Aggressive virgins: will incels appear in Russia?

The best way to spend your birthday is to get up at seven in the morning and start writing a text about angry virgin killers. A few days ago, I stumbled across a great deal of incel stuff on the internet and my first reaction was, my God, what the hell is this, it must be a group of three losers, and the media is again blowing up the story in search of traffic and sensation. However, something still hooked me, and I began to study the issue.

It turned out that incels are a relatively new radical movement and subculture that has developed around it in the United States. Literally, these are thousands of men who adhere to forced celibacy, they have never had sex in their lives. Ideologically, the incels blame their abstinence on women who have become too free, a society that follows their lead, the spread of feminism, and even the state, which did not provide them with the right to access to sex. For example, they propose to solve their problems at the institutional level — to legalize rape of women as a natural right of a man.

On the other hand, they see the reason in their own shortcomings, considering themselves both physical and moral monsters. They spend thousands of dollars on plastic surgery — penis enlargement, jaw enlargement, wrist enlargement. They insert chin implants, correct noses and pump Botox into the eyebrows. Improvement in appearance, or, as the incels themselves call it, looksmaxing is actively discussed on the forums. Here, forced virgins ruthlessly evaluate each other’s photos, indicating that they need immediate correction.

Incels accuse society of «lookism» — discrimination based on appearance. The phenomenon really exists: according to studies, beautiful people are paid more money, hired more often, they are considered to have all sorts of advantages, and disadvantages are attributed to less beautiful people. Even juries give lighter sentences to people who look good.

At the same time, the Incels are ruthless to women and are themselves obsessed with evaluating their appearance. Let’s use their slang again to try to see the world through the eyes of an incel and explore the mindset. Roasty are fallen women, that is, those who have already had sex with men. Roasty comes from the word «roast beef», as the Incels themselves explain, because, in their opinion, the labia of a non-virgin woman looks like torn slices of beef.

One of the latest posts on the incel forum, where more than 7 people are registered, mostly between the ages of 000 and 18, is devoted to the typology of women, which are evaluated on a 21-point scale:

1. Absolute monsters. According to the incels, they are the majority. Uglies, feminists, people with deformed faces and transsexuals.
2. Just freaks.
3. Typical unattractive women. For example, women with a large weight, but a pretty face. According to incels, they have 50 «matches» a day on Tinder. Tinder itself occupies a huge place in the minds of incels.
4. Ordinary women, below average. This includes anyone over thirty.
5. Mediocre — can be cute, but with the help of photo filters.
6. Attractive. Around them revolve from 5 to 10 men. They envy everyone who is prettier than them.
7. Beautiful. Their Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) is 80% selfies.
8. Very beautiful. Absolutely inaccessible.
9. Fucking models.
10. Dozens — Incels call them «Stacey». They are perfect.

Misogyny, aggression and cruelty towards women has found its embodiment not only on the Internet. In 2014, twenty-two-year-old Roger Elliot, who later became a cult hero for incels, killed six and injured 14 people, after which he committed suicide. The massacre was preceded by a long preparation, and the day before the murder, Roger sent out a manifesto full of rage because of his virginity and posted a video on YouTube.

In April of this year, another incel killed ten people and wounded 14 others. I experienced a wide range of emotions, spending some time on the forum, reading the comments, and running myself up the scale of attractiveness. As a feminist, I’m in the monster section, as a woman over 30 I’m in the illiquid area, but at the same time, 80% of my Instagram (an extremist organization banned in Russia) consists of selfies, so can I consider myself an inaccessible beauty in this case?

This is both funny and sad at the same time. The saddest comment I came across was in a thread called «You’re incel if…». Among the answers were: if you are a terrible person, a moral freak, you have never had sex. But the saddest thing is if no one wishes you a happy birthday. Coincidentally, on that day, I was constantly distracted by the phone bursting with congratulations, and such a contrast cut so much that I experienced real sympathy for these guys, despite my great disgust for their views, rhetoric, attitude towards the world and towards myself.

I thought, is it possible for such a subculture to appear in Russia? On the one hand, in our country, of course, feminism is not as widespread as in the West, it does not have such a history and such influence. During the Soviet Union, sociology was banned, and this slowed down the development of social thought and social criticism for seventy years. Now we are trying to catch up, but still hopelessly behind. Nevertheless, unfamiliar men on VKontakte regularly write to me that, since I am a feminist, they hate me, and sometimes they want to wipe me off the face of the Earth.

On the other hand, hatred of women, misogyny, is quite widespread among us, so there are prerequisites. After all, a somewhat similar phenomenon, the mass murder of schoolchildren, was also considered a problem in the Western world for a long time, but gradually it is becoming our reality. In times of globalization, widespread access to the Internet, it is quite possible that a few sexually unsatisfied people, these angry and desperate virgins, having learned about incels, will join them and / or organize some kind of their own, similar in attitudes and beliefs, group. I don’t know if they will start killing, but so far in our country women are mostly killed at home, and there is nothing good in this either.

Expert Comments

Arina Lipkina, psychologist

The name of the community involuntary celibacy is translated as «unintentional, involuntary involuntary, forced celibacy.» If we start from the meaning of the adjective in this phrase, then “involuntariness, involuntaryness” indicates that in such a group people have the so-called external locus of control, that is, external.

The locus of control of personality is a characteristic of a person in terms of what he attributes to the causes of events occurring in his life. External causes are always other people, circumstances. As a result, we observe a group that is “charged” with active blaming, in this case, women. It turns out a displaced conflict, when the real essence, causes are pushed aside, and community members see a problem that is not what it really is. It is not women who reject them, but they do not accept themselves.

They suffer from low self-esteem, self-doubt, lack of intimacy and loneliness (perhaps from early childhood), trauma, or physical and emotional disorders. Such celibacy among young men makes them vulnerable, somewhat isolated and alienated, they lack acceptance and understanding, self-affirmation, and they find this by joining the incels.

But all negative feelings: anger, resentment, rage, hatred also spill out, which leads to radical thinking and actions towards others and towards oneself (murders and suicides).

In Russia, the creation of such serious and dangerous associations is unlikely, since in our culture it is customary to carefully hide virginity from the age of 17-18. It is unlikely that there will be those who will create active and open groups on this basis, introducing an accusatory and militant ideology. There are groups of asexuals, but this is not forced celibacy, these are those who have no sexual desire or it is very weak.

Vladimir Dashevsky, psychotherapist

There are two groups of factors contributing to the appearance of incels. The first group is social. This is the reverse side of political correctness, which exists both in our country and in the West, the development of the feminist movement, the strict regulation of social life, the most unadapted society in matters of sexuality.

Teenagers subtly feel what is happening, because at this age they have several social tasks: finding a mate and socialization within some significant group. These guys, most of whom have low self-esteem, did not manage to find themselves a partner at the right time. Today, the boundaries are blurred, the age of sexual intercourse has dropped, children start having sex at the end of school, and if you do not find a partner, you become an outcast. The driving force behind this movement is the way to find a pack. Find a group of people where your peculiarity will be encouraged or at least there will be an explanation for it.

People unite on different grounds: hair length, favorite groups, belonging to a particular party. This feature is systemic. The Internet has become a platform that has made it possible to facilitate such processes. A wonderful place to compensate for some mental problems.

The factor of feminism also affects — a clear regulation of the possibility of entering into a relationship. We know that in America, almost everything related to sex is taboo. As a result, a new puritanism arises, which partly causes this rather ugly phenomenon bordering on fascism: the size of the jaw, wrists — resembles Lombroso’s theory, doesn’t it? What is happening today in social networks also works for this new fascism — it forms the standards of beauty that are replicated in the cinema and everywhere else.

The second group of factors refers to the peculiarities of individual psychology — this is an inferiority complex, inverted egocentrism, a situation in which you put yourself in the center of the world, and everything that happens to you is proof of your worth or failure. They completely and completely shift the responsibility to society and look for the cause in the outside world, and not in themselves — such a hypertrophy of the ego. The post-Soviet space in social issues is 20-40 years behind, in the near future such a movement is unlikely to arise in our country. Our society is patriarchal and macho, it is very difficult to admit one’s own sexual failure in it.

The condemnation of women and masculinization is possible, this form fits well with Russian reality. This is archaic, a trend towards patriarchy: house building, planting stereotypes “a woman should stay at home” and so on. This can affect teenagers. And rather, our movement will take a different form, roughly speaking, “we are cool, and all the women are bitches.”