There is a new and trending movement on the scene: the incel movement. Unlike its social justice counterparts, this movement is rooted in violence, anger, and virulent misogyny. The incel community has recently been thrust into the spotlight after Facebook posts appearing to belong to the Toronto van attack suspect, Alek Minassian, attributed his heinous actions to the incel ideology.
‘Incels,’ or involuntary celibates, are a predominately male online community characterized by their frustration with their inability to attract and/or convince women to have sex with them.
Most incel online discussion centers on elaborate and intricate conspiracies that they use to explain their sexual failures. These conspiracies usually revolve around how “Stacys” (conventionally attractive women) and “Chads” (conventionally attractive men) are plotting to keep those in the incel community from attaining physical relationships with women.
While such behaviour might mislead one into dismissing them as just another group of losers whining on the internet, it would be unwise to do so. For within the incel community, there exists an increasingly popular radical sub-group which has gone as far as advocating for the mass rape and genocide of women, as well as men they perceive as a threat to their goal of upending the sexual status quo.
Minassian was a follower of this particular school of thought, and he was hardly the first incel to actualize his violent fantasies.
The first known incel attack was carried out in 2014 by a young man named Elliot Rodger. He killed six and wounded 14—mostly women—in a shooting spree in Santa Barbara, California.
In a series of YouTube videos, Rodger justified his actions as a retaliation against women for refusing him the sex he believed they owed him.
It is quite disturbing to note that this man has become a hero to many incels, including the Toronto van attack perpetrator, according to the Globe and Mail.
They praise him for serving justice to those whom they believe treat them unfairly, and for initiating the incel rebellion against those who deprive them of the sex they believe they deserve.
It is tempting to want to perceive this group and their own brand of virulent misogyny as an aberration in the system. But their beliefs and behaviours are simply an extreme and exaggerated expression of the thoughts and beliefs that make up the existing system of patriarchy.
They operate within a centuries-old ideology. Their core beliefs about women and the relationship between the sexes is rooted in a familiar misogyny that has long been the backbone of the patriarchal system.
The gendered violence they glorify might not yet be occurring on a mass scale, but that does not mean it can’t, given the current tumultuous political climate in North America and the fact that we still live in a patriarchal society.
It would be a dishonour to the victims of the Toronto van attack to disregard the threat that radical misogynists, like those within the incel community, pose to the progress that we have made in achieving gender equity and equality.
We should let the Toronto van attack be a reminder to us that misogyny, quite literally, kills.
