Until this week, many people had never heard of “incels”, a term short for “involuntary celibates” that describes a certain kind of man. It’s a man who has never had sex, or who has trouble finding partners to have sex with, and who feels a deep sense of entitlement to the women who won’t have sex with him.
This sense of entitlement can extend to dreams of raping women, to the actual murder of several students (by a man aspiring to be a “pick-up artist”, Elliot Rodger). And, as we discovered on Tuesday, it can lead to someone driving a van onto a pavement and killing ten people.
Alek Minassian was an incel, and moments before his despicable crime, he left a message on Facebook that many have described as ‘cryptic’ or ‘puzzling’. In fact, for those of us who have been watching incels quietly over months or years, it was all too comprehensible.
It read:
“Private (Recruit) Minassian Infantry 00010, wishing to speak to Sgt 4chan please. C23249161. The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Minassian begins with a military statement, referring to 4chan, an often-toxic online community that incels flock to. He includes a number – C23249161 – which is reportedly his own military ID.
The Incel Rebellion has already begun: he clearly identifies himself as an incel and a rebel, believing he is fighting the righteous fight. Because he can’t get a girl (incels in almost every case identify as heterosexual, even though some of their obsessions with men they believe to be “Chads” – see below – could certainly be described as homoerotic).
Chads and Stacys: Chads are men considered by society to be handsome and fit. They tend to be tall with muscular bodies and chiseled faces. Incels obsess about Chads to an unhealthy degree, sharing photographs of male models and comparing them to photographs of men who are considered to be more “average” looking by society. One man described his fear that his Dad must think he was gay after he found the Chad folder he kept for particularly Chad-like men on his computer.
Chads get the girls. They use and abuse them with (not-so)-gay abandon and have the pick of the bunch.
Not mentioned here are Tyrones, who are handsome Black men who get all the girls. There is a lot of racism in the incel community.
Stacys are attractive girls and women. They spend their teens and twenties sleeping with all the Chads and Tyrones. Despite being the people the incels desire, they are also the subject of abject hatred and bitterness from this group. Incels have no idea if they want to sleep with Stacys or just kill them. Often, there are fantasies of torture and rape involved.
Elliot Rodger: The reference to Elliot Rodger is a call back to the spree killer who, to deal with his frustration of never getting a girl and still being a virgin, killed his university roommates and others who crossed his path. Rodger is a bit of a hero in the incel community because he brought attention to their supposed plight, and he took action to deal with his anger. He left an epic (meaning huge, not impressive) manifesto to explain what he did.
Minassian probably imagined that his note would survive him. Instead, he was taken alive by the police and will have to face a trial and the consequences of what he did. What may have seemed like a good idea once will hopefully haunt him for decades to come as he rots in prison.
In his note, he could have gone further. There is plenty more to explore in what incels say and do. Here is some of their notable vocabulary and theory:
Normies: Normies are average-looking men who succumb to their desire for women and are in relationships with them. Incels treat normies with contempt, despite them being essentially the same as them, just actively having sex rather than not getting any.
Roasties: Incels believe – wrongly – that vaginas and vulvas change shape the more sex a person has. The inner labia apparently stretch and get longer, resembling roast beef, when they are particularly sexually active. This leads to them being called roasties.
Cucks: Cucks are men who have sex with women, accepting an inferior role in life to support a Stacy, such as “wage cucks” who earn money to support their girlfriends or wives.
Types of incel: there are currycels (Indian incels – I mentioned the racism already), nosecels (incels who can’t find women because of the way their noses look), and even volcels – “voluntary celibates” who could change their situation if they took action, such as losing weight.
So, when Stacys have finished “riding the cock carousel” (you’re really getting an image of how charming these guys are, right?) in their twenties and are looking for a wage cuck in their thirties to settle down with, their roastie vaginas mean they are no longer worth chasing. Incels want virgins and they want them to be perfect. I’ve read conversations about breeding women and girls especially to sleep with incels, to be brought up with no influence of feminism or modern society so that they are dedicated to curing a poor incel of his suffering.
But what this is is men who haven’t had sex and are, frankly, overreacting about that. They turn it into a destructive identity that they can’t see beyond, and their whole lives are defined by this one fairly insignificant factor. Their sense of entitlement is horrifying and, as we have seen in two major incidents, this theory can turn into reckless, boundless violence.
Photo: Brad Hagen/Creative Commons