A study at Swansea University found incels - or involuntary celibates - overestimated physical attractiveness and finances, while underestimating kindness, humour and loyalty.

The study's co-author Andrew Thomas said "thinking errors" could "lead us down some quite troubling paths".

He said mental health support was crucial, as opposed to "demonisation".

The term refers to a community, largely online, of mainly heterosexual men frustrated by their inability to form romantic or sexual relationships.

The idea dates back more than 30 years and was popularised by a website offering support for lonely people who felt left behind.

Study: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00224499.2023.2248096

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

This is a bit of a raw spot for me.

I was an incel in the mid eighties to early nineties, before we had the term. It was conspicuous that a) as a teen I had a raging, compulsive libido (which was not uncommon) and b) society gave zero fucks about my overwhelming frustration and expected me even to learn trig and grammar. This drove me to become a frustrated, bitter, antisocial, misanthrope, much of which carries on to this day, though now my acerbic vitriol is finely distilled and crafted before it is slung at penetration velocities.

This is to say my sexual frustration as a teen and young adult figures into my own (well diagnosed) madness, though in full disclosure, I'm pretty sure compound neglect did the heavy lifting.

I ~~lost my virginity~~ became sexually active at twenty-six, and was able to enjoy many relationships both fulfilling and disastrous, but it did mean realizing the misogynistic bubble in which my young adulthood was spent did not have an accurate view of what women, or heck, the whole of the human species, was about. And the paths I forged were not clear, easy to find roads, rather rabbit-trails and deer tracks.

Our society does very, very little to recognize our teens navigating their developing sexual drives. (Parents, teachers, ministers and politicians alike seem to resent that our kids are horny, except when they are athletic superstars.) Much of the US still teaches abstinence-only sex ed (often seasoned with large doses of right-wing Christian ideology, such as women have only value as an untouched virgin, and men are obligated to go into a relationship blind, then committing to be a provider). Even our more comprehensive sex-ed omits ideas like opt-in consent.

Our society really dislikes and disregards our teens, and the consequences of this have always been stark. Sexual frustration consistently figures into our history of spree killers and rampage killers, our domestic terrorists like Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh. It was a common driving factor for the rise of the alt-right in 2016, and is useful in both the transnational white power movement and the Christian nationalist movement. When you need an army of V8-worshiping warboys eager to ride eternal, shiny and chrome, chastity commandments are your friend.

I hypothesize that young people getting laid don't turn into terrorists, but both here in the states, and across the middle east, young people sexually frustrated are easily radicalized.

I don't know how to fix this problem, and it's only gotten worse with the advancement of faith-based initiatives and most recently the Dobbs ruling. I have little hope and though my embitterment has gone political, it persists with sympathy for the newer generations being driven into fascist militarism