly nuanced and the entire discussion in that area is worth on average one post. There's not much to discuss about the group overall other than how ruthless we want to be in dealing with them.
I obviously fervently disagree. This kind of 'burn it all down' fundamentalism is unbenefitiing of liberal intellectuals.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Why not just tell them we care about their pain first and then when they're listening help tell them their behavior is wronging them? These communities are created because of public ridicule over the things they typically enjoy. You can't tell people with no esteem that society needs them to be a certain way because their first instinct will be "Fuck society"?
Because many members of these groups are experienced emotional manipulators and will use your caring and listening as a tool to legitimize themselves.
Focusing an anti-incel campaign around listening and understanding cedes the ground that they became incels because society didn’t give them enough caring and understanding, which is their fundamental recruiting tool.
Society didn't give them enough caring and understanding. This is a problem not just with incels but with how we raise boys in general. Incelism is just a particularly dangerous symptom of a much broader problem.
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
+22
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
What can be done to stop these groups is within the bounds of the OP - it's just that the most obvious solutions are not particularly nuanced and the entire discussion in that area is worth on average one post. There's not much to discuss about the group overall other than how ruthless we want to be in dealing with them.
How do we ruthlessly stop incels? I don't even understand the fundamental point of this post.
Add in we give boys either no or terrible advice as a society as to how to pursue women.
And terrible advise to women on how to express their own selves. Like, the whole thing is seriously f'd up. There needs to be a massive shift in the way healthy, desirable relationships are presented in media.
Why not just tell them we care about their pain first and then when they're listening help tell them their behavior is wronging them? These communities are created because of public ridicule over the things they typically enjoy. You can't tell people with no esteem that society needs them to be a certain way because their first instinct will be "Fuck society"?
Because many members of these groups are experienced emotional manipulators and will use your caring and listening as a tool to legitimize themselves.
Focusing an anti-incel campaign around listening and understanding cedes the ground that they became incels because society didn’t give them enough caring and understanding, which is their fundamental recruiting tool.
Society didn't give them enough caring and understanding. This is a problem not just with incels but with how we raise boys in general. Incelism is just a particularly dangerous symptom of a much broader problem.
That being true doesn’t mean it can’t be counterproductive to center it.
And it’s merely one factor in their turning to the movement.
There is a lot of stuff the education system kind of just assumes people will learn elsewhere and any attempts to teach it often have a backlash from certain groups of parents.
It is also hard to tell if the social guidance films of the mid-20th century had any effect.
Notice how we are on page 3 of a thread about an extremist movement that has caused multiple incidents of death and violence, and all of the talk is about the emotional needs of the perpetrators and almost nothing about the victims?
George Chen and Katherine Cooper had emotional needs too, before an incel shot and killed them.
While the ways that people deal with depression in themselves and those around them is certainly a part of the discussion, we shouldn’t forget that we are dealing with a violent extremist group and it should be treated as such. Like, for example, deplatforming them
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
What can be done to stop these groups is within the bounds of the OP - it's just that the most obvious solutions are not particularly nuanced and the entire discussion in that area is worth on average one post. There's not much to discuss about the group overall other than how ruthless we want to be in dealing with them.
I obviously fervently disagree. This kind of 'burn it all down' fundamentalism is unbenefitiing of liberal intellectuals.
My view of this particular issue is deeply nihilistic. A lot of people around me express a deep, well rooted desire to harm women and an even deeper wish to be themselves flushed out and destroyed. I do not see an oasis of compassion from which we can cultivate a humane solution for most. All we can do is save the lucky few. Prove me wrong, I beg you.
Paladin on
Marty: The future, it's where you're going? Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
Going back to the issue that women are unfairly expected to shoulder men's emotional needs, I have learned of a male-led group recently that is apparently dedicated to addressing toxic masculinity. I first heard about it in the Marvel thread, where someone posted that an actor in one of Marvel's TV shows was a member of that group, and just last night a female acquaintance of mine just so happened to share one of that group's Facebook posts.
It's called the ManKind Project. Here's a self-description from their site:
We believe that emotionally mature, powerful, compassionate, and purpose-driven men will help heal some of our society's deepest wounds. We support the powerful brilliance of men and we are willing to look at, and take full responsibility for, the pain we are also capable of creating - and suffering. We care deeply about men, our families, communities, and the planet.
And another from their Facebook page:
The ManKind Project offers men the opportunity to explore their lives, overcome obstacles, create new choices and embrace a healthy, powerful and peaceful masculinity.
The Independent also covered them and other mens' groups last year:
In the wake of modern narratives surrounding sexual harassment, toxic masculinity and staggering male suicide rates, various sectors are attempting to rebalance what it means to ‘man up’.
They’re anonymous, and I promised not to disclose names and people as a condition of attendance, but a long-time member of MKP, 41-year-old cameraman Dan Kidner, explained his reasons for participating.
“The powerful element is being with other men who are sharing their feelings at such a deep level,” he says. “Before I experienced that, I thought it was only me who wasn’t coping and that everyone else was fine. It was a huge relief to realise that there was a community of men who are able to share their vulnerability.”
“I’d say many institutions...are fundamentally about hiding feelings. And where they encourage feelings, the only acceptable ones are rage and anger.”
Such is the current public conversation about negative male behaviour – of violence, Weinstein and “toxic masculinity” – that the need for masculine change has gained extra urgency. Indeed, look around and one might say that disquiet about masculinity has become one of the big themes of the last few years.
This year’s “masculinist” hit was Robert Webb’s book How Not To Be A Boy, which explored the battle to reclaim his sensitivity in the antediluvian 1970s world of “manning up” and dressings down from a scary dad. Last year, Grayson Perry’s The Descent of Man continued the artist’s theme of maleness and emotional intelligence and this time, featured a scary stepdad.
The South Bank has just held its fourth Being A Man festival, featuring “poignant and necessary discussions around the challenges and pressures of masculine identity in our modern age”, and a recent play, 31 Hours, about four men who clean up after rail suicides, is described as “a journey through masculinity, mental health and messy aftermaths in modern Britain”.
...the idea that men need some kind of specialist salvation is going mainstream, and populating a new evidence base. There are other groups and experiences – a men’s weekend associated with MKP called The Adventure, and one called Noble Man, the latter facilitated by women.
I’m not going to engage with white nationalism by spending all my time talking about how white is a shrinking demographic in America.
I’m not going to engage with a fascist uprising by talking about the weaknesses of liberal governance
I’m not going to engage with extreme Islamic terrorism solely by pointing out the problems of American colonialism.
And I’m not going to engage with Incel culture by talking about how boys struggle to feel cared for.
They’re not *wrong*, they’re just recentering the conversation away from their more problematic areas and into fertile ground for them to find unwitting allies.
+4
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I’m not going to engage with white nationalism by spending all my time talking about how white is a shrinking demographic in America.
I’m not going to engage with a fascist uprising by talking about the weaknesses of liberal governance
I’m not going to engage with extreme Islamic terrorism solely by pointing out the problems of American colonialism.
And I’m not going to engage with Incel culture by talking about how boys struggle to feel cared for.
They’re not *wrong*, they’re just recentering the conversation away from their more problematic areas and into fertile ground for them to find unwitting allies.
Whoa, none of these things are the same. This is cherry picking in the extreme.
White nationalism isn't fixed by preserving the white majority
Fascism isn't fixed by removing liberal governance
Islamic terrorism isn't a problem fixed by 'America'
But the Incel movement is absolutely thwarted by removing their ability to recruit by teaching men how to heal and to reach out for help.
I’m not going to engage with white nationalism by spending all my time talking about how white is a shrinking demographic in America.
I’m not going to engage with a fascist uprising by talking about the weaknesses of liberal governance
I’m not going to engage with extreme Islamic terrorism solely by pointing out the problems of American colonialism.
And I’m not going to engage with Incel culture by talking about how boys struggle to feel cared for.
They’re not *wrong*, they’re just recentering the conversation away from their more problematic areas and into fertile ground for them to find unwitting allies.
Whoa, none of these things are the same. This is cherry picking in the extreme.
White nationalism isn't fixed by preserving the white majority
Fascism isn't fixed by removing liberal governance
Islamic terrorism isn't a problem fixed by 'America'
But the Incel movement is absolutely thwarted by removing their ability to recruit by teaching men how to heal and to reach out for help.
No, it isn’t. That can be one prong. But delegitimization of their ideas in social discourse, deplatforming their groups and confronting them when gathered are just as important if not more so.
0
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
+1
Nova_CI have the needThe need for speedRegistered Userregular
So what do you suggest? What does it mean to confront and deplatform incels?
So what do you suggest? What does it mean to confront and deplatform incels?
Confront means doing what we are doing now and arguing with them whenever they pop up, and it means calling a spade a spade and a violent extremist group a violent extremist group.
Deplatforming means their groups and leaders are banned from internet sites.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Men need to be more nurturing towards each other and need to develop better understanding and need to be more prone to encourage other men to seek help, and that it's okay to seek it, and have to do their part in dismantling this toxic masculinity shit.
OH NO SHIT SORRY WE'RE FOCUSING ON MEN AND THEIR NEEDS CLEARLY BAD.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
Pretending this isn’t a violent extremist group and is just a bunch of sad misunderstood men is also actively harmful.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
Pretending this isn’t a violent extremist group and is just a bunch of sad misunderstood men is also actively harmful.
Its mostly just sad bitter guys who feel isolated. Treating them all like terrorists in waiting is going to be selffullfiling.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
Pretending this isn’t a violent extremist group and is just a bunch of sad misunderstood men is also actively harmful.
Its mostly just sad bitter guys who feel isolated.
That’s one thing it is.
It’s also a bunch of misogynists encouraging violence.
It’s also a haven for people with untreated mental illness.
Focusing entirely on the first is being their unwitting ally. They want you to focus on that front and ignore the other two.
I'd even contend that a lot of the issues we experience with extremism right now would be drastically helped by improving the emotional support structure men have around the world.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
Pretending this isn’t a violent extremist group and is just a bunch of sad misunderstood men is also actively harmful.
Its mostly just sad bitter guys who feel isolated.
That’s one thing it is.
It’s also a bunch of misogynists encouraging violence.
It’s also a haven for people with untreated mental illness.
Focusing entirely on the first is being their unwitting ally. They want you to focus on that front and ignore the other two.
Did I miss anyone saying we shouldnt crack down on extremist elements?
Rejection needs to be a thing people expect and use to build character through self analysis that fosters growth. I've found a lot of young men have a fear of rejection I don't ever remember being that bad. We've turned all of our information sharing and social linking up to 11 but haven't meaningfully shifted expectations when it comes to romantic pursuits or even emotional availability between people who consider themselves friends.
I had four friends growing up. People now have hundreds, but I don't think they're actually getting support the way I did from those friendships. At least a not insignificant number are being misinformed and shamed.
Still doesn't mean it's okay for them to be toxic, but finding a way in to that mindset will be necessary to get others out of it.
Posts
I don't think that's really what the message of incels is. Its more "Fuck you for thinking people like me are awful, we are entitled it our own odalisque."
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+
This was the question raised by the OP. What are we supposed to talk about?
If you are a person with unusually high emotional needs, say for example someone struggling with depression or a similar mental illness, understanding that is crucial to maintaining healthy, balanced relationships.
I’m reminded of a tweet: if you think you don’t need therapy, tell your best friend you are thinking about it and see how relieved they look.
Re: the bolded, I would agree with the caveat that 'as long as you're sure you're the right person to be doing it / as long as you have the emotional space in your own life to do it'
For instance, personally, I'm an expert on depression, the way it affects the brain, retraining the brain, what medications can help, etc. That being said, no one should ever ask for my advice about depression because I still suffer from it - I still get stuck in that way of thinking sometimes, and if they catch me at a bad time I might actually give them destructive ideas rather than constructive advice! So, to be safe, I have a blanket rule now of "I cannot be an expert on depression at this time - but I can certainly point you to one!"
Do the best you can for your fellow person, of course, but make sure you actually CAN handle it - don't overestimate your ability or your capacity, or you'll both end up the worse for it.
Your family is your
family I presume they haven’t had extensive conversations about how they either want to castrate you for having what they want or force a collar on you and turn you into their living sex doll.
If they have run the fuck away already.
I feel like way too many people are ignoring the second most important characteristic of an incel which is a hatred/loathing of women. They have already helped to get people killed. How can you really believe just listening or kindness is going to change that? Black people have done the listening/kindness thing for years and guess what it got us until we started agitating in mass for change.
When we talk about criminal justice reform, one of the things we talk about is dealing with people who have killed other people. There are many more plain old regular murderers than there are incel murderers. Similarly, most incels never kill anyone, although a few have. I taught some regular murderers, in my brief prison-teaching jaunt. They had done a really bad thing.
Is there a discussion about the victims of incel violence that you think would be productive, and that we haven’t had but should’ve?
Ah, well they still have a lot to pay for, if we're thinking about it in transactional terms. But I don't really believe in tit for tat in human interaction.
1) we have to understand their movement if we want to stop it from radicalizing more people.
2) most incels don't kill anybody. Some unknown but significant number commit suicide. Saying to somebody who is in pain that we don't give a shit about his pain because some other dude he's never met who happens to be part of the same movement killed somebody is deeply shitty.
3) their problems are a symptom of deeper dysfunctions with Western masculinity in general. Understanding incels helps us understand this masculinity.
4) if you want to talk about the needs of the victims, go ahead. In another thread. There are plenty of places online where you can discuss the damage that toxic masculinity causes to victims of violence. There are damn few that talk about the damage it does to the men who have interalized it.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Telling them their behavior is wrong is not telling them we don’t care about their pain.
Sure, understanding a movement can help defeat it. But it’s only one tool, and extremist groups are particularly good at judo-flipping those attempts at understanding into mainstream exposure and acceptance.
Confrontation, delegitimization and deplatforming are just as important as understanding.
What can be done to stop these groups is within the bounds of the OP - it's just that the most obvious solutions are not particularly nuanced and the entire discussion in that area is worth on average one post. There's not much to discuss about the group overall other than how ruthless we want to be in dealing with them.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
If anorexic individuals were shooting up yoga studios there'd be a lot of, "Why?"
Probably easy to identify or make assumptions about incels and the isolated communities. Everyone has felt a little left out at some point, so perhaps they do get too much empathy.
I posit that others just don't get enough?
Because many members of these groups are experienced emotional manipulators and will use your caring and listening as a tool to legitimize themselves.
Focusing an anti-incel campaign around listening and understanding cedes the ground that they became incels because society didn’t give them enough caring and understanding, which is their fundamental recruiting tool.
They don't merely hate women. They also hate men - at least, they hate people they perceive as chads and alpha males. Go deep into black pill communities and they hate themselves, too.
But to answer the question 'how could somebody become an incel?,' here's a brief and simplified recipe:
1) Teach young men that they're not allowed to seek physical affection or emotional intimacy from anybody except a sexual partner.
2) Teach them that aggression is one of a short finite list of emotions they're allowed to express. Bonus points: give them a steady diet of video games and movies that normalize violence, especially heroic male violence.
4) Expose them to a steady diet of media images that systematically show people who are thinner, taller, whiter and prettier than average, so they develop body image problems.
5) Make sure #2 has a gender imbalance, so their perception of what the average woman looks like is particularly warped, leading them to believe that women who look like actresses and models are normal.
6) Wait until they hit puberty, then give them mixed messages about whether they should embrace or repress their strong sex drives.
7) Feed them cultural messages that male virginity is shameful; that finding a woman to have sex with is one of primary goals of man and if you haven't done that by some arbitrarily young age then it means you've failed in your masculine mission.
8) Tell them that they reason they're deeply sexual frustrated and angry all the time is feminism.
The best part of this is that 1-7 don't require 4chan, voat, MRAs, incels, or any other recent emergent movements. All of those steps are already part of hegemonic Western masculinity. By the time an incel gets on 4chan, he's already well-indoctrinated in 1-7. All the incel movement has to do is give it a scapegoat.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I obviously fervently disagree. This kind of 'burn it all down' fundamentalism is unbenefitiing of liberal intellectuals.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Society didn't give them enough caring and understanding. This is a problem not just with incels but with how we raise boys in general. Incelism is just a particularly dangerous symptom of a much broader problem.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
How do we ruthlessly stop incels? I don't even understand the fundamental point of this post.
And terrible advise to women on how to express their own selves. Like, the whole thing is seriously f'd up. There needs to be a massive shift in the way healthy, desirable relationships are presented in media.
That being true doesn’t mean it can’t be counterproductive to center it.
And it’s merely one factor in their turning to the movement.
It is also hard to tell if the social guidance films of the mid-20th century had any effect.
My view of this particular issue is deeply nihilistic. A lot of people around me express a deep, well rooted desire to harm women and an even deeper wish to be themselves flushed out and destroyed. I do not see an oasis of compassion from which we can cultivate a humane solution for most. All we can do is save the lucky few. Prove me wrong, I beg you.
Doc: That's right, twenty five years into the future. I've always dreamed on seeing the future, looking beyond my years, seeing the progress of mankind. I'll also be able to see who wins the next twenty-five world series.
It's called the ManKind Project. Here's a self-description from their site:
And another from their Facebook page:
The Independent also covered them and other mens' groups last year:
The ManKind Project: How programmes, politics and pop culture are addressing toxic masculinity
I’m not going to engage with white nationalism by spending all my time talking about how white is a shrinking demographic in America.
I’m not going to engage with a fascist uprising by talking about the weaknesses of liberal governance
I’m not going to engage with extreme Islamic terrorism solely by pointing out the problems of American colonialism.
And I’m not going to engage with Incel culture by talking about how boys struggle to feel cared for.
They’re not *wrong*, they’re just recentering the conversation away from their more problematic areas and into fertile ground for them to find unwitting allies.
Whoa, none of these things are the same. This is cherry picking in the extreme.
White nationalism isn't fixed by preserving the white majority
Fascism isn't fixed by removing liberal governance
Islamic terrorism isn't a problem fixed by 'America'
But the Incel movement is absolutely thwarted by removing their ability to recruit by teaching men how to heal and to reach out for help.
No, it isn’t. That can be one prong. But delegitimization of their ideas in social discourse, deplatforming their groups and confronting them when gathered are just as important if not more so.
There’s an angle where you are right. There is another angle where the last thing the world needs is even *more* focus on men and their needs.
Confront means doing what we are doing now and arguing with them whenever they pop up, and it means calling a spade a spade and a violent extremist group a violent extremist group.
Deplatforming means their groups and leaders are banned from internet sites.
This is pointless. Its a thread about the men and what can be done.
OH NO SHIT SORRY WE'RE FOCUSING ON MEN AND THEIR NEEDS CLEARLY BAD.
Is a thread about fascism only about fascists and their needs?
Acting like every bad thing and group is analagous helps no one.
But yeah, the fascism thread has talked about why fascism is appealing to people and how alternatives can be offered.
Pretending this isn’t a violent extremist group and is just a bunch of sad misunderstood men is also actively harmful.
Its mostly just sad bitter guys who feel isolated. Treating them all like terrorists in waiting is going to be selffullfiling.
That’s one thing it is.
It’s also a bunch of misogynists encouraging violence.
It’s also a haven for people with untreated mental illness.
Focusing entirely on the first is being their unwitting ally. They want you to focus on that front and ignore the other two.
Did I miss anyone saying we shouldnt crack down on extremist elements?
I had four friends growing up. People now have hundreds, but I don't think they're actually getting support the way I did from those friendships. At least a not insignificant number are being misinformed and shamed.
Still doesn't mean it's okay for them to be toxic, but finding a way in to that mindset will be necessary to get others out of it.