Our Obsession with Redeeming Men

As I was sitting in a conversation about “incels” and the steps that cishet women should take to protect themselves from their online and in-person vitriol, a conversation about redemption and rehabilitation piqued my interest. For the purposes of this conversation, the folks running this room were all Black femmes talking about Black men.

Therefore, the approrpiate, and specific, nomenclature should be “nigels” (Black incel). Nigcels were being described as a particular type of Black “man”. He, in the logic offered in the room, is one that could be rehabilitated out of their violent ideology. Nigcels are a radicalized Black man, not a “real” or “good” Black “man”.

Defining a Nigcel, then, becomes reliant on ascribing assumedly exceptional traits and behaviours to Black cishet men. I thought about how this framing, and the subsequent analysis used, actually opens up many doors for “Man” and “Manliness” to be redeemed. Many narratives exist that continue to offer that there is truly a difference between “good men and bad men”, “toxic masculinity and positive masculinity”. There isn’t.

But the important takeaway from Connell’s work is that the dominant form of masculinity, the very concept of masculinity itself, is hegemonic. Domination is rooted not only in the overt acts of violence and performance, but is the core, the center, the root, the default of what hegemonic masculinity and manhood are as structural entities. What is often described as “toxic masculinity” is not the aberrant or deviant form of true “masculinity” itself, or “good masculinity.” It is the default. Within that framework, there is no actual split between toxic and non-toxic masculinity. — Saki Benibo & joshua briond, 2019

When we talk about the nigcel and steps to “correct” his behaviour, we often pair him up with the “broken man” narrative. This narrative assumes that all abusive, violent, and misogynoiristic Black men are that way because they are suffering from trauma that was brought with them into their adulthood. Not only does it assume that all Black men were raised in toxic, hurtful household, but it reinforces a liberal conception of hate, in which the hatred harbored by cishet men is simply a “misunderstanding” or point of innocuous “ignorance”.

Not only are there a plethora of Black men who were not raised in toxic and abusive households (in which it is also posited that the alienating and overbearing Black matriarch becomes the reason for this Black man’s ills), but still abuse Black cis women, but the liberal analysis fails to take into account that we live in a world that positively responds to the abuse, sexual assault, and murder of Black non-men.

If the world is oriented such that femicide, transphobia, femme-misia, and (trans)misogynoir is rewarded, what is there to merely “unlearn”?

Saying “toxic masculinity” is like saying “toxic whiteness,” “toxic capitalism,” or “toxic police state.” It’s redundant. If a system or structure is created for the purpose of maintaining power through the subjugation and domination of the most vulnerable and marginalized of our society, then the system or structure as a whole is the issue. — Saki Benibo & Joshua briond, 2019

We can talk about ways that abused Black men internalize trauma, and take that out on people, however it can not be ignored that the people they take it out on tend to always be their non-men partners (and they also use their own trauma to justify it). Under the guise that all nigcels are “broken Black men”, and not just people who blissfully accept the power that situating themselves within the colonial gender binary affords them, cishet women are expected to breastfeed men who are trying to kill them.

I was wondering why the nigcel is a figure that seems so distinct from the typical construction of “Man”. If the very construction of “Man” requires violent policing of the borders of gender, then what makes a “nigcel” different from just a regular nigga on the street? Black cishet men are always meditating on the death of Black trans women and Black cishet women. Manhood actually requires that they do so.

From the ways that cishet men prey on vulnerable cis women at college parties to their violent refusal to accept a cis woman’s “no” to the harassment of Black trans women on the street — there is insurmountable evidence that points to the fact that allegiance to Manhood is radicalization enough.

Cishet men’s natural orientation in this world as people who identify as “men” make their violence impune and necesarry. There does not need to be a an exceptional “nigcel culture”, when the entire construction ofBlack cishet men’s identity (nigcel or not) is contigent on violence that is purported as exceptional and unique to nigcels only.

Simply labeling Black men obsessed with murder, death, and violence against non-men (particularly cishet women) as nigcels does nothing, because all Black cishet men are in allegiance to a gender politic that requires the death of Black non-men. To be clear, I am not saying that all Black cishet men are involuntarily celibate. When I am talking about nigcels, the actual definition of the term is irrelevant to me because their behaviour, their actions, and their ideology is what gives this “movement” its infamy.

We can, then, think of being a nigcel not as simply, or only, a man who is involuntarily celibate, but also a man who is literally sexually aroused by the conquering of non-men’s bodies to the point of literal obsession and actual harm. So, maybe not all men are involuntarily celibate. However, all men are in allegiance to manhood.

What truly is being a “nigcel” devoid of anti-Blackness, patriarchy, and male domination? Without the figure of the “man”, the “nigcel” could not exist.

This is why it makes no sense to detach the two. By detaching them, we assume that the “man” is redeemable. In this framing, the “non-nigcel” man configuration has been bastardized, weaponized, and radicalized against non-men, as if necesarry to the actual configuration of “man” and the preservation of the gender binary was not meant to do that. If we live in a culture that celebrates violence against non-men, cishet women specifically, how much different is a nigcel and a regular ol’ nigga on the street?

What is our true aim in separating and classifying men based on their behaviour, as if those behaviours are not inherent to

This “good men” versus “bad men” paradigm stems from the same “not all men” logic that ultimately benefits no one except men.”— Saki Benibo & Joshua briond, 2019