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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Can I take the other side of that bet?
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.
[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.
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.
If there are more short men than women that are willing to date short men, some short men will still be able to find partners, but not all of them.
More generally speaking, some men have so many unfavorable traits that no female would accept them, because females almost always have more and better options. Those unfortunate individuals are discarded from the gene pool.
I'm not saying that every self-described incel is actually in that set of unfortunate individuals, but this is how sexual selection works in lots of species, including our own.
Firstly, I didn't say they have to lower their standards.
> It's poor reasoning to conclude that because some (for example) short men find a mate than all short men can find a mate [...]
I agree that that would be faulty reasoning. I was combatting the opposite reasoning, which is that some traits or combinations of traits (like being short) are disqualifying. E.g. your parent comment in which you wrote: "If you are very short, your attire can not make up for it."
I could totally be misunderstanding your meaning or the incel worldview, but as I said, it comes off to me as very binary - there is some "threshold" of attractiveness/traits, which if you are under, you are therefore unable to find a sexual partner. My contention is that almost every one of these traits or combinatios-of-traits can be found in someone who is in a sexual relationship, and therefore that can't be true.
> More generally speaking, some men have so many unfavorable traits that no female would accept them, because females almost always have more and better options. Those unfortunate individuals are discarded from the gene pool.
This is in incorrect view of the world (barring extreme examples like severe physical deformities or mental issues).
People aren't ranked in some kind of linear way from "more attractive" to "less attractive", lined up, and then can only find partners who agree with their level. There are many reasons:
- People are varied and have different preferences - some women like short men, etc.
- The same person has different preferences at different times.
- Most people will have more than one sexual partner.
All of these combine to make it so that effectively, almost everyone can find a sexual partner.
And this is not just a theroetical idea either - as I posted in another comment, according to some random studies I just Googled, <0.5% of people have never had a sexual experience by age 40.
Moreover, I can tell you that almost everyone I know, including some fairly odd, nerdy, shy, introverted people who had had no dates by the time they were 25, still ended up in happy relationships. (And I say almost mostly because I lost touch with some people and don't know how their story turned out).
--
Let me just close by saying that if you truly believe you (or some/most people posting on incel forums) are incapable of ever having a sexual relationship, I empathize with you - it must be very unhappy to believe you will never have something that you want and see so many other people enjoying.
But based on my own life experience, and where the people around me are at at age 35, I can tell you that I absolutely believe that almost everyone (>99.5% of people) posting on HN is able to find a sexual partner.
I mean, they could maybe hit the gym, or get rich, or read The Game, or become ardent feminists, or buy Thai brides online (after getting rich). I'm sure the options have not been exhausted. But I think at some point you have to admit that these people were just dealt a shit hand and there's probably not much they can do about it.
Or, if you think they should just work to fix the problem, you have to understand that it's not at all obvious how to do that. I mean honestly, I don't understand why serial killers can find partners and the people I'm thinking about can't. I've no idea what they ought to do about it.
Being short is in fact a huge disadvantage for dating, this is well established, for example in the study I gave you. Most females will indeed disqualify a short male from consideration.
Of course every dating pool is different and it might contain the odd exception where a female prefers to date a short guy, but then she will still prefer the affluent or handsome short guy over the other short guys, which are now out of mates.
> People aren't ranked in some kind of linear way from "more attractive" to "less attractive", lined up, and then can only find partners who agree with their level. There are many reasons...
I'll call this the "cosmic justice fantasy". In reality, attractiveness is fairly objective and measurable, with fairly low variance across individuals. There are of course always exceptions at the tail ends, but it doesn't make much of a difference.
> All of these combine to make it so that effectively, almost everyone can find a sexual partner.
At this point, I think we should differentiate between finding a a partner and having a sexual encounter at least once in your life.
> And this is not just a theroetical idea either - as I posted in another comment, according to some random studies I just Googled, <0.5% of people have never had a sexual experience by age 40
What this actually says is that less than 0.5% of people admit to never having had a sexual experience, which also would include an encounter with a prostitute.
Even at that low-ball rate, we'd be talking about millions of people in the US.
> Let me just close by saying that if you truly believe you (or some/most people posting on incel forums) are incapable of ever having a sexual relationship, I empathize with you - it must be very unhappy to believe you will never have something that you want and see so many other people enjoying.
To be clear: I'm neither short, nor bad-looking, nor do I lack sexual experience. I'm neither an incel, nor incel-affiliated, nor do I personally know any actual (self-identified) incels. I don't read discussions on incel forums. You may well be right in that a large amount of incel forum dwellers really only look blame personal failures on some immutable characteristic, because that's just what people like to do.
I happen to be interested in the some of the science that an incel might be interested in, because I prefer to know what's real, as opposed to what people would like to be real.
To be clear myself, I agree with this attitude and goal completely.
> Being short is in fact a huge disadvantage for dating, this is well established, for example in the study I gave you. Most females will indeed disqualify a short male from consideration.
The study you linked is about online dating. While that is clearly important, it's also an arena in which you are basically forced to quantify and pick thresholds for various attributes (and in which it is much easier to just "disqualify" people based on attributes).
This is important, and arguably will get more important as reliance on online dating becomes ever more prevalent. But it is still not everything, there are still some places in which potential partners will have a chance to get to know each other without the initial choice to disqualify someone based on height, and through which other attributes might win out.
> I'll call this the "cosmic justice fantasy". In reality, attractiveness is fairly objective and measurable, with fairly low variance across individuals. There are of course always exceptions at the tail ends, but it doesn't make much of a difference.
I don't know, on reading this I was inclined to agree. But on further reflection, speaking as a man, I know there are plenty of other men who have differences of opinion with me about what they care about in a woman - height, body type, etc. There are the endless discussions of "are you a chest man or a butt man". And the answers really do vary! A woman who is objectively very pretty (and who I can objectively say is very pretty), might still not be the best match for me, because she is e.g. too thin or too tall. Whereas other men might want a thin, tall woman.
That said, you're also making another mistake in your reasoning IMO - you're assuming attractiveness is the only thing that matters in finding a mate. That is simply not true - both in what people say they care about, and by simple observation of actual people.
Put another way, let's do this experiment: someone takes a hundred couples (let's assume straight couples), takes a picture of the man and the woman separately, then mixes up the pictures. Do you think you'll be able to match the couples based on attractiveness alone? I'm sure there's some correlations here, and you'll be able to do it to some extent, but certainly nowhere near 100%.
> What this actually says is that less than 0.5% of people admit to never having had a sexual experience, which also would include an encounter with a prostitute.
Even at that low-ball rate, we'd be talking about millions of people in the US.
By age 40, and that also includes people who are not actively looking for sex. But yes, that is a lot of people, probably around a million (assuming an over-40 population of around 110 million in the US, which I'm kind of guessing at).
--
I'm not sure what our point of disagreement is at this point. I'm not saying that there are literally no people who are able to find a sexual partner despite wanting one. I'm saying:
1. It's very rare to be unable to find a sexual partner.
2. Physical attractiveness and other physical (immutable) attributes, while certainly mattering a lot, will almost certainly not preclude anyone from being able to find a sexual partner.
3. If you're an around-20-year-old incel, the chance that you will never be able to find a sexual partner, assuming you make some steps to change things you can change for the better, is incredibly tiny. Most people posting in incel forums are not in that situation, and if they think they are, they are mistaken.
Of course in reality women aren't going to reject males on arbitrary and exact thresholds, but on what they consider "too short", which is also related to their own height.
I would agree that online dating is a very tough dating pool and that many other pools exist and that those thresholds are always relative to who is in the pool.
> I don't know, on reading this I was inclined to agree. But on further reflection, speaking as a man, I know there are plenty of other men who have differences of opinion with me about what they care about in a woman - height, body type, etc. There are the endless discussions of "are you a chest man or a butt man".
That's another point I keep making: Men's preferences generally don't matter to the outcome. Average men have far lower standards and are willing so settle for less, because the pool is far smaller. Beggars can't be choosers.
Women have higher standards not only because it's their biological imperative, but because they generally can afford to, at least in a free sexual marketplace.
> That said, you're also making another mistake in your reasoning IMO - you're assuming attractiveness is the only thing that matters in finding a mate. That is simply not true - both in what people say they care about, and by simple observation of actual people.
I'm not exactly saying that. The evidence shows that - absent any societal or economical pressures - attractiveness is the overwhelmingly important factor in mate choice. What people say is irrelevant, studies show that people are not honest about this. People don't want to be seen as "shallow" or "superficial", they also want to believe in a just world.
> Put another way, let's do this experiment: someone takes a hundred couples (let's assume straight couples), takes a picture of the man and the woman separately, then mixes up the pictures. Do you think you'll be able to match the couples based on attractiveness alone? I'm sure there's some correlations here, and you'll be able to do it to some extent, but certainly nowhere near 100%.
Looking at couples is "survivorship bias". You would have to be taking into account the population that fails to find a mate.
Again, just because you can find a short guy with a mate doesn't mean there's mate for every short guy.
> I'm not sure what our point of disagreement is at this point.
I guess you're being "too optimistic".
> 1. It's very rare to be unable to find a sexual partner.
Finding sex - if we were to include prostitution - is very easy. Finding a sexual partner with which to produce offspring is another matter. I would suggest that the number of males that fail at this, particularly in a free sexual marketplace, would be relatively high, perhaps in the double-digits percentages.
> 2. Physical attractiveness and other physical (immutable) attributes, while certainly mattering a lot, will almost certainly not preclude anyone from being able to find a sexual partner.
I disagree with this, at least if we exclude prostitution.
> 3. If you're an around-20-year-old incel, the chance that you will never be able to find a sexual partner, assuming you make some steps to change things you can change for the better, is incredibly tiny. Most people posting in incel forums are not in that situation, and if they think they are, they are mistaken.
I'm not interested in the question of "how many self-described incels on the forums are real incels?", because it's just not measurable. Like I said, people are dishonest in what they say, people like to harbor victim identities, and so on.
At the very least, I doubt only a "incredibly tiny" amount these people couldn't be turned into a reproductive success, because I already ballparked the amount of reproductive failures at over 10% and it makes sense that these would be overrepresented in an incel community.
E.g. being short is certainly a disadvantage when dating, that's obviously true - but it's just as obviously true that being short does not mean you will be an incel for life - how can you possibly think that it does, given the myriad short people who are doing just fine. Can they date literally any partner they want? No, no one can. But can they date someone, can they be non-celibate? Yes, demonstrably so.
It's certainly true that everyone is a mix of more desirable attributes and of less desirable attributes, and some people get a bigger mix than others. Some are mutable, some are immutable.
The big problem with the incel worldview (as I understand it) is that it's completely binary - you are either capable of finding a sexual partner, or not, and some traits (that they believe they have) mean that they are on the wrong side. But that's just utterly unfounded, again, because take any trait that is supposedly disqualifying, and you'll find someone (plenty of someones) with those traits that are in sexual relationships.