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For other uses, see Incel (disambiguation).

Incels (/ˈɪnsɛlz/ IN-selz), a portmanteau of "involuntary celibates", are members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.[1][2][3] Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people.[14] The American nonprofit Southern Poverty Law Center described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups.[15][16] Incels are mostly male and heterosexual.[10][12][17] Many sources report that incels are predominantly white, although a group of researchers have argued that there is no definitive proof to support this claim.[18][19][20][21] Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands.[22][23]

At least seven mass murders, resulting in a total of 54 deaths, have been committed since 2014 by men who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and writings in their private writings or Internet postings. Incel communities have been criticized by the media and researchers for being misogynistic, encouraging violence, spreading extremist views, and radicalizing their members.[2][24][25][20] Beginning in 2018, the incel ideology has increasingly been described as a terrorism threat, and a February 2020 attack in Toronto, Canada became the first instance of incel-related violence to be prosecuted as an act of terrorism.[20][26][27][28][29]

History

The first online community to use the term "incel" was started in 1993 when a Canadian university student known only by her first name, Alana, created a website in order to discuss her sexual inactivity with others.[5][30][31][32] The website, titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences.[5] In 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time".[33] During her college years and after, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity.[32] She stopped participating in her online project around 2000 and gave the site to a stranger.[34][31] In 2018, Alana said of her project, "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years."[33] When she read about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and that parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, she wrote, "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it."[35][32] She expressed regret at the change in usage from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness.[22]

The message board love-shy.com was founded in 2003 as a place for people who were perpetually rejected or extremely shy of potential partners to discuss their situations.[36][37] It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s, and while IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and other online communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped.[34] In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. As edgy and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist trolling and "shitposting".[20]

The /r/incels subreddit, a forum on the website Reddit, later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their involuntary celibacy, sometimes advocated rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist.[38][39] One post titled "general question about how rapists get caught" was asked by a member pretending to be a woman, saying they wanted to know how a woman who was drugged and raped would begin finding her rapist.[38][35] On October 25, 2017, Reddit announced a new policy that banned "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people".[39] It banned the /r/incels subreddit on November 7, 2017, under the policy's purview. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.[40] After the subreddit was shut down the incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in various other subreddits; on September 30, 2019, Reddit banned another large incel subreddit, /r/braincels, after broadening its banning policy.[4][41]

Incels came to wider public notice with the banning of /r/incels and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as incels or shared similar ideologies.[37][42] Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex.[43]

Incel communities have become more extremist and focused on violence in recent years.[44][45][9] This has been attributed to various factors, including influence from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups.[2][46][25][44] The misogynistic and sometimes violent rhetoric of some incels has led to numerous bans from websites and webhosts.[10][38][47][19] Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms, such as Reddit, 4chan, 8chan, Voat, and Gab.[36][48][20] More extremist incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services and the dark web to avoid site shutdowns, as well as the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers.[20] There are also incel forums that disapprove of hatred, and a dating website that caters to incels.[49][50][7]

Beginning in 2018 and increasing into 2020, the incel ideology has been described by governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture.[20][26][28] In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for attempting to make terrorist threats for posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place... killing as many girls as I see."[51] In September 2019, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the Joker film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among incels on the dark web.[20] January 2020 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that incels are an "emerging domestic terrorism threat".[26][27] A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies."[20] Dr. John Horgan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who in 2019 received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to study the incel subculture, explained why the incel ideology equates to terrorism: "the fact that incels are aspiring to change things up in a bigger, broader ideological sense, that's, for me, what make it a classic example of terrorism. That's not saying all incels are terrorists. But violent incel activity is, unquestionably, terrorism in my view."[52] In February 2020, an attack in Toronto found to be motivated by incel ideologies became the first such act of violence to be prosecuted as terrorism, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE) movement.[29]

Ideology

Many incel communities are characterized by resentment, self-pity, racism, misogyny, misanthropy, and narcissism.[14][38][39][47][19] Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex;[6] other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness,[53] suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitutes, as well as various attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as income or personality.[37] Opposition to feminism and women's rights is commonplace, and some posters blame women's liberation for their inability to find a partner.[54] Some incels believe that there was a golden age in which couples married early, were strictly monogamous, and adhered to traditional gender roles, and that looks played less of a role in romantic pairings and mens' "entitlement" to sex with women was never denied.[20][55] While incels who hold this belief often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress.[55] Antisemitic beliefs are also regularly found on incel forums, with some posters going so far as to blame the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by Jews to weaken the West.[34][20]

Some discussions endorse suicide among incels,[56] violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men,[39][57][58] and harassment of women,[24] including activities such as catfishing.[24] A subgroup of incels who frequent websites run by Nathan Larson, a perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually.[34] In some communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (2018 Toronto van attack suspect),[59][60] as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (1989 École Polytechnique massacre),[24] Seung-Hui Cho (2007 Virginia Tech shooting),[61] and George Sodini (2009 Collier Township shooting).[62] Rodger is the most frequently referenced, with incels often referring to him as their "saint" and sharing memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities.[34] Some incels see violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them, and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Other incels take the more nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts. Some incels support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change.[55]

Many incels justify their prejudices using interpretations taken from concepts such as biological determinism and evolutionary psychology.[63][64] Other concepts that incels may believe in include female hypergamy, genetic superiority of men over women, the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle) which suggests that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most attractive men; and, among non-whites, the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which suggests that Caucasians face the fewest obstacles when dating.[54][65][66] Incels also believe that single people seeking a partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and Darwinian sexual selection, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of cosmetics.[67] Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image,[68] penis size,[65] or their physical appearance,[69] and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth.[70] Some incels justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.[37][63][71]

While incels believe that they are physically inferior to the rest of society, often referring to themselves as "subhuman", incels also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general.[55][6][64][72] A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high IQ') to see the truth about the social world." The study determined that incels followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups: ascribing highly negative values to out-groups, and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, incels also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance.[55]

Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere.[2][73][74] According to The New York Times, involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of "male supremacy".[75] The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018.[16] The New York Times wrote that "the group has evolved into a male supremacist movement made up of people—some celibate, some not—who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights".[71] Incel communities sometimes overlap with topics such as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[66] men's rights activism, vlogs by people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL),[53] and pickup artistry,[37][62] although at least one male incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accuses pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels.[62][76][77] The incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups, with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noting that incels "are part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration.[78][20] Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together."[20]

"Black pill"

The "black pill" is a set of beliefs that are commonly held amongst members of incel communities, such as biological determinism, fatalism, and defeatism for unattractive people.[79] Someone who believes in the black pill is referred to as "blackpilled".[80] The black pill has been described by Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly sexist ideology that ... amounts to a fundamental rejection of women’s sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice."[34]

The concept of the black pill distinguishes incels from the men's rights movement and their popular reference to the "red pill", an allusion to the dilemma in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist must choose to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill).[81] In the context of men's rights activism, people who are "bluepilled" believe in feminism and the existence of patriarchal structures in society.[82][83][84] Conversely, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where feminism has given women too much power over men, and male privilege does not exist.[85][84] The term "black pill" was first popularized on the blog Omega Virgin Revolt, where it represented a belief that the entire social system was broken and that one's place in the system was not something any individual could change.[66][86] To incels, "taking the black pill" means realizing that they are hopeless, and that their lack of success romantically and sexually is permanent regardless of any changes they might try to make to their physical appearance, personality, or other characteristics.[63][86][55][20]

On the former incel subreddit /r/braincels, "blackpills" were memes (usually images) that users shared to describe a user's thoughts, many of which criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow.[87] Although the tone of the subreddit was similar, moderators of the forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor /r/incels that resulted in its being banned from Reddit.[87] The /r/braincels subreddit was banned later, however, on September 30, 2019.[41]

Lexicology

The term "involuntary celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy".[1][2][3][88] It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success),[36][89] "FA" (short for "forever alone"),[90] "unfuckability",[91] "omegas",[92] "betas",[93] "the undersexed",[94] or "the sexless".[12] Alana, the coiner of the term incel, initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".[31]

Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect.[66] Incels often use dehumanizing terms for women, such as "femoids" (which they sometimes shorten to "foids") or "roasties".[55] They refer to attractive sexually active women as "stacys", less attractive sexually active women as "beckys", and attractive sexually active men as "chads".[38][80][95] People who are average looking and not incels are "normies".[55] "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. "Looksmaxing" is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including dressing nicely, working out, or undergoing plastic surgery.[53][96] The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and aren't attending school: "not in education, employment, or training".[93]

Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups in the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse),[97] "marcels" (married), "nearcels" (those who are considered nearly incel), "hicels" (those who have high standards; are very picky when dating), "heightcels" (short),[31] and "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship).[63][98] There are also a number of race-based variations of the term "incel" which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels".[56][8][65][99]

The term "incel" is increasingly being used as an insult to label men who may be unsuccessful in dating, but who aren't part of the online community.[100][101]

Demographics

Self-identified incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts.[10][12][17][34][38][47][17][53] Estimates of the size of incel communities vary,[37][92][102] and range from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands.[22][34][79][23]

Many sources describe incels as predominantly white, although some researchers have questioned the accuracy of this claim. Sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in The Washington Post describing them as primarily white.[18] Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center echoed this to NBC News, saying they are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood".[19] Jaki and colleagues, publishing linguistic analysis of a large incel forum in The Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict in June 2019, contended that "contrary to what is often reported" there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white, and that "it is impossible to say whether the majority of ... users are white men, but our data implies that this may be less true than expected. They suggested that the various mentions of race on the forum "may reflect, to some extent, the ethnic variety of the forum".[21] However, Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that most respondents self-identified as Caucasian.[20]

Some media outlets depict incels as unemployed (NEET) and living with parents.[36] Incels are mainly located in North America and Europe, although there are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere, such as the Italian website Il Forum dei Brutti.[23][20][103] The English language forums also receive much traffic from non-anglophone countries. Research published in 2020 by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) on the three largest incel forums found they had a total of about 20,000 users, with only about 1,000 who post actively. The FOI found that between 4.6–7.3% of the visitors to the forums originated from Sweden. They suggest that in proportion to its population, Sweden has the highest proportion of incels in the world, though they caution this may not be accurate, given the use of personal VPNs.[104]

The incel subculture includes people who are in sexless marriages (or other sexless relationships) but who wish to be sexually active. Asexual people and those who are voluntarily sexually abstinent are not considered incels.[105]

Female incels

The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was gender-inclusive.[106] There are present day women-specific forums, such as /r/Femcels and /r/ForeverAloneWomen.[107][32] Nonetheless, there is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels,[108] others claiming that it is impossible for women to be an incel at all,[37] others claiming that only women with a physical deformity can be incels,[109] and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels.[110]

Tens of thousands of self-identifying female incels are reported to populate the internet. Their most popular site is r/TruFemcels on Reddit, with over 22,000 members.[111] Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can genuinely experience involuntary celibacy.[111][112][113] Some female incels believe they could have casual sex, but fear it would only be from men who would abuse or disrespect them.[111][112][113]

Women who identify as incels share some similarities with their male counterparts, such as belief that physical appearance is the most important factor in finding a partner. In other ways they tend to be different; for example, according to journalist Isabelle Kohn, rather than being angry at the men who reject them, they empathize with the men for not wanting to date them. Kohn notes the tendency for female incels to turn their rage inwards, rather than outwards like males.[111] Journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesizes that the fact female incels don't go on violent rampages like some male incels is the most obvious reason why female incels haven't received much attention in mainstream media.[112] As of February 2020, Kohn wrote that she could find "mountains" of academic papers on male incels, but none on female incels. She says the assumption that female incels don't exist adds to their pain.[111]

Mental health

"Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, autism spectrum disorder, and body dysmorphic disorder.[64] Some visitors of incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues, and members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment.[63][4][114] Some incels with severe depression are also suicidal, and some members of incel communities encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending they commit acts of mass violence before doing so.[36][4][44][96]

Mass murders and violence

2023 Allen, Texas outlet mall shootingPlymouth shooting2020 Westgate Entertainment District shooting2020 Toronto machete attackHanau shootings2019 Dallas courthouse shooting2018 Tallahassee shootingToronto van attackStoneman Douglas High School shootingAztec High School shootingUmpqua Community College shooting2014 Isla Vista killings
Timeline of violence committed or suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies

Several mass murders and other violent attacks have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies.

2000s

On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three women died and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself.[115][116] He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name.[117] In the years following the shooting, Sodini has been embraced by some incel communities.[62]

2010s

Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California on May 23, 2014, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. These killings drew media attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel communities. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos in which he detailed his involuntary celibacy and discussed how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women.[31][118][119][120] He had been an active member of a community popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto.[121][122][42][62][123] Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that emerged later.[15][42][124] He has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities.[60][62]

Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus on October 1, 2015 in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related with Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods".[19] Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so."[37][125][126][127] Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters.[36][128][129]

On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being involuntarily celibate for four years.[130][131]

William Atchison killed two people before killing himself on December 7, 2017 in Aztec, New Mexico, in a shooting at Aztec High School, where he had previously been a student. He had used the pseudonym "Elliot Rodger" on several online forums, and praised "the supreme gentleman" (a term Rodger had used to describe himself, which has since become a common reference among incel communities).[60][132]

On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, before being arrested. Cruz had previously posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten".[19]

Alek Minassian killed ten people and injured fourteen others on April 23, 2018 in a vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario before being arrested. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Rodger.[31][75][133][134] The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation.[1] Following the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede /r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint."[15] Following the attack, police found that Minassian had been radicalized by incel communities. Minassian told police that he was a virgin, and that the attack had been motivated by his resentment for "chads and stacys", as well as for women who "g[ave] their love and affection to obnoxious brutes" rather than to him. He said that he hoped his attack would "inspire future masses to join me" in committing acts of violence as a part of the "Beta Uprising".[135]

On November 2, 2018, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four women and a man before killing himself in a shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in Tallahassee, Florida.[136] He had been a follower of incel ideologies for a long time, and also had a history of arrests for grabbing women's buttocks.[20][137] In 2014 he posted several YouTube videos of himself espousing extreme hatred for women and expressing anger over not having a girlfriend, mentioning Elliot Rodger in one video. In the months leading up to the shooting, he posted numerous misogynistic, racist, violent, and homophobic songs to SoundCloud.[136][137][138]

In January 2019, Christopher Cleary was arrested for posting on Facebook that he was "planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter" and "killing as many girls as I see" because he had never had a girlfriend and was a virgin. He has been described as an incel in the media.[51][139][140] In May 2019, Cleary was sentenced to up to five years in prison for an attempted threat of terrorism.[141]

Bryan Isaack Clyde began what was intended to be a mass shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas, Texas on June 17, 2019, but was shot and fatally wounded by officers from the Federal Protective Service before he injured anyone. Clyde had shared incel memes on social media, along with other posts referencing right-wing beliefs and conspiracy theories.[142][143] Following the incident, the Joint Base Andrews military base briefed its personnel on incels, with a spokesman describing them as "a very real threat to military members and civilians."[144]

Incels have also praised attackers with unclear motives who they believe to be incels. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, some of the incel community celebrated the shooter Stephen Paddock, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies".[15] After the 2018 Toronto shooting, posters on an incel message board expressed excitement with the possibility that the perpetrator might be an incel, although no motive has been identified.[24]

2020s

Tobias Rathjen committed two mass shootings in Hanau, Germany on February 19, 2020, killing ten people and himself, and leaving behind a manifesto described by Insider as "delusional". Some media sources reported that Rathjen self-identified as an incel in the manifesto; others said that he did not use the term.[145][146] The manifesto included racist and paranoid writings, where Rathjen called for the extermination of non-white people and claimed he had not had a relationship with a woman because the government had been monitoring him.[145][147]

On February 24, 2020, a 17-year-old male stabbed a female spa worker to death and attempted to kill her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the murder was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the attack being motivated by incel ideology. This was the first time violence motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada.[29]

Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020 at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development in Glendale, Arizona, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people.[148][149]

Criticism

Of incels

Incel communities have been widely criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist.[1][2][17][24][25] Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play[s] a very large role" in the radicalization of incels, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites".[44] Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups.[44][24][25][150] Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and ... find themselves very frustrated." He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs."[151] Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence".[5] Another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of incels in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about incels' feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape".[43]

While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic towards incels. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions.[67] New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a similarly controversial op-ed in May 2018 titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex workers would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires.[152][153] Some commentators wrote articles agreeing with this view, including Toby Young, who agreed that sex robots could be a "workable solution";[23] others criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing incel ideology.[154][155]

Journalist Zack Beauchamp has expressed concern about other types of harm inflicted by incels that may be lost in the attention paid specifically to mass violence; he points to forum posts in which users brag about yelling at, catfishing, and sexually assaulting women.[34] University of Portsmouth lecturer Lisa Sugiura has described incel forums as a "networked misogyny", and urged the posts in such forums be taken seriously not only in the context of hate speech but also as a form of grooming that could radicalize "impressionable and vulnerable disillusioned young men".[43] Some sociological research on incel communities has analyzed them as a hybrid masculinity, in which privileged men distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously reproducing it.[74]

Of platforms providing services to incel communities

Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the /r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some incels) and Twitter.[25][41] Cloudflare, which provides services including DDoS protection and caching so that webpages are still accessible when a site is offline, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime even when webhosts have terminated service.[156]

Of media reporting on incels

Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities.[157] Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming by implying that women who rejected the attackers' advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks.[158][159] Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in Vice who condemned media outlets who "cove[r] and amplif[y] toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology".[155]

See also

References

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Wikiquote has quotations related to Incel.
  • The dictionary definition of incel at Wiktionary
  • The thesaurus entry for incel at Wiktionary.
  • Media related to Inceldom at Wikimedia Commons
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