To Alleviate Stigma: How Incels Negotiate Masculinity Online

Abstract

This article draws on Goffman’s stigma theory to explore how incels (involuntary celibates) alleviate stigma and negotiate masculinity by employing normification, minstrelization, and militant chauvinism. Using netnographic research, I qualitatively explore three incel forums consisting of 927 comment threads. While incels advocate antifeminism and misogyny, they also exhibit traits and behaviors usually avoided in subcultures dominated by men, such as narratives of loneliness and inadequacy related to hegemonic ideals of masculinity and hyper-masculinity. This article explores the ambiguity of gender processes online, identity negotiation among incels and the use and combination of various stigma management strategies to uphold, challenge, or reject hegemonic masculinity. I argue that closer attention to stigma can help us understand incels’ countercultural expressions within broader social and cultural notions about masculinity and shame.

To Alleviate Stigma: How Incels Negotiate Masculinity Online

Over the last decade, concerns about online harassment, extreme misogyny, and men’s violence have shone the spotlight on incels, a portmanteau of “involuntarily celibate” (Bates 2020; Ging and Siapera 2018). This group of men, united by their perceived inability to attract sexual and romantic partners, congregate in online spaces notorious for their misogynistic, heteronormative, cisgender composition (Botto and Gottzén 2023; Cottee 2021). These spaces have been used to cultivate a subculture directly targeting women whom incels perceive to marginalize and subjugate men in modern society (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2021). According to the incel worldview, society – especially women – systematically ostracizes them based on their appearance, condemning them to a life without sex or romance. Often criticized for its white, heterosexual, male dominance, the incel subculture promotes a disturbing blend of antifeminist views and violent narratives (Halpin 2022), associated with fostering racism, male supremacy, domestic terrorism, and martyrdom (Hoffman, Ware, and Shapiro 2020). Meanwhile, some online communities, like the subreddit r/IncelTears, counter this by ridiculing incels (Dynel 2020). Thus, the collective stigma of incels includes being both a nefarious security threat and an object of ridicule.

Concurrently, men associated with the term incel often describe themselves as weak or subordinated (Halpin 2022), contrary to other male-dominated subcultures. Online incel forums offer these men a space to discuss social exclusion and deep-seated loneliness, connecting members failing to conform to hegemonic masculinities and hyper-masculine ideals (Thorburn, Powell, and Chambers 2023). Interactions both within and outside their communities shape the social construct of an incel (Lindsay 2022). Kelly, DiBranco, and DeCook (2022) suggest using the term misogynist incels to refer to those incels who propagate hate. Thus, by recognizing the distinction between individuals who identify as involuntarily celibates, incels, or misogynistic incels, we can more comprehensively grasp their process of meaning creation. While incels may use narratives of loneliness to rationalize misogyny (Sugiura 2021), other associations to the incel subculture also need to be recognized and understood.

I nuance the specter of incel involvement by utilizing the concept of stigma management to explore online behavior in the incel subculture, particularly its complicated relationship with stigma and masculinity. Goffman (1965, 128) argues that any man who fails to display the “general identity-values of a society” will likely view himself as “unworthy, incomplete, and inferior.” Deviating from this normative position creates immense pressure to act in conformist or compensatory ways. Drawing on Goffman’s dramaturgical metaphor (The Presentation of the Self in Everyday Life [1959]) describing human interaction as a theatrical onstage presentation of the self to gain social approval, I interpret incels’ countercultural rejection of mainstream society as an onstage identity presentation to manage stigma and masculinity online. This identity work involves embracing their otherness as “social deviants” while viewing themselves as stigmatized, or “spoiled” (Goffman 1965, 143).

This study investigates how stigma shapes incels’ meaning-making and expressions of masculinity online by examining three different incel forums that vary in terms of membership, activity, and publicity. Incels, whether they are labeled as such or self-identify as one, navigate the dual stigmatization as emasculated men – branded as social and sexual losers – and as misogynistic perpetrators of gender violence, seen as potential mass murderers. Utilizing Goffman’s (1965) stigma theory, I explore incels’ strategies for confronting their stigmatized identities through the online negotiation of hegemonic masculinities.

Men’s Rights Activists, the Manosphere, and Incels

For more than a century, resistance to the feminist movement has been a part of Western societies as men grapple with changing power dynamics (Kimmel 2006). The 1970s saw the men’s liberation movement split into antifeminist and pro-feminist factions, solidifying the antifeminist stance of men’s rights activists (MRAs) who address challenges, perceived or otherwise, facing men (Messner 2016). MRAs, coming from various backgrounds, nevertheless shared feelings of “aggrieved entitlement,” an emotional response to what they saw as an unjust deprivation of their privileges as women asserted their autonomy (Kimmel 2017). This culture of entitlement engendered a stark contrast between societal narratives of men’s power and the personal experiences of certain men, a dissonance that incels articulate as oppression (Fowler 2022). Today, incels are part of the online “manosphere,” a loose network that includes MRAs, “pick-up artists” (PUAs), and “men going their own way” (MGTOW) (Ging 2019). Despite their differences, men in these groups agree that feminism favors women unfairly and advocate for traditional gender roles reinforcing male dominance (Botto and Gottzén 2023). Pleck (1984) highlights these men’s paradoxical dependency on women for emotional and masculinity validation within a patriarchal system that coerces men to oppress women and each other. Thus, men benefit from systemic privilege and institutional power but perpetuate harmful masculine pressures that make them feel powerless (Sugiura 2021).

An involuntary celibate has been defined by researchers as someone who “desires to have sex, but has been unable to find a willing partner” within a given timeframe (Donnelly et al. 2001, 159). While the lack of sexual consumption can be described as a concealable stigma (Goffman 1965), incels argue that they display invisible and visible markers that identify, maintain, and accentuate their inceldom and mark them as spoiled. These identity markers include unattractive physical characteristics that make it impossible for incels to develop relations with women because of appearance-based discrimination, referred to as lookism (Pelzer et al. 2021). Although incels disagree on the specific factors contributing to the stigma of inceldom, they [i.e., factors] can be characterized by “an attribute that [are] deeply discrediting” (Goffman 1965, 3). Thus, by blaming external factors, incels renege on their personal and social responsibility.

The relationship between stigma and masculinity has been discussed in gender and masculinity studies (Hlavka 2017; Kong 2009) and illuminates how this dynamic contributes to incels’ rationalization of misogyny, which includes violence toward women (Daly and Reed 2021; Halpin 2022). For instance, incels adopt the rhetoric of oppression to exhibit hybrid masculinity, thus reinforcing male dominance (Ging 2019; Lounela and Murphy 2024). Scholars have also noted the vitriolic and toxic language used by incels (Pelzer et al. 2021), their endorsement of male supremacy (DeCook and Kelly 2022), promotion of gendered violence (Cottee 2021), and facilitation of stochastic terrorism (Lindsay 2022). However, DeCook and Kelly (2022) argue that studies on incels tend to oversimplify the community, neglecting its inherent complexity and contradictions by pathologizing incel misogyny instead of acknowledging it as indicative of broader structural issues. Similarly, Czerwinsky (2023, 11) observes that the literature on terrorism inaccurately labels certain mass murderers as “incels or incel-inspired.” Additionally, the incel subculture is not confined to obscure online forums but extend to mainstream social media platforms, which is conducive to normalizing and popularizing harmful incel ideology (Solea and Sugiura 2023). Finally, incel beliefs do not exist in a vacuum; the objectification and dehumanization of women mirrors widespread sexism and misogyny in mainstream society, pornography being one manifestation of this (Tranchese and Sugiura 2021).

Incels often downplay their misogynistic and hateful language, provocative humor, or trolling (Nagle 2017). Resources like the “Incel Wikipedia” archive portray their beliefs as scientifically informed and rational, used to justify their misogynistic attitudes (Andersen 2023; DeCook 2021). Despite these rationalizations, the widespread negative sentiments within the incel subculture can amplify feelings of depression, hopelessness, and fatalism, potentially leading to self-harm and suicide (Daly and Laskovtsov 2021). This article contributes to the discourse by exploring how incels construct meaning around shame and masculinity. Applying Goffman’s stigma theory, I demonstrate that incels’ stigma management spans a nuanced spectrum, is implemented across various online platforms, and has different strategies for managing stigma that co-occur.

Hegemonic Masculinity, Goffman, and Stigma Management

According to Connell (1995), hegemonic masculinity refers to a pattern of practice that legitimizes unequal gender relations, thereby perpetuating men’s dominance over women. This gender practice “embodies the currently accepted answer to the problem of the legitimacy of patriarchy” (Connell 1995, 77). Although hegemonic masculinity is not explicitly separate from other forms of masculinity, its effectiveness depends on a “degree of overlap or blurring between hegemonic and complicit masculinities” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 839). Hegemonic masculinities often present unrealistic standards when compared to men’s actual lives. Nevertheless, such constructed models still “express widespread ideals, fantasies, and desires” (Connell and Messerschmidt 2005, 838). Consequently, they can create impossible standards of masculine ideals and expectations negatively impacting men’s physical and mental health (Connell 1995). Importantly, hegemonic masculinity varies depending on the local, regional, and global context, which accounts for multiple and unequal masculinities (Beasley 2008). Multiple masculinities can legitimize men’s dominant position in society, justifying practices that subordinate not only some groups of men but also women through variations of geek, beta, or hybrid masculinities (Ging 2019; Salter and Blodgett 2017).

The pattern of hegemony is socially maintained through the policing of men and the marginalization of women, where men must “do masculinity” to construct identities aligned with dominant masculine ideals (Messerschmidt 1993). Individuals deviating from these norms risk stigmatization, with those who fail to conform perceived as effeminate, or “less of a man” (Connell 1995; Goffman 1965). Stigmatization is a subjective process that is neither inherently creditable nor discreditable. Stigma decreases an individual’s social status and results in a “spoiled” identity because of traits that deviate from societal expectations. This results in alienation, leaving the individual “a discredited person facing an unaccepting world” (Goffman 1965, 19).

Goffman (1959) also likens social interactions to a theatrical performance where individuals act to maintain their social image (“front stage”) and may behave differently in private (“back stage”). On online incel forums, users engage in “impression management,” presenting a particular identity “onstage” to influence others’ perceptions as they negotiate stigma and masculinity. However, this process of stigma management has dual consequences: it can “protect their sense of self” and create a sense of acceptance, or it can reinforce negative stereotypes, thereby exacerbating social alienation (Roschelle and Kaufman 2004, 26).

Coston and Kimmel (2012) examined how marginalized men, including those with disabilities, gay men, and men of lower socioeconomic status, cope with perceived masculinity deficits using the strategies of normification, minstrelization, and militant chauvinism, as framed by Goffman (1965) in his discussion of stigma. Extending this work, I explore similar stigma management techniques within the incel community. Goffman (1965, 3–5) describes stigma as the loss of one’s ability to participate in society fully, socially and psychologically, because of a lack of self-conception in reaction to what he describes as “normals.” I use Goffman’s (1965, 30) concept of normification to describe what happens when a stigmatized individual tries “to present himself as an ordinary person, although not necessarily making a secret of his failing”. Among incels, this strategy compensates for a lack of hegemonic masculinity by minimizing the differences between themselves as a stigmatized group and normals, while still relying on and upholding certain hegemonic ideals of masculinity. In contrast, the strategy of minstrelization entails the stigmatized person “ingratiatingly act[ing] out before normals the full dance of bad qualities imputed to his kind” by “consolidating a life situation into a clownish role” (Goffman 1965, 110). Incels challenge masculine ideals by exaggerating the difference between themselves as stigmatized figures and the dominant group, overconforming to a stereotypical role. Lastly, I use militant chauvinism to describe the stigmatized individual who “give[s] praise to the assumed special values and contributions of his kind” (Goffman 1965, 113). Here, the stigmatized reject hegemonic masculinity by positioning themselves as different from and superior to the opposing group and then maximizing these distinctions.

This article utilizes Goffman’s stigma theory to analyze three incel forums, where members gather around their inability to achieve hegemonic masculinity within mainstream society. Incels perceive themselves as inherently different from others due to characteristics they believe are stigmatized and spoiled. The analysis identifies three strategies incels use to revive their spoiled identity and negotiate masculinity, which may uphold (normification), challenge (minstrelization), or reject (militant chauvinism) hegemonic masculinity.

Data and Methodology

This study uses netnography to explore incels’ “online interactions and experience” (Belk and Kozinets 2017, 272), capturing their online activity by selecting forums based on their relevance, activity, and heterogeneity (Kozinets 2015). It is a qualitative study of three incel forums conducted over 6 months, from May to October 2021. I manually screenshotted all posts, 1 day each month, within the main comment thread of the selected forums. The data collection produced 927 comment threads, including data from incels.is (n = 549), looksmax.org (n = 287), and Facebook (n = 91).

Incels have created an online ecosystem of ideas and propaganda materials essential for the growth, development, and cementing of an incel community with international reach (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2021). Its members are diverse, marked by ideological differences regarding key issues: the definition of an incel, the source of their problems, and proposed solutions. Nevertheless, following Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgy, the possible inauthentic dramaturgy of incels online does not negate their reflexive construction of identity, which continually takes place with reference to others within specific frames of meaning. For a broader view of incel meaning-making, I examine three incel forums that vary in size, activity, and members.

Incels gather on multiple publicly accessible online forums, although registration is required to post. The most prominent of these is incels.is, with 14,807 members posting over 7 million posts as of October 2021. This forum was established in November 2017 after Reddit banned the subreddit r/incels, which exceeded 41,000 members (Bell 2017). The forum is exclusively for males; its rules explicitly state that “women and LGBT individuals” will be “banned on sight” and prohibit discussions or bragging about sexual or romantic encounters. ¹ Another forum, looksmax.org, was created in August 2018 and has a less puritanical approach to inceldom, as members are not required to identify as incels (Pelzer et al. 2021). This similarly masculine, male-only community emphasizes “attracting the opposite sex,” making it a heteronormative, cisgender, and misogynistic space, with forum rules discouraging “low effort or LGBTQ content.” ² Its primary focus is looksmaxxing, ways of changing one’s appearance to increase upward mobility in the dating market. As of October 2021, the community reported 9,368 registered members publishing over 6.6 million posts.

Finally, I included a smaller Facebook incel group comprising about 500 members in October 2021 to represent their presence on more mainstream platforms. This group provides a space for sharing experiences and grievances about unsuccessful dating and a solitary life. Notably, not all incels consider themselves part of the manosphere (DeCook and Kelly 2022). Including this group allows for a broader range of perspectives on inceldom, thereby avoiding the characterization of the subculture as a core set of members (Williams 2011). This incel Facebook group is private, and others like it vary in size from 400 to 1,500 members. Although these groups are generally heteronormative and exhibit limited openness toward women and LGBTQ+ individuals, they do not entirely exclude these demographics. In line with Kozinets’s (2015) approach to netnography, I joined this group; gaining entry required filling out a form elaborating on my intentions to join and stating my role as a researcher, a step not necessary for the other publicly accessible forums.

The timeframe for data selection was chosen strategically and conveniently, offering a “snapshot of a culture in flux” (Thorburn, Powell, and Chambers 2023, 14). The selection criteria might exclude significant discussions within the forums since the data encompasses only 6 days of in-group communication over 6 months. Despite this limitation, online incel discourse is characterized by repetitive themes, thoroughly documented in previous research (Ging 2019; Lindsay 2022; Menzie 2022). This analysis primarily aims to capture the overarching tendencies of the incel subculture rather than conduct a comparative study across the three forums. Consequently, in the analysis, repeated incel words or terminology are italicized, and specific incel jargon is provided in parenthesis without direct citations. More in-depth documentation is presented through direct quotations. The Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research (SIKT) approved this study and provided ethical guidelines regarding the sensitivity of participants’ safety, confidentiality, and anonymity, which were strictly followed. To protect the privacy of forum members, I exclude usernames and rewrite quotations for anonymization purposes while ensuring that the flavor of the quotation remains. The Facebook group selected for the study is not publicly accessible, and its name has been anonymized to protect member privacy. Personal information, such as names, ages, and locations, was omitted from the data collection.

I applied an abductive process to code the data (Tavory and Timmermans 2014), initially approaching the coding from an inductive perspective. Afterward, I familiarized myself with theoretical frameworks of masculinity and stigma management. The thematic focus of the subcategories rested on how incels uphold, challenge, or reject masculine ideals of, for example, mental, physical, and social attributes, sexual preferences, and fantasies. I coded the 927 comment threads into 4 main categories and 60 subcategories, using NVivo. I used a reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) (Braun and Clarke 2021), and the data coding identified common themes connected to the theoretical frameworks. My analysis borrows from Coston and Kimmel’s (2012) study on men resisting their loss of gender privilege. Most importantly, I reference the theoretical categories of stigma management from Goffman’s (1965) stigma theory, that is, normification, minstrelization, and militant chauvinism.

As a man, I must consider how my gendered position might influence the coding and analysis of data by underestimating or exaggerating harmful antifeminist and misogynistic views (see Mauthner and Doucet 2003). My reflexive stance involves being vigilant against internalizing and displaying disproportionate sympathy, or “himpathy” (Manne 2018), towards men who portray themselves as victims while perpetuating misogyny. As someone of Asian descent, I strive to remain attentive to racism and ethnic prejudice without being unfairly critical while recognizing the unique insights my background provides (see Milner 2007).

Three Ways of Managing Stigma

Incels construct their identity through ambiguous, often contradictory expressions, which complicates distinguishing benign from hateful incel content. The incel subculture has been accurately described as an extreme faction within a misogynistic internet movement (Bates 2020). However, the consistent negative portrayal and othering of incels by society and the media may amplify the group’s us-versus-them mentality (Becker 1963). This labeling process could further reinforce their incel identity and exacerbate deviant and harmful behaviors. Incels might employ specific techniques of neutralization to justify or rationalize their participation in incel spaces (Sykes and Matza 1957). Nevertheless, the online incel subculture can also provide a space for “sympathetic others,” where, according to Goffman (1965, 19–20), stigmatized individuals find acceptance from peers as “any other normal person.” This environment enables incels to exchange experiences of loneliness and unrequited love, thereby offering each other sympathy, comfort, and support while venting about their inceldom.

Normification

Incels who perceive hegemonic masculinity as attainable try to compensate for a spoiled identity. This stigma management includes upholding or compensating for hegemonic masculinity, which I label normification (Goffman 1965, 110). It entails relying on and promoting ideals of hegemonic masculinity, such as physical strength, athleticism, independence, and sexual prowess (Connell 1995). Incels underline their lack of hyper-masculine characteristics to make themselves desirable to women, yet hold onto the mainstream ideals, standards, and expectations supposedly required for access to women willing to sleep with them. Therefore, incels’ physical and mental efforts to minimize the differences between themselves and sexually successful men concerning looks, money, or status are essential strategies to alleviate their stigma. Normification strategies range from rejecting the stigmatized image of themselves as irrational and pitiful, to total rejection of themselves as mass murderers.

The incel worldview describes regular people as bluepilled, that is, having naïve and false beliefs about romance and sexual relationships. Incels adopt the red pill notion that women are shallow and picky but may “settle” for men of average looks if they have money or other advantages (Bates 2020), which incels contend can include themselves. Incels’ metaphor of the red pill is an important way of compensating for failing to match up to masculine ideals by enhancing certain qualities to attract women. Thus, to lessen their unattractiveness, incels discuss ways to improve their looks (looksmaxing), financial status (moneymaxing), and social status (statusmaxing). These range from mainstream tips about dieting, exercise, and the styling of hair and clothes to more controversial measures such as anabolic steroids, plastic surgery, and face implants. Other forms of compensation also involve the promotion of pseudoscientific treatments, including hitting their face with a hard object to alter the bone structures in their chin or jaw (bone smashing). As one incel explains:

Bonesmashing is a looksmaxxing theory that states that if you smash your bones (with a hammer, fist, or whatever), they will grow “spurs” or “bumps” of bone where the pressure is applied—the man in the video talks about breaking the bone under his foot to grow taller.

Incels employing normification strategies recognize their differences in masculinity and attraction as dynamic but ambiguous. Most incels keep their identities hidden online to avoid additional scrutiny and stigma. However, some incels spend time at the gym and assert their masculinity by sharing anonymous or semi-anonymous photographs of themselves to demonstrate that possessing or pursuing a manly body is crucial within the incel subculture (gymcel). By so doing, incels maintain and support the conventional idea that the male body expresses “true masculinity” (Connell 1995, 45). They promote the idea of becoming an attractive “alpha male,” or a “Chad.” Incels view these men with admiration, envy, and contempt because of their conventional and charismatic attractiveness that gives them, contrary to incels, disproportionately advantages in “sexual access and social status” in a society that discriminates based on looks (Menzie 2022, 4). According to incels, women will only mate with these “high-status males” (hypergamy). Thus, becoming a Chad would eliminate the spoiled identity of incels while guaranteeing a privileged life of social ease, friendship, romance, and sex.

Stigmatized individuals reject labels of deviance in various ways (Becker 1963). One strategy includes neutralizing personal guilt by deflecting societal condemnation, shifting the blame onto those who label them as deviant (Sykes and Matza 1957). Incels perceive their coverage by the mainstream media, journalists, and researchers as untrustworthy because it conflates nonviolent incels with those who are violent and misogynistic. Participants on incel forums express frustration at being, in their eyes, demonized and falsely labeled as irrational, dangerous, violent, or racist. They blame the media for promoting a view of incels as notorious mass killers. As one incel put it, violent incels give “incels worldwide a bad name and tarnish the general image of incels.” Incels who consider themselves nonviolent perceive (physical) violence as wrong and irrational and call perpetrators fake members of the incel community (fakecels). Incels can therefore experience “identity ambivalence” when faced with “a close sight of [their] own kind behaving in a stereotyped way, flamboyantly or pitifully acting out the negative attributes imputed to them” (Goffman 1965, 106–107). Rejecting the image of incels as mass murderers therefore becomes a vital strategy for incels to alleviate stigma.

Sections of the incel community rely on, uphold, and promote hegemonic ideas of masculinity that presumably enable sexual access to women. This strategy includes accepting oneself or compensating oneself physically, mentally, financially, or socially. The normification approach allows incels to frame themselves as “gentlemen deviants” (Goffman 1965, 111). In other words, incels engage in “cowering” by positioning themselves as friendly, “normal” men, despite their reputation as ridiculous, or even nefarious, characters.

Minstrelization

Incels who perceive hegemonic masculinity as unachievable may resist by embracing the spoiled identity others seek to normalize. This way of managing stigma is evident when incels assume exaggerated roles online to challenge or resist hegemonic masculinity, which I label minstrelization (Goffman 1965, 110). This involves embodying their otherness by over-conforming to the “stereotypic characterizations that the dominant culture may hold about them” (Coston and Kimmel 2012, 101). Incels believe that their inceldom impedes success in the dating market without the possibility of improving their so-called sexual market value (SMV). Instead, they exhibit hybrid masculinities (Ging 2019), embracing their incel identity as a strategy to alleviate their stigma, using subcultural provocation by exaggerating the differences between “us” and “them”; it includes self-mockery and self-abuse by reveling in nihilistic or fatalistic discourse about their lives as compared with those of people in mainstream society. Through minstrelization in various forms, incels reformulate and challenge ideas that society might hold about them and position themselves as rational outsiders.

Incels’ stigma management often includes subcultural provocation in response to feelings of romantic and sexual alienation. In opposition to mainstream society, delinquent subcultures invert larger cultural norms with “negative polarity” (Cohen 1965, 28). Thus, incels’ use of deterministic and self-deprecating narratives can be seen as managing stigma, which matches their self-identification as “low-status males.” For example, non-white incels (ethnicels) attribute their failed romantic career to biological positivism and preferences for Western heteronormative masculinity. Thus, one incel says:

I fucking despise being ethnic so much! I hate how much more attractive, charming, positive, and pleasant 90 percent of white people are compared to how low IQ, nasty, ugly, and idiotic ethnic people are. What I would give to be white. Being a shitskin is the cause of 95 percent of my problems.

The internalized racism of non-white incels, highlighting feelings of emasculation positioned against an idealized form of white masculinity, is central to their self-identity and masculinity negotiation intersecting with racism and sexism (Halpin 2022). It is part of a competitive internal hierarchy within the incel subculture of what it means to be an authentic incel (truecel). In line with Goffman’s (1959) dramaturgy, incels display competitive performativity in trying to outdo each other with their tales of woe. Given the proper context, acts generally associated with weakness or vulnerability can give incels credibility and indicate sincerity. Thus, inceldom, unlike other male-dominated subcultures, allows and encourages emotional outbursts or expressions that frame incels as pathetic, ugly, or effeminate, to gain acknowledgment, status, and subcultural capital. This frequently involves fatalism – encouraging other incels to give up and lay down and rot (LDAR) – and includes suicidal ideations (Daly and Laskovtsov 2021). As one incel describes it: “for genuine incels, it comes down to either cope or rope.” Simultaneously, because of the perceived advantages that white incels are assumed to have over non-white incels in the dating market, the competitive performativity often results in non-white incels denouncing white incels as inauthentic. They are labeled as fake (fakecel) or voluntary (volcel) incels, accused of not taking advantage of their socio-economic status and women’s attraction to white men, and who, if unsuccessful in a Western context, can travel to Southeast Asia to succeed sexually (SEAmaxxing). Importantly, this points to incels’ frequent overt and covert endorsement of white supremacy, such as white men being entitled to non-white women while upholding racial stereotypes suggesting non-white men are inferior, lacking intelligence, and primitive (Kelly, DiBranco, and DeCook 2022).

Incels adopting minstrelization strategies recognize their differences in masculinity and attraction as fixed. As a result, incel becomes an all-encompassing identity or script, describing the sexual failure or lack of sexual experience of a social outcast or loser. For incels, their deviant role as involuntary celibates becomes a master status (Cottee 2021). Their embodiment of inceldom is made visible by various incel traits, such as their looks, demeanor, and expressions. For example, the invisible and visible identity markers of inceldom are manifested in the so-called incel walk, which fails to match hyper-masculine ideals, given expression in the confident stride of an alpha male. Incels thus establish their mythos as having outsider status while being “situation-conscious” (Goffman 1965, 111). While incels may compare their situation to that of historically oppressed groups, the social dynamics and hierarchies of their performative minstrelization are distinct from those within African American communities. In the nineteenth century, minstrelsy entrenched racial stereotypes and stigmatized black masculinity. It upheld white supremacy, leading African Americans to use humor and hyperbole as survival strategies to navigate and resist racial injustice (see Lott, 2013).

Simultaneously, incels seek recognition as rational outsiders, reframing their exclusion from the dating market as scientifically explicable, invoking economics, biology, or evolutionary psychology to explain attraction (see Bachaud and Johns 2023). They cultivate a hybrid masculinity valuing rationality, casting themselves as social critics and “an observer of human relations” (Goffman 1965, 111). For example, they fixate on masculine facial features supposedly attractive to women, claiming that men must possess narrowed, alluring, hunter eyes. Such features are, in other words, impossible for incels to achieve because of their inherent characteristics and the limitations of modern medicine. As one incel explains, surgically improving his eye appeal is limited by his anatomical bone structure: “The position of the tendons is attached on the lateral of the eye orbit […] You can’t fix this!” In other words, their positions and actions result from circumstances beyond their control (see Sykes and Matza 1957). Thus, positioning themselves as scientifically literate and rational observers analyzing their inceldom status helps alleviate stigma and inadequacy by blaming external forces.

Incels use minstrelization to challenge the ideals of hegemonic masculinity regarding dating and romance. They express feelings of alienation and powerlessness when comparing themselves with normals who seemingly conform to them. In response, they performatively embrace the stereotypes of losers, outcasts, and rational outsiders. This hybrid masculinity allows incels to assume a victim role, whereby they “strategically distance themselves from hegemonic masculinity, while simultaneously compounding existing hierarchies of power and inequality online” (Ging 2019, 14). Using minstrelization to alleviate stigma allows incels to mount a low level of resistance against their perceived marginalization. Incels, therefore, adopt a clownish role, engaging in bravado to exempt themselves from accountability and responsibility.

Militant Chauvinism

Incels perceive conventional social norms of hegemonic masculinity as responsible for and perpetuating their inceldom status. In response, incels alleviate stigma by rejecting hegemonic masculinity and creating an alternative set of masculine standards, which I label “militant chauvinism” (Goffman 1965, 113). This way of managing stigma involves maximizing their differences from hyper-masculine men, who possess desirable masculinities, while simultaneously positioning themselves as superior to others failing to conform to heteronormativity (Coston and Kimmel 2012). In exhibiting a form of protest masculinity (Connell 1995), incels’ rejection of romantic or sexual relationships is a vital stigma management strategy. It includes despising non-incels, denigrating other men for their hyper-masculinity, and mocking those viewed as effeminate. Incels also frame women as one-dimensional, valued for their bodies, sexual availability, and purity. This strategy of militant chauvinism promotes male and racial superiority while relishing the suffering of others.

Incels adopting militant chauvinism reject current social and masculine norms as wrong or failed. They condemn impossible standards of masculinity with their social and sexual demands. The black pill ideology conceptualizes this critique, which includes a biological, deterministic, and essentialist worldview of human social and sexual behavior (Lindsay 2022). This ideology is staunchly anti-feminist and steeped in misogyny, contesting the evolving social structures permitting non-monogamy and sexual agency to women. Moreover, it serves to normalize oppressive attitudes toward women and rationalize violence as means for policy change (Sugiura 2021). According to the black pill, women permanently exclude incels as potential partners because of their genetic inferiority and unappealing looks. Incels’ undesirability is also culturally reinforced by the sexual revolution, feminism, and sex-positivity, which increase women’s bodily and sexual autonomy. To manage their undesirability, incels frame their inceldom as a blessing in disguise. As one incel says:

Knowing that every bluepilled cuck is exerting all of their effort to improve, doing worthless shit that does nothing more than increase their SMV [Sexual Market Value] and nothing else – pure surface improvements – is liberating. Fuck that shit! No gym, no going out with friends, no social gatherings, no diets, etc. We are free from all that shit because we know how stupid it is.

The stigmatized highlight how their “suffering can teach one about life and people” by using stigma for “secondary gains” (Goffman 1965, 10–11). Accordingly, incels mock regular people, or normies, for holding false bluepilled beliefs while framing as degrading and humiliating the aesthetic, financial, and social demands made on men to achieve romantic or sexual success. This strategy includes rejecting conventional norms and values associated with romantic and sexual relationships as transactional scams or traps – for instance, marriage is framed as the only way a beta male can maintain a relationship with a woman, through financial compensation (betabuxxing). Thus, incels perceive women’s reciprocal feelings and acts of love for men as insincere or impossible, unless they are directed at Chads. This strategy supposedly rejects traditional forms of masculinity and patriarchal structures yet contradictory uphold them as incels position themselves as superior to other men, deriding both hypermasculine Chads and men failing to meet heteronormative ideals – including non-white, effeminate, or LGBTQ+ individuals – often employing pejoratives like cuck or soy. Ironically, incels perpetuate hegemonic masculinity through their disdain for perceived masculine weakness.

Goffman (1965, 4) identified stigma markers as physical deformities, “blemishes of individual character,” and group identities. Similarly, incels assert that invisible identity markers, such as autism or those grappling with mental health, manifest in facial features, mannerisms, and expressions that cannot be hidden. Consequently, men may appear physically attractive yet face difficulties attracting a partner (mentalcels). However, the legitimacy of being a mentalcel is sharply contested in incel communities, evident in one incel’s remark: “Imagine being attractive and tall while getting female attention but blaming ‘muh autism’ for your incel status. Please kys [kill yourself] ASAP to all the mentalcels on this site (you know who you are).” Thus, stigma management is evident in the denunciation of members within incel groups.

Injury or harm to a victim may be neutralized by rationalizing it as a “form of rightful retaliation or punishment” (Sykes and Matza 1957, 668). Kimmel (2017, 75) highlights how feelings of aggrieved entitlement can justify “revenge against those who have wronged you.” In an extreme rejection of social norms, incels relish the suffering of others, wishing for social destruction through economic collapse, pandemics, or world wars. The essential desire is that other people should suffer as much as they do. One incel stated: “I will eat bugs if it means normies are suffering too.” Importantly, incels dehumanize women through fantasies of retaliation for their romantic rejections, which they perceive as unjust and humiliating attacks on their masculine identity (Thorburn, Powell, and Chambers 2023). Employing this strategy of victimhood (see Cottee 2021; Lounela and Murphy 2024) alleviates stigma and masculine inadequacy through the collective rejection of and hostility towards women, whom incels accuse of receiving preferential treatment in society.

Incels symbolically reject hegemonic masculinity through what Connell (1995, 116) describes as “a spectacular display”, protesting current social structures that amplify their stigma and limit their patriarchal dividend. Instead, they call for radical social change, fitting the category of “misogynist incels” and supporting male supremacy (Kelly, DiBranco, and DeCook 2022). This extreme rejection of mainstream values includes “doing” masculinity through acts of hostility to exert dominance in an ultimate celebration of machismo (Messerschmidt 1993). To this end, misogynist incels create online spaces featuring militant chauvinism, offering “fantasies of humiliation and triumph over normals” (Goffman 1965, 112). Ironically, while appearing as a form of protest masculinity (Connell 1995), such behavior upholds hegemonic masculinity and reinforces the dominant gender order. Through their hostility, incels attempt to manage stigma by positioning themselves above others, thereby seeking to regain masculine dominance, control, and agency.

Concluding Discussion

The misogyny espoused by incels reflects wider societal sexism, indicative of institutionalized misogynistic norms embedded within our culture (Tranchese and Sugiura 2021). Their ideologies are intertwined with broader social frameworks and political movements opposed to women’s rights, which have contributed to the rise of incel communities (Kaiser and Pakis 2022). While these elements are central to the larger backdrop, my research explores how incels construct meaning through their complex understanding of masculinity and shame. They position themselves within a persecution narrative as social and sexual outcasts because of the mismatch between their masculinity and unattainable ideals of hegemonic masculinity. Concurrently, incels are condemned by the media as pathetic deviants who espouse antifeminism, misogyny, and racism. This labeling includes framing incels as dangerous male supremacists or terrorists – true deviant outsiders (Becker 1963). Incels have become our current “folk devils” (Cohen 2002), which makes participation in the incel subculture unthinkable and irrational for outsiders.

However, similar to other undesirable and potentially violent subcultures offline (see Hamm 2004; Treadwell and Garland 2011), the online incel milieu serves as a space where stigmatized individuals share grievances, interests, and experiences. It also has a soft dimension of empathy, comfort, and community – a hybrid category, not unlike Goffman’s (1965, 19) “sympathetic others” – comprising involuntary celibates rallying against those outside their group. Incel forums can, therefore, be understood as backstage settings, where incels can relax and freely discuss their inceldom apart from their regular social life. However, incel forums are far from non-judgmental spaces; they deny outsiders access, enact strict internal norms and rules limiting opposing views and expressions, and ban defectors (Baele, Brace, and Coan 2021; Pelzer et al. 2021). Although incels are not always sympathetic to one another, the onstage setting of incel forums allows them to express shame and masculinity in particular ways, opportunities that are limited offline. Thus, incels engage in creating and maintaining their identity by managing various stigmas, opposing the out-group of “normals” while negotiating distance within the in-group. In this article, I have shown how incels continually alleviate and manage stigma and masculinity.

The incel subculture is relatively diverse, with multiple ways of constructing an incel identity (Andersen 2023). Therefore, it is essential to include the multiplicity of voices to fully understand the online subculture and its members and the stigma management they engage in. Goffman (1965, 18) notes that the stigmatized individual “vacillates between cowering and bravado.” My analysis points to the varying ways incels negotiate masculinity while engaging in complex stigma management within their subculture. The ambiguity of gender processes online allows incels to use stigma management strategies singly or in combination. They shift between strategies as they see fit to minimize the negative impact of their stigmatization, with the masculinity project of incels vacillating between cowering (normification), bravado (minstrelization), and hostility (militant chauvinism).

The incel subculture is a community of social deviants with online ecological boundaries encompassing “sympathetic others.” It becomes a place “where the individual deviator can openly take the line that he is at least as good as anyone else” (Goffman 1965, 145). Incels variously handle their inceldom and its stigma – they uphold, challenge, or reject hegemonic masculinity. Normification strategies allow incels to present themselves as normal, or gentlemen deviants, by distancing themselves from a negative incel label. By “cowering,” incels reposition themselves as virtuous men, thereby disconnecting themselves from misogynistic or violent incels. Minstrelization strategies allow incels to adopt a well-defined and stereotypical role of loser, outcast, or rational outsider. Incels challenge conceptions of masculinity, using “bravado” and subcultural provocation to express woes and grievances about their masculinity or lack thereof. Lastly, strategies of militant chauvinism allow incels to present themselves as superior to others, both outside and inside the in-group, by rejecting societal expectations about dating and romance. Incels use “hostility” to symbolically reject hegemonic masculinity and regain a sense of masculine dominance, control, and agency.

Incels’ ongoing stigma management points to the complexity of masculinity. Hegemonic masculinity is “fluid, intertextualized, always shape-shifting, and open to contestation, formed at the intersections of gender, sexuality, class, age, ethnicity, professional background, and history” (Milani 2015, 2). Similarly, incels’ stigma management takes multiple forms that overlap at times. For example, their strategy of normification might play to the “nice guy” trope, exacerbating incels’ sexual frustration and expectations that women should sleep with them. While attempts to distance themselves from other masculinities as nice guys may seem subversive, such strategies can reinforce ideas of men’s entitlement and misogynistic practices (de Boise 2018), which continue to define masculinity based on hegemonic standards while simultaneously reproducing patriarchal power (Ging 2019). Additionally, strategies co-occur where minstrelization and militant chauvinism intersect, with incels asserting their status as rational outsiders while simultaneously dehumanizing women. For instance, the “dogpill,” initially intended as an exaggerated joke suggesting that women prefer sex with dogs over sex with incels, has become a genuine belief for some. This notion is corroborated by manipulative experiments on dating apps used to rationalize the control and punishment of women. Consequently, while the masculinity projects of incels may vary, they continue to operate within the parameters of hegemonic masculinity, which limits incels’ ways of doing masculinity – as competition with other men.

The dramaturgy of incels shows that their identity and meaning-making are socially constructed and communicated through interactions with others “onstage,” often manipulated to elicit specific responses. Incels typically cling to a pessimistic worldview, perceiving themselves as irreparably flawed, or spoiled. Nevertheless, by examining the subtler aspects of incel subculture and their stigma management, we can more effectively understand how they navigate shame and masculinity. Goffman’s (1965) stigma theory proves invaluable in interpreting the everyday interactions among incels, allowing for the development of alternative interpretations and expressions of manhood that benefit this community. These insights could be applied to emergent online platforms designed to proactively assist incels in transitioning away from their harmful mindset in an actual “backstage” setting, offering support without passing judgment on them or robbing them of agency (Botto and Gottzén 2023; Gheorghe and Clement 2023).

I argue that the incel subculture highlights how young men and boys struggle to adhere to hegemonic masculine ideals in dating and sexual relationships. However, instead of questioning or challenging the structures imposing these expectations upon them, incels perform a contradictory renegotiation of identity, and women are blamed for not playing their supposed role. Their stigma management results from perceived, experienced, or self-imposed marginalization within a broader culture valuing social status and appearance. However destructive they are to themselves and others, incels’ countercultural efforts to alleviate stigma are not entirely arbitrary. Thus, while it is tempting to dismiss incels as sad and dangerous men unworthy of empathy or support, we should acknowledge that the development of the incel subculture and the actions of its members are linked to broad social and cultural notions of masculinity and shame.