Alek Minassian, a self-proclaimed incel, murdered 10 people and injured 15 in a horrific terrorist attack in Toronto last week. As soon as it came to light that Minnasian had committed this terrorist atrocity in the name of an ‘incel rebellion’, incels took to Reddit to explicitly condemn the attack. It was akin to the Muslim response to Islamist terror activity,’ #NotInMyName’ is what the incels were saying. They feared the backlash. ‘What a piece of shit’ said one user in regard to Minassian in a subreddit named ‘IncelsWithoutHate’, ‘Braincels does not support the Toronto attack’ proclaimed the admins of the incel subreddit Braincels, all while numerous incels pointed out that the violence of one individual should not be used to tar all incels. Incels are afraid. I am afraid, for I am incel.

But what is an incel? The term incel means ‘involuntarily celibate’, while the term ‘inceldom’ means to be in the state of involuntary celibacy. and those who self-identify as incels believe they are unable to obtain sex or romantic relationships without payment. The world first began to pay attention to incels when Elliot Rodgers published his racially charged, misogynistic and misandrist manifesto, before slaughtering six people and injuring another 14. Third-wave feminists on Facebook and Reddit described this as a misogynistic attack (despite the fact he killed more men than women), and screenshots of disgusting posts written by individual incels on Reddit in which rape, mass murder, and school shootings were promoted could be found plastered all over the internet.

Some anti-incels argue that they do not have a problem with men who cannot have sex or romantic relationships and who are depressed by this fact, but that they are instead angered by the things individual incels say and do – for example, their promotion of horrific violence against ‘Staceys’ (attractive women) and ‘Chads’ (attractive men), and the ‘incel ideology’ that apparently all incels subscribe to. But upon deeper analysis this appears to be untrue. Anti-incel activists are much like Islamophobes, the Islamophobes who claim to have a noble cause, one of opposing Islamic extremism, an aim most Muslims could, and would, get behind, but upon a deeper analysis, we find that many on the right who frame themselves as anti-Islamist are in fact anti-Muslim. The anti-incels are no different; they claim to have no problem with men who are unable to have sex, and this is, in fact, true. They have no problem per se with men unable to have sex or romance, but they do have a problem with men unable to have sex or romance who are depressed about it. Indeed, they claim that the feelings of depression that come with the inability to form romantic and sexual relationships is rooted in a problem of male entitlement – men believe that they are entitled to the bodies of women, and that women ‘owe’ them sex, and thus feel depressed when they do not receive their due. I myself have received this response when I’ve told friends of mine that I am unable to attract women, and that this depresses me (without using the word incel), and I’ve routinely been told in categorical terms that I’m upset because I believe I’m entitled to women, and that my depression is representative of internal misogyny. On Thursday, I read a tweet written by Christine Estima, in which she wrote that incels don’t exist, and that the reason we feel the way we do is because we ‘just prioritise…(our) fragile, narcissistic masculinity over women’s autonomy’. Her critique wasn’t of Minassian, the Toronto terrorist, or of what individual incels have said on the internet, but rather of the way incels feel in the first place. Our feelings, our depression, our despair, our bitterness isn’t natural – it’s proof of our misogyny and sexism. Similar tweets and posts have been made from left wing commentators all the way down to The Mountain Goats. When I was six, I cried because I had no friends, that wasn’t because I was an entitled, hateful individual who believed he was ‘owed’ friendship and put that before the other children’s autonomy and right not to be my friend, no, I cried because I wanted a friend, and for incels, it’s quite the same. They want to feel valued – that does not make us misogynists. The anti-incel problems aren’t with Elliot Rodgers, Alek Minassian, or individual incels on Reddit, it goes beyond that.

But is there any validity to the claim that incels are miserable because they are entitled misogynistic individuals who believe they are owed sex? In short – no. Numerous studies routinely find that romantic relationships are the key to human happiness and fulfilment, and finds that a lack of social relationships, both in quality and quantity, are bad for a person’s mental and physical health (this applies to all types of social relationships, and is not limited simply to sexual and romantic ones). Being happily married or in a committed relationship has been shown to have positive effect on our physical health. Being happily married or in a committed relationship has been shown to be positive effect on our physical and mental health, married people are less likely to commit suicide than single people, all while 60% of those with mental health problems feel that being in a romantic relationship helps them with their mental health problems. Romantic and social relationships are to mental health what healthy eating is to physical health, and it’s no wonder that couples’ relationships are now considered a public health concern. This may seem obvious, but when it comes to incels, society seems to forget this. Individuals in Reddit groups such as ‘incel tears’, and Facebook groups such as ‘Incel Hell’ gleefully tell incels that they have an unhealthy desire for sex and romance, while engaging in sexual and romantic relationships themselves, arguing that our desire for such relationships is based on male entitlement and misogyny. Romantic relationships are the only relationships where it’s considered socially acceptable to demand your partner not share this bond with anyone else (monogamy), where it’s natural to cohabit, where it’s normal to get out loans together, and mortgages together. Couples in our society are expected to work together on every problem, to tell each other all your innermost secrets, and even share bank accounts. The term ‘my other half’ is shown by the way each person acts in regard to romantic relationships to have real meaning beyond metaphor. All the evidence shows that the romantic relationship is the ultimate human relationship, and that humans have relied on for millions of years, that animals have relied on for billions. I say it again, it’s not about entitlement or misogyny, it’s about the fundamental desire to feel valued and wanted by a member of the opposite sex. With this in mind, it’s no surprise that single people report ‘higher levels of loneliness, depression, anxiety, (and) sexual dissatisfaction’. But for incels, it is not simply rejection or a short amount of time without sex, or romance – it is chronic. Single instances of rejection are painful enough, but even so, rejection can also be positive, it can strengthen our social awareness and mental health, but these are single instances of rejection, not chronic ones. Indeed, just as pain has an evolutionary purpose, it indicates we should not do thing x, if thing x brings us physical pain, and so it improves our physical awareness, the pain of rejection has a similar purpose. However, pain stops serving this purpose when there is no way of escaping the said danger. It does not serve this purpose for an animal in a factory farm, for example, because the pain is inescapable. The same can be said for incels, as the emotional pain of rejection is not singular but chronic. It is inescapable, and instead of breeding a single instance of upset, it breeds despair, depression, and social anxiety. Incels are not depressed because of toxic masculinity, entitlement, and misogyny, but because they desire fundamental human social relationships that the rest of the world seems to have, and they will never have.

Inceldom isn’t upsetting because incels lack sex. If it were, an incel could watch porn, pay for the time of a sex worker, or buy a Fleshlight, but it most certainly is not simply about sex. It’s about something more. As one incel in a Reddit forum put it: ‘Nothing is more indicative of people’s lack of empathy than their assumption that all incels want is a warm hole to put their dick in. If you seriously can’t grasp why the situation of an ‘incel’ would be so debilitating and crushing, you’ve never truly dealt with feeling like you’re unfuckable, undesirable, (and) unlovable’. Inceldom doesn’t simply hurt due to a lack of sex or romance – it is a broader point of the pain of social rejection. Humans are social animals, we need other people to be happy. The inability to find a mate is an indicator of social rejection, and this is extremely painful.

So, if the hatred and dislike of incels isn’t based upon the horrific things individual incels say, and the feelings incels have aren’t born from misogyny and entitlement, why are incels so hated? As a person of color from a working-class Muslim background, I see a great number of parallels between anti-incel hatred, classism, and Islamophobia, and through the rest of the article I intend to cite them. Ultimately, anti-incel hatred is based upon hatred of the other. Incels lack privilege, romance and sex are not an entitlement, they are a privilege, incels are socially rejected by society, they are the dregs, and so, just as Conservatives blame the poor for their poverty, and POC for their low academic attainment, anti-incels blame incels for their inceldom. There must be *some* reason why no woman wants this man. In response to this feeling, anti-incels have developed a caricature of incels, one designed to undermine our humanity and feelings. We are portrayed as a homogenous group. We are caricatured as neckbearded, overweight, unemployed 30-year olds in America with no qualifications and no future who hate women. This is not only classist, ableist and fatphobic, but it couldn’t be further from the truth. It is a clear attempt to undermine our humanity and feelings. It is akin to the stereotypes and caricatures promoted by racists, Islamophobia, and anti-Semites. ‘Do not feel bad for incels’ society is being told, ‘they are all violent, and misogynistic, and have nothing going for them – they bring it on themselves’. This caricature is created in order to prevent anyone pitying or feeling sorry for incels, and by Jove, it works.

Some will claim that I am overstating the importance of sex and relationships. I can almost hear readers of this article saying ‘I’m single but that doesn’t make me depressed’ – perhaps not. But the difference between being single but sex and relationships being obtainable to you and them being unobtainable is the difference between being able to walk but choosing to sit down and choosing to sit down because you can’t walk. I have never met anybody who desires sex and romance who is unable to obtain it, who is happy with this. We lack an ability you have. It’s the difference between being hungry and knowing there’s food around the corner, and being hungry and knowing there’s no food around the corner. Some will find these parallels offensive, but only because they don’t put mental health on a par with physical health. If mental health is as important as physical health, and if one of the greatest predictors of good mental health is being in a relationship, then the inability to form sexual and romantic relationships will inevitably hurt.

I first ‘came out’ as an ‘incel’ to one of my friends at university, and, in response, she sent me a whole host of screenshots of truly reprehensible things that members of the incel Reddit community had said. She was extremely confused. How could a friend of hers associate with a community in which so many members espoused such vitriol? ‘You shouldn’t willingly be associating yourself with such people just because you happen to have one thing in common with them’, she told me. Her argument was: ‘Don’t identify as what you are because a minority of the people who identify the same way, say and do bad things in the name of this identity’. I come from a Muslim family, I consider myself a member of the Muslim community, and, in the name of the religion of my ethno-religious cultural background terrorists have committed a great many atrocities. We on the left are disgusted by the idea that we should tar every Muslim with the same brush, that we should demand every Muslim apologise for the acts of a minority. We have assigned such behavior its own term, Islamophobia, so my question is: Why do we not apply the same nuance to the incel community? An ICM poll showed that 20% of British Muslims have some sympathy for the feelings and motives of the 7/7 bomber. This doesn’t mean they believe the attacks are justified, nor does it mean they believe the attacks are moral, it simply means that they understand why the attacks were committed, why the bombers felt the way they did, and perhaps how we can prevent them from happening again. In the same way I understand why a small minority of the incel community say what they do. This doesn’t mean I think that what they say is justified or moral, but that I understand that these are real people, that these are real men, real men with very real feelings, and that to mock them, judge them, and undermine them at every turn will get us nowhere. To mock, judge, and undermine every incel simply because of what a minority say and do is just as reprehensible as islamophobia. Incels aren’t a homogenous group. Incels aren’t all like Elliot Rodgers or Alek Minassian just like Muslims aren’t all like Jihadi John, and to tar all incels with the Rodgers brush will not just create more Elliot Rodger’s, it will cause more male disenfranchisement.

But why do a minority of incels say and do such horrific things? Incel extremism is similar to Islamic extremism and working class and BME crime. People of my race don’t disproportionately commit crime because of ‘toxic blackness’, people of my class don’t disproportionately commit crime because of ‘toxic working classness’, just as people of my religious background equally don’t commit terrorist atrocities because of a ‘deep, dark problem within British Muslim communities’ – they can all be explained through various external factors. Indeed, working class people don’t commit crime because they are inherently bad people, or because they are from an inherently bad culture, but because inequality breeds certain kinds of behaviour. The left recognise the importance of such contexts and factors in explaining the crimes of various other oppressed, underprivileged, and discriminated against, but somehow lose this nuance in regard to incels. Incels feel lonely, miserable, isolated, and depressed, and, when merged with other factors, this can lead to extremism. Every person of my race or my class aren’t criminals, just as every incel isn’t an extremist, but just as a great many factors explain racial and class crime, so do such factors explain incel extremism. Incels feel isolated, rejected, alone, lonely, and ‘left behind’ – all these things breed anger, bitterness, and sometimes, extremism.

Was it a surprise to the incel community that both Alek Minassian, the Toronto terrorist, and Elliot Rodgers were both autistic? No. Why? Because not only does autism compound the problem of romantic rejection, but it also compounds the problem of social isolation and rejection. Was it a surprise that both attackers were ethnic minorities, Minnasian, an Armenian, and Rodgers east Asian? No, because the incel community recognise that ethnic minority status compounds romantic and social rejection, with incels of my race identifying as ‘currycels’ in attempt to ‘reclaim’ their ‘oppression’. That isn’t to say that autistic people and POC are worse people, but that certain external factors can lead to autistic and BME incels becoming more susceptible to incel extremism because they are more socially isolated and rejected than the average incel.

So how do we prevent incel extremism? I have already cited the fact that social relationships are fundamental to human happiness, contentment, and mental health. These social relationships don’t necessarily have to be romantic however. Though, of course, a strong circle of good friends who care about you cannot always fill the social void of romance and sex, it can cure many of the negative impacts of loneliness. Incels are incredibly open about their feelings, and, out of all men, are probably the most open to discussing them, however, every time they do discuss them, they are accused of being entitled misogynists. This causes them to retreat into themselves, to retreat into reddit, and to become extremists. If we responded to our male friends who are miserable and insecure about being unattractive, not by undermining their feelings and telling them ‘relationships don’t matter’ and that their ‘fixation is unhealthy’ all while engaging in them constantly ourselves (showing we do believe them to be valuable), nor by telling them they are nasty entitled violent individuals, I believe that we can prevent incel extremism, and help male mental health in the process. Equally, from a young age, we should work to engage the socially excluded, ostracised, and isolated. This bitterness and anger can begin while in nursery, or reception – ‘why does everyone else have friends except me?’ I can hear the five-year-old future incel say to his mother. We should teach our children to spend time with the weird, boring child in their kindergarten class. Some will say ‘I don’t owe anyone my time, or my emotional energy, or kindness’ – this is a phrase we hear the online left say all the time. But this isn’t a case of ‘owing’ anyone anything, but rather one of being a decent human being, of being kind, and if, on the left we expect the rich to pay their taxes in the name of society, we should be willing to include others in the name of kindness and community. I’ve often found that when I’ve engaged with people I initially found boring or annoying out of a sense of common decency, that they are, below their lack of social skills, incredibly interesting and engaging people that I enjoy being friends with. Ultimately, I believe that going out of our way to socially include, and be kind to others, while also not undermining the feelings of incels, is a fundamental part of preventing incel extremism. Hate breeds hate, which breeds extremism, if instead, we respond to incels with love, extremism can be prevented.

The rest of what I will suggest to prevent incel extremism is something the left, I am very proud to say, are already calling for. We must support left of centre politicians such as Sanders, Corbyn, and whoever else will stand against neoliberalism, in support, not of socialism, but of a controlled, mixed, capitalist economy, eradicating homelessness, poverty, and gross inequality, while also giving people purpose in life beyond their natural desires. I first realised I would be chronically unattractive at 11 years old, and this was a notable thorn in my side for from year 6 all the way to my fourth year of secondary school, but, at the age of 15, I essentially exchanged my natural desires for material, artificial ones. I often say that the only thing that matters is love, but for someone like me, who will always lack love, beyond the love he receives from his mother at least, that means little. Many incels, a disproportionate amount in fact, identify as ‘NEET’ – ‘Not in Education, Employment, or Training’- this poverty, and low economic and educational status compounds their anger, and bitterness, and makes them, again, more susceptible to extremism. Just as the less well-off of us are more likely to become criminal, less well-off incels are more likely to be radicalized. Inequality exacerbates status anxiety and results in feelings of social dejection and failure. Thus, the election of Jeremy Corbyn will almost inevitably work to prevent incel extremism. Investment into adult education, into different forms of education for young people, investing in different types of intelligence, and skills, beyond that of the academic world, will give incels who academically perhaps aren’t very successful purpose beyond the social and romantic relationships they often lack. It will make their lives less depressing and meaningless, and more fulfilled.

I also call for a continuation of intersectional leftism. We must work to eradicate problems such as racism, classism, and ableism. It is problems such as these which compound the problem of inceldom, and the loneliness and rejection that leads to incel extremism. In tandem with this, I call for university mental health services to pay attention to incel mental health, perhaps creating support groups specifically for the problem of ‘inceldom’, before it leads to a terrorist atrocity in this country. I was very lucky to have a college welfare officer who was understanding and non-judgmental when I told her of my romantic and sexual failings, but, when I told a welfare officer of a different college, he responded by undermining every single one of my problems. This is not how we should be responding to the problems incels face, and I believe that a prevent strategy focused on helping incel mental health will be beneficial for everyone, both incels, and non incels. A part of this incel prevention strategy, which should not focus on blaming incels as the current Prevent strategy does, must involve academic work conducted by everyone from Jordan Peterson to Germaine Greer, coming together to help disenfranchised young men.

Finally, though controversial, I call for euthanasia clinics in this country for anyone, incel or not, who wishes to take their life in a painless, and safe environment. Inceldom is a chronic problem that can take over and break an individual, and I truly believe that some incels are beyond helping, and that, in the name of compassion, and to prevent them doing something horrific, we should provide them with a means of death.

In conclusion, I believe that we should approach incels with compassion, not hate, that we must invest in our economy, and country, by voting in support of a mixed interventionist social democracy advocated by those such as Jeremy Corbyn and Caroline Lucas, that we must invest in mental health services in the name of both male mental health and an ‘Incel Extremism Prevention Strategy’, and finally I call for assisted dying to help those incels who cannot be helped. If my learned experiences as an incel have taught me one thing, it’s how heart-wrenching and crippling this reality is. Incels need help, not hate.