This is a reply to an article which I want to be read as “yes, and” and not “but”, meaning I agree with what is being said but wish to expand with some personal lived experiences.
Please read Jesse’s article first, and then come back.
The incel movement doesn’t exist in isolation from related movements indoctrinating “females”, with each movement existing within a false gender binary. These movements have relations with individualism, a narrow focus on nuclear families, and the reduction of multi-generational living and reduction of multi-generational (and in other ways diverse) communities.
Jesse included a TicToc video at the end of a recent article discussing how the male loneliness (incel) movement and the “girl boss” movements are designed to separate society and disallow solidarity in finding real solutions to a growing number of problems.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Quick side-note on terminology: I don’t label the problematic operating system “Capitalism”, as I have done deep-dives into Western European “Enlightenment” ideologies as systems. I see the problem as related to outdated Western European worldviews, spread through Empire and settler-colonialism.
For those who think that Western Socialism, Marxism or Communism would solve major problems, I offer:
The social constructs which seeks to erect and maintain binary gender silos is part of what happened with the Adult Autism group I was involved with over the past year. That group has been on pause for the month of May.
On Apr 30, 2025, I posted to a group chat for Special Interest Infodumps, where I made some observations about some issues we had over the last few months.
While the Canadian Federal Election is over, the growing (and deliberately fueled by special interest groups) divisiveness is not going away. It is much larger than a general confusion about the word "liberal" and "conservative", but a radical response to a lack of inclusion and the generation of helplessness in certain demographics (including younger people).
I wanted to point to the following -- but please avoid the videos if you are feeling vulnerable.
"In Canada, nearly half of men aged 18-34 identify with conservative populism. These figures aren't mere statistics; they signal a profound shift toward radical, yet highly engaged, political action rooted in a rejection of perceived powerlessness and exclusion.
The 764 network leverages exactly this sense of exclusion. Its sophisticated online manipulation tactics specifically target vulnerable youth—often those facing mental health struggles or social alienation—promising distorted versions of community, purpose, and power. "
I am very aware of my own mental health struggles and lifelong feelings of social alienation. Even though I'm a non-racialized (white) cis-hetero male, it is my age and other lived experiences that means that I'm not a target for these groups. I am going to be very aware that other members of our community are targets.
A reminder to other parts of the community with other demographic traits : please do whatever you can to avoid creating further social alienation. Language policing fellow Autistic people who are already extremely vulnerable, or virtue signally, only makes existing problems worse. While we may not agree with the alleged solutions they have been drawn to, everyone needs to be willing to accept that the problems they are triggered by are real. This society (not talking about individuals, but systems) is very sick, and the status-quo is not working.
I received a harshly worded response, suggesting it was not a systems problem, but a “men” problem, and that privileged men must fix themselves and other men.
“White men step up”, the person said, who I’ll give an alias of FGB for.
While I know about and have discussed my privileges, this is specifically an Autistic group. The demand was actually being made by FGB that I and others should police language and do other things I consider to be behaviourism to “fix men”. In this case it was behaviourism against Autistic people who are being declared “other” by someone I felt was projecting a false gender binary onto this Autistic community.
Individualism leads people to incorrectly believe Mysogyny and Androcentrism are things that “men” do to “women”, as opposed to being a flawed system which infects entire populations (of all genders - not a binary, and not one against the other).
I tried to direct the conversation away from a gender binary of individuals, and back towards systems.
I know what you are trying to say, but the problem with this thinking is that it effectively leaves everything up to some single white, rich, cis-hetero male (Maybe King Charles?), as everyone else looks at their intersectionality and says "them, not me".
In the following article I did a review of a Netflix TV series where I referenced the book "White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color" by Ruby Hamad.
There was someone who had actively campaigned for a party during the election (a “wrong” party in some peoples minds, but I don’t buy into any of the partisanship) who wrote “Door to door all I heard was a rallying cry for civility across Canada.”
My reply:
One of the many problems with Canadian politics is that there is a "rallying cry for civility", but for partisans it is near universally a pointing of the fingers to someone else. Whether it is left-center-right-green-red-purple-whatever it is "I am civil, but THOSE people aren't being civil".
What passes for Canada's political spectrum is essentially a mixture of feuding cultures of grievances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_resentment
Given most of the people I have communicated with in the face-to-face gatherings self-identify as being left-of-center, I will share a comedic video I regularly share in that type of conversation.
I hope you can imagine the equivalent for the right-of-center communities, and if you can't then please consider a deep dive into Canadian politics from outside of any current bubble (including any bubble of time).
Another (potentially “cis-male”) Autistic person entered the conversation, talking about social anxiety causing an inability to go to the mall by themselves, and how the language being used by FGB only seemed intent on generating arguments and division.
FGB being one of the “admins” of the facebook group, that person even expressed worry that they might get kicked out.
This degenerated into that person feeling pushed out of the group, and FGB doubling down on their desire to have an environment free of anyone who questions their specific way of thinking.
“Well I feel now that this place isn't for me …”
I tried to respond:
I'm sorry for any part I may have played in making you feel that way.
I've noticed a growing problem within this community, even in our face-to-face gatherings, and tried to bring it up into the open so that there could possibly be healing.
While I am in a different place in my lifelong learning journey, I remember vividly how I thought the majority of my younger life. I was taught from an early age that everyone was supposed to think the same way (alleged "human nature"). I was taught to try to fit into Canadian Culture, a derivative of Western European culture, which included Androcentrism, Anthropocentrism, and Individualism as three philosophies (moral stance, political philosophy, ideology, and social outlook, etc). While these concepts didn't feel right with me, I tried my best to fit in.
While the specific area of confusion might have been unique to me, the pressure as an Autistic person to mask their true selves and fit in may be one of the most common things among Autistic people.
Individualism is the most problematic, as it causes people to not see the systems (social structures, social constructs, social hierarchies, etc, etc) around them.
I know how the discussion of misogyny being a man problem, of racism being a White problem, etc made me feel -- personally attacked. I didn't do these things (as far as I knew at the time), so why blame me? I observed that non-White people are racist to other non-White people, and females will be misogynist to, and “social role” gatekeep, other females, so why blame me?
I have come to accept my true self, and that includes never understanding many of the worldviews https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/worldview that are part of Canadian culture, identity, etc. I am a systems person, and I naturally see social interactions, politics, etc as systems and relations, not in terms of individuals.
I wrote about the politics of resentment before. This politics spans the Canadian political spectrum, so it is not a “right wing” problem or a “left wing” problem. If you include individualism within your political philosophy, it is likely that rather than observing the systems which are the cause of a problem you observe, you will believe that there is some living person or group of people who is actively doing those things right now. This isn’t actually the case: most of the problems we see today were encoded into policy (social systems, laws, constitutions, etc) by groups of people who are long dead, and living people are simply trying to “fit in”, “go with the flow”, “live their lives”, “obey the law”, and other such things.
I’ve written about this in many contexts, but possibly the most drastic might be in policing. There is a culture of ACAB (All Cops Are Bad – well, another B word), which I don’t agree with. The job of law enforcement is to enforce the law, not subjectively as individuals decide which laws are “good” and which are “bad”. If you want to see the source of any particular issue (including racism in policing), you should not be looking at some mythical “bad apples”, but at the fact that Canadian law itself (including Canada’s constitution) includes racist policy. If you wish to enforce and obey Canadian law, part of what you will be doing fits directly into the social construct of race and racism. There is no way to avoid that, and blaming individuals for simply following the rules doesn’t help anything.
-----------
I hope this reply will help, and doesn’t make the growing problem even worse.
Unfortunately, my reply wasn’t seen by that person as they had already left the group.
I don’t write this article suggesting I have solutions to these problems, only to give yet another example where finger pointing and building stronger silos blocks any possible solution.
This is a serious problem that needs serious discussion, not finger pointing to some generated “other”.
Further videos that I wanted to share.
“The Patriarchy” exists, and is part of the false gender binary. It isn’t something that “men” are doing to “women” (as if there were only two genders, rather than a complex spectrum), but something that harms all of us.
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
This video was posted in reply an earlier video they did that received odd comments:
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Hey Russel, thanks, I really enjoyed this. Three things it does that I rarely see done together.
The refusal of individual blame is correct and unfashionable.
Most writing on this either blames a demographic or blames nobody. Holding "the system is sick" while still taking the grievances seriously is harder than either, and you do it.
You document the group breakdown honestly, including your own part in it.
That account has value beyond your argument. Purges and ostracism in autistic spaces are a known pattern, and first-person records of them are thin on the ground.
Naming the politics of resentment as spanning the whole spectrum, not one wing of it, is the right call, and you apply it to your own side first.
Where I think the argument works against itself:
1. Systemic analysis loses its point if it also dissolves accountability. The policing passage is where this shows. Officers enforce law, the law is racist, therefore blaming individuals "doesn't help anything". That structure means no participant in any system is ever answerable, which exempts FGB, and exempts you and me. It also removes the mechanism by which systems change, since systems only ever change through people inside them refusing something. Crenshaw's frame is "an account of power as much as it was an account of identities" (https://stimpunks.org/glossary/intersectionality), which is a tool for locating responsibility, not for dispersing it. The workable distinction is between someone acting badly who is open to change and someone who is not (https://neuroclastic.com/our-movement-needs-mediators-not-leaders), and neither is answered by pointing at the system.
2. You drop a named system while arguing systems must be named. You decline "capitalism" and substitute Western European Enlightenment worldviews. Talila Lewis's working definition names both: ableism as a system "deeply rooted in anti-Blackness, eugenics, misogyny, colonialism, imperialism, and capitalism" (https://stimpunks.org/glossary/ableism). Colonialism sits beside capitalism there, it does not replace it.
3. Systemic does not mean evenly distributed. Misogyny being a system rather than a thing men do is compatible with it landing unequally. Autistic women are around thirteen times more likely to die by suicide than average, and autistic accounts repeatedly document "no" being ignored. A systemic frame with no account of who absorbs the cost is the frame minus its evidence.
4. The strongest support for your point about autistic men sits inside the gender analysis, not outside it. Bell Hooks, "Disconnection is not fallout from traditional masculinity. Disconnection is masculinity", and the reading that emotional detachment is what turns boys into lonely, angry, broken people (https://stimpunks.org/glossary/toxic-masculinity). That gets you the recruitment mechanism without dissolving the category.
5. Double empathy applies in both directions here. Milton's point is that the incomprehension is mutual and "not a singular problem located in any one person" (https://stimpunks.org/glossary/empathy). The piece assigns motive to FGB throughout and resolves that mutuality in your favour. The pattern is documented: both sides carry the same narrative, each accusing the other of projecting, and both are partly right.
The mediators piece also offers a better prescription than "stop finger-pointing", which is itself a demand on other people's speech. Its version is "our movement needs more mediators, not more leaders", a role someone takes up rather than a rule imposed on others. That reads to me like what you were actually trying to do in that thread, and it is worth more than the conclusion you reached. Related, and relevant given you are describing harm inside a support space: there is an argument that traumatic rejection in autistic support settings is a health assault as worth preventing as corrupt services, made specifically in a Scottish policy context (https://neuroclastic.com/tying-down-a-duty-to-protections-for-fairness).