People are shocked incels are a thing...Uhm why?

[jackfaire]

I don't feel the world owes me a woman or a relationship. I would never call myself an Incel.

Honestly though I totally get why this is a thing. From a very young age it was made clear to me that you had to have a girl. Back to the Future 90 percent of the plot is about getting a girl.

Yes we remember the time travel the clock tower and so on but think about it most of the movie is spent with one guy trying to figure out how to get his parents to hook up.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame Quasimodo is the absolute hero of that movie but I felt sad leaving that movie because he didn't get the girl. In movies and TV shows all over the place the guy with no wife or girlfriend is Sad he's depressing he's a loser.

We do this to both genders you have to have a relationship or you're a garbage person. Then we get shocked when people get angry because the world hasn't given them a relationship that the same world says they have to have or they are pathetic.

I just turned 39 a week and a half ago. I started panicking because I haven't dated anyone since I was 29. No one night stands, no first dates. I have done things with friends, spent time with my daughter. I have a relatively happy life. There are things I wish I had but I haven't really felt lonely.

The world still tells me I better get someone. If I were to try to get someone just to have someone and got frustrated about it then the world would tell me "hey you're not owed a relationship but yes you are a sad pathetic loser" even though I don't feel like I am one. I'm just saying I see how the world is kind of trying to have it both ways "We should get to call you a loser but you can't get mad when we do"

[D_Yeti_Esquire]

You hit the nail on the head with try to have it both ways.

I've been happily married for 7 years. That's after a decade and a half where I just wasn't interesting to women. Have I changed considerably in that time? Not really - I've had normal human growth but so does the guy who was extremely successful in his teens.

I take it as a given that both society and even individuals feel the need to pair up or group up. The idea is old as Maslow's and you see it even in people who identify as asexual.

The problem with incels isn't the concept so much as the group that exists that have taken the name. Because that's not really an sociological designation but a political one, and one that's attracted extreme right wingers, psychotics, and functions very much like a death cult often teaching you can't "escape" being an incel.

If we accept that feminism has allowed women on the whole to take the relationships they want and leave the ones they don't, then to some extent those relationships are driven by women and their preferences. Suprise, suprise - just like men can be myopic - it happens in reverse as well.

The problem is though - how do we talk about it and what would our goal be in doing so? In general feminism doesn't want to engage on the whole because it comes off as a criticisims of "free choice". The other party who would talk about it, anti-feminsts or often religious types only want to do so disingenuously - they don't want to talk about how we fix what we have now, they want to revert entirely.

In reality, I brought up my situation to say this - I just wasn't interesting by and large to many women in my 20's. I was raised by a 30 something woman and a lot of what I learned about what women want were from a woman aged past those hormones and with (on average) more real day to day problems. I didn't come to that dishonestly - its just what I worked on isn't particularly successful in the teens and 20s. And the other fun issue is as a society we pretended men don't have to be "attractive" because it fit another narrative so when men came out who weren't and couldn't find anyone - well they were looking for answers. Again, the disconnect there is two different groups that take different things from the same narrative so we don't correct it.

So incels are a hot potato not seriously engaged by anyone. For one they are a dangerous symbol of entitlement, not people. For the other, they're evidence this new system doesn't work.

In reality I think we now have enough studies to start to make some real conclusions that might help. But it's up to entrenched political ideologies to adopt them. The first is to admit it's not 1950 anymore. To some extent we understand who is desirable and at what age and for what purpose. Women are not saints or whores. Men are not dogs. During prime child bearing years, women on the whole do tend to seek out attractiveness and in many cases there is no "premium" placed on if they are good people. Women are more prone to cheat in those years then men. I'm not making this crap up - we have studies on these proclivities.

As women get older and the focus turns to child rearing, those preferences change. But at the same time, the market changes. Those "good" men, previously not overly desirable bump in attractiveness. Things like bank accounts, personality, kindness - things that you worry about interacting with your child matter (this is whether you have a child or not - this is more about the average hormonal journey). A lot of relationships with attractive but not necessarily good or stable men break up. Cheating flips to men - who in many cases now have far more options.

But in every market switch - frankly there are losers. I'm only talking about in average. Every demo has their market outliers. And that 's the non-political Incel phenomenon. When you add in most women are not fulfilled by one night stands, that tends to mean you have men who are undeserved sexually, and women who are undeserved relationially.

Thing is - I don't know how as a society we talk about these problems without getting really blunt about these impulses. Many women up through their 30's live in a overabundance of opportunity and then have varying reactions to what happens when that flips. A lot of men are completely unprepared for the flip and some aren't changed much - some become flat out cads. Many women vastly overestimate their attractiveness in terms of the partner they can get. We have studies on that as well. Many men benefit by taking advantage of that. Many men, newly attractive don't have the impulse control or social skills to stay "good people" because it's a bit like shoving a starving person in front of every dish in a steakhouse. There's just a lot to unpack and study - but since the cost is rewriting a lot of set in stone world views... 'eh. Most men and women on the whole are comfortable talking to themselves and handwaving their situation as some form of stereotype.

But it seems to actually make things better we have to be honest about what's out there. If you want to be successful in your 20's or a man or woman it's a different set of life skills and attribute. Ditto past a certain age. But because we're alternately using these truths as a cudgel to score political ideology points or sticking our head in the sand and saying "love wins out", well - the idea of involuntarily celibate just doesn't fit in either romanticized world view.

And I think, more than people will admit, a lot of the rage we see in "incel" populations is that people don't "see" them or address those issues. And in that absence of societal concern - they are ripe for people peddling easy answers. In men, penis pills, hookup artist training, 4500 supplements, pheremones, contradictory advice regarding behavior, etc. So you have a group already sad, combined with highly antagonizing and toxic "sales" environment. Where I think a lot of these guys actually need real understanding, real advice, perhaps real self-study, and then in some cases - people to simply admit and commiserate with them that they have a set of attributes that just are what they are. Because that makes people who are paired up profoundly uncomfortable though - I just don't see it.