The Rise and Radicalisation of Incel Culture

Are InCels really looking for sex? Or a way to achieve total domination over women

On August 12, 2021, 22-year-old Jake Davidson woke up and chose to murder. The 22-year-old took up a shotgun in the early hours of that balmy August evening and within the space of 12 minutes, five people were dead.

The first was his 51-year-old mother, Maxine Davison. He shot her dead in their family home in Plymouth. His next four victims were simply innocent bystanders, including three-year-old Sophie Martyn and her father Lee. Davidson went on to kill two more people before shooting himself in the head. It was the worst mass shooting in the UK in over a decade.

Since, professionals have been looking for signs as to why this atrocity was committed. He left no note, video manifesto or any sort of explanation for his violent actions. Police turn to Davidson's internet presence for answers, where they find he had an active interest in sites such as YouTube, Reddit and 4Chan discussing “InCels”, or the “Involuntary Celibate”.

What is an InCel?

The term InCel was conceived in 1993 by a young Canadian woman known only as Alana. Lonely and frustrated with her life, Alana decided to start an online support group for other self-professed “late bloomers” like herself to socialise and commiserate together. She named this site ‘Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy project’, a welcoming place for people of all genders and orientations. 

Yet over time, the term ‘InCel’ has come to mean something different, something now far more malignant. Populated on internet chat sites such as Reddit, 4Chan and 8Chan, the movement has morphed into something violently misogynistic. 

InCels, a portmanteau of the phrase ‘Involuntary Celibate’, are a subset of the online misogynists known as the ‘manosphere’. Members of this online community are mainly comprised of young men from ages 18-30, who consider themselves unable to attract a woman to them sexually. These are predominantly heterosexual men who blame women and society for their lack of romantic and sexual success, conceiving that all women are inherently manipulative and have the intent to exploit men. However, many men would like to have sex and do not. This leads one to believe that InCels aren’t really looking for sex; they’re looking for complete male supremacy. Sex is defined to them as domination over female bodies.

InCels believe in the concept that attractiveness is pre-determined by genetic factors, which dictate our physical appearance. In their skewed perspective, this is what women find most attractive in men. InCels believe women have too much power in the sexual sphere and ruin InCels lives by rejecting them. This ideology creates a deep-seated pessimism, a sense of grievance towards women and an overwhelming predisposition to violence. 

InCel violence was first brought to media attention after the Elliot Rodgers spree-killing in Isla Vista, California. On the evening of May 23rd, 22-year-old Rodgers killed six people and injured fourteen- by gunshot, stabbing and vehicle ramming- near the University of California campus, then killing himself. Before committing the murders Rodgers left a video/manifesto detailing his experience with ‘involuntary celibacy’.

InCel language

InCel culture is individual in that it had a strict set of common language and a few key beliefs that it adheres to:

Hypergamy – The concept that women will always revert to the Hypergamy – using sexual/romantic partnerships to elevate their own ‘status’.

Chads – InCels believe that 80% of women only want to date the top 20% of men, known as Chads. Chads are the best-looking and richest men, often characterised by a strong jawline, leaving the rest of the men, including InCels without partners. The core belief here is that the Chads benefit from the hypergamy, whilst the InCels suffer. 

Stacys – Stacys are who want to date the Chads, InCels believe this is due to a woman’s greed and manipulative ways. Whist InCels hate both Chads and Stacys ultimately, they want to be Chads, whereas they want to date, ridicule or in extreme cases, kill Stacys.

Ascend/FakeCel– To rise above your previous InCel state through romantic/sexual gratification. This cannot be done through an escort service. If an InCel ascends then the community quickly turns on them, labelling them as a FakeCel.

Foid – An abbreviation of Femoid, a combination of female and android. This derogatory word is commonly used to reduce women to a sub-human group. InCels perceive their lack of romantic success in these women hence the pejorative terminology.

Why is InCel culture growing?

In this modern day and age, sex has become a hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, and, like any hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace there are bound to be some disastrous consequences.

Sexual value continues to benefit abled over disabled, cis over trans, thin over fat, tall over short, white over non-white, and rich over poor. Men and women are both taught differently how to respond to these circumstances. Women are taught from childhood to blame themselves if they feel undesirable, and then how to fix this issue through conventional femininity. However, within our patriarchal society Men are also taught to blame women when they feel undesirable

Yet as we culturally shift away from the patriarchy women are growing the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners – it is rather unsurprising to find that men do not like this. Several cultural changes have created a situation that disallows men to have unequivocal access to women’s bodies, which in an earlier era they would have had. (1)The sexual revolution, which urged women to seek liberation, (2) The self-esteem movement that taught women that they are valuable beyond what convention may dictate, (3) The rise of mainstream feminism gave women certainty and company to these convictions.

Canadian studies have unearthed a particularly active InCel community in Toronto – possibly due to Canada's political climate and their prime minister, who openly calls himself a feminist. People, more specifically misogynists, feel oppressed when equality is closer. In areas where equality is deemed “threatening” to men and masculinity you often see a backlash online in the form of increased interest in traditional values and strict gender roles. 

One answer as to why InCel culture is growing lies in the changing attitudes toward sex. The politicisation of sex is a largely ignored concept, instead, most refer to the case made by Ellen Willis in ‘Lust Horizons: Is the Women's Movement Pro-Sex? (1981). Society takes desire for the most part as given and insists that acting on that desire is morally constrained only by the boundaries of consent. Willis declared that sex was no longer morally problematic or unproblematic: it is instead merely wanted or unwanted.

However, as we move towards an intersectional understanding of desire, we come to understand that a political framework controls our perception of what constitutes as desirable. What before may have been understood as preference is now clear is internalised racism, ableism, and transphobia, making the new sexual market bound in political relevance. In Amia Srinivasan – ‘Does anyone have the right to sex’ - she highlights the very real risk that over-politicising desire will encourage a discourse of sexual entitlement. People who are unjustly sexually marginalised or excluded can pave the way to the thought that these people have a right to sex, a right that is being violated by those who refuse to have sex with them. 

On a now-banned Reddit group, a post titled ‘It should be legal for InCels to rape women’ a Redditor stated that “No starving man should have to go to prison for stealing food, and no sexually starved man should have to go to prison for raping a woman.” InCels transmit their unhappiness into a rage towards women ‘denying’ them sex, rather than at the systems that shape desire.

Is Incel culture an extremist one? 

The answer to whether the InCel culture is an extremist one perhaps lies in the expansion of what ‘violent extremism’ is. Traditionally a violent extremist commits acts towards that of the ‘other’, however, a lot of the violence by InCels is self-harm, which is not to say InCels do not commit acts of violence towards others. The InCel community is built on a foundation of nihilism and self-hatred. While not all InCels are violent, the online ecosystem breeds and encourages extremist attitudes related to suicide, interpersonal violence, and violent misogyny 

InCel culture heavily relies on an us vs them mentality, something that is widely observed amongst extremist groups. This division between InCels and those that can get into a relationship is not only lonely but breeds dangerous resentment and isolation. There is such a strong echo chamber of misogyny online, stated a reformed Reddit InCel, so much so that thinking/saying small things in real life seems acceptable in comparison.

InCels are indoctrinated to believe they hold a superior mental concept of sex and relationships. They are the only ones who realise that the game of sex and attraction is rigged from birth. This creates a deep-seated superiority complex amongst the community and only serves to divide. The concept of enlightenment is recognised amongst scientific fields and religious sects and describes the deliverance of knowledge and understanding.

The problem of InCels is a deep issue, not just about the surface level of public violent incidents that we often see reported in the media. There are three distinguishable levels of violence. (1) Personal violence: Self-harm, suicide. The acronym LDAR ‘lay down and rot’ is frequently used in InCel culture and is indicative of its fatalistic nature. (2) Interpersonal violence: InCels are encouraged to take others with them if they are going to harm themselves. Also, in the way Women are harassed both in real life and online by InCels. ‘Chadfishing’, or the catfishing of women posing as a ‘Chad’ to get dates and then scorning them. (3) Societal violence: Violence aimed at society through mass shootings. Within the community these events are idolised and seen as examples, they also rank perpetrators online.

A mental health issue?

First and foremost, we must understand that the InCel ideology and the forums are very attractive to vulnerable young men. The community is often found online by those wanting friends and like-minded individuals which is what they find. Amongst other mental health conditions, Anxiety and depression were found to be very common amongst InCels. These individuals often have experienced a history of relationship trauma as a result of abuse or neglect within the family system. 

Those InCels that were trauma and abuse survivors surveyed were shown to exhibit a social skill deficit. i.e. poor boundaries in a relationship, poor recognition of social cues, lacking conversation skills. As well as highly sexualised behaviour. With no awareness of boundaries and a distorted view of what a healthy relationship is. Relationships they had observed, growing up mostly, were violent, adding to the normalisation of violent romantic relationships.

In October 2019 a user poll on the ‘Incels.co’ website found that 1 in 4 of the 550 respondents stated they had previously been diagnosed with autism. Social communication and interaction impairments due to Autism-Spectrum-Disorder may cause challenges in making and maintaining peer friendship groups. Due to young individuals with ASD experiencing higher rates of bullying and rejection by peers in the physical space, the internet is already the “preferred socialisation to the outside world” for lots of them. Many of these factors lead vulnerable people down the path to misogynistic, violent InCel life, often without the person realising. 

Amongst these worrying components, self-help or positivity is frowned upon in the forums, if someone interacts positively with a woman, instead of congratulations and praise, they are now a ‘Fakecel’ meaning ‘Fake InCel’. Getting better and improving is seemingly not the end goal of this lifestyle, merely to progressively get poorer and poorer mental health. 

The InCel community is one that wants its people to suffer, and perpetuate self-harming behaviours and violent misogyny through idolised mass brutality. The question on everyone’s lips is, how do we stop them?