“Asexuals are just Incels”
“You don’t want to have sex. Nobody cares! It’s not even real.”
“Just trying to make more infighting in the queer community.”
“You DO actually want sex, you fucking cishet incel.”
“You don’t wanna have sex, okay? My people [insert another queer identity] are literally being brutalized.”
“Nobody cares if anyone has sex. If you’re anything, you’re the OPPRESSORS, incels killing people that don’t wanna fuck you.”
“You don’t belong [in the LGBTQIAA+ community].”
“Stop inserting yourselves into our community and stealing our rights.”
“You’re literally not suffering, the fuck. It’s not like anyone’s stopping you from loving your partner.”
“Yeah, sure, you’re the A.”
“You already have that, it’s ascetic. Yknow, christians and monks.”
“No victim card, no in [the LGBTQIAA+ community]. Your claim is being misunderstood but lmao.”
Let’s start from the begining, how about.
LGBTQIAA+. This acronym breaks down to:
Agender, Androgynous [call it A-squared ‘eyyy…], Pan, Poly, Two Spirit, Gender Nonconforming (gnc), Nonbinary (enby).
(This is the extent I could find. If there’s something I haven’t heard or a word your culture uses, lemme know!)
Something to keep in mind with these terms is that just about all of them are spectrums in themselves.
The acronym is a lot to say and not easy, so I usually say “alphabet mafia” or “queer community” (mostly the latter). (Queer is being reclaimed since the AIDs epidemic in honor of those we’ve lost and those that cared for them, and for those who couldn’t express themselves in the past.)
Going forward, I’ll just use queer community.
Asexuality means that someone has less or lacks sexual attraction to other people. This doesn’t mean their bodies can’t/don’t react to sexual stimulus, that they can’t/don’t masturbate, that they can’t be sex workers, nor that their libido doesn’t exist.
The A prefix is a negation of the base word. That also applies to Aromantic and Agender. (The linguistics with Androgynous is just a bit different, the base word is Greek, I believe.)
It’s often shortened to “ace.” As such, the people who aren’t ace also have a shorthand which is “allos” as in “allosexuals.”
The spectrum of this sexuality includes—but isn’t limited to—someone who occasionally feels sexual attraction to someone and wants to engage in sex, someone who doesn’t necessarily have attraction but enjoys engaging in sex with their partner(s), or someone who’s disgusted by the notion of having sex with someone else and so who doesn’t. These three are the easiest reference points when thinking about asexuality (and there’s more micro labels), and are called, respectively: “sex-favorable” (“sex-positive” is a different thing entirely), “sex-neutral,” and “sex-averse” or “sex-disgusted” (“sex-negative” is a different thing entirely).
This is distinctly different to celibacy which is a strict religious practice, although that doesn’t mean that asexuals in the past didn’t choose that path when given the opportunity.
Incel is an acronym that means “involuntarily celibate.” It’s worn proudly by communities online who are usually and largely made up of men, very misogynistic men, who blame their “celibacy” on the people around them (usually women) instead of trying any sort of constructive self-betterment. They’re known to be able to get extremist and not just violent but premeditatedly homocidal. Those men are pedestalized in these echo chambers with their actions and manifestos, even if they also lose their lives; a solution for suicidal ideation in fact being “don’t go down alone.”Encouraging rape doesn’t seem to be rare in these circles, and I believe they’re the ones that started “RAW” (“rape all women”). Due to all this, there’s a heavy stigma.
(Not all of this will have a source (X) because I’ve learned a lot just by virtue of being online. However, other information shouldn’t be hard to find as they’re a known issue (for all genders, obviously), and not all of their threads are gate-kept.)
The history of this term is that it was actually coined by a woman who wanted to make a place for other lonely people. This was before the internet as we know it in this century, with the Involuntary Celibacy Project, which was shortened to “invcel” then “incel,” as it was easier to say. "The word [incel] used to mean anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time. But we can't call it that anymore."
After she left the forum, confident in its supportive nature and moving on with her life, the name was co-opted by these men. Since learning of this bastardization and harm, she’s created a new project called Love Not Anger. "Dating is hard and happens a bit later in life for some people. Some people need help learning social skills and that doesn't mean they should be stigmatised for that difference." (This is part of why understanding others, and not seeing the internet as Harassment Central is important.)
They began on 4Chan, Reddit and Facebook, with other sites directly made for and run by incels. They’re the ones that use the “black pill” term, a reference to The Matrix’s blue and red pills, one signifying the choice to stay in propoganda, and the other to see reality. This black pill means they see the “reality” that sex and attraction is all rigged from birth (by everyone’s genetics), a “game” which isn’t limited to sexual success.
Self improvement or anything against their miserable world views and self wallowing is ridiculed; someone reporting a positive interaction with a woman is dubbed a “fake-cel.” (This is a high control group, there’s punishment for thinking differently, and those examples keep others in-line, reinforcing those rules themselves, meanwhile, the award for behaving is being accepted in the group and possibly recognized by the wider population.)
Women are the root of all their issues, incels believe. They’re unwanted because they lack succesful genetics that would give them not only looks that attract “females,” but also mean financial or economical and social success as well. But also women are gold-digging and manipulative s-slurs who don’t care about mens’ feelings, and will jump on the next guy who has money and thinks they’re pretty. But they also hate those men as well, as those men are more successful than them. (This is an us-vs-them mentality.)
However, with the genetic essentialism, they’re also known for racism (it’s largely white-centric). Despite this, there’s POC members who, similar with the trump movement, are “the good ones” and therefore tolerated (as long as they behave).
They have their own nomenclature:
Stacy: an attractive women and the epitome of the evilness of females.
Chad: an attractive and sexually successful man who won that genetic lottery (and bears other attractive features).
In other words, Stacys will always, always, always, pick Chads.
There’s also “Pepe” a frog or “Pepe the frog,” and other drawings, some only being headshots or busts, of similar style. There’s an expansion of “the incel” and “the chad,” which seem to me to be more ways for an incel to say how “oppressed” they are.
These caricatures have their own art in the group, drawn as crude stereotypes. But these artistic renderings and memes haven’t remained in their circles, but are largely recognized and even used in other ways (not for their violent “dark” humor) across the internet now.
X. X (if someone can access this).
But it’s not just a subculture that preys on young boys who can’t live up to the expectations set by society (mainly Hollywood), they’ve expanded to be more mainstream.
Looksmaxxing is an extension of this thinking, specifically in attractiveness. People who participate in this (and it’s not just young men) believe there’s ways to compensate for their “inferiority” in appearance. Namely in jaw lines and facial structure (there’s another extension in regards to muscles, steroid use is a plague for young men and teens). They do this through exercises and drugs, and even actual attempts to re-sculpt their bone structure through breaking the facial bones, all of this not necessarily with medical oversight (in fact, seeking medical assistance could be denigrated).
*Another facet is “the manosphere.”
Allosexuality is the normalization and expectation of society that sex is an inevitable and universal goal. It makes people who don’t do so, either by choice or not, outliers.
This is the only way I see that asexuals and incels could possibly be compared, although it then also includes virgins and other types of celibates.
With all that said, it’s more than obvious that asexuals being incels is a conflation of fantastical proportion.
Aces are, in fact, and of course, as we’re a sexual minority, also discriminated against (literally exemplified at the begining) and, too, face sexual abuse. Being queer, however, isn’t some “oppression Olympics;” the point of having a community for sexual minorities is for strength, support, validation and education against the discrimination we all face, standing together to keep saying “we exist” and fighting for the rights of us all, together.
The discrimination we face is termed “aphobia” or “acephobia” (similar to “transphobia” and “homophobia”).
The truth is: [as of 2015]
• 35.4% of Asexual participants reported having sexual contact including groping or kissing that they didn’t consent to/were unable to consent.
• 18.5% of Asexual participants reported having had sex due to social pressure from a partner.
• 43.5% of Asexual participants reported having experienced sexual violence.
• Ace survivors are commonly subjected to corrective rape. Corrective rape occurs when the offender seeks to "fix" or "correct" someone's sexuality by assaulting or raping them based on their abusive beliefs towards people who are not heterosexual. This form of assault is used as a punishment by attempting to "teach a lesson" to Asexual survivors.
We’re also regarded as less than human (“robotic”) or immature (infantalization) for not wanting to engage in—including conversation, jokes, or consuming media—sex.
X (includes a link to aro as well).
• In a study conducted by the Trevor Project on LGBTQ+ youth, they found that 10% of youth surveyed identified as asexual.
• Asexuality is not a new identity. There is documentation of sexuality as early as the 1800s as mentioned in the book Asexual Erotics by Ela Przybylo, PhD.
• Asexual people are 2.5x more likely than their non-asexual (or allosexual) peers to experience sexual trauma.
• 82% of asexual people reported experiencing at least one type of sexual violence in their lives.
• More than 50% of asexual college students have reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual contact.
• 18.5% of asexual people reported having sex due to social pressure from a partner.
• Demisexual and gray-asexual people report higher rates of experiencing rape and sexual violence than asexual people who experience no sexual attraction or desire.
Other aphobia is “ace erasure,” which is when asexuality is ignored or literally retconned. It’s very similar to when trans people are ignored because every single possible instance is surmised as just someone cross-dressing (keep in mind, there’s nuance especially when looking at different time periods and cultures; some are, for all intents and purposes, indeed trans, but others have different motives).
Other examples of this are when an overwhelming majority of fanbases and fan content that cannot just let an ace identity exist (whether it be a personality or a character); they need to be in porn (or smut) and, sometimes, it will fix them in some way. “They’re just unsure of what they want.” “They just didn’t know what they were missing.” “It’s not erasurist, aces can still have sex! You’re aphobic for ignoring that!”
Which brings me to other erasure which is how asexuality has been accepted—when it’s accepted—and that’s through “aces can still have and enjoy sex,” “aces crack the best sex jokes,” “if you’re not using your artistic talent to draw/write smut, even if you’re ace, cuz they do this best, why do you even have any talent.”
These remarks not only validate solely one part of the spectrum and throw the rest away, but still hold asexuals, who are not part of allonormativity, to that expectation.
The last is “you’re just traumatized.” How disgusting to not only belittle someone like that, belittle trauma-reactive-hyposexuality, but especially with how approximately half to most of us have faced sexual violence. Whilst someone’s experiences can influence their sexuality, it’s not a matter of causation. (Even if it was a matter of causation, why aren’t the people who say that then trying to do something, anything, about rape culture?) Sexual trauma affects ace people no differently or less than anyone else.
There is no law of nature that aces must be or are all hetero (straight) nor cis (non trans or enby or gnc) or perisex (not intersex). Queer identities can be intersectional which includes asexuals. People can identify as, for example, trans-ace, pan-ace, enby-ace, trans-intersex-ace, or aro-ace (aros also face similar erasure).
Neither does being a cishet ace demean one’s queerness whatsoever.
Erasure of other identities within the queer community IS THAT infighting and “friendly” fire. It’s destroying the point of a community. And, frankly, get with it, queer rights are being attacked in so many places, fight against that.
• If you’re in a community that focuses on being miserable/spreading misery and encourages any form of self-harm, please, please, PLEASE get out or reach out for help (leaving a high control group can be very scary, but you’re not alone and there are people who want to help. And likely people who have already done so.).
• Other people! Stop mocking and chastising incels! You’re confirming their biases and pushing them deeper! This isn’t a matter of if they deserve punishment or kindness, the fact is that being mean to them pushes a them deeper into this perceived safe places of acceptance. Acknowledge that. (And “trolling” is mostly just harrassment anyway.)
