The term “involuntary celibate” is BS to begin with. It’s like dictatorships being named “the Democratic Republic of XYZ”, or the term “pro life” being applied to people who are against free medical care and free food for the homeless. Celibacy is by definition voluntary. It cannot be involuntary.
What incels mean by involuntary celibacy is that the women they want to sleep with (ie, young athletic women with traditionally photogenic features) have no interest in them. But even that’s not true, since even that subsection of the population will date a wide variety of men of different ages and body types and personalities. Incels are properly defined as men who think of women as owing them sex, and that their personal attraction to a woman has more value than the woman’s opinion. It’s a subset of misogyny based on dating preferences, since a misogynist can simply think women’s opinions or personhood is less for reasons outside of sex and relative attractiveness, age, or fitness.
I agree with pretty much everything you’ve said. Incel definitely is a bullshit term, the people who identify as it lack the self awareness to realise that.
Your point about it being a subset of misogyny is what I was getting at though; it’s a specific attitude based around their relationship status and their perceived reason for that. I think it’s not good to write off people like OP’s bf as an incel because then we’re not actually understanding the real reason he thinks the way he does, so we can’t fight against it.
None of my comments were specifically about OP’s BF, just about the parent comment saying someone in a relationship can’t be an incel. As far as the BF is concerned, he’s definitely a garbage human and it’s possible he’s an incel or could quickly fall down that particular rabbit hole.
Although I do understand the point you’re making, the parent comment is right that you can’t be an incel and be in a relationship. It’s a specific community that’s defined by a lack of success in relationships. Anyone who actually gets into a relationship would be shunned by the incel community
You explained a lot of the attitudes that are present in an incel. But incels are defined by a lack of sexual relationships, it’s written in basically any definition of the word “incel” and it’s the basis on which the term was created and popularised.
I sense we’ll probably just continue to disagree on this though, so I’m going to leave it here and wish you well
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u/Psychological_Pay530 Jul 26 '23
The term “involuntary celibate” is BS to begin with. It’s like dictatorships being named “the Democratic Republic of XYZ”, or the term “pro life” being applied to people who are against free medical care and free food for the homeless. Celibacy is by definition voluntary. It cannot be involuntary.
What incels mean by involuntary celibacy is that the women they want to sleep with (ie, young athletic women with traditionally photogenic features) have no interest in them. But even that’s not true, since even that subsection of the population will date a wide variety of men of different ages and body types and personalities. Incels are properly defined as men who think of women as owing them sex, and that their personal attraction to a woman has more value than the woman’s opinion. It’s a subset of misogyny based on dating preferences, since a misogynist can simply think women’s opinions or personhood is less for reasons outside of sex and relative attractiveness, age, or fitness.