From Vox:
“Although some self-identified ‘incels’ assert that the nihilistic views of ‘the black pill’ are what connect them, and not overt misogyny or alt-right beliefs,” he told Vox in an email, “notice the misogynistic basis of the worldview”:
“Success” with women is defined as sexual conquest; men are presented as being entitled to sex with women, but being thwarted by the next point; women are presented as fundamentally materialistic and shallow, only attracted to physicality and beauty and nothing else; feminism is presented as the source of the problem; men are understood to be the “real” victims.
Because of this underlying belief system, it’s difficult to extricate conversations about men’s mental health from the real threat many of these men pose to women.
Incels are not a community of sad men that reflect a societal problem with loneliness; they'e a community of violent misogynists that reflect a societal problem with sexism & sexual entitlement.
— Jessica Valenti (@JessicaValenti)
May 3, 2018
From a mental health perspective, however, the misogyny is usually a mask. “What they’re expressing is probably pain ... but there are biases around understanding male pain,” Matt Englar-Carlson, director of the Center for Boys and Men at California State University Fullerton, told me. “We all get socialized to look at men’s needs and not see them as critical.”
This gets even harder to do when the men in question are dehumanizing women and are celebrating and enacting violence against them. “It may be really hard for a layperson to understand that pain or have empathy for it,” Englar-Carlson said. The flip side of enacting justified outrage at expressions of misogyny and other polarizing worldviews, he cautioned, is dehumanization. “We throw people away so quickly,” he said. “We don’t see them as humans; we see them as opinions.”
Mental health professionals like Englar-Carlson — who believes that everyone can be helped — may have an obligation to hate the sin and love the sinner. “You don’t affirm the act, but you do affirm the person,” he said. “Just dismissing them or saying you’re crazy or you’re radical or you’re homophobic or you’re sexist ... is not going to reinforce any kind of help-seeking. What it reinforces is the notion that you’re worthless.”
The more negative reinforcement men receive, the more urgent the need for mental health treatment rather than ostracism becomes. Men frequently hide depression
behind personas of intensely masculinized behavior — and men who have their masculinity threatened are more likely to engage in risky behaviors or
respond aggressively.
“Men struggle with the desire to prove their masculinity,” Joel Wong, program director of the counseling psychology program at Indiana University, told me. “When men perceive that they’re not regarded as masculine enough, they could react in one of several ways. One is that they could try to overcompensate by going to the gym and working out.” (Witness Reddit’s “hit the gym” motto.) “Another way is to say, ‘I’m going to forge my own path and form my own subculture.’ They’re all different ways to respond to a self-perception about their masculinity.”
“The idea of the lonely American male is a true experience for a lot of men,” said Englar-Carlson. He told Vox that the “support” offered by incel communities reflected a deeper truth about many online communities, which enable toxicity and negative thinking even as they offer limited opportunities for socialization: “You’ve made a connection, but the connection is possibly killing you.”
Helping men get treatment is easier said than done
This is the kind of trajectory that once could have been a precursor for more serious mental health treatment — but in the US, at least, resources are limited. America’s public mental health system
completely collapsed between the 1950s and the ’80s, and options for outpatient services are limited. A
2015 study found that only 41 percent of US adults with mental health conditions had received treatment. A
2011 report by the National Alliance on Mental Illness called state funding cuts to mental health services a “national crisis,” and noted that demand for psychiatric services was increasing even as resources were declining.
Additionally, Supportcel members expressed a distrust of social support systems for mental health. One member described the therapy he was currently undergoing as “useless,” while others spoke of fearing the
intense stigmatization that comes with being identified as a person who has mental health issues. As a non-US native, Sinbad pointed out that most of the health advice he is given in the community tends to be US-centric. “A lot of the ‘advice’ I’ve been given would just make my situation worse if I applied it where I live,” he said.
“In general, there are a fair amount of men who have a really hard time accessing support services,” Englar-Carlson said. “One of the core notions of traditional Westernized masculinity is that you should be independent and you shouldn’t ask for help.” He said the popular perception that therapy is a place you go to cry or be weak is a barrier to men who’ve been conditioned to mask their emotions. “A lot of men equate therapy to weakness.”
Wong pointed out that the self-defeatist attitude of incels plays a huge role in whether they experience results even if they do have access to treatment. “Therapy might not be the most useful initial option because therapy only works when someone comes to you for therapy,” he told Vox. “But a starting point could be for therapists and psychologists to connect to them without saying, ‘I think you have a problem.’“
“You have to have health professionals who understand men,” Englar-Carlson said. “But it doesn’t help me to hang a shingle out saying ‘I understand men’ and wait for them to pour in.” Wong suggested that therapy-led support groups for incels could be helpful, along with needs-assessment surveys and potential workgroups for the community that could address some of the needs of members without condemning them.
Several Supportcel community members I spoke with did suggest that the incel sphere’s overall attitude toward mental health and treatment had improved somewhat. This, they believed, was mainly due to stricter moderation policies across many of the highly trafficked communities, the ousting of the most toxic voices, and a more open dialogue with “normies.” Of the many threads on r/IncelTears that look to help incels, the ones that offer advice and support frequently
recommend leaving the community and seeking cognitive behavioral therapy. On r/IncelsWithoutHate, designed to be a space where incels can interact positively with each other and with those outside the community, members speak with
tentative hope about seeking therapy and embarking on paths of self-improvement.
Out of all the factors that may be causing members of the community to seek movement away from toxicity, one of the biggest may simply be a growing awareness of how dark the incel rabbit hole is once you’re inside it. Since I initially spoke to them, one of the Supportcel moderators has stepped down and withdrawn from the community. “Everyone who’s involved in this community in any way eventually decides to just give up, in my experience,” they told me. “People who try to help incels eventually come to the conclusion that it’s generally not possible and that it takes a huge toll on their mental well-being if they are deeply involved in these efforts.”
“How can I stop becoming an incel?” a self-professed 20-year-old
asked IncelTears recently. But in the middle of seeking answers, he seemed to have found his own: “I noticed that the more I read incels’ posts the more I tend to agree with them on some things,” he said, “so I stopped reading before aggravating my situation.”
It seems that if therapy isn’t attainable, then self-awareness may be the incel’s best hope.
https://www.vox.com/2018/6/20/17314846/incel-support-group-therapy-black-pill-mental-health
