Online anti-feminism within the Incel community and ideology - Feminist ethnographic and feminist content analysis of Incels’ manifestation of online anti-feminism, masculinity structures and aggrieved entitlement on r/Braincels

Abstract: This thesis is a critical, feminist ethnographic research of one of the most extremist and violent movements that originated from the growing online anti-feminist ideology. Based on a feminist poststructuralist epistemological tradition, this thesis researches the growing Incel movement through feminist cyber-ethnography, netnography and feminist content analysis. The analysis bases on a dataset of 980 threads and comments from Reddit's former subreddit r/Braincels granted by Analyse & Tal. The Manosphere is an umbrella term for separatist men's groups online, which has become more radicalised, violent, and extremist since they moved from offline forums to online social media and blogs. Within the Manosphere is a community of men who self-identify as Involuntary Celibate or Incels. Incels is the most extremist group of the Manosphere and is associated with misogyny, extreme hatred and violent fantasies towards women, and several terror attacks. Incels is a product of the growing online anti-feminism, which merges hatred towards feminism, the feminist, and the woman. Furthermore, Incels are a product of a masculinity crisis, resulting from online anti-feminist views, where the man has to reconstruct his place in society from a conservative, normative, and patriarchal structure of masculinity. The masculinity crisis reproduces an ideology of men's place in society to be eliminated by feminists and women, resulting in misogyny and aggrieved entitlement, which for Incels constitutes in their entitlement towards women's bodies. This thesis' analysis presents findings that answer the research questions of how the Incel community and ideology manifests within online anti-feminism and how they express hegemonic and hybrid masculinity and aggrieved entitlement towards women's bodies. The analytical findings present that the Incel community exists as a product of online anti- feminism, as Incels merges their hate towards both the feminist, feminism, and the woman. Furthermore, it presents that Incels has created a hierarchy of attractiveness based on hegemonic and hybrid masculinity, reproducing conservative, patriarchal, and masculinist views on a "real" man. The thesis also presents how Incels, as a result of online anti-feminism and the masculinity crisis, has developed an aggrieved entitlement towards women's bodies despite extremist misogynistic views. The thesis aims to give a new and broader perspective on the growing online anti-feminism by looking at the most extremist movement within the Manosphere; Incels.