I don’t know, but this comment from @Hermes@hexbear.net has given me some stuff to think about.
People should not think less of you on the base of the amount of sex you have, and you shouldn’t either.
This is a nice thought, but insults based on amount of sex are absurdly common. I have seen quite a few people on this site who still do these insults, and it doesn’t get removed when I report it. The incel article from a while go was about how we should critique incels for their misogyny rather than them failing to have sex, I see this as pretty similar to the arguments about not body-shaming fascists in that most of the people who will get hit by the insult are not the actual target. From what I remember, that article good job explaining why these insults are harmful and how they hurt a lot of people who they really shouldn’t, unfortunately the discussion on that post was very off topic. In my experience, most people who have sex fail to recognize that not everyone who is celibate is an incel (“If so many terrible people have sex and you can’t, that must mean you are worse than they are!”).
I would say that insults based on amount of sex a person has should not be allowed, but I am very pessimistic about this actually leading to a change in site culture.
Once again, please assume good faith, even if you disagree with the take. If you think I mean something weirdly reactionairy by this post, ask me wether that is what I mean, instead of just saying that’s what I mean please.
I don’t want this to become a strugglesession, I just feel like this would be a good discussion to have. If this does become hostile, then please lock/remove it mods.
The linked thread does not include a single derogatory use of the word incel, every time it is brought up it comes from people who struggle with the common usage of the term and call out virgin shaming. I find this to be represenative of the site in general, from my experience on here incel is exclusively or almost exclusively used for the sect of ideologically committed online ultra-misogynists, not for “person who doesn’t have sex”. The virgin shaming, body shaming and ableism that are inextricably linked to reactionary, non-feminist callouts of incels are all against site policy and are, from what i see, removed reliably by mods. I fully stand behind that. As a queer person i do have criticisms of hexbear’s site culture in regards to sex, but these are that the site can be both aggressively sex negative and still too lenient on purging misogynists.
Speaking of which, this thread leaves me with the clear impression that you are making up a problem that doesn’t exist. It comes off as an attempt at tone-policing and silencing feminist critique, and of you placing a protection of fragile masculinity above the safety concerns of women. I exclusively call people incels when they are the ideologically committed kind, i do not use the term when i do not mean these particular online communities and i view that as the common usage of the term on this site. Nothing about that is problematic. There is no reason to protect the incel community, there is no reason to feel pity for misogynists, there is particularly no reason to make the self-descriptor of a very specific hate group a “no-no word”. Doing so needlessly complicates accurate designation of some of my worst enemies, some of the biggest threats to my safety in my day to day life, one of the main reasons why i do not use most online spaces anymore and the flat-out main reason why i cannot be part of non-queer nerd communities any longer. Gamergate and its consequences would’ve been impossible without incels. 4chan would not have gone the way it did without them. Incel culture has poisoned most of my hobbies and made it impossible to engage in them without hand-picking and vetting the people i do that with. And even that seems like a trivial afterthought when i think about what incels have done to other women. These shitheads have killed people. There have been actual acts of terrorism motivated by their ideology. Where is your concern about that? Why should i assume good faith from you when you make a thread like this after your behavior in past struggle sessions? I see a clear pattern here and i’m not ok with it.
Great post!
good post
Thanks for posting this, I struggled with finding the right words to explain why the op bothers me so much and your comment made it clear to me. Virgins are not a systemically oppressed group. Incel is a term for a specific ideology but could be used as insult. Using it as insult is mean but that doesn’t make it a slur. The ideology it describes is dangerous and harms women, it is important that the ideology gets called out continuously for the safety of the women that might fall victim to people who subscribe to that ideology.
I mean, just to make it clear: I am absolutely, 100% against shaming people who don’t have sex, be that because they are involuntarily celibate, asexual, in a longterm relationship where one or both partners just do not have much of a libido anymore or w/e. There definitely is a repressive, ideological component around mocking people who don’t get laid, it is commonly rooted in a patriarchal understanding of sexual “conquest” and bragging rights, frequently intertwines with forms of systemic opression like ableism and allonormativity etc.
That should be called out, and from my experience, it usually is on here. Outside of hexbear, i’ve also seen people use the word incel in ways that legitimately piss me off. But on here? It’s a descriptor for a women-hating online subculture that builds an identity around being intrinsically unfuckable because they do not meet or think they do not meet criteria purported by other adherents of the “redpill” or “manosphere” ideology. It makes sense to be able to identify them, just as we can correctly identify other subsets of that anti-feminist movement like MGTOW / fathers’ rights activists, PUAs / Tate-style hustlegrind pyramid scheme subscribers and so on.
When evaluating a word, you have to look at its connotations and context rather than just the most literal definition. Here on Hexbear at least, the word’s never used against people just for lacking in sexual experience. It only gets pulled on misogynist creeps who think they’re entitled to women’s bodies.
The problem is that they call themselves incels. It has become is term to describe misogynists because the reason they can’t get sex is because they’re misogynists.
In a similar way that we can’t stop calling Nazis Nazis just because it includes the German word for socialist and being a socialist isn’t a bad thing. The fact is that they’ve claimed the word and they’re a specific brand of misogynist that can only be identified by that word now because of that.
Nazi doesn’t include the German word for socialist. The German word for socialist is Sozialist, that’s obviously not included in Nazi. What is included in Nazi is only the “National” prefix the nazis used in their self descriptor Nationalsozialist, and that’s specifically because German antifascists didn’t want to refer to them as any kind of Sozialisten and stuck with a shorter word that centers the Hitlerists’ nationalism while leaving out the bogus claims to be socialist or a workers’ party. Terms like NS or Third Reich are parlance made up and used by the Hitlerists themselves, but Nazi and Hitlerist aren’t, these are leftist inventions (with Hitlerist specifically being ML jargon).
Incels, otoh, adopted the term incel on their own after it was coined as a self descriptor by an involuntarily celibate woman on her blog. It became widely known only because ultra-misogynist online communities used it for themselves, and the adoption of that term meant they largely phased out terms like foreveralone, permavirgin etc.
Tons of groups use slurs to describe themselves. Especially reactionaries who will call themselves “autistic” or the r-word or the like. That a group uses a word as a descriptor does not mean it becomes acceptable. We could easily just call them misogynists or the like.
I don’t think it’s a 1:1 comparison and I don’t want to say I don’t see your point either, I get what you mean. I lean towards your view as well, or did until I read that comment.There’s also the question of how many incels we interact with here compared to how many comrades who get hurt by us using “not having sex” as a derogatory.
How is the word incel a slur?
It can be a derogatory as explained in the body text.
Uhh, just because something is derogatory doesn’t mean it’s a slur. For example: cracker is not a slur.
I guess I haven’t ever seen the word used to insult someone for not having sex.
100% happens though.
Yes. But their will be other people that are decent people, but people not having sex but not through choice, who will get called incels. It’s not fair to them.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the term ‘incel’ be used that out of context, and especially not on this website. It’s a very specific term, circumscribed to communities of people who are driven by a misanthropic, most often mysoginistic world view. I have just never seen anyone say ‘incel’ to refer to someone who is currently unable or have never had sex. At the end of the day we have to discuss language as it is actually used.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen the term ‘incel’ be used that out of context, and especially not on this website.
It’s used IRL all the time, and also on places other than hexbear, lemmygrad, etc. I’ve personally seen it.
It’s not that I don’t believe what you’re saying, its just that it hasn’t been my experience. Far from it. Almost always what I see is people calling out incels for what they are. The closest that I remember has been people lashing out against what they incorrectly perceive to be an incel - not in the sense that being a virgin or unable to have sex is derogatory, but that the derogatory part is the massive, insane mysoginy that is tied to inceldom as a subculture.
That’s the key point where this thread misses me. Incels are a subculture. They recognize themselves as such and are recognized by virtually everybody else as a group apart. Nobody can ‘be caught in the crossfire’ unless they act or at least appear to act like an incel. You’re not an incel because you’re a virgin (incels aren’t, necessarily) and you aren’t an incel because you aren’t having sex as of late (incels do engage with sex workers they claim to hate). You’re an incel because you buy into an entire worldview that reduces people to things, human relations to a marketplace and turns the sum of humanity into a phrenology experiment to deflect from one’s faults and mistakes.
I think in an attempt to critique the toxic ppl online, innocent bystanders do get hit with the crossfire. There are definitely actual involuntary celibates that get hurt when someone says “man fuck those stupid incels they’re so toxic.” I 100% believe this.
The only people who identify as incels are the people who associate with the misogynistic ideology. Normal people just say they’re virgins. The word “involuntary” is the misogynistic part, it implies that they are being wronged by women/society.
The discussion is not about people identifying as incels, but about calling other people incels.
In that case, I would agree that we shouldn’t use the word interchangeably with virgin. I wouldn’t accept people using virgin as an insult either.
Ideological incels deserve to be called incels with all the contempt that entails.
Isn’t it harsh to say “haha virgin” to someone who hasn’t had sex though?
Yep. Good thing nobody’s suggesting doing that!
I mean in real life, I’ve seen it, for years. Sorry for making that clearer.
People definitely do, you just haven’t seen them, I have.
Report them and they’ll get banned, but that doesn’t really have anything to do with this thread.
Should have said in real life, not on here.
then report it. that kind of behavior is unacceptable. but calling an incel an incel is not that.
Should have said in real life. Not on here.
I’m a virgin and I’ve never had a problem with incel, just like I’ve never had a problem with cracker, because while semantically it does mean everyone who is a virgin against their wishes, it practically is only applied to those who abuse women. We of course can have a discussion about the misuse of the term and how that affects virgins but the word per se is not a problem as far as I can see.
But just a disclaimer: I’m a volcel, not an incel, so that probably changes some things.
No
This suggestion is just running defense for incels - a group notable for their reactionary response to not having sex. A person is an incel when they decide misogyny is what explains their inability to have sex.
Making fun of people for not having sex, sure.
But the moniker incel is something this group of people have chosen for themselves.You don’t go around calling people incels just because they can’t get laid.
People are incels when they are politically and socially reprehensible enough to the point that nobody wants to interact with them, let alone fuck them.
Their inceldom comes from a place of entitlement, where they think they deserve sex but refuse to work on their own shit personality so that people might actually want to have a relationship with them.
They openly call themselves incels, and the term adequately encapsulates the fact that their sexual frustration comes from being scum of the earth unwilling to self-crit.
Incel is more often used to refer to a political position not a virginity status.
The word does directly infer a sexual status as well though. It’s short for “involuntary celibate”.
I agree it also (and mainly) ascribes the user to be a misogynist and shutin, but sex is also very much a part of it.No one is using it to refer to virgins. It is used to refer to a political position of extreme hatred of women, among other things.
No one calls themself an involuntary celibate if they aren’t also an incel.
Instead of blanket banning everything and making this place into an over modded hellhole (it’s already a shadow of its former self) why not just take it on a case by case basis? Are the mods just lazy and don’t want to do anything but start a monthly struggle session?
I don’t see how turning the site into a hugbox is going to help the revolution
You’re on a 7 month old account, the fuck do you know about old Hexbear?
I was on the sub, and here on chapo.chat’s first day, and yet this is my first comment on this account.
Not saying it’s the same case for the person you’re replying to, but account age isn’t necessarily “time spent on the site”.
The words on their profile directly above where it says 7 months are “I’ve been here for awhile despite the account age” so I’m guessing that’s the case.
Honestly I think it’s projection. Or they can’t even conceive that someone may have been a lurker without an account or practiced actual digital hygiene and created a new account for opsec, etc.
Your account is only about a year old, so what do you know about old hexbear?
I don’t know much, other than during the initial Reddit ban this place was too toxic for me to stick around, so I stayed on Reddit instead of coming here. I didn’t end up coming back until federation when the moderation had improved.
No opinion on the matter, but can I just say that calling famous and powerful men incels, or trying to redefine the meaning of “incel” as “generalised misogynist” is a foolish endeavour that makes us look like idiots to whom words have no meaning everytime we do it. The word incel has a meaning, it’s literally shorthand for “involuntary celibate”. Elon Musk, Andrew Tate, etc are definitely not incels. This is obvious to everyone. They are misogynists of course, but by definition they are not incels, which is/was a word that referred to a specific type of misogynist that blames society for their celibacy, which does not apply to rich and powerful men, obviously. It’s just bad propaganda, and calling rich and powerful men incels honestly reads like cope at the state of a society that rewards the type of behaviour they engage in.
Words have meanings and these meanings are not and never have been limited to their most narrow etymological origins. Incel being a shorthand for literal “involuntary celibate” does not mean it is never allowed to mean anything else, much as auspicious does not mean it is seen by looking at birds. Incel at this stage refers to an online subculture and it even means this in languages other than English where neither involuntary nor celibate are used as words.
I’m on the fence, people like Tate are attached to the Incel political movement whether or not they fit the literal meaning of the word.
Like you’re correct in that they’re not literally celibates, what that’s not really what “incel” means anymore in common context.
Removed by mod
Agree with your first two sentences, but uhh what’s is going on with the rest of your comment? I’ve never heard that argument and don’t see the need to insert that into the comment. Maybe I’m lucky that I’ve never heard that before.
People use it, the same way liberals were calling Trump and Putin the F-slur (e.g. “yeah I bet Putin effs trump in the A”) in order to attack Trump as being a Russian asset or whatever.
It does remind me of the discourse around “Karen” or “boomer”… saying that someone in their 20s could be “boomer” or a some guy could be a “Karen”, when that’s not really what people think about when you use those terms or how they were intended to be used. Not really a fan of filtering out “incel”, but we should still be clear on terms.
I agree with what you’re getting at here but I think we also can’t deprive ourselves of the ability to call a spade a spade on this one. I think the term incel should absolutely be fair game to disparage genuine self-identified incels or those who clearly fit the mold, but it shouldn’t be a term to lob around against people for an individual questionable take - this has the potential to do severe damage to sensitive/vulnerable comrades, a lot of whom are probably neurodiverse and fight RSD.
Use incel to talk about how /r/braincel users deserve the wall. Don’t use incel to disparage people for bad takes that are correctable with patient but firm dialogue.
Incels are, sadly, an actual thing and even a self-identity beyond just an insult towards virgins. They are a phenomenon worth discussing on a forum like this, mods should just remove posts that use the word inappropriately, like they probably are already doing.
That seems reasonable, but I think it would be good to have a discussion (as we are now) about it still. When is it “inappropriate” and the like
I think that occasionally discussion about incels and incel adjacent things around here and elsewhere can veer into a sort of heavy handed dismissiveness of people who struggle to navigate sexual and/or romantic relationships, and it’s important we do our best to make sure comrades aren’t catching strays here for that sort of thing. But “Incel” used properly (ie not as a synonym for “virgin loser”) is, I think, a term whose connotations are specific enough and broadly understood enough that I don’t think we need to tiptoe around using it.
