In 1989, when 25-year-old Marc Lépine shot and killed 14 women and wounded another 14 people at École Polytechnique in Montreal, the term “incel” wasn’t part of the cultural lexicon. In fact, incel culture was simply not a thing.
And his violence was treated as a one-off event.
Despite him blaming feminists and saying they ruined his life, Canada—and frankly the world at that point in time—didn’t really perceive it as terrorism.
Then, in 2020, Ashley Arzaga, who worked at a massage parlor in Toronto, was murdered by a teenaged male in a machete attack (that also injured another young woman)… all because of her gender.
For the first time, a woman murdered because of incel culture ideology was called a terrorist attack in a court of law.
Despite the history, it took the Canadian justice system almost 40 years to set a precedent and call it terrorism—a categorization that other countries may eventually follow.
As a society, we’re ill-prepared to deal with an incel culture movement that centers primarily on the hatred of women. We demean young girls for their interests while tacitly teaching young men that women don’t deserve respect in even the most mundane of ways, punish women who are considered outspoken by calling them bitches, and undermine any notion of equality with jokes about women being too emotional. We validate the idea that women are but a mere prize to be won in the media and then call it “romance.”
Photo: Roman Davydko via Unsplash
Enter The Manosphere… A Distinct Incel Culture Realm
Though the manosphere doesn’t only attract heterosexual men into its orbit, it is, however, focused on straight men. In that world, terms like being red pilled or black pilled are used to describe levels of misogynistic thought. To be blue pilled is to accept things as they are, while red pill rhetoric centers on the idea that women are only motivated by shallow things like money and looks.
Early incel groups claimed to help men become desirable, pushing everything from exercise routines and pick-up artist tricks to get rich quick schemes.
On the other hand, black pill advocates take a more nihilistic approach, asserting that some men will never find love, thereby inciting anger at women and society at large. It’s hatefulness as an anesthetic—a logic that removes all personal responsibility for failure in advance.
Manosphere groups used to primarily attract older men who were upset about the lack of romantic love in their lives. Now, we’re seeing kids as young as preteens gravitating to these forums. They have already begun to believe they will never find romance before they’re even old enough to date… much less have sex. They repeat the misogynistic insults they’re picking up online and create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Photo: Mikael Blomkvist via Pexels
Girls Don’t Want to Date Boys Who Hate Them
If you’re a young man going through that first awkward blush of puberty and struggling with interpersonal skills, red pill and incel culture forums are an easy salve to your ego.
Not only are the podcasts, TikToks, and YouTube videos inescapable—the comment sections can also feel like friendship if you don’t have any actual friends.
Oftentimes, these are people who have struggled with socializing in person—and any friends they did have may have fallen away as interests shifted. The stereotype is that all incels are nerds, but the reality is anyone who isn’t good with people and who finds comfort in hatred can end up being drawn to these groups.
It’s like joining a gang, only there’s no initiation and no colors to warn anyone. In a culture where misogyny is already normalized, this is an easy slide into much deeper and more troublesome waters.
For teenagers who may have any number of challenges at home, this is a space where their worst thoughts are validated. No one will chastise them for thinking that half of our species is subhuman.
They don’t have to entertain any pushback to their belief that the world owes them. And as they age and gain access to weapons, resources, etc., this proverbial peanut gallery will blame their victims before they would ever blame a perpetrator. For instance, after teenaged influencer Bianca Devins’ murder by an adult incel acquaintance, who reveled in bragging online about it, her mother Kimberly Devins has had to fight to keep pictures of her daughter’s corpse offline.
Why?
Because incel culture forums think it is okay to post the pics and then tag her family members.
It’s a cultish space, and sure, not every young man that flirts with red pill groups will end up harming women. But there is nothing pushing the predators out either. Ultimately, incel ideology doesn’t reject any man, and that is perhaps the hardest part for people outside of these spaces to understand.
Patriarchal notions that women fill a specific place in society—one that is located beneath men—are toxic enough. However, in many ways, this is the inevitable next step of teaching boys that girls aren’t their equals.
