On the web, groups of men called incels preach violence against women, both online and on the streets, and demand their submission. Who are they and how to fight them?
When hatred for women unites men among themselves. This is the foundation of the incel ideology, a contraction of “involuntary celibate”, or “involuntary celibate” in French. Groups of men suffering from their “lack of success” with women have thus formed themselves on forums to vent their misplaced frustration. Hidden behind their own vocabulary, they advocate violence, aggression and misogyny towards the fairer sex. The call for rape and murder is common in their groups. And year after year, the army of incels has grown. The news is even marked by feminicides and attacks motivated by this masculinist theory. A virtual current, with very real dangers.
# 1 Who are the incels and what do they claim?
At the origin of the incels, a Canadian student only known under the pseudonym Alana, who launched at the end of the 90s a site for single people. Nothing foreshadowed the rest of the movement. As the Gardian, his project was just a simple online support group for single people, nothing more … Then around the word incel, men began to build a sexist ideology in North America and Canada. Alana confessed to feeling like “The scientist who discovered nuclear fission and then discovers that it is used as a weapon of war”. Nowadays, incels are present all over the world. A real danger for society. They are single, heterosexual men, usually between the ages of 18 and 35. Their common base: a hatred against women, whom they accuse of being responsible for their celibacy. For them, “all women are sluts”. On the forums, the incels call for rape and harassment, give “advice” to rape women … At the end of 2017, an incel sub-forum on Reddit, which had nearly forty thousand members, was closed for “violation rules of use ”, reported the Monde.fr. In France, incel-type messages were discovered on the 18-25-year-old forum of the jeuxvideo.com site.
How many are there in total? According to some statistics, they are several tens of thousands to have joined these incels groups. They have even created a real language of their own. The term “femoid” (contraction of “women” and “humanoids”) is widely used, for example. It serves to dehumanize women. And these “femoid”, according to the incels, would only come out with “Chads”, handsome, popular and charming young men. Or the opposite of incels. As for women who are in a relationship, they are nicknamed the “Stacys”. A female counterpart exists in the incels, the femcels. Size difference between the two communities, femcels are not violent. The resentment they feel, they turn against themselves and not against men. A form of empathy is even visible towards men who do not look at them.
# 2 when incels take action
The few words on forums quickly turned into real drama. On April 23, 2018 in Toronto, Alek Minassian killed 10 people, including 8 women, after rushing into a crowd in a rental van. “I told myself that was it, it was the day of revenge”, he said at the time. During his interrogation, the man spoke of his loneliness and said he was looking for friends on platforms such as Reddit and 4Chan. “It’s basically a movement of angry incels, like me, who can’t sleep with women, said Alek Minassian. We want to overthrow the Chads, which would force the Stacy’s to breed with the incels. “
A few years earlier, in 2014, Elliot Rodger had killed 14 people in California. “I will destroy women because I can never have them. I will make them suffer for not having wanted me ”, he wrote in a video manifesto. On the way to incels, being a woman simply makes you a target to be beaten down.
In Inside the secret world of incels (“In the secret world of incels”), a documentary broadcast in 2019 on BBC Three, the father of Katherine Breann Cooper, one of the victims of Elliot Rodger, wondered: “How do you come to associate your own sexual frustration with killing people that you don’t know from Eve or Adam, that you don’t know, who have never done anything to us? bad or good… ”. The question is also how to defuse this hatred, so that it no longer kills.
Discover our Newsletters!
We have so much to tell you: news, trends and all kinds of exclusions.
I subscribe
# 3 How to get out of the incels of their hatred of women?
Kaitlyn Regehr, researcher at the University of Kent (UK), has been working on online misogyny for 5 years. Interviewed as part of the British documentary, she explains: “A lot of people are on the go, feel isolated, rejected, looking for a place to exist. And it’s a slippery slope. There is a good chance that there will be another incel attack someday. The police should monitor these communities as they monitor religious extremists … And at our level, we do not talk enough about mental health in this technological world. We are not talking about the fact that an isolated individual can step into a gaping hole on the Internet and never come out. We are not trying to bring him back to us ”.
In many foreign media, ex-incels have testified about their new life without hateful thoughts against women. Each interview shows that it is thanks to socialization that they were able to question their ultra-misogynistic thinking and their projects of domination. A solid social fabric and communication seem to be one of the solutions to stem the spread of the incel ideology and to overcome these harmful communities. Once again, it is a question of lifting the taboos around mental health and its care, but also, and above all, of the fight against patriarchy, fertile ground for the incel movement.
Celine Peschard
Journalist who loves the versatility that his profession can offer. Specialized in the historical field, societal subjects and auteur films, against a background of electronic music. University course based on …