Celibates – even involuntary ones – can live deeply meaningful lives

For centuries, numberless men and women have lived lives of involuntary celibacy: they have never found a partner with whom to settle down. The Irish were, traditionally, cautious about marriage – often because so many farms were small and inheritance was uncertain – so they lost their opportunity to find a spouse. There were many lonely bachelor farmers who found themselves alone in old age, simply through the circumstances of life.

Marry

In Britain, and in France, two world wars deprived many women of the chance to marry. Sweethearts and boyfriends had been lost in the wars, and there was a horrible phrase used, by officialdom, about such singletons: ‘surplus women’.

And there have always been plenty of individuals who were simply unlucky in love. The one they yearned for rebuffed their hand.

Yet many of those who were ‘involuntarily celibate’ led lives of fulfilment and usefulness. They were busy in their work, volunteered for charitable societies, were helpful in the local community and often supportive as bachelor uncles and spinster aunts to extended families. Their single status could be lonesome, but it could also give them the freedom to pursue hobbies and interests of their choosing. Even the bachelor farmers could be philosophical, perceiving that marriage has its burdens too.

How depressing it is, now, to learn that ‘incel’ – involuntarily  celibate – has come to mean a misogynistic online group of men who have blamed women in a hateful way for their single status. Jake Davison, the 22-year-old who killed five people in Plymouth, including his own mother and a three-year-old child, identified himself as part of this ‘incel’ movement.

Anger

He had never had a girlfriend, and felt uncontrollable anger that everyone else seemed to be enjoying some rapturous relationship – while he was friendless and sexually alone. His fury was fed by these ‘incel’ groups online. It was evident he was mentally unbalanced, and the authorities should never have allowed him to hold a permit for a shotgun – his licence had been taken away and then, catastrophically, restored. (It has also been suggested that bodybuilding steroids contributed to his mental troubles.)

All these elements must be factors in this terrible slaying, but so, I think, must the sexualised aspect of modern society. Sexual images are pervasive and ubiquitous in contemporary culture – drama, stories, advertising, magazines, books – and an alienated loner with a disjointed perspective could easily get to feel that that the world, and especially women, hate and rebuff him and are the cause of his misery.

In truth, many couples struggle with their relationships, while there are plenty of celibates who may not have chosen their condition, but live, and have lived, decent and even serene lives.

Painting a pitiful picture

Some years ago, the war photographer Don McCullin told me: “Nobody ever conquers Afghanistan. The terrain is impossible.” It was, he said, the worst, the most difficult country he had ever worked in. Child mortality was wretchedly high; it was difficult for anyone to survive in such rugged conditions.

The British suffered defeat in three Afghan wars from 1839 to 1919; subsequently the Russians and now the Americans, backed by its Allies.

The most poignant image of Afghanistan is surely Lady Butler’s The Remnants of an Army which portrayed the defeat of 1842, with a single British soldier, the surgeon William Brydon, on an exhausted and dying horse, as the last survivor of an Afghan defeat.

Elizabeth Butler – born Thompson – was a much-admired military painter, the sister of the Catholic poet Alice Meynell, and herself a Catholic. She was the mother of six children and yet pursued her vocation as a painter, encouraged by the men in her family. She died at Gormanston Castle in Co. Meath in 1933, aged 86. Her great achievement was that she highlighted the pathos of war, not just military glory.

Everyone would want to support those in need in Afghanistan, including Christians who will feel vulnerable, and women and girls, who fear the Taliban rule. But history plainly shows that western powers going into Afghanistan has always ended pitifully – as Elizabeth Butler’s painting shows.

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RTÉ has been made aware, I think, that its screening of The 8th leaves a gap in the market for balance: this film was partly funded by the George Soros Foundation, which has campaigned for abortion worldwide. Now is the time for an enterprising group of documentary filmmakers to get together and make a film which gives a thoughtful, sensitive and well-told other side of the story. RTE can hardly refuse a screening.