Female incels, or "femcels," feel romantically doomed by society's perception of their bodies.
Université de Montréal criminology professor Alexandra Zidenberg and Brandon Sparks, a postdoctoral fellow in psychology at the University of New Brunswick, have rigorously documented the femcel phenomenon for the first time.
Their study, published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, is the first to collect data directly from involuntarily single women instead of simply reviewing online forums.
119 women studied
Zidenberg and Sparks administered the Multidimensional Sexuality Questionnaire, which assesses 12 dimensions of sexual well-being, to 61 women who self-identified as femcels or as "forever alone" and 58 single women who did not identify as femcels.
The findings paint a picture of interconnected layers of intense distress among femcels.
The most pronounced difference between the two groups was on the sexual depression dimension—a feeling of sadness or discouragement about romance and sex. Femcels scored an average of 19.2 on a scale of 25, compared with 11.2 for the control group.
"(Femcels) think about romantic relationships, but not happily," Zidenberg explained. "There's more depression, anxiety and negative feelings."
The study found significant differences in several other dimensions. Femcels had higher levels of sexual anxiety (17.0 versus 11.8), for instance, largely driven by fear of abuse from potential partners—a fear that, according to the researchers, stems more from apprehension than actual experience.
"In the forums, they talk about sexual violence as a possibility, rarely as a personal experience," Zidenberg explained. "It's a fear."
Central to femcel identity is a concept called the "pink pill": the belief that a social hierarchy based on physical appearance—also known as "lookism"—condemns some women to romantic failure, regardless of their actions.
This belief is reflected in the data: In the second-largest gap found by the study, femcels scored 14.4 out of 25 on the external sexual control scale, compared with 9.6 for the control group.
"In their belief system, if you aren't one of the beautiful people, there's nothing you can do," Zidenberg said. "You can't change things."
Paradoxically, this sense of powerlessness is accompanied by intense rumination: Femcels scored 13.1 on the sexual preoccupation scale, compared with 7.8 for non-femcels.
Femcels think about sexuality much more often but see no solution. That tension exacerbates their fear of sexual relationships (18.4 compared with 14.8). Wanting a relationship while fearing it is the contradiction at the core of the femcel experience.
