I’m a white guy, a little above average height for my demographic. So, y’know. I have it easy. The world is given to me on a silver platter. I’m not really sacred of much.
But I was a small kid, a bit of a spaz, and back then, I was scared of a lot. So I spend a lot of time thinking about fear.
Y’know what really scares me? Incels. I mean, more ignorance than Incels, but Incels are a prime example of ignorance. People so intitled, unsocialized, self-centered. These are people who advocate for government appointed girlfriends, and mean it. How could anyone ever take that seriously? I mean, they have to be completely willfully ignorant to get to that level of dehumanization. Have you seen Elliot Rodger’s manifesto? These are people so isolated that they internalize the world of mass media marketing and inhabit it as a fabricated dream world where they are losers. I mean, c’mon. They ARE losers.
But they have me thinking to myself too, because way back when I was a little kid, I was a looser. I lived in my own world, imagined by me, detached from the people around me. I mean, to a lesser degree, everyone lives in their own imagination-land, but Incels, these young people, don’t go outside. Imagination and 4Chan is all they’ve got. Losers are sad. And what worries me most these days, what scares me, is how society manufactures these losers.
Y’know that one kid who would always play with the handicapped kid at recess? Or the one popular kid who would go out of their way NOT to pick you last, even though you were a little chubster who was no good at sports? Maybe you don’t. You PROBABLY don’t. But I do. And I worry that if it wasn’t for that one kid, those few acts of understanding and kindness, I would be a godamn Incel. I worry that society manufactures Incels and no one is bothering to try and stop it.
The discourse around shooters and Incels, what I see on tv and on the internet, frightens me. By all means, I think their acts of violence and misogyny are reprehensible. Abhorrent. Disgusting. But ask yourself for one second: “How low of a place would I have to be in to act that way and think those things?”
You see, I don’t see anyone being that guy who picked the fat kid 3rd from last, despite there being a more athletic choice. I see society mocking young men and making their feelings irrelevant. We say things like “All white men have it easy because of what they were born as.” Do you know how many self-flagellating, depressed, man-bunned young men I see struggling in university campuses every day? People are people, and the type of conversation society is having about young men Right Now is about how much privilege they have and how it’s got to be taken away, or modified or institutionally corrected, and how white men couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to struggle. Well, as a young man myself, let me just tell you right now, this kind of talk just makes them feel alone, unloved, unwanted and untethered. It’s naïve, childish and it’s pushing people into strange, frighteningly isolated corners of their own imaginations. And if you were made to feel that lowly, as lowly as an Incel, why wouldn’t you just kill yourself? I thought about it, doing my best to put aside my “white privilege” and just use regular, old fashioned Human Empathy. The only reasons I could come up with were either because you hated yourself so much, you felt you deserved to suffer, or because you were so angry at the world you wanted to take somebody else down with you. Just take a moment to let that sink in.
Now I can see people thinking “well, now you’ve basically just said that it’s up to women and racial minorities to make white boys feel better.” Absolutely not. It’s up to everyone, no matter your gender or color, to respect one another. It’s up to society to have the maturity to stop talking about people in broad, generalized ways. It’s up to us to stop dehumanizing each other.
Incels are like an air filter for our social discourse about young men; sitting alone in their parent’s basements, alone on the library computer, alone in their cheap, pest infested apartments, they have no way to avoid the onslaught of negative criticism and unrealistic standards set by advertising. They accumulate all the toxicity of anti-man rhetoric, and inhabit it, become it. They become so toxic themselves, they can’t even stand to live anymore. And then someone shows up, makes an unbelievably vile manifesto, and shoots a bunch of innocent people. And then it’s talked about like these people should to be marginalized even more, like we need to pretend they don’t exist, like they don’t deserve to even be mentioned, as if they shouldn’t even be spoken about, like the devil or Voldemort, only real.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is myopic.
Is it male privilege that men have a higher success rate in suicide than women? Is it male privilege that custody cases favor women over men? Is it privilege that more men go to war and die than women? That women get statistically shorter prison sentences for the same crimes? Is it male privilege that the report rate for sexual assault among male victims is even lower than women? I’m not trying to insinuate that there aren’t areas where men are obviously favored over women. But I am trying to say that, in general, society thinks of men as more disposable. And maybe, just as it’s difficult for men to empathize with people different than themselves, it’s difficult for non-men to understand how harsh the world can be to them. I’m trying to say that it’s our human duty to strive to empathize with everyone, to acknowledge fellow humanity.
My own partner is non binary and mixed race. They’re wonderful, funny, caring. I have the privilege of getting to hug and kiss them. But my own partner, after giving me a peck on the cheek, will then go off about all the evils of white men, how stupid, terrible and annoying they are. Listen, it’s not as if I don’t see the shitty white guys out there, but it’s not as if every white dude is worthless. And it’s not as if hearing these types of things, over and over again doesn’t hurt me, or others like me. When I bring this up, people roll their eyes and go “‘not all men’ again, eh? Fake news!” Let me just ask, when has it ever been okay to talk about an entire group of people in generalized, negative terms? This is a lesson we should have learned from the War. From the civil rights movement. From the suffragettes. Lessons we should have been taught in kindergarten. And here it is again, rearing up like some kind of horrible animal we can’t seem to scare off completely.
My best friend is a man who was raped. He’s struggled to tell anyone about it because it made him feel like less of a man. He joined the military and destroyed his body trying to inhabit an unrealistic image of masculinity.
My cousin was wrongfully accused of inappropriate conduct at the school where he worked. He was ostracized by his community, banned from work, and treated like garbage until the case cleared and it was revealed, through camera recordings, that the accusations against him were false. He can’t go back to work regardless, because the case was handled so poorly.
I work in childcare, and I constantly fear some playful remark being taken out of context, some angsty kid, mad at me since -as the only male in most situations- I’m automatically designated the “heavy” by my coworkers, just deciding to say I did something inappropriate. It would ruin my reputation. It would ruin my career. That would ruin my life.
Let’s talk about the Rich White Men for a second. Are they rich because they’re white, or because they’re men? After using your critical faculties for a mere moment, I hope you can see that it’s neither! They’re rich because they have money, and that begets more money. Because when you get famous, you get inducted into the illuminati or something. They’re rich because of smart investments or shady, unethical behavior, or whatever. But it’s not, repeat NOT, because they have white skin and a penis. You think the “1%” is evil white people in China? Saudi Arabia? Japan? Our examples of white male privilege are celebrities, rich with cash and connections, like Matthew Broderick and Michael Fassbender, like the Donald, like the Clintons and like Epstein. These are not the everyday people you meet on the street!
Our culture glorifies a mentality that brings us money and fame; it glorifies capitol, psychopathy and the commodification and subsequent dehumanization of our fellow human beings. Incels are just a startling mirror to see this in. Incels encompass all these traits, but since they have no money, social skills or political capitol, they get nowhere, do nothing, and we look upon them with scorn and contempt, until they explode. Incels are just canaries in a mine shaft.
That’s what scares me.
But I was a small kid, a bit of a spaz, and back then, I was scared of a lot. So I spend a lot of time thinking about fear.
Y’know what really scares me? Incels. I mean, more ignorance than Incels, but Incels are a prime example of ignorance. People so intitled, unsocialized, self-centered. These are people who advocate for government appointed girlfriends, and mean it. How could anyone ever take that seriously? I mean, they have to be completely willfully ignorant to get to that level of dehumanization. Have you seen Elliot Rodger’s manifesto? These are people so isolated that they internalize the world of mass media marketing and inhabit it as a fabricated dream world where they are losers. I mean, c’mon. They ARE losers.
But they have me thinking to myself too, because way back when I was a little kid, I was a looser. I lived in my own world, imagined by me, detached from the people around me. I mean, to a lesser degree, everyone lives in their own imagination-land, but Incels, these young people, don’t go outside. Imagination and 4Chan is all they’ve got. Losers are sad. And what worries me most these days, what scares me, is how society manufactures these losers.
Y’know that one kid who would always play with the handicapped kid at recess? Or the one popular kid who would go out of their way NOT to pick you last, even though you were a little chubster who was no good at sports? Maybe you don’t. You PROBABLY don’t. But I do. And I worry that if it wasn’t for that one kid, those few acts of understanding and kindness, I would be a godamn Incel. I worry that society manufactures Incels and no one is bothering to try and stop it.
The discourse around shooters and Incels, what I see on tv and on the internet, frightens me. By all means, I think their acts of violence and misogyny are reprehensible. Abhorrent. Disgusting. But ask yourself for one second: “How low of a place would I have to be in to act that way and think those things?”
You see, I don’t see anyone being that guy who picked the fat kid 3rd from last, despite there being a more athletic choice. I see society mocking young men and making their feelings irrelevant. We say things like “All white men have it easy because of what they were born as.” Do you know how many self-flagellating, depressed, man-bunned young men I see struggling in university campuses every day? People are people, and the type of conversation society is having about young men Right Now is about how much privilege they have and how it’s got to be taken away, or modified or institutionally corrected, and how white men couldn’t possibly know what it’s like to struggle. Well, as a young man myself, let me just tell you right now, this kind of talk just makes them feel alone, unloved, unwanted and untethered. It’s naïve, childish and it’s pushing people into strange, frighteningly isolated corners of their own imaginations. And if you were made to feel that lowly, as lowly as an Incel, why wouldn’t you just kill yourself? I thought about it, doing my best to put aside my “white privilege” and just use regular, old fashioned Human Empathy. The only reasons I could come up with were either because you hated yourself so much, you felt you deserved to suffer, or because you were so angry at the world you wanted to take somebody else down with you. Just take a moment to let that sink in.
Now I can see people thinking “well, now you’ve basically just said that it’s up to women and racial minorities to make white boys feel better.” Absolutely not. It’s up to everyone, no matter your gender or color, to respect one another. It’s up to society to have the maturity to stop talking about people in broad, generalized ways. It’s up to us to stop dehumanizing each other.
Incels are like an air filter for our social discourse about young men; sitting alone in their parent’s basements, alone on the library computer, alone in their cheap, pest infested apartments, they have no way to avoid the onslaught of negative criticism and unrealistic standards set by advertising. They accumulate all the toxicity of anti-man rhetoric, and inhabit it, become it. They become so toxic themselves, they can’t even stand to live anymore. And then someone shows up, makes an unbelievably vile manifesto, and shoots a bunch of innocent people. And then it’s talked about like these people should to be marginalized even more, like we need to pretend they don’t exist, like they don’t deserve to even be mentioned, as if they shouldn’t even be spoken about, like the devil or Voldemort, only real.
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is myopic.
Is it male privilege that men have a higher success rate in suicide than women? Is it male privilege that custody cases favor women over men? Is it privilege that more men go to war and die than women? That women get statistically shorter prison sentences for the same crimes? Is it male privilege that the report rate for sexual assault among male victims is even lower than women? I’m not trying to insinuate that there aren’t areas where men are obviously favored over women. But I am trying to say that, in general, society thinks of men as more disposable. And maybe, just as it’s difficult for men to empathize with people different than themselves, it’s difficult for non-men to understand how harsh the world can be to them. I’m trying to say that it’s our human duty to strive to empathize with everyone, to acknowledge fellow humanity.
My own partner is non binary and mixed race. They’re wonderful, funny, caring. I have the privilege of getting to hug and kiss them. But my own partner, after giving me a peck on the cheek, will then go off about all the evils of white men, how stupid, terrible and annoying they are. Listen, it’s not as if I don’t see the shitty white guys out there, but it’s not as if every white dude is worthless. And it’s not as if hearing these types of things, over and over again doesn’t hurt me, or others like me. When I bring this up, people roll their eyes and go “‘not all men’ again, eh? Fake news!” Let me just ask, when has it ever been okay to talk about an entire group of people in generalized, negative terms? This is a lesson we should have learned from the War. From the civil rights movement. From the suffragettes. Lessons we should have been taught in kindergarten. And here it is again, rearing up like some kind of horrible animal we can’t seem to scare off completely.
My best friend is a man who was raped. He’s struggled to tell anyone about it because it made him feel like less of a man. He joined the military and destroyed his body trying to inhabit an unrealistic image of masculinity.
My cousin was wrongfully accused of inappropriate conduct at the school where he worked. He was ostracized by his community, banned from work, and treated like garbage until the case cleared and it was revealed, through camera recordings, that the accusations against him were false. He can’t go back to work regardless, because the case was handled so poorly.
I work in childcare, and I constantly fear some playful remark being taken out of context, some angsty kid, mad at me since -as the only male in most situations- I’m automatically designated the “heavy” by my coworkers, just deciding to say I did something inappropriate. It would ruin my reputation. It would ruin my career. That would ruin my life.
Let’s talk about the Rich White Men for a second. Are they rich because they’re white, or because they’re men? After using your critical faculties for a mere moment, I hope you can see that it’s neither! They’re rich because they have money, and that begets more money. Because when you get famous, you get inducted into the illuminati or something. They’re rich because of smart investments or shady, unethical behavior, or whatever. But it’s not, repeat NOT, because they have white skin and a penis. You think the “1%” is evil white people in China? Saudi Arabia? Japan? Our examples of white male privilege are celebrities, rich with cash and connections, like Matthew Broderick and Michael Fassbender, like the Donald, like the Clintons and like Epstein. These are not the everyday people you meet on the street!
Our culture glorifies a mentality that brings us money and fame; it glorifies capitol, psychopathy and the commodification and subsequent dehumanization of our fellow human beings. Incels are just a startling mirror to see this in. Incels encompass all these traits, but since they have no money, social skills or political capitol, they get nowhere, do nothing, and we look upon them with scorn and contempt, until they explode. Incels are just canaries in a mine shaft.
That’s what scares me.
