A couple of weeks ago I wrote a diary that noted an almost overlooked data point in a recent PEW poll. It turns out that one of the largest gender gaps existed between millennial-aged men and women and their tendency to support progressive politics.
Overall millennials approve of progressive politics by about a 25% margin. However, when you break that down by gender, the differences are dramatic: a +47% of women lean progressive — but only +7% of men in the same age group.
This means that a whole bunch of alt-right gamer-boys are having a tough time finding a girlfriend. Think about it — how likely is it that a progressive woman who believes in gender equality, racial equality, orientation equality and reproductive freedom… if she is straight, how likely is it that someone with these political values would feel comfortable dating (or getting serious with) some dude wearing a red MAGA hat and a confederate-flag t-shirt?
So many of these boys end up being lonely that they’ve actually gone online and invented “involuntary celibacy” as a well-articulated grievance. They even have a nickname for the affliction: InCel... and — of course — they blame it on a couple of familiar leftist villains: feminism and “cultural Marxism.”
Now it turns out that the white-skinned, millennial-aged male responsible for a murder-by-van rampage in Toronto April 23 posted a Facebook message about Incel rebellion moments before starting the rampage that killed 10 and injured 13.
The newspaper article (link above) includes the following passage [bold highlights are mine]:
The term “InCels” emerged from a Reddit group in which tens of thousands of users, most of them young men, commiserate about their lack of sexual activity– many of them placing the blame on women. The group has received substantial criticism for its apparent misogyny, including posts that appeared to condone rape.
Reddit banned the community late last year. Chads and Stacys, meanwhile, are pejorative terms often used by this group to describe men who are sexually active and women who won’t date members of the group.
The terms are mostly employed in fringe online channels that are often virulently anti-feminist.
I know — the guy in Toronto was Canadian and PEW was polling Americans… but certain elements of political culture occur on both sides of the border. The alt-right is smaller in Canada, it lacks deep=pocketed funding sugardaddy billionaires like the Mercers and it’s much, much harder for Canadians to acquire firearms — but the fringe logic is similar and — when we compare the murders in Charlottesville, Virginia and Toronto, Ontario, the motives and the weapons were exactly the same.