Good article, but I’d like to elaborate some more on your points, particularly this one:
“ we need to combat the deeper forces of patriarchy and toxic masculinity”
Despite their hostility to feminism, incels could really benefit from its critiques—particularly lookism and toxic masculinity.
If you want to understand incels from their perspective, you have to realize that a lot of them are high school age or in their early twenties. Their worldview is constricted by a very narrow experience.
Lacking any sort of systemic framework with which to understand the world, they see social hierarchies in a simplistic way. The “Chads” and the “Stacies,” i.e. the beautiful, popular people, are on top and the broader issues race, class, gender, etc. are secondary.
It has to be acknowledged that looks are a form of privilege, but incels unfortunately view this as the primary form of privilege and they have been conditioned by two-bit pseudointellectuals like Jordan Peterson to view “intersectionality” as some kind of neo-Marxist Doublespeak.
Incels present an example of where an intersectional critique really comes in handy. They illustrate how someone can be privileged in one sense— “straight white males”— but disadvantaged and marginalized in another: many are low SES or non-neurotypical, and some are ethnic/racial minorities, e.g. “currycels”
As for toxic masculinity, they subscribe to the views of the so-called man-o-sphere with its division of men into alphas, betas and “omegas” (incels). They have a warped concept of what constitutes a man, and place themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy.
As you noted, feminism promotes that it’s OK to be nerdy, shy, quiet, sensitive, etc, which is a message they desperately need to hear, but I think communicating that to them is problematic. It requires a kind of long-term, emotionally exhausting intervention that I wouldn’t expect anyone to be willing to undertake.
I suppose a good start would be to make some content on Youtube or other areas where they tend to congregate. (The readership of Medium tends to skew left/liberal I’ve noticed)
