22 Terrifyingly Honest Confessions From A Woman Who Infiltrated An Incel Community
Note: This post contains mentions of sexual assault and violence.
An incel, short for involuntary celibate, is a person who feels like women and society at large are to blame for their lack of sexual partners. The term is mostly applied to heterosexual men, particularly in certain very online and very angry communities, though there are some "femcels" out there, too.
Incels tend to believe in strict gender roles, and they think that women are only attracted to a very specific kind of man. If they don't fit into the allegedly irresistible alpha male "Chad" mold, they believe that this makes their chances of finding love hopeless.
This worldview leads to some really dark conversations online, but it can also leak out into real-life violence. The most famous case of this was Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old man who killed people in Isla Vista in 2014 and has been cited as an influence in other attacks.
Recently, on Reddit, a woman who found herself by chance in an online incel community posted on r/AMA, inviting users to "ask me anything" about the experience. Her post sparked a really eye-opening conversation that I know I'll personally be thinking about for a long, long time.
She started the thread by writing, "I found the community by chance. Met one of their members in an online game, who didn't know I was a woman, and I didn't know he was an incel. He invited me to his discord server and saw they were "redpilled" or "MGTOW" [Men Going Their Own Way] as they liked to call it. I stayed to watch. I admitted to being a woman a couple weeks in, and they allowed me to stay until I eventually left after a few months."
Here are some of the most interesting questions and answers from the thread:
1.Q: Were they all roughly around the same age? Were there older ones influencing the younger ones?
A: They were all between 15 and 35, as far as I know. The older ones definitely influenced the younger ones. The younger ones had less appalling opinions and were usually nicer to me than the older ones.
2.Q: Were these people who didn’t really have friends or a community in their life?
A: That seemed like the case for most of them. A lot of the ones who called themselves MGTOWs seemed to have much better social lives from what I could tell, but even still I think they preferred to be online.
3.Q: The oldest members of the community — what kind of jobs did they have? Were they independent? How did they live on a day-to-day basis with such warped opinions?
A: I remember all of them being independent besides the teenagers, and I remember a handful being in the Air Force and the Army, but I don't think of any other branches of the military. Other than that, I can't remember what their jobs were. I think they all just acted normal in public. None of them ever said anything that made me think otherwise.
4.Q: You say that you asked some about their home lives and why they feel the way they do. Could you tell us a bit about what home life these guys had and their apparent reasons for feeling the way they do?
A: A little over half of them didn't have their mother in their life, which I feel might have been a catalyst for some of them. A few others had mothers or stepmothers who were openly sexually promiscuous and cheating on their fathers.
However, one that left a major impression on me was that he had a stepmother who sexually abused him, and his father apparently knew about it. I believed him; this conversation happened in voice chat, and I could hear him sniffling and the mic being rustled from him wiping his face. That was one of the first times I actually felt sorry for them.
5.Q: Do they call themselves incels? Or is it just something that they are so they labeled that by others?
A: They prefer to call themselves red-pilled or MGTOWs; I think in their minds, incel is mostly a derogatory term given to them by other people.
6.Q: What assumptions did you have going in that were proven wrong?
A: In my head, I always viewed incels and everyone under that umbrella as just monsters. Flat and simple. But I saw softer sides of them that did show me that it's not that black and white. Some of them had sisters they defended, a lot of them really cared for animals and loved their pets, and sometimes I saw them giving emotional support to each other that I rarely see in men in general. I think my assumption that they're all just movie villain-esque monsters was proven wrong.
7.Q: Are you in the field of psychology?
A: No, just a random gamer with nothing better to do.
8.Q: How did they take it when you admitted to being a woman?
A: Very poorly. They only kept me around to relentlessly harass me, but I was so curious about it that I just put up with it until I felt like there was nothing more I could get out of watching them. A lot of them were still willing to have normal conversations with me when they weren't harassing me, weirdly enough. I was able to ask most of them about their home life, why they feel the way they do, etc., and I got what I felt were mostly honest answers. But it would turn back into harassment a little while later.
9.Q: In your mind, do you think these individuals can be rehabilitated? If yes, what are your ideas on how to do so?
A: I think the younger ones could be. I think the only way would be to somehow pull them out of these echo chambers. I think it would have to be a man to do it. I tried and was dismissed because I'm a woman. I think therapy would help a lot, too.
10.Q: Do you see them as victims of chance or persons who have been let down by society?
A: This one is really difficult for me to answer. I do think a lot of them were victims of childhood abuse or at least abandonment, which makes me pity them a little bit. I also think a lot of them are victims of the echo chamber that these communities are. The community I was in basically pounded the idea in each others' heads that they were worthless.
11.Q: Do you think a lot of them have unnecessarily low self-assessment? Speaking as a man, there seem to be lots of self-proclaimed "losers" who think life has dealt them bad cards but are often a simple lifestyle change away from fitting right back into society and even excelling.
A: Yes absolutely. I didn't really consider any of them to be physically ugly at all. Some were even very handsome. I think most of them wouldn't even have a hard time getting a girlfriend if they just acted normally.
12.Q: To what do they attribute the fact that most men do not have the same problems that they do in terms of love and relationships? If I pointed out that I fell in love young and have long been happily married, would they say I was just lucky or had an unfair advantage somehow? That it was different in other recent decades?
A: I think some would just say your wife is using you and cheating on you, and you're too "cucked" to notice. Or that you must be rich, or top 1% in terms of attractiveness, or that she just had no other options and was desperate because she's ugly. They always convince themselves of a reason, no matter how irrational it is.
13.Q: Did you find yourself liking any of them?
A: Yes, I did genuinely care for some of them.
14.Q: Has this experience tainted how you feel interacting with men in your real life? If you’re straight and single, has this affected your comfort level with dating?
A: It did make me a bit more distrustful of men but also made me pity them a bit more, too. I can't answer the last part, though, since I've been in a long-term relationship this entire time. I think it would make me a little wary if I were back in the dating scene.
15.Q: Did you leave feeling more pity than derision?
A: Yes, absolutely. I really don't even hate or dislike them, either. I mean, I obviously dislike and hate a lot of the things they said, but I mostly just pity them. I genuinely did care for some of them, too. I don't think they were fully monsters; I think they were hurt people saying monstrous things. Things I'm not even sure they fully believed themselves. Of course, this is based on one small community. I probably wouldn't openly extend sympathy to every single incel I come across without sitting down with them the way I did these guys.
16.Q: Did you get the impression they wanted to open up to you and be vulnerable, but they felt like you were the enemy trying to make fun of them so they couldn't?
A: I'm really glad you asked this question. I feel like they were all far more willing to be vulnerable and open about their feelings and experiences than most men. I found that really interesting. I think a lot of them just really desperately want to feel cared for, even if they wouldn't admit to that. I was viewed as the enemy and a punching bag, but despite that, a lot of them still seemed enthusiastic to share their problems with me.
17.Q: Would they value a woman more if she happened to be a "tradwife"? Do you think they would still view her just as "breeding stock," or does that view only come from their hate of "feminism"?
A: Tradwives are just better and more agreeable breeding stock, nothing more. But then again, none of them have had any kind of real relationship with a woman, as far as I know. I do think there were a couple in there that would be capable of loving a woman and changing their views completely if they just got out of that echo chamber and stopped letting these guys convince them that they're worthless.
18.Q: What are a few of the wild things you saw them say?
A: Their views on the age of consent and a woman's role in society were the most wild to me. Most of their opinions regarding these were that women's only role in society was to produce boys and breeding stock (girls). As soon as a girl gets her period, a lot of them believed that she should be okay to sleep with. Some suggested that if they were given the chance, they would rape a child with the intent to impregnate as long as she had a period, even if she was 11 or 12. Something I thought was interesting, though, was that some of the ones with younger sisters argue against that.
19.Q: You mentioned that a lot of these men had been sexually abused as children. I just can’t believe someone could go through that, obviously have trauma from it, and then suggest it should not only happen to others but become the NORM.
A: I believe it's retaliatory.
They think: Nobody cared when it was done to me, so why should they care when I do it to someone else? Why do I deserve it to happen to me but not to someone else?
Male victims of SA are wildly ignored and sometimes just flat-out bullied for it; I think that's probably where the cognitive dissonance begins in these people. I think it may also be them trying to "take back" power. I will say, in this specific community, I don't feel like any of them will actually do anything. I still reported them [to the FBI tipline], but I don't think these guys specifically will end up doing anything after watching them.
20.Q: I am of the opinion that a lot of the offensive rhetoric incels spew out is often just said for shock value, to be hateful and cruel, and/or for humor; most of them don't truly back their vile opinions and only do this as a way to vent because they are incredibly miserable. As someone who was part of the community for a while, would you back this opinion? Or am I being hilariously naive? I find it hard to believe that anyone truly thinks the way they do.
A: I think I agree with you. I have a hard time believing the majority of them actually TRULY believed what they were saying, especially since they were willing to be normal towards me at times.
21.Q: Do you think they had any good points regarding how men are treated in society?
A: I think most of their points about how men's emotions, traumas, and vulnerabilities are treated in society were valid. It's just how they went about it, and what they think caused it is where it gets twisted.
22.Q: Are you better able to spot an incel now?
A: I don't think I could spot them any better now. They were perfectly capable of acting normal and well-adjusted when they wanted to and were capable of treating me kindly when they wanted to. I think for most of them, if they don't want you to know, then it will be very hard to know. I think it did make me a little more distrustful of men, but it did make me pity them a bit more, too. It's hard to describe. It gave me a peek into men's inner thoughts that I never would have gotten otherwise. I don't mean all the messed up stuff; I mean the parts where they were vulnerable and suggested that they felt like they didn't matter and society didn't care about them. I suspect maybe a lot of men feel that way even if they don't all go down the incel path.
