United by Rage, Self-Loathing, and Male Supremacy: The Rise of the Incel Community

Abstract

Since the 1990’s the internet has fundamentally transformed social relations by giving rise to cyber-communities, which have brought new kinds of polymorphous, highly personalized, and lifestyle-oriented social groups. They have also given rise to new political movements, including extremist internet groups, that can be severely detrimental to the sustainable wellbeing of society (Delanty 2018, 200). Over the past decade, a fringe internet group known as the involuntary celibates (Incels) have developed mainstream infamy for their extreme misogynistic rhetoric and reactionary anti-feminist language, which has manifested into several terrorist attacks (Olheiser, 2018). It can be argued that Incels have developed an online community centred on the desire for society to revert to absolute patriarchy that dehumanizes women as mere sexual commodities and vehemently oppose the idea of women’s empowerment and sexual liberation (Tolentino 2018). In this paper, we will be analyzing the social dynamics and methods of communication within this fringe echo-chamber, we can better determine if the values of hate, self-loathing and misogyny can facilitate deliberation and in turn constitute the Incels as a legitimate community.

Beyond Fish and Bicycles: Exploring the Varieties of Online Women’s Ideological Spaces

“…As the analog of the Manosphere subculture The Red Pill [24], most of the users in this community do not believe in gender equality, and they discuss house-wife duties, or supporting their alpha men [24,58]. Even though there are previous studies on RPW and femcels [16,38,44,48,53,58,91,99], there have not been any large-scale studies focusing on them.…”

Hegemonic masculinities in the ‘Manosphere’: A thematic analysis of beliefs about men and women on The Red Pill and Incel

“…The studies conducted to date differ from our proposed study most centrally in terms of scope, in that no research thus far has collected data from both The Red Pill and Incel. Our study seeks to do so in recognition of the fact that Incel formed in reaction to The Red Pill and other communities like it (Labbaf, 2019) and the two communities continue to be in dialogue with each other. Our study also differs from past research in that the only previous study that conducted a content analysis on data from The Red Pill examined core ideological texts rather than direct member discourse (Van Valkenburgh, 2018).…”

“…This is where The Red Pill forum in the manosphere gets its name. The corresponding “blue pill” in the ideology of the manosphere represents everyone else who remains ignorant of red pill “truths” (Labbaf, 2019). Both Incel and The Red Pill position themselves in opposition to the blue pill ideology, the only difference being the presence of “black pill” terminology among incels, which represents the additional “truth” of permanent hopelessness (of having a romantic or sexual relationship) that they accept for themselves (Hoffman et al., 2020).…”

Az incel mozgalom mint nőgyűlölő terrorfenyegetés

“…Ő alkotta meg az "involuntary celibates" (akaratlanul cölibátusban élők) kifejezést, így utalva e támogató csoport tagjaira. Miután magára hagyta a hálózatot, az elkezdett a gyűlölet és frusztráció virtuális közegévé válni, főleg a manoszféra heteroszexuális férfitagjai között (Labbaf, 2019). A Web 2.0 és a közösségi média megjelenése óta az antifeminizmus egy különösen rosszindulatú formája tűnt fel több online hálózaton és platformon.…”