> incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit

While there's a perception that incels are ugly, socially awkward nerds, the one's I've interreacted with online (and off) tend to be angry, misogynistic douchebags.

The nerdiest guys I know (IRL) all have significant others. The bitter guys I know (two) IRL are older, have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them". They are both very active online however. This is my personal experience, anecdotal of course.

That's exactly it, and it really muddies discussions. So many dumbass discussions of "why don't the femcels and incels just date each other" by people who have absolutely no idea what either of the groups are beyond the name.

At this point, "incel" is one of these buzzwords that don't mean anything anymore.

Agree. There's a cottage industry of social media influencers who find money in selling this cadre a simple message, "There is a reason it's hard for you and this is the group who's making it that way. I'll teach you why they're wrong and how to fight them to win."

It's an appealing message for a group who sees their intrinsic or essential power impotent in a changing world. It means that radical self-growth, a long and difficult process, doesn't have to happen, painful self-truths don't have to be addressed, and basic skills like empathy don't have to be cultivated. In short, issues can be externalized.

> have let themselves go and have nothing "going for them"

that is, they fell ill with depression because of lack of relationships, entering a loop of ever-furthering isolation and depression, which made them bitter and undesirable.

Some "ugly, socially awkward nerds" somehow find meaningful relationships and get saved. Others don't, and go down the nasty road.

A little bit of empathy wouldn't hurt.

I think there's a vast gap between people who feel hopeless and worthless and occasionally vent a little bit online, and people who adopt the incel identity so thoroughly that they'll cop to it IRL. I think the latter are rare, and their perceived importance is inflated the vast numbers of the former.

My teens and twenties predated the term "incel," but I was horny, lonely, and unhappy about it, and I could identify with a lot of the online whining from men who felt the same way. I did some venting in the "woe is me" vein on Reddit. But in my real life, at least when I wasn't in a depressive episode, I was always trying to improve my situation by bettering myself and buffing my social skills. I was always thinking of ways to crack the problem. When I felt defeated and discouraged, I'd complain anonymously online, because I knew nobody in my real life wanted to hear it, and then I'd get back to work figuring out my life.

I have no evidence, but I would bet that the perception of the incel phenomenon is warped by a small number of angry people who managed to inflate their importance by expressing the frustration and humiliation of a much larger group of men who are like I was, who go online to express temporary (though possibly recurring) feelings of hopelessness. As an identity, being an incel doesn't have much to offer. It's about a desire for sex, but it doesn't offer any path to sex. I think the vast majority of horny, frustrated young men who have applied the label to themselves at one time or another probably spend much more time thinking about how to be more likable to women than they spend thinking about incel ideology. And if they get any reward at all from trying to improve themselves and their empathy towards women, that will be a better deal than they get from the incel camp.

You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.

Consuming the benefits of having a woman sexually interested in you is a very different skill from creating that interest in the first place. So they would just pay to skip all the steps that they are bad at, thereby never learning them.

I think that may happen in some cases but they would also learn that sex is likely not what they imagined it to be. Its just something that people do together sometimes. I think there would be emotional growth after the fact.

> but they would also learn that sex is likely not what they imagined it to be.

If you're paying someone to live out those fantasies, you're probably not going to experience "normal" sexual relationships.

> You suggestion kind of sounds like: Let's teach kids how to grow an apple tree by giving them apple juice.

This is a poor analogy because apples and apple juice don't involve social dynamics. I can easily see a man who is experienced having sex with women through prostitution being more confident flirting/being intimate with real-life women. And confidence is a large part of "creating that interest."

Not a good analogy because you'd still be learning a ton from a paid sexual experience vs not having any. It'd be more like apple picking and eating them with the farmer that grew them, while they tell you how the apple trees are planted, cultivated, and harvested. Do it enough times and you'll have the confidence and general idea on how you can do it on your own. There's obviously a risk of getting too addicted to the instant gratification and getting stuck in this loop but I suspect that'd be a small percentage as eventually people will want the real deal relationship.

Plus you'd be (temporarily) alleviating the pain and frustration of loneliness, which is a huge boost in morale and will bring hope. That being said I've never tried a prostitute, although I've considered it in times of loneliness for the same reasons above.

I think that would work on the immediate effects (i.e. "sexual loneliness") but build confidence and learn to socialize? I doubt that. Sex is the endgame. Before that you've got a whole world of social interaction and skill and skipping to the end wouldn't help you with any of that.

Maybe if the prostitutes were more like escorts, you go out on a date, they give you honest feedback about how you're presenting yourself and so on. But that feels far outside the typical work of a prostitute.

>Sex is the endgame

Maslow would suggest otherwise.

100% this. How many acts of violence by lonely men would be avoided if they had just had the opportunity to go out, drop $150 and have sex. Especially sex that catered to whatever fetish they happened to indulge in. I have no scientific numbers to back this but I am willing to be the answer is "a lot". I feel like if an isolated, angry virgin was able to have sex in a non judgmental environment they would lose their hostility and likely be all the better for it.

And I don't see how there's anything to back up this assumption. It seems to me more likely that men expressing misogyny online would also express it in person. Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not, but either way this opportunity exists now and this problem still persists.

> And I don't see how there's anything to back up this assumption

I present to you, some pretty good data: the time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:

https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...

Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.

They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")

There's also no convincing evidence (just cherrypicked data that is either pro- or con-) that legalizing prostitution results in more sex trafficking.

> Sex workers may individually choose to tolerate that or may not

Funny thing about you saying that, they can't choose anything if it's illegal- if it's legal, they can not only choose, they can bring legal charges against anyone who mistreats them.

> How many acts of violence by lonely men would be avoided if they had just had the opportunity to

Zero. It's not about the sex. It's about value and self-worth. It's about being selected. It's about being chosen by the person who could have chosen anyone. When people are rejected by other human beings, they are literally being told they are worthless. Wouldn't you turn violent if you were told you were worthless your entire life?

Prostitution is an incredibly dismissive and superficial solution to the so called "incels" and it's going to fail for the exact same reasons as sex bots solution that's often proposed: it's not genuine human acceptance.

False. Sometimes, it IS "just about the sex."

Here we go: The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:

https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...

Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.

They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power", i.e., it IS "about sex", at least sometimes)

Sometimes, you don't need "genuine human acceptance." Sometimes, the only thing that will clear your head is that you just need to fuck. At least for some portion of men (and possibly, just to be inclusive here, women).

Here are your numbers:

The time Rhode Island "accidentally" legalized prostitution for a number of years, and then made it illegal again, and the correlations to public health that seemed to result from this:

https://whyy.org/articles/prostitution-decriminalized-rhode-...

Scroll down to the section "Researchers take notice" if you are low on time.

They used surrounding states as a control. They tried hard to account for the consequences, but that pesky 40% drop in gonorrhea and 30% drop in rapes (!) just wouldn't go away (and also doesn't fit the feminist narrative that rape is "only about power")

Anecdotally I've heard of people using prostitutes as "practice" in some asian countries where they're either legal or at least not enforced.

Women have already chosen the safest way to be sex workers: Through media like OnlyFans. All relations with men, but especially prostitution, are vastly more dangerous for women.

The fact that women have chosen this way of interacting with men on a paid basis should tell you it's not because they are prudes about sex work. They don't feel safe, and for very good reasons.

This is yet another example of how men need to stop "solving" this problem with their own clever ideas. Stop and listen. You will hear answers.

This seems like finding yourself in a depressing situation, becoming depressed, and solving the problem with pharmaceuticals rather than changing the circumstances which led to depression in the first place.

Prostitution is already legal in lots of countries. I’m not sure that there’s any evidence that it makes a huge amount of difference to this problem.

Do those same countries have the same level of violence as the US? I am willing to bet that sexual frustration leads to violence in a lot of instances.

Are there any studies linking legal prostitution with less "sexual loneliness"?

"lots of countries" To my knowledge only Germany.

There's a bunch more and coincidentally most of them are also leading countries for human trafficking.

I'm looking at Europe and I'm a bit confused how this would be a causal relationship.

9 countries have legalized prostitution: Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Switzerland, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, and Turkey.[0]

Human trafficking, in order of severity, is most linked to: Netherlands, UK, Romania, France, Germany, Bulgaria, Italy, Poland, Hungry, Portugal.

From this list alone (these tend to follow power laws) there's a higher correlation with being a Bloc State than legalized prostitution. Unsurprising to see UK and Germany here considering they are not only the most wealthy countries, but also the most populous. Netherlands... well I got no answer there but this is just a quick look.

Just given this quick look, I'd be shocked to learn that legalization of prostitution was a major causal factor in human trafficking.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Europe

[1] https://www.statista.com/chart/4947/the-eus-hotspots-for-peo...

It’s more than 9. It’s also legal in the blue-colored countries confusingly labeled with ‘Abolitionism’.

I don't think it is confusing and I don't think it is what you're suggesting. The wiki explicitly says that the act of prostitution is legal but the act of procuring it is illegal. Essentially you get arrested for paying for sex. The John. This is often done so that women have more of a safety net and can feel more comfortable going to police if they are abused. In other areas if you are trafficked you might feel scared to go to the police out of fear that they will arrest you.

This isn't the same as saying that prostitution is legal because the transaction is still illegal. It also doesn't resolve the issue of the correlation, which is the main point.

That is true in orange 'Neo-abolitionism', not in blue 'Abolitionism', where buying sex is also legal, just not 3rd-party involvement.

You can check the relevant Wikipedia pages on prostitution in e.g. Spain or the UK to see that your are misinterpreting the significance of the blue keying. It is not illegal to sell sex or to pay for sex in either of these countries (or in any of the other blue countries, as far as I’m aware).

I think there is some confusion about used terminology, where legalization is more like 'regulation', while many european countries do not criminalize prostitution but do not have legal framework for prostitution (e.g. 'abolitionism' in the Wikipedia link). In these countries prostitution is perfectly legal (but not necessary 3rd party involvement, which may may be used to bully prostitutes by attacking their business partners, e.g. landlords renting flats).

I also find the data highly questionable--it's very popular to pretend that prostitution is "trafficking" with little or zero evidence. I recall a news article recently about a bunch of "trafficking" busts--that was the police putting up ads and busting the guys who showed up. Trafficking women requires that there be women in the first place and there were none.

And, no, women who move around a lot and live on-site isn't proof of trafficking--because that's also a way to make it much harder for the cops to investigate and thus a sensible safety strategy for them. I'm sure trafficking exists but I don't believe the claimed numbers at all.

Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Greece, Turkey, Senegal, Nevada in the US, and various Australian states

*Parts of* Nevada--it's county choice in the rural areas (my impression is about half say yes), prohibited at the state level in the urban areas.

to correct me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_by_region

UK also, in addition to sibling's list.

And it’s not like that any sexually deprived young man just walks into a brothel like he walks into a pharmacy in Germany. That’s highly stigmatized and I suppose it is in the other countries as well.

I dont think prostitution can fix that issue in the slightest. Here in Germany prostitution is legal and highly regulated (to the point that there are ticket stations for prostitutes working on the street to pay taxes). I would however never ever consider using those services.

> I would however never ever consider using those services.

Maybe because you don't need or want to?

If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.

If not, you're either expecting too much for too little compensation or regulation is preventing the market from being efficient.

No because I would rather not have sex than take part in the exploitation of at risk woman. Just because it's legal and regulated doesn't mean there aren't horrible things going on.

> If you're the type of person that wants to have sex with someone, and you're willing to pay for it, and you have the option - you're probably going to.

I am the kind of person that wants to have sex with someone. I'd be willing to pay for it, i have the option. But I'd rather not have sex than be involved in such things. It's an ethical decision no matter how lonely I get.

Someone who wants sex in the context of a relationship might very well have no interest in a prostitute. The thought of sex with a stranger is repulsive to me.

So King Louis XVI witnessed the end of French monarchical rule because he failed to ban... what? Revolutions? Monarchy has nothing to do with whether or not the people in power believe in bans being useful.

Flag and move on, the guy is a troll and doesn't have a single useful/non-inflammatory post.

If people consider marriage as a contract of exchange, then it is already a form of legalized prostitution. Monogamy might be a bigger underlying problem.

Esther Perel's Mating in Captivity in a good read on this topic.

You can have a financially dependent relationship with actual love and affection, prostitution is purely transactional. I agree that monogamy as it is usually practiced has some drawbacks and is not well suited to many aspects of modern society, but it does work well for a large number of people, even if it is a minority.

People who think like this don't tend to stay married long.

People that don't, don't stay married long.

I started out married thinking of it as a nebulous thing. My marriage improved when I realized it was all an exchange and I need to make sure I'm always providing my bit rather than just working towards some nebulous idea of love.

I've been married 24 years and I'm happy my marriage isn't transactional. What happened if you couldn't provide your bit due to an injury? Your marriage ends?

I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories. Serious unfixable medical injuries almost always end with the spouse at the very least getting sex on the side, at least if they're reasonably young.

Getting a long term badly limiting disability in anything but old age is a recipe for divorce. Eventually the loving spouse gets caretaker fatigue and is overloaded from carrying the weight without relief. I fully expect and will not hold it against my spouse if I'm seriously disabled for over a year and the marriage ends. Any high moral ground about love and honor or whatever falls apart when you're grinding in poverty and going to be sucked under yourself with no light at the end of the tunnel.

My wife (in her mid thirties) sustained a nerve injury, couldn't move her leg, lost all mobility, was mostly in bed everyday and needed help standing, a special toilet seat, the whole nine yards. We were told this is a permanent condition.

I never left her side or stopped supporting her. I didn't get fatigued, I got motivated and we found one of the best Neurologists in the world. It took a several years and surgeries for her to get better. She can walk, drive, and work today. I couldn't imagine throwing away my marriage over some ass. Also what kind of father would I be if I left their mother when she needed me the most?

If your entire marriage is built on sex and money transactions, your marriage will eventually fall apart no matter what.

Lol it's hilarious you pretended to ask a genuine question when you already knew the answer for your marriage. In fact you intentionally withheld it as some kind of poorly executed trap. Talk about a bad faith discussion.

Not all marriages involve people with the money to continue supporting the children when both rather than just one parent is bankrupted by medical debt, and not all disabilities end with being able to drive and walk. Usually don't involve people privileged enough to get "best in the world" Neurologists either.

There are people out there that may have to divorce precisely because they can't look their kids in the eyes with the marriage as it stands due to the disability, knowing a divorce will separate the finances and possible allow them to find more support for their child. Every human is susceptible to caretaker fatigue and you yourself can't possibly know you would never get fatigued if the disability never ended. Some people can go a 1 year without cracking, others a decade, others 100 years and until it happens you probably won't know your breaking point.

The fact of the matter is I get to see the people that deal with hundreds of seriously chronically disabled people. My dataset to work with is that it's a bad bet to expect that the counterparty will sacrifice themselves indefinitely for the sake of the marriage.

You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.

First you had family that worked in healthcare "I have family in healthcare so I hear the stories.". Now you're able to draw parallels because you get to see the people that deal with others? It doesn't even make sense. I have people that work in the healthcare industry including doctors too. Your evidence is andetoal at best, hearsay at worst. You don't have a dataset, you have stories. So which is it? Talk about a bad faith discussion...

The reality is there are plenty of people that would love their partner for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health.

Yeah just be able to get the world's best neurologist and hope the situation gets better. If it does I'll say after the fact I'm sure no matter what it'd be in sickness and in health and I'm super man who doesn't fatigue. Obviously the impoverished mom who can't even afford to hire a doctor and walks away so the kids won't get bankrupted, well she just doesn't see marriage the same as you.

You have even less than an anecdote, and then when you asked me for a response which uses actual anecdotes where it doesn't get better, you suddenly get upset about it.

>You walked right into it, that's not my fault. LOL.

This is just straight up sociopathy. You knew you had an unusual outcome, so you asked for the expected outcome with the trap that yours was a heartwarming but unexpected one. It was never coming from a place of curiosity.

I have an unusual outcome? You're grasping at straws, name calling, and making a ton of assumptions with literally zero data. I'll budge an inch, sure, if your partner is going to need long term hospice care, I can understand why you might move on, but that's not the case for most fully disabled people and families. You're basically saying if you lost the ability to walk and it inconveniences me I'm bailing on you. That's a weak marriage, it's might even be the definition of a weak marriage. I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal.

Do you not understand the premise of the most common wedding vow ever to be spoken? "for better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health." That's just a fancy way of saying I'll love you for who you are because I'm not transactional.

Honestly, your marriage sounds like a sociopaths dream. How many points and transactions can I earn so my partner thinks I actually care. You also lied about your data for some silly reason. Anyway, I'm gonna take my upvotes and move on. You have a great day.

>You're basically saying if you lost the ability to walk and it inconveniences me I'm bailing on you

Nobody says it like that. Usually it gets to the point where the end-stage symptoms resulting in their leaving is something like suicidal depression and the kids are badly suffering. The impetus is the disability but you're downplaying how it gets there.

It really shows gross ignorance to think you can extrapolate the yes UNUSUAL case that after getting world's best neurologist we did what the doctors said couldn't be done. And then extrapolate all the people other than you that faced disabilities that resulted in dissolved marriage must have started with weaker marriages.

Honestly someone that belittles the plight and hard marital choices of the disabled as much as you have, would be worthy of much worse name calling than anything I've seen here, and it's especially harmful to the disabled who have actually initiated the divorce out of LOVE for their partner.

>I don't think sticking with your partner through thick and thin is abnormal, ad

Yeah investigate a bit people going through the serious disease of chronic addiction. When the husband uses the entire paycheck to keep from getting dope-sick and passes out while the toddler is crawling around after the second, at best third rehab the wife dumps them like a hot potato. Honestly it is rare to find a chronic addict that is still with their family. When push comes to shove when the kids are suffering the wife will drop your ass, even if you're trying your best to overcome the disease and act in love. All that shit about sticking around no matter what goes through the window, and these aint people in hospice care or even acting purposefully with malice against their family. Usually they genuinely and badly want to fulfill their responsibilities.

Perel's argument was the inverse: people who failed their marriage because they are holding too tight on the monogamy ideal, as they expect everything from a single partner who cannot provide everything. Well, I'm not sure what to think of that. I'm just quoting her theory and I feel it's relevant in this discourse.

You shouldn't be getting all of your needs met by a sexual partner. Friends and family are critical. A lot of the people I know into polyamory do not have the best friendship and family situations. They are seeking to get everything met through partners.

Monogamy was a fantastic tool to manage diseases for thousands of years.

Imagine removing antibiotics, vaccines, screening tools, and any other medical treatment.

Anyone who was around for the AIDs epidemic will understand how quickly a large segment of the population can start dying off.

The early portion, it was literally a mystery disease that was killing off anyone that engaged in risky lifestyle.

Interesting insight from Darwinism point of view!

If we have solved the public health problems, does it make Monogamy an empty construct? Or there are other social/economical/biological factors that hold it in place?

Up until my generation it was really hard to raise kids as a single parent. And they take a while before you’re not responsible for their safety/wellbeing.

As far as I know, there weren't any significantly life-threatening sexual diseases for most of human history in most of the world. Syphilis only affected the Americas before the 1500s, and HIV is much newer than that.

Most other sexually-transmitted diseases that existed in most of the world were unpleasant, but not life threatening, even before antibiotics. And it's also worth noting that most primates (and many mammals of all kinds) are not monogamous, and yet they are not plagued by STIs to any significant extent.

Instead, monogamy was much more important for managing babies, especially given how much hare human babies need, and for how long, compared to virtually any other animal.

Syphillis isn't from the Americas or anywhere specifically. It just gets described in European literature around the time of Columbus first documented contact. If you read descriptions of literature from that time it's either a separate virus or the virus mutated radically since then to become less fatal.

As far as primates not having STIs, you might want to read up on the animal origins of HIV a bit. The only reason we have HIV is because SIV can proliferate indefinitely in another species and crossed into humans.

It looks like the European strain wasn't as deadly as the American strain. Pre-Columbus skeletons showing signs have been found.

However, with a slow disease like syphilis there's also the issue of how well it was identified in old times. Identifying the primary form as sexual is very different than identifying the tertiary form as a continuation of the primary. It was 1965 before we realized shingles is tertiary chicken pox and the 1980s before they realized that cervical cancer is mostly tertiary HPV. Other virus/cancer links have been identified (I recently read that IIRC 5% of cancer is known to be of viral origin) and personally I think the actual number is even higher as determining a link between an asymptomatic virus and later cancer would be very hard. (Again and again I see news reports of clusters of unusual cancer where no cause is found but the pattern looks contagious. It's very hard for cancer itself to be contagious but the same effect would be observed if the cancer was due to an asymptomatic virus. I also find the notion that random mutations could cause consistent behavior of the cancer strange--but quite sensible if it's viral damage.)

As far as I understand, the exact history of syphilis is still unknown, and the idea that it was spread to Europe from the Americas is not completely impossible (though seems less likely today).

As for SIV, I am aware of it, but it is not a serious problem for most simians (though apparently Chimpanzees are being killed by SAIDS in serious numbers) - which is my point. STIs have not been so serious a threat to animals as HIV+AIDS has been to humans in the initial pandemic.

> Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions?

Incels don't like prostitutes, they despise them. Incels believe that they are _owed_ sex, they don't want to pay for sex. You fundamentally misunderstand what Incel claim being.

Prostitution is legal in Germany, guess what country in the EU comes first when it comes to the number of self declared incels

https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2021-10/ran_i...

Prostitution advocate often claim that legalizing prostitution will lower violence against females, there is absolutely not a single proof that true. All we know is that legalizing prostitution increase the demand for legal and illegal (minors, trafficked women) prostitution.

https://journalistsresource.org/economics/legalized-prostitu...

Nobody is owed sex. Not a single person on the planet, with anybody.

They would no longer be incels. Most incels wouldn't settle by using prostitutes.

> Legalize prostitution and regulate safety and perhaps incels would build confidence and learn to socialize a bit from paid sexual interactions?

Prostitution is legal in my country. One can literally go to a clearnet website and get a menu full of humans to choose from. So called "incels" still exist.

Make things worse for women to appease lonely men? No thank you.

That the 'oldest profession' is essentially paid rape says a lot really.

Better to criminalise only those who seek to use prostitutes, and provide help and support for those who wish to exit the sex trade.

I think incel is as much about involuntary celibate as antisemitism is against semitic languages.

Incels are a hate group only vaguely related to celibate. And legalizing prostitution (something I am for) will probably do as good to that group as language lessons would do against antisemitism as we know it today.

same things are happening in countries with legal prostitution