Men's Rights Activists. MGTOW. Incels.

[ismnotwasm]

Once fringe weirdos, now elevated to hate groups. I used to spend a certain amount of time here arguing about how toxic these assholes are. How dangerous. How despicable.

This is NOT new.

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/26/men-going-their-own-way-the-toxic-male-separatist-movement-that-is-now-mainstream

https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit

In April 2018, about 20 years after the early incel community coalesced, a college student in Toronto named Sohe Chung decided to walk to the library. It wasn’t a short walk — the subway would have been faster — but Chung and her roommate, So Ra, wanted to enjoy the sunshine.

Chung and So never made it to the library. On the way there, a van hopped the curb onto the sidewalk and slammed into pedestrians. Chung was one of 10 killed; So was one of 16 wounded.

The van’s driver was a self-described incel — but the community today would not be recognizable to those who built it decades earlier. Today’s incels are almost entirely men and boys who pollute their online forums with posts blaming women for their sexless lives. Some posters even celebrated Chung’s killer the day of the attack, calling for other incels to follow up with “acid attacks” and “mass rape.” What was once an open-minded support group had degenerated into a place where praise for mass killers was tolerated, even normalized.

On a balmy afternoon last June, dozens of demonstrators carrying “Stop the Violence” and “Rape is Rape” placards descended on the Hilton DoubleTree in downtown Detroit. They had come to protest the first-ever national gathering of the men’s rights movement, which aims to battle discrimination against men but has drawn criticism for stirring up hatred of women. Two weeks earlier, a sexually frustrated 22-year-old named Elliot Rodger had gone on a suicidal rampage in Santa Barbara, California, killing 6 people and injuring 13. He had left behind a chilling 137-page manifesto suffused with a bitter misogyny and language commonly found in men’s rights forums. “The girls don’t flock to the gentlemen. They flock to the alpha male,” Rodger wrote. “Who’s the alpha male now, bitches?” His attack ignited a firestorm online, spurring women to share their experiences of misogyny via the hashtag #YesAllWomen, and bringing major media attention to the men’s rights movement.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2015/01/warren-farrell-mens-rights-movement-feminism-misogyny-trolls/

Their communities still thrive, and somehow.. surprise! Most of them are RW fuckheads

[LizBeth]

1. Kill Bill woman, perfect image of exclamation mark. Incels get the same cover as white nationalists.

[ismnotwasm]

2. Sometimes they're the same people.

I follow the forums closely, mostly via readings on YouTube from Reddit.

[LizBeth]

4. Lots. I, too, have been listening for about a decade.

[Mister Ed]

3. No, it sure isn't new.

I remember a few years back when you and others were fighting to fend off a small army of such trolls, who had invaded DU under the guise of a campaign for "equal rights for men".

Since then, it seems the situation has only become more dire, as the internet continues to provide new ways for such hateful and murderous men to recruit and interconnect.

[MineralMan]

5. Thanks for posting this summary!

I started learning about incels after the Elliot Rodger incident. As usual, I dove into the places they congregated and read what they wrote. It was both sad-making and frightening at the same time.

I soon realized that I had known people like that all my life, but did not have a name for them. There were incels in my high school, at my college, and in the USAF during my enlistment. I've met them in places where I worked and in industries I later worked in as a freelancer.

They weren't just misogynists. There was something else about them that was far more alarming. An element of violence in their conversations when the topic of women came up. It wasn't a matter of how they looked; it was about how they thought. They put me right off, so I never got to know any of them on a personal level. They just made me very uncomfortable, so I avoided them.

They weren't just misfits. They were broken in some way I could not put my finger on. They'd have Playboy centerfolds stuck on their walls, but spoke only with derision or animosity toward women. I did not understand them, so I avoided them.

While I was stationed at a remote USAF base in Turkey, a base with zero women stationed there, men like that made regular trips to what was called "The Compound." It was, of all things, a brothel operated by the Turkish government. The women in it were there because their husbands had died and they owed money to debtors. The vast majority of the men stationed at that base, less than 500 in all, never went there. I couldn't imagine going there. But the group I now know were incels went there regularly. The rest of us dealt with our sexual tension on our own.

The few times I heard one of those incels talk about a trip to "The Compound, " their language was full of disgust for the "ugly" women who were there, and used violent imagery and misogynistic names for the women and for what went on there.

I didn't have a name or category for those men at the time. Now I do. But, I remember them. From time to time, I encounter people like them, and still react by avoiding them. They have a toxic mindset, and are dangerous people, I think.

[smirkymonkey]

6. Do you have any theories on what makes guys like this tick?

I have encountered men like this as well, although I am sure I haven't seen the worst of them, their hostility toward women was palpable. I stayed far away from them.

[MineralMan]

7. No, I don't. It could be modeling by a father.

It could be a problem with an abusive or overly clinging mother. It could be some sort of mental disorder. I just don't know, and never got to know anyone like that well enough to understand any better.

All I know is that they're serious screwed up.

[alwaysinasnit]

8. k&r

[brer cat]

9. Thanks for this reminder.

They are certainly not new.