ASM151 Incels and Masculinity in the 21st Century

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Incels and masculinity in the 21st century all that and more on this week's episode of ask science mike [Music] science faith welcome to ask science mike the weekly podcast where i answer your questions about science faith and life i'm your host mike mccarg and this week we're doing a special episode really based around what it means to be a man and before we do that we've got some announcements to do so let's get it started [Music] this week is going to be one of those topical programs that i've been doing lately uh where i follow a subject that has captured my interest before we get into it though i want to let you know uh really two things one is uh if you don't know i co-founded a organization called the liturgists most known for the liturgist podcast and this week we are launching something new called the liturgists network which is a a series of podcasts in addition to the liturgist podcast which is well known we're trying to highlight other voices and other perspectives and other viewpoints and in doing so just offer you more podcasts why this is relevant to you as a math science mic listener well ask science mike is now a part of the liturgist network along with the liturgist podcast but other podcasts that are on the network include the red couch podcast with propaganda and alma you might know a prop either from his incredible music or from his appearance on the liturgist episode black and white and we're also launching the unravel podcast with brady tubes brady's a good friend of mine and has created a really thoughtful beautiful program that centered around conversations very very very balanced empathetic beautiful conversation so we're launching the literature network with four podcasts so if you've only heard ask science mike i'd encourage you to go to the liturgist.com network and check out the descriptions to the other podcasts and give them a listen we're really excited to introduce you to the liturgist network with more podcasts coming in the future absolutely and in fact if you know of podcasts you'd like us to consider for inclusion in the liturgist network feel free to go to ask sciencemike.com send me a message and i'll make sure that the team sees it okay also events may the 7th i'm going to be in minnesota around the minneapolis-st paul area for jesus wrote a dinosaur faithful ministry youth ministry and a scientific age tickets are available for that right now if you're not a youth minister no big deal uh the evening of may the seventh i'm going to be doing the battle of the podcast ask science mike versus homebrewed christianity with tripp fuller and that's a free event you just have to rsvp for it may 25th the liturgist gathering is coming to austin texas and i just want to warn you folks uh austin tickets are selling very very fast we've already sold like one in four tickets available in the first week that get ticket sales are available we've never sold tickets this quickly for any literatures event and gatherings usually sell out so if you're thinking about joining us in austin texas for the literatures gathering on may 25th don't wait go to the liturgistgathering.com grab your ticket today july 27th i'll be at the skylight festival in ontario canada i'd love to see you there for all you folks up north especially excited that's happening in the summer in canada and uh the liturgist gathering is going to london england on october 5th so all my friends on the other side of the atlantic ocean i'd love to see you october 5th and 6th for the liturgist gathering well i've been traveling a lot and getting really behind on email including ask science mike emails andrew golucki who does pre-production actually messaged me and said hey are we not getting questions for science mike anymore because i'm so behind and transferring messages from that inbox into the system that andrew uses to sort them as i was kind of catching up on that and looking at the emails that came in i noticed a theme in just a handful of messages and one of those messages is read like this science mike what does incel mean i keep seeing this term mentioned online and i googled it and i saw that it stands for involuntarily celibate what is this about so you may have never heard in cells or the insult movement and and we'll get to that in a moment but then i saw some other messages written to me from men that were asking about uh how to approach women in an age of feminism they they're afraid that if they try to flirt with a girl they are going to be viewed as predatory you know they don't want to be part of the problem but they're they that honestly it was heartbreaking some of these messages conveyed an incredible sense of you know loneliness and desperation and so i kind of want to start unpacking that a little bit because we're in a weird age that produces something like the in-cell movement the involuntary celibate movement these are people who believe that they'll never be able to have sex with another person specifically generally women this is not a very lgbtq affirming community uh in general i don't want to ever paint people with a broad stroke from what i've seen online where in cells gather self-identified in cells gathered online they are not um accommodating of lgbtq identities but they believe that they'll never be able to have sexual intimacy with a woman uh because they have you know bad genetics or they're unattractive uh so there's a lot of self-loathing built into this movement and this movement which is is is both very very deeply saddening to observe and kind of horrifying and even rage inducing in the way that this movement so often refers to women i think they use the term femoids often for women like a humanoid a femoid uh it's very much taking an objectifying dehumanizing approach to women out of resentment over access to uh sexual intimacy and i think the incel movement is deeply linked to the rise of the alt-right we basically have hundreds of thousands or millions of men today in the world who resent women's liberation because they believe the changes in society that have occurred prevent them from having what once was basically men were almost guaranteed access to women's bodies and boy is that a troubling idea and one might be tempted to just dismiss the in-cell movement out of hand but there's no question that this level of desperation happening in men today is causing a lot of problems in society and not just for the men who feel so isolated they would refer to themselves as involuntarily celibate so i think to understand involuntary celibacy we really have to understand masculinity marriage and relationships in the context of anthropological history okay so uh let's kind of just roll back to the emergence of our anatomically modern homo sapiens a couple hundred thousand years ago and what we understand from archaeological records is that it it seems that hunter-gatherer societies were a bit more egalitarian than things that happened post-agriculture and anthropologists theorize that the rise of agriculture meaning intentionally cultivating you know livestock and crops was so labor-intensive that it reduced women's labor value so the main value of women became their reproductive capacity and so for a man who's now defending some land and later owning some land uh and who wants to cultivate food on it he needs people to work that land children happen to make handy farm hands and this gives the rise to male centered polygamous relationships and later monogamous relationships that become the institution of marriage so marriage begins with men trying to secure access to reproductive capacity in women later marriage kind of creates an additional value in creating tangible alliances with other tribes and cultures and ultimately nations and nation-states and things like monarchy so women became bartered as part of an alliance and their value got further and further reduced in fact you had to pay a dowry to transfer a daughter into another person's family because they were seen as so much less valuable than men that's wild if if we think about the institution of marriage which so many people especially christians defend vigorously uh it actually historically rose out of the need to own and control women so when when when polygamous relationships were allowed they were they were always multiple women single man this came from wealth and power the more wealthy and powerful you were the more brides the more women you could have and this was not generally a matter of sexual novelty as we would kind of interpret to a modernist lens but but property rights and alliances so it's much later that romantic relationships come into fashion in marriage and they kind of do that as slavery goes out of fashion as the idea of owning other people became less palatable to human societies you see romantic love introduced in literature and media and some feminist scholars believe that is primarily as a means of controlling women to make their primary desire to be desired right so romantic love becomes a way to control women by getting women to avoid their own agency and their own you know power to act as an individual and instead to attract the desire of men and to compete with other women for the desire of a man they're trained to view themselves as an object to be one and to compete with other objects namely women for the desire of men and this is a terrible deal for women in society it means all they get to do is compete for the affections of a man and once they win it they get to clean a house and raise children this is obviously terrible we all agree this is terrible so what happens women's movements first women's suffrage the right to vote and later feminist movements come along and they create a new script for women liberation offered them a new identity as people women's liberation and that was very good and that that movement inspired other movements right you start to you see well around the same time abolitionism gets to gain steam we stop thinking that it's okay to own people especially african people in america that's good then the civil rights movement comes along and it offers a new identity for people of color especially black people in america a new identity they're not owned they're proud strong black americans that's a script that offers identity the lgbtq movement comes along and it offers a new script for lgbtq people and these are all wonderful movements in human society don't hear that i am questioning the value of these movements the beauty of these movements bring tears to my eyes in the way that they promote universal human justice and equality but here's the problem as we have societally written new scripts for women and people of color and women of color and lgbtq people and immigrants into this country especially hispanic and latino immigrants there has not been a new script created for men especially straight white men often the perceived script in this age of liberation for straight white men is you are the oppressor and no one wants to be the oppressor no matter how true it is that white straight men have have occupied a historic station of privilege and of genuine power they don't want a new script that says you are the oppressor so straight white men often try to revert to an old script and what does that old script say it says you're in charge it says you have to be emotionally stoic and self-sufficient it says that vulnerability is weakness that your value comes in competition and winning and dominating other people ideally be nice about it which is kind of an institutionalized paternalism so what does this have to do with the insult movement and with marriage well homo sapiens biologically look like serial monogamists if you look at how we compare to other species of primates especially apes we don't look like we're as as committed as as gorillas or as promiscuous as chimpanzees or somewhere in the middle studies tell us that it looks like the center of gravity the kind of bonding period for a human relationship that is based primarily on sexual attraction is is anywhere from eight to 20 years and that's kind of what nature calls in the human body and then we shred through women's liberation as we should and through lgbtq justice we shred the script on sex and sexuality but what happens to men who don't have a new script they still want sex they still want intimacy but their previous script which was you know men are this powerful protector provider the strong silent type the head of the household that's not welcome anymore and it shouldn't be but what are men now what we found is modern men are lonely and isolated statistically they have very few friendships and they don't know how to create lasting bonds with other people and if they're married they don't know how to create lasting bonds with their own wives i think one problem is that the way we view marriage is rotten and it needs to be reformed but i also think masculinity itself needs a new script we need a new way for men to have identity what do loneliness alienation and desperation in men produce violence mass violence gun violence sexual assault sexual harassment this toxicity has to be dealt with and it can't be dealt with simply by telling men to behave there has to be a script there has to be some liberation-like movement for men and i've been thinking a lot about what that looks like because we're in a situation right now of hyper masculinity being idealized and valued historically and now nostalgically hyper masculinity the the the cowboy riding into town and killing all the bad guys taking the women right when all you have is hyper masculinity everything looks like a target it's unhealthy and i don't want a world where straight men especially straight white men are lonely are full of despair and feel alienated because it's bad for them and it's bad for everyone else now think about me i'm a white straight man but i am not a primarily identifying myself as a powerful provider or a protector i'm certainly not the strong silent stoic type i'm not the head of my household and i have no desire to be i don't play sports i don't like to try to dominate other people competition is very uninteresting to me so we need to create a script for inclusive masculinity because the kind of resentment and rage we see in the in-cell movement and in and in men today is the very thing that is preventing them from attaining true intimacy with other people be it sexual or otherwise this fear of change this fear of letting other people share power in society comes from lack and love knows no lack the courage to share power with everyone else in society comes not from weakness but from strength so here's what i would say to my fellow straight men and all men there's no need to be a powerful protector anymore what the world needs instead are powerful advocates what is an advocate an advocate is someone who stands up for others yes but doesn't stand over them an advocate lends their own strength and their own resources to helping others while expecting nothing in return we don't need a cowboy who rides into town and shoots all the bad guys we need men who stand in solidarity with women and people of color and immigrants and lgbtq people we need men who advocate that everyone is equal and everyone deserves the same rights and the same levels of economic access we need men who are partners in society co-equal members of civilization who relish rights and responsibilities for themselves and for others instead of being strong and silent and stoic a new inclusive script of masculinity tells men that they are vulnerable and empathetic i cry all the time [Laughter] and i don't feel weak and i don't feel ashamed and i don't feel judged hell i don't care if i am judged because i cry there is nothing wrong with having feelings with experiencing those feelings i laugh loudly and i sob with the same gusto because there is no reason for me to be ashamed of how i feel because when we're vulnerable when we admit to others how we feel and we admit to ourselves how we feel we create the opportunity to connect with other people my friends listen to me the more vulnerable i have been in life the more friends and the more support i have as a person has being a vulnerable man cost me some relationships absolutely but it's gained me thousands more but it's not enough to just be vulnerable we don't want to be self-obsessed we don't want to think only of our own feelings we must also be empathetic we must be responsive and aware of the feelings of others because that responsiveness to their vulnerability and their responsiveness to our vulnerability forms deep emotional bonds it allows us to communicate through difficult topics and situations mutual empathy mutual concern is an unmatched tool for both personal growth and societal change we need to stop worrying about being the head of a household and we need to start being equal partners with those in our household that might be a spouse or a domestic partnership that might be co-parenting you might be a single father and instead of being the head of household with your children you should work to partner with your children yes you will have to lead because of your maturity and your legal status but a partner is willing to say i'm sorry when they're wrong a partner has no need to control or dominate others a partner works with other people to make it through each day and indeed through life and my new script for masculinity says that men are powerful advocates their partners in society and in their households they're vulnerable they're empathetic and they are inclusive to be masculine to be manly is to understand that women can be masculine as well and that men can be feminine that a human being has no need of a penis to identify as a man [Music] and there's no need to be threatened when people are attracted to different genders than you are being a strong man means being unconcerned if you express feminine qualities and to carry yourself with dignity and with pride and to accept the dignity and pride of others as well an inclusive man understands that everyone is on a journey that like us everyone is just trying to figure out how to make it through life while avoiding harm toward others and pursuing a good life for yourself while being an advocate for everyone a man doesn't pursue a good life at the expense of others it breaks my heart that there are communities of hundreds of thousands of young men online who identify as involuntarily celibate but i know that they do so because they're trying to read from a script that doesn't work anymore and so to anyone listening who is a man who is lonely or alienated or desperate who feels fear and response to movements for women's liberation take a deep breath the first step on a journey towards being a man is to love and accept yourself your body is beautiful and your identity isn't vile learn to see the fullness and beauty of the person that you are and understand that where you feel so much pain enough pain to call yourself subhuman in some cases is coming from a system that's designed not only to oppress women and people of color and people of different sexualities or gender identities but also to oppress you to put you in a box and to tell you exactly who you should be so be a man and tear that box apart start viewing other people as beautiful and as whole as you see yourself [Music]