WHITE MALES
New study identifies two main factors that predispose someone to incel membership

2022/12/24



New research has attempted to discover the origin of membership in the “incel” community. Reviewing over 8000 posts in two online incel groups, common themes that led to membership were revealed. Incel membership is related to a shared sense of perceived injustice and a method for increasing self-esteem through group membership.

The study was published in the journal Deviant Behavior.

The term “incel” blends the words involuntary and celibate, and is used as a personal identifier. Individuals identifying as incels have come together on the internet and developed theories about the origin of their incel status. These include the role women, minorities, and democracy may play in preventing their emergence into a world of non-incel individuals.

The authors of the new study, Roberta O’Malley and Brenna Helm, describe incel groups as “a popular subculture of men nestled within the online misogynist and male supremacist ecosystem.”

In ages past, the term celibate was associated with the religiously devout, children, widows, and those who had suffered catastrophic accidents. Today, some men who have failed to consummate any relationship, even after decades of trying, have turned to violent actions and beliefs as an outlet for their frustration. Incels have been connected to at least three mass shootings and have been identified as a male supremacist hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

O’Malley and Helm recognized that reducing membership in incel groups may include understanding what motivates a man to get involved. The research team chose two incel forums, one from a large social media website and the second from an independent forum with 11,000 members. Posts from the summer of 2018 to January 2019 were sampled from these two forums.

Over 8,000 posts were mined from the two sites and analyzed. Posts were systematically coded to identify repeat ideas or statements. Those were then funneled into larger conceptual ideas like hopelessness or disconnection.

Through this analysis, O’Malley and Helm uncovered two significant themes, perceived injustice and a need to build self-esteem. First, analyzing the posts for evidence of the origin of these feelings of injustice, the researchers found “perceived injustices are rooted in ideals of gender inequality.” Incel members may feel on the outside of manhood while at the same time desiring male supremacy.

Second, those in an incel group may experience a boost to self-esteem if they perceive the group to be “knowledgeable, free-thinking, and not easily duped by modern society, which may feel positive in the face of overwhelming self-loathing.” The research team notes that these two factors did not operate independently as pathways to incel groups; they seem to both be necessary factors for incel membership.

Some limitations to the study were identified. First, the evolving nature of online communities may not reflect current membership factors. Second, posters are anonymous, and any individual post may not reflect the beliefs of the poster. Finally, researchers cannot speak to those participating in the forums, so some factors that predispose someone to membership may be absent from the data.

Despite these limitations, O’Malley and Helm feel any clues to the path to incel membership is important to the prevention of future violence, stating, “Although only a small subsection of incels may go on to perpetrate physical violence, the forum operates to solidify and interpret the world through a gender-extremist lens that is highly concerning. Specifically, incel forums encourage and promote violence to combat the injustices they perceive. Thus, incel forums are not innocuous spaces.”

The study, “The role of perceived injustice and need for esteem on incel membership online”, was authored by Roberta O’Malley and Brenna Helm.

© PsyPost

Opinion: Yes, the incel community has a sexism problem, but we can do something about it

by Michael Halpin and Finlay Maguire, The Conversation

June 12,2023

A number of online communities and social media influencers engage in misogynistic 

rhetoric. Incels — short for involuntary celibates — are one of these communities. 

Credit: Shutterstock

A judge in Ontario's Superior Court has ruled that a 2020 attack on a Toronto massage parlor was an incel-inspired act of terror. This is the first time that an incel-related crime has been labeled a terror offense.

Law enforcement groups in Canada and the United States have identified incels as a growing terror threat.

A number of online communities and social media influencers engage in misogynistic rhetoric. Incels—short for involuntary celibates—are one of these communities. Incels are men who see themselves as unable to establish romantic relationships with women. Incels believe they are victims of lookism, which they define as a social bias in favor of attractive people.

Incels have been connected to hate crimes against women and celebrate attacks that target them. Despite the link between incels and violence, public figures like Jordan Peterson defend incels and see them as unfairly marginalized.

Online misogyny

To better understand incel misogyny, we analyzed every comment made on a popular incel discussion board over a period between 2017 and 2021. In total, we collected more than 3.5 million comments. Some incels say they are not misogynistic, but we found that misogyny is widespread within the incel community.

In the comments we analyzed, incels used misogynistic slurs nearly one million times. They use misogynistic slurs to describe women 3.3 times more often than non-misogynistic terms. More than 80 percent of discussion board threads contained at least one misogynistic slur. Some users only referred to women using misogynistic slurs.

Our research is not just about the number of misogynistic slurs that incels use, but also the types of slurs they use. Many of these terms are explicitly hostile and dehumanizing. Slurs like "foid" are used to label women as uncaring machines, while words like "roastie" aim to body shame sexually active women.

While our data shows that incels hate all women, incels particularly target racialized women with sexist and racist terms. Incels dehumanized and sexualized racialized women by saying they were sexually available to all white men. Incels labeled women "race traitors" for dating outside their race.

Why are incels targeting women? Incels argue that women and society treat them like subordinate, failed men and "beta males." As we argue, incels weaponize this subordination by saying women should be rented, bought and sold like property to "solve" the "incel problem." Incels see themselves as the "real victims," who are being attacked by women, feminism and society. They think eliminating women's rights will improve society.

What can we do to address online misogyny?

Our study shows that incels do not become misogynistic within the incel community. Instead, they are already misogynistic when they arrive in the community. This suggests that men are becoming misogynistic in other communities, such as men's rights groups like Men Going Their Own Way and those formed around online influencers like Andrew Tate. These communities can serve as a pipeline for incels.

Efforts to disrupt online misogyny will need to focus on multiple communities and the networks between them. Simply shutting down online forums or discussion boards is not likely to be effective. Incels and other communities pop up in new locations, and these groups see censorship as validation of their beliefs.

Instead, academics, policymakers and the public need to directly challenge misogyny. We can engage with and challenge incel communities to disrupt their ability to operate as misogynistic echo-chambers.

We also need to keep supporting organizations that advance gender equity. In addition to organizations that advocate for women, we also need to support groups for men that challenge sexism and promote healthy and positive ideas about masculinity.

We can amplify the voices of men who have left the incel community. We can also identify and support men who decide not to join the incel community, particularly because our data suggests that the men who did not make misogynistic comments appeared to leave the community.

All of us can challenge how science is misused to create misogynistic misinformation. A page on the incel website we analyzed provided links to hundreds scientific studies that they believe support their sexist claims.

Many of these studies were misinterpreted, misquoted or presented out of context. We can adapt existing tools, such as online fact-checkers, to more efficiently counter such incorrect and misleading misogynistic claims.

What can incels do? The site we studied tells its members to not persecute, harass or attack others. Based on our research, those rules don't seem to apply to attacking or harassing women. To the extent that incel communities care about misogyny, they need to do better at challenging it in each other.

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Incel terrorist attacks pose an increasing threat

New study delves into the mating psychology of involuntarily celibate men

2023/09/1


There has been extensive media coverage on the mating psychology of incels in recent years. However, most of the commentary has been speculative given the lack of empirical research on the topic. The first formal investigation of this subject has revealed that contrary to mainstream narratives, incel-identifying men report lower minimum standards for mate preferences compared to non-incel men, among other interesting findings. This research was published in The Journal of Sex Research.

“The incel topic in general interested me because finding and retaining a mate represent persistent adaptive problems for humans. Modern humans descend from an unbroken evolutionary chain of ancestors who successfully solved these problems. Achieving mating goals is so important to humans that it impacts physical and mental health, financial success, and even functions as a social signal of status,” said William Costello (@CostelloWilliam), a PhD student of Individual Differences and Evolutionary Psychology in Dr. David Buss’ lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“Indicative of how preoccupied humans are with attracting mates is the fact that billion-dollar industries are built around it in the form of dating apps, we write poetry and go to war over it. It seems somewhat paradoxical, therefore, that there is a growing community of men who strongly identify with their perceived inability to solve these adaptive problems – involuntary celibates (incels).”

“We have a deep evolutionary history of involuntarily celibate men. Indeed, genetic evidence reveals that in every generation, most women reproduce whereas only a subset of men reproduce (Betzig, 2012). Modern incels, however, appear unique in galvanizing a shared victimhood identity around their sexless and mateless circumstance.”

“Despite the incel community being focused almost entirely on their perceived difficulties in mating, and the significant media speculation about the potential sexual and mating psychology of incels, incel mating psychology has yet to be formally investigated in the scientific literature. In fact, there is a relative dearth of primary data collected from self-identified incels in general, likely due to incels being a hard-to-reach group who are suspicious of the motives of academic researchers.”

I asked Costello what can be learned by studying this specific population. The researcher said, “The mental health impact of feeling like you cannot access sexual or romantic relationships. We know that there is lots of research showing that relationships improve mental health.”

A total of 409 individuals were included in this research. Participants were recruited through Facebook and Twitter using social media snowball sampling. Costello also advertised the study on the “Incel” podcast. As well, the study was shared with users on the Incel.is forum.

This study focused on single, biological males. Those who identified as heterosexual, biologically female, and non-incel were kept for additional analyses. A total of 151 incel and 149 non-incel single men were included in this research.

Participants completed a “reasons for being single” checklist where they ticked off items they believed contributed to their singlehood. Of these, 9 items were external reasons (e.g., online dating), while 28 were internal reasons (e.g., fearing rejection). Participants also completed the Mate Value Scale which includes four items assessing their opinions of their own general attractiveness as a mate.

In addition, they completed a questionnaire assessing their minimum standards for mates, for which they indicated a minimum score between 1 to 10 a person would have to meet across 15 traits (e.g., humor, intelligence) to be considered as a long-term mate. Participants also responded to these items from the perspective of a woman. The researchers derived a composite score across the 15 traits. Lastly, participants indicated whether they identify as an incel and completed a demographic questionnaire (e.g., education, employment status).

Costello broke down the results of their research.

“Our findings highlight extremely poor mental health, some cognitive distortions, a victimhood mindset known, the disproportionate prevalence of autism spectrum disorder, poor mating intelligence, and dating anxiety among incels.”

“Many people are understandably worried about incel violence. However, my supervisor (Dr. David Buss) and I actually just published a theoretical overview of the scale of incel violence. The evidence suggests they are far more dangerous towards themselves than others. Given that sexless young men are typically very violent and disruptive in society, it’s actually a puzzle why there is not actually MORE incel violence.”

“Our new work also confirms and dispels some stereotypes about incels,” the researcher told PsyPost.

“Unsurprisingly, incels have a low sense of their own mate value. But interestingly, evidence shows that men are most inclined toward misogyny when they doubt their appeal to female partners and that unwanted celibacy (independent of incel identity) predicts misogyny. The misogyny pervading much of the incelosphere likely reflects a low sense of mate value. This means that helping incels improve their own mate value and mating prospects would have the added benefit of reducing harmful instances of misogyny.”

“A stereotype that our work dispels is that incels do not simply have too high standards as many commenters suggest. A common narrative is that incels simply have too high standards. Evolutionarily it would not be a good strategy for low mate value men to concentrate their finite mating effort on competing with high mate value men for high mate value females. Our data show that incels had lower minimum standards for mate preferences across every trait and overall. Incels do not appear to have overly high mate standards compared to non-incel single men.”

“However, incels make fundamental mistakes in their perception of female mate preferences. Incels UNDERESTIMATE the importance of qualities like intelligence, kindness & humor, and OVERESTIMATE physical attractiveness & financial resources. ~Global prevalence of autism spectrum disorder is .62% Yet it’s 18-30% for incels! People with autism have poorer theory of mind i.e., ability to infer the desires of others. Incels’ failures of cross sex mind reading may reflect high levels of autism.”

He noted a caveat, “There may be some social desirability regarding the reported preferences of women in our study. Specifically, around the importance of financial resources. Robust evidence shows that women do indeed place a premium on financial resources in a mate. However, kindness, intelligence, and humor are also extremely important to women.”

He added, “The vast majority of incels reasons for being single were internal (self-blame).”

What are incels’ top reasons for being single? Costello listed, 1) Not good at flirting, 2) Not good looking enough, 3) Socially awkward, and 4) Too shy.

As for questions that still need to be addressed, the researcher said, “I think the important next steps are for scholars to design and test some mental health interventions to help this at-risk group. I am also interested in working with someone to dig deeper into the high rates of ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) among incels (~18-30%). We should investigate why there is such an overrepresentation of men with ASD in this community. What is it about incel identity that appeals to men with ASD?”

“It might also be interesting to investigate whether incels are accurate or inaccurate in their assessment of their own mate value. There are reports that incels are seeking invasive cosmetic surgeries to improve their physical attractiveness. It’s important to ascertain if this is based on a cognitive distortion or body dysmorphia.”

This year, Costello was selected as the American Psychological Association Division 51 Society for the Psychological Study of Men & Masculinities student of the year.

The study, “The Mating Psychology of Incels (Involuntary Celibates): Misfortunes, Misperceptions, and Misrepresentations”, was authored by William Costello, Vania Rolon, Andrew G. Thomas, and David P. Schmitt.

© PsyPost

INCEL MALE FANTASY'S ARE  GOR  S&M

Gor

Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org › wiki › Gor

Gor is the fictional setting for a series of sword and planet novels written by philosophy professor John Lange, writing as John Norman.

Gor Series vols.1-32 by John Norman

Internet Archive

https://archive.org › 01tarnsmanofgorjohnnorman

Jan 13, 2020 — The famous fantasy/scifi series by John Norman, complete up to volume 32.

John Norman's Gor novels : Free Download, Borrow, and ...

Internet Archive

https://archive.org › details › john-normans-gor-novels

May 4, 2021 — Topics: Chronicles of Counter-Earth, Counter-Earth Saga, Fantasy, Gor, Gorean Chronicles, Gorean Cycle, Gorean Saga, John Norman, Planetary ...

Inside the warped world of incel extremists

The Conversation
August 16, 2021


In trying to understand what prompted a man in Plymouth, England to commit the worst mass shooting in the UK for over a decade, attention has turned to his apparent links with the incel community – an online subculture of people who describe themselves as “involuntary celibates".

Jake Davison allegedly shot his mother before a shooting spree which ended when he turned the gun on himself. His youngest victim was three years old. In the lead-up to the attacks, he compared himself to incels in YouTube videos and contributed to their forums.

He uploaded videos in which he fixated on his virginity and, in a direct reference to incel ideology, Davison's described himself as “blackpilled". This means that he believed himself too old, at 22, to find love.

Incels refuse to accept responsibility for their circumstances, instead believing their inability to attract women makes them victims of oppression. Like all groups under the umbrella of online misogyny known as the “manosphere", they subscribe to the “red pill" conspiracy theory. They believe men are the true victims of gendered oppression, that male power has been usurped, and that feminism is a front to disguise men's subjugation.

Incels essentialise this conspiracy in the idea of the “black pill". To swallow the black pill is to accept that this oppression is insurmountable. It invokes a certain hopelessness. Incels believe there is nothing they can ever do to improve their lives.

Incels believe in a genetically essentialist social hierarchy. At the apex are “chads" – hyper-athletic attractive males who women desire instinctively. Beneath them are descending classes of “betas". At the lowermost point are incels, whose innate characteristics make them unable to attract women. Height-cels say they are too short; skull and frame-cels blame their skeletal structure; wrist-cels believe their wrists are too thin; and there are many more delineations. Incels cannot accept responsibility for their lot in life, instead spinning themselves as victims of their own biology and societal oppression.
Targeting women

Incels blame women for this hierarchy and their low place within it. The culture portrays women as irrational and emotional creatures who are blindly pursuing the biological imperatives to seek sexual satisfaction and material security through marriage.

Incels believe women select different men for these functions, marrying an inferior “beta" for financial gain whilst cheating with “chads" for sexual gratification. To incels, women pursue their interests sociopathically and will not hesitate to harm men. A society dominated by women does the same and incels see their oppression as a natural consequence of women's malicious and inhuman nature.

Nowhere is this expressed more bizarrely than the widely held incel belief in the “dogpill". This is the view that women's drive for sexual satisfaction is such that they will routinely have sex with large dogs. Absurdity is the point here. Women are portrayed as so depraved that they are undeserving of rights and bodily autonomy.

Incels call for women to be stripped of their rights and be forced to serve as state-mandated girlfriends or held in concentration camps. Incels see themselves as the sexless victims of women's nature, and call for them to be contained or controlled accordingly.

The “black pill" refers to the oppression of incels at the hands of biologically malevolent women. In various online cultures, to take the black pill is to give up hope. And in incel culture specifically, it is to give up hope of ever having sex or a genuine romantic connection. Because they believe attractiveness is genetically determined, there is no hope for incels to rise in the hierarchy. They will be forever denied sex and happiness, and are doomed to be women's victims. Nihilistic despair and dogmatic hopelessness permeates incel communities and it is from this that violence flows.

Death and violence

Given that the alternative is to languish in unceasing oppression, incel ideology legitimises violence against practically any target. Incel forums simultaneously glorify suicide whilst justifying extreme violence against women as a noble reaction to female domination. Violence is an ideological response; a means to punish women for their perceived crimes and reclaim what has been usurped. Incel ideology is necessarily violent because there is no hope, only revenge.

For some time, the wider world has instinctively dismissed what is, admittedly, a childish ideology based on crude stereotypes and nonsensical concepts. Sadly this is no longer an option. Plymouth is not the first shooting linked to incels. Californian Elliot Rodger, a self-described “kissless virgin," killed six in 2014 as “revenge" against those who denied him sex. Incel communities venerate Rodger as a saint to this day.

In Toronto, Canada, Alek Minassian was convicted of murdering ten people with a van in 2018. He hailed Rodger online minutes prior to the attack. Recent attacks in Canada, Arizona and Germany have also been linked to incels, while a planned attack in Ohio was discovered only days before Plymouth. There are many more examples, and some are calling for the Plymouth shooting to be classified as an act of terror.

Although not obviously political, incel ideology revolves around imagined subjugation, and violence is intended to have a far-reaching social impact. Rodger hoped to “deliver a devastating blow" that would shake women to “the core of their wicked hearts". Minassian fantasised of an “incel rebellion" that would overthrow the corrupt social order and return women to their proper place.

Few incels believe this is actually feasible, but allegiance to the principle motivates violence intended to strike at the social order and harm women as a distinct class. This is why the extreme violence of the incel community should be considered terrorism.

Incel terrorism has spiked over the last decade and there is every indication this community is growing. If this most recent attack was motivated by incel ideology, it was neither the first nor likely to be the last. For all their warped concepts and ideological incoherence, incels are becoming a threat we must take seriously.


By Charlie Tye, PHD Candidate, York Law School, University of York

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

WHITE TEENAGE MALE ANGST = FEMICIDE, MISOGYNY
Women-hating manifesto tips off police to ‘incel’ mass-shooting plot

By Mark Gillispie
July 22, 2021 — 

Cleveland— A man who identifies with a group that despises women appeared in federal court in Cincinnati on charges related to his plans to kill sorority members at an unidentified university in Ohio.

Tres Genco, 21, of Hillsboro, Ohio, is charged with an attempted hated crime and possession of a machine gun.

Federal prosecutors in a statement released on Wednesday (Thursday AEST) said Genco identifies himself as an “incel” — involuntary celibate — and has spent time participating in an online community of men hostile to women because they believe they are unjustly denied sexual or romantic attention.

Genco was active in the online incel sub-culture. 

The statement points to a 2014 shooting committed by a self-identified incel named Elliot Rodger, who killed six people and injured 14 others outside a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, before killing himself.

According to prosecutors, Genco frequently posted on an incel website in 2019 and 2020. In one post, he wrote that he had used a squirt gun to spray “foids” in the face with orange juice, something Rodger had done before the Santa Barbara killings.

“Foids” is the shortened incel term for the hostile term “feminoid”.

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Court documents say Genco wrote a manifesto called “A Hideous Symphony,” which stated in part: “I will slaughter out of hatred, jealousy, and revenge…I will take away the power of life that they withhold from me”. He also allegedly signed a document “Your hopeful friend and murderer.”

Court documents allege the 21-year-old conducted surveillance at an Ohio university on January 15, 

According to local acting US Attorney Vipal Patel, on the same day Genco allegedly searched online for topics including “planning a shooting crime” and “when does preparing for a crime become an attempt?”

Local police searched Genco’s home in March 2020 and found a firearm with an attached bump stock — which allows it to be rapidly fired — a pistol, loaded ammunition magazines, boxes of ammunition and body armor.

Messages seeking comment were left on Wednesday with Genco’s newly appointed public defender.

AP, staff

Ohio 'incel' charged with hate crime for plotting sorority mass shooting, officials say Tres Genco, 21, planned to shoot women at an Ohio university "out of hatred, jealousy and revenge," the Justice Department alleged.

July 21, 2021, 
By Antonio Planas


An Ohio man whom authorities describe as an "incel" was arrested Wednesday and charged in federal court with attempting a hate crime by plotting to kill women in a mass shooting.

The Justice Department alleged in a statement that the man, Tres Genco, 21, of Hillsboro, Ohio, planned to shoot students at sororities at a university in Ohio. A grand jury indicted Genco on charges of attempting to commit a hate crime and unlawful possession of a machine gun, officials said.


During an investigation, law enforcement discovered a note indicating that Genco hoped to "aim big" and attain a kill count of 3,000 victims, officials alleged. Genco also wrote a manifesto, authorities said, in which he said he would "slaughter" women "out of hatred, jealousy and revenge."

An examination of Genco's electronics showed that on the day he is accused of having written the manifesto, he also searched online for sororities and a university in Ohio, authorities said. The university was not named.

Officials said Genco was part of the online "incel" community, a group of mostly men who harbor hostility toward women. Genco identified as an incel, or "involuntary celibate," officials said.

"Incels seek to commit violence in support of their belief that women unjustly deny them sexual or romantic attention to which they believe they are entitled," the statement read. "According to the indictment, Genco maintained profiles on a popular incel website from at least July 2019 through mid-March 2020. Genco was a frequent poster on the site."

Genco attended Army Basic Training at Fort Benning, Georgia, from August through December 2019, authorities said.

In 2019, he bought items that included tactical gloves, a bulletproof vest, a hoodie with the word "revenge" on it, a bowie knife, two Glock 17 magazines and a 9 mm Glock 17 clip, officials said.

The charging document, authorities said, alleges that Genco conducted surveillance at an Ohio university on Jan. 15, 2020. He is accused of having searched online for topics the same day. Officials said some topics were "how to plan a shooting crime" and "When does preparing for a crime become attempt?"

Neither Genco nor his relatives could immediately be reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon. It was unclear whether he had retained an attorney.

During a visit to an incel website, authorities said, Genco referred to Elliot Rodger, a known incel who killed six people and injured 14 others in May 2014. Some of Rodger's victims were shot outside a sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The attempted hate crime charge carries a sentence of up to life in prison, officials said.

We need to pay better attention to the ways people talk about incels

Luc Cousineau, 

Postdoctoral Fellow in International Network on Technology, 

Work, and Family, Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) 

- Tuesday
The Conversation

Men’s rights activists have been around since the mid-1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. But over the past 50 years, this movement has shifted and many of these activists are migrating towards more extreme and misogynistic views — the most violent of which are incels.

Research on incels is growing, and in December of last year, New York University (NYU) released Incels: Inside the world of involuntary celibates. While the report includes a useful glossary of incel terms and ideology, worldview and theory, there are issues with it. And these issues are common across incel-related writing (and writing on other violent terrorists), making it an issue that people need to get a handle on.

In the context of communities like incels, researchers must navigate a line between exploration and exposing content for wider consumption.

The dilemma here is that when researchers are working from a perspective critical of these ideologies we should be aware of how our research might serve to amplify the messaging. Are we inadvertently honouring the people we seek to condemn?

It is certainly possible to walk that line, and communications researchers Debbie Ging and Adrienne Massanari provide us with good examples. However, in reports like the one out of NYU, some common practices are problematic.

Risk creating worshippers and copycats

One of the most discussed hot-button issues when writing about far-right and misogynist violence is whether to identify attackers.

Like using the word incel itself, naming well-known attackers adds shock value. But when people do this, regardless of intention, it increases the profile of the attackers and can elevate them to positions of cultural phenomena and martyrdom.

Perhaps the most significant example of this is the Isla Vista killer, who killed six people during a multi-site spree in California, in 2014. The killings were heinous, but at the risk of sounding glib, six deaths in a mass killing isn’t huge in the United States. What made this incident huge was the nearly perpetual coverage and re-inscription of the killer across popular media and the academy.

By publishing and re-publishing this information, media and academics helped make the perpetrator an icon, inadvertently supporting and perpetuating the incel community’s veneration of individuals who have “died for the cause.”

When we label attackers incels, we inflate their power

A picture from Kimveer Gill's Blog

SEE LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for EMOTIONAL PLAGUE 

The NYU report labelled the perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique tragedy the first incel. While it might be true that he had some characteristics that would align him with today’s misogynist incels, he was not an incel.

Given that the term incel as it is used today did not appear until the late 1990s, it is simply not possible for him to have been an incel.

To include him in any accounting of incel violence does a disservice to those working to disrupt violence against women, as it flattens the nuances and complexities of misogynistic violence.

The Montréal perpetrator’s inclusion in the history of incel violence is a fabrication to give certain ideological positionings deeper roots. His inclusion gives a historical significance and early presence to inceldom while helping provide legitimacy.
The issues are much deeper than incels

In the context of media coverage and academia, incels are trendy; they get views.

For most incels, violent misogynist inceldom is the end of their journey, not the beginning. They have likely been introduced to elements of inceldom in other spaces (like pick-up artist communities) and moved slowly into inceldom.

The appeal of covering incels can blind people of this pathway, and facilitate a move to innocence where people ignore the more mundane and everyday instances of violent misogyny.

The fact that radicalization is a process provides opportunities to stop movement towards radical ideas — there are places where men can be intercepted before they are encouraged (or encourage others) to do real violence.

Even once men become incels, there are opportunities for deradicalization and de-conversion, like the work being done by Groundswell Project in the United Kingdom.

We are going to see more and more writing about incels as some continue to commit acts of violent misogyny. But how people write about them matters.

The danger is that in giving incel ideology all of this time and energy people will unavoidably perpetuate what they seek to stop. It gives energy to a movement that’s primary interest is subjugating women and increases the value of violence.

As writers and academics, we have the responsibility to do better. There is no place for this violence in Canada, and we bear part of the responsibility to stop it.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Incels are surprisingly diverse but united by hate

Inside the warped world of incel extremists

Luc Cousineau receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council. He is the Director of Research at the Canadian Institute for Far-Right Studies.

EXCLUSIVE
INCELS The Radicalised Extremist Community of White Male Supremacists
Sian Norris
13 August 2021

Photo: emjhCreative / Stockimo/Alamy

As news reports suggest that the man behind the mass shooting in Plymouth identified as an “incel”, Sian Norris reveals the extremist misogynistic ideology that fuels the movement

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article contains violent misogynistic and racist language

The horrific shootings that took place in Plymouth have shocked the nation, as it was revealed that six people – including the killer and a very young girl – were shot dead on Thursday evening.

It is too early to say what the motivations were behind the worst mass shooting in the UK since 2010. However, videos created by the perpetrator, Jake Davison, on YouTube suggest that he appears to affiliate with the ‘incel’ community – a misogynistic online sub-culture of men who identify as ‘involuntary celibates’ because they feel sexually rejected by women.

Davison also apparently identified as ‘Black Pill’ – a common status among incels. Black Pill is a spin-off of the Red Pill men’s rights community that encourages men to become ‘alpha males’ via gaming women into sex and by getting fit. In contrast, Black Pills share a fatalistic outlook in which they believe that success with the opposite sex is determined by genetics.

In one shocking outburst, Davison said: “Why do you think sexual assaults and all these things keep rising? The reality is that women don’t need men no more and they certainly don’t want and don’t need average men and below average, you have to go abroad to fund [sic] a woman.”

If it is indeed the case that Davison identified with the incel sub-culture, the murders form part of a growing and terrifying pattern of attacks by men from this community who have killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada.

However, these killings are rarely categorised as terrorist incidents – despite evidence that members of this community are being radicalised and committing violent acts to advance their misogynistic, white supremacist ideology.

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Who Are Incels?

The incel community initially blossomed on the Reddit website, before being banned and moving onto independent forums where men swap memes, discuss whether to have the Coronavirus vaccine, and share violent and hateful views about women and women’s sexuality.

The driving force behind the movement is a belief that men are entitled to women’s bodies – both as a sex object and a reproductive vessel.

Initially, men who identified as incels claimed to believe that they had been sexually rejected by women in favour of popular jocks known as ‘Chads’. In contrast, the incels saw themselves as good guys, who had been “friendzoned” by women – i.e. seen as a platonic friend not a potential sexual partner.

However, this is potentially a simplification of what is ultimately an extremist misogynistic space riddled with white, male supremacy, violent ideology and even paedophilic fantasies.

It is a sub-culture in which men are radicalised to hate women, and where far-right conspiracies such as the ‘Great Replacement’ are shared and promoted.

The language used by incels dehumanises women – commonly recognised as the first step towards violence and even mass killings or genocide. They talk about women and girls as ‘foids’ – short for ‘femoids’ – as well as referring to women as ‘toilets’. One post referred to “toilets riding the Chad c**k carousel”. Women are known as toilets because they are seen as receptacles of bodily fluids.

Other incels refer to putting vaginas ‘on leashes’; sending women to ‘the slaughterhouse’; and imagine putting grenades up women’s anuses. They refer to women as ‘rape fuel’ and ‘scum’, and fantasise about having a ‘prime white virgin harem’. One man, in a thread about expressing fantasies, wrote that “every man would be guaranteed a wife”; while another put it succinctly: “Women shouldn’t have rights anyway.”

Many discussions on the forums involve men fantasising about ‘jail bait’, i.e. sex with girls under the age of consent. Girls who are categorised in this way are considered desirable because ‘they are still innocent before they ruin themselves’.

One poster said that he wasn’t attracted to “jail bait until I became an incel”. Another wrote that he “slowly but surely found myself attracted to JB foids” after joining the incel community, suggesting men are being radicalised to accept abuse of girls as normal.

The incel sub-cultures, and wider men’s rights activism spaces, are also often a gateway to white supremacist movements. Journalist Aja Romano wrote in 2016 how, for these communities of angry young men “who ultimately feel threatened and rejected by women, the movement promotes a sense of male entitlement that is easily radicalised into white nationalism and white supremacy”.

Incels discussing ‘jail bait’ on a popular forum

Posters often use graphically racist and anti-Semitic language, and there is an obsessive focus on ‘foids’ having sex with black and ‘Arab’ men.

The racialised nature of much incel content fits into conspiracist narratives that the West or Global North is apparently in decline and degenerating as a result of women’s sexual and reproductive freedoms, along with migration from the Global South.

In this respect, incel culture is close to the baseless far-right Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which posits that feminism is colluding with Western elites to repress the white birth rate and encourage immigration in order to create a ‘white genocide’.

For example, on a thread titled “women destroying cultures and countries”, one incel synthesises the Great Replacement, misogyny and racism by writing “the antifa and femoids support the invasion of africans and arabians [sic] in ALL Europe. In 50 years, thanks to the ‘diversity’… agenda, all Europe will turn into a third world s**t hole full of wars and Sharia law everywhere”.

Incels and Terrorism

The first mass shooting explicitly linked to the incel community occurred in 2014, when Elliot Rodger posted a misogynistic manifesto online railing against women before shooting dead six people, injuring 14 more.

Four years later in Canada, Alek Minassian killed 10 people by driving into a pavement. He said that he drew inspiration from the incel movement and posted on Facebook “all hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger” – the moniker given to the mass shooter and other men admired by the community, including Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

The incel movement has now killed an estimated 50 people in the US and Canada, including a mass shooting in a massage parlour in Georgia; a machete attack at a Toronto massage parlor; and a shooting at an Arizona mall which injured three people.

In June, US President Joe Biden laid out his formal strategy to combat domestic terrorism – including threats from emerging extremist movements such as incels and the followers of the QAnon movement. A Californian man who confessed to killing his children referred to the conspiracy, while a pattern of violence is linked to the theory.

Incels responded on a thread about “creepy Uncle Joe”, criticising Biden’s move as “incelophobia” and claiming that feminists “are using violence to spread their message” while “us incels are pretty tame”.

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“In a world full of w****s the virgin is frowned upon”, posted one individual.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service – the body that decides which criminal cases are prosecuted in England and Wales and conducts the prosecutions – for an offence to be classed as terrorism in the UK, it must be designed to “influence any international Government organisation or to intimidate the public”. It must also “be for the purpose of advancing a political, religious, racial or ideological cause”.

The latter point has often meant that misogynistic and incel-related violence is not classed as terrorism. But this is to miss the point that incels are driven by a white, male supremacist ideology that positions men as superior to women and promotes the belief that men have sexual and reproductive entitlement to women’s bodies. This is a belief linked to fascism.

Further, as is evidenced by the posts about ‘jail bait’ and the Great Replacement theory, incel websites are spaces of radicalisation to this male supremacist and ultimately violent ideology.

As one man put it: “I’ve learned to hate women, feminism and their sexual choices so much.”

Teen plotting attacks on women charged in France’s first ‘incel’ case

The man has been charged with terrorist conspiracy 

By AFP
July 2, 2025


A French male, 18, suspected of plotting attacks on women was arrested the DGSI security service in the eastern city of Saint-Etienne - Copyright POOL/AFP STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN

An 18-year-old French man suspected of planning attacks on women has been charged in the country’s first case of a terror plot linked to the misogynist “incel” movement, officials said on Wednesday.

According to a source close to the investigation, the suspect, Timothy G., was arrested on Friday by the DGSI security service near a public high school in the southeastern city of Saint-Etienne.

According to sources close to the case, the suspect was arrested with two knives in his bag and identified himself as a member of the “incel,” or involuntary celibate, subculture.

The “incel” movement is an internet subculture rife with misogyny, with men tending to blame women and feminism for their romantic failings.

They typically target those who they see as attractive or sexually active women.

The National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) said that an investigation had been opened on Tuesday “against an 18-year-old man claiming to be part of the ‘incel’ movement”.

The man has been charged with terrorist conspiracy with a view to preparing one or more crimes against persons and imprisoned, the PNAT said.

The involvement of anti-terror prosecutors appears to indicate that French authorities recognise this form of gender-based violence as terrorism.

On Tuesday evening, Timothy G. appeared before a judge who remanded him in custody.

He looked shy and had an almost hairless face and a slender build, according to an AFP journalist.

His lawyer Maria Snitsar described him as “a teenager who is suffering, not a fighter preparing for action”.

According to one of the sources close to the case, the teenager, who wanted to become an engineer, was a fan of misogynist videos on social media, particularly short-video app TikTok.

According to another source close to the case, this is the first time the PNAT has been called upon to investigate a man who exclusively identifies as part of the “incel” subculture.

The concept had previously appeared only marginally in at least two cases handled by the anti-terrorism prosecutor’s office.

WE HAVE SEX BY OURSELVES

‘Having sex with women is gay’: White nationalist praises involuntary celibacy

Bob Brigham
May 14, 2022

William Edwards/AFP.

White nationalist livestreamer Nick Fuentes leaned on his homophobia as an excuse for why the young man is apparently having difficulty attracting women.

Fuentes discussed being an incel, or involuntary celibate, on his video podcast.

Fuentes complained about "people calling me gay because I've never had a girlfriend."

"I think if anything — if anything — it makes me less gay. If anything, it makes me not gay — as opposed to less gay, not that there's any gay, but it makes me not gay," he argued.

Fuentes went on to describe how he has never been in a romantic relationship or had sex with a woman, but is "more heterosexual than anybody."

"If we're really being honest, never having a girlfriend, never having sex with a woman, really makes you more heterosexual, because honestly, dating women is gay," he claimed. "And if you want to know the truth, the only really straight, heterosexual position is to be an asexual incel."

The incel movement came to prominence in 2014 when Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others in a rampage in Isla Vista, California before committing suicide.

In 2018, Alek Minassian praised Rodger before allegedly murdering ten people in Toronto.

"The Incel Rebellion has already begun!" Minassian posted to Facebook. "All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!"

The movement was described by The New York Times in 2018 as "an online community of men who lament being 'involuntarily celibate' and dream of a social order granting them access to the women of their choice."

"Although attacks like the one in Toronto that killed 10 people are rare, the hate being spread online is leading increasingly to threats and calls for violence. More often than not, the threats target women," the newspaper explained. "The incel movement tells its adherents that society’s rules are engineered to unfairly deprive them of sex. That worldview lets them see themselves as both victims, made lonely by a vast conspiracy, and as superior, for their unique understanding of the truth."

There are political ramifications of the incel movement beyond violence.

"The alt-right, right-wing populism, men’s rights groups and a renewed white supremacist movement have capitalized on many white men’s feeling of loss in recent years. The groups vary in how they diagnose society’s ills and whom they blame, but they provide a sense of meaning and place for their followers," The Times explained. "And as different extremist groups connect online, they draw on one another’s membership bases, tactics and worldviews, allowing membership in one group to become a gateway to other extremist ideologies as well."

Watch the segment below or at this link.

SEE 

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/we-need-to-pay-better-attention-to-ways.html

https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2022/05/this-racist-youth-movement-is-melting.html