Toxic Manhood

The Santa Fe HS shooter apparently targeted a girl he was stalking, and in fact mostly shot at females.  This comes as we are being made aware of the "incel" cult and being treated to a serious discussion of Jordan Peterson's idea of a sexual marketplace.  This is the brave "Dark Web" bullshit again.

To understand the pull of this misogynistic rape cult, it's again helpful to see this as a fear-based reaction to change.  However, I do think that they are imagining a past that hasn't existed for decades.  On the one hand, yes, women have been objectified, harrassed and assaulted forever.  But the incels seem to think that there is some new paradigm that's preventing THEM from having sex.  Angry, frustrated losers have had trouble getting a sexual partner since arranged marriages went away. This is not a new dynamic.  I could make a case that I was "involuntarily celibate" when I was an impoverished grad student with poor job prospects.  I certainly wanted a girlfriend, but it never occured to me that I was OWED a girlfriend.  I might lament that ugly rich guys in LA had no trouble finding partners (though the Weinstein sage calls into question how consensual those partnerships were), but I wasn't owed anything.  Hell, even in the epoch of arranged marriages, you had to prove that you would provide for your arranged bride.

The idea that men should have to demonstrate their worthiness as a partner is not a new thing.  Women have to do the same thing.  We all participate in some sort of mating dance. We show off our bright feathers.  We work to show that we are worthy companions.  Perhaps, some of what we expressly value has changed.  Men are being evaluated for more than simply their earning potential, since women have earning potentials, too.  But the incels aren't even making that argument, that they have money and status, but women won't sleep with them.  They are explicitly making an argument that they deserve sex because they are (white) men. 

Outside of rape, that was never the case.  Like most people building an ediface of hate, they are building it on a foundation of lies and misapprehension.