Feminism has played an invaluable role in movements towards women's liberation throughout history. While society has come a long way, many issues still require Feminism to help solve. The definition of Feminism has shifted and changed over time. However, its goals remain somewhat fixed on providing the framework through which we can advocate for the equality and safety of women and men. One of the main hurdles in the protection of women's safety in the twenty-first century is gender-based violence, specifically the sexual assault and harassment of women on and offline. With the rise of the internet as a means of communication and connection, there has been an unfortunate side effect of the establishment of communities that act as safe havens for violent misogyny. Through intersectional analysis, Feminism aims to act as a preventative measure working against the growth of anti-feminist and misogynistic ideology in male spaces.
Misogyny, in all its varying forms, has only continued to shift and grow as time has passed. As each form of gender bias becomes less socially acceptable, a new and more elusive form develops, and this is especially true of the alternative right (alt-right) sphere of the internet. The alt-right represents the ultra-conservative sect of online communities that pedals white supremacist conspiracy theories and hateful, misogynistic vitriol. A common argument posed by this group is that multiculturalism (and often Feminism) is an imminent threat to white culture and the white race (SPLC, 2022), and this claim sets the foundation for much of the anti-feminist propaganda that is often spread throughout these communities. A popular sub-sect of the alt-right community is the manosphere, made up of a plethora of anti-women/feminist hate groups, the most violent of which are incels. Incel is a portmanteau of the phrase involuntary celibate. It is a community of men who believe that women are withholding sex from them on purpose, that all men's issues, both personal and 'systemic' are caused by women and their so-called 'Gynocracy', and that women as a group should be exterminated or made into submissive sex slaves en masse. Male patrons of the internet are introduced to incel-dom through less violent means and are often targeted for their loneliness, then eased into becoming perpetrators of violent, misogynistic hate speech online.
Tim Squirrel, a researcher studying social interaction in online communities, discussed how much of the vocabulary used in conservative spaces was born in the incel communities, highlighting that incels have been "Culturally enormously influential, even if they're not politically incorporated" (Bates, 2020, pg24). Incel communities are pervasive in that much of their surface-level rhetoric is a non-violent, empathetic approach to men's issues, affording men who feel disenfranchised by society a person or group of people to blame, those people being women.
The danger of these communities is not, however, to be understated. As Dr. Sugiura, a cybercrime expert, notes in an interview with Laura Bates for her book ‘Men Who Hate Women’, “Online communities and virtual platforms provide the means for these ideas to take shape, take hold, and spread” (Bates, 2022, pg26). One of the most active incel subreddits boasted over 40,000 active subscribers who constantly post ‘threads’ calling for the violent sexual assault of women. Comments ranging from, “I wouldn’t feel like a real man if I had consensual sex. Rape is the alpha method of pleasure … thats why {women} prefer to get raped.” (Bates, 2020, pg35) to arguing that rape should be illegal only if the women are unmarried virgins or nuns, to statements like:
“My concern for level of pain of rape would be greater if it weren't for the fact that most American women deserve to be raped because they oppose prostitution as a sexual outlet for men. Since they deserve to be raped, I cannot concern myself with the pain rape causes them” (Bates, 2020, pg30)
This form of violent rhetoric is not uncommon in these incel spaces; in fact, it dominates discussion surrounding the growing culture of 'rejection towards men' that incels feel is one of the most pressing issues in our society today. These men often talk about what they refer to as the 'day of retribution', which Bates outlines as a "fantasy that involuntarily celibate men would punish the world by carrying out bloody massacres of the women who torment them" (Bates, 2020, pg28). The day of retribution became an especially poignant talking point for incel groups after Elliot Rodger, a member of the incel community, shot three and killed two sorority sisters in the Alpha Phi sorority house at the University of California. Rodger continued his spree, driving into victims and shooting others, resulting in six total deaths and fourteen people injured. He filmed a YouTube video acting as a manifesto the day before his murder spree, in which he confesses that he is still a virgin, referring to his ongoing struggle to 'obtain' sex as "torturous" and threatens to "Punish" women for their perceived slights against him. He outlines his future crimes stating, "on the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck up, blonde, slut I see inside there" (The New York Times, 2014). Following Rodger's massacre came a slew of similar attacks citing Rodgers as inspiration. Ben Moynihan in 2014 (BBC, 2015), Chris Harper-Mercer in 2015 (SPLC, 2018), Alek Minissian in 2018 (NBC, 2018), and Scott Beierle in 2018 (CNN, 2019) all committed violent murders and publicly credited Rogers for inspiration for the attacks. In the coverage immediately following these sprees of violence, there was often little to no concerted effort to highlight the impact of Incel ideology as a catalyst for the crimes, instead shifting the discussion to their mental health and victim status in society. Police referred to Rodgers as "severely mentally disturbed" (Buzzfeed, 2014) and made no effort to highlight the fact that this incident was a misogynistic hate crime and should have been classified as such.
It is easy to cast these men as 'bad apples' in the Incel community as a way to avoid grappling with the understanding that tens of thousands of men participate in violent misogyny every day online (Bates, 2020 pg36). For the most part, those who do not enact violence on others are encouraging it in these forums. The day before Harper-Mercer committed a shooting at Umpqua Community College in 2015, which he stated was due to his inability to get a girlfriend, it is alleged that he posted a Reddit post detailing the plans for the crime and encouraging members of the subreddit not to attend school the next day. In response, members left comments encouraging the attack, stating, "Make us proud" and "Kill them all for us" (Bates, 2020 pg56). Harper-Mercer's manifesto shed light onto his aims, and amongst the mix of racist, rambling, and misogynistic threats of violence, he demonstrates how widespread the community is, quoting Ted Bundy, "We are your sons, your brothers, we are everywhere" (SchoolShooters, 2024).
While this statement was most likely intended to strike fear in female readers, its message is far from false. In 2018 the incel website 'Incelocalypse' was taken down for posts advocating for rape and having graphic descriptions of child pornography; the banner at the top of the homepage read, "The day we make the jailbaits our rape slaves" (HuffPost, 2018). A highly active user/administrator of the website going by the name 'Leucosticte' created posts promoting father-daughter incest, encouraging rape and referring to acid attacks as "the great equalizer" (Bates, 2020, pg37). This user was later uncovered to be Nathan Larson, a congressional candidate in Virginia. Larson spread Incel talking points throughout his congressional campaign, such as advocating for the Violence Against Women Act to be repealed, a nod to a previous post of his on Incelocalypse stating, "A man should be allowed to choke his wife to death as punishment for cutting her hair short without permission, or other acts of gross insubordination" (HuffPost, 2018). Larson's position as a highly respected congressman speaks to the acceptability of these views in society and helps uncover just how pervasive this rhetoric is.
Incel communities remain strong despite growing criticism, forums such as INCELS.IS continues to be active with posts every day detailing a violent hatred towards women, with over 100 posts being published just on the 23rd of May 2024. One post in particular stood out, with the user Dr. Autismo' threatening to keep going "ER on foids … I would have done worse tha{n} punch them" (2024). 'ER' are the initials of Elliot Rodger, the convicted shooter mentioned earlier; commenters replied encouraging this behaviour using coded language like highlighting the letters 'E' and 'R' in seemingly innocuous statements in order to convey hidden support for the original poster's threats. As this ideology spreads into common culture, more men internalise these ideas and engage in violent sexual behaviour against women, as is encouraged in these groups.
Influencer Andrew Tate, an ‘idol’ in incel communities, often speaks on the ‘epidemic of male loneliness’ perpetuating the idea that young men will never find loving romantic relationships and should instead devalue the role of women in their lives (M., 2022). He encourages violence towards women by creating fantasy situations where he gets to assault them (Ahmed, 2023) and avoids responsibility when these allegations are brought up to his face (Piers Morgan Uncensored, 2023). Tate was arrested in December of 2023 over allegations of rape and sex trafficking, his ideology of male domination seeping into his offline behaviour and acting as a clear example of the danger of the most influential men in these groups. Intimate partner violence and the encouragement of sexual assault in these communities set the foundation for a growing rate of femicide in these groups. Women who have been sexually assaulted are at a significantly higher risk of femicide compared to those who have not (McFarlane Et al., 2009), and the ever-growing rape culture in our communities sets the foundation for attacks like these to take place.
In order to address this problem, we first need to understand why men join groups such as these in the first place. Belle Hooks identifies one of these reasons as a fundamental misinterpretation of what Feminism is in her novel, 'Feminism Is For Everybody: Passionate Politics'. Hooks highlights how conservative media portrayals of Feminism are often skewed negatively and how feminist women are consistently portrayed as "man-hating" (Hooks, 2000, pg68) or aggressively misandrist. In turn, attitudes towards Feminism generally fall victim to this misrepresentation of the cause. Therefore, to prevent the men at the beginning of their radicalisation from being absorbed into inceldom, we have to understand their concerns. Despite their misplaced blame on Feminism, their expressions of hurt, loneliness, and alienation are genuine issues amongst their demographic that need to be addressed (Coman, 2020 pg5). The way that Feminism aims to confront these issues is through the employment of intersectionality, defined by Kimberlé Crenshaw as "a metaphor for understanding the ways that multiple forms of inequality or disadvantage sometimes compound themselves. … It's a prism for understanding certain kinds of problems" (NAIS, 2018 0:07-0:38). Through the lens of intersectionality we can begin to understand how patriarchy affects both men and women in different ways. It's through this dissection of patriarchy that anti-feminist groups such as the Incels will begin to dissolve. It also has to be understood that these groups pose a significant danger to women on a day-to-day basis and that we have a cultural responsibility to hold these men accountable once they cross over from passive disillusionment with society to active and hateful misogyny. Feminism, in this case, would act as a preventative measure for the forms of incel violence we see day to day as opposed to something that can be applied once the violent alt-right ideology has taken hold and begun to seep into Incel behaviour towards women.
Ultimately, the implementation of an intersectional analysis of the factors that encourage men to form these sorts of communities will allow outreach to be more effective in curbing men's interest in blaming feminism for their social issues. The Alt-right poses an intensely violent threat to the well-being of women and, therefore, should be understood as a significant barrier towards gender equality, which, while being heavily anti-feminist, would be largely prevented by the implementation of feminist, anti-patriarchal praxis. Due to the significant impacts of feminism within the last century, it becomes apparent that, as a society, it is necessary to address these sorts of issues, which continue to mutate and grow.
This essay was submitted as part of a Politics course I took at university last semester. I feel that the limited word count and pressure to solve an issue so great in less than 2000 words had steered the essay in a somewhat patchy direction. I would argue, retroactively, that I sometimes disagree with Hooks' staunchly sympathetic approach to managing misogyny and that there is a turning point where individual men's misogyny can't be where feminism has to put all of its focus. There is a kind of violence in framing feminism around men; it distracts from the problem by focusing on the symptoms of the issue. Either way, this essay touches the very surface of a much deeper issue, and in the future, I may discuss this issue further with less limiting parameters.
References:
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