Incels. Jesus. This is how most of us see them: nasty little creeps who can’t imagine women as independent human beings, who see women as tools for their gratification.
Once upon a time, I would have assumed everyone would recoil in disgust at the murderous selfishness of incels, but I guess I was wrong. Here’s how Ross Douthat sees them:
One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane.
What he’s setting up is the argument that maybe the incels are right, and that maybe everyone is owed sex to some degree, and he’s going to bring in an “authority”.
…it brings me to the case of Robin Hanson, a George Mason economist, libertarian and noted brilliant weirdo. Commenting on the recent terrorist violence in Toronto, in which a self-identified “incel” — that is, involuntary celibate — man sought retribution against women and society for denying him the fornication he felt that he deserved, Hanson offered this provocation: If we are concerned about the just distribution of property and money, why do we assume that the desire for some sort of sexual redistribution is inherently ridiculous?
After all, he wrote, “one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met.”
Robin Hanson is also icky. He’s another example of how libertarianism is a corrupt ideology of greed that is destructive to the social contract. And he’s a tenured professor!
It’s a disquieting example of how what we might call hyper-misogyny has crept into academic discourse via sexually frustrated and clearly angry men who believe men are not only entitled to sex but entitled to sex with women they find attractive. It’s not lost on me by any means that the idea that women owe men sex is not at all new. But this is a new frontier in embedding these ideas into formal public policy proposals, particularly ones that ape the language of rights and equality in much the same way modern racists groups do.
That these people are making analogies to the redistribution of wealth is particularly odious. Such a comparison falls apart quickly, for a couple of reasons.
Wealth redistribution is about flaws in capitalism. The system encourages cheating: you can leverage inequities to cause undeserved gains to those individuals who have initial advantages in capital — it is not a system that rewards effort and skill, but one that gives the ones with the mostest more. If you want to talk about fairness, and fair distribution, and equality of opportunity, you’ve just removed yourself from any possibility of doing that within the context of capitalism (or its even more pathological brother, libertarianism), because those words don’t exist in that context. “We ought to share fairly, just like we do in capitalism” is a nonsense sentence.
Unlike money, you can’t accumulate sexual desirability by stealing it from others — it’s not something that can be gathered at the expense of others. And it can’t be redistributed. You can’t arrest Scarlett Johansson for hoarding sexiness, and fine her for 3.2 pounds of good looks, which are then to be given to PZ Myers, who was clearly a bit of a loser in the attractiveness sweepstakes. It just doesn’t work that way. So instead they want to think that sexual attention is something they can demand, that it would be “fair” to insist that attractive people and women in general be compelled to surrender their autonomy. Not just their money, or possessions, but their selves in involuntary service.
Isn’t it odd how a philosophy of individualism and worship of liberty has now come around to arguing for depriving individuals of their freedom…as long as they are young attractive women? The only way they can do that without their heads exploding over the conflict is by denying the humanity of women, which is apparently something conservatives are comfortable with. No surprises there, I guess.
Again, this is a consequence of the near-religious worship of dogmatic capitalism. Everything is viewed as a transaction, with profits and losses, with numerical values that can be auctioned off. Every time someone utters the evil phrase, “sexual market value”, you are hearing the canonization of a true perversion of human relationships. But this isn’t how sex works! It’s a gift of shared intimacy, voluntarily given, between two or more people. You can’t compel that (which is not to say that some generous people can’t give it in return for money — but even that is a willing exchange. Sex work isn’t rape. Rape isn’t sex work.)
That leads into the other problem with Douthat’s perspective. Incels aren’t just young men howling in frustration for more sex, because heck, that would be almost every human being going through puberty. These are people who want to punish and kill women for being objects of desirability, who have so twisted their idea of sex that it becomes nothing but a violent act in their minds. All the talk of impractical policies of sex redistribution is a smoke screen, irrelevant to the real issue: these are horrible damaged people who think murder for the sake of their penises is justifiable, and who have such a misbegotten idea of what sex is that they think hatred and violence will satisfy their sexual urges.
Of course, Douthat is just using this as a stalking horse for his own brand of sexual perversity.
There is an alternative, conservative response, of course — namely, that our widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility might be dealt with by reviving or adapting older ideas about the virtues of monogamy and chastity and permanence and the special respect owed to the celibate.
Those “older ideas” also involved demanding the submission of women and denying them autonomy, it was just a more genteel version of the same resolution, where a wealthy gentleman with an income above £10,000 a year could purchase a young lady of good breeding to be his kept spouse, once again reducing everything to a simple quantifiable transaction, where the women are kept in line with an absence of capital.
Do I even need to touch that Catholic nonsense of special respect owed to the celibate
? Why? What does celibacy add to the virtue of a person…especially when so often it was only the appearance of abstinence?
Well, I suppose everybody is entitled to sex in some degree.
But what, these guys cannot even get dates with their right (or left) hands?
So, if there’s 10,000 repulsive guys that want to fnck Douthat up the bunghole, their wishes should be “accomodated”? Maybe he should try it out, and let us know how it works.
Hmmm…George Mason? Where have I seen that name in recent news? Oh, yeah. So is this Robin Hanson, by chance, one of the Koch brothers’ hires?
Everyone should understand what “friendzone” really means.
There has been a period in my life where I have been a literal “involuntary celibate”.
I thought that the world was unfair.
I thought that women were playing with me.
I thought that I could improve myself, become more attractive, be a better person and a better potential partner.
To my shame, I was in the PUA and I did plenty of things I regret, and /even then/ I never thought once that I was entitled to someone else’s body.
These are not physically ugly people, or people with mental problems, or whatever.
These are assholes.
These are people unwilling to take responsibility for their moral failures.
Maybe we need to set up modern monastic enclaves where these guys can enjoy one another’s enlightened company, free from the corrupting influence of women. Build a high enough wall around it and they can spend their days growing vegetables and making wine. Maybe we can all show our appreciation in monthly ceremony where they are presented with small, tasteful tokens representing how many months or years they have passed without being a gross cancerous lesion on society.
Why don’t we just legalize sex work?
Seriously, If these guys feel their owed sex then the people providing it are owed money. Seems like a win/win for me. They get laid, the sex worker charges them extra and everyone goes home happy.
You can regulate prostitution and restrict it to certain areas, make sure the sex workers are tested for STD’s on a regular basis and hire security so if some misogynistic asshole decides to be a problem, they can throw him out on his ass, or, better yet, have him arrested.
Really it seems like the only real reason to keep prostitution illegal is religious pandering.
Oh really???
Frank Zappa said it long ago.
Q. What is the ugliest part of your body???
A. I think it is your mind!!!
The your refers to incels, Nazis, fundie xians and the other near countless
people who are net negatives for the progress of our society and civilization.
IMO, PZ Myers mind is the exact opposite of ugly.
Just speaking for myself and an unknown but probably large number of people.
In the long run who you are and what you do is far more important than your surface appearance.
Why don’t we just invent sex robots???
1. What gave the internet its start was…porn.
In general humans are endlessly fascinated with everything about sex.
2. So what is going to be the kickstarting app for personal robots???
Probably sex robots
Some of the incels might complain that they want live humans rather than sex robots but I don’t see that as a major hurdle.
What they really want isn’t a live human but something a lot closer to a sex robot.
Hey, Robin Hanson, he’s the guy from Overcoming Bias, the sister blog to LessWrong.
@ Raven,There you go, taking work away from honest, hard working humans and giving it to cold, emotionless robots *SMH*.
;)
“Free Pussy”? That sounds like socialism.
Odd that it’s all about sexual rather than intimate relationships, eh?
After a bit of perusal, a few hours with a typical escort appears to cost around the same as one would expect a nice “third date” or decent hotel room. This shit isn’t about sex, it’s clearly about subjugation of women fed by a deep insecurity. I’m fat, old(ish), and not particularly attractive, but apparently I could have an evening of sexual pleasure with a woman “out of my league” for about the same time and money investment as going to a concert. You don’t want a woman, you want a Realdoll that’ll make you a sandwich.
Sorry, we all have to pay, compromise, and relinquish power in our relationships. Whether they’re professional, friendly or “boom chicka wow wow”. Pay up, or learn to act like a human being.
Seriously, best advice I can give to all these scumbags: Find that shriveled seed of humanity left inside you and let it sprout. Just be honestly nice and kind to those around you and someone will notice. She might not look like Keira Knightley, but you ain’t no Brad Pitt. You want great sex? Put in the effort to form relationships like a grown up. Otherwise, just STFU and keep saving up for that Realdoll and wackin off to Pornhub.
I really do think we shold push “bodily autonomy” harder as a fundamental basis for human rights.
Clearest legal argument for abortion access, and it also puts an end to this shit: no human has a right to another human’s body.
Humans do have a right to society meeting their basic needs, and we may need to redistribute wealth to achieve that goal. But “another person’s body” is not a basic need.
If you think that incels problem is lack of access to sex, then you do not understand that community. They can pay for sex now. It is slightly harder than it would be if prostitution were legal, but it is easily doable.
It is not sex they want, it is to control and dominate women. They are horrified at women having the freedom to choose and in making that choice, preferring someone other than the incel.
Their ire is focused on a fictional version of reality. Like Nazis scapegoating jews or the KKK scapegoating African Americans, the problems incels point to are not real. Because they aren’t real, they cannot be satisfied by any real action.
They are members of an extreme cult-like community and need to be deprogrammed. There is no way to satisfy them through capitulation.
The abyss of (male) human minds is not a new thing. I found this yesterday, here is a seventh century ethics and law practice living on to the present: (trigger warning)
https://bit.ly/20RqfFz
I am aware the apologists to this practice do not represent a majority of their community (I hope). I just want to remind you that these horrors pop up everywhere in all ages, like cancer, and sometimes even win official approval. Especially in males with a dominant position.
The incels are, despite the occasional spree killers, just a tiny, insignificant fraction of the fungal swamp. The ones who do the most damage are the ones who are allowed to operate under the radar, or even openly, year in and year out. Weinstein comes to mind, but he is certainly not the worst. I want to pour bleach over my brain after watching this stuff.
Amen! Seriously, is there a more basic or fundamental right? This should be the bedrock our freedoms are built upon.
“Their ire is focused on a fictional version of reality. Like Nazis scapegoating jews or the KKK scapegoating African Americans, the problems incels point to are not real. Because they aren’t real, they cannot be satisfied by any real action.”
You have just described any number of reality-averse political and religious bastards, like the followers of Orban in Hungary, and Golden Dawn in Greece. The fuckers at “Fox and Friends are scapegoating all poor, and sense no cognitive dissonance at all. It is difficult to define a toxic cult-like group, but I know one when I see one.
● If what is meant really is the Internet, no. That was not DARPA’s reason.
● If what is meant is the world wide web (which is probably what is meant), then also no. That was not CERN’s reason.
● On the off-chance what is meant is Usenet, another no.
It is possible once the Internet (and hence the world wide web) became easily accessible to the public, p0rn (which certainly did exist on all three prior to that point, albeit not(? rarely?) commercial) was one of the driving factors in convincing people to go to the then-hassle of getting the proper equipment and a connection. Loosely speaking — and ignoring the many many years of hard work and creativity put in by people all over the planet to get to that point — it might be called a , but “alternative fact” seems a better description.
Not sure if you were responding to me, but:
@19 Ragutis
Not you specifically. Solving the problem by giving incels sex is a solution that has been proposed a lot in the last few days. I was responding more broadly to the notion.
I had some friends who got into the pick-up artist culture a decade or so ago (with the expected results of zero satisfying encounters and increasingly disturbing misogyny). That lead me into encounters with the beginnings of this incel shit. I’ve kept my eye on them since (mostly through wehuntedthemammoth).
It’s jarring to see all these media people stumble on them, think, “Oh, I didn’t get laid as much as I wanted in high school and college, I get it,” and come up with absolute horseshit ideas in response.
That’s what I was broadly replying to. The idea that prostitution is the solution to their problems is just wrong. They are far stranger and more deviant than that.
I read Douthat’s article. He also discusses an article by Amia Srinivasan, which Douthat summarizes thus:
And it’s not so much that Douthat agrees with Robin Hanson. It’s more like, he brings up Hanson, he brings up Srinivasan, draws a comparison between the two, and throws his hands up saying “who knows?” Basically the article is about Douthat’s inability to discern good ideas from bad.
As far as incels go, I feel that it has a lot to do with the unrealistic expectations placed on men. e.g. men are supposed to take charge of everything, measure their success by how much sex they have, only have emotions of anger and violence. And rather than questioning these expectations, incels take them for granted, and they blame women for not allowing men to live up to their expectations.
When Douthat suggests celibates are owed respect, that’s not completely wrong. Men’s social status is often measured by their sexual performance, and we need to fight that. Unfortunately the “conservative” way of respecting celibates is laughable. Celibates aren’t respected, they’re pedestalized, and they’re constrained to taking very particular life paths.
This part, at least, is true. Feminists and SJWs have been calling incels disgusting and dangerous for years, but nobody paid attention because the incels were only hurting people they didn’t care about.
The problem with pushing autonomy is a fundamental human right is that it immediately slams hard into the capitalist expectation that you will work an 8 hour day at least 5 days a week (which is itself a reduction in past expectations). Jeff Bezos does not want you telling the people in his warehouses that they should be treated humanely and respectfully and that their labor should be done for work that gives them satisfaction and a living wage.
I agree with Siggy that celibates are owed respect…just not for the celibacy part. They should be treated as human beings. But sometimes ideas are bad and ought to be disparaged, and sometimes ideas are just choices that do no harm, may be a good fit to the person making them, but bestow no special, exceptional status on them, and particularly do not require condemnation.
That Incels are calling for women to be provided for them isn’t that surprising. These are people with serious issues that need to be addressed but instead congregate to reinforce their worst, most self destructive notions, so unreasonable ideas have fertile ground to propagate. If you believe that you have a disability that renders you inherently sexually unattractive (and are talking to people who agree with you because they feel the same way), then it’s not too far a reach to believe that society should provide you with the same accommodations it provides other disabilities. If everybody you saw had a red balloon, but you had no idea how to get one and whenever you brought it up people scolded you for being a terrible person for acting like you were entitled to the same red balloon everybody else has, you’d be pretty bitter after a while too. So, the self-reinforcing downward spiral continues.
That anybody else is treating their calls to be provided with sex as anything other than a Swiftian “Modest Proposal” designed to highlight the absurdity of such a request, shows how screwed up our culture really is. Incels need help, but it’s to overcome the social issues they have that are holding them back, not to be indulged in those very same issues. That Ross Douthat sees their issues and first thinks what woman can do to accommodate them, shows the mix of rape culture and toxic masculinity that’s (at least partially) fuelling this problem.
I’ve been saying that for years in the context of the badly misnamed pro-lifers.
They aren’t pro-life.
The are forced birthers and female slavers.
Female slavers, because if you don’t control your own body and life, then what are you? A slave.
@18
It’s more correct to say that what drove the mass market adoption of the internet and world wide web was…porn.
Just ask Google. This article from the Guardian was written in 2002.
“Pornographic sites are also one of the few web services that make money.”
This is no longer true of course. Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook etc.. are now among the largest companies in the world.
So what is going to drive Virtual Reality, and Personal Robots?
Most likely…sex. Hopefully, it will work for the incels.
I have no illusions that legalizing sex workers is a solution to misogyny, but is vaping better than smoking? It may be a small step, but at least maybe in the right direction.
These people clearly aren’t going to be deprogrammed overnight. Legalized prostitution and sex therapy may not be the magic cocktail, but it might be part of a start.
It’s like A Modest Proposal, except the author thought it was a choice of cannibalism vs. becoming a breatharian. Douthat really has a way of lowering my expectations every time I read his garbage.
I’ll just predict right now that this is not going to be a very entertaining kook fight. Let the right wing assholes beat the other right wing assholes, for all I care — just wake me up when it’s done.
So, Douthat thinks that “widespread isolation and unhappiness and sterility” is greater now than in the past? No evidence of that.
If these men feel so strongly that women have “wronged” them, well, being happy is the best revenge. Enjoying the life you have, and not wallowing in bitterness about what you don’t, makes you happy.
And, for anyone who feels isolated, sterile, and unhappy? Everyone knows that volunteering to somehow help other people is the most certain way to increase happiness, meaning, and connection, that’s known to humankind. As a side benefit, helping other people makes one more attractive to everyone (not just women), as happy, involved people who live meaningful lives are always more attractive. And even if they don’t hook up while volunteering, they’ll be a lot happier and can think about all the good they did and be proud of it.
No one has to remain isolated, sterile, and unhappy: they are choosing to. And no coercive social policies that treat women as less than human are required.
If Douthat’s so damn concerned about these men, how about suggesting that they try volunteer work? That would actually be of help them.
Prostitution is illegal?
Where?
Just in case anyone missed it.
Douthat has always been a seriously warped Catholic extremist.
He is a raging misogynist, anti-contraception, anti-abortion, and
continually defends and praises the Catholic church, no matter how many
scandals they have.
He frequently just flat out lies about anything and everything.
You can’t believe anything he asserts or states without fact checking it and much or most of the time it is just wrong.
Many years ago, I read on Op-Ed that was so incredibly stupid, I rechecked it to remember the name. It was…Ross Douthat.
Siggy @21
This statement is accurate for every Douthat article. He is an eternal exercise in wrongness.
Problem 1.
Sex worker =/= sex bot. Sex workers are human beings who have the right to be safe and incels are not safe. Sex workers are also among some if the most marginalized, least protected members of society– we should be supporting them, not expecting them to fix all the would be murdering rapists by sexing them into.. into not hating women? How does that work?
2. Show me one misogynist who learned to respect women by getting his dick wet, paid for or not. Just one. I’ll wait.
3. Legalizing sex work, while it would go a long way toward making sex workers safer, won’t solve the incel problem, because it’s not a sex or legality of paying for sex problem, it’s an entitlement to social status and an I can’t get the specific person I want to do what I want, because they expect to be able to make their own decisions problem. Not only should sex workers still get the right to exercise autonomy in choosing their clients, but to put it bluntly, sex work is low status in most societies so no guy gains social status by sexing prostitutes in the same way he does by sexing the quarterback’s girlfriend.
Incels want the self perception of being the BMOC , not the self perception of being some pathetic guy buying sex off the street. That option is already available to them, they want something else, besides, if they were concerned with legality, they wouldn’t be cheering for murder and rape.
It’s not about sex. It’s about image and misogyny, status and toxic masculinity, women objectified as commodities. You don’t fix that by treating women, sex workers or not, as commodities rather than people. Legalizing sex work wouldn’t make sex workers obligated to take on clients who are unsafe, in fact, it would probably decrease that factor, so not much help to incels after all.
@Ragutis #28:
I agree with you that sex work should be legal, but not as a way to placate Incels. It’s really just “treating” a symptom while ingnoring the underlying problems. Maybe if we stop telling men that sex with women validates their own personal worth, they wouldn’t fall into such a toxic pit of bitterness, self loathing, and rage when it’s more difficult for them to navigate this area of interpersonal relationships than (they perceive) it is for others. Also, maybe if we stop treating sex as a one-sided “safe space” where women are expected to accommodate men’s issues without any regard to what they want, the idea that sex should be provided to Incels in the same way that insulin is provided to diabetics wouldn’t get such traction.
@doubtthat
This cannot be repeated enough.
I second also the argument for bodily autonomy.
The Satanic Temple have even made it one of their sacred tenets.
Sorry, that was @28 Ragutis. Long comment, tiny screen, address tag forgotten, now remedied.
So why don’t we just legalize sex work for the benefit of the sex workers, their customers and society at large?
Any impact it has on idiot…sorry, I meant to say “Incels” is just bonus.
@2 Snarki Son of Loki — you beat me to the punch. Yes, if Douthart wants to be taken seriously, he must offer his daughter up to the horde of unsatisfied alt-righters, then offer his son up the alt-gay-righters. And since a Muslim may take 4 wives, then that leaves a lot of Muslim men involuntarily celibate. So your rules apply to those Muslims you despise so much, Ross? Oooooh, and black men, you’re not too keen on them either….but they probably get horny too! Can they have at your daughter, just to be fair? And gay black Muslims? Your son really owes them some redistribution of ass, correct?
Yeahhhhh, this is not about sex and celibacy, as several commenters noticed. This is about how upset Puritans get when somebody is having more fun than they are. With a healthy dose of controlling those uppity wimminfolk.
But the incels might want to think about beginning to pay for some LTC supplemental health insurance, cuz dudes have a field day in nursing homes and assisted living facilities, simply due to the ratios. My uncle landed a girlfriend on his first afternoon in assisted living. Patience, fellas, patience.
Saying that incels will give up their misogynistic ways if they were sexually active is playing into their game. Their hatred for women isn’t due to their (alleged) celibacy. Incels are just a subset of MRAs who claim to be involuntarily celibate.
Legalizing sex work will not solve this problem, because you still have to allow sex workers the right to choose their clients…and sorry, Incels, there are many reasons you will be rejected.
@jrkrideau #31
Everywhere in the US except Nevada. Sure there are “escort services” and other such things, but they are essentially illegal enterprises run through loopholes.
As I understand libertarianism, its central tenet is that no one may be forced to do anything unless they are actively harming someone else. So I really don’t see how the incel movement is compatible with libertarianism. The idea of government regulation of sexual behavior strikes me as about as un-libertarian an idea as there is. It’s almost as if someone claimed to be an atheist who believes in God. And I’ll bet most libertarians would be just as appalled by the incel movement as anyone here.
That aside, there are lots of people I find attractive who aren’t interested in me, but I fail to see how that is different from any number of other things I’d like to do that I can’t. I’d like to be Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, for example, but my lack of political connections makes that highly unlikely. I’d like to find a job that paid me to sleep until noon and then spend the rest of the day reading good books, but so far I haven’t landed that one either. So if I can’t make it with the adorable 20-something clerk my office just hired, well, just add that to the list of things I’d like to do that I’m never going to. That’s life.
PZ, #41
Yeah, bringing up legalization of sex work in the context of incels sounds quite demeaning to sex workers. It’s like people are saying to women sex workers “we are going to use you as a tool to fix these vile unpredictable assholes who hate women who have sex.”
PZ @41, Saad @44
Yes, thank you. That’s what I was trying to get at in my comment @34 but you both put it much more succinctly.
Too often, that word I emphasized, is disregarded, to argue “always”, EG “everyone thought Newton was crazy and also that Einstein was an idiot, so there you go, who we call crazy are the real geniuses, like ME”.
re “sex workers”
only catching references in passing, excuse if i repeat what was said earlier. Prostitution in Amsterdam and Germany, at least, are well regulated institutions, completely decriminalized, when fully licensed and monitored for health. (yes, I have 1st hand experience, shhhh don’t tell anybody)
It’s also part of a broader cultural pattern. Whenever men have the opportunity to change something about themselves in order to make a part of society more equitable towards women, the solution some people seem to prefer is instead to redistribute that obligation amongst marginalized women. (Husband won’t help clean because he thinks it’s women’s work? Hire a maid!) Its apparently totally reasonable to expect more privileged women not to put up with something so long as the solution is to hire a less privileged woman to put up with it instead and not to pressure men to, you know, actually change the way they view and treat women.
This whole problem would just go away if we could go back to the Good Old Days® where the excess supply of young men could be sent off for cannon fodder.
It may be shocking, but women can do the same thing. I think it is at least partly because they pretty much get any man’s attention with little trouble. But if they don’t, they can be very demanding, too.
wcorvi
Really? Seen many women coalescing around organized promotion of terror campaigns against other genders based on the notion that they are owed sex from perceived high status members of those genders, have you?
thirdmill301 @43
That’s what they say, but it’s been pretty clear from a lot of self-described libertarians that past few years that they really mean it only applies to white men.
wcorvi #49
Are you trolling?
The recognition of body autonomy as a fundamental human right would require that sex work be legal. Requiring sex workers to work for incels or any other horrible human would negate that right to autonomy.
Besides, as noted by several, incelism isn’t about sex, it is about denying agency to women.
Chigau @52
Well, that’s one option.
See, I really don’t think ol’ Russ is the problem. Society has always had odious, little turds who spout nonsense. The problem is that people don’t look away uncomfortably or point and laugh. Dude has a fricking prestigious platform at the once-prestigious Times.
The problem is that there are “serious” people who read this guy’s crap and say, “Gee, I haven’t read that before. How creative. How clever,” rather than screaming, “Eww,” and immediately washing their hands. I suspect these are the 10% of people who started viewing Trump favorably after they got a tax cut out of the dismemberment of the nation, because the 30% who support Trump no matter what don’t read the Times.
Incels are the worst. And I don’t have much to add in terms of them or how to handle them.
However, I feel the need to point out that it isn’t at all unheard of to think emotional/sexual/erotic intimacy is a human need (or a capability that should be use for happiness) and I actually think people are entitled to opportunities for a range of relationships, including sexual ones. I know of at least one feminist who holds similar views.
Incels were socialized incorrectly and society (NOT women generally or worse a particular woman) does owe them better than to saddle them with a toxic self-conception.
Gee, legalizing sex work won’t get rid of misogynistic assholes!? Shocker.
Oh well, guess we shouldn’t do it then.
Two bizarre things that just leap out when conservatives/libertarians advocate the position that incels should be provided sex upon demand are (1) this is the exact opposite position they take when considering income redistribution; and (2) they never, ever, ever, ever, put the shoe on the other foot, and thus cannot even contemplate that women, the disabled, gays, lesbians, transsexuals or people of color may also be involuntarily celibate.
Every conservative and libertarian I know of is against income redistribution to help the poor, the elderly, minorities or women, and never acknowledge the intractable unfairness resulting from centuries in capitalist systems benefiting mostly white males to the detriment of everyone else, an unfairness that results from a geometric progression of oppression, slavery, wage-suppression, land and resource grabbing, discrimination, etc. benefiting only them. Yet, these same people believe we should consider redistribution of sex due to the unfairness to incels?
Why is income redistribution out of the question, horribly unfair to the “haves,” but a legitimate premise with respect to sex? Could it possibly be because the unfairness they see is only to men, mostly white men? Could it be that it’s perfectly legitimate for society to have financially victimized, enslaved, robbed and gypped virtually all constituencies other than white men for hundreds of years, but absolutely should not deprive young white men of sex they are owed?
And, there is never a discussion or even a minimal recognition that the celibacy of other groups of people is even relevant. Many people are involuntarily celibate due to ordinary circumstances, including disabled people, homely people, women over a certain age, gays, transsexuals, etc. But in the interests of fairness, if society is going to provide cis male incels with their choice regardless of the bodily autonomy of their intended partner, does this new rule apply to other involuntarily celibate people? Are the new laws going to force “high status” men to have sex with involuntarily celibate women based upon the demand of those women? Are the laws going to force high status men to have sex with other men if involuntarily gay men demand it?
Of course not. It’s absurd to think it reasonable to force cis white males to have sex with those they don’t want to have sex with. They get to chose, and their needs are important, but anyone else? Nope. Not relevant enough to even acknowledge.
Obviously, this is not about sex, or celibacy, or fairness, or correcting social wrongs, as has been pointed out numerous times above. It’s about who gets control over whom. About men getting to control women, without any concern whatsoever about what that does to women, and without any reciprocity at all. Women’s needs are never even recognized, whether you are talking about their right to bodily autonomy, or their right to have sex upon demand.
It’s just a new iteration of the continuing mind-numbing selfishness and narcissism of conservatives that can see only their own privileged needs, added to their fanatical beliefs that their demands should be met by everyone else, and that they are truly oppressed when others refuse to submit.
By no means do I want to defend Robin Hanson, but from what little I know of his writing (basically what was quoted in the linked TPM piece and a similar one in Slate last week), I got the impression he is trying to make a crap argument against the redistribution of wealth, along the following lines:
1. You think it’s sad that some people don’t have enough wealth
2. I think it’s equally sad that some guys don’t have enough sex
3. Here are a bunch of plainly repugnant arguments about how to redistribute sex so guys aren’t sad
4. If you find the above arguments repugnant, you should also find redistribution of wealth repugnant
5. Submit to my superior libertarian reasoning
None of which invalidates the other criticisms of Hanson’s writing or line of reasoning, just that I thought he’s trying to make a deliberately trollish (reductio ad trollum?) argument AGAINST the redistribution of wealth, not FOR the redistribution of sexual activity. Like I said, I haven’t read his work deeply, so he may very well think he’s making a reasonable proposal, but I came away thinking it’s just exceptionally tasteless satire.
My perception of Incels is not that they fundamentally want sex. What they want is social status among other men, and they are convinced the main way to gain social rank among other men is to have sex with a number attractive women. I base this on what I have read about PUA culture and materials, in which pleasure and satisfaction from sex – even for the men – is never mentioned. All that seems to count is the total number of women bedded.
Paying for sex would not count under this perception.
@59
The only way that loonytarian argument works in any way, is if you equate money with…people and claim they are more or less in the same category.
Comparing apples and oranges except far worse.
It’s simply dumb and wrong.
Regarding the point:
“one might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income…”
On it’s face, I don’t think that sounds entirely unreasonable. Prolonged poverty, unemployment and loneliness can do not so good things to an individual’s state of mind. From a couple of reasonable looking articles I’ve lightly perused, it appears that a lack of sex can have some adverse effects on you as well.
If that’s true, then there’s a new problem. How the hell do you deal with that? It’s not like a doctor can write a prescription for sex. That would kinda go against the entire idea of bodily autonomy.
I have no idea what would be a good way to deal with this issue. Someone further up the thread mentioned legalizing sex work. I’m not exactly opposed to that, but it would have to come with a host of regulations and such. That in itself is an entirely separate discussion.
Better psychiatric care, perhaps?
Oh, regarding my comment about legalizing sex work. I should have mentioned that I also find it perhaps an unsustainable solution to the specific issue of incels. Again, the whole bodily autonomy argument, just because it’s suddenly legal to accept money for sex it obviously doesn’t mean that a sex worker would be required to have sex with whomever.
Women have been in forced celibacy and forced sex work for thousands of years, and still are. Even in Western Democracies, sex trafficking occurs, forced sex work violently imposed, and women routinely raped and assaulted. In the US, women are forced into sex, pregnancy and celibacy in cults such as FDLDS, Quiverfull, etc. And, for thousands of years, women were the sexual property of men, some violently raped, others sexually neglected and outcast. Even today, many cultures view women as the property of husbands and fathers, to be disposed of at whim.
Yet, we are supposed to be worried about a few sexually deprived cis men? Using Richard Dawkins Muslima logic, do these men have any right to complain until all of that is fixed?
I have never understood why some of my educated liberal and moderate friends consider Douthat to be an example of a conservative intellectual who isn’t an extremist. Douthat uses big words on occasion – sometimes incorrectly – but otherwise his ideology is just as bug-nutty insane as Elliot Rogers or Roy Moore.
erichoug, #57
Who said we shouldn’t?
@ erichoug, #57
Or, and this is a wild notion I know but I’m just gonna throw it out there, maybe this topic really doesn’t have anything to do with sex work. Maybe going all “but sex workers exist!” every time incels are discussed is a harmful (to sex workers) distraction that provides unnecessary cover for deeply hateful and extremely dangerous people (that would be the incels).
Just a thought.
It’s the difference between saying underserved black people should have access to good education and saying black people should have access to good education so that white people don’t consider them sub-human anymore.
erichoug (#7)
Because “incels” aren’t really upset about not getting sex. They’re upset about not getting to use their penises to claim the purity of hot young women’s virginal pussies for bragging rights among their peers. (See also what Strewth said at #60.)
Am I the only one who thinks that cartoon is kind of fucked up? Incels should be mocked for their horrible ideas, not for their physical unattractiveness or social awkwardness.
…holy crap. I hope none of these incels work as caregivers for disabled women.
Forgive me, but while the lovely Scarlett is indeed lovely, you yourself evince a great deal of attractiveness by virtue of the use of that brain, incisive comments and a sharing of the intelligence therein.
However, due to your non-availability, I can only take this as a sign of the benchmarks below which I will not consider a partner. They must be similarly intelligent, open to discussion, and also willing to admit where they themselves are learning and changing their minds.
All I can do is hold a quantity of envy towards the lovely Mrs M, who must also be pretty incredible to attract such a specimen.
Heterosexual men — the “incels” in question — already have all those opportunities. If you want everyone to enjoy that privilege, you can advocate against laws that criminalize consensual, adult homosexual sexual contact and deny people the opportunity to couple legally and with the privileges state-recognized marriage affords.
The outcome of equal opportunity will never achieve perfect parity between groups. Women have to live with that every day. Why do straight men think they are special in this regard? The most mockable creature on earth is the spinster who has failed her socialization by not fulfilling her primary functions in life: being fuckable, serving a man, and making and rearing babbies. The pressure placed on men to Be Something, which includes obtaining a trophy sex object, is infinitely more comfortable compared to the pressure placed on women to Be Worthy of Someone’s Attention.
Mike Smith, #56
Yes, but it’s a very different category from needs like food, shelter and healthcare. Unlike those three, this intimacy is neither an inanimate object nor an impersonal service. It requires work on one’s part; it requires give and take; and it matters very much on one’s behavior. And unlike the other three, it also involves a long-term constant emotional and physical investment by another human being. One is much more responsible for making sure they’re doing the right things to secure and maintain the intimacy than one should be for being able to eat enough to live a healthy life.
They do have them. Incels have these opportunities you speak of. Is there a law keeping them from having relationships?
While I agree with your point in general, to make that point about incels is to misrepresent what incels are.
Soon after the Bolshevik revolution, Wilhelm Reich (then known as a Freud protegé, before his Orgone® zealotry) suggested to Lenin that he establish the Workers’ Paradise with free bordellos for the entire male population. (No mention, sfaik, of the proposed workers’ workers’ inclinations.)
Have the incels started putting Reich on their t-shirts ‘n’ tats yet?
@saad
I don’t believe they actually do have the opportunities for healthy and fulfilling intimate relationships. Not because women are bunch of stuck of you know or whatever clap trap incels say. It’s not because of their looks or whatever but the set of baggage a sexist society has saddled them with functionally precludes relationships being able to form for many of the reasons people have pointed out. People don’t get this repulsive by choice and their ideology, such as it is, speaks to deeply ingrained socialization from childhood. Incels are not safe to date. That’s in part caused by society. That is why I think healthy fulfilling relationships are barred from them.
Society can effectively bar people from needs with tools besides the law. I’m effectively locked out of being openly gay where I live despite their being no law preventing me.
@ snuffcurry
see above.
Elliot Roger was saddled with narcissism (if not formally) and an extreme sense of entitlement that not only motivated his murderous rage but made it rational for women (or anyone) to avoid social interaction. He was not born with those traits to the degree that he displayed or more to the point the idea that underpinned his rampage were not his own. Women or worse a specific blonde sorority woman didn’t owe Rogers anything. Society owed him a better upbringing.
Nothing I said can be read that men have it worse or even as bad on these issues. That women’s suffer the lion’s share of the lion’s share of the negative effects of sexism. Men also suffer.
I think Hanson is trolling. In any case, non of his suggested policies, not fully legalizing and destigmatizing sex work, not even outlawing any form of polygamy or cheating (assuming it is possible) can cure some of these people’s angst. They will complain why should they pay prostitutes while Chads are getting it for free (and the thought of the money they are paying the prostitute to be spent on a Chad is intolerable for them).
Strict monogamy has also been tried and is still in effect in many places (most of them 3rd world). Again, these people will complain that Stacys are marrying Chads and would even prefer to remain single than to [pity] marry them! Besides, It is hard to imagine how they can have a successful marriage when all they care about is if their wife is trying to ditch them for a Chad or if they can “trade-up” their current wife for a Stacy!
I don’t like the term “incel” as it seems to be a blanket term for a lot of people many of them have real trouble establishing and maintaining meaningful relationships and deserve help and empathy to overcome their situation. The truly reprehensible ones are beyond redemption though.
Also making this about capitalism/socialism or left/right is wrong since it implies that there is a “socialist” solution for the unreasonable incels’ problems at which point they are like: “bring it on! All we care about is getting out of this hell! If it is socialism that helps us get the Stacys, so be it!”
Incels do not want sex with sex workers because having to pay for sex is against their agenda. If one is entitled to sex, why pay for it?
Also, they do not want sex robots. They want women behaving like sex robots. Anything less hurts their little egos.
Mike Smith, #76
What are you basing that on?
@Saad
Their statements that indicate self-loathing, violent and abusive tendencies among other interpersonal issues.
The problem isn’t that women won’t be intimate with incels. It’s it’s irrational to be intimate with incels as society has saddle them with toxic masculinity/upbringing
Undoubtedly they should be able to find sex in some form. It’s pretty obvious that sex would be unhealthy and more to the point unfulling.
so i read this article, and i read some of the comments, and…i couldn’t finish getting through them. so, i apologize if some or any of this is redundant. but you know, i lurk here a lot. i really like a lot of the commentariat and i often learn things or am introduced to new perspectives. so i’d just like to say that it’d be nice if people putting forth “legalized” sex work as a “solution” to the “problem” of “incels” would take a second to examine their axioms here. as a former sex worker, first of all, by and large we don’t want *legalization*, we want decrim, and those are different things, which you can google-machine about if you’re interested. we are also, by the way, still human beings, who already EXIST. as workers. so sure, it’s illegal work. but nothing non-economic is actually stopping the vast, vast majority of these misogynistic “incel” assholes from accessing sex workers if sex was actually their goal; it’s not. they HATE us. as with every misogynistic worldview, we bear the brunt of it – ALREADY. like, in case you needed the reminder, we ALREADY deal with a gigantic amount of sexual abuse and assault in our jobs that cannot be attributed to a small if especially terrible subset of misogynist men that have suddenly come to prominence in the national discourse and who generally shun folks in our trade because we’re not willing 9.8/10 virgins. so could you please please please please stop suggesting that “sex workers” ought to take on the task of fucking the misogyny out of men like incels? and that if our work was only legal that these guys would stop wanting to drive vans into crowds because they couldn’t get their dicks wet with the head cheerleader? pretty please? because we’re *already* functionally society’s goddamn sacrificial lambs and it’d be pretty cool if so-called liberal-minded people would consider our humanity and safety before spouting off about how if we just made our bodies more available to people who think “femoid” is a cool thing to say, everything would be juuuuust great. for these guys. ffs. rant over.
apologies if things in my comment at #81 were already addressed in the thread. i’ll just say that phew this has been a tough week to live through as somebody familiar with the manosphere AND the sex trade. it’s like a perfect storm of bad takes everywhere i look, and i should probably just stick to twitter because at least it limits my characters. back to lurking.
It’s not just confusing, it enables the latter group to use the former as a stalking horse.
Uh…
…why?
Almost no one here (possible exception: Aryaman, #59) seems to actually have read Hanson’s post. It was obviously a reductio ad absurdum: his argument was that there is an even stronger case for “sexual equality” then for income equality, but the case for sexual equality is obvious nonsense. Therefore, the case for income equality is also nonsense.
You may think Robin’s argument is a pile of garbage, but he was not arguing for forcing women to have sex with incels!
I knew Robin a number of years ago: he likes coming up with logical arguments of this type, and, yes, his arguments can be irritating — he specilaizes in taking economic reasoning to its logical (and logically absurd) conclusion. (I was bugged for years with one of Robin’s arguments that seemed obviously wrong, but it was hard to show exactly why it was wrong.)
Incidentally, anyone who dismisses the claim that sexual inequality is more painful than income inequality has probably forgotten his youth: just about anyone who went to grad school was, temporarily, “poor” by American standards. Most young men, I suspect, would rather be as poor as a grad student than be an incel.
Lots of the people here claim to respect science. Then look back at the primary evidence — i.e., what Robin actually said.
Leo Buzalsky asked:
Strangely, enough, I actually had a chance to chat once back in the late ’70s with Charles Koch: I’m afraid I found him rather boring. However, that incident has caused me to follow from afar the antics of the so-called “Kochtopus.”
And, what I have heard is that the Kochs want results: the sort of flighty, pie-in-the-sky speculation at which Robin excels is not what the Kochs would usually choose to finance. Of course, Robin might somehow indirectly be benefiting from Koch largesse.
Dave Miller in Sacramento
Simple Desultory Philip@81,
Since you obviously can use upper-case letters, but choose not to make your writing readable by doing so in the standard way, I’m not going to read it.
You can take them at their word and repeat the self-serving incel talking point of “awkwardness,” or you can interrogate their actual positions, most of which are about hating and resenting women, eschewing all non-sexual, non-servile contact with them, and regarding them as usurpers and withholders who have, through the existence of preference, toppled the natural order of things, where men’s desires are or ought to be of paramount importance. You think society uniquely “failed” them? I say they fetishize the patriarchy within society, they admire it, have internalized it, and want to join its highest ranks, where fucking the right women is an exercise of male power. This is the logical and fully-realized consequence of patriarchy, in which men also suffer, sure, but to pathologize it, pretend it is aberrant, is disingenuous. They absorbed their socialization just fine.
In a world where most women lack complete bodily autonomy, it is almost monstrous to try to turn these unsucked dicks into a social justice issue, but, fine. Let’s play along. They have been Denied their Rightful Opportunities. But the opportunities are not heterosexual and heterosocial relationships (they don’t want any), and they are also not sexual liberation and the egalitarian and blind distribution of sexual partners. Incels correctly deduce what we already know: people who are alike (physically, socially, politically) mostly pair up. In their dull and heteronormative world, Stacys and Chads are 10 of 10 on the desirability scale. But incels don’t want to burn that ladder, they want to ascend it and then gatekeep its highest rung. They have no interest in obtaining physical access to women who look like themselves, act like themselves, come from places and people like themselves. There’s no prestige there. Nothing to impress male rivals with.
So, no. They’re just like the rest of us, yearning after highly attractive people but generally not going to bed with them. Boo fucking hoo.
And this “awkwardness” lark, whoo boy. A delicate euphemism for blunt, transparent misogyny. Truly socially awkward people marry and fuck every day. And when they don’t, they don’t respond by forming hate groups. Their bad table manners and nervous laughter is not what is keeping women-haters from unfettered access to unwilling bodies without having to otherwise interact with the people occupying those bodies. Again, why are they so special that their banal, garden-variety undersex0redness is a greek tragedy? Why are you justifying these people’s violence by pretending that they don’t understand social interaction and that that “confusion” is the source of incel woe? They get along very well with each other and communicate perfectly, which is why reading them is so ghastly. So it goes back to that old chestnut of the archetypical wife beater: he’s a brave bully when she’s alone with him but he flees a potential bar fight with a larger man just like the rest of us. “Social awkwardness” is a red herring, conveniently brought out for display whenever one wants to handwave away particularly egregious hate speech. Women getting to choose who to fuck and when and under what conditions is their true lament. Women seeing through their bullshit and avoiding contact with them is the just and fair consequence.
Men have a right to a relationship? Women have a right to live a life free of abuse and violence. A misogynist has never changed his stripes because he got laid and a woman’s body is not a tool to be dusted off the shelf and wielded in order to save a man from himself.
The tragedy here is not these men, but the girls and women who will pay the price of quislings who want to rehabilitate the incel image into something other than dangerous, fashionable bigotry that strokes the thigh of the status quo and deems the oppression of women a desirable outcome in a zero-sum game.
You think they are suffering. I think they enjoy this. Venting at women has always and forever been a useful hobby for self-pitying men with so much time and money and privilege on their hands that this sort of thing is the defining issue in their lives and guiding principle of their politics. No surprise, then, that the bulk of them espouse other reactionary views, like white supremacy and evolutionary psychology.
There is no such thing as “sexual inequality” as it is defined here and women don’t like feeling deprived of sex, either. What’s your point?
Dave: “Incidentally, anyone who dismisses the claim that sexual inequality is more painful than income inequality has probably forgotten his youth: just about anyone who went to grad school was, temporarily, “poor” by American standards. Most young men, I suspect, would rather be as poor as a grad student than be an incel.”
Great, next time I run across a starving villager in Madagascar or Ethiopia or an inner city resident in Baltimore, I’ll inform them of their good fortune. Dude, might I suggest that your perspective could use some broadening.
Mike Smith, #80
But such a small minority of men are incels. So are a small percentage of men specifically targeted with this toxic masculinity and upbringing? I thought we all were.
a_ray_in_dilbert_space wrote to me:
Dilbert, old chap, I explicitly referred to American graduate students! Trust me, not as poor as inhabitants of Ethiopia or Madagascar.
And, while American grad students are indeed (temporarily) poor compared to most Americans, if you think they are more concerned with their poverty than with their relations to the opposite sex… well, you don’t get out much. do you?
snuffcurry asked me:
I think in context it was clear I was using “sexual inequality” as shorthand for “inequality in ability to have intimate relations with the opposite sex.” That is, after all, what we have all been talking about.
Obviously, such inequality does exist: i.e., some people are more appealing to the opposite sex than others.
Personally, I, like Robin Hanson, am not bothered by inequality per se: I think inequality is like rain or the law of gravity, just an obvious fact of nature. But, my and Robin’s question is why people who are bothered by some forms of inequality are not bothered by other forms of inequality that can indeed be quite unpleasant for those at the bottom.
snuffcurry wrote:
Snuffy, I have never interacted with any self-declared “incel,” and I have no intention of doing so.
However, fi you are ignorant of the fact that some young males truly do not understand “social interaction”… well, have you ever visited Caltech?
I did my undergrad there, and I assure you that a lot of the males at Caltech truly do not understand how to interact with females: I mean they really do not know how to simply talk to females.
When I was a Techer, most Techers not only had never been on a date in high school, most had still never been on a date when they graduated from college!
Caltech: the only place on earth where I counted as “experienced with girls” since I had actually dated a couple girls in high school (and, indeed, had a couple girlfriends at Caltech, one of whom I married).
For both young males and young females, dealing with the opposite sex is a complicated road to travel. We can condemn those who respond to that difficulty with violence while still recognizing that it is confusing for many young men and women.
Perhaps, Snuffy, you were homecoming queen or BMOC; most kids are not.
@ snuffcurry, #88
Agreed. And, as I said on a previous post about incels, I don’t believe that it’s accurate to describe them as self-loathing. These (non-)fuckers love themselves; it’s everyone else they hate.
It’s not a healthy love, either. Incels have fundamentally warped their entire emotional landscape around a sense of aggrieved entitlement, and anyone who doesn’t cater to that is a hated enemy. Then they get together with others who feel the same way to lovingly nurture that toxic core of their being, cutting away any fact or emotion that doesn’t support that.
Incels have decided that they, and they alone, are deserving, worthy people, whose whims should be serviced on demand by enslaved women who meet their aesthetic requirements. Because they are denied this, everyone (especially the women they want) can/should suffer and die for their amusement.
That is not self-loathing.
Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y @84:
uh…because there is a difference between them. as i said in my original comment, i was unable to read the entirety of the thread, as i was extremely repulsed by the amount of folks who found the suggestion that sex workers are a solution to incel misogyny somewhat reasonable, so i have no idea what comment the second quote you referenced is, or from whose authority it derives. when i say you can google machine about what the majority of *sex workers* think about this issue, however, what i mean is entering something like “difference between legalization and decrim sex work” into the search box on that website and then clicking on a source or two from an *actual sex worker or sex-worker-rights organization*. those kinds of articles literally exist to give you more of a 101 explanation than i am willing to here.
KG @87:
well, i guess you won’t be able to read this sentence calling your reply irrelevant and petty then, since it didn’t start with a capital letter. i’m not upset about it.
simpledesultoryphilip#96blessyourheartandhaveaniceday
And I used to genuinely be one of them.
STOP FUCKING APPROPRIATING US.
I am accepting at face value your claim that there is a difference between “decriminalization” and “legalization.” I asked you why sex workers would be in favor of the former rather than the latter. It would have taken one tenth the keystrokes the above paragraph required to give me a plain fucking one-sentence answer, you smarmy piece of shit.
chigau (違う) @97:
being able to read something well enough to send it up and assume the rest of your audience will *also* get the joke kinda defeats the purpose of calling it unreadable, but consider my uncapitalized lil heart blessed in the deep southern sense. do you also blessregularcommenters’heartsaftereachunevenlycapitalizedcomment?orisitbecuasei’mnew?justwondering.
Azkyroth, B*Cos[F(u)]==Y @99
holy fuck, i said in my *original comment* that i wasn’t cool with doing 101. that’s the whole point of suggesting googling it if you wanted to know more about it. i’m not being smarmy and if a one-sentence answer is what you’re looking for, guess i’m the piece of shit who isn’t gonna provide it for you, still.
Simple Desultory Philip #100
Why are you pretending to be “new”?
chigau (違う) @102:
i’m not pretending to be anything. i’m me. i’m not hiding. anybody who wants to look up my comment history can, i assume? i don’t know everything about this comment system but i’m under the impression you can do that. and since i’m me, and i know when and how often i’ve commented, i know that if you look that history up, it’ll reveal that i *am* relatively new at attempting to *regularly* comment here. i’ve been reading for years and years (as i’ve prefaced many comments i’ve left!) but i’ve not ever attempted to regularly contribute my own comments until relatively recently. i’ve been careful to correctly and respectfully copy everybody’s username and looked up the html code that i don’t understand at all to quote people’s comments because i have seen how people appreciate that it is easier to understand when quoting other comments – by which i mean to say i have actually made the effort to conform to the standards expected by the regulars here in terms of names and making quotes easier to read? but i’ve never seen anybody else get taken to task for not capitalizing conventionally in their text. suppose i could have missed it. i apologize if the way i dispense with capitalization except for extreme emphasis is truly unacceptable here.
liar
chigau (違う) @104:
um ok, so it’s kinda dawning on me now that your responses to me might actually be about something or someone else entirely, and you’ve mistaken me for/decided i’m them? which i’m not, so i’m sorry for the misunderstanding, and honestly sorry that i came off sounding like a troll to you. good night.
liar.
nope.