“Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.”
— 1 Cor. 16:13
Toronto, where a coward killed 10 people this week by driving a van through a crowd, seems like a long way from Columbia, Mississippi.
But in today’s digitally connected society, the same sick ideology that seems to have driven murder suspect Alek Minassian could just as easily infect someone here.
He inhabited a lonely world of internet-obsessed men who call themselves “incels,” short for “involuntary celibates.” Instead of doing things that would make themselves attractive to women — talking to them, treating them with respect, having something positive going on for themselves in the real world, to name a few — they blame women for rejecting them. They also lash out at men who do have wives or girlfriends.
It’s a sad, ridiculous thing that society in times past could just dismiss as a realm inhabited by hopeless losers, but now with social media serving as a fomenting agent for their hate, it leads to violence.
And the attack in Toronto was not the first. The incels apparently take inspiration from Elliot Rodger, a deranged community college student who killed six people outside a California sorority in 2014 because he felt rejected by women. The alleged Toronto killer referenced Rodger in his Facebook post along with saying, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun!”
Two possible outlets for addressing this problem, which is growing in every community as more and more young men spend too much time isolated with video games and the internet:
1. Re-teach what it means to be a man. First, it does not entail an obligation by women to have sex with you, as incels hold.
A better definition is the biblical one of being a selfless leader in the home, church and community. As the apostle Paul advised Timothy, “Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.”
2. Hold social media companies accountable for allowing hate speech.
This newspaper would not allow itself to become a forum for the kind of bigotry that inevitably results in violence. Even though the Supreme Court has held that the right to free speech includes hateful language, that doesn’t mean that a media company has to allow its privately owned entity to be used for that purpose.
Yet federal law shields social media from the same standards that traditional media face. Congress needs to change the 1995 Communications Decency Act, which defines social media outlets as neutral carriers of information, like a phone line owner, rather than as media companies. Clearly at this point they are, and they need to own up to that.
It’s time for them to act like men and take responsibility for their actions.
— Charlie Smith
