• 1 Those bans started with the r/truecels subreddit in 2016, then with r/incels in 2017, and r/brainc (...)
• 2 Incels.is forum. URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20230308102952/https://incels.is/, archived Marc (...)

1Incels are heterosexual men who have not had romantic or sexual experiences with women despite wanting to. Hence the term “incel,” a portmanteau of “involuntary” and “celibate.” While this definition could apply to countless men, incels ground their identity in the feeling of being undesirable and thus excluded from the romantic and sexual spheres. They have become a true Internet phenomenon, a community with its own terminology and ideas, which really started booming in the 2010s on Reddit. There, romantically unsuccessful men shared their frustration and experiences, bemoaning the easier dating lives of good-looking women and men (whom they respectively called “Stacies” and “Chads”). They tended to depict themselves as ugly, or socially inept, and attacked double standards towards ugly men through humor and memes, as well as a flourishing jargon. Soon, the community became a popular attraction for non-incel Reddit users. At the same time, it saw increasing bitterness towards women and plain misogyny, which resulted in an eventual ban from the platform.1 Nowadays, the most active remaining incel platform is undoubtedly the independent incels.is forum with more than 20,000 members as of writing.2

• 3 Witt, Taisto, “‘If i cannot have it, i will do everything i can to destroy it.’ The Canonization o (...)
• 4 For a review of incel-related attacks, see Hoffman, Bruce, et al., “Assessing the Threat of Incel (...)

2In 2014, this still confidential group infamously came under the spotlight with the Isla Vista shooting, where 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people before killing himself. Before his death, he had posted YouTube videos and emailed an autobiography to his acquaintances, documenting his rejection by women, his subsequent angst, despair, and hatred, leading up to the planning of the killing spree he called his “retribution.” Although incels debate or refute his actual involvement in the community, Rodger has become a cult-like figure for some.3 Since then, several other deadly attacks have been linked with incels.4

• 5 Moskalenko, Sophia, et al., “Incel Ideology, Radicalization and Mental Health: A Survey Study,” Th (...)
• 6 The steady increase in incel toxicity or “violent extremist language” over time has been documente (...)

3While such violent events only concern an infinitesimal fraction of the community, and it would be misleading to call incels a “terrorist organization,”5 it is certainly home to a rare level of hateful, violent speech. Remaining incel communities are thus now closed to outsiders and closely police who can join and post, which was not the case on earlier platforms. This defiance is partly triggered by the fear of being infiltrated or scrutinized by outsiders, whether it is journalists, social scientists, security forces, or just curious “normies” (the incel term for the mass of non-incel people). This can be held partly responsible for the radicalization of the community, which has seen a marked rise in hateful speech and conspiracy theories since its inception.6

• 7 Costello, William et al., “Levels of Well-Being Among Men Who Are Incel (Involuntarily Celibate),” (...)
• 8 See respectively, Voroshilova, Anzhelika and Pesterev, Dmitriy, “Russian Incels Web Community: The (...)

4Recently, survey research has shed light on some socio-demographic features of incels. These overwhelmingly childless, heterosexual cisgender men tend to be in their mid-twenties. They are also more likely to be unemployed and to be living with their parents. All surveys of incel samples have found greater ethnic diversity among incels than in the US population, with white people still constituting a majority.7 Although the English-speaking incel community is by far the largest one, there are offshoot communities, for example in Russia or Italy.8

• 9 For a definition of “platform signals,” and examples of their use in studying online men’s communi (...)
• 10 For analyses drawn from this corpus on the role of evolutionary science among incels, as well as m (...)
• 11 Ibid., for complete detail of the corpus materials (Supplementary materials S1). By date of creati (...)

6The present study is based on qualitative analysis of a selection (or “corpus”) of online incel content. The corpus is divided into three sections. The first section (70 %) consists of the best-known, most popular texts in the community. To select them, we used “platform signals” such as “upvotes” on Reddit, “featured” posts on blogs, and “must-read” sections on forums.9 The second section (15 %) was randomly sampled on Reddit and forums to represent the diversity of viewpoints, profiles, and forms of speech found in the community. A final section (15 %) is composed of content that is relevant for the analysis: this article being part of a larger research project on the use of life sciences in online men’s groups, we selected content broadly related to biology by browsing and searching for keywords such as “Darwin” or “evolution.”10 Taken together, the corpus contains content from four different forum websites, three Reddit communities, two Twitter accounts, one online encyclopedia, one blog, and the online autobiography of a murderer. It contains material from 2014 to 2022, for a length of 1,800 PDF pages.11

• 12 These data protection and dissemination measures were approved by the University of Kent’s Ethical (...)

7To protect personal identities when quoting, Internet users are anonymized in this paper, and no hyperlinks to their comments are provided. Anonymized comments are identified by their date of online publication and the type of platform they were posted on (forums or Reddit). On the other hand, full citation is provided for content from public incel pages and figures. The quoted material contains offensive and hateful language; however, we believe it is important to depict this online community through its own words. For similar reasons, spelling, grammar, and typographic errors in the cited material will not be signaled.12

• 14 A survey of 274 self-identified incels found that 69 % report having been bullied as teenagers (ag (...)

9Incels typically attribute experiencing rejection to their physical appearance, which they depict as ugly and repulsive. Since school, they recall being ostracized or bullied because of their looks:14

• 15 An example is the “Hot or Not” popular website (hotornot.com) which boomed in the early 2000s, whe (...)

12Incels see society as segmented between different strata, based on looks and sexual attractiveness. They thus resort abundantly to a 1-10 aesthetics grading scale (the “looks scale” mentioned in one of the comments above). While this is a rather common practice in popular culture and on the Internet in general,15 incels have added their own labels to that scale. For example, very attractive men are called “Chads,” while average-looking women are called “Beckies.” Unsurprisingly, incels place themselves at the bottom of this hierarchy.

• 16 Incels.wiki, “Decile.” URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20221006131947/https://incels.wiki/w/Decil (...)

Source: Incels.wiki16

• 17 The coinage of this new “-ism” word among the fat acceptance movement was reported on in a 1978 Wa (...)
• 18 For a brief review of the existing scholarship on lookism, see Saiki, Diana, et al., “An Examinati (...)
• 19 Meeting online has become the most popular way for heterosexual couples to meet in the United Stat (...)

14To support their vision of a strictly hierarchical looks-based society of which they occupy the bottom rung, incels resort not only to personal narratives, but also to mainstream social scientific research. In the same way sexism and racism became central concepts in the feminist and civil rights movements, defining at once people’s lived experiences and structural prejudice, incels routinely claim to be the victims of “lookism” (sometimes also spelled “looksism”), i.e., discrimination based on looks. They did not however coin the term, which emerged in the 1970s from the fat acceptance movement.17 Although much less popular than research on gender or race-based discrimination, there is a growing body of research on the effects of lookism, most notably in workplace environments.18 Incels contend that lookism is reinforced by the growing popularity of social media and dating apps, whereby one’s social worth and romantic success arguably become increasingly linked with looks and presentation of self.19 As shown in Figure 2, the word is becoming increasingly popular and incels strive to popularize it, thereby anchoring their grievances in the legitimacy of social scientific studies. In fact, one of their main online venues was a now defunct forum called lookism.net (2017-2020).

• 21 Incels.wiki, “Scientific Blackpill,” and “Scientific Blackpill (supplemental).” URL: https://web.a (...)

16One of the most unique documents in the “incelosphere” is the “Scientific Blackpill” page of the online incel encyclopedia (incels.wiki). This page, along with its supplement, compiles hundreds of scientific papers on themes such as dating difficulties for men from ethnic minorities, bald men, short men, etc.21 This is not confined to the incel wiki, as many popular forum threads start with the sharing of one or several scientific papers – often by the same forum members. Another example is the r/BlackPillScience community on Reddit, which is exclusively dedicated to sharing scholarly research on similar issues. Here is part of its mission statement:

• 23 For a clear and concise summary of “the blackpill” and other elements of incel ideology, see the E (...)

17The focus on “immutable traits” is of particular relevance here. Indeed, incels believe that looks are the main factor in determining men’s dating and social fortunes. Since physical appearance is genetically heritable, they consider this as particularly unfair. This set of beliefs is called “the blackpill,” which has now become the dominant ideology on incel platforms.23 In short, the blackpill holds that genetics determines one’s romantic destiny, and incels believe they are the unfortunate losers of that all-important lottery. As we shall now see, their sense of inferiority, or even “subhumanity,” is therefore not only grounded in a social experience of rejection or loneliness, but on the belief that this is all caused by genetics. We now examine incels’ uniquely deterministic understanding of genetics, which further supports their sense of subalternity, and makes it fatally inescapable.

• 24 Chadwick, Jonathan, “When you lose your virginity may be written in your GENES,” Mail Online, July (...)

20Moreover, a very unique view of genetic determinism circulates in incel spaces, as illustrated by a forum thread commenting on an online Daily Mail article reporting on a University of Oxford genetics study.24 The research team analyzed hundreds of thousands of people’s genomes and life experiences, including age at first sexual intercourse and age of first giving birth, and found a link between those. The incel who shared the study rejoices, “OUR DEVELOPMENTAL MILESTONES ARE CONTROLLED BY GENETICS! WE INCELS KNEW IT ALREADY! THE BLACKPILL HAS BEEN PROVED.” (2021, forum)

• 25 Ibid.

21The article goes on: “Their analysis of Brits' data revealed genetics can explain between five and 17 per cent of when individuals achieve these two milestones.”25 Studies on age at first sexual intercourse are of great interest to incels, who have yet to reach theirs. This article could be a glimmer of hope for them. Indeed, if one’s genome can predict only 5-17 % of the variation in age of losing virginity, it means that genetics is far from determining one’s destiny on this matter. Yet, the forum poster’s reaction is much different: “SOON IT WILL BE 100 %. GENOMICS WILL PROVE THE BLACKPILL OF BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM BEYOND ANY SHADOW OF DOUBT.” (2021, forum)

• 26 Definition found on Reddit, r/gatekeeping, and on the Urban Dictionary, “Gatekeeping.” URL: https: (...)

25In Internet parlance, “gatekeeping” is “when someone takes it upon themselves to decide who does or does not have access or rights to a community or identity.”26 As we shall see, it is a ubiquitous phenomenon in the incel community. Somewhat paradoxically, these men who self-identify as “subhuman,” “freaks,” and “genetic dead-ends” jealously defend their identity. In that regard, incel subalternity might be frequently bemoaned, but it is also worn as a badge of honor, as a token of shared experiences and suffering, and incels are resentful of attempts to appropriate it. Indeed, there are frequent debates and controversies in the community around who exactly has the right to call himself an “incel.”

• 27 Incels.wiki, “Escortcel.” URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20230219122747/https://incels.wiki/w/Es (...)

28Another contentious case is that of “escortcels,” i.e., celibate men who resort to sex workers in order to satisfy their sexual needs. Some believe escortcels are true incels (or “truecels”), because paying for sex does provide sexual gratification, but is fundamentally different from attracting a romantic or sexual partner. Others claim that a true incel would even be rejected by sex workers: “For truecels, everyone rejects their advances, even prostitutes, in a perpetual state of rejection.”27

• 28 Center for Intersectional Justice, “What is Intersectionality?” URL: https://web.archive.org/web/2 (...)

30As described earlier, incels frequently invoke scientific research on dating and sex. By insisting on the many traits (short height, disability, nonwhite skin color, neuroatypicality) that are structurally disadvantaged and by deploring that state of affairs, they could be said to engage in intersectional thinking and advocacy. Indeed, the Center for Intersectional Justice (CIJ), an NGO whose honorary president Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the concept in 1989, defines intersectionality as “the ways in which systems of inequality based on gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, class and other forms of discrimination ‘intersect’ to create unique dynamics and effects.”28 However, rather than trying to recognize how structural disadvantages dynamically “intersect,” incels prefer to think in terms of fixed hierarchies. That is why they insist on establishing who gets the shortest end of the stick.

• 29 Two survey studies found the share of incels identifying as Asian was 10.2 % (n=274) and 15 % (n=5 (...)

31In that discussion, one of the most vocal subgroups are the nonwhite incels or “ethnicels.” Drawing on personal experiences and a large body of empirical evidence, they assert that people of African, Asian, or Middle-Eastern descent are the most sexually and romantically disadvantaged in the West, thus claiming that “[i]nceldom is an ethnic problem, always have been” (2018, forum). Not only do nonwhite men diverge from Western beauty standards, they argue, but they are also shunned by women of their own ethnic background, who prefer white men. In addition, men of Asian descent also bemoan their shorter height: “Its over for me, im an Asiancel and Heightcel, Asian women despise their own men” (2018, forum). Men from Eastern Asia or the Indian subcontinent (respectively called “ricecels” and “currycels” or simply “rice” and “curry”) are regarded as particularly disadvantaged in that regard:29

• 30 Center for Intersectional Justice, “What is Intersectionality?” URL: https://web.archive.org/web/2 (...)

34These debates are often heated; drawing on examples, counter-examples, and personal anecdotes, incels often try to position their own situation and label (e.g., “currycel,” “shortcel,” “autistcel”) as the most disadvantaged, while downplaying the claims of others. This one-upmanship of misery is at the antipodes of intersectional activism, which shies away from hierarchizing discriminations and contends that “[a]ll forms of inequality are mutually reinforcing and must therefore be analysed and addressed simultaneously.”30 The parallel is however a useful one, because it reveals some of the specific features of incel ideology and identity.

• 31 A recent study on the topic concluded that “Asian American men, in particular, are socially exclud (...)

35Indeed, incels use empirical research and grueling personal experience to denounce the manifold structural discrimination based on race, neurotypicality, or looks. In that way they resemble some of the social justice movements and their rhetoric. However, their approach is far from inclusive, but instead based on strict gatekeeping and internal squabbles about the relative weight of adverse traits and factors. More specifically, their movement is quite unique in that it is not centered upon the traditional areas of anti-discrimination advocacy (employment, civil rights, living standards, political power and representation, stereotypes in the media, etc.), but almost exclusively upon sexual issues. These are not within the traditional purview of anti-discrimination movements and research, mainly because it would be difficult for the state to intervene in people’s sexual preferences and choices. Thus, sex research is usually framed in terms of individual behavior and preferences, rather than discrimination – an individual rather than structural scale of analysis. Yet, the combined effects of individual behavior can add up to the structural level, and this behavior is largely influenced by cultural values and stereotypes. As incels of Asian descent living in the West can testify, some people do have it harder than others in terms of dating and sexual experience.31

• 32 A recent literature review of the English and Scandinavian scholarship on incels illustrates the e (...)
• 33 Debbie Ging thus resorted to the concept of “hybrid masculinities,” while Taisto Witt insisted tha (...)

37Incels neither fit nor endorse traditional stereotypical standards of masculinity; in fact they bemoan the existence of those stereotypes. Yet, they engage in widespread denigration of women and routinely call for male supremacist measures, such as curtailing women’s rights and liberties. They thus evade the simplistic traditionalist/misogynistic vs. progressive/feminist dichotomy. This has puzzled scholars and it is a central question in the rapidly expanding literature surrounding incels.32 Different attempts have been made to conceptualize and analyze the phenomenon.33 Particularly germane to our discussion of subalternity is sociologist Michael Halpin’s concept of “weaponized subordination,” which he defines as:

• 35 Costello, William, et al., “Levels of Well-Being Among Men Who Are Incel (Involuntarily Celibate), (...)

38Even though Halpin’s account seems to espouse that of the present article, the last sentence is worth debating. Halpin implies that incel subalternity is consciously constructed in order to achieve a higher goal: the denigration of women. Yet, there is very little empirical evidence to confirm that narrative. In fact, recent quantitative research confirms that incel self-denigration comes from genuine experiences of social inadequacy, loneliness, rejection, or bullying, and a resulting deep mental anguish. For example, a comparative study of incels (n=151) and non-incels (n=378) showed significantly higher levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness among incels, as well as a much lower level of satisfaction with life.35 Reading Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger’s autobiography My Twisted World also provides a firsthand account of this. His isolation and mental health issues grew concurrently with his hatred of women, resulting in a tragic finale, without indication of much strategizing on his part. We contend that both elements (self-discrediting and the denigration of women) co-evolve in a dynamic process, without necessarily revealing any conscious or strategic intent. What Halpin usefully highlights, however, is that incels’ subordinate identity fosters particularly intense forms of hatred and violence. We are presently going to examine some reasons why it might be so.

• 36 The difficulty of assessing incel hatred because of “shitpoting” is discussed in Hoffman, Bruce, e (...)

39The first one might be called “desensitization.” As we have seen, incels do not hesitate to refer to themselves in particularly deprecating terms. It is no wonder that this extreme self-denigration should be accompanied with a similar level of vitriol towards others. When a person has forfeited self-esteem to the point of identifying as “subhuman,” one could hardly expect much empathy or nuance in their judgment of others. Thus, from their self-identified subaltern position, incels spread the most vicious insults towards other groups. Women are prime targets and are, for example, often called “toilets.” Similarly, we have seen how racial self-hatred abounds in the community, with a fine line between denouncing racism and internalizing it. Here again, this does not stop at self-denigration and racial slurs are routinely used by all portions of the community, whether to refer to oneself or others. Homophobic and anti-Semitic slurs (i.e., “faggot” and “kike”) are also routinely used as gimmicks or derogative terms between members. So are Nazi imagery and terminology. It is impossible to determine how serious this is, how deep the hatred hiding behind those words goes. Indeed, a lot of incels are self-avowedly “trolling” or “shitposting,” i.e., deliberately being outrageous and provocative.36 This combination of “shitposting” and extreme hatred towards oneself and others creates a desensitized environment, where nothing seems to be out of line, whether in terms of political correctness, slurs, or violent fantasies. This is all fostered by the lack of moderation in these online spaces whose organizers and users pride themselves on promoting free speech. This effect was in fact felt while conducting the present research, as daily exposure to hate speech and slurs ends up blunting one’s sensitivity to them.

• 37 Incels.wiki, “Femoid.” URL: https://web.archive.org/web/20230221102653/https://incels.wiki/w/Femoi (...)
• 38 Chang, Winnie, “The Monstrous-Feminine in the Incel Imagination: Investigating the Representation (...)
• 39 Livingstone Smith, David, Making Monsters: The Uncanny Power of Dehumanization, Cambridge, London: (...)

40Another link between blackpill ideology and violence is that incels resort to archetypal thinking. As we have seen, incels divide society in more or less discrete classes. More than a label, each of those classes becomes a true archetype, with specific features thought to be universal among the class. When incels narrate a personal experience, they usually do so by invoking those archetypes; they do not refer to classmates or strangers but to “normies,” “Chads” and “Stacies,” etc. A consequence of seeing people through archetypes is to deny their individuality, their uniqueness. This is a first step towards dehumanization. We have seen that incels frequently refer to themselves as “subhuman,” thus legitimizing the very idea of subhumanity. Yet, they do not reserve the term to themselves, but also use it to disparage other groups such as women or “normies”: approximately 20 % of occurrences of “subhuman” in the corpus are directed towards other groups. In fact, their favorite term for women is “foid” or “femoid,” a contraction of “female” and “android” or “humanoid.”37 As noted by sociologist Winnie Chang, even incels’ own definitions of the term acknowledge its dehumanizing purpose: “‘Femoid’ is defined on /r/Braincels as a ‘derogatory dehumanising term for women’ that is used ‘to imply they aren’t truly human.’”38 Since dehumanization lays the ground for the most heinous acts of violence,39 it unsurprisingly features in Rodger’s My Twisted World:

• 41 This post is cited and discussed in Sugiura, Lisa, The Incel Rebellion: The Rise of the Manosphere (...)
• 42 Baldwin, James, The Fire Next Time, London: Michael Joseph, 1963, p. 84.

42The trope of rebellion was invoked by Toronto van killer Alek Minassian, whose rampage killing was infamously announced in a tweet: “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”41 His narrative of “overthrowing” and “rebellion,” we argue, is embedded in the subaltern identity described in the present article. If a group’s whole identity is based upon hopelessness, it is inherently dangerous. As James Baldwin wrote in a different context: “People cannot live without [their sense of their own worth]; they will do anything whatever to regain it. This is why the most dangerous creation of any society is that man who has nothing to lose.”42 Similarly, the extreme violence that incels condone derives from the paradoxical form of subalternity that they deploy.

• 43 Allen, Judith, “Men Interminably in Crisis? Historians on Masculinity, Sexual Boundaries, and Manh (...)
• 44 Dupuis-Déri, Francis, “Le discours de la 'crise de la masculinité' comme refus de l’égalité entre (...)
• 45 Menzie, Lauren, “Stacys, Beckys, and Chads: The Construction of Femininity and Hegemonic Masculini (...)
• 46 Preston, Kayla, et al., “The Black Pill: New Technology and the Male Supremacy of Involuntarily Ce (...)
• 47 Kaiser, Susanne, Political Masculinity: How Incels, Fundamentalists and Authoritarians Mobilise fo (...)
• 48 Kelly, Casey Ryan and Aunspach, Chase, “Incels, Compulsory Sexuality, and Fascist Masculinity,” Fe (...)

44When confronted to the incel community, the academic literature oscillates between two broad positions. On the one hand, incels can be portrayed as the umpteenth avatar of the ubiquitous “masculinity crisis.” After all, sociologists and historians argue, whenever gender norms evolve in society, discourses around masculinity start painting it as “fragile, defensive, threatened, and at risk. Inherently unstable, masculinity is always in process, under negotiation, needing to be ‘shored up,’ reinforced, buttressed against its many enemies,” historian Judith Allen writes in an article titled “Men Interminably in Crisis?”43 For sociologist Francis Dupuis-Déri, this recurring trope of a masculinity crisis is fundamentally reactionary: it obscures male power and domination, usually blames women for social changes, and mobilizes resources and emotions towards a reinstatement of traditional values and a sexist hierarchy of the sexes.44 In that perspective, incels’ subaltern identity can be dismissed as “weaponized subordination,” a baseless posture whose underlying aims are male supremacist in essence. Sociological research on incel discourse therefore tends to frame the movement in terms of “hegemony,”45 “supremacy,”46 or an “authoritarian”47 and “fascist”48 subjugation of women. Incel violence is then seen as a manifestation of this true sexist agenda.

• 49 Incel suicidality has been studied qualitatively by Daly, Sarah and Laskovtsov, Albina, “‘Goodbye, (...)
• 50 For reviews of this psychological/psychiatric approach, see Sparks, Brandon, et al., “Involuntary (...)
• 51 For a recognition of the need to understand incel grievances and narratives, see Van der Veer, Ren (...)

45On the other hand, incels as a group exhibit clear signs of social exclusion and psychological distress. These ethnically diverse men are more likely to be unemployed, neuroatypical, depressed, with few to no friends, and to have experienced bullying, without even mentioning the anguish and lack of self-esteem resulting from prolonged virginity and celibacy. Unsurprisingly, suicidality in the community is extremely high.49 Research in psychiatry and mental health therefore insists on incels’ wellbeing and recognizes them as a particularly fragile demographic.50 Research on security and terrorism sometimes acknowledges the need to understand incels’ grievances and distress in order to prevent their violence.51 Incel violence is thus de-politicized; instead of reflecting broader social and historical trends surrounding gender, it is seen as an extreme manifestation of a sick psyche.

• 52 This is why a counter-terrorism scholar has called for “applying a gender lens to counter-terroris (...)
• 53 The recent trend whereby extreme far-right ideologies and groups mutate and hybridize online was t (...)

46Both these approaches hold valuable insights, and should not be held as mutually incompatible.52 Indeed, as we have shown, incels’ grievances stem from a genuine sense of distress coming from lived experiences. However, this emotion is then collectively channeled towards a common worldview in which labels and hierarchies lead to a sexist de-humanization of women. The personal and the collective intersect in the building of incel identity, which both reflects the unique trajectories of incels, and broader social trends, such as at the rise of a nebulous transnational conglomerate of online extreme far-right movements.53 This calls for a transdisciplinary understanding of the phenomenon, which the present article has sought to illustrate, by drawing on research from the humanities, the social and psychological sciences, as well as terrorism studies.