This was an excellent read. Well done. As someone owning a probably too simplistic theory that explains the rise in conflicting gender relations, including more loneliness and neurotics that manifest as incel-sim or femcel-ism, as being caused by bad economic policy connected with technological advances that have led us to new social experimentation pushing female dominance that has broken our gender-specific human evolutionary trajectory... this was good for me. Now, after reading this, while not completely giving up this theory, I see maybe that things are just the same as they always have been, but with technology tools that both amplify the ubiquitous challenges of human sexuality while also providing some more remedies.
Incels and Femcels and Excels.....The differing nature of male and female sexual desire has been the subject of much empirical research in recent times. Some of it is buried away as dry academic research papers, some has found its way into book form and some into journalism (both broadsheet and pop magazine). “Certain traits associated with masculinity seem to be attractive to women on average: dominance, confidence, assertiveness, and extraversion”. Numerous studies of sexual desire have reached the same (broad-brush) conclusion that male sexuality is primarily about desiring whereas women’s is more about the desire to be desired. This, it is argued, accounts for the particular attractiveness of men with an insistent, confident ‘charm’ – one that makes the woman feel that it must be her and no one else will do. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
This is interesting to me because I first heard femcel as an accusation toward lonely lesbians, not women who would like to be with men but aren't for whatever reason. I've been mostly unaware of the heterosexual-specific community of femcels.
When I encountered it, femcel was being used to demean lonely lesbians, similar to the vitriol with which some people call men incels. I will admit that I have been afraid to openly discuss feeling loneliness related to being a single lesbian because of this. Loneliness is a difficult thing and we all share that, even though we may feel it in different ways.
"... convinced that I was a virgin because I was too ugly and awkward for male attention ..."
You referenced your attractiveness a few times in the post, but never made any reference to your weight. Were you thin, slim, chubby, doughy, "thick", etc. when you were a Femcel? I ask because every girl I have known that has dealt with serious loneliness was, at least a little bit, overweight.
" ...lost ten pounds from stress..."
Were you underweight after that, or closer to your 'ideal' weight?
"... questionable views on certain historical events"
Phenomenal line.
"... men make their loneliness a spiritual burden to be suffered through, women make it an aesthetic."
No. This is a great post, but our experiences are not analogous. Men and women are truly different. There is no Female version of being Emasculated, which is that word only exists for men. There is no female version of being cuckolded. And there are slights and indignations that girls can, and do, experience that guys, basically, never will.
"The heart of the debate has always been, for me, whether the self-identified femcels are actually unattractive women. This is an inherently unsatisfying question because attractiveness is generally subjective..."
No. We have known, for a long time now, that their are some obvious and universal signs/factors of attractiveness (i.e. Symmetry, Large Eyes, Healthy Skin, Waist/Hip ratio, etc.)
Again, this was a great post and it is always great to hear that someone has found love.
I appreciate that we can all be made to feel "less than", but there is a reason why there is no phrase like "... she was effeminated." That word does not exist because our experiences are not analogous.
There is no analogous experience that men have that compares to giving birth.
This is why it is important to accept and appreciate 'the other' for what they are.
The reason no word exists is not because the experience does not exist. That women can be stripped of their feminine role and therefore feminine value does not mean that being emasculated is lesser.
Giving birth is a physical experience. You are creating another human life with your body, and subsequently, a child is leaving your body through your vaginal canal. Of course men cannot experience that.
Not living up to gendered and sexual expectations can be and in fact is a shared experience.
"That women can be stripped of their feminine role and therefore feminine value does not mean that being emasculated is lesser."
People can be "stripped" of all sorts of things that make them feel all sorts of ways, but our experiences are not analogous.
"Giving birth is a physical experience. You are creating another human life with your body, and subsequently, a child is leaving your body through your vaginal canal. Of course men cannot experience that."
Almost everything that a woman experiences and all of the emotional and psychic impacts that come from pregnancy and childbirth is something that a man will never, truly, be able to appreciate. And that is OK. We are different. Our differences, by and large, make us more attractive to, and complement, one another.
I'll say it again, our experiences are not analogous.
I'm not arguing that men and women are carbon copies. What I'm saying is that both gender roles come with expectations, and failing to meet those expectations carries unique burdens for both sexes. It's not worse for men.
Yes, men cannot give birth - that's a physical reality, not an emotional experience. You don't create life with your body. But women can profoundly fail to meet society's idea of womanhood, and it's unbelievably painful and causes immense existential angst.
The notion that women don't have an equivalent to emasculation is simply false. The difference is that it's often invisible or dismissed by society at large, especially in the last decade. I don't know where right-wing men got the idea that being a woman who fails at a still fairly narrow idea of womanhood is "easy." That's not the reality. And to the extent the berth of possible identities has widened - it's widened for both sexes.
I'm saying this partly for the benefit of those reading along, because I know that no matter what I say or how I explain it, some will remain set in their ways. For some reason, in popular imagination, it's always "Women live on easy street and every woman has sexual power." Feminist overreach exists - that doesn't make being a woman easy or every woman desirable or every woman powerful.
Great writing, really inspired a lot of empathy in me. I’ve always been quite dismissive of femcels, thinking of the label as a kind of stolen valor—‘Most women can have casual sex whenever they want, why are they complaining?’ I never really considered what it must be like to receive next to no IRL male attention for most of your life. Sure, most women could have sex pretty easily, but never experiencing the validation of being actively courted must be crushing for your self-worth. It seems natural that such women would turn a bit misanthropic, aestheticizing their suffering as a form of cope.
Incredibly beautiful piece. You described the experience of being a woman on Twitter really well and you are right on the money on how they end up in those places, and it breaks my heart that so many stay because of a belief that somehow the validation will mend low self-esteem.
thank you so much - and completely agree re twitter, I think dating is best on there if it is a fast-turn around time (I got super lucky and found someone with 2 months ish). vs the girls who are less fortunate and linger around for months and years, they begin to have a sense of having "seen too much"
Hmm are there femcels? For sure there are plenty of overweight unkempt females with a baggage of psychological issues.
But any 5+ ( out of 10) girl I have ever known has no problems for casual if she if ever wants it herself. All she has to do is exposes herself to people and accept it .
Granted these two steps needs to be taken . But it is actually quite trivial in a senses that all of that can be achieved in one night without anything else
depends if "casual sex" is something you want. I was raised religious, still am, and casual sex was never an option on the table for me. perhaps if that's what I was seeking, I would have received it -- but ofc the point has been made before that this is also true of incels w/r/t prostitutes. a lot of the incel/femcels labels make more sense if you consider people who are seeking sex *and* romance and view the two as fundamentally inseparable.
I think if you are genuinely looking for a committed relationship, the murky shark infested waters of a porn soaked hook up culture make it difficult to met someone. Is “femcel” a rejection of this culture, which dehumanises and treats people as disposable garbage? God loves you and if it’s His Will, you will meet the right one in the right time. In the meantime, don’t take it personally if sharks don’t bite whenever you swim in these murky cultural waters - sounds like you are being protected without realising it ❤️
Well genuine connection is indeed hard(er) now both for men and women. Part of current zeitgeist.
And I have a hunch it is not going to be resolved by reverting back to traditionalism in the west. Relationships require a lot of work and sacrifice on both sides. Less and less people are willing to do that.
Most people rather stay lonely than to go through it. And as soon as there are semi adequate solutions for it ( ai companion bots?) divorce between sexes will be finalized and become part of the "normal"
Do they? I used to think I was averagely attractive. I’d get a lot of casual sex but never a boyfriend. One night in my twenties, after casual sex, the guy told me I was “very sexy for an ugly girl”, and I think he meant it as a compliment! I was utterly devastated and it forever changed the way I felt about myself.
I guess a lot of women do have an idea of where they are on the casual sex desirability spectrum, but not so sure that's true of the longer-term relationship spectrum. And, if there's any time women aren't aware of how they rate, it's when they are lonely and feel unattractive. That's all to say I could believe your fiance when he says you're beautiful, and you probably should too. Maybe accepting that will clean out some of the lingering femceldom from your system and help you be happier. I hope you get everything you want.
I come from a tech-hating conservative home too. I don't know that I can really relate, though. When I was in the thick of loneliness, I went online, but looking for a friend, not a date. I feel like my family would judge anyone I brought home, and even more so if it came out we met online.
The closest I came to inceldom is reading about looksmaxxing on r/Vindicta. That was calculating, though — basically I realized that I could get through life manipulating people into taking care of me just by being female. When it comes to dating, though, there's no way I would change my personality for something that important. I think so, anyway; it's not like I've ever even tried dating or flirting (what even is flirting? what some people call flirting just looks like conversation to me.)
The point about the general male vs general female reactions to loneliness (suffering lone hero vs tragic aesthetic) reminded me of some conversations I've had. It also made me realize that the fact that my parents have many of the supposed 'essential character traits' of their genders switched probably saved me from aestheticism. I even find fandoms and *especially* fandom-like following of political figures to be just weird.
(BTW, does anybody else have parents or a parent like that?)
Oh wait, I have a question. Now that you're Catholic, do you pray the rosary often? Do you feel anything different them from other forms of prayer? I tend to get chills, trembles, warm feelings, etc. no matter what style of prayer. I'm not Catholic, but I do use the rosary/chaplets at times.
Hmm, I don't feel like the essay actually completely answered the question in its title, unless the answer is something like "I dunno" or "it depends."
This was an excellent read. Well done. As someone owning a probably too simplistic theory that explains the rise in conflicting gender relations, including more loneliness and neurotics that manifest as incel-sim or femcel-ism, as being caused by bad economic policy connected with technological advances that have led us to new social experimentation pushing female dominance that has broken our gender-specific human evolutionary trajectory... this was good for me. Now, after reading this, while not completely giving up this theory, I see maybe that things are just the same as they always have been, but with technology tools that both amplify the ubiquitous challenges of human sexuality while also providing some more remedies.
Incels and Femcels and Excels.....The differing nature of male and female sexual desire has been the subject of much empirical research in recent times. Some of it is buried away as dry academic research papers, some has found its way into book form and some into journalism (both broadsheet and pop magazine). “Certain traits associated with masculinity seem to be attractive to women on average: dominance, confidence, assertiveness, and extraversion”. Numerous studies of sexual desire have reached the same (broad-brush) conclusion that male sexuality is primarily about desiring whereas women’s is more about the desire to be desired. This, it is argued, accounts for the particular attractiveness of men with an insistent, confident ‘charm’ – one that makes the woman feel that it must be her and no one else will do. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-less-desired
This is interesting to me because I first heard femcel as an accusation toward lonely lesbians, not women who would like to be with men but aren't for whatever reason. I've been mostly unaware of the heterosexual-specific community of femcels.
When I encountered it, femcel was being used to demean lonely lesbians, similar to the vitriol with which some people call men incels. I will admit that I have been afraid to openly discuss feeling loneliness related to being a single lesbian because of this. Loneliness is a difficult thing and we all share that, even though we may feel it in different ways.
I am a day late, but ...
"... convinced that I was a virgin because I was too ugly and awkward for male attention ..."
You referenced your attractiveness a few times in the post, but never made any reference to your weight. Were you thin, slim, chubby, doughy, "thick", etc. when you were a Femcel? I ask because every girl I have known that has dealt with serious loneliness was, at least a little bit, overweight.
" ...lost ten pounds from stress..."
Were you underweight after that, or closer to your 'ideal' weight?
"... questionable views on certain historical events"
Phenomenal line.
"... men make their loneliness a spiritual burden to be suffered through, women make it an aesthetic."
No. This is a great post, but our experiences are not analogous. Men and women are truly different. There is no Female version of being Emasculated, which is that word only exists for men. There is no female version of being cuckolded. And there are slights and indignations that girls can, and do, experience that guys, basically, never will.
"The heart of the debate has always been, for me, whether the self-identified femcels are actually unattractive women. This is an inherently unsatisfying question because attractiveness is generally subjective..."
No. We have known, for a long time now, that their are some obvious and universal signs/factors of attractiveness (i.e. Symmetry, Large Eyes, Healthy Skin, Waist/Hip ratio, etc.)
Again, this was a great post and it is always great to hear that someone has found love.
>There is no Female version of being Emasculated, which is that word only exists for men
there is, and it is to be made to feel like you are somehow less than a woman
I appreciate that we can all be made to feel "less than", but there is a reason why there is no phrase like "... she was effeminated." That word does not exist because our experiences are not analogous.
There is no analogous experience that men have that compares to giving birth.
This is why it is important to accept and appreciate 'the other' for what they are.
Vive la différence.
This reminds me of women who claimed that they have a prostate too ...
The reason no word exists is not because the experience does not exist. That women can be stripped of their feminine role and therefore feminine value does not mean that being emasculated is lesser.
Giving birth is a physical experience. You are creating another human life with your body, and subsequently, a child is leaving your body through your vaginal canal. Of course men cannot experience that.
Not living up to gendered and sexual expectations can be and in fact is a shared experience.
"That women can be stripped of their feminine role and therefore feminine value does not mean that being emasculated is lesser."
People can be "stripped" of all sorts of things that make them feel all sorts of ways, but our experiences are not analogous.
"Giving birth is a physical experience. You are creating another human life with your body, and subsequently, a child is leaving your body through your vaginal canal. Of course men cannot experience that."
Almost everything that a woman experiences and all of the emotional and psychic impacts that come from pregnancy and childbirth is something that a man will never, truly, be able to appreciate. And that is OK. We are different. Our differences, by and large, make us more attractive to, and complement, one another.
I'll say it again, our experiences are not analogous.
I'm not arguing that men and women are carbon copies. What I'm saying is that both gender roles come with expectations, and failing to meet those expectations carries unique burdens for both sexes. It's not worse for men.
Yes, men cannot give birth - that's a physical reality, not an emotional experience. You don't create life with your body. But women can profoundly fail to meet society's idea of womanhood, and it's unbelievably painful and causes immense existential angst.
The notion that women don't have an equivalent to emasculation is simply false. The difference is that it's often invisible or dismissed by society at large, especially in the last decade. I don't know where right-wing men got the idea that being a woman who fails at a still fairly narrow idea of womanhood is "easy." That's not the reality. And to the extent the berth of possible identities has widened - it's widened for both sexes.
I'm saying this partly for the benefit of those reading along, because I know that no matter what I say or how I explain it, some will remain set in their ways. For some reason, in popular imagination, it's always "Women live on easy street and every woman has sexual power." Feminist overreach exists - that doesn't make being a woman easy or every woman desirable or every woman powerful.
Incredible stuff. You are Top 3 writers writing for me right now Venus. At least! Thank you for getting this down on paper. Paper :')
tysm!
Great writing, really inspired a lot of empathy in me. I’ve always been quite dismissive of femcels, thinking of the label as a kind of stolen valor—‘Most women can have casual sex whenever they want, why are they complaining?’ I never really considered what it must be like to receive next to no IRL male attention for most of your life. Sure, most women could have sex pretty easily, but never experiencing the validation of being actively courted must be crushing for your self-worth. It seems natural that such women would turn a bit misanthropic, aestheticizing their suffering as a form of cope.
thank you so much, this means a lot!
I'm not on Twitter much but I feel this deeply. Thank you for this meaningful piece.
Happy you liked it. Venus is an extremely talented writer.
Fabulously well-written.
Incredibly beautiful piece. You described the experience of being a woman on Twitter really well and you are right on the money on how they end up in those places, and it breaks my heart that so many stay because of a belief that somehow the validation will mend low self-esteem.
thank you so much - and completely agree re twitter, I think dating is best on there if it is a fast-turn around time (I got super lucky and found someone with 2 months ish). vs the girls who are less fortunate and linger around for months and years, they begin to have a sense of having "seen too much"
Hmm are there femcels? For sure there are plenty of overweight unkempt females with a baggage of psychological issues.
But any 5+ ( out of 10) girl I have ever known has no problems for casual if she if ever wants it herself. All she has to do is exposes herself to people and accept it .
Granted these two steps needs to be taken . But it is actually quite trivial in a senses that all of that can be achieved in one night without anything else
depends if "casual sex" is something you want. I was raised religious, still am, and casual sex was never an option on the table for me. perhaps if that's what I was seeking, I would have received it -- but ofc the point has been made before that this is also true of incels w/r/t prostitutes. a lot of the incel/femcels labels make more sense if you consider people who are seeking sex *and* romance and view the two as fundamentally inseparable.
I think if you are genuinely looking for a committed relationship, the murky shark infested waters of a porn soaked hook up culture make it difficult to met someone. Is “femcel” a rejection of this culture, which dehumanises and treats people as disposable garbage? God loves you and if it’s His Will, you will meet the right one in the right time. In the meantime, don’t take it personally if sharks don’t bite whenever you swim in these murky cultural waters - sounds like you are being protected without realising it ❤️
Now that reliable and effective birth control has effectively divorced sex and reproduction, good luck getting that genie back into the bottle.
Well genuine connection is indeed hard(er) now both for men and women. Part of current zeitgeist.
And I have a hunch it is not going to be resolved by reverting back to traditionalism in the west. Relationships require a lot of work and sacrifice on both sides. Less and less people are willing to do that.
Most people rather stay lonely than to go through it. And as soon as there are semi adequate solutions for it ( ai companion bots?) divorce between sexes will be finalized and become part of the "normal"
Do they? I used to think I was averagely attractive. I’d get a lot of casual sex but never a boyfriend. One night in my twenties, after casual sex, the guy told me I was “very sexy for an ugly girl”, and I think he meant it as a compliment! I was utterly devastated and it forever changed the way I felt about myself.
That's a heartbreaking thing for someone to say to someone else.
Many women experience it.
Why keep picking those guys then?
I guess a lot of women do have an idea of where they are on the casual sex desirability spectrum, but not so sure that's true of the longer-term relationship spectrum. And, if there's any time women aren't aware of how they rate, it's when they are lonely and feel unattractive. That's all to say I could believe your fiance when he says you're beautiful, and you probably should too. Maybe accepting that will clean out some of the lingering femceldom from your system and help you be happier. I hope you get everything you want.
very kind of you, so glad you enjoyed the piece!
I come from a tech-hating conservative home too. I don't know that I can really relate, though. When I was in the thick of loneliness, I went online, but looking for a friend, not a date. I feel like my family would judge anyone I brought home, and even more so if it came out we met online.
The closest I came to inceldom is reading about looksmaxxing on r/Vindicta. That was calculating, though — basically I realized that I could get through life manipulating people into taking care of me just by being female. When it comes to dating, though, there's no way I would change my personality for something that important. I think so, anyway; it's not like I've ever even tried dating or flirting (what even is flirting? what some people call flirting just looks like conversation to me.)
The point about the general male vs general female reactions to loneliness (suffering lone hero vs tragic aesthetic) reminded me of some conversations I've had. It also made me realize that the fact that my parents have many of the supposed 'essential character traits' of their genders switched probably saved me from aestheticism. I even find fandoms and *especially* fandom-like following of political figures to be just weird.
(BTW, does anybody else have parents or a parent like that?)
Oh wait, I have a question. Now that you're Catholic, do you pray the rosary often? Do you feel anything different them from other forms of prayer? I tend to get chills, trembles, warm feelings, etc. no matter what style of prayer. I'm not Catholic, but I do use the rosary/chaplets at times.
Hmm, I don't feel like the essay actually completely answered the question in its title, unless the answer is something like "I dunno" or "it depends."
I’d like to get a post about vindicta commissioned