Incel

An incel (/ˈɪnsɛl/ ^ⓘ IN-sel; a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate"^[1]) is a member of an online subculture of mostly male and heterosexual^[2] 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.^[3][4][5] The term inspired a subculture that rose to prominence during the 2010s, later influenced by and associated with misogynist terrorists such as Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian.^[6]

The incel subculture's online discourse has been characterized by resentment, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and non-sexual violence against women and the sexually active.^[7] Incels tend to blame women and feminism for their inability to find a partner; their romantic failures are often attributed to biological determinism, where women's preference for mating with high-status males (nicknamed "Chads") is seen as innate and unchangeable.^[8][9][10] Incel communities have been criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, endorsement and encouragement of violence, and extremism.^[11] 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 (SPLC) describes incels as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups.^[12][13] The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism (GIFCT) 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"; GIFCT states that incel beliefs combine a wish for a mythical past where all men were entitled to sex from subordinated women, a sense of predestined personal failure, and nihilism, making it a dangerous ideology.^[14][15] Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals.^[16]

The first website to use the term "incel" was Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, a blog and mailing list founded in 1997^[a] by a female university student living in Toronto known as Alana,^[18][19] in order to write about and discuss her own experiences of celibacy with like-minded people.^[20] The blog was intended as a supportive and inclusive site for people who had difficulty forming romantic relationships,^[21][18] and was used by people of all genders and sexual orientations to share their thoughts and experiences^[22] in order to overcome social barriers such as shyness.^[23] Alana originally used the abbreviation "invcel" for "involuntarily celibate", later shortening it to "incel".^[19] Her website was intended for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time".^[24][25] She later said, "I was trying to create a movement that was open to anybody and everybody."^[20][26]

During her college years and afterward, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity.^[26] As her own dating life improved, Alana stopped maintaining the website,^[21] passing the site's contents on to someone else she did not know around the year 2000.^[27][28] 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".^[19]

After learning that the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings was being glorified by parts of the incel subculture, Alana 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".^[20][26] She expressed regret at the change from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness.^[16]

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.^[29][30] 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 communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped.^[27]

In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums such as 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility.^[10] 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 and "shitposting".^[10]

The r/incels subreddit later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist.^[31][32] Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit in 2017 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.^[33][32] At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.^[32][34]

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.^[35] On September 30, 2019, the r/braincels subreddit was banned after Reddit again broadened its banning policy.^[36][37] Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject.^[38][39]

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.^[30][40] 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.^[41]

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 wikis and forums. These reject 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.^{[42][43][44][45]} 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.^[42]

In 2017, the largest incel forum was founded by a previous moderator of the r/incels subreddit. The forum had almost 15,000 members as of October 2022^[update].^[38][39] It is composed of public and registered message boards for self-described incels to discuss their personal experiences. Moderators ban women and LGBTQ individuals from joining, stating that the forum is oriented towards straight men.^[46][47] 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.^[48] In 2023, Rolling Stone 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".^[49] In 2019, Vox stated that the site has a culture of praising mass killers, which is treated lightly by the site's admins.^[27]

The site has used several top-level domains since its creation, after being suspended by one domain registry due to violence and hate speech^[50] and denied renewal by another.^[51] The site owners also operate a wiki,^[44][45] which has been described by researchers publishing in New Media & Society as cherry picking academic papers to promote misogynistic points.^[43]

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, New York Times, and the CCDH identified them as Uruguay-based Diego Joaquín Galante and United States–based Lamarcus Small.^{[52][53][54][55]} 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,^[56] and estimated that the true number was likely much higher.^[57][56] 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.^[52][55]

Incel rhetoric invokes an idealized patriarchal society in which couples adhered to traditional gender roles, married early, and were strictly monogamous. During this mythologized "golden age", incels imagine that all men had nearly unencumbered access to women as romantic partners, thereby reducing the competition for sex.^[9][58][59] Incels often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, but they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress.^[58] As a result, incels tend to blame both women and the feminist movement for their inability to find a partner.^[9][60]

Incel discourse is characterized by resentment and hatred, self-pity, hostile sexism, anti-feminism, racism, sexual objectification and dehumanization of women, misogyny, misanthropy, and nihilism.^[7] Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex from women.^{[69][63][70][71]} In the incel worldview, the only solution to male sexlessness is a rigidly patriarchal social structure encompassing enforced monogamy and the elimination of women's rights, thereby increasing women's dependency on men.^[76] Some incels also advocate for sexual slavery, legalized rape, punishment for female promiscuity, redistribution of women, and violence against feminists.^[76][60]

Other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness, suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitution, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as looks, income or personality.^[30][77][65] The incel community has a shared victimhood identity in which individuals fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success.^[78]

The metaphor of the "red pill" originates from the movie The Matrix in which 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).^[58][63][10] In the wider manosphere, an online association of anti-feminist and male supremacist groups that includes incels along with men's rights activists (MRAs), men going their own way (MGTOW) and pick-up artists (PUAs),^[79] the "red pill" refers to the belief that male privilege is a feminist myth^[80] and that feminism has instead granted women power and privilege over men.^[9] To be "red-pilled" means to awaken to the realization that contemporary society has been engineered by feminists to reduce men's rights, and that men must fight against feminist brainwashing.^[9] Endorsing these beliefs means that one has "taken the red pill".^[36][81]

The concept of the "black pill"^[b] or "blackpill"^[84] developed on incel forums as a more nihilistic critique of the "red pill".^[84] Expanding upon the red pill belief that men are an oppressed group, black pill ideology uses pseudoscientific claims^[85] to argue that society has been set up to benefit women and "alpha males" on the basis of physical attractiveness.^[9] Both worldviews portray women as manipulative, superficial, and hypergamous.^[84] The concept of hypergamy was originally applied to the mating choices of animals, but incels use the term to argue that women seek high-status men in order to increase the social, economic and genetic potential of their offspring.^[9] Most incels subscribe to the "black pill",^[86] believing it is impossible for unattractive men to escape this social hierarchy.^[87] Incels commonly identify as either "redpilled" or "blackpilled", whereas non-incels who uphold mainstream views about romance and dating are seen as being "bluepilled".^[63]

Black pill ideology is defined by biological determinism, in contrast to ideas of personal agency and self-improvement often associated with red pill beliefs.^{[10][83][88][89]} Selected ideas from evolutionary psychology are used to reinforce the idea of "sexual market value" in a mating system controlled by the most desirable women.^[9] Those who subscribe to red pill ideology believe they can use their knowledge of women's hypergamy to achieve success in the dating market^[84] and increase their own sexual market value, such as by improving their social skills^[63] or physical appearance ("looksmaxxing").^[84][9][90] However, according to black pill ideology, improving one's looks is futile, since dating success is entirely determined by genetics, keeping most men from achieving sexual dominance.^[91]

The black pill promotes fatalism^[63][92] and defeatism for men perceived to be unattractive.^[9][62] According to the black pill, as long as women are able to freely choose their sexual partners, genetically inferior men will only find a wife once she is past her sexual prime, who will only use the man for financial security.^[84] Researcher Angus Lindsay writes that the nihilistic worldview of the black pill appears to have influenced terroristic behavior by incels who have attempted violent retributions against those who are perceived to hold a higher social status.^[9]

Hoffman et al. write that "'Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition".^[10] Aja Romano writes at Vox that black pill ideology "unites all incels".^[36] According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), 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 little to 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.^[83] 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.^[83]

On Reddit, notable figures within the incel community are described as having taken the black pill, such as the mass murderer Elliot Rodger.^[82] On the former incel subreddit r/braincels, the term "blackpill" was used for meme images that criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow.^[35] The black pill has been described by Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly sexist 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".^[27]

Many self-identified incels support their beliefs through citations to scientific studies in fields including psychology, sociology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and economics.^[89][93] Collections of research deemed to support their beliefs are sometimes named the "scientific blackpill".^[44][94] Some evolutionary psychology researchers^[who?] have disputed incels' interpretations of studies from their field, such as the strategic pluralism (or "double-mating strategy") hypothesis.^[94] 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".^[44]

Self-identified incels regularly endorse the ideas of women's genetic inferiority,^[60] "female hypergamy", 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 the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which posits that Caucasians face the fewest obstacles to relationships and sex.^[85][82][95]

Self-identified incels also believe that people seeking a romantic or sexual partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and Darwinian sexual selection, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of cosmetics.^{[96][better source needed]} Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image,^[97] penis size,^[95] or their physical appearance,^[98] and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth.^[99] Some justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.^{[30][89][100]}

Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s.^{[101][102][68]} This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups.^{[4][103][104][101]} The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some members of these communities has led to numerous bans from websites and web hosts.^{[70][31][105][106]}

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.^{[29][107][10]} More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services (such as Discord) and the dark web 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.^[10]

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.^{[10][108][109]} 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".^[110] 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.^[10]

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".^{[111][38][112]} 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".^[10]

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".^[113]

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 stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE)" movement.^[114] 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.^[115] In March 2022, the United States Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center, published a case study 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."^[116]

Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men,^[33][117] harassment of women,^[118] and suicide.^[118][119] According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere.^[120] 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),^{[121][122][123]} as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre),^[118] Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting),^[124] and George Sodini (perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting).^[125]

Rodger is the most frequently referenced, often being referred to as their "saint"^[122] 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.^[27] In 2020, the BBC described Rodger as "the founding father of the incel ideology".^[126]

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.^[62] Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change.^[58]

Other researchers^[who?] have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, with some suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others".^[78] Some violent posts may be motivated by status-seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence.^[127]: 735 A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence.^{[128][127]: 735} A 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence.^[78][129]

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.^[27] Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape.^[120]

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.^[55] 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.^[55][53]

Racism is generally considered^{[by whom?]} to be common on incel forums,^{[22][67][68][38]} though some researchers^[who?] have questioned its prevalence.^[130] 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.^[47][130] Some researchers^[who?] 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.^{[127]: 736 [131]}

Incels believe that being white makes one more attractive to potential mates, paralleling ideas of race science promoted by the far right. This often encourages racist attacks on Black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) members of incel forums.^[9] Such "racepill" ideology portrays whiteness as the most desirable racial classification, often invoked using the phrase "Just be White" (JBW). Incels attempting to appear more white in order to attract a partner call this process "whitemaxxing".^[63]

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 to weaken the Western world.^[27][10]

Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere, a loose collection of misogynist and anti-feminist movements that also includes men's rights activists (MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pickup artists (PUAs), and fathers' rights groups.^{[79][132][133]} The Southern Poverty Law Center describes the incel subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018.^[13][12] The New York Times describes involuntary celibacy as an adaptation of male supremacy, saying that incels "believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights".^[134][100]

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.^{[58][65][93][135]} 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.^[58]

Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way,^[82] men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL),^[77] and pickup artistry,^[30][125] although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels.^{[125][136][137]} 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.^[132]

Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right 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, especially women's empowerment and immigration.^[138][10] 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".^[10] In March 2021, Der Spiegel reported on the overlap between the incel community and the Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist network.^[38]

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".^{[3][4][5][139]} It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success),^[29][140] "FA" (short for "forever alone"),^[141] "unfuckability",^[142] "omegas",^[143] "betas",^[144] "betafags",^[132] "the undersexed",^[145] or "the sexless".^[74] Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".^[28]

Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect.^[82] They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids",^[146] sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely^[147] believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active).^[58][148] 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.^{[18][31][149]}

People who are average looking but not incels are "normies".^[58] "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 and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing in hopes of improving facial aesthetics.^{[77][120][150][151]} The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training".^[144]

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).^{[120][89][152][153]} 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".^{[95][154][67]}

"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.^[155][156]

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Self-identified incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts.^[157] Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied.^{[30][143][158]} It ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands.^{[16][27][159][160]} 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.^[55]

Incel communities are largely made up of emerging adults who feel they have not met their sexual milestones "on time"^[161] according to gendered dating norms, resulting in a gender role conflict.^[162] 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).^[163]

Mainstream news media has often described incels as predominantly white.^[164] In 2018, sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in The Washington Post describing incels as primarily white.^[165] In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center told NBC News that incels are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood".^[106] More recent studies have described incel communities as ethnically diverse.^{[63][166][167]} A 2024 study by Alyssa Maryn and colleagues states, "Recent research suggests that common perceptions that Incels are almost all White are inaccurate".^[168] In June 2019, Sylvia Jaki and colleagues published a linguistic analysis of the most popular incel forum, arguing that "contrary to what is often reported", there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white.^[47] 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.^[10] Incels who are not white often blame their race for their celibacy, using the acronym "JBW" (Just be white) to sardonically express the perceived advantages white men have in attracting women.^{[63][169][170]}

A 2024 survey of self-identified incels by researchers from the University of Texas found that incels tended to be slightly center-left. They were significantly left in questions about homosexuality, corporate profits and welfare benefits.^[163] 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. 17.5% were centrists, and 38.9% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study.^[171][172] A 2025 survey found that incels tended to consider "feminists" and the "political left" at-large to be "enemies" of the incel community.^[173]

Self-identified incels are mainly located in North America and Europe. There are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere, such as the Italian website Il Forum dei Brutti and the モテない男性 (motenai dansei ) board on the Japanese website 5channel.^[10][174] 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.^[175] Brooks and colleagues found that areas with higher male-to-female sex ratios, fewer single women, higher income inequality, and lower gender pay gaps had higher rates of incel-related activity on Twitter.^[127]

The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was inclusive of all genders.^[20][176] There have been more contemporary female-specific incel or femcel communities, such as r/TruFemcels^[177] and its successor ThePinkPill.^[178][179] As of February 2020^[update], the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members.^[177] It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate.^[179][178] Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice.^[180][181] There are hashtags pertaining to the idea of female incels in use on TikTok, such as #femcel, #femcelcore and #femcelrights, which as of 2022, have over 250 million views.^[182] There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet.^[177]

There is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels,^[183] others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all,^{[30][180][184]} others claiming that only "severely deformed" women can be incels,^[185] and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels.^[186] 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.^[130]

In 2020, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the majority of self-identified incels do not believe women can be incels.^[120] Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels.^{[177][187][188]} In 2021, M. Kelly wrote for 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.^[42]

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.^[130]

Some women identifying as incels believe they could have casual sex, but fear it could only be with men who would abuse or disrespect them.^{[177][187][188]} Within online female incel communities, misogyny and an impossible feminine beauty ideal are also perceived as reasons for female celibacy.^{[179][189][190]} Other women may share similar concerns, but do not self-identify as female incels.^[189]

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 saying, "I'd rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I'm pretty".^[191] In 2022, an expert in psychology interviewed by El País 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, [female incels] would 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."^[180]

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.^[130] 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.^[177]

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.^[187] 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.^[177] In 2024, an article in Archives of Sexual Behavior stated that "there has been almost no research on femcel communities or what the women who join them have to say."^[192]

"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, autism, and body dysmorphic disorder.^[93] 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.^[129][127]

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.^{[89][36][193]} 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.^{[29][36][101][150]}