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controversial online subculture For other uses, see Incel (disambiguation).
Incels (a portmanteau of involuntary celibates) are self-identifying members of an online subculture[1][2] who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom.[3] Self-identified incels are mostly white, male, and heterosexual.[4][5][6] Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment, misanthropy,[1] self-pity,[7] self-loathing,[8] misogyny, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active people.[5][6][9][10][11] The Southern Poverty Law Center described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is a member of their list of hate groups.[12][13] People who have either self-identified as incels or who had mentioned incel-related names and literature in their private writings or Internet postings have committed at least four mass murders in North America, resulting in forty-five deaths.
Contents
History
The first online community to use the term "incel" was started in 1993 when a Canadian college student known only by her first name, Alana, created a website in order to discuss her sexual inactivity with others.[11][14][15][16] The website, titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project",[11] was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences. In 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, which was later shortened to "incel". During her college career and after, she realized she was queer, and became more comfortable with her identity. She later gave the site to a stranger.[15]
The /r/incels subreddit, a forum on the website Reddit, became a particularly active incel community. The subreddit was known as a place where men blamed women for their involuntary celibacy, sometimes advocated for rape or other violence, and were generally misogynistic and often racist.[17][18] One post titled "general question about how rapists get caught" was asked by a member pretending to be a woman, saying they wanted to know how a woman who was drugged and raped would begin finding her rapist.[17][19]
When Alana read about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and the way parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, Elliot Rodger,[19] she wrote, "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it."[16] Alana expressed regret at the change in usage, with her original intention being to create an "inclusive community" for men and women who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization or mental illness.[20] She has since started a new project, "Love Not Anger", which she describes as "a project to research how lonely people might find respectful love, instead of being stuck in anger."[15]
On October 25, 2017, Reddit announced a new policy that would ban "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people."[18] On November 7, 2017, the /r/incels subreddit was banned for violating this policy. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.[21]
Incels came to wider public notice with the banning of the subreddit and when a series of mass murderers either self-identified as involuntarily celibate or shared similar ideologies.[22][23]
The misogynistic and sometimes violent rhetoric[5][17][24][25] of some members of incel communities has led to numerous bans from websites and webhosts. Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms, such as Voat[26] and the message board /r9k/ on 4chan.[27] There are also incel forums that disapprove of hatred, such as /r/IncelsWithoutHate,[28][29] and dating websites that cater to incels, such as dateanincel.com.[8]
Ideology
Many incel communities are characterized by resentment, self-pity,[7] misogyny, misanthropy, and racism.[1][5][11][25][7][17][18][24][30] Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are owed sex, and endorse suicide among incels[31] and violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men.[18][32][33] Many incels firmly defend concepts such as biological determinism and evolutionary psychology.[34] Other concepts that incels may believe in includes female hypergamy, the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle) which suggests that 80% of women aim for the top 20% of most attractive men, and among non-whites, the JBW theory, which stands for "Just Be White", suggesting that Caucasians face the least obstacles in the dating world.[35][36] Some incels support the works of fringe[22] social psychologist Brian Gilmartin,[34] author of the book Shyness and Love which gained popularity among incel communities, and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.[37] Some members of incel communities believe in the idea of "forced 'sexual redistribution'", where governments would require women to engage in certain sexual relationships.[38] In some communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (2018 Toronto van attack, suspected),[39][40] as well as by those they feel share the ideology such as Seung-Hui Cho (Virginia Tech shooting)[41] and George Sodini (2009 Collier Township shooting).[42] Discussions also revolve around idleness, loneliness, unhappiness,[43] suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitutes, as well as various attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as income or personality.[22] Incels commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth.[44]
Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere.[2][45][46] According to The New York Times, involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of "male supremacy".[47] The Southern Poverty Law Center described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018.[13] The New York Times wrote that "the group has evolved into a male supremacist movement made up of people—some celibate, some not—who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights."[38] Incel communities sometimes overlap with topics such as Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW),[36] men's rights activism, and pickup artistry,[22][42] although at least one male incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accuses pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels.[48][42][49]
Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image,[50] penis size,[35] or their physical appearance.[51]
Black pill
The black pill is a set of beliefs that are commonly held amongst members of incel communities, such as genetic determinism, fatalism and defeatism for unattractive people.[52] Someone who believes in the black pill is a black piller.[31]
The concept of the black pill distinguishes incels from the men's rights movement and their popular reference to the red pill, an allusion to the dilemma in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist must choose to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill).[53] In the context of men's rights activism, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where women hold power over men.[54] The black pill, on the other hand, refers to hopelessness.[34] It also holds that one's personality isn't very important.[55] Sam Louie, in an interview with WBUR-FM, defined "taking the black pill" as meaning "I will now espouse violence, hatred and misogyny."[56]
The term black pill was coined on the blog Omega Virgin Revolt, where the term commended despondency in order to distinguish incels from the pickup artist communities.[36] On the incel subreddit /r/braincels, "blackpills" are memes (usually images) that users share to describe a user's thoughts, many of which criticize women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow.[57] Although the tone of the subreddit is similar, moderators of the forum say that they do not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they make from the subject matter of its /r/incels predecessor that resulted in it being banned from Reddit.[57]
Lexicology
The term "involuntary celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as inceldom[3] or incelibacy.[58] It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success),[27][59] "FA" (short for "forever alone"),[60] "TFL" (an initialism of "true forced loneliness"),[43] "unfuckability",[61] "omegas",[52] "zeta males",[62] "beta males"[35] or "the sexless".[6] Alana, the coiner of the term incel, initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".[15]
Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect to refer to various concepts.[36] For example, they may describe women as "femoids", "stacys" (attractive sexually active women), or "beckys" (less attractive sexually active women), and sexually active men as "chads".[17][63][64] "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. "Looksmaxing" is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including dressing nicely, going to the gym, or pursuing plastic surgery.[43][65]
Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups in the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse),[66] "marcels" (married), "nearcels" (those who are considered nearly incel), "hicels" (those who have high standards; are very picky when dating), "heightcels" (short),[15] and "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship).[34][67] There are also a number of race-based variations of the term "incel" which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry)[31] and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds).[35]
Demographics
Self-identified incels are mostly white, male and heterosexual,[4][5][6] and are often described as young[24][68][69] and friendless introverts.[43] Some media outlets depict them as unemployed and living with parents.[27] However, due to their varied nature, there is no singular typical trait that defines all incels.[27]
In the 1990s, a gender-inclusive incel website called Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project was created.[70] There are also women-specific forums, such as /r/Femcels[71] and /r/ForeverAloneWomen.[16] Nonetheless, there is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incel, with some claiming that male incels outnumber female incels,[72] others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incel,[22] others claiming that only women with a physical deformity can be incel,[73] while others argue that only highly unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incel.[74]
Estimates on the size of incel communities vary,[22][75][62] and range from the thousands,[20] to tens of thousands,[52] or hundreds of thousands.[76]
The incel subculture includes people who are in sexless marriages (or other sexless relationships) but who wish to be sexually active. It is considered to be distinct from asexuality and from voluntary sexual abstinence.[77]
Mental health
"Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel suffer from physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, Asperger syndrome, and body dysmorphic disorder.[78] Some visitors of incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Some incels with severe depression are also suicidal.[27] Many incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues.[34]
Mass murders and violence
Some mass murders in North America have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies.
On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. These killings drew media attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel communities. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos detailing his involuntary celibacy and discussing how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women.[15][79][80][81] He had been an active member of an involuntary celibacy community called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto.[42][82][23] Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that began later.[23][83][12] He has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings.[40]
Rodger is among several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities. The perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting, George Sodini, has been embraced by some of these communities.[42] After the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting by a man with unclear motive, some of the involuntarily celibate community celebrated the shooter, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies".[12] The trend has since continued—after the 2018 Toronto van attack, a poster on a website created to supersede /r/incels wrote about suspected perpetrator Alek Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint."[12]
On October 1, 2015, Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, anger at not having a girlfriend, and animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related with Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods."[25] Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated he was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: "Involuntarily so."[84][22][85][86] Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many involuntarily celibate posters.[27][87][88]
On December 7, 2017, William Atchison killed two people before killing himself in Aztec, New Mexico in a shooting at Aztec High School, where he had previously been a student. He had used the pseudonym "Elliot Rodger" on several online forums, and praised "the supreme gentleman" (a term Rodger had used to describe himself, which has since been adopted as a moniker by incel communities).[40][89]
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida before being arrested. Cruz had previously posted online that “Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten".[25]
On April 23, 2018, someone suspected to be Alek Minassian killed ten people and injured fourteen others in a van attack in Toronto, Ontario before being arrested. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Elliot Rodger.[15][47][90][91] The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation.[1]
See also
References
Source en.wikipedia.org