“I Don’t Hate All Women, Just Those Stuck-Up Bitches”: How Incels and Mainstream Pornography Speak the Same Extreme Language of Misogyny
AUTHOR(S)
PUBLISHED
2021 in Violence Against Women
KEY FINDINGS
- This study analyzed the language used by incels on incel-related forums, and found that the language is strikingly parallel to themes found in mainstream pornography.
ABSTRACT
This article seeks to establish the connection—via shared discourse—between Incels and mainstream pornography. With an interdisciplinary approach which involves a Corpus Linguistics analysis of Reddit forum data, research into digital behaviors, and a feminist critique, this article focuses on the commonalities between the language of pornography and that of Incels. In doing so, it demonstrates how both pornography and Incels are different manifestations of the same misogyny. The findings of this study highlight the... READ FULL ABSTRACT
EXCERPTS
- "In pornography, women are also reduced to bodies to be accessed and consumed, feminine performances, rather than people and, while in pornography women’s refusals are made invisible because of the illusion of fiction, all these practices share the aim to silence women and put them 'in their place,' one where they always say 'yes.' Clearly, these practices share a misogynistic ideology which sees women as human givers."
- "The men that Incels perceive as being Chads and the women that have sex with them resemble, in many ways, the men and women in pornography. For example, Incels’ linguistic abuse of women through sexual degradation betrays hyperbolic views about their sexuality that are also common in gonzo pornography, like the obsession with women’s 'promiscuity' or the idea that women 'beg for sex.'”
- "Pornography is not harmless; its harm exists and resides, partly, in its insidious ability to infiltrate (while being infiltrated by) mainstream culture. This article has sought to make its misogynistic nature visible by focusing on its similarities with discourses which are socially recognized as harmful."
