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“”Women seem wicked when you're unwanted.

—Jim Morrison, People Are Strange

“”Today, the term “incel” is often used to describe men who feel unable to obtain romantic or sexual relationships with women, to which they feel entitled. The term is used to describe one online subculture that exists within the “manosphere” – a network of blogs and forums frequented by groups including incels, men’s rights activists (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and pickup artists (PUAs). Although these groups are known to promote male-dominant views, some members express extreme ideologies involving anti-woman hate, sexual objectification of women, and calls for violence targeting women.

—Hot Yoga Tallahassee, A case study of misogynistic extremism (2022)

Incel is a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate". The term "Incel" typically refers to members of an online subculture who define themselves as being unable to find a willing sexual partner for an extended period of time. Incel subculture is typically characterised as self-loathing, misogynistic, racist, selfish, cultish, narcissistic, ultra-conservative, sadistic, mildly evangelistic, sociopathic, and resentful. Most (if not all) of its members believe that they should be entitled a sexual partner, with their idea of a "partner" being defined loosely. Many often endorse suicide and violent behavior. Whether it's that nobody will sleep with them because they are insufferable, or they have become insufferable because nobody will sleep with them, or both varies from case to case.

The term incel gained more public attention with the banning of the /r/incels on Reddit, as well a series of multiple-homicides (often immediately followed by suicides) committed by men who had publicly proclaimed themselves as "celibate not-by-choice" in an online shitpost at some point prior to these killing sprees. Such incidents have ultimately led police agencies such as the FBI and Secret Service to keep tabs on incel communities as a potential terror threat.

Etymology and early history

A shortened version of term "involuntary celibacy" called "INVCEL" was coined in 1997 by a college student named Alana from Toronto, Ontario. She created a website on a university domain as an academic project to discover the causes of involuntary celibacy. The website was titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project". The abbreviation was later changed to "Incel". Around 2003, Alana began to grow increasingly disaffected by the rise of toxicity, and sold the community to someone else, who moved the community to a more conventional forum called "Incel Support".

Definition "controversy"

Academic sources and mainstream sources describe incels as relating to the toxic online subculture of perpetually-outraged MRAs that is typically associated with hostile views towards women and sexually successful men. In an attempt to legitimize their beliefs, some incel apologists attempt to expand the definition of "incel" to be a "life circumstance", to include all people who are involuntary celibates. It may be wise for those who do not condone the manosphere to move away from the term "incel".

The phrase "involuntary celibacy" is a self-contradicting one; the state of celibacy is, by definition, voluntary. It has been argued to be a neologism for sexual frustration; however, contrary to misogynistic beliefs, one can wish to have sex, not be able to find it, and not be frustrated about it. Conversely, one can sometimes pay for sex, or just masturbate.

Another problem is whether it is truly "involuntary" if an incel turns down advances from less attractive women. Most women are not childless, young, thin, and with large… tracts of land,^{[citation NOT needed]} yet for some reason, incels believe it's a horror to consider lowering their standards.

Online communities

To varying degrees, incel communities tend to run rampant with misogyny, chauvinism, and feelings of entitlement to women's bodies, as well as not-so-subtle endorsements of violence. They have also been known to contain descriptions of dating anxiety, bad luck, descriptions of extreme introversion, physical handicaps, and mental illnesses or disabilities. These communities generally embrace the blackpill ideology.

Some online incel communities use a vast vocabulary of other terms to describe incels, such as "truecel", someone who has never had any form of physical intimacy, "mentalcel", someone whose involuntary celibacy is caused by a mental health issue, or "fakecel", someone who pretends to be incel. Female incels sometimes call themselves femcels. Homosexuals and transgender incels sometimes call themselves gaycels and transcels respectively.

Proclaimed beliefs that are common in these communities include being cursed, nihilism, fatalism, and defeatism for unattractive people. Those who post on these anonymous boards tend to claim that modern society is gynocentric, where women have the power to choose or reject sexual partners, and that women using this power are predisposed to selecting men based on their perceived genetic fitness.

/r9k/

The 4chan board /r9k/ is considered the birth of the culture of blackpill boards, originating terms such as "Chad" and "Stacy". It was not created as an incel board but rather as a general place for original content on 4chan with an automated bot that rejects unoriginal content. (Its name refers to the ROBOT9000 algorithm.) It turns out that when you ask a bunch of lonely weeaboos to post original content, they mostly post about wanting to have a girlfriend.

/r9k/ users sometimes call themselves "robots". The term is used either as a label of autism or a near-synonym for hikikomori (never mind how autistic people might feel about being compared to 4chan users).

/r/incels

The r/incels subreddit was banned late 2017, shortly after Reddit announced a new policy that banned "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or group of people." At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members. Common themes included misogyny, racism, blaming women for their involuntary celibacy, and advocating for and glorifying rape and violence. Anonymous posters in the subreddit used 4chan lingo, described women as "femoids" or "Stacys," and described men who were able to have sex with these women as "Chads".

Some members moved to other subreddits such as /r/braincels, /r/IncelsWithoutHate and /r/Shortcels. These subreddits were eventually quarantined or banned for similar reasons.

incels.is

incels.is was also created as a refuge for /r/incels posters. Formerly incels.co, and before that, incels.me, it is infamous for inability to retain domains, due to a prevalence of posts encouraging violence and suicide. The forum is alt-right and bans all women and LGBTQ people immediately.

On 9 December 2021, The New York Times released a front page article regarding a website that encourages and facilitates suicide. This website was run by two people who used the alias "Marquis" and "Serge" — the same aliases that happened to found and run the various incarnations of incels.is, as well as several other incel or manosphere related sites. In addition to reporting on the suicide victims that frequented the site, due to an information breach from the site's domain seller (Epik) in the fall of 2021, the Times exposed the full names, city location, and background of the two founders: Lamarcus Small of Huntsville, Alabama (alias "Master/Marquis/Randy Thompson/Javix/Rell/Marcus") and Diego Joaquín Galante of Montevideo Uruguay (alias "Serge/Sergeantincel/Eth/Aleph/Alexander/Ankh/Rince"). This was subsequently republished by dozens of other outlets, and attracted attention from authorities in both Uruguay and the United States.

The matter also attracted attention by the United States Congress. Congresswoman Lori Trahan (D-MA), along with 6 other congresspeople sent a letter to the head of the Department of Justice (DOJ) asking if the DOJ has statutory authority to pursue a criminal case against Diego and Lamarcus, during a run-up of congressional briefings on the matter of the suicide promotion site the founders ran. In December 2021, the founders of the site claim to have resigned from the backend and frontend of both incels.is and the explicit suicide encouragement/facilitation site.

On 31 December 2021, users of the incels.is forum wrote their own letter to US Attorney General Merrick Garland and 7 congresspeople entitled, "RE: Sanctioned Suicide", in which users mentioned they were, "familiar with many of the members" of the suicide promotion site. An incels.is admin or mod pinned the letter on their forum in early 2022.

An Ohio man named Tres Genco, who was a regular poster on incels.is was arrested by federal agents and indicted in 2021 for allegedly plotting to slaughter women.

Love Not Anger

The original incel community (Alana's group and IncelSupport) tried to start up again around 2019 through a mailing list. It was centered around a gender-inclusive site called "LovenotAnger" at, "lovenotanger.org" The project was shut down in early 2020 due to Alana finding a job unrelated to inceldom that she found more personally fulfilling than previous activities. They were looking to move away from the word incel.

Incel wikis

incelwiki.org and incels.wiki are devoted to incel topics. They both take the apologetic stance that "incel is a life circumstance". Both sites originated from incels.info, which started in 2018 to counteract what they perceived as sensationalism, inaccuracy, and non-neutral writing on the Wikipedia incel article after the Minassian van attack.

Notable suicides

Wilkes McDermid

In 2015, popular London food critic Wilkes McDermid jumped off the City restaurant Coq d’Argent’s roof-terrace to his death. In his final blog post hours before his death, he wrote, “I have concluded that in the realm of dating and relationships the primary characteristics required for men are as follows: “Height: above 5ft 10ins; race — a huge bias towards caucasian and black; and wealth or other manifestation of power. From my observations and research it appears that you need two of the three criteria for success … What this … means [is] that it’s ‘game over’ for me.” A friend of his told the Evening Standard that he had lots of friends but never had a girlfriend by age 39, the time of his death.

Notable homicides

Several men have gained media attention through suicides and/or homicides. Though not all these men considered themselves incels, or were necessarily motivated by incel ideology, they were all were hailed as heroes by incel communities. Some men did leave delusional notes or manifestos describing their incel experiences and twisted ideologies.

George Sodini

The perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township, Pennsylvania shooting and suicide, George Sodini, killed multiple women before shooting himself at a gym outside Pittsburgh. He had an online blog detailing his perpetual rejection by women and inability to figure out why despite attempts to improve himself. In a July, 2009 blog post he wrote, "Last time I slept all night with a girlfriend it was 1982. Proof I am a total malfunction. Girls and women don't even give me a second look anywhere. There is something blantantly^[sic] wrong with me that no goddam person will tell me what it is." His last post before the shooting discussed his net worth of over $250,000, the estranged mother of his child, that people didn't know the full extent of his frustration, and that women would only ever call him a "nice guy". Before the shooting he had also sought dating help, to no avail.

Elliot Rodger

See the main article on this topic: 2014 Isla Vista killings

The 2014 Isla Vista, California spree killing and suicide drew considerable attention to involuntary celibacy. The perpetrator, Elliot Rodger, self-identified as an incel and the "supreme gentleman", left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos discussing how he wanted to torture sexually active men and women whom he thought had wronged him. He had been an active member of an anti-pick-up-artist community called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate") and referenced it several times in his manifesto.

Alek Minassian

Another major incident of killings involving a self-described incel concerns Alek Minassian, and his April 2018 Toronto van attack and attempted suicide. The perpetrator of the April 2018 Toronto van attack posted on Facebook shortly before the attack, "The Incel Rebellion has already begun! … All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" After the attack, he requested that a police officer shoot him in the head, which the officer declined to do. On March 3^rd, 2021, Minassian was convicted for this incident, guilty of 10 counts of first degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder.

Faisal Hussain

Faisal Hussain was a Canadian-born man of Pakistani background. He was the perpetrator of the Danforth shooting, which happened on July 22, 2018, in Greektown, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Before killing himself, Hussain also killed two people and wounded 13 others. Due to his death, it took a while to figure out a motive. Eventually, reports came out that Hussain's motives were arguably inspired by Elliot Rodger (a copy of the manifesto was found on electronic devices owned by Hussain) as well as Minassian's van attack. It was also reported that one trigger of the attack was his family telling him to "find a wife".

Tobias Rathjen

On February 19 2020, a gunman killed nine people in two racially-motivated shootings at hookah lounges in the German town of Hanau. The suspect then returned home, killed his mother, and then killed himself. The gunman was identified as Tobias Rathjen, aged 43. Before the mass murder, Rathjen uploaded a rambling manifesto (that made one radicalization expert, Peter R. Neumann, believe that the shooter suffered from some serious mental issues) that contained multiple rants against minorities, including calls for wiping half the world's population out. In the manifesto, the man wrote that he was an incel, stating that he had not had a relationship with a woman in 18 years due to a fear of the state surveilling him. The manifesto also contained a grab-bag of other far-right conspiracy theories, such as some ideals borrowed from QAnon.

Other incidents

Date	Location	Country	Description
October 1, 2015	Roseburg, Oregon	United States	26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer shot and killed 9 people and injured 8 others at the Umpqua Community College campus before killing himself. He left a manifesto at the scene outlining his interest in other spree killings, anger at not having a girlfriend, and animosity towards the world. Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated he was "saving himself for someone special," Harper-Mercer had replied, "Involuntarily so."
July 31, 2016	107th Avenue and 97th Street, Edmonton	Canada	Security guard Sheldon Bentley, 38, came across a 51-year-old homeless man named Donald Doucette sleeping near the store where he worked and proceeded to stomp on him repeatedly. Doucette suffered massive internal bleeding and died within minutes. Bentley gave his reason as being frustration at his involuntary celibacy and inability to attract women.
December 7, 2017	Aztec High School, New Mexico	United States	Student William Atchison shot dead two fellow students at Aztec High School before committing suicide. In addition to other far-right causes, Atchison was known to be a member of the incel community, using "Elliott Rodger" as an online handle and praising "the supreme gentleman" on social media.
November 2, 2018	Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio, Tallahassee Florida	United States	40 year old Scott Paul Beierle walked into a yoga studio in Tallahassee, Florida just before a class began, and shot six people, killing 21-year-old Florida State University student Maura Binkley, and faculty member Dr. Nancy Van Vessem, 61, before turning the gun on himself. Beierle also applauded Elliot Rodger on social media and shared many misogynist beliefs online, such as the belief that "American whores" should be crucified. He previously had been arrested for grabbing women's buttocks without consent, and had been terminated from various jobs and booted from the Army due to his interactions with the opposite sex.
February 24, 2020	Crown Spa, Toronto, Ontario	Canada	A 17 year old male was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder after entering a massage parlour and stabbing multiple people. The crime was later upgraded to a terrorism charge on May 2020 due to evidence that the crime was inspired by incel ideology. This is the first time, globally, that incel ideology has been acknowledged that it could drive extremist, ideology fueled violence worthy of the "terrorism" label. University of Toronto law professor Kent Roach welcomed this development, saying that the application of the terrorism label to ideologies such as far-right extremism and the incel movement was "long overdue". Others, such as Director of U Ottawa Security program and ex CSE analyst Phil Gurski, have argued there is not enough proof of political motive to classify existing violence charges as terrorism, including the Crown Spa attack. A major foreign policy publication, Foreign Policy, mocked the associated trial as a 'show trial', because of a lack of a clear political goal needed for a rational terrorism charge. Editor and General Manager of The Conversation, argues 'We do not need and should not want an anti-terrorism response to misogyny'. They argue that expanding 'terrorism' to “lone actor”, “homegrown”, and/or "ideological terrorism" would lead to further targeting of environmental activists, Indigenous protestors, or any ideology the government does not like.
May 21, 2020	Westgate Entertainment District, Glendale, Arizona	United States	Three people were injured when 20 year old Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire within the Westgate District, a popular shopping and restaurant strip just outside of Phoenix, Arizona. The perpetrator of the crime live-streamed the incident on Snapchat and claimed to be targeting couples. Prosecutors said that Hernandez described himself to authorities as an incel and claimed he wanted to shoot at least 10 people in order to "gain some respect". Fortunately, Hernandez's gun jammed during the incident, preventing him from hurting more people.
June 3, 2020	Virginia	United States	23 year old Cole Carini arrived at a hospital with a mutilated hand, at first claiming this injury was due to a lawnmower. The FBI later discovered explosives and other evidence that Carini was preparing an improvised explosive device in his home when the device exploded. In his writing, Carini expressed a desire to use the device against "hot cheerleaders," potentially inspired by Elliot Rodger based on notes found on his property.
July 21, 2021	Hillsboro, Ohio	United States	21-year-old Tres Genco was arrested and charged in federal court with a hate crime for planning a mass shooting at Ohio sororities. Genco was a poster at Incels.is and wrote a manifesto detailing his desire to "slaughter (women) out of hatred, jealousy and revenge", fantasied about killing over 3000 people, and called death the "great equalizer". Along with admiration of Elliot Rodger, Genco had also mimicked Rodger's actions prior to his killings by spraying “some foids and couples” with a water gun filled with orange juice. Authorities found in his car an automatic rifle equipped with a bump stock, body armor, several loaded magazines and boxes of ammunition. Genco ultimately pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to commit a hate crime and was sentenced to 80 months in prison.
August 13, 2021	Plymouth, Devon	England	On this date, six people, including a three year old girl and the shooter's own mother, died in a mass shooting incident in the city of Plymouth — a type of crime that had not happened in Britain since 2010. Police named the shooter as Jake Davison, a 22 year old crane operator. In videos posted on the Internet, Davison had complained about not losing his virginity as a teenager, described himself as an "incel", and frequently referenced incel memes (such as "Chads" and "blackpills"). Davison was also unusually obsessed with guns, violent video games, and weightlifting, as well as American right-wing/alt-right political figures and institutions (such as Donald Trump, the NRA, and Fox News), even going as far as pretending to be from Arizona in his online profiles. Reportedly Davision had mental health issues, had "beat up his father a couple months ago" according to one source, and was known to frequently clash with his mother (the first victim of the mass shooting) over Davison's sexist and misogynist views. Despite the known mental health issues, Davison was able to obtain a firearms license. Though his motivations remain unknown to investigators, he was hailed as hero by incels.

See also

• Blackpill — a sociopathic theory that some self-described incels subscribe to
• Charles Fourier (The incelly early socialist who wanted guaranteed sex for everyone, and inspired the hippies)
• Anatoly Karlin — far-right blogger whose controversial articles on rape are promoted by incels
• Men's rights movement
• Sex-positivity