
Sympathy for the Incel - text_exch
https://www.thedailybeast.com/sympathy-for-the-incel?ref=author
======
thinkingemote
I'm sure when the rest of the tech world wakes up this will be flagged which
might be ironic as it might show that that happened due to a lack of empathy -
the two responses that the featured article recommends - and instead represent
a denial or an opposition to discussion. (I'm being flppant here - most flag
killing happens because the discussion turns into a flame war, which I can see
happening here too!) but...

Empathy is pretending to feel what its like as another person. It's not the
same thing as sympathy. It is possible empathise with an angry hateful person
as much as with a happy loving person. For me, it's a good tool to use to help
understand what the other person wants, and how they are behaving.

How many times do you read something which says "I don't understand why they
would do this thing / act this way / vote for that / like this thing"? How
many times is that person you? Those statements are true statements about the
giver - that person literally doesn't understand the other person. But the
question they ask is not actually asking for understanding - they are telling
you that their target is The Other - that it is impossible to understand. And
they haven't tried empathy. Sometimes that person might be disgusted even
thinking about using empathy on the other that they disagree with.

------
burfog
Besides sympathy, there is the issue of society becoming destabilized.
Anything that leads to a significant number of unmarried males will cause huge
social problems. This includes things that, for various reasons, we might
otherwise want.

So there is a cost to polygamy, a cost to preferentially aborting female
babies, a cost to women not needing men for survival, a cost to not sending
men off to die in war, and so on. The result is a greater potential for
violence and general mischief.

We tend to think of sex as low-priority compared to things like air and water
and food. If we ignore the time scale though, and instead focus on what these
things mean in an evolutionary sense, it is clear that they are equal. We need
air... so that ultimately we can pass on our DNA. With a long-term
perspective, it is clear that sex is on an equal footing with things like air
and water and food.

When a good chunk of the population is being denied something so essential,
we're facing serious trouble.

~~~
pjc50
"Everything in the world is about sex except sex. Sex is about power." \-
Oscar Wilde.

The incel phenomenon is not about the act itself. Especially not in an era of
many forms of highly available internet-based sex work. No, it's about power
and status. That is fundamentally harder to solve. A more egalitarian society
just makes them angrier, as suddenly there's fewer people they can feel
superior to.

(Remember that the word was coined by a queer woman; there are plenty of
people who feel that they are unwanted sexually but aren't going to flip into
mass murder because of it.)

~~~
zerostar07
How is society more egalitarian? Old-world monogamous societies were
egalitarian, today you have sexual inequality which leads to online movements
like these.

To quote Houellebecq:

> “It's a fact...that in societies like ours sex truly represents a second
> system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system
> of differentiation it functions just as mercilessly. The effects of these
> two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained
> economic liberalism, and for similar reasons, sexual liberalism produces
> phenomena of absolute pauperization . Some men make love every day; others
> five or six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of
> women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the
> market'...Economic liberalism is an extension of the domain of the struggle,
> its extension to all ages and all classes of society. Sexual liberalism is
> likewise an extension of the domain of the struggle, its extension to all
> ages and all classes of society.”

~~~
pjc50
> Old-world monogamous societies were egalitarian

Not for the women. At what date in your society were women given the right to
not be raped within marriage? (In the UK this was 1986, by the way)

~~~
_csoz
i m talking about inequality in the sexual marketplace. if you re talking
about equality of rights then i dont follow how "suddenly there's fewer people
they can feel superior to"

------
godzillabrennus
In Japan the handicapped have access to physical sexual release through tax
payer funded services that help with their emotional well being.

[https://coed.com/2013/06/01/japanese-medical-hand-jobs-
for-d...](https://coed.com/2013/06/01/japanese-medical-hand-jobs-for-disabled-
people-are-real-video/)

Not saying incel folks are in need of this but it’s obviously beyond time we
legalize sexual services as a profession.

~~~
magic_beans
Reddit’s incel subreddit seems to believe paying for sexual services doesn’t
technically break celibacy.

------
brad0
I think some men are missing three things:

\- Belonging

\- A Path

\- Status

For most men in the past, family has provided both the path and belonging (in
addition to career and hobbies etc).

As for status, it was a lot easier to be good at something in your small
circles. Now with the internet it's almost impossible to be good at anything
vs the rest of the world.

As for how we solve this, I'm not sure.

------
Hnrobert42
I sympathize with people who can’t get what they want. The problem is, most
people can’t. A foundational error in the incel world-view is not that they
are lonely, but that they are uniquely lonely.

~~~
mercer
I don't think it's unique to the incel worldview. In fact, it strikes me as
rather logical that if crippling loneliness is the defining cause of suffering
in your life, you'd turn to something that finds the solution in something
similarly isolating/insular.

I've seen quite a few very lonely people turn to obscure cults, obscure
philosophies, weird health communities, or smaller, sectarian movements within
a bigger religious community. And from personal knowledge of some of these
people, the underlying dynamic was _always_ a kind of resentment towards and
rejection of 'everyone else'.

One example that I found particularly painful to experience was a guy I met a
few years ago. We got along well, but he had the extremely grating tendency to
describe everyone as stupid ('sheeple'), unintelligent, inferior, etc. He was
really taken with what I suppose you could call 'scientism' and gravitated
towards the aspects of it that were mainly about belittling others. For
example, he was a huge fan of some videos where Richard Dawkins would read
semi-illiterate letters people had written to him, many of them religious
obviously. All his colleagues were stupid too.

Over time I discovered that he'd had a shitty childhood (terrible family,
school bullying), and this had just kind of continued on until his thirties.
In the years he'd lived in our city he'd not made a single longer-term friend,
and had never really had anything resembling a relationship. It seemed rather
obvious that hating/rejecting the world because it never included him was more
a defense-mechanism than anything.

What really hurt to see though, was that he was actually a pretty nice guy,
he'd just never learned how to 'do' inter-human relationships! He was smart,
funny, creative, sorta-caring and far from an 'inherent' asshole. He just
truly never learned how friendship works. He never learned how to have a
'normal' conversation. And considering how much work and experience it takes
to do social life right, it depressed me to think that he might never 'catch
up'.

As an aside, I suspect this guy was on the autism spectrum. I think we often
overlook how much effort, anxiety, and experience it takes for some people to
even just pull off 'weirdo, but okay' socially.

------
FrozenVoid
If you want to explore the topic from first-hand perspective instead of
reading these stupid articles spend a week in 4chan's /r9k/ board.

------
jimmywanger
When you back a rat into a corner even it will strike back.

------
the_solenoid
If this is just about not getting laid, I think it's time for sex work to
become legal. Or is that not an option these folks have considered?

~~~
cup
Maybe It's time for people to realise they don't 'deserve' sex and that they
should get counselling, seek help and form constructive relationships that
improve their lives rather than kill people.

~~~
Zanni
The word 'deserve' is not used in the article. I think you're missing the
point by laying that on them (and by suggesting they're all killers). But
counseling and help forming constructive relationships _is_ what they need. On
that we agree.

This is a tough read, and I admire the author for tackling the subject,
especially in the wake of the recent killings. To even suggest sympathy for a
group that are so manifestly unsympathetic is brave. And the incels
themselves, man, I just want to shake these guys and say, "It's not all about
sex. It's not all about _you_. Get over yourself. Get a life."

No one _deserves_ sex. But I don't think we're doing the world any favors by
piling on to people who are clearly in pain, no matter how much it's of their
own making.

------
cup
Someone really needs to do a write up looking at all the times race has
altered the public discourse.

Theres a consistent theme here in portraying culprits who are white as victims
or sympathetic. Whether its contrasting breivik to jihadists, or incels to
african american victims of police shootings or white nationalists to BLM
protesters.

I think a bit more intellectual honesty might have a dramatic effect on the
level of social engagement.

~~~
mercer
I find that various groups will do exactly as you say in various ways. In my
particular surroundings, for example, there are some who do as you describe,
but most actually do the opposite: the incels/alt-right/sad nerds are openly
mocked, and the jihadist is purely a victim of circumstance.

Personally I'd like it if we could just empathize with all of these 'culprits'
and actually do something about the situation, even if just for one of these
groups, rather than argue about who deserves more empathy or sympathy.

