Hacker News Reader

Comment by dekken_ | Hacker News Reader

Please stop using that word, no one but the person in question gets to decide if they are celebate or not, it's really disingenuous, and just indicates you don't understand the notion of consent.

View on HN

I don't want to justify much, if any, of the behaviour of the incel/redpill crowd but...

For me several years passed between thinking 'I would like to lose my virginity' and said event happening. Should anybody feel sorry for me? No. But I can empathize with some of the feelings that lead people down that path.

To me, the biggest issue is the hostility of certain crowds that prevents us from discussing and exploring these phenomenons. There is this whole "women don't owe you sex" overreaction that is very quick to silence any discussion.

At the same time sexual satisfaction is strongly correlated with happiness (or depression) and both genders experience very different phenomena here.

The flip side of "women don't owe you sex" is "men don't owe you good sex", or even safe sex for that matter. Many women are sexually unhappy, it's not nearly as easy for them as the typical 'incel' might assume. That's yet another reason why incels do not put any effort into becoming better romantic prospects, they have no idea that they're even supposed to! And dating apps do nothing to address this, either.

Supposedly most men do not reproduce, and it's feasible they shoulnd't, but they still feel like they are supposed to, that's just life

They do decide to not be celibate. They also get to decide that it is involuntary, and to identify with the term "involuntary celibate", shortened to "incel". The study explicitly says:

> ...we compared a sample (n = 151) of self-identified male incels...

> They also get to decide that it is involuntary,

That doesn't make sense, then it's voluntary.

In layman's terms, "I want to get laid, but I can't" is the definition of involuntary celibate. If someone doesn't want to get laid, they - by definition - aren't an incel.

Yes, that is exactly the spirit of this paper – it refers to mating behavior.

The decision to not be celibate requires (at least) one more person who agrees with that decision. The decision to be celibate only requires yourself. That's the root of the problem...

But the decision to be misogynistic is independent of the decision to be celibate or not. And voluntary misogyny is the defining characteristic of the term "incel". There are many non-misogynistic non-inceles who want to get laid but can't for other reasons than choosing to hate women.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com