Courtney Stanhope Kenny (18 March 1847 – 18 March 1930) was a British jurist, academic and Liberal politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1888, and was later Downing Professor of the Laws of England at Downing College, University of Cambridge. He is buried with his family in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.

Early life and career
Kenny was born on the Wirral, the son of William Fenton Kenny J.P. of Halifax and Ripon and his wife Agnes Ralph, daughter of John Rhodes Ralph J.P. of Halifax. He was educated at the Heath and Hipperholme grammar schools and joined a firm of solicitors in 1863. In 1869 he became a partner but decided to leave and pursue a university education, entering Downing College, Cambridge in 1871. His career at university was particularly brilliant; in 1872 he was awarded a scholarship, in 1874 he was senior in the law and history tripos, won the Winchester Reading Prize, and was elected president of the union. In 1875, he won the chancellor's medal for legal studies.

Kenny was elected a fellow of Downing College in 1875 and was appointed to a lecturership in law and moral science.  In three successive years, 1877, 1878, 1879, he submitted an essay which won him thrice the Yorke Prize; the essays were on the history of the law of primogeniture (jointly with Perceval Maitland Laurence), the law relating to married women's property, and the law of charities.

In 1881 Kenny was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn and joined the south-eastern circuit.

Political career
At the 1885 general election Kenny was elected Member of Parliament (MP) for the Barnsley division of Yorkshire, and at the general election of June 1886 he was again returned as a Liberal. While in parliament he introduced bills for the abolition of primogeniture and for the amendment of the law relating to blasphemy, which demanded the repeal of the laws restricting the expression of religious opinion.

Cambridge Professor
In 1888 Kenny became university reader of English law at Cambridge University, and resigned from parliament to concentrate on work at the university. In 1907 he was elected to replace the recently deceased Frederic William Maitland as Downing Professor of the Laws of England, a position he held until his retirement in 1918. He died in Cambridge aged 83. Two student residence buildings at Downing College are named in his honour.

Selected bibliography
 The Law of England on the Effects of Marriage on Property, Yorke Prize 1877
 The History of the Law of Primogeniture, Yorke Prize 1878
 The true principles of legislation with regard to property given for charitable or other public uses or Endowed Charities, Yorke Prize 1879?1880
 A Selection of Cases Illustrative of English Criminal Law, 1901
 A selection of cases illustrative of the English law of tort, 1908
 Outlines of Criminal Law, 1902, textbook with at least 19 re-editions to 1966,
 including, with James H. Webb, an American edition in 1907

Family
Kenny married Emily Gertrude Wiseman (2 July 1849 – 27 November 1929) daughter of William Wood Wiseman M.R.C.S. of Ossett, Yorkshire in 1876. They had two daughters, Gertrude (died 9 September 1958) and Agnes (died 11 January 1966); all are buried together in the Parish of the Ascension Burial Ground in Cambridge.

References

External links

1847 births
1930 deaths
Alumni of Downing College, Cambridge
Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge
Liberal Party (UK) MPs for English constituencies
UK MPs 1885–1886
UK MPs 1886–1892
Members of Lincoln's Inn
People educated at Heath Grammar School
Presidents of the Cambridge Union
English legal writers
English legal scholars
British legal scholars
British legal writers
Fellows of the British Academy
Downing Professors of the Laws of England

Courtney Kenny (British politician)


The eastern racer (Coluber constrictor) is a type of nonvenomous snake in the family Colubridae. It only lives in North America and Central America.

Description
Eastern racers usually grow up to 50 to 152 cm (20 to 60 in) in length. They usually weigh around 556 g (1.226 lb). Its color can range from black, bluish, gray, to olive brown.

Distribution and Habitat
It is found throughout the United States, east of the Rocky Mountains. It is also found north into Canada and south into Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.

It is usually found near water, but it can also be found in bushes, trash piles, roadsides, and swamps. It spends most of its time on the ground. But, it is a good climber. It may be found in shrubs and trees where there are bird nests.

Most of the eastern racers like open, grassland habitats where their eyesight and speed can be used. They are usually not far from a place to hide.

Feeding
They mainly eat small rodents, frogs, toads, lizards, and other snakes. Some subspecies are known to climb trees to eat eggs and young birds. Young eastern racers usually insects with soft bodies, such as crickets and moths. They overcome moving prey by wrapping into one or two coils pressing its prey to hold it so that it can swallow it alive.

Behaviour
The eastern racers are fast, very active, diurnal snakes. Eastern racers are curious snakes. They have very good vision. They are sometimes seen raising their heads above the grass where they are crawling to see what is around them. They usually run away from a predator. They are hard to hold and will poop, and release a bad smelling liquid from their cloacae.

Reproduction
It mates in the spring from April until early June. The female lays three to 30 eggs in a hidden nest, such as a hollow log, an abandoned rodent burrow, or under a rock. The young ones hatch in the early fall. They reach maturity when they are around 2 years old.

References

Colubrids
Snakes of North America

Eastern racer


Fairy Tales is a 1981 book of children's stories written by Monty Python's Terry Jones and illustrated by Michael Foreman with both ink drawings and watercolour paintings.

The book tells an assortment of short fantasy tales, such as "Simple Peter", about a boy with a mirror that shows you as others see you, and the tale of a little girl who is offered the chance to take a magical trip to Goblin City, but spends so long fretting about the trip that eventually the friendly goblin who made the offer takes it back.

The tales are told with an irreverent voice and comic nonsense.  At one point the stars are heard to sing, "Boodle-dum dee, boodle-dum dar, isn't it fun, being a star?" To which the moon answers, "I'm just the moon, but that's fine by me, so long as I hear that boodle-dum dee!" Some of the dialogue is surprisingly adult ("That is one hell of a beautiful butterfly", says an admiring frog) and some of the tales end on a rather sad note, but they also feature the old-fashioned lessons and fearsome monsters one would expect of fairy tales.

In April 2009, the book was chosen by Children's Laureate Michael Rosen as one of his five best children's stories of all time.

References

1981 short story collections
1981 children's books
Children's short story collections
British short story collections
Books by Terry Jones
Fantasy short story collections

Fairy Tales (Jones book)


Incel ( ) is a portmanteau of "involuntary celibate". Originally coined as "INVCEL" around 1993 to 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as Alana, the term rose to prominence in the 2010s as it became closer associated with an online subculture of people (mostly white, male, and heterosexual) who define themselves as unable to get a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one.

The subculture is often characterized by deep resentment, hatred, hostility, sexual objectification, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity and self-loathing, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, blaming of women and the sexually successful for their situation (which is often seen as predetermined due to  biological determinism, evolutionary  genetics or a rigged game), a sense of futility and nihilism, rape culture, and the endorsement of sexual and nonsexual violence against women and sexually active people. Incel communities have been increasingly criticized by scholars, government officials, and others for their misogyny, the endorsement and encouragement of violence, and extremism. Over time the subculture has become associated with extremism and terrorism, and since 2014 there have been multiple mass killings perpetrated by self-identified incels, as well as other instances of violence or attempted violence.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem" that is included in their list of hate groups. The Global Internet Forum to Counter Terrorism states that "the incel community shares a misogynistic ideology of women as being genetically inferior to men, driven by their sexual desire to reproduce with genetically superior males thereby excluding unattractive men such as themselves" which "exhibits all of the hallmarks of an extremist ideology", and that it is the combination of a wish for a mythical past where all men were entitled to sex from subordinated women, a sense of predestined personal failure, and nihilism, which makes the worldview dangerous. Estimates of the overall size of the subculture vary greatly, ranging from thousands to hundreds of thousands of individuals.

History
The first website to use the term "incel" was founded sometime between 1993 and 1997. The website was created by a university student living in Toronto and known only by her first name, Alana, to discuss her sexual inactivity with others. Titled "Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project", the website was used by people of all genders to share their thoughts and experiences. During 1997, she started a mailing list on the topic that used the abbreviation INVCEL, later shortened to "incel", for "anybody of any gender who was lonely, had never had sex or who hadn't had a relationship in a long time". During her college years and after, Alana realized she was bisexual and became more comfortable with her identity. She stopped participating in her online project around 2000 and gave the site to a stranger. In 2018, Alana said of her project: "It definitely wasn't a bunch of guys blaming women for their problems. That's a pretty sad version of this phenomenon that's happening today. Things have changed in the last 20 years". When she read about the 2014 Isla Vista killings, and that parts of the incel subculture glorified the perpetrator, she wrote: "Like a scientist who invented something that ended up being a weapon of war, I can't uninvent this word, nor restrict it to the nicer people who need it". She expressed regret at the change in usage from her original intent of creating an "inclusive community" for people of all genders who were sexually deprived due to social awkwardness, marginalization, or mental illness.

The message board love-shy.com was founded in 2003 as a place for people who felt perpetually rejected or were extremely shy with potential partners to discuss their situations. It was less strictly moderated than its counterpart, IncelSupport, which was also founded in the 2000s. While IncelSupport welcomed men and women and banned misogynistic posts, love-shy.com's userbase was overwhelmingly male. Over the next decade, the membership of love-shy.com and online fringe right-wing communities like 4chan increasingly overlapped. In the 2000s, incel communities became more extremist as they adopted behaviors common on forums like 4chan and Reddit, where extremist posts were encouraged as a way to achieve visibility. According to Bruce Hoffman and colleagues writing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, as "edgy" and extremist statements became more prevalent in incel communities, so too did extremist trolling and "shitposting".

The r/incels subreddit, a forum on the website Reddit, later became a particularly active incel community. It was known as a place where men blamed women for their inceldom, sometimes advocated for rape or other forms of violence, and were misogynistic and often racist. On November 7, 2017 Reddit banned the r/incels subreddit following a new policy that prohibited "content that encourages, glorifies, incites, or calls for violence or physical harm against an individual or a group of people" adopted earlier in October 2017. At the time of the ban, the community had around 40,000 members. The incel community continued to inhabit Reddit in other subreddits, such as on the subreddit r/braincels. Although the tone of the subreddit was similar to r/incels, moderators of the r/braincels forum said that they did not endorse, support, or glorify violence or violent people, a distinction they made from the subject matter of its predecessor that resulted in its being banned from Reddit. The r/braincels subreddit was banned later, however, on September 30, 2019, after Reddit again broadened its banning policy. Incel communities began to migrate away from shared platforms and instead use their own closed forums dedicated specifically to the subject.

The subculture came to wider public notice throughout the 2010s with the banning of r/incels and when a series of mass murders were committed by men who either identified as members of the subculture or shared similar ideologies. Increased interest in incel communities has been attributed to feelings of "aggrieved entitlement" among some men who feel they are being denied rights they deserve and blame women for their lack of sex.

Since around 2019, some self-identified incels have attempted to redefine their views to appear more mainstream by writing blog posts and articles on subject-specific wikis and forums rejecting the more open expressions of misogyny within other segments of the subculture, highlighting the heterogeneity of incel communities, and reframing incels not as an online subculture but as those experiencing a life circumstance that applies even to individuals who are not members of the subculture. M. Kelly wrote for the Political Research Associates think tank in 2021 that these attempts to redefine themselves contradicted the communities' self-identifications and moderation strategies, where members regularly challenge other users' "legitimacy" as incels, but have accepted as members individuals with sexual experience who nonetheless shared similar political ideologies.

Extremism
Incel communities became more extremist and focused on violence from the late 2010s. This has been attributed to factors including influences from overlapping online hate groups and the rise of the alt-right and white supremacist groups. The misogynistic and violent rhetoric of some members of these communities has led to numerous bans from websites and webhosts. Incel communities continue to exist on more lenient platforms including 4chan, 8chan, and Gab, as well as on web forums created specifically for the topic. More extremist self-identified incels have increasingly migrated to obscure locations including gaming chat services and the dark web to avoid site shutdowns and the self-censorship that has developed among some incel communities as an effort to avoid drawing scrutiny from law enforcement or website service providers.

Beginning in 2018 and into the 2020s, the incel ideology has been described by North American governments and researchers as a terrorism threat, and law enforcement have issued warnings about the subculture. In May 2019, an American man was sentenced to up to five years in prison for attempting to make terrorist threats, posting on social media, "I'm planning on shooting up a public place... killing as many girls as I see". In September 2019, the U.S. Army warned soldiers about the possibility of violence at movie theaters showing the Joker film, after "disturbing and very specific chatter" was found in conversations among self-identified incels on the dark web. A January 2020 report by the Texas Department of Public Safety warned that the incel movement was an "emerging domestic terrorism threat" that "could soon match, or potentially eclipse, the level of lethalness demonstrated by other domestic terrorism types". A 2020 paper published by Bruce Hoffman and colleagues in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism concluded that "the violent manifestations of the ideology pose a new terrorism threat, which should not be dismissed or ignored by domestic law enforcement agencies". John Horgan, a psychology professor at Georgia State University who in 2019 received a $250,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to study the incel subculture, explained why the incel ideology equates to terrorism: "the fact that incels are aspiring to change things up in a bigger, broader ideological sense, that's, for me, what make it a classic example of terrorism. That's not saying all incels are terrorists. But violent incel activity is, unquestionably, terrorism in my view". In February 2020, an attack in Toronto that was allegedly motivated by incel ideologies became the first such act of violence to be prosecuted as terrorism, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police stated that they consider the incel subculture to be an "Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist (IMVE)" movement. Jacob Ware publishing in Counter Terrorist Trends and Analyses wrote that analysis of incels has been focused within the United States and Canada due to the concentration of incel-motivated attacks in those countries. The United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, in a March 2022 case study titled "Hot Yoga Tallahassee: A Case Study of Misogynistic Extremism", sought to draw attention to "the specific threat posed by misogynist extremism."

Forums
The largest incel forum was founded in 2017 by a previous moderator of the r/incels subreddit. The forum had almost 15,000 members . It is composed of public and registered message boards for self-described incels to discuss their personal experiences. Moderators ban women and LGBT individuals from joining, justifying so by stating that the forum is oriented towards straight men. Talia Lavin in her book Culture Warlords describes the site's culture as one of "one-upmanship", "barroom boast-off" and shock content. Rolling Stone describes a vindictive site culture, giving an example of an ex-moderator who entered a romantic relationship and was subsequently rejected by site members as a "fake incel". Vox states that the site has a culture of praising mass killers, which is treated lightly by the site's admins.

The site has used several top-level domains since its creation, after being suspended by one over violence and hate speech and denied renewal by another.

The site owners also operate a wiki, which has been described by researchers publishing in New Media & Society as cherrypicking academic papers to promote misogynistic points.

Connection to suicide forums

In September The UK-based Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH) published a report in September 2022 about the largest dedicated incel forum, based on monthly visits, and a network of other sites run by the same two pseudonymous individuals. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the CCDH identified the individuals as Uruguay-based Diego Joaquín Galante and United States-based Lamarcus Small. In December 2021, the New York Times reported that it had identified 45 people, individually, who died in connection to a website called Sanctioned Suicide, and estimated that the true number was likely much higher. The Times reporters discovered that Galante and Small created and operated the suicide website, in addition to their several incel forums. The CCDH reported that Galante and Small also maintained forums for online communities dedicated to body image and unemployment.

Ideology present in incel communities
Many incel communities are characterized by resentment and hatred, self-pity, racism, misogyny, and misanthropy. Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex; other common topics include idleness, loneliness, unhappiness, suicide, sexual surrogates, and prostitutes, as well as attributes they believe increase one's desirability as a partner such as income or personality. The incel community has a shared victimhood identity in which individuals fatalistically celebrate their failures and discourage each other from seeking romantic success. Many self-identified incels adopt the "scientific blackpill", a series of social psychology studies that purport to scientifically prove their victimization. Opposition to feminism and women's rights is common, and some posters blame women's liberation for their inability to find a partner. Some believe there was a golden age in which couples married early, were strictly monogamous, and adhered to traditional gender roles. They believe that during this time, looks played less of a role in romantic pairings and men's "entitlement" to sex with women was never denied. While those of them who hold this belief often disagree about precisely when this golden age occurred, they concur that it was gradually destroyed by feminism, the sexual revolution, women's liberation, and technological progress. Racism is generally considered to be common on incel forums, though some researchers have questioned its prevalence. In 2019, Jaki et al. estimated that 3 percent of comments on incel forums contained words from a list of racist words identified by the researchers. Antisemitic beliefs are also regularly found on incel forums, with some posters going so far as to blame the rise of feminism on a plot masterminded by Jews to weaken the Western world.

Some researchers have questioned linguistic analysis of incel forums as the primary methodology for studying the subculture, recommending that future researchers employ qualitative methods such as one-on-one interviews to obtain a more nuanced view and to avoid results being skewed by the prevalence of shitposting on incel forums.

In context of related communities

Incel communities are a part of the broader manosphere, a loose collection of misogynist movements that also includes men's rights activists(MRAs), Men Going Their Own Way(MGTOW), pickup artists(PUAs), and fathers' rights groups. Journalists for the New York Times in 2018 wrote that involuntary celibacy is an adaptation of the idea of "male supremacy" and that the communities have evolved into a movement "made up of people—some celibate, some not—who believe that women should be treated as sexual objects with few rights". The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) also described the subculture as "part of the online male supremacist ecosystem", which they began including in their list of hate groups in 2018. While the incel ideology involves the belief that one is physically inferior to the rest of society, often referring to oneself as "subhuman", researchers have agreed that self-identified incels also espouse supremacist views: either that they are superior to women, or superior to non-incels in general. A 2019 study published in Terrorism and Political Violence found that self-identified incels believe themselves to be the only ones who are "capable of pro-social values and intelligent enough ('high IQ') to see the truth about the social world". The study determined that they followed a pattern that is typical of extremist groups, ascribing highly negative values to out-groups and positive values to in-groups, with the unusual caveat that despite seeing themselves as psychologically superior, they also view themselves negatively in terms of physical appearance.

Incel communities sometimes overlap with communities such as Men Going Their Own Way, men's rights activism, people who believe they are experiencing "true forced loneliness" (TFL), and pickup artistry, although at least one incel website has expressed hatred for pickup artistry and accused pickup artists and dating coaches of financially exploiting incels. Media scholar Debbie Ging writes that incels' discourse around "victimhood and aggrieved entitlement" began on 4chan and has spread into more mainstream groups such as men's rights activists (MRAs) and Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW). Incel communities have also been observed to overlap with far-right groups, with the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right noting that the subculture is "part of a growing trend of radical-right movements" that are distressed by neoliberalism, especially women's empowerment and immigration. Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, stated that "a particularly worrisome trend is how seamlessly the militant incel community has been integrated into the alt-right tapestry, with common grievances and intermingling membership bringing the two extremisms closer together".  reported in March 2021 on the overlap between the incel community and the Feuerkrieg Division, a group modeled after the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist network.

Promotion of violence

Some discussions in incel communities endorse violence against sexually active women and more sexually successful men; harassment of women, including activities such as catfishing; and suicide. According to the Anti-Defamation League, they form the most violent community within the manosphere. In some incel communities, it is common for posts to glorify violence by self-identified incels such as Elliot Rodger (perpetrator of the 2014 Isla Vista killings) and Alek Minassian (perpetrator of the 2018 Toronto van attack), as well as by those they believe shared their ideology such as Marc Lépine (perpetrator of the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre), Seung-Hui Cho (perpetrator of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting), and George Sodini (perpetrator of the 2009 Collier Township shooting). Rodger is the most frequently referenced, often being referred to as their "saint" with memes in which his face has been superimposed onto paintings of Christian icons. Some incels consider him to be the true progenitor of today's online incel communities.

Some within these communities view violence as the only solution to what they see as societal oppression and abuse against them, and speak frequently of incel "uprisings" and "revolts". Others take the more nihilistic view that nothing will change society, even violent acts, and focus their efforts on constructing a scientific justification for this nihilism. Some support the idea of violence as revenge on society, without the hope it will lead to societal change.

However, other researchers have questioned the degree of violence found in incel communities, with some suggesting that "extreme inceldom looks more like suicidality than violence toward others". Some violent posts may be motivated by status seeking behavior by individuals on forums, rather than a desire to promote violence. A 2021 study found that the overwhelming majority of self-identified incels themselves do not think that incel groups promote violence, and a 2022 study found that most self-identified incels surveyed (79%) rejected violence.

Sexual violence
A subgroup of self-identified incels who frequent websites founded by Nathan Larson, who was a perennial political candidate and active participant in incel communities, work deliberately to convince other self-identified incels that they are justified in raping women if they are rejected sexually. Some self-identified incels describe women's sexual rejection of them as "reverse rape", a phenomenon they consider to be equally harmful as rape.

A September 2022 report by the Center for Countering Digital Hate on the largest dedicated incel forum found that users posted about rape once every 29 minutes during their study period, and used the word "kill" 1,181 times in one month. 89% of forum users during the study period expressed that they support rape in general. According to the report, some posters on the forum try to normalize the idea of child rape, and more than half the total forum during their study period supported pedophilia. The report also exposed that the incel forum site operators had changed a forum rule in March 2022 to allow for the sexualization of pubescent minors, narrowing an existing rule to outlaw only the sexualization of "pre-pubescent" minors.

Justifications for beliefs

Many self-identified incels justify their prejudices using interpretations taken from concepts such as biological determinism and evolutionary psychology. Self-identified incels also regularly endorse the ideas of "female hypergamy"; genetic superiority of men over women; the "80/20 rule" (an application of the Pareto principle) which suggests that 80% of women desire the top 20% of most attractive men; and, among non-white men within the subculture, the "just be white" (JBW) theory, which suggests that Caucasians face the fewest obstacles to relationships and sex. Self-identified incels also believe that people seeking a romantic or sexual partner participate in a cruel, mercenary, and Darwinian sexual selection, wherein incels are genetically unfit and where women hold an advantage for reasons ranging from feminism to the use of cosmetics. Incels may attribute their lack of sexual success to factors such as shyness, sex-segregated work environments, negative body image, penis size, or their physical appearance, and commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth. Some justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe social psychologist Brian Gilmartin and clinical psychologist Jordan Peterson.

"Red pill" and "black pill"

The "red pill" is an allusion that is common among manosphere communities, as well as some communities outside of the manosphere. It originates from the dilemma in the movie The Matrix where the protagonist must choose whether to remain in a world of illusion (taking the blue pill) or to see the world as it really is (taking the red pill). Among communities that use the term, the "red pill" often refers to the core set of beliefs of that community, and people who are "redpilled" or who have "taken the red pill" are those who hold those beliefs. In manosphere communities such as men's rights groups and, according to some researchers, in incel communities as well, "taking the red pill" means seeing a world where feminism has given women too much power over men and male privilege does not exist. The "black pill" is an extension of the red and blue pill analogy. There is some disagreement among researchers and journalists over which beliefs are "red pill" and which are "black pill", and whether the black pill ideology is a distinguishing belief of the incel ideology or if there are self-identified incels who do not subscribe to black pill ideas. Some researchers and journalists use the term "red pill" to refer to the set of beliefs commonly held by men's rights' activists, and the term "black pill" to summarize the incel ideology as a whole. Hoffman et al. have said that Taking the black pill' is critical to the incel identity, since it means recognizing 'inceldom' as a permanent condition". Aja Romano writing for Vox has said, "what unites all incels is something known as the black pill". Researchers at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) write that there are some incels who believe in the red pill and others who believe in the black pill.

The "black pill" generally refers to a set of beliefs generally only held by incel communities, which include biological determinism, fatalism, and defeatism for unattractive people. These beliefs are supported by continued reference on incel forums to scientific studies in fields such as psychology, sociology, and evolutionary biology. Believers are referred to as being "blackpilled". The black pill has been described by Vox correspondent Zack Beauchamp as "a profoundly sexist ideology that... amounts to a fundamental rejection of women's sexual emancipation, labeling women shallow, cruel creatures who will choose only the most attractive men if given the choice". The term was first popularized on the blog Omega Virgin Revolt, where it represented a belief that the entire social system was broken and that one's place in the system was not something any individual could change. One who has "taken the black pill" has adopted the belief that they are hopeless, and that their lack of success romantically and sexually is permanent regardless of any changes they might try to make to their physical appearance, personality, or other characteristics.

Researchers at the ADL have said that incels can also follow the red pill ideology. Those who believe they can improve their chances with women are adherents to the red pill, whereas only incels who believe they have no power to change their position in society or chances with women are blackpilled. The ADL writes that, among incels, the beliefs summarized as "red pill" center around the idea that feminism has unbalanced society to favor women and give them too much power. Redpilled incels believe they have the opportunity to fight back against this system which disadvantages them, which they do by trying to make themselves more attractive to women. Conversely, blackpilled incels are those who believe they can do nothing to change their situation. The ADL writes, "This is where the incel movement takes on characteristics of a death cult". Those who have taken the black pill are left with few options, says the ADL: giving up on life (referred to by incels as "LDAR", an abbreviation for "lie down and rot"), dying by suicide, or committing mass violence.

On the former incel subreddit r/braincels, the term "blackpill" was used for memes that criticized women as egocentric, cruel, and shallow.

Lexicology
The term "involuntary celibate" (shortened to "incel") refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture based around the inability to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, a state they describe as "inceldom" or "incelibacy". It is sometimes used interchangeably or alongside other terms, such as "love-shy" (describing those with social anxiety or excessive shyness preventing romantic success), "FA" (short for "forever alone"), "unfuckability", "omegas", "betas", "betafags", "the undersexed", or "the sexless". Alana, the coiner of the term "incel", initially considered using other terms such as "perpetually single" or "dating shy".

Members of incel communities regularly use jargon and a distinct dialect. They often use dehumanizing and vulgar terms for women, such as "femoids" (a portmanteau of "female humanoids", sometimes shortened further to "foids") and "roasties" (a reference to the labia minora, which incels falsely believe changes shape and begins to resemble sliced roast beef after a woman becomes sexually active). They refer to attractive, sexually active women as "Stacys", less attractive sexually active women as "Beckys", and attractive sexually active men as "Chads". People who are average-looking but not incels are "normies". "Mogging" refers to the act of eclipsing another person in terms of physical appearance and thereby undermining them. "Looksmaxing" is an attempt at enhancing one's appearance by methods including getting a haircut and dressing nicely, taking steroids and working out, undergoing plastic surgery, or engaging in alternative techniques such as mewing. The abbreviation "NEET" refers to people who do not have jobs and are not attending school: "not in education, employment, or training".

Members of incel communities use many variations of the term "incel" to refer to subgroups within the community, such as "volcels" (voluntary celibate; someone who chooses to forego sexual intercourse), "fakecels" (those who claim to be incel, but in reality have recently had sex or been in a relationship), and "truecels" (true incels; men who have never had any sexual or romantic encounters). There are also a number of race-based variations of the term "incel" which refer to people who believe their race is the reason behind their inability to find a partner, including "currycels" (people of South Asian ancestry) and "ricecels" (those of Chinese or Southeast Asian backgrounds), or collectively, "ethnicels".

"Incel" has also come to be used as an insult against people who do not necessarily identify with the subculture, but who are perceived to be sexually inexperienced, undesirable, or unpopular.

Demographics
Self-identified incels are mostly male and heterosexual, and are often described as young and friendless introverts. Estimates of the size of incel communities during 2018–2020 varied, and ranged from the thousands, to tens of thousands, to hundreds of thousands. A statistical analysis of the largest incel forum shows that only a few hundred accounts made up the vast majority of forum posts during all of 2021 and most of 2022.

Many sources describe incels as predominantly white. Sociologist Ross Haenfler was quoted in The Washington Post describing them as primarily white. Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center echoed this to NBC News, saying they are "young, frustrated white males in their late teens into their early twenties who are having a hard time adjusting to adulthood". Jaki and colleagues, publishing linguistic analysis of a large incel forum in The Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict in June 2019, contended that "contrary to what is often reported" there was no definitive evidence that the group is predominantly white, and that "it is impossible to say whether the majority of... users are white men, but our data implies that this may be less true than expected. They suggested that the various mentions of race on the forum "may reflect, to some extent, the ethnic variety of the forum". Hoffman and colleagues, publishing in Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, reported that a March 2020 survey of the same forum determined that most respondents self-identified as Caucasian. Researchers from the University of Texas ran a poll of self-reported incels, which found that 63.58% of those who responded identified as white, a smaller percentage than non-incels in the study. They also found that 44.70% of incels who responded leaned to the left on the political spectrum, 17.47% were centrists, and 38.85% leaned to the right, showing no differences between the incel and the control group of the study.

Self-identified incels are mainly located in North America and Europe, although there are also incel communities for people outside the Anglosphere, such as the Italian website Il Forum dei Brutti. The English language forums also receive much traffic from non-anglophone countries. Research published in 2020 by the Swedish Defence Research Agency (FOI) on the three largest incel forums found they had a total of about 20,000 users, with only about 1,000 who post actively. The FOI found that between 4.6 and 7.3% of the visitors to the forums originated from Sweden, though they caution this may not be accurate given the use of personal VPNs.

Some media outlets depict incels as unemployed or NEET ("not in education, employment, or training") and living with parents.

Female incels
The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was gender-inclusive. There have been more contemporary female-specific incel (or "femcel") communities, such as r/TruFemcels and its successor ThePinkPill. , the most popular female incel forum was the r/TruFemcels subreddit, with over 22,000 members. It was banned in January 2021 for violating Reddit's rules against promoting hate. Another subreddit reportedly associated with self-identified female incels is r/Vindicta, which contains beauty advice. There are also hashtags pertaining to the idea of female incels in use on TikTok, such as #femcel, #femcelcore and #femcelrights, which as of 2022, have over 250 million views. There are reported to be tens of thousands of women self-identifying as female incels on the internet.

Nonetheless, there is disagreement in online incel communities on whether women can be incels, with some claiming that male incels grossly outnumber female incels, others claiming that it is impossible for women to be incels at all, others claiming that only women with a physical deformity can be incels, and others arguing that only unattractive women belonging to the "bottom percentile in terms of appearance" can be incels. Members of male incel communities often reject the concept of a female incel, believing that all women can obtain sex from men, and believing that self-identified female incels are voluntarily celibate. Members of male incel communities may also troll female incels. According to the Anti-Defamation League, the majority of self-identified incels do not believe women can be incels. Journalists have written that outside of the female incels' own communities, few believe women can be incels. M. Kelly wrote for the Political Research Associates in 2021 that members of incel communities point to the existence of female incels as an argument against criticisms of them as misogynist, but that most incel communities do not accept them and ban them from using their forums.

Female incel communities are also generally overlooked within academic literature about incels. Like members of male incel communities, female incel community members tend to believe that they are victims to their ugliness, and think that only unattractive men will date them. They call more attractive looking women "Staceys", who they believe decrease their chance of having sexual contact with men, similar to discussion of "Chads" in male incel forums. They have adopted the idea of the "pink pill", which has been likened to "red pill" and "black pill" terminology, and which describes a belief that some women are considered undesirable and thus are unable to engage in sexual relationships due to society's focus on certain aspects of female attractiveness. Members of female incel communities are more likely to self-blame rather than blaming men for their dating and sexual difficulties. This may be due to gender stereotypes, such as the belief that women do not have a "natural" need for sex. Some women identifying as incels believe they could have casual sex, but fear it would only be from men who would abuse or disrespect them. Within online female incel communities, misogyny and an impossible feminine beauty ideal are also perceived as reasons for female celibacy. Many other women have similar problems, but do not self-identify as female incels.

Some female incel communities have been critical of body positivity and mainstream feminism, viewing them as unhelpful to female incels: a former member of the r/TruFemcels community was quoted in The Atlantic saying, "I'd rather be able to talk about being ugly than just try to convince myself that I'm pretty". An expert in psychology interviewed by El País characterized these communities as overly insular and skeptical of outsiders (who are deemed "normies"), in what she described as "cognitive inflexibility". She also stated that, "US culture is less sociable. In Spain, [female incels] would have completely different characteristics... I don't think it would have the same number of followers, to begin with, because in Spain we are more encouraging of interpersonal relationships, and the development of social skills."

Women who identify as incels share some similarities with their male counterparts, such as belief that physical appearance is the most important factor in finding a partner. In other ways they tend to be different; for example, according to journalist Isabelle Kohn, rather than being angry at the men who reject them, they empathize with the men for not wanting to date them. Kohn notes the tendency for women identifying as incels to turn their rage inwards, rather than outwards like males. Journalist Arwa Mahdawi hypothesizes that the fact that females who identify as incels do not go on violent rampages like some of their male counterparts is the most obvious reason why they have not received much attention in mainstream media. In February 2020, Kohn wrote that she could find "mountains" of academic papers on male incels, but none on female incels. She says the assumption that female incels do not exist adds to their pain.

Mental health

"Involuntary celibacy" is not a medical or psychological condition. Some people who identify as incel have physical disabilities or psychological disorders such as depression, anxiety, autism, and body dysmorphic disorder. A 2022 study found that self-identified incels had higher rates of depression, anxiety, and formal mental diagnoses than the general population: 95% reported depression and 93% reported anxiety. 38% had clinical diagnoses.

Some posters to incel forums attribute their inability to find a partner to physical or mental ailments, while some others attribute it to extreme introversion. Many of those identifying as incels engage in self-diagnosis of mental health issues, and members of incel communities often discourage posters who post about mental illness from seeing therapists or otherwise seeking treatment. Some members of incel communities with severe depression are also suicidal, and some members encourage suicidal members to kill themselves, sometimes recommending they commit acts of mass violence before doing so.

Mass murders and violence

Mass murders and other violent attacks have been committed or are suspected to have been committed by men who have self-identified as involuntarily celibate, or whose statements align with incel ideologies. Other intended attacks by such individuals have been thwarted by police before being carried out.

2000s
On August 4, 2009, George Sodini opened fire at an LA Fitness health club in Collier Township, a suburb of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Three women were murdered and nine other people were injured before Sodini killed himself. He purportedly expressed sexual frustration and complained of constant rejections by women on a website registered in his name. Sodini and his actions have been embraced and glorified by some members of incel communities, who sometimes refer to incel violence as "going Sodini".

2010s

Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others before killing himself in Isla Vista, California on May 23, 2014, near the campus of University of California, Santa Barbara. These killings drew media attention to the concept of involuntary celibacy, and particularly the misogyny and glorification of violence that are a mainstay of many incel communities. Rodger self-identified as an incel and left behind a 137-page manifesto and YouTube videos in which he detailed his involuntary celibacy and discussed how he wanted revenge for being rejected by women. He had been an active member of a community popular among incels called PUAHate (short for "pickup artist hate"), and referenced it several times in his manifesto. Although PUAHate shut down soon after the attack, Rodger became something of a martyr to some communities that remained, and to some of those that emerged later. It is common to see references to "E.R." in incel forums, and mass violence by incels is regularly referred to as "going E.R.". Rodger has been referenced by the perpetrators or suspected perpetrators of several other mass killings, and is one of several attackers who are regularly praised by members of incel communities.

Chris Harper-Mercer killed nine people and injured eight others before killing himself in a shooting at the Umpqua Community College campus on October 1, 2015, in Roseburg, Oregon. He left a manifesto at the scene, outlining his interest in other mass murders including the Isla Vista killings, his anger at not having a girlfriend, and his animus towards the world. In his journal writings, he had related with Elliot Rodger and other mass shooters, describing them as "people who stand with the gods". Before the attack, when someone on an online message board had speculated Harper-Mercer was "saving himself for someone special", Harper-Mercer had replied: 'involuntarily so". Several hours before the shooting, someone suspected to be Harper-Mercer posted a threat to a Pacific Northwest college to /r9k/, a 4chan board with many incel posters.

On July 31, 2016, Sheldon Bentley robbed and killed an unconscious man in an alleyway in Edmonton, Alberta. During his trial, Bentley said he killed the man by stomping on his abdomen because he was frustrated with stress from his job as a security guard and with being an incel for four years.

William Atchison killed two people before killing himself on December 7, 2017, in Aztec, New Mexico, in a shooting at Aztec High School, where he had previously been a student. He had used the pseudonym "Elliot Rodger" on several online forums, and praised "the supreme gentleman" (a term Rodger had used to describe himself, which has since become a common reference among incel communities). Atchison had also posted far-right content online.

Nikolas Cruz killed seventeen people and injured seventeen others on February 14, 2018, in a shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Allegedly also motivated by other extremist views, Cruz had previously posted online that "Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten".

After an April 23, 2018 vehicle-ramming attack in Toronto, Ontario, Alek Minassian was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree murder and 16 counts of attempted murder. Shortly before the attack, Minassian had allegedly posted on Facebook that "the Incel Rebellion has already begun" and applauded Rodger. The term "Incel Rebellion" is sometimes used interchangeably with the term "Beta Uprising", which refers to a violent response to incels' perceived sexual deprivation. Following the attack, a poster on a website created to supersede r/incels wrote about Minassian, "I hope this guy wrote a manifesto because he could be our next new saint". Following the attack, police claimed that Minassian had been radicalized by incel communities. A video interview was later released in  showing Minassian being interrogated by police shortly after the attacks. In the video, Minassian is shown telling police that he was a virgin, and that he was motivated by a resentment of "Chads and Staceys", as well as women who gave "their love and affection to obnoxious brutes" rather than to him. The video also showed Minassian saying that he hoped the alleged attack would "inspire future masses to join me" in committing acts of violence as a part of the "Beta Uprising". The judge who found Minassian guilty on all counts wrote in her decision that Minassian had attempted to tie his attack to the incel community as a way of increasing his notoriety, and that "working out his exact motivation for this attack is... close to impossible". She found that Minassian had "lie[d] to the police about much of the incel motivation he talked about and that the incel movement was not in fact a primary driving force behind the attack".

On November 2, 2018, Scott Beierle killed two women and injured four women and a man before killing himself in a shooting at the Hot Yoga Tallahassee studio in Tallahassee, Florida. He had been a follower of incel ideologies for a long time, and also had a history of arrests for grabbing women's buttocks. In 2014 he posted several YouTube videos of himself espousing extreme hatred for women and expressing anger over not having a girlfriend, mentioning Elliot Rodger in one video. In the months leading up to the shooting, he posted numerous misogynistic, racist, violent, and homophobic songs to SoundCloud.

In January 2019, Christopher Cleary was arrested for posting on Facebook that he was "planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter" and "killing as many girls as I see" because he had never had a girlfriend and was a virgin. He has been described as an incel in the media. In May 2019, Cleary was sentenced to up to five years in prison for an attempted threat of terrorism.

Brian Isaack Clyde began what was intended to be a mass shooting at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas, Texas on June 17, 2019, but was shot and fatally wounded by officers from the Federal Protective Service before he injured anyone. Clyde had shared incel memes on social media, along with other posts referencing right-wing beliefs and conspiracy theories. Following the incident, the Joint Base Andrews military base briefed its personnel on certain online behaviors among "introverted, sexless individuals," with a spokesman describing them as "a very real threat to military members and civilians".

Self-identified incels have also praised attackers with unclear motives who they believe to be incels. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, some of the incel community celebrated the shooter Stephen Paddock, who they felt was a hero who was targeting "normies". After the 2018 Toronto shooting, posters on an incel message board expressed excitement with the possibility that the perpetrator might be an incel, although no motive was identified.

2020s
Tobias Rathjen committed two mass shootings in Hanau, Germany on February 19, 2020, killing ten people and himself, and leaving behind a manifesto described by Insider as "delusional". Some media sources described Rathjen as an incel, though fellows at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism wrote that while the manifesto was "riddled with misogynistic remarks", some of which were similar to common incel topics, "the manifesto does not demonstrate a clear connection to the incel identity, either in terms of evidence that the shooter frequented incel forums or shared basic incel ideology". The manifesto also included racist and paranoid writings, where Rathjen called for the extermination of non-white people and claimed he had not had a relationship with a woman because the government had been monitoring him.

On February 24, 2020, a female spa worker was stabbed to death in an attack that also severely injured her female coworker at an erotic massage parlor in Toronto. On May 19, the Toronto Police Service declared the attack was being treated as a terrorist incident after evidence pointed to the stabbings being motivated by incel ideology, and police laid charges against a 17-year-old male alleged to have committed the stabbings. This was the first time violence thought to be motivated by incel ideologies was prosecuted as an act of terrorism, and is also believed to be the first act of violence not perpetrated by an Islamist extremist to be prosecuted as terrorism in Canada. On September 14, 2022, the perpetrator entered a guilty plea to murder and attempted murder. The attack was ruled a terrorist attack during sentencing proceedings.

Armando Hernandez Jr. opened fire on May 20, 2020, at Westgate Entertainment District, a mixed-use development in Glendale, Arizona, before being arrested by police. A 19-year-old man was critically injured, while a 30-year-old woman and a 16-year-old girl suffered minor injuries. According to the Maricopa County prosecutor, Hernandez identified himself as an incel and claimed he wanted to target couples and shoot at least ten people. The prosecutor said, "Mr. Hernandez is a self-professed incel... He was taking out his anger at society, the feeling that he has been bullied, the feeling that women didn't want him". The prosecutor also alleged that Hernandez sent a video of the attack to a woman he wished to impress.

Between January and , five self-identified incels were arrested in separate incidents in North America for killing or planning to kill women. Among them was Cole Carini, a man who was charged with making false statements to law enforcement in June 2020 after claiming serious injuries to his hands had been caused by a lawnmower accident. Police alleged that Carini was actually injured while trying to make a bomb, and that he had written a note threatening violence against women and referencing Elliot Rodger.

In April 2021, a 19-year-old self-described incel was arrested on federal charges after allegedly videotaping himself approaching women sitting outside a restaurant in Manhattan, New York and telling them he was going to detonate a bomb. The man had previously been arrested several times for harassing others, often while recording or livestreaming, and for multiple assaults with pepper spray.

In July 2021, a 21-year-old self-identified incel from Ohio was charged with attempting a hate crime and illegally possessing a machine gun. The man was a frequent poster on a popular incel website, where he wrote posts venerating Elliot Rodger. He wrote a manifesto in which he expressed his desire to "slaughter" women, and in another document he allegedly wrote about his goals to kill 3,000 people in a mass casualty attack.

On August 12, 2021, Jake Davison, a 22-year-old man who referenced "inceldom" in online videos and expressed similar views, perpetrated a mass shooting in Plymouth, England. He killed five people, including his mother, and injured two others before killing himself.

On May 6, 2023, 33-year-old self-identified incel Mauricio Martinez Garcia went on a spree shooting in a mall in Allen, Texas. Garcia killed eight people and injured at least seven others before he was killed by a police officer.

Criticism

Of the subculture

Incel communities have been criticized in the media and by researchers as violent, misogynist, and extremist. Keegan Hankes, a senior research analyst working for the Southern Poverty Law Center, has cautioned that exposure to violent content on incel forums "play[s] a very large role" in the radicalization of their members, and describes incel forums as having "more violent rhetoric than I'm used to seeing on even white supremacist sites". Journalist David Futrelle has described incel communities as "violently misogynistic", and is among critics who attribute worsening violent rhetoric on incel forums to the growth of the alt-right and white supremacy, and the overlap between incel communities and online hate groups. Psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has described incels as "a group of people who usually lack sufficient social skills and... find themselves very frustrated". He has said that in incel forums "when they're surrounded by other people with similar frustrations, they kind of lose track of what typical discourse is, and they drive themselves into more and more extreme beliefs". Senior research fellow at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue(ISD), Amarnath Amarasingam, has criticized some incel communities where calls for violence are commonplace, saying "under the right set of psychological and personal circumstances, these kinds of forums can be dangerous and push people into violence". Another researcher at the ISD, Jacob Davey, compared the radicalization of men in incel forums to teenagers being urged to go to extreme measures on online forums that promote anorexia and other eating disorders, and to online campaigns convincing people to join ISIL. Speaking about their feelings of entitlement to sex, Davey said the attitude "can go as far as the justification of rape".

While generally agreeing with critics' concerns about misogyny and other negative characteristics in the incel subculture, some commentators have been more sympathetic. In April 2018, economist Robin Hanson wrote a blog post likening access to sex with access to income, writing that he found it puzzling that similar concern had not been shown to incels as to low income individuals. Hanson was criticized by some for discussing sex as if it was a commodity; others wrote more positively about his opinions. The New York Times columnist Ross Douthat wrote a similarly controversial op-ed in May 2018 titled "The Redistribution of Sex" in which he suggested sex robots and sex workers would inevitably be called upon to satisfy incels' sexual desires. Some commentators wrote articles agreeing with this view, including Toby Young, who agreed that sex robots could be a "workable solution"; others criticized the column for objectifying women and for legitimizing the incel ideology.

Journalist Zack Beauchamp has expressed concern about other types of harm inflicted by incels that may be lost in the attention paid specifically to mass violence; he points to forum posts in which users brag about yelling at, catfishing, and sexually assaulting women. University of Portsmouth lecturer Lisa Sugiura has described incel forums as a "networked misogyny", and urged the posts in such forums be taken seriously not only in the context of hate speech but also as a form of grooming that could radicalize "impressionable and vulnerable disillusioned young men". Some sociological research on incel communities has analyzed them as a hybrid masculinity, in which privileged men distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity while simultaneously reproducing it.

Of platforms providing services to incel communities

Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (which banned the r/incels community in 2017, and banned most of the remaining incel communities in September 2019, but is still home to some identifying as incels) and Twitter. Cloudflare, which provides services including DDoS protection, caching and obsfucation of the source host of the content, has also been criticized for protecting incel websites against downtime even when webhosts have terminated service.

Of reporting and research

Reporting on incels by media outlets following the incel-related attacks during the 2010s has been criticized for its "breathless" coverage, for normalizing incel communities by describing them only as "sexually frustrated", and for directing readers to incel communities. Some reporting has also been criticized for giving attackers notoriety by reporting on them at length, or for victim blaming by implying that women who had rejected the attackers' romantic or sexual advances held some responsibility for provoking the attacks. Those who have written sympathetically about incels have faced criticism for legitimizing the incel ideology, such as from Samantha Cole in Vice who condemned media outlets who "cove[r] and amplif[y] toxic internet culture as if it's valid ideology".

In a 2021 report published by the Political Research Associates think tank, M. Kelly wrote about recent attempts by various self-identified incels to "rebrand" their communities, and stated that "incels' attempts to reframe their identity have also been helped along by researchers, journalists, and 'counter-violent extremism' experts, who, in their attempts to investigate and understand incels, have given them larger, more mainstream platforms. These new platforms have allowed self-identified incels to reframe the public narrative about them; minimize the threat their community poses; and have amplified—or even endorsed—their hate-laced grievances, centering their self-perceived victimhood at the hands of women who deny them sex". Kelly criticized a podcast titled The Incel Project for platforming incel ideologies without challenging or fact-checking their statements, and its creator, Naama Kates, for increasingly "no longer just reporting on incels' misogyny, but justifying and sharing it with the world". Kelly also criticized the International Center for Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), who published several reports on incels co-authored by Kates and by the founder and lead moderator of a major incel forum, writing that "while previous ICSVE reports have drawn from primary data, including interviews and surveys with members of the community being studied, this seems to be the first time—at ICSVE or in academic research more broadly—that someone actively involved in a community that regularly expresses bigoted or violent ideology has co-authored the resulting study".

Portrayals in fiction

Two episodes of the American crime drama Law & Order: Special Victims Unit are based on incels. In season 16, the episode "Holden's Manifesto" is based on Elliot Rodger and the 2014 Isla Vista killings. In season 20, the episode "Revenge" features a group of incels who attack the targets of each other's obsession to exact revenge while creating alibis for one another, the plotline which in itself is inspired by a 1950s novel Strangers On A Train.

The 2023 science fiction film The Beast also features a character based on Rodger.

Fair Warning, a 2020 thriller novel by Michael Connelly, features a company that buys genetic test data on women genetically identified as vulnerable to sex addiction. The company sells their names and addresses to incels, one of whom is a serial killer.

The main character of Whatever, a 1994 novel by French author Michel Houellebecq, has been labeled by Adam Kirsch in The New York Times as a "proto-incel" with the novel as a whole being retrospectively evaluated as predictive of the modern incel movement. It was adapted into a film of the same name in 1999.

See also

 Herbivore men
 Hikikomori
 Human mating strategies

 List of subcultures
 Lookism
 Mate value
 Nice guys
 Sexual capital
 Toxic masculinity

References

External links

  Podcast episode about the early history of the incel subculture.

/pol/ phenomena
1990s neologisms
2010s controversies
2020s controversies
Celibacy
Culture-related controversies
Gender-related violence
Internet memes
Internet-related controversies
Manosphere
Misogyny
Opposition to feminism
Sexual controversies
Social issues
Social psychology
Subcultures

Incel


Samuel Wilson (born 4 April 1953) is a Northern Irish politician, serving as Chief Whip of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in the House of Commons since 2019. Wilson has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for East Antrim since 2005. He served as a Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for Belfast East from 1998 to 2003 and for East Antrim from 2003 until 2015. He served as Lord Mayor of Belfast from 1986 to 1987 and again from 2000 to 2001, the first person from the DUP to hold the office. He has also served as Minister of Finance and Personnel and Minister of the Environment in the Northern Ireland Executive.

Personal life
Wilson was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, the son of Alexander Wilson, pastor of Bangor Elim Pentecostal Church. Both of his parents died of Alzheimer's disease. He was educated at Methodist College in Belfast, and then went on to study Economics and Politics at both Queen's University of Belfast and Stranmillis University College. Wilson's first job was a teaching post at Grosvenor Grammar School. He later became the Head of Economics at the school, and also served as Assistant Chief Examiner for A-Level Economics for the CCEA exam board in Northern Ireland.

In May 1996, the Sunday World published a series of candid holiday photographs showing Wilson and his girlfriend naked. Wilson subsequently sued the paper for damages, which were settled out of court. Two years after the incident, at the inaugural sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly, Martin McGuinness of Sinn Féin addressed the Assembly by saying "It is also very good to come across someone like Mr Sammy Wilson, whom I have never met, and it is great to see him today with his clothes on."

Political career

DUP Press Officer
Wilson began his political life as the Democratic Unionist Party's Press Officer. He served as Press Officer from 1982 to 1996. In 1981, he was elected as a DUP councillor to Belfast City Council, a position that he held until March 2010. Through his membership of the city council, Wilson became the first person from the DUP to serve as Lord Mayor of Belfast in 1986 / 1987. Wilson aroused controversy as a DUP councillor in June 1985 when he issued a threat to Ulsterbus vehicles and staff after it refused to transport unionists to a demonstration in Castlewellan, which ended in violence. Wilson said "it now seems that the Northern Ireland office has enlisted not only the RUC but the transport industry in its offensive against the Unionist population. Such a move can place Ulsterbus vehicles and drivers in an extremely vulnerable position." In August 1986, while Lord Mayor of Belfast, Wilson said his party had no difficulty in working alongside the paramilitary Ulster Defence Association (UDA). The following day Social Democratic and Labour Party MP Seamus Mallon accused Wilson of supporting random killings, intimidations and "other outrages". Wilson stood in East Belfast at the 1982 Assembly election but was not elected. In June 1991, during a heated council meeting where Nigel Dodds was installed as mayor, Wilson congratulated those who had "rid Ireland over the last month of those who have politically or militarily supported [the IRA]", referring to the death of three IRA men in an SAS ambush in County Tyrone and the assassination of Sinn Féin councillor Eddie Fullerton by the UDA.  He first contested a seat for Parliament in 1992, when he stood for Strangford, but came second with 23% of the vote. In September 1993 the day after the UDA (under its "Ulster Freedom Fighters" cover name) claimed responsibility for firebomb attacks on several Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) premises, Wilson described the GAA as "the IRA at play".

Wilson chaired a rally in Ulster Hall in November 1986 declaring the founding of a new loyalist paramilitary group, Ulster Resistance. The event was addressed by DUP party colleagues Ian Paisley, Peter Robinson and Ivan Foster. After a large arms cache linked to Ulster Resistance was discovered in County Armagh in November 1988, Wilson told the Sunday Tribune that he "[defended] the right of Unionist people to resist" and "Ulster Resistance are doing no more and no less than Lord Edward Carson." Wilson refused to say when he had last been in contact with Ulster Resistance. In January 1992 at a meeting of Belfast City Council, Sinn Féin councillor Máirtín Ó Muilleoir accused Wilson of involvement in the formation of Ulster Resistance; Wilson reportedly shouted back "I'm proud of it."

In September 1988 Sammy Wilson was named in a Canadian court as having hosted Canada-based gunrunners in Belfast City Hall in October 1986 when he was Lord Mayor. It was also claimed that in Wilson's City Hall sitting room the Canadian arms traffickers met two prominent loyalist paramilitary figures. Wilson left the room shortly before the loyalists entered and was absent for this second meeting. One of the Canadians, Howard Wright, was convicted of illegally exporting firearms to the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) between 1979 and 1986. Another Canadian man named during the trial, Bill Taylor, was imprisoned in Canada on an extradition warrant for charges of conspiring to import arms into the United Kingdom.

In January 1994, the UDA released a document calling for ethnic cleansing and repartition of Ireland, with the goal of making Northern Ireland wholly Protestant. The plan was to be implemented should the British Army withdraw from Northern Ireland. Some areas with strong Catholic/nationalist majorities near the Irish border would be handed over to the Republic of Ireland, and those Catholics left stranded in the "Protestant state" would be "expelled, nullified, or interned". Controversially, Wilson called the plan a "very valuable return to reality". He added: "[it] shows that some loyalist paramilitaries are looking ahead and contemplating what needs to be done to maintain our separate Ulster identity".

In April 1994 amidst controversy over a large-scale operation by the British Army to overhaul the British security forces base in the predominantly nationalist village of Crossmaglen, County Armagh, acting as DUP press officer Wilson commented

In July 1994, Wilson and DUP MP Peter Robinson  were pallbearers at the funeral of UDA member Ray Smallwoods, who served half of a 15 year sentence for the attempted murder of Bernadette McAliskey in 1981.

MLA for East Belfast
In May 1996, Wilson was elected to the Northern Ireland Forum for the constituency of East Belfast and went on to represent this area in the Northern Ireland Assembly upon its creation in June 1998. The DUP were opposed to the Good Friday Agreement and in March 1998 Wilson and fellow DUP politician Ian Paisley Jr gave speeches at a rally in Portadown organised by the paramilitary Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF), who were also opposed to the ongoing talks process. Their appearance was widely criticised; days earlier the LVF had murdered two men, Philip Allen and Damien Trainor - one a Protestant, one a Catholic - in a bar in Poyntzpass, County Armagh in an indiscriminate sectarian attack. On 24 April 1998, Sammy Wilson and DUP councillor Jack McKee shared a platform with self-styled pastor Clifford Peeples, a member of the LVF and leader of the Orange Volunteers, at an anti-Good Friday Agreement rally in Antrim town. Peeples set a print copy of the Good Friday Agreement alight as attendees cried 'And burn Fenians too'. Police believed the Antrim-based Loyalists who murdered Catholic Ciaran Heffran in Crumlin several hours later attended the rally.

Wilson again served as Lord Mayor of Belfast between June 2000 and June 2001. During his time as Mayor, the Andersonstown News set up a website to highlight Wilson's "naked sectarianism". The site included such quotes from Wilson as: "The GAA is the sporting wing of the IRA"; "I don't care if [gays] are ratepayers. As far as I am concerned they are perverts"; "Taigs don't pay rates"; and "They [Sinn Féin voters in the Oldpark area of Belfast] are sub-human animals". The Andersonstown News had challenged Wilson to take legal action if he felt he was being misrepresented. He did not. The website voluntarily shut down when he ended his tenure as Mayor.

MLA and MP for East Antrim
In the 2003 Assembly election, Wilson stood successfully in the East Antrim constituency, alongside fellow DUP candidates George Dawson and David Hilditch. This momentum was carried through to the 2005 Westminster Election on 5 May, which saw Wilson defeat Roy Beggs of the Ulster Unionist Party, to become Member of Parliament for East Antrim with 49.6% of the vote.

Wilson is a former member of the Northern Ireland Policing Board and Northern Ireland Housing Council.

In his role as DUP education spokesman, Wilson was one of the most vocal critics of Education Minister Caitríona Ruane's plan to abolish academic selection and introduce a comprehensive school system in Northern Ireland.

He resigned from his position as chair of the Education Committee when he took up his role as Minister for the Environment.

In March 2016, during a BBC Spotlight episode discussing the implications of the EU referendum, Wilson was recorded agreeing with a member of the public who said that they wanted to leave the European Union and "get the ethnics out". Wilson stated: "You are absolutely right". Wilson said he was agreeing with the desire to leave the European Union, not the "ethnics out" call. Wilson was criticised by the Polish consul in Northern Ireland and various other political parties.

In July 2016, he called breastfeeding in the House of Commons chamber "voyeuristic" and said: "To me, anyone who chooses to do it in the chamber rather than who do it in the quietness of their office, is doing it for reasons other than simply feeding the child, to make a point".

On 25 February 2017, he was interviewed by American broadcaster PBS in which he claimed there "has always been an affiliation between the Irish republicans and terrorist groups, especially in the Middle East". He also commented that he agreed with the message behind an Ulster loyalist mural which equated the IRA and Sinn Féin to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

In 2018, he argued against the suspension of his party colleague Ian Paisley Jr from the Westminster Parliament, after he was punished for accepting family holidays paid for by the government of Sri Lanka while speaking in favour of the regime in the House of Commons.

In March 2019, Wilson was one of 21 MPs who voted against LGBT inclusive sex and relationship education in English schools.

Wilson was photographed on the London Underground without a face mask amid the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2020.

Minister for the Environment (2008–2009)
On 9 June 2008, Wilson joined the Northern Ireland Executive as Minister of the Environment.

His appointment and tenure as Environment Minister were criticised by some environmental groups. Wilson rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. He has stated that man-made climate change is a "myth based on dodgy science". Wilson says that "reasoned debate must replace the scaremongering of the green climate alarmists" and "resources should be used to adapt to the consequences of climate change, rather than King Canute-style vainly trying to stop it". This, along with his opposition to the creation of an independent environmental protection agency and his support for nuclear power, led the Green Party to condemn Wilson's "deeply irresponsible message" and give him the 'Green Wash' award for being the MLA most likely to damage the environment. Wilson's beliefs on climate change have been likened to "a cigarette salesman denying that smoking causes cancer" by John Woods of Friends of the Earth, who added that "Ironically, if we listen to him Northern Ireland will suffer economically as we are left behind by smarter regions who are embracing the low carbon economy of the future".

Wilson came under renewed criticism in February 2009 when he blocked the broadcast of climate change advertisements on television, calling them part of an "insidious propaganda campaign". He also stated "that future ecological messages could only be promoted in Northern Ireland with his permission". New Scientist magazine stated that despite the minister's comments, "the overwhelming majority of scientists do agree that there is a greater than 90% chance that the rate at which we burn fossil fuels is driving climate change".

Minister for Finance and Personnel (2009–2013)

In the June 2009 Executive reshuffle, Wilson became Minister of Finance and Personnel. He was praised by First Minister Peter Robinson, who said that Wilson was the "most qualified Finance Minister that Northern Ireland has had in decades".

In August 2009, Wilson was the subject of criticism from the Northern Ireland Council for Ethnic Minorities for saying that "jobs should go to people born in Northern Ireland before going to economic migrants". Following racist attacks on Romanian people in Belfast, Wilson commented that "charges of racism were always coincided with the holding out of the hand for more money". The Northern Ireland Assembly Standards Committee dismissed complaints made against him over these remarks.

Wilson's tenure as Finance Minister coincided with the worst recession in the history of Northern Ireland. He criticised banks in Northern Ireland for not increasing lending to businesses. Wilson was commended for displaying leadership and received cross-party support for stopping bonuses to civil servants during the recession.

Wilson was replaced as Finance Minister in July 2013 by DUP colleague Simon Hamilton, in a planned reshuffle.

Brexit position

On 9 February 2016, during a debate in the House of Commons regarding the upcoming Brexit referendum, Wilson gave his support to the UK government holding a referendum, as he wanted to "break down the walls of the prison in which we have been held for the last 40-odd years. In that time, we have been robbed of our money, our fishing grounds have been violated, our farmers have been destroyed and the EU Court of Justice has run over the rights of victims while upholding those of terrorists". Shortly after this statement, Arlene Foster formally announced the Democratic Unionist Party's intention to campaign for a "Leave" vote in the Brexit referendum.

In reply to a 2016 UK Treasury report that highlighted the negative economic impact of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union, with specific reference to the economy of Northern Ireland, Wilson accused the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne of "resorting to ever increasingly desperate tactics", adding "To suggest that any economic model can predict what our economy let alone the EU and world economy will look like in 14 years time is totally dishonest".

As the DUP's Brexit spokesman, Wilson said in January 2019 it was "perfectly possible" that Theresa May would be able to negotiate a revised withdrawal agreement which removes the Northern Ireland backstop.

On 29 January 2019, during a debate in the House of Commons, Wilson responded to a suggestion from Scottish National Party MP Ian Blackford that a no-deal Brexit could lead to food shortages and that many supermarkets "warn of not having sufficient supplies and of shelves lying empty", by saying people could simply "Go to the chippy" instead. DUP MP Gavin Robinson later said that the remark should "not be taken too seriously", but Caroline Lucas of the Green Party of England and Wales, said the DUP should be "ashamed".

However, on 11 January 2021, during an Economic Update from the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak in the House of Commons, Wilson complained that in Northern Ireland "supermarket shelves are empty and thousands of people are being sent letters from suppliers in England saying that neither they personally nor their businesses will any longer be supplied with goods" as a direct result of Brexit.

LGBT+ rights

In a 1 June 1992 Daily Express article, Wilson was quoted as saying "They are poofs. I don't care if they are ratepayers. As far as I am concerned they are perverts" after gay rights activists had requested the use of Belfast City Hall.

Wilson has voted against legislation allowing same-sex marriage in both the mainland UK in 2013 and Northern Ireland  in 2019.

In November 2016, while responding to a letter from a constituent, Wilson refused to support World AIDS Day as he felt the UK government had exhausted considerable resources on dealing with AIDS at the expense of other illnesses which were "not always as a result of lifestyle choices and which therefore deserve higher priorities". A subsequent statement by Chief Executive of the UK National AIDS Trust Deborah Gold asserted that the "misinformed response" from Wilson was the result of "prejudice".

In March 2021, responding to an email from a constituent about gay conversion therapy, Wilson stated "I feel that those who wish to avail themselves of conversion therapy and those who wish to practice it should be allowed to do so". A DUP spokesperson later moved to clarify Wilson's comments by stating "while the practice is not something he would support; it is not for him to dictate to others the services they seek out".

Climate change denial
Despite once serving as the Environment Minister for Northern Ireland, Wilson has described environmentalism as "hysterical pseudo-religion". In 2009, Wilson blocked 'Act on ' television and radio campaign adverts (urging people to reduce their carbon output and use less energy in the home) from being broadcast in Northern Ireland, saying he would not allow this "insidious New Labour propaganda campaign" to be imposed on the public. Furthermore, Wilson said he wrote to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change to say that the Act on  campaign "was not welcome", was contrary to his personal views, and that he did "not wish for climate change messages to be promoted by other Whitehall departments here". He has also warned that future ecological messages could only be promoted in Northern Ireland with his permission.

References

External links

Guardian Unlimited Politics – Ask Aristotle: Sammy Wilson MP
Appearances on C-SPAN
Maiden Speech : House of Commons – 18 May 2005

1953 births
Living people
Lord Mayors of Belfast
Ministers of Finance and Personnel of Northern Ireland
Ministers of the Northern Ireland Executive (since 1999)
Members of the Northern Ireland Forum
Democratic Unionist Party MLAs
Northern Ireland MLAs 1998–2003
Northern Ireland MLAs 2003–2007
Northern Ireland MLAs 2007–2011
Northern Ireland MLAs 2011–2016
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for County Antrim constituencies (since 1922)
Democratic Unionist Party MPs
UK MPs 2005–2010
UK MPs 2010–2015
UK MPs 2015–2017
UK MPs 2017–2019
UK MPs 2019–present
Members of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom
Schoolteachers from Northern Ireland
People educated at Methodist College Belfast
Alumni of Stranmillis University College
Alumni of Queen's University Belfast
Politicians from Belfast

Sammy Wilson (politician)