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I decided to share my theory (if we can call it that) about the origin of the ‘incel’ slur. I’m not claiming it’s terribly original or anything but I welcome your feedback about it because it’s a pure culture war phenomenon in my view and I wonder if my theory is sound.
To start with the obvious, pretty much every human community that ever existed have had concepts of the feminine and masculine as collections of desirable traits. This entails that men and women who refuse to live up to these ideals are disadvantaged in various ways. One way is social shaming. Again, let’s leave it that here; I’m aware that I could go off on dozens of tangents here and add dozens of qualifiers and interpretations to make my argument nuanced and elaborate, but I want to keep this concise.
One way to shame unmasculine men is to use the slur ‘nerd’ on them. This was the norm for a long time in Anglo-Saxon societies, and it sort of made sense. After all, nerds are interested in things and machines, not humans, who are anything but machines. The traits that make you a nerd, especially a hard-working and employable one, are exactly the traits that are useless, detrimental even, if you want to be a socially savvy, sexually successful cool guy. If you’re too boneheaded to correctly read the carefully calculated, covert signals women send out to you to indicate sexual interest without coming off to their social circle as dirty sluts, you’re not a real man. Especially if you’re also not interested in playing team sports etc.
At some point though, the Third(?) Industrial Revolution happens, and the computerization of science and the economy is in full swing. The men most disposed to become computer scientists and programmers happen to be nerds. Before that, programming used to be seen a lowly, dull desk job, basically not different from being a secretary, and a significant chunk of programmers were single women as a result. But now, society starts believing that learning to code is a secure path to having a high-paying career and the American Dream. It seems that only the sky is the limit in the digital revolution and the booming online sector. Young women come to realize that calling undesirable men ‘nerds’ just comes across as dumb and baseless to most people.
However, none of this means, of course, that unattractive male traits just disappeared, or that society is open to abandoning social shaming as a tool of controlling men. In fact, due to an unfortunate combination of the unintended(?) long-term consequences of feminist messaging and socially harmful, pathological trends like online porn addiction, endocrine disruptors, sedentary lifestyles, social atomization, the disappearance of male rites of passage and male bonding rituals etc., it seems that a growing segment of men are socially illiterate, repulsive and dull skinnyfat manchildren. Women no longer want to dismiss them as nerds, but they definitely want to dismiss them as…something.
At this point, due to online trends, society discovers the ‘incel’ term, and just starts using it as a replacement of ‘nerd’, basically. Later, online journos discover that the term was actually invented by some Canadian female college student 20 years earlier who was a romantic failure and started a long-defunct online message board for other college women in the same situation, who applied the term to themselves, not as a slur, and definitely not as something that conveys anti-feminist views etc., but all this is long forgotten and nobody cares anymore, so it doesn’t matter. Fast forward a few years, and it becomes normal for leftist women and their male ‘allies’ to dismiss anyone and everyone as ‘incel’, even married men with children as long as they come across as sufficiently deplorable to the average feminist.
The kernel of truth at the center of this is that even men who are objectively, even wildly, sexually successful can still harbor the sexual resentment that sits at the core of the incel label.
Incel, properly understood, is more like "unemployed" than it is like "disabled" or "nerd." Most men are involuntarily celibate (they would like to have sex but can't find a partner) for periods of their life. I've expanded the metaphor elsewhere:
What we see is a lot of guys retain the incel talking points and resentments, that they formed when they couldn't get laid, even after they are getting laid. A lot of guys continue to hate women for withholding pussy even after some women stop withholding it! A lot of guys who came into themselves are still mad about rejections in high school. Which I understand, there was a period between 16-18 when it seemed like I had somehow already missed the boat: every girl I hit on who didn't reject me immediately eventually told me she had lost her virginity some time ago to her [asshole] ex bf, and that now she wasn't really interested in that kind of thing anymore. And it's easy for those kinds of rejections to fester, even after one goes to college and none of it matters anymore. Or, a lot of guys who came into their own after college, once they got a good job, feel like they missed the boat in that ok fine I can date women now, but half of them got fat after college, and i can never get that back, they're always going to resent not getting it back then.
That's the dynamic I think you're seeing!
None of that explains why Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson etc. regularly get called incels though.
Do we need an explanation beyond "people throw all the buzzwords at whatever they see"? Incel is a popular progressive insult, and people love using insults even if they don't really fit.
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And I can understand that attitude on the part of the girls; they had sex for the first time with their boyfriend because that's what you're supposed to do when you're In Love (as well as the other social attitudes dinned into us about sex and freedom and the rest of it); it probably wasn't that great for her because inexperience and a guy who is more interested in getting off himself; she thinks "well I don't know what is supposed to be so great about this" and then they break up. And the boys who replace him are, as you say, 16-18 and clearly aching for the chance to get sex, which is why they want a girlfriend. And it's clear to the girl that they primarily see her as a route to sexual access. And if she isn't that keen on having sex, and the boy isn't that impressive, then "sorry but no, Horace, I can only think of you as a brother".
Nobody is being deliberately bad, the boys are boys at that age and Nature is having its way with them, the girls are being girls. The boys will want sex a lot more than the girls and be less interested in the girls as persons, conversely the girls will be socialised into putting huge emphasis onto the personal element and be turned off by "he only has one thing on his mind". There isn't really a cure for it, it does no good to be brutally honest and tell 16-18 year old boys "you will want sex much, much more strongly, and want it more frequently, than the girls will, and unless they really like you there is little chance you'll get it" and tell 16-18 year old girls "basically all you are is a warm body to him so if you don't put out he'll dump you". The boys are not being mean or horrible on purpose, but neither are the girls. It's evolutionary drives all the way down, with the layers of civilisation on top!
The common attitude among single women and girls is that you shouldn't ever do or reveal anything that might give the impression to any man who's a long-term prospect / boyfriend material that you're promiscuous and easy. Engaging in desire sex (for lack of a better word) and kinky sex acts in general is only advisable with other types of guys. Again, this is rather understandable from an evo psych point of view, but let's not pretend it doesn't exist, and that it doesn't play a big role in this.
For a long time, it's been a tricky balancing act. Don't put out? You're a frigid bitch. Do put out? You're a slut. Men seem to want (and I'm emphasising "seem" here because this is all gross generalisation) women to be agreeable to have sex with them, but never to have had sex with previous partners, or only a couple of previous partners. If you think about it, it's not really doable; if you dump/break up with the girlfriend and both of you move on to new relationships, after a while you're both going to have a past history. If Joe has had more relationships than Annie, that's great. If Joe and Annie have the same number, that may be a problem: too high for Annie, too low for Joe even on the same numbers. If Annie has had more relationships than Joe, that's bad because that means she's promiscuous.
The double standard hurts men and women both because men are supposed to rack up more experience, but women are not, which means how do you do that? If the guy is always dating a new girlfriend who had only one or two boyfriends before him, then a small number of men are getting all the 'good' girls and leaving 'sullied' girls after them for the rest of the guys.
So women have an incentive to report lower numbers, and men to report higher numbers, of previous partners than they really have had.
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I think there's a lot of work you're just leaving on the table on the part of both boys and girls and assuming they won't do it and just be "boys be boys and girls be girls". 16 is old enough for boys to try and put in more effort into connecting with the girl on a personal level (and getting good at sex), and for girls to be a bit more forgiving about initial unimpressiveness (while also learning that the more physically impressive the boy is, the less incentive there is for him to stick with her and learn her preferences).
You've provided examples of destructive rather than constructive "brutal honesty", but it doesn't have to be.
The problem is that that is the age most sensitive, and most under the cosh of brutal honesty. It may well be that you will have to wait four years to grow out of the awkward, shy, spotty stage (for both boys and girls) but that is cold comfort to be told that "jam tomorrow but not jam today" when you see (as you think you see) 'everyone else is dating and having sex but not me'.
Resentments do seed themselves at that time, and come to bloom in later years. There is no way around the realities of nature, but we try and wrap it up in cotton wool for good reasons. But some people will never find anyone, and it's not anybody's fault in particular. And state-mandated girlfriends are no solution there, neither are the AI waifus (though for some very bruised psyches, the perfect girlfriend or boyfriend you can tailor to your exact tastes who will never leave you and always love you will be an aid, the way spectacles or a wheelchair is a necessary aid for physical lack of abilities).
I don't and never cared, which saved me from the worst of it. But my God, had I wanted romance and love and sex in my teens and twenties, I'd probably genuinely have tried killing myself because of the need that could never be assuaged, because I'm too weird, too ugly, too wrong to get someone who loves me. Whatever flaw of nature means I don't feel the want of that really was a lucky one.
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I'll cop to that. When I finally (finally! after much struggle!) got my first girlfriend at the tender age of 16, she admitted that she had previously had a boyfriend in middle school, and had lost her virginity to him, and didn't want to be like that anymore. A fact which she mentioned multiple times, and at great length. In retrospect I think she was actually a bit traumatized by the experience, and was trying to find closure by talking about it with someone. But at the time, it sure felt like I had missed the boat in middle school and was doomed forever to just be the guy picking up the pieces for these damaged women.
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I don’t mind you linking back to this post since it is one of your best and I very much agree with it, but to some extent this is just cope.
The very same people who are upset they missed out on high school are - as you point out - also the people who:
True enough, but those people often missed out on having fun in high school for exactly the same reason they aren’t capable of ‘catching up’ today.
It gets rare with age, but certainly in every major metropolitan area there is a substantial minority of adults well into middle age hooking up, partying and living a low responsibility lifestyle. Sure, it may be worse of more cringe than 18 year olds doing it, but that isn’t the primary issue these people have.
The core emotion is inward, it’s self hatred not because they never did, but because they never could have. If they went back to being 16 now with their current personality, they’d end in the same place in the social stack. “I regret not partying in high school” should actually be “I regret not being the kind of person who would have partied in high school”.
This isn’t coming from a popular person sneering at nerds perspective either, since (possibly like yourself) I led a largely dull and chaste high school life. But that’s because of who I am, not because of what happened to me.
Absolutely. Only boring people are bored. Endorse all of what you said.
I'd add that I don't regret in any way leading a dull and chaste high school life, in that I am happy where I am. Amor Fati. It's fun, occasionally, to daydream of how I could have acted with more agency at the time, but if I had the power to change anything I'm not sure I would. I might have ended up married to someone else, which I wouldn't trade for anything.
I was talking with [a child] the other week, who was complaining about boredom (in the absence of screen time) and observed that I remember being bored when I was a kid, but as part of growing up, I'm never bored as an adult. There is always something (many things, actually) I should be doing, and never enough hours in my day. And I even have to take care to use my hours wisely: not all interesting things have equal long-term value: I've largely retreated from video games except in a social capacity with IRL friends far away, instead working on improving myself (exercise, learning languages, art, hobby skills, reading), and valuing getting things done that provide long-term benefits.
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I acknowledge that the phenomenon you're describing is real, but I wish we had separate terms for "men who resent women because they can't get laid" and "men who can get laid, but resent women because of lingering grievances brought about from earlier rejections".
Accepting these as the choices is still accepting the incel-yellers frame. There is a possibility that the complaints the men have do in fact have validity and are not merely some sort of injured pride.
Well, yes. "Couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I still can't get laid" could be down to "all women are bitches" or it could be "there are reasons why this is down to me" (and that needn't be "I don't make any effort", it's "unfortunately due to nature I'm odd/weird/ugly/otherwise unattractive").
But "couldn't get laid when I was 16, now I'm 30 and I can" has little reason to still resent the 16 year old girls back then. You're older now, improved, grew up (we hope), are better value, know now what to do and how to act when you want to attract someone. Still being resentful over "Lisa wouldn't date me when I was a spotty, gangly, awkward 16 year old, that bitch, I hope she's fat and single and poor today" is just being mean.
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All three can be true. This is what you absolute conflict theorists ignore: the people you hate may be making bad faith accusations, but their accusations may also have more than a little truth to them. Of course you won't acknowledge the latter because admitting your enemies have a point would be conceding ground to them, which conflict theorists (who do not care about the truth, only about winning) can never acknowledge. But your enemies still might have a point.
There are actual incels, and incel-adjacent misogynists, and some of them have been legitimately injured by feminists and have reason to be resentful, and some of them are just shitty people who can't get laid for good reason, and some are just plain old misogynists resentful that they can't get laid as much and as easily as they would like.
Your enemies are never going to concede that calling Elon Musk (with 10 kids by 3 attractive women) an incel is at all wrong. By conceding that any of their accusations have truth to them, you validate such bogus accusations as well. It is not a matter of conflict theorists not caring about the truth; it is a matter of conceding true things assists in establishing lies.
No, they aren't, because they are also bad-faith conflict theorists.
Calling Elon Musk an incel is obviously ridiculous, but it has nothing to do with whether incels and incel culture does in fact exist. And if you take your position, which is that you can never admit your opponents might even accidentally be right about something because that would be giving them a "win," then you are no longer able to actually distinguish between what's true and what's not, only between what helps your cause and what doesn't.
I know what's true and what's not; I know men with unjustified anger at women exist. But I see no reason to accept the "incel" framing of that phenomenon when it brings in all the stuff that isn't true also, and by accepting that framing I implicitly validate that too. That brings no one closer to truth.
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The term "incel" is generally hurled at three categories of men:
I know because I fit into the third category (certainly not the first, and I would like to think not the second), and have had the "incel" epithet hurled at me dozens of times.
Now, obviously it's ridiculous to assume that any man who departs from woke/progressive orthodoxy is either sexually frustrated or harbours a lingering resentment towards women as a group. I don't think I hold the opinions that I do because of resentment towards women. But I'm also not going to deny the existence of men who fit in category 2: they exist, I've interacted with them, I've spoken to them in person.
And what's more, even if these men only arrived at their opinions because of their lingering resentment towards women as a group, that doesn't in and of itself mean that their opinions are wrong, or their grievances lacking in merit - that would be a textbook example of Bulverism. Bob's underlying psychological motivation for believing in X has no bearing on whether or not X is true. I'm not required to deny the existence of resentful misogynistic men in order to make the case for why e.g. female underrepresentation in STEM is not the moral outrage many feminists seem to think it is.
Spin it back the other way around: it could be literally 100% true that Alice is only a socialist because she feels resentful of how unsuccessful she is, and that in and of itself wouldn't tell us anything about whether or not socialism is a preferable economic system to capitalism.
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