Strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime
By David Futrelle
It’s not like any of you need any more reminders that incels are some of the worst people on planet earth, but here’s one anyway, in the form of a comment on Incels.me from a dude who thinks that following 14-year-olds down the street in order to freak them the hell out is kinda fun and every incel should try it.
Here’s the full text:
I once approached a teenage girl (around 14 years old) by asking her for directions at first. Then I proceeded to ask for her name. She became afraid and started walking away. I followed her, and then she went from walking briskly to running. Her gait was peculiar, because she ran like a newborn fawn, turning around every so often, trying to see if I am still following.
(Now, I want to make clear that I absolutely abhor rape and did not have any intention in that direction, not molestation not any of that.)
She had no reason to be frightened. I wasn’t gonna do anything.
But the feeling when you follow a girl and she notices you, and she tries to loose you or picks up the pace. That is kind of a good feeling. You become important to her. You are no longer some random insignificant face in the crowd.I know it is kind of low-level behaviour. But I do enjoy doing that. I go to another city, look for a girl that is walking by herself and start following her. After a while they notice you. After dark, after sunset it may suffice to just walk in the same general direction as a girl that is walking in front of you. They become paranoid.
I recommend you lonely incels try it some time. Just to make her afraid. If you know your limits and don’t actually harass -let alone rape- that girl, it should be harmless psychological fun.
Yes, that girl had no reason to be scared of the exceedingly creepy dude following her down the street because he wasn’t really planning to rape her though the thought had definitely occurred to him.
H/T — @iAmTheWarax
@Dvärghundspossen
Firstly: Hej! Hur mår du? (I’m learning Swedish, my husband & I want to move our family there.
Secondly, since I live in the us, whenever I’m in public presenting as femme, it with my husband (I’m nonbinary, born with a Male body, my husband is a FtM trans man) I’m carrying a gun.
Like, I get the gun debate, I do. But I’m not carrying because I think ISIS is comingfor my tiny midwestern town or that 12 year old black kids asking for directions are scary, I’m carrying because I really don’t feel like having to run for my life from transphobic, homophobic rednecks.
I live in a town of 2,000 people in a super conservative state in the midwest (Mike Pence, the current vice president, was our governor). The number of times I’vebeen harassed and had to wonder if my kids were gonna see their parent get murdered today is enough that I eventually got a handgun permit. I grew up with rifles, and actually go hunting now and again, but I am now trained with handguns as well.
TFW you see the typos in your post after the editing time has passed.
Also @Cindy: S’up, heat packing buddy?
Also also @Idli: it might be a patriarchal trope, but it also can be necessary since we’re stuck in a patriarchy. I had to get in several fights in high school when people were coming after my older sister, she weighed 90lbs soaking wet with rocks in her pockets, and there was a kid in our youth group who would grope her, but she wasn’t believed because he was a Deacon’s son. So I had to get him to leave her alone.
Alan:
“That ocean voyage was just about blowing off steam”
@Moggie
I doubt it. That’s what makes them the worst of us
@Alexis: Tack, jag mår bra, om än nervös inför min jobbintervju på fredag. (That’s a lot to unpack for you! 😉 ).
Re the gun, yeah I get where you’re coming from….
dslucia said:
“after I started reading here, I started paying attention to how often people refer to women as “females” in casual conversations. It shows up with frightening frequency, even from women.”
Is that an incel thing? I associate it with military guys, or former military, and the ones I’ve heard use it have all been happily married and a long way from the incel mentality.
Alexis, I wish someone like you would get airtime on mainstream news in this gun debate to give your unique (or maybe more common than thought) perspective. That you have to pack to protect yourself from the packers who are packing against The State, or the other, or whoever.
I also wish every African American citizen of legal gun purchasing age (what is that age, by the way?) would go out and buy a few guns each. Maybe even form a “NRA” (Negro Rifle Association) lobby (sarcastic spin on the old racist “negros with guns” trope).
We all know this would bring gun control to pass in like under a month because there’s nothing these gun toters fear more than n-w-g’s.
See Reagan and the Black Panthers for some historical background.
@idli sambar revolution
I wish you stop trying to use black people’s discrimination to push gun laws. Oh and stop using the n word while you’re at it. Comments policy.
I’m not a black person, but in my experience…
@idli, in north america, using the N-word to describe a black person is at best horribly insensitive, and usually horribly racist. I understand that that’s not true everywhere, but when talking about African Americans, should probably consider their opinions on the word first.
(If you’re familiar with the Black Panthers and the Nixon era, you should probably recognize that)
I’m also not black, so I can’t speak for any black people, but I personally, am not a fan of people who are not black advocating for people who are black amassing guns in hopes it’ll scare conservatives into allowing gun control.
If black people start amassing guns and walking around with them in open carry areas, there’s a pretty damn good chance that they’ll just be harassed, arrested or even shot and killed by the police. I’m not cool with asking a group of marginalized people to sacrifice their own lives for the cause like that. Especially since it’s no longer the 1970’s and I don’t even think this tactic would do more than just encourage even more racism and even more white nationalist weapon stockpiling.
It’s really no better than saying women should just have sex with incels in the hopes of appeasing them.
@idli
The answer to ‘racists would demand gun control if black people all had guns’ isn’t ‘then black people should go out and buy guns’. The answer is ‘then white people shouldn’t be so goddamn racist’
Considering what happened to Philando Castile, Tamir Rice, John Crawford III, and any number of other black people who the police suspected might possibly be committing the crime of having a gun while black, I think that asking the black community to carry guns more often seems INCREDIBLY uncaring of their lives and safety, to say the least.
“Here’s something that black people can do to end racism!”
“Here’s something that women can do to end misogyny!”
The side-eye, it sidles.
Dear idli sambar revolution, I would take it as a personal favour if you didn’t say questionable things in literally every thread, disturbing the normal flow of conversation.
If you don’t think that you can post without saying questionable things, then maybe you should examine your motivation for posting.
Hello.
Say a man who have never done any psychology course and has less empathy than a stone in a quarry…
Asking direction is a classical opener, in PUA world, in the same range as asking for the time or light for a cigarette, except that it needs more context – a point that many of those “artists” do not really grab. It is a chance, because it allows to spot them quicker (it is more problematic whit the ones who know when to use it). In all cases, the purpose is to get the attention of the person (the target, as they say, because this give themselves the feeling of being hunters, thus superiror to the person). And yet, they are often the ones complaining about “attention whores” (sorry for the term)…
Have a nice day.
@Trixie True
Yeah, military use female a lot, as do cops and emergency services. In specific descriptive contexts though – doubt you’ll ever hear any military using females as a general word in place of using women, like these fuckmuppets do.
(We do too frequently use ladies and lads here in the UK – which has it’s own problems and very patronizing tone. It’s heavily discouraged and is dying out, but some of the multi-striped dinosaurs are fossilised in their ways.)
@Alexis
I have such strongly mixed feelings about this:
“Also also @Idli: it might be a patriarchal trope, but it also can be necessary since we’re stuck in a patriarchy. I had to get in several fights in high school when people were coming after my older sister, she weighed 90lbs soaking wet with rocks in her pockets, and there was a kid in our youth group who would grope her, but she wasn’t believed because he was a Deacon’s son. So I had to get him to leave her alone.”
This is real, but often IMO becomes a tool of oppression itself. Having seen what the “protection” of controlling men can involve, I like to avoid showing too much gratitude to men I don’t know (and some I do), because some think it gives them license to do more than favors.
Also I’ve found a lot of really protective conservative men, when pressed, themselves have messed up ideas about consent and power that disincline me to trust their motives. I’ve seen men who talk about shooting bad boyfriends turn around and talk about gazing at their own nieces and daughters, and I don’t think this is uncommon. For historical reasons I still feel unsafe around my own dad – even though I was a “boy”, he embodied that combination of protection and abuse.
I know what’s needed is needed, and genuinely kind men exist… But. Male protection will never not make me weary.
@ Shadowplay:
I think it’s also the difference between male/female, adj. and male/female, noun.
(I admit that I will accept female-as-a-noun in the context of “clumsy-but-sincere flirtation between the comedy sidekicks in an old movie.”)
Mostly, yeah, but not completely. Thinking on it, male/female are invariably used for casualties (both ours and (most definitely) the innocent) as a way of getting a bit of head space while dealing with the problem and the immediate aftermath. It is a depersonaliser – used deliberately to let you function for a time. Figure it’s the same for the cops and the emergency services.
“male/female are invariably used for casualties (both ours and (most definitely) the innocent) as a way of getting a bit of head space while dealing with the problem and the immediate aftermath. It is a depersonaliser – used deliberately to let you function for a time. ”
I don’t believe that the military guys I’ve known use it to depersonalize so much as a form of formal language. They don’t generally refer to women they know as females or female, but they’ll use it when discussing the practices in another country, for instance. “That’s a job for females there; males do this,” sort of stuff. It’s used for women and men in the abstract. When they’re talking about people they know, it’s “women” or “ladies.” or whatever.
Subtle difference, perhaps. Guess I need to pay more attention.
I’ve heard cops use it differently:
“There are three females in the alley. We’ll keep an eye out in case they try something.”
“We are continuing to hunt for the suspected killer of the 24-year-old woman.”
The difference seems to be based on whether those are people that the police inflict violence on, or inflict violence on behalf of. I’m not an expert, but I understand that this may tie into the concept of violability, which is one of the aspects of objectification.
I think that’s more of an internal versus external thing.
Police are to taught to use standard terminology in communications. That avoids ambiguity. So it’s “IC” code (that’s ethnic appearance) + apparent gender + other identifiers like height etc.
But when doing press stuff or communiques with the public they use everyday language, woman, girl, man, boy etc.
Totally off-topic, but the image and caption at the top led my warped and twisted mind to this neat song by Tom Smith
When I grow up I want to be Peter Lorre by Tom Smith
Whoops that should be “wary” at the end of my post. Though “weary” is really just as accurate.
@Dvärghundspossen
Actually I understood all of it. I’ve only been working on svenska for about oh,
fyra månad. I can understand it in writing better than I can speak it.
@Idli uh, that is not at all a good plan.
@cyborgette
Oh I get it. I’m not saying the idea of “her dad or brother will kick his ass “doesn’t reek of the “women as property” trope. It’s super gross, and I totally get being suspicious. I also don’t subscribe to the “women are delicate flowers who must be protected” shit.
It’d be hard for me to, since as a nonbinary who identifies as femme I’m hardly delicate. I feel more like just how it isn’t my responsibility as a trans+ person to stop transphobia (it is the responsibility of straight allies to call out other straight people for their bulshit) it’s also the responsibility of anti-sexist men to call out sexist men. Does that make sense?
And that didn’t really apply to my story, which only came up because the article David wrote reminded me super forcefully of shit that happened to my sisters when we were kids. So I guess I shouldn’t have phrased it as being her brother that had to stick up for her, and focused more on “when my sisters were younger they got stalked all the time”.
To anyone wondering about my gun stance. I’m all for gun control. By all means let’s up background checks, DV arrests mean no guns, increase waiting periods, make permits back into “may issue” instead of “shall issue” and most importantly for cutting down on mass shootings, any rifle that fires a bullet stronger than a 100 grain .223 has to be either bolt, lever, or pump action. You want to be able to fire 5.56 NATO military rounds (the most common “assault rifle” round) you can’t have it be semi-auto.
For that matter, if you can’t demonstrate why you need it, you can’t get a CC permit. There’s a lot that can be done, and should be done.
CW: violence & sexual assault…
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I didn’t want to have to walk around with a gun, but I’ll tell you right now, I’ve been assaulted, I’ve been raped, I’ve had death threats leveled at my kids. It’s not a matter of “ohh, I feel like Rambo” it’s simply that I needed to level the playing field. The homophobes, transphobes, alt-right monsters are armed, so until sanity returns to our system, I need to be too.
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End CW.
@Alexis
It makes complete sense, and I’m sorry for not keeping more awareness of the context. Male protectionism is a… “thing” with me, and I need to get better at not knee-jerking in response to “things”. This is clearly some pretty intense stuff for you, too, and I hope I didn’t cause you too much hurt.
You’ll get naught but sympathy from me re: guns, BTW. (Though I’m in Boston at the moment, so the main armed bigots I worry about are cops.)
Nah, no harm no foul, we’re cool. Just wanted to explain where I was coming from.
More black people with guns would just mean more “justified” police shootings: “He had a gun on him!”
RE: The original topic.
Maybe someone needs to start stalking *him* to maybe instill some empathy into his tiny little neckbearded brain.
Unfortunately some one putting this into practice
https://www.ksat.com/news/man-followed-neisd-student-home-tried-to-enter-her-apartment-letter-to-parents-says?__vfz=medium%3Dsharebar