Someone to blame

 Oh right, now we're talking about incels. 

The horrors of Plymouth, when some arsehole who's name I'm not going to bother remembering because you shouldn't decided the right course of action was to kill some innocent people are too fresh and too raw to consider with an objective eye, but the story is one that's as old as time itself, a sickening rehash of a theme that we've heard many, many times before. A fragile male ego snaps, women are blamed.

I've had enough of this shit. In the immediate aftermath, it took only the width of a second for various chin-stroking male wankers to start opining about the causes of the incel movement, the poisonous kool-aid which beardy mc fuckface who's name I'm not going to bother remembering had been glugging. Unsurprisingly, they concluded that it was the fault of women.

If you're unfamiliar with it, the term stands for "involuntarily celibate": that is to say, no sane woman would go near you with a barge pole. And the incels reckon that it's women's fault for not wanting to sleep with them, rather than theirs for being basement-dwelling weirdoes with a distressing dress sense, no social skills and a faint but persistent background odour of piss.

Am I going to spend any more time on their argument? No, I am not. For it is evidently ludicrous. But I find them, as a group, interesting, more in how they've arrived at their conclusions than any other reason.

I am not involuntary celibate. I am a happily married father of three, married to an intelligent, interesting, wonderful woman. It is my pleasure and my privilege. And in my life I have had the honour of being the boyfriend, partner, whatever of some very cool, very fascinating women. Lucky me.

But, and this is the crucial part, I didn't feel any of this was owed to me. At no point during my long girlfriendless years did I think it was girls fault that they didn't want to date me, and believe me, I've had some pretty long dry spells. The closest I've come to feeling like that was at school where, as a fairly nerdy kid, I was very much ignored by girls until, one day, I wasn't. As a teenager I fretted over every aspect of why this might be, too ugly, too spotty, too fat, not good at sport..all of that. Maybe it was the girls fault for not seeing how amazing I was, my Mum thinks I'm cool.

Because I was a fucking teenager. and that's how teenagers think.

Now, I was lucky enough to grow out of that. I realised pretty quickly that in school I was in one particular box, and when not in school, meeting girls suddenly became less problematic, I realised that there was a big world outside, and in that world there were girls who might want to kiss me. All of which is by way of illustrating that, while I was undoubtedly involuntarily celibate in one environment, I managed to negotiate it without shooting anyone.

See, I think people are approaching this from the wrong angle. Don't try to understand the incels. Don't try to empathise. They are misogynists, pure and simple. The reason they're not getting any is that they're toxic. it's as simple as that. 

And this whinging "The women MADE me an incel!" has it's counterpart in all manner of dubious types, the racists claiming that other races made them racist, the people who deride BLM and Extinction Rebellion, citing their actions as excuses for their own shit behaviour, I am very, very over it.

I've blogged recently about a lack of emotional intelligence (which I will stick my hand up to) being the cause of a lot of the world's problems, but I'm coming round to the view that a lack of personal resilience is it's evil twin, and I wonder why that is. I'm not talking resilience in terms of being strong and tough, I mean resilience in terms of being able to take a knock and keep going, sure, feel sad for a bit, but pick yourself up and crack on.

I should be very careful at this point and say explicitly that I am NOT talking about mental health issues, anxiety, depression, or anything else that puts you on your arse and keeps you there, I've seen what that does, and it's pernicious.

I think what I'm talking about is more the ability to recognise your own flaws, and work to counteract them. The ability to admit being wrong, but not have it send you into a spiral of blame and self loathing and yes, the ability to say, honestly and truly to yourself and others "yep, that was my fault, I'm to blame here". it's a tough lesson to learn, but it's a necessary one, and, I would argue, it's one of the best bits of self-care you can do. When I finally worked this one out, it felt incredibly freeing. But I still have to work on it, the urge to blame others is the easy way out, and as with all easy ways out, it is seductive.

There are no easy answers, as the peerless William Goldman wrote in The Princess Bride "Life is pain, Princess, anyone who says otherwise is selling something". But one thing is for certain, no one is to blame for those shootings in Plymouth except for whatever the fuck that self-pitying, whining, murdering bastard's name was. May he rot in hell.