SYMPATHY FOR THE INCEL

Life advice for guys who think no one will ever love them for who they are

Hey Nevermorons,

I seem to be one of the few people who has any sympathy for young men who can’t get laid, which seems to be a helluva lotta of people these days.

Part of the reason is that I can relate to their pain. Due to an extremely traumatic event that happened when I was 14, I had a lot of mental health problems when I was younger.

I was diagnosed with schizophrenia when I was 17. After that, I was too heavily medicated to fry an egg, let alone do all the things you need to do if you want to impress girls.

I remember what a huge boost it was to my self-esteem when I succeeded in getting a job as a dishwasher at a steakhouse, which I believe I got because the dish pit “boss” felt sorry for me. I also remember how horrible it felt when I got fired from that job.

So, yeah, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I was a huge loser… or at least I felt like a huge loser. I was in and out of psych wards from the time I was 17 until 22 or 23, and I was still drugged stupid for some time after that.

Eventually, I met my first girlfriend at the library in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, just as I was finishing reading Hesse’s Journey to the East. She liked hitchhikers, and I convinced her to come travelling with me. I haven’t been in a psych ward since.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that my mental health magically improved once I started having sex regularly for the first time in my life. To my mind, there’s a clear connection between sex and mental health, but this important factor seems not to be given the attention it deserves.

Now, to be clear, it wasn’t just sex that improved my life. I was in a relationship with a woman I loved, meaning intimacy, love, and companionship as well as sex. I had someone to open up to, someone who could meet me where I was at, someone who didn’t think I was a loser, someone who didn’t see me like I saw myself.

I was very self-loathing at that time, and founding out that someone thought I was loveable was a big deal. But I believe that a significant part of my healing had to do with the health benefits of having a sex life. And this is something that you rarely hear mentioned in discussions of schizophrenia or other forms of mental illness. I’d bet money you could scientifically prove that psychotics with girlfriends are way less likely to wind up in the psych ward.

I haven’t ever read any of Wilhelm Reich’s books, but I am convinced that he was onto something when it comes to what he calls “the function of the orgasm”. I think a healthy sex life is an essential part of both physical and mental health.

Part of the crisis of the 21st century is that many, many people are suffering from acute orgasm deficiency, but for some reason it’s not seen as the massive public health emergency it is.

Most people would rather just dunk on “incels” for being losers, and, to be fair, there are definitely some unloveable losers out there giving your everyday normal losers a bad rap.

I’m not talking about the tiny number of psychos who kill innocent people because they’ve got blue balls. I’m just talking about guys who are involuntarily celibate in general.

Please don’t get me wrong: I think the “Incel Movement” is an absolutely toxic soup of misogyny, sexism, entitlement, and everything bad. People who believe in the “Incel ideology” (if you can call it that) give us all plenty of reasons to mock and denigrate them. But let’s not forget that their pain is real.

Today, I’d like to share a lovely Anishnaabe folk tale, which I offer as life advice to incels. It won’t apply to everyone, but it will apply to some. Some of you just need to go outside more.

This story is selected from an excellent compilation called American Indian Myths and Legends, which I really can’t recommend highly enough. It’s the best book of its kind I’ve ever come across.

The story’s also got some life advice for young women.

Enjoy!

Crow Qu’appelle

P.S. On another note, I just removed the paywall on this:

HOW WOLVERINE MAN FOUND TRUE LOVE

Originally Published as The Foolish Girls

AN OJIBWAY FOLKTALE

In the world long ago, some people were camping in birchbark lodges. There were two very foolish girls who always slept outside the lodge, in the open. Self-respecting girls didn’t do this, only foolish, man-hungry ones. So there they were, lying outside, looking at the sky, giggling. One of the girls said to the other, “Look at those stars, the white one and the red one.”

“I’d like to sleep with a star. They must be good lovers, real hot ones,” said the other.

“Me too—I want a star under the blanket with me,” said her friend. “I’ll take the red star to bed, and you can have the white one.”

“All right,” said her companion, and they drifted off to sleep. When they awoke, they found themselves in an upper world—in star country. The stars were men, and they spoke to the girls: “You wanted to sleep with us. Well, here we are; let’s do it!”

So they did. The girl who had chosen the red star found that he was a vigorous young man, and he kept her busy all night. She was content. Not so the other, because her star, the white star, was very old. His hair was white, and he couldn’t perform very well. She said to her friend, “Let’s swap husbands for a while,” but the friend didn’t want to.

So they lived for a time with their chosen stars. Then the one who had married the young redheaded star began to complain: “This man wears me out. It’s too much; I can’t stand doing it all the time.”

The other said, “This star lover of mine is so old that he can’t do anything.”

And after having stayed there for a long while, they both concluded that it wasn’t as much fun being with star men as they had imagined. All the stars did was eat star food, sleep with the girls, and shine. They didn’t play games; they didn’t hunt. The girls became bored and homesick. It was winter, and one said to the other, “Down in our country they’re playing snow-snake now. I wish I could be there.”

Old Woman sat on a hole in the sky all the time. Once when those foolish girls passed by, she moved a little bit and let them look down through the hole. They saw their village and watched the people playing snow-snake. They heard singing and dancing coming up through the hole, and they felt very sad.

“How can we get down there?” they asked. Old Woman gave them plants of various kinds and said, “Twist them into fibers. Make a long rope. That’s the only way to get down where you came from.”

For days the girls twisted fibers into ropes. They needed a very, very long rope, and they got tired. They were lazy as well as foolish, and they said, “Surely this rope is long enough. No use working any more.” They went to their two star men and told them: “We want to visit our folks down there, just for a little while. Then you can haul us up again.”

Of course they didn’t mean it. They had discovered that sleeping with stars was no different from sleeping with humans. Now they wanted young Ojibway men, they were so foolish and fickle.

“Hold these ropes; help us down,” they told the stars. But the ropes were too short, which is what comes of being lazy. The cords reached almost all the way down, but not quite—just to the top of a very, very high tree, the highest tree in the world. At its tip was an abandoned eagle nest, and there the two foolish ones were stuck. “Oh! What are we going to do? How are we going to get down?”

They saw a bear passing by below. “Hey, Bear, you sure must be looking for some women to sleep with. If you get us down safely, you can do it with us!” The bear saw that these girls were good-looking, but he was wise and noticed that they were also very foolish and forward.

He wanted nothing to do with them. He pretended he couldn’t climb, though he could easily have made it up the tree. The bear went off, not even looking back.

Next, a buffalo passed under the tree. “Hey, Powerful One,” the girls shouted, “get us down from here. If you do, you can sleep with us.” Seeing that the girls were pretty, the buffalo didn’t care whether they were stupid or not.

He tried to climb up, tried a long time, but couldn't do it. He gave up and shouted to the girls, “Hooves are no good for this kind of thing. Get somebody with claws!” Then he went off.

The third one to pass by was Old Man Coyote. “Hey, friend!” the girls called down to him, “Do you want some good-looking young women to sleep with? You can, if you get us down.”

“I sure would like to,” shouted Old Man Coyote, “but I have a young, jealous wife. She gets mean if I fool around with the girls.” And he went off too.

The fourth one to pass under that tree was Wolverine, who is so ugly no girl will sleep with him.

“Hey, Handsome,” the two girls called, “you sure are a good-looking man. Get us down from here, and you can enjoy us.” They didn’t have to say it twice; with his powerful claws, Wolverine shinnied up that largest of all trees in no time.

He threw the first girl down and immediately made love to her. There was no use resisting; he was so strong and greedy. Then he did the same with the second girl. He had never had such a good time, but they enjoyed it a lot less since Wolverine was the ugliest man they had ever seen.

“Friend,” one girl said to the other, “I think we’ve done a dumb thing. When I get home, I'll never sleep outside the lodge again.”

“How right you are,” said the other girl. “This man is truly ugly and so rough that it really hurts. I’m never sleeping outside again, either.”

But they had a problem because after making love to them, Wolverine always fed them and then carried them back up, willy-nilly, to that eagle’s nest. He didn’t want them to get away—ever. He knew when he had a good thing.

One day when Wolverine was out hunting, what did those suffering girls see from their nest but Wolverine Woman. Wolverine Woman hadn’t met up with Wolverine Man yet, and she was so ugly, truly surpassingly ugly, that no man wanted her.

“Hey, beautiful woman down there,” the two girls called, “up here, Doll Baby! If you get us down and take our place in this nest, we promise you a handsome young man to sleep with. He comes up here to make love to us, but we’re humans, and we have to get home to our people. But he’s such a nice man, we don’t want to disappoint him. He should have a good woman to sleep with.”

“You're absolutely right,” answered Wolverine Woman, “and so generous! I sure would like to meet that handsome man.”

Wolverine Woman got those two girls down safely, and they hurried off as fast as they could. They had never run so hard in their lives.

At night, Wolverine Man arrived, climbed the tree, and got Wolverine Woman down. He was in such a hurry he didn’t even notice that there was only one woman in the eagle nest. He made love to her all night, and when dawn finally came, Wolverine Woman said, “You're not as handsome as I was told.”

Wolverine Man saw that he had been tricked. “You're not a raving beauty either,” he told her.

“Let's stop this,” she said. “Face it: we’re incredibly ugly. Nobody else would have us, so let’s stay together.”

“I guess you're right,” said Wolverine Man, so they stayed together. There’s nobody so ugly that he can’t find a mate.

When the two girls played that trick on Wolverine Man, it was the first time they stopped being foolish and got smart.

And they all lived happily ever after.

And since Wolverines are nocturnal, it was dark out when they’d get it on most of the time anyway. Wolverine Man still thought of the silly Ojibway girls all the time, but he didn’t miss them because they were kind of annoying and not that good in bed. Plus, who wants to be with someone who doesn’t want to be with you?

In the end he was better off with Wolverine Woman, who turned out to be fun, funny, caring, a good listener, a good storyteller, a good cook, and just really good company in general. And since they were both Wolverines, they liked doing a lot of the same things, like hunting, scavenging, curling up together in the den all warm and cozy, and going for long walks in the woods in the moonlight. And soon they realized the advantages of being together, as they were better able to hunt and defend their territory together than they were alone. Neither of them ever really had any question in their minds that being together beat the hell out of being alone. Who wants to get old all on their lonesome?

Sometimes, when they were making love, Wolverine Woman wondered whether her husband was fantasizing about fucking those silly Ojibway girls, but she never busted his balls about it.

You wanna know why?

Because that’s what she was thinking about too.

—Told by David Red Bird in New York City, 1974, and recorded by Richard Erdoes, with my additions in bold.