I don’t know, but this comment from @[email protected] has given me some stuff to think about.
People should not think less of you on the base of the amount of sex you have, and you shouldn’t either.
This is a nice thought, but insults based on amount of sex are absurdly common. I have seen quite a few people on this site who still do these insults, and it doesn’t get removed when I report it. The incel article from a while go was about how we should critique incels for their misogyny rather than them failing to have sex, I see this as pretty similar to the arguments about not body-shaming fascists in that most of the people who will get hit by the insult are not the actual target. From what I remember, that article good job explaining why these insults are harmful and how they hurt a lot of people who they really shouldn’t, unfortunately the discussion on that post was very off topic. In my experience, most people who have sex fail to recognize that not everyone who is celibate is an incel (“If so many terrible people have sex and you can’t, that must mean you are worse than they are!”).
I would say that insults based on amount of sex a person has should not be allowed, but I am very pessimistic about this actually leading to a change in site culture.
Once again, please assume good faith, even if you disagree with the take. If you think I mean something weirdly reactionairy by this post, ask me wether that is what I mean, instead of just saying that’s what I mean please.
I don’t want this to become a strugglesession, I just feel like this would be a good discussion to have. If this does become hostile, then please lock/remove it mods.
Thanks for posting this, I struggled with finding the right words to explain why the op bothers me so much and your comment made it clear to me. Virgins are not a systemically oppressed group. Incel is a term for a specific ideology but could be used as insult. Using it as insult is mean but that doesn’t make it a slur. The ideology it describes is dangerous and harms women, it is important that the ideology gets called out continuously for the safety of the women that might fall victim to people who subscribe to that ideology.
I mean, just to make it clear: I am absolutely, 100% against shaming people who don’t have sex, be that because they are involuntarily celibate, asexual, in a longterm relationship where one or both partners just do not have much of a libido anymore or w/e. There definitely is a repressive, ideological component around mocking people who don’t get laid, it is commonly rooted in a patriarchal understanding of sexual “conquest” and bragging rights, frequently intertwines with forms of systemic opression like ableism and allonormativity etc.
That should be called out, and from my experience, it usually is on here. Outside of hexbear, i’ve also seen people use the word incel in ways that legitimately piss me off. But on here? It’s a descriptor for a women-hating online subculture that builds an identity around being intrinsically unfuckable because they do not meet or think they do not meet criteria purported by other adherents of the “redpill” or “manosphere” ideology. It makes sense to be able to identify them, just as we can correctly identify other subsets of that anti-feminist movement like MGTOW / fathers’ rights activists, PUAs / Tate-style hustlegrind pyramid scheme subscribers and so on.