nice guys don't deserve women

on the entitlement of incels

I know the title is a little out there, but walk with me

I was scrolling on Instagram when I saw a video by Subwaytakes. For those unfamiliar with the page, he's a guy who asks random people their "unpopular opinions". While most of the takes are anything but unpopular, more unsaid but socially agreeable takes, I enjoy watching the videos from time to time. In a video I recently watched the woman featured stated that Incels don't exist, they are not involuntarily celibate but rather they hate women and feel entitled to their bodies. "It's not that women are not interested in them because they're a nerd or they think they're ugly. It's like you're on land and you're saying Why can't I catch any fish? Put out something I want to eat."

For those who are on different spheres of the internet than I, an incel is an individual who claims they are involuntarily celebrate. The term was unintentionally created by Alana, a young woman from Canada, who created a website—Alana’s Involuntarily Celibate Project— to share her struggles with forming romantic relationships. What started out as a community for lonely people later grew into something more sinister. The term incel now coopted by hateful and misogynistic men now has a extremely negative connotation as opposed to the former saddening one.

While I do partially agree that the root of incels and misogynistic men's lack of female companions is rooted in their beliefs and character or lack thereof, I find it troubling baiting women as consolation for their hypothetical transformation. We often echo, “If you were nice or didn't hate women, you would be able to form relationships with them.“ While this is technically true relationships are easier to form if you’re more considerate and genuine, it is unintentionally aligned with incel logic it aims to oppose. "Women MUST want me because I'm nice." Stating that a nice guy deserves a woman is like saying someone deserves a child — it treats people like rewards, not individuals with agency. They are both human beings, not objects of entitlement. Inasmuch as I would want all women to choose to associate themselves with decent men, there's little to be done besides advising, as everyone has free will. There are decent men who have a hard time forming romantic relationships and not-so-decent men who don’t have an issue at all. There will always be outliers

If not having relations with women makes a person violent, doesn't that prove that the sole reason keeping them from hurting women is access to them? Encouraging misogynistic men to "put out something the fish would like" might do more harm than good. It could fuel their entitlement, or worse, they could feign decency as an attempt to get women. Which is something that is very evident in the existence of gender based violence towards women by their ex-partners, from boyfriends to husbands. The men who physically harm their partners when they(the women) initiate a breakup, as they feel entitled to the relationship and the woman. Had they expressed their entitled and misogynistic ideologies earlier on, most of the relationships never would have come to fruition.

You shouldn't be a decent person in hopes of getting a reward, especially a human being at that. We must value community and kindness over all else and encourage self-help from a less individualistic and more communal perspective.

Thank you for reading. Feel free to share your thoughts.