I commented a few days back about “incels” having risen to virality (though not, of course, to virility, which would make the whole topic moot). A point I didn’t make, though, was that the collective shudder on the Left at the sight of these wretches, and the equally collective wish to make them go away, wants explaining.
“Really?” I hear you ask. “Why does disdain for gamma-level males need explaining?” (After all, it seems so … natural.)
Here’s why: because the affliction that makes the incel miserable is the same one that the Progressive culture-warrior normally makes the subject of endless crusades: the unequal distribution of social goods. (And if sex isn’t a social good, what is?)
Here’s a short explanation, then, and one that is obvious enough: when we talk about incels we are talking, generally, about heterosexual males.
‘Nuff said, right?
Well, perhaps not. For a far more comprehensive elaboration of the Incel Question, I refer you to this cask-strength post by the blogger known as Spandrell. (Caveat lector: don’t leave it open on your desktop at the office.)
4 Comments
It is curious, isn’t it, how in our age of entitlement only young heterosexual men as you put it are be expected to remain chaste and without love (or to be candid, young white and Asian heterosexual men). For make no mistake about it, there are a significant minority of these males now in their teens, twenties, thirties who have not had a real girlfriend, or made love to a non-prostitute, or even been kissed, much less been married. One cannot underemphasize the psychic wounds, the feelings of humiliation and worthlessness this phenomenon elicts. I think it’s comparable to the desolation spinsters felt in the past (of course now nearly any Westerm woman can at least havethe consolation of a child, or more, out of wedlock if she really wants to).
To be sure, many of these “incels” do bring this problem upon themselves to a certain degree, yet the public myopia on these fellows simply needing to “Man Up” does seem disproportionate. It’s probably in many ways an evolutionary response based on the visceral sense of revulsion many women especally, needless to say, have for those men who come off as inadequate or weak. Even conservative men, perhaps especially Boomer social conservatives, are guilty of this, not recognizing how much of their own success with women has been due to the serdendipitous influence of culture channeling both the genders’ behaviors, or even of something as mundane as demographics as spandrell points out in the last paragraph of the blog post. Interestingly, the only “neoconservative” exception to this I know of is the journalist Charlette Allen. Perhaps being a Catholic and a Southerner makes her more willing – and as a lady more able – to ackowledge some of the darker and often more subtle recesses of female nature that any healthy civilizaion must to an extent suppress.
Jason,
You might enjoy Laura Wood’s blog.
I’d quibble Jason with the use of your word in the evolution sense if only because that implies a long-term natural process.
Perhaps Jason you’ll better grasp my meaning from a comment I left here on Malcolm’s site “eons” ago. Lemme see if I can pull it up …
http://malcolmpollack.com/2010/12/03/life-goes-on-2/
Should you Jason be getting the gist of what my quibble is I think you might consider – using the word as we’ve witnessed so frequently in these modern times:
You’ll perhaps recall in the wake of the [Bill] Clinton era Defense of Marriage Act, quite a number of our pols (Obama, Hillary for example) explained their flip-flopping on the *issue using the language: “My views have evolved.”?
I think you’ll agree Jason that, in the very short term wherein these things have appeared there’s been a helluva lot of evolving going on.
Not evolution properly speaking (survival of the fittest in “Old-Speak”) if Jason, you catch my drift?
More about ‘incels’:
https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2018/05/28/incel-advice-start-going-to-church/