Incels were inevitable

When I first learned off the phenomenon known as incels, my thought was, so it finally happened? Sexuality and entitlement have been pushed for decades and a whole generation of men has been spoon-fed the message. But just like getting rich, getting sex is a competition that includes many losers.

And the loser position has been depicted as unbearable and shameful if not outright harmful. Voluntary celibacy by clergy has been incorrectly depicted as the cause of child sexual abuse.

Pederast priests were treated by some sectors in the media as victims of a Church that deprived them of sex. A dangerous notion that partially absolved the perpetrators and ignores the far greater percentage of abuse taking place in public schools.

Voluntary celibates get attacked because they are an old-fashioned threat to the modern order, incels are a new post-modern threat. People shouldn’t be celibate out of devotion to a traditional religion, only because modern societal processes force them into that position.

But incels are by that logic victims of a society that doesn’t allow them to fulfil their sexual needs either.

Regardless of whether one is religious or sees any value in celibacy, it is clear that to proclaim that celibacy is unhealthy because it constitutes sexual repression and that such repression leads to one molesting children, means that to be in a situation where you cannot have sex with another person for a significant period of time, can cause you to become insane.

This means that to be able to have sex with another person is a requirement for mental health. A basic need. If we’re entitled to healthcare then we are entitled to sex, aren’t we? Or can one be healthy without sex with another person? Because than that message should be proclaimed more. That abstinence is possible and not unhealthy.

Maybe there should be less virgin shaming. Maybe movies and television series could be more inclusive by having character who are forced to live celibately but handle it well.

While we’re at it, it used to be that there was a push to move away from abstinence only sex education to comprehensive sex education where teens are taught how to avoid STD’s and pregnancy when they don’t stay abstinent.

But for some reason there has been a push to teach about sexual pleasure in sex ed. I can only think of perverted reasons for doing so. Pleasure is subjective and the means of achieving it differ per person. You discover what you find pleasurable as a part of sexual self-discovery. That is not something adults teachers should involve themselves in. Teaching the (supposedly) best way to achieve sexual pleasure could only involve very graphic details. Merely emphasizing that sex is pleasurable in general only encourages people to desire and seek out sexual fulfilment.

If you specifically emphasize the notion of sexual pleasure to teens and teach them how to do it safely, they will be expecting that pleasurable sex happens eventually.

Sexual fatalism means that sex is essential as food or shelter. The excessive emphasis on sexual identity and sexual rights further strengthens the position of the incels. If birth control and abortion need to be state funded, if the means to not have to deal with the natural consequences of sex are a right, then why wouldn’t sex itself be a right?

With all the focus on sexual self-acceptance, on how cruel fundamentalist religions are for teaching LGBT to be celibate with even bisexuals needing to be able to sleep with people of both sexes to be happy, and finally talk about polygamy, why wouldn’t incels feel completely left out? Priests telling homosexual Catholics during confession that they shouldn’t engage in homosexual acts, has been outlawed in Victoria as a form of conversion therapy (I didn’t know the confessional was a therapeutic centre). If LGBT people aren’t affirmed and able to find self-fulfillment, this can lead to suicide. When suicide rates are high amongst LGBT people this is a call for further support and expanded rights (beyond equal rights it seems). But the suicide rate amongst incels? Who cares?

The focus with incels has been on the sense of entitlement and the misogyny. But the majority of them have social and or mental issues. Considering the size of the group and the apparently increasing possibility of further violence, maybe social outreach would be an idea?

Altmann Beten