Tara Isabella Burton in Vox:
It’s 2018 and everybody’s talking about sex robots.
It started last month, when a Toronto man intentionally drove his van into a crowd. His ideology? The incel movement — a politically radicalized form of misogyny in which “involuntarily celibate” men envision taking vengeance on the virile “Chads” and shallow “Stacys” they believe are contributing to their sexual poverty. (It’s the same movement, fomented on internet discussion forums like Reddit and 4chan, that inspired the 2014 Santa Barbara shooter, venerated in incel circles as the “Supreme Gentleman”). How, various media outlets wondered, could we combat such a radical, toxic ideology, one that had already racked up a high body count?
Out of this reaction came a modest proposal. George Mason University economist Robin Hanson published a blog post seemingly advocating for “sexual redistribution”: a subversion of the sexual marketplace in which sexual access was state-sanctioned and state-organized. The government, in other words, should intervene to provide incels with sex.
More here.