Van attack puts spotlight on violent sentiment in ‘incel’ community

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TORONTO, ON. (NEWS 1130) – A message allegedly posted by the accused in Toronto’s deadly van attack is shedding light on a mostly male online community that experts say endorses violent rhetoric against women.

Police have said they are looking into a “cryptic” message posted on Alek Minassian‘s Facebook profile minutes before pedestrians were run down on a northern stretch of Yonge Street.

“The Incel Rebellion has already begun!” the post declared.

Debbie Ging, an associate professor at Dublin City University studying gender and social media, said the incels are part of a loose confederacy of male-dominated online subcultures known as the “manosphere,” which espouse a range of visions of modern masculinity, often defined in opposition to feminism.

Incels are characterized by their inability to find sexual partners, which is often intertwined with resentment towards women, whom they see as “genetically hard-wired gold diggers,” Ging said.

“Involuntary celibates… see themselves as men who are denied sex by women, so implicit in that claim is a sense of entitlement to sex that they feel they’re being denied,” she said.


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Ging adds the Facebook post used terminology common to incel forums, such as references “Chads” and “Stacys,” the respective male and female archetypes of the sexually active masses whom incels blame for their sexual rejection.

The post also praises Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old man who killed six people and then himself at the University of California in 2014, calling him a “Supreme Gentleman.”

The moniker is widely used to describe Rodger within the incel community, Ging said, where he is lauded as “kind of a hero” because he “acted on his ideology and took revenge.”

Judith Taylor, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, says the men within the so-called “manosphere” tend to be underemployed, uneducated, and unwilling to seek additional training.

“Men who don’t do well in education, and men who are suffering occupationally are the ones who are most susceptible to self-harm and harm of others. They’re the most likely to be forsaken by society,” she says.

She says Rodger fits a similar profile, as does Charleston church shooter Dylann Roof, and Quebec mosque shooter Alexandre Bissonnette.

“We have a lot of evidence about what happens to these young men and what they do, and we need to really get smarter about how to identify them more quickly… we can’t really just be silent bystanders anymore if we want to save lives.”

Minassian, 25, is charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder and 13 counts of attempted murder. Police said a 14th attempted murder charge would be laid following further investigation.

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