“You think that you’d get laid if it wasn’t for advancements in technology”? A Sociological Analysis of Marginalised Masculinity in Involuntary Celibate Communities

In recent decades, Involuntary Celibates (Incels) sporadically emerged from their digital enclaves to engage in extremist violence. Incel communities encompass an expanding network of social networking spaces, and research suggests socio-technological factors facilitate Incel movement toward violent extremism. However, men and masculinities studies ought to be applied to better understand and prevent the propagation of Incel ideology and violence. Masculinity – the expectations and ordering of men in society – is said to critically shape an Incel’s fidelity to the community and reinforce their justification for violence. Incel masculinities privileges men by debasing and subjugating women and anything considered feminine, including other men. In these areas of research, Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ have become central to approaches to environments that enable and constrain behaviour and motivations. Although these concepts are readily applied in digital sociology and men and masculinities studies, these concepts are seldom used to elucidate the influence of socio-technological ecologies – composed of software and hardware such as websites and mobile devices – on Incel masculinity. In this chapter, we consider the ways Incel masculinity is enabled and constrained by the technological milieu in which Incel online communities’ dwell and develop. To achieve this, we focused on Bourdieu’s concepts ‘field’ and ‘habitus’ to examine the discourse and action occurring in certain Incel online social networking spaces and in what ways their technologies and spaces may uniquely shape an Incels’ opportunities to construct their masculine identities. As a result, we suggest that Incel communities and their various masculine identities are similarly conditioned and characterised by interrelated and entangled socio-technical structures and systems as gendered beings.