Exploring Incel Culture and its fragile masculinity

Alpha
Sep 18, 2023
6 min read

Updated: Oct 1, 2024

In the current online ecosystem, “the Incel” is a common stereotype for lone men who can’t find a sexual partner, despite their wishes, and as such act in a spiteful manner towards members of the opposite sex. However, the actual communities that fall under the description of Incel culture, go beyond spitefulness and involuntary celibacy. With the rise of concepts such as the “Manosphere” and “The Red Pill”, these communities have turned into groups where self-hatred, suicidal thoughts, and extreme misogyny are common and encouraged. As such, in this blog, we will explore the definition of the Incel mentality, its origin, and its consequences.

PHOTO CREDIT: Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay

The birth of the Incel concept:

The term “Incel” was first coined in 1993 as a blend between the words “involuntary” and “celibate”, with its first iteration being “INVCEL”. It was started by a queer female Canadian student, only known as Alana. The website was created to discuss her involuntary sexual inactivity and create a safe space where others could share their frustrations with their inability to find a partner. Alana left the site around the 2000s as she became more comfortable with her sexuality and passed the ownership of the site to a stranger. But by 2003 the Incel subculture started to become more and more radicalized. Largely thanks to the creation of the message board “love-shy.com”. At the time other sites designed as talk spaces for incels, such as IncelSupport, were moderated and specifically against misogyny, whistle presenting a variety of user backgrounds. But love-shy.com was composed mostly of white cis males who migrated from extremist communities within 4chan and Reddit [1]. However, the r/incels subreddit became the largest forum for this radicalized group of incels and quickly grew, becoming the most problematic of the incels communities.

Incel Culture and “The Red Pill”:

Incel culture falls within the “Manosphere”, a collective of online communities that defend misogyny, men’s rights movements, and sexual strategy and is against the feminist movement. The Manosphere has been made popular with the rise of figures such as Andrew Tate, Jordan Peterson, Pickup artists, and Internet Gurus, who tend to target young displeased men. The ideological basis of these communities, Incels included, is “The Red Pill”. A worldview that revolves around the concept of hypergamy and female oppression. In short, “The Red Pill” defends that women only desire relationships with males more attractive than them, and as such only a small percentage of attractive males are fit to have a sexually active life. Consequently, the individuals of these communities defend that women are the main cause of their misfortune and unhappiness, all the while believing that women’s rights movements only exacerbate this reality and worsen society.

“The Red Pill” serves as the basis of the Incel ideology and oftentimes turns to the ideas of genetic fatalism. Defending ideas such as cranial differences between incels and those low percentage males, or “chads”. Lastly, “The Red Pill” also defends that dating is a sexual market. Meaning that the driving concept behind one's love life is only sexual attraction and activity. This idea is the main cause for the rise of misogynistic views defended by these communities, as it directly leads to the notion that women are but frivolous beings, who only desire immediate sexual pleasure. As such, it is commonplace to see an extreme objectification of the female gender. Which often results in the idealization of sexual abuse and the notion of mandatory partners are often perpetrated within these communities.

Incel Culture and “The Black Pill”:

Whilst “The Red Pill” was a concept accepted within the Manosphere as a whole, “The Black Pill” is mostly accepted within the more extremist incel communities being even more radical. “The Black Pill” rejects the idea of individual attempts to achieve sexual relationships and claims that one's sexual attractiveness and “value” is genetically set. Meaning, the idea of attempting to seek a relationship is nothing but a hopeless endeavor that is ridiculed and ostracized. As the philosophy YouTuber ContraPoints puts it in her video essay “Incels”, it is the idea that “you are a perma virgin” [2]. The idea then evolves into the notion that by lacking sexual relations, one will never be happy. And as a consequence, happiness is unachievable. This eventually leads to the idea that one should simply LDAR (Lay Down And Root).

This belief is dogmatically hopeless when it comes to one's life. Its defense that happiness is directly related to attributes assigned at birth has been proposed as a result of Catastrophizing. As it may begin with a rejection and devolve into the idea that one can never be desired. Concluding that one should simply lay down and root. As a result of this notion, the encouragement of suicidal actions or violence towards women and sexually active men is commonplace within these communities. Such was the case of Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old who on the evening of the 23rd of May 2014 killed six people, injured 14, and ended his own life, near the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. In a video posted by Rodger, his motives were clarified as the result of a deep anger towards feminine rejection and the sexual activity of other men [3]. Unfortunately, despite being the first case of a member of these communities committing an act of violence, he was far from the last [4].

A Culture of Self-Harm and Hate:

One of the aspects present in incel forums is the adoration of depression and public online shaming,

presented as dark humor. Nevertheless, the propagation of a fatalist world, that paints reality as rigged from the start by genetics, has the common effect of resulting in the seclusion, depression, and more extreme cases, suicidal actions of the members of these communities. And yet, it can also be observed that said members revel in the toxicity shared between them. The sharing of personal selfies that purposefully lead to the shaming of the self, is common practice. Self-loading is another facet of the incel ideology, as they seek humiliation as a form of digital self-harm

Crimes and Government Action:

As the Incel ideology and communities increased the intensity of their extremism, multiple platforms have banned said communities. Most of the remaining communities reside in spaces with lackluster moderation, such as 4chan and the dark web. Consequently, there has been an increasing radicalization of said communities, with many subscribing to extreme white nationalist and misogynistic values. Which have resulted in more violent incidents such as the Umpqua Community College shooting, the Aztec High School shooting, the Parkland High School shooting, and the vehicle ramming attack in Toronto. Faced with the escalating number of attacks and murders, the North American Government classified incel ideologies as a terrorism threat and issued warnings to the public that targets it [5].

Possible strategies:

The radicalization of members of incel communities mostly results from the lack of social skills and frustration that is shared and exacerbated by its members. As they often share the same gripes and insecurities, their worldviews are shared in a confined space which evolves into extreme beliefs. Being surrounded by others who share the same radical opinions only worsens their situation, as they lose grasp of what constitutes typical discourse. Therefore it is strongly advised that those who seek to leave said communities, block all ties to them. With more severe cases also being recommended professional help.

Conclusion:

The incel subculture is a complex and dangerous part of the online ecosystem. It is a predatory space where individuals are free to share their disdain with those that they deem the culprit for their situations, and as such seek to find betterment in themselves. One must only look for a brief moment to find that these men are suffering from a strong insecurity, which originates in toxic masculinity and misogyny. It is easy to recognize that a lot of their views about masculinity and sexual attractiveness result from a lot of the predatory ideas perpetrated within the Manosphere.

Ideas such as the notion that one cannot have a relationship with a woman that goes beyond sexual satisfaction. And that to achieve said relations one must act, look, and talk a certain way. Which many incels considered unachievable, for reasons fabricated by their insecurities and envious views towards other men. This is an issue that has become more and more prevalent in recent times and can be directly correlated to the recent rise of extreme right-wing misogynistic movements. And male virginity is at an all-time high [6]. So in an attempt to try and put a halt to this movement, if you know someone who finds themselves in this position, try to help them by severing ties with those toxic ideologies. And if you find that you are trapped in those communities, you can always leave and find that life isn’t as dower as you might have thought.

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