More than half of those posting on the world’s biggest ‘incel’ forum support sexualisation of children aged under 18, according to a new report.
The world’s largest incel forum changed its rules in March to explicitly permit the sexualisation of pubescent minors, i.e. girls aged 13 to 16.
The findings by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) support previous investigations by Byline Times which found numerous posts on **********, a popular incel meeting place, referring to ‘jailbait’ and expressing a desire to abuse girls aged 13 and above.
Incels are a misogynistic online sub-culture that believes men are superior to women, that they are entitled to sex and to women’s bodies, and which often hold white supremacist beliefs alongside their male supremacist ideology. They refer to women as ‘foids’ or ‘femoids’ and ‘roasts’, and often use explicitly racist, misogynistic and violent language.
The sexualisation of girls often stems from an expressed desire to have girlfriends or wives who have not been ‘ruined’ by ‘Chads’ – high status alpha males who have sex with multiple women.
In incel culture, men fantasise about recreating a ‘golden age’ whereby women are not permitted to have autonomy, including the right to divorce, to choose who to have sex with, to vote, or to abortion. Instead, women should “perform their gender specific duties”, as one incel put it.
While the majority of incels are from America (43.8% of users on the incel forum examined by the CCDH), increasing numbers of boys and men from the UK have joined. According to data from the CCDH, 7.5% of the forum’s 17,000 users are from the UK, with 4.2% from Poland.
This again tallies with independent investigations by Byline Times which have found frequent references to Poland. During the 2019 Women’s Strike protests that followed the decision to extend the country’s ban on abortion, men posted in praise of the Government, calling it ‘based’ (slang for ‘good’) for banning abortion and praising heavy-handed security tactics in suppressing the protests.
“They deserve to be chained like the animals they are,” wrote one ********** member, responding to videos of the Polish protests. “The army should start raping them on the streets,” wrote another, and “every country should copy and paste [Poland’s] laws.”
“Incels are not lone wolves or socially isolated,” Imran Ahmad, CEO of the CCDH, said. “They are in fact enmeshed in highly active communities with a coherent, evolving ideology that has radicalised further in the past 18 months. They are egging each other on to commit mass violence, normalising sexual violence against women and even codified their approval of sexualising children.”
Violent Fantasies
Since 2013, 59 people have been killed as a result of incel-linked violence, including six people in Plymouth, UK, last August.
The incel forum is packed with fantasies of violence, with the CCDH finding that, in an 18-month period, the word ‘rape’ appeared every 29 minutes. In total, the researchers found that the words appeared more than 18,000 times and was used by 39% of users.
Forums included ‘women are designed to be raped’ and ‘rape is f*cking awesome’. Discussions of rape showed that 89% of forum users were supportive of sexual violence.
Research by Byline Times found that fantasies of violence extended beyond rape. One particularly distressing post described putting a grenade inside a woman’s anus and cutting off her breasts “with a machete”. Another poster wrote how vaginas should be kept on “leashes”. One of the less extreme posts fantasised about how “women have to suffer, and if they don’t want to suffer, we make them suffer”.
Along with fantasies about rape and other forms of violence against women, incel forums are increasingly accepting of paedophilia. The CCDH’s research found that more than a quarter of incels have posted on the forum using paedophilia keywords.
Byline Times’ investigations found users fantasising about “jailbait”, a term used to denote teenage girls. The CCDH found that “jailbait” or “JB” featured in 1,716 posts over 18 months; while the term “loli”, short for “Lolita”, was mentioned 3,117 times. It would appear “loli” has become more popular, perhaps as it is more coded than “jailbait” which is a commonly-understood term.
Paedophilia is presented as normal, with one forum poster writing: “Any straight normal human will lust over minifoids, all the normies will deny it though.”
The CCDH found one thread created by a regular contributor which contained an image of a then 12-year-old child, along with the comment: “Who in their right mind would prefer a 22 year old roasty to this?”
“Big Tech companies, like YouTube, Twitter and Cloudflare, have enabled this community,” Ahmed added. “They know about the problem but have failed to act. They are voluntarily providing a platform and monetising content that encourages atrocities against women and girls.
“We need new legislation to force Big Tech to do the right thing and protect women, girls and the young men who are being drawn into this evil ideology.”
bylinetimes.com
