"This article seeks to establish the connection—via shared discourse—between
those who identify as involuntary celibates online (henceforth Incels) and
mainstream pornography. Using an interdisciplinary approach involving linguistic
analysis of Reddit forum data—more precisely the r/incels Subreddit—informed by
research into digital behaviors and feminist analysis, we demonstrate how both
mainstream pornography and Incels are different manifestations of the same
deep-rooted misogyny, enabled and exacerbated by contemporary technologies. It
is not the aim of this article to establish a causal link between the watching
of pornography and negative behavioral change, nor is it our intention to cast
judgments on people’s sexual practices. We want to move beyond a simplistic
pro-porn or anti-porn dichotomy that discourages debate, and instead provide
evidence of its commonalities with other practices that are more often seen as
aspects of the ongoing normalization of violence against women (VAW) and whose
misogynistic nature, therefore, tends to be taken more seriously."
Some results (excerpts):
Women are one homogeneous group.
"(...) the discussion of the success of obese women (as opposed to Incels) in
finding (sexual) partners. This view is often supported by pseudo-scientific
facts and dubious external data, suggesting that women, unlike men, are in
high (sexual) demand and, therefore, even women who appear low on the
“attractiveness scale” will find a (sexual) partner, while men who are not at
the top of this scale are condemned to a life of celibacy. This is expressed
clearly by one of the users on the forum:
There are many males that have literally zero options. [There is strong
demand for even the ugliest of women.] (link to sluthate.com). The top 20%
of men get the top 80% of the women, and the bottom 80% of men fight like
dogs over the remaining 20% of women. This is why in a sexually free
society, even the ugliest most deformed obese women can get males of average
attractiveness.
In this system, women are the gatekeepers of sex, while Incels are their
victims. As shown in the following, it is particularly feminism—with the
sexual liberation of women—that Incels blame for their misery."
(...) women are often talked about in terms of what happens in their minds,
rather than in terms of their actions in the external world. Thus, despite
their factual and pseudo-scientific tone, these discussions are speculative,
particularly when they occur alongside aggregation (e.g., Because the majority
of modern women don’t want a loving boyfriend). These conjectures often
revolve around the type of men that women are supposedly attracted to (e.g.,
Women don’t like ugly men who aren’t rich, because they aren’t good
providers), or around women’s sexuality, including the suggestion that women
enjoy abusive relationships and aggressive sex.
"Like in pornography, where the tendency is for female performers not to say
“no,” but to show pleasure when subjected to physical aggression, Incels
believe that aggression and female pleasure are connected (e.g., Most women
don’t like it soft: they like it rough, hard, and deep)."
"Scholars (Jensen, 2011; Makin & Morczek, 2015) have suggested that
mainstream pornography—with its unceasing exploitation of women—encourages the
acceptance and propagation of “rape culture,” (...). Some comments on r/incels
show that this is not just a prerogative of pornography: But the deal is that
they start liking it in the middle of the act or follow the guy around later
like puppies on a leash. So rape is what modern Western women want."
"(...) the most frequent attributes for women: whores, people, and sluts.
The specifically sexually derogatory nature of this language is worth
noting, as r/incels (like pornography) appears to be a site of constant
(re)production of ways to linguistically degrade and objectify women. For
example, Incels refer to women as cumdump, cumrags, or twatrags—a term that
indicates an old garment used to clean up bodily fluids following
ejaculation. Another way in which Incels use sex to linguistically
dehumanize women is through verbs that are normally applied to things such
as soil or roads (e.g., a 30yo woman who has been plowed by 150 different
cocks). The verb plow here, in addition to normally being applied to
inanimate objects, also suggests violence (e.g., fields are plowed with
sharp objects). The implication is not only that women are objects to be
treated aggressively but also that the penis is a powerful weapon to be used
against them. This discussion of women as objects used for sex or as
receptacles of men’s penises and semen (dumpsters, holes, tubes) recalls
some of the most popular images of mainstream pornography (...)."
"Incels also dehumanize women by referring to them as objects, female humanoid
organisms (or femoids) or animals, as shown by metaphors such as women are
fucking animals, women are shallow creatures, women are toxic wild beasts.
Perhaps the strongest indicator of the propensity of Incels not to see women
as human beings is the frequent reminder on r/incels that women are people
(e.g., women are people literally just like you). Arguably, the very need to
state the obvious, that is, that women are people, is an intertextual
reference to the common presupposition among Incels that women are something
else (animals, objects, holes, containers). The dehumanization of women (for
sexual pleasure) is part and parcel of “rape culture” (Jensen, 2011) and a
major feature of mainstream pornography."
"This sense of entitlement to and understanding of women’s bodies as objects
(that must be obtained) also appears in the ways in which FORCE is used. While
many users do not explicitly encourage forcing women to have sex or be in
relationships with them, the discussion of the obvious suggests, again, that
this is indeed a possibility for Incels. In fact, not forcing women is often
linked to their inability, rather than their unwillingness, to do so (e.g., I
cannot force a woman to desire me or have sex with me so essentially I am
screwed). Women are once again positioned as gatekeepers of sex and,
consequently, of Incels’ happiness. Incels, in contrast, are the victims:
constantly starved for sex and fighting other men to gain access to women’s
bodies that are scarcely available (to Incels)."
"The specific hatred for feminists is also shown by the fact that feminist is
more often associated with (sexually) derogatory language than woman. (...)
feminist is similar to words such as whore, bitch, cuck, slut, idiot, cunt,
while woman is more similar to words like people, man, girl, guy, female,
person. The type of abusive language that one may expect to find on the forum
does not target women in general; it tends to be specifically directed toward
feminists, who receive insults for their “promiscuity.”"
"What Incels really hate—and what they blame feminists for—is women who refuse
them, women who sleep with several men but say “no” to Incels. It is these
women who receive most online (sexualized) abuse (Lewis et al., 2017),
arguably in an attempt to control them through silencing. This generates a
paradoxical situation, in which derogatory terms that refer to “promiscuous”
women are not being used for women who participate in sexual acts with
numerous men, but for women who say “no.”"
"Like in offline sexualized violence, for Incels too sex is the chosen weapon
to express the hatred and revenge that women “deserve” for rejecting them and
choosing aggressive alpha men instead."
"The issue, therefore, is a broader one and a cultural one; neither Incel
ideology nor mainstream pornography should be problematized separately or
insulated from discussions of women’s equality, because these practices are
not detached from other forms of misogyny but are an extension of these and
symptoms of structural misogyny. Neither pornography nor Incels created
misogyny, but misogyny underlies and correlates both practices, which,
therefore, should be understood as part of a “networked misogyny”
(Banet-Weiser & Miltner, 2016) that, separately or cumulatively, causes
harm and is not limited to the online world. While the internet, as a “site of
social and cultural reproduction that reflects real-world patterns” (Lewis et
al., 2017, p. 1464), enables the exponential replication of misogyny by
inventing, spreading, and reproducing techniques to attack women (online and
offline), online misogyny is not a product of the technology, but a result of
the society that shaped it."
- - - - - - -
- Tranchese, A. & Sugiura, L. (2021). “I Don’t Hate All Women, Just Those
Stuck-Up Bitches”: How Incels and Mainstream Pornography Speak the Same
Extreme Language of Misogyny. Violence Against Women, 27(14), 2709-2734;
link
- photographs by Susan Meiselas
via
and
via
