What do we do about the Incels?

So last week I learned a new term. That term is incel. Evidently it indicates a certain group of men who are involuntarily celibate. There are online incel communities with their own values and terminology. My awareness of this community is tied to the realization that Alek Minassian, the suspect in the Toronto truck attack, is part of this community. This has brought the community to light as we try to understand the motivations behind this tragedy.

More context is in order. It is not just that the men in the community are involuntarily celibate. It is also that they are frustrated at women and blame the women for their celibacy. They feel that women prefer to go after good-looking guys and will not give plain-looking guys, like them, a chance. This anger and frustration has led to some pretty ugly stuff being written by the incels. These writings reveal an attitude that women are pieces of meat to be used by these men for their pleasure. This type of expectation of sexual availability from men is one of the reasons why women feel fearful of us.

Now from this point on you might expect me to go on a rant against the incels. Indeed it is not hard to find such rants here and here. I cannot say that this community does not deserve this harsh criticism. In this world of MeTooism, when men talk about women as mere tools of sexual gratification, then you are rightly going to be blasted. And that is usually not a bad thing. Perhaps such criticism will help discourage more men from joining this community.

But in this case, I am certain that this cannot be our only reaction to the incel community. Whether they are right or wrong in feeling rejected, this is a community of men who feel that they have been rejected from the mainstream culture and definitely from women. Attempts to stigmatize them will merely drive them further underground or it may even increase their numbers or both. You may laugh at the second option, but in a society of Trumpism, being rejected by the cultural elite can sometimes be seen as a sign of pride. We have to do more than expose the incel community if we want to deal with these poisonous attitudes. So I am not going to go down the route of heaping scorn and anger upon them. Instead I suggest a different tactic. I suggest that we think about how to help them.

Before I dive into what I think may be of service to them, let me talk about why we should consider helping them. First, it is clear that these men are hurting. They are isolated and lashing out. We can be horrified at the ways they are lashing out, but we dare not minimize this pain. Nobody wants to be an involuntary celibate or involuntary anything. Our desire to reduce human suffering should compel us to consider how we can help.
I suspect that some may see this issue quite clearly if we were looking at a different group. My guess is that the incels tend to be white males. This may not make them the most sympathetic group to some progressives. But what if we were talking about inner city blacks who were struggling with criminal activity? Of course we should punish those who harm others, but would we not also want to get at the root of the crime? Would we not also want to provide ways they can improve their lives and in doing so make our streets safer without building the prison-industrial complex? Likewise, we should punish those who cross the line but still seek ways to help incels as a group.

But what about the women suffering due to the sexist attitude of such men? Is it sexist to care about the men in such a group? That brings me to the second reason why we need to consider helping them. Doing so will actually help women. Women clearly do not benefit from having a subset of men that have reduced them to sexual toys and are mad that they are not being serviced. I do not think we will see an upsurge of incel violence but even if I am correct, and obviously I hope I am, the incels can corrupt the atmosphere women have to live in with their sexism.

I know that the incels state that what they need is basically cheap sex. They are wrong. What they really need is to learn how to relate to the opposite sex (and I am guessing that some of them need to learn how to relate to their own sex). If they learn relational skills, they will be much better off and can actually develop healthy relationships (romantic or otherwise) with women. And in a world where the sex ratio becomes more unbalanced against women as they get older, I am betting that many women would love to see these guys get their acts together and be viable romantic partners. I know that some may disagree with me, but I see helping the incels as helping women in general.

Okay so if you are still with me, then we should ask the question about what we should do about the incels. I admit that this is not a topic I have done research on and thus I am only using my general observations as a social scientist as I think about this question. But first let me get a little personal. I never had the type of hatred some of these men have, but earlier in my life I did have a great deal of difficulty cultivating romantic relationships with women. And that difficulty led to a great deal of frustration. Looking back at my life, I believe a lot of my failure was being a black male in an atmosphere with mostly white women at a time where interracial romance was discouraged – to say the least. That led to many lonely times. I never felt entitled to a woman’s love, but I am not going to lie and say that I was never frustrated that it seemed that women could not get past my skin color to appreciate me. So there is a part of me that can relate to what some of these men are feeling.

But, eventually I was able to work on some things that helped me to become more confident. Also our society changed and suddenly being with a black man was not such a taboo. I am now married and expecting my third child. So while I have never truly been an incel, I did have some of those difficulties with women they complained about. And over time I have found a way around that. So I hold out hope that some of them will engage in the introspection so that this can be reality for them as well.
So let me see if I have ideas that may be useful. I will first identity three social factors I think have contributed to the development of the incels. Then I will explore one path towards dealing with them as a group.

Our Changing Notion of Community

One of the first factors that has contributed to the increase of incels is the changing nature of what we see as community. Community was once the people we saw day-to-day, whether it was in our schools, places of work, churches or neighborhoods. In our modern society, we have the technology so that we create our communities online as much as we do face to face. On the positive side, this allows us to become united with individuals who share our interests, no matter how esoteric it may be. But on the negative side, individuals can lose their ability to interact with each other in personal relationships. These lack of social skills can be multiplied for those who work with computers and do not have to interact very much with others. I wonder how many of the incels work in such jobs.

But even for those who do not work with computers, we as a society focus more on our online relationships than personal relationships. We are failing to learn how to interact with each other. It is not just the incels who are experiencing this phenomenon. For example, in Japan, sexual activity and romantic relationships among singles has dramatically decreased. Modern society has been brutal on our ability to start and sustain relationships in general. When you mix in the lack of social skills that incels are likely to have, then you have a recipe for a group of men who are not only clueless about relating to the opposite sex, but live a lifestyle that minimizes their personal contact with those of the opposite sex. It is a great plan if what you want is to have groups of men who are unlikely to ever have a successful romantic relationship.

One can argue that the internet is not the villain here since it also offers opportunities for singles to meet with each other. A dating profile on Match or Plenty of Fish can certainly bring possibilities of a romantic encounter. I do not deny the value of such dating services. Indeed, one of them is how I met my wife. But I had to develop the interpersonal skills so that I could follow up with the women I contacted from dating websites. Individuals who have a lifestyle of interacting with others behind a computer screen do not suddenly develop great personal skills once they meet others in person.

It is not just the incels who suffer from our depersonalized society where we have lost the essence of local community. Many individuals are lonely and depressed in our culture. Most of them do not react with the extremist rhetoric we see within the incels, and so this reality is not an excuse for their attitudes towards women. But if we can find ways to help individuals find connection in this modern society, then we will be better off for everyone, but incels will disproportionately benefit from a society where in-person relationships become more common relative to online relationships.

Definitions of Masculinity

I am not one of those worried about toxic masculinity. I am also not trying to push the boundaries of gender. I believe that men are men and women are women. We are different, and I am glad for the difference. But I do think that some of how we define our masculinity it problematic and creates an unhealthy social environment. I also believe that part of that definition is making the problem of incels worse.

One part of our definition of masculinity I am concerned about is the idea that a man proves himself by the number of women he beds. We see this norm trumpeted in our Hollywood shows and in other media. We reinforce this idea that the man gets the woman he wants and as many women as he wants. When this message is received by those with immature social skills, then they may start to question whether they meet the social definition of manhood. This frustration leads them to an anger at those they think are responsible for their failure to be a man – the women who reject them.

Quite simply, having sex with a lot of women does not make one a man. A man is someone who takes responsibility for his actions and takes care of others. A man can do that regardless of whether a woman is attracted to him or not. His “manhood” does not depend upon what others think of him but of what he does himself. We have to move our notion of manhood closer to this definition and away from a definition based on notches on a bedpost.

To be clear the definitions of masculinity as sexual conquests is not just problematic for incels. This definition ruins men across the spectrum of our society and creates misery for the women who interact with those men. But it seems to have an especially toxic effect on incels. If we can redefine what it means to be a man, then we would create a better environment for all men but especially we would take some of the pressure off incels to see women as only potential sexual conquests.

Fatherly Relationships

I am willing to bet a decent sum of money that many of the incels either did not grow up with their father, or they did not have healthy relationships with their father. My speculation is based on the fact that men learn a lot about relationships with women from their father. So if we have a group of men who do not relate well to women, then it is reasonable to assume that these men did not learn enough from their fathers on how to relate to women. Or they learned the wrong lessons from their fathers.

Just consider my last point about masculinity. As I stated, I have two boys and a third on the way. Trust me that I am going to teach them that being a man is not about having sex with as many women as possible. Being a man is helping his pregnant wife by doing the dishes so that she can get to bed early. Being a man is about serving his church and the community around him. Being a man is about taking the time to read to his children and helping them develop into good citizens. By action and word, I want to show them a definition of manhood that is about giving to others and not about seducing women. I cannot guarantee that they will accept all of these lessons. But I do believe that I will give them the tools with which they will not fall into the sexism we see among the incels.

Of course bad relationships with our fathers factor into a multitude of social problems. We can add the issue of incels to that list of problems. I know of no easy way to correct these poor relations with our fathers. But being aware that such relationships helps to create the ugly ideas many incels have may help us to see another important factor in the creation of this subculture.

Can Mentoring Help?

Now that I touched on some of the issues that may lead to the development of incels, let me suggest one possible way we can address them. I think we need to consider the role of mentoring. Of course this puts the pressure upon us men to engage in that process. It is a way those of us who are not incels can help reduce the sexist attitudes among incels. Changing our online culture, altering definitions of masculinity and correcting dysfunctional father-son relationships is a daunting task connected to the need to make large structural changes. Often we feel powerless to do anything about these problems. But mentoring others is something attainable for many of us.

A couple of years ago I met a Christian young man who did not have good social skills with women. He did not have the hatred that we see in so many incels, and being a good Christian man he did not consider himself entitled to sex. But still he suffered from some of the issues of isolation that they did. I befriended him. Encouraged him. And yes talked to him about how to relate to women and even how to romantically approach the ones he was interested in.

This year he gets married. And I know enough men in their 40s and 50s who never married to know that his getting married was not guaranteed to eventually happen. I am not saying that I am the reason why he is getting married. There are a variety of factors that contributed to his conduction of a successful relationship. His teachablity and occupational success also likely made him a more attractive potential marital partner. But I think I made a valuable contribution to the process. Men teaching men is something that we should not underestimate.

There is a role for the church in all of this. We complain about the lack of men in our singles department. Well we have to meet the real needs of those men if we want to reach them. I would love to see a church develop a program that can do that for the incels and address their real needs. We must address their real spiritual needs instead of simply misplaced desires for cheap sex.