- Nina Høy-Petersen, C-REX, University of Oslo: Researching incels: What we know and new directions
- Emilie Lounela, University of Helsinki: Interviews with current and former incels: constructing and leaving the incel identity
- Jan Christoffer Andersen, University of Oslo: Drifting in and out of the incel subculture
- Kirsti Sippel, University of Turku & Emilia Lounela, University of Helsinki: On cucks, sluts and science – Evolutionary justifications for involuntary celibacy, misogyny and victimhood in the Incel Wiki
Abstracts
Researching Incels: What we know and new directions
Nina Høy-Petersen, C-REX, University of Oslo
While understood as a cause of wicked acts for centuries, the internet provided the means for male sexual frustration to rise as a distinct terrorist threat. Subsections within the loosely organized online-community of ‘involuntary celibates’ have in recent years assembled strands of misogynistic and anti-feminist ideas to justify political violence. As the movement develops, shared grievance and ideological affinities with the far-right are becoming increasingly apparent. This talk presents an overview of current approaches to incel research, and proposes new directions. The opportunities and limitations presented by ethical guidelines and legislation associated with internet- and Deep/DarkWeb research are discussed.
Interviews with current and former incels: constructing and leaving the incel identity
Emilie Lounela, University of Helsinki
In this work-in-progress study, I interview both current and former incels to explore their experiences of becoming an incel, belonging in incel communities, and leaving. I also address the difficulties of defining violent extremism, especially when it comes to loose online communities with strong connections to mainstream misogyny.
Using discourse analysis, I examine how the participants construct inceldom and ideology. As there is a limited amount of interview research on incels, this study is explorative: using a wide set of interview questions in semi-structured interviews, I aim to capture the diversity of incel experiences and worldviews. I examine how the participants describe adopting and negotiating the incel worldview, how they position themselves in relation to masculinity as a social category, and how they present the relationship between online posting and offline worldview. In the case of former incels, I look into how they construct and present their experiences in retrospect, to gain insights into how disengagement happens and how, or if, their worldviews have changed.
This research provides new knowledge on how violent online content and collective victimhood intertwine with everyday community building and peer group belonging
Drifting in and out of the incel subculture
Jan Christoffer Andersen, University of Oslo
Debate is ongoing about the harm that misogynistic and extremist online communities pose to young men’s identities and their understanding of masculinities. Incels have become inextricably associated with misogyny and violence, a characterization that some who identify with the term contest. This presentation aims to provide a nuanced understanding of the online incel community by utilizing 14 interviews with men who identify, or formerly identified, as incels or involuntary celibates. I use a subcultural theoretical framework, and my analysis identifies three forms of subcultural involvement among incels: all-encompassing, active participation, and loose attachment. Lastly, I invoke the concept of digital drift to illustrate how incels can flexibly move across these categories, changing their level of involvement and attachment to the incel subculture over time. The most committed incels fully embrace their subcultural identity, while others maintain a fluid and temporal relationship with it. The presentation emphasizes the importance of critical and direct engagement with young men involved in various aspects of the incel subculture in order to counter the harmful ideologies it perpetuates
On cucks, sluts and science – Evolutionary justifications for involuntary celibacy, misogyny and victimhood in the Incel Wiki
Kirsti Sippel, University of Turku & Emilia Lounela, University of Helsinki
Incel (“involuntary celibacy”) online communities have received increasing academic and public interest in recent years, especially following acts of mass violence connected to incels. These online communities share a strong sense of masculine victimhood (e.g., Blommaert 2018) and misogyny (e.g., Ging 2019) due to their perceived absence of romantic and sexual interest from women alongside feelings of marginalization.
With the growing cultural authority of evolutionary psychology in rationalizing gender differences and inequalities (O’Neill 2016), incels are also especially fond of pseudoscientific interpretations of evolutionary theory in justifying their misogyny and victimhood. Incels present themselves as logical, non-ideological and rational (Ging 2019), differentiating themselves from “emotional” and “childlike” women. Naturalization and biological determinism justify their nihilistic worldview, The Black Pill, while utilizing evolutionary pseudoscience frames the ideology as definitive.
In this article, we examine how incels construct gender in Incel Wiki articles entitled Scientific Blackpill, that claim to use “a neutral tone and convey the scientific findings without judgment”, while talking about “female sneakiness and nastiness” and “sluts”. Using discourse analysis, we unpack the ways in which evolutionary psychology and biology are used to naturalize misogynist ideology, presenting inceldom as unnatural as well as a discriminatory byproduct of feminism.