Every now and again a social issue comes to our attention via the media that seems to have come out of nowhere. We haven’t heard anything about it before. Where did it come from?
The prosecution of a man in Canada brought the issue of Incel to the fore. A young man, at 17 years of age, entered a massage parlor and killed a woman. He was charged with carrying out an “Incel” inspired terrorist attack.
Incel, short for “involuntary celibate”, is an online subculture focused on members’ perceived inability to find romantic or sexual partners. What began as a benign movement amongst lonely young men and a few women, has taken on a more aggressive tone. The more militant express a hatred against women, blaming them for their lack of sexual opportunities and obsessing about ways to force women to have sex with them. The young man referred to here took out his anger against women by killing a sex worker.
Where did Incel come from?
While a specific starting point would be difficult to pin down, we would do well to consider the origins of modern sexual mores that developed out of the sexual revolution of the 1960’s. Not that male/female roles were anything near perfect before the revolution, but they certainly underwent major shifts. The feminist movement gave women more autonomy. Most have seen this as a good thing as family structures have been dismantled, providing greater freedom of choice. Incels feel very insecure that women have freedom to choose who they want to have sex with – especially since they are not chosen as partners.
Gender oppression has led to altered roles and in turn, reaction against those new roles. Incel came from the breakdown of the building block of society – the family.
To read more on this subject of relationships within families we invite you to read the following article on The Role of Women
Brian Orchard