HALIFAX, N.S. — A Dalhousie University researcher is revealing a look into the dark world of incels, an online community deeply rooted in twisted ideas of hatred toward women and who view themselves as victims.
Michael Halpin accessed one of the most popular English-language incel discussion boards on the internet and analyzed more than 9,000 comments to try to grasp the beliefs of those who blame women for their lack of what they see as sexual success. The term incel is derived from the words involuntary and celibate.
“There are tens of thousands of members on here,” Halpin said in an interview about his project Thursday.
“They're producing just tons and tons of content.”
Halpin’s analysis focused on a three-month time period focusing on the most popular threads.
His research paper on what he found, titled Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women, is published through the Journal of Gender and Society, available online.
The details he revealed are quite disturbing.
“The main result of this paper is that incels situate themselves as victims,” Halpin said.
“They label themselves as victims, they see themselves as victims. They are ‘victimized’ by women in society and they think that the main reason why they’re victims is this form of social bias called ‘lookism,’ and they talk about lookism quite a bit.”
That is the belief that people who are physically attractive enjoy social advantages over those who are unattractive. Incels believe they are victims of lookism and that it’s women who are “lookist” and who discriminate against them. They believe they are going to be alone forever because women have no interest in them sexually or romantically.
“They want to see women kicked out of the labour force, forced into monogamous relationships with men, the elimination of any sort of protection for . . . child support or divorce. And, ideally, for some of them, they want women to be kept as property to be either sold by other men or to be sold to men by the government.”
Halpin said the community was originally started by a woman in Canada who identified as queer and was looking for other people struggling with relationships. Over time, the community became increasingly more misogynistic and now is dominated by men who hold those views.
They celebrate Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer in the U.S. who wrote an incel manifesto, and Alek Minassian, who used a van to deliberately run over pedestrians, killing 10, in Toronto in 2018. Minassian also claimed to be motivated by incel ideology.
They claim Marc Lepine, who murdered 14 women at the Montreal Polytechnique school on Dec. 6, 1989, as one of their heroes.
Halpin, who is an assistant professor in Dal’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, started off primarily as a researcher in the mental health field. He said it was the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S. in 2016 that led him to look into motivations of alt-right online spaces and male-centred online communities referred to as the “manosphere.”
That led to the incel sites and his research.
They call themselves “genetic trash, or ogres or monsters and talk about how people are physically revolted when they see them in public,” he said.
“The way that they talk about their bodies is in a level of nuance and detail that most people would find bizarre or peculiar.”
An example is using the thickness of a man’s wrist as one measure of how a woman would find one attractive or not. Others include how pronounced eyebrow ridges are, whether eyes tilt up or down and the ratio of the upper lip to the chin.
“They’re looking at men’s bodies in just an incredible amount of detail and picking them apart for flaws, and any kind of discrepancy or shortcoming is seen as excluding someone from having any chance of a heterosexual relationship.”
The ideal, according to incels, is a super-attractive white man like actors Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth, whom they call “Chads.” The belief is that all women, or “Stacys,” want to be with that kind of man.
Men who are not incels are immediately banned from the forum, Halpin said. Any contact with women is grounds for being dropped, including holding someone’s hand, having a first kiss or going on a first date, even if it is a spectacular failure.
They also denigrate women’s appearances and want the women they feel to be the most desirable to be made available to them.
“These guys are not just sad, lonely people who are upset with themselves and maybe sexually frustrated because they’re still virgins. These are guys who want women treated like property, talk about murdering women, talk about stalking women, talk about completely removing women’s rights, celebrate things like the Taliban victory in Afghanistan because it was a loss for women . . . celebrate things like the overturning of Roe v Wade.
“So, they’re not just guys who are sad and lonely and looking for love. They are really guys who are aggressively misogynistic and want to see women harmed physically and socially.”
He said future papers in development include research into how incels talk about Lepine and race, how they use racist comments toward women, their discussions about sexual assault and the frequency of the use of misogynistic terms.
The discussion forum Halpin used for research has tens of thousands of members but it records hundreds of thousands to millions of unique visitors each month. The site has members around the world, with one organizer in the U.S. and another in South America.
Halpin said the demographics do not point to a stereotype of a socially isolated guy living in their parents’ basement. The site’s own surveys show men from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds with a wide range of academic achievement, and slightly less than half the members identify as men of colour.
“They’re all over the planet and they’re a diverse group of men.”
There are people in the community who say talking about violence doesn’t help their case, Halpin said. They talk about the need to have discussions about how men who are perceived as unattractive are treated in society and how talking about stalking and hurting women is counter-productive.
There are men who support other men. But even the men who distance themselves from violence and are supporting and encouraging of other men are still misogynistic. Every single poster on the forum is referring to women with misogynistic terms.
Halpin said there’s been a movement in Canada to classify incels as a domestic terror or hate group.
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Michael Halpin accessed one of the most popular English-language incel discussion boards on the internet and analyzed more than 9,000 comments to try to grasp the beliefs of those who blame women for their lack of what they see as sexual success. The term incel is derived from the words involuntary and celibate.
“There are tens of thousands of members on here,” Halpin said in an interview about his project Thursday.
“They're producing just tons and tons of content.”
Halpin’s analysis focused on a three-month time period focusing on the most popular threads.
His research paper on what he found, titled Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women, is published through the Journal of Gender and Society, available online.
The details he revealed are quite disturbing.
“The main result of this paper is that incels situate themselves as victims,” Halpin said.
“They label themselves as victims, they see themselves as victims. They are ‘victimized’ by women in society and they think that the main reason why they’re victims is this form of social bias called ‘lookism,’ and they talk about lookism quite a bit.”
That is the belief that people who are physically attractive enjoy social advantages over those who are unattractive. Incels believe they are victims of lookism and that it’s women who are “lookist” and who discriminate against them. They believe they are going to be alone forever because women have no interest in them sexually or romantically.
Want women kept as property
“Because they feel persecuted by women, they think that it’s valid for them to attack women, to talk about stalking, harassing, assaulting and murdering women and to support policies that remove women’s rights,” Halpin said.“They want to see women kicked out of the labour force, forced into monogamous relationships with men, the elimination of any sort of protection for . . . child support or divorce. And, ideally, for some of them, they want women to be kept as property to be either sold by other men or to be sold to men by the government.”
Halpin said the community was originally started by a woman in Canada who identified as queer and was looking for other people struggling with relationships. Over time, the community became increasingly more misogynistic and now is dominated by men who hold those views.
They celebrate Elliot Rodger, a mass murderer in the U.S. who wrote an incel manifesto, and Alek Minassian, who used a van to deliberately run over pedestrians, killing 10, in Toronto in 2018. Minassian also claimed to be motivated by incel ideology.
They claim Marc Lepine, who murdered 14 women at the Montreal Polytechnique school on Dec. 6, 1989, as one of their heroes.
Halpin, who is an assistant professor in Dal’s Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, started off primarily as a researcher in the mental health field. He said it was the election of Donald Trump as president of the U.S. in 2016 that led him to look into motivations of alt-right online spaces and male-centred online communities referred to as the “manosphere.”
That led to the incel sites and his research.
Serious mental health issues
Halpin said even laypersons would have to be pretty oblivious to not see significant mental health issues in the population. There’s anti-social behaviour, talk of harming others, self-harm, depression, skewed self-images of their own bodies, and hatred of women and themselves.They call themselves “genetic trash, or ogres or monsters and talk about how people are physically revolted when they see them in public,” he said.
“The way that they talk about their bodies is in a level of nuance and detail that most people would find bizarre or peculiar.”
An example is using the thickness of a man’s wrist as one measure of how a woman would find one attractive or not. Others include how pronounced eyebrow ridges are, whether eyes tilt up or down and the ratio of the upper lip to the chin.
“They’re looking at men’s bodies in just an incredible amount of detail and picking them apart for flaws, and any kind of discrepancy or shortcoming is seen as excluding someone from having any chance of a heterosexual relationship.”
The ideal, according to incels, is a super-attractive white man like actors Brad Pitt or Chris Hemsworth, whom they call “Chads.” The belief is that all women, or “Stacys,” want to be with that kind of man.
Men who are not incels are immediately banned from the forum, Halpin said. Any contact with women is grounds for being dropped, including holding someone’s hand, having a first kiss or going on a first date, even if it is a spectacular failure.
They also denigrate women’s appearances and want the women they feel to be the most desirable to be made available to them.
More than sexually frustrated virgins
Halpin said people need to know that incels are not young men who simply aren’t having sex when it seems others are.“These guys are not just sad, lonely people who are upset with themselves and maybe sexually frustrated because they’re still virgins. These are guys who want women treated like property, talk about murdering women, talk about stalking women, talk about completely removing women’s rights, celebrate things like the Taliban victory in Afghanistan because it was a loss for women . . . celebrate things like the overturning of Roe v Wade.
“So, they’re not just guys who are sad and lonely and looking for love. They are really guys who are aggressively misogynistic and want to see women harmed physically and socially.”
He said future papers in development include research into how incels talk about Lepine and race, how they use racist comments toward women, their discussions about sexual assault and the frequency of the use of misogynistic terms.
The discussion forum Halpin used for research has tens of thousands of members but it records hundreds of thousands to millions of unique visitors each month. The site has members around the world, with one organizer in the U.S. and another in South America.
Halpin said the demographics do not point to a stereotype of a socially isolated guy living in their parents’ basement. The site’s own surveys show men from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds with a wide range of academic achievement, and slightly less than half the members identify as men of colour.
“They’re all over the planet and they’re a diverse group of men.”
There are people in the community who say talking about violence doesn’t help their case, Halpin said. They talk about the need to have discussions about how men who are perceived as unattractive are treated in society and how talking about stalking and hurting women is counter-productive.
There are men who support other men. But even the men who distance themselves from violence and are supporting and encouraging of other men are still misogynistic. Every single poster on the forum is referring to women with misogynistic terms.
Halpin said there’s been a movement in Canada to classify incels as a domestic terror or hate group.
Dalhousie University researcher delves into misogynistic incel world | SaltWire
HALIFAX, N.S. — A Dalhousie University researcher is revealing a look into the dark world of incels, an online community deeply rooted in twisted ideas of ...
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