I Can’t Help But Wonder (S1/E6)
How many of us out there are having great sex with people we’re ashamed to introduce to our friends?
Note from OTF: Happy 1 year anniversary to Blaze’s recurring column “I Can’t Help But Wonder…”!
I Can’t Help But Wonder…
How many of us out there are having great sex with people we’re ashamed to introduce to our friends? (season 1, episode 6)
A lot.
Shame is personal. It’s a projection of our own self doubts and insecurities. What makes us ashamed to claim our partners is the same shame that plagues our internal dialogue. Status, taste, jobs, appearance, class, money, intelligence, attitude; all areas society puts pressure on us to perform a certain way in. So why choose to sleep with partners who amplify these flaws in ourselves?
Does scratching that itch give us some personal gratification when voluntarily becoming as close as physically possible to someone who embodies our own insecurities just to discard them as fridges on the carpet of our life and not the main tapestry? Is it the power or reassurance that we’re not doing as bad as we fear by comparing our life choices up close and personal? What makes us feel shame and what makes the sex great? Can you have one without the other or is the humiliation of sleeping with the reflection of our insecurities the missing kink that gives the sex it’s extra spice?
What qualifies great sex to begin with? Does great sex only happen when we’re vunerable and does sleeping with those we deam, for one reason or another, beneath us give us the freedom to be vulnerable without the fear of rejection? What qualities would we sacrifice for good sex and how low would we go to get it?
There are many ways to be proud or ashamed of your partner. Do they prefer Doritos over Lays, Kraft cheese or pecorino, The Fast and Furious or Frances Ha? Nickelodeon or Nikki Giovanni? Do they pick their teeth in a restaurant? Do they wear Crocs? Do you wear Crocs? Are you more offended when someone wants to take shots at the bar or when they refuse to? Everyone has their personal litmus test for shame, what great sex means to them, and what their willing to put up with to get it.
At a recent dinner party I put this question to my friends. When asked if they’ve every been ashamed to introduce the people they’ve dated to their friends, it was a resounding yes before I even finished the question. We also realized that while most of their numbers were in the 30+ range, the friend group had yet to met a single one. Not only did my friends admit to hooking up with people they wouldn’t introduce to us, they laughed at the thought! When pressed for why they’ve hid their partners in the past, the answer was decisively personality.
Everyone seemed to be afraid their plus one would say something uncouth or generally embarrassing. The flip side of this is everyone also admitted without hesitation that their preference for hot, vacant people combined with the sharp wit and judgmental nature of our friend group made for a toxic cocktail not fit for casual introductions. I am still hearing complaints for making my friends sit through my ex-boyfriends subpar improv show 5 years ago.
After all, it is the unspoken rule of life that no one is a harsher critic of a potential partner than your friends and unfortunately for anyone willing to date one of us, that criticism is multiplied tenfold.
Blaze
Have you ever had great sex with someone but still didn’t want to introduce them to our friends?
Friend 1
Absolutely. None of them ever need to meet you guys. Ew. No, I would not like that.
Blaze
Okay, so what would make you ashamed of someone enough to not want to bring them around?
Friend
Personality. Definitely.
Blaze
Have you ever hooked up with someone you felt embarrassed to about?
Friend 2
Hahahah yes several. Usually it’s personality. I would also say lack of ambition in life too. I’m fine with these skaters but you guys don’t need to talk to them. I don’t even like talking to them.
Blaze
Ya, thank you for shielding us from that. Very helpful.
Friend 3
Have I ever dated anyone I didn’t want to introduce to my friends?
Yes, always personality. No question.
Friend 4
Almost exclusively. I love them dumb. Just jocks with no brian; a brick if you will.
Friend 5
Bring someone around the friend group? Never. When was the last time you met someone I was fucking?
Blaze
Ya, that’s a good point. Never.
Friend 5
Exactly. There’s a reason for that.
Blaze
Fair enough.
Friend 6
I don’t even let them sleep over, why would I introduce them to my friends?
Friend 7
Ya, I’d be too embarrassed if they said something rude or just… no.
Colloquially speaking, looks play a factor but what really determines our abilities to take the relationship to the next level and claim someone as ours is their personality.
An internet identity that has a lot to say about this ratio between attractiveness and temperament are incels. “Incel” or “involuntarily celibate” is definition by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “a person (usually a man) who regards himself or herself as being involuntarily celibate and typically expresses extreme resentment and hostility towards those who are sexually active.” It’s hack to use the literal dictionary definition of a word to preface a diatribe, a trick best saved for unoriginal wedding toasts, but I think it is important to note the exact language used for this group of people.
Not only are they identified as predominantly male, but including their violence tendencies and “hostility” in an objective definition is significant. For context, the same dictionary defines “nazi” as “a member of a German fascist party controlling Germany from 1933 to 1945 under Adolf Hitler” with no mention of violence. The comparison between the specificity of these two groups is intriguing yet alarming. What made Merriam-Webster feel the need to add that incels, “expresses extreme resentment” to their definition and not to nazis?
Incels as a subgroup has fascinated me for years. Trying to follow their rhetoric is like watching a dog chase its own tail all morning, just to sit there in the afternoon licking their wounds wondering where all these bites came from. You can’t look away because it’s a dog and it’s in your house and they really shouldn’t be unsupervised; but it’s all so pathetic. You want to step in and give them a toy to take the heat off their own self flagellation, but if this is how they treat their own tail, what on earth would they do to the toy? Naw at it’s seams until it’s decapitated and then rip the stuffing out? Probably. They can’t be trusted and neither can these men.
The incel ethos is that women are shallow and only care about looks, so if you are born unattractive you do not deserve, nor will you receive, love, sex, or a relationship. It’s giving big religious undertones, pandora’s box, “all the evil in the world is created by women and therefore they should suffer” vibes and what a convenient story.
Previous articles like “Our Incel Problem” by Zack Beauchamp tried to explain incels to the world before, but with the false enthusiasm of a zoo tour guide (Vox, 2019). Yes, he acknowledges their danger for dramatic effect, but his experience as a man in close proximity to the untamed animal gives him a greater sense of security around them, whether warranted or not. After all, sometimes even zoo keepers fall in the cage. He argues on behalf of the dog, of course he bites his own tail because he’s lonely and if given a toy, he would treat it better than himself.
“John, a 30-year-old incel from New Jersey, tried pretty much everything he could think of to help himself succeed in the dating market. He works out regularly, eats vegetarian, and spends time reading up on fashion so he can try to dress well. He’s tried online dating for years and let some of his female friends set him up on dates.” (Vox, 2019).
Beauchamp is tries to prove that this man is putting in the work to appeal to women, but that list seems pretty short and superficial to encompass “pretty much everything”. It’s great he is working on his physical health but where is the prioritization of his mental health? “Pretty much everything” in this example doesn’t include therapy, counseling, investing in new hobbies, education, or other self improvement activities for the mind. What’s his relationship with his parents like? How is he healing his generational trauma? How is he connected to his community?
Incels enclose themselves in this niche echo-chamber where the main bond is an agreed upon shared reality that beauty is the best and only metric of superiority and questioning that belief system is a quick way to ostracize yourself from the group. They place attractiveness on such a high pedestal so they assume women do too. If the men are traditionally unattractive and then spend hours and hours at the gym to change their physic and women still turn them down, they’re reenforcing their own idea that they will never look good enough to attract a partner. Not only does this completely take away a women’s autonomy to choose a partner that appeals to her on a wholistic level; intellect, humor, looks, attitude, career, lifestyle; these guys then turn around critic a women for having one aspect of the same value system that they do. “How dare women be shallow”, says the man who deemed her too beautiful to have her own opinions and god forbid speak them out loud.
The author continues to describe this man and says, “very few women have responded to his messages on dating apps.” While this paints a sympathetic subject; a man trying their best and still getting rejected, the real question is… are they actually trying their best or are they doing basic human behavior and expecting to get a reward? What type of women did this man choose to match with on the dating website and what qualities is he looking for? What did he set his age range preference to on the dating apps? What were the messages he sent to them that only “very few” responded to? Was he interested in getting to know them? How are they learning and unlearning about the global objectification of women and how that intersects with race? Congratulations on eating a salad dude, but that’s the baseline qualification for starting a healthy relationship and none of it has to do with your looks.
I’ve certainly matched with people on dating apps that I found cool and interesting, just for them to say something off putting when we start chatting. Incels talk about eating healthy and working out as if that’s their only plan to find love and if that doesn’t get them a lasting relationship, it’s over.
In fact, blaming it on your naturally born looks is the perfect lazy scapegoat. Unless you have endless time and money, you’re stuck with the looks you have and the option to fix them is conveniently out of your control. However, you can change your personality; it just takes thoughtful and uncomfortable introspection and self reflection. But how would they even know that’s possible when the only people they communicate with is each other and all they hear is extremely negative rhetoric? The danger of a single story as Chimamanda Adichie tells it.
“Their hypocrisy is a crime [punishable by] torture for the rest of their slutty lives” reads an incels.co post (Vox, 2019). It could be self reflective, depending on who the hypocrisy is referring to. It also reads like a Game of Thrones fanfiction piece featuring a cuckold servant and a demanding queen; which they would probably take that as a compliment but who’s to say they shouldn’t!
There’s clearly a lot to unpack here, yet the idea of therapy or professional mental health treatment isn’t even mentioned in this article; not once by the interviewer or the interviewee. “Our whole lives we’ve had to endure the pain of being so physically repulsive to females that they’d never even consider giving us a chance. We are actually so genetically inferior that they HATE us. They need to suffer,” reads another anonymous post on incels.co (Vox, 2019). Yikes.
This is a terrifying premise for a club really, especially as a hot woman who is directly in their crosshairs of these self selecting celibate men who lurk openly on the street corners of the internet. Beauchamp does a decent job in this article outlining the problem but doesn’t offer any solutions shockingly.
Thankfully more people are beginning to acknowledge this group and discuss the implications. It’s not just reformed incels sharing stories from the inside, now there are real reports on the movement and the psychological damage it does to all genders. Outsiders can now get close enough to report on them, such as columnist Michelle Goldberg, who recently wrote a New York Times Opinion piece entitled “A Manifesto Against Sex Positivity” on the heels of the publication “Rethinking Sex: A Provocation,” a fascinating new pillar in the current sexual lexicon by Washington Post columnist, Christine Emba, both published March, 2022.
Emba’s textbook describing how to having “good common sex” is hot off the presses of Sentinel - the “independent thinkers” arm of Penguin Random House. No, she’s not advocating for missionary only sex but sexual relationships and honor the “good” in everyone involved, bringing more humanity and mutual respect into the bedroom.
Emba is a writer, religious advocate, and leftest. She walks the line between radical principles and conservative though processes about sex and culture. In the book she describes a friend of a friend’s sexual encounter that is relayed to her at a party unprovoked, tapping into our modern desire to tell every detail of our sex lives to strangers; yet she uses it as an example to advocate for the danger this holds and not the freedom. The woman feels more comfortable sharing her sexual experience with a stranger, who happens to be Emba, but is worried about telling the partner directly that his actions are too aggressive during sex because she likes all the other aspects of their relationship.
From this anecdote Emba argues that a more sexually liberated culture does not guarantee a happier one; in fact it can subvert our sexual freedom into a new form of repression where we are forced to explore the edges of our sexuality because the extra is now expected, even if it not truly what we want. You can summon a sexual partner in minutes with dating apps but is that good for us as an individuals? As a society? What does “good” mean? Who defines “good common sex”?
This book can be read in support or against sexual liberation as we think of it today, but what it really aims to do is redefine “liberation”. She isn’t calling for an end to the sexually explorative movement for the sake of cultural purity, but more for the sake of self preservation. She believes if we listen to ourselves more, most of us probably aren’t that sexually wild but society has been grooming us to think this promiscuity, in or out of a monogamous relationship, is paramount.
“Emba’s argument is that sexual liberation, as currently conceived, has made people, and especially women, miserable. It’s created, ironically, new strictures and secret shames, at least in certain elite milieus, around “catching feelings,” hating casual sex and having vanilla sexual tastes writes Goldberg. Ms. Emba critiques sex positivity, at least in its popular form, as submission to patriarchal capitalistic values, but there’s also a strong streak of conservatism in her work. Among her chapter titles are “Our Sex Lives Aren’t Private” and “Some Desires Are Worse Than Others.”(New York Times, 2022)
What makes Emba work so fascinating in light of the incel movement is that she does offer clear steps to improving the situation. She “proposes replacing a transactional approach to sex with an ethic of what Aquinas called ‘willing the good of the other,’ or determining to act in one's partners' best interests” (New York Times, 2022).
My issue with this neat solution is that in order to replace the “transnational approach” to sex and relationships comes at a price. While she might not receive direct benefits from the monetization of sex work, a lot of women do. That’s a very literally reading of the phrase, but the traditional culture of men asking women out, men paying for dates, men usually having the more lucrative career; it all plays into our dynamics in relationships. Sure things are changing and women have a larger presence in the workforce and we’re slowly washing away these outdated dating practices but they still exist and it will take time to dismantle them.
Not to say we shouldn’t try to better but it feels like every self empowering article about gender policies has this ribbon running through it that encourages women to work harder to advocate, change, and redirect the patriarchy. While the oppressor will never help the oppressed, it is a little disheartening to think about the hours of reading, research, thoughtful dialogue, therapy, and workshops women do to understand these groups who hate us while incels are just farting away in their oversized gamer chairs thinking they’re Luke Skywalker in a fighter jet while they’re fiddling away at the same two buttons on a controller crusted in dried cum and Cheeto dust.
Women really do keep thinking we can fix men and I’m not sure if they want to be fixed. These incels are in a cloud of their own toxic behavior and have no desire to get themselves out. I know the problem is that they feel isolated and using this kind of disparaging language against someone is probably just fueling the fire but it’s exhausting just thinking about all the time and energy women continue to put into improvement these men that we don’t even know.
Okay so Billy hasn’t gotten laid in a few years and now he’s so depressed he’s going to shoot up a public space to punish all females for rejecting him? Yes that is a real scenario talked about on incel message boards that is definitely horrifying, but is it our responsibility to bare the burden of that?
Who raised him? Where was his dad? Where are the male figures in this life to look up to? Where are the strong pillars of positive masculinity to inspire incels to treat each other and women with respect and kindness? Why are women conditioned to take on the plight of our partners and fix their issues? Because their issues directly impact the health and safety of those around them, primary women.
But why does their violence exempt them from shouldering accountability for their behavior? If these men refuse to see women as other complex human being, then I do not think they deserve a relationship. Must a women subject herself for being treated below worth because of an incels inability to love himself? If they truly believe the idea that all women are shallow, awful creatures that want men to suffer, why are they so hung up on dating them?
If there was a greater emphasis on personality improvement over physical betterment I think a lot more people would be less ashamed to date the people they are already attracted to. There are so many mediocre looking people with great laughs and interesting hobbies who make amazing partners and women are scooping them up everyday. The bar is set so low for men that all these articles and think piece are simply suggesting they treat women better and the overall answer is how dare you tell men what to do.
They claim women won’t date them but the issue is that they don’t listen to what women want. We want great sex with someone who treats us right and respects women and there is no shame in that.
Shit We’re Loving: LISTEN
Blaze’s Pick: “Fallen Star” by The Neighbourhood
Show Your Support: Conservation International
April is Earth Month, so to honor and celebrate everyone’s Mother, our spotlight organization this month is Conservation International (CI). For 30 years, Conservation International has worked to support, uplift, and secure the critical benefits that nature provides to humanity.
Humans need nature.
As an organization, CI combines fieldwork with innovations in science, policy, and finance and has helped protect more than 6 million square kilometers (2.3 million square miles) of land and sea across more than 70 countries. With offices in more than two dozen countries and a worldwide network of thousands of partners, CI’s reach is truly global.
In OTF fashion, we have donated $50 to Conservation International and encourage you to give what you can for this Earth Month! Together, we can address the greatest threats to life on this planet and protect the natural resources that sustain and inspire us.
Daily Intention:
Today I choose…
to let go of what does not serve me.
Here’s some nifty buttons for you to press, enjoy: