Incels, or involuntary celibates, are men with an unhealthy view of women and of life. Many, of course, would disagree with that statement. They view themselves as more aware of reality. However, the thoughts are self-destructive and can even lead to violence. Some people would say the best way to stop being an incel is to lose your virginity. This again, comes from mistaken thinking. This mistaken thinking is understandable because our current age equates sexuality with happiness, identity, and self actualization.
To be a virgin is to be somehow less than those who have a long sexual history. This, too, is foolish thinking. A person’s sexuality and sexual history comes from their character. People of poor character often have a long history of broken hearts, sexual dysfunction, disease, and other problems. Self-actualization has little to do with hedonism.
In any case, I’m on my soapbox. Let’s get into the 11 steps or realizations that will help you set aside incel thinking.
1. Realize the Alpha and Beta Dichotomy is Incorrect
Incel thought centers on a mistaken idea of an alpha-beta male binary. The view roots in a misunderstanding of how alpha-beta male group dynamics function in the animal kingdom. The dynamics have more nuance that alphas, or Chads in incel lingo, get all the females. In fact, in many primate groups, alphas have sex less than subordinate males. In a study of mountain gorilla groups, the main dominate silverback had sex less than the other high-ranked, but still subordinate males. These males had 70% of the observed copulations. In many of the groups, the alpha male worked to further reduce the sexual control of these males, shifting the power dynamics down to the beta males rather than monopolize the females for himself (Stoinski, 2009).“Specifically, dominant males may provide reproductive concessions to a few top ranking individuals and/or relatives in exchange for remaining in the group. More subordinate individuals may be given opportunities to copulate with daughters of the dominant male” than with females unrelated to the alpha male. In other words, Chad gorillas played matchmaker for the beta males.
In a similar study of white-front capuchins, females favored alpha males regardless of the male’s control of the food supply. This seems to favor the alpha-beta binary among these animals. However, in-wild studies show food control does change female mating preferences to some degree. The researchers note that evolution among capuchins are driven more by social context than food context (Tiddi, 2018). In other words, the binary isn’t as strong, even when the species evolves to favor it, than it first appears. This social context centers around stability. When the group is stable, more social females, those closer to the alpha, have a higher survival rate and infant survival rate than lower-ranked females. However, when the alpha male dies or is replaced, these social, high-ranked females have a lower survival rate. Many, in fact, neglect the infants they had with the previous alpha male. In such upheaval, females mated to beta males have a better survival rate (Urs, 2017). Nature uses both dynamics to ensure survival.
In a study of farmed red deer, researchers found females will seek out beta deer for mating. In the colony studied, 13% of fawns were fathered by the beta deer. When the alpha deer is unable to control the female deer well, they will seek out the beta males more often (Newton-Fisher, 2014). In other words, the Chad has to be domineering to retain his access to females.
As you can see with these few examples, alpha-beta male binary is more nuanced and mostly depends on the actions of the alpha male than on female preference. Incel thinking depends on females choosing the Chad above the beta men. However, this isn’t the case in many animal groups. While the lesson can’t be extrapolated into human behavior, these and other studies suggest the alpha-beta binary isn’t a function of evolution or female preference as much as male dominance seeking. In the case of the silverback gorillas studied, the Chad gorilla made sure the gamma gorillas had mates to hedge against the threat the beta gorillas presented. This matchmaking also ensured the stability of the group and its genetic diversity.
2. Stop Stereotyping Women’s Behavior
Incel thinking stereotypes the behavior of women. They seek Chads and men with means. This so-called red pill stereotypes all women and demeans their individualism. It reduces all the complexity of relationships into a few, overly simple points. There are many shallow women (and men!) out there. However, just as many exceptions can be found too. Stereotyping people shows poor thinking. It ignores nuances in people’s behavior. Stereotype thinking shows a lazy mind, and you are better than that!
3. Realize How Your Thoughts Determine Your Happiness
Speaking of thinking, your thoughts determine your view of life. As Marcus Aurelius wrote:
“The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.”
Incel thinking falls into Aurelius’s “unsuitable to virtue” category. Many incel forums I’ve visited teem with unhappy and angry men. The fact they feel unhappy and angry shows how their thinking lacks virtue. After all, according to Aristotle, virtues are means between extremes that generate happiness in your life. The “red pill” is neither a mean nor a virtue. It is a mistaken perspective. It is better to develop your thinking using spiritual practice and compassionate virtues. In fact, developing virtue stands at the epitome of manliness in the ancient world’s traditions, be those traditions Bushido, Stoicism, Platonism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Confucianism, and other time-tested traditions. Somewhere along the way, the modern world’s men has lost this in favor of hedonism.
4. Develop Your Character
Character is a result of habit. Habit is a result of thinking. In order to develop your character, you have to train your thoughts, again back to the Aristotelian idea of virtues. Musashi, too, emphasized the requirement of kindness in virtues. Developing kind thoughts, leads to kind habits, which leads to kind character. And women love kindness. Developing your character requires you to notice when you are thinking unkind thoughts and then challenge those thoughts using reason. Over time, this becomes a habit. Over years, kind thinking becomes your character.
5. Embrace Your Virginity
Your virginity isn’t a flaw or a burden. Virginity is a normal, natural state of being. In fact, if you choose to remain a virgin until marriage, you are practicing self-discipline, delayed-gratification, and the Christian virtue of temperance. Virginity is a strength. It allows you to channel more focus and energy into your hobbies. Untapped sexual energy can act as fuel. Virginity also frees you from relationship headaches, unwanted kids, sexual diseases, misplaced focus, and other life complications sex outside of dedicated, long-term relationships brings. To be an incel means you are involuntarily celebrate. Make it voluntary and watch how your perspective changes toward a healthier view.
6. Realize Romance Isn’t Necessary for a Happy Life
Pop culture leads us to believe romance is necessary for a happy life. While romance can add to a happy life, it can’t create it. Only you can create a happy life for yourself through the development of your spirituality, character, and thinking. A good relationship can add to that baseline, but it can’t cultivate that baseline. That is your job. Each of us are responsible for our own happiness. Only when you are happy–and I mean happiness in the Aristotelian meaning, that is, contentment–can you add to another person’s happiness. If you want a successful relationship, learn to be content alone first.
7. Realize the Status of Your Sexuality Doesn’t Define You
Our age has a mistaken idea of identity. It is tied to sexuality instead of a person’s character. Who you are is more than your sexuality: who you are attracted to and what you do. Reducing people down to their sexual history demeans them. People are more than than sexual histories. At the same time, their sexual histories reflect the state of their characters and their priorities. I urged you to embrace your virginity, but don’t let it define you as well. Make it a part of your character, but not the whole of your character. Instead, pursue compassion, gentleness, discipline, temperance, courage, thoughtfulness, reason, spirituality, and curiosity.
8. Be Mindful of Your Entitled Thinking
You are entitled to your work, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your labor. You are not entitled to a relationship or to sex because you are kind to a woman, and this is a common line of incel thinking. Kindness done for any reason besides itself isn’t kindness. Entitled thinking shows you don’t understand virtue nor how such thinking makes you unhappy. A man of poor character seeks rewards, be it sex or money or anything else. A wise man understands he is only entitled to his actions. Feelings of entitlement in terms of women reduces them to objects, as means to your own gratification.
As Musashi wrote, “Do not seek pleasure for its own sake.” Acting with the goal of pleasure is wrong. Reality doesn’t care about your sense of entitlement. Rewards stand outside your control. Waiting for them only leads to unhappiness. It’s better to be content in the work itself. Ironically, you will discover the less you chase reward, when you let go of your sense of entitlement, rewards will come more often. The less you care about them, the more rewards will chase after you. However, if you are like me, you will have to remind yourself to not expect them. As Musashi wrote, “Be detached from desire your whole life long.”
Entitlement reveals your poor character. Use this revelation to change.
9. Take Care of Your Health and Hygiene
You can’t be a content man of character without having a firm foundation of health. Likewise, you can’t attract women of quality character without a foundation of health and character. A healthier body will help you pursue your interests better. How you treat your body is also a sign of your inner man. After all, the body is a God-given temple for your soul. Take care of it through good eating and exercise, and it will do its best to take care of your soul too. You will feel better, look better, and be able to live better.
10. Develop Hobbies and Deep Interests
Unplug from the Internet and especially social media and develop offline interests and hobbies. Incel forums will poison your thinking. Interests and hobbies help build contentment. They offer chances for lifelong learning. The best hobbies have mastery but can never be mastered. As a single man, you have an extra fuel source for these interests and fewer distractions. Use this while you can. Once you find a relationship, your energy and time for these hobbies will decrease. There’s only so much time each day, after all. Hobbies and interests also make your more interesting for women, but consider this a happy side effect and not the reason for your hobbies. Take up hobbies like writing, carpentry, pottery, metalworking, leatherworking, painting, drawing, printmaking, robotics, candlemaking, gardening, bookbinding, carving, cardplaying, bonsai, kendo, or any other lifelong interest that encourage mastery but not mastering.
11. Read
The best way to develop your character is to read good philosophy. Read Marcus Aurelius. Read Aristotle. Read Musashi. Read Takuan Soho. Read philosophy and spiritual books from all traditions. Reading offers the key to character development. Spend less of your time reading online forums and social media. Your mind uses what you read and hear and see for its thinking. If you consume garbage, you will think garbage thoughts. However, if you fill your mind with quality, you will think quality thoughts. Reading also offers a path into hobbies and other interests. Read novels too. Novels are proven to increase compassion and your ability to think from the viewpoints of others. In short, reading is an accessible way to change your mind and life for the better.
Conclusion
All of these steps or realizations target your insecurity. Many posts I’ve read from incels have insecurity behind them. Anger and resentment come from a mistaken sense of entitlement. The online community also thinks with pop culture instead of with quality philosophy and spiritual thinking. Virginity should be viewed as a gift and a strength. A man who decides to wait until marriage takes control of his situation instead of allowing his baser instincts or our current societal norms rule him. Decide you are going to be a voluntary celibate instead of an involuntary. Decide to stop fretting over such a small thing and pursue a life of character instead. Use this time, this lack of distraction, to develop yourself into a person of virtue.
References
Newton-Fisher, N. E. (2014). Roving females and patient males: a new perspective on the mating strategies of chimpanzees. Biological Reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, 89(2), 356–374. https://doi-org.oh0164.oplin.org/10.1111/brv.12058\
Stoinski, T. S., Rosenbaum, S., Ngaboyamahina, T., Vecellio, V., Ndagijimana, F., & Fawcett, K. (2009). Patterns of male reproductive behaviour in multi-male groups of mountain gorillas: examining theories of reproductive skew. Behaviour, 146(9), 1193–1215. https://doi-org.oh0164.oplin.org/10.1163/156853909X419992
Tiddi, B., Heistermann, M., Fahy, M. K., & Wheeler, B. C. (2018). Male resource defense mating system in primates? An experimental test in wild capuchin monkeys. PloS One, 13(5), e0197020. https://doi-org.oh0164.oplin.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0197020
Urs Kalbitzer, Mackenzie L. Bergstrom, Sarah D. Carnegie, Eva C. Wikberg, Shoji Kawamura, Fernando A. Campos, Katharine M. Jack, Linda M. Fedigan (2017)Female sociality and infant survival in capuchins Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Feb 2017, 114 (8) 1892-1897; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1608625114
All of this is fine but you fail to understand that most incel aren’t incel all the time.
A lot of us share all the value you talked about at least 80% of the time.
Yeah sure you can be have a good charachter, read, work, have meaningful hobby, take care of your health, exercize, place philosophy spirituality or tradition above hedonism etc…
You can even leave those weird forum.
But as the saying goes : ” you can be done with the blackpill, the blackpill will never be done with you.”
As long as you’ve not become a full fledge monk sexuality will ALWAYS come back as a question. There will ALWAYS be times of weakness. Where normal people would be supported by their significant other or at least seek support of the opposite sex.
Truth is, applying your way of thinking can work for examplar figure like musashi or any prophet of every tradition.
But we’re weak. We cannot be strong all the time. And all the incels think like incel when they’re weak. When they’re alone at night and not necesseraly every night but at least once a week.
I dont know if you’re a virgin yourself but if you are you’re either very strong, asexual or totally delusional (and you’ll crack at some point and join us in our bitterness).
I agree with you that it’s possible to not be an incel all the time. But trying to never be one would be like trying to never be sad.
Only monk manage that.
You are right. We all have moments of weakness. Moments of weakness provide a chance to become stronger. To tap the old cliche, a muscle becomes stronger only through weakening it with weights. However, you misunderstand monks. Monks also struggle with their sexuality. If you read journals and other writings from monks, you will see that the struggle can be intense. Gay monks struggle most of all because their faith and vows prohibits sex and they are in an all-male environment. Monks are human. Fortitude can be nurtured as I outline in the article. I disagree that never being an incel is like trying to never be sad. Incel is an internal narrative. If you embrace your celibacy, as monks and those of us who vow to wait until marriage do, all the bitterness goes away. The problem comes from over-valuing sex. Sex isn’t important in the large scheme of things. What you truly crave is intimacy and connection, which the blackpill ideology works against.
You can only find connection by accepting that pain and rejection is a part of connection. All meetings must have endings. Everything that lives must die. Therefore, connection needs to be savored while you have it. Accepting the reality of impermanence, while not easy, is necessary for a peaceful, content life. Failing to accept impermanence in a healthy way leads to nihilism and the blackpill narrative.
I though this had some points but you really contradicted yourself by saying don’t stereotype girls or define oneself by sexuality…by first establishing the idea that people with a long sexual history have dysfunction or diseases. Ironic, considering in Japan where there’s no history of Christian imperialism to associate sex with guilt or marriage, sex is normal and people don’t count partners getting caught up in how many lovers someone has had. If one is safe and regularly tested, that’s what is important. Not that there aren’t people who exhibit promiscuity with tragic pasts, but there are also people who get traumatized out of sex. They associate it with being dirty to the point they won’t engage or feel even if they want to and feel guilty over normal thoughts. Sexual dysfunction can go both ways. The note about stereotyping I made was to say that women are called sluts by western and/or monotheistic men when they’re sexually active if myths about sexual autonomy are passed down. There’s a double standard in treatment so it’s important people don’t lift themselves up by pulling anyone else down rather they’re a virgin or not.
I attempted to pin poor character as the reason for hurtful behaviors. You’re right that Japan lacks the Christian association of sex with guilt, but many sects of Buddhism teaches against sex outside of marriage or long-term relationships. Promiscuity in both Christianity and Buddhism points to a problem with a person’s inner state, which can be corrected by practicing virtues like self-control. I attempted to point toward those virtues. You’re also right that people can be traumatized out of sex, making it difficult for them to have a good long-term sexual relationship with a partner. The development of sound character works against both these extremes. I agree with you. We can’t pull others down to lift ourselves up. However, calling out poor character practices isn’t pulling another down. Character can be changed through proper practice, which is different from labeling someone as a “slut” or some other identity label.
This is excellent! One of the healthiest and most nuanced perspectives I’ve seen online in a while on this topic. Free from the polemic poison that one usually sees so much of, and that only has the effect of engendering deeper alienation for the incel. Very empowering and practically helpful!
I’m glad you liked the article and found it helpful!
No. 5 is total BS. I never choose to ba virgin, and being a virgin might be ok at 20, 23 years old, not at 33. I never wanted to keep it to the marrieg, I am atheist, I don’t believe in God, so I don’t care about Christanity aspect. This build up Energy is disturbing, I can’t focus on finding any hobby or interest. And people hearing that I’m a virgin are shocked that at this age I still am a virgin… Oh, and I wanted kids since I was teenager…
Have you looked into mentoring or volunteering at the schools?
Why is it not okay to be a virgin at 33 years old? Who is to say it isn’t? Everyone walks their own path at the pace their fate determines.
I find myself ensnared in the labyrinthine corridors of your captivating prose, where each sentence unfurls like a delicate arabesque, weaving together erudition, eloquence, and philosophical musings to create a symphony of intellectual delight.
My mind reads this as sarcasm, but thank you.
I don’t think philosophy, spirituality, and novels are the only way to go for healthy reading. I’d also recommend scientific reading, which can focus the mind on growth just as much as philosophy. For example, reading blogs about neurotransmitters can help you understand your own emotional regulation patterns, and how things like sleep and temperature can alter this and allow you to fine-tune your thought patterns. Its empowering to know how science can help you take charge of your own happiness and performance in many aspects of life, including romance. I recommend Huberman Lab, for example, although this is a podcast and not a blog, however this is the kind of content I recommend in addition to thought-provoking fiction and philosophy. Its a potent combination.
I am curious to know what inspired you to write this particular entry, since I was under the impression that incels were past their prime. Maybe it was wishful thinking on my part. The gen Z crew doesn’t disvalue being a virgin like the older generations, for example. They seem less concerned with sex as a societal milestone that needs to be achieved by everyone within a certain age range, and see it as more of a personal journey. You can also see this somewhat reflected somewhat in their more expansive use of gender identify – its about their individuality more than expectations from others. I hope this spreads like wildfire.
Thank you for adding scientific books to the list! They are helpful books for learning how to counteract biological influences.
I’ve had this article in the queue for quite sometime (a year actually), but after reading several current-release books about incels and online behavior, I decided to finally post it. While I hope incels are on their way out, the books suggested their way of thinking remains influential in some areas of the “manosphere”.
I’m uncertain if the Gen Z view of gender identity is healthier or not. There’s not a lot of data on it yet. I’m of the camp where identity should sit on character and not gender or sexuality or other external traits, which are mostly beyond our control.
What about sociology? I think it’s very interesting
Sociology is a good field of study.The incel community, however, tends to over-simplify the field in their discussions.
Yeah, Not to mention Personally on Number 11, I think it’s best to be a little more biased toward Science and Engineering with a Love-Hate relationship toward a philosophy that stops clinging to the failed ideas of the past and instead focuses on the demonstrable solutions of science, mathematics, and other relevant fields. We need to set boundaries on what constitutes good, worthwhile philosophy and set it apart from the vast sea of useless or manipulative nonsense. This stuff matters, and it has a greater influence on our collective social behaviors than people realize.