Femoid Identity and Ideology in the Incelosphere Anthropology

Femoid: Identity and Ideology in the Incelosphere A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in Anthropology. ________________________ ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements .........................................................................................................iv Abstract ............................................................................................................................v Introduction ......................................................................................................................1 Methodology ................................................................................................................6 Glossary........................................................................................................................8 (In)voluntary Celibate: Agency and Abstinence ..............................................................9 Femcel ..........................................................................................................................9 Are Incels Celibate? ...................................................................................................12 Pussy Cartel: Poverty and the Sexual Marketplace........................................................16 Clitcoin: The Oldest Profession .................................................................................18 Material Girl ...............................................................................................................23 Conclusion..................................................................................................................26 Glossary......................................................................................................................27 Hypergamy: Evolutionary Psychology and the Alpha ...................................................29 Cucks and Betas .........................................................................................................29 Female Nature ............................................................................................................39 Conclusion..................................................................................................................51 Glossary......................................................................................................................52 Blackpill: The Uncomfortable Truth and the Comforting Lie .......................................53 The War on Masculinity .............................................................................................54 The Language of Victimhood.....................................................................................57 Conclusion..................................................................................................................66 Glossary......................................................................................................................66 Evangeline: Incel Futurism ............................................................................................68 Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition ........................................................................68 No Chad’s Land: Incel Utopianism ............................................................................72 Conclusion..................................................................................................................77 Conclusion......................................................................................................................79 Glossary..........................................................................................................................83 Bibliography...................................................................................................................85 iii iv Abstract This project provides an analysis of the incel movement in order to understand the perpetuation and creation of incel ideology. The term incel is short for involuntary celibate and describes an online community of men who unite over their lack of sexual success. Often blaming women for their sexual shortcomings, incels assert that their incelibacy (involuntary celibacy) is an uncontrollable condition and thus “organized around a life circumstance, rather than any concrete ideology.”1 This thesis explores whether this claim is true through the analysis of posts on incel forums and websites. I express that rather than a condition, inceldom constitutes an ideological formation. This work expresses the ways that incel ideology is represented as experience through the erasure of ideology. Through techniques such as language, appeals to science, the blackpill and the redpill, and economic metaphors; incels represent incelibacy as a natural consequence of our biology, society and culture. In doing so incels represent incelibacy as a natural state while simultaneously constructing an all encompassing world view. 1 https://incels.wiki/w/Main_Page v Introduction On May 23, 2014 inceldom was shot into the spotlight with a series of killings in Isla Vista, California. Armed with misogynistic ideologies, a knife, and two handguns; Elliot Rodgers (a 22 year old self identified incel) went on a violent rampage near the campus of UC Santa Barbara. Specifically targeting a UCSB sorority house, Rodgers killed 6 and injured 14 including sorority women, pedestrians and bystanders. In his manifesto, Rodgers specifically cites his rejections and lack of sexual access as the reasons for his violent attack. This harrowing experience left the general public to grapple with a hoard of new anxieties: What are incels? What do they believe? And what does this mean for new manifestations of gender based hatred? Incel (short for Involuntary Celibate) references an online community of men who share the common experience of lacking sexual success. These men congregate over both this experience, and a set of shared beliefs about their movement and experiences. Among these beliefs are biological reductionism, objectivity in attractiveness, oppression on the basis of sexlessness and misogynistic ideals. Despite the prevalence of ideological beliefs within the community, incels assert that: “[inceldom is] organized around a life circumstance, rather than any concrete ideology.”2 However, an understanding of the processes under which ideology functions, illuminates how incels conceptualize their experiences. In his work on ideological state apparatuses, Althusser expresses that: “Ideology represents the imaginary relationship of individuals to their real conditions of existence”(Althusser 2001). He articulates that ideology represents the world rather than 2 https://incels.wiki/w/Main_Page reflecting it. Here, incel ideology is a conceptualization of incelibacy through an illusory lens. To incels, conditions and beliefs are synonymous, the experience of incelibacy and the ideology of inceldom are indistinguishable. This thesis will focus on the ways that ideology is represented as truth via the discourses that occur on incel platforms. By obscuring the presence of belief, incels construct a holistic worldview which permeates the lives and perspectives of their community. My central question is: How does online communication function in incel spaces to turn an experience (sexlessness) into an ideology (inceldom)? Through analyzing posts from incel forums and sites, I express the ways that incel rhetoric represents their beliefs as natural processes of our biological and social world. In this way incels’ experiences are transformed into an identity and an all encompassing worldview. Despite the prevalence of men within the community, the term involuntary celibacy was actually coined by a woman. In 1997 a woman named Alana started ‘Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project,’ a website aimed at individuals struggling to find love and relationships (Taylor 2018). This site was a forum where people of all genders could express solidarity over shared experiences of loneliness. Alana left the community behind in 2000, only to realize in 2014 how her term had been reappropriated. As it stands today, the incel movement bears little resemblance to how Alana originally envisioned it. Developing out of the expansion of the internet in the early 2000s and 2010s, modern incel beliefs and communities have grown to prominence in the last decade. While present on spaces like r/foreveralone and the forum PUAHate [Pick Up Artist Hate] prior, the Incel movement was thrust into the mainstream following the Isla 2 Vista Killings. Today, the Incel community constitutes a vocal subset of what is known as the manosphere, an online subculture comprised of men's rights activists, incels (involuntary celibates), Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), pick-up artists (PUA), and fathers' rights groups. This work grapples with incel ideology in totality; however, beliefs differ within facets of the incelosphere. The main example of this is the divergence between the redpill and the blackpill, and how they propose solutions to inceldom. Rather than comprising separate ideologies, they express distinct ways of understanding how incelibacy is produced and perpetuated. The redpill belief system is one of the basic tenets of incel ideology and describes the notion “that most males are seen as disposable, modern society is inherently gynocentric, that women are hypergamous maters who are also generally highly deceptive towards men and the endorsement of masculinism.”3 This system takes an individualistic approach to understanding incelibacy in which escaping inceldom is based on individual achievement. The redpill borrows from economic conceptual metaphors (see chapter 3) in the way that it describes inceldom and proposes solutions to incelibacy. Here hard work, increasing ones sexual value, and going to the gym are solutions to perpetual celibacy. On the other hand, the blackpill takes a more systematic approach to understanding incelibacy. Rather than an individual failing, blackpillers see incelibacy as a systemic problem to which there are no individual solutions. Under the blackpill, an entire overthrow of society is necessary in order to escape their oppressive fates. While 3 https://incels.wiki/w/Redpill 3 the blackpill breeds some of the most fatalistic beliefs of the incelosphere (see chapter 5) it also allows for an envisioning of a future free from incelibacy (see chapter 6). Such visions of the future often feature more communistic and communal images than that of the redpill. Additionally, Evolutionary Psychology is a primary explanatory framework used to substantiate blackpilled claims about the biologically determined nature of human behavior (see chapter 4). Generally, a blackpilled perspective sees revolution and a transformation of the system as solutions to the problem of incelibacy. The identities and ideologies of the incelosphere are rife with contradictions in how they represent themselves in relation to their desires. Sexlessness is the defining factor of incelibacy; however, the desire of incels to have sex positions them in a constant conflict between their identity and their sexual needs. This leads to the central paradox of this thesis, which in my view takes on different forms in relation to blackpill and redpill beliefs. The redpill paradox is thus: Incels want sex, but once they attain it they are no longer incels. This paradox takes an individualistic approach to inceldom and is a conflict based on identity. Whereas the blackpill paradox is: Incels want to end incelibacy, but if they do their movement ceases to exist. These paradoxes position inceldom as a movement built on the hope of its own destruction. While the redpill paradox only requires that individual incels navigate their relationship to identity, the blackpill paradox threatens to unmask the entire ideological basis of incel beliefs. This thesis will therefore work primarily with the blackpill paradox in order to express the complex relationships between ideology and experience. 4 This thesis borrows from the frameworks of liminality and subjunctivity in the analysis of the incel community. Deriving from Victor Turner's research on rights of passage, which describes “rites which accompany every change of place, state, social position and age”(Gennep 1960), Turner expresses how liminality resides within the marginal phase of these rites. Liminality describes the process of being betwixt and between, a site where an individual resides after being detached from the social structure and before reentry (Turner 1964). Individuals within the liminal period occupy a statusless state which serves as a foundation for transformation. In Turner’s work ‘Frame, Flow and Reflection,’ he describes that “the liminal in socio-cultural process is similar to the subjunctive mood in verbs”(Turner 1979:465-6). Borrowing from the subjunctive mood of language, subjunctivity describes envisioning potentialities through the lens of what could have been. Rather than a longing for the past, the subjunctive expresses a complex relationship between past events and future hopes. Metaphor is another concept that is foundational to the approach of this thesis. In their work ‘Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language’ Lakoff and Johnson describe the notion of conceptual metaphors in order to illuminate the relationship between language and social structure. Conceptual metaphors express how a symbolic relationship between separate domains shapes how each domain is conceptualized (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). They use the example of argument as war, evidenced by the phrases “He attacked every weak point in my argument,” and “his criticisms were right on target” (Lakoff and Johnson 1980:454). They argue that discussing debates as if they were war 5 structures how debates are perceived and engaged in. Lakoff and Johnson expand on this argument, expressing that metaphors profoundly shape our larger conceptual system. The concept of ‘the new biologism’ provides a framework for understanding the beliefs and discourses that circulate in the incel community. The new biologism describes the turn away from social explanations of human behavior and towards totalizing biological explanations (Cameron 2009). This reflects a larger societal shift away from the social and towards the scientific. The incel communities adoption of evolutionary psychology and biological deterministic beliefs emphasizes how incels are entrenched in larger social frameworks. Methodology For my primary sources, I focus specifically on incel forums and the Incels Wiki page in order to access writings by incels. For my data, I collected a variety of posts from forums and used them to unpack certain dimensions of incel beliefs. I used the Incels Wiki as a supplementary source in order to gauge how incels represent themselves and to understand general incel beliefs and concepts. The incels.is forum is the site that I primarily used in the collection of data. This site is a thread discussion forum similar in structure to reddit, in which incels create threads for others to respond to. This format facilitates discussions on specific topics and communal participation. Incels.is is one of the most heavily trafficked incel forums with over 15 thousand members and 336 thousand threads as of April 2022. This forum is relatively difficult to navigate as the only way to access posts is to scroll or use tags. 6 Additionally, individual users do not have profiles so it is impossible to see what an individual has posted without scrolling through a variety of threads. This format facilitates the anonymity of the site while also privileging recent threads over older ones. I tried to engage mainly with current threads in order to understand the incel community as it exists now. The data I collected was in the form of incel posts, containing a few sentences on a variety of topics. I used these posts by unpacking the language and content, in order to demonstrate a variety of incel beliefs and the way they function. The Incels Wiki page is an incel made wiki affiliated with incels.is. This website features a variety of resources including a glossary, essay and poem collections, pages on different incel concepts and information about inceldom. This page was likely created as an introduction to incel concepts for prospective incels and those dipping their toes into incel ideology. This site paints a positive picture of inceldom as an involuntary experience and as an identity group. I used this site by collecting passages from specific pages. I didn’t approach the Incels Wiki as an unbiased representation of inceldom, rather I analyzed it as a formation of the incel identity building project. I used this site to gauge general incel beliefs and supplemented them with forum posts. Additionally, I include glossaries at the end of most of my chapters in order to make the incel jargon more accessible for readers. As the incel movement has a variety of community specific terms, these glossaries facilitate an easy understanding of incel forums posts and language. 7 Throughout this project I tried to put aside my personal biases, in order to understand incel beliefs from an outside perspective. However, this task served to be far more difficult than I initially anticipated. Trying to empathize with and humanize a group of individuals who would not extend the same courtesy to me was an arduous process. Seeing the hatred that incels directed towards women was difficult, and ultimately shaded my perspective on incels. Many of my initial reactions were unsympathetic and accusatory, centered around incel self victimization and the consolidation of power. It took an immense amount of time interacting with incels’ assertions of pain and suffering in order to understand their experiences as genuine expression rather than just self serving rhetoric. What I present is the result of this process, I make no promises that it will be empathetic or unbiased. Rather, it is the product of my efforts to continually humanize others, even and especially when their values oppose my own. Glossary • • • • • • • • • Blackpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom, systemic change can help end incelibacy Gynocentric: A system that disproportionately benefits Women Hypergamy: The idea that women are always seeking the most attractive and successful man, i.e. Chad. Used to explain inceldom. Incel: Involuntary Celibate Incelibacy: The condition of being an incel Inceldom: Incel ideology Incelosphere: The online domain of inceldom PUAHate: Pick Up Artist Hate; a popular incel forum prior to 2014 Redpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom, individual action can help one escape incelibacy 8 (In)voluntary Celibate: Agency and Abstinence The term incel, short for involuntary celibate, expresses the complex relationship between agency and abstinence in the incelosphere. The term celibacy commonly refers to the act of abstaining from marriage and sex; however, for the sake of discussing incels I will only address the latter. The idea of abstinence suggests a form of agency on the part of the individual. Despite this, incels assert the involuntary nature of their celibacy. The main tension of this chapter lies in whether or not involuntary celibacy is a paradox, in reference to the ways that religious celibate practice relies on agentive choice. This chapter will use cross-cultural studies of celibacy, in order to explore how incelibacy relates to and diverges from traditional notions of celibacy. By exploring the relationships between celibacy, gender and agency, I hope to illuminate the complex dynamics of incelibacy and its affinity to inceldom. Femcel Celibacy within and outside of the incel community has largely been conceptualized as a male endeavor. This masculinization of celibacy is deeply rooted in societal understandings of sexual desire and gender. The relationships between gender and sexual expression raise questions about the gendered dynamics of celibacy. Within incel spaces, incelibacy is understood as an inherently male condition, and many incels either doubt or reject female incelibacy altogether. An Incels.is explanatory post addresses the question of whether women can be incels. It expresses that: 9 Many experiments have shown that even artificially generated women created to be as repulsive looking as possible can get dates from men in online dating. So it is difficult to conceive a reasonable circumstance where a woman would truly be incel, unless it is just due to her high standards. Ultimately, however, every person decides if they are incel (Incels.is: Jan 18 2018). This quote is interesting as it positions incelibacy as both a condition and an identity based label. This passage therefore questions the idea that women could experience incelibacy while also asserting their ability to identify as an incel. However, Inceldom has been restricted as a solely male condition and ideology on incel sites, with some even banning female involvement. Despite this, cross-cultural studies have expressed the unique conditions of celibacy for women. While this celibacy is voluntary, it still expresses the dynamics of how sex and desire is conceived in relation to female bodies. Kawanami explores the dynamics of female celibacy in her Celibacy, Culture and Society Chapter, “Can Women Be Celibate?” Kawanami discusses celibate practice among male and female Theravada Buddhist monks in Myanmar (Kawanami 2001). They ask the question of whether or not women can be celibate through an analysis of gendered celibate practices. They argue that: “The function of female celibate practice cannot be understood if we impose on it the assumptions that govern male celibate practice”(Kawanami 2001:137). Rather, male and female celibacy have different functions in relation to gendered social norms. When a male monk practices celibacy he asserts his maleness, whereas women practicing celibacy must shed their womanhood and femininity, freeing them to pursue spirituality(Kawanami 2001:139). Kawanami notes that Buddhist literature reinforces a view of women that is one of uncontrollable 10 and dangerous sexual desire, which informs the denial of desire in female celibate practice. Yet strangely, female celibacy is seen as less of a sacrifice than that of male celibacy. Kawanami thus asserts that female monks must: “defy the social construction of womanhood, and subvert the patriarchal order”(Kawanami 2001:153). In this way female monks deny their position as either passive mother or sexual object. In this way, Kawanami concludes that women are expected to be chaste not celibate. Therefore, female celibate practice requires a reconceptualization of what celibacy is and means. This example expresses a key distinction in how male and female sexuality are conceived. In the example of Theravada Buddhism, sexual control is an expectation for women and a choice for men. This belief operates similarly to how sex is understood in incel spaces. While sexual action is not seen a choice for men, it is still expected for women to be chaste. This is evidenced by the valuation of female virginity and the scorn directed at promiscuous women. However, rather than tied to Buddhist beliefs this phenomenon is more aptly connected to Christian ideas of purity and western sexual politics. In the Chapter “The Chaste Adolescent’', Schlegel focuses on practices of chastity among adolescents in which no vow of celibacy is taken (Schlegel 2001). Focusing particularly on the relationship between chastity, sexual restriction and virginity, she argues that the relationship between gender ideology and celibacy is contextually dependent not straightforward. Schlegel pays particular attention to the sexual politics of 1950s America which she designates as a mildly restrictive society in 11 regards to sexual freedom (Schlegel 2001:93). She describes how the expression of sexuality was permissible in relation to monogamous pairings. For a woman “the management of one’s reputation was more important than the actual preservation of virginity” (Schlegel 2001:94). The decreasing value of virginity and the increase of sexual freedoms among women has characterized most of the past few decades. Incels are one iteration of the ways that discourses of sexual liberation have shaped today's sexual practice, or lack thereof. Inceldom has arisen rather recently as a western phenomenon and is deeply entrenched in western sexual politics. Incels discussion of sexuality centers on the repression of female sexual desire and the expression of male sexual desire. Incels have co-opted antiquated notions about the appropriate sexual behaviors of women in ways that contradict rhetorics of female sexual empowerment. In this way, incels express the impossibility of femceldom through the narrative of female sexual passivity. If celibacy rests on the denial of desire, then women under incel ideology both lack desire and are never denied. However, this constitutes women as both agents and non-agents in sexual encounters is ways that draw into question the involuntarity of incelibacy. Are Incels Celibate? Sobo and Bell’s book Celibacy, Culture and Society compiles a variety of anthropological work on celibacy in order to understand how celibacy functions crossculturally (Sobo and Bell 2001). This text describes celibacy and the ways that it relates to gender and ideology in a variety of contexts. Through this analysis, they express the ways that sexuality is a social idea that is deeply tied to time and place. Celibacy 12 throughout history has existed in a vast diversity of forms for a variety of purposes. It is essential to understand incelibacy both as an example of celibacy and as a product of western sexual liberation. This section will explore the basic patterns among celibate practices, in order to express whether incelibacy constitutes an example of celibacy, a reconstitution of celibacy, or something different altogether. In the first chapter, Bell and Sobo express some of the underlying phenomena in celibate practice. Bell and Sobo state that: “Celibacy per se is accompanied by a removal of oneself from the larger social world and/or in an effort to alter that world, whether in an actively engaged fashion or through a self centered passive critique of it” (Bell and Sobo 2001:3). This idea of celibacy reflects how celibacy operates within the incel community. Inceldom involves a critique of western sexual politics through a rejection of feminism. The involuntary nature of their celibacy in their eyes represents the failures of society to adequately provide for the needs of men. By constituting incelibacy as a systemic inequality, incels simultaneously suggest both their celibacy and their lack of agency in sexual encounters. However, this representation of celibacy diverges from how it is traditionally constructed. Bell and Sobo assert that: “Celibacy must, at least first, and at least conceptually, entail a denial of sexual desire”(Bell and Sobo 2001:12) This quote demonstrates the way that a celibate identity is forged through the rejection of an individuals sexual urges and drives. Yet, this is different from how celibacy operates under inceldom. Rather than denying their own desire, incels’ sexual desires are being denied. Incelibacy is thus a passive state, distinct from the agency that other forms of 13 celibacy require. By positioning incelibacy as a state of sexual impoverishment, incels constitute an agent-less form of celibacy. This returns us to the question of whether inceldom is a form of celibacy at all. Inceldom enforces certain moral standards about the importance of and necessary domain of sex. This ideology constitutes a reformation of how sex is perceived and engaged in. Within the incel community sex is something to be desired but not to be engaged in. In a similar vein, scholarship on Christian celibate practice expresses the complex relationships between celibacy and identity. Pruss in his work on Christian sexual ethics expresses that: “The celibacy that the Christian tradition praised was not just a lack of a good, but the sacrifice of a good. The notion of sacrifice implies that something is being given up for something else”(Pruss 2012:420). Like the denial of desire that Bell and Sobo discussed, celibacy functions through the sacrifice of a certain ‘good.’ Through the lack of sex, priests reinforce their devotion to Christianity and express their moral beliefs. The comparison of inceldom to celibate priesthood, illuminates the relationships between experience and ideology. Like priests, the lack of sex within the incel community situates the individual in an identifiable social position. In this sense, celibacy makes an incel an incel. This brings up complicated questions about what constitutes incelibacy. If inceldom were merely the experience of incelibacy, then all sexually unsuccessful men would be incels. However, there are many individuals who, for whatever reason, are not currently engaging in sex despite their efforts; who do not 14 not identify as incels. The determination of whether one is an incel is an individual choice. The incel community is therefore based on both individual identification and communal belief. Involuntarity is deeply connected to the redpill paradox of this thesis: incels desire sexual access, but once they attain it they are no longer incels. Here, inceldom demands both sexual desire and sexual denial. Whether incelibacy under inceldom is truly celibacy is difficult to determine. However, incelibacy mirrors and diverges from how celibacy is practiced in religious contexts, and this relationship expresses the complex relationship between behavior and belief. Studies of celibacy as it is traditionally constituted provide a useful framework for evaluating incelibacy, but they alone cannot account for the significance of incelibacy within the community. 15 Pussy Cartel: Poverty and the Sexual Marketplace The online incel community is an environment centered around the shared experience of sexual denial. The conceptualization of this denial takes on a variety of forms in incel discourse. In particular, allusions to the concept of a sexual marketplace serve to fashion what inceldom is by structuring it within the logics of poverty and late stage capitalism. The Incel Wiki, defines incelibacy as: an academic sociological term that is short for involuntary celibate or involuntary celibacy (also called "inceldom"), an adverse life circumstance. An analogy many incels often find elucidating would be comparing the state of lifelong inceldom to other common adverse life circumstances, such as poverty.4 By creating a parallel between inceldom and poverty, incels assert themselves as a marginalized identity, therefore expressing how sex and sexuality is perceived in relation to wealth and material goods. This chapter will focus on the use of economic metaphors and the relationship they create between the free market and contemporary dating norms. In order to do this I will unpack the variety of ways that language is used and what underlying assumptions shape the way discourses around sex are constructed. These forms of speech replicate two underlying assumptions, starting with sex as transactional and leading to women as sexual objects. The metaphor of the sexual marketplace has a significant role in shaping how discourses of sexual exchange occur. Sapir's analysis of the different forms of metaphor elaborates on analogy as a form of metaphor. He states that in an analogy: “Two terms are juxtaposed and, ignoring any shared features they might have, we look instead to their 4 https://incels.wiki/w/Main_Page 16 respective semantic domains: A is to A's domain as X is to X's domain...The similarity now derives from the relationship each term has to its proper domain”(Sapir 1977:23). When applying this interpretation to the sexual marketplace the analogy becomes: sex/ woman are to the sexual marketplace as services/goods are to the economy. The consideration of both women and sex as a commodity in the sexual marketplace, has a variety of implications for the way that speech manifests on incel forums. In their work ‘Conceptual Metaphor in Everyday Language’ Lakoff and Johnson express the social prevalence of metaphors and the way they shape common understandings. They express that “Our ordinary conceptual system, in terms of which we both think and act, is fundamentally metaphorical in nature”(Lakoff and Johnson 1980:454). They use the example of the metaphorical relationship between time and money to emphasize this dynamic: “In our culture time is money in many ways: telephone message units, hourly wages, hotel room rates, yearly budgets, interest on loans, and paying your debt to society by serving time. [These practices] have arisen in modern industrialized societies and structure our basic everyday activities in a very profound way”(Lakoff and Johnson 1980:457). This example illuminates the way that metaphors surrounding time are structured deeply by the societies and economic systems in which they originate. These metaphors then come to structure how the systems they represent are societally understood. Similarly, metaphors relating to sex in the incel community are formed through the language of capitalist exchange. The prevalent discussion of the sexual marketplace, a term used in the incel community to describe modern sex and dating scene, expresses how capitalist ideologies are deeply ingrained in the ways that incels 17 conceptualize and converse about sex. The ways that these ideas are constructed rely on a redpill understanding of the world in which self improvement is central to sexual success. This model follows capitalist notions of hard work and personal value in how it conceptualizes the relationship between individual agency and sexual success. This chapter addresses forms of speech that incels use in order to express how economic language surrounding sex and sexuality perpetuates ideologies about the position and agency of women in the sexual marketplace. Clitcoin: The Oldest Profession Incel ideology relies heavily on comparisons between the economy and the modern functionings of sexual relations in ways that shape how sex is perceived both as an entity and a commodity. This section grapples with economic metaphors about sex and how they perpetuate the view of sex as transactional. I analyzed different posts made on Incel forums in order to unpack both the language of the posts and the underlying assumptions about the nature of sex that they rely on. These notions inform how sex is transformed into a service to be exchanged. The Incels Wiki expresses that: The pussy cartel refers to women artificially inflating the value of sex via pricefixing. It is relatively easy for women to artificially inflate the value of sex when they desire initiating sex less than men…Sex is worth maybe $5 of women's time and effort. But women know men will go insane without sex, so they collectively deny it to men. They force most men to invest hundreds if not thousands of hours into resource security, job security, free drinks, free transportation, free housing etc just for the possibility that they will get sex.5 In the Incels Wiki the editor(s) describe the concept of the pussy cartel, or female domination of the sexual marketplace. The phrase ‘pussy cartel’ expresses a market 5 https://incels.wiki/w/Pussy_cartel 18 economy which is controlled by female interests, and an economy in which ‘pussy’ is the commodity of exchange. The word cartel, which describes market participants that collude in order to influence price, contains connotations of illegality and associations with drugs. The words “value,” “price,” and “inflate,” draw a direct comparison between sex as a concept and an exchangeable market good. The writer posits that because sex does not cost a woman much time or effort (5 dollars worth), the denial of sex is equatable to price fixing and inflation. However, rather than real money being exchanged for sexual favors, instead “hundreds if not thousands of hours,” are spent on the possibility of attaining sex. The idea of investing “into resource security, job security, free drinks, free transportation, free housing etc,” in order to gain sexual satisfaction is an implicit reference to the concept of betabuxxing or being a beta provider. Betabuxxing refers to the process in which men financially or emotionally support a woman in exchange for possible sexual favors. Incels both look down upon this practice and simultaneously see it as one of the only possible avenues for sexual success. The concept of betabuxxing itself relies on the underlying logic that sex can be and is exchanged for the ‘investment,’ of time and effort towards a women. As a betabuxxer invests a lot towards sex, the high ‘cost’ of sex juxtaposed with the low ‘cost’ of ‘production,’ is represented as as exploitative force. The idea of sexual inequality in the dating world is based on the assumption that male sexual desire is stronger and more uncontrollable than female sexual desire. If sex is of little value to a woman and of great value to a man then there is an imbalance in who holds power over sexual relations. Here, women are the drug lords who extort 19 resources from men, while men serve as the addicts willing to pay anything for their next high. By seeing sex as an unequal exchange, incels put themselves in the position of the oppressed. This further feeds into the rhetoric of inceldom as a state of disenfranchisement in which sexual denial constitutes a totalitarian force. This rhetoric not only positions women as a powerful oppressor, but allows for the perpetuation of male self-victimization. This is further exemplified in the discussion of prostitution on incel forums. In another Incels.is post, a forum member expresses their views on the relationship between sex and money. Prostitution is in [women’s] nature. A cheap, dishonorable foid has sex for 40 dollars with a man she is not sexually attracted to, but a foid who respects herself can be laid for money too, but you have to enter into a slightly different business for it. You have to marry her and provide for her life, for everything she needs and wants. You have to buy her jewelry and a clothes until she dies and in return, she lets you have sex with her once a year, while she gets drunk so she doesn't have to endure you during the act. This concept of a modern day marriage is nothing else than long-term-prostitution (Incels.is: Oct 28, 2021). Similar to the Incel Wiki discussion of the pussy cartel, this incel relies of the assumption that sex is an exchangeable commodity. He expresses two types of sexual transactions, one between a man and a “cheap, dishonorable foid,” and the other between him and a foid who respects herself. A cheap foid (i.e. a woman who has sex) will exchange sex for money with an undesirable man. But if a man wants to have sex with a self respecting woman he must marry and provide for her. By in putting time, effort and money, he can gain sexual access. In this example, purchasing items and providing for a women becomes the currency upon which sex is exchanged. However, this is a delayed rather than an immediate transaction. This parallel between prostitution and marriage whittles what marriage is down to the pure exchange of sex for money. By viewing marriage 20 through this diminishing lens, this incel expresses the extent to which sex becomes transactional under incel ideology. The idea of longterm prostitution and infrequent sex creates a specific relationship between desire and denial. In Don Kulick’s work on desire he discusses the different ways that desire is conceptualized. He notes that “the displacement of desire onto other things means that the demands through which desire is symbolized actually has not one, but two objects: one spoken (the object demanded), and one unspoken (the maintenance of a relationship to the other to whom the demand is addressed)”(Kulick 2003:73) In this relationship the object demanded is sex and the addressee of the demand is the female partner. The relationship of marriage serves as the way that this relationship is maintained. I see a parallel between this and the comparison between marriage and prostitution. If marriage is viewed solely through the lens of sexual desire, marriage and prostitution are synonymous, having the same relationship to the acquisition of the desired object. Furthermore this ideology relies on antiquated conceptions of how marriages function. This view relies on the glorification of the female as a submissive housewife, while simultaneously scorning the idea of providing for her. This ideology also relates to how a woman's value is perceived as lessening throughout her life. In a post on Incels.is, a poster states their opinion on women's value. [A woman's] age is a huge factor in their overall value. An average girl just entering the dating market at around 18 has an overall value of at least 8. I know it sounds strange to say "an average is an 8" but I'm saying she's average in her cohort of 18 year olds, but she's an 8 if you compare her to all women. Her "weakness" is that this value declines rapidly. Within five years she has declined to a 6, and by the time she's thirty, most women are 5 or below. More to the point, the weakness is that she's going to live for 90 or even 100 years, 21 but she has only 10 years, only 1/10th of that time, to have this high value (Incels.is: Sept 27 2020). This quote implicitly discusses the concept of the wall, the idea that a woman’s sexual value declines rapidly after their mid-twenties. Here the poster uses the PSL rating which expresses one's physical attractiveness through a scale from 1-8, 1PSL being the least and 8PSL being the most attractive. However, this incel’s wording of ‘at least an 8,’ indicates that there may be some disagreement about the range of the PSL. This scale expresses how women are perceived as having value only when they are young and attractive. Therefore perpetuating the idea that a woman's worth is proportional to her sexual value. This is further elaborated on in the concept of Sexual Market Value discussed in incel spaces. In one post on Sexual Market Value (SMV), a forum member expresses his notion of a woman's value. The true reason is that women are still in society because of their SMV. Sure there are a few outliers, but most absolutely suck at anything that isn't centered on their SMV. Women are so fucking useless considered apart from their SMV, that you have to be deluded to think males would just let billions of women suck off their resources like it's nothing for absolutely 0 reason. A females worth is her pussy and nothing more. (Incels.is: May 28, 2019) This quote discusses the concept of SMV, a term which represents an individual's sexual desirability in the dating scene. This poster repeatedly asserts that a woman's value is nothing without her SMV, concluding that “a females worth is her pussy.” The logics of SMV parallel that of the sexual market, if sex is transactional then ones sexual value can be increased. In his book ‘Critique of Commodity Aesthetics’, Haug discusses the relationship between sexuality and commodification. Haug notes that: “commodities borrow their aesthetic language from human courtship; but then the relationship is reversed and people borrow their aesthetic expression from the world of the commodity” 22 (Haug 1986:19). I see this being clearly expressed in the way that Incels use SMV and PSL in order to give themselves arbitrary markers of value. By discussing their value as one would an object of exchange, Incels commodify themselves in order to market themselves to women. This is accompanied by other capitalist narratives of self improvement on Incel forums, such as the way that maxxing is discussed on these sites. -Maxxing (short for maximizing) is a suffix used to connote the action of improving oneself in order to improve one's SMV or gain sexual/romantic relationships. Common derivations of this term are looksmaxxing and moneymaxxing. This concept mirrors capitalist logic in the idea that success can be achieved through strenuous work. The idea of increasing one's SMV relies on the commodification of the self. By referring to someone in the same way companies and assets are referred to, the individual takes on the position of a sexual object. This marks the blurring between the commodification of sex and the commodification of the human. Material Girl Beyond representing sex as transactional, economic analogies function in the objectification and dehumanization of women. On Incel forums, economic language is used to position women as an object of sexual exchange. This section analyzes posts on Incel forums which directly express the commodification of the female body. In an Incels.is post, a forum member discusses his understanding of a woman's worth in relation to the concept of virginity. Virginity was a prerequisite for a woman to be "marriage material"... It ensured that your investment would be worth it as you aren't footing the bill for 23 "used goods," that may sound cruel but men have to basically invest a lot into a woman's very being, even more so today, get divorced once and half of your wealth goes to another person, and these days the women aren't even virgins, marriage is truly a raw deal in this modern era. (Incels.is: Dec 16 2018). In this quote, the author draws a direct comparison between a woman's worth and her sexual history. This post claims that virginity is necessary for a woman to be considered marriage material, based on the idea that marrying a woman is an investment. The quote “footing the bill for ‘used goods’,” refers to marrying a non-virgin woman and directly describes her as an object. By referring to women as used goods the poster establishes both that the woman is a sexual commodity and that her value rests in her sexual purity. A reply to this post further emphasizes this concept. “Sure, who wants to pay a 'new' price for a 'refurbished' product”(Incels.is: Nov 22 2018). In this sentence both virgin and nonvirgin women are described as objects. The virgin woman however, is described as new, whereas the non-virgin woman is refurbished. The idea of refurbishing evokes a metaphorical domain of furniture and houses, objectifying the woman while also tying her to the site of the household. Along with objectification, women's worth as a commodity is determined based on their sexual experience or lack thereof. The idea of a woman as solely existing for the purposes of male sexual pleasure is exemplified in the way that men discuss the ownership of women. In this Incels.is quote a poster discusses how having a daughter is ‘cucked’ in his view. I cannot think or comprehend of anything more cucked than having a daughter. All the hard work you put into your beautiful little girl... All of it has one simple result: her body is more enjoyable for the men that will eventually fuck her in every hole. Raised the perfect girl? Great. Who benefits? [Her husband] gets to fuck her tight pussy every night. As a man who has a daughter, you are LITERALLY dedicating at least 20 years of your life simply to raise a girl for 24 another man to enjoy. It is the ULTIMATE AND FINAL cuck. (Incel.is: Feb 22, 2019). In this quote the incels.is member expresses how he perceives the practice of having a daughter to be cucked. The term cuck, a commonly used insult on Incel forums, is an abbreviation of the scientific term cuckold. This word has been taken to mean a man with a disloyal wife, especially one who sleeps with and has sex with other men. The idea of being a cuck has the underlying logic of ownership, especially when extended to the topic of daughters. This incel indicates that having a daughter is cucked as the father puts hard work into raising the perfect child only for her to be used by another man. Due to this the father does not benefit from the daughter he raised. This implies that hard work should be met with accompanying rewards. However, when one has a daughter, “all the hard work you put into your beautiful little girl,” is done without benefit. This concept is related to capitalist logics of success, fairness and the value of hard work as necessitating some form of reward. The notion of ‘benefit,’ is illuminating as it expresses how the poster perceives the benefit of women to be primarily sexual. This, coupled with the idea of cuckolding expresses how a daughter is considered by OP (Original Poster) to be an object of sexual possession. Therefore a father is cucked when another man has sex with his daughter as it violates his rights to ownership over her. The objectification of women on incel spaces is so ubiquitous that it is embedded into the very terms they use to describe women. The term femoid is a popular word used to describe women on incel spaces. It is created by the combination of the word “female,” and the word “android.” The Incels.is Wiki page describes this femoid in technological terms. 25 Femoids are a pay-to-cum horror DDLG roleplaying game. Due to bloatware and the increasing amount of resources required to install and maintain females, full romantic access is reserved for elite masochists. Many men have become bankrupt due to extortionate prices for temporary romantic subscriptions. Females' ability to exploit desperation makes them a common product in the Las Vegas strip and Romanian cam studios.6 In the Femoid section of the Incels Wiki page, the writer discusses what a femoid is by discussing women as if they are a computer program. They use technological diction such as “bloatware,” “install,” “product,” and “program,” in regards to women as well as economic terms such as “pay-to-cum,” “bankrupt,” and “extortionate prices.” This language reflects both an objectification of the female subject and the representation of her as a disagreeable agent. This example illuminates how both the commodification of the female body and the expectation of sexual services are prevalent on Incel forums. Conclusion The logics of the sexual marketplace turn heterosexual relations into the bare exchange of goods and services. The forms of language used on incel forums further perpetuate an ideology which privileges capitalist conceptions of the self and the commodification of the other. The analogy of the dating scene as an economy serves to flatten the dynamics of interaction into an exchange. The simultaneous view of woman as commodity and sex as transactional, is reflected in the forms of speech present on Incel forums. This speech reproduces forms of incel identity which perpetuate harms against women while also formulating what it means to be an incel. My analysis of language expresses how women are seen as sexual objects while also being the agents of sexual 6 https://incels.wiki/w/Femoid 26 exchange. However, the woman's role in sexual exchange is often one of a denier, the cost of her sex is exorbitant. This representation situates incelibacy as a condition of marginalization in ways that erase the prevalence of incel ideological beliefs. This notion is most clearly expressed in the quote: Calling involuntary celibates a movement is like calling poor people a movement or ideology. Most people would widely agree that poor people aren't a movement, nor is there a specific ideology that which they adhere. Likewise, incels and inceldom are the same in that respect.7 Here, incels use economic metaphors to express that inceldom consists of a condition rather than an ideology. By paralleling themselves to the impoverished, incels imagine their relationship to incelibacy as one of oppression. This is both ideological and serves to erase the presence of ideology, therefore asserting the synonymous nature of incelibacy and inceldom. By positioning women both as sexual oppressors and sex objects, Incels contribute to the narrative of their own marginalization while simultaneously consolidating their hold over the bodies and agency of women. Glossary • • • • • 7 Betabux/ Beta provider: When a man provides emotional/ financial support to a women, in order to gain sexual access Cuck: An abbreviation for cuckold; used in Incel spaces to represent men with disloyal wives, especially those who have sex or get pregnant with other men. Can also refer to men who are weak and effeminate Femoid/Foid: A woman; A combination of the words Female and Android Nice guy: A man who supposedly deserves sexual/romantic partnership due to the qualities of their personality -Maxx/Maxxing: Improving oneself in order to increase SMV or gain sexual/ romantic success ◦ Looksmaxx: Improve one's looks ◦ Escortmaxx: Gain sexual success through hiring escorts https://incels.wiki/w/Inceldom_FAQ 27 • • • • • • • ◦ Statusmaxx: Improve one’s status ◦ Moneymaxx: Gain wealth ◦ SEAmaxx: Gain sexual success through going to South East Asia PSL: Acronym for; Puahate.com, Sluthate.com and Lookism.net. Used as a rating system for attractiveness in which 4PSL is the median and 8PSL is the maximum attractiveness Pussy Cartel: The female domination of the Sexual Marketplace in regards to the ‘price’ of sex Sexual Marketplace: The current sex and dating scene SET: Sexual Economics Theory; the idea that human sexuality involves buyers and sellers, specifically that female sexuality has a higher ‘cost’ Simp: A man who invests time and/or money into a woman who isn't romantically/ sexually interested in them SMV: Sexual Market Value; a determination of someone's worth based on sexual appeal The Wall: The age in which a woman’s SMV begins to decrease, usually around mid-twenties 28 Hypergamy: Evolutionary Psychology and the Alpha Darwinian narratives about human nature are omnipresent within the incel community’s discourses. Shaped by incel rhetoric on gender and sexuality, inceldom’s representation of evolutionary mechanisms often follow the grain of misogyny, the gender binary and heteronormativity. Incels rely on Evolutionary Psychology (EP), in their justification of inceldom as an adverse life circumstance rather than a consequence of social and cultural phenomena. This move constitutes one part of the societal shift towards a scientifically ordained understanding of human behavior. Evolutionary psychology and animalcels both constitute a form through which social behavior is transformed into biological essence. These manifestations demonstrate the ways in which biological essentialism reinforces incel ideology. By painting human beings as agent-less and prone to primal evolutionary desires, incels reinforce gender difference and fortify hypergamy, female nature and inceldom as biological truth. Cucks and Betas The use of animal-related language on incel forums is one way that biological essentialism is reinforced. The incel wiki page contains a subsection titled animalcels, that details animals which incels commonly relate to due to the hypergamous nature of the species, or the specific dynamics of copulation. The incel wiki states that animalcels express how “hypergamy is not merely a human female phenomenon, but rather is replicated among females of multiple species of animals, and as such, suggests that 29 hypergamy is an innate characteristic of being female.”8 The term hypergamy, which is ubiquitous on incels sites, derived from the Hindu caste system. The original meaning refers to the practice of men marrying women from a lower caste (Blunt 1931:46-7). However in incel spaces, hypergamy is used to refer to the process in which women date or marry up in regards to status, looks, money, etc. Incels assert that women will always be searching for a ‘higher quality’ man i.e. a Chad, and incels therefore are left without sexual contact or female companionship. The hypergamous nature of women is cited as one of the primary reasons for the existence of incels. An example of an animalcel which incels relate to due to hypergamy is the elephant seal, the site details that: Elephant seals are some of the most polygynous animal species on the world. As such, a single alpha male will accrue up to 30 or even more of the females as a harem. Thereby, typically there are no females left for the other male elephant seals, thus relegating most male elephant seals to becoming truecels for the rest of their life.9 This quote expresses how incels project their experiences and identity onto the lives of animals. In the example of the elephant seal, the word ‘truecel,’ an incel specific term, provides the clearest example of this dynamic. Meaning those who are truly doomed to lifelong inceldom, the use of the ‘truecel’ demonstrates the way that these animals are depicted through the lens of incel ideology. Similarly to the discussion of truecels, the words ‘polygynous’ and ‘harem,’ normally used to discuss human relationship dynamics, are applied to the mating behaviors of the seals, expressing an anthropomorphization of these animals. Additionally the term ‘alpha male,’ is used as a descriptor for the elephant seal at the top of the social hierarchy. This term originates from classifications of wolf 8 9 https://incels.wiki/w/Animalcel https://incels.wiki/w/Elephant_seal 30 hierarchies and is used widely among incels and men generally to describe (akin to the chad) an attractive, dominant and sexually successful man. The application of this term onto elephant seals expresses both the extent to which human hierarchies are understood in relation to animal dynamics, and that these dynamics are seen as functionally equivalent in how they operate. The blurring of the animal and the human is also evident in the way terms such as alpha, beta and cuck(old) (which originate from animal classifications) are used in the incel community. By using the language of the human to describe the animal, and the language of the animal to describe the human, incels forge a cross species identity for the direct purpose of expressing universality and innateness of incel experiences. Animalcels draw a direct connection between the nature of the animal and that nature of the human. By doing so incels neglect the deeply social behaviors of both parties, instead representing humans as animalistic and driven by primal instincts. Rather than a product of a specific social and cultural context (through the use of animalcels) incels assert the implicit nature of incelibacy as a consequence of biological drives and processes. This representation furthers the domination of biological essentialism in regards to human nature, in ways that reinforce gender norms and diminish female agency. In the incel community as well as in many male dominated spaces, the terms alpha and beta are used to classify dominance hierarchies among men. Originating from the first letter of the Greek alphabet, the word alpha was first applied to animals by Rudolph Shenkel in his 1947 studies on wolf behavior. The term alpha was roughly synonymous with the lead wolf of the pack, and was applied to both male and female 31 wolves based on dominance competitions (Shenkel 1947:22). However, this research took place in a zoo among wolves who were not related, which creates very different conditions than what would be observed in the wild. David Mech, a foremost wolf researcher, realized the stark differences between wolf behavior in the wild and in captivity while doing research on wolves in the arctic. He instead expressed how wolf hierarchies usually formed around family structures (Mech 1981). Having used the concept of the ‘alpha wolf’ in previous works, Mech recanted his use of the term, and it eventually fell out of favor in scientific literature. However, the term and its significance had already become ingrained in our society's collective consciousness (Lilly 2015). The origin of the term ‘alpha male’ is somewhat more ambiguous than “alpha wolf.’ However, its tenuous origins can be traced to the concept of the ‘alpha’ in primatology research. This created a more salient connection between alphaness and human behavior. Franz de Waal’s publication of Chimpanzee Politics, popularized the idea of the alpha male (and the beta male in parallel) in terms of primates and created an implied connection between the dynamics of chimpanzees and humans (De Waal 1982). Although, Franz de Waal vehemently objects to the modern concept of the alpha male, his work sowed the seeds for the birth of this phenomena. In the 21st century, the alpha male has commanded a firm status in a western cultural repertoire. Although varying between regions and communities, the alpha male generally embodies attributes such as confidence, dominance, ambition, leadership and is representative of the hegemonic masculine ideal. 32 The development of alphaness makes evident the relationship between history and social context in the formation of the Alpha. However, this is a linguistic process and not merely a sociohistorical one. In Eric Russell’s 2021 piece Alpha Masculinity, Russell demonstrates the means through which Alpha male discourse is encoded into language, and the consequences it has on how masculinity is conceived (Russell: 2021). Russell uses the concept of enlanguaging, the process through which reality is constructed via language use, to represent the emergence and prevalence of the term. He expresses that rather than a social truth, the alpha male is a category that is continually constructed and refashioned through language. Due to the animalistic vocabulary of alpha masculinity, alphaness is associated with a primitive dominance and bestial tendencies. Russell states that the alpha male relationship between primal instincts and human nature becomes part of the “ideational projection of biological essentialism,”(Russell 2021:121). These relationships cement the male/female and alpha/beta binaries. This representation of the alpha male as a tool of biological essentialism, is deeply connected to prevalence of Evolutionary Psychology, and prominence of Darwinian logics within incel communities. The incel community has its own conceptualization of the alpha which intersects with other prominent incel concepts. According to incels, the alpha figure has the highest position on the dominance hierarchy.10 This hierarchy consists of more than is traditionally conceptualized by the alpha/beta dichotomy. Rather the hierarchy comprises: alpha males, beta males, omega males and the sometimes included sigma males. The 10 https://incels.wiki/w/Dominance_hierarchy 33 alpha males in the hierarchy play a role similar to that of the Chad, as the sexually successful and attractive man. The beta male is moderately sexually successful and is comparable to a normie or non-incel. The omega male however, is the classification most associated with incels, as they are unsuccessful sexually and inferior to alpha males. The additional classification of the sigma male sits between the alpha and the beta, constituting the ‘lone wolf’; they maintain many of the characteristics of an alpha but refuse to participate in the hierarchy. The sigma male position is one that is largely favored among incels. The construction of this hierarchy is deeply enmeshed with the forms of language used on incel forums and the way they express the nature of masculinity and dominance. Although scientifically inaccurate, the discourse of alphaness is most evidently structured through the language and imagery of the wolf. In one incel.is post, the poster linked a video with a corresponding caption. The video depicts two male wolves caught in a dominance display. In order to accurately portray what is occurring and not reinforce the alpha/beta binary, I will call the ‘alpha wolf’ wolf 1, and the ‘beta wolf’ wolf 2. The video begins with a low guttural noise and the camera shifts to show the two wolves. The video is taken within a wolf enclosure which is evidenced by the chain link fence in the background. The wolves are facing each other with the sides of their necks touching, wolf 1 appearing somewhat larger than wolf 2. Wolf 1 displays an upright posture with their chin positioned on the back of the other, right behind the head. Wolf 1 is making the growling noise heard at the beginning of the video and has their tail pointed upwards and wagging. Meanwhile, wolf 2 has a lowered posture with its tail 34 pointed at the ground. They continue to shift around with wolf 1 keeping his head above wolf 2. After a small scuffle, wolf 1 positions his head on the back of wolf 2 and proceeds to mount them from the front. The wolf 1 continues to growl and maintains that position, while wolf 2 waits with its head below the other's abdomen. After wolf 1 dismounts, the wolf 2 tries to flee; he is pursued by wolf 1 and they rush off camera. The poster captioned this video: It's so obvious who is the dominant male, heck it would be even obvious even without that dominance display. Observe the strength and bones of those two wolves. One wolf looks way bigger, wider ([Facial Width-to-Height Ratio] for humans), bigger paws and legs (wrists and frame for humans). Now would a female wolf reproduce with this Beta/Omega wolf or Alpha? Obviously Alpha, every female in that pack wants that Alpha D. Even if Beta tries to do something, Alpha instantly puts him down (bullies and femoids in the human situation) (Incels.is: May 13 2018). In this quote, the poster creates an obvious parallel between human and animal dominance hierarchies. They compare the physical characteristics of the two wolves and use parentheses to represent the human equivalent. The first parallel that the poster uses is the comparison between the ‘alpha wolf’ being larger and wider with Facial Width-toHeight Ratio in humans. The concept of Facial Width-to-Height Ratio in incel communities is thought to predict dominance and aggression.11 By associating images such as size, strength and dominance with the ‘alpha wolf,’ they become representative of a prominent male figure. This is also evidenced in the posters discussion of sexual success in relation to dominance. They express that female wolves must necessarily desire to procreate with the alpha male. This instance represents the projection of incel ideas of the sociosexual hierarchy onto wolves. Although hierarchical position is not 11 https://incels.wiki/w/Facial_width-to-height_ratio 35 indicative of sexual success in wolf communities (Mech 1981), the poster reinforces a dominance based conception of the relationship between masculinity and sex. Through this lens, a lack of masculinity equates to sexual deprivation. This passage expresses not only that the ‘beta wolf’ is lower in the hierarchy than the alpha wolf, but that being less dominant makes them inherently inferior. As a result of how the alpha wolf embodies masculine ideals such as dominance, leadership, power, and violence, beta wolf-hood becomes synonymous with emasculation. Through this dynamic the incel positions themselves as the beta/omega wolf, both expressing their innate inferiority and their lack of masculine attributes. However, the classifications of alpha, beta and omega are inconsistently applied within incel spaces. As scholar Debbie Ging expresses: “Some argue that men, having swallowed the red pill, should reject their beta status and strive to achieve alpha masculinity”(Ging 2017:13). Whereas, other incels assert forms of beta masculinity or reject the dominance hierarchy altogether. Although tenuous concepts, due to their artificiality and shifting meanings; the roles of alpha and beta within the incel community serve a variety of purposes. Principally they function to reinforce normative concepts of masculinity, and represent those who deviate from them as inherently inferior. Through the discussion of animals, masculinity is represented as a biological characteristic which has consequences in a variety of facets of the manosphere. The word cuck is another prevalent term in the incel community that originally derived from the observation of animals. Short for cuckold, this term was first used to describe the behavior of the cuckoo bird, which lays its eggs in the nest of the other bird 36 species. Therefore causing another bird to raise the cuckoo’s young. Now, the word is commonly used to describe a man whose wife sleeps with other men. The word cuck is also used outside of this context as a pejorative for a man who is “spineless or effeminate.”12 This language is based on the politics of ownership over female bodies. This is exemplified in the quote previously mentioned in the third chapter: As a man who has a daughter, you are LITERALLY dedicating at least 20 years of your life simply to raise a girl for another man to enjoy. It is the ULTIMATE AND FINAL cuck(Incel.is: Feb 22 2019). This individual describes how he perceives having a daughter to be the pinnacle of cuckoldry. In this instance, OP is using cuck to describe an instance more clearly mirroring the way the term is applied to birds. Here the man would raise a daughter only for “another man to enjoy her.” Based on the reference to time spent on a daughter, and the concept of another man enjoying her, this excerpt configures cuckoldry to mean putting time and effort into a woman without attaining sexual contact. This also fits within the second definition of cuckoldry. This positions the women as the object of sexual possession rather than an agent. This representation is in line with the representation of women as sexually passive. However, women certainly do not escape animalistic and biologically essentialist conceptualizations of their behavior. Although the incel community often depicts women as less sexually desirous, women often fill the double role of being sexually passive and perverse. The second of these labels is applied in the Incel Wiki’s definition of femoid: Hybristophilia, scelerophilia and hypergamy are [women’s] hardwired personality settings. These settings were modeled after female mammals that you can find at Kruger National Park or in Masai Mara. The criteria among 12 https://incels.wiki/w/Cuckoldry 37 female mammals for male partners in these game reserves or ecosystems is often for whomever is the most brutal and cruel. Femoids are secretly embarrassed about these desires as they are irreconcilable with civilizational values.13 This quote expresses the dual representation of woman as object and animal. The words such as “hardwired,” “settings,” and “femoids,” represent women as a technological apparatus. However the words “hardwired,” and “settings,” serve the dual purpose of expressing the biologically endowed nature of female desires. The terms “Hybristophilia,” and “scelerophilia,” represent women as being attracted to criminality and masculine aggression. This is furthered through the comparison of female attraction to mating preferences exhibited among mammals. The references to African wildlife refuges is also pertinent in creating the conceptual background for the discussion of the ‘wild’ and ‘primitive’ nature of women. It's impossible to ignore the racial dimensions of such a comparison especially in reference to the over sexualization of black women. This representation of a monstrous female sexuality is racialized especially in relation to the idea that their “desires…are irreconcilable with civilizational values.” The depiction of uncontrollable female sexuality is also evident in the incel concept of animalcels. One instance that exemplifies this dynamic is the mating habits of the praying mantis. The animalcels section of the Incels Wiki states that: The praying mantis is an insect. This animal is sometimes cited by those in the incelosphere to demonstrate the importance of sex. For the male praying mantis, sex is more important than his own life. He enters into the copulation process knowing full well that it is going to conclude with him in the female's belly. He knows he is going to die, yet he pursues the sex anyway. Some IQcels 13 https://incels.wiki/w/Femoid 38 and evolutionary biologists posit that this is because, as far as natural selection is concerned, sex is more important than life itself.14 In this depiction, the praying mantis plays the role of a femme fatale. She lures in her mate with pheromones, beheads him mid-copulation and consumes his corpse. For incels the male praying mantis serves to express the deep importance of intercourse. However, this also portrays female sexuality as monstrous and dangerous. The depiction of women as animalistic and prisoners to their desires serves to dehumanize women and diminish their agency. By using animals to represent inceldom, incels participate in a dehumanization of the self. The comparison of animal behavior to human behavior serves the specific purpose of representing human actions, desires and abilities as biologically determined. In doing so incels express the nature of their inceldom as an inherent biological phenomenon rather than a product of our social and cultural world. In doing so they create narratives which profess the innateness of gender roles and further biological essentialism. Female Nature The prominence of scientific rhetoric within incel forums plays a significant role in the perpetuation of the ideology. These discourses are prevalent in many facets of the incel community, from their emphasis on IQ to the concept of the scientific blackpill. However, no discipline is as pervasive as Evolutionary Psychology (EP) within the incel community. In these settings EP, constitutes a ‘scientific’ background for incel beliefs. 14 https://incels.wiki/w/Praying_mantis 39 This section will attempt to make sense of the use of EP by incels, in order to explore the facets of inceldom’s representation of gender and biology. Evolutionary Psychology is a discipline that views human behavior through the lens of our evolutionary past. This approach “argue[s] that a comprehensive understanding of any aspect of human behavior cannot be achieved without due consideration of the selective forces that have shaped that behavior in our evolutionary past, and which may continue to do so in the present”(Roberts 2011:16). EP combines qualitative and quantitative methodologies in order to assess human behavior in relation to supposed evolutionary forces. By analyzing human subjects in this way evolutionary psychologists seek to provide “ultimate explanations for behavior” (Roberts 2011:16). These ideas have been taken up within the incel community in order to substantiate incel conceptualizations of gender and biological innatism. Evolutionary Psychology is ubiquitous in the incel community as an explanatory mechanism for female nature and the blackpill (the idea that inceldom is systemic). Co-opted from anthropological discourses of human nature, female nature is used to profess the inherent biological basis of female behavior. Lacking the social and cultural dimensions of anthropological work, female nature is used to express the hypergamous, weak and untrustworthy nature of women. EP theories about early human evolution are used to concretize female nature as a result of reproduction and the conditions of hunter-gatherer societies. However, these interpretations are often based on incorrect assumptions about gender and the dynamics of foraging communities. 40 What incels often forget is that while the data drawn from EP research is accurate, that data is also interpreted through the researchers contemporary understandings of evolution and gender. Modern conceptions of gender feed into the sort of conclusions and representations that are drawn from data. When incels use and interpret EP, their assumptions about gender are inscribed into their conclusions. The prevalence of eugenics and false narratives about human evolution in incel spaces furthers the unreliability of their interpretations. The Incel communities' reliance on gendered notions of the division of labor and understandings of genetic morality, rewrite history through the lens of a strict gender binary. One way that false assumptions about biology are used to construct theories about human evolution is through the prominence of eugenic rhetoric in incel spaces. Based on incorrect notions about the genetic superiority of Chad, incels assert that they are cursed with bad genes, thus relegating them to inceldom. The notion of genes as having an attached value draws on eugenics and the conception of genetic predispositions. The concept of eugenics is based on the work of Francis Galton. Using Darwin’s concept of natural selection, Galton hypothesized that this mechanism could be accelerated to improve the human race (Mukherjee 2016:64). He expressed that eugenics could be used to “give the more suitable races or strains of blood a better chance of prevailing speedily over the less suitable”(Mukherjee 2016:65). His observations and use of the pseudoscientific data to explain traits such as intelligence and beauty were used to construct the idea that such features were biologically determined. Others used his 41 conclusions as evidence that traits such as criminality, mental illness, feeble-mindedness and idiocy were passed down generationally. This oversimplification and misunderstanding of genetic mechanisms was inspired by Galton's own notions of racial superiority. The idea of some individuals as genetically superior has been utilized historically to oppress marginalized communities. Eugenics has most notably been used by the Nazi’s during WW2 to justify the extermination of Jewish peoples, but has also contributed to white supremacy and forced sterilizations in America (Mukherjee 2016). Although eugenics is commonly understood to be pseudoscientific, notions of genetic value are still steeped into modern discourses. On Incel sites beliefs about genetic superiority are mostly applied to Chad and his mogging (domination) of incels. The notion of Chad’s superiority is based at least partially on the idea that women sexually select for the best genes. The attraction that women experience towards Chad is used as evidence for his superiority. One incel expresses that: The black pill has taught us that women are attracted first and foremost to signs of high genetic quality, such as a tall masculine frame or chiseled jawline, and that your dating success is heavily correlated with your perceived attractiveness (Incels.is: Nov 8 2019). The notion that attractiveness connotes higher genetic quality is founded on Eugenic rhetoric. This logic finds a basis in positive eugenics (Saleeby 1909), which encourages the procreation of the ‘suitable,’ as an alternative to the sterilization of the ‘unsuitable.’ In this example women are eugenicists and arbiters of genetic change in the human population. Female sexual attraction is a form of control that ensures the population is ‘bettered’ with each subsequent generation. Therefore the genetically ‘unfit’ incels are 42 unable to procreate. This interpretation relies on the reading of evolution through the lens of the incel inferiority complex. Incels’ notion of their genetic subservience to Chad, rather than a biological truth, is a concept birthed out of pessimism and the incrimination of women. This is exemplified in the passage: Bad chemistry = inferior genes. Females do not see most males as sexual beings, even healthy and young ones. Once they analyze a male's genetic traits/ looks, there is no going back (Incels.is: April 23 2018). This quote expresses the idea that women are not attracted to those with inferior genes. In this post female sexual selection is predetermined due to genes. However, this conceptualization of natural selection pushes the blame onto women while simultaneously claiming that this phenomenon is beyond their control. Under this logic, inceldom is a natural consequence of the human genetic process of reproduction and is thus a natural part of the human condition. By expressing their inceldom as innate, incels reinforce their incelibacy as biologically determined rather than a product of their actions. When ideas of good and bad genes are used to construct evolutionary theories, what is produced is a bastardized narrative. Birthing ideas such as: Chads having a higher prevalence of Neanderthal DNA, or the existence of a cowardice gene. These evolutionary interpretations express the extent to which incorrect assumptions about human development come to shape how modern human behavior is conceptualized. This also influences the way that ideas about an evolutionary basis for gender are reproduced on incel forums. Incels beliefs about the conditions in which humans evolved rely deeply on assumptions about gender. Incels depend on gendered notions of the division of labor in a 43 way that rewrites history through the lens of a strict gender binary. The idea that women gathered and men hunted is one example of the ways human evolutionary history has been rescripted with western gender norms. This concept is used in incel spaces to extrapolate about the dynamics and conditions in which sex roles emerged, and to create theories about human behavior. However, as evidenced by the work of many anthropologists, this gendered division of labor is less concrete than societal notions might suggest. Misconceptions about the roles of men and women in hunter-gatherer societies is likely the fault of early anthropologists and their over emphasis on the behaviors and social relationships of men. According to The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers: Anthropology traditionally neglected to study women; this led to theories that overly emphasized men. Durkheim categorized Aboriginal men as sacred and women as relatively profane. Radcliffe-Brown concluded that the patrilineal, patrilocal ‘horde’ was the basic unit of Aboriginal society. Service postulated that the patrilocal band, which kept male hunters together, was the natural form of social organization for hunter-gatherer societies (Endicott 1999). The lack of emphasis on the roles of women in foraging communities within classical anthropological work has contributed to incorrect beliefs about the labor and importance of women. Within the incel community, theories about hunter-gatherer societies position women as dependent on men for their survival and protection. This misconception is used as a basis for the incelosphere’s understanding of early human evolution and for their construction of anthropological theories about human society. Before embarking on an analysis of hunter-gatherer societies, it is essential to note that contemporary foraging groups are at best a vague glimpse at what prehistoric 44 communities might have looked like. The assumption that modern day hunter-gatherer groups are stagnant remnants of early human societies is deeply flawed. In reality we know very little about the conditions under which humans evolved. Rather, an understanding of contemporary hunter-gatherers offers an opportunity to unsettle flattening generalizations about the sameness of these communities by expressing the vast diversity of practices among hunter-gatherer societies; all while remembering that these communities are deeply situated in the present. The extent to which there is a gendered division of labor between hunting and gathering is deeply societally dependent, and differs between groups. Endicott notes that: “The stereotype of man the hunter, woman the gatherer accurately describes only how many forager peoples divide daily work responsibilities. In reality, many hunter-gatherer men also gather vegetable foods and women procure animal foods, though the latter is not always called hunting”(Endicott 1999). The gendered division of labor described here is not nearly as firm as is normally conceptualized. Endicott expresses that these societies differ in relation to food production, but in many communities men also engage in gathering depending on the time of year or presence of game. Endicott elaborates that some women also participate in hunting: “Anthropologists have tended to say that men hunt meat but that women gather or collect it, even when the animals are the same,” however, hunting practices between men and women largely differ (Endicott, 1999). This expresses a potential bias on behalf of the researcher, but also represents the extent to which hunting is masculinized. Especially in incel spaces, meat consumption is conceptualized as a masculine activity, evidenced by the derogatory term ‘soyboy’. These 45 notions of gender roles no doubt ground the ways incels approach and understand early human behavior. This is expressed in the incels.is post: In the Paleolithic, men hunted and women gathered. This strategy was already a vast improvement over other mammal species food procurement strategies as it combined the benefits of both a high-risk/high-return strategy (hunting) and of a low-risk/low-return one (gathering), which is something that no other animal species had ever achieved before. (Incels.is: Sept 30 2019) Putting aside the previously discussed hunter/gatherer binary, this quote expresses the overvaluation of the importance of meat. While gathering may be low risk, it is definitely not low return: “gathering was an important part of the foraging way of life….in the extant foraging societies of the tropics, women, but also men, gathered food regularly, and this food was the main source of calories for the whole group”(Dahlberg 1981:2). Rather than secondary to hunting, gathered food constitutes the staple of these communities. In fact it was likely the basis of gathered food that allowed for the advent of hunting practices (Dahlberg 1981:2). This concept disrupts incel conceptualizations of female mate selection as dependent on the male procurement of meat. As meat is not only one part of the diet, but often shared communally. However, Incel theories still represent women as dependent on men, as exemplified by this post: Observations made often throughout history, [suggest] that women lack agency and are passive creatures that desire to be acted upon by a male. This is inline with the bodyguard hypothesis of female evolutionary psychology: Women are physically weak and lack social power so their position is naturally a submissive one.15 The bodyguard hypothesis according to the Incels Wiki page refers to the concept that women choose the most dominant partner as a form of protection from other men.16 This 15 16 https://incels.wiki/w/Scientific_Blackpill https://incels.wiki/w/Bodyguard_hypothesis 46 quote represents the extent to which modern conceptions of gender are applied to past societies. Dahlberg expresses that modern individuals are prone to “appl[ing] concepts of hierarchy appropriate to our own society and fail[ing] to understand women’s status when it is quantitatively different from that in our society”(Dahlberg, 1981:3). However, there is legitimate psychological research on the Bodyguard Hypothesis, although phrased somewhat differently: “heterosexual pair-bond [as] reduction in risk of sexual aggression from other males”(Wilson and Messnick 1997). The use of legitimate EP research in a misogynistic manner begs the question, are incels incorrectly using EP? or does EP as a field lend itself to sexist readings of gender? In order to explore the dynamics of Incel EP use, it is important to understand when incel and EP understandings overlap and when they differ. In order to do so I will compare EP research on hypergamy and mate selection, with Incel beliefs about the same topics. In doing so I hope to illuminate the dynamics of incel EP use. The EP article “Rational Choice and Evolutionary Psychology as explanations for Mate selectivity,” offers one interpretation of how hypergamy may function. This work uses an analysis of dating sites in Tel Aviv to analyze how the male to female ratio affects mate selection (Bokek-Cohen 200:53). The researchers hypothesized that due to the higher parental investment of women and other factors, women would be in general more sexually selective, i.e. hypergamous. However, they also hypothesized that rather than being consistent, women’s mate preference would shift based on the availability of men. The data for this study was tested empirically, and results were determined. According to the research women were more sexually selective than their male counterparts. However, 47 counter to incel ideology, this selectivity was primarily based on non-physical characteristics. Additionally, the data analysis supported the second hypothesis, that women’s mate preference is fluid and shifts in response to spouse availability. This contradicts incel notions about women's universal desire for Chad and disdain for other men. Despite the similarities in the mate selection data (that women are more selective), Incels and Evolutionary Psychologists drew vastly different conclusions. While incels often view EP research as infallible, the authors of this work expressed the possibility of additional factors in their results: “we cannot rule out the possibility that there were some unique social, political and economic circumstances unrelated to marriage squeeze that may be responsible for our findings”(Bokek-Cohen 2007:53) The incel interpretations of EP represent a huge potential for biased conclusions. As incels filter EP research through the lens of their misogynistic perspectives, they are prone to drawing conclusions based on their assumptions. However, Feminist analysis of EP expresses that these misinterpretations may be only one part of the story. The clash between feminists and evolutionary psychology has been an extensive and well documented phenomenon in the realm of gender research. Centering on the emerging emphasis on the scientific determination of gendered behavior, EP has been increasingly weaponized against feminist discourses. Feminist scholar Deborah Cameron contextualizes this societal shift towards a renewed emphasis on the role of biology in human behavior through the concept of the new biologism. She expresses that the new biologism is “one manifestation of a larger ‘Darwinian turn’ in the study of 48 human behavior”(Cameron 2009:173). Inspired by an increasing academic interest in the biological innateness of behavior, “advocates of the new biologism contest the belief that male–female behavioral differences are effects of social and cultural processes. They argue instead that many such differences are biologically based, produced by evolutionary processes which have led the two sexes to differ not only in the obvious physical ways, but also in their cognitive abilities, their psychological dispositions, and consequently their habitual ways of behaving”(Cameron 2009:173). Cameron sets this as the contextual background for the emergence and prominence of EP. Through drawing a relationship between evolution and the human brain, evolutionary psychologists have sought to solidify psychology within the realm of science. However, feminists and social scientists alike have expressed the reductive nature of understanding human behavior solely through the lens of biology. The new biologism forms one facet of the social context for EP’s prominence; however, this shift is also marked by feminist discourses. As scholar Rachel O’Neill elaborates: “The cultural authority of EP at this time can be understood as part of a wider backlash against feminism. By locating the origins of sexual difference in the past, EP lends ideological support to the postfeminist credo that women and men are naturally and properly different”(O’Neill 2016:346). With this insight, the ubiquity of EP on incel forums is unsurprising. Like animalcels, the use of EP expresses the innate differences between men and women, thus lending itself to misogynistic constructions of female behavior. Furthermore, the essentialization of gender shifts the blame for inequality away from men and the patriarchy and instead places it as a consequence of our biology. 49 The application of EP to the gender binary serves as an example of the dangers of applying EP conclusions too liberally. Feminist Lynne Segal elaborates on these overgeneralization in her criticism of EP: “The central point, made repeatedly by the critics of those evolutionary psychologists who are busy reversing the reel to explain why we are the way we are, is that changes in genetic structure, which may survive as adaptations to particular environments, are precisely what Darwin saw them to be: 'local adaptations’”(Segal 2000:6). Like in Darwin’s research on the beaks of Galapagos finches, where the finches' specific physiology was deeply tied to their environment, the effects of evolution on human development are shaped by time and place. The creation and application of totalizing theories about human evolution are not only untrue to the processes under which evolution functions, but prone to false assumptions about our evolutionary past. However, the over application of these theories is often not the fault of evolutionary psychologists, but the new biologism and those who would encourage its ideological domination. Rather, Cameron advocates that “EP should not be crudely characterized as an approach that attributes everything to ‘nature’ (in the form of genes) while giving no weight to ‘nurture’ (environmental/cultural influences). On the contrary, it seeks to move beyond that dichotomy by arguing that the adaptations which produced human nature resulted from the demands made on humans by their physical and social environment interacting with biological mechanisms”(Cameron 2009:175). Cameron emphasized that EP can in fact offer an escape from the new biologism’s scientific hegemony through the destruction of the nature/nurture binary, thus facilitating more complex understandings of human relationships. 50 It is not that the research and data of psychological work on gender differences is inherently wrong, it is that the interpretations of such research are situated within our society's gendered beliefs. When in the hands of incels, EP becomes a tool of gender oppression, used to erase gender hierarchy and reinforce gender difference. By asserting that women's behavior and status are biologically situated, incels perpetuate the myth of gynocracy through the obscuration of social inequality. Conclusion The extent of EP and animalcels on incel forums exemplifies how biological essentialism breeds firm notions of gender difference. The concept of animalcels and the use of animal-related language to describe the human, function to reinforce biological essentialism through the comparison of humans to (biologically driven) animals. This approach neglects the complex social behaviors of both animals and humans thereby expressing the natural and unconscious conditions of human behavior. This conceptualization is emblematic of Cameron’s idea of the societal tendency towards the new biologism and its effects of creating scientific rather than social understandings of human behavior. This is emphasized through how incels have come to interpret evolutionary psychology as a totalizing explanation for human behavior without reference to its limitations. Incel explanations of human nature become grounded in biased interpretations of scientific phenomenon. In this way, Incels are creating anthropological theories that lack anthropological insights. It is partly the new biologism 51 that has allowed for the growth and development of incel pseudoscientific rhetoric on the grounds of biologically ordained. Glossary • • • • • • • • • • • • • Animalcels: Species which incels relate to based on (a) the hypergamous nature of the species or (b) their sexual behaviors. Blackpill: A more pessimistic iteration of the redpill, inceldom is systemic and individual action cannot remedy it. ○ Redpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom. Bodyguard hypothesis: That women have an evolutionary preference for large dominant men who can protect them from other men. Chad: An attractive, sexually successful man. Cuck(old): An abbreviation for cuckold; originally meaning a bird that raises another bird’s young. Used in Incel spaces to represent men with disloyal wives, especially those who have sex or get pregnant with other men. Can also refer to men who are weak and effeminate. Dominance hierarchy: The sociosexual hierarchy of men based on dominance and aggression. ○ Alpha male: Top of the hierarchy, attractive and sexually successful. ○ Beta male: Average normie or non-incel; somewhat sexually successful. ○ Omega male: Incel; inferior and lacking in sexual success. ○ Sigma male: Lone wolf; Individual with Alpha attributes that rejects the dominance hierarchy. Facial Width-to-Height Ratio: A ration Incels use as a predictor of dominance and aggression. Female nature: The natural state of women; hypergamous, deceitful, etc. Gynocentric soyciety: A society of weak men who unfairly privilege women. Hypergamy: The idea that women are always seeking the most attractive and successful man, i.e. Chad. Used to explain inceldom. IQcel: Intelligent incel LDAR: Short for ‘Lie down and Rot,’ the only option for blackpilled incels. Truecel: An incel who is truly doomed to inceldom. Opposite of Fakecel. 52 Blackpill: The Uncomfortable Truth and the Comforting Lie The redpill and the blackpill are belief systems that have become deeply ingrained in the way inceldom is constructed. The concept of the redpill emerges from the film The Matrix, In which the protagonist Neo is awakened to the reality of the world by taking the redpill. This concept has been taken and used widely among the manosphere and alt-right communities for a variety of ends. However, what is common within these uses is the notion that those who take the redpill therefore become privy to a set of information to which the general public is ignorant. In the context of inceldom the redpill means being awakened to the reality of male oppression under inceldom. Advocates of the redpill often encourage -maxxing, self improvement and confidence as a way to ascend (stop being an incel). This logic sees incelibacy as a personal state which an individual must work to overcome. The blackpill furthers and deviates from this concept by expressing a more pessimistic view of male-female relations, in which rather than a personal failing, inceldom constitutes a form of marginalization. The blackpill as present in the incel community refers to: “a philosophy that men's dating problems require systemic rather than personal solutions, if a solution exists at all. It has emerged in opposition to the redpill movement which instead promotes self-improvement and various dating tricks.”17 The blackpill therefore emerged as a response to the failures of the redpill to account for what they perceive as the systemic nature of inceldom. This chapter will analyze a variety of manifestations of the blackpill within incel spaces. Here, the blackpill functions both to create the narrative of incel 17 https://incels.wiki/w/Blackpill 53 marginalization and to recruit new incels through pessimistic rhetoric. Here I will grapple with the ways that incel suffering is both an experiential reality and a narrative used to obscure privilege. Through this analysis I hope to illuminate the ways that incel ideology is proliferated and reproduced. The War on Masculinity Within incel discourse, inceldom is almost always in opposition to gender equality and the feminist movement. On forums, incels routinely express alternate forms of masculinity which result in the reestablishment of normative masculinity and the rejection of the feminine. Within these circles feminism and femininity is framed as the enemy, and women are perceived as privileged due to their societal status. The belief in gynocracy, or a society in which women hold power over men, is used to position men as a marginalized group. The idea that our society is gynocratic also reinforces the notion that masculinity is under threat from the female establishment. By representing women as their subjugators, incels construct the myth of their own oppression. In their work on anti-feminist movements Chafetz and Dworkin describe 1980’s men’s rights movements as countermovements. They use Mottl’s definition of “a countermovement as a conscious, collective, organized attempt to resist or to reverse social change”(Mottl 1980:620). Within the realm of feminism, countermovements seek to undermine the aims of feminism in order to reaffirm male power. Chafetz and Dworkin express that “countermovements are pro-institutional in character, that is, supportive of the establishment and the status quo”(Chafetz and Dworkin 1987:35). This exemplified in 54 men's rights movements by the rejection of feminist ideologies and the push to reinforce traditional gender roles. In this way, Inceldom functions as a countermovement through their opposition to feminism and their enforcement of the patriarchy. However, inceldom has another dimension in that incels support the establishment while simultaneously expressing their opposition to it. The myth of gynocracy paints incels as revolutionaries fighting against an unjust system of power, when in reality they are reinforcing normative structures. This section will explore the ways that anti-feminist narratives and the notion of masculinity on the decline permeate the incel community. The language of inceldom is thus subversive of feminist narratives and formulated through the lens of men’s rights. The concept of eroding masculinity has spurred a variety of responses from different men's rights movements. Jie Liang Lin in her work on the MGTOW or (Men Going Their Own Way) movement, expresses how anti-feminism takes on a variety of forms within the manosphere. This movement advocates for the creation of a male only society which is freed from corruption by women. Lin expresses that this is a form of anti-feminism that diverges from traditional antifeminist ideals. She notes that MGTOW is framed within masculinist ideology and is “opposed to the feminization of culture— less than the advancement of women as a group—which masculinists believed had devalued male identity”(Lin 2017:82). The idea of the feminization of culture is prominent within incel beliefs. Here, one Incels.is member expresses the importance of father figures in the face of gynocracy. 55 When society doesn't encourage or teach masculinity, when schools shame and ignore what makes a man a man and when the media preaches perverse values, not having a proper father figure leaves boys completely in the dark on the matter. I believe having a good father will shield a boy from the harms I listed for the most part (Incels.is: Nov 28 2021). This narrative is expressed through the idea that society has devolved into a gynocracy in which women hold social power over men. Therefore without strong father figures to represent the masculine ideal, men would be raised as soft and effeminate. This notion structures society as fundamentally against masculinity, therefore positioning it in a state of crisis. Within the MGTOW community the solution to this crisis is framed as an escape from women altogether. Incel ideology is often framed through the language of feminism in an attempt to subvert its alleged power. The etymology of the term femoid is representative of this larger trend. The word femoid first arose within the manosphere as a response to the discourse surrounding the use of ‘female’ among men as a descriptor. Many women “complained that incels were using the scientific term 'female' instead of 'woman' in incel forums. And instead of choosing a more neutral word [incels] chose a more dehumanizing term, 'femoid', to make fun of women hating the word 'female'.”18 I see this as an example of the larger phenomenon of men’s rights movements borrowing language from women in order to formulate their own stances. This is exemplified in the RAW (R*** All Women), not all men, and #NotMe movements in the way that they coopt feminist discourse in order to contradict them. These discourses have their own 18 https://incels.wiki/w/Femoid 56 degree of prominence in the incel community depending on which feminist discourses are currently circulating. In short, Inceldom is an ideology built on negation but framed in the language of revolution. By positioning themselves as opponents of the oppressive structure of gynocracy, incels assert a marginalized identity. The Language of Victimhood Incel identity is continually reaffirmed through discourses of suffering, marginalization and deprivation. The move to brand themselves as oppressed has specific consequences for the way that inceldom is conceived. Where the ‘War on Masculinity’ serves to position men as oppressed under gynocracy, language of victimhood is used to consolidate power through expressing the oppressive consequences of gynocratic society. This section will introduce some of the ways that incels represent themselves as a marginalized group, and how these representations function as a power tactic. However, seeing the pessimistic ideologies of inceldom as solely a malicious mechanism of control, ignores the very real suffering and insecurity that incels experience. I will attempt to grapple with the dual functions of suffering as narrative, and suffering as experience, in order to unpack the complex dimensions of this cynicism. The blackpill offers an avenue for understanding, but no reprieve from the insecurity, isolation and distress that incels experience. By digging themselves into a hole of despair in order to gain acceptance, incels reproduce the conditions of their agony. The concepts of hegemonic masculinity and hybrid masculinity offer explanations for the contradictory dynamics of incel ideology. Following the shift away 57 from sex role theory in the 1970s and towards a focus on power relations, Connell coined the term hegemonic masculinity to express the relationship between masculinity and larger social structures. Inspired by Gramsci’s notion of hegemony (Gramsci 1971), Connell and Messerschmid elaborate on the notion of hegemonic masculinity (Connell 1983) and its role in gendered power relations. Hegemonic masculinity describes a form of idealized, normative masculinity which sustains itself as an ideological practice (Connell and Messerschmid 2005). Hegemonic masculinity is also specific in the way that it distinguishes itself from other masculine forms. Elaborating on the idea of hegemonic masculinity, Bridges and Pascoe introduce hybrid masculinity as an alternate and oppositional construction (Bridges and Pascoe 2014). They describe hybrid masculinity as the way that primarily White, Heterosexual men assert a minoritized status and position themselves in contradiction to hegemonic masculinity. This is also accompanied by the incorporation of elements associated with the activism of minoritized communities. Men who take on forms of hybrid masculinity, attempt to assert themselves in opposition to the hegemonic masculine ideal, but end up reinforcing it. Ging expresses a similar sentiment to the notion of hybrid masculinity in her reflections on incels and the manosphere. She discusses the manosphere more broadly and the ways that masculinity is constructed and conceptualized in these spaces. Ging notes that: “the discourse of white male suffering has become a dominant trope in American culture and is a deliberate strategy to reinstate the normalcy of white male privilege through the articulation of its loss”(Ging 2017:11). 58 In this sense, the men of the manosphere take on a minoritized position in order to reaffirm their power. However, in many Incel spaces this rhetoric serves not only as a power tactic but as a deeply held belief system. Among the incel community, incels utilize the narrative of their suffering (due to hypergamy and their lack of sex) as both a recruitment tactic and a way to reinforce their ideology. By representing their oppression, incels consolidate their power. One way that incels assert a subordinate social status is through their mogging by Chad. Whose power, dominance, and sexual success positions him above incels in their sociosexual schema. Due to this incels express their inferiority within the system as evidence of an oppressive hierarchical order. This belief intersects with hybrid masculinity in the way it structures incels in opposition to the normative masculine ideal. Through positioning Chad as the foil of incels, they express themselves through an alternative masculinity. Bridges and Pascoe conceptualize this through the lens of the patriarchy moving and adapting to the increasing societal acknowledgement of its existence. They note that: “When privilege becomes visible…it does not necessarily cease to exist. But, the experiences of privilege by privileged groups do change, as do the ‘legitimating stories’ or justifications for existing systems of power and inequality” (Bridges and Pascoe 2014:256). This idea illuminates how male suffering is used to conceal the privileges that incels have under the patriarchy. By rejecting the existence of the patriarchy in favor of gynocracy as the overarching oppressive structure, incels conceal their privilege and thereby reinforce it. One way that the narrative of incel 59 suffering serves to reinforce power is through the comparison of inceldom to poverty. As discussed previously, by representing incelibacy as a state of poverty, incels describe inceldom as an adverse life circumstance and demonstrate their deprivation. One incels.is poster states that: In the end it‘s not your wealth, but joy, happiness and fulfillment of life is what matters. And having sex and love are the requirements to have it. And this is where even the poorest African (or any third world inhabitant)brutally mogs the average first world incel. To make it more clear: The only reasons to live are sex, love, reproduction. They have a life, we don‘t. We are poorer than them (Incels.is: Feb 12 2022). In this quote OP represents incelibacy as not only parallel to, but worse than physical poverty. This incels expresses love and sex as central to human happiness, and thus represent sexlessness as a form of sub-humanity or deprivation. This demonstrates a larger trend within the incel community in which incels paint sex as a fundamental human right, and its denial as a form of profound suffering. What this quote conceals is the immense privilege that western incels have over the global poor. Additionally, incels obscure the extent to which society benefits them through continually asserting the power and privilege of women. One way that this occurs is through the incel meme of ‘tutorial mode.’ This meme is based on the language of video games and expresses the idea that women live life on ‘tutorial mode’ and therefore experience no difficulties or hardships.19 One incel asserts that tutorial mode itself does not capture the extreme freedoms that women are granted, instead expressing that women live life on story mode. 19 https://incels.wiki/w/Life_on_tutorial_mode 60 In story mode there is no losing or having to learn skills. They go with the flow on everything and it always works out. It's like those shitty story games where the choices don't matter cause they still end up winning in the end. Their lives are like fantasies that I can only dream of. Be the loved child with loads of friends and having everything done for you, worry about menial shit like the prom and getting the quarterback Chad to notice you in the stands, smoke weed and hop on the back of your motor cycler bad boy bf, travel and shit on someone else's dime. It's all a series of stories with no losing involved (Incels.is: Feb 5 2022). Here, the belief that women have it easy only corresponds to their romantic and sexual relationships. As incels’ suffering stems from their difficulties in dating, the supposed effortlessness with which women gain male attention and romantic partners is seen as an immense privilege. The ‘tutorial mode’ meme fails to account for the systemic disadvantages that women experience in all other walks of life. The irony is that incels’ blindness to their privileges perpetuates their feeling of oppression. Despite the extent to which incels’ rhetoric of marginalization reasserts their power, I think it is unfair to entirely reject incels suffering as a false narrative. This approach wouldn’t fully account for the vastness of pessimism, suicidality and anguish in the community. This suffering is written onto the language of the blackpill and has become synonymous with incelness. In this way, inceldom is constructed through the language of suffering. An example of the way this functions is through the concepts of LDAR, ‘cope or rope’ and ‘it's over,’ which all express the hopelessness associated with inceldom. LDAR (lay down and rot) refers to the act of giving up and refusing to strive for wellbeing or accomplishment. “Blackpillers also particularly like to use the term to describe their own situation after reaching a point of fatalism born from sexual in- 61 opportunity.”20 Similarly, coping or roping is another response that incels use after accepting the blackpill. It refers to the process in which an individual must either find coping mechanisms to deal with their incelibacy, or kill themselves. Coping also has associations with rejecting the blackpill and shielding oneself from the harsh reality of the world. This creates an environment where the only options are the rejection of the world as it is, or leaving the world entirely. Additionally, he term “it’s over,” is used to express defeatism towards a specific condition or circumstance. On incels.is, ‘it's over’ is one of the major tags (or prefixes) used to classify posts. The tag is shown as a black icon with the words ‘it's over’ accompanied by a noose; there are approximately 6,000 threads under this tag as of April 2022. Other popular tags on the site include brutal, suicidefuel and blackpill. I included these examples not to show incel suffering through a voyeuristic lens, but to impress the ubiquity of suicidal mentalities and fatalism in the incelosphere. Here, inceldom offers a place for incels to vent about their experiences and struggles, but offers no opportunity to escape those difficulties. The incelosphere thus becomes an echo chamber of depression, in which to be a good incel is to suffer greatly. The use of depressive rhetoric within the incelosphere stems from individual feelings and is reproduced through incel ideology. Addressing the ways that individual incels find solace in the incelosphere is essential to understanding the relationship between insecurity and incel membership. The discourses surrounding suffering and hatred within the incel community serve to indoctrinate new incels. This process is deeply tied to radicalization and its unique functions on the internet. 20 https://incels.wiki/w/Lay_down_and_rot 62 The process of indoctrination on the internet has often been blamed on the online sphere itself rather than individual actors. However, Archetti in her work on online radicalization among islamic extremist groups expresses that: Such views are simplistic in their technological determinism– the belief that a technology, due to its mere existence, must produce certain effects. They overlook the fact that it is always humans (governments, citizens and extremists among them) who use technology as a tool to advance their own goals and that audiences… actively select and embrace–rather than merely absorb–messages they are interested in (Archetti 2015:50) This idea is central to the way that inceldom operates via the internet. Although, it is easy to state that an entirely online ideology such as inceldom is a fatal flaw of technological advancement. It is more appropriate to see the internet as a tool through which incel ideology is propagated. Through this perspective, it is more apparent the ways that incel indoctrination functions similarly to offline indoctrination. In his work on indoctrination in China, Robert Jay Lifton lays out criteria for thought reform that are central to the process of indoctrination. He explains how indoctrination is facilitated by social isolation, the blurring of the moral and the scientific, linguistic systems and the revelation of ‘truth’(Lifton 1989). This concept illuminates how a variety of aspects of the incelosphere participate in the indoctrination process. The vastness of incel specific language shapes the discourses of inceldom such that “their capacities for thinking and feeling are immensely narrowed”(Lifton 1989:430). Similarly, the use of EP on incel forums is used to defend incel moral beliefs as scientific truths. Therefore opinions that contradict inceldom are “not only immoral and irreverent, but also ‘unscientific’”(Lifton 1989:428). Furthermore, the language of the redpill represents the incel ideology as the truth of the world, making all other viewpoints deceptive and 63 false. The common experience of incel isolation also participates in the indoctrination process by restricting the individuals access to other systems of knowledge. The framework of liminality offers additional explanations for how new incels become integrated into the community. In his work on rites of passage, Turner expresses that seclusion, the relationship of neophyte to elder, and instruction are central components of these rites (Turner 1964). The idea of seclusion provides an explanation for the prevalence of incel isolation. Turner describes that in many rites of passage: “solitude is liminal between boyhood and manhood”(Turner 1964:100). Within the incel community, social seclusion allows incels to become easily indoctrinated; however, this insight illuminates that isolation is itself part of the indoctrination process. Furthermore, Turner writes that “the essence of the complete obedience of the neophytes is to submit to the elders but only in so far as they are in charge…of the common good, and represent in their persons the total community”(Turner 1964:100). Neophytes (which Turner uses to describe liminal subjects) defer to the authority of their elders throughout the rite of passage, thus creating a hierarchy premised on knowledge and social standing. Within incels.is, the process in which an individual becomes an identifiable member of the community is through the phase of being a graycel. “A graycel (formally called a recruit) is a user on the forum incels.is who has 499 or less posts on the forum. Once they have posted 500 posts, they are no longer a graycel and have achieved Officer rank on the forum.”21 Here, the graycel occupies a similar position to the neophyte, in which they go through a process of learning and transformation in order to become a socially recognized 21 https://incels.wiki/w/Graycel 64 member of their community. Through the notion of instruction, the circulation of knowledge becomes central to the liminal process. Turner describes that during the rite of passage, neophytes are instructed on “the main outlines of theogony, cosmogony, and the mythical history of their societies or cults…these constitute the crux of liminality”(Turner 1964:103). The process in which the secrets of one’s society are taught to emerging members, mirrors the processes of incel membership. Through being a graycel and interacting with forum posts, incel are slowly introduced to the main beliefs and ideologies of inceldom. It is through this process in which they learn to accept and identify with incel ideology. These examples represent the way that individuals are introduced to incel ideology through exposure to its ideas and rhetoric. Men who are insecure, unattractive or unsuccessful in love are more likely to come into contact and accept incel ideology. One former incel express that they: Felt fundamentally lacking, and the incel community preys and thrives upon the inadequacy of disaffected men. This sense of deficiency helped me stomach the disgusting and toxic ideas that I believed to be true. While in some sense it felt gratifying to have what you've been through be recognized. The incel community had no intention of helping me out of the pit I found myself in, they preferred that I stayed buried with them.22 This quote expresses a critical point on the incel indoctrination process, that inceldom feeds on the insecurities of men but offers no reprieve from their suffering. This former incel expresses that the way the incel community gave voice to his problems made him feel seen and understood. However, that recognition comes at the expense of continual self doubt and hatred. The blackpill perpetuates itself cyclically through both recruitment https://www.reddit.com/r/aromantic/comments/k3sg16/a_former_selfidentified_incels_ experience_with/ 22 65 and ideological hegemony. Here the blackpill is an experience of suffering, a recruitment tactic and a method of power consolidation. These functions coalesce to form the basis of a belief system built on suffering and denial. Conclusion The multiple functions of the blackpill are at once contradictory and cooperative. The ideology of the blackpill serves to represent incels as a marginalized group who experience paramount suffering due to the unjust nature of the world. However, this ideology conceals the privileges that incels have as western men. Due to incels social position it would be easy to dismiss inceldom as solely a project of anti-feminism and misogyny. However, while these factors are prominent, there is more to incel ideology than simply reactionary activism. Instead, many incels do suffer from profound insecurity, fatalism and suicidality. The blackpill therefore functions to recruit depressive men into an ideology that will only amplify their suffering. Here incel pain is rhetoric and experience. Incels both suffer and weaponize their suffering in ways that reinforce inequality. Glossary • • • • • • • To Ascend/Ascension: To have sex; To stop being an incel Blackpill: A more pessimistic iteration of the redpill, inceldom is systemic and individual action cannot remedy it. Brutal: Incels.is tag used to express harsh content Cope: To lie to oneself in order to keep living avoid a unpleasant reality Cope or Rope: The idea that the only options are to distract oneself from the realities of life, or kill oneself. Greycel/Graycel: An incel on incels.is with less than 500 posts Gynocracy: A society that disproportionately benefits Women 66 • • • • • • • • • • It's Over: Incels.is tag used to express fatalism and resignation LDAR: Short for ‘Lie down and Rot,’ the only option for blackpilled incels. Lookism: Prejudice based on one's physical appearance MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way; A movement that advocates for the formation of a male only society Mogg: To express dominance over another Not all men: A response to negative generalizations about men RAW: R*** All Women; A male response to the Kill All Men (KAM) movement on social media Redpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom, individual action can help one escape incelibacy Suicidefuel: Incels.is tag used to discuss depressive topics Tutorial mode: The idea that women face no difficulties such that their life mirrors the tutorial mode on a video game 67 Evangeline: Incel Futurism Representations of the future feature heavily in the ways that incels imagine solutions to their condition of sexlessness. Incels draw on understandings of the past, and the possibilities of future technological advancements in how they visualize ideal incel societies. Throughout this chapter, I make a distinction between incelibacy as experience and inceldom as ideology, a distinction that incels themselves do not make. However, this difference is central to incel imaginings of the future. The condition of incelibacy rather than the ideology of inceldom is what incels seek to extinguish through these solutions. The ways that incels conceptualize modernity and the past are central to understanding the relationships between ideology, identity and experience. These utopian visions illustrate the ways that incels reconcile paradoxes and obscure ideology. Reject Modernity, Embrace Tradition The ways that incels imagine a brighter future of inceldom often rely on the incorporation of traditional values and outdated cultural norms. The ideas of enforced monogamy, paternalistic control over women and a rejection of feminism are central to incel conceptualizations of an ideal future. Through these concepts incels express a form of longing for the pre-Feminist era in which inceldom was supposedly non-existent. In his work on liminal spaces, Victor Turner observes rites of passage in order to understand the relationships between liminality, adolescence and subjunctivity. He expresses how individuals involved in rites of passage exist in a transitory space which breeds subjunctive potentialities. Turner states that: “another way of putting it would be 68 to say that the liminal in socio-cultural process is similar to the subjunctive mood in verbs - just as mundane socio structural activities resemble the indicative mood. Liminality is full of potency and potentiality”(Turner 1979:465-6). Borrowing from the functions of subjunctive mood in language which is used to explore hypothetically or express wishes, Turner illustrates that liminal spaces open up arenas for the engagement with potentialities beyond the mundane. He asserts that: “since liminal time is not controlled by the clock it is a time of enchantment when anything might, even should, happen” (Turner, 1979:465). Within incel spaces, liminality features in both incels societal position and the contradictory ‘here and there’ nature of incel ideology. Incels who are mainly between the ages of 18-25 are undergoing a turbulent period of uncertainty in which they begin the transition into adulthood. This era of emergence into society is a potent period of self exploration. This potency is reflected in the ways that incels are led to affiliate with incel beliefs. Additionally, the liminality of incel spaces is represented in the strange paradox of incel ideology. Incels are bridging the space of existence and nonexistence and their beliefs are based on a desire to ascend and escape the pains of incelibacy; however, if their ideals came into fruition they would cease to exist. In this way, inceldom is a terminal belief system predicated on its own destruction. The ‘here nor there’ nature of incel ideology is deeply influenced by the relationship between the past and the future. Borrowing from the idea of liminality, Amy Malek discusses the ways that members of the Iranian diaspora grapple with displacement through imagination, artistic generation and nostalgia. She argues that the concept of subjunctive nostalgia is central to the ways that pre-Revolutionary Iran is 69 conceptualized. Rather than simply a return to the past, subjunctive nostalgia “is a creative production beyond recalling memories of the past or projecting what should be in the future, focusing instead on foreclosed possibilities: what could have been”(Malek 2021:142). The concept of subjunctivity in incel spaces both differs from and relates to Malek’s understanding of subjunctive nostalgia. Unlike members of the Iranian diaspora, incels both call for a return the past and mourn the lives they could have lived in a preFeminist world. One incels.is poster expresses these dual sentiments in their statement about the solution to inceldom. There is only one solution to this growing problem and it's going to upset the forces that want to control and destabilize society. Change back the laws in favor of traditionalism to the pre-feminism era. Yes, turn back the clock. The cancers in society are growing, but they can still be excised and society can be given a chance to heal. It's not an overnight fix, of course, but this will heal society over many decades and generations to come. For us in today's world, however, it's completely and absolutely over (enjoy your copes, buddy boyos). But for future generations, there may yet be hope. (Incels.is: Feb 19 2022). In this quote nostalgia is expressed both through the desire to reestablish traditional values and the pining for a world in which those values already existed. The assertion of traditional values represents pre-feminism as the ideal site of incel prosperity. The metaphorical turning back of the clock represents a form of nostalgia that seeks to imitate the past in order to construct the future. However; this hope is also accompanied by the mourning of what could have been. This quote composes a form of pre-Feminist subjunctive nostalgia in which the imagining of a life before feminism shapes how the future is envisioned. Incel envisionings of the future are deeply tied to a shifting idea of the past. However, this imagined past is multi-local and undefined. The types of ideals and beliefs 70 that incels associate with the past express the forms that pre-feminist nostalgia takes within the community. Within incel spaces the idea of gynocracy shapes incel selfconceptualizations. As one incels.is member states: Patriarchal societies naturally emerged to be stronger as men in patriarchal societies had reason to fight (i.e their family).Now since the whole world has become one society again due to globalization with no reason to fight with one another. So the world again reverted back to matriarchal and degenerate. And it is going to remain like this where honorable incels are forced to commit suicide and beta males are becoming slaves for chads. (Incels.is: Jan 24 2022). This post expresses the ways that the myth of a declining patriarchy shapes imaginings of an incel future. This post expresses that the solution to inceldom lies in a return to the patriarchy and values of this supposed period. Incels’ idea of a patriarchal society transcends male power and extends to full control over the lives and agency of women. This representation of the past is a world in which incelibacy does not exist and thus offers an imagined reprieve from the hardships of celibacy. The idea of an incel-less past shapes a variety of the ways that solutions to inceldom are conceived. One incels.is poster expresses their view of how past norms are superior to current societal dispositions. For thousands of years our ancestors chose to create an enforced monogamous environment for men… After world war 2 feminism gained traction and enforced monogamy was basically abolished. Now you may believe that this was a great thing, that women were finally given the freedom to choose a mate regardless of societal pressures and norms. But you've got to understand… that all women are naturally hypergamous. (Incels.is: Dec 29 2021) This quote situates monogamous marriage as the solution to inceldom. Ignoring the fact that our society is largely monogamous, this post calls for a return to monogamy in order to increase the ease and availability of sexual relationships. Here monogamy is not simply the union of two people, but a relationship initiated and controlled by a man. This notion positions the blame for inceldom on female agency. The idea of women's choice as 71 the main cause of incelibacy is ubiquitous on incel forums ranging from the notion of hypergamy to the belittling of feminism. Here patriarchy is envisioned as total control over female actions and is seen as the arbiter of justice and wellbeing for incels. This is evident in many solutions that incels propose such as this incels assertion that: “The only fucking treatment to prevent inceldom is to take away the financial independence of women”(Incels.is: Sept 21 2021). And “The only solution is for governments to enslave young foids from 14-27 where they can be put on open markets' '(Incels.is:, Jan 18 2022). These quotes represent the fantasy of total control over women which underlies so much of incel social imaginings. The dehumanization and subjugation of women offers an easy solution to those who have already rejected women's’ humanity. This section elaborates on how incels imagine a vision of the future in the image of the past, and mourn the possibilities of a lost pre-feminist era. Through exploring the period of time before the inception of incel ideology, Incels conceptualize a world in which their suffering no longer exists. As Inceldom is an ill of modernity, the past opens up possibilities for incel ascension and the end to suffering under gynocentrism and hypergamy. No Chad’s Land: Incel Utopianism Beyond a return to the past, incel imaginings of the future offer technological solutions to incel problems. Technologies such as cloning and artificial partners offer supposed opportunities for the development of incel societies separate from the pressure of the larger world. Incel representations of the future express the ways that modernity is 72 seen as both the cause of and the solution to inceldom. By analyzing incel imaginings of the future I hope to illuminate the ways that the nature of incelibacy is conceptualized. In his 1964 work The Art of Conjecture, Bertrand de Jouvenal introduced the idea of futuribles and the way that they relate to how the future is conceptualized (de Jouvenal 1964). As the future is inherently unknowable, de Jouvenal expressed that futuribles represent possibilities rather than realities. They are “the composites of all possible alternative futures, which we can further discriminate into ‘well-defined alternative possibilities, sets of plausible and presumptively true predictions.’ They do have a kind of existence”(W. Bell 1987 quoted in Riner 1991). The idea of plausible futures is central to the way that futurity of the near and far is imagined. Bell elaborates that: “The future is not an overarching leap into the distance; it begins in the present.... for in the decisions we make now, in the way we design our environment and thus sketch the lines of constraints, the future is committed”(Bell 1971). The notion of a past that builds from the present is central to how incels conceptualize modernity and antiquity. As the previous section suggested, incels envision a return to the past in the ways that they structure possible futures. However, even the technologically advanced and socially distinct imaginings of the future are still tied to the possibilities of the present. This section will explore the ways that incel visions of the future are entrenched in the realities of the present, in order to illuminate the social function of utopian idealism. Incel notions of freedom from incelibacy figure technology both as potential solution and as something with horrifying potentialities. Inceldom's reliance on the internet for the community's existence creates interesting representations of technology 73 and its relationship to humans. One incel describes the possibility of the world being a simulation, and how this technology could both perpetuate incelibacy and offer an opportunity for its abolition. Just thinking about this world being a simulation and how that relates to inceldom. I came to the conclusion that it would be better to live in one for a simple reason. If blackpill is just a natural process then that means there's literally zero hope. But if it's a byproduct of some alien god program then there's the remote possibility they could change it for whatever reason. Even if it's just a .00000001 chance the point is it still would be better”(Incels.is: Feb 24 2022). This post borrows deeply the 1999 film The Matrix, in the conceptualization of a simulated reality. Constituting a form of redpill literalism, this quote moves beyond an incel conception of the redpill ideology, and envisions a world in which a literal redpill could free them from the pains of incelibacy. Here technology is configured as an oppressor; however, its ‘unrealness’ offers a possibility for reprieve. Similar to many ideas about the formulation of incel society, this quote features an overthrow of the system as it is. Modernity thus features as threat and possibility, creating pathways for new futures. These possibilities create ways for incels to conceptualize their futures in parallel to the emergence of new technologies. One incels.is member expresses the possibilities for inceldom afforded by future technological advancement. [We should have] a strong organization in order to explore transhumanism. Cloning foids and then reprogramming them in order to love us. At the end we could move to an uninhabited place (incel.is: Jan 29 2022). This passage expresses a world in which the benefits of technology offer new opportunities for incel societies. Here the ideal incel utopia is marked by the blurring of technology and the human. The idea of transhumanism is specifically relevant in the way that women are represented. This incel suggests cloning women as a way to create new 74 generations of women, a process which is enabled by technology but is dependent on biological characteristics and processes. However, OP also offers up the idea of reprogramming women into ‘loving incels.’ This idea blurs the line between representing women as humans and representing women as machines. This evokes a world in which women only exist as agent-less entities and do not bear the marks of human intelligence or personality. This quote is also fascinating in the way it envisions technologies that are just out of reach of contemporary science. The idea of cloning in humans is not currently feasible, but the emergence of gene editing technology and its use on humans makes the potential for human cloning seem evermore possible. MGTOW notions of separation from women as a solution to the problems of gynocracy is a recurring trend in incel imaginings of a utopian society. Through separating themselves from women and Chads, incels hope to create a world where they can thrive. One incel.is poster expresses their vision for an incel world: For me it would be a brotherhood of men where productive assets are equally owned by male members and resources distributed based on one's contribution aka mental and physical labor… All important matters are decided by electronic public election where every man is given exactly one vote. There is a copy of every man's genetic information kept in the national DNA library. Once members reach a certain age, they are legally given the right to reproduce or rather clone themselves…Upon conquering other countries, first the females are eradicated and then the males are given an opportunity to join the nation as initiates (or die).... In short, no money, no hierarchies, no females to compete over and no male infighting. A society of immortalized men united by a common goal/enemy.”(Incel.is: June 16, 2021). This post represents a world in which incels have overtaken society and established their own utopia. This utopian society borrows from Marxist ideas about distribution and ownership in a society which is populated solely by men. In The Communist Manifesto, 75 Marx expresses his belief that: “Private property must be abolished and in its place must come the common utilization of all instruments of production and the distribution of all products according to a common agreement-- In a word, what is called the communal ownership of goods”(Marx 1848:60). The society which this incel describes mirrors Marx’s notion of ownership and distribution through a model in which: “productive assets are equally owned” and there is “no money [and] no hierarchies.” This produces an interesting dynamic in relation to the economic metaphors discussed in Chapter 3. Within redpill ideology, women are configured as a private good in which one's access is determined by attractiveness and SMV. These metaphors coincide deeply with a capitalist worldview. Whereas in these imaginings of the future, ideas of communal ownership, equitable distribution and an absence of money are central to the construction of utopian worlds. This also extends to how relationships with women are imagined as shifting from private ownership of agentive women to public ownership of robots and clones. This notion illuminates the differences between redpill and blackpill world views. The redpill represents a resignation to the world as it is, whereas the blackpill creates more expansive imaginings of the way that the world could be. This is also a world in which technology opens up new opportunities for male livelihood. As a world without women in our current society would mark the extinction of humanity, incels imagine technological substitutes for reproduction as an escape from reliance on women. The idea of cloning, DNA libraries and electronic voting are concepts which are either achievable, or have the potential to be achievable in the near future. This image is also necessarily a colonial one. In establishing a new world order, incels must 76 overthrow the old. This incel sees the conquering and indoctrination of other cultures as the solution to the creation of the ideal world. While many representations of incel uprising feature the idea of a revolution against the oppressive system, this vision is one of violent subjugation of others in the pursuit of their righteous path. This also features the eradication of women as an important step in the establishment of this society. Women are thus positioned as the cause of inceldom. Therefore the solution to incelibacy is the creation of a society without need for women. This section focuses on ways that incels imagine and represent the ideal futures for incel society. Technology offers opportunities for the end of incel suffering and dependence on women. Despite the immense pessimism on the incelosphere, imaginings of an incel utopia offer optimistic pathways for the incel community. Through the use of these technologies, incels hope to eradicate incelibacy while leaving room for the continuation of incel identity and community. Conclusion How incels represent the past and the future illuminates how they conceptualize their status in relation to larger societal norms. These imaginings of the future feature supposed solutions to incelibacy that do not recognize the prevalence of incel ideology. As incels imagine themselves to be plagued by an adverse condition rather than a member of an ideological movement, incels obscure the extent to which their belief system figures in their experience. By refusing to make a distinction between incelibacy as experience and inceldom as ideology, incels disguise ideology as objective truth. This 77 is deeply connected to one of the major paradoxes of incel ideology: Incels want to ascend through ending inceldom, but if they did so they would cease to be incels and their movement would die. Inceldom would therefore be a movement built on the hope of its own destruction. However, the futures that incels imagine illuminate that this is not quite the case. The solutions of a return to tradition, enforced monogamy, patriarchy and technology; propose an eradication of incelibacy, not inceldom. Rather, incel utopian imaginings represent the possibilities of a non-existent incelibacy and a ubiquitous inceldom. The lack of acknowledgement of incel ideology conceals what incels truly desire: the end of incelibacy and the ideological hegemony of inceldom. Here the experience of incelibacy is converted into the ideology of inceldom through the erasure of ideology. Without the troubling subjective nature of belief, inceldom becomes truth. 78 Conclusion This thesis has elaborates on the variety of ways that incels build identity out of a shared experience of denial. By representing their community as one built on experience rather than belief, incels reinforce their power and authority. Incelibacy is thus represented as a condition caused by hypergamy, sexual denial, biological gender differences, gynocracy and female sexual liberation. These causes represent inceldom as both ailment of female action and power, and a natural consequence of our biological and social world. This approach ignores the social history through which their notions evolved. Through language, appeals to science, the narrative of oppression and imaginings of the future, incels have constructed an all-encompassing world view. However, incels refusal to acknowledge the ideological basis of their community, spurs experiential representations on ideological phenomena. By depicting inceldom as an experience, incel ideology represents itself as truth. Incels conceptualize themselves as rejecting western society while at the same time ignoring the ways their beliefs are entrenched in a western worldview. The complex interplay between capitalism, biological determinism, gender essentialism and antifeminism situates incel ideology at the nexus of western social beliefs. The economic metaphors prevalent in the incelosphere express the direct ties between incel beliefs and western capitalism. While at the same time, incels imagine an ideal future in the model of a communist utopia. These contradictions express the paradoxical nature of incel beliefs and as both an expression of protest of and a return to the status quo. The complex and 79 contradictory nature of inceldom necessitates further exploration in order to unpack the nuances of incel beliefs. A continuation of this project would involve contextually situating inceldom within the larger domain of the manosphere and looking more in depth at specific phenomena. The manosphere which includes groups such as men's rights activists, pick up artists and MGTOW, has beliefs that relate and differ from that of incels. Further research could elaborate on the nuances of incel beliefs and their relationship to larger beliefs of the manosphere. Additionally, this research could look more into the relationships between these groups, such as the tension between incels and pick up artists, in order to illuminate the specificities of incel beliefs. A continuation of this project would also entail more emphasis specifically on the functions of language in this domain. I initially intended to use language as the central point of my project, but shifted away from this in order to prioritize painting a more holistic portrait of incel beliefs. If I were to continue this project I would focus more specifically on how language functions in the project of identity construction. More research in this domain is necessary on both a micro and macro level, in order to illuminate the complexities of incel ideology. In order to express the functions of incel ideology, I often made generalizations about incel beliefs. Rather than homogenous, incels have a great diversity of perspectives which this paper did not fully capture. I often noticed disagreements between incels surrounding topics such as EP and the redpill. The tension between the blackpill and the redpill is one of the biggest instances in which incel beliefs diverge. Redpilled and blackpilled incels both have a similar understanding of how the world functions, but vast 80 different approaches to escaping incelibacy. Therefore, differences in beliefs often arise between subscribers of these two belief systems. Additionally, my over reliance on the Incels Wiki site as an arena for gauging general incel belief may have played a role in the creation of such generalizations. Specifically because the Incels Wiki paints a very unitary picture of inceldom, that is shaded by how incels want to be perceived, it is far from an unbiased source of information. I tried to supplement information I got from the Incels Wiki with incel.is posts, but I cannot guarantee that the information I provide is an unbiased representation of incel beliefs. Furthermore, I can not eliminate the potential for trolling within the incelosphere. The things that incels say usually range from ridiculous to horrifying, and this means that I might have used quotes literally that someone posted satirically. Although I tried to use quotes that reflected general sentiments within the community, I cannot rule out the possibility of having misinterpreted posts written in a joking manner. An understanding of the incelosphere illuminates the ever-changing construction of masculinity within a contemporary framework. This conceptualization of masculinity is deeply shaped by the conditions of separation that are fostered by the internet. The immense isolation which incels experience in their daily lives imbues the interactions that occur on incel forums with additional meaning. Many testimonies of former incels cite that their feelings of isolation served to reinforce their involvement in incel spaces. This isolation allows incels to accept central beliefs of inceldom, such as the idea that very few men have regular sex. When incels only interact with other incels, the 81 perpetuate a very insular perspective on sex and relationships. However, these interactions also facilitate a sense of belonging. Interactions on incel forums maintain an affective charge which gives incels a feeling of community and understanding. Incels likely benefit from the community engagement of the incelosphere despite the depressive nature of incel spaces. Here, incel forums serve as a site of male camaraderie which is facilitated by the shared experience of suffering. Incels use these forums as a substitute for real life social interactions with other men. However, this isolation from in person interactions likely facilitates further involvement in the incelosphere and further isolation. Inceldom therefore serves as a reprieve from and the cause of a lack of male friendships. Inceldom reflects a rising sentiment among men in western society. Arising out of the internet, reactions to contemporary feminism and the increasing isolation of the modern world, the incel movement is increasing in vocality. In accordance with larger discourses of the manosphere, the alpha male movement, and the influx of misogynistic podcasters; the incel movement is one iteration of misogyny evolving to fit the current era. I fear that inceldom will only become more and more ubiquitous within the coming years. Research on all facets of the incelosphere therefore is essential to combat the rising tide of online misogyny. 82 Glossary • To Ascend/Ascension: To have sex; To stop being an incel Animalcels: Species which incels relate to based on (a) the hypergamous nature of the species or (b) their sexual behaviors. • Betabux/ Beta provider: When a man provides emotional/ financial support to a women, in order to gain sexual access • Blackpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom, systemic change can help end incelibacy • Bodyguard hypothesis: That women have an evolutionary preference for large dominant men who can protect them from other men. • Brutal: Incels.is tag used to express harsh content • Chad: An attractive, sexually successful man. • Cope: To lie to oneself in order to keep living avoid a unpleasant reality • Cope or Rope: The idea that the only options are to distract oneself from the realities of life, or kill oneself. • Cuck(old): An abbreviation for cuckold; originally meaning a bird that raises another bird’s young. Used in Incel spaces to represent men with disloyal wives, especially those who have sex or get pregnant with other men. Can also refer to men who are weak and effeminate. • Dominance hierarchy: The sociosexual hierarchy of men based on dominance and aggression. • Alpha male: Top of the hierarchy, attractive and sexually successful • Beta male: Average normie or non-incel; somewhat sexually successful • Omega male: Incel; inferior and lacking in sexual success. • Sigma male: Lone wolf; Individual with Alpha attributes that rejects the dominance hierarchy. • Facial Width-to-Height Ratio: A ration Incels use as a predictor of dominance and • aggression. • Female nature: The natural state of women; hypergamous, deceitful, etc. • Femoid/Foid: A woman; A combination of the words Female and Android • Greycel/Graycel: An incel on incels.is with less than 500 posts Gynocracy: A society that disproportionately benefits Women • Gynocentric soyciety: A society of weak men who unfairly privilege women. • Hypergamy: The idea that women are always seeking the most attractive and successful man, i.e. Chad. Used to explain inceldom. • Incel: Involuntary Celibate • Incelibacy: The condition of being an incel • Inceldom: Incel ideology • Incelosphere: The online domain of inceldom • It's Over: Incels.is tag used to express fatalism and resignation • IQcel: Intelligent incel 83 • LDAR: Short for ‘Lie down and Rot,’ the only option for blackpilled incels. • Lookism: Prejudice based on one's physical appearance PUAHate: Pick Up Artist Hate; a popular incel forum prior to 2014 • -Maxx/Maxxing: Improving oneself in order to increase SMV or gain sexual/romantic success • Looksmaxx: Improve one's looks • Escortmaxx: Gain sexual success through hiring escorts • Statusmaxx: Improve one’s status • Moneymaxx: Gain wealth • SEAmaxx: Gain sexual success through going to South East Asia • MGTOW: Men Going Their Own Way; A movement that advocates for the formation of a male only society • Mogg: To express dominance over another • Nice guy: A man who supposedly deserves sexual/romantic partnership due to the qualities of their personality • Not all men: A response to negative generalizations about men • PSL: Acronym for; Puahate.com, Sluthate.com and Lookism.net. Used as a rating system for attractiveness in which 4PSL is the median and 8PSL is the maximum attractiveness • Pussy Cartel: The female domination of the Sexual Marketplace in regards to the ‘price’ of sex • RAW: R*** All Women; A male response to the Kill All Men (KAM) movement on social media • Redpill: Accepting the harsh reality of inceldom, individual action can help one escape incelibacy • Sexual Marketplace: The current sex and dating scene • Simp: A man who invests time and/or money into a woman who isn't romantically/ sexually interested in them • SMV: Sexual Market Value; a determination of someone's worth based on sexual appeal • The Wall: The age in which a woman’s SMV begins to decrease, usually around midtwenties • Suicidefuel: Incels.is tag used to discuss depressive topics • Truecel: An incel who is truly doomed to inceldom. Opposite of Fakecel. • Tutorial mode: The idea that women face no difficulties such that their life mirrors the tutorial mode on a video game 84 llllll k 85 h h h h 86   h 87 h h h h 88 h h 89