gender, manhood, and the incel within

15 Nov, 2024

being a man can be fucking weird for me sometimes.

especially being a man to women. being a man to men is something I've never felt uncomfortable with. I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that male-male social interactions are flawless or good -- there's an awkward emotional distance between two men, a lack of emotional curiosity and support, best described as "Hank Hill syndrome" -- but the role feels natural. it feels good to be able to go up to a guy playing DBFZ, get your ass beat, and make a new friend. it's nice to be able to forget yourself in interactions with other guys, because the topic of conversation is frame data, or PS2 hacking, or Linux distros. you ain't gotta lie to kick it. men are not creatures of scrutiny.

being a man to women, though, is awful. I hate it. makes me want to die sometimes. not hyperbolic, sometimes I pass by a beautiful woman when I'm not in a good mood and it makes me wish I could just take a gun out of my pocket and blow my brains out right inaw front of her, and I hope she doesn't feel a lick of empathy.

I feel incredibly guilty being a man to women. there's always an implicit level of distrust they feel towards you. they can emotionally compartmentalize that distrust, and explain it as just safety, or they can not, and have that distrust breed resentment. this is not a binary choice, of course. there will always be some mixture of the two. the kindest, sweetest woman you meet will always be hiding a little bit of resentment towards men.

not that this doesn't go both ways, of course, let's be clear. men are hiding as much resentment of women under the rocks in their heart. it comes from a different place, though, so it manifests in a different way. instead of uncompartmentalized distrust, it breeds from desire, and the failure of that desire to manifest, and the powerlessness a man feels in the face of that. men are supposed to get pussy, and if you can't get pussy, there's something wrong with you. so, fundamentally, a man who is unsuccessful with women only gets to blame two forces, women or himself, and the part of that blame that goes to women breeds resentment.

y'know. incel shit.

there's been a lot of discourse about how the incel mindset is entitled, and while I think there is entitlement there, it isn't the whole story, and you kind of paint half a picture of them if that's the only thing you analyze. most incel violence is suicide. for every high-profile case of mass homicide, there's maybe hundreds of guys posting goodbye threads before taking their own lives¹. one of the biggest pro-choice suicide forums was owned and operated by two incels, who also ran a lot of the high profile incel sites. all of the insane phrenological beauty standards passed around the incelosphere are ways for incels to justify a worldview where the reason they've struck out with women is because they are flawed on a fundamental, biological level, and there is no true solution. there's whole catchphrases about the natural conclusion to that fact. lie down and rot. cope or rope.

the dichotomy of "it's either women's fault, or my fault" is one where both roads lead to hell, and very little incel/anti-incel discourse has been interested in breaking it. there have definitely been attempts, to be sure, but a lot of those attempts haven't taken into account how durable of an interpretive framework this is. many people have tried to point to the patriarchy as the culprit for male alienation and loneliness. this is true, but the dichotomy can easily translate that as "it's the patriarchy's fault>you, as a man, are responsible for the machinations of the patriarchy>it's your fault". or, take the statement, "women are individuals, women's tastes vary widely, there's no easy answer, you just haven't found the right one for you yet". again, this is true, but it can be translated as "women's tastes vary>you haven't put enough work into finding one who likes you>it's your fault". it's exceptionally easy for someone who is already thinking in these terms to internally twist well-meaning advice into accusations, and react to them accordingly. it's a hard problem to solve.

I'm getting away from introspection a bit, so I think it would be useful to discuss my own life a bit here. I was homeschooled throughout my entire education until college, which I started later in life, at 22. most of my social circle was my older siblings, and their friends, with a couple friends of my own on occasion. I was signed up for some community homeschooling extracurriculars, but by the time I was, almost all of the other kids in them were way, way younger than me. any women I knew in-person that I was attracted to were way older than me, and generally adults, and I understood that nothing was happening there.

once I did get into college, I was a bit of a fucking mess. I had been struggling with depression and isolation for years at that point, probably since I was 10 or 12. it's a bit hard to measure, since there are definitely points I can pinpoint where it got way, way worse, but it's been a while. I made more friends than I expected to, but the friendships didn't last past me dropping out, and the one that did I crashed off the edge of a cliff by panicking and getting needy and vindictive. sorry Cyclone. I mostly hung out with guys, and the women I did hang out with had boyfriends, or just weren't into me, so I didn't try for them. I asked out one girl I thought was cute in my magic group, and she said she wasn't looking for anything at that point, so I let it go as a polite rejection. also I apologized for asking her out a little while afterwards, because I felt guilty. I don't think she ever actually had a problem with it? who knows, that's her business.

the only woman I've ever been on a date with was a tinder date, right during the 2020 election. I remember she whipped out her phone and we got to find out Biden got Georgia at the same time. she was nice, but I wasn't that into her, so it didn't really go anywhere beyond that one date. on the subject of the apps, the only reason I'm not a virgin to this day is Grindr. funny story, I actually got stood up on the day I lost my virginity. I was talking to this girl on grindr about hooking up, and she was down, and I had rented a motel room and everything, but she just stopped responding out of nowhere. I was just sitting in the motel, feeling anxious as all get out, my battery dying, when some other guy shot me a message, and I told him I was getting stood up. I figured, shit, I already got the room, why let it go to waste, and the rest is history. I did eventually get a reason: turns out she just fell asleep. cucked by the motherfuckin' sandman.

okay, getting back on topic: whose fault is it that I wound up the way I did, 26 and no hoes? mine? women's? seems a bit silly, either way you slice it. oh, sure, I could blame my parents, but they were just trying to make the best choices they could, same as the rest of us. but that dichotomy of entitlement and failure has seeped into my thinking, even as a non-incel with plenty of obvious reasons that I missed out on romantic relationships. mostly, I try to keep to the failure side, because if I have to choose between hating women and myself, hating myself seems like the decent thing to do, but I'm not going to claim to be free of any issues with women. I wrote this whole-ass post, for chrissake.

I guess the takeaway here is that the whole blame game is an ultimately fruitless endeavor. there's no point to it. you're wasting your time, trying to make yourself mad to no end. nothing will be born from hatred.