morlock-holmes:

soulvomit:

This came up for me, apropos of this thread, and it’s some insight I have into incel psychology.

I feel like I have known SO MANY people who have trouble in their relationships, who are basically… too romantic about their relationships, and in some cases they’ve internalized dating mores that are profoundly out of step with their world, and internalized certain expectations about what falling in love is supposed to feel like, and that’s why they don’t have partners - or they don’t have good relationships. And this isn’t a straight-male-only problem. Yes, I’ve known plenty of women who basically have the same psychology as incels, they’re just a little less likely to actually be virgins. I was in spaces that were actively trying to teach women to date “correctly” (by pre-Boomer standards), and noticed the predictable pattern of really religious middle aged women who couldn’t find a “Godly man.” There was often lots of passionately misandrist sentiment that they expressed, but they were able to cloak it in societal viewpoints about normie gender roles (whereas incel misogyny doesn’t tend to get a pass except with other incels.)

I had this problem for a long time, and when I think about ways that I used to express myself in relationships that would end up with my partners thinking I was unhinged - it always made them uncomfortable - it had to do with the models I had growing up, which were hugely based in the way that emotions and relationships were described in classic literature and Hayes Code TV. Not even contemporary 80s material.

I’ve known too many men who basically were precocious kids also reared on classics, who basically had all of this deep seated 19th century stuff to unpack, and later got labeled incels if they didn’t overcome it.

I suspect you can be about 20 years behind and find people who are on your page, who are also cultural late adopters, and find other people who are probably also cultural late adopters, or be with someone who is just slightly an earlier adopter than you, and you’ll be fine. 

But once you’re behind by more than half a century, you’re probably boned. And by boned, I mean unboned.

I’d say, if I understand this correctly, that it’s almost the opposite; that a lot of incels wanted to take on the feminine roll in courtship, i.e. taking on a roll where they passively react to various suitors.

And then when it becomes clear that that isn’t working at all, they gravitate towards traditional explanations about gender roles because those provide an explanation of why their preferred strategy isn’t actually working.

It also works because it’s any kind of explanation at all, whereas more progressive views on dating take on this kind of mystical “Just be a good person and things will work out, stop trying to overcomplicate things” approach and are, to be honest, often proffered by complete hypocrites who are usually doing things that they can’t or don’t want to explicitly talk about.

A 19th century etiquette manual is at least something you can understand and do.