My Love-Shyness
& Asperger's BLOG
Exploring Incel, Involuntary Celibacy
Love-shyness is a particular type of Involuntary Celibacy, or Incel
for short. While love-shyness has been fairly thoroughly documented by
Gilmartin, incel in general has not been studied at all except for one
paper by sociologists, Involuntary Celibacy: A Life Course Analysis.
The literal meaning of involuntary celibacy is quite encompassing
including prisoners, married people whose spouses stopped having sex
with them and most anyone who hasn't gotten any in a while. But
love-shyness is a type of chronic incel.
Chronic incel I will
define as anyone who has gone three or more continuous years of their
adult life wanting sex and a romantic relationship but is unable to
obtain this at all. Hereafter when I refer to incel I usually mean
chronic incel. Most chronic incels, at least those posting in incel
internet forums, are lifelong incels, virgins, or close to it. Chronic
incel also means that it is not the outside world preventing the person
from mating; it is the person's own issues. Note that the term incel is
often used to differentiate non-love-shy chronic incels from love-shys.
Is
incel a psychological condition or merely a description of a person's
situation? I believe it to encompass both. Love-shyness proves that
incel can be a psychological condition. Yet, some people need only fix
a few things with themselves to be able to date successfully. I
separate incel into Syndrome Incel and Non-Syndrome Incel. One incel
sufferer calls it primary and secondary incel. Many cases of
non-syndrome incel can theoretically be fixed fairly easily. However,
if one has autism or another severe social handicap, he or she will
need much help to date successful. The autism spectrum can also help
lead to the creation of love-shyness, so non-dating autistics can be
divided into syndrome and non-syndrome incel, but each case is not
immediately obvious as to which type of incel the autistic fits.
Syndrome
incel means that there is a specific incel condition preventing the
person from mating. Love-shyness with its phobia of sex and romance is
the most obvious syndrome incel. Unfortunately, no one has studied
incel enough to explain what the other thing or things are that prevent
mating. I suspect there are probably around three different types of
psychological syndrome incel in addition to love-shyness.
While
love-shyness is often induced by low self-esteem, cold parents and
bullying, non-love-shy syndrome incel often relates to physical
abuse by parents and extreme bullying. Love-shys overwhelmingly were
not subject to physical abuse. Syndrome incels who were shy as children
develop love-shyness. A more extremely negative childhood seems
required to create incels compared to love-shys with their "thinner
skin."
The psychological conditions are buried deep, and it
seems to me as a love-shy that incels have a bit more "crazy" in them.
Unraveling syndrome incel is quite an undertaking. Along with figuring
out what causes what is the challenge of dealing with incels
themselves. Many incels are stressed living their whole lives in
loneliness and seem to have a general fear of outsiders.
No
matter how incel is defined, its sufferers require help. But they can't
receive decent help until their condition is officially accepted.
Unfortunately, incels overwhelmingly don't want to do anything
resembling public awareness. What does it take to make everyone believe
that
Involuntary celibacy exists and its sufferers are desperate for help
?
Our society and psychological professionals generally do not believe in the existence of incel. Our society believes that anyone without obvious severe physical or mental handicaps can mate successfully if, perhaps, they lower their standards or slightly improve themselves. As long as society believes this myth then incels will be ignored. Most comprehensive sexuality suveys show that around 4 or 5 percent of adults are virgins. Surprisingly, professionals don't see these numbers and conclude that a fair number of adults need help. Instead they write off this proof of involuntary celibacy thinking that these people could date if they really wanted to. Yes, some lifelong virgins are asexuals who don't care about sex and some refrain from sex voluntarily for religious or other reasons, but many, probably most, adult virgins are in their situation involuntarily.
Another reason I see society not accepting incel nor wanting to do anything about it stems from the idea of natural selection, survival of the fittest.I'm not talking about having women lower their standards towards incel men or "take one for the team." Rather, I'm calling for treatments so incels can actually compete effectively in the dating arena. We give glasses to people with bad vision and fix broken bones with casts, etc., rather than having "natural selection" take its course. We as a society do not let people with broken bones suffer at the side of the road, but we treat people with incel as garbage. Many incels complain that when they went to a therapist complaining about their lifelong virginity the therapists suggested the incels were closet homosexuals.
Recent PA gym shooter Sodini was obviously incel. Of course the vast majority of incels are not murderers and Sodini had other psychological issues. But no therapist would have acknowledged, much less treated, his incel. I believe the best course of action to treat Sodini would have been to focus on his incel—the thing that bothered him the most—allowing his other issues to arise in time. As long as the public and psychological professionals do not acknowledge incel nor offer any type of treatment, innocent women will continue getting killed and thousands, if not millions, of incels will continue living lives of quiet desperation.
