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Since I last attempted to give advice to romanceless men I heard from a lot of them on Putanumonit, Twitter, and by email. I think that the main thing I underestimated is the remarkable lengths some of them would go to self-sabotage. https://t.co/LaJHPTUj9U
Guys who complain that there are no decent women looking for relationships look for women in the sorts of online forums that decent women who have their shit together avoid. They scoff at the suggestion that these women are out there in book meetups and dance classes, not Reddit.
Step 0 in my advice thread was to GTFO of incel forums. Not because they promote violence and misogyny, but because they build for these men an identity of victims oppressed by society. And giving up an identity can be much more painful than mere loneliness.
@yashkaf No disagreement here, but I'd like to note another angle on this and am curious to hear your thoughts. I think what a lot of these men primarily want, isn't so much to get a girlfriend. It's have the unfairness in their situation, and their anger at it, recognized and respected.
@yashkaf 4/ Look at it this way. If they wanted love and sex, their behaviour of staying on incel websites wouldn't make any sense. Killing women and committing suicide would make *zero* sense. But if we assume they just primarily want their anger to be heard and to be validated --
@yashkaf /5 -- then there's no discrepancy here. The model predicts what we're seeing. I think a lot of the crises we're seeing in men are due to the fact that society doesn't like (and indeed seems often unable) to acknowledge --
@yashkaf 8/ This is also, I think, why whenever you advise men on how to actually date, they react negatively. That's not the attitude of someone who wants a girlfriend. It's the attitude of someone who wants their anger to be heard, who wants the pain underlying it to be respected.
@yashkaf 9/ Telling men how to change isn't making them feel understood in their pain. I think instead what we should do is to sit with them; to listen to their pain; to accept why their anger exists; to respect the boundaries whose violations cause their anger to flare up.
@yashkaf 10/ Men are people! We want to be understood and loved for who we are, more than we want to fuck. I think the former explains men's behaviour much better than the latter, and at least for me, it describes my mental state and my emotional journey in a much more accurate manner.
@yashkaf 11/ And men can be powerful if they feel listened to. Of course they can change! But so long as their pain is not known, not accepted, not respected, then yes, they'll keep forcing it onto people. Because they feel like they are caught in an unjust situation --
@yashkaf 13/ Personally I was a boy who (at the young age of ~16!) decided to change instead of hate women, though it could have gone either way (hence my compassion). But even after nearly a decade of feminism, being great friends with women, and having several partners --
@yashkaf 14/ -- I still carried a *ton* of pain and repressed anger with me. Only recently, through an anger workshop, was I allowed -- and this, given modern society, was the scariest thing I've ever done! -- to finally express all of this anger directly at women.
@yashkaf 15/ I broke down in front of them and cried for minutes on end while they, of their own accord, hearing and seeing my pain and accepting it, stood up to come in front of me, and apologized to me for the ways in which they (read: women) had hurt me.
@yashkaf 17/ It was an extraordinary event, and I think it was immensely healing, and honestly I think it's something we men need on a far greater scale. Society invalidates *all* anger from men towards men, no matter the validity, because it is frankly afraid of male anger.
@yashkaf 18/ Understandably so!! Because male anger has done a lot of terrible things. But refusing to accept male anger won't stop its crimes; it will only ensure that anger in men will never make them great, the way feminism allows angry women to be great.
@yashkaf 19/ There's a common notion that when men complain about a problem, they're looking for solutions, but when women complain, they're looking for compassion. Well, sometimes when you see men complain but get angry when you try to help them, maybe they just wanted your compassion.
@yashkaf 20/ PART 2. To add to this: Much self-destructive behaviour is driven by the desire to destroy oneself. But I hope it is not controversial to say that much of it is also done in the hope of finally getting someone to say, "Hey, you seem to be hurting a lot; do you need help?"
@yashkaf 21/ A lot of men (doubly so if they're white) are constantly being told that their pain, whatever it is, isn't valid, that it isn't enough for people to care about (relative *even* to e.g. the right for women to have armpit hair).
@yashkaf 24/ The awful thing here is that in fiction, this happens all the time. Snape lived a miserable life and was an asshole to everyone, but then people found out that really the poor guy had just been hurt all this time! Cue a mass acceptance of his entire character.
@yashkaf 27/ (I imagine many women are burned in their own way by loving men who are cool and hurt, but who are driven by this pain to *harm* them; men too hurt to tame. But the woman, understanding where her abuser is coming from, finds it hart to leave him and so risk hurting him more.)
@yashkaf 29/ A lot of men see this kind of representation everywhere and start to think that, hey, if pain makes you cool, and it makes people care about you, and it makes women love you, but currently people don't care about my pain, then maybe the right response is to hurt myself more.
@yashkaf 30/ (On this note: I've heard female friends complain about guys that try to make women like them by being too open about their sadness and pain. Compare also guys who 'make' their partners do a lot of emotional labour for them. --)
@yashkaf 31/ (-- Clearly a lot of men have gotten the message that women find male pain attractive. Both men and women are victims of this process.) In real life, of course, very few people actually like men who are hurt. This is sad in many ways. It is also understandable in many ways.
@yashkaf 32/ I think many men experience some kind of trauma when they slowly realize that all this hurt they'd been inflicting on themselves in the hopes to be loved, actually makes them less attractive. That sure isn't what they were led to believe!
@yashkaf 35/ What you then get is a lot of men who desperately seek to be taught a new model for what women actually find attractive, and who are *definitely* not going to listen to women here again. Enter The Red Pill! It's not a great solution, but for many men it's all they're handed.
@yashkaf 36/ The Red Pill says, your pain is valid, your anger is well-judged, and the women who told you they wanted nice or hurt guys are liars. Listen to *us*. -- It's a very powerful message, and it can be hard for men to tell that these methods won't give them what they want either.
@yashkaf 38/ But I'm also convinced that many men who come to them are men who were simply taught the wrong lessons by society; were then burned by this; and in their quest for the right lessons, listened to the only group that would acknowledge their pain. Here they are *turned* shitty.
@yashkaf 42/ However (Part 2): IF π YOU π ACKNOWLEDGE, π WELCOME, π AND π RESPECT π MEN'S π PAIN π THEY πCAN π AND π WILL π DO π ANYTHING π FOR π YOU, π EVEN π PROFOUNDLY π CHANGE π THEMSELVES
@yashkaf 44/ Another possible link here: there is a male tendency to use humour to mask pain, and women love humour in men, so a lot of men start to self-deprecate so they can be simultaneously funny and visibly hurt; this latter approach doesn't work well, however.
@yashkaf And finally I wanted to note that, of course, no single model explains any culture. I think the path I described in Part 2 is taken by some men who cross paths with these things, but not at all by all. However, I do think that what I wrote in Part 1 is widely true and applicable.
@Elodes12 This entire thread is excellent, thanks for writing. I realied that my writing isn't for incels, it's for clueless young men who need insight and technique but aren't carrying a lot of pain and anger. Maybe I can help some of them get on the virtuous cycle of romantic success.
@Elodes12 What I write is a complement to the things you were talking about. I can't really offer them because I have never felt deep anger and hate towards women and so I don't know how to help people overcome that. But I guess I could always do better on acknowledgment and compassion.
@yashkaf Happy you liked my thread :-) I'm curious what percentage of clueless young men who need insight and technique you think *aren't* carrying a lot of pain and anger. I'd guess I'd estimate this number to be much higher than you would, but at the same time I have only anecdotes.
@yashkaf If you haven't learned how to play the game by the time you're e.g. 21, but you've likely been actively interested in women since you were ~12, that's 9 years of constant unfulfilled desire. I feel like few men could get through that well in a healthy way, especially at that age.
@yashkaf I should clarify that whatever anger I hold towards women, I hold >thrice as much love. Almost all my best friends are women - for a reason! None of them would guess I'm carrying around anger towards them. I think esp. younger men learn never to express any.
@yashkaf This sort of thing is a huge spectrum. Many men eventually catch up; most learn to deal; some men take longer; others never do, but make peace with it; a minority becomes violent. But I think all of them carry pain borne from it. I only recently identified mine caused anger in me
@yashkaf What I'm trying to say here is: Many men may carry anger without seeming like they do; sometimes without even being aware of it. I find the claim that only few 21 yo's who don't know how to date, would carry pain or anger, to be sorta implausible. Open to changing my mind though!
@Elodes12 I was alone and clueless at 21 and it never turned into hate. I also see tons of semi-clueless people kinda getting by while also being exasperated by dating. So you're right: I do believe that a lot of guys need a good gameplan more than they need trauma healing. Some need both.
@yashkaf Forget about hate and anger for a second; would you make the same claim if we're talking solely about pain? (I feel like we might have different definitions of hate and anger which would be an entirely separate conversation to hash out, but we probably agree on what pain is ;-) )
@ElodesNL @yashkaf https://t.co/qQ9i3WlIpq