Incels are often associated with violent acts of misogyny or depicted as pathetic targets of humor. Having treated a number of self-described incels who had been convicted of sex crimes, I’d like to offer a take on what incels and those of us who care about them can do to prevent their ending up on a sex-offender registry.
Most of us know that incel refers to those who are “involuntarily celibate"— that is, those who want to be sexually active but are experiencing a sexless life. What most people don’t know is that the idea had its origin when a university student named Alana became so sexually frustrated that she developed a website (Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project) in order to document her struggles in the dating sphere.
An article in the National Library of Medicine (NLM) is the best overview I’ve ever seen of the incel phenomenon. Despite Alana’s having initiated the conversation, most of us still associate “incel” with the male gender, as do the majority of male incels.
Alana’s website, according to the article, “featured discussion forums, article sharing, and a mailing list, which served a diverse community of people across the age span, genders, and sexual orientations.” Not so antisocial, right? No, it was downright pro-social.
Alana had found love and moved on, returning only after a violent incident perpetrated by an incel led her to discover that "the group had splintered into male-only assemblies whose sexual frustrations were often directed at the women who have ‘shunned’ them.”
Males who direct their sexual frustrations at women do so because, no surprise, they are........