It May Lead to Mental Illness
There’s been a lot of talk about incels lately, as they seem to be a growing community. They were once only a part of their own forums, but now they’re out and proud. While being involuntarily celibate isn’t a mental illness itself, tolerating behaviors associated with it may lead to one. It can be especially hard to dismiss an incel, especially if they’re your friend and you aren’t sure they’re an incel or not. But let’s talk about the effects of tolerating incels, whether you’re close to them or not.
The way to spot an incel is easy. They don’t have sex, and it’s not by choice. Plus, they can exhibit some of these behaviors:
- Being irrational and overly dramatic
- Showing their misogynist side openly
- Hating guys they deem good-looking
- Acting entitled
- Praising and hating themselves at the same time
Tolerating these types of behavior means encouraging them, even when that’s not your intention. Being silent while someone is displaying any of the aforementioned behaviors equals enabling incel behavior. This can only reinforce an involuntary celibate’s beliefs and opinions, leading to mental illnesses such as depression. Unfortunately, suicide is also common in the incel community, so you should be wary of any red flags.
Misogyny
One of the things you definitely shouldn’t support, tolerate, or encourage is misogyny. Simply put, misogyny is hatred towards women. This form of sexism is designed to keep women on a permanently lower social status than men. Why? Only because they’re women. But incels aren’t hating on women to maintain their low social status. They’re doing it because they’re entitled.
Misogyny is one of the easiest ways to spot an incel. They’ll openly hate women only because they don’t want to sleep with them. At the same time, involuntary celibates aren’t putting any effort into impressing a woman or getting to know her. They expect women to just throw themselves at them without any real reason. They start spewing hate once they realize things don’t work like that.
Unfortunately, misogyny is ingrained in many people, and it’s a learned behavior. Many consider it one of the collective generational curses that we need to break. For example, children don’t know how to hate anybody. But, later in life, they can learn that hatred from their parents. The saddest thing of all is that misogyny isn’t exclusive only to men because women can engage in it too, for various reasons.
Anger Projection and Violence
Unfortunately, anger issues are common in the incel community. In fact, it’s no surprise considering how much they hate women. For example, let’s assume that a woman rejected an incel because she simply doesn’t like him. This is a pretty normal situation that all people go through, but it takes a bit of time to learn how to deal with rejection. So, what happens with an incel in this case? He starts projecting anger onto the woman because he thinks he is entitled to her attention and affection.
More often than not, this anger leads to violence. We’re not only talking about violence where one incel threatens or manages to harm one woman. Since their anger builds up, incels think they should punish the whole society for how they’ve been treated. So, they target anyone from women to men they feel inferior to.
Sadly, this behavior and belief led to many terrorist attacks where multiple people were killed or wounded. Tolerating incels only encourages them to act out in this way, so people need to be very careful around them. Giving them silent support can be fatal to many innocent people.
Manipulative Behaviors
Apart from anger issues, incels are incredible manipulators. Not only will they try to manipulate women, but all people around them. This can be dangerous to all who expose themselves to involuntary celibates. So, how does this manipulative behavior work? It’s easy to spot it. For example, an incel is trying to talk to a woman he thinks is a good fit for him.
Unfortunately, she’s not showing any interest. What does he do next? He starts manipulating her. This is when you can hear a lot of talk about how he’s a good guy, but nobody wants him. The manipulation revolves around self-pity until a woman feels bad for him.
When around other people, involuntary celibates will resort to the same tactics. Of course, this again means that all women are bad. Also, incels can create false narratives that paint a false picture. This is dangerous, especially if you’re friends with both parties and you don’t know whose story to believe. Tolerating these manipulations, self-pity talks, and lies also encourage incels to continue their behavior. That’s because they’ll think it’s working.
How to Handle These Guys
Putting an end to incel culture may seem difficult because this is a surprisingly large community. However, we can do it as a society. But how do we do it? There are several ways, and they include:
- Stopping any self-pity, misogyny, or manipulation by changing the subject or not letting them talk
- Explaining that their beliefs are wrong and providing some examples
- Suggesting therapy or support groups
Remember that what lies beneath this behavior is pain that needs to be addressed. Whether this pain really comes from rejection or something else is up to the incel to figure out in therapy or support groups. With this in mind, you should be careful about invalidating how an incel feels. While their feelings towards society, and women, are wrong, the underlying feelings are still valid.
Suggesting therapy is the best thing you can do to help an incel recover. However, accepting your suggestion may be difficult because it seems that men naturally have negative feelings towards therapy. However, explaining that this will really change their life may help. So, it never hurts to try. We need to do everything in our power to stop and help incels change because that’s the only way for us to progress as a society.