incel Archives - Paging Dr. NerdLove

Post Mortem – Textual Harassment

June 29, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

On occasion, I’ll get a request for advice on a situation that’s more layered and complex than a typical Ask Dr. NerdLove question. These questions typically need a deeper dive into just what went wrong, a sort of exploratory emotional surgury – a dating Post-Mortem if you will. On other occasions, the circumstances require more than just surgery. Sometimes it requires a session with The Chair Leg of Truth.

Listen to the Chair Leg of Truth. It does not lie.

So come up to the lab and see what’s on the slab. It’s time to put on the scrubs and dig into this particular corpse.

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The Incel Phenomenon: Fixing The Wrong Sexual Crisis

May 4, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

I see we’re not done talking about incels.

After Alek Minassian’s deadly attack on innocents in Toronto, scores of people decided to share their hot takes about how to “handle” the incel problem. Of course: like as not, the “problem” they focused on was that incels were angry virgins instead of the hate and misogyny that was radicalizing young men.

Worse, the solution wasn’t to deal with the anger, but to deal with the virginity.

Never was the absurdity of this argument more visible than when economist Robin Hansen attempted to equate being a virgin to financial inequality – leading many to wonder just what the absolute fuck was wrong with him.

(Considering that Hansen has described infidelity as being akin or worse to rape and that maybe women who cuckold their husbands should be tortured – but don’t quote him on that – the answer is evidently “a lot.”)

Now, one might be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that most people would recognize the idea that maybe we should ask women to “take one for the team” in the name of preventing future attacks is both idiotic on its face and disgusting to boot. Sure, someone at The Federalist was undoubtedly limbering up their hands to produce their next hot take but c’mon. It’s The Federalist.

This, of course, was like daring the universe to prove me wrong. I may as well have stood on a mountain and declared that God has shitty aim.

On Wednesday, I was coming back from a lovely trip to the UK to see friends. After a nine hour enforced vacation from the Internet, I turn on my phone to discover that New York Times contributor Ross Douthat picked up the Baton of Stupid Arguments and ran with it.

So we need to talk about just what’s so mind-bogglingly wrong with the argument that the problem with incels is some sort of “sexual inequality.”

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The Trouble With Incels

April 30, 2018 by Dr. NerdLove Leave a Comment

When Alek Minnasian drove his van into groups of pedestrians, the world went looking for answers. A post on his personal Facebook page – one where Minnassian referred to incels, the Incel Rebellion and hailing “Supreme Gentleman Elliot Roger – seemed almost too perfect.

After all, 4chan boards like /pol/ have a long history of spreading hoaxes and misinformation after every recent tragedy and mass shooting. Faking a post – or an entire Facebook profile – for someone accused of the crime is well within the typical modus operandi of such groups.

Facebook confirmed that the post was real. Subsequent investigations found that Minassian was indeed part of the incel (short for “involuntarily celibate”) community – like Elliot Roger and Chris Harper-Mercer before him – and his rage led him to commit atrocities against innocents.

Since then, the media has been falling over themselves to discuss the incel community – who they are, what the existence of the incel community means for men, what drives them to such lengths, and so on. Many people have been asking what we can – or should – do about them.

The problem is: too many people are asking the wrong questions. We let ourselves get distracted, taking the name and their self-description at face value and, as a result, miss the real issue underneath.

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Post Mortem: Why Do Women Have All The Advantages In Dating?

November 13, 2017 by Dr. NerdLove 409 Comments

As my long-term readers know, I get a lot of letters from readers for my weekly Q&A “Ask Dr. NerdLove” both here and over at Kotaku. But, occasionally, I’ll get a letter from a reader that requires a deeper and more thorough dive than the usual request for advice. Sometimes the answer is more nuanced than normal or requires cutting through a Gordian knot of related issues. These are the Post-Mortems, where we dissect a letter and dig through the remains in order to get to the heart of the issue.

Post-mortems are rarely pretty. Many times, we’re having to liberally apply the Chair Leg of Truth to a lifetime of beliefs. But, while the love may be tough, at the end we’re going to know exactly what went wrong and how we can do better next time. So scrub up and snap on the gloves; it’s time to get all up in them guts.

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This Is Why Women Won’t Date You

September 25, 2017 by Dr. NerdLove 389 Comments

Last Tuesday, The Federalist – a conservative news organization that seems to devote at least a third of its coverage to lamenting that women won’t sleep with them – decided to publish the hottest of hot takes: that women who refuse to give it up to conservatives are why Trump won.

And to be fair: he’s half-right. Women are, in fact, refusing to date or sleep with Trump voters. As it turns out, #MAGA is the ultimate anaphrodisiac; red hats are becoming the new “tiger pic” of Tinder. However, in getting things half right, author Jarrod Laber manages to be absurdly wrong at the same time. While others have covered the hot takes about why this is stupid, I would like to take a different angle. Laber is, indeed, correct that he and his cohorts are getting fingered by the invisible hand of the free meat market; however, he’s missing the point as to why.

But in missing that point, he presents a series of excellent reasons why certain men are having a hard time dating. Mostly by embodying all of them.

Let’s break it down, shall we?

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