Incels Are the Product of an Incomplete Sexual Revolution

We all need more freedom to openly discuss—and engage in—sex. Instead, we all too often pounce on provocative opinions and hem in what is deemed "acceptable" bounds of debate. This is a shame.

Consider the rhetorical maelstrom created when George Mason University economist Robin Hanson recently suggested that the Toronto attack— in which a self-described incel (an involuntary celibate) mowed down 10 pedestrians — shows that we should worry not just about income inequality, but also the sexual inequality that is leaving too many men sexually frustrated. Hanson, whose blog Overcoming Bias is dedicated to raising uncomfortable questions that cut against ingrained thinking, mused that "cultural elites" might consider "redistribution" schemes that could help incels get a fair share of the action.

This was a provocative suggestion, no doubt. But Hanson wasn't really serious about it. He is a libertarian, after all, so talk of "redistribution" was more in the vein of a thought experiment. Still, many people were understandably offended by even the hint of a suggestion that men are "owed" sex, or that this particular man was somehow justified in his violence because of some societal failure to keep his sexual drive satiated. This was, after all, the second instance of incel violence in four years.

Liberals roundly pilloried Hanson. Slate's Jordan Weissman called him "America's creepiest economist," before doing an entirely tendentious interview with him with the aim of exposing Hanson as a nutjob. Wonkette's Robyn Pennacchia accused Hanson of "singing the songs of horny men." Motherboard's Samantha Cole declared that Hanson really wants "women to f--k violent men."

Such high dudgeon does little to advance the cause of mutual sexual understanding among men and women. The fact of the matter is that although the sexual revolution offered the possibility of more sexual fulfillment, it also produced new frustrations and challenges.

The New York Times' Ross Douthat, who defended Hanson (and came in for a heap of criticism as a result), rightly pointed out that the "Hefnerian" ethos that the revolution generated has made the "frequency and variety in sexual experience" the "summum bonum of the human condition." This might work for the "beautiful and rich and socially adept in new ways." However, it poses special problems for people who lack sexual draw and confidence.

Many feminists consider any discussion of the innate differences between male and female sexuality verboten. But it is hard to deny that evolution has wired the two sexes differently when it comes to sex. The qualitative sexual experience of men and women might be similar. But, by and large, as evolutionary psychologist Diana Fleischman points out, men tend to desire more sexual partners, need to know someone for less time before wanting to have sex with them, and have lower standards for sexual liaison. By contrast, women tend to be more discerning and discriminating (because they bear the brunt of producing offspring).

The sexual openness of today's liberated women often means that men's more easily stimulated sexuality is constantly triggered. However, social norms still put the onus on men to approach women and open themselves to rejection. The combination of heightened desire and increased risk from assertive women adds up to constant inner anxiety for many young, inexperienced men venturing into the sexual world. This doesn't mean that incels are right or owed, or that sex actually ought to be redistributed, or that incels are the "real" victims here. Indeed, incel forums can be dark and degraded places where misogyny and violent rhetoric often runs amuck. But ferocious and reflexive demonization from the left isn't helping matters. It is still necessary to understand the root cause of these new sexual pathologies.

All too many social conservatives want to shut down pornography, tighten controls on prostitution, and restore puritanical norms from a time when men and women could only try to meet their sexual needs within the confines of life-long matrimony. This obviously should not (and will not) happen, if for no other reason than it traps too many couples in emotionally and sexually dead marriages.

The trouble with the sexual revolution isn't that it happened, but that it was incomplete. The problem is not that sex has been over commodified as hardline feminists and conservatives (talk about strange bedfellows!) like to assert; the problem is that it hasn't been commodified enough. The sexual industry in the broadest sense hasn't matured enough yet to cater to the myriad and diverse needs of lonely single people (of both sexes). Where are the Dr. Ruths for single people facing confidence issues or looking for advice? Is it really a surprise that young men turn to each other for solace in the deep recesses of the dark web — and that the result is often very ugly?

Progressivism's promise is to move toward social arrangements that increase the number of winners and diminish the number of losers. But until we achieve a utopia where everyone wins, we'll have to figure out ways to offer relief to the losers. This will require liberals to start taking the plight of people like the incels seriously, and stop penalizing intellectual mavericks like Hanson who have the nerve speak up on their behalf. And it will require conservatives to stop romanticizing an imperfect past and look for viable solutions that don't involve turning back the clock.

>Would a so called incel want a love relationship or just orgasms in a woman? Sounds like they don’t like women, or possibly people, at all, so why not work hard, save your dollars, and go see a prostitute if all you want is an orgasm with another body around?

Incels wants to be desired. Hookers don’t desire anything but money.

>And if they want an actual love relationship with a woman, they need to love people. Severely disabled people have love affairs. Anyone can, if you have a loving heart. It isn’t the same thing as a sexual hookup. It is not possible that a loving person would not find someone to love, and be loved by.

The youth dating marking has become largely polygamist were 70-80% of the women are hooking up with 20% of the guys. the next 60% of the market of men fight over the 30-20% of women not hooking up with guys at the top leaving the bottom 20% of men completely in the cold. That’s how polygamy works and it’s why it was outlawed for so long in the west.

>That sick student from Santa Barbara wrote millions of pages about his incel life, but he was ONLY WANTING HOOKUPS FOR HIMSELF. He was too autistic to have ANY care about a woman or girl. He was only able to be concerned about what he felt he deserved, without giving anything. Buy a hooker if that is your issue. Don’t shoot up your school.

Shooting up a school will get him the female attention he’s been denied. That kid in Florida is now getting endless love letters and visits from young girls who are now madly in love with him because he shot up a school. Men who are not given access to women and see no path to gaining it generally have no allegiance to the society that birthed them so from their perspective why shouldn’t they be violent?

Yep:

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/240037/marxist-feminisms-ruined-lives-mallory-millett
MARXIST FEMINISM’S RUINED LIVES
The horror I witnessed inside the women’s “liberation” movement.
September 1, 2014 Mallory Millett

...Sometime later, I was a young divorcee with a small child. At the urging of my sister, I relocated to NYC after spending years married to an American executive stationed in Southeast Asia. The marriage over, I was making a new life for my daughter and me. Katie said, “Come to New York. We’re making revolution! Some of us are starting the National Organization of Women and you can be part of it.”

I hadn’t seen her for years. Although she had tormented me when we were youngsters, those memories were faint after my Asian traumas and the break-up of my marriage. I foolishly mistook her for sanctuary in a storm. With so much time and distance between us, I had forgotten her emotional instability.

And so began my period as an unwitting witness to history. I stayed with Kate and her lovable Japanese husband, Fumio, in a dilapidated loft on The Bowery as she finished her first book, a PhD thesis for Columbia University, “Sexual Politics.”

It was 1969. Kate invited me to join her for a gathering at the home of her friend, Lila Karp. They called the assemblage a “consciousness-raising-group,” a typical communist exercise, something practiced in Maoist China. We gathered at a large table as the chairperson opened the meeting with a back-and-forth recitation, like a Litany, a type of prayer done in Catholic Church. But now it was Marxism, the Church of the Left, mimicking religious practice:

“Why are we here today?” she asked.
“To make revolution,” they answered.
“What kind of revolution?” she replied.
“The Cultural Revolution,” they chanted.
“And how do we make Cultural Revolution?” she demanded.
“By destroying the American family!” they answered.
“How do we destroy the family?” she came back.
“By destroying the American Patriarch,” they cried exuberantly.
“And how do we destroy the American Patriarch?” she replied.
“By taking away his power!”
“How do we do that?”
“By destroying monogamy!” they shouted.
“How can we destroy monogamy?”

Their answer left me dumbstruck, breathless, disbelieving my ears. Was I on planet earth? Who were these people?

“By promoting promiscuity, eroticism, prostitution and homosexuality!” they resounded.

They proceeded with a long discussion on how to advance these goals by establishing The National Organization of Women. It was clear they desired nothing less than the utter deconstruction of Western society. The upshot was that the only way to do this was “to invade every American institution. Every one must be permeated with ‘The Revolution’”: The media, the educational system, universities, high schools, K-12, school boards, etc.; then, the judiciary, the legislatures, the executive branches and even the library system.

It fell on my ears as a ludicrous scheme, as if they were a band of highly imaginative children planning a Brinks robbery; a lark trumped up on a snowy night amongst a group of spoiled brats over booze and hashish.

To me, this sounded silly. I was enduring culture shock after having been cut-off from my homeland, living in Third-World countries for years with not one trip back to the United States. I was one of those people who, upon returning to American soil, fell out of the plane blubbering with ecstasy at being home in the USA. I knelt on the ground covering it with kisses. I had learned just exactly how delicious was the land of my birth and didn’t care what anyone thought because they just hadn’t seen what I had or been where I had been. I had seen factory workers and sex-slaves chained to walls.

How could they know? Asia is beyond our ken and, as they say, utterly inscrutable, and a kind of hell I never intended to revisit. I lived there, not junketed, not visited like sweet little tourists — I’d conducted households and tried to raise a child. I had outgrown the communism of my university days and was clumsily groping my way back to God.

How could twelve American women who were the most respectable types imaginable — clean and privileged graduates of esteemed institutions: Columbia, Radcliffe, Smith, Wellesley, Vassar; the uncle of one was Secretary of War under Franklin Roosevelt — plot such a thing? Most had advanced degrees and appeared cogent, bright, reasonable and good. How did these people rationally believe they could succeed with such vicious grandiosity? And why?

I dismissed it as academic-lounge air-castle-building. I continued with my new life in New York while my sister became famous publishing her books, featured on the cover of “Time Magazine.” “Time” called her “the Karl Marx of the Women’s Movement.” This was because her book laid out a course in Marxism 101 for women. Her thesis: The family is a den of slavery with the man as the Bourgeoisie and the woman and children as the Proletariat. The only hope for women’s “liberation” (communism’s favorite word for leading minions into inextricable slavery; “liberation,” and much like “collective” – please run from it, run for your life) was this new “Women’s Movement.” Her books captivated the academic classes and soon “Women’s Studies” courses were installed in colleges in a steady wave across the nation with Kate Millett books as required reading.

Imagine this: a girl of seventeen or eighteen at the kitchen table with Mom studying the syllabus for her first year of college and there’s a class called “Women’s Studies.” “Hmmm, this could be interesting,” says Mom. “Maybe you could get something out of this.”...

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