Incels: The Minions of Christofascism Nicole Scott Free Inquiry

Culture wars are nothing new to our modern, interconnected societies, and perhaps they are simply a part of the human condition. These days, however, conflicts of culture and ideology are saturated with self-replicating ammunition—a deluge of uninformed opinions and disinformation—delivered through a supply line of infinite capacity: the internet. When these mythical ministrations are received by a frustrated and philosophically illiterate group of alienated young men, the combination of conspiracy theory, misinformation, and confirmation bias can be explosive.

Take the classic angry young man, feeling shut out of the hedonistic pleasures promised by torrents of advertising, achingly lonely and sexually stymied by his isolation. Now throw into the mix a powerful dose of confirmation bias, based on revered old texts and scriptures, telling him that all of this pent-up pain and want is the result of his being taken down several notches in the great pecking order in favor of the very thing he desires most. That’s a volatile combination and the perfect brew for creating soldiers for a culture war.

That is what we find when we peek behind the curtain of what is known as the “incel”1 movement, or the “involuntarily celibate.” Members of these online groups perpetuate the fallacy that they are owed status, sex, and influence, but they are thwarted by what they see as the unjustified and corrupt influence of feminism. They argue that their wants are the natural order of things and deem that the agency of women is at fault for their failure to secure sex and/or a romantic relationship. This self-reinforcing position emboldens these men to disregard the personhood of women as it appeals to their desire for a resurgence of an imagined “golden age” of gender roles.

Now, where on earth could they be getting such ideas?

The incel movement has much in common with other factually vacant ideologies such as Christofascism—an ideology that would force a dictatorial, ultraconservative Christianity at the center of public and private life—and white supremacism. Each of these antiquated social constructs utilizes the same patriarchal pedagogy with an unyielding deference to male authority as parallel to God.

To buttress these deluded and fallacious ideologies, these groups look to one of the most reliable playbooks of oppression in the world, the Bible.

There are a few stellar, standout chapters and verses that come to mind in what I like to call the Great Contradiction. Specifically, the book of Genesis provides two origin myths. Both myths were written by different ancient near-eastern Jewish communities. The first narrative can be found in Genesis 1:1–2:3, written between 571–481 BCE by scribes referred to as “P” or Priestly, an author group that had returned to Israel after the Babylonian exile. In their creation narrative, humans—male and female—were created simultaneously, both in the image of God.

The Yahwist scribes (or “J”), however, wrote their version of the creation story somewhere around 950 BCE; you know, that one about woman being made from man’s rib, her punishment of eternal sin, and the curse of pain in childbirth.

Can you guess which version appeals more to our misogynist trifecta of incels, Christofascists, and white supremacists?

The thread of ancient honor/shame systems continues to spool out, providing aggrieved extremists with the veneer of credibility. They appeal to the authority of the Bible and the gender systems and worldview it articulates.

As humanists, our values represent a worldview committed to human thriving, one that embraces critical thinking, empathy, and justice. We are unburdened by the theological underpinnings to which believers are beholden, and despite our lack of group adhesion to orthodoxy, many of our cherished values are universal, shared by believers and nonbelievers alike. I argue that humanists’ code is rooted in our commitment to human rights, one that is free from adherence to religious tenets and all their accompanying baggage, in which we engage in critical thought and philosophical pedagogy to discern and access moral actions.

Humanists have an opportunity for moral leadership. I challenge humanists to call out the “isms” that religion cultivates and exacerbates: sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, and the other forms of bigotry bolstered by old myths. These ideological knee-jerk reactions have been fostered by generations of believers justifying their sense of superiority with scripture. One need only look at the thinking of early church Fathers and their opinions on women. Aquinas comes to mind, and his Summa Theologica:

As regards the individual nature, woman is defective and misbegotten, for the active force in the male seed tends to the production of a perfect likeness in the masculine sex; while the production of woman comes from defect in the active force or from some material indisposition, or even from some external influence, such as that of a south wind, which is moist, as the Philosopher observes. (De Gener. Animal. iv, 2)2

Aquinas was not alone in this abysmal assessment. Tertullian, Augustine, and Jerome all espoused positions regarding female as inferior to male in the hierarchy of being. With this attitude as a foundation, it is no wonder that we live in a patriarchal society that provides the soil in which incels, sexual predators, and abusers can take root.

If patriarchy is the method, then incels are merely one more set of tools for the perpetuation of the myth of male supremacy; tools to carve out and control that which is female through the fixed assignment of roles.

We are not obliged to accept any of this. We can jettison this archaic way of thinking and structuring society, as we did with feudalism. No longer are we lords and vassals but, ostensibly anyway, equals under the law.

Secular humanists are perhaps best equipped to take the lead in this effort, but we do have one stumbling block, and that is the role that the virulent “men’s rights movement” plays in perpetuating religion’s sexist ideology and the dark irony that it has taken root among many atheists. One can find several examples of men’s rights activists who also identify as atheists; in fact, one such person’s participation within the secular movement deterred me from joining a local humanist group. My position is that if you reject the concept of a deity and live your life embracing reality, then you should also reject the dehumanizing ideologies that find their sustenance in religion. Continuing to place individuals within a hierarchy of value serves no purpose but to exclude and hoard power.

It is clear to me that part of our job as humanists is to deconstruct the artifices of the past, to amplify justice, equality, and freedom of thought. While we are by no means perfect, we are certainly ahead of the curve on this, and it is my ardent hope that we expand our moral leadership and promote these values more broadly to facilitate human thriving in a society under threat from worldviews that are long past their expiration dates. Clinging to these diseased ideologies slows our progress, tangling us in the phantom thread of a patriarchal past.

Man invented a woman to suit his needs. He disposed of her by identifying her with nature and then paraded his contemptuous domination of nature. But woman is not nature alone. She is the mermaid with her fish-tail dipped in the unconscious. Her creation will be to make articulate this obscure world which dominates man, which he denies being dominated by, but which asserts its dominance in destructive proofs of its presence, madness.—Anaïs Nin3

Notes

1. Kayla Preston, Michael Halpin, and Finlay Maguire, “The Black Pill: New Technology and the Male Supremacy of Involuntarily Celibate Men.” Men and Masculinities, vol. 24, no. 5, December 2021. Available online at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1097184X211017954.

2. Saint Thomas Aquinas, The “Summa Theologica” of St. Thomas Aquinas. London, UK: Burns, Oates & Washbourne, ltd., First Part, Question 92.

3. Anaïs Nin, The Diary of Anaïs Nin. New York, NY: Swallow Press; Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1966 [1980].

Culture wars are nothing new to our modern, interconnected societies, and perhaps they are simply a part of the human condition. These days, however, conflicts of culture and ideology are saturated with self-replicating ammunition—a deluge of uninformed opinions and disinformation—delivered through a supply line of infinite capacity: the internet. When these mythical ministrations are received …