February 17, 2025
SINGAPORE – Feeling unlucky in love is a common human experience. Yet, for some men, multiple rejections and relationship woes spark a resentment so deep that they blame women and society at large.
These men are known as “incels”, short for involuntarily celibate.
While “incel” has evolved into an online insult aimed at those seen as sexually inept or misogynistic, its roots lie in niche internet communities with links to violent extremism.
A 2014 mass shooting in California – by a perpetrator who set out to “punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex” – killed six people and injured 14, bringing incels to mainstream attention in the United States.
Another attack in Plymouth, England, in 2021 – by a shooter who referenced incel content and the subculture’s nihilistic world view – killed six.
Most recently, sexist and abusive attacks on women, such as “your body, my choice” and “get back to the kitchen”, spiked across social media after US President Donald Trump’s re-election.
Within 24 hours of the conclusion of the 2024 US presidential election – during which manosphere content creators helped drive support from young men towards Mr Trump – the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue found a 4,600 per cent increase in mentions of sexist phrases such as “your body, my choice” on social media platform X.
That phrase subverts “my body, my choice”, which was widely used by women as a pro-choice rallying cry for reproductive rights.
One X post stating “Your body, my choice. Forever” by American far-right activist Nick Fuentes – who identifies as an incel – garnered more than 90 million views on the platform and was reposted over 35,000 times.
Dr Eviane Leidig, an associate fellow at the Netherlands-based International Centre for Counter-Terrorism, says there is a misconception that incel terrorism lacks a clear political agenda and is different from other forms of extremism.
“Incels do champion certain goals, such as ending women’s suffrage and abolishing laws on rape and sexual assault,” she says.
In 2023, Canada was the first country to designate incel terrorism as its own threat category, followed by Britain that same year.
Among researchers, there is growing recognition of the danger of extremism relating to male supremacist ideologies.
The rise of the manosphere is a global phenomenon. High-profile figures such as social media personality Andrew Tate, Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson and American podcaster Joe Rogan have gathered followings of millions by appealing to men who feel ignored or disenfranchised by mainstream culture.
Ms Yasmine Wong, an associate research fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s Centre of Excellence for National Security, says these online personalities capitalise on the fears of young men and boys – about their socioeconomic standing and the threat that women allegedly pose to “traditional masculinity” – to achieve virality.
While manosphere creators are primarily based elsewhere, Ms Wong notes the parallel developments in Singapore. Online communities here like Reddit forum r/SingaporeRaw and Hardwarezone Forum play host to similar rants that occur daily here in the manosphere.
The main laments in Singapore tend to be about how national service favours women while disadvantaging men, taking up their best years, as well as charges that Singapore women today are the “privileged gender”, thanks to the Women’s Charter.
Ms Wong says that while it is unclear whether these Singapore-based communities are equivalent in size and influence to the manosphere elsewhere, they still popularise misogynistic narratives by desensitising users to debasing women, while intertwining their contempt with internet humour.
A 2021 study by local gender equality non-profit Aware and technology firm Quilt.AI of online posts in Singapore found that 48 per cent of misogynistic posts on X – formerly known as Twitter – involved belittling and objectification, while 25 per cent involved “flipping the narrative”, where men present themselves as the real victims.
The study also found that female accounts on X receive twice as many misogynistic comments as a random sample, and that bystanders inadvertently fuel the issue by liking or retweeting these comments more often than non-misogynistic ones.
“This means that misogynistic comments create an online ecosystem of hatred towards women and girls, who, as a result, feel degraded, objectified and unsafe,” notes Ms Sugidha Nithiananthan, Aware’s director of advocacy and research.
The incel world view
A self-described Singaporean incel, 28-year-old bank executive Zac (not his real name), sums up the incel world view as such: “It’s a sin to be born a man. Women have all the privileges and are delusional about it.”
He tells The Straits Times he realised he was an incel after joining Singapore’s “bleak” dating scene in 2022, to little success.
“Modern dating is rigged against straight men,” he says, adding that women themselves are not to be blamed. Instead, he targets “stupid feminism rights” and “women having the freedom to choose who they want to mate with”. He also claims that women value only appearance and are inherently manipulative.
Such sweeping beliefs are hallmarks of incel ideology. His views echo that of four other men who identify as incels and ex-incels interviewed by ST, all of whom requested anonymity as a condition for speaking up.
These are men in their 20s, some unemployed, others in professional positions, with education levels ranging from O levels to degree-holders. Most shared a dissatisfaction and resignation towards life, and see themselves as outcasts.
Most said they were initiated into this niche online culture through manosphere content produced outside Singapore on Reddit and YouTube.
For instance, Albert (not his real name), a 25-year-old who works in the education sector, says he identifies as an incel more because of his resignation towards his place in life, rather than the community’s hatred of women.
“My financial situation is involuntary, my looks are involuntary and societal expectations are also imposed upon me. I don’t think I have a choice in this,” he says.
“The common trait among incels is a sense of resignation that societal and economic constraints make it difficult or impossible to have a romantic relationship,” he says. “It can be quiet resignation or a sort of loud, angry and bigoted resignation.”
Sam (not his real name), 25 and currently unemployed, says the cornerstones of incel ideology resonated with him as someone who was bullied in school and had always felt like an outcast.
“If you see the people who have an incel-posting history, a lot of them are usually outcasted in some way,” says the polytechnic graduate.
But the community’s extremism and the growing toxicity convinced him to leave the community behind in 2019. “Having good online friends who cared for me even in my incel phase also helped me out of it,” he adds.
Who fits the bill
What makes an incel? According to Aware’s Ms Nithiananthan, incel ideology refers to the belief of some individuals – mainly heterosexual men – that they are entitled to sexual or romantic relationships, but are denied them by women because of the feminist movement.
Incel communities and ideas are part of the “manosphere”, a collection of websites, forums and other online spaces where misogynistic and anti-feminist views are prevalent, she adds.
Others who are in the manosphere include men’s rights activists, pick-up artists and the community of Men Going Their Own Way, which espouses male separatism and advocates for men to avoid being tied down by marriage and committed romantic relationships with women.
Ms Nithiananthan says incel and manosphere ideology promote contempt of women, normalise gender-based violence and create toxic social pressures tied to rigid notions of what it means to be a “real” man, which can lead to harmful mental health issues.
Jacob (not his real name), a 20-year-old polytechnic student, recalls first encountering incel content in secondary school. As a lonely teen, he was drawn in by a sense of belonging.
“I felt at home with them, I felt like I could actually be myself, like I don’t have to put on a filter around them,” he says, adding that the online vitriol towards “all women and more attractive men” soon wore him out.
He started distancing himself, but says he still sees similar rants in many of Singapore’s mainstream online communities, even among those who do not identify as incels. He notes that many incel narratives are distortions of “traditional conservative ideas”.
“A lot of men won’t identify as incels, but there’s a big population that would fit the definition,” he observes.
Dr Leidig says incels and other parts of the manosphere share a common anti-feminist and misogynist outlook that they describe as the result of having been “red pilled”.
The manosphere draws the term from the science-fiction film The Matrix (1999), in which its protagonist Neo takes the red pill and becomes awakened to the “truth”.
Incels take this analogy one step further and consider themselves “black pilled”, a nihilistic view that says they are biologically determined to fail in relationships with women because of traits they cannot change.
“Incels believe they are entitled to sexual and romantic relations with women, and that women are valued only for serving these needs. However, incels believe that due to their physical appearance and low social status, their fate is that they will never be successful with women,” says Dr Leidig.
Is that perception or reality? A 24-year-old research assistant, who wants to be known only as Sue and is active in Singapore’s dating scene, says encounters with such men by her and her peers have led her to believe that incel narratives may be a “convenient psychological defence”.
“These men are people who are upset because they can’t find a date. Psychologically, they’re trying to justify that ‘women are the problem’ rather than face the uncomfortable cognitive dissonance that they might be hard to date or love or like,” she says.
Crisis of masculinity
Experts interviewed by ST agree that the number of men who openly identify as incels globally may be small, but incel culture and narratives have a larger-than-life presence in the echo chambers of online spaces.
Research fellow Ms Wong says incel narratives use coded language and are characterised by their hatred and anger towards women, stemming from their own self-loathing.
These sentiments resonate with other men who harbour feelings of loneliness, insecurity and dissatisfaction. By linking these personal grievances to a general contempt for women, this sometimes escalates to violent extremism.
Dr Kenneth Tan, an assistant professor in psychology at Singapore Management University who studies singlehood and relationships, says social isolation and grievances play a role in how people become incels.
“One of the reasons people gravitate towards groups like incels is that they feel isolated and excluded, so they reach out to different communities for that sense of belonging to be fulfilled,” he says.
The incel world view leans heavily on “genetic determinism”, the idea that immutable traits like height and appearance doom certain men to romantic failure. This belief, he says, completes the cycle of self-loathing and hostility towards women.
Dr Tan notes that incels overestimate how much attention is paid to physical attraction, while neglecting other aspects that constitute a person. And in a bid to protect themselves from rejection, they isolate and deprive themselves of opportunities to disprove their world view. “This incel identity keeps them in the loop of thinking misogynistically,” he adds.
Former incel Jacob found a “sense of community” among other incels at first. But he began to realise over time how being part of the manosphere only deepened his biases and was a negative influence on his mental health.
“It got to the point where I was really depressed all the time. And I realised these views were pushing a lot of my depressive thoughts,” he says.
Simon (not his real name), a 23-year-old who identifies as a “men’s rights advocate” but not an incel, says the behaviour he sees in incel communities is not unlike that of eating disorder groups, where people cajole and bully one another into pursuing an unhealthy lifestyle.
In this case, he observes young men validating one another in skewed and unhealthy perceptions of women. For example, when one shares a negative overgeneralisation of women, others jump on the bandwagon with their own personal examples, dismissing the few who disagree.
Dr Leidig notes that, like other ideological extremist movements, individuals who radicalise towards misogynist violent extremism are driven by both personal and societal grievances.
She cites a growing recognition of a broader crisis of masculinity affecting boys and young men in their 20s and 30s, manifesting in higher suicide rates among younger men, and lower male enrolment and graduation rates at universities.
This allows popular manosphere figures, like British-American social media personality Andrew Tate, to exploit the feelings of young men who lack a sense of purpose and fulfilment.
“Unfortunately, this crisis of masculinity has become a crisis of misogyny,” she says.
Letting go of hate
Although social isolation and toxic masculinity form the core of the incel world view, letting go of this hatred is easier said than done.
A 2024 study by the United Kingdom’s Commission for Countering Extremism found that incels typically display extremely poor mental health and are more likely to be neurodivergent.
The study surveyed more than 500 incels in the US and UK, the largest such study to date, and found that incels had perceived high levels of victimhood, anger and misogyny. These respondents acknowledged a shared world view among incels, which includes identifying feminists as a primary enemy, while identifying the wider society and women as enemies.
“The answer to the incel phenomenon is more closely aligned to mental health support than counter-terrorism interventions,” says the commission.
“Relationships are about providing safety and security, rather than power dynamics,” says Dr Tan, who adds that incels and other parts of the manosphere see gender relations through the lens of power and manipulation.
Shedding this world view is a complex, multi-step endeavour.
“When you’re stuck in this mindset, you’re not getting a lot of social support from people,” Dr Tan adds.
NTU researcher Ms Wong says digital literacy alone is not enough to counter the draw of misogynistic narratives online, as online conversations can devolve into ideological echo chambers and prevent opportunities for healthy discussions.
“It is important for schools, parents and communities to engage boys and young men on issues through a gender-sensitive lens, addressing concerns over their mental health and socioeconomic futures in a way that is not premised on the demonisation of other identity groups,” she says.
Ms Nithiananthan notes that while Aware is still in the process of completing its study on harmful ideologies involving men, the organisation believes a lack of comprehensive sex education (CSE) is a likely contributing factor to misogynistic comments online.
CSE addressing consent, gender stereotypes and gender-based violence should be taught in an age-appropriate manner to young people, she adds.
Social media users should intervene when they witness harassment online, and tech companies should also have a duty of care to moderate user-generated content.
For Jacob, the way out of the negative spiral of misogynist thoughts came in the form of support from friends and a reassessment of his world view.
He says: “I had this friend who helped me open up on a lot of my issues. Something in me felt a bit more believed.
“The mind doesn’t know how tiring clinging to hate is until it lets go of it.”
- Teo Kai Xiang is a journalist at The Straits Times’ Life desk, covering emerging trends, unusual subcultures and lesser-known facets of life in Singapore.