[privacy_bodger]

That refutes "a single bad card in your hand means you will inevitably lose". It doesn't refute "At some point your hand is so bad you're basically [not] fucked from the start". Which I think might be a fairer statement of incel beliefs.

[krapp]

>It doesn't refute "At some point your hand is so bad you're basically [not] fucked from the start". Which I think might be a fairer statement of incel beliefs.

Serial killers get marriage proposals from behind bars. Ugly men, including men with physical deformities, find partners. Men without working penises still have sexual relationships. Even if there were such a thing as "basically [not] fucked from the start," the vast majority of incels would be nowhere near that extreme.

I mean, look at the patron saint of incels (canonized as such by the incel community itself) Elliot Rodger. Did life deal him such a terrible hand that dating was impossible, or was the only thing standing in his way himself and his own twisted, hateful and false view of women and the world around him?

[privacy_bodger]

The fact serial killers get marriage proposals does not mean that people who are not serial killers necessarily get marriage proposals.

I suspect if somebody is hideously deformed and does not have a working penis, they're going to have a lot of difficulty finding a romantic partner. Presumably there are large numbers of people who have those and similar issues. I think they should be allowed to talk about that, and not have people respond by comparing them to Elliot Rodger.

That these things didn't (Ok I don't know about the penis thing) apply to Elliot Rodger doesn't mean they don't apply to anybody.

[krapp]

> The fact serial killers get marriage proposals does not mean that people who are not serial killers necessarily get marriage proposals.

Yes, you are correct that the fact serial killers get marriage proposals does not mean that people who are not serial killers necessarily get marriage proposals, however that was not the argument that I was making. Serial killers have extremely undesirable personality traits which, typically, one would assume should exclude them from the dating pool. Despite these traits, however serial killers manage to be attractive to people. The conclusion to be reached here is that there is a wide range of personality traits, including negative and antisocial traits, which women can find attractive.

>I suspect if somebody is hideously deformed and does not have a working penis, they're going to have a lot of difficulty finding a romantic partner.

Again, yes, you are correct. But I was not arguing that it was common, rather, I was arguing that there is a wide range of physical attributes which women find attractive, and including deformity implicitly includes the entire range range of attributes one would consider non-traditionally attractive as well, and again (refer to the previous argument) most incels likely do not fall outside of this range in terms of their physical appearance.

Therefore, the argument that every incel is somehow undateable due to immutable and innate characteristics is demonstrated to be false when the variety of physical, psychological and social traits of the entire population which is dating is considered. Edanm's comment above is correct - there are very few, if any, incels for whom a person with practically the same physical and psychological circumstances couldn't be found, but with a partner.

>Presumably there are large numbers of people who have those and similar issues. I think they should be allowed to talk about that, and not have people respond by comparing them to Elliot Rodger.

If they don't want to be associated with people like him, they shouldn't self-identify with a community that considers him a hero and a martyr for their beliefs.

[privacy_bodger]

I think that's all broadly untrue or nonsensical, but I'm not going to argue it point by point.

Basically, I think people should try to have some empathy for people who are having a bad time. I don't really get why so many people are so adamant that that should not happen. But I get that I'm not likely to change your mind about anything at this point.

[edanm]

> Basically, I think people should try to have some empathy for people who are having a bad time.

I completely agree, and I have a lot of empathy for people who are unable to find a partner. I was a very geeky "late bloomer" myself, and went through a luckily small period where everyone around me was able to find relationships, and I wasn't.

So when I say I think incels are wrong in their view of the world, it's not out of a lack of empathy - it's because I think the most important thing to tell incels is that they are wrong. I have no idea how to make this a message that will actually resonate with them, but I wish I could. The cure to believing you will never be able to get something that you desperately want, and that you actually can get with >99% certainty, is to learn that your belief is wrong.

[edanm]

I'm not that aware of incel beliefs, I've only visited the forum a few times out of curiosity (partially borne of my own history with relationships).

But to be clear, I agree that there is a point at which you're basically unable to find sexual relationships - clearly there is such a point. But I'm willing to bet that no one, not one person on the incel Reddit, is unable to find a sexual relationship, at least not because of the so-called "immutable characteristics". There is no one there who is so physically unattractive (or who has whatever other traits are talked about) that they can't find a relationship.

I say this with having known many people who in their late teeanager/adult years, were unattractive, "undateable", etc, who believed that they wouldn't ever find a relationship, and who grew up to be in great relationships.

It's like those old commercials for closeted homosexual teenagers - "it gets better". That's a message that is really the same - it does get better, and it's super easy to confirm, because so many older people in happy relationships were once young incels.

[gridlockd]

So, you accept that there must be a set of individuals that are unable to find sexual partners, but at the same time you are willing to bet that somehow none of these individuals are also active on some incel subreddit.

Can I take the other side of that bet?

[edanm]

I was being somewhat metaphorical, as I can't imagine how we could possibly test such a hypothesis.

But were we able to test it (and feel free to suggest something), I would take that bet, yes. My position being roughly that anyone capable of posting to an incel forum, is capable enough to make the kinds of changes in their life that would "overcome" whatever other physical characteristics they have, and therefore be able to find a sexual partner. Although not necessarily quickly - it might only be later in their adulthood.

(And ok, to be more realistic, I'd only bet on 99.5% of people on incel forums - not 100%. Though I'd probably take the bet at 100% anyway.)

> [...] you are willing to bet that somehow none of these individuals are also active on some incel subreddit.

Yes. I believe the base rate of people who never find a sexual relationship in their entire lives (assuming they want it) is miniscule. Some quick searching puts it at around 0.5% by age 40. I believe that those are mostly unfortunate extreme cases. I believe that even some of these people could conceivably still make changes that would lead to them having a sexual relationship.

The odds of someone on an incel forum being one of the probably-less-than-0.5% of people who by age 40 have not had a sexual relationship is pretty small.

[privacy_bodger]

>I believe the base rate of people who never find a sexual relationship in their entire lives (assuming they want it) is miniscule. Some quick searching puts it at around 0.5% by age 40.

[1] puts it at 1.2%, which would be about two million American men.

[1] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/mar/3/government-s...

Edit: Arguably fairer to just divide by the number of over-40s in America, which would make it only about half a million.

[gridlockd]

I'm actually not so much interested in the incel identity, but in the biological reality of sexual reproduction and mate choice including (but not limited to) Homo Sapiens - as opposed to the fantasies that a given Homo Sapiens might harbor in favor of that reality.

To that end, I would count an incel not as "someone who can't have sex" but someone fertile who involuntarily fails to sexually reproduce.

Research suggests that historically, the ratio of females to males that reproduced is 1.1 (Asia) to 1.4 (West Africa)[1]. Of course that doesn't prove all of these male individuals were incels, but we're not a naturally monogamous species, so you would have to explain why a female would not choose only the best males for reproduction and ignore the rest.

Many (if not most) societies have historically suppressed female mate choice, likely as a measure for maintaining social order. This would suggest that as females are able to be more picky, the number of incels should rise.

I believe that's exactly what we can observe right now in affluent western societies: Women have been financially independent from males for decades, and now that online dating shows women the abundance of mate choices they never knew they had, less attractive males suddenly appear much less desirable. Consequently, the threshold for successful reproduction rises.

[1] https://www.cell.com/ajhg/pdf/S0002-9297(10)00033-9.pdf