PhD student Kayla Preston recently published an article titled "The Black Pill: New Technology and the Male Supremacy of Involuntary Celibate Men" in the journal of Men and Masculinities. This article examines the arguments that heterosexual incel men make regarding their attempts in finding a partner. Kayla and her co-authors collected data by qualitatively analyzing 9,062 comments on a popular incel online forum. They found that incels believed that emerging technologies, such as social media and dating apps, exacerbated their experiences of incelibacy.
Kayla is currently a PhD student in Sociology at the University of Toronto and a Junior Affiliate with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society. Her areas of research interest include extremism, (de)radicalization, gender, political sociology and race.
We have included the abstract of the article below. You can also read the full article on Sage.
Preston, Kayla, Michael Halpin, and Finlay Maguire. 2021. "The Black Pill: New Technology and the Male Supremacy of Involuntary Celibate Men." Men and Masculinities.
Abstract
"Involuntary celibates, or “incels,” are people who identify themselves by their inability to establish sexual partnerships. In this article, we use analytic abduction to qualitatively analyze 9,062 comments on a popular incel forum for heterosexual men that is characterized by extensive misogyny. Incels argue that emerging technologies reveal and compound the gender practices that produce involuntarily celibate men. First, incels argue that women’s use of dating apps accelerates hypergamy. Second, incels suggest that highly desirable men use dating apps to partner with multiple women. Third, incels assert that subordinate men inflate women’s egos and their “sexual marketplace value” through social media platforms. We argue that incels’ focus on technology reinforces essentialist views on gender, buttresses male domination, dehumanizes women, and minimizes incels’ own misogyny. We discuss findings in relation to theories of masculinity and social scientific research on the impacts of emerging technology."