The number of people self-identifying as incels in Britain could be “tens of thousands,” according to an academic who led the biggest global research into the sub-culture.
The House of Commons Women and Equalities Committee is investigating incel (involuntary celibate) culture following concerns about its involvement in misogynistic and other forms of violence.
They said 561 incels—199 from Britain and 362 from the United States—completed their online questionnaires and was the largest global research into the subject.
Andrew Thomas, a senior lecturer in psychology at Swansea University, said it was impossible to say how many men in Britain self-identified as incels but he said there were tens of thousands who took part in online incel forums, including Reddit sub-groups.
“For every person you have on those forums there will be other individuals who are maybe not joining a forum, are digesting the content separately but not signing up to an account,” he added.
The ‘Hope, Cope or Rope’ Strategy
Mr. Thomas said many incels used the phrase “hope, cope or rope,” meaning they had to choose to be optimistic about a better future, accept their reality or take their own lives.Asked by the committee’s chair, Labour MP Kate Osborne, if women ever identified as incels, Mr. Thomas said there was a smaller group of women who referred to themselves as “femcel” and also a sub-culture called “insings” which means women who choose to avoid relationships.
Mr. Costello, a PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin, told the MPs: “The original incel community was actually set up by a lesbian woman in the 1990s and it was a pretty benign support group for people who were involuntarily single. The community has descended into toxicity since then ... and is now a misogynistic online sub-culture.”
Joe Whittaker, a lecturer in cyber threats at Swansea University, said a core belief of incel culture was that the growth of feminism and sexual freedom had led to a “mating crisis” for men.
Link With Far-Right
They found while commentators have suggested there was a link between incel culture and the far right, their study suggested incels were on average politically on the centre-left.But they said the 5 percent who agreed it was justified to commit violence against those who cause incels harm were more politically centre-right.
They also found a third of the incels who carried out the questionnaire passed the threshold for the autism spectrum.
Responding to the Swansea University study in February, Robin Simcox, the commissioner for countering extremism, said incels were a “desperate, depressed cohort of men.”
But he said looking at the issue through a counter-terrorism lens was, “not often going to be the most appropriate response.”
After the inquest into the Plymouth shootings, the local Labour MP, Luke Pollard, told Parliament last year, “I really want to rid the internet of the disgusting, festering incel culture that is capturing so many of our young people and young men in particular.”
“In particular I want minimum standards to apply to make sure that on big and small platforms where there’s a risk, that minimum standard includes recognition of incel content,” he added.
