Feminist Media Studies

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The monstrous-feminine in the incel imagination:

investigating the representation of women as
“femoids” on /r/Braincels

Winnie Chang

To cite this article: Winnie Chang (2020): The monstrous-feminine in the incel imagination:
investigating the representation of women as “femoids” on /r/Braincels, Feminist Media Studies,
DOI: 10.1080/14680777.2020.1804976

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1804976

Published online: 05 Aug 2020.

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FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/14680777.2020.1804976

The monstrous-feminine in the incel imagination:

investigating the representation of women as “femoids” on
/r/Braincels
Winnie Chang
School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This article presents a study of the discourses circulating /r/Braincels, Received 5 December 2019
the (now-defunct) forum on Reddit for self-proclaimed “incels,” that Revised 17 July 2020
bolster the belief in the structural victimisation of men under Accepted 30 July 2020
a purported gynocentric order. Particularly, it uses feminist critical KEYWORDS
discourse analysis to explore perceptions created by the term Online misogyny; incels;
“femoid,” a pejorative generated by incels to refer to women. It exam­ dehumanisation; monstrous-
ines the dehumanising characteristics of “femoid” that construct feminine; Reddit
women as an abject Other—a monstrous-feminine—thereby justify­
ing the violence enacted on them. I demonstrate how, rather than
being unique to online spaces, the misogyny expressed on /r/Braincels
is linked to and enabled by broader social practices that similarly
position women as inferior Others; these attitudes are symptomatic
of, not anomalous to, the deeply misogynistic society we live in.

Introduction

“Humanity . . . All of my suffering on this world has been at the hands of humanity, particularly
women.” (Elliot Rodger, My Twisted World)1

On the evening of May 23 2014, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger went on a murderous rampage
in Isla Vista, California, killing six and injuring fourteen before killing himself (Phillip Rucker
2014). The above quotation is the opening line to Rodger’s 141-page autobiography. He also
documented his burning hatred of women and jealousy of sexually active men in a YouTube
video titled “Elliot Rodger’s Retribution.”2 In it, he claimed the motives behind his attack
were to “punish” women for refusing to have sex with him—an experience he described as
“very torturous.” He declared, “I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will
punish you all for it. It’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me.
I’m the perfect guy [. . .] the supreme gentleman.”
Although Rodger bemoaned his isolation, the sentiments he expressed were not
cultivated strictly in solitude. Before the attack, Rodger was active in various online
communities in which men contemplate the idea that women secretly dominate society.

CONTACT Winnie Chang w.chang0823@gmail.com

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 W. CHANG

While he never explicitly claimed the “incel” label for himself, these communities have
since deified Rodger as a martyred “incel hero” (BBC 2018).
Incel, a portmanteau of “involuntary celibate,” is the nomenclature used by men who
resent their abstinence due to their purported ineptitude with women. Incels form part of
a broader network of online communities, loosely referred to as “the manosphere,” where
stories of events like Rodger’s attack are shared as inspiration. Rodger’s attack fuelled pre-
existing discussions about an “incel rebellion” or “beta uprising.” This was how 25-year-old
Alek Minassian justified driving a rented van along a sidewalk in Toronto in April 2018,
killing ten and injuring sixteen. Shortly before his attack, Minassian posted on his
Facebook page, “The Incel Rebellion has already begun! [. . .] All hail the Supreme
Gentleman Elliot Rodger!” (Robin Abcarian 2018).
This article draws on a study that uses feminist critiques of the monstrous-feminine
trope to explore how discourses on /r/Braincels, the (now-defunct) subreddit for incels,
construct women as “femoids” (i.e. female humanoids). Through the use of “femoid,”
incels dehumanise women and discursively create the existence of a subhuman mon­
strous-feminine that oppresses men. This paper demonstrates that, while its language is
unique to social-media communication, the misogynistic ideologies underpinning this
discourse are “embedded in our mythological and religious heritage,” intrinsic to the
establishment of the Western political order (Carole Pateman 1989, 17). By analysing
“femoid” through the lens of the monstrous-feminine, I demonstrate how the rendition of
women as “femoids” perpetuates the phallogocentric tradition that constructs women as
Other to the male norm. If the manosphere is one modern form of the ancient and
institutional pejoration of women, the sentiments expressed by incels should not be
viewed as anomalous, but as symptomatic of a society already entrenched in misogyny.

The manosphere and “ironic” radicalisation

The term “incel” was coined in the 1990s by a Canadian woman who wished to cultivate
a supportive community for people who, for whatever reason, were unable to find sexual
or romantic partners (Ashifa Kassam 2018). Ironically, it has since been co-opted by men
who promulgate the belief that, plagued by the spectre of feminism and political
correctness, modern society has placed awkward, unattractive, heterosexual men like
them at the bottom of the social ladder. These men have become the forefront of the incel
subculture, which forms part of what is known as “the manosphere”: a network of online
communities populated by antifeminist men. To conceive of the manosphere as
a monolith replicating only traditional forms of masculinity is insufficient: Debbie Ging
2019 details the conflicts and contradictions between the various factions of the mano­
sphere, and Angela Nagle 2016 explores how its adherents deviate from hegemonic
masculinity and display complex gender-bending expressions of masculinity. However,
I argue that this should not eclipse the way incels’ misogyny is related to historical
traditions of woman-hating; investigating this relationship could unveil the traditional
misogyny disguising itself in counterhegemonic masculinities that are often viewed as
“progressive.”
The multi-faceted manosphere is united by the concept of the “red pill,” inspired by the
1999 film The Matrix, in which the protagonist must take either a blue pill or a red pill: the
blue pill enables him to continue living a life of peaceful delusion, whereas the red pill
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 3

enlightens him to life’s ugly truths. The “Red Pill philosophy” purports to enlighten men to
the “reality” of feminist brainwashing and structural misandry (Ging 2019), constructing “a
fictional establishment against which, as underdogs, they could rail” (William Merrin 2019,
207). While the Red Pill philosophy arose from a specific context with its own set of
characteristics, the basis of its ideology has a long history: positioning men as victims of
feminism has surfaced with every new iteration of the feminist movement as a tactic to
reinforce patriarchal hegemony (Michael A. Messner 1998).
Social media communication, especially on the manosphere, often takes the form of
online “trolling,” what William Merrin (2019) describes as an inherently anti-serious “sport”
with “a historical spirt of disruption, disorder, challenge, play and humour” that targets
dominant cultures and those who assert authority. Internet trolls are characterised by, and
reviled for, their transgressive and obscene humour, unabashed amorality, and dedication
to serve only their own amusement, or “lulz,” satiated only by upsetting mainstream
sensibilities (Whitney Phillips 2015). They typically defend themselves by insisting on the
ironic nature of trolling and their intent to subvert moral proprieties. Far-right groups
have weaponised this rhetoric for political purposes, and assertions of “troll culture”
provide them with “a veneer of edgy irreverence” that safeguards them from criticism
(Alice E. Marwick and Becca Lewis 2017). This is especially compelling to the growing
demographic of young men who feel alienated and victimised by mainstream liberal
society’s “political correctness,” making them especially susceptible to extremist ideology
strategically masked behind edgy humour and troll culture (Rob May and Matthew
Feldman 2019). We must look beyond the façade of humour and irony to appreciate
the gravity of the messages being communicated and consumed.
Indeed, extremists often use irony and humour to dilute their ideas into ostensibly
harmless “memes,” internet-generated comedic images, specifically for the purpose of
wide dissemination to recruit and radicalise people (i.e. “redpill” them). In exploring how
memes on the manosphere construct “social justice warriors” (SJWs) as a monstrous-
feminine, Adrienne L. Massanari and Shira Chess (2018, 529) find that underlying these
vituperative images are “older and more powerful” tropes that have existed for centuries.
As Phillips (2015, 10) observes, despite the brazen obscenity that characterises online
trolling, it is not deviant but rather “built from the same stuff as mainstream behaviors.”
The actions of trolls are situated within and fuelled by culturally sanctioned inclinations.
Linking contemporary discourses of the manosphere to pre-existing systems of misogy­
nistic representation, such as the monstrous-feminine trope, can help to identify their
underlying ideologies.

Formation of the monstrous-feminine

Since Aristotelian times, images of the monstrous have been “paradigmatic of how
differences are dealt with” (Rosi Braidotti 1994, 79); the monster’s inherent status as
“Other” functions to buttress the normative characteristics that are defined against it.
Aristotle based the normative human on a male model, thereby rendering the female
body an anomaly and positioning the feminine on the negative pole of pejoration
(Braidotti 1994). Under this phallogocentric discursive order, the female body is relegated
to the “abject,” as Julia Kristeva theorises it: “radically excluded” (Julia Kristeva 1982, 2),
that which “does not respect borders, positions, rules” and that which “disturbs identity,
4 W. CHANG

system, order” (1982, 4). The female body is aberrant because of its sexual “difference,”
and especially because of its shapeshifting ability during pregnancy. It obfuscates the
contours demarcating the body’s boundaries and defeats “the notion of fixed bodily
form” enforced by liberal individualism and scientific rationality (Braidotti 1994, 80).
This has produced a cultural tradition that systematically represents women as mon­
strous. Themes surrounding women’s bodies, particularly their reproductive abilities,
feature steadily in horror films where they are intimately linked to the abject (see
Barbara Creed 1993). Sandra M. Gilbert and Susan Gubar 2000 write extensively about
the angel/monster dichotomy that is mapped onto female bodies in literary representa­
tions. The angel-woman, revered as the perfect woman, is the blueprint all women are
expected to follow; the monster-woman is used to intimidate women into conforming to
the angel ideal. However, no woman can live up to the impossible expectations set by the
angel archetype for it ultimately mandates women “to ‘kill’ themselves [. . .] into art
objects: slim, pale, passive beings whose ‘charms’ eerily recalled the snowy, porcelain
immobility of the dead” (Gilbert and Gubar 2000, 25). Therefore, all women are regarded,
to varying degrees, as monstrous. Molly Haskell (2016, xix) notes the monstrous-feminine
that continuously haunts the Western cultural imagination, observing the “persistent [. . .]
fear of powerful women” materialising in cinematic images of “the she-monster” that
proliferate in eras of significant feminist progress. Such representations demonstrate
a fear of women’s autonomy under an order that insists on their heteronomy, manifesting
in the construction of autonomous women as deviant, dangerous, and monstrous.
Licia Carlson 2014 delineates how groups of individuals are characterised as subhuman
in relation to three key concepts—reason, morality, and animality—that can be applied to
the portrayal of women throughout history. Persistent depictions of women’s alleged
inability to “transcend their bodily natures and sexual passions” fortified the belief in their
essential irrationality and immorality (Pateman 1989, 4). They also defined women as
animal-like, justifying their exclusion from the definition of the “liberal individual” as
inherently rational beings with the capacity for civil participation (Pateman 1989). As
a result, women, alongside Black and working-class people, were regarded as unfit for and
a threat to civil society.
The monstrous-feminine has no inherent qualities. She is created through representa­
tion to enforce behaviour and justify patriarchal oppression. For example, cultural ideas
about “proper” feminine behaviour shaped definitions of female insanity in Western
psychiatric discourses that demonised “disobedient” women (Elaine Showalter 1987).
This had a significant impact on wider discourses on gender, and the definition of the
monstrous-feminine is bound up with the enforcement of what is regarded as “appro­
priate gender behaviour” (Michael Thomson 1997, 419), embodied in the angel archetype.
Furthermore, it is crucial to acknowledge the role of race, being inextricably linked to
constructions of gender (see Bell Hooks 1981), in conceptualising the monstrous-
feminine. Patricia H. Collins (2000) analyses the “controlling images” produced by hege­
monic social institutions that objectify specifically Black women as Other, thereby natur­
alising their particular (racialised and sexualised) oppression. Chandra T. Mohanty 1984
explores how, influenced by colonialist discourse, Western feminist scholarship discur­
sively constructs a singular “Third World Woman” living in abject poverty, devoid of
agency and complexity. This construction is predicated upon the assumption that
Western women are (relatively) liberated subjects situated in opposition to the
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 5

objectified, oppressed, monolithic “Third World Woman” (Mohanty 1984). Kathy

Deliovsky’s concept of “normative white femininity” (Kathy Deliovsky 2008) puts forward
a cogent analysis of oppression operating at the intersection of race and sex, arguing that
the patriarchally-constructed “normative femininity” (Sandra L. Bartky 1998) is not race-
neutral but operates under a historical schema of whiteness; “appropriate gender beha­
viour” (Thomson 1997, 419) necessarily means behaving appropriately by the rules of
whiteness. These works reveal the myriad ways the colonial knowledge-production
system strips racialised women of heterogeneity and renders them “unfeminine” or
“wrongly” feminine, constructing them as monstrous and Other in relation to both race
and sex.
The links between female bodies, madness, and monstrosity are fortified by social
practices and cultural representations (Braidotti 1994; Gilbert and Gubar 2000), which
contribute to the continuous demonisation of women in medical, legal, and cultural
discourses (Massanari and Chess 2018; Showalter 1987; Thomson 1997). Although
women have been granted independent legal status in the West, their persisting socio­
cultural position as Other, compounded by intersecting social locations such as race and
class, pervades societal attitudes and structures, lending power to incel ideology.

Methodology
This paper explores the discursive functions of the term “femoid” as incels use it on Reddit.
Reddit is a collection of over a million forums called “subreddits,” and one of its major
appeals is the anonymity offered to its users: the information displayed on user profiles
include only their username, their posts, and their “karma,” representing the aggregate
amount of upvotes or downvotes users have received on their posts. While incels con­
verge on multiple online platforms, I chose Reddit because of its accessibility and
popularity3. The data was collected from /r/Braincels, a major incel hub that has since
been banned for violating Reddit’s anti-harassment policies.
This study investigates how “femoids” are discursively constructed as a monstrous-
feminine and how that process reinforces misogynistic ideologies. To do so, an apprecia­
tion of the productive powers of language and discourse is necessary, as language is the
conduit through which meaning is created (see Stuart Hall 1997). Alice E. Marwick and
Robyn Caplan 2018 show how online discourses affect the use of the term “misandry”
such that it has come to be viewed as synonymous with “feminism.” Jaki, De Smedt,
Gwóźdź, Panchal, Rossa, & De Pauw 2019 find that, through the repeated use of deroga­
tory and dehumanising language toward women on Incels.me (now Incels.co), violence
against women is normalised, justified, and even encouraged. These studies demonstrate
how discourse has the power to construct a reality where male violence against women is
recast as a heroic act of rebellion against a subhuman enemy.
Therefore, I use feminist critical discourse analysis (CDA) to examine how gendered
power imbalances influence, and are reproduced in, the term “femoid.” It scrutinises how
“social power abuse, dominance, and inequality are enacted [. . .] by text and talk” (Teun
van Dijk 2001, 352) and seeks to uncover the ideological presuppositions hidden beneath
the surface of texts (David Machin and Andrea Mayr 2012).
To start, I used Reddit’s search function to search the term “femoid” and its deriva­
tive, “foid,” to find threads containing those words. “Femoid” first appeared in thread
6 W. CHANG

titles in January 2018, and “foid” made its appearance shortly after in March 2018.
I sorted the results by popularity and took a purposive sample of 14 threads with the
most upvotes and/or comments as greater community engagement meant richer data.
Threads were analysed in their entirety, because analysing language items in isolation is
insufficient “to describe the meanings of texts” (Sara Mills 1995, 157): peripheral discus­
sions indicate how “femoid” becomes saturated with certain ideas that are evoked when
the term is used.
The first research task uncovered the origins of “femoid” to understand the social
contexts that gave rise to the term. Then I examined the representation of “femoids” to
identify the discursive strategies employed to reify them as a monstrous-feminine. Users
often set up dichotomies that position themselves in opposition to lowly, irrational
“femoids,” employing emotive language that evokes feelings of indignation and disgust.
Four main themes emerged from the dataset, namely reason, animality, morality, and
sexuality, which fit the historical precedent for representations of women as Other
(Braidotti 1994; Carlson 2014; Pateman 1989). Finally, I explored the implications of
these representations in today’s context.

Creating “femoids”: findings and discussion

Incels’ understanding of “women” is indelibly linked to their conception of them as
“femoids,” a term that dehumanises women into a subhuman Other on whom violence
can be justifiably enacted. While the language and humour found on the forum might be
contemporaneously unique, the ideologies informing them have justified women’s
oppression throughout history—they are woven into the very fabric of society and
continue to shape all social interactions.

Defining “femoid”
“Femoid” is defined on /r/Braincels as a “derogatory dehumanising term for women” that
is used “to imply they aren’t truly human.” A search for its origin presented a thread from
/r/IncelTears titled “Where on earth did FEMOID come from?” in which a comment
summarised the evolutionary process of the term. It claims that incels first referred to
women as “Female Human Organisms” to deliberately upset them; “human” evolved to
“humanoid” to evince the idea that women “are not human, they simply resemble
humans.” This was shortened to the widely accepted “femoid,” spawning derivatives
such as “foid,” “femaloid,” and “void.” “Void” is especially saturated with symbolism
when considering that, historically, women have been represented in terms of lack,
whereas the penis was constructed in cultural and legal discourses as “the mark of
human fullness and [. . .] symbolic presence” (Creed 1993, 110, emphasis added).
Three trends explain the emergence of the term. First, the shift towards meme-based
communication on social media encourages ironic humour and trolling. Indeed, the
definition given “femoid” on /r/Braincels claims it as a “joke.” Second, the popularisation
of feminism through social media has reignited fears of male victimhood (Messner 2016).
Third, there has been a notable rise in right-wing populism across Europe and America in
a phenomenon dubbed “global Trumpism,” which has had dire consequences for
women’s rights across the world (see Peter Beinart 2019; Thomas Greven 2016). These
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 7

trends form the backdrop against which the attitudes conveyed on /r/Braincels should be
understood.

Race relations on /r/Braincels

There is an element of whiteness implicit in the conceptualisation of “femoids” as
references to women of colour are accompanied by descriptors like “black” or “Asian.”
However, white women’s whiteness is often leveraged against them in comments such as
one claiming that “white women are not sentient.” This is interpreted as an attempt to
render its misogyny more acceptable since it is directed at women possessing racial
privilege. Another comment states that “white women are WAY more racist [than] white
men,” assuming a stance that can be tentatively regarded as antiracist. While white
women’s racism must be identified and challenged (see Angela Y. Davis 1983; Elizabeth
G. McRae 2018; Mohanty 1984), this comparison ameliorates white men of accountability
while constructing white women as the actual oppressors; antiracist rhetoric is misappro­
priated to reify white women as “femoids.”
Some users display an awareness of white-centric beauty standards when observing
that white people “are considered the most attractive.” One commenter, identifying
himself as Indian, claims that Indians are “shorter than the average height and have
different facial features and colouring from the average person (who is white). Therefore
Indians are less attractive than average because people prefer the ‘normal’ [leading] to
Indians having less sex and relationships,” essentially arguing that white normativity
(“the average person [. . .] is white”) negatively impacts Indian men’s social standing.
While true, this lamentation appears to be motivated by self-pity and unfulfilled access
to women’s sexuality rather than the core issues of white centrality and supremacy,
which are left unquestioned as they run rampant on the forum. The forum’s (however
ironic) denigration of non-white people with racist stereotypes—Indian and Asian incels
are often referred to, and refer to themselves, as “currycels” and “ricecels” respectively—
reveals the shallowness and narcissism of their “antiracism,” which does not mean­
ingfully challenge racism. Rather, it appears to be used only when convenient to evoke
sympathy and form horizontal bonds across racial identities to demonise women as
“femoids.”

“Worthless sociopath low-IQ subhumans”

Words such as “degenerate,” “vile,” and “disgusting” are repeatedly used to describe
women on /r/Braincels, intended to arouse visceral feelings of revulsion and effectively
constructing a debased monstrous-feminine in the incel imagination. A comment claim­
ing that “voids” are “[f]ucking empty worthless garbage subman [sic] sociopath low-IQ
subhumans” exemplifies the subreddit’s flagrant dehumanisation of women specifically
by highlighting their lack of moral and cognitive capacities—a widely-used strategy
throughout history to characterise certain groups as subhuman (Carlson 2014). The
gendered nature of this insult becomes apparent in light of the construction of women
in terms of lack (“void” and “empty”). Their relegation as “subman” and “subhuman”
suggests secondariness to men, the implied centre of humankind. Women are positioned
as the partially formed, “empty” Other in opposition to the fully formed Man, bolstering
8 W. CHANG

the hegemonic mode of discourse formation that constructs “the main theme of man­
kind” as male (Braidotti 1994, 79).
Users unanimously view women as “low-IQ” and often liken them to animals, particu­
larly dogs, to emphasise their lack of intelligence. One user asks, “Why would you try to
have a serious conversation with a woman? You may as well explain this shit to your
dog . . . he’ll understand about as much.” Replies agreed that “[f]oids truly have the lowest
IQ,” reinforcing the belief that reason and intellect are exclusively male qualities. The
comparison of women to dogs evokes the misogynistic slur “bitch,” commonplace even in
wider society (see Sherry Kleinman, Matthew Ezzell and A. Corey Frost 2009). These
comments purport to be truth as they adopt the straightforward tone of commonsense
knowledge; when left unchallenged and even upvoted, they fortify the process of
dehumanisation.
The intellectual hierarchy between men and women is depicted in an image captioned
“The incelibate mind vs the femoid brain” (Figure 1). The thought bubble representing the
“incelibate mind” is filled with pictures symbolising a “serious” thought process, while the
“femoid brain” thinks only of men considered by incels to be “alpha males.” The “vs” in the
image’s caption employs the discursive strategy of contrasting to herald one subject’s
intellect as superior to the other’s. Assigning the “mind” to the male incel and the “brain”
to the “femoid” implicitly bolsters the divide: while the former signifies thought, reason,

Figure 1. The incelibate mind vs the femoid brain.

 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 9

and consciousness, the latter is an organ that does not alone imply human consciousness.
A discussion on the lack of cognitive activity in the “femoid brain” ensued, and users
concluded that women “are quite literally mindless” (original emphasis). The formatting of
the image as a meme lends it the protection of irony and humour, dismissing its misogyny
as inconsequential while discursively reinforcing women’s dehumanisation. As meme-
based communication online continues to grow in popularity, the circulation of poten­
tially dangerous ideologies disguised as humour has implications that must be taken
seriously (see May and Feldman 2019).
In addition to their inferior intellect, “femoids” are also constructed as inherently mad:
sociopathy is demarcated as a “feminine trait,” and women are viewed as “inherently
psychopathic” on the forum. That said, representations of women as crazy are not limited
to incel discourses but are reflective of mainstream narratives that use women’s pur­
ported craziness “to shame [them] into compliance” (Harris O’Malley 2014) and buttress
men’s status as rational individuals in contrast to the irrational female sex (see Marianne
S. Noh, Matthew T. Lee and Kathryn M. Feltey 2010). These claims are also reminiscent of
medical, psychiatric, and cultural discourses that construct “madness” as a female disease
(Gilbert and Gubar 2000; Showalter 1987).
The conception of “femoids” as unhinged can be demonstrated by this comment:

Femoid: What is your height?

Male: What is your weight?

Femoid: THIS IS WHY YOU’RE AN INCEL LOOSER [sic]. KYS [kill yourself]. #MeToo

Worth noting people have some degree of control over their weight but not their height.

This hypothetical conversation exemplifies and reifies the hypocritical, oversensitive,

and over-reactive “femoid.” The mention of height alludes to women’s reputed prefer­
ence for tall men, often used to demonstrate, as the above comment does, their shallow­
ness and cruelty towards short men. Its extensive discussion amongst incels is indicated
by the coinage of the term “heightpill,” which, according to incels.wiki,4 is “the realization
that females prefer men who are much taller than average” and “feel visceral disgust
towards manlets [short men].” By pointing out that people have more control over their
weight than height, the comment’s final line works to illustrate women’s hypocrisy and
exaggerate their irrationality and immorality. The addition of “#MeToo” following the
“femoid’s” outburst mocks and disempowers the movement,5 thus painting all claims of
#MeToo with the same hysteria. This echoes the pushback notion that women campaign­
ing for their rights are “mentally disturbed” (Showalter 1987, 145), which remains
ingrained: for example, #MeToo is often misrepresented as “a vindictive plot against
men” (Tarana Burke in Patrick Greenfield 2018); in an interview with DailyMailTV, actor
William Shatner claims it has become “hysterical” (Zack Sharf 2018). These wider discus­
sions lend power to incels’ representation of “femoids” as maniacal.
Insofar as the incel community likes to portray itself as countercultural to the “main­
stream,” the discourses they reproduce to dehumanise “femoids” are, in fact, widely
accepted, rooted in the very structures they claim to reject. By summoning the concepts
of reason, animality, and morality, incels position women on the negative pole of the
phallogocentric order that constitutes the image of the monstrous-feminine.
10 W. CHANG

Vilification of female sexuality

The construction of “femoids” as a monstrous-feminine, rather than simply monstrous, is
due to the centrality of sex and gender in their representation. Sex is undoubtedly
a prominent topic on /r/Braincels, where sexist slurs like “cunt” and “slut” are commonly
used; a more extreme example is “[n]asty foid whore.” Discussions on the subreddit are
saturated with the belief that men possess “the right of sexual access to women’s bodies”
that necessarily precludes women’s refusal (Pateman 1989, 13). Women’s autonomy,
when exercised in the form of sexual rejection, is viewed as a blasphemous, castrating
affront to their identity as “men.”
Users trivialise sexual violence by claiming that women actually want it, often using
“rape fantasies” as evidence of female sexual passivity and perversion, thus justifying
sexual violence against women. One user proclaims, in an enlarged and bolded font,
“WOMEN WERE NEVER RESPONSIBLE FOR SELECTING IN HUMAN BEINGS. MEN TOOK
WHAT THEY WANTED. THIS IS WHY WOMEN GET OFF TO RAPE AND HAVE RAPE
FANTASIES.” Absolutist language is employed to aggressively assert that women inher­
ently enjoy rape, leaving little room for disagreement. While much can be said regarding
the prevalence of “rape kinks,” the discussion on /r/Braincels is not intended to provoke
meaningful commentary on, for example, the sexualisation of violence and the easy
accessibility to increasingly violent pornography (see Andrea Dworkin 1981; David
A. Makin and Amber L. Morczek 2015), but to deride female sexuality as inherently deviant
and claim its oppression as natural.
Women’s sexuality is represented paradoxically as both passive and active. On the one
hand, women’s only role is to “lie down, spread their legs [and] let chad6 pump his cum” as
they are “passive breeding mashines [sic].” Conversely, as the comment below suggests,
women do have the capacity for active choice:

Women are not complex in their mating behavior they want the best genes they can find and
[environment] to raise the baby in (looks and money). However men who meet both thresh­
olds are rare so they must compromise. They can choose the best available long term partner
and rely on infidelity to obtain the best genes or a man who is [. . .] the best available
compromise. Its just that femoids have a retarded dual mating strategy while men do not.

This comment, vilifying women as selfish exploiters of men, demonstrates the disdain the
user feels for women’s “choices.” Dehumanisation is evident in the use of the phrases
“mating behavior” and “mating strategy,” which are reminiscent of scientific language
describing animals’ sexual behaviour, surreptitiously assigning women the status of
animality. Such language also presents the user as rational and logical, in opposition to
the hysterical, animalistic “femoids.” Their sexuality is diminished to essentialist categories
and their sexual choices are constructed as “retarded,” immoral, and animalistic.
Furthermore, if abjection is understood as the disturbance of boundaries and conven­
tional codes of identity and morality (Kristeva 1982), then the assertion made by a user
that women have “sexual relations with dogs on a fairly regular basis” can be viewed as
the pinnacle of abjection. The prevalence of this view is demonstrated by what is dubbed
“the dogpill,” a neologism suggesting that, as the title of a thread on /r/Braincels declares,
“Femoids would rather fuck dogs than incels.” Here, the positioning of women in close
proximity to animals is made explicit. Bestiality, an imbrication of human and animal, is
abject because it disturbs the established borders of religion, morality, and law that
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 11

demarcate the human world of culture from “the threatening world of animals or animal­
ism” (Kristeva 1982, 13). The fragility of the boundaries between human and animal is
perversely extrapolated to inspire feelings of repugnance, allowing “femoids” and their
sexual rejection of incels to be easily associated with immorality, depravity, and
monstrousness.
There is also the recurring sentiment that, as one user proclaims, “[w]hite thots7 do
nothing but suck black cock.” Although users argued that people typically date within
their own race, the idea that white women prefer Black men remains salient across the
sample, based on the racist and fetishistic stereotype of Black men’s animalistic hyper­
sexual prowess (Collins 2000). This threatens a racist, patriarchal order whose survival
depends on a “compulsory white heterosexuality” (Deliovsky 2005): the notion that white
women’s bodies “ought to be regulated in service of [. . .] white men and to the higher
ideal of heteronormative white supremacy” (Deliovsky 2008, 54). Interracial sex is used as
proof of the degeneration of white women who have become sex-crazed “thots,” defiled
by their relationships with Black men and deviation from their role as obedient properties
of white men. Additionally, it works to vindicate their sense of victimhood as white men
whose rightful property—white women—is stolen by “racially undeserving” Black men
(Deliovsky 2008, 54).
The symbiotic relationship between misogyny and racism can also be observed in
a comment declaring:
I’m also sick of worthless parasites leeching off of my income. Why should fat ass BBWs who
got knocked up by the only black dude who would stick their dick in them be allowed to
support their children with any portion of my income?

This comment (emphasis added) is imbued with divisive “us-vs-them” rhetoric. The
words “parasites” and “leeching” conjure images of disease, contamination, and ver­
min that are mapped onto both women and racialised subjects. While standing for
“Big Beautiful Woman,” the term “BBW” is used pejoratively on the forum. The
reference to specifically a “black” man as “the only [. . .] dude” who would deign to
“stick their dick in [fat ass BBWs]” illustrates not only their undesirability, but also their
unworthiness of respect—even from Black men, who are similarly dehumanised on the
forum. Setting up a clear dichotomy of human and subhuman along the axes of race
and sex, the user produces a vivid imagery that presents himself as the superior white
male subject who is victimised by “worthless parasites” irresponsibly reproducing and
subsequently “leeching off of” his hard-earned income. Such associations have dan­
gerous implications as they construct their targets as subhuman monsters, influencing
the ease with which discrimination—and calls for eradication—can be justified (see
Jaki et al. 2019).

Fears of victimisation under a “gynocentric dictatorship”

The construction of women as monstrous “femoids” emboldens the male victimisation
narrative, which seems to strengthen in tandem with feminist advances (Messner 1998).
As Marwick and Caplan (2018) demonstrate, the idea of “misandry” becomes powerfully
persuasive when the push for gender equality is perceived as an attack on men’s social
status. The belief that women are secretly enslaving and controlling men is prevalent
12 W. CHANG

throughout the sample, captured by comments asserting that men are “victim[s] of
brainwashing” and “trained from birth to be slaves to female wordplay.”
These comments evince a postfeminist discourse of gender equality that constructs
advocacy for women’s rights as excessive and unnecessary (Messner 2016). The mon­
strous-feminine of the West who surreptitiously oppresses men is the reason why,
according to one user, “more men everyday are abandoning western women and dating
other [sic].” This comment reduces non-Western women to a static, monolithic “other”
that is readily available to Western (white) men. They are desirable because they exist in
the colonial imagination as dependent, infantile, and submissive, not yet “tainted” by the
agency that Western women possess (see Mohanty 1984). At the same time, Western
women are derided as unsuitable partners because of their agency, which is viewed as
excessive because it deviates from the paradigm of female subordination asserted by
patriarchy.
Fearmongering around feminist progress is exemplified by a user claiming that
Scandinavian men are “hit really hard by [. . .] female privilege,” and that Scandinavia is
“essentially a matriarchal gynocentric dictatorship” where things get “worse for men and
better for women every decade!” Dehumanisation arises again in his likening of
Scandinavia to primate bonobo “societies”:

In the matriarchal Bonobo societies which are considered highly promiscuous 60% of men
live and die sexless and are just used as labor and hunting slaves and get brutally bullied and
mutilated by the group of females and their chosen alpha males. [. . .] in media Bonobo
societies are presented as utopias and “empowered” females consider the fate of most men in
those societies as “fun.”

Recasting liberalism as a “gynocentric dictatorship” elicits fear and pushes the narrative
that feminist progress is threatening to democratic society, which has long been
advanced to exclude women from civil participation (Pateman 1989). Additionally, while
Scandinavian countries are known as the “leaders on gender equality,” studies show that
gender gaps persist and men continue to possess structural power over women (OECD
2018).
The comment situates incels as underdogs opposing the mainstream media, which is
regarded as corrupt for glorifying the brutal mutilation of men—never mind that, if
anything, it is the mutilation of women that is glorified in media such as film, television,
and pornography (see Martin Barron and Michael Kimmel 2000; Carolyn Bronstein 2008;
Edward Donnerstein and Daniel Linz 1986; Birgit Wolf 2013); perhaps the sentiment
expresses a subconscious fear that women will seek vengeance for the atrocities com­
mitted against them. The emotionally charged nature of these comments positions the
speaker as a harbinger of truth and justice and presents a convincing front that what they
are declaring is the “reality” the world is too afraid to admit.
The construction of “femoids” as manipulative monsters responsible for society’s
problems is reminiscent of the way the Jewish community was scapegoated and dehu­
manised to justify the rise of Nazism (see Peter Glick 2002, 2005). There is a notable
presence of antisemitic ideology on the forum, correlating with the trend in rising
antisemitism and right-wing populism across Europe and America (Jon Henley 2019).
Women are likened to Jews regarding the idea that they secretly control the world: “girls
are kinda like jews in a way. they pull the strings and then when problems arise for
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 13

peasants [. . .] they smirk and ask ‘whats wrong?’ to the peasant.” When a term like
“femoid” constructs a subhuman monstrous-feminine that is secretly “pull[ing] the
strings” and gleefully causing the degeneration of society, it can be utilised to justify
violence against them as necessary and emancipatory, rather than a profoundly normal­
ised act that has been protected—socially, legally, and culturally—over centuries.

Concluding remarks
Sociological literature on incels is relatively new as the phenomenon only emerged in
recent years. Existing research tends to focus on the unique nature of online misogyny
because of the internet’s role in expediting the spread of misogynistic discourses and
allowing for hate groups to converge across geographical boundaries. Such research is
valuable especially in light of the shift towards meme-based communication online where
misogyny can be easily masked as harmless “jokes” and consumed uncritically, resulting in
the normalisation of sexist rhetoric and, potentially, radicalisation (Marwick and Lewis
2017).
However, overemphasising the idiosyncratic nature of online interactions overlooks
how the ideologies informing their discourses are steeped in traditions that were estab­
lished long before the development of the internet. This paper traces the new language of
the incel community back to older misogynistic tropes. It argues that the misogyny
pervading /r/Braincels is not distinct from historical constructions of women as Other
and should not be dismissed as an isolated aberration; rather, it is a continuation of
woman-hating ideologies that have existed since ancient times. While the explicit mis­
ogyny of “femoid” may be shocking to the postfeminist sensibility of (ostensible) gender
equality, to treat it as an isolated incident normalises sexist structures that have shaped
contemporary culture and informed these points of view. This paper has attempted to
make visible how wider society is implicated in the emergence of the incel subculture.
This connection is necessary to confront the root of the issue, instead of exceptionalising
the incel community; otherwise, we risk normalising the very structures that enable their
ideology.
Through the conflation of women with “femoids,” women are understood as less
evolved, less intelligent, and less human than men—women are “femoids.” The repre­
sentations discussed in this article feed into the wider conceptual maps shared by incels,
and the term “femoid” becomes saturated with these ideas that are evoked whenever it is
used. A specific discourse, regardless of whether it reflects an “objective” reality or not, is
produced through the construction of “femoids” as monstrous. Through the productive
powers of discourse, these representations form a type of “knowledge” that both creates
and relies upon the existence of a monstrous-feminine. They are all the more convincing
because they are based on discourses normalised by historical and institutionalised
misogyny. The invisibility of normalised discourses is particularly dangerous because
they become part of the power structures that tacitly oppress groups in ways that are
difficult to identify.
The term “femoid” and its surrounding discussions on Reddit dehumanise women and
create the existence of an abject subhuman enemy. Users reiterate deep-seated fears of
female bodily and sexual autonomy by vilifying women’s sexual choices and insisting that
women are “passive breeding mashines.” Moves towards gender equality are likened to
14 W. CHANG

a “dictatorship.” Women are transformed into monstrous “femoids” in the incel imagina­
tion, while incels position themselves as victims of these monsters. This purported
victimhood is weaponised to impede on feminist progress, a tactic repeatedly deployed
throughout history to push back against feminism and reinstate male hegemony
(Marwick and Caplan 2018; Messner 1998). There is hardly an epistemic break between
pre-internet misogyny and the misogyny expressed online by these incels; the former
paved the way for the latter.
The view that incels are all white men shadows the presence of non-white incels on the
forum and overlooks the horizontal bonds formed between these men. Investigating the
participation of non-white men on /r/Braincels raises interesting questions about how
misappropriated antiracist rhetoric can in fact be mobilised to uphold a white male
supremacist order. This is not to disregard the vicious racism within the community—or
the synergistic qualities of white and male supremacy—but to investigate how “progres­
sive” language can be taken out of context to justify bigotry.
Understanding the complexities of incel discourses is valuable to understanding their
relationship to broader discourses. Despite their efforts to present themselves as counter­
cultural, the forum’s discourses are in fact enabled by mainstream narratives: the “mad­
woman” stereotype (Gilbert and Gubar 2000), the frequent appearance of themes
surrounding female anatomy in horror films (Creed 1993), the recasting of feminism as
tyrannical (Messner 2016), and mass media’s sensationalist eroticisation of violence
against women (Wolf 2013). These provide the foundation for their construction of
women as monstrous “femoids” deserving of violence which, as seen in the form of
men like Elliot Rodger and Alek Minassian, can have devastating real-life consequences.
Further, women’s inclusion in the political and public spheres is still limited: it remains
contingent on their female embodiment, which continues to be othered. As we witness
the alarming rise in the “authoritarian sexism” of global Trumpism that is fervently
attacking women’s rights from the top down (Beinart 2019), representations of women
as “femoids” on /r/Braincels can only be viewed as symptoms of, not anomalous to, the
deeply misogynistic society we live in.

Notes
1. Available at https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1173808/elliot-rodger-manifesto.
pdf
2. Available at https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/100000002900707/youtube-video-retribution.
html
3. As of July 2020, Reddit ranks as the sixth top site in both the UK and the USA, and 18th
globally (information retrieved from https://www.alexa.com/topsites)
4. https://incels.wiki/w/Heightpill
5. The movement was founded by social activist Tarana Burke in 2006 to help sexual abuse
victims vocalise their experiences. Its most recent iteration was catalysed by the infamous
Harvey Weinstein scandal, which sparked a global conversation about sexual harassment and
assault (Sandra E. Garcia 2017) calling for the reclamation of women’s bodily autonomy (Karla
Adam and William Booth 2018).
6. /r/Braincels defines Chad as “A very attractive man (typically white). A rating of 8/10 to 10/10,
and over [6ʹ0”], with a nice facial structure, and a full head of hair.”
 FEMINIST MEDIA STUDIES 15

7. “Thot” is an acronym for “That Hoe Over There.” While it is arguably humorous, it is synon­
ymous with other misogynist pejoratives such as “whore” and “slut.”

Disclosure statement
No financial interest or benefit has arisen from the direct applications of this piece of research.

Notes on contributor
Winnie Chang is a graduate from University of Bristol with a BSc (Hons) in Sociology. The focus of her
education has primarily included gender, cultural representation, ethnicity, and race. This paper was
modified from her final year dissertation, an independent research project conducted on the
representation of women by the incel community of Reddit. E-mail: w.chang0823@gmail.com

ORCID
Winnie Chang http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8031-7555

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