The public recognition of the violent misogyny of “incels” has got me thinking about the ways that we define extremism. Because while incels are cartoonishly repugnant, their views are the logical endpoint of sexist attitudes that we consider mainstream.
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In particular, I'm thinking about how "incels" are disappointed with what they feel are the insufficient rewards of patriarchy, and how they understand that disappointment as oppression.
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Moira Donegan Retweeted Moira Donegan
I've wondered for a while about why patriarchy confuses the *denial of rewards* to men as the *oppression* of men.https://twitter.com/MoiraDonegan/status/981990689511624704 …
Moira Donegan added,
Moira Donegan @MoiraDoneganAnother thing to investigate is the rhetoric that equates of the *denial of rewards* to misogynists with their murder or imprisonment. "How many times does he have to die?" "Why are you calling for his head?" etc. https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/981985912635756544 …Show this thread3 replies 161 retweets 767 likesShow this thread -
The lesbian feminist theorist Marilyn Frye dismantled this reasoning pretty handily in her 1983 essay "Oppression." http://www.filosoficas.unam.mx/docs/327/files/Marilyn%20Frye,%20Oppression.pdf …
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But what's not detailed in that essay is the tendency, pronounced by incels but not exclusive to them, to understand intercourse with women as a "human right" for men, somewhat akin to food and shelter.
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I should know better than to expect consistency from patriarchy, but given how much emphasis is placed on women's "purity" and "cleanliness," it's amazing that our denial of and no-saying to sex is what provokes this rage.
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A lot of the proposed solutions to incels—from their own ideas of government-organized rape programs to the hypothesis that the whole problem should be passed off to sex workers—accepts the principle that men have a *right* to intercourse, and women have a *duty* to provide it.
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Which makes me think that this is still a revolutionary idea: What if we accepted that all women—girlfriends and wives and friends and sex workers alike—had an absolute right to control their own bodies? What if we didn't accept that men had moral claims to women's bodies at all?
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The first synopsis of incel that a I read called it sexist and homophobic because women and gay people are not welcome - as though the rest of the content was fine, if only we could all claim the label.
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