Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women
Highlighting a new study released in the journal Gender and Society that wades deep into Incel swampland, exposing both their self-hatred and their misogyny.
Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women - Michael Halpin - Gender and Society
Released on October 5th, this study goes deep into the muck and mire of the world of Incels (Involuntary Celibates). The article defines incels as
a predominantly online community of men who define themselves by their inability to have heterosexual sex and/or relationships. Incels perceive themselves as “ugly, genetic trash” who are dominated (or “mogged”) by other men and rejected by women. Incels view themselves as subordinated due to lookism, a form of social bias favoring the physically attractive. Despite their claims of subordination, incels assault, harass, and stalk women. Incels are also tied to several mass murders, including Elliot Rodger’s murder of six people in the United States (e.g., Witt 2020). Incels simultaneously situate themselves as failed, hopeless losers while celebrating, encouraging, and participating in violence against women.
As you can likely tell, there is a lot of terminology and language used by incels with which the rest of us are simply unfamiliar. This not only allows them to communicate amongst themselves with ease, but it keeps the rest of society in the dark about the immanent danger of men who hate both themselves and women as both gender and sex. Over the course of the paper, the author aims to
first describe how incels see themselves as subordinated by lookism before demonstrating how incels view their subordinate masculine status as permanent. Last, I explain how incels weaponize their subordination to legitimate their interpersonal and systemic violence against women. …
The entire article is worth reading in full (and is currently available to be viewed for free any anyone), but I was struck by how those who call themselves ‘incels’ genuinely seem to hate women and see women entirely as objects to be dominated, even distributed among men by the state. Of course, in the forums visited by the study’s author, there were objections to so-called ‘sexual Marxism’ based not on the misogyny, but on the objectionable suggestion that the state should be involved in the domination, rather than having some kind of free-market distribution system:
In addition to interpersonal violence, incels desire systemic male supremacy and the elimination of women’s rights (e.g., banning divorce, birth control, and abortion). For example, User 46 argues, “women should have all their rights and liberties taken away” and “women should be property.” Incels further suggest that governments or powerful men should distribute women among men to solve the “incel problem.” Incels refer to this approach as “sexual Marxism” (Incels.wiki 2022d), with potential “sexual redistribution” policies including “government funded prostitutes,” “mass legal rape and universal forced monogamy,” and “culturally encouraged volunteer corps of women to sex up incels.” In a thread with more than 150 replies on whether incels would date their looksmatch, User 47 critiques sexual Marxism in favor of a free market approach:
Why don’t we try to be more extreme, more misogynistic? . . . We should demand free market brainwashing facilities. Foids are considered private property and you can buy one from a privately owned brainwashing institute . . . . There are economical issues here as this is extremely pricey. One foid should not cost more than a new car, and just like the car market you can find used cars if you are poor . . . [a possible objection is] the richest men will have harems of Stacies [the most attractive women] and poor people will get only ugly roasties [a derogatory term for women]. Again, good point, but our goal is to reduce the costs of the indoctrination process, so that everyone will own at least one foid.
Inequalities between men on the sexual marketplace is the only ethical issue User 47 raises, which is an injustice he is willing to accept if every man can “own at least one” woman.
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Here is study author Michael Halpin doing a YouTube talk on the history of the Incel movement.