Incel
Incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ IN-sel; a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate"[1]) is a term associated with a mostly online subculture of people (racially diverse, but mostly white,[2] male and heterosexual[3]), who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, and who may blame, objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result.
[4][5][6] Originally coined as "invcel" around 1997 by a queer Canadian student, the spelling had shifted to "incel" by 1999, and the term rose to prominence in the 2010s in the aftermath of the misogynistic terrorist acts of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian.
[11] 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".
[15][12] 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.
[20][21] On November 7, 2017, Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit following a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people" adopted earlier in October 2017.
Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to r/incels, moderators of the r/braincels 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 that resulted in its being banned from Reddit.
[19][59][60] In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for making terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place ... killing as many girls as I see".
[61] 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 self-identified incels on the dark web.
[65] Jacob Ware publishing in Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses wrote that analysis of incels has been focused within the United States and Canada due to the concentration of incel-motivated attacks in those countries.
[74][75][76][77] In December 2021, the New York Times reported that it had identified 45 people, individually, who died in connection to a website called Sanctioned Suicide,[78] and estimated that the true number was likely much higher.
[46] Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex; other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness, suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitution, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as looks, income or personality.
[13][19] Alexei Podnebesny, whom the media calls the leader of the incel movement in Russia,[85][86] has developed his own theory of vaginocapitalism (from "vagina" and "capitalism"), according to which men are deprived of the right to sex by women, every man is forced to pay for it in some way.
[90]: 736 [91] The "blackpill" (sometimes written as "black pill") generally refers to a set of beliefs mostly held by incel communities, which include biological determinism, fatalism, and defeatism for unattractive people.
[100] Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image,[101] penis size,[99] or their physical appearance,[102] and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth.
Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence.
[111] A September 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate on the largest dedicated incel forum found that users posted about rape once every 29 minutes during their study period and used the word "kill" 1,181 times in one month.
[120][121] Journalists for the New York Times in 2018 wrote that involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of "male supremacy" and that the communities have evolved into a movement "made up of people—some celibate, some not—who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights".
[83][36][98][123] A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that self-identified 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".
[120] Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups, with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noting that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration.
[126][19] 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".
[26] 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".
[4][5][6][127] It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success),[17][128] "FA" (short for "forever alone"),[129] "unfuckability",[130] "omegas",[131] "betas",[132] "betafags",[120] "the undersexed",[133] or "the sexless".
[95] They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids",[134] sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely[135] believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active).
Looksmaxxing is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking steroids and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing to improve facial aesthetics.
[150] 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".
[155] Journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesizes that the fact that females who identify as incels do not go on violent rampages like some of their male counterparts is the most obvious reason why they have not received much attention in mainstream media.
[210] In April 2021, Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old self-described incel who praised Elliot Rodger,[211] was arrested on federal charges after allegedly videotaping himself approaching women sitting outside a restaurant in Manhattan, New York and telling them he was going to detonate a bomb.
[215] On December 27, 2021, an individual who harboured views common with incels, Lyndon McLeod (whose pen name was Roman McClay), committed the 2021 Denver and Lakewood shootings, murdering five people before being killed by a police officer.
[223][224] 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.
These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex".
