A study from Institute For Family Studies suggests main cause of involuntary celibacy is a decline in marriage.
This hard-core incel group is indeed growing as a share of the male population. The NSFG’s sample size, over 1,000 never-married men between the ages of 22 and 35 with sufficient questionnaire completion to estimate sexual behavior and reasons for virginity if they have not had sex, is large enough to be decently confident of these results.
But the 68% increase from 2002 to 2015 in the incel share of the male, never-married, 22-35-year-old population is mostly due to a decline in marriage, not never-married men having less sex. Rising involuntary virginity among never-marrieds accounts for around 27 percentage points of the increase, with the other 41 percentage points coming from a declining married share of the population. It may also be that some of these “incels” are males who were formerly, or would formerly have been, religious, and while they no longer abstain for religious reasons, nonetheless they may continue to hold some degree of religious norms regarding “high standards” for a first sexual encounter.
In other words, incels are right to see themselves as part of a novel and fairly extreme change in our society’s sexual behavior, with a growing share of sexless young men. But the big change isn’t a growing share of alpha males hoarding all the sex, nor women suddenly becoming far more choosey amid rising promiscuity; rather, it’s just that marriage is being delayed, which means that rates of marriage-status-controlled celibacy that aren’t historically extremely unusual result in very unusual rates of total population-wide sexlessness.
A few reasons for declines in marriage.
- decline in religiosity among people
- divorce rates and financial risk
- decline in economic opportunities
Rise in sexless men caused from people delaying marriage and people going to school
But whatever the direct effect of education on never-married men, the primary cause of the rise in sexlessness is simply the increasing delay of marriage. The delay in marriage has numerous causes, of course, but probably the most powerful driver of marital timing also relates to education. Men and women are much less likely to get married while attending school, and across times and countries, an increase in the years of schooling is associated with later age of marriage, though more-educated people do tend to get married eventually. Thus, as more and more schooling becomes necessary for a good middle-class job, marriage gets pushed later and later, leaving more young people (men and women!) companionless and lonely.
In general, people have obfuscated the term involuntary celibate with misogynist. While there is an overlap, they do not mean the same thing.
Societal factors drive involuntary celibacy. It not just a bunch of men that have hateful preconceptions of women.
This thread is probably banal to most you and doesn't apply.
Frankly, I don't have time to respond to people's comments, but I would enjoy to listen to what you have to say on the topic.
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