Why Men Rape: An Indian Undercover Investigation

by Tara Kaushal

Women, empowered by sexual, self-esteem and feminist revolutions, are choosing who they want to have sex with. “In the past few years, a subset of straight men calling themselves ‘incels’ have constructed a violent political ideology around the injustice of young, beautiful women refusing to have sex with them,” writes Jia Tolentino in the alarming piece ‘The Rage of the Incels’131. They believe that ‘hypergamy’—an evolutionary principle that makes women seek males above their status—in a post-monogamy society means a tiny percentage of genetically superior men hoard most of the desirable women and hetero sex. Women, Tolentino theorizes, are socialized to respond to rejection and feeling undesired by blaming themselves—men, like women, tend to blame women if they feel undesirable. Not everyone who is an ‘involuntary celibate’ is an incel, however: “Incels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for absolute male supremacy. Sex, defined to them as dominion over female bodies, is just their preferred sort of proof … What incels want is extremely limited and specific: they want unattractive, uncouth, and unpleasant misogynists to be able to have sex on demand with young, beautiful women. They believe that this is a natural right.”