[RD] Toronto van attack

[Synobun]

Oh we've definitely changed some "natural biological" whateverstuff. Reducing violence is way more than indifference. It's the opposite of indifference. We don't beat our children severely as often for minor missteps. We don't hang their classmates for theft when they're hungry. We removed lead paint from houses, we removed lead from fuel. Maybe we'll reduce fetal alcohol exposure even more(working on it!). All these things take love and effort and maintenance. We've improved their educations, we've improved their nutrition. How we approach growth and redemption, how we approach having faith or cynicism in our countrymen is absolutely critical. Very young children are very malleable, yes. But old dogs learn new tricks - 20 year old men with problems are absolutely worth the effort. They've got the better part of a century left where they can positively impact the world and they should be encouraged to try. It seems to make them happier, for one, much less the rest of us.

Definitely! Yet, I can't think of much that's changed on the actual education front when it comes to toddlers. There have been many gimmicks but they are largely cult-like in execution (like Montessori).

This is not the fault of the parents, of course. The state does a poor job of providing educational resources to would-be parents and childcare providers. You are essentially locked into a trial-and-error approach, and propagating "what works" becomes extremely difficult in such a personalized setting. Something as simple as sleep has little material and those who become desperate for sleep-training their children often turn to predatory "sleep coaches" who charge hundreds of dollars to simply give you a sheet of paper. This doesn't even get into behavioural education, and going into luxury care like getting a nanny isn't even a guarantee that they'll cover toddler behaviour and transitioning into individualism thoughtfully and respectfully.

We've done a lot to be healthier and removed some clearly negative tactics (beating, avoiding touch) but haven't done much to improve toddler development. I'm not sure what can realistically be done to solve that, but at the very least I do think it plays a big part in a lot of the behaviours we see in troubled youths and adults.

I do not get the impression that incel radicalism stems mostly from things that people learn by the time they are 5. It's true that societal sexism is learned by 5-year-olds, but the belief that women owe men sex, or that they are motivated by a hatred of unattractive men, stems far more from incels' bitterness over what has happened in their teens and twenties and by their failure to develop emotional maturity between age 5 and age 15-30.

It's based on what happens to them in their teens, but their ability to parse and acknowledge those events is often laid out in the first few years of their life. A toddler that isn't taught emotional control and recognition of their place in the world will likely grow into a teenager with stunted maturity and the same trouble with recognition, only heightened because now they can noticeably think about it. This is something you can self-teach but it is much easier to tackle such a problem if the foundations have been set long beforehand.

 

[Lexicus]

I do not get the impression that incel radicalism stems mostly from things that people learn by the time they are 5. It's true that societal sexism is learned by 5-year-olds, but the belief that women owe men sex, or that they are motivated by a hatred of unattractive men, stems far more from incels' bitterness over what has happened in their teens and twenties and by their failure to develop emotional maturity between age 5 and age 15-30.

You don't think a culture that relentlessly positions women as objects of male desire and nothing else might play a role? A culture that teaches men that women are their reward for a job well done? A culture that sees female pain as something to be endured for the sake of male pleasure?

http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure

Spoiler :

The real problem isn't that we — as a culture — don't sufficiently consider men's biological reality. The problem is rather that theirs is literally the only biological reality we ever bother to consider.

So let's actually talk bodies. Let's take bodies and the facts of sex seriouslyfor a change. And let's allow some women back into the equation, shall we? Because if you're going to wax poetic about male pleasure, you had better be ready to talk about its secret, unpleasant, ubiquitous cousin: female pain.

Research shows that 30 percent of women report pain during vaginal sex, 72 percent report pain during anal sex, and "large proportions" don't tell their partners when sex hurts.

That matters, because nowhere is our lack of practice at thinking about non-male biological realities more evident than when we talk about "bad sex." For all the calls for nuance in this discussion of what does and doesn't constitute harassment or assault, I've been dumbstruck by the flattening work of that phrase — specifically, the assumption that "bad sex" means the same thing to men who have sex with women as it does to women who have sex with men.

The studies on this are few. A casual survey of forums where people discuss "bad sex" suggests that men tend to use the term to describe a passive partner or a boring experience. (Here's a very unscientific Twitter poll I did that found just that.) But when most women talk about "bad sex," they tend to mean coercion, or emotional discomfort or, even more commonly, physical pain. Debby Herbenick, a professor at the Indiana University School of Public Health, and one of the forces behind the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior, confirmed this. "When it comes to 'good sex,'" she told me, "women often mean without pain, men often mean they had orgasms."

This is a good article that I read a while back, that opened my eyes to just how deeply rooted these problems are in society. I spoiled the quote from it because it contains vaguely explicit discussion of sex.

Yet this future gives people the opportunity for equal cognitive abilities, equal physical abilities, and is likely closer to something resembling post-scarcity...

One of the higher-probability outcomes seems to be clones bred for the purpose of extending the life of guys like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk with organ donations.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

One of the higher-probability outcomes seems to be clones bred for the purpose of extending the life of guys like Peter Thiel and Elon Musk with organ donations.

The ethics of that (and objections of the younger Musk) would be pretty rough, I doubt we'll see exactly that.

However it's not out of the question that it becomes possible to specifically grow or repair organs. Why clone the entire body rather than being more ethical *and* more efficient and just cloning the kidney itself or something? No need to go tossing brains in the equation if you don't want them.

 

[Lexicus]

However it's not out of the question that it becomes possible to specifically grow or repair organs. Why clone the entire body rather than being more ethical *and* more efficient and just cloning the kidney itself or something? No need to go tossing brains in the equation if you don't want them.

That's true.

 

[Farm Boy]

Hehehe. Well, I would say that toddlers are very different people from one another. What works with one of them doesn't work with another, they've got their own minds and very lightly developed controls, so they act on them. I mean, this is clearly true through the primary school years, but a large part of that is more advanced socialization and indoctrination. Toddlers are toddlers. They primarily need good nutrition, protection from harm*, exposure to spoken language, love, attention, and to learn why their butt occasionally feels wet and smells bad and how those weird things on the ends of their arms work(not easy! They keep changing size!). But how they're going to sleep, what they'll willingly eat, what gives them indigestion, what overstimulates them, I dunno man. I think they need the attention and tailoring and stability probably more than they need any form of best practices. But I'm not sure I'm right, it's such a hard job I never knew how well I was doing or am doing!

*I swear, I spent(spend? will spend(puberty<shudders>)?) the majority of some days simply trying to keep the little human from destroying itself, or removing bits that don't regrow, by accident. It's not necessarily a complicated task, but it's draining.

 

[Bootstoots]

You don't think a culture that relentlessly positions women as objects of male desire and nothing else might play a role? A culture that teaches men that women are their reward for a job well done? A culture that sees female pain as something to be endured for the sake of male pleasure?

http://theweek.com/articles/749978/female-price-male-pleasure

Spoiler :

This is a good article that I read a while back, that opened my eyes to just how deeply rooted these problems are in society. I spoiled the quote from it because it contains vaguely explicit discussion of sex.

Of course I think it plays a role, and a rather large one at that. I just don't think that it's anything like the main reason incels become incels, given that even most men who are repeatedly rejected by women don't act like this.

Although, now that I think of it, a different argument about this could be made: a society that teaches men to objectify women will provoke incel-like behavior in some fraction of the unsuccessful men. That's a bit different from Synsensa's point but, I think, a valid one.

As for sex hurting, some norm needs to develop that women should communicate how they feel during sex, and that men should listen. Strengthening norms about sexual communication is important.

It's based on what happens to them in their teens, but their ability to parse and acknowledge those events is often laid out in the first few years of their life. A toddler that isn't taught emotional control and recognition of their place in the world will likely grow into a teenager with stunted maturity and the same trouble with recognition, only heightened because now they can noticeably think about it. This is something you can self-teach but it is much easier to tackle such a problem if the foundations have been set long beforehand.

Possibly. I tend to be more skeptical than most people of arguments that things you teach toddlers have all that much effect when they're 15 or 20, because these sorts of effects tend not to replicate when other factors (income, family stability, time spent with parents, etc) are held constant as much as possible. But it's possible that there's some effect from insufficient teaching of self-regulation to toddlers.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Although, now that I think of it, a different argument about this could be made: a society that teaches men to objectify women will provoke incel-like behavior in some fraction of the unsuccessful men. That's a bit different from Synsensa's point but, I think, a valid one.

IMO this is likely not enough. If most people do X, people who a) want X and b) can't have X are not going to like it. In human history this was somewhat frequently "resolved" with violence, while such solution isn't going to be popular (most people have X and don't want to be exposed to violence).

I agree that objectifying women exacerbates the issue, but X could easily be "stable family", "having children", or "food". I don't think this problem just goes away if you remove one thing, unless that thing is inclination to violence. You still have the problem of suffering at that point though.

 

[Farm Boy]

As for sex hurting, some norm needs to develop that women should communicate how they feel during sex, and that men should listen. Strengthening norms about sexual communication is important.

Sex really isn't all that easy to be good at, particularly if you haven't had it a lot and hormones are where we would guess they are. Physiology differs. Sensitivity differs. Intimacy, even here, differs. Casual sex is almost by definition and certainly more predisposed to be #*$&ier than in a practiced, honed, and long term partner-centric relationship. Not that it can't still be bad if people continue to suck at it* over the course of a long term and committed relationship. And of course Don Juans might be good at the mechanics and dreadfully damaging on the emotionals.

*ha!

 

[Lexicus]

Of course I think it plays a role, and a rather large one at that. I just don't think that it's anything like the main reason incels become incels, given that even most men who are repeatedly rejected by women don't act like this.

Although, now that I think of it, a different argument about this could be made: a society that teaches men to objectify women will provoke incel-like behavior in some fraction of the unsuccessful men. That's a bit different from Synsensa's point but, I think, a valid one.

We're on similar ground then. Incidentally, the first half of this is why I have a problem with the "incels just want love" theory...incel-ism and the alt-right are overwhelmingly white male phenomena, but white men are actually the people in our society least likely to have what we might call "legitimate" reason for existential despair, feelings of dislocation and meaninglessness, and so on.

For these reasons I think the second half of this quote is important. It's not merely about objectifying women. It's about the erosion of all these forms of privilege - privileged access to public life, careers, financial independence, and so on, but also privileged access to women's bodies themselves.

I think that last form is probably the most important of all.

Sex really isn't all that easy to be good at,

It's not that hard to learn, either, though that assumes a desire to please and a willingness to listen to feedback without letting your ego get involved. Which apparently are a lot rarer among men than some of us would like to believe.

 

[Bootstoots]

We're on similar ground then. Incidentally, the first half of this is why I have a problem with the "incels just want love" theory...incel-ism and the alt-right are overwhelmingly white male phenomena, but white men are actually the people in our society least likely to have what we might call "legitimate" reason for existential despair, feelings of dislocation and meaninglessness, and so on.

For these reasons I think the second half of this quote is important. It's not merely about objectifying women. It's about the erosion of all these forms of privilege - privileged access to public life, careers, financial independence, and so on, but also privileged access to women's bodies themselves.

I think that last form is probably the most important of all.

Erosion of privilege is probably a major factor in existential despair, though. I suspect that people's life satisfaction depends to a great extent about whether they perceive themselves to be advancing in life or declining, on whatever terms they set for progress. In a society where status and wealth are held as the ideals, any decline in relative status or relative wealth by a privileged group - even if that group remains more privileged than others even after the gap has narrowed - is going to provoke a negative reaction. If the decline seems inevitable and inexorable, the learned helplessness response will be triggered, and that is experienced as despair. For gender specifically, the income gap between men and women is slowly narrowing, norms are slowly starting to favor men less, and the education gap has flipped and now favors women. Add that to the ordinary despair felt by people who think they have a low social status, and it's easy to see how this happens.

Not that this is an argument against eroding privilege, mind you. But despair seems likely to be a logical consequence of it without coming up with something to aspire to beyond status and wealth.

 

[Farm Boy]

Status and wealth are wonderfully cynical things to value in an anti-faith based zeitgeist. I don't know that they're at all unnatural to put on a pedestal, but they're certainly unhealthy. Rights/responsibilities, the failing of the (at least overt) lionization of chastity and fidelity, all that. Plus you have to ask if the people most in despair are truly privileged in the ways that make people feel better. Obviously not, for them, at least. Not getting randomly crapped on by the police is not a privilege, it is a rightness. Randomly getting crapped on by the police is a wrongness. Flipping the conversation on its head does damage to the idea. If you're young and your peers and prospective mates value education and you don't have good one, it matters not at all that people other people think you're similar to have one. At least not as a positive. More likely it's directly negative. What's wrong with him/her?

 

[danjuno]

Well, yes, Lemon Merchant. I didn't think I needed to specify that part. I don't owe them anything, obviously (and neither do you). Not that they'd care for sex with me since I'm a "trap" and therefore having sex with me would undermine, rather than affirm, their masculinity (in their twisted views).

I thought traps were those characters in anime who cross-dressed. Then again, considering the main demographic from which inceldom draws from, I'm not surprised they stumbled on the term and appropriated it.

 

[Evie]

I think to a certain demographic, that's what transgender is - people who cross-dress to "trick them" into falling in love with "men".

 

[danjuno]

It certainly fits in with the idea that everybody in the world has decided to drop everything they are doing in order to conspire against them.

 

[Evie]

Yep. Everything is about the plot against their masculinity - the "Chads" who are trying to force them to remain inferior males by denying them the women ; the women who are denying them the affirmation of their masculinity, and the so-called traps who are trying to lure them into further destroying their masculinity by making them gay.

 

[danjuno]

If anybody wants to view these, er, interesting specimens from a safe distance, I can heartily recommend the IncelTears subreddit, as there is plenty of meme-fodder on there. If you want to get up close and personal, the /r9k/ board on 4chins is a bit more of authentic experience.

 

[Yeekim]

If one of those guys eventually gets laid, do they graduate to excel?

 

[red_elk]

Yep. Everything is about the plot against their masculinity - the "Chads" who are trying to force them to remain inferior males by denying them the women ; the women who are denying them the affirmation of their masculinity, and the so-called traps who are trying to lure them into further destroying their masculinity by making them gay.

What's a trap, a transgender?

 

[Lexicus]

Erosion of privilege is probably a major factor in existential despair, though.

I don't think so. Declining privilege isn't the problem so much as the disintegration of social structures we were talking about earlier in the thread.

 

[Evie]

Yes, trap is a term they (and other groups) use for transgender people (and especially trans women), since, as many people see it, 1)we are still men and 2)we make ourselves look like women to trap them in to having sex with men and thus further destroy their masculinity.