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Last week, Luke Pollard, the UK Labour MP for Plymouth Sutton and Devonport, yet again called for a "national incel strategy". According to him, it's vital that we do this to prevent another "incel terror attack" like the Keyham shootings.
I think the first time I actually heard the word was around the time Todd Phillips' Joker had released. What I don't understand is this extreme alarmism of progressives surrounding incels, when they say the exact opposite of Islamist terrorism. An internet subculture of terminally online, socially disabled men who find themselves unable to order a Big Mac without feeling butterflies in their stomachs are such a big threat to our society that we need a national strategy to combat them? This to me seems like it's completely tarred by alarmism surrounding white supremacy and racial animosity. Granted, incels do hold on to ethno-supremacist views, such fringe ideologies always find purchase among those on... the fringes of society, often young, single men with no social life and no job/ a dead end job and having nothing to lose. They spew all the vitriol online because they tend to be non-confrontational in real life, they might claim to support violence but almost never have the stomach to commit violence themselves. They've locked themselves inside their heads, no one's allowed inside and they view the world, society and women through a tiny keyhole into the sewer that is the most toxic spaces on the internet. They aren't hurting anyone but themselves. But why are the "basement dwelling gamur incels" among the most reviled subgroups in the culture war? Is it simply because they spew the most bile against every 'vulnerable' demographic (women, minorities, LGBTs) online?
Christianity solves this. Arguably it was one of the greatest solutions to incel issues. And by limiting females to one male guaranteed one female for every male.
I don’t believe this is the solution he is searching for.
Has Christianity (or any religion, for that matter) ever prevented serial monogamy or cheating? Or guaranteed a fulfilling marriage?
A male loser always struggled for a partner, regardless of the cultural context. The biggest difference is that in the past surplus men were burned off through a variety of mechanisms, while contemporary society only has suicide as a release valve.
Why would the standard be a guarantee? What other social institution is held to this standard?
Does feminism guarantee a fulfilling life for women?
Does welfare guarantee a better life?
Do traffic lights guarantee no car accidents?
Do police guarantee an absence of crime?
No, but these also don't solve these problems - they (allegedly) mitigate them.
Hm...this is actually relevant to your other response: Depends on the problem and the level we zoom in on; I think a reasonable observer could say that the ethnic Danes have "solved" mass illiteracy as an issue*, even if any individual may be illiterate.
You could argue that Christianity solved mass inceldom as an issue even if it didn't solve it for everyone... But was it an issue?
Unattached males are sort of a continual issue, like weeds, and there's evidence today that polygamous societies face challenges due to the sex distribution problem and the troublesome young men it leaves behind (it also goes in the other way; Mormon elders used to cast out younger men to monopolize females)
I guess it depends on whether you consider those sorts of situations as being the same species as the modern incel crisis we're talking about.
But Ancient Rome wasn't polygamous in the modern sense. As you suggested, rich men had access to multiple partners, just like in most Christian societies, but they could only marry one. This was also true of Ancient Greece, another key area for early Christianity. The Jews did practice polygamy, but it doesn't seem to have been common (this is debated) by the time of the early Christians.
It certainly helped that Christianity was compatible with the existing Greco-Roman monogamous approach, but Christianity didn't introduce it.
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