Researcher warns of ‘extremely frightening’ exchanges on an incel forum

A doctoral student at the University of Quebec in Montreal (UQAM) has sounded the alarm about the demonization of women that has taken place on incel discussion threads, after analyzing exchanges on a male chauvinist virtual forum.

Violence against women has been shifting online for many years, where the genesis of certain crimes against them sometimes comes to life. This digital hatred is the theme of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, which will take place on Tuesday.

Océane Corbin, a doctoral student in communication at UQAM, knows something about this. She spent nearly three years immersed in the main forum for incels, or “involuntary celibates,” which is freely accessible.

Incels are “almost exclusively heterosexual men who would like to be in a relationship with women but are unable to do so for a variety of reasons,” she summarized in an interview with The Canadian Press.

“They blame women, and more specifically women’s emancipation, for their single status,” she explained.

Often composed of men between the ages of 13 and 30, this masculinist movement sometimes goes so far as to want to “commit violence and punish women because they are emancipated.”

Corbin recounted witnessing “extremely frightening things” during her immersion in this international forum, ranging from the sharing of lists of drugs that can be used to weaken people before abusing them to confessions of sexual assault.

She also noted that confessions of rape fantasies are extremely common in these discussion threads.

“About every 30 minutes, there is a message posted confessing a desire to commit sexual assault,” she testified.

Quebec is no exception to this trend, which emerged in the 2010s.

“There are other Quebec forums where you will find masculinist discourse and discourse that can be likened to the incel movement,” Corbin pointed out.

Above all, it is very difficult to regulate such discussion threads, the doctoral student said, since these forums are often based in the United States and difficult to control.

“There is currently a major legislative gap in Quebec and around the world with regard to these types of platforms,” said the researcher, who sometimes had nowhere to turn when she wanted to report comments made on the forum.

However, she mentioned that a bill on online sexual assault threats is currently being drafted in Quebec.

According to her, education remains the key to curbing the incel movement, which often recruits in early adolescence, when boys experience their first romantic rejections.

Corbin believes that young men need to be taught to deconstruct the arguments put forward by members of this community in advance.

–This report by La Presse Canadienne was translated by CityNews