> But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex.
The authors of this article admit that involuntary celibacy is rising among young men. They admit that 20% of the men are having 60% of the sex while incels claim it's 80%--not that much of a difference. Marriage is declining--and that's their coup de grâce? Gimme a break. The decline in marriage could be due to all the factors that incels claim: that people, including women, are more promiscuous outside of marriage and that social media and online dating make women more shallow and appearance-oriented.
While there are some problematic, misogynist aspects to the incel and MGTOW (men going their own way) movement, this article does nothing to shed light on the existing problem of young men feeling increasingly isolated, anti-social and cut off from the sexual marketplace. Incels are consistently written off as simply misogynist while the numbers clearly point to a more endemic problem that no one will address because young men are not considered an oppressed group.
In general, groups based on men's issues tend to get labeled as misogynist. There's a few reasons for this that I can think of, one being that I do think that a lot of journalists don't seem to apply a lot of intellectual rigor to their work; any group of men is low-hanging fruit for a hit piece exposing them as women-haters who want to abolish women's rights, perpetuate rape culture, etc. Journalists with integrity usually have bigger fish to fry than groups like incels or MGTOW, or even men's rights activists for that matter.
That's why I don't trust the conclusion of the article, even if there are some nuggets of truth to it. It's pretty clear to me, based on the author's snotty attitude splattered here and there, that they aren't interested in understanding incels at all; they want a feather in their cap, and telling incels they're wrong is an excellent way to do that right now.
Secondly, each of these groups tends to have a few really outspoken advocates who hold the most low-brow opinions and ideas. I wouldn't label myself MGTOW(just so happens I don't bother with relationships these days), but I have some familiarity with MGTOW content creators and that group suffers from the problem of having one particularly misogynist advocate(namely Sandman) getting the majority of attention and search results. In reality, I've found men who call themselves MGTOW to be very diverse, most of whom do not harbor any ill-will towards women at all. A lot of MGTOW, just as with others of different male-oriented groups, don't even particularly like each other or agree on that many things. It's really a one-issue concept, but of course it wouldn't seem that way to a journalist who scans over /r/mgtow, completely discounting the fact that Reddit is generally a cesspool, and decides they've got another group they can label as alt-right nazi misogynists. I'm sure that incels suffer from much the same problem, possibly worse, because they're much angrier than MGTOWs because they still ultimately desire women and are very frustrated.
Sex is not a marketplace, and it's not surprising that people who view it as such aren't having sex. It's like trying to learn to play the piano using the theory of relativity.
Of course sex is a marketplace. There's a hierarchy with most attractive people at the top, least attractive people at the bottom. There's more agreement than disagreement about which people are "more attractive" and "less attractive"--but there is some disagreement. Maybe a woman I find very attractive, you don't find attractive at all (assuming you are attracted to women). Everyone is competing to find the most attractive/compatible mate. They bypass the less attractive/compatible and go after (or accept dates with) more attractive people. And due to the fact that more attractive people are a scarcer resource, there is a market competition. Yeah, you could say we live in a world where anyone has an equal shot at being with anyone, but we both know that's not true. Sex is a marketplace to some extent or another.
> Everyone is competing to find the most attractive/compatible mate
Well, is it attractive or compatible? The two are not actually synonymous and it makes a significant difference. While attractiveness may be fairly universal (although not completely so), compatibility is very individual. This would severely restrict the size of any marketplace so as to make the dynamics very un-market-like.
I mean... perhaps I'm not the best person to ask. My wife and I were both the first person the other had dated, and I was very clear on our first date that I was not having sex with her that night, nor any other night, until we married. There were a few other guys who wanted to date my wife, but since my wife and I were dating, it's not like they could outbid me. That's kind of what it means to be in a committed relationship. After marriage, I've had women hit on me, and the answer is a universal back off, because -- you know -- sex isn't actually a marketplace. All the couples we interact with have similar stories (Although obviously, marrying the first person you date is not typical).
Attraction and compatibility are different and both have an effect on whether you want to be with a person. A super ugly person may have all the same interests as you or be compatible in other ways, and you still wouldn't want to date them. The attraction part is the part that is similar to a marketplace.
I think your relationship highlights what incels are talking about. In the past, more people got married like you did. Pre-internet, people's options were more limited. You chose from who ever was in your physical vicinity: at work, in your town, in your school, etc. Now with dating apps, you have an almost unlimited number of choices and you could choose the most physically attractive among thousands instead of the most attractive among the ten or twenty eligible people in your social circle, town, church or school. This makes sexual selection more like a marketplace. If you are an ugly person, you are less likely to marry up because the marketplace has become too efficient for it.
> Everyone is competing to find the most attractive/compatible mate. They bypass the less attractive/compatible and go after (or accept dates with) more attractive people
Correct. Or, as Louis C.K. eloquently put it. "You either F-ck up, or F-ck sideways. Nobody F-cks down."
Setting aside the logical impossibility of people f-king up but not f-king down, that is not true at all: men will f-ck down quite readily if it is convenient and there is low commitment. This is due to the obvious reason that males can have ten kids in a day by ten different women, whereas females can have perhaps 10 kids in a lifetime and each birth is incredibly high risk to her.
The core problem in the mating world is that the middle of the female attractiveness curve is having sterile sex with the top of the male attractiveness curve and then failing to pair bond with the middle of the male attractiveness curve. This is due to female hypergamy coupled with male promiscuity, arising from the dynamics of male and female reproductive constraints.
I don't disagree with that, but my point was more that 'dating up/down' is murky/subjective, so both sides could feel like they're dating up or down regardless of what other people might think. So even if two people were to be dating based on physical attractiveness, they could both think they got the better deal.
Incel is a distinct sub-group of the people who are involuntarily celibate. It is incorrect to use the term "incel" to refer to everyone who is involuntarily celibate.
> Incels are consistently written off as simply misogynist
Incels are defined by their misogyny, and not by their involuntary celibateness.
I think this misses the mark though. The main thesis of incels is basically that regardless of all other factors people can be so horribly ugly that no one in the right mind will ever desire them. Most of them don't fall into that bucket and have other issues going on, but objectively...is that idea wrong? I'd like to see the study address something like indian men under 5'4 (a strong incel demographic) and see how many of them don't have sex.
I take the article to dispute the incel premise that a majority of women only have sex with a minority of men. My impression is that this asymmetry is crucial, because it underwrites the narrative that sexlessness is largely a problem for men and not women; and that women are in some sense blameworthy for this state of affairs. Maybe incels are right about there being a minimum threshold of attractiveness, but that only matters to their sense of aggrievement if the threshold is higher for men than for women.
Actually the article states that 20% of the men are having 50%-60% of the sex. That's a minority of men having a majority of sex. Different numbers, but not wrong.
>In other words, incels are right to see themselves as part of a novel and fairly extreme change in our society's sexual behavior, with a growing share of sexless young men.
While a lot of it, including the very name, revolves around sex, I think it is important to consider the lack of emotional intimacy such relationships provide and if there is any correlation between lack of any romantic partner ships and lack of close friendships. Completely lacking both would indicate a very isolated individual, which isn't good for mental health.
Also, most the data used looked at no sex within the last year which is quite different from never having had sex. At least in the part of society I'm familiar with, there is a massive difference in social status between a guy who just has bad luck dating, and someone with the label of virgin (especially once you leave young adulthood).
> While a lot of it, including the very name, revolves around sex, I think it is important to consider the lack of emotional intimacy such relationships provide and if there is any correlation between lack of any romantic partner ships and lack of close friendships. Completely lacking both would indicate a very isolated individual, which isn't good for mental health.
From what I know of the incel 'community', it really is less about 'just' sex, and pretty much always about intimacy in a broader sense. Furthermore, while I don't know if this applies to most 'incels', it often does seem to be much broader kind of loneliness than just a lack of intimacy with the other sex.
I suppose that shouldn't really be surprising, as I know plenty of 'involuntarily celibate men' who are otherwise relatively happy with all sorts of friendships and communities, and have no need/desire to join a community centered around that celibacy.
the author manages to blame the egg for the chicken
not a great article in general based on the lack of statistics, the failure to address the influence of non-hetero relationships, and the lack of a disclaimer on the reliability of survey data. but the kicker is the author ignoring the inherent connection between the ability to find sex partners and the ability to find marriage partners
and instead blaming the knowledge economy with nothing to back it up
one interesting tidbit from the article: the slow steady increase in celibate married men that doesn't appear to be matched in women
If you're not aware 'incel's are the woman-hating group so vile they were kicked off reddit and one of them committed the van attack in Toronto recently.
What percentage of those who are "involuntarily celibate" do you suppose have substantially the same beliefs or opinions as the vile woman-hating terrorists? Should we suspect only those who publicly identify as such, or would it be more appropriate to initiate a witch hunt to remove them from society root and branch?
Incel is a generic term for involuntarily celibate people. Volcel is for voluntarily celibate people. Both considered weird and unnatural by majority. Don't conflate it with some organized group that reused the name, that would be a pretty big scientific mistake, likely politically motivated.
I'd argue that "incel" is a specialized label, just like "antifa".
If you identify as an "incel", that's a more loaded point than just saying you are "involuntarily celibate". Similarly, you could say you are "against fascists" without implying all the connotations that go along with saying you are an "antifa".
Could be now getting more specialized/loaded, as the non-radicalized majority that could have been labeled by 'incel' label would probably like to distance from it (in a 'leave me alone!' way) - I guess Urban dictionary will have a term for them soon. Still, in the past few years 'incel' was just 'involuntary celibate' and grumpy about that.
That ship has sailed the moment they decided to name themselves "incel", as opposed to "involuntarily celibate". Orwell explained the effect nicely in "The Principles of Newspeak":
It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it. The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily.
I think the main difference between that Newspeak example and them is that the Newspeak version has some intentional formulation in order to be simpler to pronounce whereas the 'incel' term seems like something that a 4channer would conjure while on a creative night filled with desolation, and then just picked up organically by those that would love to use it for shaming purposes first, maybe later in a self-parodizing way by the people it originally pertained to? Then somebody takes it way too seriously and the rest of us are left facepalming, wondering what has just happened?
The Newspeak, as a fictional language and thought exercise, takes a phenomenon that occurs naturally in real life and proposes a way to exploit it. The "incel" label is just a natural, real-life occurrence of the phenomenon Orwell noticed and described.
this isn't really a choice these days. the modern mind doesn't have time or attention for something as unwieldy as "involuntarily celibate". even comintern seems a bit long. we live in a world dominated by memes
the only other likely moniker this group could have ended up with today is "involuntarily fucking celibate"
I was not aware. Never even heard the term until now. At first read, I thought this might have been in some way related to, or an offshoot of, MTGOW. However, based on reports of actual, extremely serious violence and being so bad they are booted from Reddit, I imagine they are not related at all.
I am 32 and have not had sex in 7 years, however when my doctor asks if I am sexually active I lie and say yes because I am embarrassed. While I have no idea what the root cause of societal sexlessness is I find it easy to believe that a self reported survey would not reflect actual numbers.
I don't understand why parents would let their adult children live with them for years on end. My parents made it very clear that after the age of 18, my brother and I had to make it by ourselves. Like, they'd love it if we visited, but not living with them, and I can't understand why any one would want to live with their parents. Isn't 18 years of imprisonment bad enough?
> I don't understand why parents would let their adult children live with them for years on end.
Extended families living together had been very common across cultures and times; as has people living with parents, if not permanently, until marriage, however late that may or may not happen.
Unconditional ejection at the entrance to legal adulthood is, arguably the odd thing.
> Isn't 18 years of imprisonment bad enough?
Not every family situation feels equivalent to imprisonment for the child or enslavement for the parent.
In Italy it's fairly common to live with parents until you find a partner. Housing prices are really high, income is low and having an housemate without romantic engagement is not a common practice, unless you're studying in another city.
IE, I'm almost 30 and I've been living alone for 2 years only because I found a decent medium-pay stable job 3.5 years ago, and the apartment I live in is rented by a friend who asks very little money. All of my friends who are single like me live with their parents, and only a few of those who are engaged live with their partners.
Does that scale? In a neighborhood of 2, offspring of family A would be living with family B and offspring of family B would be living with family A. The only way that this could be avoided is if all families lived next door to an empty house.
Is living with someone else's parents more acceptable?
This isn’t a new issue and in past times societies found a solution for this, that solution is what some would call “patriarchy”.
Throughout our evolutionary history males have been terribly unsuccessful at procreating compared to females.
Which is why many societies essentially enforced rules of one woman for one men and made promiscuity a sin even more so for women.
Societies who didn’t tended to be much less stable and productive in the long run as they had a very large population of males that essentially had nothing to work for and no future.
This was also enforced by biology as sexual activity was very risky for women as the likelyhood of them getting pregnant was very high.
And a pregnant woman even today would find it quite difficult to manage on her own and most men do not want to raise someone else’s child.
Now in a very short period of time we have had 2 major social changes in regards to women.
Birth control which allowed women to have sex without the fear of getting pregnant and women entering the workforce in droves an for the most part as equals which meant that they were no longer dependent on men to provide for them and more importantly that a career became a socially acceptable life development path for women.
This essentially means that today women don’t need to settle for “lesser” men any more and can actively compete for the top percentage of men as they no longer compete for long term relationships and child caring support.
This inevitably would result in much larger percentage of men being left out of the game.
What makes this worse is that today society at least as far as the west goes essentially stepped out of its role as a matchmaker.
People don’t set people up anymore, even grandmothers don’t try to marry off their grandchildren anymore.
And while that may sound archaic it was a pretty big deal in the past.
Events like debutante balls and high school dances all of these were essentially there to allow the sexes to mingle in a manner that would increase the chances of coupling and this is something that goes out do fashion by the day.
Despite not growing up in the US my teens were filled with events that essentially “forced” people to ask each other out and that was a pretty good way of teaching people how to actually well date or at least approach a member of the opposite (or same) sex.
I’ve used to dismiss the whole “incel” phenomenon but I’ve learned that many people that I interact with on a daily basis suffer from this to some extent, I’ve worked with more than a few “30 year old virgins” all of them were while not perfect couldn’t be further from some hate spewing troll on the internet.
Those who aren’t and do still manage date also struggle a lot especially if the only dating they have time for is online dating / tinder and especially if they have a limited social circle that can’t help them out.
I only hope is that we find a solution and strike a good balance before alternatives come into play or worse before socities would amass a critical mass of “incels” because when you have a lot of angry men who can’t get laid civil unrest is quite likely to follow.
And this does not refute the argument of incels; it supports it. The idea is that with a higher percentage of the population getting married, the average man was more likely to find a partner. Without monogamy, the number of sexual partners skews heavily toward the top 20% of men, leaving less sexual partners for less attractive men.
maybe this is a call for help and I get HN us probably the wrong place but I haven’t had a girlfriend in 15yrs and yes that means no sex in 15yrs.
Im sure I have tons of issues. If im being defensive I’d say it’a juat bad luck. There’s been plently of women that have been interested in me and some I’ve been interested in but none where we were interested in each other. It doesn’t help that I’m a geek engineer so there are no women at work and most geek meetups are 90-95% men. Sure I go to a few non geek meetups but of course I almost never meet someone there I think I have anything in common with.
I also have this hang up that if I know the woman is not going to be long term I won’t sleep with her. The reason is in my experience, at least for my type of girl, they are always hoping for LTR even if they say short term is ok so if I already know I’m not really interested then it feels deceitful. And Im also not looking for short term.
so, I’m always hopeful I’ll meet someone but that hope is now at 15yrs.
Have had 6 LTR before I was 35 including one short marriage
Ask yourself honestly: Do I really need sex/intimacy or is it just a bonus at best? Take a coin, label one side as never have sex, the other as have sex, flip it and observe your feelings once you see the result - did you feel relief or stress? Then you know "the direction of your heart". If you want to start meeting lots of women, buy a camera, spend a few months mastering the art of strobe photography to get at least to average level, make a profile on Model Mayhem, start doing castings or respond to traveling models in your area; if your work is any good, within another 6 months you'll be meeting the most beautiful women on this planet, possibly most entitled as well ;-) You will definitely have no issues talking to any woman afterwards, probably you'd not even want to approach most women and reject them outright if they ever approach you. If you get yourself in shape instead of being lazy or busy etc., that would also help tremendously. If Flavio Briatore with his physique could date Heidi Klum, what are the limits for ugly incels? It's all in your head, possibly in hygiene and how you dress as well. Don't be stupid, anyone can do it, women react to completely different stimuli than you were taught; once you figure it out you'll be laughing on how silly you were.
Thanks for trying to help. I'm not ugly or unfit and as I mentioned women are interested. Rather I have some other issue which is finding one I want that's also interested in me. I find plenty (well, 3-4 a year so maybe that's not plenty) that would be happy to date and are attractive. They just clearly (or at least in my head) are not a match. That includes at least one actual "model". I dress well as well.
The issue is not attracting them so much as something about my attitude and finding better matches. Example: I have a hairdresser who is clearly interested. We have zero in common though. Her entire life is drink with friends at a bar near her salon and otherwise watch Japanese TV. (both her own admission that that's all she does). And she's attractive. I'm not judging her choices, just saying that doesn't interest me so I don't pursue.
Conversely, met a girl who was a game dev. We hit it off immediately. Talked like fast friends. Thought it might go somewhere. She ditched when she found out I was 15yrs her senior (3rd-ish date). I wasn't shooting for young, just happy to find someone with semi common interests so that conversation was a exciting and joyous for both of us. That rarely happens. Not saying I need a game dev person. Just saying need someone who I can see as being a friend I can have a real conversation with. Who I like talking to because she's interested in more than just fashion (that's not an indictment of women in general, just that it's been a common experience for me). Have met a couple of girls I could talk well to but I wasn't physically attracted. Not looking for model just for whatever reason it attraction wasn't there for me.
Anyway, clearly I'm doing something wrong that I can't seem to meet someone that both seems like a match and we are mutually attracted. 15yrs is plenty of proof that it's me. Still I have no clue where to meet them. If I go to some conference where I think I'd meet some who have compatible interests they're are too few so they are probably taken or hit on constantly and therefore I'd feel like a jerk to be yet another guy trying.
From my experience you are chasing an illusion or a "rare event". It's unlikely you are going to find what you desire with the current generation of women, maybe you'd have had higher chance in previous ages. Now it's like with jobs - most likely the only choice you have is how much money you get and to what extent your boss is going to be terrible, but all jobs look the same (barring luck). So with girls you shouldn't expect deep meaningful conversations and working on something great together (unless it's political/economical power, including internal war once you reach interesting level); get buddies for that. Similarly, the same frustration is shared by women as they don't see much interesting going on with contemporary men, when it comes to their preferences, and neither side cares about compromises anymore. So either accept you will have at best an actress pretending she likes what you like and you'll be an actor simulating her preferred type, or focus on something else that seems meaningful to you. Romantic love is dead and buried (again, barring some rare exceptions).
As a animal why would I need to goto the effort of pleasing the opposite sex if I get all the gratification for free with porn and without the stresses and hassle, of an expensive marriage and nagging?
You don't get "all the gratification". Since you are focused on the purely physical aspect, I'll talk about that first - it's not an equivalent orgasm, scientifically speaking. Studies have shown that the quality of orgasm is around 3-4 times better with a partner, as measured through hormone levels post-orgasm. I forget exactly which hormones, though I believe they measured at least dopamine and prolactin. Possibly testosterone or something else as well, though I'm not going to search about orgasm hormones at work to find the study, haha. If memory serves, your dopamine (the thing that makes you horny) plummets and your prolactin skyrockets, giving you that post-coital sense of bliss. And the amount dopamine/prolactin fall/rise, are 3-4 times the amount than when it's just you and your favorite hand.
And that's not to mention the mental or emotional aspects at all. Nor anything about a relationship (if the sex was with a longer term partner).
Porn is about fantasy and serving a short term need/desire. And it's a form of entertainment, fantasy entertainment. No one expects real sex to be like porn, just as no one expects action spy movies like Bourne to be like how intelligence agencies operate. That doesn't mean that regular/real life isn't worth living or doesn't offer something of value that isn't covered by the other thing.
It's difficult for regular guys to experience mindblowing sex with a woman that is giving them everything like they see in movies - they should be happy if they get their 5-10 minutes and then move on. So what they see in porn they never get to experience in real life and it might be significantly more enjoyable to them than the real, yet average thing that is available to them. I guess that also explains sudden interest in realistic dolls (can't shake the pathetic feeling from that). Some people here do experience the jackpot; if they are smart they don't talk about it, the rest is just theorizing what if.
I don't buy it. This article reduces the whole issue down to delayed marriage, which seems overly simplified and correlative.
> The rise of young male sexlessness isn’t about Chads and Stacies; it isn’t primarily about Tinder or Bumble; it’s not mostly about attitudinal shifts in what women want from relationships; and it’s not mainly about some new war between the sexes. It’s mostly about people spending more years in school and spending more years living at home. But that’s not actually a story about some change in sexual politics; instead, it’s a story about the modern knowledge economy, and to some extent exorbitant housing costs. As such, it’s no surprise that rising sexlessness is being observed in many countries.
My experience doesn't tell me that living at home has that significant of an impact on whether a person gets to have sex. Perhaps once one gets to a certain age; past 26, it's kind of pathetic IMO. But if people are living at home longer across the board, I would expect more of those people would find each other. My experience in knowing people who have taken a while to get married tells me they do so in order to save up for the wedding. I don't think it has very much to do with causing involuntary celibacy.
Maybe there's some aspect of the article I'm missing. What I'm not missing is the author's snotty attitude, which should make anyone suspicious of their motives:
> Many incels quote a rule of thumb that 20% of men have 80% of the sex. Is this true? It turns out, the answer is no. And of course, it isn’t!
Of course it isn't, silly reader!
Outspoken incels might be wrong about some of their claims, but that doesn't meant that there isn't something to what they're saying. Just as I wouldn't claim that a person who claims to have seen heaven while almost dying on a hospital table, I wouldn't claim that incels aren't experiencing alienation from the opposite sex. Instead of concluding that incels in general are "woman hating terrorists", it's a better idea to keep a level head and try to figure out exactly what's going on here with a modicum of compassion.
Are incels "woman haters"? I don't buy it. As online communities for incels are essentially support groups for frustrated people, yes, of course you're going to read a lot of nasty things about women written by incels. Does that mean that an incel isn't immediately going to turn the other cheek as soon as a woman shows them genuine affection? I don't think so. I think these are men who genuinely want the affection and companionship of women.
If incels are terrorists because of a very, very small minority, then I guess all Catholics are pedophiles. Right? Riiiiight?
You might be thinking that I am indeed an incel. No, not by a long shot. But I can see where a lot of them are coming from. Years ago, online dating really wasn't all that difficult, and I'm not particularly good-looking either. I do think that there's an amalgam of societal changes that have been affecting all sides, and it can't be reduced to a lack of marriage.
Let me be clear, these are my opinions based on my experience. Your results may vary.
By 2016, online dating had become much less fun in general and a lot more work. I don't think a lot of people, especially people who found partners early on, just how much effort it takes for a guy to date women online. The effort is monumental, especially when you don't have much in the looks department. Not only that, but you've got to fight off the hundreds or thousands of other penises that slither towards women as soon as they log in to these platforms. 99% of your messages will ever be read or replied to. It takes hours out of your life and is demoralizing. If this lasts for months or years, it's damaging to how you view yourself. I personally gave up on that game because women really demand a lot from men but return very little, in my opinion. It does work out for some people, but I know I'm not the only person who realized that eventually you've got better things to do than to prove yourself to people who have no interest in your approval of them. I harbor no hatred of women, it's just that I increasingly don't seem to be a good mate for them and vise versa.
It seems to me that attitudes have changed quite a bit between the sexes. Men of my generation, in my experience, grew up being told lots of fanciful things about women, possibly much more so than previous generations(but I can't be sure). Sugar and spice was just the beginning of that; I recall many times in my life when authority figures told me that the world would be a better place if only women were in charge of anything. Disney movies made men look fallible, while the women were misunderstood sweethearts who are the prize at the end of the tunnel after you fight off the dragon, the monster, or the bad guys. A lot of boys grow up to subliminally believe that women are their salvation and that, if only they could just meet that one girl, their lives can finally get on track. Of course this isn't true as a rule since women are mere human beings. In contrast, women get different messages about what a man should be, and they are just as unrealistic as the messages told to men about women.
Of course, those things aren't necessarily new, but I think they're heightened. What's different is women's roles in society have changed drastically, and that's going to effect their preferences. In my experience, women simply don't need men(they'll even attest to this) more than ever, and there's a lot of media telling them that "they're worth it" even if they don't change who they are, so they quite logically try to shoot the moon and only settle with the man that they are most attracted to that they can get. Men of utility simply need not apply. Ugly men of the past could more easily pass on their genes because of their utility. Again, I am not blaming women. I would likely do the same thing if I were a woman.
Moreover, a woman can get support and validation from so many more avenues than they used to. Validation regularly comes in through social media reactions(let's be honest, most women can get validation every day by posting innocuous photos and men ultimately enable this), and support can easily asked for, bought, or begged from by the government. As I said, the man who is a mere utility need not apply.
What I've observed of the people in my generation who are getting married is that women are often marrying what I would refer to as the "adorkable dude-bro" who really isn't a bad guy by any means, but he has essentially taken on the gender role once held by women, albeit in a more bumbling way. He probably doesn't work, or if he does his work makes him peanuts. He's good looking, charming, has excellent social skills, funny, etc. The fact that he only works 4 hours a day at most means she's never going to think he's "working too much". It doesn't matter that he can't do a single useful thing beyond making grilled cheese, because is wife or girlfriend loves him entirely for the things he is rather than the things he does.
Need I repeat that this is my experience and not necessarily reflective of everyone's reality? Everybody got that? Good!
Clearly, not all guys can be that adorkable dude-bro. I'll never be that guy because I'm not charismatic, not particularly attractive, I'm highly analytical, and I spend a lot of my time writing software and not much of it in leisure. The reality is that I am not the preference of the vast majority of women in my generation, and even though I can and do have sex, spending inordinate amounts of time trying to build relationships with women has become tiresome and unrealistic. I certainly don't want to play the adorkable dude-bro to please women.
A some men who are not as good looking as I am(and trust me, I'm on the low-end) are basically screwed. Worse yet, there are hundreds of companies preying on their insecurities, telling them that if they learn some behavioral techniques, the ladies will "drop their panties." Once they figure out that "game" is a giant scam, or they figure out that sex-alone is dissatisfying, they rightfully get pissed off. Wouldn't you be extremely upset if what you most wanted out of life seemed unobtainable no matter what you did? You'd probably think the system was rigged against you, too. Hell, you'd be even more enraged if your lack of something put you on the lowest rung of society; both men and women will cackle at you for not getting laid.
So no, I'm not absolving incels of any specific wrongdoings. But being dismissive is not a solution, and blaming the marriage rate doesn't seem realistic. The fact that any modestly-sized group of people are perceiving the modern world as being unfair to them should be alarming for a multitude of reasons.
TL;DR My experience makes me distrust the author's conclusion, and my experience is not necessarily reflective of reality. Thus, my opinion is something to be taken with a big chunk of rock salt.
They had a terrible 20 year economic hangover due to a massive bubble poorly handled, and that definitely had massive negative social spillover effects. But over the past 15 years social surveys have shown increasing (and solidly net positive) happiness and satisfaction with the quality of life across all demographic groups except the extremely old. Notably, over the past decade Japanese life satisfaction levels are higher than the same surveys show in North America and Europe.
An economic system that depends on a pyramid model is ultimately unsustainable. I don't mean in the "there's a population bomb problem the planet's going to die unless we do something!" sense -- I don't in fact agree with that. But there's no reason why the system can't and ought not achieve balance.
The downside of "the way of Japan" is that they'll shortly have no one to pay for all the old people. Keeping old people alive is expensive.
In the US young people pay old people's social security income. You see how many people are talking about the aging baby boomers right? Imagine that but much worse.
I'll go out on a limb and say you're being downvoted because it's not actually "the best decision a person can make for the planet/sustainability". It's not even a good decision, really.
> Otherwise 1 kid per parent (on average) is what is sustainable.
Says who? People are responsible for climate change. I mean have a kid if you want to and think it'll be fun or whatever, but the idea that it's "sustainable" decision is a joke.
Well, if you want to work till death then be my guest.
If you believe that society should somehow support their old then I think that one should provide at least one replacement.
If you expect that somebodies else children should support you then I question your sanity. Why should they choose to do so?
If you think that you will be supported by riches you collect during your life time then keep in mind that riches are imaginary.
If you will have no children but 10 others will have 10 children (each) then which genes will prevail? Sustainable or not sustainable?
Edit: I think that it is sustainable to have 1 child per parent. It will keep the population constant. What is not sustainable is to have more than 1 per parent. If we could convince the majority of the world to follow this then the prospects will be much better than today.
What I consider a joke is a belief that if you die out next to the society with very high fertility then it somehow helps the planet. It does not make a dent.
How does forcing kids to care for dying parents have any impact on the sustainability/environmental impact of having kids.
> If you expect that somebodies else children should support you then I question your sanity. Why should they choose to do so?
Why are you so sure your own kids would choose to do so? Aren't you making a hundred-thousand-dollar-plus child-rearing bet that they'll feel guilty enough to care for you? Why not just spend that money on a paid caretaker?
> If you will have no children but 10 others will have 10 children (each) then which genes will prevail? Sustainable or not sustainable?
Just because other people are making a bad decision doesn't mean you have to make it, too.
>Aren't you making a hundred-thousand-dollar-plus child-rearing bet that they'll feel guilty enough to care for you?
This is not how the things work.
>Why not just spend that money on a paid caretaker?
Lets imagine that single generation just stops having children. Where exactly does this caretaker come from?
Now imagine that just half does so. What will happen to the economic output and therefore with the accumulated value (money, stock, real estate) you plan to use to pay for these services? If the society is struggling to just keep up with itself then where exactly does this caretaker come from?
Economy is not a fixed state. It is a living organism. Riches are imaginary. If you have no sustainable economy then your riches will vanish.
>Just because other people are making a bad decision doesn't mean you have to make it, too.
I was pointing out that if sustainable thinking just dies out then perhaps that is not the outcome you would expect.
Of course that’s how things work! You really think that having a kid is a guarantee that kid’ll take care of you as you die?
I watched my parents care for their dying parents and that’s just not something I’m interested in. I live 2000 miles away and told them to sort their own plans out when the time comes.
I did not mean that children should personally take care of me. Rather they will provide to the economy and this will keep the system running. If everybody is busy dying then not much is left for other activities.
What I mean by sustainable society is that it can keep its populace in constant size on its own.
India is not sustainable, Arab countries are not sustainable. But so are also not most European countries because they need heavy immigration to maintain the population size.
The authors of this article admit that involuntary celibacy is rising among young men. They admit that 20% of the men are having 60% of the sex while incels claim it's 80%--not that much of a difference. Marriage is declining--and that's their coup de grâce? Gimme a break. The decline in marriage could be due to all the factors that incels claim: that people, including women, are more promiscuous outside of marriage and that social media and online dating make women more shallow and appearance-oriented.
While there are some problematic, misogynist aspects to the incel and MGTOW (men going their own way) movement, this article does nothing to shed light on the existing problem of young men feeling increasingly isolated, anti-social and cut off from the sexual marketplace. Incels are consistently written off as simply misogynist while the numbers clearly point to a more endemic problem that no one will address because young men are not considered an oppressed group.