The term “incel” doesn’t really make sense. It’s not involuntary, by any definition of the word that I’ve seen.
Almost anyone can find a partner simply through effort. Diet, exercise, hygiene, etiquette, dressing nicely, socializing, actively seeking a partner. Notice something about that list? Pretty much everyone can do those things. It’s just a matter of effort.
Yes, there are some exceptions, for example from people with severe disability, but those people rarely call themselves “incels.” The majority are people who are perfectly capable of doing these things.
If you don’t practice basketball and you don’t even go to the tryouts, you don’t get to say that your not making the team was “involuntary.”
The bit you’ve missed off your strange list is being someone a woman would want to be around. Incel fits perfectly because they think they should just get women with no effort whatsoever.
As someone who was previously involuntarily celibate, I have to say that this comment really misses the actual problem, which is mental health. I had basically been suffering from some combination of depression, social anxiety, and high functioning autism from around age 8. This didn’t leave me with much in the way of friends or social skills, but it didn’t reduce in the slightest the horniness I felt.
To me, trying to figure out how to get women to have sex with me felt like dying of thirst on a desert island covered in land mines. In my constantly precarious mental and social situations, I was always terrified of trying anything because I feared that doing the wrong thing would lose me the few friends (ie, acquaintances who tolerated me) that I had. And I feared that letting on to anyone that I had any sexual interest in anyone ever - that I had any sexual urge at all - would lead to everyone I knew immediately abandoning me. And this, I was quite sure,would result in my own death via suicide. This was the case to the point that, one time, my friends asked me if I was gay, probably assuming I was closeted. They were right. I was closeted. I just wasn’t gay.
So since I couldn’t talk to anyone in real life about my problem, I turned to the internet. I ended up in /r/seduction and… was immediately grossed out. It was weird and manipulative and unnatural and and just generally unappealing to me as someone who was committed to treating other people with basic human dignity. So instead I turned to the normal/liberal/leftist side of the internet, which was… unhelpful to say the least.
Saying that it is voluntary assumes that the steps needed are straightforward and obvious. But you might as well say that primitive tribes were voluntarily living without electricity for 200,000 years. After all, you just have to spin a magnet! Just put the work in! What’s wrong with them?
I notice a severe lack of ‘working on self and mental health’ amongst other really important things that were missed in that incredibly short list. Which is the central problem with an Incel. It’s a central problem with many things.
Also just finding someone isn’t an instant sign of successful in relationships. There are plenty of dysfunctional relationships that are evidence that a person might even be more healthier alone and working on self in order to set standards on finding better relationships than just be in such a relationship all just to avoid being labelled involuntary celibate.
Personally I always disliked the word Incel as a stand-in for antisocial personality disorder. Cuz really that is what it is. Sex or no sex. They have the same attitude even if they were getting some. They just complain about the lack of sex (or have poor view about women in general) cuz that’s the only symptom they usually notice and come up against that might be hinting there is a deeper problem with themselves.
The term “incel” doesn’t really make sense. It’s not involuntary, by any definition of the word that I’ve seen.
Almost anyone can find a partner simply through effort. Diet, exercise, hygiene, etiquette, dressing nicely, socializing, actively seeking a partner. Notice something about that list? Pretty much everyone can do those things. It’s just a matter of effort.
Yes, there are some exceptions, for example from people with severe disability, but those people rarely call themselves “incels.” The majority are people who are perfectly capable of doing these things.
If you don’t practice basketball and you don’t even go to the tryouts, you don’t get to say that your not making the team was “involuntary.”
The bit you’ve missed off your strange list is being someone a woman would want to be around. Incel fits perfectly because they think they should just get women with no effort whatsoever.
As someone who was previously involuntarily celibate, I have to say that this comment really misses the actual problem, which is mental health. I had basically been suffering from some combination of depression, social anxiety, and high functioning autism from around age 8. This didn’t leave me with much in the way of friends or social skills, but it didn’t reduce in the slightest the horniness I felt.
To me, trying to figure out how to get women to have sex with me felt like dying of thirst on a desert island covered in land mines. In my constantly precarious mental and social situations, I was always terrified of trying anything because I feared that doing the wrong thing would lose me the few friends (ie, acquaintances who tolerated me) that I had. And I feared that letting on to anyone that I had any sexual interest in anyone ever - that I had any sexual urge at all - would lead to everyone I knew immediately abandoning me. And this, I was quite sure,would result in my own death via suicide. This was the case to the point that, one time, my friends asked me if I was gay, probably assuming I was closeted. They were right. I was closeted. I just wasn’t gay.
So since I couldn’t talk to anyone in real life about my problem, I turned to the internet. I ended up in /r/seduction and… was immediately grossed out. It was weird and manipulative and unnatural and and just generally unappealing to me as someone who was committed to treating other people with basic human dignity. So instead I turned to the normal/liberal/leftist side of the internet, which was… unhelpful to say the least.
Saying that it is voluntary assumes that the steps needed are straightforward and obvious. But you might as well say that primitive tribes were voluntarily living without electricity for 200,000 years. After all, you just have to spin a magnet! Just put the work in! What’s wrong with them?
I notice a severe lack of ‘working on self and mental health’ amongst other really important things that were missed in that incredibly short list. Which is the central problem with an Incel. It’s a central problem with many things.
Also just finding someone isn’t an instant sign of successful in relationships. There are plenty of dysfunctional relationships that are evidence that a person might even be more healthier alone and working on self in order to set standards on finding better relationships than just be in such a relationship all just to avoid being labelled involuntary celibate.
Personally I always disliked the word Incel as a stand-in for antisocial personality disorder. Cuz really that is what it is. Sex or no sex. They have the same attitude even if they were getting some. They just complain about the lack of sex (or have poor view about women in general) cuz that’s the only symptom they usually notice and come up against that might be hinting there is a deeper problem with themselves.