Incel Ideology and Child Sexual Abuse Material

Anna Meyniel 

A Feminist Call to Action in the Digital Age

The Internet is great. It really is. But one thing that is terrible about it, among a myriad of other things, is the threat that one community called ‘incels’ presents to children. 

In 2023, I finally read through Laura Bates incredible work, Men Who Hate Women (2020). In 2024, I started working for the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC). And then it clicked. On page 37 of her book, Laura Bates cited the ‘Incelocalypse’ website which was taken down in 2018 after alerts of rape and child sexual abuse material (CSAM) content had been made.

Involuntary celibates, “incels”, are a subgroup of masculinist individuals online, the “manosphere”. They have attracted attention especially since the 2014 Isla Vista attacks perpetrated by Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old who killed six people, injured an additional fourteen and shot himself. Before doing so, he published a YouTube video and sent a Manifesto out to his contacts where he explained in detail the reasons for his actions. These reasons are misogyny, a deeply rooted hatred of women and of sexually active men. The word “incel” is a self-labelling denomination that points to these men’s beliefs that they will never date or have sex, essentially (Ging, 2017; Solea and Sugiura, 2023; Hoffman, 2020). Consequently, their vision of the world is a hierarchy organised by looks, status and money where women distribute sexual power to attractive men only.

With the world of incels comes a myriad of new vocabulary, and my experience with Bates’ book introduced me first to the term ‘jailbait’, which is a fetichised, sexualised and terrifying term used by incels to describe children. What it does is comparing minors to sexual baits that will make incels risk prison if they engage in sexual interactions with them.

So then of course, when I entered the field of Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse (OCSEA), I realised this term was also used by offenders. Getting curious and outraged, I started digging, but could not find a genealogy of this terminology in current research. This might be because Technology-Facilitated Gender-Based Violence, and hence the entire incel threat, has been disdained by terrorism studies and largely researched as a mental health problem, sometimes taking a detour down the ‘lone wolf’ paradigm. However, I was finding out that incels are also a very real threat to children, and I knew deep down that it had to do with incel ideology, which stems from a very specific gendered vision of the world. So, I started doing the research that I couldn’t find.

What I found is that some of the countries where incels are most present are also countries where Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) is an overwhelming issue in comparison with other regions of the world. According to the United Nations, 66% of all CSAM was hosted in European countries (UNICEF, 2023).  On the other side of the ocean, the United States accounted for 30% of the global total of CSAM URLs in 2022, according to the Internet Watch Foundation (MIT Technology Review, 2022). Guess which regions of the world have the highest concentration of connections to incel forums? In 2022 in a one month study, the US accounted for 43.8% of connections to one of the biggest incel forums (Statista, 2022). And in the top 10, five  European countries can be accounted for.

This by no means implies that the only source of CSAM is incel networks, because CSAM represents a much wider pool of offenders. It does mean, however, that countries with high internet penetration are societies in which both incels and CSAM consumers flourish (WeForum, 2023).

To understand why incels consume and diffuse CSAM, we need to understand the logic behind the incel process of rewriting societal rules and norms online in order to regain sexual dominance. This can only be done through a feminist lens, since the way that incels envision the world is precisely gendered and built on a sexual hierarchy. Feminist studies are interested in gender inequality and challenging the patriarchal structure of society where men have most privileges. Incels, on the contrary, envision a world where women are shallow beings only interested in being protected by handsome ‘alpha’ males. The integration of children into this ideology goes through turning them into both perpetrators and victims of the incel ideology. Central to this ideology is the promotion of rape culture and male dominance, infused into a young audience easy to manipulate and indoctrinate, but also to target and prey on.

Feminism is hence key to understanding how to debunk incels’ vision of the world, and the integration of children into it. OCSEA is a crime for which the majority of offenders are part of the family, friends or entourage of the child. As a consequence, tackling OCSEA means challenging deeply rooted cultural and socio-economic structures, which feminism aims to do. 

So, what do we do with this information? First of all, we talk about it. The fact that online hatred spread by communities on incel forums, but also on mainstream social media, directly participates in abusing and exploiting children, should be known. For this to be possible, we need awareness campaigns funded by government and NGOs, but also more academic openings dedicated to digital hate.

Secondly, we need internet service providers (ISPs) and information communication technology industries to build a safer internet from the start. Content moderation, and built-in safeguards should be non negotiable.

Thirdly, we need more severe legislation that protects citizens but also tackles ISPs and industry not respecting their obligations in terms of safety.

This piece of writing is a call for more attention on the online manifestations of violence against anything that does not fit into the incel societal structure. I will keep digging and researching, but it is high time more people in positions of power did.

References

Addis, M. E., & Mahalik, J. R. (2003). Men, masculinity, and the contexts of help seeking. American Psychologist, 58(1), 5-14. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.58.1.5 

Andersen, J.C. (2023). The Symbolic Boundary Work of Incels: Subcultural Negotiation of Meaning and Identity Online. Deviant Behaviour https://doi.org/10.1080/01639625.2022.2142864 

Argentino, M.-A., Barrett, G., & Tyler, M. B. (2024). 764: The Intersection of Terrorism, Violent Extremism, and Child Sexual Exploitation. GNET. Retrieved from https://gnet-research.org/2024/01/19/764-the-intersection-of-terrorism-violent-extremism-and-child-sexual-exploitation/

Bates, L. (2021). Men who hate women: From incels to pickup artists: The truth about extreme misogyny and how it affects us all. Naperville, Illinois: Sourcebooks.

Byerly, C. (2020). Incels online reframing sexual violence. The Communication Review, 23(4), 290–308. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2020.1829305

CCDH Quant Lab. (2022, September 23). The Incelosphere. Exposing pathways into incel communities and the harms they pose to women and children.

Christmann, K., Gallagher, B., Fraser, C., & Hodgson, B. (2006). International and Internet child sexual abuse and exploitation. Huddersfield, UK: University of Huddersfield.

ECPAT. (2016). Luxembourg Guidelines. ECPAT International

Ging, D. (2019). Alphas, betas, and incels: Theorizing the masculinities of the manosphere. Men and Masculinities, 22(4), 638-657.

Halpin, M. (2022). Weaponized subordination: How incels discredit themselves to degrade women. Gender & Society, 36(6), 813–837. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912432221128545

Hoffman, B., Ware, J., & Shapiro, E. (2023). Assessing the Threat of Incel Violence. Georgetown University and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Internet Watch Foundation (IWF). (2023). EU still hosts the most child sexual abuse material in the world. Retrieved from https://www.iwf.org.uk/news-media/news/eu-still-hosts-most-child-sexual-abuse-material-world

Stevenson, J., Krzeczkowska, A., Jacobetty, P., & Fry, D. (2023). A Scoping Review of the Nature of Online Child Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. In Searchlight 2023- Childlight's Annual Flagship Report. Childlight– Global Child Safety Institute: Edinburgh. Retrieved from https://www.childlight.org/child-sexual-exploitation-abuse/

Solea, A. (2024). Hiding in Plain Sight: How the ‘Newgen’ Misogynistic Incel Content Creators Escape Moderation on TikTok. GNET. Retrieved from https://gnet-research.org/2024/01/19/hiding-in-plain-sight-how-the-newgen-misogynistic-incel-co ntent-creators-escape-moderation-on-tiktok/ 

Solea, A., & Sugiura, L. (2023). Mainstreaming the Blackpill: Understanding the Incel Community on TikTok. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research. 29:311–336 https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-023-09559-5

WHO. (2018). Violence Against Women Prevalence Estimates. Retrieved from https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women

Anna Meyniel is a Regional Program Officer at the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children (ICMEC). She works on fighting Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation globally and in collaboration with law enforcement agencies, governments and NGOs. Prior to this, she worked in the French Permanent Representation to the Political and Security Committee to the European Union Council, notably on cybersecurity issues. She holds a dual degree Master of Arts from both Sciences Po Paris and King’s College London. Her research interests cover the intersection of security and development issues, gender studies, digital and human security, incels and online radicalisation.