re: #54 BigPapa

I don’t think sex is the main motivation. Being able to capture and control access is.

Those of us in the real world want consent, if not actual attraction.

Incel-ism is a tepid whiny ‘well, actually’ strain of PUA culture.

I read a very interesting op-ed today about Ross Douthat’s opinion piece in the NY Times.

She makes the case that the incel narrative isn’t really about having sex, or lack thereof, as such. The “sexual hierarchy” is really about social values. As a gay man, I can understand this line of argument.

Being at the bottom of a sexual hierarchy does not mean you don’t have sex.

This is another point that should be obvious but has, apparently, been lost in the vacuous prattle that followed the Toronto killings. Society has hegemonic norms, but people violate them constantly and form microcultures. As an autistic transgender woman with non-white features, I’m certainly on the “wrong” side of a few beauty hierarchies in this society and I pay a price for that; I still have sex and two very committed partners with whom I share very deep connections.

Sexual hierarchies can be fluid and micrological. In some communities, they may even be reversed outright. This doesn’t even begin to grapple with how your individual notions of attractiveness, honed over the years by uniquely personal experiences, may affect things. Hierarchies of desirability do have an impact, but not necessarily on the practical outcome of whether or not you have sex. It may affect your ability to feel sexy, and hurt your self-esteem of course; goddess knows I’ve been there. But that’s less about your ability to have sex, than it is how you feel about yourself and what struggles emerge from that. Through it all, people from every position on the “hierarchy” still manage to frequently find meaningful and exciting relationships.

Even a casual glance in your own social circles will reveal many happily bonded people who, in one way or another, are considered socially undesirable or “unattractive” by the ruthless metrics of conventional beauty standards. Meanwhile, our media is saturated with the image of “unattractive” men who are loved deeply by conventionally attractive women; it’s the conceit of a dozen and one sitcoms and it does reflect a partial reality where men who look like, say, Kevin James are quite capable of finding loving relationships. (I say “partial” because, naturally, it fails to reflect what life is like for women of all shapes and sizes.)

In short…

Sexual hierarchies aren’t really about sex.

They’re wired in to all manner of socio-economic and political mores, certainly, but bear only a passing relationship to your actual ability to find dates and slap your genitals against someone else’s. Rather, they are norms about social value which determine other aspects of your reality that are untethered to your sex life. For women, those who are seen as conventionally attractive will have to endure constant imprecations about their careers — ”is she sleeping her way to the top?” will haunt her every step, and her beauty will be taken as blanket consent for everything from drawing porn of her against her will to dismissing her point of view to undervaluing her accomplishments.

Conventionally “unattractive” women, meanwhile, will be ruthlessly mocked and derided by men (including incels — just look at what they say about women they deem undesirable, impervious to irony as reactionary bigots often must be). Such women may be ignored outright or deemed unworthy of making even professional connections with, seen as uncharismatic, unhealthy, or shamed for what they look like.

This is all, indeed, a function of the sexual hierarchy; but it’s markedly unrelated to one’s sex life as such. Which brings me to the final point…

Sex will not cure these extremists.

More here…