Why have incels gotten so much attention?

[Hygro]

In the Mainstream Discourse in the United States there is no discussion whatever of people who are being ground down by capitalism. It gets close sometimes with Trump voters - of all people - but not quite there.

Okay but without the caps, discussing capitalism is super mainstream. Social justice is super mainstream. Discussing marginalization is super mainstream. Sometimes the words used aren't so fancy tho.

 

[Peuri]

Serious physical disability aside, you don't need another person to get off. And I agree in the abstract with the idea that people have a "right" in some sense to properly intimate relationships (which, I hasten to add, need not be sexual) but how many failed attempts to build those does it take before you start thinking "maybe it's me and I should stop blaming the feminists"?

Like I said I'm not defending incels. As to their views I'm going perfectly on hearsay on what I've read in this thread. No doubt these incels could do better to promote themselves in the dating market by dropping their misogynisyic attitudes and thinking about other people as persons and not as objects.

Just pointing it out that some people are seriously claiming, and indeed succesfully so, for such a thing to be a right. That opens a realm of discussion as to where the line for such a right should be.

 

[Lexicus]

Okay but without the caps, discussing capitalism is super mainstream. Social justice is super mainstream. Discussing marginalization is super mainstream. Sometimes the words used aren't so fancy tho.

I don't really agree that discussing capitalism is super mainstream. Social justice and marginalization are super mainstream but only in the context of identitarianism, which is a form of anti-politics.

Just pointing it out that some people are seriously claiming, and indeed succesfully so, for such a thing to be a right. That opens a realm of discussion as to where the line for such a right should be.

To me saying that sex is a right inevitably implies rape. Rights are things that are yours, not things that other people can choose whether or not to give you.

 

[Ryika]

I think that is a difficult position to defend. "Deserves" gets pretty close to "owed". Why do people deserve a healthy sex life?

Do rabbits deserve not to be hunted by foxes? etc. Is there something special about humans that earns them the right to free from their genes and the forces of evolution? Some of that may be on the horizon, but it is not here now. A huge part of being human is our crankiness and hostility; they go along with all our more "desirable" characteristics.

I mean, if "deserve" is understood as too strong of a word, I'm happy to drop it.

The concept I'm trying to describe is:
Lack of access to healthy relationships is known to have a lot of negative consequences in many people, so as a society we should make it one of our goals to help people who cannot help themselves to find their way into a healthy relationship.

You may not have been talking about incels, but that's the conversation the rest of us are having. By all means start another thread where the topic is more broadly about dating difficulties, but right here, right now, incels are explicitly the point.

I didn't even mean to have a discussion about it. Bugfatty300 made a post that was ever so slightly off topic, I responded to it because I found it interesting and had some thoughts I wanted to share about it, and next thing I know is arguing with a wall for 5 pages, for reasons I still don't quite understand.

 

[Lexicus]

Why do people deserve a healthy sex life?

Honestly considering how effed up in the head we all are a healthy sex life is more like a delusion than a thing people deserve

 

[Birdjaguar]

I mean, if "deserve" is understood as too strong of a word, I'm happy to drop it.

The concept I'm trying to describe is:
Lack of a healthy sex life is known to have a lot of negative consequences in many people, so as a society we should make it one of our goals to help people who cannot help themselves to find their way into a healthy relationship.

Thanks. The difficulty I see that "healthy sex life" means very different things to different people and it changes over time. If that is the business you want to be in, then I would suggest that healthy relationships are more fundamental and society should focus on helping people have more healthy relationships that can lead to better sex. But that gets to be quite a quagmire too. Tough problems without good solutions.

 

[Peuri]

To me saying that sex is a right inevitably implies rape. Rights are things that are yours, not things that other people can choose whether or not to give you.

That's quite interesting. Would you say that a state granting education as a right implies theft and imprisonment then? If you are going to educate people, you need money and teachers. Obviously sex as a right would not mean you could go raping (and pillaging) at will, but receive some sort of certificate to visit a prostitute*, such as the disabled in Denmark and the Netherlands.

*One that is willing to do the job, and who is not a victim of human trafficing, and works in a safe clean environment.

 

[Ryika]

Thanks. The difficulty I see that "healthy sex life" means very different things to different people and it changes over time. If that is the business you want to be in, then I would suggest that healthy relationships are more fundamental and society should focus on helping people have more healthy relationships that can lead to better sex.

Yeah, that's actually what I meant (I edited my post a minute before you posted yours to change exactly that). I think healthy sex life is implied by a healthy relationship, but the primary one is of course the latter.

 

[Senethro]

Need to make some Friendship Simulation Robots to fill unreciprocated social needs.

 

[Lexicus]

That's quite interesting. Would you say that a state granting education as a right implies theft and imprisonment then? If you are going to educate people, you need money and teachers.

I don't think that education and sex are really comparable in this sense given that education is a social process that unfolds over a long period of time rather than a single act generally between just two people. That said I can certainly think of systems where education is a right guaranteed by the state that do necessarily imply theft and imprisonment. I don't think this worked out historically though as there seem to always have been people willing to be teachers.

Obviously sex as a right would not mean you could go raping (and pillaging) at will, but receive some sort of certificate to visit a prostitute, such as the disabled in Denmark and the Netherlands.

The prostitute point suggests that what we are conceiving as a "right" is pure sexual gratification with none of the messy emotional stuff that comprises an actual relationship with another person. If that's the case, I suggest just masturbating instead (again this doesn't work for people too physically incapacitated to do that, but I think Birdjaguar's "tough problems without good solutions" applies in that case). Maybe some sort of masturbation robot or something.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Need to make some Friendship Simulation Robots to fill unreciprocated social needs.

The prostitute point suggests that what we are conceiving as a "right" is pure sexual gratification with none of the messy emotional stuff that comprises an actual relationship with another person. If that's the case, I suggest just masturbating instead (again this doesn't work for people too physically incapacitated to do that, but I think Birdjaguar's "tough problems without good solutions" applies in that case). Maybe some sort of masturbation robot or something.

Such friendly robots and dolls are a work in progress by existing companies. Google is your friend. I'd bet they are working the Alexa technology into them as we speak type, but it will be touch sensitive rather than voice activated.

 

[bernie14]

Great, the AI sex robots will take better care of the planet after they do away with us

 

[Broken_Erika]

Need to make some Friendship Simulation Robots to fill unreciprocated social needs.

The Japanese are already on that.
https://singularityhub.com/2017/10/...-companions/#sm.000ytc7uhg1md8f10cj1xr4mgmphb

 

[Traitorfish]

Okay but without the caps, discussing capitalism is super mainstream.

Well, loudly announcing to anyone who'll listen that you're discussing capitalism is super mainstream. But what mostly gets discussed is taxes, regulation and "the economy". Little is said about capitalism as such, because that requires us to imagine capitalism as one possible system, and not something coded into the basic physical makeup of the universe, which seems to make a lot of people nervous.

 

[Akka]

I'm seriously scratchig my head in disbelief at the pages-long bickering about if it's real that some people can fail to get intimate with others. That's the kind of discussion I would expect among pre-teen trying to posture, not adults.
And the argument about "maybe some are so fundamentally deformed they are too monstrous to get some action" is barely better.

I mean, it's not "how can I seduce a member of the opposite sex" wasn't about 50 % of our entire underlying social relations (the other 50 % being "how can I prove to the group I'm a valuable member"). If there was an easy guaranteed success, we wouldn't be human. I don't know in which world you live, but you must not be able to see with your eyes opened to even wonder if it's possible to have every kind of people either succeed or fail at about anything.

 

[spot261]

I didn't even mean to have a discussion about it. Bugfatty300 made a post that was ever so slightly off topic, I responded to it because I found it interesting and had some thoughts I wanted to share about it, and next thing I know is arguing with a wall for 5 pages, for reasons I still don't quite understand.

I don't either, considering I made no comments about "not helping people".

What I did say, and what you haven't addressed was that I'm uncomfortable with the idea of a linear scale of attractiveness and merit which people measure themselves against. When I used my own experiences as an illustration of why I feel this is too simplistic and reductionist there was a subtle shift that some people noticed, others didn't where somehow I has been claiming "anyone can do it if they try hard enough".

@Timsup2nothin picked up on this and described it as a "bait and switch", but I opted to assume no disingenuous intent on your part despite it apparently playing into your hands. Eventually we would always get back to this point in either case, so why not let the misdirection play out?

So, back to the original point from five pages ago and completely discarding the pretense I had made claims "anyone can do it" or "they don't deserve help", why do you feel there's a linear scale of attractiveness? This seems important to me because it seems like exactly the sort of misconception which underlies not only your conceptualising of the situation, but incel thinking itself. If you weren't presenting as a female and someone were shown your posts in isolation, they'd be forgiven for thinking you aren't just discussing incels, but actually are one. That's not entirely because of your points per se but the mentality seemingly underlying them.

 

[red_elk]

I'm seriously scratchig my head in disbelief at the pages-long bickering about if it's real that some people can fail to get intimate with others. That's the kind of discussion I would expect among pre-teen trying to posture, not adults.

I had the same impression.

And the argument about "maybe some are so fundamentally deformed they are too monstrous to get some action" is barely better.

I guess that was an extreme example to illustrate Ryika's point that involuntary celibacy does exist. In general, there are thousands of people around who are unable to find satisfying partner, sometimes for years. And it doesn't mean they hate people of opposite gender, want to rape them, think they owe them their bodies, etc. The idea that these people deserve to be happy too, doesn't seem far-fetching to me.

 

[Akka]

I guess that was an extreme example to illustrate Ryika's point that involuntary celibacy does exist. In general, there are thousands of people around who are unable to find satisfying partner, sometimes for years. And it doesn't mean they hate people of opposite gender, want to rape them, think they owe them their bodies, etc. The idea that these people deserve to be happy too, doesn't seem far-fetching to me.

Yeah, well, that was precisely why I find the need to go so deep into caricature to be ridiculous. Lots of people don't find a partner, and no need to go into being malformed monsters for that. Hence the headscratching.

 

[spot261]

I guess that was an extreme example to illustrate Ryika's point that involuntary celibacy does exist.

Involuntary celibacy in the terms being discussed, an "incel", isn't simply being unable to have sex, it's a position which is defined by misplacing the explanation for that on others. The pages of bickering have been ways of approaching that distinction, some more meritorious than others. Of course some people struggle to find satisfying love lives, but an "incel" is a different beast altogether.

If we are to help people we need to understand that distinction, because the nature of the help will be very different in the two instances.

 

[Angst]

The trap there, which you have basically dived into headfirst, is that "smart" and "knowledgeable" are not the least bit interchangeable.

My trap? Trusting the experts is a trap? Let's say for the sake of argument, that it is. Is it worse than what you are doing - you denounce commonly acknowledged truths among experts in the field, because... well what reason exactly? I mean, I guess it's not a trap you're falling into per se, because there's no logical premise that you can be tricked by, there's no good premise for the argument to begin with, it's just plain weird. You're maybe even being anti-intellectual or conspiracy theorist, depending on your placement in the experts-don't-know-what-they're-talking-about discourse. Who should I trust if not the experts? You? Ryika? Give me a break.

Then again, you might be arguing semantics. That Ryika is smarter than people in academia in whatever measurement smartness means to you? He may be, depending on the definition, I guess. But my usage of the word "smart" here is meaningful and common, and you're well aware of what I mean. So if it's semantics you're doing, it's just meaningless busiwork to distract from the subject matter, which is always poor thinking.

Or it might be a third point. Anyhow, I'm not sure what the point of these criticisms is. I've already found a good place to be with Ryika, and the other two of you are jumping me from the sideline because I trust experts over non-experts. I'm not really sure what to do about that, lol.