Content note: This essay mentions rape and mass murder.
I have filled my head with useless information about “incels” – involuntary celibates, a movement of (mostly) young men who, in the dank depths of the internet, work and rework their sexual rejections into cause for venomous misogyny. I have read voraciously about their ideology, which they call “the red pill”; it frames women as the privileged oppressor in the sexual economy, leaving men of subpar attractiveness with the short end of the stick. I have combed through their message boards until 4 a.m., greedily gulping down their poisoned logic – because, in some ways, it makes me feel safer to do so.
Incels are not always, but notably are sometimes, mass murderers. Two such attacks have taken place in my own city: a van ramming into pedestrians, killing 8 of them, as part of an “incel rebellion,” and a terrifying shooting on a high-traffic street that led to the death of two girls, both not even old enough to be considered women. So my efforts to understand incels’ twisted thought processes are, in part, an attempt at self-defense. Some part of me believes that if I know my way around their philosophical hedge maze, I can scythe my way out, should I ever need to. I don’t know quite what that would look like or what it would accomplish, but it’s comforting to imagine.