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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.
I would substitute "fail" rather than "refuse". No man chooses to be 5'6".
Shame their parents weren't willing to indulge in a little HGH before their bones ossified.
It worked wonders for Messi.
I always have a mild hangup about dating girls who are significantly shorter than me (and of course, most are, unless you're Nordic, 6' might not be quite as remarkable in the West as it is in India, but it still falls into tall). If I'm serious enough to want kids with them, as I was with my ex, I am scared shitless at the possibility of my son(s) coming out short. I know being tall has been incredible for me, I have my charms regardless, but even average men are often hard countered by women setting 6' in their bio, or even implicitly in person or social settings (though women are certainly not the best at gauging it, hence so many guys who are 5'10" getting away with, they just recognize "tall"). And I've read research to the effect that taller men are trusted and respected more, and even paid better (!), just look at the heights of successful politicians versus the average male in their locale, or the average height of CEOs.
Now, if I had a daughter, that would hardly be a concern, but if it's a boy and he's not looking like he'll turn out at least as tall as I am, well, if I can't prescribe the HGH myself, I know someone who knows someone and so on. I guess the genes for height were there all along in our family, looking at me and my brother, though my dad probably spent at least half his adolescence malnourished. But knowing firsthand how much that matters, no way am I going to let my sons turn out short. I'd rather lop my legs off at the heels and give it to them as platforms.
I have bad news for you. If you are the tallest in your family, your kids are most likely going to regress to the mean.
Unless your parents and their siblings and cousins, etc, were all that terribly malnourished, it's most likely you're an outlier.
My brother is a mere half inch shorter than me, a source of merciless mockery from my end. Well, it's good natured, it's not like he's suffering, being actually hot, to the extent that he has most of the girls in his med school after him, and all the gay guys, including a professor.
Very luckily for him, he's borderline asexual so doesn't give a shit about women. I wish I was so lucky, so I cherish every advantage I get. If there was a pill that shut off my libido without other side effects, I'd take it regularly and PRN.
Once can be a coincidence, twice is
enemyfriendly action. If you count my very large extended family, I'm not the tallest, but that's more evidence the genes are percolating in their somewhere. Nutrition certainly made everyone taller over the ages, but it is not remotely enough to account for 6 extra inches alone, not when the genes aren't helping. After all, I did once have a CT brain and they didn't find a pituitary adenoma, though that would have made me both tall and milkable.Besides, even if it's a fluke, the solution remains the same. Yay, more HGH, what can it not do?
I wish I could be asexual as well, certainly would free up a lot of space in my head.
Risks of HGH for kids? I don't trust Dr Google on this one.
You ideally give them during puberty, and as long as you don't go overboard and end up in gigantism territory, it's not much of a concern.
I don't recall anything else particularly pressing, but you don't need all that much of it to have noticeable effects. You can look into the therapy Messi received if you want a simple example investigated with Thorough Journalistic Depth.
While I'm not an endocrinologist or paediatrician, I know that it's often offered as a treatment for dwarfism due to HGH deficiency. Haven't heard of any serious issues when dosed correctly, and it's an ongoing therapy so plenty of time to reduce doses or stop if something isn't right.
Just don't take it when your bones have fully ossified and fused, I'd say 18 is concerning, 21 dangerous. Unless you really crave the neanderthal look, I heard it's in vogue these days.
Hey, sorry for the oddball question (I promise not to take this as medical advice, I have an endo and will ask them these questions but would much appreciate some info on this topic if possible): What if you have a 22-year old with growth plates that are still slightly open in proximal tibia, distal femur, proximal femur and proximal humerus, but that person is 3-4 inches shorter than the rest of their generation in their family, with noticeably narrower bones as well?
For background, I was born a bit premature with borderline low birth weight, grew normally up to age 9, and then developed anorexia nervosa at age 9 which lasted right up until age 20, at times mildly underweight and at times significantly underweight, maybe briefly normal weight for a 1-year period around age 12. I have osteoporosis as a result, which I suppose is a sign of how bad the malnutrition was, but I've recovered since, and have not been underweight for 1 year and reached an optimal BMI of 20 now at age 22 (completing recovery from the eating disorder). I take this recovery as a win, but at the same time I am insecure about my frame size, mainly height but also things like hand/foot size, shoulder width, arm length, overall ribcage diameter, and seeming lack of appositional growth of my bones too, although I'm not sure when most of the appositional growth is supposed to happen so I'm not sure if it was the anorexia or lower birth weight that did that.
I have heard of catch-up growth; I've read about cases of hypothyroid men in their mid 20s growing inches after HGH treatment, but I'm not sure if the level of delay in growth maturation is less significant for anorexia than for hypothyroidism, making me wonder whether I have as much potential to "catch-up" as the hypothyroid men due to our having different etiologies of growth retardation. Apparently hypothyroidism is one of the hormonal effects of anorexia so perhaps they're not as different as I currently believe but I'm not informed enough to know whether this is the case.
Would HGH make any sense at all in this situation? If there is any growth potential left, would it just happen naturally now that I'm at a normal weight, without the need for HGH? I'm thinking the minimalist approach would be to let nature take its course now, and if my body can indeed grow more, it will do so, without the risk of hormone treatment. But another side of me wonders whether, due to my age, some sort of kick-start is needed for the growth process to commence?
Also, regardless of etiology of growth retardation, if plates are still technically open but nearly closed in someone's 20s, is HGH worth it or just too risky?
Thank you.
Oh dear. I am really not an endocrinologist or paediatrician.
This is incredibly far outside what I can reasonably consider my expertise, and you have asked a complex question to boot.
Growth plate fusion is very important, and given your age, you'd need an xray to very carefully examine your growth plates to figure out how safe it is.
To put the difficulty of your question in perspective, I'd be barely more at ease if asked by someone if they needed open heart surgery.
I could ask you to elaborate and provide reports and so on, but I'm still not remotely comfortable with the topic, especially at that age, it would entail me cracking open textbooks and research papers and feverishly reading, and it's not laziness that makes me wish to avoid it, it's the fact that I still wouldn't be sure if my advice was sound in your case, especially with the risk of acromegaly.
You absolutely need a different kind of doctor, not a psych trainee, this is genuinely above my paygrade and I would have to be crazy to comment without significantly more experience in the subject, which seems rather unlikely to come about.
My apologies, while I'm not one to gatekeep medical advice, this isn't something I feel qualified to speak about, especially with so many confounding factors. My innate reaction is "probably not a good idea, if the plates are almost fused" but even that isn't a statement from confidence.
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The trouble is, you will get the arms race. If everyone is now 6 foot minimum, the new filtering level will be 6 foot 3. Then future versions of you will be "I hope my sons won't be 6 foot manlets, I'm going to put them all on HGH so they're at least 6 foot 6".
Do that enough and we will end up with the 7 foot NBA version of "we must ensure our kids have all advantages" you're scorning.
On the plus side, Elendil the Tall is the role model to aim for 😁 "2 rangar minimum, 6 foot shorties DNI"!
Giving your kids anything that, that explicitly gives them an edge in the dating market is gauche and very outside the Overton window. Hell taking steroids yourself for it is..
He doesn't need to worry about an arm's race anytime soon.
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I expect my grandkids, if they exist, will be simulated entities in a Matrioshka brain. When it's the size of the sun and change, I think it becomes a bit moot 🧐
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At least if bodymodding is available to all, then everyone will be able to reach whatever equilibrium there is (square-cube law should eventually put a cap on height).
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