any assault on a woman = "incel attack"?

ExcitableSarcasm · 2025-07-16T09:25:35+00:00

The problem as I see it are two fold:

Mislabelling incels. It's been proven time and time again that most SA incidents are perpetuated by men who knew the women, and aren't strangers like in this case. Random, lonely guys even if they have misogynistic thoughts (which aren't ok, but I think that's a given we can all agree on based on the sub) aren't the ones attacking women. About a quarter of rapes are committed by partners, about the same by family members, and an amount beyond that are committed by friends, or friends of friends of the victim, who by that description, by definition are less likely to be the perpetual lonely types typecasted by the media given how important social networks are in loneliness.

The fact of the matter is that the people committing crimes against women and the people who hold "incel opinions" are two separate groups, which while they may overlap, do not do so significantly accordingly to the evidence we have so far.

The idea that the archetypical incel who is masturbating 3x a day in his room and gets anxiety talking to women is going to be confident enough to attack someone is not one that really tracks. The label is simply applied to any man who does a negative thing towards women, and this is extremely dangerous for better gender relations, because this is actually negative to women in that it lulls them into a false sense of danger when they are at risk of being SA'ed by people who don't fit the "incel" appearance but who they write off as "safe".

Often, "incel" is just applied as an insult and is an extension of appearance-ism. I've seen married guys being called incels. I've seen actual incels be married and not be called that. I've seen random voluntarily celibrate monks be called incels, and I've seen people who are dyed-in-the wool feminists be called incel for calling out hate towards men. The point is that whether using the popular (ideological) definition of incel, or the actual dictionary definition (involuntarily celibate), the term is simply not used in any meaningful way.

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The "addressing" of incels is hilariously farcical. Let me be clear. I do not support in any way shape or form inceldom, or incel ideology. However, I've been friends with people who have fallen into that pipeline, and for a couple of years when my mental health was poor, was dangerously close to falling into the same trap, though I never did fully.

When you talk about why people fall into incel-dom, this is where the stereotypes are actually helpful. Most of it stems from loneliness and isolation, whether via conditions (neurological, e.g. autism, anxiety), or circumstance (forced into male only or dominated environments with little or no contact with women), or a mixture of both (very common).

This is why intersectional groups such as East and South Asian men in the West (low rates of mental health diagnosis, focus on studying and then work, often in gendered collectives, insular cultural groups with little encouragement to socialise with peers one's age, especially with those of the other gender, plus racism against them in Western societies, in particular, sexual racism, where racial hierarchies put them solidly at the bottom with emasculating stereotypes), are relatively overrepresented in incel groups. https://www.adl.org/resources/article/online-poll-results-provide-new-insights-incel-community I say this without reservation as a minority man, because I've been subjected to all those push factors even if I ultimately never fell down the rabbit hole.

Cont. in the next comment as I don't want to risk my comment not saving due to length and I have a meeting soon.

ShivasRightFoot · 2025-07-16T14:00:29+00:00

You may be interested in knowing there is a body of scientific literature showing Women have a strong preference against hearing contradicting ideas. Particularly one study shows that women are significantly more likely to "not justify my political beliefs to someone who disagrees with me;" "often feel uncomfortable when people argue about politics;" and disagree that they "have no problem revealing my political beliefs, even to someone who would disagree with me."

Coffé, Hilde, and Catherine Bolzendahl. "Avoiding the subject? Gender gaps in interpersonal political conflict avoidance and its consequences for political engagement." British Politics 12 (2017): 135-156.

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Descriptive-gender-gaps-in-political-conflict-avoidance-a-I-would-rather-not-justify_fig1_303835617

Here is another study that shows women are more likely to avoid expressing political opinions, even in anonymous academic surveys. This seems to definitively eliminate a theory that women do not express opinions due to physical intimidation.

Rae Atkeson, Lonna, and Ronald B. Rapoport. "The more things change the more they stay the same: Examining gender differences in political attitude expression, 1952–2000." Public opinion quarterly 67.4 (2003): 495-521.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3521691

A very recent one that shows "gender gaps [in political participation] are better understood as a product of men’s comparatively higher levels of enjoyment of arguments and disagreements."

Wolak, Jennifer. "Conflict avoidance and gender gaps in political engagement." Political behavior 44.1 (2022): 133-156.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-020-09614-5

Of course there are more that you can find cited in these papers, particularly the latest paper which can link you into the most recent research in the area.

ratcake6 · 2025-07-17T16:34:30+00:00

Any good bully knows that weaklings make for better targets, that's why virgins get blamed for the actions of people who've had more sex than anyone who knows what "incel" means :p

vegetables-10000 · 2025-07-16T21:34:21+00:00

This is due to benevolent sexism and chivalry.

Men are expected to always talk to women in a nice way, and never be too serious with them. Because any serious male tone to a woman can come off as "toxic masculinity" or "incel".

So a lot of women struggle to tell the difference between equality and misogyny. Because to them equality is a man giving them special treatment. And misogyny to them is a man treating women no different from men.

Zach-Playz_25 · 2025-07-16T07:44:27+00:00

Pretty sure the groping part is what got the incel name branded over the assault.

Incel is used loosely around these days- anyone who's considered sexually dangerous to women will probably be called an incel.

Dark_Prince_of_Chaos · 2025-07-17T18:11:23+00:00

Incel is just another shaming tool for bullies and women.

Banake · 2025-07-18T21:52:08+00:00

Equivocation. -https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation - They define incel as misogynists, so if someone did somethink to a woman, it was because of misogyny, and therefore he is an incel.

Glassyeyebrian · 2025-07-17T14:39:00+00:00

Marc lepine was a misogynistic terrorist, but he isnt an incel

Lostyogi · 2025-07-17T03:41:33+00:00

Incel for men is what slut is for women: both impose moral judgments based on sexual history. Men for having none, women for having too much. Funny how no one writes think pieces on toxic slut culture. 🤔

AdAppropriate2295 · 2025-07-20T16:50:26+00:00

Just let go of the idea of incel being a specific term, it's clearly a broader label now

This is like being upset that italians and irish are called white

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