What is an incel? How does it overlap with otaku culture?

Incel, or involuntary celibate, was coined in 1993 by a Canadian woman named Alana who used it to describe her experiences as a college-aged virgin. Ironically, the term now labels a section of the Men’s Rights Movement who ostracize women. An involuntary celibate is someone who wants to have sex but has been unable to find a willing partner for at least 6 months. According to Donnelly (2001), the time period isn’t important–the self-defining aspect of the term matters more: “situations we define as real become real in their consequences.” In other words, how we view situations give those situations reality.

Involuntary celibates can include married and partnered people whose partners no longer want (or are able to have) sex. Sexual inactivity tends to gain momentum: longer periods of inactivity increases the chances of the period continuing. For incels, this extends to their ideology becoming a self-fulling prophecy as we will see. In Donnelly’s study (2001), the life trajectory of virgins differed compared to those who had their sexual experiences on society’s timeline. They marry later and have other non-sexual life experiences later. Note: this isn’t a bad thing. People use societal considerations of normal as measurements for themselves, including the timing of experiences and their frequency. Society can include an Internet subculture. The people who don’t follow those timelines often feel left behind or left out. This is apparent in incel forums.

Donnelly found that body image impact people’s ability to socialize and establish relationships. One virgin male in the study’s 35-44 age group said:

My lack of any sex has had some very serious effects upon me. Obviously, I could get a prostitute any time, but I haven’t’ done that. It would be no different than glorified masturbation. It is the fact that no woman has ever wanted to be sexual with me (and as far as I can tell, even considered sex with me) that I find so painful. It makes me feel sexually worthless. And the fact that no woman has loved me or cared for me enough to have sex with me is tremendously damaging to my self-esteem. It makes me feel like a freak, an unloved person who is not worth anything to anyone. I know intellectually that these feelings are to a large extent misleading and wrong, and that in fact they are damaging to me. Nonetheless, this is the visceral feeling my gut that I get when I think about this—and I think about it everyday, every hour. Sometimes every minute.

Examining Incel Culture

“I fucking FUCKING HATE women!!!! They don’t deserve any rights because they are not even human, they are poor imitations of a human being therefore they should be treated like shit.”

–A post from Incels.me

Incels follow the same framework Donnelly studied. Incels have developed a language and ideology that reflects the pain Donnelly’s subject expressed. However, they go beyond it and into misogyny. Incels share many of the same viewpoints as the Pick-up Artist community despite the differences in their experiences. Pick-up Artists focus on “the game,” a methodology that allows them to sleep with and manipulate women. At the same time, Pick-up Artists despair about the lack of virtue modern women have. Few are chaste enough for marriage; therefore, the only recourse is to enjoy them before they become overused. The Men’s Rights Movement began as a backlash against feminism in the  1960s-70s. Although some evidence points to it beginning in 1926 with women’s voting rights. They believe society is sexist against men. Men face governmental discrimination with custody laws favoring women, false rape allegations, violence against men, and disproportional prison sentences. The movement also believes boys fall behind in school because school structure caters to female learning patterns (This Week, 2015). Incels and pick-up artists are alt-right groups in the United States.

Originally, the term incel represented men and women, but over time the term narrowed to men. The word femcel now represents the female involuntary celibate groups. Incels want romantic or sexual partners but can’t find them. This drives them to blame women and genetic factors such as skull shape for their sexual rejection. According to Jacob Davey (quoted by Tait, 2018), a researcher for the Institute of Strategic Dialogue in London:

In their ideology women are often seen as sexual gatekeepers, and incels imagine a power dynamic where women actively exclude them from ahieving a sexually fulfilled existence, reinforcing an entitlted attitude to sex, which can go as far as the justification of rape.

Violence has spilled from the community. Elliot Rodger killed six people before killing himself in 2014. A day before, he recorded a video of his plans to target the “hottest” sorority house, Alpha Phi: “For the last eight years of my life, ever since I hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires…all because girls have never been attracted to me (Tait, 2018).” Rodger–simply called ER on incel forums–has become something of a saint for the community.

Incel Ideology

Incel ideology breaks down to three categories, or “pills” as they are called. Pills refers to a metaphor from the film The Matrix where Morpheus offer’s Neo a choice between a red pill which reveals the true nature of reality and a blue pill which would allow him to live in comfortable ignorance. Taking the red pill awakens an incel to their status as perpetual virgins and why. The red pill can lead to the “blackpill.” The blackpill rejects women’s sexual emancipation, labeling them as shallow, cruel creatures who choose only the most attractive men (Beauchamp, 2019). According to the blackpill, 80% of women are after the top 20% of attractive men. The bottom 20% of women will have sex with the rest of the men– betas, cucks, normies. Incels rank themselves at the bottom of the list.

They measure attractiveness on a scale from 1-10. Everything about the ideology reduces people to a commodity. Attractiveness is measured down to bone structure. Incels believe only certain skull and skeletal shapes attract women, and only 20% of men have these ideal shapes. These beliefs reflect the obsession with racial purity in Nazi Germany and their skull-measuring practices to prove the superiority of the “Aryan race.” On incel forums, you will often see people Photoshop themselves to what they believe women consider ideal.

The blackpill dehumanizes women as does their language. Femoids is the general term for women. The “rapepill” combines the blackpill with the dehumanization of women. The rapepill is the understanding that for civilization to survive, femoids need to be treated as subhuman objects whose purpose is to obey and have the children of supreme gentlemen–obviously referring to themselves (Beauchamp, 2019). With this mix, it’s not a surprise that the incel forums often celebrate murderers and sexual assault (Beauchamp, 2019):

“I do it all the time, rub my dick on their back/ass until I cum [referring to women in subways],” he writes. A second says that he injected his semen into chocolate bars at his office to “punish” a woman who he thought was flirting with him but actually had a boyfriend. A third claims to have “groped so many women,” estimating his total at between 50 and 70 — and claimed he wanted to escalate to violent rape.

All of this comes from a sense of personal failure mixing with a sense of entitlement–the belief that the world owes them sex and there’s something wrong with a society where women don’t give it to them.

Incel Language

Incels have their own set of jargon that objectifies not only women but also themselves. As with any community, their use of language draws boundaries between themselves and other communities. This sense of separation –which we can also find in otaku culture–offers a sense of identity. Here is a selection from Incel Language Dictionary (2019).

Alpha (Male): The opposite of a beta male. Takes on risk and confrontation. Confident and a leader.

Ascend: When an incel moves on to get laid or gain a relationship.

AWALT: “All women are like that” or “All women are literal trash” or “All women are lying thots.”

Becky: An average female.

Betabux: A beta male when a girl takes advantage of him. He is chosen to be her significant other because he earns a decent wage to finance her lifestyle, etc. The girl he’s with is past her prime youth, she has already ridden the Cock Carousel, and her value on the sexual market has decreased.

Beta (Male): An unremarkable, careful man who avoids risk and confrontation. Beta males lack the physical presence, charisma, and confidence of the Alpha male.

Bluepill: Used to describe someone who is blissfully and willfully ignorant. Used by more groups than just incels.

Chad, Tyrone, Chang, Jamaal, Chadpreet, Chaddam, etc: Your stereotypical alpha male of whichever ethnic background. Very manly, alpha, attractive, and often mogs incels.

Chincel: an incel with a weak chin.

Cock carousel: Describes the period in “all” women’s lives when they sleep with many men, usually seen as a time in their life going from 16-25 (usually includes college) where they have many different sexual partners. Makes them less valuable afterward.

Cope: a derogatory term used to insult those who suggest self improvement.

Cuck/to be cucked/something is cucked: Originally referred to ‘cuckold’, more specifically a fetish where a man watches his wife being plowed by another man. Now used as an adjective for everything incels dislike. Originating from an idea that all left-wing men are cuckolds, which in term arose from Karl Marx describing “class traitors”. Used by more groups than just incels.

Foid/Femoid: Abbreviated form of “female humanoid,” used to dehumanize females.

FWHR: Face/width height ratio. Apparently this will stop you getting laid if it’s not ideal. Like everything else.

Hole: Female.

Landwhale: A grossly obese woman, pejorative. Incels have a different definition of obese than most people. Used by more groups than just incels.

Manlet: a short incel.

Mog: To overshadow, especially in personal aesthetic attributes, often supplemented with a facial feature our characteristic descriptor to form a compound. Used by more groups than just incels.

Moid: Femcel version of foid. “Male humanoid,” used to dehumanize males.

Redpill: A difficult to swallow truth that can’t be unlearned. Relating to incels, this is a less intense version of the blackpill. Used by more groups than just incels.

Roastie: Used to describe a woman who has had sex with more than one partner. An insult that combines body shaming and slut-shaming in one.

Rope: slang for suicide.

Stacy/Stacie: A hot, popular woman. Presumably does the sex.

Sui: Suicide.

Sui fuel: images of women having fun with “Chads” and other images intended to push people toward suicide.

The Wall: After riding the cock carousel, this is the idea that a woman is used up and worthless. Specifically relates to age and how women lose their youthful looks as they get older.

The Overlap with Otaku Culture

Incel culture only minimally overlaps with otaku culture. The two cultures overlap with regards to porn consumption. Porn accounts for 30% of all online traffic, and 88% of porn shows violence against women: “Even non-violent porn makes clear that sex is not about loving intimacy or a partnership: it’s about male penetration of the female body. It’s overwhelmingly about women submitting to male power (Hunter, 2018).” This includes hentai. Consuming such messages skews men’s understanding with women and hurts their ability to interact with them. Real women who say no or otherwise don’t pay attention to a guy betrays what a brain that grew up on porn expects. We lack data on how much porn incels consume, but their ideology reflects the messages pornography sells. In turn, porn caters to their ideas in a feedback loop. Members of the otaku community who are trapped in this feedback loop may also become incels.

I had thought waifuism would overlap a little with the incel community, but I couldn’t find any evidence linking them. I speculate that some members of the incel community may turn toward 2D characters to fill their needs. However, waifuism generally doesn’t fall into the type of misogyny incels do. Usually, waifuism is the simple preference for 2D characters over 3D women or as an outlet for male desires that are not socially acceptable, such as the enjoyment of cuteness.

Anime and manga can offer some outlets for incel frustration. But I suspect the ideology will draw them toward stories with dominating men and vicarious sexual situations. Enjoying manga and anime doesn’t make someone an incel. Likewise, identifying as an incel doesn’t mean you like anime or manga. Few online communities are mutually exclusive. You can be a sports fan and still be an otaku, for example. Unlike the incel community, otaku culture has  proven itself beneficial–if not without its own problems. It has united many couples. It helps with autism, and it provides other social needs for its members.

The incel community, like other Men’s Rights groups, fosters a poisonous viewpoint that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. After all, what self-respecting woman would want a relationship with someone who views her as subhuman? Ironically, the incel community is dealing with the same body issues women have faced for decades. The focus on chin-size and wrists comes from the proliferation of advertising dictating societal measures. The blackpill ideology builds on this fantasy. After all, we see only societally beautiful people in films pairing off with each other. Now add pornography’s portrayal of male and female roles and the Internet’s echo-chamber effect. Is it any surprise incels and many other people have skewed measurements of themselves?

References

Beauchamp, Zack (2019) Our incel problem. Vox. https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit

Donnelly, D., Burgess, E., Anderson, S., Davis, R., & Dillard, J. (2001). Involuntary Celibacy: A Life Course Analysis. Journal of Sex Research, 38(2), 159–169.

Hunter, Latham (2018) Pornography is brain-training a generation of boys. The Record.

Incel Language Dictionary (2019) https://www.reddit.com/r/IncelTears/comments/aoekwm/incel_language_dictionary/

Morris, Chris (2018) “What is an Incel and Why are People Talking about Them?” Fortune.

Tait, Amelia (2018) “I’ve been forced to endure an existence of unfulfilled desires. It’s not fair, you girls have never been attracted to me. I…will punish you for it.” Daily Telegraph (London) 20-21.

This Week (2015) Men’s rights movement: why is it so controversial?