Involuntary celibates (hereafter “incels”) are an online community of men who define themselves by their inability to access sex with women. Incels blame their inability to form sexual relationships on their perceived genetic inferiority, evolutionary traits in female mate selection, and oppressive societal structures. Their online ecosystem contains violent misogynistic content, much of which is presented and discussed through this ideological lens. In addition to encouraging violence against women, vocal members of many incel communities endorse white supremacy, suicidal ideation, and attacks against members of the public. Mass casualty events are regularly celebrated by incels online, and the perpetrators are adopted into a canon of incel “heroes” if they are deemed to be motivated by incel ideology.

While there is a growing body of research on online incel communities, to date there has not been a systematic, multi- platform study of how they communicate. There is also a lack of knowledge about how to identify and assess incel risk factors, and on conducting enhanced interventions to disengage vulnerable individuals from violent incel beliefs.

This report is intended to improve understanding of the incel community and the scale of the community’s online activity in Canada. We describe the known demographics and size of the at-risk community on several major platforms, map best practices from fields related to the vulnerabilities identified within the incel ecosystem, and present evidence-based recommendations to identify risk and respond to incel-related violence.

You can download the French version of the report here.