Incel

Incel is short for "involuntary celibate." The word was coined in the 1990s by a Canadian woman known publicly as Alana, who built a website for lonely people of any gender who struggled to form relationships. She has said she intended it as a supportive space. Over time the term was taken over by an online subculture of mostly heterosexual men marked by misogyny, entitlement to sex, and hostility toward women, sometimes tied to real-world violence. Researchers place incels within the broader "manosphere." The organized movement is predominantly straight and male, so the term rarely describes LGBTQ+ life. Loneliness and isolation are real across all communities, but the incel movement itself is a distinct, documented extremist phenomenon.