this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
162 points (85.5% liked)

No Stupid Questions

35822 readers
1070 users here now

No such thing. Ask away!

!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.

The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:

Rules (interactive)


Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.

All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.



Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.

Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.



Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.

Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.



Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.

That's it.



Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.

Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.



Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.

Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.

On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.

If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.



Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.

If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.

Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.



Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.



Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.

Let everyone have their own content.



Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here.



Credits

Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!

The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Something I've always wondered is what kind of women were in the lives of incel men when they were young. Did they have a bad relationship with their mother? Did they lack sisters or other female family members? Or is their family situation irrelevant? Maybe some particular situation in their early years caused them to develop a complex around women?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 110 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think boys and men have serious issues in our society that are not getting the attention they need. This along with changing social structures leaves some men behind. And they turn to the dark corners of the internet where other men just like them seem to care about them, and seem to have the same problems as them.

Boys and men are falling behind in schools and universities. Many colleges that have affirmative action are now having to use it to boost enrollment for men. Many of these rules were originally meant to increase numbers for women.

Women and girls have issues that society needs to help them with, and often times these issues get a lot more attention and are met with sympathy and understanding.

Whereas sometimes for men’s issues, the base reaction of society is to say stop crying and be a man. Men asking for help in and of itself is generally seen as not a manly thing to do.

This is an oversimplification of the issues, but just making fun of incels without trying to understand where they are coming from is probably not the best strategy to get them the help they need.

This in turn, leads them to start listening to men like Andrew Tate and other asshats.

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 22 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The important part of the word incel is the “in”—their situation is involuntary. They don’t have the skills or ability to change without help.

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Most do- they just think they’re entitled enough not to have to life a finger. It’s entirely voluntary for most of them.

[–] WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com 17 points 1 year ago

I have a friend who has slid into a lifestyle that is incel adjacent (he’s not quite fully rage filled against women yet), and I find that it is hard to determine what is voluntary and what isn’t. He is fully capable of getting a job or a girlfriend, but his worldview is so warped by depression and anxiety that he simply self sabotages any opportunity to have those things. He suffers greatly and blames himself a lot, but he is also the only thing that is ever standing in his way.

He doesn’t lift a finger to work unless forced, but observing him over the years has led me to believe that it is all a product of severe anxiety. There is no chance of failure if you never try, and it’s easier to act arrogant than it is to constantly reveal how much you actually hate and doubt yourself.

Sadly, there’s not much you can do for someone like that other than continue to be honest and hope it seeps in. Sometimes I feel like Brandon Novak waiting on Bam Margera to be ready for help, but I still have hope that he’ll see the light one day. Under all that negativity, he is still a worthwhile person.

[–] SwallowsDick@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You left a comment above saying that there are no cultural elements that contribute to people becoming incels. You need to have some more empathy for people, as long as they aren't hurting others

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago

I have zero empathy for people with self-inflicted conditions.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What gets me is that the discourse around incels is forcibly centered on how they effect women, when it should be focussed on the societal problems that turned those men that way in the first place. But it's not palettable to discuss the issue unless women are given the victimhood role.

It's much like how every year funds raised for breast cancer research are an order of magnitude more than funds raised for prostate cancer research, even though more men die of it than women do of breast cancer. Both are worthy of funding, but they're certainly not treated equally.

[–] rosymind@leminal.space 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Would just like to point out the men can also get breast cancer:

https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/breast/men/index.htm

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, but the rate is only 1% of all breast cancera diagnosed.

[–] rosymind@leminal.space 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yes, that's true. 1% is still a significant enough amount (accounting for how large the human is at present) that men benefit from the past breast cancer research as well.

I'm just pointing out that it isn't a disease that only affects women. I dated a guy back when I was 14 or so, whose uncle got breast cancer. He was all paranoid that he had it, too, because he had lumps in his chest. In his case they turned out to be beniegn

I'd rather that men know there is a (small) risk, than ignore signs because they think that only women can die from it

1% is the typical birthcontrol pill failure rate, and I know of at least 2 babies born into the world while her mother was using bc pills

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'd rather that money is apportioned to finding cures for diseases based on how many people they kill, not by which gender it effects the most.

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world -2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Men not getting the sex they feel entitled to is not a societal problem. It's a male problem. Noone is entitled to sex and men need to learn that.

[–] z00s@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

You're confusing cause and effect, but I suspect you already know that due to your gross generalisation.

[–] burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works -3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I don’t understand your point but prostitution is legal in some places.

[–] eatthecake@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The mens issue being talked about is involuntary celibacy and that is not feminists problem to solve. Nor should sex workers have to deal with misogynists.

[–] burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Men’s issues and women’s issues are problems for society to solve together. Feminists can do whatever they do. Doesn’t change anything that society needs to work together to solve.

[–] Elivey@lemmy.world -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Okay, we're going to continue not having sex with sexist entitled incels then. You're not entitled to our bodies to "fix" this issue.

You do you I suppose.

[–] iheartneopets@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago

I would just like to say, that society didn't just start "caring more about women's issues over men's issues" overnight. To get society to give a shit about women at all has been a constant, centuries-long battle fought by various feminists.

It's not the effect of society "caring more about women" necessarily that you're seeing, it's the direct impact of a loooooong battle for recognition. I think that men could benefit from the same thing, because there are a lot of problems that men also face because of the same patriarchy that women face. The be strong, don't show emotion, being to close to another man is gay type of rhetoric is extremely harmful.

When done in a good-faith way that's not a disguised attempt to roll-back women's rights as some men's rights discussions can sometimes be, I (a feminist woman) am a huge advocate for healing our boys and men. Obviously changing the way we parent boys will help, but it also takes communities of already-grown men themselves to come together to do that work on themselves, as with any self-improvement.

[–] GraniteM@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I listened to an interview with a woman who did an in-depth study of the loose coalition of websites and social media personalities of which the incel movement is a part. She described it as "funnel shaped," which is to say that they don't start with the darkest, most unhinged language. They start by talking to young men who feel lonely and rejected, and they talk about how they shouldn't feel bad about being men, how they deserve respect and status, and then it goes on from there down the rabbit hole into the really depraved stuff.

The reason this works is because a lot of young men don't hear those initial encouraging words in a lot of other places. They hear a lot about toxic masculinity and the harm of the patriarchy, and they feel like their identities are being targeted, and they don't have a lot of positive healthy male role models to turn to.

We need to have ways of talking to men, especially young men, about how they should feel good about themselves, how they should be proud of the good things they can do in the world, how they should be the best versions of themselves that they can be, and all of that in ways that don't lead down that dark road to toxicity. It's an incredibly wide ranging problem, and it's not going to be easy to fix.

This ⬆️ 💯 great take.