Involuntary celibacy

"Incel" redirects here. For the medication used to treat cancer patients, see Biricodar. For the phenomenon of voluntary or semi-voluntary celibacy, see Celibacy.

Involuntary celibacy is the absence in human sexuality of intimate relationships or sexual intercourse for reasons other than voluntary celibacy, asexuality, antisexualism, or sexual abstinence. The term (which is sometimes shortened to incel) describes those who, despite being open to sexual intimacy and potential romance with someone and also making active, repeated efforts towards such an end, cannot cause any such end(s) to occur with any significant degree of regularity—or even at all.

As a concept, involuntary celibacy distinguishes itself from other various celibacy types by two major overall characteristics: First, it is explicitly not dependent on the choices or actions of the individual, and is instead a pattern-like, semi-perpetual, essentially unchanging situation, even if the person tries and/or succeeds in improving their looks and social skills to try to attract sexual partners. Second, involuntarily celibate individuals are at a complete or near-complete lack for intimate physical connection for very long spans of time—several years and even sometimes decades at a time, not merely weeks or months—while also being at a complete or near-complete lack of opportunities for sexual advancement in the first place, thereby making betterment of their own sexuality through accumulation of "sexual experience" impossible.

What makes involuntary celibacy an especially difficult condition for its sufferers to deal with is the fact that most of the time the circumstance cannot be explained through external personal factors—most incels, based on inquests by researchers into the population, are not especially physically unattractive, and most resemble in an interpersonal sense their peers who are not involuntarily celibate. Although a few of the involuntarily celibate population may have discernible personality disorders that preclude current and future sexual opportunities, the small amount of research done on this subject indicates that the incel population are on the whole socially normal, healthy individuals whose frustration is merely a product of their lack of sex, and not vice versa. This makes an individual's involuntarily celibate situation extremely difficult to resolve through the standard psychological methods of pinpointing and "fixing" internal and external life circumstances.

There are critics who claim that involuntary celibacy not only does not, but also that it cannot, exist in the first place, because to these critics the 'actual' cause is such people's lack of taking responsibility for their own sexual prowess and lack of initiative at knowing how to improve it. Such critics allege that self-proclaimed incels are simply affixing themselves with a label so the label can be used in self-defense. Incels themselves continue to insist that they are not "making excuses"; that involuntary celibacy is very real and can be very emotionally destructive; and some, on the assumption that incel is a valid sexological condition, are actively fighting to get incel officially recognised in the sexual science field.

Definition and psychological consequences

What separates the incel experience from people with the more typically inconsistent, but still occasional, intimacy opportunities is the fact that chances for sexual activities of any type other than masturbation — in particular physical intimacy, cuddling, kissing, and connection (whether romantic or simply momentary) — are perpetually rare-to-nil. Involuntarily celibate people may suffer from unusually intense loneliness, frustration, and depression as a result of this condition lasting for the lengths of time it typically tends towards. At the same time, in most Westernized, sex-positive societies, there is the additional social pressure for people in 20s or 30s age ranges to have experienced sexual interaction in some form. If the person has no such experience while all of his or her peers do, serious psychological consequences can result.

Not all involuntary celibates are sexual virgins, nor can incels be presumed to not have had at least a few—sometimes even moderately extensive—sexual experiences, including ones in the realms of outercourse, at various stages of life. It therefore cannot be assumed that involuntary celibates are by their nature sexual novices. With that said, even a person who has successfully had sexual activity exposure and/or sexual intercourse one or two times over the course of 50 or 60 years of life may still be assessed as being involuntarily celibate. The anchor of the involuntarily-celibate condition rests not in the precise (very low) number of sexual experiences a person has had, but rather in the repeated tries, and repeated failures, of that person to secure physical intimacy to any even somewhat-consistent degree. Its nature means that incel people subsequently have very few if any opportunities over the course of their sexually-mature lives to "learn" themselves and others sexually, for example what their particular individual skills in sexual situations may or may not be, as well as to "learn" their own responses to and patterns in romantic relationships, given they may not be having any. It is in this way that incel can be argued to actually be destructive to a person's overall sexual development, at least in the sense that it stunts such development for indeterminably long periods and, at its most extreme, for an individual's entire life.

While it may at first appear that incel is a purely individual and personal issue, there are those who point out that it does have effects on a given society at-large and constitutes a quality of life issue for a community and is also a public health concern. Involuntary celibates have higher mortality rates compared to the general population. Incels who do not consider suicide may instead binge drink or turn to psychoactive drugs, whether as a substitute for sexual relations, or to anesthetize themselves sexually. Finally, while sexual abstinence diminishes the risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases (STD) it may necessitate relinquishment of potential health benefits of sex. Somewhat relatedly, in any culture lacking liberal attitudes towards sexual expression and fulfillment, usually based upon religious principles (for example strict Sharia law societies, fundamentalist Christianity, hasidic Judaism and others), the effects of "enforced" lack of sex can have even worse general societal consequences. Numerous studies have indicated that excessive repression of the sexual instinct tends to increase the overall level of aggression, meaning when applied to whole populations, forbidding non-marital sex while also not being married and not having access to sexual contact in other forms, tends to lead to higher rates of crime and violence. There may also be a link between sexual repression and random aggression, anger at and purposeful insensitivity towards others, and even criminal behavior and a greater likelihood of killing and torturing enemies. More chillingly, recent examinations of a very small number of males fitting the incel criteria have shown that those few may commit extreme actions such as going on shooting rampages, as well as becoming serial arsonists, terrorists and serial killers.

Personality consequences

Limitations and disappointment, the indefinite postponement of sexual and romantic gratification, delay even of dating (much less marriage), and in particular the total lack of sexual experiences at key transition points during adolescence and young adulthood (things like "first base", one's first kiss, petting, and one's "first time"), which are all the types of lacks that seem to be the psychological cornerstones of the involuntarily celibate condition, are often ennobled on situation comedies, in movies, and in related media; for example, a sympathetic view of an incel male was made clear in The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But this does not tell the complete story of involuntary celibacy, which in everyday life can in fact be actively destructive to a person's emotional and interpersonal well-being, rather than just a periodic nuisance or inconvenience, as is usually the case with relatively short-term "dry spells".

Behaviors associated with involuntary celibacy can include self-absorption and an unhealthy preoccupation with sexual activities that can have an adverse effect on social interactions—including examples like the incel person mistaking every bit of social attention from the attracted-to gender as a sexual advance; tendencies towards being "obsessed with sex" or having "creepy" behaviors; seeing sexual metaphors where no such metaphors are even remotely intended; and similar phenomena. A jumpy, "hungry", and very intense overflow of sexual energy might also emanate uncontrollably from the incel individual, a product of the desperation for intimacy often felt by these individuals who can go decades or possibly even their entire lives without so much as even having the opportunity to, for example, see anyone from their sexually-desired gender naked in a real-world situation, much less any opportunity to explore sexual intimacy therein. The scale of the resultant desperation can vary but, if it is sensed by the desired gender at all, those people around that individual might mistake this for predatory tendencies rather than the simple backlog of sexual arousal that it really is. Such situations can have the ironic effect of reinforcing the incel individual's lack of access to sexual opportunities.

Internal consequences that can have external manifestations in an incel person usually follow the standard sexual frustration pattern of being or becoming tense, overly-easily sexually aroused, irritable, belligerent, and/or to have trouble sleeping and mood swings (assuming that these consequences are mostly or entirely the result of a prolonged lack of sexual activity, and would not exist at all on their own, or would exist only minimally).

Depth and prevalence

There is some controversy, both academic and amongst involuntary celibates themselves, concerning the duration of the celibacy needed to qualify for the label of involuntary celibacy. Someone who is "single" and without sex for several relatively short stretches at a time is usually not looked upon as being involuntarily celibate. Researchers Donnelly and Burgess (see below) used a floor figure of six months of involuntary celibacy in their study design, but others apply the term only to those who have never been involved in a sexual and/or romantic relationship even once, while other opinions extend the definition to include those who get sexual opportunities extremely rarely (such as once or twice within a five-year bloc, or once or twice within a decade). A few researchers, although not many, also include in their analysis medical celibates who are physically unable to engage in sexual activities due to disabilities, serious injuries and other health problems along with the side effects of chemotherapy and prescription drugs; Donnelly and Burgess did not include such a population in their examination of incel.^{[citation needed]}

There is very little sexological study regarding involuntary celibacy. Prior to a self-directed study on modern involuntary celibacy initiated in 1998 by researchers from Georgia State University, there were quite literally zero publicly-searchable research-based sources on the phenomenon. Even the 1998 study was only started once a member of an online discussion group for involuntary celibates inquired about current research on the subject. The study, Involuntary celibacy: A life course analysis, was published in 2001 in the Journal of Sex Research, produced by the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality. A news article reporting on the study indicated that involuntary celibacy can lead to anger and depression. Involuntary celibacy: A life course analysis has also been included in an anthology of scholarly literature.

Overall, it is still the case that very little research has been published on involuntary celibacy, and few statistics are available, although it is finding its way onto university syllabi. There has not been a more widespread study undertaken by sexologists or other sexuality scientists that could give rise to empirical data. Most of what is published scientifically and academically on the subject of celibacy focuses on voluntary and medical celibacy. Given this shortfall, incel does not appear to be a concept or a phenomenon taken seriously by those who do not experience it. It remains to be seen whether the lack of concentrated academic and scientific research into this subject will be corrected, and it also remains unclear why so few researchers in the fields of professional study of sexuality have directly addressed the condition thus far.

Possible contributing factors

Despite there being many theoretically plausible sources of involuntary celibacy, none can be demonstrably proven across any given sample of involuntary celibates, especially given the fact that many if not all of these possible reasons are controversial among vocal involuntary celibate themselves (see below).

• An objective lack of suitable social circumstances conducive to sex, i.e., "hanging with the wrong crowd" for this end; if this is the case, widening one's scope from the physical world to the online world, pursuing social activities in new areas of the physical world, or some combination of these, is the usual solution.
• Physical unattractiveness (although part of the point of the term involuntary celibacy is supposedly that it is used to explain a situation where a reasonably or even noticeably sexually-attractive person mysteriously fails to secure any, or much of any, sex; therefore this factor may not be applicable)
• An objective lack of suitable partners in the environment(s) in which the attempts to attract partners is/are being made.
• Inability to perform sexual intercourse due to sexual dysfunction, like erectile dysfunction (E.D.) — most incels lay claim to no such issues.
• Cognitive biases and/or negative explanatory styles such as learned helplessness or fundamental attribution error. This may be one of the more likely explanations, but still is not necessarily a definite or universally-applicable one.
• Self-sabotaging passive-aggressive patterns: it is unclear where the line can be drawn between passive-aggressive behavior being a cause and being a result of involuntary celibacy. This is also one of the more often-proposed explanations.
• Self esteem issues affecting one's feeling of 'normal' entitlement, such as a possibly sub-conscious feeling that one does not 'deserve' sexual satisfaction even though others do.
• Autism Spectrum Disorders such as Asperger's Syndrome, which are associated with impairment of social skills and nonverbal awareness, thereby impeding the ability to establish rapport with a potential sexual partner.
• Codependency issues that undermine one's ability to focus on the obtaining of a sexual encounter; for instance, a heterosexual woman can be codependent on another woman albeit non-sexual thereby undermining her ability to enjoy the desired heterosexual relationship with a man (this reason may be too subjectively-obtained, however, to be able to be proven to any palpable degree).
• The presence of proven psychological disabilities such as social phobias, social anxiety, and similar may play a role in preventing courtship.
• The presence of physical disabilities. Self-confident involuntary celibates with physical disabilities may counter that their social experiences teach them that they are seen by others as sexually attractive (such as being verbally informed by others that they are "hot"), but that nevertheless, sex does not result.
• Living conditions that make privacy, and thus sex, impossible, such as living in a house with no individualised sleeping quarters, or living with people who disapprove of sex and do not allow it to occur — potentially leading to a feedback loop of conscious or unconscious assumption on the part of the incel that because his or her living conditions make privacy impossible, there is no point in either initiating or accepting sexual advances because no place realistically exists where sex could happen.^{[citation needed]}
• Living in rural or suburban areas with constrained sexual, romantic, and marriage patterns.
• Hypergamy, a phenomenon in which men with the lowest socio-economic positions have the fewest sexual opportunities, or none at all, over the course of their natural lives.
• Heterosexual men who disqualify appealing women as "relationship material" based on the stereotype that beautiful women are less likely to be faithful as girlfriends or wives, or to become good mothers, and would be the most likely to seek divorce. A man may not even pursue an exceptionally beautiful woman to begin with due to insecurity, his fear of rejection, and an assumption that she is already in a monogamous, long-term relationship. When such patterns become fixed and perpetual in a person's consciousness, involuntary celibacy is the usual result.
• Very attractive men and women who may not even be noticed and be ignored completely by members of the opposite sex who are in monogamous relationships. A Florida State University study concludes that an unconscious attentional bias serves to help men and women remain faithful to their spouses and significant others.

Early mentions of involuntary celibacy

Historian Elizabeth Abbott, in her book The History of Celibacy, devotes one chapter to involuntary celibates. She includes in this category a wide variety of people:

• Those in social circumstances that deny them access to potential partners (for example, being imprisoned, or living in a society with skewed sex ratios caused by the death of many men in a war, or preferential abandonment or abortion of females—the latter is particularly severe in China and India.
• Those without access to the monetary resources to deal with a child.
• Those denied the right to marry by social norms (for example, widows in certain Hindu communities, or younger sisters in societies that call for the oldest to be married first).
• Women whose families lack money for the dowries required by their society.
• People who would lose their jobs if they were known to be sexually active (for example, apprentices and journeymen in certain trades in Medieval Europe, certain Western domestic servant or educator positions prior to the previous centuries).
• Men castrated against their will.

However, in general, no aspect of this particular listing bears much relation to how those in current discourse tend to use the term.

Commentators' perspectives

It has been argued on some blogs and by the members of some internet forums that in a promiscuous culture, sex with women is monopolized by a small number of good looking, high-status men, citing the lack of economic and social pressure to marry young as a contributing factor. Therefore, these critics may be in favor of a return to pre-sexual revolution standards of sexual morality, not to reduce women's rights or to narrow the scope of personal choice but, they claim, in order to reduce monopolies in heterosexual competition, and to possibly "level the playing field" in the contest for desirable women.

Other critics such as Henry Makow and psychologist Gary R. Brooks also believe that the sexual revolution has socially conditioned men into believing that they need both the approval from and companionship of beautiful women for validation. Meanwhile, some social conservatives such as Dr. Judith Reisman claim that pornography has increased internal anxiety amongst both sexes and has made men and women feel generic and possibly worthless, leading them to become heterophobes and inevitably incel.

What tends to be overlooked in these types of commentaries is that some of the most desired men and women are, inexplicably, also among the involuntarily celibate, which makes it unlikely that pressuring women to date and/or marry less desirable men or vice versa through a sense of "duty" or obligation, as was the case before the sexual revolution, would actually in itself put a stop to the incel phenomenon, whether for men in particular or either gender generally.

In the February 16, 2012 edition of the Avenue section of The Independent Florida Alligator, writer Ryan Galloway titles his piece "The 25-year-old Virgin Speaks Out about Sex and Love", arguing that the accumulation of sexual experience — and the obtaining of sexual intercourse in particular — is "not a big deal". Galloway criticizes what he sees as the over-sexualization of present-day human history, "as fiery and hot as it is," and asks: "Who said I have to experiment in order to figure out how to do things? I found some STD stats that would suggest that I don't." This line of thinking may be cold comfort to involuntary celibates, who by definition do not choose to not-have a sex life but rather are compelled by circumstance towards the state of not having one; therefore, Galloway himself may be viewed psychoanalytically as exhibiting some or another form of self-justifying behavior.

See also

• Asexuality
• Attachment theory
• Average Frustrated Chump
• Love-shyness
• Nice guy
• Sexual frustration
• Unrequited love

External links

• Sexless in The City
• The Incel project Devoted to promoting awareness of involuntary celibacy