In this study, teachers' views are evaluated to determine whether there is a relationship between the humor styles of school principals and the health of an organization. The study is based on a mixed research approach with both quantitative and qualitative aspects. In the quantitative study, the teachers were asked to describe their principals' senses of humor using the “humor behavior scale” and to evaluate the organization in which they worked using the “organizational health inventory.” In the qualitative dimension, principals (...) working in primary schools were interviewed and asked to evaluate their own sense of humor and the school's health. When the quantitative findings were examined, the regression results showed that school principals with a cynical style of humor negatively predicts organizational health, and productive social and affirmative styles of humor positively predict organizational health. In the qualitative study, the content analysis results revealed that a school administrator who uses humor effectively is capable of effectively solving problems in the school. However, it has been stated that the humor style of the school principal can have negative effects as well as positive effects. School principals are advised to recognize the teachers with whom they work and to distinguish which teachers are receptive to humor. (shrink)

In recent years, online “involuntary celibate” or “incel” communities have been linked to various deadly attacks targeting women. Why do these men react to romantic rejection with not just disappointment, but murderous rage? Feminists have claimed this is because incels desire women as objects or, alternatively, because they feel entitled to women’s attention. I argue that both of these explanatory models are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence toward women—for their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent (...) hatred. I propose instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian “Other.” For Beauvoir, when men conceive of women as Others, they represent them as simultaneously human subjects and embodiments of the natural world. Women function then as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, regardless of the quality of their actions. I go on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, “My Twisted World.” I show how this Beauvoirian model sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence toward women. It therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

In this chapter, Filipa Melo Lopes looks at incel violence, and argues that the two most common feminist analyses of their actions—their objectification of women or their sense of entitlement to women’s attention—are insufficient. They fail to account for incels’ distinctive ambivalence towards women, namely their oscillation between obsessive desire and violent hatred. Melo Lopes proposes instead that what incels want is a Beauvoirian ‘Other’—discussed by Beauvoir in her chapter on myths in terms of the ‘Eternal Feminine’. For Beauvoir, (...) when men conceive of women as Others, they function as sui generis entities through which men can experience themselves as praiseworthy heroes, but also risk the denial of their so-called exceptionality. Melo Lopes then goes on to give an illustrative analysis of Elliot Rodger’s autobiographical manifesto, My Twisted World, showing how Beauvoir’s analysis of the myth of woman sheds light on Rodger’s racist and classist attitudes and gives us a better understanding of his ambivalence towards women. Beauvoir, according to Melo Lopes, therefore constitutes a powerful and overlooked theoretical alternative to accounts centered on objectification and entitlement. (shrink)

This text presents an analysis of some aspects of the phenomenon of so-called incels. It focuses on the sexist and male supremacist ideology inherent to the incels’ narrative. It also follows a link between this ideology and the assumptions made by some commentators on the incels’ problem, who have been relying on a mixture of conservative views on society and reductionist naturalism. I present a critique of these background assumptions, relating to concepts that feature centrally in them. First, I criticise (...) the characterisation of a particular concept of ‘monogamy’ as natural and its possible construal as normative. Then I explore the rhetoric of sex as a ‘basic need’, pointing out the tendency to mistake what one wants for a ‘need’. I conclude by criticising the particular kind of idea of the science of human nature that underpin the reductionist accounts of sex-related violence. (shrink)

In this article, we investigate the relationship between loneliness and misogyny amongst the online movement of “involuntary celibates” (incels) that has become widely known through several violent attacks. While loneliness plays a prominent role in the incels’ self-descriptions, we lack a comprehensive analysis of their experience of loneliness and its role in their radicalization. Our article offers such an analysis. We analyze how loneliness is felt, described, and implicitly understood by incels, investigate the normative presumptions underlying their experiences, and critically (...) reflect on the political function of their discourse of loneliness. We claim that it is the affective mechanism of ressentiment that transforms loneliness into antagonistic emotions and show how loneliness is exacerbated rather than alleviated through the incel community. Finally, we point to the relevance of our analysis for contemporary philosophical and feminist loneliness studies. (shrink)

In this article, I analyze weaponized subordination, wherein men strategically use their perceived subordinate masculine status to legitimate their degradation of women. I draw on a qualitative analysis of 9,062 comments made on a popular involuntary celibate discussion board. Incels are an online community of men who define themselves by their inability to participate in heterosexual sex/relationships. Incel forums are characterized by self-loathing, anger, and misogyny, with several incels having committed murders. I first detail the type of subordination incels (...) argue they experience—a social bias in favor of attractive people they call lookism. Next, I explain how incels perceive themselves as permanently subordinated “failed men.” I then demonstrate how incels weaponize their subordination, using their perceived subordinate status to justify their misogyny. Findings are discussed in relation to hybrid masculinity and conceptualizations of subordinate masculinities. (shrink)

Controversially, psychologist and public intellectual Jordan Peterson advises “enforced monogamy” for societies with high percentages of “incels.” As Peterson’s proposal resonates in manosphere circles, this chapter reconstructs and briefly evaluates the argument for it. Premised on the moral importance of civilizational sustainability, advocates argue that both polygamous and socially monogamous but sexually liberal mating patterns result in unsustainable proportions of unattached young men. Given the premises, monogamous societies are probably justified in maintaining their anti-polygamist social and legal norms. The case (...) for imposing stricter sexual norms on socially monogamous but sexually liberal societies is weaker, however, as male involuntary celibacy in those places isn’t as directly caused by male intrasexual competition, and since less intrusive social interventions are more likely to ameliorate “the incel problem.”. (shrink)

This article investigates conceptions of morality within the framework of ressentimentful victimhood in the manosphere, while also exploring avenues for resistance among young individuals encountering the “hatred pipeline”. In Study 1, we use the emotional mechanism of ressentiment to examine how incels construct narratives of victimhood rooted in the notion of sexual entitlement that remains owed and unfulfilled, alongside its “black pill” variant emphasising moral and epistemic superiority. Through a linguistic corpus analysis and content examination of 4chan and Incel.is (...) blog posts, we find evidence of ressentiment morality permeating the language and communication within the incel community, characterised by blame directed at women, and the pervasive themes of victimhood, powerlessness, and injustice. In Study 2, we delve into young individuals’ reflections on incel morality and victimhood narratives as they engage with online networks of toxic masculinity in the manosphere. Drawing from semi-structured interviews with young participants who have accessed the manosphere, we explore their perceptions of risks, attribution of blame, and experiences of empathy towards individuals navigating the “hatred pipeline”. Our analysis underscores the significance of ressentiment in elucidating alternative conceptions of morality and victimhood, while shedding light on the potential for acceptance or resistance within online environments characterised by hatred. (shrink)

Educators continue to struggle with how masculinities are performed and regulated in spaces of learning. In a time of rapid social change, there is a renewed impetus for gender justice reform in schooling, though these approaches themselves remain a shifting picture. Adding a new layer of complexity, we are now witness to educational policy recommendations around surveillance which are designed to counteract boys’ and young men’s vulnerabilities to be radicalised into the misogynies of the ‘manosphere’. These recommendations exist despite limited (...) research and significant gaps in our understanding regarding both the manosphere as well as the emotional lives of young men. The article intentionally shifts the conversation from reactive surveillance in schools to educative gender justice approaches. We focus, in particular, on the significance of ‘pedagogic discomfort’ in terms of fostering gender transformative dialogue which is critical of ideas associated with the manosphere. We consider how a constructive dialogue might be fostered with a particular focus on pedagogies that recognise the emotional intensities of gender justice work. (shrink)

This book is an edited collection of original research papers on the digital revolution of the public and governance. It covers cyber governance in Finland, and the securitization of cyber security in Finland. It investigates the cases of Brexit, the 2016 US presidential election of Donald Trump, the 2017 presidential election of Volodymyr Zelensky, and Brexit. It examines the environmental concerns of climate change and greenwashing, and the impact of digital communication giving rise to the #MeToo and Incel movements. (...) It considers how digitilization can serve to emancipate women through ride-sharing, and how it leads to the question of robot rights. It considers fake news and algorithmic governance with respect to case studies of the Chinese social credit system, the US FICO credit score, along with Facebook, Twitter, Cambridge Analytica and the European effort to regulate and protect data usage. (shrink)

This chapter explores a case study in contemporary fanaticism. We adopt Katsafanas’s conceptualization of fanaticism to make possible an in-depth discussion of and evaluation of a diffuse but important social movement — the anglophone manosphere. According to Katsafanas, fanatics are fruitfully understood as members of a group that adopts sacred values which they hold unconditionally to preserve their own psychic unity, and who feel that those values are threatened by those who do not accept them. The manosphere includes several social (...) movements, including incels, men’s rights activists, and men-going-their-own-way. We show that many members of these groups are well-characterized by Katsafanas’s theory of fanaticism, and that they have forged their fanatical group identity using tools that philosophers have tended to associate with more benign social movements and the task of “conceptual engineering.” Indeed, we think that manosphere groups have in many cases been more successful than more palatable liberationist movements, and that this case study in the dark side of conceptual engineering may be both sobering and informative. (shrink)

This paper initiates analytic inquiry into the metaphysics of masculinity. I argue that individual masculinities (such as ‘clone masculinity’ and ‘incel masculinity’) are distinct homeostatic property cluster kinds related to gender structures via processes of adherence, failed-adherence, selective adherence, and/or reinterpretation with respect to male-coded social norms.

This paper explores a phenomenon that we call “justified-but-misdirected anger,” in which one’s anger is grounded in or born from a genuine wrong or injustice but is directed towards an inappropriate target. In particular, we argue that oppressive ideologies that maintain systems of gender, race, and class encourage such misdirection and are thereby self-perpetuating. We engage with two particular examples of such misdirection. The first includes poor white voters who embrace racist and xenophobic politics; they are justified in being angry (...) about their own economic exploitation, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains capitalism (which is the appropriate target of their anger). The second includes so-called “incels” who embrace misogyny; they are justified in being angry about unrealistic and unhealthy standards of contemporary masculinity, but that anger is misdirected in a way that maintains patriarchy. One goal of exploring this type of justified-but-misdirected anger is to thread the needle between holding wrongdoers to account while also clearly identifying the oppressive ideologies that influence their actions. (shrink)

Drawing on philosophy, social and psychoanalytic theory, popular culture, and her own experience, Salecl explores how the passion for ignorance plays out in many different aspects of life today, from love, illness, trauma, and the fear of failure to genetics, forensic science, big data, and the Incel movement-and she concludes that ignorance is a complex phenomenon that can, on occasion, benefit individuals and society as a whole.

Mühendishâne-i Berrî-i Hümâyûn hocalarından Masdariyecizâde Hüseyin Efendi 1238/1822’de doksan dereceden küçük bir açının Eukleides geometrisi yöntemleriyle üç eşit parçaya bölünmesine dair antik prob- lem hakkında bir risale kaleme alır. Risale, köklerini Antik Yunan’da bulan bu meşhur problemin Eukleides geometrisinin araçları olan çizgilik (işaretsiz cetvel) ve pergel kullanılarak ulaşıldığı düşünülen çözümünü içerir. Ayrıca, sunulan ispat Mühendishâne eğitim kadrosunun her birinin onayını gösteren imzalarla kayıt altına alınmıştır. Akademik literatürde bu risaleye dair yapılan değerlendirmelere bakıldığında, çözümde kullanımı sınırlandırılmış araçlarla bir sonuca ulaşılamayacağının Hüseyin (...) Efendi’nin risalesini yayınladığı tarihte çoktan ispatlanmış olduğu iddiasına dayanarak eser, müellif ve dönemin ilim çevresi ile seviyesi hak- kında tahkir eden genelleştirilmiş yorumlar görülür. Tüm bu güncel yayınlar, tek bir kaynaktan, Salih Zeki Bey’in konuya dair yaklaşık bir asır önce kaleme aldığı ve içerik itibariyle doğruluğu tartışılır makalelerinden neşet etmiştir. Bu çalışma bu güncel yayınların ortak kaynağının iddialarını inceler ve problemin çözümü- nün tarihine odaklanır. Böylece verilen hatalı bilgilerin tashihini sunar. (shrink)

Approaching Simone de Beauvoir's feminism and social commentary as a toolkit to understand our current crises, Simone de Beauvoir: Toolkit for the 21st Century brings together established and emerging scholars to apply her insights to gender studies, political philosophy, decolonisation, intellectual history, age theory, and critical phenomenology. The essays in this collection start from key concepts in Beauvoir's oeuvre and relate them to contemporary debates, asking how her notion of ambiguity speaks to decolonial freedom struggles; how myths inform our notions (...) of collective, national identities; how masculinity and its violence has reached new levels with the emergence of 'Incels'. These and other issues are central to this critical appraisal of Beauvoir's legacy, demonstrating the contemporary relevance of her thought as it diagnoses the present and looks toward change for a better future. This book will be of great interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students looking to engage with the political content of Simone de Beauvoir's work and the timely application of her ideas. (shrink)

The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. (...) Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right. (shrink)

Der vorliegende Artikel beleuchtet Variationen selbststigmatisierender und zugleich selbstkonstituierender Akte männlicher Internet-Subkulturen. Allen Akten gemeinsam ist ihre Nähe zu Schmutz und Fäkalien. Die Analyse des Autors bewegt sich systematisch von den »Computerfreak«-Milieus der frühen 2000er Jahre über die sogenannten »Pickup-Artists« (Frauenverführungskünstler) und Online-Männerrechtsgruppen hin zu den »Incels« (Akronym für »involuntary celibate«: unfreiwillig sexuell enthaltsam) – der extremsten Variante dieser Subkulturen. Dabei dient Donald Meltzers Studie über den anal-masturbatorischen Charakter als heuristische Folie; mit ihr lässt sich die konstitutive Relevanz der analen (...) Sexualität für die im Internet sich differenzierenden Maskulinitäten und deren »Frauen-Feind-Bilder« herausarbeiten. So lässt sich beobachten, wie Computerfreak-Milieus im Netz ironisch mit dem Stigma der analen Vorgeschlechtlichkeit spielen, die Männerrechts- und Incelgruppen jedoch das Spielerische im Umgang mit diesem Stigma weitestgehend verloren und eine (auto-)aggressive Identifikation mit ihm entwickelt haben. Übergreifend zeigt die Analyse, wie die spezifische Netzwerkstruktur des Internets, die Funktionsweisen des Digitalen sowie dessen kommerzielle Nutzung auch permanente »Überbietung« und Extremisierung begünstigen. (shrink)

Rızâeddîn bin Fahreddîn, 19.-20. yüzyıllarda İdil-Ural bölgesinde ceditçilik hareketi içerisinde yer almış en önemli düşünürlerdendir. Rusya müslümanlarının uyanışına katkı sunmak için birçok İslam düşünürünün biyografisini kaleme almıştır. Bunlardan birisi de İbn Arabî hakkındadır. Eserinde İbn Arabî’nin fikirlerini amelî, ilmî ve felsefî başlıkları altında inceler. Amelî görüşler başlığında içtihat, kıyas ve icmâ meseleleriyle ilgilenir. İlmî görüşler başlığı altında şumûl-i rahmet, ricâlu’l-gayb ve firavunun imanı konularını inceler. Felsefî görüşlerde ise âlem-i misâl ve vahdet-i vücûd hakkındaki tartışmaları öne çıkarır. Rızâeddîn bin Fahreddîn, eserinde (...) İbn Arabî hakkında gelişen tarihsel münakaşaları yeniden değerlendirir. Bu konuda üç tutum ve gruptan bahseder. İlk grup onu kafir, ikinci grup ise büyük bir veli olarak görür. Üçüncü grup onun büyük bir veli olduğunu kabul eder fakat eserlerinin okunmasının sakıncalı olduğunu söylerler. Rızâeddîn bin Fahreddîn bunlara ek olarak eserinde İdil-Ural müslümanları arasında da İbn Arabî etkilerinden bahseder. Eserinin sonunda İbn Arabî ile ilgili zikrettiği görüşleri değerlendirir. İbn Arabî düşüncesinin zaaf ve imkanlarına işaret eden bu değerlendirmede neo-selefî ve reformist görüşlerin etkisini izlemek mümkündür. (shrink)