Inceldom: A New Perspective
Alienation should be considered the main factor Incels and their violence
ABSTRACT
In our modern alienated society, there is a social group called “Incels”. These incels represent a dangerous manifestation of masculinity in modern society. Many adherents of the group routinely promote violence and murder against women. Several of the individuals have committed mass shootings resulting in the deaths of dozens. (Scaptura & Boyle, 2020) It is a serious sociological phenomenon that must be addressed to secure society from its resulting violence in the future. This work attempts to explain the root cause of the Incel phenomena as a product of alienation.
INTRODUCTION
The focus of this paper is to shed light on the Incel phenomenon from the standpoint of alienation. It is this author’s contention that much of the current literature is insufficient to explain Inceldom and its violence. Much of the academic work I’ve come across is too focused on individual psychological causations. In addition, I find much of the investigation limited to a stance of simply blaming masculinity in general, lacking much needed nuance. Most work on the subject deliberately ignores the female manifestation of Inceldom. It is this author’s opinion, that Inceldom is largely alienation, combined with misogyny.
ORIGIN OF INDCELDOM
There is a general opinion among the public that this is a new phenomenon. The phenomena of Incels dates back further than most people would think. The term is said to have been first created in the period of 1993 to 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as “Alana”. (Baker, 2016) She was a self-described Incel herself. She founded a website during her time as an undergraduate degree in statistics at Carleton University in Ottawa. (Baker, 2016) Her goal was to create a place where male and female Incels could connect with each other. (Cernik, 2021) Eventually, what was created, with altruistic intentions, morphed into an online movement that is responsible for many deaths. (Hoffman & Ware, 2020) It wasn’t until the 2010s that this Incel phenomenon became the manifestation we see today.
WHAT IS INDCELDOM?
“Incel” is a combination of the two words “Involuntary celibate”. Incel is a title used to describe an individual, be they male or female, (Cernik, 2021) that has been without a romantic and/or sexual partner for a significant amount of time, or never having had one. The majority of Incels are men, while a small contingent are women, referred to as “Femcels”. (Cernik, 2021) Much of the focus has rightly been on male incels as they are more numerous and have a proclivity for violence. As of 2020 the number killed in Canada and the US by Incel based violence was 50. (Hoffman & Ware, 2020) The violence perpetrated by Incels have been acknowledged as terrorist activity by even The Hauge. (DiBranco, 2020)
Across the globe young men who experience extreme loneliness have gathered in online spaces to discuss their grievances with society over their situation. In many instances, when they speak to each other they elicit images of violence against women, including rape fantasies and threats. (DiBranco, 2020) There Generally, there is a belief in some kind malevolent force working upon society to cause harm to men. That force can take several forms in their eyes. Primarily, the force is accused of being feminism. This belief in a feminist conspiracy shares similarities with anti-Semitic ones. (DiBranco, 2020)
The majority of Incels have not committed any acts of violence, but some have, and are responsible for mass shootings. Jillian Peterson and sociologist James Densley, co-founders of the think tank The Violence Project, have noted: “Twenty percent of all mass shootings in the past 50 years occurred in just the last five years, with more than half of the shootings occurring since 2000 and 33 percent since 2010.” (Peterson & Densley, n.d.) Killings by such individuals have made national headlines in the US and other Western countries. Elliot Roger is probably the most famous case of Incel violence. In 2014 he attacked a University of California, Santa Barbara, sorority house. In an online video he declared his intentions and motivations: “If I can’t have you girls,” he said, “I will destroy you.” (Hoffman & Ware, 2020)
Despite this tragic incident, the expression of desired violence is much more common. When speaking to each other in these forums, they make graphic depictions of violence, including rape towards women. Miriam Lindner claims: “…hateful online communities allow low-status men to engage in virtual or simulated coalitional bargaining with a sympathetic audience of like-minded others, providing private but futile satisfaction.” (Lindner, 2023) Many of them use the image or threat of a mass shooting as a way of claiming dominance over a society that they allege has wronged them. These pseudo-threats and descriptions of revenge fantasies allow them to feel some power. (Lindner, 2023) It is my theory that doing so allows them to relieve that hostility to an extent. The mere ability to express such extreme acts, acts a kind of pressure valve. This “psychological steam” release allows them some measure of relief. I claim it is akin to talking about your emotions and frustrations as a way of coping with them. By venting their frustration to others, in what they consider a safe environment, it allows them to emotionally connect via a shared “injustice”. Validation is a key aspect of their communications.
Inceldom is said to be deeply rooted in misogyny. (DiBranco, 2020) This link certainly cannot be denied. DiBranco says the motivation for Incel terrorism springs from two primary manifestations of misogyny. “1) the belief that men are entitled to sexual access to women, which misogynist “incels”—men who identify as “involuntarily celibate”—have used to justify mass violence as retribution for being denied sex; and 2) the belief that feminists are a malevolent force controlling society at the expense of men…” (DiBranco, 2020) It would be hard to claim that there’s no misogynistic roots here, but I think there’s more happening. Simply blaming male hatred of women is not enough to explain what is causing the conditions to trigger a lonely man into an Incel into shooter.
ALIENATION AS A SOURCE
In my opinion, an important aspect of this phenomenon is the community building it produces. Incels share message boards and other websites to communicate with each other. By doing this, they have created their own social group based on their grievance. Normally, without the internet, such individuals would probably never know about each other in the real world. Incels don’t typically express their ideas in physical public spaces – primarily due to the social shaming that they would receive from others. But in the digital public place, the anonymity provided to them makes them feel safe to express such ideas rejected by society. This is the root of its creation; the single individual feeling alone is now able to connect with others. Many even share a bond with each other through a shared perceived injustice. They are sharing their feelings, their outrage with others and seeing that others feel the same. This is not unlike the beginnings of many protest movements. Authoritarian governments often ban public demonstrations because of the potential for power in them. When you feel something, you feel it, and then put it away. When you see that other people feel the same way you do, you now have a connection, a sense of power that you can do something about the subject that’s making you feel this way. It is the realization of a collective power to effect change and the ability to encourage others. Authoritarianism knows the power of people collected on an idea, motivates them and grants them the power to change it. This is why it has been so important to shut down Incel message boards and websites, to prevent this incorrect, often conspiratorial thinking from coalescing. Reddit has already taken steps to ban such subreddits (Hathaway, 2017) including the female version. (Jones, 2022)
I claim that both the male and female versions of Incel need these communities. I claim both groups of individuals are desperately suffering from alienation. Primarily, their problem is that no one is engaging with them. They are not feeling a connection to the opposite sex. As it is, male and female relations have almost all but have collapsed. According to some work, Generation Z has not placed a priority on establishing committed romantic relationships as past generations have. (Noenickx, 2022) They are engaging in “situationships” where the relationship is difficult to define because of its informal nature. (Noenickx, 2022) The relationship cannot be defined because it’s in some kind of limbo.
“A situationship is an informal arrangement typically between two people that has components of both emotional and physical connection, yet operates outside the conventional idea of being in an exclusive, committed relationship. In some cases, situationships are constrained by time and the idea that a casual arrangement is the best fit for the current situation.” (Noenickx, 2022)
The traditional linear development of relationships is breaking down. From meeting for the first time, to dating, committed relationship, long term relationship, engagement, and marriage. Marriages are being abandoned across the US. (Anderson & Washington, 2023) The cost of raising a child has increased substantially. The cost of raising a child is now at $310,605. (Parker, 2023) To make matters worse, according to the Pew Research Center, “a rising share of U.S. adults who are not already parents say they are unlikely to ever have children, and their reasons range from just not wanting to have kids to concerns about climate change and the environment.” (Brown, 2021)
“About two-in-ten (19%) say it’s due to medical reasons, 17% say it’s for financial reasons and 15% say it’s because they do not have a partner. Roughly one-in-ten say their age or their partner’s age (10%) or the state of the world (9%) is a reason they don’t plan to have kids. An additional 5% cite environmental reasons, including climate change, and 2% say their partner doesn’t want children.” (Brown, 2021)
To demonstrate the imbalance:
“Sixty-one percent of single men were looking for a relationship or dates, but only 38 percent of women reported doing so.” (Brown, 2021)
The family unit, not just the nuclear family, is breaking down. The conditions in which you would raise children are breaking down.
Loneliness is an epidemic in the US. (Ryan, 2023) The isolation that men feel is increasing, and has always been higher than that of what women experience. (Ryan, 2023) Naama Kates, an investigative journalist explored Incels and loneliness. She found the following: “Overwhelmingly a lot of them are just lonely, in general. […] A lot of them have trouble with just platonic friendships too and don’t feel they have like a strong social group. And just with other aspects of purpose in life, a lot of them just aren’t happy.” (Kates, 2022) She notes that the manifesto Elliot Rodger left behind before his mass shooting, it mentioned ‘the word “lonely” 49 times, “loneliness” 30 times, and “alone” 52 times.’ (Kates, 2022)
There is no denying that loneliness is unhealthy. (Mind, 2023) If left unchecked, it can manifest into mental illness. (Mushtaq, Shoib, Shah, & Mushtaq, 2014) loneliness is the primary factor that causes a male individual to begin a journey ‘down the rabbit hole’ into the fringe social group of Inceldom.
My claim is that there is no Incel if there is no loneliness. There is no loneliness if there is no alienation.
Alienation occurs when an individual loses a connection to society. The loss of such a connection will cause an individual to become separated from the group, no longer a part of it. “A person will experience that they are separated from the group, no longer a part of it. It can primarily manifest in emotions of loneliness, distance from loved ones, feeling helpless, or that life itself has no value or meaning. It can also manifest as seeing the lives of other people as having no value, manifesting in a lack of empathy.” (Unruhe, 2023) Social society itself will appear as alien to the individual. This loss of connection can manifest as aggression and resentment towards society itself. (Seeman, 1959) This is the theory that I hold as the cause of the loneliness that causes Inceldom.
Loneliness induced isolation seems to be the main manifestation of alienation experienced by Incels. This separates the alienated person from the collective, losing their emotional and social attachment to it. “Their existence can appear as irrelevant or as an annoyance. With it comes the lack of any empathy for those people. Their suffering is not something to pay them any mind. This is particularly destructive to the individual when we consider that human beings are by their very nature social creatures. We need connection to others to function, and even live as human.” (Unruhe, 2023)
As this loneliness festers, it creates an anger towards a society that they feel has rejected them. The anger towards this perceived rejection morphs into anger. Anger and resentment together are a dangerous combination on a social level. Their loneliness stems from rejection by the opposite sex. Which means they are going to blame the opposite sex as the source of their negative feelings, their alienation. As a result, they are going to make the opposite sex the target of their hostility, resentment, and possibly violent actions carried out in revenge for their situation.
With individuals who lack the necessary tools to understands social phenomenon they struggle to understand their situation. In circumstances like this, the human mind has a tendency to seek simple answers to complex problems. (Song & Schwarz, 2010) This is a part of Cognitive fluency: “The ease with which our brains process information. The easier information is to process, the more we are inclined to like it, find it attractive, and believe it to be true.” (Hunt, 2018) This is an unfortunate fact of human nature. As a result of this phenomenon, there is a tendency to be fooled by conspiracy theories.
With women as the source of rejection, and thus the target of anger and resentment, they become the social group to blame. They see their rejection in the rejection of other men in the same experience. This goes from being an isolated act, which may have personal origins, to a social effort against all men. In this ‘revelation’ we can see the birth of the feminist conspiracy. A collective effort of women, feminism, can easily been see as a part of a collective effort against men. This combined with the loss of male supremacy can easily be mistaken by an individual looking for a conspiracy/cause for their situation.
This inability of the Incel to draw a scientific conclusion of their situation is also directly related to “Meaninglessness”. It’s defined by Seeman as "the individual's sense of understanding events in which he is engaged". (Seeman, 1959) This is the social detachment that hinders rational thought from being able to grasp the proper thinking process. The alienation, the loneliness itself, hinders the rational thinking of the Incel, causing him to look for easy answers, along with its proclivity in human nature.
Even the violence that they carry out against women can be traced back to alienation. It is easily seen in ‘powerlessness’.
“It produces the feeling that one’s actions have no effect. Powerlessness particularly makes an individual experience as though they have no control over their lives. That they are merely made subject to the ebbs and flows society, forces outside their control. Because of that, they sense as though they have no power. Nothing they want to achieve is possible because they lack the power to make it happen. Seeman (Seeman, 1959) also describes this as a detachment between what an individual would like to do and what they feel capable of doing.” (Unruhe, 2023)
The Incel cannot make women attracted to them. Nothing they do can significantly alter this in any way. While a small minority do escape and become ‘Alpha Males”, the vast majority do not. The inability to affect any change whatsoever, the frustration of not being able to, is what pushes the Incel individual into more extreme behaviour. Kalekin-Fishman says, “A person suffers from alienation in the form of 'powerlessness' when she is conscious of the gap between what she would like to do and what she feels capable of doing”. (Kalekin-Fishman, 1998) The violence they carry out isn’t just an act of revenge, but also an attempt to regain power they feel they’ve lost. “They are trying to prove their potency, their mattering, their ability to wield power by inflicting harm. This impression of potency could (in an ultimate sense) make them more respected and hence sexually successful.” (Lindner, 2023)
By carrying out this type of violence against women, they view themselves as taking back what they perceive as having been stolen from them by the ‘feminist conspiracy’.
CONCLUSION
It is wholly insufficient to claim that Incel violence is simply the work of misogyny. It requires a greater understanding of alienation that is produced by loneliness. If misogyny were simply the cause, then I believe there would be much more in terms of Incel mass shootings. As society in general becomes increasingly alienated (due to several factors beyond this work), this violence will continue. Other forms of violence will become more prevalent, like mass shootings. Which, as we have seen, are already increasing. (Nawaz & Conciatori, 2022) Society must do something to alleviate this loneliness.
Works Cited
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Unruhe, J. (2023, Ocotber). Dismantling Whiteness & Alienation: The Cause Right Wing Mass Shootings.
An interesting read. I expected as much in theprofiles announced of mass shooters. The same may be extrapolated by way of racism towards other nationalities.