Jerome, the Incel ...

Hey Incels, it’s your boy Jerome. I had a revelation last night while reading some ancient Christian wisdom: why are we brainwashed into thinking that inceldom is a curse? Society says that people who have sex are living well; that they’re attractive people enjoying sex and their bodies. And you know what? For a long time, I bought into it. I sat here thinking I was a loser because I couldn’t score any chicks. But you know, I’ve been thinking about it, and everyone’s got it all wrong. I think it is us incels who are actually living a far superior lifestyle to the masses, who have no self control. Being an incel is really a blessing in disguise-- we’re a chosen elite.

— So first of all, we’re free of the grip of these whores who run around distracting all of these guys, sleeping with hundreds of men, not actually interested in any of them. until one day, they are shunned by their friends and family as a witch. Every guy wants to fuck them, until one day, they are shunned by their friends and family as a witch. You know why? Everyone hates a slut. These women are disgusting users, who manipulate guys and ruin their lives by distracting them from the pursuits and accomplishments that really matter in life, the ones that get you written down in history books as the good guy.

— Secondly, let’s say you’re done screwing around, get a girlfriend, and propose marriage (with some huge diamond ring that your bitch wife will probably throw at you in a fight). Every dude says he can’t wait to find a wife and have kids, but that’s another lie that was just perpetrated by the blue pilling Chads of society. Let’s be real: men love little baby girls, nice sweet teenage girls… but then they get a little older and they lure you into their miserable prison. All husbands hate their wives. Women age really quickly, especially women who settle down with a guy and have a baby. And no guy actually wants kids either. Pregnancy is a disgusting, messy, and expensive process -- women get all of the credit for nine months in the belly while Daddy pays for everything and just gets trashed all the time.

— It’s us incels who are living the most lucidly, not wasting our time wrapped up in meaningless hookups. Even in marriage there can’t be such a thing as meaningful sex. Sex is a diversion, a necessary evil for the continuation of the human race. And let’s be honest… who even really wants it to continue? Most people are mean and cruel; they add nothing to the earth, and dismiss important real responsibilities. They focus on how to be cool and sexy to women who scheme for their downfall. Think about it: all of these magazines, sexy clothes, testosterone supplements, makeup, hair… people behaving like hookers, desperate for sexual attention. Instead of gawking over skinny beautiful women, it would do society good to respect people who lead a life of discipline, like us. Good people, who don’t cause trouble or harm. Maybe then we wouldn’t have so many problems. If I’m being dark and completely honest (this is 4chan after all), I really believe that the only good of sex is to produce more incels like us, who can push the human race forward. We should stop putting ourselves down, and instead see the inner light of an incel— never sidetracked by an evil witch bitch masked as a fairy.



Pride, Prejudice, and Paul: A Slightly Farcical Analysis of Jane Austen and Biblical Marital Theory

“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.” Thus counseled Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. 7:8-9, NRSV). Less than 2000 years later, Jane Austen took a rather different tack on marriage, opening Pride and Prejudice with these wry words on the marital views of wealthy English society: “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a large fortune, must be in want of a wife” (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter 1, p. 5).

Since that famous opening line, Pride and Prejudice has become a media sensation in the 20th and 21st centuries, with multiple film and television adaptations and the creation of an entire subculture dedicated to Jane Austen. Mr. Darcy’s name has become legendary. His pursuit of Elizabeth Bennet is romantic cliche. But as a famous depiction of a more modern marriage, how does it hold up against the original Biblical writers who tackled marital good? Is this marriage as theologically sound as it is popular? Pride and Prejudice may be closer to us than Saint Paul, but the subject is not too alien. After all, the world of Jane Austen’s Regency England was Christian. From the religious sensibilities of Mary Bennet to the droning sermons of Mr. Collins, Pride and Prejudice is a text infused with Christianity. But does the novel reflect the religious source material?  How well do the principles expressed in the letter to the Corinthians map out with the Darcy and Elizabeth love story? Would Saint Paul ever deign to get cozy for an evening watching Bridget Jones’ Diary with some popcorn?

Darcy’s first marriage proposal to Elizabeth ends in disaster, as he stuns her with the revelation that he is madly in love with her and then proceeds to insult her situation in life. He begins with the now-famous, agitated demonstration of the urgency of his feelings for her: “In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.” (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XI, p. 185). This ardent admiration undoubtedly has a sexual element lurking under its surface. The “struggle” Darcy references is his own wrestling with his body to overcome his attraction to Elizabeth. He has ultimately lost that struggle, so he must marry her immediately in order to give in to the urges of his body and brain without censure. He reveals that he is only pursuing the marriage because it would allow him to have a church-sanctioned relationship with Elizabeth. To this end, he insults Elizabeth’s family and rhetorically demands if he is supposed to enjoy being forced to interact with Elizabeth’s uncouth, insufferable family during their marriage. This also partially reflects the oddness of their match--he is rich and she is the daughter of a less well-off country family. “Could you expect me to rejoice in the inferiority of your connections?” he demands (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XI, p. 188). Although Austen does not explicitly state it, it is clear that there is an element of necessity in Darcy’s proposal--marriage is the only way to legitimate his desire.

The language of repression here mirrors Paul’s discussion of passion and self-control--Darcy cannot control himself, so he must marry rather than burn. Paul would likely grudgingly approve of Darcy’s actions. He might even sigh or roll his eyes. Still, the proposal here is an expression of Paul’s own idea of the necessity of marriage as a last resort. Darcy is saving himself from future sin--once he marries Elizabeth, all his immoral lust will be somewhat redeemed. If not for Darcy’s overwhelming attraction, Paul would have urged Darcy and Elizabeth to remain as they were--unmarried and apart, devoted to God as good Christians. 

Elizabeth rather vehemently rejects Darcy’s proposal, leaving the him presumably stewing with his aforementioned passion until the resolution of the novel. Darcy brings up the offer of marriage again, this time in a more conciliatory manner. He tells her that if she truly does not want to marry him, he will withdraw from her: “If your feelings are still what they were last April, tell me so at once. My affections and wishes are unchanged, but one word from you will silence me on this subject forever” (Austen, Pride and Prejudice, Chapter XVI, p. 346). Elizabeth informs him that she has changed her mind about his previous proposal, and they are summarily engaged. In this proposal, he once again references his suppressed feelings, though he is not adamant that he and Elizabeth must get married for the sake of propriety. Instead, this “proposal” is about respect for Elizabeth--Darcy acknowledges the urgency of his feelings but also assures Elizabeth that he can repress them if she so wishes. In telling Elizabeth that “one word could silence him on the subject forever”, Darcy is revealing that marriage is no longer the necessary option that it was before--he still has feelings for Elizabeth, but he has learned the control that he lacked before. For that, Paul would probably fling his hands up and ask why Darcy and Elizabeth were even bothering to get married at all this point. Per his views in the letter, the marriage is unnecessary. It is no longer the safeguard against sin that it once was, as the “vain struggle” is now a mutual acceptance. Of course, it results in a happy ending for them and the reader. Darcy and Elizabeth are in love--but it is not necessarily love that makes a marriage for Saint Paul. One could hope that he would be able to forgive Jane Austen just this once--after all: “love is kind”, and it makes for good literature (1 Cor. 13:4. NRSV).

Virginity, Love, and the Flaming Lipzzzzzz Girls Bar: Jovinian's Account

Paul and I don’t get along too well when it comes to women. I mean, honestly, I try to be reasonable, but the guy’s two missed meals away from going ascetic, and he can’t do anything without trying to give people tons of opinions on literally everything – I still think he tries to give his knee-jerk opinions to the Ephesians every time he writes them. And, every time that god and women comes up, he gets all smug and condescending, talking about how even thinking about getting back in the field is some grave disappointment and how marriage is for the less controlled, on and on and on. And don’t get me wrong, he’s a brilliant man, but I swear – he really seems to think all this self hatred will get him anywhere further than the rest of us before god. So, when we decided to meet up and “discuss our interpretations”, as Paul puts it, I told him that he could pick the restaurant if he drove us both. Seemed fine, right?

Big Mistake.

We turn off the highway, down by the motel where junkies take the direct route to god a few times a week, and turn into genuinely the seediest strip club I have ever seen. I take two looks at the place, see the bouncer ashing his cigarette into someone’s water, and ask Paul what in God’s name his problem is. Turns out, Mr. Wise and Pure thought that “Flaming Lipzzzzzz Girls Bar” was referencing the inspirational words of women or something, and nothing I  tried to say would convince him otherwise. So we walk in, Paul pays both our covers, and two seconds later we can’t hear anything, because the music is playing like hell and there’s at least 70 children of god posted up at the tables, drinking beers and filling the whole place with the stench of sweat. And that’s not even mentioning the girls – the place was way more then distracting, even for this humble monastic. It’s about the time that I notice how sticky the floor is that I try to ask Paul if this place is a good idea, but he just laughs and tells me that he “no longer belongs to the desires of the flesh” and “will not be tempted”. Yes, that’s true, but we also don’t need to spend serious time getting slowly broiled in a mixture of lust and desperation. Somehow, we find a table near the back, and we haven’t even started when some stripper comes up to us and asks, with a voice so artificially sexual it felt like a pagan ceremony, if we wanted to go for a private room. I was this close to leaving, but Paul, with some kind of sudden insanity, pulls another $100 out of his wallet and takes us back there.

              So we’re finally somewhere at least a little quieter, though the music’s still loud as hell, and the girl’s barely got her bra off before Paul’s staring with those deep, caring eyes and asking her what must have been a hundred questions about her life. And, with nothing more to lose, I listened. We learned her stage name was Mizz Kokaine, but her actual name was Turia. She was married, her husband was the bouncer outside, she’d been in the business for about five years now, she might be pregnant but she’s not sure, she just opens up to Paul like he’s her therapist. And as I listened, I felt myself becoming almost empathetic. Sure, this place was lust personified, but Turia? She was just a person, someone who loved someone, who had been good in marriage, who lived a holy life, who was forced into bad circumstances because of things beyond her control. And if sins weighed on her, they weighed doubtlessly more on those around her – her insurance agent who doubled premiums unexpectedly, her landlord who’d threatened to evict her if she reported him, her mother who had called her a worthless slut and not spoken to her in five years. She was afraid of what was happening, what would happen if she wasn’t making enough, if her husband got arrested. And then she was gone, our five minutes were up, and we made our way out.

              We spent at least an hour talking in the car afterwards, about Turia, about the club, about what was necessity and what was lust. Paul believed it was all adultery, but condemned it in a sort of bemused way – he didn’t particularly dislike them, he simply felt that their own sin was too apparent to be ignored. Which made me angry. As natural, the discussion escalated, and I found myself responding – that, in the end, virginal purity didn’t make any difference if she was living a pious married life. I mean, who cares if she’s a stripper? Piety isn’t meant to be all about appearances, and faith should come out of oneself, not some big bad desire to look good for the other ascetics. In the end, the saint and I had to agree to disagree, and he drove me back to my apartment before returning to whatever hovel a man who could afford to tip a stripper three digits decided to live in. I’ll never get Paul, truly, but the least I can say is that nobody else is like him. There is one thing I can’t forgive, however – I don’t think the floor gunk is ever going to get off my shoes.

Paradise Lost: Love According to "The Bachelor" Franchise, Reviewed by a Real Roman

My name is Turia, and I am a Roman noblewoman and wife. My husband and I lived on Earth during a very tumultuous time, when the world as we knew it was changing more dramatically than we ever thought possible. We saw the rise of the all-powerful Octavian Augustus, who brought peace and harmony to the world after decades of civil war. My parents were cruelly murdered when I was young, but I did not leave them unavenged. I fought for and won the inheritance rightly owed to my husband and me.

 We were married on Earth for forty years. In a time fraught with conflict I advanced the causes of my husband and advocated tirelessly on his behalf. To my great despair I could not give him the children he so rightly deserved, but he refused to leave me for another woman regardless of my insistence. Our bond, despite many tests, was only broken by my death.
 After I passed into the underworld, my husband gave a very praiseworthy oratio funebris for me, of which I was undeserving. I merely lived my life in service of him, as a woman rightly should; that deserves no special recognition.

We have been together with the shades for some time now, and the living world has changed quite a bit. Of course, the glorious empire of Rome, founded by the great Augustus, has long perished. New powers have risen. New technologies have been created. What amazes me most is this new thing that they call “television.” I met a man named Steve something or other last week who tried to explain this new technology to me, but I couldn’t completely comprehend it. He also went on to tell me of these new “apple” devices, which seem to be like televisions but smaller, and which you can use to talk to other people, although I don’t quite understand how you can do that with a piece of fruit.
Even though I can’t grasp how this new technology works, I do take a lot of pleasure in watching things with my husband on the television. One of my guilty pleasures is a show called Bachelor in Paradise. I feel a bit odd watching this show, but it is so interesting to see how much the world of sex, love, and marriage has changed since my time in the human world.

Essentially, this TV show is about people trying to find what they call “love,” although they seem to me to have a deluded vision of what that means. A large group of men and women with accents unlike any barbarians I’ve ever heard before go to a beach in a strange province called Mexico. While there, they go on “dates” with one another to try to create feelings of romantic attraction, which will apparently lead to a long lasting marriage. This is another concept which I just don’t get. When I was alive, our parents usually told us who to marry. The political and financial benefits of different options were weighed and compared, sometimes with special attention paid to the virtue of the potential match, and then a decision was made. There was little shopping around and few secret one-on-one meetings, unless one was looking for an illicit relationship. If you were looking for a spouse, you focused on the practicalities of the match and cared little about potential romantic feelings. When the match was no longer practical, divorce was usually not an issue.

The people on this TV show, men and women alike, talk a lot about finding “the one,” as if there’s more than one person in the world whom it would make sense to marry. This seems like a nice concept, but it isn’t very rational, in my opinion. For us Romans, marriage is mostly about practicality and duty. The people on this show talk about marriage purely in how it relates to feelings of romantic “love,” making it seem like a marriage can only be successful if you “love” someone first. I would say my husband and I had a very successful marriage even though we didn’t necessarily love one another at the beginning. The philosophy of this show hinges on a definition of love as it relates to physical and emotional attraction, but is love not a product of fulfilled duty? Of course, my husband and I grew to have strong physical and emotional feelings for one another, but I also know plenty of other couples from my day who fulfilled their duties towards one another faithfully without having any sort of romantic connection.

Even though I don’t necessarily understand how the people on this show think and act, I can definitely see why people like to watch it. It’s so performative, and if there’s one thing we Romans love, it’s a performance. My husband claims he doesn’t like this show and says that it’s “too dramatic,” but who is he to judge? He used to go down to the Colosseum every weekend to watch people fight to the death in front of an audience.

Issue 1 for Fall 2018!

Issue 1 of 2018: "Pious Eye for the Modern Guy", featuring engaging commentary or interventions by ancient writers on sex/love/marriage in our own mass/pop culture. Read 'em and weep ...

A new season dawns ...

Welcome to the new series of "Love, Medieval Style," featuring four new issues produced by a new editorial collective here at Harvard University. Our authors and editors will be introducing themselves in the next week or so; in the meantime, welcome back--we look forward to visiting the world of medieval sex, love, and marriage with you in the coming months!