It started off as people who are involuntarily celibate due to unfortunate circumstances. It ended up being co-opted by individuals incapable of self-reflection and self-improvement to understand that their celibacy is entirely based on their lack of hygiene and attitude towards women. They would rather blame the world for their problems instead of owning up to them and making positive changes in their lives.

Does identifying as an incel automatically come with those negative beliefs around gender and society, or should those two have separate terms?

Absolutely, yes. Incel culture is one of misogyny and sexism. People identifying as incels are typically the ones who blame women for not wanting to have sex with them while doing nothing to make women actually want to have sex with them.

My advice to you OP is stay far away from individuals and communities identifying as incel or pro-incel.

We already have the term “virgin” for people who haven’t had sex. The reason they made a new term is so the “involuntarily” part makes them a victim. See, it’s not just that they aren’t having sex (which they TOTALLY deserve, btw), but they’re being actively denied it.

It’s a term born in anger and a need to blame someone else. If you don’t feel that need, you don’t use the term.

There was likely a time when “incel” just meant “involuntarily celibate,” without all of the baggage, but then two things happened together.

First, a significant number of “incels,” most notably on 4chan, fell into a specific set of essentially misogynistic coping behaviors - primarily blaming the supposed hypocrisy and shallowness of women for their own problems.

And second, a significant number of smugly self-righteous bigots saw an opportunity to hurl self-affirming hatred at an undifferentiated mass of people without suffering the backlash they’d get if it was directed at a group that essentially enjoys protected status, and leaped at the opportunity.

So now the popular conception is that all involuntarily celibate men are “incels,” with all that that implies - that they’re not just involuntarily celibate, but shallow, hateful, misogynistic losers and assholes.

It could potentially help if involuntarily celibate men who don’t share the misogyny of the “incels” had their own label, but honestly I don’t think it would make much of a difference in the long run, because there are now enough asshole bigots reveling in their hatred of “incels” that they’d refuse to let anyone get away. Just like all other more traditional bigots, they’d cling to their self-affirming conception that the mere fact that an individual is of a specific race gender sexual orientation relationship status means that they’re necessarily foul and loathsome, so their hatred of them is justified.

The definition as “involuntary celibate” is mostly used by the community whence the word comes… 4channers. Everywhere else, it has come to refer to the ideology of those who came up with it. Basically, misogynists who blame society, and particularly feminism for allegedly creating a world where it’s harder for them to get laid, and harder still to get a subservient housewife.

So, I accept the premise that something that started as an abbreviation can take on a different meaning than just what it stands for.

And I do feel it’s most reasonable to consider the term “incel” to include an attitude of entitlement to sex without consideration for the bodily autonomy of whoever they feel should be providing it.

But I think that attitude is already baked into the un-abbreviated form. The term “involuntarily celibate” implies bigoted entitlement. It implies a worldview in which someone (typically women) owe the person who identifies as “involuntarily celibate” sex.

If someone wants to murder people and nobody will let themselves be murdered to satisfy the wannabe murderer’s impulse, well, the wannabe murderer clearly has some issues to work through anyway, but calling themselves “involuntarily murderless” or whatever is highly fucked. The wannabe murderer has to already be thinking in terms of entitlement to kill people to adopt or identify with that term.

If someone is “celibate” and would prefer to be in a relationship, don’t call them “incel” or “involuntarily celibate” unless they’re entitled bigoted assholes about it, in which case just call them “incels”.

If they’re “celibate” and would prefer to be in a relationship but isn’t bigoted about it… probably prefer whatever term they would prefer you use, but maybe something like “single and looking” would be a reasonable term.

If they’re “celibate” and don’t want to be in a relationship and are bigoted, “volcel” or “MGTOW” (with a derisive dip in tone) is probably a reasonably good term.

If they’re “celibate” and don’t want to be in a relationship and aren’t bigoted, again, whatever they prefer, but “asexual” and/or “aromantic” might be reasonable.

Maybe they should be called far-incels

It has changed an enormous amount, this article discusses it

I would never use the term towards someone unless they were exhibiting the stereotypes. I would have no reason to, I could otherwise just say “this person is a cinnamon roll and needs to be protected.”

There is no 100% scientific consensus on the definition of incel, therefore I don’t believe in their existence.

It comes with a load of different perspectives and emotions. I agree with the person pointing out it has a lot to do with victimhood and blaming other people, if used as a self-description. I wouldn’t use it that way. And using it on another person I think it’s derogatory. So I also wouldn’t use it unless I wanted to hurt someone.

Andrew Tate -like

I’m just here thinking, someone is asking a small group of people what they believe to be the definition of a word rather than use the vast wealth of knowledge published by experts in their field on these here internets.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/articles-heterodoxy/202208/inside-the-minds-the-incels

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-024-06236-6

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2023/10/new-paper-explores-the-rise-of-incels/

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9780135/

Wiki: A portmanteau of “involuntary celibate”. A term associated with an online subculture of people (mostly white, male, and heterosexual who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one, and blame, objectify and denigrate women and girls as a result. The movement is strongly linked to misogyny. Originally coined as “invcel” around 1997 by a queer Canadian female student known as Alana, the spelling had shifted to “incel” by 1999, and the term later rose to prominence in the 2010s, following the influence of misogynistic terrorists Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian.

It has always been the latter.