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Showing posts with label Incels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Incels. Show all posts
William Costello & David M.Buss ✏ Recommended by Christopher Owens. 

Incels (involuntary celibates) are an online subculture community of men who form an identity around their perceived inability to form sexual or romantic relationships. They attribute their lack of success to genetic factors, evolved mate preferences, and social inequities. While we have a deep ancestral history of incels, the modern incel community is an evolutionarily novel group that fosters a shared victimhood identity. We applaud Lindner for an important contribution to the scant literature on incels and highlight the importance of her evolutionary psychological lens in understanding their grievances.

Our critique of Lindner’s work addresses two key issues. Firstly, we challenge the hypothesis that incels engage in simulated coalitional bargaining for sexual access. While coalitional bargaining for sexual access may have played a role in ancestral populations of involuntarily celibate men, this is not a suitable analysis of modern incels. Instead, the incel community operates as a fatalistic echo-chamber, where failure is celebrated, and individuals discourage each other from pursuing romantic success.

Secondly, we critique the association between incels and violence. Contrary to common beliefs, empirical evidence suggests that incels are not particularly prone to violence. Incels’ propensity for violence appears relatively low compared to that of the general population. We conclude by offering one hypothesis as to why modern day incels are not as violent as we might expect.

Continue reading here.

Why Isn’t There More Incel Violence?

Queer Majority ðŸŒˆ Penned by Chris Ferguson. Recommended by Christopher Owens.

In 2019, the movie Joker sparked a rather remarkable moral panic. The film considers the origin of the Joker as a socially awkward young man named Arthur Fleck (played by Joaquin Phoenix) with neurological and mental health problems. He is unliked, ignored, and bullied by society. He hallucinates a relationship with a beautiful neighbor, being otherwise unsuccessful with women. Eventually, pushed to the limit, he becomes, well, the Joker. It’s a fascinating film that evokes a controversial modern archetype: the incel.


The term “incel”, short for involuntarily celibate, refers to people who are unable, for various reasons, to secure romantic partners despite wishing to. The term originated with a woman but has come in recent years to describe mainly young, heterosexual men unable to find girlfriends. In its most current form, “incel” invokes not merely a socially awkward dorkiness, but also a menacing misogyny — men who can’t get laid, and who hate women because of it. Thus, particularly among the chattering classes and elite journalism, incels are a target of both high-school-like scorn and deep worry.

That might help explain the oversized reaction to Joker. Many reviews of the film clutched at pearls over its potential impact on viewers. 

Continue reading @ Queer Majority.

Boutique Bogeymen 🌈 The Incel Panic And The Failure Of Empathy

William Costello responds to a piece by Brandon Sullivan.

Apologies for the belated response to this piece and thank you to Christopher and Anthony for bringing it to my attention. I made the decision to not use any of my Sunday to pay much attention to it as I was busy playing a Gaelic football match. Ironic given the Ian Paisley comparison.

Well…so much for me thinking my article appealed to incels, normies and even feminists alike. It was bound to cop some flak eventually. Nothing like an ad-hominem, guilt by association, straw man ‘critique’ to let me know that I’m doing something right. Although I must say that an ad hominem critique about ‘who I Might have been in the 1980s’ is quite novel.

“I wouldn’t want to be part of any club that would have me as a member” - Groucho Marx.

I suppose to address one of the first guilt by association jabs, had Brandon listened to my appearance on the ‘Just Checking In’ men’s mental health podcast (first of a number of shameless plugs I will use this rebuttal as an opportunity to provide) he would have heard me clarify my stance on A Voice For Men and the wider manosphere. The ‘manosphere’ incidentally is not a monolith and rather contains multitudes of ideological thinking. As such, there are elements of AVFM and the manosphere that I agree with and disagree with. I have not encountered any ‘figure head’ from within the men’s rights community that expects me to have all the same views as them. The reason I don’t classify myself as a Men’s Right’s Activist is because I am not an activist in the same way that someone doing great work for men’s rights like Elizabeth Hobson is. I am just a commentator who is interested in men’s issues and the dynamics between the sexes. It just so happens that this is one of the articles of mine which has garnered most traction. I don’t however consider this association to be a slur. To sum up on this point I will reiterate my closing remarks at the Battle of Ideas 2019, where I spoke about tribal politics (shameless plug number two)

I ended my debate by quoting Eleanor Roosevelt, “Small minds talk about people, average minds talk about events and great minds talk about ideas”.

I think it’s indicative of your mind that much of your argument consists of guilt by association slurs.

“Lies, damned lies and statistics!” - Mark Twain

That’s a selective quote about statistics. You criticize my use of ‘selective academic statistics and quotes’. I don’t really know what to say here other than to highlight that this is generally how one goes about making an argument, i.e. backing up your points with wider reading and research that serves as evidence of the ideas you’re expressing. Feel free to critique the validity of any studies referenced or refute them with statistics or quotes of your own.

Much of your ‘critique’ is full of assumptions and speculation about my intent, motivations and stances so can you specifically highlight what you think is a ‘dog whistle’ and to what end? This might be enlightening to readers…most of all me.

I don’t understand why the premise that we (manosphere and wider society) need to do more to support vulnerable men is laughable? Do you not agree?

I care about incels because I feel they are very misrepresented due to the most extreme voices within their community. We quite rightly rail against other minority groups being defined by extremists within their community e.g. the harmful stereotype of Muslims as terrorists, however we are reluctant to do this when regarding incels. In society, we usually try to help or at least have sympathy for the most disenfranchised minority groups but we don't seem to do this when we discuss incels. In response to my article, I have seen people who are usually extremely kind commentators say things like, "life is hard...get over it". I think this is a disservice to the vast majority of incels who do not meet the trivialised caricature description used by most media. This caricature of inceldom can lead to the temptation to dismissively shun incels from polite society but this doesn't help the problems they face and represent.

It’s somewhat disappointing that you didn’t find the article informative or valuable but I recognize it’s a pretty divisive and evocative topic.

However, the response has been extremely positive from incels, normies and even feminists alike.

Thus far the article has led to the following,

  • I was invited on to a men’s mental health podcast to discuss the article and wider gender politics issues.
  • I was invited on to the Incel Project podcast with Naama Kates and my episode has been downloaded over 6k times. Your ‘critique’ will likely lead to more so thanks for that.
  • A female and feminist academic who is writing a book about incels reached out to me and after informal discussions we are now planning to engage in a formal wiki.letter exchange on the topic.
  • I have been invited to record an episode of The Sex & Censorship Youtube channel with Jerry Barnett. 
  • The article has been republished by the academic Psychology blog Psychreg with an invitation to record an episode of their Youtube channel.
  • Psychreg have also invited me to expand on the piece and to rewrite it into a more formal academic style for publication in their academic journal. I plan to explore this when I start my MSc in Evolutionary Psychology next week.
  • I have been invited to speak at the International Conference on Men’s Issues 2020

I think all of this is indicative that you are the outlier in not finding it valuable.

You’ve got your mind set on me

Another quote to grate on you. This time an adapted lyric from the George Harrison song. I think your criticism of my Twitter feed gets more to the crux of why I think your argument is in bad faith. It seems you have decided everything you need to know about me already and would rather argue against a straw man version of me built upon your assumptions about who I am rather than engage with any of my ideas or see me as an individual with a collection of different views.

I’m not going to play your ugly game of identity politics, rather I’ll set the record straight on certain aspects of what you’ve said that I think could be misleading to readers.

Ultimately, I quite like my Twitter feed and would encourage anyone to follow me @CostelloWilliam to make their own mind up about my content.

My twitter consists of a huge variety of content including aesthetically beautiful Gaelic football pitches, anecdotes about my own life, articles I find interesting, sometimes Irish republican sentiment and more often than not it’s just funny memes and GIFs.

You could have linked to any of my tweets that you found problematic, but you neglected to do so, why is that? Where are the ‘calls to arms’ you describe? That’s quite the accusation to level at someone. I regularly tweet about the dangers of Islamism and the importance of separating critic of ideas and ideology from bigotry against Muslim people. As an atheist I often tweet out content that is critical of all religions…including Islam. As a free speech absolutist, I have tweeted out about the Charlie Hebdo massacre and the bigotry of low expectations many seem to apply in making excuses for these Islamist attacks.

I think the fact that you’ve tried to use the pinned tweet with Pepe the frog imagery as evidence of some nefarious intent on my behalf is extremely telling of your goals and lack of rigor in ‘investigating me’. The pinned tweet is a link to this very article you’re ‘critiquing’. The Pepe/Joker frog meme logo was one I used for my article and I think it’s quite artistic and fitting. The sad/lonely pepe frog is certainly synonymous with the centrality of ‘shitposting’ to life in the online incel community. The joker element to the image is an allusion to the moral panic about how many incel attacks were going to happen in response to the release of the Joker movie…as it happens this ‘terrorist wave’ never manifested. Islamist terrorist responses to cartoons are in fact more likely than an incel terrorist attack in response to a comic book movie.

To summarise on this point, your characterization of me couldn’t be more wrong and in the short time that I’ve been writing, I have covered topics such as identity politics, polyamory, the ‘Karen phenomenon’ and Nick Sandmann. I am currently planning on writing a piece about how gaelic football can be an amazing vehicle to combat racism as it goes. Not what you would have assumed I imagine?

“I disagree with what you say but I defend to the death your right to say it.”

In relation to your objection to the publication of my piece, well firstly you obviously did think it was worth the time and effort but you haven’t offered much of a critique or refutation so much as a personal attack. You haven’t actually engaged with any ideas in the piece. Your gripe seems to be with me or rather who you think I am or worse again, who you think I might have been had I been born in the 1980s. You also take issue with the publishers over whether the piece should have been published or not. The publishers (and others) obviously thought it had merit, you’re free to disagree and say so. My article was published (here and in various other outlets) and so was yours. I must give credit to the publication for creating fertile ground here for the genuine exchange of diverse ideas. I think they have justified their decision in the following comments and I’m happy to let them speak for themselves. I also admire their conviction and fortification in defending their decision and in drawing my attention to your screed here.

I do however want to address one additional piece of criticism from ‘Lucy’ the comments that I feel ties in with the overarching free speech & platforming theme of the debate that has been happening in the comments.

It’s Pepe the frog. It’s the weaponisation of liberal principles of discourse by the Right. Got to hand it to them – they’ve moved the Overton window in a way we might have thought unimaginable a decade ago. When we give their ideas a platform in true liberal Voltairean spirit we are obediently dancing to their tune; fearing the spectre of an accusation of hypocrisy that never especially seems to trouble them. So, perhaps we should stand for something other than simply letting everyone speak. And Costello’s ideas have dark implications that can be traced directly to the soil of overt manosphere misogyny that clearly nurtured them; not least the idea of sex itself as a commodity to which men have the right of “access”, and a predictable but distressing demand of further emotional labour from women to solve the issue.

The notion that I am far right or even right wing doesn’t stand up to even the slightest scrutiny. There is so much about me that would make me unwelcome on the far right. I am a free speech absolutist, sexual expression and sex work advocate and have expressed sympathetic views to polyamory. I am pro immigration and an immigrant who lives with a mixed race immigrant. I voted Yes in the same sex marriage and Repeal the 8th referendums in Ireland. I spend a lot of time socializing in the gay village district of Birmingham. I was a remainer and have positive views towards post work utopian worlds of super abundance and universal basic income. Seeing as my Twitter content is the subject of such speculation I am conducting a Twitter poll about how people would characterise my political leanings. At the time of writing the results are,

  • Far Left: 8.3%
  • Centre Left: 50%
  • Centre Right: 41.7%
  • Far Right 0%

I also, for entertainment value, decided to take the political compass quiz. My answers placed me firmly in the Left Libertarian quadrant.

More specifically, I don’t quite agree with viewing sex as a mere commodity, however, there absolutely has always been a transactional nature to sex. This topic is well explored in this Quillette article, ‘The Price of Sex’. However, I go to explicit lengths in my article to stress that I absolutely do not think that men should have the ‘right of access’ to sex. Here is a direct quote from my article:

However, to have sympathy for incels does not equate to advocating women be ‘given to them’ as their entitlement… Every time I discuss incels with any semblance of sympathy, I am met with a chorus of, ‘‘boo hoo, woe is me, poor men, they’re not entitled to sex or women you know!” This is of course true. I am not and have never at any point suggested that women should be made lower their standards to reduce the plight of the incel.

It's grating to be described as one of 'them' purely for writing an article Because I don't want the issue hijacked by nefarious actors on the far right, which is precisely what happens when we resign this conversation to the dark corners of the internet and label anyone discussing it as far right. I thought/think I can bring a new level of sensitivity and sophistication to a topic that I think sorely needs it. If you feel I haven’t brought sufficient sensitivity or sophistication then fair enough, I am open to critique. However, we shouldn’t keep the issue completely off the table or label someone as far right because they think it needs discussion.

“It was acceptable in the 80’s” - Calvin Harris

The speculation about who I might have been in the 1980s is truly bizarre. I was born on October 29th 1989. A few days later they took down the Berlin Wall … what does that mean? Given your speculative nature I’m sure you can conjure up some significance to this fact.

Your assumption that I treat people as monoliths couldn’t be more misplaced. I have written in depth about the corrosive nature of identity politics and how it goes against universalist and enlightenment values of individualism. I believe in the philosophy of Maajid Nawaz, “no idea above scrutiny and no person beneath dignity”. If I do have a gripe with ‘woke’ ideology, it is that it divides people along identity lines of immutable characteristics and distracts from class divides which have a real impact on their lives. In that we might even agree more than we disagree.

My piece doesn’t mention woke, cancellation or BLM. It certainly does not mention Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn so again you’re setting up a straw man for yourself to argue against.

My piece doesn’t directly mention feminism but it does refer to feminism with one Frank Furedi quote. Is there something about Frank Furedi that makes me guilty by association too? My piece also references feminist journalist Louise Perry who is quite an outspoken feminist and the work of Dr. Francesca Minerva who I understand also identifies as a feminist. If you or other interested readers want to hear my views on the range of sporadic topics you can read or listen to more of my work e.g. I do discuss feminism in a debate at Goldsmith’s University last year.

All of this is indicative that it is in fact you that is the one that sees people as monoliths because you assume a full suite of my other political views because of one. You make 2+2=5 and run with it. You’re arguing into the ether about a version of me that doesn’t exist outside of your incorrect assumptions. Quite honestly it’s very weak and in really bad faith.

You haven’t done your homework and it shows.


William Costello is an Irish writer studying Evolutionary Psychology at Brunel University London. William has debated publicly at Universities around the UK about feminism and gender/identity politics. William writes opinion pieces for various publications and you can follow his work on Twitter: @CostelloWilliam and Medium.

A Response To My First Hatchet Job

Brandon Sullivan ➠ A few weeks ago, I noticed discussion on Twitter between the publisher of this blog and a frequent contributor about having an article appear. 

 The article was “Step Your Dick Up: Why Incels Deserve Better Advice” by William Costello, and had previously been featured on the anti-feminist, and often outright misogynistic, website A Voice For Men. I sighed – I became aware of the “men’s rights movement” and its blogging wing the “manosphere” whilst at university. (Arguably, the entire movement consists of blogging – activism is difficult to find.) I watched the “movement” Chief-of-Staff, Paul Elam, adopt the language of political resistance, civil disobedience, academic discourse, and social progression in his denunciations of “western” women, and the shadowy “feminists” who have supposedly infiltrated governments across the first world and are apparently waging war on men.

The Incel article was rambling: selective academic statistics and quotes from “edgy” characters such as Frank Furedi, along with a few dog-whistles to the online world of neo-reactionaries, finished off with the laughable premise that the “manosphere” needs to do more to support vulnerable men.

Now, I didn’t write down, prior to looking, what I thought the author’s Twitter feed would reveal, but I wish I had, for it was as predictable as it was depressing. A “pinned” tweet with a “pepe the frog” animation, and then Tweets and re-Tweets about the dangers of Islam, supposed “cancellation”, MRA calls to arms, snide mentions of BLM etc. In other words, a Laurence Fox clone.

I can understand, even sympathise, with the argument for publishing this article: put it out there and allow others to critique it. The problem is, as with any article emanating from the “manosphere” it is difficult to know where to start critiquing it and, life being short as it is, often it simply isn’t worth the time and effort to do so. But published it was.

And when an article of this nature appears on an online publication that you read and enjoy, and is endorsed by a writer whom you respect, it feels different. The publisher of TPQ Anthony McIntyre, commented favourably, saying:

The Dictatorship of the Woketariat can go fuck itself if it thinks it can set the agenda about what can and cannot be discussed. William puts together a robust piece that cannot be wished away by a woke wand.

Robustness is subjective, but leaving aside that questionable descriptor, it did make me think. What is going on here? Why is publishing a disjointed blog piece, written by an unoriginal, fairly typical Twitter neo-reactionary considered a rebuttal to the “Dictatorship of the Woketariat”? And who wants to “wish away” such pieces, anyway?

My only objection to its publication, aside from the mediocre quality, is that it gives it a sheen of respectability that the article simply doesn’t deserve or warrant.

I wonder what Mr Costello’s politics would have been if he were around in the 1980s? When I see the lurid terminology used by people of his political ilk about Muslims/feminists/BLM, it makes me think of the discourse employed by Paisley and his supporters. Reactionaries need to treat blocs of people as monoliths, and paint them simultaneously as inferior, and as sinister and threatening. What genuinely upsets me is when people don’t see the laziness and meanness of those who scapegoat and the obvious precedents. And they don’t, I believe, because they have bought into the myth that “woke” is the real enemy. Meanwhile, Northern English mining towns vote in Tory MPs, the poor get poorer, Boris Johnson wipes out Jeremy Corbyn, Dominic Cummings trolls the nation, and, still, people fixate on the dangers of “wokeness.”

It’s the oldest trick in the book.

⏩ Brandon Sullivan is a middle aged, middle management, centre-left Belfast man. Would prefer people focused on the actual bad guys.

Why Being Anti “Woke” Puts You In Some Embarrassing Company

William Costello  ➤ Men who can’t get sex are seen as losers. The piece initially featured in Medium and was later picked up by A Voice For Men.

We hear a lot about double standards between female and male sexual behaviour. Women who have a lot of sex are often slut shamed, while men who have lots of sex are seen as ‘studs.’ What is often ignored however, is how true the exact inverse of this is. Men who cannot get sex are seen as losers and lampooned as members of the most derided group in society…incels.

Meanwhile, perpetually single women are celebrated in society and we lament the lack of good men out there. Examples of this include the 2019 Psychology Today article, ‘Are There Not Enough Men Worth Marrying?’ and the NY Post article, ‘Broke Men Are Hurting American Women’s Marriage Prospects’. Not to mention the media love in for ‘self partnered’ Emma Watson.

However, it may well be true about the mismatch between what women want and what men are offering. This supply and demand problem is of course the difference in the way we perceive the two groups. Choosy women are not involuntary in their ‘celibacy’. It seems that women have tough choices… but incels have no choices.

This essay is not so much an exploration of what we say ‘about’ incels, but rather what we say ‘to’ incels.

I aim to explore,
Who are the incels and do they deserve such disdain?
What is the plight of an incel?
Why the advice given to incels is useless
Why we simultaneously hate incels for giving up and for trying to better themselves

Who are the incels?

This definition of incel is not one I would agree with entirely. It is however, the top definition on Urban Dictionary and highlights the way in which incels are seen in society

It’s important we know who we are talking about when we use the term incel. The definition used in the image above is not one I fully subscribe to, although it is the top definition in Urban Dictionary and gives an idea of how incels are seen in society. An incel, or involuntarily celibate, is defined as someone who has not had access to sex for a sustained period of longer than six months. Going by this definition and acknowledging the fact that the number of men not having sex within the last year has increased 3 fold in the last decade, we must conclude that the majority of incels are peaceful and non-violent.

A significant minority of incels derive a sense of community spitting misogynistic vitriol online and rare individual incels have lashed out at society in horrific acts of violent rage. Media and cultural depiction tends to fixate on the latter two groups and uses them to represent all incels as misogynistic. It is important to note that while they might resent their lack of success in what they consider a somewhat superficial sexual selection system, the majority of incels do not hate women. The majority might not even define themselves as incels.

‘Be Yourself’ and ‘Just Lift Bro’

The first incel I ever encountered in real life spoke at the ‘Messages for Men’ conference I attended in London in 2019. He overcame obvious crippling anxiety to speak and provide insight into his life. The most striking point for me was how he detailed a frustration at the tension between being told to simply, ‘be yourself’ and ‘just lift bro’ in order to improve himself by weightlifting.

‘Just Lift Bro’, I was told, is a common piece of ‘magic bullet’ style advice provided to incels, particularly from men within the wider ‘manosphere’. It seems cruelly insufficient when we consider the number of incels who report to have physical and/or mental disabilities which might serve as significant barriers to weightlifting.

Honest commentators must acknowledge how hollow and unhelpful these platitudes truly are. Telling an incel to simply “be himself” is to gaslight him into thinking there is no problem at all or to imply that his problem is that he is being inauthentic. To tell him to ‘just lift bro’ might be a little more helpful, in that a lot can potentially be helped through self-development, however, the blaséness and dismissiveness with which incels are told to ‘just lift’ is demeaning to the significance and complexity of the challenge they face.

Study on how couples meet 1940–2020

The dating economy is increasingly moving online and a recent study of Tinder found that, “the bottom 80% of men (in terms of attractiveness) are competing for the bottom 22% of women and the top 78% of women are competing for the top 20% of men”.

Crudely put, the modern dating economy closer resembles polygyny, with the most high-status men having a ‘monopoly’ on the majority of women. The majority of men are simply not being considered.

Why do we hate incels?

James Bloodworth’s insightful article, “Why Incels are the Losers in the age of Tinder”, describes the way in which men and women uniquely hold disdain for incels.

…we still judge people by how much sex they have, or not in this case. We still view men who don’t have sex as failures in some way…For men, calling someone an Incel implies something positive — a certain sexual abundance — about one’s own existence. For women it has begun to function as a putdown that ruthlessly dismisses unworthy suitors while simultaneously expelling them from the community of the good as misogynistic and creepy.

It’s obvious why society hates the misogynistic online abuse and the violence but why do we hate the majority of incels … simply for giving up?

Incels have taken the decision to check out of a mating market in which they see the cost of courtship as being too high, both financially and emotionally. They are increasingly retreating to virtual worlds of pornography and online communities as shelter from what they see as a culture that rejects them. Sociologist Frank Furedi explores how:

…the status of moral inferiority conferred on men, encourages a defensive and anxious approach towards dealing with women. Feminism and the ascendancy of the #MeToo movement serve as constant reminders of the inferiority of male identity.

When so much of male identity is wrapped up in the idea of competency and agency, the incel admission of incompetence is jarring to us as a society and we find it repugnant.

What do we want incels to do? Keep trying and being rejected…or give up? It seems the answer is neither.

It’s not all about looks you know

Every time I discuss incels with any semblance of sympathy, I am met with a chorus of, ‘‘boo hoo, woe is me, poor men, they’re not entitled to sex or women you know!”.

This is of course true.

I am not and have never at any point suggested that women should be made lower their standards to reduce the plight of the incel.

However, the erosion of societally enforced monogamy coupled with the fact that women are rapidly outpacing men in education, yet still seeking highly educated partners, has significantly exasperated matters on this front.

However, to have sympathy for incels does not equate to advocating women be ‘given to them’ as their entitlement.

It’s important that mainstream society gives incels a more appealing message than we have been giving. To dismiss them runs the risk of resigning them to the basements of internet communities, to fester in resentment and disenfranchisement as potential ticking timebombs.

However, let’s look at some of the messages we send to incels.

Incels are often told that ‘it’s not all about looks’ and that some women go for personality. This is despite the fact that statistics show that men’s looks matter far more to the fairer sex and far more than they’d care to admit.

Feminist writer, Louise Perry, who is currently engaging in an extremely productive letter exchange exploration of the modern dating economy with aforementioned James Bloodworth, had this to say on the looks vs personality dichotomy:

The dating market is highly competitive, hierarchical, and often cruel. This fact is uncomfortable for anyone who values egalitarianism, so a more appealing — albeit dishonest — option is to instead blame Incels for their plight by suggesting that their unpleasant personalities must be the problem.

To make the argument that ‘it’s not all about looks’ is to make the assumption that if you don’t have good looks, you can simply compensate with a sparkling personality. I’m routinely provided with anecdotal evidence for such a phenomenon. However, what constitutes a sparkling personality can be very much dependent on what a man looks like and there is often a minimum level of attractiveness to be reached before personality and other traits are even considered.

Dr. Francesca Minerva, a bio-ethisist at Warwick University, explores the fascinating ways in which an underexplored type of discrimination, ‘Lookism’, translates into discrimination in other facets of life. Lookism impacts on areas that we might not intuitively think dependent on physical attractiveness, such as professional success, perception of intelligence and even morality.



Lookism filters out to other facets of life

Bloodworth explores more difficulties encountered by incels in regard to ‘it’s not all about looks’.

…in the world of online dating, which is how 40% of couples in the United States meet, looks, height and social status are usually pre-requisites for matching with someone at all. Offline, many Incels lack the basic social skills required to navigate relations with the opposite sex. According to an internal poll carried out on the website Incels.co, 26% of users of the forum said they had some form of autism. Flirting, which requires an innate understanding of nuanced sub-communications and unspoken sexual tension, does not come naturally to these men.

When I bring this up with friends, I receive a volley of potential qualities that incels could and should conjure up so that they may compete in the mating market. It seems that it is difficult for us to imagine a man who is objectively lacking in every aspect that might be important to a woman when considering a mate. We also neglect to acknowledge how many of these are immutable and difficult or impossible to do anything about.

Keep trying: There’s someone out there for everyone

The next piece of advice given to incels is to ‘keep trying’ and that ‘there’s someone out there for everyone’.

Why do we insist that men must persist in a world where 90% of romantic advances are expected to be made by men. Evolutionary speaking, it can be argued that women are born with inherent value, in that they are likely to one day have children, whereas men need to demonstrate value in order to be sexually selected for.

Why do we want them to continue to run this gauntlet? Why do we want them to continually pick themselves up and try again, only to endure humiliating rejection after rejection after each clumsy attempt?

In a world with antiquated views about who should pay on dates, how much money should a man have to spend fruitlessly on courtship before it’s ok to stop?

The notion that ‘there’s someone out there for everyone’ also seems oddly sexist towards women. If you just keep looking there’ll be a woman with low enough standards for you.

What do we as a society get out of this ritual that causes so much pain?

I feel that the pain of this ordeal is downplayed by society, despite studies showing that physical pain and social pain (rejection, exclusion, ostracism) activate the same regions of the brain. Modern day progressives will happily tell you that “words are violence” but will most likely scoff at this notion of pain. I feel this dismissiveness is due to how acutely aimed at men most sexual rejection is and an example of an empathy gap. The reason my girlfriend can scoff at this type of pain is because she genuinely can’t relate to it. She has literally never been rejected. In terms of romantic options, she lives in a blissfully ignorant state of abundance.

The veil of ignorance

We are all vulnerable romantically and socially. We all face rejection and hurt in romance and relationship. Scorning incels is a projection of our own insecurities and fears. If it wasn’t for random luck, we too could be alone. Those of you who are willing to reflect and consider the ways in which we discriminate and have attractiveness privilege, I strongly suggest listening to Jay Shapiro’s podcast on ‘Lookism’ with Dr. Franca Minerva. Shapiro takes the listener through the ‘veil of ignorance’ thought experiment in the context of attractiveness. The “veil of ignorance” is a method of determining the morality of issues. It asks a decision-maker to make a choice about a social or moral issue and assumes that they have enough information to know the consequences of their possible decisions for everyone but would not know, or would not take into account, which person they are. The thought experiment illuminates how unfair yet philosophically difficult the conundrum of lookism is.

The veil of ignorance thought experiment can be applied to create empathy to those less attractive/fortunate.

Step your dick up

In discussions about this topic with friends, one of the cruellest and most galling pieces of ‘advice’ that I have heard put to incels is that they should ‘step their dick up’, i.e. improve themselves to a standard at which women will consider them.

If we can move past the glaring double standard and the fact that an ‘unlucky in love’ woman would never be told to ‘step her pussy up’ to earn male attention, how much do we really think can be mitigated through self improvement?

Certain aspects can be improved upon by acquiring skills e.g. fashion sense can be improved upon. Manopshpere fashion blog and Twitter account @WellBuiltStyle is a pragmatic example of practical fashion advice that will help struggling men present themselves in a more favourable light.

Social skills to some extent can be learned, primarily by overcoming shyness to reveal a truly interesting personality. This does require a ‘putting yourself out there’ that can be gruelling for socially anxious young men and a ‘trial and error’ learning curve that will lead to all sorts of discomfort for women, who will have to endure many inept attempts at approaching them.

However, we must recognise the uncomfortable and ugly truth of how much of attraction is based on the immutable. One of the most common ‘deal breakers’ for women is a man’s height, which no amount of Cuban heels can mitigate.

Research from the online dating website AYI.com found that, every inch increase in a man’s height directly correlated to his likelihood of being contacted by a woman. The study showed that 6ft men were 33% more likely to be contacted than a man of average height (5ft 7in), and 77% more likely to be contacted than a man under 5ft 4in. A different study about height and human mate choice found that, on average, the shortest man a woman would date is 5 feet 9 inches tall (2 inches taller than the average man) and the same study shows that 23% of men compared to only 4% of women would accept a dating relationship where the woman was taller (the average woman is 5ft 3in)

Develop yourself … but not like that

There happens to be a whole ‘industry’ devoted towards helping men develop themselves to be more successful with women. However, the ‘pick up artist’ industry, which coaches men how to ‘game the system’, is sneered at as superficial and sinister. Pick up artists are dismissed as teaching men how to ‘trick’ women into considering them. I find this criticism quite demeaning to women in that it suggests they are not discerning enough to know when they are being ‘tricked’ . Most women are of course robust enough to see through many pick-up artist techniques. They are considered trite and cheesy in the modern dating arena.

However, one can imagine the exasperation of an incel who finds himself being held in scorn for his immutable incompetence and simultaneously being scolded for trying to ‘game the system’.

Is our distaste for the hollowness of pick up artist pageantry an expression of an internal recognition at how superficial our sexual selection process is? Are we hating the game by resenting the weakest players?

From an evolutionary perspective, it’s female sexual selection that has kept this whole show on the road for our evolved history. Do we dare trifle with it?

I say yes.

Primarily because I am not a nihilist. I believe that much can be done to bridge the supply and demand chasm that exists between what women want and what men are offering.

We will need a more sophisticated and likely uncomfortable conversation than we are currently having. That conversation will need to grapple with uncomfortable issues like the tension between women’s success in the workplace and hypergamy. We will need to reframe the value of traditional masculinity, which has been culturally demeaned.

The conversation will need men moving beyond defining their self-worth through sexual success expressed as the denigration of ‘beta incels’.

It will take women moving past absconding and obvious slogans like ‘incels are not entitled to anything’ and perhaps even considering coaching hapless but well meaning men on how to better succeed.

Inceldom needs reckoning with and I think we can do a lot better than to continually use the most extreme caricatures to trivialise incels.

It’s in all our interests to give advice to incels than to simply ‘be yourself’ or ‘step your dick up’.


William Costello is an Irish writer studying Evolutionary Psychology at Brunel University London. William has debated publicly at Universities around the UK about feminism and gender/identity politics. William writes opinion pieces for various publications and you can follow his work on Twitter: @CostelloWilliam and Medium.

Step Your Dick Up ➤ Why Incels Deserve Better Advice

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