Mihaela Popa-Wyatt

Incels (involuntary celibates) are an online community united by a shared inability to form intimate relationships. This study is the first to focus solely on incels’ self-referential uses of ‘subhuman’. Compiling the first dedicated corpus of ‘subhuman’ incel posts, the Subhuman Corpus, we use move analysis to explore how forum users employ derogatory self-referential uses of ‘subhuman’ to perform incel identities. Two moves are typical of the corpus: Referencing Women and Describing Appearance/Genetics , reflecting the community’s fixation on romantic rejection by women and its belief in genetic determinism. Among the atypical moves, expressions of users’ troubled psychological states emerge as grounds for further study. We conclude that the ‘subhuman’ identity is upheld through labelling, the hierarchical categorization of social groups, and an emphasis on incel victimhood. Moreover, in applying ‘subhuman’ to both the in-group (incels) and an out-group (women), incels treat physical, social and moral attributes as criteria of ‘subhumanity’. Finally, we evaluate the efficacy and suitability of an automated move-coding tool in novel application of move analysis to an incel forum. Automation presented practical and conceptual challenges, notably, a partial shift in focus from linguistic function to lexical form: some moves lend themselves readily to cue-based identification, while others require human analysis.

This volume offers a set of theoretical frameworks for understanding the relationship between oppressive speech and the social structures within which it

We admit concepts like ‘sexual harassment’ into our collective hermeneutical pool, yet hesitate to do the same with the incel notion of ‘blackpill’ or ‘monkeybranching.’ Why this disparity? Incels present themselves as marginalized, and their own efforts to create new conceptual tools as legitimate responses to such marginalization. At face value, such a standpoint aligns with anti-oppression epistemologies, according to which we should take conceptual contributions from marginalized groups seriously. This raises the question whether the ‘incel standpoint’ warrants consideration, and whether our reluctance to do so is driven by an a priori moral condemnation of their political agenda. One response is to simply reject that incels are meaningfully marginalized. This paper takes a different approach. We accept that incels suffer marginalization in some important respects, yet suggest that it is nevertheless possible to distinguish, in a non-arbitrary way, genuine attempts to overcome what Miranda Fricker calls hermeneutical injustice from conceptual innovations which merely reinforce dominant ideologies, or even constitute forms of self-deception. Thus, it is possible to accept the marginalization of incels yet have good reasons to be sceptical about their conceptual and interpretive innovations. We do so, first, by putting forward a novel understanding of what hermeneutical empowerment consists in; second, by offering three criteria to assess conceptual engineering efforts. The two proposals, combined, enable a more robust (i.e. less arbitrary and less moralized) way to assess conceptual innovations. This approach can, in principle, apply to cases beyond that of incels.

Cultural evolutionary models of bargaining can elucidate issues related to fairness and justice, and especially how fair and unfair conventions and norms might arise in human societies. One line of this research shows how the presence of social categories in such models creates inequitable equilibria that are not possible in models without social categories. This is taken to help explain why in human groups with social categories, inequity is the rule rather than the exception. But in previous models, it is typically assumed that these categories are rigid – in the sense that they cannot be altered, and easily observable – in the sense that all agents can identify each others’ category membership. In reality, social categories are not always so tidy. We introduce evolutionary models where the tags connected with social categories can be flexible, variable, or difficult to observe, i.e. where these tags can carry different amounts of information about group membership. We show how alterations to these tags can undermine the stability of unfair conventions. We argue that these results can inform projects intended to ameliorate inequity, especially projects that seek to alter the properties of tags by promoting experimentation, imitation, and play with identity markers.

One account of slurring utterances is that they function as a power grab in conversation (Popa-Wyatt and Wyatt in Philos Stud 175(11):2879-2906, 2018). The speaker assigns a powerless role to the target while taking on a dominant role. This establishes a power imbalance in the conversation. However, this power asymmetry creates further conversational effects that differ across the participants. For example, the target is humiliated, while the speaker is not; the speaker’s status is elevated while that of the target is diminished. This is the foundation of an act of humiliation . A robust dialogical theory should be able to capture these divergent effects. In this paper, we propose to model this power asymmetry using an existing formal model of dialogue KoS (in: Ginzburg The interactive stance: meaning for conversation. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012). Core to KoS is the idea that conversations and interactions are modelled in terms of individual but coupled cognitive states. This framework enables us to model how slurring utterances have differential effects across the speaker and target by capturing these variations through participant-sensitive update rules. We develop a formal account which relates the perceived emotional signals (‘ Mood ’) and power relations evolving or already operative in society. However, slurs do more than merely humiliate; they enact sustained oppression over time. To address this, we introduce the concept of oppressive history which draws on two interrelated processes: a cumulative history of slur usage and its emotionally charged impact.

This paper identifies a novel function of slurs—compensatory manhood acts (CMAs)—alongside their more widely recognised subordinating, weaponised, and insider/outsider functions. CMAs occur when men perceive their masculinity as being under threat and respond by engaging in hypermasculine behaviours, including the use of misogynistic and homophobic slurs. Drawing on sociological findings, we argue that in their compensatory function, slurs are effective tools to restore status, assert dominance, and maintain hegemonic masculinity. Using a conventionalist framework for speech acts, we argue that CMSAs are illocutionary acts in their own right, separate from but interwoven with other functions of slurs. We conclude by raising the theoretical question of how multiple illocutionary forces can coexist in a single utterance and suggest that illocutionary relativism may provide a fruitful approach to understanding these speech acts.

Incels (involuntary celibates) are part of a broader misogynistic culture known as the manosphere. Some communities within the manosphere, including incels, promote gender-based violence through misogynistic rhetoric and ideology. Incels are men who struggle to form romantic relationships and thus seek solace in online forums to find a sense of purpose and community. The community is organised around an ideology and a hierarchical classification of members. This paper presents a computational linguistic analysis of the utterances made within the community. We analyse the linguistic patterns of six different ranks of users: paragons, high-rank users, low-rank users, greycels, banned users, and self-banned/deleted users. We conducted an analysis of the sentiments expressed between ranks and of the affective attitude of posters when discussing a variety of topics. We then we analysed linguistic features, also conditioned on the rank of the poster. These analyses reveal qualitative differences between users of different ranks in how they express themselves and their sentiments. Finally, we trained models based on the linguistic features of users’ posts and show that already based on this information it is possible to predict the rank of users. Overall, our results indicate that the incel community has developed distinctive linguistic patterns to disseminate their ideology and that these linguistic patterns vary according to the rank of an incel within the community. This methodology offers a robust framework for studying similar echo chamber-like communities.