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The five core elements of incel ideology

Content warning: This blog discusses the views of men who hate women which can be offensive, upsetting, and rage inducing.

As boys scroll through their social media feeds, algorithms ensure they come across content promoting a dangerous world view. The manosphere is a network of websites, forums, and blogs promoting extreme misogyny. Incels are an online sub-group of the manosphere known for blaming women for their own lack of sexual and romantic relationships, or ‘involuntary celibatism’. Incels have been linked to over 50 violent attacks in the last decade.

Understanding how this community weaponises everyday misogyny to radicalise boys has become crucial for parents, educators, and anyone concerned about young people’s welfare to understand.

Using O’Malley et al. (2020: NP4989) we’ve broken down their ideology so you can get a better handle on who incels are and the messages that social media algorithms push to boys and young men.

The Foundation: Men’s Victimhood and Oppression

Incels believe that rather than women, it is men who are truly oppressed. They believe women sexually control men and lie about gender inequality, claiming that:

• family court systems are biased in favour of women
• women often make false rape allegations
• sexual violence and domestic violence are gender-neutral problems.

Incels argue that they are oppressed by ‘more masculine’ men and societal expectations about men’s appearance. But instead of recognising that these stem from patriarchal stereotypes, incels develop other theories to explain their supposed oppression, painting women and feminism as the problem. One such theory is the Sexual Marketplace…

The Framework: Sexual Marketplace Theory

The sexual market is the imagined idea that everyone has a ‘sexual market value’ (SMV) dependent on their attractiveness and desirability. They trade on this value to enter romantic and sexual relationships with others of a similar SMV.

Incels view their own SMV as low due to their physical appearance and lack of material wealth. Unlike the rest of the manosphere, incels are resigned to their low SMV, believing they cannot improve their value as the marketplace is rigged against them.

They resent women as they view them as falsely increasing their SMV through make-up, clothing, and a healthy lifestyle, as well as manipulating the marketplace with feminist ideas which inflate their SMV, such as body positivity.

They claim this leads to women unfairly making them involuntarily celibate through rejection as women only pursue sexual relationships with men of a high SMV, a.k.a. attractive men with nice cars and high-paying jobs.

This aggravates incels who find this frustrating and unfair. As men, incels feel that they should have access to women’s bodies and sex.

The Sexual Market theory shapes incels view of women’s nature which is…

“Women are Naturally Evil”

Incels argue that women’s primitive instincts for self-preservation steer their behaviour to use men for safety and procreation. We can’t help it. This supposedly explains women’s attraction to wealthy, muscular men (a.k.a men with a high SMV). Incels claim this biological drive for survival leads women to manipulate these men into relationships.

Whilst criticising women for their promiscuity with these ‘high value’ men, incels complain that women won’t have sex with them. Incels consistently repeat this contradiction of believing women should be chaste and provide men with sex. For example, incels advocate for it to be legal for men to buy sex from women.

When women decline incels’ sexual or romantic advances, incels characterise these women as narcissistic, dishonest, and evil, often interpreting the rejection as bullying and humiliation.

These beliefs about women’s nature allow for incels highly regressive views on gender.

The Response: Legitimising Regressive Masculinity

Again, Incels use regressive biological theories to argue that men should have power over women. They believe women crave sexualisation and that men are hard-wired to sexualise them and argue that sexual attraction to girls is biologically normal. They claim feminism has falsely labelled men’s sexuality as paedophilia.

Incels’ beliefs are entrenched in regressive views of relationships between men and women and seek to strengthen the unequal power structure that lead to women’s inequality.  

Incels dehumanise women by arguing they only have basic emotions, referring to them as ‘femoids’, ‘foids’ or ‘roasties’, and drawing on sexist tropes such as women being cheaters, gold diggers, and leeches. This encourages viewing women as animals or objects and are the foundations for incel’s ultimate conclusion.

The Conclusion: Justifying Violence

Incels’ belief system leads them to their ultimate conclusion: men’s violence against women is justified.

Incel forums are full of men discussing, joking, and threatening violence. Incels argue for the keeping of women as sex slaves, the massacring of women and girls, and other forms of violence. They collectively inspire and enact violence both online and off.

A product of mainstream values

The ultimate contradiction of incel ideology is that they view themselves as a rebel group who can see the truth. But incel ideology is really the concentration of current mainstream beliefs and norms.

Rather than rebel against, they reinforce stereotypical ideas of masculinity, gender roles, and existing unequal power dynamics.

To learn more about incels and their affect on young people, read our Many Good Men full report, published in partnership with Civic Digits.

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