If you’re as hyper-online as I am, you may have come across the now-viral video a man uploaded to social media where he justified literally chasing a woman after she rejected him. As disturbing as his actions were, what scared me more was the content of his speech — which was startlingly different to the usual incel spiels. They’re evolving.
Jacob Yerkes, 25, posted a video to social media in which he made a complaint to police. He said his female co-worker’s dad threatened to stab him and he wanted police to file it. So far, that’s kinda normal, right? You’d think so, until he explained why he had been threatened.
Yerkes explained — in full seriousness and without a hint of shame — that he tried to play a song for his colleague and ask her out. When she rejected him, he said he chased her “a couple of blocks down the street” while she ran for her life because “women are crazy”. He then justified it by saying: “She wanted me to chase her”.
Mind you, this man told this information to police freely and willingly because he didn’t think he had done anything wrong.
Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.
Margaret Atwood
He thought he could stalk her straight. pic.twitter.com/OKwQommXMa
— AskAubry 🦝 (@ask_aubry) November 7, 2022
Both the police officers and I were gobsmacked at this revelation. You know it’s fkn bad when even cops can see the blatant misogyny here. They told him to leave her TF alone, but Yerkes wasn’t done.
“But that’s, like, fun for women. Women like that. It’s a little bit of excitement,” he said about chasing his colleague. When police obviously said “no, they don’t”, Yerkes kept arguing his case.
“What about BDSM porn?” he asked.
He then insisted “most women like having rape fantasies” and maintained he was just doing what she wanted him to do.
But here’s what I found most unsettling: Yerkes continuously used words like “choice” and “freedom” to justify stalking his colleague. He said he wanted to give her “her own choice” when he asked her out. He said police needed to speak to her father because she was “being controlled by him” and he wanted her “to have her own free will”. He said he wanted to ensure she “had a reasonable opportunity to make her own choice” about dating him.
All of these comments have one thing in common: they’re garbled attempts at co-opting feminist buzzwords to manipulate people into thinking he cares about women and their autonomy. Which is starkly different to the way incels typically speak of women as mindless objects that exist to satiate them.
When we think of incels, we usually think of men who are frustrated and angry towards women for not having sex with them. Incel ideas typically revolve around men’s right to pleasure, sex and servitude. It’s about what men want, at the expense of women, who they see as just a pathway to sexual satisfaction, ego stroking and status among other men. If a woman reacts adversely to incel advances, then that woman is a shallow bitch.
Basically, in typical incel conversations, women aren’t people with their own desires or ambitions. They are tools to a means with no self-actualisation.
According Yerkes faux liberation speech though, he chased that woman because he cares about her autonomy and needs. He wanted her father on file for threats because he wants to protect her. He wants her father out of the picture because he wants to free her, so she can make her own choices
PSA for males: If she turns away or runs, that is a no. Women do not want to be chased in parking lots or down streets. We do not have to “hear you out.” We do not owe you an explanation. We don’t need your input/opinion to “discover ourselves.”
— Julia Sugarbaker (@BamaBluebelle05) November 7, 2022
Later in the video, Yerkes returned to the car and began a monologue to the camera, which confirmed my suspicions about his particular genre of inceldom.
Yerkes said “bad shit happens” when “women don’t ever come to terms with themselves”. Because really, that’s all he wants right? For this woman to have an environment where she can self-actualise (because she hasn’t already, apparently).
Yerkes, despite his obvious disregard for this woman’s lack of interest in him, insisted he was doing all this because he cares about not just her, but her rights. Her needs. Her autonomy.
Shockingly, Yerkes revealed the end of his video that wanted to turn the woman he was chasing “straight”. Yeah, the woman he was stalking was actually queer, and his feelings about it sounded a lot like arguments for corrective rape.
Yerkes claimed he wanted to save his co-worker from “the woke belligerent LGBT shit that has her”. And from her father who Yerkes said was “controlling” her. He maintained these fake-feminist ideas but eventually, in the last few seconds of his video, he described women as “snakes” and thanked his “bros” and “dudes” for being there for him while he struggled with his mental health.
This shows a neo-incel is still an incel, no matter what new-age BS he polishes this turd with.
Jacob Yerkes has since been arrested by Loudon County police. They came across his viral videos online and have now got him in custody on charges of aggravated stalking and harassment.
Police assured the public he no longer poses a danger to his co-worker. But, as Yerkes said in his videos, there’s a whole community of online men who supported him.
Those men are still out there, potentially spread across the world due to the international nature of incel communities.
They mark a shift in the way incels are targeting women, and there’s a good chance they’re deploying the same manipulative tactics in their pursuit of women as he was.
They’re evolving, and we need to make sure we are too.
