Have you ever felt as if human relations have been grinded down as of late? Does it feel as if every single aspect of human connection is commodified, systemitized, and eventually contractualized? I don’t think it’s radical to say there is a loneliness crisis among young people and the algorithmic despotism of the internet only adds gasoline to the ever growing sub zero flames of alienation. Because of this a lot of young people (myself included) flock to online spaces for community and identity. One of these online identities is that of the femcel. A play on the word “Incel” a femcel is a loveshy, counter cultural, and typically socially and sexually frustrated woman who primarily socializes via the internet.
Femcels are everything the modern zeitgeists say women shouldn't be: messy, genuine, and weird. The cultural right says women must be background objects and the cultural left says women must be as cynical and lowbrow as men. The femcel doesn’t stand above this, she is outside of it. Femcels typically have interests one could consider weird or unnatractive to the mainstream such as fanfic, erotic writing, visual novels, etc with a common theme of outsideness being present in their interests. Femcels as I previously said a femcel is seen as the female equivalent of an incel, but it begs the question. Why does incel need a female equivalent?
Now you may think this question is a bit odd, I mean what do I mean why does incel mean a female equivalent? Incels are all men right? Well sure but look at what incel stands for (a concerning amount of people don’t know its an acronym). Involuntarily Celibate, a person who desires sex but cannot access it. Now to me that's a fairly gender neutral term that can apply to anyone really. So why is the term incel seen as exclusively male and why are incels always male? I think the answer to this question is intrinsically tied to human evolution and natural selection.
If you look at the roles of men and women in the process of reproduction you come to realize one can afford to be alot less selective than the other. Women have the duty of carrying the fetus for nine months and since men typically did the more dangerous jobs in tribal societies it was women who would be left to raise the child should the husband perish. Women thus have evolved to be selective, they don’t just want to reproduce they want to be ensured they’re reproducing something worthwhile. Men on the other hand simply do need to spread the seed so to speak, it doesn’t matter if they’re reproducing with someone worthwhile, they just want to reproduce and if the first reproduction doesn’t work well they can reproduce again. Mind you none of this is saying anything about men and women from a personal perspective purely a biological one, most men probably wouldn’t leave their wives if they didn't like their kids. At least I hope. But this selectiveness is in fact a biological underpinning. And so it’s easy to see why incels are almost entirely male, women are simply more selective and men less so. If a woman walked into a supermarket and yelled out “I need sex!” at least three men would be in line within the millisecond while if a man did the exact same thing he’d have to inform any neighborhood he moved into of his arrival after the fact. So it should become clean Femcels aren’t just incels, most women can get laid easily so the celibacy is entirely voluntary. Femcels are generally frowned upon by alot of men from incels who rightly see them as not one of them, to alarmist and easily offended men who claim them to be just as bad as incels yet conveniently only seem to care about femcels. In general, femcels have been slandered as “posers” and many are trying to turn femcel into a dirty word like incel mostly from the right who want to have an annoying buzzword to commentate on gender politics like leftists do with the word incel.
It should be recognized however that just because femcels aren’t incels, doesn’t mean they don’t present a unique societal benefit. It is my opinion that femcels are not just positive forces in society, they could very well be the start of a revolutionary even aristocratic counter culture. The Spectacle as in the intersection of the mass media and the upper echelons of the capitalist class manipulates this evolutionary trend among men and women and turns love into what is essentially a cold war between men and women. Many incels claim women especially “stacies” as the benefactors of this practice. I however think women do not benefit from capitalist dating culture at all, much the opposite. In my opinion women have an alienating and burdensome role that reduces them to nothing more than at best trophies at worst meat.
To begin my dissection of why femcels are positive first we need to talk about the spectacle. The spectacle is a concept by French Marxist, Guy Debord in his most well known work Society of the Spectacle. Guy Debord existed in a context in which Marx had been thoroughly proven wrong: the workers never rose up in the industrial nations and capitalism had come out stronger after each financial crisis. Debord, an avid Marxist recognized this and came up with the theory of the spectacle as a response to Marx’s failed predictions. The spectacle according to Debord is a cultural force crafted by the capitalist media as a constructive reality that gives people false goals to achieve via consumption and labor. The spectacle permeates and incorporates everything it can not just commodities but concepts itself. Love included.
The modern spectacle pushes a forced reality that paints worth as the measure of one’s production for the economy. Indeed production for the economy and contribution to the spectacle in the form of wage labor and societal conformity is seen by many as contribution to society at large, this is because the spectacle needs to sell us a myth. It requires us to think that what we do and what we have is essential to the health of society and one of those is relationships. The relationship, romance to the spectacle is not a life long bond between two people. It is like everything is a commodity, one that needs to be monetized. Dating Apps turn dating into a competitive sport where people cynically scroll through stats and pick who is high enough, online dating and romantic influencers push insecurity and market it as empowerment and improvement, algorithmic feedback loops empower the most cynical, hateful, and delusional voices who push the same idea “it’s not about love, it’s about status”.
Relationships are in fact mostly about status, especially for men. For a sad amount of men to have a girlfriend or wife isn’t to have someone you love and care about, it’s to have something to show off to others and say “Look, I’m of value”. Because women do control the sexual and dating market, men treat dating like a math equation that you need to solve in order to get this status symbol. Because that is in fact what women are to a lot of men. Status symbols. Signs you made it and that you are a person of worth. One needs only to look at how the media portrays virgin men to see why this is. Men who haven’t had sex are seen as childish, immature, creepy, neckbears, total failures who deserve nothing but scorn and mock. Those who don’t fit against the spectacle’s perfect world are who the spectacle programs us to see them as subhumans (we see this alot with counter cultural movements such as satanists in the 80s, emos in the 2000s, and yes femcels). It’s honestly very understandable a lot of men have this view of women in a world that tells them if they don’t “win” in the sexual market place they border on subhuman.
This is of course a terrible and alienating deal for women too. Women are not sought out because they’re loved or cared for, women in this game are not even people. They are grails to be sought after, they are trophies, status symbols, robots meant to be programmed and used. This is why so many women are becoming disillusioned as we see in South Korea’s 4b movement. This market of emotion and flesh turns women from individuals yearning for love and connection into both opponents to be outwitted and prizes to be won. To be a femcel then is to throw off the alienating burdens of the spectacle and become a ghost in the machine. She refuses to be the grail and crafts a life based on her values and passion not that on the spectacle’s control that is why she draws the ire of conservatives who worship the spectacle as tradition and the incels who see she is not them but what they wish they could be, a being able to break from the machine instead of letting it break her. Femcels are a new aristocracy of the soul. Priestesses of a mystical digital cultural revolution against the spectacle, against misery and malaise itself.
While there are femcels do swear off men or do have some form of misandrist tendencies, many still have boyfriends this is because femcels do not wave away relationships as a whole only the cultural ideas that make relationships negative in the first place and that's what makes femcel culture so fundamentally different (and more positive) from incel culture. Femcels are generally more positive, more artistic, more interested in creativity than negativity. Unlike incels whom they have really zero shared DNA with, femcels represent a counterculture more than anything where as incel is subculture because whereas femcels actively seek to challenge cultural ideas incels submit to them and see themselves as people who failed the cultural standards.
Femcels are more than just women sitting in the dark reading a03, they’re a reminder that there’s still room in this world for creativity, individuality, and aesthetics in a world that feeds on groupthink and sameness. I don’t think it should end with women, every facet of life should be radically re-examined through the lens of the femcel and men can and should be included in that analysis too as the femcel critique while inherently female is not exclusive to women. The dating system in modern society dehumanizes men and women. While women become prizes to be won, men become actors in their own lives. They cannot be truly them but simply performers playing a role to get a status symbol with otherization by the spectacle the gun pointed at their heads. It’s natural men are also realizing this but sadly the male awakening to the spectacle has been hijacked by it’s agents. From redpill con artists, to chauvinistic right wing talking heads, and deranged ‘looksmaxxers’ who think smashing your jaw is a replacement for self respect. All these snake oil salesman capitalize on men awakening to their alienation and drag them back down by claiming to teach them how to ‘win’ the system when in fact the system has no victor, even when one gets what the system calls reward he feels empty in hollow because it was not something he genuinely wanted but he was forced to get by cultural consensus. Men need to turn inwards to solve their issues, they need to recognize that the false reality the spectacle perpetuates is exactly that; false reality.
In general what we need to defeat the spectacle is to act as if it doesn’t exist. We need to live and create as if it doesn’t affect us because in reality the spectacle only has as much control as we give it. Femcels are the most well known instance of successful resistance to the spectacle but they cannot be the last, a revolutionary and aristocratic undertaking is needed if we are to reverse civilizational decline. It won’t look glamorous, it won’t be an army marching to battle at least not early on. It starts with having the courage to simply see the spectacle and feel apathetic towards it.