I CAN'T GET NO SATISFACTION

2018 has been a year of vocabulary building for me.  Last week, I learned a new word – “Incel.”  It means involuntarily celibate, which certainly described my adolescence.  But this being 2018, involuntary celibacy has become a protest movement, the latest fad among men’s rights advocates. 

It’s easy to mock these guys, but some of the more impressionable lads among them have turned violent.  Last week in Toronto, a self-described Incel committed mass murder by driving his van down a busy sidewalk and killing 10 pedestrians.  He wasn’t the first misogynistic mass murderer.  In 1989, a sexually frustrated shooter killed 14 people in Montreal.  In 2014, another sexually frustrated guy went on a shooting spree in Santa Barbara, killing 6 people and wounding 14 others.

Members of the Incel movement aren’t just horny.  What separates them from me in my adolescence is that Incels have a sense of entitlement.  Women owe them, dammit!  They’re mad as hell and they aren’t going to take it anymore.  This being 2018, of course Incels have online forums dedicated to nursing their grievances.  Because spending all your time online with other lonely men complaining about women is a surefire way to attract hot babes.

Radical Incels are at war with the world of Chads (sexually active men) and Stacys (sexually active women).  Incels believe that they’re an oppressed minority, and they demand justice.  And by justice, they apparently mean random acts of violence against women who won’t have sex with them. 

Donald Trump isn’t an Incel, but he shares the Incel’s sense of entitlement.  Trump’s money and fame give him access to women.  He can marry the ones he temporarily likes, cheat on them with impunity, and dump them when he’s ready to move on.  “When you’re famous, they let you do it.”  That’s the ultimate Incel fantasy.