Against Incel Bashing

The term incel is used to blur the line between misogynistic weirdo and person who has trouble finding dates

1 The bashers

I am going to spend a lot of this article quoting Scott Alexander. This is because all the best things to say on the topic have already been said by him.

Many years ago, Ellen Pao, former CEO of Reddit released a rather curious Tweet.

Somehow, I sense that she did not have “help them find girlfriends” in mind as the solution.

In a Wired article, Pao helpfully clarified who and what she was talking about, writing:

THE WORLD HAS recently become more terrifyingly aware of incels, which, if you don’t already know, stands for “involuntary celibate.” It’s an underground coalition of mainly men who complain about how society actively and unfairly deprives them of sex, often, they say, because they are too ugly or too fat.

It is, of course, nonsense. Incels are usually conspiracy theorists, not victims, who believe the world is purposely denying them their fundamental right to sex on demand—and who share many values and tactics with white supremacist, men’s rights, and alt-right groups. Self-declared incels encourage violent acts, including the “incel rebellion” in Toronto that killed 10 people and injured 20 more.

In the article, Pao explains that tech companies should then crack down on these people, trying to get them fired for their private speech online. After all, they are apparently conspiracy theorists some of whom encourage violent acts and “share many values and tactics with white supremacists,” and other groups. Such claims are, apparently, not the kind of things that require a source or evidence—they are simply known.

Jia Tolentino has another article titled The Rage of the Incels, wherein she claims that “Incels aren’t really looking for sex. They’re looking for absolute male supremacy.” Big if (and only if) true! She begins her article by presenting various people who are righteous victims—those who are alone and unloved and have never had sex but don’t feel entitled to sex, she claims. These heroes include an autistic man and a disabled woman. These people “process a difficult social position with generosity and grace.” She clarifies that when she bashes incels, she’s not talking about those who are involuntarily celibate—the label is a technical term:

The label that Minassian and others have adopted has entered the mainstream, and it is now being widely misinterpreted. Incel stands for “involuntarily celibate,” but there are many people who would like to have sex and do not. (The term was coined by a queer Canadian woman, in the nineties.) Incels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof.

If what incels wanted was sex, they might, for instance, value sex workers and wish to legalize sex work. But incels, being violent misogynists, often express extreme disgust at the idea of “whores.” Incels tend to direct hatred at things they think they desire; they are obsessed with female beauty but despise makeup as a form of fraud. Incel culture advises men to “looksmaxx” or “statusmaxx”—to improve their appearance, to make more money—in a way that presumes that women are not potential partners or worthy objects of possible affection but inconveniently sentient bodies that must be claimed through cold strategy.

A few things about this paragraph are odd. For one, the author seems not to consider the possibility that some of the people she bashes want a companion in life—there is more that is valuable about a relationship than just sex. Thus, sex work would not suffice (I support legalizing sex work, for what it’s worth).

The negative response to the phrases “looksmaxx” and “Statusmaxx” is even odder. Claiming that being wealthy makes people more interested in you—a true fact—does not mean one values potential partners merely as sentient bodies to be claimed through cold strategy anymore than trying to dress nicely to attract partners does. If one wants love, doing things that make oneself more likely to find love is a good idea. In fact, the author seems to agree that Statusmaxxing works, when she claims “a rich straight white man, no matter how unpleasant, will always receive enthusiastic handshakes and good treatment at banking institutions; he will find ways to get laid.”

This is one of the most popular articles on Google about incels. And yet it’s unbelievably confused. It’s a bit like claiming that if you try to be nice to attract friends, that means you regard them merely as sentient bodies to be claimed through cold strategy.

When reading these articles, one notices a troubling throughline. There are a few token people who have trouble finding love who the author finds sympathetic. But the author ambiguously equivocates between those who are upset at their lack of romantic success and those who harbor genuinely sexist or objectionable views. If your gripe is with men who are violent or sexist, then criticize men who are violent and sexist. But the term incel is not helpful—it muddies the waters too much, and gives high-status people an excuse to viciously berate those low-status people who are miserable and unloved and alone.

2 Radicalizing the romanceless

Scott Alexander has an article from 2014, which is one of my favorite of his articles titled Radicalizing The Romanceless. The whole thing is very worth reading and if you haven’t read it, you should stop what you’re doing, boil a nice pot of coffee, and read it immediately before finishing this. In it, he describes a guy named Henry who had five wives, got arrested three times for domestic violence issues, and cheated on his fifth wife with his fourth wife, who he’d been violent towards. Scott writes:

When I was younger – and I mean from teenager hood all the way until about three years ago – I was a ‘nice guy’. And I said the same thing as every other nice guy, which is “I am a nice guy, how come girls don’t like me?”

There seems to be some confusion about this, so let me explain what it means, to everyone, for all time.

It does not mean “I am nice in some important cosmic sense, therefore I am entitled to sex with whomever I want.”

It means: “I am a nicer guy than Henry.”

Or to spell it out very carefully, Henry clearly has no trouble attracting partners. He’s been married five times and had multiple extra-marital affairs and pre-marital partners, many of whom were well aware of his past domestic violence convictions and knew exactly what they were getting into. Meanwhile, here I was, twenty-five years old, never been on a date in my life, every time I ask someone out I get laughed at, I’m constantly teased and mocked for being a virgin and a nerd whom no one could ever love, starting to develop a serious neurosis about it.

And here I was, tried my best never to be mean to anyone, pursued a productive career, worked hard to help all of my friends. I didn’t think I deserved to have the prettiest girl in school prostrate herself at my feet. But I did think I deserved to not be doing worse than Henry.

In the article, Scott bashes the bashers of “nice guys.” He argues that the phrase nice guy is ambiguous and is popular for exactly that reason—it allows high-status people to mock and tease those who struggle to find love, but when pressed on it, they can claim the moral high ground. They’re just criticizing those who are entitled and sexist. An article by Jezebel even sort of admits to the truth of this charge, when it claims “What’s on offer isn’t just an opportunity to snort derisively at the socially awkward; it’s a chance to talk about the very real problem of male sexual entitlement.” Scott’s thesis is that the second part of the sentence is an excuse to engage in the first without facing social sanction. If you’re an adult and you make fun of nerds, that’s unacceptable, so you wrap your mockery for nerdy men who have trouble finding love in a thin veneer of social justice rhetoric.

The term nice guys has fallen somewhat out of favor since 2014. Taking its place has been the concern over “incels,” the bashers of whom are very clear to tell us that they’re only going after selfish jerks, not normal people who are miserable and unloved.

In his article, Scott argues convincingly that this isn’t a sufficient reply. He gives the following analogy:

Okay. Let’s extend our analogy with Dan from above.

It was wrong of me to say I hate poor minorities. I meant I hate Poor Minorities! Poor Minorities is a category I made up that includes only poor minorities who complain about poverty or racism.

No, wait! I can be even more charitable! A poor minority is only a Poor Minority if their compaints about poverty and racism come from a sense of entitlement. Which I get to decide after listening to them for two seconds. And If they don’t realize that they’re doing something wrong, then they’re automatically a Poor Minority.

I dedicate my blog to explaining how Poor Minorities, when they’re complaining about their difficulties with poverty or asking why some people like Paris Hilton seem to have it so easy, really just want to steal your company’s money and probably sexually molest their co-workers. And I’m not being unfair at all! Right? Because of my new definition! I know everyone I’m talking to can hear those Capital Letters. And there’s no chance whatsoever anyone will accidentally misclassify any particular poor minority as a Poor Minority. That’s crazy talk! I’m sure the “make fun of Poor Minorities” community will be diligently self-policing against that sort of thing. Because if anyone is known for their rigorous application of epistemic charity, it is the make-fun-of-Poor-Minorities community!

I’m not even sure I can dignify this with the term “motte-and-bailey fallacy”. It is a tiny Playmobil motte on a bailey the size of Russia.

The same basic point holds with incels. Just replace the word poor minorities with the word InPoors, meaning those who are involuntarily poor, and keep the capitalization the same. If a person spent lots of time mocking those who were involuntarily poor, but at the first sign of criticism made sure to clarify that they were only talking about a small group of prejudiced poor, we would not consider that to be a legitimate excuse. Yet for some reason, when people spend lots of time mocking incels and suggesting they get kicked out of tech companies, that’s regarded as completely hunky dory.

This is not to deny that some of the people who Pao complains about have sexist views. I’m sure some of them do, just like I’m sure that there are some prejudiced poor people. My claim is that just as it would be monstrous to use the term InPoors, which literally means involuntarily poor, to mean prejudiced assholes, it is similarly bad to have a term that literally means “person who is celibate involuntarily” to mean sexist assholes. When you have a group of people that is miserable and vulnerable, it is bad to have a term used exclusively to equivocate between them and real sexists.

3 Are incels really Incels?

I have a friend who took a class in which there was a kid who was a big Marxist. In every class discussion, this kid said things like “the Marxist view on this is,” or “well a Marxian analysis reveals” or “well the Proletariat really need to.” He made sure to, through all his actions, firmly establish his role as the resident Marxist.

At one point in the class, they discussed the parallels between poverty and romancelessness. We generally think that poor people are part of a marginalized group, one that is unfairly treated badly. We often think the government should do something about this fact. And yet virtually no one thinks this about the romanceless. Why is this?

Of course, there are some reasons why addressing the income disparity is easier than addressing the romance or sex disparity. Paying people to date or have sex with those who have trouble finding love would be unlikely to succeed. So it’s not clear that there is a great solution. But nonetheless, it’s strange that we tend to have sympathy for the poor, while something nearer to revulsion for the romanceless. We spend a lot of time thinking about government policies to help the poor, but very little thinking about government policies to help those who have trouble finding love.

Suddenly, in this discussion, the Marxist shed his Marxism and turned into a massive social conservative in the blind of an eye. “Why don’t these Incels just go to the gym. They should stop complaining and start working on themselves. These people should pull themselves up by their bootstraps,” he claimed. A few things are notable about this case. For one, contrary to the claims of those who defend Incel bashing, the term Incel was not reserved for the genuinely sexist. It was used broadly to mean those who couldn’t find dates. I submit that most of the time that Incel is used, it is directed at the socially awkward, potentially after they express romantic interest in embarrassing ways, rather than the genuinely sexist.

Second, those on the left, supposed to have the most sympathy for the downtrodden seem to be the ones most willing to bash Incels. Discussing those who have trouble finding dates brings out the far right, poor bashing in the most radical of Marxists.

People don’t need an excuse to mock nerds who have trouble finding dates. That people do this is the premise of around half of movies. But giving people an excuse to do it under the thin veneer of social justice is pathetic. And from the way the term is actually deployed, in real conversation rather than in think pieces that paint it in the most favorable possible light, it becomes immaculately clear that this is so. As Scott says:

I live in a world where feminists throwing weaponized shame at nerds is an obvious and inescapable part of daily life. Whether we’re “mouth-breathers”, “pimpled”, “scrawny”, “blubbery”, “sperglord”, “neckbeard”, “virgins”, “living in our parents’ basements”, “man-children” or whatever the insult du jour is, it’s always, always, ALWAYS a self-identified feminist saying it. Sometimes they say it obliquely, referring to a subgroup like “bronies” or “atheists” or “fedoras” while making sure everyone else in nerddom knows it’s about them too.

…

Let’s not mince words. There is a growing trend in Internet feminism that works exactly by conflating the ideas of nerd, misogynist, virgin, person who disagrees with feminist tactics or politics, and unlovable freak.

I have a friend who I will leave unnamed. This person is quite a delight—one of my favorite 10 or so people on Earth. I’d seriously consider dying for him. This friend also has a lot of time finding love. This is in part because he’s not the best-looking guy in the world, and is also on the spectrum and consequently not especially gifted at reading social norms.

I have another acquaintance. This guy has often expressed to me various views that many people would regard as sexist. Despite this, he has no trouble finding women to date.

Occasionally, my friend who has trouble finding people to date has expressed his sadness about this. He’s discussed the misery of being alone—of being unable to find anyone to love. In fact, he’s even described that he thinks that some of his romantic woes are caused by people’s romantic interest in others not being exclusively proportional to their possession of positive traits.

When a person does this, it’s claimed that they’re entitled or sexist in some way. People object that they are blaming women for not wanting to date them and that this is deeply evil. But why is this?

Fat acceptance activists often complain about overweight people being treated badly. For example, they claim that people don’t treat fat acceptance activists as people, are unwilling to befriend them or consider dating them because of social stigma, and are treated badly by various institutions. When they do this, no one claims that they are acting entitled.

Yet how is this different from my friend complaining about not getting sufficient interest from women? Why is it that the word entitled gets used to describe one of these things but not the other? My cynical answer is that entitled doesn’t really have much propositional content—saying a person feels entitled to something is roughly saying “they want this thing and they are bad.”

Everyone would be outraged if a person described a poor person as feeling “entitled” to the money of rich people. And yet poor people actually do want the money of rich people often. Many of them do think that the government should take the money of rich people and give it to poor people. I don’t think this is objectionable because I support taxing the rich.

But if this is not entitlement, in what sense is a person complaining about the opposite sex not being interested in them entitlement. They’re not even claiming anything should be done about it! They’re just expressing that because they’re alone and unloved and no one has so much as kissed them or held their hand, it makes them upset. That’s not such a terrible thing! That doesn’t sound like some objectionable form of entitlement. What is the definition of entitlement that says this is entitlement but a poor person supporting food stamps isn’t entitled?

4 The argument from Incels by definition suck

The incel bashers have a general reply to any point that could be made in favor of the incels. This point generally involves saying “you might make X reasonable point on behalf of the incels, but the incels don’t believe this point because they suck and are sexist.” For example, Tolentino says:

And incels, in any case, are not actually interested in sexual redistribution; they don’t want sex to be distributed to anyone other than themselves. They don’t care about the sexual marginalization of trans people, or women who fall outside the boundaries of conventional attractiveness.

Now, maybe this is true of incels, if one by that term only means a group of sexist people that Tolentino has defined. But if, as I submit, the term incel is used more broadly and weaponized to victim blame those who have trouble finding love, then it’s totally false. Most who are miserable and alone feel the plight of others who are miserable and alone, be they trans people or women who fall outside the boundaries of conventional attractiveness. Pao made a similar statement:

It’s an underground coalition of mainly men who complain about how society actively and unfairly deprives them of sex, often, they say, because they are too ugly or too fat.

It is, of course, nonsense. Incels are usually conspiracy theorists, not victims, who believe the world is purposely denying them their fundamental right to sex on demand—and who share many values and tactics with white supremacist, men’s rights, and alt-right groups.

Why is it that these people keep feeling the need to point out that incels suck as a response to somewhat legitimate grievances (obviously that they phrase uncharitably) like that people who are ugly or fat have trouble finding love, and that that is not their fault? My hypothesis explains this; the term incel is weaponized to eliminate all the legitimate grievances of people who have trouble finding love.

Suppose that you’re a good-looking guy. You see a weird autistic nerd ask someone out in a socially awkward way and get rejected. You want to make fun of them. But you have an inner conscience that tells you not to do mean things. So you pause for a moment to consider whether this is really such a good idea. “Well he’s an incel,” you think. “So it must be permissible, perhaps even supererogatory.” (This is inaccurately assuming that jocks frequently think in the language of deontic categories).

This also explains the vast treadmill of phrases that people have come up with that mean “guy who can’t find people to date and/or sexist pig.” There are many of these terms; dudebro, Incel, nice guy, good guy, and more. Why so many terms? Why is it that every time people come up with a word for those sexist pigs it also happens to be that it can be easily confused for a word describing someone who has trouble finding dates?

5 Do incels have legitimate grievances?

The incel bashers often note that incels make points like “it’s sort of unfair that some people who are really crappy have no trouble finding people to date while others who are very virtuous find it impossible to find anyone to date them as a result of things that are largely outside of their control like their looking ugly and being ignorant of social norms.” The counterargument they provide is always “but the incels suck, so they can’t have a legitimate point.” But do they?

Yes, yes they do. It is an unfortunate part of our world that often very crappy people have an easy time finding love while very nice people have an impossible time at it. Bullies, for instance, “are sexier, more popular and have more dates than their victims when they grow up.” Narcissists have more sex and an easier time getting into relationships than non-narcissists. Autistic people tend to have a much harder time finding love than non-autistic people. The same is true for smarter people. To explain this you must think one of two things:

1. Narcissists and bullies are great; autists on the other hand suck.

2. Lots of things that determine one’s attractiveness are utterly uncorrelated with their virtue—some are even inversely correlated.

2 is obviously the correct interpretation.

And suppose you’re upset by this fact. People generally think you have a right to be upset by things that are bad and especially bad for you. If a Tornado hits your town, you’re alowed to complain that it’s unfair; that’s not entitlement. Suppose that you’re especially upset that narcissists, abusers, and rapists seem to have absolutely no trouble finding relationships, but somehow you do. You start going on online message-boards where you read stories from other people who are similarly upset about this. You even start using slang; you start referring to the people who suck but have no trouble finding dates as “chads.” Well then, CNN helpfully explains that this means you’re a huge misogynist.

In that article, CNN defines an Incel as a “heterosexual men who blame women and society for their lack of romantic success,” or “someone who has misogynistic viewpoints or behaviors.” But they explain that to figure out if one is an Incel you can look to their behaviors. Incels have “an appearance-based hierarchy, in which how one looks is considered the most essential key to both sexual relationships and one’s place in society.” So you hear someone complaining about having trouble finding dates because they’re ugly, and CNN tells you that means they’re one of those sexist jerks who hates women.

It also explains that Incels use special slang—talking about Chads and Looksmaxxing. So if, after spending time online with people who have similar grievances, you use the term Chad to describe the aforementioned “people who suck but have no trouble finding dates” then CNN says this means people should suspect that you’re one of those sexist incels and be very afraid. If you start using online slang to discuss physical improvements to make yourself better looking, well, that once again means you’re a sexist incel!

Incel means bad person who does bad things. But you figure out that someone is one of those if they talk in ways that indicate they spend time online reading things said by other people who are miserable and alone about their inability to find a date. I’m reminded of another passage by Scott Alexander (I said I’d quote him a lot here):

Everyone is a little bit racist. We know this because there is a song called “Everyone’s A Little Bit Racist” and it is very cute. Also because most people score poorly on implicit association tests, because a lot of white people will get anxious if they see a black man on a deserted street late at night, and because if you prime people with traditionally white versus traditionally black names they will answer questions differently in psychology experiments. It is no shame to be racist as long as you admit that you are racist and you try your best to resist your racism. Everyone knows this.

Donald Sterling is racist. We know this because he made a racist comment in the privacy of his own home. As a result, he was fined $2.5 million, banned for life from an industry he’s been in for thirty-five years, banned from ever going to basketball games, forced to sell his property against his will, publicly condemned by everyone from the President of the United States on down, denounced in every media outlet from the national news to the Podunk Herald-Tribune, and got people all over the Internet gloating about how pleased they are that he will die soon. We know he deserved this, because people who argue he didn’t deserve this were also fired from their jobs. He deserved it because he was racist. Everyone knows this.

So.

Everybody is racist.

And racist people deserve to lose everything they have and be hated by everyone.

This seems like it might present a problem. Unless of course you plan to be the person who gets to decide which racists lose everything and get hated by everyone, and which racists are okay for now as long as they never cross you in any way.

Sorry, there’s that paranoia again.

6 But the incels call themselves incels

I can sense a detractor typing the following: “you act like this was a term foisted by activists on lonely men. But it’s the other way around; people started self-describing using the term, and then people took notice and used the term. There are entire Reddit threads of self-identified incels. And those message boards in fact expressed many genuinely sexist things.”

Let’s go back to the analogy from earlier about InPoors. Imagine that there were a small number of people who identified as InPoors. Many of them said prejudiced things on Reddit. Conservatives who opposed welfare then proceeded to write exactly 10^52 articles in which they discussed the horror of InPoors. These articles described that you can tell a person is an InPoor if they discuss being upset about not having very much money or if they talk in slang that is more common among poor people. They remind you that these are just how you figure out if someone is an InPoor—what the word InPoor means is some prejudiced asshole who thinks employers owe him money because he’s entitled and he also probably hates women! They also often include sentences like “InPoors say that it’s very unfair that the rich don’t pay taxes when so many are so poor, but they don’t really care about poverty—they just feel entitled to other people’s money but don’t think poor trans people deserve money.”

The natural reply here would be the following: yes, it’s true that there are some people using this label to self-describe, and a lot of them suck. But the reason this label has become popular in the culture is clearly because it gives people plausible deniability when they bash poor people. Furthermore, it gives people the ability to shut down any concern anyone raises about the plight of the poor by claiming that this comes from a sense of entitlement and means that one is an InPoor. This is exactly my claim about those who bash incels. There are a few who use it to self-describe, some of whom are actually sexist (in no small part because the frequent demonization of the term results in those who aren’t genuinely sexist avoiding the term like the plague).

The point of this article is not to vindicate the small number of people who are legitimately sexist and call themselves incels, while populating message boards that complain aout women and minorities. It’s about the broader phenomenon of the term incel which has become a cudgel to shame the romanceless. People already do enough of that—there’s no reason to give them a term that provides moral justification for it.