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Terrorism and Political Violence
ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ftpv20
The Emergence of the Incel Community as a
Misogyny-Motivated Terrorist Threat
Demeter Lockyer, Michael Halpin & Finlay Maguire
To cite this article: Demeter Lockyer, Michael Halpin & Finlay Maguire (26 Jan 2024): The
Emergence of the Incel Community as a Misogyny-Motivated Terrorist Threat, Terrorism and
Political Violence, DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2023.2296515
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2023.2296515
Published online: 26 Jan 2024.
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The Emergence of the Incel Community as a Misogyny-Motivated
Terrorist Threat
Demeter Lockyer
a
, Michael Halpin
b
, and Finlay Maguire
c
a
Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada;
b
Department
of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada;
c
Department of Community
Health & Epidemiology, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
ABSTRACT
The incel (involuntary celibate) community is characterized by misogynistic
beliefs surrounding women and a fatalistic outlook on society. Incels have
committed, or have attempted to commit, several acts of mass violence
globally, which suggests they are an emerging terror threat. In this study,
we discuss how incels position their violence as ideological terrorism, how
this violence is tied to misogyny despite incels’ additional targeting of non-
women, and nally, the extent to which incels are, or at least claim to be, anti-
violence or otherwise non-violent. To do this, we inductively analysed over
1000 comments from a popular incel forum, Incels.is, detailing how incels
discuss three mass-murderers associated with the incel community: Elliot
Rodger, Alek Minassian, and Jake Davison. Through revealing the ways incels
discuss these three men, we conclude that incels view their own violence as
terrorism with ideological aims, thus qualifying the community as a terrorist
threat.
KEYWORDS
Incels; terrorism; violent
misogyny; ideological
violence; anti-feminism
Introduction
Incels, a portmanteau term of “involuntary celibates,” are a subculture of a larger body of male-
oriented online social spaces collectively known as the “manosphere.”
1
As an online community of
heterosexual men, incels claim to be unable to establish sexual and/or romantic relationships with
women despite wanting to do so.
2
Incels and other subcultures within the manosphere (e.g., men
going their own way [MGTOW], pickup artists [PUA]) share the beliefs that feminism and women’s
empowerment are threats to traditional masculinity, that there is an ongoing cultural “war” against
men, and that men are generally oppressed in modern society.
3
Discourse within the incel community
builds on these beliefs by encouraging violence against women and the complete abolition of women’s
rights.
4
Despite their outward aggression, incels see themselves as victims because they believe they
have been deprived of their masculine entitlement to women’s bodies.
5
The incel community exists primarily in online spaces, but several men who incels have claimed as
their own have been connected to acts of violence in various regions of the world over the last decade.
On May 23, 2014, twenty-two-year-old Elliot Rodger went on a rampage where he stabbed, shot, and
used his vehicle to kill a total of six people and injure fourteen others in Isla Vista, United States.
6
On
April 23, 2018, after posting on his Facebook page “the Incel Rebellion has already begun!,” twenty-
five-year-old Alek Minassian killed eleven and injured an additional fifteen people in a vehicular attack
in Toronto, Canada.
7
On August 12, 2021, twenty-two-year-old Jake Davison shot seven people,
killing five, in an attack in Plymouth, United Kingdom.
8
These are just some of the many known
CONTACT Demeter Lockyer d.lockyer@dal.ca Department of International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, 6135
University Avenue, Halifax, Nova Scotia B3H 4R2, Canada
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2023.2296515
© 2024 Taylor & Francis
incidences of incel violence: upwards of fifty deaths were attributed to incel violence in North America
between 2014 and 2020.
9
These attacks have sparked debate over if the incel community should be regarded as an interna-
tional security threat or not. Both the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) and the United
States Secret Service have formally recognized incels as violent extremists,
10
yet security and law
enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom have been less inclined to use similar labelling.
11
A similar debate exists in scholarship on the topic: while some researchers have found that the incel
community’s capacity for violence constitutes labelling the community as a transnational terrorist
network,
12
others argue that this is a mischaracterization of a “mostly peaceful” community.
13
Through this study, we identify that while the majority of incels are unlikely to carry out physical
acts of violence on the public, the behaviour of these so-called “non-violent” incels does not reflect
a peaceful community, but rather a toxic culture with a high propensity for violence. Furthermore, this
article will demonstrate that the hesitancy by certain law enforcement and security agencies, scholars,
and others in labelling incel violence as a form of terrorism is rooted in how the term is currently
defined and applied. More specifically, present discourse on the subject often discounts gender as
a basis for terrorism. Consequently, the reluctance in labelling incel violence as terrorism appears not
because incel attacks do not amount to terrorism, but because current understandings of terrorism are
based on outdated stereotypes of what terrorism is and who terrorists are.
Through an analysis of incels discussions surrounding Elliot Rodger, Alek Minassian, and Jake
Davison, this paper will demonstrate that incels situate their own violence as misogynistic terrorism
that is performed to achieve ideological aims. Incels do not commit acts of violence for land, resources,
or material objectives. Instead, their goals are to seek revenge and retribution against women and
society through intimidation and violence. As we will argue, incel violence presents a growing threat to
public safety, a threat which is exceptionally novel and unfamiliar to law enforcement, security, and
intelligence agencies across the globe. Using incels’ own accounts, this paper demonstrates why incel
violence should be recognized as terrorism and addressed as such.
The incel ideology
Incels endorse hostile sexism,
14
which refers to misogyny, prejudice, objectification, denigration, and
other negative perceptions that are directed towards women.
15
The hostile sexism of incels, along with
the community’s more broadly defined misogynistic attitudes, have been extensively covered in prior
scholarship.
16
In addition to misogyny, the incel ideology is also characterized by victimhood and
fatalism.
17
Inspired by the “black pill” philosophy of the manosphere, incels argue that men’s romantic
fortunes are predetermined by a combination of their physical appearance and women’s strict
preference for conventionally attractive men.
18
In relation to victimhood, incels believe that they have been unfairly denied access to sex and
women’s bodies. In this sense, incels see their status as tied to “lookism,” a form of social bias which
favours physically attractive people.
19
Those who adhere to the black pill philosophy have accepted
this state as an eternal curse or inevitable destiny of sorts.
20
Incels’ worldviews are thus simultaneously
informed by this combination of misogyny, fatalism, and perceived victimhood; by claiming victim-
hood, incels present violence against women as a consequence for being denied access to women’s
bodies.
21
Despite incels’ worldviews being rooted in misogyny, incel violence is not directed at women
alone but rather society at large. O’Donnell & Shor have found that incels seek to harm “anyone who
does not subscribe to the incel ideology, even those who do not directly hurt incels’ sexual chances,”
thus defaulting most of society as “the enemy” as opposed to specific societal factions.
22
Such
sentiments are evident in Elliot Rodger’s manifesto, which, in part, aims to provide his explanation
for the Isla Vista murders. In this manifesto, Rodger expresses hostility towards “females,” but more
broadly “the world and society,” as he puts it.
23
In this paper, we advance this literature by arguing that incel violence is a form of ideological
misogynistic terrorism. While a combination of violent misogyny and fatalism informs incels targeting
2D. LOCKYER ET AL.
of diverse groups of people, we suggest that incel violence is ultimately rooted in misogynistic ideals,
regardless of who they target as their victims. As we will demonstrate, according to incels’ own
perspectives, incel violence is meant to send a message to the entirety of society, not just women
alone. In incel rhetoric, all women and all of society are responsible for their victimization. However,
because incels use misogyny-based fear and aggression to send their message, this community
constitutes a misogyny-motivated terrorist group.
Classifying terrorism
Defining terrorism can be difficult for both scholars and governments. For example, the Government
of Canada, which has previously tied incels to terrorism, claims that terrorism is a highly malleable
term which is open to a variety of different definitions and interpretations.
24
As such, researchers note
that questions such as “what is terrorism?” or “who is a terrorist?” do not have simple, clear-cut
answers.
25
As Hardy & Williams demonstrate, this lack of a clear definition for the term “terrorism” is
a long-established issue: in the wake of the September 11, 2001 terrorism attacks in the United States,
the United Nations passed a resolution calling for international action against terrorism, but then
failed to provide a universal definition for the term.
26
Since then, legislatures have created a plethora of
different definitions for “terrorism,” many of which do not account for the changing dynamics of
modern terrorist threats. More specifically, terrorism continues to be presented by governments
internationally as a foreign threat that is innately tied to the Muslim population.
27
Caron Gentry writes that in the United States, Islamic terrorism has remained a focal point of
national security to the extent where other forms of terrorism have become completely obscured.
28
Rachel Guy notes that while the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has begun to recognize more
non-Islamic security threats to the United States in recent years, such as eco-terrorists and “extremist
animal rights groups,” the FBI still does not track any misogyny-motivated terror threats.
29
Similar
dynamics are observable in other countries: a 2017 policy report released by Canada’s Department of
National Defence named only Daesh, al-Qaida, and other Islamic extremist groups as terrorist threats
to Canadians,
30
and as recently as 2018, Islamist-inspired terrorism was still being named by CSIS as
the foremost national security threat to Canada.
31
Yet the Government of Canada’s level of concern
over Islamic extremism has not been supported by statistics on mass violence in the country: as of
2021, less than 10 percent of casualties from violent attacks in Canada had been perpetrated by
Muslims, but evidencing the legal consequences of what is labelled terrorism in Canada, 98 percent of
terrorism prosecutions in the country in the same time frame were against Muslim Canadians.
32
These
statistics, however, may soon change.
In recent years the Government of Canada has begun to introduce misogyny-motivated threats into
their public reports and strategy documents on counterterrorism. In their 2019 report, CSIS listed
“gender-driven violence” (GDV) as a form of what they call “ideologically motivated violent extre-
mism” (IMVE); the Toronto van attack was provided as an example of this type of violence.
33
The
“IMVE” terminology was first put into action the following year when a seventeen-year-old male, who
claimed to be an incel inspired by Alek Minassian’s attack, murdered a woman and injured a man in
Toronto, Ontario.
34
After first arresting the young man on first-degree murder and attempted murder
charges, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the Toronto Police Service decided to upgrade the
charges to “murder—terrorist activity” and “attempted murder—terrorist activity” after their inves-
tigation revealed that the attack was inspired by the “IMVE incel movement.”
35
This marked the first
time—and only, to date—when Canadian law enforcement has laid a terrorism charge onto a self-
identified incel.
36
While the decision to charge the perpetrator of the 2020 Toronto attack with
terrorism related charges signals progress in Canada, misogyny-motivated violence continues to be
under-recognized in global security industries.
Violence against women is one of the most common cases that criminal justice systems encounter
globally,
37
and women represent the largest demographic of mass shooting victims in the United
States,
38
yet gender is perpetually minimized as a motive for terrorism among defence and security
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 3
agencies around the world. Vink and colleagues note a similar issue within scholarship on violent
misogyny, arguing that despite increasing awareness of the existing connections between structural
misogyny and terrorism, the link between incel violence and broader patterns of misogyny tend to go
ignored in scholarship.
39
We believe that this has, in turn, limited exploration into the potential
capacity of gender-based terrorist threats.
Part of the problem is that perpetrators of misogynistic terrorism are often publicized as “lone-
wolf” actors despite the offenders of such acts oftentimes taking inspiration from online communities
such as the incel community.
40
Quite recently, we have seen incel violence being framed in this way: in
the weeks following the Plymouth shooting, Jonathan Hall, an Independent Reviewer of Terrorism
Legislation in the United Kingdom, said that a change in terrorism legislation after Davison’s shooting
would be unlikely unless more similar attacks were to occur.
41
The Plymouth shooting was considered
a lone-wolf attack, but unlike lone-wolf violence—which is typically carried out by an individual
whose motives “are conceived and directed by the individual without any direct outside command or
hierarchy”
42
—there was sufficient evidence that Davison’s attack was directly influenced by his
engagement with the incel community.
43
To this point, we posit that the failure of governments to recognize that instances of gender-based
mass violence can and should qualify as terrorism perpetuates the longstanding systemic failure to take
violence against women seriously. Since women are so routinely targeted by men, violence against
women has become normalized as a seemingly unavoidable by-product of society, to the extent where
blame and responsibility are often deflected away from the perpetrators of sexual and violent crimes
against women and placed onto women themselves by both individuals and institutions.
44
This
shifting of blame and responsibility away from perpetrators and onto victims is even present in the
literature on incels.
Some scholars have presented the argument that classifying incels as terrorists would be an unfair
designation as this label could be damaging to incels’ mental health, social reputation, and general
well-being.
45
Ironically, a similar rationale is used by incels themselves to justify their words and
actions: by claiming victimhood, incels present murdering women as a just consequence for being
denied access to sex, thus deflecting any sense of wrongdoing away from themselves and placing
responsibility for their behaviour onto women. Although some may consider it unfair to incels to
immediately assume these men have violent intentions, the lives of women cannot be gambled for the
sake of giving incels the benefit of the doubt; women do not owe this to anyone, much less men who
openly call for violence against them. We seek to emphasize that in any attempt to assist, deradicalize,
or provide supports to incels, the safety and security of women cannot be compromised.
Are incels terrorists?
As various scholars have emphasized, misogyny-motivated violence is partially discounted as
a legitimate terrorist threat due to the lack of a clear and consistent definition of terrorism being
available, but more so because of an unfounded hesitancy on behalf of governments, law enforcement,
security agencies, and others to apply the label of “terrorism” to violent crimes motivated by
misogyny.
46
For instance, immediately following the Plymouth shooting Devon and Cornwall Police
Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer declared that the attack was not terror related; this claim was made
despite the attack being the worst mass shooting in the country in over ten years.
47
Instead, the attack
was labelled a “domestic incident” which “spilled into the street” causing several Plymouth locals to
lose their lives in “extraordinarily tragic circumstances.”
48
Yet if we consider some of the more commonly circulated and accepted definitions of terrorism and
terrorist activities it becomes increasingly evident that incel violence does align with these descrip-
tions. The section on domestic terrorism of the United States of America’s PATRIOT Act defines
domestic terrorism as activities that “involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the
criminal laws of the United States” and “appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian
population.”
49
Likewise, the Criminal Code of Canada includes in its definition of “terrorist activity”
4D. LOCKYER ET AL.
an act “in whole or in part for a political, religious or ideological purpose, objective or cause . . . with
the intention of intimidating the public.”
50
As we will show in the pages to follow, incel violence meets
the criteria to be considered terrorism.
We posit that the demonstrated reluctance of governments to recognize instances of gender-based
mass violence as terrorism contributes to the larger societal and political issue of failing to take threats
to women’s security seriously. By discounting the possibility that, in some instances, patterns of
violence against women have ideological roots, violence against women remains viewed as an inter-
personal trend rather than a trend indicative of ideological misogyny.
51
We suggest that, outside of the
incel community specifically, violent misogyny must be better recognized by governments as
a problem with ideological or systemic roots and not merely an inter-personal phenomenon with
no common cause. This would also necessitate countries acknowledging gender as a pertinent factor in
matters of domestic security.
Regarding incels specifically, various scholars have made the argument that there is reasonable
justification for incel violence to be classified as terrorism.
52
We advance these findings by demon-
strating that incel violence should not only be classified as terrorism because it appears to align with
legal and political definitions of the term, but also because incels themselves position violence from
those connected to the community as terrorist activity. As will be shown in the sections to follow,
incels make it clear that their goal is to send a message to society through intimidation and to terrorize
the public into receiving and responding to said message. Although incel violence targets men and
social institutions along with women, we argue that incels engage in misogyny-motivated terrorism
specifically because their violence only exists in relation to misogyny; their aims are, above all,
misogynistic in nature. In the results section to follow, we provide examples of incels positioning
their violence as ideological terrorism. We then demonstrate how this violence is innately tied to
misogyny. Finally, we unpack some presented counterarguments from incels which argue that this
community is predominantly non-violent, and thus should not be treated as a threat to public safety.
Methods
This paper used data collected from the incel discussion board on Incels.is. Over the last decade,
dozens of incel forums have been created, many of which are no longer accessible online.
53
Incels.is
was chosen for analysis for this study because this site hosts the most popular English language incel
discussion board that is still in operation. As of June 2023, Incels.is had over 21,500 members, and over
10.25 million posts had been made to the forum. Incels.is is advertised as “a forum for male
involuntary celibates, single men who have trouble finding a significant other” and bans non-incel
men and women from participation.
This study is part of a larger project on incels which began in September 2021.
54
For this project, we
downloaded the entire content of Incel.is (all posts made between November 8, 2017 and December 5,
2021) using a custom web-scraping tool. From this dataset, all comments that contained the key words
“Rodger,” “Minassian,” and “Davison” were extracted for our analysis. The lengths of these comments
ranged dramatically between single word comments and elaborate arguments surpassing a thousand
words. All data and analysis codes are available for review at https://github.com/fmaguire/incel_mass_
killer_discussion_paper.
There are several reasons as to why we selected Rodger, Minassian, and Davison specifically as the
subjects of this study. Mainly, to emphasize that the incel community is a transnational terrorist entity,
one not native to a specific country or region, we decided to focus on incel killers from three different
countries (the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom). We felt it necessary to include Rodger
in this project because he serves as a central figure among online exchanges within the incel
community. For instance, the term “going ER” (which was a code used in our data analysis) is
a shorthand term often used by incels to suggest committing a mass murder akin to Elliot Rodger’s
(ER’s) attack; an example of this term in use will be shown in the results section to follow. Minassian
was selected to “represent” Canada due to the significance of his attack; up until Gabriel Wortman’s
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 5
murder of twenty-two people in Nova Scotia in April of 2020, Minassian’s attack had been the
deadliest mass killing event in Canada since the 1989 Montréal massacre. Finally, Davison was chosen
for this study because of the proximity of his attack to the start of this project; research for this project
commenced mere weeks after the Plymouth shooting. As this event was a highly prominent topic in
the media at the time, we thought it was fitting to use Davison as our third subject for this study.
As Davison’s attack had occurred just four months before data collection for this project, searches
for Davison on Incels.is only generated forty-nine comments, all of which were coded due to the small
sample size. We generated 922 references to Minassian, coding 520 of these comments. Likewise, we
captured 3493 references to Rodger, coding 505 of these comments. Coding for the Rodger and
Minassian datasets was deemed complete upon reaching saturation which, as described by Charmaz,
occurs when “gathering fresh data no longer sparks new theoretical insights, nor reveals new proper-
ties of your core theoretical categories.”
55
Thus, once coding the datasets of “Rodger” and “Minassian”
no longer generated new contributions, coding was ceased.
All coding was done by the first author via a line-by-line analysis, whereby each comment was
individually coded; the qualitative analysis method of in vivo coding was used because of the incel
community’s use of certain terms and language (slang) that are distinctive to the community. Line-by-
line codes and in vivo codes formed the basis of inductive themes, which are the results section of this
article. This project generated sixty-one codes in total; operational definitions were created for each
code. For example, the previously noted code of “going ER” was used to capture comments where
incels discussed the value or merit in committing mass violence, and the code “highIQcels” was used to
capture comments where incels discussed other incels who are thought of as having high intelligence
(see below for example). These theme and others will be discussed in the pages to follow.
Results
Our findings can be separated into three main themes, all of which appeared consistently throughout
the data. First, we found several markers of terrorism which appeared among incels’ discussions of
Elliot Rodger, Alek Minassian, and Jake Davison. For instance, many incels placed a strong emphasis
on the necessity of their violence sending a message to society, thus constituting this violence as
ideological. Similarly, we found that some incels explicitly labelled violence from those associated with
their community as terrorism. Second, we discuss how this message and the violence through which it
is sent is innately fused to misogynistic ideals, and how these ideals are conveyed and supported by
incels.
Finally, we exhibit some points of disagreement among incels in their opinions of Rodger,
Minassian, and Davison and their respective attacks; while many praised these three men, some incels
were instead critical of their violence. Yet as will be explained in the pages to follow, many of these
same individuals maintained that incel violence can be justified and legitimated when it does occur.
While this indicates that incel violence is not necessarily encouraged or advocated for amongst all
incels, a common ideological message is maintained by many of these “non-violent” incels. These
findings ultimately support the main argument of this paper, in that through incels’ discussion, praise,
and idolization of mass murderers connected to the incel community, it becomes clear that incels
situate their own violence as misogynistic terrorism performed to achieve ideological aims.
Traits of terrorism identied
In the literature review of this piece, we established that what constitutes “terrorism” remains up for
debate between different scholars and governments, but what can generally be agreed upon amongst
these sources is that terrorists and terrorist groups are in pursuit of some sort of goal or objective. The
goal, objective, or cause pursued by terrorists can take many forms; land, resources, power, or quite
simply, sending a message. One of the central goals of incel violence, as User A describes when
discussing Elliot Rodger’s attack, is sending a message by “waking people up”:
6D. LOCKYER ET AL.
ER inspired others . . . it’s not about number of kills. Hundreds of thousands get murdered every year . . . . It’s
about waking people up (User A).
As our data will show, incels make it clear that incel violence does not have to be directed towards
specific women or individuals, but rather anyone who supports women, women’s rights, or feminist
values in any way. Evidently, despite having misogynistic motives which threaten harm to women,
incel violence is most often inflicted against general society.
If terrorism is instrumental, then the instrumental violence of incels aims to not only effect the
immediate victims of their violence but instead serve the greater purpose of sending their message.
56
The impersonality involved in incel violence through the targeting of general society or large demo-
graphics rather than specific individuals, alongside a desire to achieve revenge and retribution, places
incel violence, as detailed in incels’ own accounts, on a level that is analogous to terrorism.
57
Put
simply, incels see violence as a tool to be used to “leave a mark” on society, as User C claims Rodger
and Minassian succeeded in doing, and furthermore expose a society which “hates suffering and
oppressed men fighting back,” according to User B:
Society hates suffering and oppressed men fighting back . . . . [Rodger] was only another victim, and the real
perpetrators were those who pushed him to the point of doing something he really didn’t want to do, and
mentioned in his manifesto several times he didn’t want to do a shoot up and really feared being driven to that
(User B).
Elliot was a talented writer . . . Minassian was a talented programmer . . . highIQcels actually know how to
systemically affect society and leave a mark (User C).
Due to the perceived importance of their message, and that message being heard by society, many
incels express the notion that any incel violence is useless unless this message is made clear, hence why
Elliot Rodger’s manifesto is so highly regarded by many incels:
Holy shit it’s so relatable. His whole manifesto is extremely relatable and inspiring tbh. It just really helps to read
such a good, well written story from someone who went through the same shit as us (User D).
[Rodger’s] manifesto should be required reading for literally everyone . . . it’s one of the best works ever published
in the English language. The reason he is held up as an incel icon is not due to his killing spree, but because “My
Twisted World” is genius-tier. Rodger succeeded, in that he set in motion an ineluctable chain of events that may
well lead to a future social upheaval. Praise be to him for that (User E).
Almost 10 percent of the entire “Rodger” dataset that was coded for this project contained positive
discussion of Rodger’s manifesto specifically. Most of this commentary resembled the above com-
ments from Users D and E, with many incels emphasizing the significance of this manifesto in relation
to the incel community. Incels’ praise for Rodger’s manifesto speaks to the emphasis they place on
messaging, which might explain why Jake Davison’s attack was largely disapproved of by incels.
Of all the comments analysed from the “Davison” dataset, 22 percent presented criticisms of
Davison. For comparison, only about 7 percent of comments from the “Rodger” dataset and 8 percent
of comments from the “Minassian” dataset were critical of Rodger and Minassian, respectively. We
argue that Davison’s attack did not receive as much approval from incels for two main reasons, one of
which being that unlike Rodger’s manifesto, or Minassian’s pre-attack call-to-action via Facebook,
Davison left no manifesto, note, or message to be spread to explain his decision to turn to violence.
The second and more prominent reason why Davison was so highly criticized among the incel
community was due to his choice of victims, which was also perceived by incels as ineffective in
sending their message.
Davison’s victims included his own fifty-one-year-old mother, a fifty-nine-year-old man, a sixty-
six-year-old woman, and a three-year-old girl along with her forty-three-year-old father.
58
None of
Davison’s victims align with the expected targets of incel violence: women who deny them sex and the
men who accompany them. This was because Davison was not hunting specific individuals as his
victims; he seemingly killed the first people he could find. Davison’s victims just happened to be at the
wrong place at the wrong time by being in his neighbourhood when the attack occurred. However,
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 7
Davison’s choice of victims (or more appropriately, lack thereof) does demonstrate the level of
impersonality that is often involved in incel violence, a point which will be elaborated upon in the
following section.
Of all his victims, Davison’s murder of a young child was specifically denounced by the community:
One of the victims in England was a child—really got that stacey didn’t he? Funny how these mass murderers
attack ordinary people instead of people who actually matter (User F).
Some of the people in this community are murderers. I don’t have to tell you the examples, I think you know the
names . . . . How could inceldom explain the murder of a child and her father?? (User G).
These two comments frame Davison as a murderer, but User G presents an interesting point: how
could inceldom explain the murder of a child? The answer, according to some incels in our study, is
that it cannot, therefore Davison could not have been an incel. Here, Davison is shunned not because
of his use of violence, but because of his failure to choose targets “who actually matter” (User F). In
other words, Davison was only shunned by the incel community because he failed to delineate
misogynistic behaviour, violence against women, and other incel values as the objectives of his attack.
As User F argues, Davison should have targeted “Stacys,” women who incels consider to be sexually
experienced and “the top tier of attractiveness”;
59
women who are viewed by incels as worthy and valid
victims of murder. Davison’s targeting of older victims and a child only served to damage the message
incel violence is supposed to send, thus he is not celebrated by incels the way that individuals like
Rodger or Minassian who explicitly connected their violence to women and society are.
Davison’s error in not killing the right people even resulted in some incels asserting that Davison
was not actually an incel, but must have had other unknown motivations for such a result to have
occurred from his attack. Users H and I demonstrate this by asserting that Davison was simply framed
as an incel by the media:
JD [Jake Davison] wasn’t a Incel either. He is just another example of the propaganda bullshit media using men’s
suffering as a way to slander the image of already miserable [lonely] men (User H).
They straight up lie about Jake Davison, he wasn’t involved with any incel forums (User I).
Our objective in including this data is not to spark debate over whether Davison was or was not a “real”
incel, but instead to show how and why incels have attempted to distance themselves from Davison. Incels
do not distance themselves from Davison because he was a violent murderer, but because he killed the
wrong people, according to many in the community. Rodger, through his manifesto, and Minassian,
through his Facebook post, made clear their message: incels must fight back against the injustices inflicted
upon them by society. According to incels, Davison’s attack only served to dilute this message and situate
incels as random, rather than targeted, ideological killers. As we argue, this ties incel violence to sending
a message through intimidating and terrifying the public, which are hallmarks of ideological terrorism.
Understanding incels’ misogyny
While anyone in society could, in theory, become the target of incels’ anger and resentment, incels
maintain that it is women who are the primary source of their struggles. The narratives presented by
incels throughout the data showed the unique way in which incels express misogyny: violence and
anger are often directed at all non-incels, making almost everyone a potential victim of incel violence,
but at the center of this ideology is the belief that women are the root of all evil.
As outlined earlier in this piece, incels believe that in the present day, women dominate men
socially; they believe that this goes against the natural order of men being superior to women. This
belief leads incels to objectify and degrade women in online settings. Women are often framed as
inhuman creatures, or “foids,” which is a derogatory term that is often used by incels to compare
women to androids.
60
These themes were commonplace among discussions of Rodger, Minassian, and
Davison, where incels made explicit references to women’s inferiority to men by identifying women’s
8D. LOCKYER ET AL.
supposed biological flaws, behavioural inequities, and other traits which are used by incels to explain
and justify their hatred of women.
The dehumanization of women as well as contempt for feminism were recurring, central themes in
incels’ discussions of Rodger, Minassian, and Davison. Feminists argue that social institutions are
structured to best benefit men; this directly contradicts the beliefs of incels who instead feel that
women are unfairly advantaged in modern society.
61
As such, many comments (over 100 between our
three datasets) blamed feminists specifically for contributing to (or single-handedly causing) the incel
condition, thus men like Elliot Rodger are celebrated because his attack is viewed by incels as an attack
on feminism:
Ugly men are shunned and bullied all their lives by their peers, and where those men feel helpless, unable to fight
back without serious repercussions it is only natural that violent “delusional” men arise. Men such as [Elliot
Rodger] who fight back against their oppressors . . . . [Feminists] are nothing but gaslighting, manipulative
whores who ignore the blatant bullying done by women EVERYWHERE . . . . I have no sympathy for these
women. They should feel scared. You reap what you sow (User J).
Incels’ contempt for feminism also aligns with the broader manosphere which extends beyond the
incel community.
62
The data provided ample evidence of incels’ well-established hatred of women and
feminism, but as we will now show, incel ideologies extend beyond a hatred of women and feminism
and position both non-incel men and greater society as enemies as well, a finding which may help
explain the lack of precision involved in many incels’ attacks on the public.
Minassian’s method of attack, for instance, would not have been effective had he only sought to kill
women. While driving a van down a busy sidewalk achieves the goal of inflicting maximum damage on
the public, it is an imprecise method for selecting specific targets (i.e., women). Tomkinson and
colleagues provide insight into this point by positioning incel ideologies as distinct from more broadly
defined misogynistic attitudes which exclusively target women: as opposed to what can be referred to
as “typical” misogynists, who are only concerned with subjecting specific women to their wrath (e.g.,
a spouse or intimate partner), incels include both women and men as victims of their violence.
63
In many of the comments analysed, incels were specifically outlining men as contributors to their
condition, “Chads” to be exact. The term “Chad” is typically used by incels to describe white men who
are perceived as dominant or “alpha” males, physically attractive, and sexually experienced; Chad is
the female counterpart to Stacy.
64
Of the 1074 total comments analysed for this project, “Chads” were
discussed in over 100 of them. Incels are also critical of other non-incel men besides Chads. Men with
unfaithful girlfriends or wives whom incels would describe as weak and ineffectual (“cucks”), and men
who defer to, submit to, or are otherwise viewed as worshippers of a particular woman or women in
general (“simps”) are also frequently criticized and ridiculed by incels:
65
I had to witness another brutal mogging on my run today . . . . No clue whether it was the same teen couple, but they
were full on making out. It was in that moment, I truly empathised with Elliot Rodger . . . . Let us assume I wasn’t
grotesque—I’d have to have a good income, own a house, own a car, be muscular, outgoing. For what? A foid that
has been ran through . . . . She won’t even be as enthusiastic for you as she was for Chad anyway (User K).
Cucks will say . . . “Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian were violent . . . we respect [women] and that’s why they
want to have sex with us”. . . . God, I hate cucks so much (User L).
Reddit is full of simps . . . They give all this free attention and validation to women . . . . At least Jake Davison
spoke some real truth for these Reddit turds simping for women (User M).
By uniting the narratives presented by incels through these comments, we see how mass murderers
connected to the incel community are characterized by their hatred of women, and furthermore gain
insight into the peculiar way in which incels express misogyny.
Evidently, incels do express hatred towards Chads, simps, cucks, and other male demographics, but
this anger is tightly coupled to their hatred of women. As visible in the above comments, User L hates
cucks for their respect of women, and User M is critical of simps for giving “free attention and
validation to women.” When incels do direct their hatred at other men, this is still reflective of their
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 9
misogyny. As User K explains, the only reason Chads are hated is because Chads have access to women
and women’s bodies, which incels do not get to experience but feel they are entitled to. While any non-
incel is susceptible to becoming a victim of incel violence, misogyny evidently remains as the nucleus
of the incel ideology.
Navigating inceldom
Our data revealed that some incels claim to be “non-violent” and have no desire to cause physical
harm; we emphasize that this is merely a claim because even in the comments from incels discussing
their supposed “non-violence” (around 10 percent of the entire dataset), we found that the message
that other, more violent incels send through their violence is often maintained and reinforced. As
emphasized throughout this piece, the overarching objective of incel violence is to send a message. Just
like violent incels, “non-violent” incels want to see a change in society, but where the disagreement
often occurs between these two factions is what means should be used to achieve this change and
ultimately send their message to society.
User N argues that there is no merit in incel violence, arguing that Rodger’s actions were “futile and
pointless.” Instead, he suggests that the threat of violence alone is a viable alternative method to bring
about “good” in the world:
Violence itself as a tool or means does not bring about any inherent good . . . . Most of the time the threat of it is
sufficient for that purpose . . . violence is immature and juvenile. It’s like lashing out in a temper tantrum, except
there are now corpses. Chaos for chaos’ sake. This is why what Elliot Rodger, and others like him . . . did was
ultimately futile and pointless (User N).
The counter-productiveness of “going ER” was a point stressed by several incels, such as User O. User
O provides further explanation as to why incel violence is detrimental to the progression and sheer
existence of the incel community and consequently hinders the incel community’s ability to spread
their message:
If you care about the wellbeing of incels, if you want to lessen the chance of coming on people’s radars: don’t
overtly call for violence or ER . . . . Rotting and shitposting on this site isn’t a crime yet . . . as long as the
discussions don’t veer into encouraging or hinting at criminal actions like mass murder and revenge . . . keep in
mind that going ER and encouraging violent uprising against society is counterproductive and serves the interests
of people looking to persecute incels (User O).
As User O explains, expressing one’s thoughts and feelings through “shitposting”—posting intention-
ally shocking or disturbing content (e.g., violent and/or misogynistic rhetoric) on forums or social
media sites for shock value—is not what has provoked a public response to incels; it is the real-life
violence of Rodger, Minassian, Davison, and others who have brought increased attention and
scrutiny to the whole community.
66
Indeed, not all incels might agree with incel violence in practice, but based on our sample it appears
that incels who could truly be considered “non-violent” individuals, in reality, likely only make up
a very small minority of this massive community. This is because many incels who identify as “non-
violent” still displayed hostile attitudes and behaviours despite their claims of being anti-violence. This
was exemplified by User P who claimed to be a “paxcel” (a peaceful incel) while still justifying both
Rodger and Minassian’s attacks by pushing the narrative that their actions were simply reactionary
responses to conditions set by others:
I don’t believe in violence, and strongly condemn it. I am a Paxcel however I completely understand why people
like Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian think and do the things they do . . . . I find it laughable when people go
around treating people like the scum of the earth for no other reason than to feel smugly superior, and then when
they shoot up a school as a result, they act all shocked and play the victim card . . . . As a promoter of peace, I hate
violence as much as you do (User P).
10 D. LOCKYER ET AL.
Although User P “hates” violence, he still frames incel violence as justifiable and rational. These sorts
of contradictions of an incel claiming to be non-violent while simultaneously trying to justify the
actions of incel killers were frequent occurrences among the comments analysed. As mentioned,
approximately 10 percent of the comments analyzed contained discussion of incels’ supposed “non-
violence,” but over half of these comments still presented justifications, excuses, or encouragements
for the continuation of incel violence. Although a significant portion of incels claim to be against incel
violence, we found that many of those who attempt to distance themselves from violence do so very
modestly, stating that violence should not occur, but when it does, it is defensible—particularly if it
sends an ideological message.
Finally, in our analysis we found that even amongst those who are “against” incel violence and
furthermore do not seek to justify or rationalize the actions of individuals like Rodger or Minassian
(unlike User P), the ideology which fuels this violence is still maintained and reinforced to some
degree:
Yes we hate women, and we’re allowed to because of our right to freedom of speech. We’ve dealt with hell our
entire fucking life due to women . . . . I feel no sympathy for women and their “heartbreaking” experiences after
what I went through. Venting aside, there were only 2 incels I can think of who were “terrorists” . . . those being
Alek Minassian and Elliot Rodger . . . we aren’t terrorists and we aren’t going to go out and rape foids and run
people over with a van JFL [just for laughs], you would literally have to be a deranged schizo to actually go out and
do that (User Q).
Here, each of our three central findings are exhibited: first, User Q establishes his hatred of women as
a reaction to women’s own actions and behaviours towards him, ultimately placing blame for his
hatred of women on women themselves and justifying incels’ misogyny. Secondly, this user explicitly
notes Minassian and Rodger as terrorists, exemplifying that in its most extreme form, incels do
explicitly position incel violence as terrorism. Finally, User Q argues that “we aren’t terrorists,”
implying that he believes the broader incel community should not be considered terrorists despite
also giving that label to two killers closely associated with the incel community. While saying that “you
would literally have to be a deranged schizo to actually go out [and commit a violent act],” User
Q implies that should a “deranged schizo” among the community turn to violence (which he admits
has happened before), that would make them a terrorist. By jointly ascribing Rodger and Minassian
the identities “incel” and “terrorist,” User Q draws the connection between incel violence and
terrorism. This indicates that even if violence is only undertaken by the most radical, violent, and
“deranged” members of the incel community, this violence is understood as terrorism.
In our review of the data, we did not encounter any incels positioning themselves individually as
terrorists for simply participating in incel forums; we were not aiming to demonstrate this. The
argument we have presented here is that incels, such as User Q, maintain that when violence from
individuals associated with this community does occur, it amounts to terrorism. Furthermore, this
final section has demonstrated that claims of incels being part of a predominantly “non-violent”
community simply because most individuals within this community do not engage in physical acts of
violence is inaccurate; as long as incel forums act as sites for misogynistic exchanges and calls for
violence against women, a truly “non-violent” incel community cannot exist.
Discussion
In this article, we provided background on incels and their set of beliefs and objectives to demonstrate
who they direct their anger towards and why. By explaining what informs incel ideologies, we have
demonstrated how and why this community is a misogyny-motivated ideological terrorist entity. To
follow this up, we then summarized the points of ongoing debate between scholars and governments
surrounding the question of how to classify incel violence. We identified that terrorism is largely
misrepresented by governments, and that in order to correct this, conceptualizations and definitions
of terrorism must be updated and perhaps redefined to better incorporate gender as a legitimate
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 11
motive for ideological violence. We found that because incel violence poses a threat to human life, is
intended to intimidate the public, and pushes an ideological and/or political cause, this violence meets
the threshold to be considered ideological terrorism.
In our results section, we discussed several key findings from our analysis of incels’ discussions of
Elliot Rodger, Alek Minassian, and Jake Davison. Based on our findings, we identified that incels
situate their own violence as misogynistic terrorism performed to achieve ideological aims. Aligning
with the conclusions made by O’Donnell & Shor, our results suggest that a substantial portion of the
incel community supports incel violence, that the presence of non-violent incels is minimal, and, as we
detailed in the final part of our results section, highly questionable. The goal of the incel community is
simple: send a message to society and terrorize the public into receiving and responding to this
message through violence. We emphasize that this threat cannot be ignored as an international
security concern.
Through their violence, incels aim to not only cause physical and emotional harm to their
immediate victims, but also place an emphasis on their message reaching greater society. As such,
incel violence is considered useless by incels unless this message is conveyed; this was made clear
through incels’ praise and admiration of Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian but not Jake Davison. Since
he failed to use his attack to send a message to society through intimidation and violence—a key
feature of ideological terrorism—Davison’s attack was largely disparaged by incels. Here, we used
incels’ own juxtaposition of Davison’s attack against Rodger’s and Minassian’s to demonstrate that
incels only consider violence from those associated with the community meaningful if it achieves
misogynistic ideological aims, that is, if it is on a level analogous to terrorism.
The narratives presented by incels in these comments showed that incels direct violence and anger
at all non-incels, making most everyone eligible to become targets of incel violence, but the ideology
which drives this desire to cause harm is founded in misogyny. Of course, threats of and attempts at
violence against women as a control measure and expression of misogyny is not a new concept;
women are routinely the targets of male violence.
67
However, incels bring an increased level of
impersonality with their violence through including indiscriminate “passer-by” victims in their
attacks, despite their anger being born out of a hatred of women. This extension of targeted violence
to public spaces wherein all non-incels are viewed as legitimate targets to incels is another indication of
ideological terrorism. While we found evidence of incels’ hatred of certain male demographics, we
argue that the aggression exhibited towards non-incel men is still driven by misogynistic beliefs. The
dehumanization of women, advocacy of violence against women, and anti-feminist sentiments were
recurring themes in incels’ discussions of Minassian, Rodger, and Davison; these three men were each
praised in some capacity for taking a stand against women and feminist society.
Incels are far more than a fringe group that operates behind the scenes; men connected to this
community have before, and will likely continue to, transfer their online expressions of rage into real
life acts of violence. Rodger, Minassian, and Davison’s attacks in the United States, Canada, and the
United Kingdom, respectively, were not lone-wolf acts of violence; they were actions undertaken for
recognition and response to a greater ideological directive. They were acts of terrorism. As such, this
violence must be recognized by policy makers as terrorism, and steps must be taken to counter this
ideology and the violence it brings.
A main barrier in this pursuit is the fact that not all are willing to situate incels as violent or
endorsing of violence to begin with, an argument which we refute. As mentioned, some researchers
propose that incels are mostly “non-violent” individuals who have no desire to cause physical harm,
arguing that only a small minority of incels express radical attitudes and expressions inciting violence
to begin with.
68
As other studies have noted, it is only a small portion of this community who makes
the most extreme posts on incel forums, yet these “extreme” posts are often highly engaged with by the
rest of the community, making these posts more visible and popular than contributions from more
“rational” incels.
69
It is worth exploring, however, why these posts—which are often dismissed by
incels as jokes, sarcasm, or otherwise not actually reflective of incels’ true beliefs—are so popularized
on forums.
70
12 D. LOCKYER ET AL.
While the most obvious answer to this question is that incels joke around and exaggerate
because they think it is funny to do so, there remains a possibility that not all of the posts
which call for violence and/or contain misogynistic content are made in jest. The question is,
how does one tell the difference between a serious threat and a “shitpost?” While incels
suggest that forum users can detect absurdity from reality, there is no simple way to discern
legitimate threats from shitposts.
71
While we agree that only a minority of incels are likely to
commit violent acts, we argue that because online incel forums provide a site for the
production and consumption of violent and misogynistic content that exists to terrorize
women and encourage violent acts, the entirety of the incel community must be approached
as a public safety concern. While this presents the risk of homogenizing the community based
on the words and actions of its most violent members, we believe that the risk of failing to act
on incel violence is far greater.
We have demonstrated that even those “non-violent” incels who are critical of incel violence are only
critical to some extent, and for the most part these individuals do little to discourage others from
participating in more violent and hostile exchanges. Furthermore, we corroborate the findings of
Lounela & Murphy who found that many incels oppose incel violence for practical reasons rather
than moral reasons; these individuals are not dissuaded over the prospect of human lives being lost, but
rather express concern over how incel violence might serve to worsen the reputation of incels politically
and socially. Although not all incels advocate for or agree with violence within the community, violent or
non-violent, incels’ engagement in toxic rhetoric regarding women, other men, feminism, and greater
society is cause for concern. Trivializing the online rhetoric which calls for violence on these forums as
simply being “a joke” implies that this behavior is victimless, but we conclude that the commentary
provided by “non-violent” incels cannot be excused as harmless or victimless simply because the
behaviour of this perceived non-violent majority is generally not harmless nor victimless at all.
Lounela & Murphy note in their piece on incel discussions surrounding the Plymouth shooting,
Successful contextualisation of discussions of violence on incel forums depends not on understanding the intent
of the poster, but recognizing that the context in which these posts are shared means that endorsements of acts of
violence, whether intended ironically or not, always have the potential to be understood as sincere by other users
and to contribute to the normalisation of such rhetoric.
72
In essence, more violently inclined incels participating in incel forum discussions can still read and
engage with content produced by “non-violent” incels who are perhaps speaking ironically, but men
like Jake Davison, who was found to have been an active incel forum participant in the months leading
up to his attack, can and will act on these discussions.
73
Incel violence and more broadly defined misogyny-motivated mass casualty events are not a new
phenomenon, but historically these events have been largely disregarded as acts of terror due to their
gendered nature. While the gendered nature of this issue is significant, we are not arguing that all
instances of violence against women in any capacity should be considered terrorism. Instead, we
submit that assaults against women carried out with the goal of sending a message to women and
society are terrorism. In other words, misogynistic men are not automatically incels simply because
they hold misogynistic beliefs; inceldom and the traits which compose the incel ideology are far more
complex than this.
This raises questions for the ubiquity of gender-based violence, which, at the population-level,
is certainly a form of terror and oppression, but to assert that incel violence is terrorism also
implicates the routine violence committed by men against women every day. This presents
a dilemma which could be addressed in much needed future research on the topic of misogyny-
motivated violence against women. What we conclude here is that to discount incel violence as
terrorism merely because of the gender-based aspect of this violence merely contributes to
systemic misogyny which, as identified in the literature review section of this piece, has long
allowed for women’s safety and security concerns to fall through the cracks among defense and
security agencies worldwide.
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 13
Considering both the inconsistency and outdatedness of the various definitions of terrorism that
exist, most of which disregard misogyny as a motive for terrorism entirely, along with the increasingly
cyber-age of terrorism which has been demonstrated by incels’ near exclusive online existence, this
junction could present an ideal opportunity for governments to solidify how and when the labelling of
“terrorism” will be applied, and under which circumstances an attack on the public of this nature should
be considered as an act of terror. As many incels describe incel violence as terrorism, there should be
little question remaining regarding whether “terrorists” is an appropriate label for this community.
While we recognize the fact that there are some incels who advocate for a less hostile and more
supportive community, separating these incels—some of whom are likely non-threatening individuals
who are merely seeking a support system more congruous with a sort of support group—from the
violent and aggressive incels who do threaten actual violence is an unlikely possibility. As a result, the
incel community must be addressed tactfully by policy makers as not to ignore legitimate threats to
public safety, while also avoiding ostracising and further stigmatizing young men and boys who may be
struggling with social isolation, rejection, and sexual exclusion.
74
Confronting this community and mitigating incel violence will be a difficult challenge, but nothing
can be done about incels until the community is properly recognized by governments, scholars, and
the like as a legitimate threat to public safety and security. Evidently, this will require a collective,
systemic shift in attitude. Action on behalf of policy makers, law makers, and government officials in
the countries discussed here and others where incels may pose a security threat is not only warranted,
but necessary to reduce or prevent future attacks from taking place on the public.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This research was supported in part by funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
[430-2022-00585].
Notes on contributors
Demeter Lockyer is a graduate student pursuing her Masters of Arts in International Development Studies at Dalhousie
University. Her research examines misogyny-motivated terrorism, violence against women, and anti-feminism.
Michael Halpin is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Dalhousie University. His research examines incels, social
isolation, health, and medical science.
Finlay Maguire is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science and the Faculty of Medicine (Department
of Community Health & Epidemiology) at Dalhousie University.
ORCID
Demeter Lockyer http://orcid.org/0009-0007-7570-3500
Michael Halpin http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9109-8290
Finlay Maguire http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1203-9514
Notes
1. Debbie Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities
22, no. 4 (2019): 638–657, https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X17706401.
2. Kayla Preston, Michael Halpin, and Finlay Maguire, “The Black Pill: New Technology and the Male Supremacy of
Involuntarily Celibate Men,” Men and Masculinities 24, no. 5 (2021): 823–841, https://doi.org/10.1177/
1097184X211017954.
14 D. LOCKYER ET AL.
3. Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels”; Michael Halpin, Kayla Preston, Demeter Lockyer, and Finlay Maguire, “A Solider
and a Victim: Masculinity, Violence, and Incels Celebration of Marc Lépine,” (forthcoming), https://doi.org/10.
31235/osf.io/cseun; Dominique Vink, Tahir Abbas, Yannick Veilleux-Lepage, and Richard McNeil-Willson,
“‘Because They Are Women in a Man’s World’: A Critical Discourse Analysis of Incel Violent Extremists and the
Stories They Tell,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2023): advance online publication, https://doi.org/10.1080/
09546553.2023.2189970.
4. Preston et al., “The Black Pill,” 20.
5. Catharina O’Donnell and Eran Shor, “‘This Is a Political Movement, Friend’: Why ‘Incels’ Support Violence,” The
British Journal of Sociology 73, no. 2 (2022): 336–351, https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12923.
6. Taisto Witt, “‘If I Cannot Have It, I Will Do Everything I Can to Destroy It.’ The Canonization of Elliot Rodger:
‘Incel’ Masculinities, Secular Sainthood, and Justifications of Ideological Violence,” Social Identities 26, no. 5
(2020): 675–689, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504630.2020.17871.
7. Liam Casey, “‘Her Life was Beautiful, then the Attack Happened’: Family of Beloved Nurse Killed in Van Attack
Speaks,” CBC News, November 17, 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/Canada/toronto/van-attack-nurse-
tesfamariam-speaks-out-1.6252848.
8. Mark Townsend, “Plymouth Gunman Ranted Online that ‘Women are Arrogant’ Days Before Rampage,” The
Guardian, August 14, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/14/plymouth-gunman-ranted-online
-that-women-are-arrogant-days-before-rampage.
9. Bruce Hoffman, Jacob Ware, and Ezra Shapiro, “Assessing the Threat of Incel Violence,” Studies in Conflict &
Terrorism 43, no. 7 (2020): 565–587, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1751459; Sian Tomkinson, Tauel
Harper, and Katie Attwell, “Confronting Incel: Exploring Possible Policy Responses to Misogynistic Violent
Extremism,” Australian Journal of Political Science 55, no. 2 (2020): 152–169. https://doi.org/10.1080/10361146.
2020.1747393.
10. See: Canadian Security Intelligence Service. CSIS Public Report 2019. Minister of Public Safety and Emergency
Preparedness, 2020. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/PubRep-2019-E.pdf; Lina
Alathari, Diana Drysdale, Ashley Blair, Arna Carlock, Aaron Cotkin, Brianna Johnston, Steven Driscoll, Mass Attacks
in Public Spaces—2019. United States Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center, U.S. Department of
Homeland Security, 2019. https://www.secretservice.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2020-09/MAPS2019.pdf.
11. Marianna Spring, “Plymouth Shooting: Jake Davison was Licensed Gun Holder.” BBC News, August 13, 2021,
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-devon-58197414.
12. Witt, “If I Cannot Have It,” 687.
13. Sophia Moskalenko, Juncal Fernández-Garayzábal González, Naama Kates, and Jesse Morton, “Incel Ideology,
Radicalization and Mental Health: A Survey Study,” The Journal of Intelligence, Conflict, and Warfare 4, no. 3
(2022): 1–29, https://doi.org/10.21810/jicw.v4i3.3817.
14. Michael Halpin, Norann Richard, Kayla Preston, Meghan Gosse, and Finlay Maguire, “Men Who Hate Women:
The Misogyny of Involuntarily Celibate Men,” New Media & Society (2023): advance online publication, https://
doi.org/10.1177/14614448231176777.
15. Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, “The Ambivalence Toward Men Inventory: Differentiating Hostile and
Benevolent Beliefs About Men,” Psychology of Women Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1999): 519–536, https://doi.org/10.
1111/j.1471-6402.1999.tb00379.x; Peter Glick and Susan T. Fiske, “An Ambivalent Alliance: Hostile and
Benevolent Sexism as Complementary Justifications for Gender Inequality,” The American Psychologist 56,
no. 2 (2001): 109–118, https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.56.2.109.
16. For example, Stephane J. Baele, Lewys Brace, and Travis G. Coan, “From ‘Incel’ to ‘Saint’: Analyzing the Violent
Worldview Behind the 2018 Toronto Attack,” Terrorism and Political Violence 33, no. 8 (2021): 1667–1691,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1638256; Halpin et al., “Men Who Hate Women”; Hoffman et al.,
“Assessing Incel Violence”; Witt, “If I Cannot Have It.”
17. Simon Cottee, “Incel (E)motives: Resentment, Shame and Revenge,” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 44, no. 2
(2021): 93–114, https://doi.org/10.1080/1057610X.2020.1822589.
18. See Preston et al., “The Black Pill”; Shawn P. Van Valkenburgh, “Digesting the Red Pill: Masculinity and
Neoliberalism in the Manosphere,” Men and Masculinities 24, no. 1 (2021): 84–103, https://doi.org/10.1177/
1097184X18816118.
19. Michael Halpin, “Weaponized Subordination: How Incels Discredit Themselves to Degrade Women,” Gender &
Society 36, no. 6 (2022): 813–837, https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432221128545.
20. Jack Bratich and Sarah Banet-Weiser, “From Pick-Up Artists to Incels: Con(fidence) Games, Networked
Misogyny, and the Failure of Neoliberalism,” International Journal of Communication 13 (2019): 5003–5027,
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/viewFile/13216/2822.
21. Halpin, “Weaponized Subordination”; Halpin et al., “A Solider and a Victim.”
22. O’Donnell and Shor, “This Is a Political Movement,” 11.
23. Elliot Rodger, “My Twisted World: The Story of Elliot Rodger,” (2014): 65, https://www.documentcloud.org/
documents/1173808-elliot-rodger-manifesto.html.
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 15
24. See “Definitions of Terrorism and the Canadian Context,” https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rr09_
6/p3.html.
25. See Caron E. Gentry, Disordered Violence: How Gender, Race, and Heteronormativity Structure Terrorism
(Edinburg University Press, 2021); Keiran Hardy and George Williams, “What is Terrorism? Assessing
Domestic Legal Definitions,” UCLA Journal of International Law and Foreign Affairs 16, no. 1 (2011): 77–162,
https://heinonline.org/HOL/P?h=hein.journals/jilfa16&i=1.
26. Hardy and Williams, “What is Terrorism?” 81.
27. Gentry, Disordered Violence; Rachel Guy, “Nation of Men: Diagnosing Manospheric Misogyny as Virulent
Online Nationalism,” Georgetown Journal of Gender and the Law 22, no. 3 (2021): 601–640, https://novanet-
primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/permalink/f/ljnbc9/TN_cdi_gale_infotracacademiconefile_A678858724; Hardy
and Williams, “What is Terrorism?”
28. Gentry, Disordered Violence, 77.
29. Guy, “Nation of Men,” 635.
30. Department of National Defence (DND), Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy (Government of
Canada, 2017), https://publications.gc.ca/collections/collection_2017/mdn-dnd/D2-386-2017-eng.pdf.
31. Rachel Schmidt, “Investigating Implicit Biases around Race and Gender in Canadian Counterterrorism,”
International Journal (Toronto) 75, no. 4 (2020): 594–613, https://doi.org/10.1177/0020702020976615.
32. Kanji Azeezah, “The Coloniality of Canadian Islamophobia—And Anti-Islamophobia,” Al Jazeera, July 2, 2021,
https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/7/2/the-coloniality-of-canadian-islamophobia-and-anti.
33. See CSIS Public Report 2019.
34. Shanifa Nasser, “Toronto Spa Killer Pleads Guilty to Murder in Deadly Sword Attack, Cites Van Attacker as
‘Inspiration,’” CBC News, September 14, 2022. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/incel-massage-parlour-
guilty-1.6582534.
35. Stewart Bell, Andrew Russell, and Catherine McDonald, “Deadly Attack at Toronto Erotic Spa was Incel
Terrorism, Police Allege,” Global News, May 19, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/6910670/toronto-spa-
terrorism-incel/.
36. Minassian did not receive any terrorism-related charges for his attack as his attack predated the introduction of
IMVE terminology.
37. Jude McCulloch, Sandra Walklate, JaneMaree Maher, Kate Fitz-Gibbon, and Jasmine McGowan, “Lone Wolf
Terrorism Through a Gendered Lens: Men Turning Violent or Violent Men Behaving Violently?” Critical
Criminology 27, no. 3 (2019): 437–450, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10612-019-09457-5.
38. Gentry, Disordered Violence, 166.
39. Vink et al., “A Critical Discourse Analysis of Incel Violent Extremists.”
40. Gentry, Disordered Violence, 180.
41. Lauren Kent and Hannah Ritchie, “Plymouth Shooter Made Misogynist Remarks Echoing the ‘Incel’ Ideology,”
CNN, August 15, 2021, https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/14/uk/plymouth-shooting-incel-jake-davison-profile-intl
/index.html.
42. McCulloch et al., “Lone Wolf Terrorism,” 441.
43. Townsend, “Plymouth Gunman Ranted Online.”
44. Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “Pick-Up Artists to Incels”; McCulloch et al., “Lone Wolf Terrorism.”
45. Moskalenko et al., “Incel Ideology and Mental Health,” 20.
46. See Gentry, Disordered Violence; Guy, “Nation of Men”; McCulloch et al., “Lone Wolf Terrorism.”
47. Spring, “Davison was Licensed Gun Holder.”
48. Ibid.
49. See section 802 of Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and
Obstruct Terrorism (PATRIOT) Act (2001). https://www.congress.gov/107/plaws/publ56/PLAW-107publ56.htm.
50. See Criminal Code of Canada, RSC 1985, C-46, subsection 83.01(1)(b), https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/PDF/C-46.pdf.
51. McCulloch et al., “Lone Wolf Terrorism.”
52. See for examples: Bratich and Banet-Weiser, “Pick-Up Artists to Incels”; Cottee, “Incel (E)motives”; O’Donnell
and Shor, “This Is a Political Movement.”
53. Stephane Baele, Lewys Brace, and Debbie Ging, “A Diachronic Cross-Platforms Analysis of Violent Extremist
Language in the Incel Online Ecosystem,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2023): advance online publication,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2161373.
54. Demeter V. M. Lockyer, “Misogyny-Motivated Terrorism: The Emergence of the Incel Community as a Modern
Terrorist Threat” (BA Honours thesis, Dalhousie University, 2022). The project noted here was initially
conceptualized as a thesis to satisfy the first author’s Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree; this study is an extension
of this project.
55. Kathy Charmaz, Constructing Grounded Theory: A Practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis (London: SAGE
Publications, 2006), 113.
56. Alex P. Schmid, “Frameworks for Conceptualising Terrorism,” Terrorism and Political Violence 16, no. 2 (2004):
197–221, https://doi.org/10.1080/09546550490483134.
16 D. LOCKYER ET AL.
57. For example, Elliot Rodger’s targeting of the entire Alpha Phi sorority house at the University of California, Santa
Barbara, not any of the specific women who resided there.
58. Kent and Ritchie, “Shooter Made Misogynist Remarks.”
59. Grace L. Scott, “A Glossary of Terms for Understanding Incels and the Rest of the ‘Manosphere,’”
Inverse, May 8, 2018, https://www.inverse.com/article/44569-what-is-incel-manosphere-glossary-
definitions.
60. Preston et al., “The Black Pill.”
61. Halpin et al., “A Solider and a Victim.”
62. See Ging, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels”; Halpin et al., “A Solider and a Victim”; Van Valkenburgh, “Digesting the
Red Pill.”
63. Tomkinson et al., “Confronting Incel,” 155.
64. Scott, “Glossary of the Manosphere.”
65. Definitions pulled from the glossary provided on Incels Wiki, https://incels.wiki/w/Incel_Term_Glossary.
66. Sarah E. Daly and Shon M. Reed, “‘I Think Most of Society Hates Us’: A Qualitative Thematic Analysis
of Interviews with Incels,” Sex Roles 86, no. 1–2 (2022): 14–33, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11199-021-
01250-5.
67. Emilia Lounela and Shane Murphy, “Incel Violence and Victimhood: Negotiating Inceldom in Online
Discussions of the Plymouth Shooting,” Terrorism and Political Violence (2023): advance online publication,
https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2022.2157267.
68. See Moskalenko et al., “Incel Ideology and Mental Health,” as well as Anne Speckhard, Molly Ellenberg, Jesse
Morton, and Alexander Ash, “Involuntary Celibates’ Experiences of and Grievance over Sexual Exclusion and the
Potential Threat of Violence Among Those Active in an Online Incel Forum,” Journal of Strategic Security 14,
no. 2 (2021): 89–121, https://doi.org/10.5038/1944-0472.14.2.1910.
69. See Baele et al., “Incel Online Ecosystem”; Daly and Reed, “Most of Society Hates Us”; Sarah E. Daly and Annie
Laurie Nichols, “‘Incels Are Shit-Post Kings’: Incels’ Perceptions of Online Forum Content,” Journal of Crime &
Justice (2023): advance online publication, https://doi.org/10.1080/0735648X.2023.2169330.
70. Daly and Nichols, “Incels Are Shit-Post Kings”; Moskalenko et al., “Incel Ideology and Mental Health.”
71. Daly and Nichols, “Incels Are Shit-Post Kings.”
72. Lounela and Murphy, “Incel Violence and Victimhood,” 5.
73. Townsend, “Plymouth Gunman Ranted Online.”
74. Speckhard et al., “Grievance over Sexual Exclusion,” 106.
TERRORISM AND POLITICAL VIOLENCE 17