Digital Commons Network^™

"If You're Ugly, The Blackpill Is Born With You": Sexual Hierarchies, Identity Construction, And Masculinity On An Incel Forum Board, Josh Segalewitz

Joyce Durham Essay Contest in Women's and Gender Studies

The manosphere is one new digital space where antifeminists and men's rights activists interact outside of their traditional social networks. Incels, short for involuntary celibates, exist in this space and have been labeled as extreme misogynists, white supremacists, and domestic terrorists. This project aims to understand discussions happening among incels and situate them within social understandings of masculinity. I downloaded 4,532 threads posted on incels.is and randomly sampled 100 for analysis. Through grounded coding methodology, I identified the importance of making meaning of manhood on this site, particularly with respect to sexuality. Further, I found that incel ideology rests on …