Thinkpiece Bot  🌹

they will give respectability to incel/MRA ideology and proposed policy solutions that involve forcing women who are deemed to have had too much sex to fuck ugly men, whose ugliness is determined by the state

by going "oh well obviously that is wack but maybe they have some ideas" they shift the Overton Window to be much closer to saying that the Handmaid's Tale is a good idea actually

just like Trump shifts what it is okay to say in public to include horrific misogyny and racism by "saying the quiet thing loud", dealing with incels and MRAs on their terms shifts what is respectable to say in newspapers

people like Douthat are willing to cede the point to incels that the reason they keep going on murder sprees is that they can't get fucked. that's wrong. the reason they keep going on murder sprees is that they were radicalized by online groups that encourage terrorism

toxic masculinity and rape culture make disaffected young men easy targets for this radicalization. easy access to guns makes it so that if they choose to use them they can easily kill and/or hurt a lot of people if they choose to do so

but the idea that access to sex will "cure" these men is absurd. first of all, they all believe they're entitled to sex with conventionally attractive young virgins; they prefer inexperienced and younger women and girls because they're easier to manipulate and abuse

second of all, it's easy to see what happens when these men do get in relationships: they abuse, and sometimes murder, their significant others.

this is also why sex work isn't a solution to this problem; it is just asking sex workers-- already people in a dangerous line of work-- to deal with violent men who hate them.

sex work should be legal so that the workers are afforded the same protections as everyone else, but those workers shouldn't be expected to be a panacea for the problem of violent men. expecting them to do so is just expecting them to be willing sacrifices

anyway expect every conversation about this to be about centering the desire of the violently entitled men and how we can restructure society so that their desires are taken care of

when you see columnists taking these toxic men's premises as true and arguing from that point, pay attention to the way they're attempting to steer the conversation

and when you see people arguing for ridiculous solutions about redistributing sex or whatever know that those people are going for those instead of the things that would actually fix the problem

they're choosing to go for modified "softer" versions of incel's mission statements instead of solutions like shutting down the places where these men gather and are radicalized online

they aren't trying to fix the problem of access to weapons, either; many of these men's acts of terrorism would have caused far less harm without access to guns

watch the way they avoid talking about those two things-- shutting down websites that these terrorists recruit and gather on and gun control-- when they are the two things that are actually likely to reduce harm from these men

and watch as the newspaper of record in particular is used to make the perspectives of these murderous misogynists more and more respectable, starting from what Douthat is doing now-- taking their claims that these murders came from a lack of sexual access as true.

sorry i don't have a way to reduce that to pithy bot jokes. but it's a way these shitty thinkpieces work to shape culture, and if there's anything i know a lot about at this point, it's shitty thinkpieces. g'night.

if you find this useful or insightful, you can pay me. i'm way cheaper than the new york timeshttps://twitter.com/thinkpiecebot/status/975238195934789632 …