Do We Have an Incel Problem?

According to every teen sex comedy of the past fifty or so years, boys and young men are obsessed with sex. They all desperately want it! In more recent Hollywood movies, girls and young women are similarly sex-obsessed. Remaining a virgin is definitely not cool — for either sex.

While I don’t think it’s healthy for either men or women to focus on sex to the exclusion of considerations of emotions and relationships, I do see this as perhaps an inevitable corrective to the anti-pleasure Puritanical ethos that has haunted America since the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock.

A lot has been written in recent years (including by me) about “incels” — those lonely young men who are “involuntarily celibate.” But I’m beginning to think that this label and the concept underlying it may be at least partly inaccurate.

A few weeks ago, I mentioned the Nick Fuentes appearance on Piers Morgan, during which he admits that he is a virgin. More recently, YouTuber Nick Shirley (whose video alleging fraud at Somali-run child care centers in Minnesota received over 116 million views) also proclaimed that he is a virgin. While I don’t think either of these men is necessarily catnip to the ladies, both are reasonably good-looking — and now quite famous. I am sure that either of them could get laid, or even find a girlfriend, if they chose to. The fact is, they choose not to. So they are, in actuality, voluntarily celibate (but I guess “volcels” doesn’t have the same ring to it as “incels”). Why does it matter? Because it is the difference between being a victim of circumstances, and deliberately choosing a course of action that will bring you unhappiness.

Of course, there are people who for various reasons outside of their control cannot find a romantic or sexual partner. Sometimes these people are actually trying quite earnestly and still having no success. They have my sympathy. But that is not the case with Fuentes and Shirley — and at least some of the chronically online men who look up to them. These men seem to be consciously choosing to avoid sexual intimacy. They remain celibate for the same reasons that priests and other religious zealots have always chosen to eschew sexual contact. This is their right, of course, but I do not view it as psychologically healthy — nor is it a good sign for the culture when this sort of behavior is on the rise. While hedonism and sexual promiscuity are a mistake, the proper antidote is not relinquishing pleasure and making a virtue out of abstinence. This false dichotomy has trapped far too many people.

It’s hard to know how common this phenomenon is. What seems to be far more prevalent is men who are unable to find sex partners because of who they have chosen to be, rather than who they inherently are (i.e., things like physical appearance or bad breath, although even many of these traits can be altered). They are celibate because they’ve chosen to make themselves repugnant by emulating men like Andrew Tate and others in the so-called manosphere. It’s true that no self-respecting woman wants to have anything to do with them, but that is entirely a problem of their own making. So can we really say that they are “involuntarily” celibate when they are choosing to make themselves repulsive?

We need to normalize sex and sexual pleasure — for both men and women — but not as some kind of be-all and end-all. Gratification — whether sexual, gustatory, aesthetic, or other — should be a vital part of any flourishing life. Rejecting pleasure is a sure way to lead a miserable life, and yet it seems this is the life many young men are choosing (some consciously and some inadvertently by their ideological choices). Young women may be making similar mistakes, but they don’t seem to have an entire neighborhood of the internet devoted to them. They also don’t seem inclined to go on shooting sprees or drive their cars through crowds of pedestrians, turning their personal problems into everyone’s problem. So while I feel for them, I don’t worry about them in the same way. Large groups of miserable, disaffected young men, however, are bad for everyone.

Ayn Rand believed, as I do, that man is a being of self-made soul. Somehow, we need to show these young men that they have it in their power to become worthy of love, worthy of a fulfilling sexual relationship, worthy of pleasure and of happiness. We need to discredit cretins like Andrew Tate, who preach a doctrine of male entitlement. In the 21st century, this ends up “entitling” a lot of young men to sad, lonely lives.