Whenever people are like oh we need to empathize w/ incels, care about their feelings blah blah, I just think about what Lundy Bancroft said about abusers.
They need to learn empathy, and this excessive focus on their feelings is a barrier to them learning empathy.
🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/iHateCogsci/status/1610409758120361984
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But this is step 1 of "offering an alternative": recognizing that it takes different skillsets/social conditions to get them well-adjusted, because for whatever reason they're starting from a different psychological basis.
I agree that to some extent the whole idea of focusing on these guys is counterproductive. But focusing on them is not the same as making sure that our movement is equipped to deal with them effectively, without having to relive this generational moment over and over again.
They feel alienated from society because it feels unlivably complex, and they happen to fit enough heuristics of the power group that they feel entitled to deal with that complexity by violently maximizing their adherence to power.
The right takes advantage of this by a) being in power already, b) being the same kind of people, and c) happy to use these guys to further their own interests. So they offer the easy, accessible, lowest-common-denominator solution of just catering to that entitlement.
Of course "Be a good person" doesn't effectively compete. But that doesn't have to be the only narrative the left offers. We need the next step, a narrative that starts with "Be a good person" and builds it into a competitively epic cognitive reward mechanism.
Honestly just think this is a problem created by the internet drastically changing our society.
To completely oversimplify, for the unlucky less attractive people dating has always been a sort of numbers thing, the more people they meet the more chances of clicking with someone on an emotional level.
The problem is that the internet has drastically changed all the "natural" ways people used to meet and we've never really resolved the fact that massive amounts of socialisation online has had the effect of removing socialisation in person where meeting people and making up these numbers would happen.
The best way to stop incels, is for them to stop being incels by meeting people and making those connections that ultimately leads to the celibate part stopping. The problem is that they do not, and that the internet has given them the power to meet as few people as possible and then to complain about it. Then they fester in their hateful spaces only making themselves more and more unattractive and hating the world.
I don't have a solution though, they need to meet more people, a lot more people, until they click with one. And the internet has moved a lot of people online instead of offline. I know pua types say that shit too but w/e I'm not advocating for the scum shit I'm just saying meeting more people definitely helps.
What were incels before the internet? Hermits?
I think the whole obsession with "finding the right one" is part of the problem. What they need is more flexibility to enter, move through, and leave communities without the goal of extracting a person from them into their patriarchal household. It's crystalizing into a specific mold/role (or failing to) that causes them to get stuck where they end up with no way out, hung up on their failures. Which is why we see them come up with all these stereotypes like Chad, Stacey, the Woke, Groomers, etc. People having a healthy relationship with a community don't assign themselves into these strict stereotypical groups that they have to define themselves by. They just exist as themselves.
Abusive husbands, hermits, cannon fodder, "bachelors"/brothel-goers
I don't disagree, but there's still a desire for an emotional connection and the "celibate" part here is still a typically 1 to 1 interaction though not always. As are the relationships that lead to that.
I think the "patriarchal household" is actually much further down the line than the hanky panky and fooling around that would fix these people if they could simply meet the right people to get it.
god, I would kill to get some hanky panky and fooling around. alas, I am in the same position of being unable to ever get it, despite not being a misogynistic shithead like actual incels.
Well like, I'm probably the most obstinate poster on here about this issue coming from the direction of being, well admittedly incel-adjacent; in that I have basically all the exact same fucking problems that they do (well, mostly I'm pretty sure), and that I'm not willing to accept the proposition that the particular Social Model that we presently have vis-a-vis the fundamental nature of interpersonal relationships (1) is actually necessarily the best one.
The most useful thing that I think that I could have, is if there was some kind of organization that I could go to that would take an active & specific interest in my integration into some kind of definite community. As far as I know that's not a thing that exists in any way right now; y'know that's not what any "Leftist Org" that I'm aware of exists to do, or is really in any way set up to accomplish, and even if it were I'm pretty sure COVID has completely torpedoed that potential regardless. The only exception that I can think of is maybe Evangelical Church Groups, and organizations like the Mormons here in the US; which may go some way to explaining their outsized social & political influence beyond just the Oil Money (though to be fair they have a hell of a lot of that I'm sure).
Now, granted; the fact that the only real organizations that I could point to that might be willing to actually serve that function are reactions is a legitimate cause for caution, I'd imagine. If set-up poorly, you absolutely can create a situation in which people who absolutely do not want to, or otherwise should not be around each other, end up getting essentially socially coerced into carrying on relationships; and that's something to be wary of. But honestly, I don't see how you grow "The Left", or really I should say a mass base of politically aware, active & committed Socialists without also trying to build a specific & definite community around that concept. And if you're doing one I don't see why you wouldn't also want to do the other.
You've grown a lot since I first saw you. This is good.
You might have the cart before the horse. First you have tightly knit communities that value each other as people then they develop political identities that reject atomization and placing thee individual above all else.
The problem is precisely that we don't have those; and also the people thrown off the land, out of their homes in the countryside & into the cities in the late-1700's, and mid-1800's also didn't have them when the first round of industrial revolutions happened. They built social clubs (which would then develop into tight-knit communities) around their identities as, yes aggrieved workers after the fact, and then leveraged that into political goals.
What I'm saying specifically is that I think we should attempt to follow that trajectory.
Sounds like a sort of adult scouts organisation? Not necessarily focused on scout activities but yeah.
I'm wondering if this would naturally be resolved if kids had more of this. Like the Young Pioneers in the ussr. I have a feeling fewer people would fall into inceldom if they had social organisations focused on teaching kids socialisation in the modern day.
Maybe that's what's missing? A modernised variant of orgs that used to provide this kind of easy and widespread socialisation.