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There are plenty of things that could hypothetically work, depending on one's analysis of the causes. If it's only the outcome of online dating/social media norms, you could regulate their negative characteristics. If it's porn and vidya, same. If it's economic inequality, you could push policies to reduce economic inequality. If it's a lack of masculine role models for young men, you could encourage the presence of fathers. Etc.
There is a massive space between discussing solutions or giving empathy to people struggling and wanting to pass a "incels can enslave women" law. And there doesn't even need to be a solution for it to be a problem worth discussing and analyzing, but people turn to the implication that anyone wanting to discuss it wants to implement that kind of illiberal law.
As a point of comparison, consider a group afforded sympathy in the social and political discourse: women. Particularly, let's look at the "wage gap." The large majority of it isn't due to discrimination, but to the choices women make with regard to mate choice. Single, childless women face virtually no wage penalty, and it's later intramarriage economic specialization choices that lead to what we call the wage gap. Those choices can be and are constrained, and many women reasonably want partners who'll support their careers and do more housework. But that runs afoul of the "nobody is owed a relationship" perspective; why is it that women who can't find the partners they want are given sympathy and deserve political and social activism to remedy the ill (unequal earnings due to gendered division of household labor), but men who can't find the partners they want are monstrous?
What does "regulat[ing] [the] negative characteristics" for dating, social norms, porn, or video games look like in a way that is compatible with liberalism?
I agree, but somehow I rarely see things in this space proposed and much more often see the "we need to take away women's rights" kind of solution.
I'm not sure I understand. I can be, and often am, sympathetic to men who have trouble finding someone to date them. Being sympathetic to someone in such a situation is quite distinct from thinking that this is a problem that demands a social or legal or political response. Where that sympathy ends is where those individuals advocate violating liberal principles to get what they want. I suspect women generally get more sympathy with their inability to find a partner because they are less likely to promote forcing society to provide one for them as a solution. Certainly less likely than similarly situated men are.
I think part of the problem here is that you do sometimes need to restrict women's rights in order to protect men's, just as men's rights are sometimes restricted to protect women's. Framing "taking away women's rights" as incompatible with liberalism is a female supremist position, as it is equivalent to saying that men's rights must always give way to women's when they conflict.
I'm curious where you perceive their being a conflict between men and women's rights within a liberal framework.
It's quite common that the exercising of one's rights infringes in some way on the rights of others. Society then comes up with rules to balance the rights of one versus the other, usually putting some restrictions on both. As an example, consider sexual harassment. A man asserts his right to freedom of speech. A woman asserts his exercising of that right infringes her right to not be subject to unwanted sexual stimulation. Similarly, a woman asserts her right to wear whatever she wants. A man asserts her exercising of that right infringes his right to not be subject to unwanted sexual stimulation.
EDIT: Grammar.
The idea that women don't want to be sexually harassed because they become sexually stimulated is an idea that's absurd on its face. Accurate flair I guess.
Fine, replace "stimulation" with "attention". My point still stands that the exercising of some rights can infringe on the rights of others and a liberal society needs to handle that.
I think the way this is usually handled is by defining the contours of the right such that they are not in conflict. I also think this is collapsing all morality into a rights based framework that I'm not sure I (or liberalism) are obliged to. People can do things that are immoral but which they still have a right to do.
Well yes, and it is quite easy to frame "defining the contours of the right" as "taking away the right" when you think you should be entitled to different contours.
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