> 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.
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.