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An '''involuntary celibate''', or '''incel''' for short, is someone who is unable to form a romantic or sexual relationship, despite desiring one.  Online, self-identified 'incels' in 2023 often believe that structures of oppression are a primary cause of their inability to form meaningful sexual relationships.  
{{Mcn}}
'''Involuntary celibacy''', or '''incel''' for short, is an online sub-culture and movement surrounding highly [[alienation|alienated]], usually male individuals who believe structures of oppression to be the cause of their inability to form meaningful sexual relationships. The status of being an incel is typically referred to as '''inceldom'''. This is based on the culture of a subreddit that arrived over a decade after the first few, self-described incel forums.<ref name=":1">Charlie Tye (August 16, 2021). ''[https://theconversation.com/inside-the-warped-world-of-incel-extremists-166142 "Inside the warped world of incel extremists"]''. The Conversation. </ref><ref name=":0">Zack Beauchamp (April 23, 2019). ''[https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit "Our incel problem"]''. ''Vox''.</ref> 


==Origin==
The incel movement is usually supportive of [[Reaction|reactionary]] and bigoted sentiments, especially [[misogyny]]. Incel forums serve as a prominent recruiting ground for the [[alt-right]] and other [[Rightism|far-right groups]], in part because of their mutual tendency towards [[racism]] and [[anti-Semitism]]. Self-described incels have perpetrated multiple [[Terrorism|terrorist]] attacks and mass-killings, as part of a rising tendency of right-wing extremism in [[Western world|the West]].<ref name=":1" /><ref name=":0" /><ref>Jacob Conley (2020). [https://kb.osu.edu/items/fce09cd1-2ea8-43cf-a2ff-d8c69b57a968 ''Efficacy, Nihilism, and Toxic Masculinity Online: Digital Misogyny in the Incel Subculture'']. ''The Ohio State University''. [https://kb.osu.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/4d512301-24e1-44f9-b065-2159952c8fe6/content (PDF)]</ref>
The shortened term 'incel' was coined in the late 1990s on an internet mailing list created by a sexually successful lesbian who wanted to start an 'incel movement'. On her webpage, she hypothesized that the 'incel movement' would be similar to the previous gay liberation movement.


Others have credited communist economics student and avant-carde philosopher Henry Flynt for the term. This is because the term 'involuntary celibacy' was virtually never mentioned in 20th century Western literature except for Henry Flynt's published musings.  His most notable musing on involuntary celibacy was a lecture he gave called the, "Creep Lecture", in the Adam Hovre uppercommon room at Harvard. University on May 15th 1962. Here, he gave a speech which referred to his own 'involuntary celibacy' verbatim.  Flynt hypothesized that the word 'creep' was just a shorthand for 'incel', and that 'creeps' have a greater latitude in creative thinking due to being excluded from social arenas which demand high social conformity.
==History==
{{Lifted content|2=[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#History Wikipedia]|type=section|cat=Wikipedia}}
The first website to use the term "incel" was "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", founded in 1997 by a Canadian university student known only by her first name, Alana, to discuss her sexual inactivity with others; however, some media has incorrectly dated it to 1993, the date of a personal interaction that later inspired her to design the page. The site was used by people of all genders and sexual orientations to share their thoughts and experiences. During 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". She would later cease participation in her online community around 2000.<ref name=":0" />


Involuntary celibacy itself is most likely timeless. Most initial references to involuntary celibacy in literature are about women not being able to afford a dowry. There is debate about how much involuntary celibacy occured in pre-history. Some liberal commentators like to paint pre-history as a giant orgy, while social conservative commentators often portray pre-history as a brutal sexual landscape that left up to 80% of the male population masturbating in bushes.  Both of these are extreme takes, and its possible the reality was somewhere between these two takes.
The message board love-shy.com was founded in 2003 as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. 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. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. 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".


A very vocal minority of social conservatives misappropriate TMRCA ratios to falsely insinuate that 2-4x as many women reproduced than men throughout pre-history.  They do this to imply that monogamous marriage was invented to solve the issues with incels in pre-history. There is no known, reputable citation for the claim of enormous sexual access skew in pre-history.  Computational biologist Melissa Wilson Sayres claims there was a large, 17:1 disparity in gendered reproductive skew directly after pre-history, when the agricultural revolution arrived.<ref>https://psmag.com/environment/17-to-1-reproductive-success</ref>  This may be contrary to the claims some social conservatives, blackpillers and fascists make about of pre-history being more brutal in reproductive skew than in more agricultural and geographically-close populations.
The subculture came to wider public notice throughout the 2010s 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. 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.


==Self-described 'incel movements'==
==Organizations==
There have been very few forums or meetups that have explicitly identified as an incel movement. One notable exception being Alex Podnebesny's Russian forums and groups, which rail against 'vaginocapitalism' and explicitly identify as social movements or parties.  Alex's groups seem to have accomplished little except personal aggrandizement for Alex.
There are a number of forums for self-identified incels. A popular example is incels.co. <!-- Misandrist digital journalism outlets and [[Department of Homeland Security|DHS]]-funded counterterror groups seem to have financial or personal incentives to only reference incels.co<!--Did you mean this?--><!-- as the only meaningful incel forum. The aforementioned forum is right-wing, generally looked down upon, and contains rhetoric that is stigmatizing toward incels, which the administrators implicitly encourage. -->


==Self-described 'incel forums'==
==Demographics ==
There are a number of forums for self-identified incels. Most are on Facebook, and some ban misogyny. Misandrist digital journalism outlets and DHS-funded counterterror groups seem to financial or personal incentives to only reference incels\.co as the only meaningful incel forum.  The aforementioned forum is right-wing, generally looked down-upon, and contains rhetoric that is stigmatizing toward incels, which the administrators implicitly encourage.
While solid information about the incel movement is hard to collect because of its hostility to outsiders, certain demographic patterns can be enumerated. An informal poll of a popular incel forum revealed that over 90% of its participants were under the age of 30. Practically all of them are males (they ban women on sight), and 80% of them were from [[Europe]] or [[North America]]. Over half of them identify as white, with other ethnic groups mixed in as well. A poll taken on incels.co revealed similar results.<ref name=":0" />


==Relationship to income, income inquality, and social status==
==Criticism==
The relationship between incel and income, income inequality, or social status is not proven. It is popular to hypothesize that low income, high income inquality, or low social status causes incel. 
The incel movement has been criticized and condemned on multiple grounds, including their hateful attitude towards women, male supremacy, relationship to right-wing extremists, and belief that they are entitled to sexual intercourse from females. In modern incel forums, there are also a large amount of pedophiles, zoophiles, and fetishists.<ref name=":1" />
 
It is important to note that there is high sexual success among the very poorest classes in America, making it seem as if there is the same amount of sexlessness among the poor as there is among the rich.  However, among the very poorest Americans, there is a large split in this demographic, with about half having many sexual partners, and the rest having none of very few.
 
In America, top athletes and popular Hollywood celebrities have almost unfettered access to sexual intercourse.  Among some basketball players, their sexual partner count is in the thousands, or tens of thousands.  Popular male celebrities often refer to celebrity as opening up a world of women, 'like being in a women's locker room for the first time', and many engage in large amounts of casual sex with fans.
 
==Incel denialism==
Some people believe that involuntary celibacy is not real.  Wikipedia most notably takes this position, but rarely elaborates on why.  They are wrong, as forced celibacy is common, such as in prisons or mental hospitals.  The occurence of forced celibacy in mental hopsitals for example, has caused some academics to opine one could interpret an amendment of the US consitution to legally defend state-subsidized sex-workers for the severely mentally or physically disabled.  Notably, the Netherlands took such an approach for around 10 years, offering such state subsidies to the severely disabled.
 
Some of the more compelling incel denialism takes involve the notion that many self-described male and female incels refuse to lower their standards.  Some self-described incels respond that standards can create an involuntary situation as forcing romantic attraction is not dissimilar to rape, another form of sex most incels can, in theory have, at the risk of long amounts of jail time.  A definition of incel that eliminates logic-holes in the definition would include an addedum that incel is the inability to have legal sex with someone you are attracted to.
 
==Sexual deviancy==
In modern, incel forums there are a large amount of pedophiles, zoophiles, and fetishists. These people create stigma for incels who are less sexually deviant.


==Hot takes on incels==
{{Hottakes|subject=incels|
{{Hottakes|subject=incels|
=== "Left-wing inceldom" ===
=== Further "Left-wing inceldom" ===
It is possible to offer a left-wing alternative to right-wing inceldom. Instead of identifying female hypergamy as the oppressive structure that prevents men from finding worthwhile partners, left-wing inceldom finds social atomisation and prevailing [[patriarchy|patriarchal]] norms to be the problem.
It is possible to offer a left-wing alternative to right-wing inceldom. Instead of identifying female hypergamy as the oppressive structure that prevents men from finding worthwhile partners, left-wing inceldom finds social atomisation and prevailing [[patriarchy|patriarchal]] norms to be the problem.
}}
}}


== External links ==
==See also==
*[[Manosphere]]
 
==External links ==
YouTube videos on incels:
YouTube videos on incels:


* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruI2al12sXE "INCELS Part 1 - Introductions, Truths & Admissions"] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1w77pXKvuU "INCELS Part 2 - Analysis, Advice & 'Chadsplaining'"] by Vaush
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruI2al12sXE "INCELS Part 1 - Introductions, Truths & Admissions"] and [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1w77pXKvuU "INCELS Part 2 - Analysis, Advice & 'Chadsplaining'"] by Vaush
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1flcGrb81M "Hegelian Recognition and Incels"] by Cuck Philosophy
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1flcGrb81M "Hegelian Recognition and Incels"] by Cuck Philosophy
* [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=103uTU-lmsY "Incels and the Last Man"] by Zero Books
*[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=103uTU-lmsY "Incels and the Last Man"] by Zero Books
Subreddits on incels:
 
* [https://old.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/ r/IncelTears], dedicated to cataloging instances of incel sexism and bigotry
* [https://old.reddit.com/r/IncelExit/ r/IncelExit], for people seeking advice on exiting the incel movement


==References==
==References==
<references />
<references />


[[category:internet]]
[[Category:Online ideologies]]
[[category:rightism]]
[[Category:Sexuality]]
[[category:ideologies]]
[[Category:Alt-right]]
[[Category:Online right]]

Latest revision as of 20:44, 28 May 2024

Involuntary celibacy, or incel for short, is an online sub-culture and movement surrounding highly alienated, usually male individuals who believe structures of oppression to be the cause of their inability to form meaningful sexual relationships. The status of being an incel is typically referred to as inceldom. This is based on the culture of a subreddit that arrived over a decade after the first few, self-described incel forums.[1][2]

The incel movement is usually supportive of reactionary and bigoted sentiments, especially misogyny. Incel forums serve as a prominent recruiting ground for the alt-right and other far-right groups, in part because of their mutual tendency towards racism and anti-Semitism. Self-described incels have perpetrated multiple terrorist attacks and mass-killings, as part of a rising tendency of right-wing extremism in the West.[1][2][3]

History

The first website to use the term "incel" was "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", founded in 1997 by a Canadian university student known only by her first name, Alana, to discuss her sexual inactivity with others; however, some media has incorrectly dated it to 1993, the date of a personal interaction that later inspired her to design the page. The site was used by people of all genders and sexual orientations to share their thoughts and experiences. During 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". She would later cease participation in her online community around 2000.[2]

The message board love-shy.com was founded in 2003 as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. 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. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. 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".

The subculture came to wider public notice throughout the 2010s 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. 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.

Organizations

There are a number of forums for self-identified incels. A popular example is incels.co.

Demographics

While solid information about the incel movement is hard to collect because of its hostility to outsiders, certain demographic patterns can be enumerated. An informal poll of a popular incel forum revealed that over 90% of its participants were under the age of 30. Practically all of them are males (they ban women on sight), and 80% of them were from Europe or North America. Over half of them identify as white, with other ethnic groups mixed in as well. A poll taken on incels.co revealed similar results.[2]

Criticism

The incel movement has been criticized and condemned on multiple grounds, including their hateful attitude towards women, male supremacy, relationship to right-wing extremists, and belief that they are entitled to sexual intercourse from females. In modern incel forums, there are also a large amount of pedophiles, zoophiles, and fetishists.[1]

Hot takes on incels

See also

External links

YouTube videos on incels:

Subreddits on incels:

  • r/IncelTears, dedicated to cataloging instances of incel sexism and bigotry
  • r/IncelExit, for people seeking advice on exiting the incel movement

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Charlie Tye (August 16, 2021). "Inside the warped world of incel extremists". The Conversation.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Zack Beauchamp (April 23, 2019). "Our incel problem". Vox.
  3. ↑ Jacob Conley (2020). Efficacy, Nihilism, and Toxic Masculinity Online: Digital Misogyny in the Incel Subculture. The Ohio State University. (PDF)
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