I'm familiar with Atwoods dystopia. The frightening thing and I suspect most captivating, is how plausible it is. Its not like extreme and fundamentalist ideological groups haven't come to power before and often all it takes is an insidious fusion of two or three large subcultural groups into a political movement

The solution to the incel problem would be to settle for lesser attractive, often times plus size women. Incels don't just feel entitled to p%$$y, they feel entitled to good looking women.

You don't get moral brownie points for a pseudo-Jesus act that pretends they are all the same.
— Baden

Moral guidance from you? Hardly, — BC

I apologise for characterizing your position as a "pseudo-Jesus act". That was neither fair nor charitable. Here's my dilemma: I'm sitting across the table from a self-identifying incel of the virulent online kind I've earlier described. Let's call him a friend of a friend I have just met. He brazenly begins to expound on his misogynistic world view. What do I do? Is silence complicit? Is compassion complicit? Is polite debate legitimizing? Is opprobrium counter-productive? I'm reminded of Nietzsche's advice that to spare someone shame is the greatest charity but this someone is so immersed in shame and so apparently in love with it, it seems that neither further shaming nor compassion can work. What can work? We don't want them leaving the table thinking talking this way has no consequences but we can't batter them into submission either.

What can work? — Baden

Alas, we do not have effective solutions for all problems! For example:

It isn't that I merely disagree with the right wing fundamentalist thinking of at least two of my siblings, I loathe and detest these views. Argue? Never speak to them? Criticize and berate them? No -- these approaches don't work. True believers are well-insulated from attack by their certainty in their beliefs. Plus, they're kin. Nothing I can do about that either. What we do, most of the time, is carefully avoid certain topics.

The guy sitting across the table from you, spouting incel garbage, is likely impervious to criticism, careful argument, attack, shame, brute-force attack, etc. He is encapsulated in a sick (and sickening) world view. You might be able to do no more than deny him an audience. Leave. Is that an effective response? Not really, but it may be all that one can do.

Apology accepted. In turn, I regret that I was relying on a very limited exposure to the content of incel chatter.

Leave. Is that an effective response? Not really, but it may be all that one can do. — BC

:up:

What we do, most of the time, is carefully avoid certain topics. — BC

You’re a true midwesterner. My family is the same.

Yes, all of the topics that are worth while and important are off the table.

Wouldn't want to ruffle any feathers.

I'm sitting across the table from a self-identifying incel of the virulent online kind I've earlier described. Let's call him a friend of a friend I have just met. He brazenly begins to expound on his misogynistic world view. What do I do? Is silence complicit? Is compassion complicit? Is polite debate legitimizing? Is opprobrium counter-productive? I'm reminded of Nietzsche's advice that to spare someone shame is the greatest charity but this someone is so immersed in shame and so apparently in love with it, it seems that neither further shaming nor compassion can work. What can work? We don't want them leaving the table thinking talking this way has no consequences but we can't batter them into submission either. — Baden

It depends on what one's goal is.

If one genuinely wishes to help a person, anything that might nudge them in the direction of self-reflection would be enough. Rather than attempting to convince a person of their faulty ways in one fell swoop (such an approach virtually always fails), a single thought-provoking question may be enough to get a person to reflect. Note that asking such a question may signal one's disagreement in a non-judgemental way.

If one's goal is to punish or discipline, then probably one ought to consider first whether it is one's place to do so.

If one is defending against what one perceives to be a threat to one's own beliefs, then the issue lies as much with oneself as it does with the other person.

The latter two goals are in most cases not going to be constructive. One's energy is best spent elsewhere.

Going by the comments I have read on this thread, most seem to pursue the latter two goals, hence the lack of constructivity.




For those interested in the wider social context of this 'incel' phenomenon I would recommend this documentary on Japanese 'hikikomori'; young, socially isolated hermits.




The Japanese generally seem to have a more 'enlightened' way of dealing with social problems. Perhaps the fact that Japanese society at least makes an attempt at helping these people urges them to reflect rather than become resentful, which seems to be what happens in the West.

Those people primarily need to be helped. Incels, on the other hand, as proponents of rape culture primarily need to be stopped because rape culture is a threat in a way that socially isolated Japanese hermits aren't. If helping them is the best way of stopping them, then sure, but I still don't know what that would look like.

Incels subscribe to a transnational ideology characterised by white male supremacy, oppression of women and the glorification and encouragement of male violence. Seeing themselves as perpetual victims oppressed by a “feminist gynocracy”, they believe that sex is their inherent birthright as men, and that rape and murder are appropriate punishments for a society they perceive as withholding sex from them. — the Guardian

Help sounds like a mental institution to me, possibly a Chinese reeducation camp if we can outsource it.