Men on an incel website reveal what they really think about women
‘Does rape count as losing your virginity?’
This is the title of the very first thread I stumble on after secretly joining a popular incel (shortened term of ‘involuntary celibate’) website to find out what it teaches young men about women.
Discussions about sexual assault, paedophilia and mass shootings grow more and more violent as I dive into some of the darkest corners of the internet.
Stephen Graham’s new crime drama Adolescence on Netflix has recently shone a light on the brutality of incel culture in Britain and how it develops online.
Metro has decided not to name the website in question, but a quick Google search led us to this disturbing world.
Apart from having to answer a few questions from moderation staff after signing up, my time was spent as a silent observer, sifting through a small portion of the 10 million posts.
So, what do incels really think – and say – about women?
As it turns out, this is not just a group of people frustrated they cannot get a date.
Most members I encountered believe that women’s true value is the ability to procreate and to fulfil the sexual desires of men.
In fact, to incels, women are not even seen as human.
Incels blame them for their perceived failures to receive what is ‘rightfully owed’ in life.
That is because women always go for ‘Chads’ – the archetypical white alpha male, who is tall, muscular, square-jawed and with a full head of hair, who are seen as sexually desirable.
Women on the website are often referred to as ‘foids’ – used to indicate that they are not fully human, and are either sub-human or ‘other’.
This has led incels to develop further disturbing theories that women are to be sexually assaulted and physically abused.
‘Anyone wished they could go back to high school so they could rape foids with insufficient consequences?’, one member wrote.
‘I’m extremely jealous of the f*g babycels on here, 15 or 16-years-olds on here while going to school surrounded by all that fresh, virgin p***y.
‘It makes me go mad at how stupid they are for not taking advantage of status as babies in society and not raping their foid classmates.
‘This is literally the only time you will be surrounded in your life with the freshest and tightest p***y ever and yet you do nothing but watch all the little chads f**k them instead.’
Another with the name of ‘Scarborough Rapist’ replied: ‘Not rape but I would wait for them to slip up and do or say stupid s**t to me so that I can beat the s**t out of them.’
A third one commented: ‘I 100% see your point. As a kid you can kiss and grope without serious consequences. ‘
Further recent threads discussed ‘Why ethnic men are dating white women’, ‘If a woman is attracted to you, do you have the right to rape her?’ and ‘I got accused of rape.’
Another recent post read: ‘The ideal life as a man is to f**k as many virgin foids as possible.’
As I joined the website in November, nominations and voting was taking place for the annual Incel Awards – the first major community event.
Categories include ‘incel of the year’, ‘best lurker’, ‘biggest retard’, and ‘funniest incel’.
Alongside ‘foid’, ‘normie’, ‘Chad’, ‘blackpill’ and ‘redpill’, ‘roping’ is also one of the specialist terms often used on the site, which boasts almost 20,000 members.
Discussions about suicide linked to male depression are open, and men who show an interest in that are encouraged and praised as brave.
Members often complain about ‘incel struggles’ under the hashtag ‘suicide fuel’ on the website.
One wrote: ‘Imagine being an incel and finally have a family, but your son turns out to be a f*g.’
‘Looking at fellow currycells [a derogative term for Indian incels] getting foids and having sex is the biggest suicide,’ a member said.
Another thread accused women of ‘promoting male suicide’ and encouraging ‘ugly men to commit suicide’.
‘They want us culled,’ a member replied. ‘Women are evil,’ another posted.
One of the comments read: ‘That’s why you should never kill yourself. You are giving women a victory.’
A number of incels spoke openly about how their life will likely end with suicide, turning the forum feeds into a dark, self-loathing echo-chamber – and once you are in, it is hard to leave without help.
Like any other website, there are rules – albeit unsure how strict moderation staff are – that even incels have to obey to remain part of the community.
Firstly, women and anyone for the LGBTQ+ community are forbidden from joining and those who are not incels.
Members are told not to request personal romantic or sexual experiences, even if they happened a long time ago, or even discuss it – though this rule seem to be ignored quite often.
Perhaps one of the most disturbing rules is that moderation staff were forced to ban any content which ‘sexualises minors in any way, shape or form’.
Introduced only this March, it was changed two days later to ‘do not sexualise pre-pubescent minors in any way, shape or form’.
Another rule banned any ‘gay or LGBT content’, unless members were criticising it.
Posts celebrating an incel ‘going ER’ – committing an indiscriminate mass murder, particularly one that targets women – are allowed on the website.
But a member saying they plan to ‘go ER’ or are encouraging a fellow to do it are forbidden.
What is an incel and who are they?
The term ‘incel’ seems to be everywhere after the release of Netflix’s Adolescence four-part series.
It stands for ‘involuntary celibate’. In its most basic form, it describes someone, usually a man, who sees himself as unable to attract women sexually.
They are part of an ‘unclear or unstable ideology that supports extreme violence’, according to the UK government.
It targets a ‘perceived other’ of some kind (perhaps based on gender or another protected characteristic), but does not otherwise identify with a particular terrorist ideology or cause.
A study on incels published on the UK government’s website identifies them as men in their mid-20s, heterosexual and childless.
Though the majority of the exclusively US and UK sample were white, it was ethnically diverse, with 42% self-identifying as a person of colour.
In line with previous research, incels typically display extremely poor mental health, with high incidences of depression and suicidal ideation.
They acknowledge a shared worldview which includes identifying all feminists as a primary enemy.
If left unchecked, incel culture has the potential to radicalise beyond the realm of social media.
Such sites promoting hate against women have been under scrutiny for years, and Reddit has previously shut down incel subreddits with tens of thousands of users.
Though there are members from across the world, a week after I join an ‘oldcel’ – someone whose inceldom can be attributed to being desexualised due to their old age – sets up a weekly meetup for UK-based incels in London.
According to the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), almost half of the web traffic for an incel forum originates from the US between April and June 2022.
Meanwhile, the UK accounted for 7.5% of traffic to the site during the same period, amounting to an average of 182,159 visits a month.
But the number of people self-identifying as incels in the UK is still unclear.
A report from CCDH in September stressed the network has a small but active membership ‘at risk of suffering harm and harming others, but poses a threat to a wider audience of visitors as well’.
The non-profit, which works to counter the spread of disinformation and online hate, called for the deranking of incelosphere sites in Google search and the deplatforming of such YouTube channels.
Further recommendations include addressing digital harms to children that drive users into incelosphere communities.
‘There is a growing consensus that social media platforms must do more to keep children safe online,’ the report read.
Need support?
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