ABSTRACT
The word “incel” is short for “involuntary celibate,” and members of the incel movement are patriarchal men who assert that that they cannot have sex with women but want to. Research reveals a strong association between digital and offline variants of violence against women and incel subcultural dynamics. Misogynistic incel ideologies are primarily expressed and normalized in online group environments with members of the incel subculture, never coming into face-to-face contact with each other but frequently exchanging written, audio, and visual communication with their peers, leading nevertheless to variants of women abuse online and face-to-face. This chapter applies male peer support theory to examine how incels, like other communities of men who are violent toward women, provide shared identity, community, and emotional support to one another; and how they use web-based resources to memorialize and echo prototype members as they mutually reinforce hostility toward women.
