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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 15, 2024

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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.

This entails that men and women who refuse to live up to these ideals are disadvantaged in various ways.

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 enemy friendly 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.

I wish I could be asexual as well, certainly would free up a lot of space in my head.

It's great, I'm aromantic as well which means I don't give a flying fig about men or their views of me as fuckable or not, and I have no stress around all that 😁 Means I relate to men on the level of "do I find you a likeable specimen of humanity?" and not "me want snoo-snoo", so if I don't like you, I don't have to tolerate your bullshit (unless you're my boss) on the faint hopes of "well maybe I can get a situationship* out of this".

*Stupidest fucking concept I've heard to date, what the hell is this need to invent new degrees of idiocy? You're fucking around, sleeping around, casual sex, fornicating. It's not a 'thing' or any kind of romantic association. It's mere convenience. 'Oh no, see, it's this special new modern thing that past generations never even thought of'. Past generations fucked around casually just fine, friend.

One downside to being asexual other than not having the drive to pass on your genes or ending up old without a family is...

If your're a man, you actually need to be competent and attractive in general for a lot of other things than getting women. No small part of me working out religiously, working hard on my career and not playing video games all day is thanks to those things making women more likely to like me. But I benefit from being fit, having money and not wasting my time nevertheless, even outside of fucking women.

If you're doing those things because you like them and get benefits from them, then "women will be more attracted" is secondary benefit. If you're doing it primarily because "women will be more attracted" and then it turns out they're not, that gets to be a problem of resentment on both sides: "I wasted all this time and effort for nothing, women are bitches" versus "joined an evening class in pottery, guy there was friendly and seemed nice while we were chatting about the class, the second he learned I had a boyfriend he ignored me and then dropped out of the class, guys only want one thing".