Men who hate women: The misogyny of involuntarily celibate men
Open accessAbstract
This article uses computational data and social science theories to analyze the misogynistic discourse of the involuntary celibate (“incel”) community. We analyzed every comment ( N = 3,686,110) produced over 42 months on a popular incel discussion board and found that nearly all active participants use misogynistic terms. Participants used misogynistic terms nearly one million times and at a rate 2.4 times greater than their use of neutral terms for women. The majority of participants’ use of misogynistic terms does not increase or decrease with post frequency, suggesting that members arrive (rather than become) misogynistic. We discuss these findings in relation to theories of intersectionality, masculinity, and sexism. We likewise discuss potential policies for mitigating incel misogyny and similar online discourse.
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Incels, including those that identify as Men of Color, label women who date outside their race as "race traitors" and suggest that they should be punished for creating incels in their own racial/ethnic group.
“Incels, including those that identify as Men of Color, also label women who date outside their race as “race traitors” and suggest that they should be punished for creating incels in their own racial/ethnic group (see also Halpin & Richard, 2021; Halpin et al., 2023).”
From Stochastic Gender-Based Violence: How Incels Justify and Encourage Sexualized Violence Against Women (2025) · cites this paper as Halpin et al., 2023
The Discussion (page not provided) says many incels identify as Men of Color and describes their participation in racialized misogyny. It does not say that incels call women who date outside their race “race traitors” or propose punishing them for creating incels within their racial or ethnic group. (LLM, conf=0.84)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredResearch on incel communities indicates that they believe feminism and women's rights movements have led to a loss of male dominance and have "unfairly" prevented men from their "entitled" access to women's bodies.
“Research on incel communities indicates that they believe feminism and women's rights movements have led to a loss of male dominance and have “unfairly” prevented men from their “entitled” access to women's bodies (Baele et al., 2019; Halpin, 2022; Halpin et al., 2023; O’Donnell & Shor, 2022).”
From Stochastic Gender-Based Violence: How Incels Justify and Encourage Sexualized Violence Against Women (2025) · cites this paper as Halpin et al., 2023
The Abstract says incels see themselves as entitled to sex, and the Discussion says they resent women for denying them heterosexual sex. The Background describes incel communities as sites for the villainization of feminism. Our copy does not say incels believe feminism or women’s rights caused a loss of male dominance or prevented their access to women. (LLM, conf=0.86)
Experimental — accuracy not yet measured
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Cites
Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment.
Brewer, R. M., & Collins, P. H. (1992) · Contemporary Sociology · doi:10.2307/2074808 · Cited by 19,445 · see citing works
Drinking male tears: language, the manosphere, and networked harassment
Marwick, A. E., & Caplan, R. (2018) · Feminist Media Studies · doi:10.1080/14680777.2018.1450568 · Cited by 495 · see citing works
Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and Neoliberalism in the Manosphere
Van Valkenburgh, S. P. (2021) · Men and Masculinities · doi:10.1177/1097184x18816118 · Cited by 263 · see citing works
Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum: Linguistic analysis and automatic detection
Jaki, S., De Smedt, T., Gwóźdź, M., Panchal, R., Rossa, A., & De Pauw, G. (2019) · Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict · doi:10.1075/jlac.00026.jak · Cited by 226 · see citing works
Taking the black pill: An empirical analysis of the “Incel”.
Glace, A. M., Dover, T. L., & Zatkin, J. G. (2021) · Psychology of Men & Masculinities · doi:10.1037/men0000328 · Cited by 117 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Research works printed but not linked: 26
- Arbeit MR Onuoha AC Burnham SLF, et al. (2022) From misogynist incels to “one of the shooters”: what can help college sexual violence prevention confront male supremacism? Journal of Women and Gender in Higher Education 15: 309– 331.
- Bosson J Rousis G Felig R (2022) Curvilinear sexism and its links to men’s perceived mate value. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 48: 516– 533. 33890521
- Boyd D (2010) Social network sites as networked publics: affordances, dynamics, and implications. In: Papachrissi Z (ed.) A Networked Self: Identity, Community, and Culture on Social Network Sites. New York: Routledge, pp. 47– 66.
- Burke PJ (2006) Identity change. Social Psychology Quarterly 69(1): 81– 96.
- Connell R (1987) Gender and Power: Society, the Person and Sexual Politics. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
- Connell R (1995) Masculinities. Berkele, CA: University of California Press.
- Dion K Berscheid E Walster E (1972) What is beautiful is good. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 24: 285– 290. 4655540
- Donovan J (2020) Concrete recommendations for cutting through misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. American Journal of Public Health 110: S286–S287. PMC7532330 33001730
- Edelmann A Wolff T Montagne D, et al. (2020) Computational social science and sociology. Annual Review of Sociology 46: 61. PMC8612450 34824489
- Ging D (2019) Alphas, betas, and incels: theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere. Men and Masculinities 22(4): 638– 657.
- Glick P Fiske ST (1996) The ambivalent sexism inventory: differentiating hostile and benevolent sexism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 70: 491– 512.
- Hamilton LT Armstrong E Seeley JL, et al. (2019) Hegemonic femininities and intersectional domination. Sociological Theory 37(4): 315– 341.
- Jane EA (2018) Gendered cyberhate as workplace harassment and economic vandalism. Feminist Media Studies 18(4): 575– 591.
- Jankowicz N (2020) How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.
- Jones C Trott V Wright S (2020) Sluts and soyboys: MGTOW and the production of misogynistic online harassment. New Media & Society 22(10): 1903– 1921.
- Moloney ME Love TP (2018) Assessing online misogyny: perspectives from sociology and feminist media studies. Sociology Compass 12(5): e12577.
- Nelson LK (2020) Computational grounded theory: a methodological framework. Sociological Methods & Research 49(1): 3– 42.
- O’Donnell C Shor E (2022) “This is a political movement, friend”: why “incels” support violence. The British Journal of Sociology 73(2): 336– 351. 35034349
- O’Malley RL Holt K Holt TJ (2020) An exploration of the involuntary celibate (Incel) subculture online. Journal of Interpersonal Violence 37: NP5009–NP5025. 32969306
- Papadelos P Beasley C Treagus M (2021) Social change and masculinities: exploring favourable spaces? Journal of Sociology. Epub ahead of print 11 November.
- Pelzer B Kaati L Cohen K, et al. (2021) Toxic language in online incel communities. SN Social Sciences 1(8): 1– 22.34693299
- Preston K Halpin M Maguire F (2021) The black pill: new technology and the male supremacy of involuntarily celibate men. Men and Masculinities 24: 823– 841. 34803370 PMC8600582
- Regehr K (2022) In(cel)doctrination: how technologically facilitated misogyny moves violence off screens and on to streets. New Media & Society 24(1): 138– 155.
- Ribeiro MH Blackburn J Bradlyn B, et al. (2021) The evolution of the manosphere across the Web. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media 15: 196– 207.
- Schippers M (2007) Recovering the feminine other: masculinity, femininity, and gender hegemony. Theory and Society 36(1): 85– 102.
- Sue DW Capodilupo CM Torino CT, et al. (2007) Racial microaggressions in everyday life: implications for clinical practice. American Psychologist 62(4): 271. 17516773
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Stochastic Gender-Based Violence: How Incels Justify and Encourage Sexualized Violence Against Women
Gosse, M., Halpin, M., & Maguire, F. (2025) · Violence Against Women · doi:10.1177/10778012241279816 · Cited by 22 · see citing works
“…and gender relations, such that they view it as the right of men to sexually assault women, which buttresses prior research demonstrating incels ’ commitments to violence and male supremacy (Baele et al., 2019; Halpin, 2022; Halpin et al., 2023; O ’ Donnell & Shor, 2022; Tranchese & Sugiura, 2021).”
InfluentialSelf-citation
- Authors
- Halpin, M., Richard, N., Preston, K., Gosse, M., & Maguire, F.
- Affiliations
- Dalhousie University (CA)
- CBI Health Centre, Canada
- University of Toronto (CA)
- Corresponding author
- Halpin, Michael
- Venue
- New Media & Society
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2023-06-06
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 424-442
- ISSN
- 1461-4448 (ISSN-L)
- 1461-7315
- PMC
- PMC11661939
- OpenAlex
- W4379519405
- Cited by
- 59
- References
- 5
- Citations by year
- 2026: 32 · 2025: 12 · 2024: 13 · 2023: 2
- FWCI
- 20.58
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- New Media & Society (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion)
- SocArXiv (OSF Preprints) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Funders
- Killam Trusts
- Donald Hill
- Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (430-2022-00585)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender, Feminism, and Media
- Physical Sciences › Computer Science › Artificial Intelligence › Hate Speech and Cyberbullying Detection
- Social Sciences › Gender Studies › Gender and Feminist Studies
- Keywords
- incel community, misogyny, online misogyny, involuntary celibacy, online forums, hate speech, masculinity, intersectionality, sexism, online discourse
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
