Revision as of 13:56, 10 May 2018 view sourceMiacek (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users13,481 edits →Terminology and causes: added a reference to a superb novel← Previous edit | Revision as of 14:07, 10 May 2018 view source Miacek (talk | contribs)Extended confirmed users13,481 edits →Ideology of the "black pill": this is a widely held belief in incel forumsNext edit → | ||
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== Ideology of the "black pill" == | == Ideology of the "black pill" == | ||
Beliefs that are common in incel communities, such as ] and ] for ] people, are collectively referred to as the ''black pill''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/raw-hatred-why-incel-movement-targets-terrorises-women|title=‘Raw hatred’: why the 'incel' movement targets and terrorises women|last=Williams|first=Zoe|date=April 25, 2018|website=]|language=en|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=April 26, 2018}}</ref> Many male incels believe that modern society is ], and that women are predisposed to ], i.e. "marrying up".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ging|first=Debbie|date=May 10, 2017|title=Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere|url=|journal=]|volume=|pages=|doi=10.1177/1097184X17706401|via=}}</ref> | Beliefs that are common in incel communities, such as ] and ] for ] people, are collectively referred to as the ''black pill''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/25/raw-hatred-why-incel-movement-targets-terrorises-women|title=‘Raw hatred’: why the 'incel' movement targets and terrorises women|last=Williams|first=Zoe|date=April 25, 2018|website=]|language=en|archive-url=|archive-date=|dead-url=|access-date=April 26, 2018}}</ref> Many male incels believe that modern society is ], and that women are predisposed to ], i.e. "marrying up".<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Ging|first=Debbie|date=May 10, 2017|title=Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere|url=|journal=]|volume=|pages=|doi=10.1177/1097184X17706401|via=}}</ref>, still others believe that women choose the worst kinds of men as mates. | ||
The concept of the "black pill" distinguishes incels from the ] and their popular reference to the ], an allusion to the dilemma in the movie '']'' where the protagonist must choose to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill).<ref name="independent.co.uk">{{cite news |last=Squirrell |first=Tim |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/incels-alek-minassian-mra-mens-rights-terrorism-toronto-van-attack-a8323166.html |title=Don't make the mistake of thinking incels are men's rights activists – they are so much more dangerous |date=April 26, 2018 |work=] |accessdate=April 27, 2018}}</ref> In the context of men's rights activism, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where women hold power over men.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.gq.com/story/mens-rights-activism-the-red-pill|title=What Kind of Man Joins the Men's Rights Movement?|last=Sharlet|first=Bruce|date=February 3, 2014|work=]|access-date=April 27, 2018|language=en}}</ref> In comparison, "taking the black pill" was described by ] as meaning "I will now espouse violence, hatred and misogyny."<ref name=":15" /> | The concept of the "black pill" distinguishes incels from the ] and their popular reference to the ], an allusion to the dilemma in the movie '']'' where the protagonist must choose to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill).<ref name="independent.co.uk">{{cite news |last=Squirrell |first=Tim |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/incels-alek-minassian-mra-mens-rights-terrorism-toronto-van-attack-a8323166.html |title=Don't make the mistake of thinking incels are men's rights activists – they are so much more dangerous |date=April 26, 2018 |work=] |accessdate=April 27, 2018}}</ref> In the context of men's rights activism, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where women hold power over men.<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.gq.com/story/mens-rights-activism-the-red-pill|title=What Kind of Man Joins the Men's Rights Movement?|last=Sharlet|first=Bruce|date=February 3, 2014|work=]|access-date=April 27, 2018|language=en}}</ref> In comparison, "taking the black pill" was described by ] as meaning "I will now espouse violence, hatred and misogyny."<ref name=":15" /> |
Revision as of 14:07, 10 May 2018
controversial online subculture For other uses, see Incel (disambiguation).
Incels (a portmanteau of "involuntary" and "celibacy") are an online subculture whose members define themselves as being unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one. Self-identified incels are mostly heterosexual and male. Discussions in incel forums are often characterized by resentment, misanthropy, misogyny, racism, and the endorsement of violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men. The Southern Poverty Law Center has described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", and self-described incels have committed several mass murders in North America.
Terminology and causes
In popular usage, the term primarily refers to the online communities of people who self-identify as involuntarily celibate. These communities are characterized by misogyny, the glorification of violence, and racism. According to The New York Times, involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of “male supremacy,” an ideology the Southern Poverty Law Center began including in their list of hate groups in 2018. The term came to wider public notice with the banning of the /r/incels subreddit and a series of mass murders committed by men who self-identified as involuntarily celibate or who shared similar ideologies.
In these online communities, the term "involuntary celibate" or "incel" is used alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success) and "incelibacy". The German author Maja Roedenbeck Schaefer uses the English-language term "Absolute Beginner" to describe individuals who are celibate, but not through personal choice.
The term encompasses people who are in sexless marriages (or other sexless relationships) but who wish to be sexually active. It is considered to be distinct from asexuality and from voluntary sexual abstinence.
It has been pointed out that with the decline of monogamy, an elite of men have acquired more sexual choices while celibacy has become prevalent among men at the bottom of the mating order. This is also a topic in Michel Houellebecq's novel Extension du domaine de la lutte.
Coinage
The phrase involuntary celibate, later shortened to invcel and then incel, is reported to have been coined by a Canadian college student named Alana in 1993 or 1997, when she created a website in order to discuss her sexual inactivity with others. The website, titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", was used by people of all genders to share posts about the topic. The abbreviation of incel originated from INVCEL, which was the name of a mailing list she started in 1997 for involuntary celibacy. During her college career and after, she realized she was queer, and became more comfortable with her identity. She later gave the site to a stranger. After reading about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, she wrote, "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it." Alana has expressed regret at the change in usage, with her original intention being to create an "inclusive community" for men and women who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization or mental illness.
Psychology
Further information: Sexual abstinence and Sexual frustrationInvoluntary celibacy is not a medical or psychological condition, but some of those who identify as incels suffer from physical disabilities or psychological disorders. A 2001 Georgia State University study found that people who self-identified as incels tended to feel frustrated, depressed, and angry regardless of why they felt they were involuntarily celibate. These researchers found that involuntary celibacy was often correlated with depression, neuroticism, anxiety, and autism.
Online communities
The misogynistic and occasionally violent rhetoric of some members of Incel communities has lead to numerous bans from websites and webhosts. /r/incels was a Reddit community (known as a subreddit) that offered a forum for people who identified as involuntarily celibate. The subreddit was known as a place where men blamed women for their involuntary celibacy, sometimes advocated for rape or other violence, and were generally misogynistic and often racist. Members of the group described women as "femoids" or "stacys" and described men who were sexually active as "chads". One post titled "general question about how rapists get caught" was asked by a member pretending to be a woman, saying they wanted to know how a woman who was drugged and raped would begin finding her rapist. Others glorified Elliot Rodger, the perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings.
On October 25, 2017, Reddit announced a new policy that would ban "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people." On November 7, 2017, the /r/incels subreddit was banned for violating this policy. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members.
Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms, such as Voat and the message board /r9k/ on 4chan. Such communities frequently overlap with topics such as pickup artistry and men's rights activism, and are a part of the broader manosphere. Self-identified incels are almost exclusively heterosexual and male, although there are some mixed-gender forums such as Reddit's /r/ForeverAlone.
Mass murders
Some mass murders in North America have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with "incel" ideologies.
The 2014 Isla Vista killings drew attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that is a mainstay of many incel communities. The perpetrator, Elliot Rodger, self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos discussing how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of an involuntary celibacy community called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto.
The perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting, George Sodini, has been embraced by some of the involuntary celibacy communities. Although the involuntary celibacy forum where Elliot Rodger had been active, PUAHate, shut down soon after his attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that began later. After the October 2017 Las Vegas shooting by a man with unclear motive, some of the involuntarily celibate community celebrated the shooter, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies". The trend has since continued—Alek Minassian, the suspect in the April 2018 Toronto van attack, posted on Facebook shortly before the attack, "The Incel Rebellion has already begun! ... All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!" After the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede /r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint." The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation.
List of mass murders by self-identified incels
Date | Location | Country | Description | Main article |
---|---|---|---|---|
May 23, 2014 | Isla Vista, California | United States | 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed 6 people and injured 14 others near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara before killing himself. He left a lengthy manifesto and YouTube videos detailing his hatred for women and his involuntary celibacy. | 2014 Isla Vista killings |
October 1, 2015 | Roseburg, Oregon | United States | 26-year-old Chris Harper-Mercer shot and killed 9 people and injured 8 others at the Umpqua Community College campus before killing himself. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, anger at not having a girlfriend, and animus towards the world. Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated he was "saving himself for someone special," Harper-Mercer had replied, "Involuntarily so." Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to a involuntarily celibate 4chan board. | Umpqua Community College shooting |
April 23, 2018 | Toronto, Ontario | Canada | A van driver, suspected to be 25-year-old Alek Minassian, killed 10 people and injured 14 others. Minassian was arrested soon after the attack. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Elliot Rodger, the self-identified incel attacker in the 2014 Isla Vista killings. | Toronto van attack |
Ideology of the "black pill"
Beliefs that are common in incel communities, such as fatalism and defeatism for unattractive people, are collectively referred to as the black pill. Many male incels believe that modern society is gynocentric, and that women are predisposed to hypergamy, i.e. "marrying up"., still others believe that women choose the worst kinds of men as mates.
The concept of the "black pill" distinguishes incels from the men's rights movement and their popular reference to the red pill, an allusion to the dilemma in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist must choose to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill). In the context of men's rights activism, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where women hold power over men. In comparison, "taking the black pill" was described by WBUR-FM as meaning "I will now espouse violence, hatred and misogyny."
The term black pill was coined on the blog Omega Virgin Revolt, where the term commended despondency in order to distinguish incels from the pickup artist communities. According to an incel Reddit subforum called /r/braincels, someone who has metaphorically "swallowed the black pill", been "blackpilled", or LDAR (which stands for "lay down and rot")", has come to "the real or perceived socially unspoken realisations that come from being a longtime incel."
See also
- Human mating strategies
- List of subcultures
- Mate value in humans
- Men Going Their Own Way
- Sexual capital
- Sexual abstinence
- Sexual frustration
- Sexual tension
- Toxic masculinity
References
- Mezzofiore, Gianluca (April 25, 2018). "The Toronto suspect apparently posted about an 'incel rebellion.' Here's what that means". CNN. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
- ^ Wilson, Jason (April 25, 2018). "Toronto van attack: Facebook post may link suspect to misogynist 'incel' subculture". The Guardian. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
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But it's not just individual women that these radical incels hate — it's society writ large, a society that allows their perceived sexual oppression to go on.
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(help) - ^ Ling, Justin; Mahoney, Jill; McGuire, Patrick; Freeze, Colin (April 24, 2018). "The 'incel' community and the dark side of the internet". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved May 4, 2018.
- ^ Janik, Rachel (April 24, 2018). ""I laugh at the death of normies": How incels are celebrating the Toronto mass killing". Hatewatch. Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved April 25, 2018.
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(help) - Maja., Roedenbeck, (2012). Und wer küsst mich? : Absolute Beginners - Wenn die Liebe auf sich warten lässt. Berlin: Ch. Links. ISBN 9783861536888. OCLC 830345509.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ Donnelly, Denise; Burgess, Elisabeth; Anderson, Sally; Davis, Regina; Dillard, Joy (2001). "Involuntary Celibacy: A life course analysis". The Journal of Sex Research. 38 (2): 159–169. doi:10.1080/00224490109552083.
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(help) - Alptraum, Lux (May 3, 2018). "'Unfuckable' Women Don't Go on Killing Sprees". Splinter News. Retrieved May 3, 2018.
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(help) - ^ Dewey, Caitlin (May 27, 2014). "Inside the 'manosphere' that inspired Santa Barbara shooter Elliot Rodger". The Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Retrieved April 24, 2018.
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(help) - Nagle, Angela (June 7, 2017). Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan And Tumblr To Trump And The Alt-Right. John Hunt Publishing. ISBN 9781785355448.
In a 2016 essay 'The New Man of 4chan', I wrote an account of the racist and misogynist incel mass shooter Chris Harper Mercer...
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- Williams, Zoe (April 25, 2018). "'Raw hatred': why the 'incel' movement targets and terrorises women". The Guardian. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
{{cite web}}
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(help) - Ging, Debbie (May 10, 2017). "Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere". Men and Masculinities. doi:10.1177/1097184X17706401.
- Squirrell, Tim (April 26, 2018). "Don't make the mistake of thinking incels are men's rights activists – they are so much more dangerous". The Independent. Retrieved April 27, 2018.
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- ^ Young, Robin (April 25, 2018). "Toronto Van Attack Suspect's Facebook Post References Misogynistic Online Group". WBUR-FM. Retrieved April 26, 2018.
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