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Femcel Discussions of Sex, Frustration, Power, and Revenge

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Abstract

Although male incels have received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent years, there has been almost no research on femcels (involuntarily celibate women). After collecting data from more than 24,000 femcel posts, we drew from a recently developed sexual frustration theory and conducted qualitative analyses of approximately 1200. Overall, our findings suggest that (1) femcels struggled with multiple types of sexual frustration; (2) they frequently discussed the gender dynamics of both sex and power; (3) they were more interested in their own frustrations than men’s frustrations; and (4) despite some notable exceptions, they exhibited less support for aggression, violence, and crime than what has been reported about male incels. Although some femcels referenced their anger, hatred, or desires for revenge, this antipathy may have been rooted in their concerns about how to find a suitable intimate partner while avoiding the threat women often face from violent men. Despite this challenge, most femcels who wanted to enhance their situation or increase their power sought to do so through legal means (e.g., self-improvement, group mobilization, or challenging the patriarchy) and did not express violent intent. Further research on femcels, and the evidence-based strategies that could help them, would be a significant contribution to society.

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Data Availability

Anonymized data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Notes

  1. Although the 2014 Isla Vista shooter is often associated with incel violence, he was not a regular participant in online incel communities like some other incel attackers.

  2. At the moment we write this, ThePinkPill.co website is not available for user posts and has the following message on its home page: “ThePinkPill.co will be right back.”

  3. ThePinkPill.co had roughly 600 registered members, despite there being millions of sexually inactive women in the USA.

  4. Recent studies of male incels have similarly found high levels of depression, anxiety, and loneliness, and low levels of life satisfaction (Costello et al., 2022).

  5. We are not implying that femcels’ posts on any subject should be equally balanced in their focus on women vs. men, or that femcels should be expected to post about men’s sexual frustration at all. It seems unlikely that in other forums, male incels give much consideration to women’s sexual frustration.

  6. Researchers suggest that ethical research of publicly available online communications should consider individual privacy rights, but informed consent is not required (Langer & Beckman, 2005; Sugiura et al., 2017).

  7. Lookism is also discussed as a concern by male incels, some of whom attempt to improve their appearance in order to find sexual partners (Daly & Reed, 2022).

  8. Definitions of misogyny and misandry vary, but one definition is a gender-based prejudice. This does not necessarily mean that people with those prejudices hate all people of that gender (including their family members and desired partners). People who harbor general prejudices sometimes make exceptions for individuals.

  9. We recognize that each of these references would need to be closely analyzed to be certain whether they show misandry.

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  1. Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, The University of Alabama, P.O. Box 870320, Tuscaloosa, AL, 35487, USA

    Hannah Rae Evans & Adam Lankford

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  1. Hannah Rae Evans
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Correspondence to Adam Lankford.

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Evans, H.R., Lankford, A. Femcel Discussions of Sex, Frustration, Power, and Revenge. Arch Sex Behav 53, 917–930 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-023-02796-z

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