I think there’s a really important distinction that gets lost in these conversations: the difference between a socially awkward, autistic dork with no sex appeal and a genuinely incel misogynist. Keeping that line clear actually helps make sense of what’s going on with Kurt.
When people call someone an “incel,” they often mash those two categories together. But they’re not the same thing. One is self-criticising, the other is truly hateful towards women.
Kurt (and others like him) clearly struggle with feeling unattractive and unwanted. There’s an obvious despair there: the sense that no matter what they do, they’re not the guy women pick. But the key thing is
where that frustration is pointed.
From what I’ve seen, Kurt’s frustration is mostly turned inward. He openly talks about his own failings and shortcomings. He knows the problem is (at least partly) self-generated: his habits, his mindset, his presentation. That’s led to isolation, loneliness, depression, emotional outbursts, medical intervention, and then attempts to fix things, therapy, meds, a self-help gym routine, etcetera.
You can criticise how effective or coherent that all is, but the direction is still inward. I’d call that
insular frustration more than misogyny: it’s self-critique, self-loathing, self-disgust. He’s not painting all women as villains; he’s painting himself as defective. That doesn’t suddenly make it healthy or good, but it’s very different to the Incel Misogynist.
An Incel Misogynist isn’t just unhappy with their own situation; they actively hate women. Not just one woman they had a bad experience with, not just a specific person who wronged them, but women as a class.
That’s qualitatively different from “I feel broken and unattractive and I hate myself for it.” One is self-directed, the other is outwardly directed at women as a group. From what I’ve seen, Kurt doesn’t fit that second category. I haven’t seen him talk about “women” in general with that blanket hatred. His comments that get clipped and circulated are usually about specific people in a specific situation, not “females” as some monolithic enemy class.
This is where people get tangled. Kurt’s comments about Kayla and April weren’t delivered into a vacuum; they were part of a wider critique of the whole polycule mess. He was talking about specific women, in a specific social ecosystem, doing specific things in public. He was criticising their behaviour in a very particular context, dysfunctional relationships, weird poly dynamics, and the way they handled all of that around their audience. That’s a far cry from “I hate women.” You can find that rude, petty, obsessive, or unhinged. Fair enough. But that still doesn’t make it an attack on women as a gender.
tl;dr
kurt is a lonely nerd mocking two coke-skanks, not The Supreme Gentleman
Edit:
Weird how this "raging incel" is easily invited into multi-panel shows, while Nick has to stream alone, again.
