(I don't know if this is really considered to be a political topic or not, but I'm placing it here to be safe.)
Just about all of you other people here on this message board are guys. Help me out here. I'm trying to understand something I can't relate to.
Of late, we here in North America have seen a raft of what I think can be justifiably labeled terrorist attacks by people who either call themselves "incels" or whom much of the "incel" community associates themselves with. The term is Internet shorthand for "involuntarily celibate". Anyway, the latest one took place in my state in the form of a school shooting that killed 10 people (mostly female). Another notable one took place in the form of a car attack in Toronto, Canada (10 dead: 8 female, 2 male). There has also reportedly been debate in the incel community as to whether the Parkland shooter whose actions provoked that 2-million strong march for gun control should be canonized as one of their own in some way. Anyway, the basic ideology of this particular section of men's rights activists is that sex is a right owed to men by women, and therefore rejection is unacceptable; that we have no right to refuse. No right to an autonomous will of our own.
I assume that most here will not agree with the ideology that I have just described. But I also think that maybe, being male, others here might at least understand this phenomenon better than I do. It's not as if there isn't plenty of loneliness among girls and women too. The symptoms of it are all over the place. Women are more likely to be religious (and more adamantly so at that), more likely to own pets, more likely to be interested in romance-themed media, etc. These, in my mind, are signs that many of us don't feel loved, or at least not adequately so; perhaps not even in a relationship. There are also the stats showing that women actually tend to have sex less often than men and average fewer lifetime partners both. And yet one just doesn't hear about women committing mass shootings or car attacks in protest. We just internalize it. We simply blame ourselves. We don't blame others.
If I can divulge something more about myself, I've not been any too successful either romantically or sexually myself all in all. I understand loneliness. But I also recognize that my loneliness, at the end of the day, is mostly my own fault. I'm not a financially successful person, I don't look great, I'm not very outgoing, I don't communicate well, I have lots of unusual opinions and beliefs, interests that not too many other women share to a similar degree (like video games, for instance), and I'm sure that people could find many other faults too. And yeah, I can also see that there are some external factors I can't control too, like the fact that I'm only interested in other women and find myself financially trapped in a community that's sufficiently repressive that almost no one is out (including me) and that really limits my options at the outset compared to your average straight guy. It's a combination of things, but I recognize mostly me. I could find partners through online avenues, no doubt, were I a more appealing person. Anyway, it's painful. I get it. I know that pain.
I also know the opposite pain though: being forced to have sex with someone against your will. That's what can happen when you consistently refuse the advances of men because you're a lesbian, especially when you don't feel like you can say that you're a lesbian in the community in which you live because it's not necessarily safe to. I don't have a car, so I walk to and from work every day and there's this guy who seems to patrol my route during the more reliable time windows to ask yet again if I need a ride. He doesn't seem like a horrible guy per se, but I don't need one, he is a guy I don't know, and I don't feel comfortable getting in his car. Does that really mean I'll be to blame if he one day responds by mowing me and a bunch of other random people down over it?
I guess what I'm really trying to ask here is: Why do guys so much more readily externalize the blame for rejection?
Last edited by Jaicee - on 24 May 2018
