Incels and the holy Trinity

I have been reading about Incels following the recent 'Adolescence' series on Netflix. The acting was raw and felt real, the characters credible and relatable. My attention focused mainly on father and son, Eddie and Jamie Miller—on their relationship, looking for causality, for that single moment in time that would subvert the character of a seemingly happy-go-lucky kid and lead him to be drawn to Incel ideology that resulted, ultimately, in gruesome manslaughter. I was expecting more in-depth analysis of how Jamie had bought into this distorted vision, and I was slightly underwhelmed. Still, I appreciate the courage it took to bring this subject to light.

While it is easy to point a trembling, horrified finger at Jamie for murdering his school mate, Jamie himself was not a bad kid but a boy on the cusp of becoming a young man, left to his own devices and therefore easily swept into the sticky spider web of the manosphere.

The Incel ideology is complex—not a topic to be squeezed into a single post. The depth of its dangerous, misogynist, supremacist message is the tip of an iceberg of pain and deep loss of identity that affects young, and less young, generations today. Behind the bravado, I see hurt, a lack of direction, a lack of positive male role models to ferry and guide young adolescents toward becoming mature, self-assured men.

Jamie's father was present in the expected role of provider and protector, working hard to put a roof over his family's head and navigating his son's changes the best he could with the tools he knew—possibly in the same way as he himself had gone from young teenager to grown man, and his father before him.

Could a different father have intuitively caught on to what was happening to his boy? Maybe, and maybe not. This is not about Jamie's father's failings, if any.

I stand by the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child. The nuclear family-centric culture, with its emphasis on going at it alone—a model that puts enormous strain on the parents—is not sustainable for the parents, nor is it healthy for the children.

The role of 'the father' in the development of a child of any gender is an integral, fundamental part of a child's life, and yet we tend to discount it in favour of that of the 'Mother' with its inverted commas and capital M, as if the male's only contribution were merely a squirt of DNA and subsequent funding.

I believe that a blood bond is not always as significant as the bond that is created with those role models a child can look up to and whose healthy behaviour a child can mirror and learn from.

However, how can a kid learn if the compact, standalone, self-reliant nuclear family is inward-looking, so self-righteous as to forget that once the little prince or princess is grown, they will have to face a world full of little princes or princesses just as precious and perfect as they are? Good luck with that, and with the sense of entitlement that this entails.

Men can and must contribute to being role models in any child's life. It really does not matter if the child is their own or somebody else's. A healthy, positive interaction will always be an opportunity for growth.

Yet, as long as we live 'our' family experience as separate from the rest of the community and morally superior—a concept never made explicit yet well and truly believed—it will be difficult for any person to want to take on that role, lest they risk the ire of 'The Mother' whose little angel can do no wrong, whose genius is misunderstood, and whose misbehaviour is seen as a form of self-expression that should not be curbed.

Incel ideology is one of victimhood, masking a deep-rooted sense of entitlement that can end with violent and often fatal consequence yet before pointing the finger out we should look deeply within, at the trinity of The Mother, The Father and The Community.

Next time....The Mother

( Not AI generated, good old elbow grease 😉 )