Gendered Tensions in the Portrayal of Incel Violence

Self-labelled involuntary celibate people (incels) consider themselves to exist at the bottom of societal hierarchies of sex and attractiveness, blaming feminism and social hierarchies for their lack of sex and relationships with women. Buoyed by a global online community characterised by misogyny, several incidents of public mass violence, predominantly in the US, have been perpetrated by individuals identifying as incels since 2014. Analysing the portrayal of these incidents in newspaper articles, this paper asks how incel violence is made sense of within public discourse. It pays particular attention to the gendered tensions present in these portrayals as well as contemplating the implications for wider understandings of misogynistic violence. Considering incels’ explicitly gendered worldview and apparent motivations for violence, as well as the public character of it, one might expect media portrayals of these incidents to provide gendered explanations of these incidents. However, this paper indicates a quite remarkable relative absence of gender in the reporting of incel violence. By continuously downplaying the gendered dynamics of incel violence, the violence itself is situated outside of established structures – rather than understanding it within wider misogynistic sentiments endemic in societal dynamics and structural hierarchies. Instead, the most prominent narratives in the reporting of incel violence focus on the perpetrators themselves, their characteristics, potential motivations and life circumstances. This is supplemented by narratives concerning what facilitates the violence – identified as access to guns and the internet. Combined, these contribute to an overall individualisation and thus depoliticisation of incel violence, which ultimately conforms to and confirms established tropes of masculinities as well as (gendered) violence.