>having a romantic and sexual relationship is not a requirement for a happy life.
It is for many, many, many people.
It is for many, many, many people.
I agree with the author though. IMO the existence of so many "incels" is some expression of a real societal problem. Many young men are suffering, and we don't acknowledge their suffering as genuine. We just tell them that they suck, call them names and walk away. This can cause them to become more radicalized.
I was raised by a mentally ill single mom, on welfare. In many ways, my emotional maturity really lagged behind that of other guys. I didn't know how to make friends, let alone how to approach women or form a healthy relationship. I did eventually manage, but it took me years of learning during my 20s. When I was a young man, I struggled with some pretty bitter feelings myself, and I feel like society didn't make it easy to overcome them. Even today, the not so ambiguous message that society sends to young men is: if you can't get women, it's entirely your fault, because you are not enough. It just adds insult to injury, particularly when you're really missing closeness and understanding, when you feel alone and wounded.
IMO, the modern discourse around gender only really goes one way. We hear about women's issues everyday, but even in 2021, it's no more okay for men to talk about the challenges they face than it was in the 1950s. Men are told to just suck it up, and that's a huge part of the problem. If feminism is really about gender equality, then it needs to allow some room for men to talk about their issues and concerns as well, without fear of judgment. I would also like to see words other than "toxic" being used to describe masculinity.
Feminism has a pretty convincing answer to the problem like I edited my original comment to include. Toxic masculinity is the social exclusion of deep emotional relationships between men, including the "suck it up" culture. The key is that only men can really participate in that healing because it's entirely a problem between men. Women, as I've observed, seek out deep emotional friendships with other women and have most of their emotional needs met that way. Men, for the most part, do not do that with other men.
Intersectionality, as described by its creator, is simplistic and misleading. It completely ignores black male incarceration because all of the labor statistics preclude them. Black men's suffering has been erased and its causing a generation (or more) of people to treat them like they are the white patriarchy and that they have privilege they really don't when you look at the data.
Intersectionality has taken demographic disparities in isolation, say white mens rights versus white womens rights, and applied them to black people without nuance to the difference between how white men and black men are treated by institutions in the US.
It's given cover for Feminists to look past racial inequity that is the basis for much of black women's suffering. Go watch the video and look at the data, tell me what you think they got wrong.
We want thoughtful, substantive, curious conversation here, not bomb-throwing, fights to the death, and whatnot. You've posted a lot of serious flamebait. Please review the site guidelines and stop doing that. Note this one: "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive."
Emotional intimacy, physical closeness, and sex are distinct and separable. Though they are linked for most people, for many no one of those is a substitute for any other.
I remember people used to argue that feminism was good because sexual liberation of women meant everyone was gonna get to have lots of sex. Obviously, these incels were not invited to the party. Women are having lots of sex, just not with them. And you actually believe "deep emotional relationships between men" are the cure for this unrest?
This is about deeper issues than friendship. It's about people's essential worth as human beings. People don't just have sex with anyone, they select partners and this implies selection criteria which implies value judgement. By seeking intimacy, we all risk judgement and rejection. Can you imagine what constant rejection by everyone must do to a person's self-worth?
"Cuddle parties" won't solve anything because they fail to understand the problem. Even proposing something like this compounds the issue because it's like saying "you are not good enough to have sex, enjoy this platonic activity instead". The root cause of this issue is society and women especially have decided these men are unattractive and therefore worthless. There is no fixing incels without fixing this inequality.
Taking the thread noticeably further into ideological and gender flamewar, as you did here and elsewhere, is also not ok.
You posted tons of flamewar comments in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Please stop and don't do it again.
Color me surprised.
I never knew such a thing existed until you posted this, and perhaps I could have done with this at earlier points in my life. My receptivity would have varied greatly at different times though.
Fundamentally, I'm not sure it would have helped me as much as finding a therapist and talking about this stuff. Now that I'm out of the rut it would be much easier to approach a cuddle party.
Men struggle to see therapists as part of the "suck it up" culture so it's extremely difficult to get out of the existence once you are part of it. The system is self-protecting and does things to embed people deeper into the anti-feminist rut.
Are the wimmen at them good lookin'? I'm all for this concept.
That's not a truth about life, it's an opinion.
Often times I wonder how would I feel if someone were to hold my hand, or give me a kiss but the feeling goes soon away perhaps dictated by the way I was raised or my own genes (something I'm can't determine since I'm not an expert neither in science or parenting)
Just to give you some context I grew up in a family with 6 uncles, 2 aunts and my mom, just one of them married, although all of them seem to fare well economically speaking.
On the other hand, "but it's not something anyone is entitled to" is fundamentally a statement of opinion, unless it is limited to a specific context like within a specific social system.
Feminism is all for men talking about their issues. It practically begs them to. It is absolutely, positively not feminist to tell men that you're not enough if you can't get a woman.
That doesn't, however, pose an obligation on any woman to listen to you. It doesn't matter whose fault it is that you can't get a woman; it does matter that it's no woman's job to make sure you get one. Exactly what that will require is up to a billion different factors -- but "blames women" is going to be an enormous red flag.
Your suffering is real. You absolutely don't have to just suck it up. Go talk about it. If you don't have a friend you trust, try a therapist -- they're paid to do that. But be prepared for the fact that if your plan is to blame feminism, a good therapist is going to ask you to reconsider your underlying assumptions. And if your friends are just there to affirm for you that the reason you don't have a woman is the fault of the women -- there's a reason the word "toxic" came to be applied.
* Working on an issue which only helps women a bit, but doesn't help men at all
* Working on an issue which helps both women and men a lot
Considering media has a routine narrative of painting men as demons and women as angels, any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases.
If you're looking for something in particular to make this case for you, I recommend reading the short book Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, which does specifically talk about mens issues and how what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways (compared to women).
But again, editorials - especially on the right - typically pick out the most extreme or indefensible positions and try to make them appear to be normalized and widely accepted. You're doing yourself an intellectual diservice not to really deeply interrogate the motivations and biases of any piece of media that leaves you feeling like an enormous group of people (those who consider themselves feminists) is in fact wildly irrational and extreme. It should set off alarm bells when you draw such stark lines in the sand as "any claim that feminism is for anything in regards to men, might need to be backed up with some strong cases" that you're missing some nuance or complexity.
I know you don't intend to do so, but assuming that someone's conclusions about an issue must have come from talking points, and were not arrived at independently, dehumanizes them and makes it difficult to convince them of anything.
It discounts the lived experiences of people who have seen their friends and coworkers radicalized against them, of either gender. "This happened to me" cannot successfully be countered by "stop parroting X/Y/W-wing editorials." (general pattern I've seen even among family, not necessarily your phrasing)
The terminology used also doesn't help make the case for feminism among anyone not already convinced. Terms like "the patriarchy" can be seen as implying that it's okay to talk about men as a whole group who can be vilified, but it's not okay to talk about women in any negative way at all. Or "ally" could be seen as implying that the only identity someone not of group Z can have that matters is as an accessory to their cause.
The most disappointing and insulting thing a friend has ever said to me might be (paraphrasing) "I thought you wanted to be an ally." No, I wanted to be your friend, not a footsoldier who dutifully agrees with you 100% of the time no matter what my independent experiences have been.
I don't think it's helpful to think of "feminism" as a singular movement,
Sadly, even some of those who advocate for feminism (whichever branches might be considered "the good kind" for purposes of this discussion) seem to deliberately lump feminist movements together, so one can be forgiven for seeing terms like "the patriarchy" used by different groups and not knowing which group's beliefs to ascribe to the term. I don't think this can be blamed on a particular flavor of media, except maybe social media.
What should set off alarm bells is this blind acceptance of written works and words, when the actions routinely do not reflect the words feminism espouses. There are entire subreddits and blogs online showing the many cases where feminism doesn't do anything, or worse, actively intervenes at the detriment of women. Your own example shows the same problem: "what she calls the patriarchal organization of society negatively affects men in different and unique ways". Cool, you talk about it, but what are you doing about it?
What is an intellectual disservice, is how quickly you circumvent my question only to berate my manner of writing. If people truly are such huge proponents of feminism, and feminism truly claims to "be good for men", surely they can answer a question this simple and provide clear examples. Do you not realize your own behavior is indication of the problem here? How can you not see that if you can't even answer "well duh, the second issue obviously" on an ideological basis, the claim that feminism is "for all" is complete bollocks?
If I really wanted to go full-on antifeminist, I could've mentioned the many issues that feminism causes for men and women that it seems to be utterly blind to. That's part of the question as well: a clear division between not only "we want the best for women", but "it doesn't need to be at the cost of men". If I really wanted to go and write on nuances, I could write a 12-page blog page and fight against the relentless nitpicking which will ensue. I'm not asking a simple, black-white question for the sake of trivializing a complex, multi-faceted subject. I'm asking it because ideologically, if we can't even answer this part first, there's no point going any further. It means the population of feminists is filled with people joining the movement, without knowing what it actually stands for. Including its most fierce proponents carrying the torches. Surely, I do not have to tell you about the many occurrences in human history where this didn't work out well.
It is literally in the name. FEMinism. If it was truly "for both sexes", we could argue the naming is sexist and supremacist. We already have a better word, egalitarianism, and people still aren't willing to adopt it.
Notice people talk past my example as well. I'm explicitly asking if feminism would prefer resolving an issue which prefers women over men, over an issue which benefits women more but benefits men equally. How this simple question cannot be answered by proponents of a movement this big, is possibly the biggest red flag. Yet we see it in the media every day: some minor issue with women needs major attention, despite there being an egalitarian issue which would help anyone outside the upper class way more. If lamenting about some "pink tax" is more important than resolving a mental health epidemic caused by making people increasingly more competitive with one another, where failure is met with lasting mental trauma, surely that should tell people what feminism really is about.
The very people claiming to be proponents for men in their words alone, are the ones partially responsible for the mess. And they are too blind to see it.
Gotcha, it wants them to talk about their issues, as long as they don't say anything unapproved. Why would any man want to go along with that, again?
Imagine a woman who is frustrated because her partner doesn't do any chores or give any indication he respects her. She complains about it online, attributing it to sexist gender norms. Someone says the same thing to her as you say here: men are not obligated to listen to you, your suffering may be real, but please keep it to close friends. If your friends affirm that the reason your relationship is the fault of patriarchy, it's an example of toxicity. It probably makes the most sense to talk to a therapist: they can help you figure out why your way of thinking is flawed and how you can convince your partner to treat you well or, barring that, find a new partner.
That'd be a pretty terrible comment, right?
Toxic gender norms hurt both men and women, but we're only willing to consider toxic gender norms that hurt women as a politicized issue.
"Patriarchy hurts men" is a feminist slogan. It gets hundreds of thousands of hits on Google. The front page is full of lefty think-pieces saying that we need to consider toxic gender norms hurt men.
https://www.google.com/search?q=patriarchy+harms+men
The fact that it needs to be said means that not everybody knows it yet. But it means that the ones who are listening to it are the feminists. Feminism is an ally in trying to fix the problems of toxicity towards men, and these threads always bring out lots of men who blame feminism for their problems. If I've accidentally confused you for one of them, I apologize.
Ending patriarchy requires both men and women to reject it. But the ones calling for for an end to patriarchy are the feminists -- which includes both women and men. Feminists absolutely, positively call out women who are guilty of entrenching the patriarchy.
That's not few women. It's lots and lots of women. And lots of men, too.
I disagree that they are particularly willing to call out instances of women entrenching the patriarchy. I think this probably has to do with a root disagreement about the scope of what is considered policing gender roles.
It's true, for instance, that feminists are more likely to criticize a mother who tells her son not to play with dolls, which is good and something I agree with. It's just not the primary mechanism by which women enforce gender roles, which is partner choice. That's not to say that women shouldn't have the right to choose their partner--of course they should--but the patterns of how women choose partners enforce toxic gender norms, and many of the most toxic aspects of gendered male behavior arise from men navigating that landscape.
As a concrete example, consider bisexuality. The majority of women dislike the idea of choosing a bisexual guy as a partner: he's considered less masculine, or dirtied, or some kind of perversion of masculinity. This is their right, but it's also shitty. The problematic aspects I want to call out are that 1) the majority viewpoint among women about bisexual men is still very prevalent among feminist-identifying women, and 2) when someone expresses frustration at these collective choices, feminist-identifying women are far more likely to criticize the frustrated party instead of the toxic gender norms. The net result of this is men being terrified of homosocial affection and remaining closeted so as not to scare off potential partners, both behaviors most people would consider expressions of toxic masculinity.
This pattern repeats itself across a lot of different forms of gendered policing. But many feminists refuse to acknowledge it, because they don't acknowledge that partner choice can be a mechanism for gender role enforcement.
Regardless, I do hope everyone will call out policing of gender norms whenever we see them. Best wishes.
Curious, are there are more of these now than in the past?
I suspect there were more decades ago because of more cultural taboos about premarital relationships. What's different now? That these folks are angry about it?
I'm curious, and this will probably be too curt but I am honestly trying to figure it out: Whose fault is it? Because incels believe it's the women's fault, and this message is the opposite.
It doesn't seem productive to tell them that it's society's fault or some other external thing. What are they supposed to do about that?
Most men that I know, including myself, function better when there's something tangible to work on. Lose weight, hit the gym, learn to lower my ego, listen better, practice small talk, learn about fashion, etc.
I think there's a healthy way to "blame" yourself. Or if you want a nicer way to put it: to be able to have honest criticism of yourself. After all, if you can't fix it, what's the point?
You can't expect women to work on having more of a penis.
These kinds of skills are rarely talked about in any setting. Maybe that's how it's always been, but it seems to me that young men really aren't given much actionable advice when it comes to attracting a mate, and at one point the rules/expectations were a little more codified than they are today.
My own experience: I would be a millionaire if I had a nickel for every time I was told to "just be yourself". On the other hand, I was told a lot growing up what NOT to do when interacting with a woman. Don't try to kiss/etc her without asking permission. Norms around when it's ok to flirt (almost never appropriate). All of these kinds of negative rules made interactions with women feel like a minefield to me so I just stuck to online dating, but of course that has its own rules and expectations that take a lot of getting used to. Don't mention sex or anything remotely sexual. Don't mention how attractive she is. Don't use pick up lines. Don't just say hi. Don't expect a reply. And then of course, there's a whole new minefield to walk through when you start getting more serious -- a lot of which comes down to boundaries, another thing we don't do a very good job of talking about.
I made it through though, amazingly. I had a reasonably successful 8 year relationship, and even though it ended, I feel like we were right for each other in the sense that we had things to offer each other and I learned so many valuable life lessons from my partner during that time. Now I'm 4 years into my next relationship and it's going great as well, still learning so much!
I think a lot of this just comes down to things changing a lot re: gender roles, norms, etc. We're in this liminal space where things haven't quite shaken out yet into something more stable. My hope is once that happens (it feels inevitable -- things can't just keep on changing like this forever, right?) we will be able to talk about it more concretely.
It is worrisome though. My younger brothers (24) have not yet made any foray into the world of relationships. I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else. They don't use the word incel but it could certainly apply.
> I try and fail to get them to open up about their feelings about this or anything else.
To be fair, opening up about my feelings to my family sounds awful. I know I know, society did this to me yada yada.
I learned by watching and doing, not talking about my feelings to my family. College buddies being my wingman and showing me the ropes, etc. and failing until I stopped failing. Then again, last time I dated, "can I buy you a drink" still worked to get a few minutes of face time and I didn't need apps. Not sure what's out there now.
I think talking about my feelings to my family would have done absolutely nothing.
Is the "don't kiss her without permission" really they difficult? And frankly the same with flirting.
If these make women minefield, I don't see how to make it better without sacrificing women who fly want to be kissed or flirted with while they have presentation at work.
That's a bit simplistic, isn't it? Not to mention, maybe it's not just the penis. Maybe you can teach women how to copy the kinds of attitudes (eg: assertiveness) that help men succeed. Maybe you can get more women in engineering by giving them positive role models from an early age.
We can help prevent there being so many incels by supporting young men emotionally from an early age. Right now we have a very punitive approach IMO. The education given to young men is a lot of "don't do this", "that's toxic", "women hate it when men do that", but there isn't enough positive messaging and encouragement.
I think there are a lot of young men who are in a similar position and if they are given proper guidance and healthy role models when they are young, they can be in a better position to succeed in friendships, work and relationships.
I certainly don't expect people to just work through childhood trauma without societal help. ex. Make it cheap, easy, and acceptable to get therapy. Much different than my list above IMO where most people can work on it themselves without many excuses.
The example I'm coming back to though are people like my younger brothers, who had relatively happy childhoods (afaik), but still have failed to launch for some reason or another. To be fair my father has anger problems to some degree, but nothing too crazy, just a proclivity to yelling more than was really necessary.
https://www.jcf.org/works/quote/every-failure-to-cope-with-a...
This is a bit of a fresh thought to me, but it seems that the standard male self-improvement advice ends up in one of three buckets:
1. The activity is its own reward (lose weight, hit the gym). Even if it’s not immediately successful at helping one find a partner, their benefits are almost immediately self-evident.
2. Advice that is vital for sustaining a relationship but usually not the missing piece when it’s time to find a new one (listen better, lower the ego). They’re needed to get the second date but can’t help get the first date.
3. Advice for the sake of having given advice (read books by female authors).
“Learn fashion” is hard to place on here. On the one hand, ensuring that you comb the crumbs out of your beard daily and wear clothes that fit better than a garbage bag is essential. On the other, becoming “into fashion” when it’s not a natural interest is often more of advice for advice’s sake unless you’re targeting a very fashion-conscious woman (or the fashion-forward portion of the gay dating pool).
Yeah I mean, I think most of the things on the list have a "basic" and "advanced" tier.
Lose weight/hit the gym: Basic is to not be obese. Advanced is to be fit.
Small talk: Basic is to be able to start and hold a conversation. Advanced is to be smooth and captivating.
Learn fashion: Basic is learning how clothes are supposed to fit. Advanced is... something like what you said. (I'm not advanced here! haha).
"The Fantastic Masculinity of Newt Scamander" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4kuR1gyOeQ is a pop culture analysis of the mild-mannered leading man of the Happy Potter prequel movies.
I unequivocally do not condone folks who go off the rails in ways that cause harm to others (self destruction and harm is similar, but a different conversation), but I've seen enough mental health challenges and crises to understand why it happens. In general, life is hard, and no one is coming to save you except yourself.
We can simultaneously tell individuals to work on self-improvement to get themselves out of tough situations while also recognizing that society can do things to make life fairer and better for everybody.
And yet, quite often they need help. Changing one's personality, mastering new skills, etc etc. are not small nor easy steps. And some people may not even be capable of doing them by themselves. So what do they do? They seek out people and go public with their frustration... and they come across two groups: Group A, who call them names and shun them out, and Group B, who claim they understand them and talk with them.... all while telling them things like "Look, it's not your fault, man." "They're all whores", etc. What do you think happens next?
What I am trying to say is, some empathy and understanding would go a long way. I get that some people don't want to help themselves and are beyond saving, but there are many others who just need a small push to improve themselves.
Incels call this "maxxing". It doesn't seem to be particularly effective for them.
> Pushing the blame outwards to some other group for not bending to fulfill your needs is a real problematic stance.
Why? Reducing inequality in dating seems like a fair goal to me. People become incels because everyone else rejects them. If that doesn't change, the number of incels will keep growing.
> Reducing inequality in dating
What does this mean, be specific. I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
So they don't need to improve themselves, they just need to believe in the right things and suddenly women will value them.
Really?
> I cannot think of anything except absolutely ghoulish ideas that remove agency from women.
And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels. Look at data from online dating services, plenty of evidence showing over 80% of men are rejected outright. Do you think this is normal?
> And yet it's this agency that created such a thing as incels.
No, incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date. What toxic nonsense.
And also, you still haven't put forward any changes you'd like to see to remedy the situation as you see it. Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Which is?
> incels were not created created because women have agency in who they date
Did you not look at the evidence? Online dating is already the primary means of forming relationships. There's data showing women reject over 80% of men they see on dating apps. They actively choose to compete over the other 20%. They'd rather share a top 20% man than settle with a bottom 80% man.
How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
> Bring solutions to the table if you think there is a problem.
Why bother? I doubt you'd consider any real solution since they would naturally result in disadvantages for women in favor of men and would therefore be "toxic nonsense".
Let me use an analogy. As a manager I help my folks get promoted all the time. The folks who struggle the most are the ones who think about promotion as a set of checkbox items they have to cross off. The ones who are easily promoted are the ones who are looking less at the criteria and more at how they can be introspective and develop themselves.
Framing finding a relationship in a "I'll just check these checkboxes and then I will immediately get a relationship" fundamentally misunderstands that we aren't generally selecting partners for one trait. No one is working from a checklist when they select their partners, so why set yourself up to fail by imagining they are.
Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
> Did you not look at the evidence?
I did a cursory Google search, which suggested online dating results in roughly the same outcomes as in person dating.
> How is this supposed to not create a class of universally rejected men?
If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
> Why bother?
Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it. Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day. You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
They're not doing this consciously. Research supports the notion that people widely agree on what features make a person attractive:
https://psycnet.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2F0033-2909.1...
It follows that if you fail to meet these criteria you are considered unattractive.
> Develop a growth mindset, focus on building your skills, build rich and fulfilling friendships. Ask for feedback and accept it. Build others up. People will want to be around you.
This assumes attractiveness is caused by factors that are within our control. This doesn't seem to be the case. Height is a very simple and uncontroversial example. How is a "growth mindset" supposed to help the incel who gets rejected by women on dating apps because he's shorter than them?
This isn't some insane idea either. Women I've dated have complained about short men on dating apps to my face. They want those men to reject themselves so as to spare them from even acknowledging their existence.
> If you are suggesting that 80% of men will face universal rejection, I find that extraordinarily hard to believe. It's quite frankly trivially falsifiable.
I said the data shows women reject about 80% of men they see on dating apps. The set of rejected men is different for every woman. Universally rejected men (incels) are the insersection of these sets, naturally it is a smaller set than 80% of men.
The fact is there's massive inequality in dating. Like all inequalities, it'll probably get worse over time.
> Because you've made vague gestures that somehow society is to blame, but won't say how you'd fix it.
Not providing a fix doesn't invalidate my point.
> Either that means you aren't sure, which undermines the idea that society is actually to blame, or your ideas are so repugnant that you are afraid to show them the light of day.
Yeah, I just encountered this subject. The most obvious solution is to go back to enforced monogamy. Nothing repugnant about that but obviously female agency will be impacted. You don't seem to be open to any ideas that don't maximize female agency.
> You do not get to claim a moral victory by claiming to be a victim and then failing to engage with even the lightest questioning of your narrative.
No, you don't get to dismiss people's arguments as "toxic" and then demand they "engage" with your questioning.
Does it really top all other qualities? Doesn't seem to be the case. There's evidence showing personality is only considered after a minimum threshold of physical attractiveness is met.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0092-x
> But in-person the initial “not-as-good-looks” can very easily be overcome if one is kind, honest, funny, etc.
Attractive people are perceived as nicer, funnier, kinder, more honest, more intelligent, etc.
https://www.gwern.net/docs/psychology/okcupid/weexperimenton...
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S01918...
You can work out and get into shape, you can have good hygiene, you can dress nicely, etc. Just because someone is luckier and doesn’t really have to pay attention to what he/she eats to get a good figure doesn’t mean that others can’t achieve that, although with more work.
Also, the face itself is much more important for men than women.
So do you now agree this statement is obviously false?
Height is just one of the first filters women use, and often the requirement is more strict than just "taller than me". You also have to pass other commons filters. Another very important filter for most women is race, and we're just getting started.
And there it is. Yes, that stance is awful. Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with. Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have. And who gets to define 'monogamy' and who does the enforcement?
It also completely ignores the poly folks out there, or the folks who are not interested in long term relationships.
It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
And I suspect that's exactly why he said "Why bother?".
And having a dating scene with an 80/20 distribution isn't? Monogamy seems like the only way to give everyone chance.
So I guess this comes down to whether you think everyone should have a fair chance to find a partner. Do you? And if so how would you achieve that?
> Going back implies removing the right of women to choose who they partner with.
Nope, they can still choose whoever they want. The point is to get the top 20% of men committed and off the dating pool as quickly as possible.
> Enforced monogamy removes the ability of folks to choose how many partners they have.
Yes? That's the point.
> And who gets to define 'monogamy'
... The dictionary.
> who does the enforcement?
I don't know, society?
> It's at best, a narrow and puritanical view of human sexuality.
Probably. I did say it was the most obvious. Do you have a better idea? Because this "just be better" stuff doesn't seem to be working.
Assuming people even want to help these incels to begin with. Other posts I've seen just want to pacify them so they don't become violent or something.
Precisely; too many men rely on partnership to meet most or all of their emotional needs and that is what drives intense loneliness when they don't have a partner.
In the West in particular we are crippled with insecurity, anxiety and doubt. Are we masculine/feminine enough? Do we fit the image we have of other people's desires? We have incredible wealth and abundance and feel like shit. It's a societal ill as well as a personal one. It is possible to practice contentment, gratitude, and self-compassion and acceptance, these are just things that are not taught or idealized in our culture. I do think the mindfulness movement, commercialized though it may be, has something to offer to modern secular society.