Incel ( ; a
portmanteau
In linguistics, a blend—also known as a blend word, lexical blend, or portmanteau—is a word formed by combining the meanings, and parts of the sounds, of two or more words together. of "involuntary celibate"
) is a term associated with an
online subculture of mostly male and
heterosexual
Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions ...
people who define themselves as unable to find a
romantic or
sexual partner despite desiring one. They often blame,
objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result.
Originally coined as "invcel" around 1997 by a
queer
''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are non-heterosexual or non- cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against LGBTQ people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to ...
Canadian
Canadians () are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''C ...
female student known as Alana, the spelling had shifted to "incel" by 1999,
and the term later rose to prominence in the 2010s, following the influence of misogynistic terrorists
Elliot Rodger and
Alek Minassian.
The subculture's online discourse has been characterized by
resentment
Resentment (also called ranklement or bitterness) is a complex, multilayered emotion that has been described as a mixture of disappointment, disgust and anger. Other psychologists consider it a Mood (psychology), mood or as a secondary emotion ( ...
,
hostility
Hostility is seen as a form of emotionally charged aggressive behavior. In everyday speech, it is more commonly used as a synonym for anger and aggression.
It appears in several psychological theories. For instance it is a Facet (psychology), f ...
,
sexual objectification
Sexual objectification is the act of treating a person solely as an object of sexual desire (a sex object). Objectification more broadly means treating a person as a commodity or an object without regard to their personality or dignity. Obje ...
,
misogyny
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against Woman, women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than Man, men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been wide ...
,
misanthropy
Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, or distrust of the human species, human behavior, or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. Misanthropy involves a negative evaluative attitude t ...
,
self-pity and
self-loathing,
racism
Racism is the belief that groups of humans possess different behavioral traits corresponding to inherited attributes and can be divided based on the superiority of one Race (human categorization), race or ethnicity over another. It may also me ...
, a sense of entitlement to sex,
blaming of women and the sexually successful for their situation (which is often seen as
predetermined due to
biological determinism
Biological determinism, also known as genetic determinism, is the belief that human behaviour is directly controlled by an individual's genes or some component of their physiology, generally at the expense of the role of the environment, wheth ...
,
evolutionary genetics
Population genetics is a subfield of genetics that deals with genetic differences within and among populations, and is a part of evolutionary biology. Studies in this branch of biology examine such phenomena as adaptation, speciation, and popu ...
or a rigged game),
nihilism
Nihilism () encompasses various views that reject certain aspects of existence. There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that Existential nihilism, life is meaningless, that Moral nihilism, moral values are baseless, and ...
,
rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active.
Incel communities have been increasingly criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, the endorsement and encouragement of violence, and
extremism
Extremism is "the quality or state of being extreme" or "the advocacy of extreme measures or views". The term is primarily used in a political or religious sense to refer to an ideology that is considered (by the speaker or by some implied sha ...
.
Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple
mass killings, mostly in North America, perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence.
The
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white ...
(SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online
male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their
list of hate groups.
The
Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism states that "the incel community shares a misogynistic ideology of women as being
genetically inferior to men, driven by their
sexual desire to
reproduce with genetically superior males thereby excluding unattractive men such as themselves" which "exhibits all of the hallmarks of an
extremist ideology", and that it is the combination of a wish for a
mythical
Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...
past where all men were entitled to sex from
subordinated women, a sense of
predestined personal failure, and
nihilism
Nihilism () encompasses various views that reject certain aspects of existence. There have been different nihilist positions, including the views that Existential nihilism, life is meaningless, that Moral nihilism, moral values are baseless, and ...
, which makes the
worldview
A worldview (also world-view) or is said to be the fundamental cognitive orientation of an individual or society encompassing the whole of the individual's or society's knowledge, culture, and Perspective (cognitive), point of view. However, whe ...
dangerous.
Estimates of the overall size of the
subculture
A subculture is a group of people within a culture, cultural society that differentiates itself from the values of the conservative, standard or dominant culture to which it belongs, often maintaining some of its founding principles. Subcultures ...
vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals.
History and organization
The first website to use the term "incel" was "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", founded in 1997 by a Canadian university student, Alana, to discuss her sexual inactivity with others.
Some media have incorrectly dated it to 1993, the date of a personal interaction that later inspired her to design the page.
The site was used by people of all
gender
Gender is the range of social, psychological, cultural, and behavioral aspects of being a man (or boy), woman (or girl), or third gender. Although gender often corresponds to sex, a transgender person may identify with a gender other tha ...
s and
sexual orientation
Sexual orientation is an enduring personal pattern of romantic attraction or sexual attraction (or a combination of these) to persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, or to both sexes or more than one gender. Patterns ar ...
s to share their thoughts and experiences.
In 1997, she started a
mailing list
A mailing list is a collection of names and addresses used by an individual or an organization to send material to multiple recipients.
Mailing lists are often rented or sold. If rented, the renter agrees to use the mailing list only at contra ...
on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time".
During her college years and after, Alana realized she was
bisexual
Bisexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior toward both males and females. It may also be defined as the attraction to more than one gender, to people of both the same and different gender, or the attraction t ...
and became more comfortable with her identity.
Around 2000, she stopped participating in her online project and gave the site to a stranger.
In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years".
When she read about the
2014 Isla Vista killings
Two misogynistic terror, misogynistic terrorist attacks occurred in Isla Vista, California, United States on the evening of May 23, 2014. 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ...
, and that parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, 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".
She expressed regret at the change in usage from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to
social awkwardness,
marginalization
Social exclusion or social marginalisation is the social disadvantage and relegation to the fringe of society. It is a term that has been used widely in Europe and was first used in France in the late 20th century. In the EU context, the Euro ...
, or
mental illness
A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness, a mental health condition, or a psychiatric disability, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. A mental disorder is ...
.
In 2003, the message board love-shy.com was founded as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations.
It was less strictly
moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and online fringe
right-wing
Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...
communities like
4chan increasingly overlapped.
In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and
Reddit
Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility.
According to
Bruce Hoffman and colleagues writing in ''
Studies in Conflict & Terrorism'', as "edgy" and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist
trolling
In slang, a troll is a person who posts deliberately offensive or provocative messages online (such as in social media, a newsgroup, a internet forum, forum, a chat room, an Multiplayer video game, online video game) or who performs similar be ...
and "
shitposting
In Internet culture, shitposting or trashposting is the act of using an online forum or social media page to post content that is of "aggressively, ironically, and trollishly poor quality".:
:
:
:
: Shitposts are generally intentionally desig ...
".
The
r/incels subreddit
Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...
, a forum on the website Reddit, later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for
rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault involving sexual intercourse, or other forms of sexual penetration, carried out against a person without consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority, or against a person ...
or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist.
On November 7, 2017, Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit following a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people", adopted in October 2017.
At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.
The incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in other subreddits, such as on the subreddit r/braincels. Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to r/incels, moderators of the r/braincels forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor that resulted in its being banned from Reddit.
On September 30, 2019, the r/braincels subreddit was banned after Reddit again broadened its banning policy.
Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject.
In the 2010s, the subculture came to wider public notice with the banning of r/incels, and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as members of the subculture or shared similar ideologies.
Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed to feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex.
Since around 2019, some self-identified incels have attempted to redefine their views to appear more mainstream, by writing blog posts and articles on subject-specific
wiki
A wiki ( ) is a form of hypertext publication on the internet which is collaboratively edited and managed by its audience directly through a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages that can either be edited by the public or l ...
s and forums rejecting the more open expressions of misogyny within other segments of the subculture, highlighting the heterogeneity of incel communities, and reframing incels not as an online subculture but as those experiencing a life circumstance that applies even to individuals who are not members of the subculture.
In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for the
Political Research Associates think tank that these attempts to redefine themselves contradicted the communities' self-identifications and moderation strategies, where members regularly challenge other users' "legitimacy" as incels, but have accepted as members individuals with sexual experience who nonetheless shared similar political ideologies.
Extremism
Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s.
This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online
hate group
A hate group is a social group that advocates and practices hatred, hostility, or violence towards members of a race, ethnicity, nation, religion, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or any other designated sector of society.
Acc ...
s and the rise of the
alt-right
The alt-right (abbreviated from alternative right) is a Far-right politics, far-right, White nationalism, white nationalist movement. A largely Internet activism, online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late ...
and
white supremacist
White supremacy is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White supremacy has roots in the now-discredited doctrine ...
groups.
The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some members of these communities has led to numerous bans from websites and
web hosts.
Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan,
8chan, and
Gab, as well as on web forums created specifically for the topic.
More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming
chat services (such as
Discord
Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...
) and the
dark web
The dark web is the World Wide Web content that exists on darknets ( overlay networks) that use the Internet but require specific software, configurations, or authorization to access. Through the dark web, private computer networks can communica ...
to avoid site shutdowns and the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to avoid drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers.
Beginning in 2018 and into the 2020s, the incel ideology has been described by North American governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture.
In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for making terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place... killing as many girls as I see".
In September 2019, the
U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the
''Joker'' film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among self-identified incels on the dark web.
A January 2020 report by the
Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the incel movement was an "emerging
domestic terrorism threat" that "could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types".
A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in ''Studies in Conflict & Terrorism'' concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies".
John Horgan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who in 2019 received a $250,000 grant from the
U.S. Department of Homeland Security to study the incel subculture, explained why the incel ideology equates to terrorism: "the fact that incels are aspiring to change things up in a bigger, broader ideological sense, that's, for me, what make it a classic example of terrorism. That's not saying all incels are terrorists. But violent incel activity is, unquestionably, terrorism in my view".
In February 2020,
an attack in Toronto that was allegedly motivated by incel ideologies became the first such act of violence to be prosecuted as terrorism, and the
Royal Canadian Mounted Police
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP; , GRC) is the Law enforcement in Canada, national police service of Canada. The RCMP is an agency of the Government of Canada; it also provides police services under contract to 11 Provinces and terri ...
stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE)" movement.
In 2021, Jacob Ware wrote in ''Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses'' that analysis of incels has been focused within the United States and Canada due to the concentration of incel-motivated attacks in those countries. In March 2022, the
United States Secret Service
The United States Secret Service (USSS or Secret Service) is a federal law enforcement agency under the Department of Homeland Security tasked with conducting criminal investigations and providing protection to American political leaders, thei ...
's National Threat Assessment Center, published a
case study
A case study is an in-depth, detailed examination of a particular case (or cases) within a real-world context. For example, case studies in medicine may focus on an individual patient or ailment; case studies in business might cover a particular f ...
titled "Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism", to examine the
2018 Tallahassee shooting at a
hot yoga studio and draw attention to "the specific threat posed by misogynist extremism."
Forums
In 2017, the largest incel forum was founded by a previous moderator of the r/incels subreddit. The forum had almost 15,000 members .
It is composed of public and registered
message boards for self-described incels to discuss their personal experiences. Moderators ban women and
LGBT
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, asexual, aromantic, agender, and other individuals. The gro ...
individuals from joining, stating that the forum is oriented towards
straight men.
In 2020,
Talia Lavin in her book ''
Culture Warlords'', described the site's culture as one of "one-upmanship", "barroom boast-off" and
shock content.
In 2023, ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'' described a vindictive site culture, giving an example of an ex-moderator who entered a romantic relationship and was subsequently rejected by site members as a "fake incel".
In 2019,
''Vox'' stated that the site has a culture of praising mass killers, which is treated lightly by the site's admins.
The site has used several
top-level domain
A top-level domain (TLD) is one of the domain name, domains at the highest level in the hierarchical Domain Name System of the Internet after the root domain. The top-level domain names are installed in the DNS root zone, root zone of the nam ...
s since its creation, after being suspended by one domain registry due to violence and hate speech
and denied renewal by another.
The site owners also operate a wiki,
which has been described by researchers publishing in ''
New Media & Society'' as
cherry picking academic papers to promote
misogynistic
Misogyny () is hatred of, contempt for, or prejudice against women or girls. It is a form of sexism that can keep women at a lower social status than men, thus maintaining the social roles of patriarchy. Misogyny has been widely practis ...
points.
Connection to suicide forums
In September 2022, the UK-based
Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report about the largest dedicated incel forum, based on monthly visits, and a network of other sites run by the same two pseudonymous individuals. The ''
Washington Post
''The Washington Post'', locally known as ''The'' ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'' or ''WP'', is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C., the national capital. It is the most widely circulated newspaper in the Washington m ...
'',
''New York Times'', and the CCDH identified them as Uruguay-based Diego JoaquÃn Galante and United States–based Lamarcus Small.
In December 2021, the ''New York Times'' reported that it had identified 45 people, individually, who died in connection to a website called ''
Sanctioned Suicide'',
and estimated that the true number was likely much higher.
The ''Times'' reporters discovered that Galante and Small created and operated the suicide website, in addition to their several incel forums. The CCDH reported that Galante and Small also maintained forums for online communities dedicated to
body image and unemployment.
Ideology
Many incel communities are characterized by resentment and hatred, self-pity, racism, misogyny, and misanthropy.
Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex. Other common topics include idleness,
loneliness
Loneliness is an unpleasant emotional response to perceived or actual isolation. Loneliness is also described as social paina psychological mechanism that motivates individuals to seek social connections. It is often associated with a perc ...
, unhappiness, suicide,
sexual surrogates, and
prostitution
Prostitution is a type of sex work that involves engaging in sexual activity in exchange for payment. The definition of "sexual activity" varies, and is often defined as an activity requiring physical contact (e.g., sexual intercourse, no ...
, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as looks, income or personality.
The incel community has a shared
victimhood identity in which individuals fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success.
Opposition to
feminism
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideology, ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social gender equality, equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that modern soci ...
and
women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and Entitlement (fair division), entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st c ...
is common. Some posters blame
women's liberation
The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminism, feminist intellectualism. It emerged in the late 1960s and continued till the 1980s, primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which resu ...
for their inability to find a partner.
Some believe there was a
golden age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the ''Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages of Man, Ages, Gold being the first and the one during wh ...
in which couples married early, were strictly
monogamous
Monogamy ( ) is a relationship of two individuals in which they form a mutual and exclusive intimate partnership. Having only one partner at any one time, whether for life or serial monogamy, contrasts with various forms of non-monogamy (e.g. ...
, and adhered to traditional
gender role
A gender role, or sex role, is a social norm deemed appropriate or desirable for individuals based on their gender or sex.
Gender roles are usually centered on conceptions of masculinity and femininity. The specifics regarding these gendered ...
s. They believe that during this time, looks played less of a role in romantic pairings and men's "entitlement" to sex with women was never denied.
Those holding this belief often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, but they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the
sexual revolution
The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the late 1950s to the early 1 ...
, women's liberation, and technological progress.
, a prominent member of Russian incel and antifeminist communities,
has described a theory of "vaginocapitalism" (from "
vagina
In mammals and other animals, the vagina (: vaginas or vaginae) is the elastic, muscular sex organ, reproductive organ of the female genital tract. In humans, it extends from the vulval vestibule to the cervix (neck of the uterus). The #Vag ...
" and "
capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production and their use for the purpose of obtaining profit. This socioeconomic system has developed historically through several stages and is defined by ...
") through which he posits that women deprive men of their right to sex, and that men are all forced to pay for sex in some form.
Racism is generally considered to be common on incel forums,
though some researchers have questioned its prevalence.
In 2019, Jaki et al. estimated that 3 percent of comments on incel forums contained words from a list of racist words identified by the researchers.
Some researchers have questioned
linguistic analysis of incel forums as the primary methodology for studying the subculture, recommending that future researchers employ qualitative methods such as one-on-one interviews to obtain a more nuanced view and to avoid results being skewed by the prevalence of shitposting on incel forums.
Antisemitic beliefs are regularly found on incel forums, with some posters going so far as to blame the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by
Jews
Jews (, , ), or the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group and nation, originating from the Israelites of History of ancient Israel and Judah, ancient Israel and Judah. They also traditionally adhere to Judaism. Jewish ethnicity, rel ...
to weaken the
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to various nations and state (polity), states in Western Europe, Northern America, and Australasia; with some debate as to whether those in Eastern Europe and Latin America also const ...
.
"Blackpill"
The "blackpill" (sometimes written as "black pill") generally refers to a set of beliefs mostly held by incel communities, which include biological
determinism
Determinism is the Metaphysics, metaphysical view that all events within the universe (or multiverse) can occur only in one possible way. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes ov ...
,
fatalism
Fatalism is a belief and philosophical doctrine which considers the entire universe as a deterministic system and stresses the subjugation of all events, actions, and behaviors to fate or destiny, which is commonly associated with the cons ...
, and
defeatism for
unattractive people.
Believers are referred to as being "blackpilled".
On the former incel subreddit r/braincels, the term "blackpill" was used for
meme
A meme (; ) is an idea, behavior, or style that Mimesis, spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying c ...
images that criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow.
The black pill has been described by ''Vox'' correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly
sexist
Sexism is prejudice or discrimination based on one's sex or gender. Sexism can affect anyone, but primarily affects women and girls. It has been linked to gender roles and stereotypes, and may include the belief that one sex or gender is int ...
ideology that... amounts to a fundamental rejection of women's sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice".
The term was first popularized on the blog ''Omega Virgin Revolt'', where it represented a belief that the entire social system was broken and that one's place in the system was not something any individual could change.
One who has "taken the black pill" has adopted the belief that they are hopeless, and that their lack of success romantically and sexually is permanent regardless of any changes they might try to make to their physical appearance, personality, or other characteristics.
Many self-identified incels support their beliefs through citations to scientific studies in fields including
psychology
Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Its subject matter includes the behavior of humans and nonhumans, both consciousness, conscious and Unconscious mind, unconscious phenomena, and mental processes such as thoughts, feel ...
,
sociology
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of Interpersonal ties, social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. The term sociol ...
,
evolutionary biology
Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes such as natural selection, common descent, and speciation that produced the diversity of life on Earth. In the 1930s, the discipline of evolutionary biolo ...
,
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regard to the ancestral problems they evolved ...
, and
economics
Economics () is a behavioral science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services.
Economics focuses on the behaviour and interac ...
.
Collections of research deemed to support their beliefs are sometimes named the "scientific blackpill".
Some evolutionary psychology researchers have disputed incels' interpretations of studies from their field, such as the
strategic pluralism (or "double-mating strategy") hypothesis.
Researchers at the
Institute for Strategic Dialogue have described incels' appeals to science as part of a strategy of "
argument by exhaustion", where "large numbers of references of dubious quality are made to back up questionable assertions".
Self-identified incels regularly endorse the ideas of "female
hypergamy
Hypergamy (colloquially referred to as "dating up" or "marrying up") is a term used in social science for the act or practice of a person dating or marrying a spouse of higher social status than themselves.
The antonym "hypogamy" refers to t ...
"; the genetic superiority of men over women; the "80/20 rule" (an application of the
Pareto principle, in which incels assert that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most desirable men); and, among non-white men within the subculture, the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which posits that
Caucasians face the fewest obstacles to relationships and sex.
Self-identified incels also believe that people seeking a romantic or sexual partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and
Darwinian sexual selection
Sexual selection is a mechanism of evolution in which members of one sex mate choice, choose mates of the other sex to mating, mate with (intersexual selection), and compete with members of the same sex for access to members of the opposite sex ...
, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of
cosmetics
Cosmetics are substances that are intended for application to the body for cleansing, beautifying, promoting attractiveness, or altering appearance. They are mixtures of chemical compounds derived from either Natural product, natural source ...
.
[ ] Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness,
sex-segregated work environments, negative body image,
penis size,
or their physical appearance, and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth. Some justify their beliefs based on the works of
fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and
clinical psychologist
Clinical psychology is an integration of human science, behavioral science, theory, and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well ...
Jordan Peterson.
"Red pill"
The "
red pill" is an
allusion
Allusion, or alluding, is a figure of speech that makes a reference to someone or something by name (a person, object, location, etc.) without explaining how it relates to the given context, so that the audience must realize the connection in the ...
that is common among manosphere communities, as well as some communities outside of the manosphere. It originates from the dilemma in the movie ''
The Matrix
''The Matrix'' is a 1999 science fiction film, science fiction action film written and directed by the Wachowskis. It is the first installment in the The Matrix (franchise), ''Matrix'' film series, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Ca ...
'' where the protagonist must choose whether to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill), or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill).
Among communities that use the term, the "red pill" often refers to the core set of beliefs of that community, and people who are "redpilled" or who have "taken the red pill" are those who hold those beliefs. In manosphere communities such as men's rights groups and, according to some researchers, in incel communities as well, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where feminism has given women too much power over men and
male privilege
Male privilege is the system of advantages or rights that are available to men on the basis of their sex. A man's access to these benefits may vary depending on how closely they match their society's ideal masculine norm.
Academic studies ...
does not exist.
The "black pill" is an extension of the red and blue pill analogy. There is some disagreement among researchers and journalists over which beliefs are "red pill" and which are "black pill", and whether the black pill ideology is a distinguishing belief of the incel ideology or if there are self-identified incels who do not subscribe to black pill ideas. Some researchers and journalists use the term "red pill" to refer to the set of beliefs commonly held by men's rights' activists, and the term "black pill" to summarize the incel ideology as a whole.
In 2020, Hoffman et al. said that Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition".
In 2018, Aja Romano writing for ''Vox'' said, "what unites all incels is something known as the black pill".
In 2019, researchers at the
Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wrote that there are some incels who believe in the red pill and others who believe in the black pill. Those who believe they can improve their chances with women are adherents to the red pill, whereas only incels who believe they have no power to change their position in society or chances with women are blackpilled. The ADL writes that, among incels, the beliefs summarized as "red pill" center around the idea that feminism has unbalanced society to favor women and give them too much power. Redpilled incels believe they have the opportunity to fight back against this system which disadvantages them, which they do by trying to make themselves more attractive to women.
Conversely, blackpilled incels are those who believe they can do nothing to change their situation. The ADL writes, "This is where the incel movement takes on characteristics of a
death cult". Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence.
Promotion of violence

Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men,
harassment of women,
and suicide.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere.
In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as
Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (perpetrator of the
2018 Toronto van attack),
as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as
Marc Lépine
Marc Lépine (; born Gamil Rodrigue Liass Gharbi; October 26, 1964 – December 6, 1989) was a Canadian mass murderer. On December 6, 1989, he murdered fourteen women and wounded another ten women and four menNote: Many sources state thirt ...
(perpetrator of the 1989
École Polytechnique massacre
École or Ecole may refer to:
* an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée)
* École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France
* Éco ...
),
Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007
Virginia Tech shooting
The Virginia Tech shooting was a spree killer, spree shooting that occurred on Monday, April 16, 2007, comprising two attacks on the campus of the Virginia Tech, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) in Blacksbu ...
),
and George Sodini (perpetrator of the
2009 Collier Township shooting).
Rodger is the most frequently referenced, often being referred to as their "saint" with memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of
Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities.
In 2020, the
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...
described Rodger as "the founding father of the incel ideology".
Some within these communities view violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Others take the more
nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts, and focus their efforts on constructing a scientific justification for this nihilism.
Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change.
Other researchers have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, with some suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others".
Some violent posts may be motivated by status-seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence.
A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence.
A 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence.
Sexual violence
A subgroup of self-identified incels who frequent websites founded by
Nathan Larson, who was a
perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other self-identified incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually.
Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape.
A September 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, about the largest dedicated incel forum, found that users posted about rape once every 29 minutes during their study period, and used the word "kill" 1,181 times in one month. During the study period, 89% of forum users expressed that they support rape in general. According to the report, some posters on the forum try to normalize the idea of
child rape, and more than half the total forum during their study period supported
pedophilia
Pedophilia ( alternatively spelled paedophilia) is a psychiatric disorder in which an adult or older adolescent experiences a primary or exclusive sexual attraction to prepubescent children. Although girls typically begin the process of pube ...
.
The report also exposed that the incel forum site operators had changed a forum rule in March 2022, to allow for the sexualization of
pubescent minors, narrowing an existing rule to outlaw only the sexualization of "pre-pubescent" minors.
In context of related communities
Incel communities are a part of the broader
manosphere
The manosphere is a varied collection of websites, blogs, and online forums promoting masculinity, misogyny, and opposition to feminism. Communities within the manosphere include men's rights activists (MRAs), incels (involuntary celibates), ...
, a loose collection of misogynist movements that also includes
men's rights activists(MRAs),
Men Going Their Own Way
Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW ) is an anti-feminist, misogynistic, mostly online community that espouses male separatism from what they see as a gynocentric society that has been corrupted by feminism. MGTOW specifically advocate for men ...
(MGTOW),
pickup artists(PUAs), and
fathers' rights
The fathers' rights movement is a social movement whose members are primarily interested in issues related to family law, including child custody and child support, that affect fathers and their children. Many of its members are fathers who de ...
groups.
In 2018, journalists for the ''New York Times'' wrote that involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of "male supremacy" and that the communities have evolved into a movement "made up of people—some celibate, some not—who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights".
The
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white ...
also described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018.
While the self-identified incels believe they are inferior to the rest of society, often referring to themselves as "subhuman", they also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general.
A 2019 study published in ''
Terrorism and Political Violence'' found that self-identified incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of
pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high
IQ') to see the truth about the social world". The study determined that they followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups, ascribing highly negative values to
out-groups and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, they also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance.
Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way,
men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL),
and pickup artistry,
although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and
dating coach Dating coaches offer coaching and related products and services to improve their clients' success in dating and relationships. Through discussion, role-playing, behaviour modelling, and other forms of direction, a dating coach trains clients to mee ...
es of financially exploiting incels.
In 2019, media scholar Debbie Ging wrote that incels' discourse around "victimhood and aggrieved entitlement" began on 4chan and has spread into more mainstream groups such as men's rights activists and Men Going Their Own Way.
Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with
far-right
Far-right politics, often termed right-wing extremism, encompasses a range of ideologies that are marked by ultraconservatism, authoritarianism, ultranationalism, and nativism. This political spectrum situates itself on the far end of the ...
groups. In 2019, the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noted that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of
radical-right movements" that are distressed by
neoliberalism
Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pe ...
, especially women's empowerment and immigration.
In 2020, Hoffman and colleagues, in ''Studies in Conflict & Terrorism'', stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together".
In March 2021, reported on the overlap between the incel community and the
Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the
Atomwaffen Division, a
neo-Nazi
Neo-Nazism comprises the post–World War II militant, social, and political movements that seek to revive and reinstate Nazism, Nazi ideology. Neo-Nazis employ their ideology to promote hatred and Supremacism#Racial, racial supremacy (ofte ...
terrorist network.
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" or "incelibacy".
It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with
social anxiety
Social anxiety is the anxiety and fear specifically linked to being in social settings (i.e., interacting with others). Some categories of disorders associated with social anxiety include anxiety disorders, mood disorders, autism spectrum dis ...
or excessive shyness preventing romantic success),
"FA" (short for "forever alone"), "unfuckability", "omegas",
"betas",
"betafags", "the undersexed", or "the sexless".
Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".
Members of incel communities regularly use
jargon
Jargon, or technical language, is the specialized terminology associated with a particular field or area of activity. Jargon is normally employed in a particular Context (language use), communicative context and may not be well understood outside ...
and a distinct dialect.
They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female
humanoid
A humanoid (; from English ''human'' and '' -oid'' "resembling") is a non-human entity with human form or characteristics. By the 20th century, the term came to describe fossils which were morphologically similar, but not identical, to those of ...
s", sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the
labia minora
The labia minora (Latin for 'smaller lips', : labium minus), also known as the inner labia, inner lips, or nymphae, are two flaps of skin that are part of the primate vulva, extending outwards from the inner Vagina#Vaginal opening and hymen, vagi ...
, which incels falsely believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced
roast beef
Roast beef is a dish of beef that is roasted, generally served as the main dish of meal. In the Anglosphere, roast beef is one of the meats often served at Sunday lunch or dinner. Yorkshire pudding is a standard side dish. Sliced roast beef ...
after a woman becomes sexually active).
They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys" and less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys". Attractive sexually active men are referred to as "
Chads", and race-based variations on the term include "Tyrone" for black men and "Chang" for Asian men.
People who are average looking but not incels are "normies".
"Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them.
Looksmaxxing is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking
steroids
A steroid is an organic compound with four fused rings (designated A, B, C, and D) arranged in a specific molecular configuration.
Steroids have two principal biological functions: as important components of cell membranes that alter mem ...
and working out, undergoing
plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as
mewing in hopes of improving facial aesthetics.
The abbreviation "
NEET
A NEET, an acronym for "Not in Education, Employment, or Training", is a person who is Unemployment, unemployed and not receiving an education or Vocational education, vocational training. The classification originated in the United Kingdom in ...
" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training".
Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups within the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse), "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship), and "truecels" (true incels; men who have never had any sexual or romantic encounters).
There are 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) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels".
"Incel" has also come to be used as an insult against people who do not necessarily identify with the subculture, but who are perceived to be sexually inexperienced, undesirable, or unpopular.
Demographics
Self-identified incels are mostly male and
heterosexual
Heterosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or sexual behavior between people of the opposite sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, heterosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexual attractions ...
, and are often described as young and friendless
introverts. Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied.
[ ] It ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands.
A statistical analysis of the largest incel forum shows that only a few hundred accounts made up the vast majority of forum posts during all of 2021 and most of 2022.
Incel communities are largely made up of
emerging adults who feel they have not met their sexual milestones "on time".
In one study, approximately half of incels surveyed lived with their parents or grandparents, and 17.8% were not in employment, education, or training (NEET).
Earlier sources tend to incels as predominantly
white
White is the lightest color and is achromatic (having no chroma). It is the color of objects such as snow, chalk, and milk, and is the opposite of black. White objects fully (or almost fully) reflect and scatter all the visible wa ...
. In 2018, sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in ''The Washington Post'' describing them as primarily white.
In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center echoed this to
''NBC News'', saying they are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood".
However, this is increasingly being disputed by scholars,
with a 2024 study stating "Recent research suggests that common perceptions that Incels are almost all White are inaccurate". In June 2019, Jaki and colleagues, publishing a
linguistic analysis of the most popular incel incel forum, contended that "contrary to what is often reported" there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white.
Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in ''Studies in Conflict & Terrorism'', reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that 55% of respondents self-identified as Caucasian.
Incels who are not white often blame their race for their celibacy, with the acronym "JBW" (Just be white) commonly used to express the perceived advantages white men have, especially in attracting women.
[
A 2024 survey of self-identified incels by researchers from the University of Texas found that incels tended to be slightly ]center-left
Centre-left politics is the range of left-wing political ideologies that lean closer to the political centre. Ideologies commonly associated with it include social democracy, social liberalism, progressivism, and green politics. Ideas commonl ...
. They were significantly left in questions about homosexuality, corporate profits and welfare benefits. In a 2022 study, the University of Texas researchers ran a poll of self-reported incels, which found that 63.58% of those who responded identified as white, a smaller percentage than non-incels in the study. They found that 45% of incels who responded leaned to the left on the political spectrum
A political spectrum is a system to characterize and classify different Politics, political positions in relation to one another. These positions sit upon one or more Geometry, geometric Coordinate axis, axes that represent independent political ...
. 17.5% were centrists, and 38.9% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study.
Self-identified incels are mainly located in North America and Europe. There are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere
The Anglosphere, also known as the Anglo-American world, is a Western-led sphere of influence among the Anglophone countries. The core group of this sphere of influence comprises five developed countries that maintain close social, cultura ...
, such as the Italian website . The English-language forums also receive much traffic from non-Anglophone countries. In 2020, research by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) on the three largest incel forums found that they had a total of about 20,000 users, with only about 1,000 who post actively. The FOI found that between 4.6 and 7.3% of the visitors to the forums originated from Sweden, though they caution this may not be accurate given the use of personal VPNs.
Female incels
The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was gender-inclusive. There have been more contemporary female-specific incel (or "femcel") communities, such as r/TruFemcels and its successor ''ThePinkPill''. , the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members. It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate. Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice. There are hashtags pertaining to the idea of female incels in use on TikTok
TikTok, known in mainland China and Hong Kong as Douyin (), is a social media and Short-form content, short-form online video platform owned by Chinese Internet company ByteDance. It hosts user-submitted videos, which may range in duration f ...
, such as #femcel, #femcelcore and #femcelrights, which as of 2022, have over 250 million views. There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet.
There is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels, others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all, others claiming that only "severely deformed" women can be incels, and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels. Members of male incel communities often reject the concept of a female incel, believing that all women can obtain sex from men, and believing that self-identified female incels are voluntarily celibate. Members of male incel communities may also troll female incels.
In 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the majority of self-identified incels do not believe women can be incels. Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels. In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for the Political Research Associates that members of incel communities point to the existence of female incels as an argument against criticisms of them as misogynist, but that most incel communities do not accept them and ban them from using their forums.
Like members of male incel communities, female incel community members tend to believe that they are victims to their ugliness and think that only unattractive men will date them. They call more attractive looking women "Stacys", who they believe decrease their chance of having sexual contact with men, similar to discussion of "Chads" in male incel forums. They have adopted the idea of the "pink pill", which has been likened to "red pill" and "black pill" terminology, and which describes a belief that some women are considered undesirable and thus are unable to engage in sexual relationships due to society's focus on certain aspects of female attractiveness.
Some women identifying as incels believe they could have casual sex
Casual sex is sexual activity that takes place outside a romantic relationship and implies an absence of commitment, emotional attachment, or familiarity between sexual partners. Examples are sexual activity while casually dating, one-nig ...
, but fear it could only be with men who would abuse or disrespect them. Within online female incel communities, misogyny and an impossible feminine beauty ideal
The feminine beauty ideal is a specific set of beauty standards regarding traits that are ingrained in Woman, women throughout their lives and from a young age to increase their ''perceived'' physical attractiveness. It is experienced by many women ...
are also perceived as reasons for female celibacy. Other women may share similar concerns, but do not self-identify as female incels.
Some female incel communities have been critical of body positivity and mainstream feminism, viewing them as unhelpful to female incels. In 2022 a former member of the r/TruFemcels community was quoted in ''The Atlantic
''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher based in Washington, D.C. It features articles on politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science.
It was founded in 185 ...
'' saying, "I'd rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I'm pretty". In 2022, an expert in psychology interviewed by ''El PaÃs
(; ) is a Spanish-language daily newspaper in Spain. is based in the capital city of Madrid and it is owned by the Spanish media conglomerate PRISA.
It is the second-most circulated daily newspaper in Spain . is the most read newspaper in ...
'' characterized female incel communities as overly insular and skeptical of outsiders (who are deemed "normies"), in what she described as "cognitive inflexibility". She stated that, "US culture is less sociable. In Spain, emale incelswould have completely different characteristics... I don't think it would have the same number of followers, to begin with, because in Spain we are more encouraging of interpersonal relationships, and the development of social skills."
Women who identify as incels share some similarities with their male counterparts, such as belief that physical appearance is the most important factor in finding a partner. In other ways they tend to be different. Members of female incel communities are more likely to self-blame rather than blaming men for their dating and sexual difficulties. This may be due to gender stereotypes, such as the belief that women do not have a "natural" need for sex. Journalist Isabelle Kohn wrote in 2020 that, rather than being angry at the men who reject them, they empathize with the men for not wanting to date them. Kohn notes the tendency for women identifying as incels to turn their rage inwards, rather than outwards like males.
Female incel communities are generally overlooked within academic literature about incels. In 2020, journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesized that the fact that females who identify as incels do not go on violent rampages like some of their male counterparts is the most obvious reason why they have not received much attention in mainstream media. In February 2020, Kohn wrote that she could find "mountains" of academic papers on male incels, but none on female incels. She says the assumption that female incels do not exist adds to their pain. In 2024, continued neglect of research on female incels was reported.
Mental health
"Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety
Anxiety is an emotion characterised by an unpleasant state of inner wikt:turmoil, turmoil and includes feelings of dread over Anticipation, anticipated events. Anxiety is different from fear in that fear is defined as the emotional response ...
, autism
Autism, also known as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), is a neurodevelopmental disorder characterized by differences or difficulties in social communication and interaction, a preference for predictability and routine, sensory processing d ...
, and body dysmorphic disorder
Body dysmorphic disorder (BDD), also known in some contexts as dysmorphophobia, is a mental disorder defined by an overwhelming preoccupation with a perceived flaw in one's physical appearance. In BDD's delusional variant, the flaw is imagined ...
. A 2022 study found that self-identified incels reported higher rates of depression, anxiety, and formal mental diagnoses than the general population: 95% reported depression and 93% reported anxiety. 38% had clinical diagnoses.
Some posters to incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many of those identifying as incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues. Members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment. Some members of incel communities with severe depression are also suicidal. Some members encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending that they commit acts of mass violence before doing so.
Mass murders and violence
Mass murders and other violent attacks 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. Other intended attacks by such individuals have been thwarted by police before being carried out.
2000s
On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness
Fitness International LLC is a North American gym chain with over 700 clubs across the United States and Canada. The company was founded in 1984 and is based in Irvine, California.
History
In 1984, the first LA Fitness was founded by founder C ...
health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
. Three women were murdered and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself. He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name. Sodini and his actions have been embraced and glorified by some members of incel communities, who sometimes refer to incel violence as "going Sodini".
2010s
On May 23, 2014, Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California
Isla Vista ( ; , "Island View") is an Unincorporated area#United States, unincorporated community in Santa Barbara County, California, in the United States. As of 2020 census, the community had a population of 15,500. For statistical purposes, ...
, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara
The University of California, Santa Barbara (UC Santa Barbara or UCSB) is a Public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in Santa Barbara County, California, United States. Tracing its roots back to 1891 as an ...
. 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
A manifesto is a written declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of the issuer, be it an individual, group, political party, or government. A manifesto can accept a previously published opinion or public consensus, but many prominent ...
and YouTube
YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
videos in which he detailed his involuntary celibacy and discussed how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of a community popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto. Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr
A martyr (, ''mártys'', 'witness' Word stem, stem , ''martyr-'') is someone who suffers persecution and death for advocating, renouncing, or refusing to renounce or advocate, a religious belief or other cause as demanded by an external party. In ...
to some communities that remained, and to some of those that emerged later. It is common to see references to "E.R." in incel forums, and mass violence by incels is regularly referred to as "going E.R.". Rodger has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities.
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, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related to Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods". Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so". Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest
The Pacific Northwest (PNW; ) is a geographic region in Western North America bounded by its coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and, loosely, by the Rocky Mountains to the east. Though no official boundary exists, the most common ...
college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters.
On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton
Edmonton is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Alberta. It is situated on the North Saskatchewan River and is the centre of the Edmonton Metropolitan Region, which is surrounded by Central Alberta ...
, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being an incel for four years.
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 become a common reference among incel communities). Atchison had also posted far-right content online.
On February 14, 2018, Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others, in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida
Parkland is a city in northern Broward County, Florida, United States. It is a suburb of Miami and located north of the city. As of the 2020 census, the population of Parkland was 34,670. Parkland is part of the Miami metropolitan area, which ...
. Allegedly also motivated by other extremist views, Cruz had allegedly previously posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten".
After an April 23, 2018 vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario, Alek Minassian was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had allegedly posted on Facebook
Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Rodger. The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta
Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...
Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation. Following the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint". Following the attack, police claimed that Minassian had been radicalized by incel communities. A video interview was released in showing Minassian being interrogated by police shortly after the attacks. In the video, Minassian is shown telling police that he was a virgin, and that he was motivated by a resentment of "Chads and Stacys", as well as women who gave "their love and affection to obnoxious brutes" rather than to him. The video also showed Minassian saying that he hoped the alleged attack would "inspire future masses to join me" in committing acts of violence as a part of the "Beta Uprising". The judge who found Minassian guilty on all counts wrote in her decision that Minassian had attempted to tie his attack to the incel community as a way of increasing his notoriety, and that "working out his exact motivation for this attack is... close to impossible". She found that Minassian had "lie to the police about much of the incel motivation he talked about and that the incel movement was not in fact a primary driving force behind the attack".
On November 2, 2018, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four women and a man before killing himself in a shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in Tallahassee, Florida
Tallahassee ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Florida. It is the county seat of and the only incorporated municipality in Leon County, Florida, Leon County. Tallahassee became the capital of Fl ...
. He had been a follower of incel ideologies for a long time, and had a history of arrests for grabbing women's buttocks. In 2014, he posted several YouTube videos of himself espousing extreme hatred for women and expressing anger over not having a girlfriend, mentioning Elliot Rodger in one video. In the months leading up to the shooting, he posted numerous misogynistic, racist, violent, and homophobic songs to SoundCloud
SoundCloud is a German audio streaming service owned and operated by SoundCloud Global Limited & Co. KG. The service enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud is ...
.
In January 2019, Christopher Cleary was arrested for posting on Facebook that he was "planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter" and "killing as many girls as I see" because he had never had a girlfriend and was a virgin. He has been described as an incel in the media. In May 2019, Cleary was sentenced to up to five years in prison for an attempted threat of terrorism.
On June 17, 2019, Brian Isaack Clyde began what was intended to be a mass shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas, Texas
Dallas () is a city in the U.S. state of Texas and the most populous city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the List of Texas metropolitan areas, most populous metropolitan area in Texas and the Metropolitan statistical area, fourth-most ...
. He was shot and fatally wounded by officers from the Federal Protective Service before he injured anyone. Clyde had shared incel memes on social media, along with other posts referencing right-wing beliefs and conspiracy theories
A conspiracy theory is an explanation for an event or situation that asserts the existence of a conspiracy (generally by powerful sinister groups, often political in motivation), when other explanations are more probable.Additional sources:
*
...
. Following the incident, the Joint Base Andrews military base briefed its personnel on certain online behaviors among "introverted, sexless individuals", with a spokesman describing them as "a very real threat to military members and civilians".
Self-identified incels have praised attackers with unclear motives, who they believe to be incels. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, some of the incel community celebrated the shooter Stephen Paddock, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies". After the 2018 Toronto shooting, posters on an incel message board expressed excitement with the possibility that the perpetrator might be an incel, although no motive was identified.
2020s
Coty Scott Taylor abducted 6-year-old Faye Marie Swetlik on February 10, 2020, in Cayce, South Carolina
Cayce ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of South Carolina, along the Congaree River. Its population was 12,528 at the 2010 census and rose to 13,789 in the 2020 United States Census, and it is the third-most populated municipality in Lexington Count ...
. Three days later, both Taylor and Swetlik were found dead. It was determined that Taylor had suffocated Swetlik and then killed himself by cutting his throat. Friends reported that Taylor was a self-described incel and that he had often said he "lived without hope".
On February 24, 2020, a female spa worker was stabbed to death in an attack that also severely injured her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the stabbings being motivated by incel ideology, and police laid charges against a 17-year-old male alleged to have committed the stabbings. This was the first time violence thought to be motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada. On September 14, 2022, the perpetrator entered a guilty plea to murder and attempted murder. The attack was ruled a terrorist attack during sentencing proceedings.
Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020, at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development
Mixed use is a type of urban development, urban design, urban planning and/or a zoning classification that blends multiple uses, such as residential, commercial, cultural, institutional, or entertainment, into one space, where those functions ...
in Glendale, Arizona
Glendale () is a city in Maricopa County, Arizona, United States. Located about nine miles northwest of the state capital Phoenix, Glendale is known for State Farm Stadium, which is the home of the Arizona Cardinals football team. The city al ...
, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County
Maricopa County () is a county in the south-central part of the U.S. state of Arizona. As of the 2020 census the population was 4,420,568, or about 62% of the state's total, making it the fourth-most populous county in the United States and ...
prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people. The prosecutor said, "Mr. Hernandez is a self-professed incel... He was taking out his anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn't want him". The prosecutor also alleged that Hernandez sent a video of the attack to a woman he wished to impress.
Between January and , five self-identified incels were arrested in separate incidents in North America for killing or planning to kill women. Among them was Cole Carini, a man who was charged with making false statements to law enforcement in June 2020 after claiming serious injuries to his hands had been caused by a lawnmower accident. Police alleged that Carini was actually injured while trying to make a bomb, and that he had written a note threatening violence against women and referencing Elliot Rodger.
In April 2021, Malik Sanchez, a 19-year-old self-described incel who praised Elliot Rodger, was arrested on federal charges after allegedly videotaping himself approaching women sitting outside a restaurant in Manhattan
Manhattan ( ) is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the Boroughs of New York City, five boroughs of New York City. Coextensive with New York County, Manhattan is the County statistics of the United States#Smallest, larg ...
, New York and telling them he was going to detonate a bomb. The man had previously been arrested several times for harassing others, often while recording or livestreaming
Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other non- liv ...
, and for multiple assaults with pepper spray
Pepper spray, oleoresin capsicum spray, OC spray, capsaicin spray, mace, or capsicum spray is a Tear gas, lachrymator (tear gas) product containing as its active ingredient the chemical compound capsaicin, which irritates the eyes with burning ...
.
In July 2021, a 21-year-old self-identified incel from Ohio was charged with attempting a hate crime
Hate crime (also known as bias crime) in criminal law involves a standard offence (such as an assault, murder) with an added element of bias against a victim (individual or group of individuals) because of their physical appearance or perceived ...
and illegally possessing a machine gun. The man was a frequent poster on a popular incel website, where he wrote posts venerating Elliot Rodger. He wrote a manifesto in which he expressed his desire to "slaughter" women, and in another document he allegedly wrote about his goals to kill 3,000 people in a mass casualty attack.
On August 12, 2021, Jake Davison, a 22-year-old man who referenced "inceldom" in online videos and expressed similar views, perpetrated a mass shooting
A mass shooting is a violent crime in which one or more attackers use a firearm to Gun violence, kill or injure multiple individuals in rapid succession. There is no widely accepted specific definition, and different organizations tracking su ...
in Plymouth
Plymouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Devon, South West England. It is located on Devon's south coast between the rivers River Plym, Plym and River Tamar, Tamar, about southwest of Exeter and ...
, England. He killed five people, including his mother, and injured two others before killing himself.
On December 27, 2021, 47-year-old Lyndon McLeod committed the 2021 Denver and Lakewood shootings, murdering five people before being killed by a police officer. McLeod had self-published a trilogy of science fiction
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...
novels under the pen name
A pen name or nom-de-plume is a pseudonym (or, in some cases, a variant form of a real name) adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of their works in place of their real name.
A pen name may be used to make the author's na ...
Roman MccClay, in which the protagonist of those books, named after himself, was depicted as killing three of the people McLeod eventually targeted.
On May 6, 2023, 33-year-old self-identified incel Mauricio Martinez Garcia went on a spree shooting in a mall in Allen, Texas. Garcia killed eight people and injured at least seven others before he was killed by a police officer.
On October 4, 2024, 19-year-old Semih Çelik killed Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner (both women aged 19) during which he threw Uzuner's severed head off the Walls of Constantinople
The Walls of Constantinople (; ) are a series of defensive wall, defensive stone walls that have surrounded and protected the city of Constantinople (modern Fatih district of Istanbul) since its founding as the new capital of the Roman Empire b ...
before committing suicide himself. Çelik was in contact with incel groups on Discord
Discord is an instant messaging and Voice over IP, VoIP social platform which allows communication through Voice over IP, voice calls, Videotelephony, video calls, text messaging, and digital media, media. Communication can be private or take ...
, where he received praise for his actions. Turkish police began monitoring incel groups in response. Following a decision by an Ankara court, Turkey
Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
blocked Discord in the aftermath of the murders.
Criticism
Of the subculture
Incel communities have been criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play a very large role" in the radicalization of their members, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites". Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups.
Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and... find themselves very frustrated". He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs". Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue(ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence".
In August 2018, another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of men in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about their feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape".
While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low-income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions.
In May 2018, ''The New York Times'' columnist Ross Douthat
Ross Gregory Douthat ( ; born November 28, 1979) is a conservative American author and ''New York Times'' columnist. He was a senior editor of '' The Atlantic''. He has written on religion, politics, and society.
Early life and education
Ross Gr ...
wrote a similarly controversial op-ed, titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex worker
A sex worker is a person who provides sex work, either on a regular or occasional basis. The term is used in reference to those who work in all areas of the sex industry.Oxford English Dictionary, "sex worker" According to one view, sex work is ...
s would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires. Some commentators wrote articles agreeing with this view, including Toby Young, who agreed that sex robots could be a "workable solution"; others criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing the incel ideology.
Journalist Zack Beauchamp has expressed concern about other types of harm inflicted by incels that may be lost in the attention paid specifically to mass violence; he points to forum posts in which users brag about yelling at, catfishing, and sexually assaulting women. University of Portsmouth
The University of Portsmouth (UoP) is a public university in Portsmouth, England. Comprising five Faculty (division), faculties, the university offers a wide range of academic disciplines. in 2022, with around 28,280 students enrolled in Unde ...
lecturer Lisa Sugiura has described incel forums as a "networked misogyny", and urged the posts in such forums be taken seriously not only in the context of hate speech
Hate speech is a term with varied meaning and has no single, consistent definition. It is defined by the ''Cambridge Dictionary'' as "public speech that expresses hate or encourages violence towards a person or group based on something such as ...
but also as a form of grooming that could radicalize "impressionable and vulnerable disillusioned young men". Some sociological research on incel communities has analyzed them as a hybrid masculinity, in which privileged men distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity
In gender studies, hegemonic masculinity is part of Raewyn Connell, R. W. Connell's Gender theory, gender order theory, which recognizes multiple masculinities that vary across time, society, culture, and the individual. Hegemonic masculinity is d ...
while simultaneously reproducing it.
Of platforms providing services to incel communities
Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some identifying as incels) and Twitter
Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
. Cloudflare
Cloudflare, Inc., is an American company that provides content delivery network services, cybersecurity, DDoS mitigation, wide area network services, reverse proxies, Domain Name Service, ICANN-accredited domain registration, and other se ...
, which provides services including DDoS protection, caching and obsfucation of the source host of the content, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime
In computing and telecommunications, downtime (also (system) outage or (system) drought colloquially) is a period when a system is unavailable. The unavailability is the proportion of a time-span that a system is unavailable or offline.
This is ...
even when webhosts have terminated service.
Of reporting and research
Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them only as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities. Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially at fault for the harm that befell them. There is historical and current prejudice against the victims of domestic violence and sex crimes, such as ...
by implying that women who had rejected the attackers' romantic or sexual advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks. Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in ''Vice
A vice is a practice, behaviour, Habit (psychology), habit or item generally considered morally wrong in the associated society. In more minor usage, vice can refer to a fault, a negative character trait, a defect, an infirmity, or a bad or unhe ...
'' who condemned media outlets who "cove and amplif toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology".
In a 2021 report published by the Political Research Associates think tank, M. Kelly wrote about recent attempts by various self-identified incels to "rebrand" their communities and stated that "incels' attempts to reframe their identity have also been helped along by researchers, journalists, and 'counter-violent extremism' experts, who, in their attempts to investigate and understand incels, have given them larger, more mainstream platforms. These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex".
Kelly criticized a podcast titled ''The Incel Project'' for platforming incel ideologies without challenging or fact-checking their statements. She said the creator, Naama Kates, was "no longer just reporting on incels' misogyny, but justifying and sharing it with the world". Kelly criticized the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), who published several reports on incels co-authored by Kates and by the founder and lead moderator of a major incel forum, writing that "while previous ICSVE reports have drawn from primary data, including interviews and surveys with members of the community being studied, this seems to be the first time—at ICSVE or in academic research more broadly—that someone actively involved in a community that regularly expresses bigoted or violent ideology has co-authored the resulting study".
Portrayals in fiction
In his debut novel '' Whatever'' (1994), French writer Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq (; born Michel Thomas on 26 February 1956) is a French author of novels, poems, and essays, as well as an occasional actor, filmmaker, and singer. His first book was a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft. H ...
seems to portray early examples of incels. However, the term did not yet exist at the time; neither did the online communities. The unnamed, 30-year-old protagonist looks unattractive, lacks social skills and suffers from depression, which means that despite his excellent job as an IT professional, he is not popular with women. Things are much worse for his colleague, who is downright ugly and still a virgin at 28. The main character tries to seduce his friend into killing a young woman who has rejected him, which his friend refuses at the last moment. In this novel, the main protagonist philosophizes about the disastrous consequences of the sexual revolution. Because of sexual liberalism, the market mechanism has come to determine human relationships. As a consequence, beautiful people get everything, ugly people get nothing.
Two episodes of the American crime drama '' Law & Order: Special Victims Unit'' are based on incels. In season 16, the episode " Holden's Manifesto" (2014) is based on Elliot Rodger and the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In season 20, the episode "Revenge" (2018) features a group of incels who attack the targets of each other's obsession to exact revenge while creating alibis for one another, the plotline which in itself is inspired by a 1950s novel, '' Strangers on a Train''. An episode of the American medical series '' Chicago Med'' also focused on an incel patient who is injured in a drive-by shooting
A drive-by shooting is a type of assault that usually involves the perpetrator(s) firing a weapon from within a motor vehicle and then fleeing. Drive-by shootings allow the perpetrators to quickly strike their targets and flee the scene before l ...
targeting hospital staff.
'' Fair Warning'', a 2020 thriller novel by Michael Connelly
Michael Joseph Connelly (born July 21, 1956) is an American author of Detective fiction, detective novels and other crime fiction, notably those featuring Los Angeles Police Department, LAPD Detective Harry Bosch, Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch and cr ...
, features a company that buys genetic test data on women genetically identified as vulnerable to sex addiction
Sexual addiction is a state characterized by compulsive participation or engagement in sexual activity, particularly sexual intercourse, despite negative consequences. The concept is contentious; sexual addiction is not a clinical diagnosis in ...
. The company sells their names and addresses to incels, one of whom is a serial killer
A serial killer (also called a serial murderer) is a person who murders three or more people,An offender can be anyone:
*
*
*
*
* (This source only requires two people) with the killings taking place over a significant period of time in separat ...
.
The 2023 science fiction film '' The Beast'' also features a character based on Elliot Rodger.
The British miniseries ''Adolescence
Adolescence () is a transitional stage of human Developmental biology, physical and psychological Human development (biology), development that generally occurs during the period from puberty to adulthood (typically corresponding to the age o ...
'', released on Netflix
Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...
in 2025, directly explores incel culture. Told across four episodes, the series follows Jamie Miller, a 13-year-old boy arrested for the murder of his classmate, Katie. Through police interrogations and psychological evaluations, it is revealed that Jamie had been influenced by online ideologies associated with the manosphere and incel communities. The series examines the impact of social media, toxic masculinity, and adolescent radicalization.
See also
* Antifeminism
Antifeminism or anti-feminism is opposition to feminism. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, antifeminists opposed particular policy proposals for women's rights, such as the right to vote, educational opportunities, property righ ...
* Cross-sex friendship
* Gender polarization
* Herbivore men
* Hikikomori
* Human mating strategies
*
* List of subcultures
* Lookism
* Mate value
* Neckbeard
* Nice guys
* Sex differences in psychology
* Sex segregation
Sex segregation, sex separation, sex partition, gender segregation, gender separation, or gender partition is the physical, legal, or cultural separation of people according to their gender or Sex, biological sex at any age. Sex segregation ca ...
* Sexual abstinence
Sexual abstinence or sexual restraint is the practice of refraining from sexual activity for reasons medical, psychological, legal, social, philosophical, moral, religious or other. It is a part of chastity. Celibacy is sexual abstinence general ...
* Sexual capital
Sexual capital or erotic capital or sexual market value is the social power an individual or group accrues as a result of their sexual attractiveness and social charm. It enables social mobility independent of class origin because sexual capit ...
* Toxic masculinity
References
External links
* Podcast episode about the early history of the incel subculture.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Incel
/pol/ phenomena
1997 neologisms
2010s controversies
2020s controversies
Celibacy
Culture-related controversies
Gender-related violence
Internet memes
Internet-related controversies
Manosphere
Misogyny
Antifeminism
Sexual controversies
Social issues
Social psychology
Subcultures
1999 neologisms
Violence against women