News What Incels.is Learned From Feminism

[Oneitiscel]

What Incels Learned From Feminism

Confusing marginality with insight leaves movements vulnerable to reactionary mimicry. A renewed engagement with Karl Marx’s structural account of exploitation can give feminism a path out of standpoint theory’s dead end.

jacobin.com

Feminist standpoint theory, which argues that marginalized experiences can produce valuable knowledge, certainly has analytic power, but it is not immune to misuse. When experience and marginality are claimed as authority they can — and often do — produce repressive hierarchies within both progressive and reactionary movements.

On the front page of one of the world’s largest incel forums, Incels.is, the rules are strict. Membership is limited to men who identify as true incels; sympathy with, or even agreement with, the forum’s critique of society is not enough. Women are categorically excluded: according to incel logic, a woman who remains celibate is never truly marginalized, because she could always find a sexual partner if she wanted. Such women are labeled “volcels,” voluntary celibates.

Much of the forum’s discussion revolves around who counts as a “real” incel. The distinction between “truecels” and “fakecels” hinges on experience: truecels are doomed to celibacy, while fakecels could escape it with effort. In other words, epistemic authority within the community is based on marginalization. Consider, for instance, a discussion thread on Incels.is in which users debate whether “Chads” — that is, men who hold privileged positions in the gender hierarchy by virtue of their physical attractiveness — can ever be genuinely “blackpilled.” As one user wrote in the thread: “They can’t ‘know’ that, they can only believe it to a certain degree. The only way to truly know it’s from experience. They will never be truly blackpilled because they’ll never experience true forced loneliness and hopelessness.”

Experience — or lack thereof — is central to the community’s collective life. Only those who have lived the full “incel experience” are considered qualified to participate or offer insight. In this, the community mirrors feminist ideas about situated knowledge and epistemic privilege, but it applies them without ethical reflection: access to “true” knowledge is determined by suffering, not by critical reflection or a commitment to justice.

The idea of finding oneself in a hegemonic feminist system, that one needs to unveil, is expressed by the following Incels.is user, who mobilizes critical theory to make his case:

It’s all about living in a world dominated by sexual norms. You see, according to Gramsci, there’s this idea that the folks in power — the bourgeoisie — pretty much control everything that shapes our social culture. So, whether it’s the movies you watch, the news you read, or the music you listen to, it’s all been given the thumbs up by them. And if something doesn’t fit their agenda, well, you might not even hear about it.

Feminist theories of standpoint and situated knowledge carry the same structural potential for misuse if claims to authority are uncritically linked to experience alone.

---

Well guys, guess it's about time to pack it up and shut the forum down.

Seems like our online identity is entirely plagiarized from inferior radfemoid propaganda, therefore making our logic & talking points inherently cucked.

/s

 

[VλREN]

They didn’t post any screenshots JFL

 

[DoomThreeKoala]

They didn’t post any screenshots JFL