The journalist Arshy Mann has an excellent tweet thread up that introduced me to a new word — and a new movement. Here’s the tweet defining it:
"Incel" refers to "involuntary celibate," essentially meaning that a person can't get laid because of their looks/personality. The incels make up one segment of the broader "manosphere", a collection of online masculinist communities that interplay with one another.
— Arshy Mann (@ArshyMann) April 24, 2018
In that thread, Mann writes about how Incels–men who can’t get laid–are “almost entirely men who are laser-focused on their inability to have sex.” They “blame women,” and are “virulently misogynistic.” Incels “often play out violent fantasies online,” and these can include “acid attacks & mass rapes.”
Mann’s thread was in the context of a terrorist attack that killed ten people in Toronto yesterday.
The problem, you think, is far from our shores? Well, do read this piece by Simon Denyer and Annie Gowen that reveals that “men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India.”
That should lead to many homegrown Incels, right? What happens then?