Incels: Just Say No

The cult of victimhood has reached its reductio ad absurdum with the grievance of the incels, involuntary celibates in case you’ve missed the news. Last month Alek Minassian drove a rented van onto a sidewalk in Toronto and killed ten people in apparent retribution for women who are too mean to have sex with him. Turns out he’s part of a sex-deprived cult.

The Guardian describes the movement:

“…Basically, incels cannot get laid and they violently loathe anyone who can.

“Some of the fault, in their eyes, is with attractive men [nb. “Chads” in their vernacular] who have sex with too many women – “We need to do something about the polygamy problem,” said the Incelcast, an astonishing three-hour podcast about the Toronto attack – but, of course, the main problem is women themselves, who become foes as people, but also as a political entity. There is a lot of discussion about how best to punish them, with mass rape fantasies and threads on how to follow women without getting arrested, just for the thrill of having them notice you. Feminism is held responsible for a dude who can’t get laid, and birth control is said to have caused “women to date only Chads. It causes all sorts of negative social ramifications”.

Incredibly there’s been serious discussion about whether sex is a “human right” which society must provide for. So far I haven’t seen a recommendation except from incels that women have an obligation to help these guys. But Ross Douthot, writing in The New York Times, starts his article: “One lesson to be drawn from recent Western history might be this: Sometimes the extremists and radicals and weirdos see the world more clearly than the respectable and moderate and sane.” Really? The incels see the world clearly? Ross blames the Hugh Hefnerization of our culture for putting the incels in such a pickle.

Robin Hanson, an economist at George Mason University, writes:

“One might plausibly argue that those with much less access to sex suffer to a similar degree as those with low income, and might similarly hope to gain from organizing around this identity, to lobby for redistribution along this axis and to at least implicitly threaten violence if their demands are not met. As with income inequality, most folks concerned about sex inequality might explicitly reject violence as a method, at least for now, and yet still be encouraged privately when the possibility of violence helps move others to support their policies. (Sex could be directly redistributed, or cash might be redistributed in compensation.)”

The trouble is that one might “plausibly” make this argument if one accepts the premise that everyone is entitled to an equal share of everything. The cult of victimhood, which attributes every unequal outcome to some sort of discrimination and oppression, is based on this premise. By this logic, since I’m Jewish and not an NBA star and since there are very few (if any) Jewish pro basketball players, my lack of an NBA career must be due to some sort of pattern of discrimination and I’m entitled to compensation if not a starting position on the Cavs.  Otherwise I might have to get violent.

We are differently abled by both genes and environment. We have different wishes, different desires, and different vices and weaknesses. Some are lucky and some are not. Outcomes will differ when we want them to and when we don’t want them to. We are entitled to equality before the law (there’s work to be done there); we have “unalienable” rights to life, liberty and the pursuit (emphasis mine) of happiness. A humane society works to provide opportunity for what we used to call betterment and cares for the helpless.

But we don’t have a right to demand that anyone like us or do us any favors, sexual or otherwise. We have a right to whine about our fate, as unattractive as that whining is. We have no right to violence because we think we’re unfairly ignored.