Something I’ve always wondered is what kind of women were in the lives of incel men when they were young. Did they have a bad relationship with their mother? Did they lack sisters or other female family members? Or is their family situation irrelevant? Maybe some particular situation in their early years caused them to develop a complex around women?
Honestly I have doubts it’s related to female exposure; I grew up in a family of men, my mom was the only woman in the entire house and had her own bathroom. She was an oncology nurse and worked crazy hours. I learned more about women dating women than I ever did from hints and lessons from Mom. I’m more inclined to think it’s related to the men in their lives and the examples they set in their interactions with women. The men online who shovel misogyny and bullshit about alpha men are doing more harm to the male sex than anything else I’ve seen.
If you look up studies on “incels” you’ll find most report that incels have an incredibly high rate of mental health disorders, mostly untreated and sometimes undiagnosed. Issues like depression, anxiety, and autism are very common. These mental health issues affect their ability to form social connections which can eventually lead to inceldom where they surround themselves with other incels and feed off each other. I read one study that called this “tendency for interpersonal victimhood (TIV)”.
Upbringing could certainly have an effect on people’s mental health, but not everyone with mental health issues is an incel. Becoming an incel is an extra step only some take and I don’t think anyone truly knows how it happens.
Just a minor but important point: being neurodivergent is not a “mental health disorder.”
I do agree it plays a role in boys becoming incels, but it’s not in the same category as depression or anxiety disorders.
Edit for the replies I got: I strongly believe our society needs to stop looking at neurodivergent people as somehow “wrong” or “messed up.” Your brain is your brain just like your skin color is your skin color, and no should be discriminated against for either. In this case, it really is society that needs change, not the individual. It’s uncomfortable or even traumatic for the individual because of how other people react to them, not because of who they fundamentally are. Having to Face all the time, being forced into far too stimulating situations, having very few people understand your needs while at the same time foisting their expectations on you is exhausting. And it shouldn’t have to be this way.
I think boys and men have serious issues in our society that are not getting the attention they need. This along with changing social structures leaves some men behind. And they turn to the dark corners of the internet where other men just like them seem to care about them, and seem to have the same problems as them.
Boys and men are falling behind in schools and universities. Many colleges that have affirmative action are now having to use it to boost enrollment for men. Many of these rules were originally meant to increase numbers for women.
Women and girls have issues that society needs to help them with, and often times these issues get a lot more attention and are met with sympathy and understanding.
Whereas sometimes for men’s issues, the base reaction of society is to say stop crying and be a man. Men asking for help in and of itself is generally seen as not a manly thing to do.
This is an oversimplification of the issues, but just making fun of incels without trying to understand where they are coming from is probably not the best strategy to get them the help they need.
This in turn, leads them to start listening to men like Andrew Tate and other asshats.
What gets me is that the discourse around incels is forcibly centered on how they effect women, when it should be focussed on the societal problems that turned those men that way in the first place. But it’s not palettable to discuss the issue unless women are given the victimhood role.
It’s much like how every year funds raised for breast cancer research are an order of magnitude more than funds raised for prostate cancer research, even though more men die of it than women do of breast cancer. Both are worthy of funding, but they’re certainly not treated equally.
Men not getting the sex they feel entitled to is not a societal problem. It’s a male problem. Noone is entitled to sex and men need to learn that.
