Behind many attacks lies a crusade that few know about, “an Isis of the ugly”: Islamic extremism has nothing to do with it. Who are Incels and why do they hate women.
In 2009, George Sodini killed three women in Pennsylvania, claiming that "thirty million women had rejected him" throughout his life. In February 2018, nineteen-year-old Nikolas Cruz shot seventeen students at Parkland high school in Florida, from which he had been expelled. Prior to the killing, he had reportedly committed domestic violence against his ex-girlfriend after threatening her new boyfriend.
Worldwide, more than 30 per cent of mass shootings occur in the United States. Examining them one by one, it emerges that among those who carried them out there are some Incels. This term was coined in 1997 by a twenty-five-year-old Canadian woman named Alana, who felt discriminated against because she was still a virgin, though she certainly had no ill intentions. It is a portmanteau of the English words involuntary and celibate, and means involuntary celibate. Today, it is used to identify men who would like a relationship but cannot find a partner, and who for this reason blame the entire female gender.
Many members of the Incel community are convinced that women choose their partners based on three parameters: physical appearance (look), financial means (money) and reputation (status). According to this theory, known as Lms, Chads are men who score highly in all three categories — that is, they are attractive, wealthy and popular. Stacys are the "hot girls" that unattractive men hopelessly desire, who are willing to have sex only with Chads. Red pillers, finally, are those who have metaphorically taken the red pill, like Neo in the film Matrix, and have managed to discover the "truth".
In psychology there is evolutionary theory, according to which females seek in a mate someone who can provide for their offspring, while males prefer a younger partner because she is more fertile. Moreover, "since nowadays both sexes work, greater importance is placed on each person's economic status when making an important life choice," explains Dr Giorgia Lauro, a psychologist who holds a master's degree in clinical sexology from the Italian Institute of Scientific Sexology (IISS).
With the advent of the internet, theory gave way to practice: online forums defined the contours — initially nebulous — of the Incel movement. The web gave many people who felt excluded the chance to finally satisfy their need for belonging, as well as the need to vent. "The pain we feel when we sense we are excluded is, according to the scientific literature, comparable to that caused by a physical wound," the psychologist explains. Often, simply in order to feel accepted, people end up conforming "to others' ideas, extreme or otherwise. And when individual responsibility merges with a group identity, people tend to dehumanise others, becoming more aggressive towards them."
Yet we are not robots, and love is not an equation. We do not select the person we want by our side as though they were a smartphone that must deliver high performance at low cost. We fall in love with someone because their presence improves our life. "We cannot ascribe the choice of a partner to a mere theory, because the complexity of the relational encounter with the other is marked by a subjective process that cannot be confined to the realm of rationality," Lauro confirms.
Unfortunately, on the internet one rarely has the opportunity to see the person one is talking to, to hear their voice, to learn their story and their emotions; as a result, one loses the sense of conversing with a real person of flesh and blood, and feels entitled to alter one's manner of expression, to be more unkind. Not to mention that one becomes "more inclined to engage in amoral behaviour" because the other members of the group are doing the same, the doctor concludes.
It is no coincidence that the Incel movement frequently transforms into a violent crusade — or rather, as one of its members describes it in an investigation by the television programme Nemo – nessuno escluso, "an Isis of the ugly." With these attacks, however, Islamic extremism has nothing to do with it.
In April 2018, twenty-five-year-old Alek Minassian drove into pedestrians walking along the streets of Toronto, killing ten of them. Before carrying out the attack, he had posted a message on Facebook: "The Incel Rebellion has already begun! We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys. All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger." Four years earlier, Rodger had killed six people after writing a 141-page manifesto and posting videos in which he warned women: "I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it."
The attack in Canada left no room for doubt, and it was at that moment that the involuntary celibates came to public attention.
We should not assume that manifestations of this kind do not exist in our country. Some cells appear to still be active: searching the keywords "forum Incel Italia" in a search engine, among the first results is "Il pianeta dei brutti," and the comments one reads upon clicking the link are far from reassuring. No Italian killer has declared membership of the community, but figures of the calibre of Massimo Bossetti, sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of young Yara Gambirasio, and Michele Misseri, guilty of the murder of fifteen-year-old Sarah Scazzi, are idolised for the "punishment" they inflicted on women.
Incels often cannot tolerate their own imperfection, but instead of acknowledging it they prefer to blame someone else, as people who cannot accept themselves frequently do. They therefore accuse others of holding them in contempt, and in particular accuse women of having stripped them of power, of being independent and no longer needing them. "Given that for many centuries men held power on multiple levels — sexual, political, theological, familial — the loss of that status brings about, psychologically, the onset of a state of anxiety and agitation," explains Dr Lauro.
Helping those who find themselves in this situation is not straightforward. Even while hating the sin, one must "try to understand the sinner's story" — who, like a wounded animal on the defensive, must regain trust in themselves and in the people around them, and must stop fearing that others will hurt them, in order to free their mind from aggression. They need people to accompany them along this journey: family members and educators.
"Only through an education grounded in gender equality at multiple levels will it be possible to try to eradicate sex-based discrimination, thereby promoting a perspective in which the rights women have gained are no longer experienced as a danger, something that must generate fear and consequently hatred, but, simply, as the normal process of socio-cultural progress," the psychologist states. Women certainly have no desire to strip men of power: they simply want to fulfil their own dreams like anyone else, men included.
In 2013 the European Parliament approved the Resolution on eliminating gender stereotypes in the Union, which called on member states to assess school programmes that would educate towards this goal, but at present in Italy such training activities are offered mainly by associations and private individuals, rather than by institutions.
It should be said, however, that today's teenagers absorb a great deal of information from social networks. On the one hand, the risk of encountering sexist content there is extremely high. On the other, since 2017 a positive discussion has been alive on them: with the hashtag #MeToo, millions of women around the world have revealed the sexual harassment they have experienced throughout their lives. It is clear that discrimination is becoming increasingly unacceptable in the eyes of society.
Read also: #MeToo. Time's 2017 Person of the Year is anyone who broke the silence on sexual violence
Matteo Camiciottoli, mayor of the municipality of Pontinvrea in the province of Savona, was sentenced to pay a fine of 20,000 euros (with a suspended sentence conditional on payment of damages within one month) because, referring to the rapists who in 2017 assaulted two young women on the seafront in Rimini, he commented: "they should have been put under house arrest at Boldrini's place, maybe they'd put a smile on her face".
Gillette, the men's razor manufacturer that for years played down the role of women, at the start of 2019 launched an advert condemning toxic masculinity.
When we are in love, we become irrational. We smile for no apparent reason, we hum in the shower, romantic films no longer seem quite so frivolous. We arrive late at the office just to make breakfast for the person we love. And that person probably entered our lives in a completely unexpected way: we weren't looking for them, they're not how we imagined them, and yet they're perfect.
Incels don't understand this. It isn't true that the perfect woman doesn't want them — it's simply that the perfect woman, like the perfect man, doesn't exist. Only when they manage to open themselves up to the enchanting imperfection of life will they be free.
