FACT SHEET
Predominantly young men, ‘incels’ resent their inability to develop sexual relationships with women, often using this as an excuse to avoid focussing on their own mental and social problems.
History
Misogyny is a characteristic of many extremist movements. Traditionalist movements will often designate women to supporting roles or separate spheres, for instance as ‘mothers of the nation,’ dedicated to reproducing their ethnic and/or cultural group through birthing and raising children. Incels, on the other hand, have no political focus beyond their own sense of grievance based in a sense of entitlement to sex with women. Although the term was first coined by a woman to acknowledge her own problems with finding relationships, the community, originally a supportive space for both sexes, split into two. One of these became increasingly populated by bitter and angry males. Similar incel communities spread to 4chan and Reddit, attracting more and more posters, and increasingly spiralling into radicalisation.
Ideology
Often young men with poor social skills and dealing with depression and social anxiety, ‘incels’ drift into internet communities to share their feelings of isolation and rejection. They are then inducted into a fatalistic ideology that blames women for their failures to achieve relationships. The community uses its own jargon – ‘blackpill’, ‘Chad’ ‘femoid’ – and is deeply steeped in misogyny. Incels often believe that women hold societal power over men, and that there is a Darwinian hierarchy where ‘alpha’ males monopolise women.
Impact
After Eliot Rodger massacred six people and injured another 22, was found to be an active user of incel communities, it became clear that the misogynist rhetoric was out of control. More moderate voices abandoned the community, leaving it to radicalise further. In the UK teenager Ben Moynihan attempted to stab three women in separate incidents in the town of Portsmouth, just months after Rodger’s attack. Rodger’s influence was also shown in the attack by Alek Minassian, who posted ‘“Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4Chan please,” he wrote. “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” Before both Rodger’s and Minassian’s mass murders in 2014 and 2017, George Sodini killed three female patrons of a gym in 2009, after outlining his sexual frustration in a personal blog. Other murderers linked to the ‘incel’ community include Chris Harper-Mercer who killed eight college students, Sheldon Bentley who killed a homeless man, Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 students and injured another 17, and Scott Beierle who killed two women at a yoga studio. In 2021, in the UK, Jake Davison killed five people, including his mother and a five year old girl in the country’s first mass shooting since 2010.
While such explosions of incel ideology into mass violence may be rare, violence against women is a frequent precursor to other forms of terrorism. The incel ideology also creates a hostile atmosphere for women offline, as well as fuelling harassment on social media. Rhetoric circulating on incel spaces inflects the behaviour of boys and young men, says Laura Bates, author of Men Who Hate Women: The extremism nobody talks about, meaning that the impact upon women in their day to day lives is impacted by this ideology. She notes that ‘incels’ are merely the most visible and dangerous aspect of a network she calls the ‘Manosphere’ where anti-feminists and misogynist rhetoric flourishes.