We need to pay better attention to the ways people talk about incels

We are going to see more and more writing about incels as some continue to commit acts of violent misogyny. But how people write about them matters. (Shutterstock)

Men’s rights activists have been around since the mid-1970s when scholars began to study feminist ideas and politics. But over the past 50 years, this movement has shifted and many of these activists are migrating towards more extreme and misogynistic views — the most violent of which are incels.

Research on incels is growing, and in December of last year, New York University (NYU) released Incels: Inside the world of involuntary celibates. While the report includes a useful glossary of incel terms and ideology, worldview and theory, there are issues with it. And these issues are common across incel-related writing (and writing on other violent terrorists), making it an issue that people need to get a handle on.