Incels and the rage of the rejected

It’s a perfect storm: the rise of the tremulous snowflake meets US gun culture and the force of #MeToo. Now women are being punished.

Santa Fe school massacre victim Shana Fisher had rejected the advances of Dimitrios Pagourtzis for months. He shot her first.

Rejection. Who hasn’t felt its sting? In a relationship, perhaps. Or at work, or with a friend, or perhaps in the sphere of that most bitter rejection of all — within a family. Baked into your psyche is a sense of abandonment that’s corrosive. The person who declares they’ve never been rejected is like the mother who declares her kids are perfect — you’re suspicious of both. What are they hiding, what are they afraid of? You’ve not lived fully if you’ve not grown from rejection; it’s a much greater teacher than success.

In literature, rejection is most often presented as a force for good. Galvanising and instructing, the narrative arc that helps the protagonist emerge a stronger person by experiencing that most universal of soul-afflictions. It helps you understand the battles of others, for everyone has them. We’re meant to grow by learning resilience, enduring, picking ourselves up and dusting ourselves down.

Yet in these misaligned times, an extremely private sense of rejection is having devastating consequences. Men brimmed with fury over female rejection are feeling it’s within their right to commit atrocities. There’s no redemptive character arc, no sense of growth or resilience, no demonstration of personal fortitude — just a festering rage coupled with a sense of cowardly entitlement. If women won’t sleep with you, you’ll kill them for not doing so.

Virgin Elliot Rodger couldn’t understand why women didn’t like him, so he vowed to ‘punish you for it’.

It’s a perfect storm: the rise of the tremulous snowflake meets US gun culture and the force of the #MeToo movement where women are saying no, actually, more vocally than they ever have before. Which brings us to the rise of the Incel movement — short for Involuntary Celibate — a dark, online subculture of men unable to find romantic partners. And that’s the fault of women, of course.

At this year’s school shooting at Santa Fe High School in Texas, where 10 people died, the gunman had been repeatedly spurned by the first girl he shot. Sadie Rodriguez said her daughter, Shana Fisher, had endured “months of problems from this boy… he kept making advances and she repeatedly told him no”. Rodriguez said the killer had been increasingly aggressive until her daughter stood up to him. “A week later he opens fire on everyone he didn’t like.” It followed a misogynistic car rampage in Toronto, carried out by a murderer reportedly furious that women wouldn’t sleep with him. Then there was the 2015 shooting at an Oregon college by a man who complained of being a virgin. In 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people in California and left behind a 140-page sexist manifesto and videos, warning: “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it.”

FILE - This undated photo provided by the Galveston County Jail shows Dimitrios Pagourtzis. The parents of Pagourtzis, accused of killing 10 people at a Southeast Texas high school, say they were not negligent and that they did as much as they could for their son, according to their attorney. The Galveston County Daily News reports the comments involve the May gunfire at Santa Fe High School. Pagourtzis remains in custody. (Galveston County Jail via AP)

The Incel movement is about male supremacy — a belief that certain men (usually white and insecure) have a God-given right to women’s bodies. When they can’t get what they believe they’re entitled to, they turn murderous. This feels like terrorism. Weak, cowardly male terrorism, inflicted on females; the insecure man reacting with violence to the strength and voice and individuality of the objectified other.

A sense of rejection hinges on the desire for approval from another. If women don’t approve, the rejection can feel acute. And the female radar is often finely attuned to the male who doesn’t actually like women, who feels entitled to them, views them as objects. So, we reject. And in this new world, as our voices get louder and we’re learning to say no, actually, with more force than ever before, it feels like the nihilistic Incel movement is only going to attract more followers. Rejection was never meant to be as cowardly as this.

The most dangerous time for an abused woman is when she’s leaving a relationship. And as women, and the world collectively, leave the insecure misogynist behind, it feels like an increasingly dangerous time for females. We’re seeing it in the indignant male rage, the hegemonic push-back — in big ways and small — all around us.