Disclaimer: I wrote these blogs a long time ago! I'm leaving them up as I don't want to delete my journey and I think showing growth is important. But it means that some of my views, and some language I use, is now different. Please be mindful of this, and that the content might be triggering, if you choose to read on.

​On Monday 23 April, a man drove a van into a group of pedestrians in Toronto, killing 10 people and injuring 13 more. It later arose that this man was a self-proclaimed ‘incel’ having posted on social media just before the attack:

​‘Chads’ and ‘Stacys’ refer to sexually active men and women. The attacker explained his angst in a video he made before the attack where he talked about still being a virgin and vowed to kill women for rejecting him.

‘Incel’ is short for ‘involuntary celibate’ - they’re part of the Men’s Rights Activist (MRA) movement. The ‘manosphere’ is another name for the huge dark corner of the web filled with different factions of these misogynistic men. Although I’ve spent longer than I should’ve in the manosphere, even I don’t understand the crazy hierarchy of men’s rights activists, pick-up artists, incels and numerous other groups and divisions within the movement. It’s a scary part of the internet to venture, full of hatred and bitterness.
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Incels are predominantly straight white men who believe they’re entitled to sex. These men have little to no sex, unsuprisingly. They embrace their own helplessness at not being able to attract women and blame it on not being as attractive as the ‘chads’. They embody being the victim and become incredibly bitter towards the men who can get women, and the women who sleep with them.

There are a lot of people on Twitter at the moment talking about how incels are terrible people, which is fair. However, I’m interested in why they act the way they do because this might help us learn something so we can help. Also, I’m aware that these men are very angry. Directing more anger and hate at them will only prove them right: they’re the victims and everyone is against them. They’re already angry because women won’t have sex with them, because other men are more attractive than them and because other people in society are gaining more power than them. All their actions are fear driven. Despite them playing the part of strong men, they’re often lonely and vulnerable.
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Dating is hard. There are lots of men who can’t get dates easily, but it’s not down to their appearance. It’s likely the bitter attitude of most incels that repels women. They’re in a vicious circle: not able to get women because of their attitude, but the rejection/fear of trying in the first place/having been hurt in the past, perpetuates that bitter attitude.

Women are taking control of their own sex lives and patriarchal traditions are being dismantled. We are trying to give power to people who have never had it before - trying to give people a voice. These men have grown up thinking the straight white man is at the top – they rule the world. They are scared that giving power to another group means taking it from them. Again, it’s all rooted in fear.

So incels are lonely men, sitting behind their computers complaining about how they’re not attractive enough to get women. When I think about this I see low self-esteem, low confidence and low self-worth. Many of these men may hang out online because they have social anxiety problems. Ultimately, anybody who goes around telling everyone they can’t get laid, is asking for help. They’re just asking for help in the wrong places.
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If many of these men have social anxieties or mental health issues it might be a daunting prospect to ask for help offline. They may not even have many friends. It makes sense that online forums are the ideal place to meet people in these circumstances. Unfortunately, these can be full of like-minded incels or MRAs encouraging each other’s hatred and anger. What these men are really looking for is a community, a support network and ultimately some help.

You may be thinking “no way, I don’t want to help these guys” but how can we try to make a difference if we simply throw hate back at them? We could create a future that helps bring young boys into a world where they can ask for help without being sucked into a potentially dangerous community. It’s not the old school MRA’s or incels that will drive vans into people or pick up a gun and storm into a school, it’ll be the younger ones or the more vulnerable men that do. Forums are a world where suddenly people understand them. I wrote a short story about this a few years ago called Manosphere, about a teenager - bitter about his ex-girlfriend - who turns to violence. I wrote it to demonstrate how easy it would be for someone desperate for help to get led down the wrong path. It was fiction but it this kind of thing now keeps happening in real life.
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Some incels are clearly experiencing anxieties they don’t know how to cope with alone, and violence - to themselves or others - is their only way out. What if they were able to ask for help in “real life” not online? What if men weren’t taught that women are sexual objects? What if they weren’t told to “man up” and they weren’t given toy guns to play with as kids? Children are constantly learning and all these things all have an impact. When men are taught from a young age that women are there just for their sexual gratification, and that they rightfully own the power, it’s no surprise that these expectations are not going to be reached.

The irony behind the MRA movement is their major concerns over the high male suicide rates and lack of support for men’s mental health. MRAs are arch rivals of feminists, yet ironically they often want the same thing. If incels felt they were able to access support from a healthy, safe place, there could be a chance they could get the help they need. Difficulty forming relationships can be because of many problems in the past: they might’ve been hurt by girlfriend, or women in their family, or maybe they’ve been bullied because of their appearance at school. The way to unpick all of this is with a good therapist. It could be that some of these men have tried to access therapeutic services but they’re too expensive or the waiting lists are too long. This is why mental health needs to be a priority. It’s just as important as physical health.
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​We need to be teaching young boys not to channel their emotions as anger, but rather that it’s okay to show emotion and empathy - it’s not a sign of weakness. Gender equality is about not teaching girls to be princesses and not teaching boys that crying is weak – it ultimately helps everyone.
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Thanks for reading. Sending love to all affected by the Toronto tragedy. Let’s try to make the world a kinder place. 

Disclaimer: I wrote these blogs a long time ago! I'm leaving them up as I don't want to delete my journey and I think showing growth is important. But it means that some of my views, and some language I use, is now different. Please be mindful of this, and that the content might be triggering, if you choose to read on.


​Warning: contains triggering subjects

There have been a few serious attacks in the news recently. It’s hard doing the ‘normal’ adult thing at the moment, just getting up and going to work like it never happened. It’s a strange world we’ve built for ourselves. My thoughts are with the victims and their families and friends, and I’m eternally grateful to our NHS. I appreciate people not wanting to give the attackers airtime, but we need to notice something happening here – most terrorists are men. Need a statistic? Here you go:

“Overwhelmingly, the majority of people arrested for terrorism related offences are male: of the 3,157 people arrested between 11 September 2001 and 31 December 2015, 92% were male.”
- From ‘Terrorism in Great Britain: the statistics - Parliament UK’

If you’re unfamiliar with Men’s Right’s Activists (MRA’s), they’re mostly men (#notallmen) and they’re mostly not doing much for men’s rights (#notallMRAs) but instead are mostly trying to take down feminists (how many more times can I use the word ‘mostly’?) The thing is, I agree with some of the things they’re supposedly concerned about – father’s rights, domestic violence against men, high male suicide rates, to name a few. It’s just unfortunate that so many of them seem to be horribly racist, sexist and homophobic. They seem to dislike anyone who isn’t a straight white man. This is only based on my short ventures into the ‘manosphere’ (a general name for the men’s rights online community), so I realise it’s from my limited perspective. If you are an MRA and you have a campaign you’d like us to join to legitimately help men’s rights, then do come forward. Many women might be happy to help you out.

I have to protect myself from going too far down the terrifying rabbit hole known as the manosphere. There’s so much hatred there. But I’ve been trying to understand masculinity and how men are becoming so angry they’ll stab people on trains, blow themselves up or drive vans into crowds. Not forgetting, killing themselves too. The male suicide rate in the UK is three times the female rate.

Maybe gender expectations are one of the roots of the problem. I might be seen as too compassionate but I’d rather try to understand why these men have such a lot of anger. In my experience of Men’s Rights Activists online, they seem bitter and hurt and are looking to provoke people, especially feminists, into saying something horrible to them. When people retaliate, it then proves their point. It proves their ‘free speech’ argument right, validating their view that they’re the real victims, hence making them even more pissed off about it all.

However, maybe they are the victims. Maybe they’re victims of a society that tells men not to show emotion. We tell boys not to cry. We tell them to be strong and tough. We teach them that anger is the only acceptable emotion. They have to play with boy toys which are often more violent than girls toys (but girls have equally damaging gender role expectations in a different way). They’re taught to ‘man up’ to deal with their problems. They’re taught that asking for help is a weakness, and that kindness and compassion are girly and weak traits.

Men need gender equality just as much as women, sometimes I think even more so. ‘Feminism’ is a tricky word now because MRA’s see feminists as being cruel and angry, which some of them are. They’re pissed off from a lifetime of living by the rules of the patriarchy so I can see why, but it’s no excuse to be hateful. However, there are a lot of feminists, like me, who think feminism means the same as gender equality. It’s just a word anyway, what matters is the intention behind it.

These men, so unhappy with the imbalance of the world, are affected by the same patriarchal society that feminists are so unhappy about too. If there was just a way for there to be a compassionate, understanding dialogue between the two groups, we might find a way forward. But both sides are firmly in their opposing online worlds, having their own little bickering sessions amongst themselves. Feminists are arguing over who can be the best feminist (and over what the word actually means for that matter) and MRA’s are too busy having competitions about how masculine they can be (they have a whole Alpha/Beta thing going on).

And through just literally typing that last sentence, I realise how ironic that is.

It seems like gender equality is treated as a luxury, but it’s really becoming a necessity now. People are dying, and that’s not solely the fault of toxic masculinity of course, but surely there’s no harm in giving it a go. Gender roles aren’t helping anyone now and it’s time we moved on. We need to break the rules around conforming to be a ‘man’ or a ‘woman’. Just whatever you like. You don’t have to name it and you don’t have to justify yourself to anyone.

We need an injection of empathy and compassion now. We need to try to stop placing blame and focus on what we can do, as individuals, to be kinder. Blaming Muslims or immigrants isn’t getting us anywhere. Terrorist attacks happen in the name of religion only in the minds of the attackers, but the basis of most religions is to be kind, forgiving and generally just don’t kill each other. It’s the person that kills people, not the religion. Often terrorists are quite young men who have been susceptible to radicalisation. We need to think about why they’re drawn into that in the first place and why they decided to become violent, unlike all the millions of other Muslims who don’t.

Thinking about it, they might not be too different from the Men’s Rights Activists or white supremacists who attack innocent people on trains, or storm into schools with guns. Despite being the opposite type of extremists, both are angry at the world. Angry at people for treating them badly maybe? Angry for not having the power and control they think they deserve. I doubt whether these men had been shown another way to channel that anger.

The man who stabbed people on a train in Portland was said to have mental health problems. I’ve personally never seen this same consideration for Muslim terrorists. We need more provision for mental health services, but we also need to help break down the stigma around asking for help. If there is more acceptance around men showing emotion, there could be a chance of helping men who may want to hurt themselves or others.

Kindness and be learned in the same way hatred can be. Our brains can always adapt, it just takes that initial push to start trying to see another perspective. We’re not going to solve the problems in society quickly, or indeed at all, but we can try to make a kinder, non-judgmental, equal world for the generations to come.

Stay safe. Be kind.