Incel

Incel is a blend of the words "involuntary celibate." An incel describes themselves as a person who desires romantic and sexual love but cannot find a partner. Members of the incel community primarily exist as part of an online subculture. Most of the community's discussions occur on specific online forum websites such as Reddit and 4chan. Although the community is predominately made up of young males, there are female incels. Incels tend to discuss a number of controversial opinions on web forums that often veer into misogynistic and misanthropic territory. Many harbor resentments towards the opposite sex, whom they blame for their inceldom. The incel community has also been known to exhibit racist attitudes and is named among the Southern Poverty Law Center's list of hate groups. Incels feel blameless for their situation and expel varying amounts of self-loathing and self-pity. Many believe they are entitled to romantic love and sex, and in being deprived of this perceived happiness they promote violence towards sexually active people. Several mass murders in North America have been committed by self-identified incels or by individuals who have espoused incel views.

Background

The term incel was first used in 1993 in an online forum created by a Canadian university student identifying herself as Alana. Alana had created a website to discuss her lack of sexual experiences with other students and it was titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project." The term involuntary celibate was later shortened to incel by Alana and users subscribed to her email list. Her website persisted for several years after launching before Alana decided to hand over administrator duties to another user in 2000. At that point, Alana had become frustrated by a range of sexist attitudes adopted by mostly male posters, but she also became more comfortable with her own sexuality by this time and decided to move on. From that point on, she lost control of how the term incel was used, and soon the word was being utilized across a variety of online groups, some of which were extremist in nature.

Two of the most active online incel communities existed on the websites Reddit and 4chan. Both sites had forums dedicated to incel discussions. On the Reddit incel subreddit, called /r/incels, many posts focused on women's role in male incel status. Many male posters blamed women for their involuntary celibacy. Some posts encouraged the rape and humiliation of women as punishment for their role. Many posts also embraced misogynist, racist attitudes, and embodied a particularly extreme form of rape culture. In late 2017, Reddit banned the /r/incel subreddit forum in response to its new policy banning "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people." The group had more than 40,000 members at the time of its banning, and these members continued to populate other subreddits on the site. Another incel subreddit called /r/braincels was later removed from Reddit for violating its anti-hate policies.

The incel community operated largely unnoticed by the general public for many years. The community received wider attention following a series of mass shootings committed by men who identified as incels or supported incel ideology. In 2014, self-identified incel Elliot Rodger stabbed and shot six people to death near the University of California, Santa Barbara, campus before killing himself. The mass murder shed light on the incel community as the media delved into Rodger's motives. Rodger had left behind a 137-page manifesto describing his incel status and the reasons for his actions, which focused on revenge for being rejected by women. Despite the horrifying nature of Rodger's actions, much of the incel community praised him as heroic. The community also celebrated other mass killings over the next few years, such as those committed by Nikolas Cruz and Alek Minassian, two supporters of incel ideology, in 2018. These murders and violent acts continued into the 2020s, with shootings and stabbings occurring a few times each year by an individual who identified as an incel.

Overview

Incel communities are most commonly characterized by their misogynistic, misanthropic, racist attitudes derived from feelings of self-loathing, self-pity, resentment, and narcissism. Incel discussion threads often focus on the belief that men are entitled to sex and disparage ideologies related to women's rights and feminism. A number of incels believe women's liberation is the root of their unhappiness and their inability to obtain a romantic partner. Some incel communities also espouse anti-Jewish sentiments and believe the women's rights movement was orchestrated by the Jewish community in order the undermine men in Western society. Incels justify their beliefs in a number of ways, interpreting scientific concepts related to biology and psychology to support their theses. Many incel ideologies are connected to misogynistic aspects of men's rights activism.

The majority of the incel community places heavy focus on the idea that women are to blame for their unhappiness. Women are often painted as shallow and mean-spirited people who are only attracted to hyper-masculine men. The community refers to such imagined couplings as "Chads" and "Stacys." Chads are defined as conventionally attractive and successful men who represent ideal masculinity, while Stacys are described as desirable women only interested in Chads. Incels resent Chads for possessing qualities they believe they can never have due to genetics, and they further resent Stacys for their perceived exclusive interest in Chads. Some incel groups advocate violent action against designated Chads and Stacys, with some communities going so far as to encourage members to aggressively harass or rape women who reject them.

Although a large number of incel communities support violent, demeaning actions against those they blame for their situation, as well as hate crimes against women, a number of incel groups contain lonely men who are extremely socially anxious and deeply depressed. Female incels exist, but their ideologies differ slightly from male incels. Female incels agree that physical attractiveness is key to finding a romantic partner, but female incel groups do not usually react angrily to rejection in the way male incel groups do. Male incel groups are considered much more dangerous, and more capable of violence, than females because of this anger factor, which is further inflamed by their feelings of helplessness. Most incels view themselves as oppressed by a social system that favors attractive men and women. Ideas such as these led to the emergence of what came to be known as the "Incel Rebellion" on online forums, an idea cited by mass murderer Alek Minassian before his killing spree.

Researchers have begun studying incel behavior in an attempt to better identify behaviors that may lead to real-world violent action. Research has found that individuals who identify as incels generally have low levels of physical and psychological well-being compared to their peers. However, the use of typical American psychological measures of mental health in this population may lack validity because of baseline differences. One study indicated that the Depression, Anxiety, and Stress (DASS) inventory was appropriate for use among incel members. Using the DASS, individuals who identified as incels scored higher than the general population control group on depression.

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