CMV: I sympathize with incels.

I feel sympathy for people who are lonely and can't find a partner because I know the pain. However, with incels, it's just a different story. I'm also not exactly conventionally attractive and I also barely have a meaningful social life. My first kiss was in my late twenties. On top of that, I'm a gay man living in a pretty homophobic Eastern European country where looking for a same-sex partner boils down to browsing online profiles with faceless body parts (when I see incels complaining about how difficult it is to be in their place, I can't help but think how much more they would complain if they were queer and only had maybe 5% of general population as their potential partners). However, I never felt like doing the incel move and blaming all the other gay men for my pain, because feeling lonely and depressed and then adding hatred into the mix doesn't really feel like an improvement. And despite the odds not really being in my favor, I've been in a loving relationship for years now. The thing is, there are lonely people out there who are in far worse situations than an average incel, yet they don't make the conscious choice to demonize, vilify and mistreat an entire group of people. I feel that if I sympathized with incels, I would be in a way excusing their behavior, and I don't think there is a valid excuse for acting the way they do.

/r/changemyview Thread