The Misogynistic Online Culture of Incels

Ahmed Sakr
Sep 2, 2018 · 5 min read

Something that we should all appreciate is the increasing acceptance of our sexual nature in many cultures. For several generations, sexuality was a taboo subject that our predecessors omitted from education and legislation, with the hope that it would reduce unwanted outcomes (e.g., teenage pregnancy). Today, thanks to many statistical studies, we all know that the absence of sexual education does not prevent teenagers from having sex, but it does decrease the chance of them having safe sex. It is much more beneficial for a society to fund sexual education to reduce sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

The male’s right-to-sex ideology is still prominent in many developing cultures. Several Asian countries (e.g., Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon) do not recognize marital rape as a criminal offence. Many eastern families raise their children in accordance to their biological sex; a male is encouraged to seek and establish a professional career, while the female is encouraged of a home lifestyle, where she would provide for a future husband and children.

Patriarchy is rooted in all nations, so that does mean western and developed cultures are not innocent in modern times, either. In many advanced, religious communities, women remain to be valued (in part) with their virginity. A woman’s virginity is often positively associated with her purity, an indicator of her qualification for marriage. Ironically, it is rare for anyone to subject men to the same virginity standard; in fact, the culture encourages men to have sex with as many women as they can. As a result, there is a worrying number of men that have an honest belief that they are entitled to sex; that men should be able to satisfy their sexual urges with a woman, for merely being a man.

Women often do not associate with the men mentioned above, for obvious reasons. Some men take it as a positive character building experience and take actions to start remedying themselves from this evil ideology. Others double-down and start coming up with a multitude of reasons for getting rejected: being ugly, not being a ‘bad-boy’ (a trendy guy that leads a risky lifestyle), and other wholly outrageous and fictional reasons. These men have found themselves to be a sizeable community, enough members to start a Reddit community and name themselves incels: Involuntary Celibates.

The Reddit administrators have banned the incels subreddit as of November the 9th, 2017 for infringing the violent content policy, under allegations that members have been encouraging rape. However, that did not stop the dedicated members from launching another nearly-identical subreddit, named “Braincels.” As of September the 2nd, 2018, the subreddit remains online and active with 37,800 subscribers.

The Braincels Subreddit homepage. Captured on September the 2nd, 2018.

The Subreddit banner depicts two men crowning a noble person, portraying enlightenment and power. The crowned man is intended to be an incel that has transcended into nobility for merely believing in incel culture. The imagery is supposed to convince the people joining incel culture that they are enlightened to feel this way regarding women. I am not surprised by the choice of the deplorable banner because incel culture is a small, unaccepted cult, and to retain the cult members, they must be made to feel superior.

Users of the subreddit submit content for everyone else to see, and usually, the material is about coping (i.e., living as an incel). Users typically prefer to convey their message in a meme-like format, which aims to exaggerate their claims. The incel culture has also formulated jargon that is used extensively to describe themselves, women, and “superior” men:

  • Incel: Involuntary celibate; a person that desires to have sexual relations but is unable to do so because of women refusing to have such relations with him.
  • Femmoid/Foid: A woman that refuses to have sex with incels, but incels claim that she easily gives her body up to a chad.
  • Normie: A normal person that has no trouble finding a relationship. This person does not struggle with the same issues as incels do.
  • chad: A “superior” man that has never struggled to seduce a woman and have sexual relations with her, using nothing but his looks and his ‘bad-boy’ vibe.

We are now well-versed with the central jargon that the incel culture uses. Let us take a look at some of the posts that are trending today.

Exhibit (a)

The user, /u/evilcel, is asking why do ordinary people confront incels about talking about women when they are virgins, but at the same time ordinary people have not experienced what it is like to be an incel. /u/evilcel is implying that because he has never received any affection from a woman in the past, then he is justified in ‘talking’ about them; I surround talking in single quotes because it is a vast understatement and misinformation. I have dipped into the post history of /u/evilcel, and I found a post that he published titled, “Female after she’s ready to settle down with her beta bux.” The post contained a very explicit GIF of a woman, with an abnormally widened anus, having anal sex. /u/evilcel was implying that every woman has sex with several men before getting married, that “open” her up. Not only is that incredibly offensive, /u/evilcel seems to be lacking biological understanding of muscles.

Exhibit (b)

The user, /u/sjsjdj978/, provided two pictures of the same Asian woman and her child, with the Asian woman expressing disturbed facial emotions in the second picture. The images claim that the Asian woman called the police on the black men for smoking, even though there were also white men smoking nearby. Even if this was true, it is anecdotal evidence of one single woman. /u/sjsjdj97 provided a stereotyping, contradicting title, “Asian foids are the biggest white supremacists whores.” First of all, it is contradictory to claim that the woman is Asian and a white supremacist at the same time. Secondly, /u/sjsjdj97 grossly mislabeled Asian women as whores because one single Asian woman has allegedly acted with a racial bias; that does not make her a whore.

I believe I have shown enough content to prove what a repulsive, misogynistic community braincels is. Many Redditors have been pressuring the administrators to ban the subreddit, but the administrators have yet to act. Reddit has very fixed policies that a subreddit must break before getting banned, and it seems that although the original incels subreddit did infringe the policies, braincels is floating in a grey area.

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