August 15, 2021

"You’ve got boys coming to these communities and saying, ‘I don’t know how to talk to a girl,’ and the response is, ‘Rape it.’ It tends to be completely under the radar of teachers and parents. They aren’t aware of this as a form of radicalisation at all."

Laura Bates, "a researcher and author who went undercover in incel groups," quoted in "Plymouth shooting: Incel groups radicalising boys as young as 13" (London Times).

“This is an extremist group advocating for women to be massacred, but at every level we don’t treat this in the way that we would any other comparable form of extremism and hatred,” she said.... 

“The presence of a small but significant minority of children that are very clearly being sucked into this is concerning,” she added. Adherents of the incel subculture describe having taken the “black pill” — a reference to the Matrix films — which means they believe that no matter what they do, they have no chance of establishing sexual relationships with women.

There's no "black pill" in "The Matrix," just red and blue pills, but it's a term in incel talk, as Wikipedia explains here:

In manosphere communities such as men's rights groups and, according to some researchers, in incel communities as well, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where feminism has given women too much power over men and male privilege does not exist. ... "'Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition."...

The "black pill" generally refers to a set of commonly-held beliefs in incel communities, which include biological determinism, fatalism, and defeatism for unattractive people.... and the belief in "hypergamy", or that women will abandon a man if they are presented with the opportunity to have sex with or enter into a relationship with a more attractive man.

Redpilled incels believe they have the opportunity to fight back against this system which disadvantages them, which they do by trying to make themselves more attractive to women. Conversely, blackpilled incels are those who believe they can do nothing to change their situation....

Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence.....

14 comments:

Temujin said...

This was never a problem in the 60s and 70s. Everybody got laid. Everybody. Looks did not matter. Well...not entirely. (I offer up myself as proof.) What has happened to our civilization? When did 'incel' become a thing? And when did we decide to cede our minds to that of the hive on the internet?

How can young men, with hormones raging, just tell themselves at a young age that they'll never be able to talk to a woman or have relations with a woman? Just on hormones alone, a young man should have his radar in constant engagement. We can't help it. Testosterone is present in large quantities. Unless we've managed to fuck that up as well.

This sounds as dangerously faddy as the trans movement where, after thousands of years, suddenly- this year- people can't figure out if they feel like a man or a woman from day to day. I think a massive power outage might do humanity some good, as I think about it.

Bruce Hayden said...

The problem here is a categorical one. Or maybe something that should be looked at as Vern diagrams. The reality is that some incels are terrorists, while some are not. Same can be said of guys with girlfriends, as well, for Trump supporters, and Trump haters. These articles seem designed to confuse people about the likelihood of someone being in one class, because they are in another, and some people in the one are in the other?

My guess on percentages (based on my personal prejudices, no doubt) are that Trump haters and incels are significantly more likely to be domestic terrorists that their opposites. Both are nihilistic, which tend towards violence, compared to the general public. Moreover, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that incels are more likely violent than those who are getting some, because it has long been known that women civilize men. Moreover, guys without connections to women, and a chance at procreation, have less connection with the furtherance of society, because they don’t have a stake in it, not having progeny in their futures.

So, the big question: the right assumes, from looking at them, and their alienation, that AntiFA are more often incels, and that is why they engage in domestic terrorism. Is that accurate? Wouldn’t accepting a nihilistic philosophy, as they do, further alienate them from the women that men naturally craze? Or to rephrase: are AntiFA domestic terrorists because they are incels, or are they incels because they are domestic terrorists.

PB said...

Can't find a romantic partner? Hire one. Could be cheaper in the long run.

Tom T. said...

I'll bet these commentators who jump all over the threat of 'incels' did not have a word to say about the Pakistani gangs who kept literally hundreds of girls as sex slaves.

Iconochasm said...

"Blackpill" is used much more widely than just incel communities. It generally means "a harsh truth that, once accepted, pushes you closer to nihilism, or a bleaker view of the world and/or future".

Critter said...

This is an example where the media can be the enemy of the people. By setting up a category and pushing it, those behind such media are actually promoting both "Incel" and terrorist thinking. Never mind that the number of people actually like the category identified can probably be counted on two hands and two feet. If the media cared or was trying to help, they would speak to the importance of in-tact families, fathers with good values, and if no father a good male role model for boys. It works all the time with rare exception.

Foose said...

They need to read the life of Count Mirabeau, horribly disfigured by smallpox as a child but a veritable honeypot for the ladies. "Few persons comprehend the power of ugliness!" he proclaimed to those wondering about the secret of his success.

effinayright said...

In times past sexual mores were much more strict, and consequences of illicit sex could be dire for unmarried women, so many men found themselves unmarried and without prospects of ever being so.

Tens of millions of men today, in places like China where female babies were routinely killed or aborted, find themselves without wives or sexual outlets. Ditto in strict Muslim societies.

If being an incel is a sufficient condition for being a terrorist, why haven't we seen it being acted out throughout all history?

rcocean said...

Sorry, I don't trust the MSM to accuractely report anything. They have to constantly "keep the scare up" when it comes to the Right wing, so they're making up crap. The Proud boy, the oath keepers, the neo-nazis, the incels, the QAnon conspiracy, the KKK, - there's always some right-wing boogie man.

Boys and Young men who have trouble finding a date have always existed and exist in other countries. Its not some scary phenonomen, its just the way things are and always will be. One wonders why the MSM aren't pouring their concern and miscroscope on antifa or the african-american young men who commit massive violent crime in Chicago or Baltimore.

Leora said...

I'm picturing Ms Bates going underground as an incel. I don't think she would pass as one. I'd assume that she did this exclusively on the internet where it is super easy to tell who is serious and who is trolling or who is 14 and who is 52.

Richard Aubrey said...

For a lot of guys, the positive regard of a woman is pretty damn' important. When I worked for a Dean of STudents office, we were told that guys who couldn't get a date should be watched. But the guys who'd been told by a woman with whom they'd had a relationship....that they were no longer wanted. Them took some serious attention.
And this anguish can turn to anger when everybody else on God's green earth is having a great time, the whole thing compressed and advertised endlessly on a large residential campus.
"Why not me? It's unfair. I've been cheated. I'm pissed." Simple progression.

And they've been told their whole lives about How It Works. Kind, thoughtful, considerate, generous. Can't miss.

But it doesn't work, as they had been told. Something's wrong. And the anger can easily be applied to the object--woman.

Jimmy said...

Bruce Hayden,
In the manosphere vocabulary, liberals (and liberal terrorists) are generally not "incels". The liberal ideology is feminism-dominated (emotions over reason). So the men there tend to be "thirsty white-knights", men who think they have a chance with women by being more virtuous. In other words, various shades of Gamma.

Men are perfectly capable of radicalizing themselves without any sexual frustration. ISIS fighters have plenty of wives, yet keep fighting. This whole looking at sexual frustration as cause for terrorism is a very Feminist paradigm. [Which is funny, because Feminists also reject the obvious solution of sexing the Incels to "cure" terrorism.]

Not to say there's no Gammas on the right [eg Ben Shapiro].

Jokah Macpherson said...

@Foose

I agree with you to the extent that's where these young guys need to end up mindset-wise. But when they're in the pits of despair about not getting any female attention whatsoever, telling them "Even this ugly guy was able to get girls; what the hell is wrong with you?" just sends them down the path of, "What the hell is wrong with me? I must be a terrible person!"

Everyone imagines the overweight neckbeard incel living in his parents' basement, but while that's not completely false, you would be surprised at the extent to which many decent looking guys who have their shit together still feel helpless in terms of an actionable plan to get a girlfriend.

AndrewV said...

Interesting the term involuntary celibacy, or incel for short, was coined in 1997 by a young woman in Canada who couldn't get a date. She actually broke it down into two different types of "incels." One was the young single who doesn't know how to form an intimate relationship. The other was someone who was in a committed relationship who wanted sex but their partner didn't.

It wasn't until years later that an angry, homicidal young man latched onto the term and used it on some video's before running over 10 people in Toronto. The term then was claimed by other angry young misogynists and that's how the the public now associates the word.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/05/08/intel-involuntary-celibate-movement-218324