Talk:Incel/Archive 6

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Black pill

"The term black pill was first popularized on the blog Omega Virgin Revolt, where the term commended despondency in order to distinguish incels from the pickup artist communities." This is just completely wrong, look at the blog for yourself, and it will tell you what the black pill label is, the usage of the black pill on the site is completely different to the current usage of the term. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.187.166.58 (talk) 10:16, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

That sentence is supported by a reliable source: [1]. Do you have a different reliable source saying otherwise? "Looking at the blog for myself" would be original research; we need to base the article on what is represented in reliable, independent sources. GorillaWarfare (talk) 15:28, 5 August 2019 (UTC)

2019 Dayton Shooting

Would this one count in the Mass Murders and Violence? According to the current note 26, "The FBI investigation is ongoing, but an official has said that the shooter was associated with incel groups of misogynists deeply suspicious and disparaging of women." [2]

However, the actual article's paragraph suggests it's not necessarily incel.

"Earlier, a federal law enforcement official said that the F.B.I. was looking at whether the Dayton gunman was associated with so-called incel groups. Incels, short for involuntary celibates, are misogynists who are deeply suspicious and disparaging of women, whom they blame for denying them what they see as their right to sexual intercourse. The F.B.I. views incels as a growing threat. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, stressed that the motive for the Dayton shooting remains unknown." 

Maybe just a note that the F.B.I. views incels as a growing threat Thebetoof (talk) 08:33, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, it's definitely WP:TOOSOON to tie this mass murder to incel terrorism. Give it a few weeks and that might change. Simonm223 (talk) 17:54, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Agreed. If it is determined that the perpetrator was involved with incel groups, then it make sense to add it, but I imagine the FBI is looking into a lot of possible connections that will later turn out to not exist. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:40, 8 August 2019 (UTC)

Picture

A picture would go really well at the top. No clue how to do so inoffensively. Red Slash 16:46, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• It's difficult to imagine what picture would 1) add encyclopedic value, 2) be published under a free license, and 3) not run afoul of personality rights protections. GMG^talk 16:54, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

• Well, there's File:Incel flag.svg, but it doesn't currently seem to be "at thing". Just something someone came up with online one day. If it ever gets picked up in RS as "a thing", then we can use it. Otherwise we fail criteria #1. GMG^talk 17:05, 26 July 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure what picture could be used here. I remember in the past someone tried to add a photo of Elliot Rodger, but as a non-free image it was deleted. I also think just selecting a photo of one of the incel murderers is a bit of an arbitrary choice, even if licensing is compatible. As for the "incel flag", it seems to be something someone just made up, so agreed with GMG that it should not be used unless sourcing supports it as legitimate. Not all articles need images, and I don't think we should go reaching for a minimally illustrative image. GorillaWarfare (talk) 16:44, 28 July 2019 (UTC)

Maybe a photo of Joseph Merrick would be a good and license-compatible example of someone suffering from involuntary celibacy? 2A02:8108:7C0:66F8:F56A:1376:B718:9363 (talk) 22:09, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

I feel like that would be pretty demonizing to the topic, so no. Merrick was atypical and is not the type of person this article describes.--Jorm (talk) 23:08, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

To add to Jorm's point, he also predated the Internet by about 100 years, so he probably was not a member of this particular online group. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:17, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Incel should be treated as ongoing news affair instead of as scientific object

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Isn’t there anything better for citation supporting a definition of incels as an “online subculture” than Vox, HuffPo and Guardian? Subculture itself is a term with definite meaning given in everyday usage by Merriam-Webster and in a technical sense by The Dictionary of Sociology (Oxford), and I’m not sure academe has agreed this phenomenon represents a group within the larger North American English-speaking culture who recognize one another by customs, beliefs, appearance, dress or lifestyle as the hippies did. We speak of blacks, gays and gun owners as such because they associate with one another in person, having also set up lobbies, NAACP, Lambda Legal or the NRA, to defend their interests. Here we have little more than a web site for men who harbor anger consequent failure in the mate market.

A culture cannot be created entirely online. Take the F-150 Mafia, an Internet community that extols the virtues of Ford trucks and includes a body of argument that Fords are superior to alternatives and Ford owners smarter than those who drive Dodges or GMCs. Is this a subculture? We’ve no evidence F-150 Mafia members club together in preference to maintaining relationships outside the group, a thing we saw with the hippies. Nor have we reason to think the incels are organized in any way. No named founders, no proof that Alana’s 1997 peer support site, later followed by Love-shy.com, the Reddit /r’s and Incel.co involve the same people acting over time.

This isn’t about secondary versus primary sources or “reliable and published,” issues covered elsewhere in the talk pages. Authority depends on expertise in the subject matter at hand. Zack Beauchamp isn’t qualified to discuss sociology, demographic trends and political doctrines, nor Amelia Tait to instruct us on mental illness in populations of sexually frustrated men; they wield competence as journalists only for anecdotes and media reaction to these men’s online chit-chat.

I’m not disputing the notability of a sequence of public murders committed by individuals who’d posted expressions of resentment toward higher-achieving men and misogyny toward women on social media beforehand, which deserves mention in Wikipedia. Yet the article purports to supply a scientific analysis which, to the best of my knowledge, remains forthcoming. All its sources are newspapers and magazines, many of them op-eds, save for Rachel Janik at SPLC, an outfit earning its money fundraising and suing hate shops. The article lacks sufficient citation support for its ontological claim, that incel is a coherent identity, linked to the alt-right and enrolling a largely white, mentally ill population of males who cannot find partners.

Until the studies are done, I suggest the article be restructured to present incel as an ongoing current affair rather than as a culture. The difference matters in an encyclopedia.Jessegalebaker (talk) 18:59, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

If you think cultures and subcultures don't exist online I'd suggest you need to go back and read some sociology texts on the issue of subcultures from after 1999. Simonm223 (talk) 19:01, 7 August 2019 (UTC)

Members of subcultures use the Internet and all three examples I listed above have an extensive Web presence. But no, customers patronizing a handful of websites do not make a subculture. According to Jon Witt (Soc 2009, McGraw-Hill, 2009 [intro. college text], pp. 49-57), culture entails shared possession of five elements: technology, language, values, norms, and sanctions.

The incels.co users do have some language items, words and special constructions, in common, but I doubt they adhere to any uniform set of values; what’s shared is envy of physically attractive, financially successful men with partners, whom they call “Chads,” and anger toward women based on previous rejection of romantic advances, both perhaps acquired through transference. Similar psychology was noted in certain rapists and serial killers of the pre-Web era (cf. Dating Game killer Rodney Alcala). The only norms are the forum rules (which exclude women and discussion of sex with women), the only sanctions, verbal stroking/censure or forum ban. There’s no common folkway here.

Tabs on incels.co lead to a wiki where much of what Wikipedia identifies as the ideology resides. (Zack Beauchamp of Vox, deepest of the cited magazine investigators, must have read it.) This carries a set of “pill theories,” with a page for each pill. Yet these pages seem mostly the work of a single author, screen name William, supplemented by BlackpillScience, Thebreeze and a few minor contributors. In short, the entire incel phenomenon may well boil down to a single person, or a dozen, who’ve been able to launch websites and attract substantial anonymous followings that come and go. Incel.co’s the latest of these. It states 9900 members and, as its format emphasizes racking up high post counts via one-liners, about 2.7 million posts. The forum allows “Pepe the frog” avatars borrowed from white nationalism, displayed by 4 of 440 I perused on the roster.

Wikipedia cites one linguistic study, “Online hatred of women in the Incels.me forum,” Jaki, De Smedt et. al., Journal of Language Aggression and Conflict, July 8, 2019 (electronic publication), galley copy in talk pages at “Largely White,” which merits reading for the word frequency counts and a left-right concordance Jaki’s crew tabulated by computer from a 1½-megaword sample of posts, with goal of informing AI systems that would detect hate speech online, a difficult task given posts condemning hate also use many of the same keywords.

Research into incels as a social group, however, is active and awaiting results while Wikipedia parrots what news outlets from the tech world and liberal current affairs/politics perspectives were saying about it in 2018. I see this unsatisfactory from an encyclopedic standpoint, ending up in a disjointed collection of facts, claims and recent events that may well reify something that doesn’t exist.

While Alphas, Betas and incels are constructs in the larger manosphere’s pill theories, and hatred of women on forums catering to it is real, I’m still unconvinced that joining a website to exchange grievances, alone, confers membership in a culture. Vox and its allies need to show their subjects are doing more together than logging onto Reddit or incels.co, and more crucially, that they help one another in times of trouble. People on those forums have no commitments to anyone else posting there, nor do most of them stay too long. The second question, whether the aggressive content can induce young people who view it to commit homicide absent predisposition, remains unanswered.

Because its topic lies outside my purview, I don’t plan to edit the article. But I think it requires diversification of source portfolio to establish the ontology and causal connections for incels it wants to show. Best wishes.Jessegalebaker (talk) 00:56, 9 August 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Jessegalebaker on all points.Hunan201p (talk) 20:09, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

As better quality sourcing becomes available, we can and should add it to the article. But an argument that the current sources aren't as good as the sources that may one day exist isn't particularly helpful for our purposes. GMG^talk 21:00, 11 August 2019 (UTC)

It's kind of amusing how many of the things Jessegalenbaker listed describe common folkways and values while denying they count for... reasons? And entirely based on an assessment of incels.co alone rather than the multitudinous other fora where incels gather. Simonm223 (talk) 12:23, 12 August 2019 (UTC)

All of which are other incels forums, perhaps operated by the same individuals, perhaps not; we've little information on who's controlled the Internet venues. It's easy to find discussion online without knowing other participants.

Now the reasons: These are probably, for the most part, isolated men who don't know one another from Adam in real life, who engage in no business or political activity together, notable because several went on rampages targeting women in particular or the public at random after citing Elliot Rodger or incel-related social media. Far from multitudinous, just half dozen websites are specifically identified with incel, maybe including series where successors arose as sites were taken down. Contra Amanda Taub at NY Times, they've not acted collectively beyond participating in the forums, with a few moneyed enough to pay for web hosting. Feminist concerns about such individuals remain valid amid the violence and rhetoric. But we note fads over pet rocks and Pac Man, and violent political groups such as MOVE, which never got classified as cultures in themselves despite the fact that each had a lingo associated with it and people getting addicted to those items or causes.

As Dungeons & Dragons, a game young people met to play, involved more knowledge and commitment, many sociologists saw that group as an American subculture. The issue's complex. Yet if we declare a set of bulletin boards habitually conversing on given topics a culture, I think we dilute the meaning of the word. Therefore, my recommendation for better-qualified sources on this. Journalism fails at sociological synthesis. Most of the pieces are op-eds, only Beauchamps attempting a trace on the history and membership. (I did enjoy his work for Vox.)

What I've been taught of information science tells me newsmagazines establish that the incel affair has been brewing for some time and that it emerged alongside a larger online manosphere, but few conclusions on the motives, affect, worldviews or human relationships behind it. Wikipedia's sources don't even know how many people we have here, who the principals are, or why the three fellas who wrote the pill theory material (not mentioned in the sources) chose that corpus to draw inspiration from. Taub, linking incel to white nationalism by coincidence that some incels use the latter's memes and general belief in subordination of women, stands on thin ice. Her "traditional society" comes absent its basis in coverture and the influence of the class hierarchy on both men and women as well.

No; this really isn't satisfactory for an article making scientific claims about the group.Jessegalebaker (talk) 23:26, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

The current Demographics section gives too much weight to the two individual claims that incels are mostly white, given that the Jaki study makes clear that no census has ever been taken on incels (nor is it possible to racially identify anonymous forum participants). I believe any such "he said, she said" claims should be removed from the article. I also do not see the point in trying to identify the race of incel forum participants, unless someone has an ulterior motive in trying to paint "self identified" incel forum users as a certain race. Does every forum/social movement get its own racial demograpics listed (whether imagined or factual?)

Furthermore, the demographics section conflates race with ethnicity, but who decided which ethnic groups are white and nonwhite? "Racial" is the appropriate terminology. "White" isn't an ethnicity. Hunan201p (talk) 06:39, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Self-selection and anonymity pose obstacles to studying demographics and personality on these forums. The classic, still-current work on unrequited love is “Gain and loss of esteem as determinants of interpersonal attractiveness” (Aronson & Linder, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Vol. 1, 1965), where the subjects were white. This had suggested being in love brought intrinsic rewards even if the target didn’t reciprocate. A related criminal justice problem appeared a bit later in “Stalking on campus: Prevalence and strategies for coping,” (Freemouw et. al., Journal of Forensic Sciences, Vol. 42, 1997).

It’s not clear whether incel forum users have stalking backgrounds or experience with romance, and if so, how these affect them. Conflation of manosphere with masculinity and of incel with unrequited love runs rife in the popular literature atop the miscategorization of Latinos (who can belong to any race) as nonwhite and whites (who include Latvians and Southerners) as ethnic. Manosphere was first used as name for a Blogspot masthead in 2009 and subsumed with broader meaning by feminist scholars. Media took it up around the time Daryush Valizadeh put forum Return of Kings online in 2012, bringing us the pill theories, but concern over the manosphere’s losers—incel—exploded just last year at the Toronto attack. Stacie Sutton’s narrative for Georgia State University News on a 1998-2001 study conducted there (cited in article) aligns more closely to Aronson & Linder tradition than to incel.

And of course Jaki et. al. examined only grammar and lexicon on Incels.me (now Incels.co), pointing out anonymity as enabler for those expressing thoughts taboo in public. Wikipedia’s lead section, contradicting the demographics section, acknowledges the uncertain racial/ethnic composition of incel forums, on which white nationalists are present as a minority. I agree we need rigor on this. The liberal news organs and commentaries it cites are too involved in our battles over men’s and women’s rights movements, racism, sexism, mass shootings and Donald Trump to give an impartial perspective, much less analysis of a phenomenon that’ll be difficult to quantify. Chances for encyclopedic treatment may improve once Trump’s left office.Jessegalebaker (talk) 15:11, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

You are unlikely to get much traction on this by complaining that the sources are liberal.--Ermenrich (talk) 15:29, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Why wouldn't he, unless Wikipedia has a strong liberal bias? I sincerely doubt that a quoted estimate from Bill O'Reilly or Jordan Peterson about the racial demographics of, let's say, criminal HIV transmission or HIV bugchasers would be allowed on those articles, much less at the introductory paragraphs as it once was on the Incels article.Hunan201p (talk) 19:08, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

To quote Steven Colbert: "Reality has a well-known liberal bias". And your comparison is completely off. The article cites reliable sources, see [[3]] for all three. The only one that might even begin to be questionable is Huffington Post, but you need a more specific complaint than "it's at Huffington Post". Compare also the listing for Fox News at the list.--Ermenrich (talk) 19:22, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

The issue here is not that the news companies themselves are liberal, but that the individuals quoted are highly ideologically motivated individuals with no statistical evidence or studies of any kind. One of them is a director for an "anti-hate" group and another specializes in something called "hate studies", which isn't even a real subject. But most importantly, their claims are pulled out of thin air. I propose removing all three claims. Also, my comparison is not the least bit off and quoting Colbert is extremely juvenile, actually mind boggling that you did that.--Hunan201p (talk) 16:04, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

Just because you don't like the individuals or organizations providing the information doesn't mean we're going to remove things found in WP:RS. Please see WP:NPOV. And if you're referring to the Southern Poverty Law Center, it's also a RS. See the same link I posted above.--Ermenrich (talk) 13:57, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

• Hey Jessegalebaker. I understand that you're fairly new to Wikipedia. But for reference from someone who's been around a while, if you want to have changes done to the article, the most effective way of doing so is proposing "change x to y" in as specific terms as possible, supported by reliable sources. Otherwise, we can lodge fairly generic complains all day long, and it's unlikely to make any material difference to the article. GMG^talk 19:06, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I’ve stated my case in full at any rate. It’s mostly that I’m pretty old, from a day when newspapers were citable only for, well, news.Jessegalebaker (talk) 15:39, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Money.

"[Incels] commonly believe that the only thing more important than looks in improving a man's eligibility as a prospective partner is wealth.[55] Some incels justify their beliefs based on the works of fringe[23] social psychologist"
This is not notable as this is a generally held belief. The Guardian, The NYPost and the Journal of Family and Marriage quote wealth as the major factor in marriageability.
Guardian after NYP “Most American women hope to marry, but current shortages of marriageable men — men with a stable job and a good income — make this increasingly difficult" https://nypost.com/2019/09/06/broke-men-are-hurting-american-womens-marriage-prospects/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/13/you-dont-have-to-settle-the-joy-of-living-and-dying-alone 194.207.86.26 (talk) 11:24, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

That these are uncontroversial aspects of a desirable mate doesn't really have any bearing. The desirability of these traits is not absurd on its face (no one is really out there writing pop songs about how "da club" goes wild for a guy who is poor, maladjusted, and horribly disfigured from the war). The remarkable thing is the extent to which incels turn these otherwise normal things into grotesque caricatures of themselves. Also, spoiler alert, men (by which I differentiate myself from boys) also tend to prefer mates who are attractive, well adjusted, and educated, with reasonable prospects in the work force. There is no family therapist or marriage counselor in the world who would be the least bit surprised by this. GMG^talk 12:53, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree with GreenMeansGo; these refs seem written in an informal/entairment manner, than a meaningful enclyopedic development of the term. Britishfinance (talk) 13:40, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

incels.me

The site is now known as incels.co 2601:8C:4500:4680:24D0:1D34:2A04:C3E9 (talk) 01:27, 12 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I've just reworded it so as to remove the name, since the TLD seems to change with some frequency. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:53, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Lacks a critical section about the use of the term as insult, and framing opponents of differing opinion

All the attributed negativeness to so called "incels" resembles demonizing them.

This article would need more criticism from this ideology to be balanced and not just ideological. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.219.233.156 (talk) 03:35, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

There's nothing that needs to be added. There is no positive side to the incel philosophy--it's hate-based. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.197.149.12 (talk) 17:55, 24 October 2019 (UTC)

Even the BBC doc presented a positive side and highlighted a particular forum as positive, cite that if you want. Thing is they are legally required to present "both sides" Wikipedia is not (usually)65.27.229.250 (talk) 17:57, 2 November 2019 (UTC)"

Exactly, Wikipedia goes by what reliable sources have already reported. If that coverage is nearly universally negative, the article is going to reflect that. We're not here right great wrongs, if that's even arguable as what has happened here since, as noted above, this is a hate-based group. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Digital news opinion outlets are not reliable sources for different sides of a controversial topic. You can use as much beararchracy as you want to pretend you are following WP:NPOV in this article, but you are not, even the biggest podcast ever made exploring inceldom from a NPOV with hundreds of thousands of listeners recently called you guys out as ridiculous on this article — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.27.229.250 (talk • contribs)

I don't know how many different ways to say "if you have the sources that back up your position, bring them forth so the article can be edited to reflect what they say". You are the one wanting to make a change, you probably shouldn't expect others to do the work for you to back your position. Beeblebrox (talk) 19:39, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 10 November 2019

For transparency reasons, i believe it would be necesary to establish on this page that there is no significant scientific (psychological or otherwise) source for any of the statements made on this page. The Citings are purely to media (magazines and news outlets) with should not be considered a sound psychological litterature. The introduction to the page is postulative in nature and the sources does not sufficiently back these postulates up. In other words. In the intire list of sources, on this page about an alleged psychological condition/movement, there is no refferal to any scientific psychological source. The citings that are in the list even seems to be to somewhat biased sources. (huffington post etc) Wikipedia is at the end of the day a place people trust for their information ( justifiably or otherwise) but it should be clear weather or not something as alarming as this is based on real science or zeitgeist.

in conclussion what i believe should be added is: "There is no recognized scientific theori too back up the existence or purpose of the Incel community as anything other than an online running joke. "

If i am wrong i would appreciate to have the sources cited on the page as i am honestly finding it difficult to research this seemingly hot air concept. 130.225.198.194 (talk) 15:16, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

• There are some peer reviewed studies cited in the article. The article does not focus on the "state of being" of involuntarily celibate, because the article is about the online community, and not the proposed state-of-being. Peer reviewed studies are generally preferable to journalism, and as these become available, feel free to bring it to our attention so that we may add them. Having said that, journalism is regularly used as a reliable source for online social groups. But the onus is not on the community to first provide sources rebutting the changes you would like made; the onus is on you to provide sources supporting the content you would like to add. GMG^talk 16:08, 10 November 2019 (UTC)

"The term was largely obscure until it gained mainstream media attention in April 2018"

@Loginnigol: I requested you add a source to support this statement, and I appreciate you doing so. But the only comment that the source you added has about April 2018 is that that was when the Toronto van attack happened—it does not state anywhere that that was when the term began to gain mainstream media attention. Can you find a source that specifically states that the term began to receive attention around then? It seems like you are perhaps using the glut of coverage of the Toronto van attacks to draw this conclusion, but without a reliable source making this claim itself, it's original research. For what it's worth, I suspect that the mainstream media attention for the term actually took off in 2014, with the Isla Vista killings. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:12, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

A quick Google search seems to return some articles attributing the attention to Toronto and some attributing it to Isla Vista. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:20, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I don't know why you are deliberately misrepresenting my statement. I didn't say the term was never used. I was referring to it's mainstream adoption. --Loginnigol (talk) 18:54, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

I'm not misrepresenting your statement -- I'm saying the statement you've added to the article is not supported by the source you've provided. The source you included does not say anything about the term beginning to be used in mainstream media. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:56, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, I'd say this supports it: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/toronto-attack-incel-alek-minassian - also https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto-attack-minassian-facebook-incel-the-investigators-1.4639606 also https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/30/opinion/sex-shame-incels-jihadists-minassian.html calls it a hitherto obscure term. Guy (help!) 19:35, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

My concern is that there are other sources that mention the surge of mainstream media attention sooner—around the Isla Vista killings in 2014—something this article mentions later on in the "Mass murders and violence" section. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:37, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Just as a point of order, a link to a google search isn't super useful in helping move the discussion forward here. GMG^talk 22:13, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Understood, and apologies—I'm at work and didn't have a bunch of time to go digging for sources, just noticed that this was in conflict with what is stated elsewhere in the article. I'll be home and back online in a few hours and will post in more detail then. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:56, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, Maybe "according to X...., though Y says earlier..." ? Guy (help!) 23:36, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, back online! So there are some sources that mention the term coming to be used publicly as a result of the Isla Vista killings: New Statesman, The Outline, Washington Post, Vice. It does seem that that was perhaps the first time it was discussed much in mainstream media, but that the 2018 attack brought the term to considerably wider mainstream usage. Maybe, The term was largely obscure until May 2014 media reporting described the perpetrator of the Isla Vista killings as an incel; the term again received widespread media attention in 2018 following the Toronto van attack.? Or similar. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:54, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Something in that ballpark seems fair. The New Statesman piece summarizes the timeline neatly in the fourth paragraph, without us needing to rely on combining disparate sources to make one overall claim. GMG^talk 11:54, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Even if it did say that, which it doesn't, a student newspaper is hardly credible enough for such a contentious assertion. Pendragon0 (talk) 19:28, 22 November 2019 (UTC)

the sub was banned

Despite this, the sub was banned on 30 September 2019, allegedly for "harassment and bullying", following a broadening of Reddit's harassment policy. Benjamin (talk) 21:37, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Which one? Do you mean the one the article mentions in Criticism has also been directed against platforms that host or have hosted incel content, including Reddit (who banned the /r/incels community in 2017 but has declined to ban another incel subreddit) and Twitter as "another incel subreddit?" That's the only place in the article that seems to refer to one other than /r/incels. Either way, we should probably wait for an actual source to update it - we can't cite a Reddit post. --Aquillion (talk) 21:47, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

r/Braincels. Why can't we cite a Reddit post? It seems reliable enough in this context. Do you seriously doubt that the sub was indeed banned? You can see for yourself. Benjamin (talk) 22:32, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Reddit posts are WP:SPS, same as any forum or blog or any other post made by a random person on the internet. "Unreliable" in this context does not mean factually incorrect or unbelievable, just that it's not a "reliable source" as defined by Wikipedia's content standards. In order to be a reputable academic project, we have standards for what an acceptable academic source is. This notion is explained in-depth at WP:V and WP:RS. A reasonable quick-fix would be to use the official message on the reddit page itself as a primary source for an uncontentious statement of fact, and expand once reliable secondary or tertiary sources become available. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 22:43, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the purpose of reliability and verifiability was to ensure factual accuracy, insofar as is practical for such a project, rather than to promote some vague idea of academic reputation. In the early days, other wikis that tried to be more of "a reputable academic project" failed, and Wikipedia prevailed. Teachers everywhere certainly did not consider Wikipedia to be "a reputable academic project", but did that stop us? Was that what shaped our core principles? Certainly not! Benjamin (talk) 22:50, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

No offense, but your lack of understanding would be easily fixed by simply reading the policies I linked. "Verifiability" does not mean "factual", it means "comes from a reliable source". "Reliable" means our sourcing is held to an academic standard. Content can't just be sourced to any "Randy from Boise". The threshold for inclusion is a higher standard than simply being "true". Nothing about this has anything to do with "promoting reputation". There are simply reasonable academic content standards in place because this is a serious academic project. These are our most fundamental ideals, and always have been. This has always been a serious academic project with high standards for sourcing. If you were taught the ignorant falsehood that it wasn't, I'm sorry, because that's actually a great tragedy for anyone who grew up with teachers telling them that Wikipedia is not reliable, but that unfortunate meme is long dead, and nowadays we're heavily integrated with formal higher education. All of this is unrelated, though, to the simple notion that internet posts are not sources. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 23:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad you agree that it isn't about reputation, but I disagree that only academic sources can be reliable, and internet posts necessarily can't. I was under the impression that the reason we don't listen to Randy from Boise is because we have no practical way of verifying his claims, but I don't think that's the case here. Do you? Benjamin (talk) 00:30, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Okay, but it's literally not a matter for debate. I'm not sharing my personal opinion here, I'm objectively explaining Wikipedia policy. WP:NOR and WP:SPS are core content policies. You're required to have the competence to accept and abide by Wikipedia policies. You're free to find sources that are actually in line with WP:RS (I gave you one easy solution above), but this is not a forum for you to complain about Wikipedia policy. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 01:13, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I have added the info now with a source. I have not frequently edited this article, so if the info should be moved/better incorporated, go for it. The Verge article also mentions Reddit broadening its definition of "harassment," the U.S. Army warning, Joker film, etc.--MattMauler (talk) 01:40, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

@Swarm: I would appreciate it if you didn't imply I'm incompetent just because I disagree with you about policy. Benjamin (talk) 19:10, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

I didn't imply you're incompetent, I said you're required to have the competence to abide by policies even if you disagree with them, which is true. Also, like I said, you're not disagreeing with me personally. I'm just objectively explaining what the content policies are, because enforcing them is my job as an administrator. I'm not out to give you a hard time, I'm just trying to educate you. Nor did I say you're not allowed to disagree with a policy, only that article talk pages are not a forum for you to express that. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 20:35, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. Should I start a discussion on the policy page, then? Benjamin (talk) 03:02, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Believe it or not, no. Policy talk pages are not forums either. The relevant discussion forum would be WP:VPP. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 01:23, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

References

• [4] It's not winning any pulitzers, but it's probably sufficient for this fairly uncontroversial fact. GMG^talk 23:53, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

• The policy in question is WP:PRIMARY dudes Red Slash 04:38, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for that. "A primary source may be used on Wikipedia only to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the primary source but without further, specialized knowledge." That seems to be the case here, doesn't it? Benjamin (talk) 04:51, 2 October 2019 (UTC)

Yes, absolutely Red Slash 00:54, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Incorrect. A self-published post by a random person on the internet is not a primary source, it's a secondary source (unreliable, but that's a different issue). Just because they posted it on reddit does not make them a primary source. A primary source would be a statement coming directly from reddit in some regard, for example, the ban message itself. I suggested using the primary source as an alternative in my very first post. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 01:23, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Umm...No. A post on social media is every bit as primary as a diary entry 100 years ago. A "letter to my dearest" from the front written by General Washington is a primary source. A "letter to my dearest" from the adjutant, written about General Washington, is also a primary source. Merely the fact that it was not written by the subject is not sufficient to render it secondary. GMG^talk 02:36, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

The distinction between "primary" and "secondary" is nuanced, and I admittedly simplified it with a blanket statement, because I'm trying to explain baseline policies to a user who is having a difficult time understanding. But your supposed "correction" is unhelpful in the extreme. I mean, if I made an overly-simplified blanket statement, it was at least meant to be addressing the distinction between primary and secondary. You're bizarrely claiming that a social media post is a primary source the same way a diary entry is. That's a fallacious comparison. A diary entry is not an inherently primary source. Nothing is an inherently primary source. Yes, if we're discussing George Washington, then George Washington's written words are a primary source. That doesn't mean every word George Washington ever wrote is automatically a primary source, and never a secondary or tertiary source. It literally depends on what you're sourcing. Random posts on the internet are not automatically a certain kind of source. Same as any other writing. The platform they're posted to has no bearing on that. It's a bit bizarre that an editor of your experience thinks it does. And, more importantly, whether an unreliable source is primary or secondary is irrelevant, because it can't be used. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 23:11, 6 October 2019 (UTC)

I struggle to imagine an instance where personal correspondence would be anything other than a primary source. We would rarely if ever quote the Adjutant General's letter; we would quote the history book that itself quotes him, after it's been vetted by an independent expert for accuracy, relevance, and importance. This independent vetting is the transformative process that renders the source secondary (and is the reason why, for example, much of the published writings of Winston Churchill must be treated as primary, because he writes about so many things that are themselves pieces of his own lived biography).

Personal correspondence is precisely the correct analogy, because social media is the preferred method of personal correspondence in the digital age. Yes, there is the odd outlier where Vox puts together a well researched micro-documentary on YouTube. But the vast and overwhelming majority of content on social media is primary. A post by a reddit user for the reddit community is unequivocally primary, unless you have some reason to believe that reddit user Silly_saracen is somehow an independent expert that has thoroughly vetted the content, in between their busy work commenting on memes. I am equally perplexed why you do not intuitively agree with that statement. GMG^talk 12:30, 13 October 2019 (UTC)

Again, the format of the source is completely immaterial. It does not matter whether a source is spoken or written, coming from an "expert" in a formal publication or coming from a random person in their diary or on the internet, a simple statement summarizing or a full-fledged series of thoughts and opinions dissecting and analyzing something. These are all, obviously, considerations in the reliability or usefulness of a source, but have nothing whatsoever to do with whether a source is primary or secondary. No format of source is inherently primary or secondary. Primary and secondary are relative terms. If my friend is a witness to an event, they're a primary source for information about that event, whether they tell me about it, post about it on the internet, write it in their journal, whatever. If I write down whatever they said about the event in my "personal correspondence" that doesn't magically make me an original source of information about the event. It doesn't matter if I'm writing down the details, a summary of what I was told, or my expanded thoughts and in-depth analysis; I'm still a secondary party whom the information is not actually coming from, I'm merely conveying it. I'm a secondary source. That's exactly what "Silly_saracen" is in that scenario. He's not the actual evidence that the event happened. None of his knowledge is firsthand. Whether a secondary source is the greatest expert on the planet or some literal nobody, who they are, what they say, and where they say it isn't what makes them a secondary source. In fact, it has nothing to do with it. It's the simple fact that they aren't a primary source, but instead they're getting the information from the primary source. I'm not saying I can't understand the confusion, it can absolutely be confusing. But making a statement about a website, on that website, does not mean the statement is a primary source about that website, because, again, the format of the statement is simply immaterial. It might or might not be a primary source. A primary source is merely an original source of information. A source that comes along and relays or refers to information from that primary source is a secondary source. The user who posted the information is not themselves the original source of the information they posted. They are merely conveying information they received from a primary source. They literally got the information from someone else. They aren't the original source of information, in any sense. That's all the distinction between primary and secondary is. Yes, anyone can see that the sub has been banned, but it's not the same as being a witness to an event. We are not actually witnesses to the event. We only actually know what happened because of a formal written message from reddit. We didn't see it happen, and we have no firsthand knowledge to know what happened to it. The only reason we random people on the internet can objectively state that the sub has been banned is because we have a primary source to refer to, and we can convey that message elsewhere. The information is not coming from us in any way. We're simply a secondary source that is referencing a primary source. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 23:03, 14 October 2019 (UTC)

Oh @Swarm:, I didn't even see this response. I was doing stuff and things because Army [5].

You are at least half right. Someone reporting first-hand knowledge is unequivocally a primary source. But that does not translate that anyone reporting second-hand knowledge is automatically a secondary source. This is a severe oversimplification. What is secondary source is heavily context dependent and there is no clear line you can draw to distinguish them in a way that takes thought and context out of the equation. To go back to the battlefield, a diary entry by a soldier in a foxhole saying "I heard that General MacArthur visited the 21st regiment today" is reporting second-hand knowledge, but is still a primary source. They are still thematically and chronologically close to the events that they are reporting, and they are not themselves compiling, disinterestedly critiquing and critically analyzing primary sources.

Even sources that do, and are normally pristine secondary sources, can still be rendered primary in certain contexts. As a grad student I spent entirely too much time on an article that never got published regarding the treatment of Positivism in undergraduate textbooks. These would have been pristine secondary sources on their respective topics, but when they themselves became the subject they were rendered primary. When the subject itself was secondary sources, the secondary sources became the base material, thematically and chronologically close to the things that were being compiled, disinterestedly critiqued, and critically analyzed. GMG^talk 17:51, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

You have it exactly right that it's not black and white, and minute differences in subject matter and context can determine whether a source is primary or secondary. I suppose that explains the confusion, but it's completely irrelevant to my point. I'm not oversimplifying these concepts, they're just simple concepts. Sure, they can be subjective and grey in some situations, but arguing that they can hypothetically be subjective and grey does not mean they are in the context that we're discussing. You need to take them with common sense. Let's go ahead and address your example of the soldier. I'm not going to pretend someone passing along hearsay is a legitimate source, so let's just throw that out and replace it with a soldier who somehow knows about MacArthur's visit. Honestly, the specifics are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if it's a soldier, you're talking about a piece of information about an event within an organization, where the source is a person who is directly involved in both the organization and the events we're hypothetically talking about. You have successfully presented an example of a primary source. Great. What does that have to do with this? Nothing. It's a useless comparison to this scenario. If you're saying it's the same, it's not. It's a total false equivalency. A user on a website is not the equivalent of a soldier in an army, or a member of any organization (unless the organization is the community of users themselves, which is not the case here). If you want to get into legal technicalities, Reddit is nothing more than a service offered by an organization. Yes, that organization is made up of humans, but no, those humans are not the website's users. The users are the consumers of the service being rendered, the equivalent of a customer who patronizes any business. They are not inside sources because they use the service. Being a user of a website does not render one "involved" in the underlying organization or events within that organization, not by any stretch of the imagination. Reading a notification on a website does not make you a primary source, any more than reading a press release about any business makes you a primary source. Websites are not "places". The ban happened in real life. It was a real-world decision made by an organization. The public was given a notification that this event occurred. That's the long and short of it. None of the information comes from Reddit users, and if you are going to use a Reddit user talking about the event, it's no different then using any member of the public talking about the event. I don't care whether you use Reddit or not, learned about it from Reddit or not, or talk about it on Reddit or not, you are not a primary source about it, your information is not 'insider' or 'firsthand', you are not tied to, related to, or involved with the event in any way, you did not witness the event, you are not privy to any information that is not public, you are not associated with the organization or service in any notable way, you are just a member of the public who read about something. By literally any definition of what a primary source is, this situation is inapplicable. ~Swarm~ ^{sting} 21:16, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Incel and incel "movement"/sub-culture not the same thing

Several of the sources make a distinction between incel (any person that is in a state of involuntary celibate, male as well as female), and the incel "movement" (an Internet sub-culture). This article confuses the two concepts. This article is based on very little science, and mostly on articles in news media. For example, the corresponding Swedish article separates the two concepts in separate sections, and presents scientific research in a separate section. Can this article be organized in a similar way? 82.196.112.105 (talk) 03:43, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

As far as I'm aware none of the sources describe "inceldom" as an actual scientific or medical phenomenon, hence why the article is structured in this way. You may wish to read through the archives of this talk page, where people have tried to get the article to treat incels as a concept divorced from the online subculture, but as you'll see in the past discussions the sourcing simply doesn't exist. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:53, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Then you guys have problem with how you cite the sources. What source define Incel as "member of the subculture"? None of the stated sources in the first sentence. 82.196.112.105 (talk) 03:58, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

You only have to look as far as the first source: When we talk about “incels,” we are not talking about all men who are not having sex. Instead, we are talking about a specific subculture of people in various internet forums — subreddits like r/braincels, the cruel troll chat forum 4chan, and dedicated websites like incels.me. GorillaWarfare (talk) 04:06, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Yup. Outside the incel subculture, it's not at all clear that "inceldom" is at all sociologically distinguishable from being single and looking for a mate. That's really just a normal part of the human mating process. It's the incel subculture that bring in all the pseud-intellectual pseudo-Darwinian spin and acts like it's something special. GMG^talk 16:15, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

My bad. Thank you for the helpful response. However, apparently not all sources make this delimitation of incel to only those identifying with the sub-culture/ideology/movement, and even fewer sources say that incel always is a hate ideology. Especially not the scientific ones. Is the Swedish Wikipedia article better now? I have avoided to write it in a very categorical way, and still think it is possible to distinguish science from opinions/debate.193.10.109.181 (talk) 20:54, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Are you saying there are sources that actively differentiate some incels from the subculture and that contradict inceldom being a hate ideology? Or do they just not mention those things? If it's the former, I'd be interested to read them—if it's the latter, the fact that a source does not mention something doesn't mean it's contradictory.

I have taken a read through the Swedish Wikipedia article as best I can, but unfortunately I don't speak (or read) a lick of Swedish and Google Translate doesn't do an awesome job of machine-translating. From what I can tell, the Definition and Research sections are more like the version of the Incel article that existed on enwiki a long time ago—I think someone's got a copy of it in their sandbox somewhere. However, after several discussions on this talk page, at AfD, etc. it was decided that there simply isn't the sourcing to support an article that treats inceldom as a legitimate scientific/medical/psychological phenomenon, and so the article focuses on the online subculture (as do the sources). GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:22, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

Found the userfied version of the old article: User:Valoem/Involuntary celibacy. It's been edited some since it was userfied; this is the article as it used to exist on the English Wikipedia in January 2016, just before it was deleted and salted after an AfD discussion. GorillaWarfare (talk) 22:44, 20 January 2020 (UTC)

We really need to break the redirect from "Loveshy" to "Incel"

I remember first reading about Incel, or Loveshy people back in 2006, the early days of Wikipedia. There was a trove of links and citations dealing with the symptomology of men and women who could not find intimate partners. I remember following a link to the website of one of the few licensed sex therapists in California. There also was the first-person account of a man, evidently born with a severe physical deformity, who had lived much of his life in hospitals, but who had earned some money by writing, and who wanted to spend it by finally partaking in a nurturing sexual experience with a supportive partner by flying to California to utilize the services offered by the Californian sex therapist.

There was serious but civil debate about whether those sorts of sex therapists were just overpriced prostitutes (it was the George W. Bush administration; evangelicals were still feeling their oats back then, in a way that they haven't in years). There were even links to some proper scholarship on this topic.

Now, all of that is lost, washed away by the changing tides of internet culture. This Incel article must not be the original, because if it were, the revision history would stretch back to 2006 or beyond, and it appears to start in 2018. I think the original Wikipedia article may have been called "Loveshy", so perhaps that's why the older history is not visible on the current Incel article. The problem is that now, if you try to go to "Loveshy", you get ineluctably redirected back here, to Incel.

My wikipedia-fu is not strong enough to break the redirect and attempt to resurrect the original Loveshy page. I'm going to try to figure out how to do it, but if I can't, could someone else please do so? Seems a shame to have a once edifying article swamped by the horror that the Incel community has become, over the past 10 years. PhilHudson82 (talk) 10:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

PhilHudson82, that was deleted with solid consensus, so no, that's not going to happen. Guy (help!) 10:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Guess that means I'll have to create a new page, then. :P

I found a permalink to what I was looking for: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Involuntary_celibacy&oldid=842912658.

I see from the comments below that other people have clamored for the same thing as me, to differentiate between between the internet social movement known as Incel and the underlying, preexisting social phenomenon, which wikipedia articles in some other languages already have. Guess it's time to edit boldly! PhilHudson82 (talk) 10:18, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

PhilHudson82, no, it means that the new page will not survive because we already deleted that topic. Guy (help!) 11:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Hey Phil – good shout on the loveshy redirect. I've gone ahead and pointed it to a target without all the associations with terrorism, mass murders & extreme misogyny. Not sure if the redirect will stick, but at least we tried.

I'd agree with Guy that's its advisable to wait a while before boldly adding too much about the pre-existing social phenomenon. The past discussions did suggest the topic could be covered at sexual frustration. But the problem you have there is that the vast majority of the science on that topic is about sexual frustration in other senses (e.g. couples with miss-matched sex drives.) So if you add more than a few lines without also expanding the other senses, others might revert you as undue weight. It's a little perplexing that about half of previous editors looking at this didn't want an article on the broad topic. I guess part of the problem is that it had been an unchallenged mainstream view for so long, since even before the dawn of western society, that its been a little taken for granted.

(The view that frustration of said desire could lead to reckless and disruptive behaviour is touched on in foundational religious texts that have shaped our great civilisations: such as the Bhagavad Gita, the Quran and the Holy Bible. Other great thinkers who shaped western society, such as Aquinas & Augustine, went further than the Bible's qualified support for marriage, arguing that prostitution is essential to prevent reckless behaviour by men denied otherwise sex. Hence why Christian cities have always largely tolerated brothels .Perhaps some might dismiss all the above as conservative sources, but even progressive thinkers have argued similar things. E.g. Amia Srinivasan's article on incels and the right to sex mentions that the purported inventor of feminism, Charles Fourier proposed a guaranteed sexual minimum for both men & woman, so none would have to suffer like incels. In a work that's currently unpopular but not substantially refuted, Unwin surveyed past civilisations and cultures, finding that their fall was invariably preceded by a loosening of sexual restraint, such as the institution of monogamy. Admittedly his focus seemned to be more on the flip side of uncledom. The idea that with sex less equally distributed, elite men who might otherwise make major cultural contributions had their energy dissipated by easy access to sex with vast numbers of different woman. Turning to more current work, here's an excessively male focussed but otherwise excellent accessible overview of the problem by a data scientist Bradford Tuckfield, taking it from ancient history to modern dating apps. )

The problem is, before its feasible to change consensus sufficiently to allow a dedicated article on the topic, we probably need some serious academic scholarship bringing all these themes together, ideally with a bit more focus on women & i+, along with connecting them with the compassionate (re)-trailblazers like Alana & Dr Brian Gilmartin. I'm expecting the sources we need for this to appear in the next year or so. FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Actually, I think that Loneliness#Romantic_loneliness is a quite reasonable redirect target for "loveshy"; thanks, FeydHuxtable. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:44, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Loneliness#Romantic_loneliness is spot-on for this. A very good call. -- The Anome (talk) 22:17, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

FeydHuxtable, looks good. Guy (help!) 22:32, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Tobias Rathjen and the Societal impact of this article

It's not to be tolerated! While it clearly wasn't intended, this article is contributing to the suffering of ~300 million plus near voiceless adults.

There's no good evidence that Tobias identified as an incel or was part of the sub culture. Multiple sources confirm Tobias did not use the word "incel" in his manifesto. He just said "for my whole life I haven’t had a wife or girlfriend".. blaming it mostly on the apparent delusion that he was being watched, not typical incel reasons like lack of good looks.

I reverted an incorrect claim about Tobias identifying as an incel, but only a few mins later another editor has added similar claims, this time with sourcing that while not high tier WP:RS, does apparently support the assertions.

This is just one example of how the wider media, experts, and even politicians get confused in unhelpful ways, mixing the article definition (incel = member of the online sub culture) with the plain English meaning indicating folk who want to have sex but can't.

There's over 300 million 18-40 year olds in the later category, and it's a problem that's growing rapidly. E.g., in the decade from 2008-2019, the share of 18-30 yr old American men not having any sex in the last year "nearly tripled" to 28%! (A small share of those men are voluntarily celibate, but that share is likely declining as the main driver of voluntary celibacy for young men (religiosity) is generally falling in the US.) Other countries tends to show a less dramatic rise in the problem, but that is likely due to less uptodate data; much of the acceleration of the problem seems to have happened in the last 5 years. E.g. 2016 figures show 12% of Brits remain a virgin at 26 (used to be 5%) while in Japan, 26% of 18-39 yr olds were still virgins in 2015 (it was just 20% in 1992). In Japan the proportion of female 18-39 yr old virgins is almost equally high. Granted part of the global rise in celibacy may is likely due to positive reasons (e.g. folk who don't want sex being more able to say refuse unwanted advances), but no one sensible thinks that is a major driver.

Since the article was re-focussed to be about the online subculture, rather than the wider problem of unwanted celibacy, it seems to have heavily influenced the media's coverage of the topic in unhelpful ways. The media largely adopted our definition, and their coverage become more negative. Understandably so due to the extreme misogyny that's found in the subculture. But many people do not confine their hostile response to the subculture - they carry it over to everyone who's having problems forming relationships - and very likely most of these 300 million + folk don't have any misogynistic beliefs, indeed in at least some countries nearly half of them are female. For the last 5 years I've been consulting with politicians on the optimal response to the rise of platforms, and it used to be fine until I started talking about the impact of dating apps. Since then I've been getting push back for promoting "incel ideology", even though I'm purely talking about the wider problem, not the subculture. Important efforts to address industry 4 scale loneliness are being impeded! Even regular lonely people are becoming afraid to seek help for their problems, as they fear being "lumped in" with the incel sub culture.

To be clear, none of the previous editors are to blame for this, the results were not foreseeable. And I might be exagerating the way this article influenced media coverage, it just seems to me that the media swiftly followed our change of definition.

Looking forward, unless there are objections, I plan to re-write the article to address this concern. And also to mostly upgrade the quality of sourcing, and to correct several existing WP:OR issues. It should be possible to do this while still keeping the focus mostly on the subculture, though I'll write a bit about the wider problem, using sources that make the connection. Five years back, I did a complete re-write of Technological unemployment - that's been one of the most contentious issues in economics for much of the past two centuries. Compared with incels, it has literally tens of thousands more academic sources expressing the conflicting POVs, but since my rewrite, there's been virtually zero contention on the article. Hopefully it will be possible to have a similar result here. FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:18, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Hiya. I don't regularly edit this page; it's a more than a bit outside my general focus. But it landed on my watchlist at some point for who knows what reason so I saw your message here. Multiple sources have claimed that TObias mentioned incel concepts and culture within his manifesto. If you've got sources that claim this is not the case and they meet WP:RS, I don't see why the recent addition about him couldn't be edited to note that sources differ. As for the rest, I won't lie; based on your phrasing in this very comment, I would be strongly concerned about WP:NPOV issues stemming from your efforts. I'm not saying this to be accusatory so much as to give you a heads up. You're obviously fairly experienced as an editor (probably more than me, I mostly just massage text because I'm a writing junky), so I'm sure you know to be careful with biases and whatnot. But "...folk who want to have sex but can't. There's over 300 million 18-40 year olds in the later category, and it's a problem that's growing rapidly." and the fact that you talk in broad terms but then consistently bring it back to men specifically raises red flags for me. Just the opening about "voiceless adults"...big red flag. I'm sure the folks who more regularly contribute to this page will have more constructive thoughts on your ideas. Like I said, outside my general purview. I just wanted to note that you shouldn't be surprised if you get push back on this based on how you worded your essay here. Cheers and happy editing. Millahnna (talk) 00:02, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the comments, and you've already been proved correct in your prediction. :-) In fairness it's not strictly accurate to say I "consistently" brought it back to men. I also specifically mentioned females: "proportion of female 18-39 yr old virgins is almost equally high." , and "in at least some countries nearly half of them are female". If I go ahead with the re-write I'll add a bit more about female incels: according to this source, there's "tens of thousands" of involuntarily celibate women in various online forums. As the Guardian noted ironically only yesterday in an article about female incels "when men suffer, it is a tragedy of murderous proportions; when women suffer, it is a farce". That said, the bulk of the article will still need to focus on men, per the balance of coverage in the sources. FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:28, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

No one is going to read that wall of text.--Jorm (talk) 00:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi User:FeydHuxtable. I have written a significant portion of this article, and I'll admit I'm a bit taken aback that you have decided you want to completely rewrite it. Since I started working on this article nearly two years ago, there has been good collaboration between many editors to discuss its tone and contents, keep it up-to-date, etc. The article is well-sourced and completely in keeping with WP:NPOV and WP:OR, so I don't see why a rewrite would be necessary. I would certainly invite you to add any academic sources you have (you are right that there are not a whole lot to be found on the subject, though that seems to be changing as time progresses), and discuss any concerns you have about OR, but I would ask you to please be collaborative rather deciding you would like to throw away our work entirely. You can certainly consider this an "objection" to your plan.

It also sounds like you are intending to shift the article back towards focusing on the "phenomenon" of involuntary celibates (that is, people who would like to be having sex but aren't/can't) rather than the online subculture. That would be contradictory to the consensus that has been established multiple times now, at this talk page and several times at AfD. GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:58, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi GorillaWarfare, yes there are several academic studies of the sub culture currently underway, some of which might be published this year. As said my rewrite should keep the "focus mostly on the subculture", though yes I would like to move the article slightly towards some explicit mention of the wider phenomenon. (And also different the non misogynistic strands of the online space a bit more clearly.) The main reason I'm so concerned about this is that I'm sensing the near 100% critical tone of the article is causing some to tar the millions of "broad sense" incels with the same brush. A great many of the millions of folk wanting but not having sex are likely totally innocent of misogyny etc; as above many are female.

Rest of world just doesn't respect our narrow definition of the word "Incel" - this is likely why Insider.com said Tobias identified as an incel - they were using the broad definition of the term. So to them his statement about 'never having a girlfriend' = 'incel'. This confusion causes all kinds of problems.

I'm not so sure the article would be NPOV, even if we left aside the problem of definition. While far less numerous & admittedly mostly leaning conservative, there are several sources that take a partially sympathetic view even to "subculture" incels. While not academic, said sources seem more WP:RS than many of the website & low tier magazines used as sources for the critical remarks. E.g. New York Times , The Spectator Washington Post . I have many more like that.

This said, of course virtually all the critical coverage of the sub culture should stay, apart from the incorrect OR. The re-write will mainly be some structural changes & additions, I'd not want to throw away most of the existing work. And if you don't like the re-write, it can just be reverted. FeydHuxtable (talk) 04:16, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: Those sources you have offered are not by any means "more WP:RS" as you claim—while the NYT and Washington Post are generally acceptable sources, we should not be using writing from their Opinion sections. Do you intend to begin the discussion to gain consensus to shift the focus of this article back towards the "phenomenon" rather than the subculture here on this page, or elsewhere? As I've mentioned, previous consensus is that the article should not treat "involuntary celibacy" as some sort of accepted psychological/medical/sociological phenomenon separately from the subculture—it appears that most people who aren't having sex but would like to be do not consider themselves "involuntarily celibate", in the same way that I do not consider myself an "involuntary non-millionaire" despite thinking it'd be quite nice to have that kind of money kicking around. Also, you keep referring to OR in this article—can you be more specific? Again, many people including myself have worked hard on this article, and so if there is uncited content here I'd like to know specifically what it is so I can fix it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 04:28, 21 February 2020 (UTC)

GorillaWarfare, totally stealing the "involuntary non-millionaire" label. Guy (help!) 11:46, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: I would like to chime in and notify you that the main hub of incels - incels.co - vehemently opposes any notion that female hominins can be considered anything close to being incel. Also, I find it unacceptable that you want to push the non-neutral PoV that misogyny should be considered a negative moniker.--Adûnâi (talk) 15:18, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Adûnâi, Seriously? You think any form of bigotry could be considered anything other than negative? Guy (help!) 11:41, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I thought that we had collectively decided to not dignify this with a response... Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 14:41, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Indeed. GorillaWarfare (talk) 18:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

vehemently opposes any notion that female hominins can be considered anything close to being incel. Also, I find it unacceptable that you want to push the non-neutral PoV that misogyny should be considered a negative moniker It's not that I don't have a witty response to this. The problem is that I have so many witty responses all at the same time, I really can't choose. GMG^talk 18:20, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

What part of what I said constitutes trolling? The notion that "femoids" (incel term for female hominins) can be incel is out of the question for the Incel Movement, this is a fact (they disallow females on their forum). And about my second point - you have to understand that by large, the Incel Movement rejects gynocentric egalitarian notions of morality. I believe my contribution is valuable to consider when writing this article. Sure, it's not reliable sources, but more of a meta perspective. A bit like it's useless to understand the Taliban without knowing they like cutting off femoids' noses.

"It's not that I don't have a witty response to this. The problem is that I have so many witty responses all at the same time, I really can't choose. User:GreenMeansGo" > Well, this is literally bulling now. Great job, Wikipedians.--Adûnâi (talk) 18:30, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

But what if I reject the non-neutral PoV that bullying should be considered a negative moniker? GMG^talk 19:00, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Adûnâi Sorry if you feel bullied. I don't think anyone intends to do that. But some of your points seem a little outlandish. E.g. "by large, the Incel Movement rejects gynocentric egalitarian notions of morality" - do you have a good source for that?

@Adûnâi: Just because incels use dehumanizing language about women does not mean it's acceptable for Wikipedia editors to do so. Please stop with "femoids" and "female hominids" and all that. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:24, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

The female incel thing is a pertinent point, though probably not in the way you mean. Currently, the main female incel forum (r/Trufemcels ,23.2k members) seems to have more than twice the number of members as the main male hub (incels.co ~11.k members including banned accounts).

In the broader sense of the term, in Japan, the number of female 18–39 virgins had increased to 24.6% of the population by 2015 which is almost as high a prevalence as for men. > 89% of those women want to get married. This is just Japan, there's likely close to 100 million young women in a similar situation. It's not just male incels who don't believe female incels are a thing – as per sources I already linked to above, society at large shares similar attitudes. I've encountered this first hand, I recall back around 2006 there were two good looking lasses (what incels would call high tier beckies) who complained of going more than a year without being asked out, and folk found this unbelievable. They both got married a few years later, but still.

Male incels have been getting all the attention, and there's now some big name accademics gearing up to give them even more. As per Foucault or MLK had predicted (riot is the language of the unheard) male incels were always going to rage outwards. The The Economist (non paywalled near equivalent ) details recent work suggesting a strong correlation between less developed countries with large numbers of sexless men and war, blaming it on male desperation. Just because female cels don't kick off in the same way, it seems rather uncompassionate to turn a blind eye to this huge scale female suffering. At least now we have sources starting to pick up on this. Accordingly, I'll go ahead and add a short section on femcels. Hopefully there's no objection? — Preceding unsigned comment added by FeydHuxtable (talk • contribs) 19:04, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

If the sources you intend to use are statistics from reddit and sources that don't actually mention the subject of this article at all, then no, you probably shouldn't add a section. GMG^talk 19:11, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

It would indeed be unwise to directly add stats from reddit. For something like this it's best to rely on secondary sources, as per the edit I've just made to the main page. FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @FeydHuxtable: Your comments are all about "female virgins" and speaks about MLK and Foucault, both of whom were dead before the incel subculture was a thing. As I have already said above, this article is not about the "social phenomenon" of people who would like to be having sex but aren't, it's about the online subculture. Any change to that focus will need formal consensus, because the current consensus has been established and reconfirmed more than once. So yes, I do object. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:24, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I, too, object to a change of focus in that regard.--Jorm (talk) 19:29, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I understand your position about the change of focus back to the broader phenomena. I'm still thinking about that. I don't like to bluntly point out that several of the assertions made above are entirely wrong, per the fact I've been an admirer of your work for more than a decade. Just trying to think of a diplomatic & collegial way to phrase things. But anyhow the female incel thing is different. In my edit to the article, I kept the focus entirely on the online subculture. So to clarify, am I correct in assuming you object to a change of focus back to the broader phenomena, but not to giving a little more due weight to female incels.? FeydHuxtable (talk) 19:35, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I think the point is that any "female incel" subculture would be a different subculture from the one covered in the article. This subject--the incel subculture--is notable because of the misogyny, violence, etc. of its members, not because of their sexual status. So, any subculture that doesn't share that misogyny and violence isn't part of the article's scope, because it would be a different subculture that shares some features with the ones included in the article proper. Much like how there are many independent restaurants named "McDonald's", but we wouldn't include them in the McDonald's article, even though they share a name and several other similarities; they're still different things. If the women-incel subculture is independently notable, or the "phenomenon" of involuntary celibacy itself, then that would probably warrant its own article and a corresponding hatnote on this article, maybe even a DAB. But consensus has shown that the latter is not independently notable, and I imagine the same would be for the former. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 19:46, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, the two sources used ([6] [7]) do relate it to the online subculture. But the question then is how muchweight to give to an opinion piece in the Guardian sourced to a magazine run by the Dollar Shave Club. GMG^talk 19:49, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: I don't mind bluntness; which of my assertions are wrong? Yes, I do object to refocusing of the article. As for giving weight to female incels, I'm not sure yet where I stand on that. I need to read the sources you included, which I haven't had a chance to do yet (I am at work). However I do think Writ Keeper makes a point worth considering. GorillaWarfare (talk) 19:51, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I would also point out that the Mel Magazine source states that The two are are distinct groups with their own cultures, values and norms, and the Guardian piece, which cites the Mel one, says that While male incel culture has been exhaustively analysed, femcels have largely been ignored...[the] fact that femcels have not been on violent rampages is the most obvious reason they are not discussed, and generally frames incels and femcels as separate groups (A lot of incels seem to think femcels are just ...). And yeah, it's also a very brief opinion piece, which is not the most reliable source. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Perhaps a better example: the articles for Antifa (United States) and Antifa (Germany), apart from the usual hatnotes and "see also" sections, barely mention each other, even though they are movements that share a name and many of the same broad objectives; they're still two separate things, and both are still themselves separate from the actual state of being anti-fascist, in the sense of opposed to fascism (which itself has its own article at anti-fascism). I think that the situation here is pretty directly analogous, except that "femcels" have not proven to be independently notable so far, and "involuntary celibacy" as a concept has been decided by consensus to be *not* notable. Writ Keeper ⚇♔ 20:17, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

That is a great example. Consider me convinced. GorillaWarfare (talk) 20:18, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Can we please slow down a little? Surely there's a case for staying open minded for a while here. This isn't just about complying with policy, as important as that is. When it comes to "new" topics like this, Wikipedia can be hugely impactful due to it's influence on the media and junior academics. Huge attention is going into the problem of male incels, there's new more realistic emotion reading AI sexbots coming out each month, new types of cheap virtual girlfriend appearing that male cels are paying for in their hundreds (project melody) not to mention all the academic attention they're getting. While it's good that some are trying to take away their pain, it's surely intolerable that the female perspective is being neglected, when they arguably suffer at least equally. I'll get on to addressing more specific reasons soon... FeydHuxtable (talk) 20:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid you will find this discussion will be more productive if we drop the WP:RIGHTGREATWRONGS pretenses. We're here to build an encyclopedia, and not to influence broad political trends or corner the market on sexbots. Continued lengthy digressions on these non-encyclopedia issues are at best distracting and at worst disruptive to a collaborative discussion. GMG^talk 21:01, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure "pretenses" was the most collegial word there. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

pre·tense: a claim, especially a false or ambitious one I don't think it's a stretch to say that it is both false and ambitious to assert that the broad disposition of sexbots is something we should be seriously considering when writing an encyclopedia. That much is nearly indistinguishable from parody. GMG^talk 22:10, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I haven't closed my mind to the possibility of including more details about female incels in this page. I'm just saying that at the moment I agree with Writ Keeper's analysis. As for your comments about Wikipedia's impact and the suffering of female incels, I have to agree with GreenMeansGo that this is beginning to stray into RIGHTGREATWRONGS territory. We are here to represent the views as they appear in reliable sources; we are not here to sway media or academic opinion, assuage female incels' suffering, or.. well I'm not really sure what you're suggesting we do when you mention virtual girlfriends and sexbots. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:00, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Arbitrary break

There's other ways of looking this. The definitions Im seeing for "pretense" seem to be overwhelming along the lines of "an attempt to make something that is not the case appear true." I.e., in the context of a non playful discussion, it can imply dishonesty. That said, GMG makes a fair point.

@GW My view is that the article has arguably been in RIGHTGreatWrongs territory ever since April 2018 – hence the need for a rewrite, or at least for a few balancing additions. The article originally embraced both the narrow & broad meaning of the term incel. So did many of the press sources – even ones that have been used in a OR way to push for the narrow definition:

WP:OR example: "The term "involuntary celibate" ... refers to self-identifying members of an online subculture"

The source used to link "involuntary celibate" to "self-identifying members of an online subculture" actually best support the 'broad sense' meaning, at least when read carefully. Granted, the quote below could be read as support "involuntarily celibate"= an online movement What does 'incel' mean? "Incel" is short for "involuntarily celibate." It's a movement made up almost entirely of men who claim they "can't have sex despite wanting to," according to incels.me. But note how the articles source is incels.me (now incels.co) which very empathetically defines incels in the broad sense. But you don't need to leave the source to see it's been misinterpreted. The CNN article later says: “Bottom line is, incel means being unable to get a romantic or sexual partner, it has nothing to do with terrorist acts” So clearly the source actually supports both "Incel" and "involuntarily celibate." being used in the broad sense.

And back in April 2018, 100% of the (admittedly sparse) academic sources seem to have been using incel in the broad sense of the term. Yet archived discussion show that editors chose to focus on just the narrow meaning in part as they didn't "want what research has been done on that broader subject to accidentally legitimize an extreme ideology" Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but while admirable, that seems a RGW position. Following our article's change of focus to the online sub-culture, much of the press soon followed suit. If everyone had, in some ways there would be less of a societal impact. The reality is that considerable sympathetic attention started going towards male incels. Even several of the sources in the article are largely about this, despite it barely being hinted at in our article (e.g. the FT source) This will be more clear when I get to detailing why the article lacks NPOV. But in a nutshell what's happening is that considerable attention is going towards addressing the problem of inceldom from a male perspective. If we'd avoided the arguably OR / RGW decision to ignore the academic work that looked at incledom in the broad sense, there would likely be a more female friendly perspective on this. And thus more holistic solutions, with less emphases on ones that mostly help men yet risk a mostly negative impact on women, like sexbots and virtual gfs.

Movomg on to Writ Keepers argument that "the incel subculture--is notable because of the" … "violence" … "of its members".

OR example: PUAHate is falsely described as an incel forum – not one killer seem to have been active on actual incel forums.

In the article it says that Elliot Roger was "a member of the involuntary celibacy community called PUAHate. " None of the sources given describe PUAHate as an incel website – it's described as "Founded to satirise and discredit pick-up artists". While the sources mention there was quite a bit of incel activity on the forum, they don't say the forum itself was incel. Even highly sexually successful men sometimes discredit pickup artists, with their despicable negging and other manipulative tactics. Its possible the majority of PUAHate users were cells, at least at the time ER last used it, but I understand it had many non cell posters. This is important as AFAIK, not one of the killers was active on true incel forums like incel.co or any of the now banned male incel reddit subs. So the impression the article seems to be giving – that members of the online subculture are violent, seems to be false. If you have time for a listen, there's some evidence that the incel forms actually moderate violence. heres a New York Times recommended podcast by good Naama Kates, where she interviews the only .co member she could find with clearly violent leanings. But he had those when he was a broad sense incel – he joined radical real world groups such as Jihadis & White supremists. Once he found incel.co, while he did briefly attempt to recruit members for violent incel rebellion activity, he got zero takers, and soon found his desire to commit actual violence fade away, thanks to the moderating effect of the forum. Incidentally – professor John Horgan himself has recently been awarded 250k to lead a team into studying male incels . Early indications are that he's open to the idea that the forums have a moderating effect on violence.

With all the above said, it's true that at least 3 of the killers seemed motivated by incel ideology, and the noteability of incel online subculture certainly increased in part due to perceived violence of the online community. So I guess theres a reason to still reject coverage of female incels if editors are so inclined, though for me that would be both unencyclopedic and unkind.

I guess the other big issues with the article is there's abundant reliable sources saying sympathetic things about even online male incels. Like you say, we're here "to represent the views as they appear in reliable sources" We're not here just to represent the views we agree with. Currently, the article is allmost entirely critical about incels, this is in no way a NPOV reflection of even the sources currently in the article - several of them include sympathetic points. As per my opening post here, correcting this isn't just the encyclopedic thing to do, it may also be helpful to those suffering from broad sense inceldom. I'll post in more detail on this probably tommorow. Unless you think I'm being unhelpful here GW. If you think that just say, there's lots of other things I can spend my wiki time on. FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:51, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

I know you disagree with the established consensus, but this will be the third time I'm saying: the consensus has been repeatedly established that this article should focus on incels as an online subculture. Look at the deletion discussions in the (collapsed) template at the top of the page, the talk page archives, etc. If you want to rewrite, or even somewhat shift, the article towards what you're describing as a "broad meaning of the term", you will need formal consensus (ie, RfC). Frankly I doubt that will be easy to achieve; if anything the sourcing seems to have trended even more towards describing incels in the sense of the radical Internet subculture in recent years.

As for your first collapsed section, about OR connecting incels and online subcultures, I think that might just be an issue of bad inline citation placement. That citation is being used to support the fact that incels use the term inceldom. The citations for the "online subculture" thing are the ones in the lead, which are quite clear:

1. ...the so-called “incel” movement — an online community of men united by their inability to convince women to have sex with them. [8]
2. The recent mass killing in Toronto by a man who once called for an “Incel Rebellion” has drawn attention to an online community of men who lament being “involuntarily celibate” and dream of a social order granting them access to the women of their choice. [9]

I'll fix the inline citation in the article body in a moment to make the intended sourcing clearer.

Regarding your comment that And back in April 2018, 100% of the (admittedly sparse) academic sources, are you referring to the one academic source I see used in that iteration of the article? That would be the Donnelly, et al study, which has also been a major topic of past conversations about this article, because it's not a great source: see Talk:Incel/Archive_1#Donnelly for a summation. Furthermore, there are now more academic sources we can use (I count five in the current version); why would we go based on what a smaller set of available sources a year and a half said, and not what current scholarship says? And no, I don't think you've correctly interpreted my comment, which you quoted only in part. If you look at the full comment (at Talk:Incel/Archive_1#Lead_sentence for anyone else following this conversation), I am objecting to someone suggesting we use sources studying people who are not having sex (but which do not use the term "involuntary celibate", "incel", etc.) as if they are referring to incels. I think it is reasonable to object to research being used to describe something it is not describing, and certainly not a RGW comment.

Following our article's change of focus to the online sub-culture, much of the press soon followed suit. I don't think this is accurate. Most media coverage of incels emerged after the Isla Vista attacks in 2014 and intensified again following the April 2018 Toronto attack. The timing of the press coverage, and its focus on extremism and violence, is quite closely tied to those events, not to how this Wikipedia article portrays the subject.

I would like to see the sources you have regarding "considerable sympathetic attention"—I've seen some sympathetic pieces (although they tend to be sympathetic towards individual members rather than towards the subculture as a whole), but I wouldn't call it a considerable amount. It sounds like from your comment that you're planning on presenting these sources at a later time, so I will be patient.

If we'd avoided the arguably OR / RGW decision to ignore the academic work that looked at incledom in the broad sense, there would likely be a more female friendly perspective on this. Which academic work is this that's being ignored? You are correct that some academic work has not been included in the past, because it was studies about people who would like to be having sex, but aren't. Much of it never used the term "incel"/"involuntary celibate"/etc., and there was no indication that any of the subjects in the research identified as such. It's improper to take research of the phenomenon of people who aren't having sex but would like to be (who often do not self-identify as incels, and in some cases reject the label strongly) and try to use it for this article, especially since consensus has repeatedly formed against addressing the topic in such a way. Again, such research is absolutely viable for use on Wikipedia, just not at this article. Sexual frustration is the most appropriate place for it, in my opinion, and loneliness, celibacy, and some others also might be appropriate depending on the specific research.

I agree that the wording around PUAHate could be improved—it was more of a home to incels than an "incel community". I can make a tweak in a moment, when I'm finished replying to you. But your conclusion that incels are not violent because the violent people mentioned in this article did not post on incels.co goes against an enormous amount of reliable sourcing—academic and media sourcing alike. Your NYT source is not really useful as a counterpoint—as you know, an incel saying "I'm (or we're) not violent" is not the same as a third party source saying "incels are not violent". Your link regarding the Horgan grant itself suggests incels are sources of violence—as for early results of his research, I guess I'm not sure where you're seeing them, so I can't really comment in any kind of informed way.

And no, you're not being unhelpful, and I would not suggest you step away from an article that I myself am heavily involved in editing—it would certainly be concerning in an WP:OWNy way to do so. I look forward to seeing the abundant sourcing you mention that holds a sympathetic view towards incels. In the meantime, I recently was granted access to an additional Wikipedia Library database for the purposes of the articles I've edited on the manosphere, and so I will see if there is any additional scholarly work in there that could be added to this article. GorillaWarfare (talk) 01:46, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for the energy you've given this GW. I agree with much of what you say. There's been some miss-communication here, which I can see is mostly or maybe entirely my fault for the confusing way I've laid out my points . It's never been my intention to reverse the consensus to focus on the sub-culture. I only wanted what I see as a v minor change in that direction - maybe a line or two to clarify that the highly critical coverage for the male subculture doesn't apply to broad sense incels. I've abandoned much of my plan to partially rewrite the article, but there's still a few changes I believe would be beneficial. I'll get back to you on this & your questions above once I've thought of a clear & hopefully semi- concise way to address them. FeydHuxtable (talk) 03:01, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Ahhh, okay. You're right that it seems I was misunderstanding your intention. I look forward to seeing what you have in mind as far as the line or two—I definitely think we can find something everyone's happy with. It probably makes sense to say some version of what's already been said on this talk page: that the incel subculture (and associated criticism) is quite a separate thing than people who'd like to be having sex but aren't, for whatever reason. GorillaWarfare (talk) 03:10, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Good to hear GW, I wont hold you to it, but it would be great if that happens. OK so before I post my final suggestions for additions, there's one last bit of OR to talk about.

WP:OR Sex robots and "Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex;"

Not one of the three sources for the sentence starting "Discussions often revolve around the belief that men are entitled to sex;" mention entitlement, so the claim could be seen as OR. Not in itself a major problem, though IMO it's creating a false impression for our readers. Elliot Roger did indeed display an entitlement to sex, but he was an atypical incel, and while he could be classed as part of the online sub culture, he never posted on true incel forums. I've had a look round the actual incel forums and not seen a single account arguing that they have an entitlement to sex - I've seen quite a few saying the opposite, inline with their mostly right wing contempt for the very notion of entitlement. (When they use the word entitlement they normally use it in nonsense arguments against women) The source for the claim that acquiring sexbots is a common topic for incels is actually entirely about wider society suggesting sex bots as a solution. Something that's now much more of a reality than it was back in 2018. I'll include the vox source in the small section Im going to propose to cover the sympathetic response. PS – the claim in the ledge that incel discussion has been characterised as showing an entitlement to sex is of course accurate and can stay.

I've just made the edit to address this as it's hopefully uncontroversial. The section above is more to suggest why it might create a misleading impression for our readers if we restored the suggestion that incel discussion often revolve around entitlement, even if a source could be found that supports it. (Arguably the USAtoday source near the start of the Ideology section does, but IMO that's inaccurate.)

Ive no intention to remove any other criticism. If you dont agree with the above & revert no worries. FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:22, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

I see my OR fix has been reverted, which for the most part I don't mind, in the grand scheme of things it's not that important. I'd suggest though that at the very least the vox source is removed. If there's one thing worse than uncited incorrect content, it's falsely cited content. The vox source is largely about outside commentators suggesting sex robots as a way to help out incels, and how it became a mainstream topic of conversation. It says absolutely nothing about "accquiring sexbots" being a commong topic for incels themselves. (They do seem to mention it occaisionally, but not commonly AFAIKT, this probably won't change until they get a bit more affordable & realistic. ) FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:59, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @FeydHuxtable: Wait, I'm confused—at the beginning of your collapsed block you say that the "entitlement to sex" thing is OR, but then at the end you say it is "of course accurate and can stay". Is it the use of the phrase "characterized as" that you're distinguishing here? As for taking a look around incel forums and looking to see if that's the case, that's WP:OR that can't be used to discount reliable sourcing. I do think you have a point about the Vox source, though—I'll poke around for a better source or remove it. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:02, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for not being clearer. All we need for "characterized as" to be true, is for some low quality sources to have made statements along those lines. They have. So the statement in the lede is accurate. And not even that misleading. Some incels - e.g. Elliot Roger - really have shown they feel entitlement to sex. But it's an entirely different thing to say discussions "often revolve around entitlement to sex". That's a much stronger claim, and it's more in the encyclopedia's voice. I think it's overstating the ammount of entitlement they feel. (Many incels being on the right, and against the very notiion of entitlement. Even some of the left leaning ones seem to agree, perhaps due to the influence of the blackpill) So I think "often revolves" is miselading to our readers. I'd prefer we don't make the statement, especially not without a source that directly supports it. But if you don't agree no worries, I could be wrong, maybe most incels do feel such an entitlement, some experts seem to think that... FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:17, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: Sources seem to agree that "entitlement to sex" is both a defining feature of the incel ideology and a common discussion topic:

• ...incels frequently feel entitled to the sexual and romantic interest of women, and bitterly resent women who reject them... Vox
• Entitled to sex: A common theme in incel threads is that women, or "Stacys," are shallow hypocrites for having sex with men with muscles or money, called "Chads," instead of ostensibly nice guys like them who need and deserve sex.USA Today
• Incels are, in general, an online community of misogynistic men who think they are entitled to sex from women and are furious that they don’t get it because of their appearance. Buzzfeed News
• Central to the incel ideology is the idea that sex with another person — specifically, penetrative sex with women — isn’t a privilege for men, but a right. Cosmopolitan
• Incels believe women owe them sex, and in some cases people active on incel forums advocate for government-sanctioned girlfriends and sexual encounters. CBC

My quick Googling turned up these and many more media results, but since you mention "low quality sources" I'll note that more academic sources also support it:

• [the incel] is convinced he is owed sex, and is enraged by the women who deprive him of it London Review of Books
• While incels are only one iteration of people who think that they are owed sex... Desire in the Age of Robots and AI
• [incels] feel as if sex is owed to them Violence and Gender
• [Incels] They frame this shift as a profound injustice to men who cannot find a sexual partner, suggesting that society has failed to give men what they are entitled to (access to women’s bodies) and that the only recourse is violent insurrection. Women in International Security

GorillaWarfare (talk) 02:33, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes you're right GW. There was no need for you to list all those sources, but I'm grateful that you did. If even someone as perceptive as Rebecca Gibson buys the view that cells generally feel entitled to sex, perhaps I've misread that part of incel culture.

In the Desire in the Age of Robots and AI source you linked to, Dr Gibson points out that sex with robots is a driving force in the latest technological advances in cybernetic and artifical intelligence science Two things in particular have turbocharged recent efforts to improve the Emotion reading/ emotive response capability of AI bots. One is increasing recognition of the problem of loneliness, esp. after Vivek Murthy's statement that "Loneliness is a growing health epidemic.". The second is the incel problem. While our article gave no hint about this, several sources were almost entirely about discussion of robots as a potential solution. E.g. the source you just removed (which was -ve about sexbots, but accepted they've become a mainstream topic as a solution for incels) or the Toby Young source ( which is mostly focussed on advocating sexbots for incels). It's not that big an over simplification to say society so far had just two responses to the Incel problem. "TeeHee Inkwell, take a shower bro, and work on your personality". And Sexbots.

On one level, no one with a heart could read the glowing testimonies Dr Gibson has collected on the deep emotional satisfaction even some of the older sexbots give their owners, and want to deny them to suffering incels. They should be the solution to those very few incels that cant be helped in any other way. But a realistic near term threat is an onrushing wave of literally hundreds of millions of advanced and affordable sexbots flooding the market. (Folk are working on models that are self-cleaning, and with some utility functions, like also being able to help with household chores.) There's hundreds of feminist sources out there on why this would likely be bad for women, though I've not yet read one that fully grapples with what an unprecedented & risky leap in the dark it would be, given the centrality of the sex drive to society and individual human behaviour. I guess the point I'm getting to is that on this particular topic, given how Wikipedia can influence coverage of emerging subjects, it's more important than normal that we carefully comply with our content policies and encyclopaedic values. So I'm really grateful for the open minded and scholarly way you've engaged with this so far, especially as I didn't open this discussion in the most collegial way. I'm almost done with my final suggestions, so hopefully we can soon draw this to a close. FeydHuxtable (talk) 09:32, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Final suggestions

My 3 proposals are 1) Add back the female incel sub section 2) Add a balancing section on the more sympathetic response , 3) Add a couple of sentences to the lede, mainly to indicate most of the critical coverage doesn't apply to broad sense incels.

This is a challenging topic to look at objectively. I'd really appreciate if anyone who takes the time to read all this doesn't rush to rejecting the suggestions, at least maybe sleeping on it first, if they don't have any questions.

To reduce the TLDR burden a little – the first & especially last of the collapsed sections below are the most optional. (The 1st being partly a rehash of less relevant earlier discussion. The last being more my own analyses rather than source or policy based reasoning.) But including for anyone up for a long read, as I think they add valuable context.)

Difficulties in being impartial about Incels + resp. to some of GW's earlier points & questions.

Incels frequently express extremely misogynistic views. Perhaps not even 1% of progressive folk would naturally look at them objectively. If I'd been present at the April 2018 discussion, I might have gone with what I'd see as the IAR RGW view that it's best not to make editorial decisions that would risk legitimizing their extreme ideology. It's only as I've been consulting in a related field that I've come to see the societal impact of non neutral coverage for this topic. So now it's my opinion that anything less than full NPOV is actually self-defeating, even from a progressive perspective. …your conclusion that incels are not violent.. To clarify, that's the opposite of what I think. That broad sense incels are more likely to be violent than sexually satisfied males has been recognised for millenia. Hence Aquinas's & Augustine's arguments for tolerance of brothels. A core part of the main stream explanation for the peacefulness of Bonobos compared to other apes, is that it's due to their relatively equitable access to sex. I agree with recent analyses that there's a causal link between the most violence prone countries and polygamy, due to the large number of broad sense incels that arise once the more elite men are allowed to hoard multiple wives (The 20 most unstable countries have relatively high rates of polygamy, E.g. in South Sudan about 40% of marriages have multiple wives, leaving lots of men unable to marry). So far none of the violent killers mentioned in the article seem to have be members of actual incel forums (though some did make incel type posts in related manosphere sites). It would be ludicrous to suggest membership of said forms would automatically cancel the natural increased proclivity for young men to be violent when they're not getting sex. But some available (admittedly weak) evidence seems to suggest that the true incel forums may have a moderating effect on folks inclination towards violence. My point was the article rather suggested the opposite. To a small extent you addressed this with your changes re PUH, and Im happy with that for now. Just including this clarification as it's useful context, and may become even more so once professor Horgans team publish their findings. Which academic work is this that's being ignored? This is partly a moot point as I agree with the reasons GW laid our in her long post, on why we should keep the focus almost entirely on the online sub culture. But things were different back in April 2018 and in earlier discussion. This 2005 book summarises some of the past research into involuntary celibacy, which extends well beyond Donnelly. Before the meaning of " involuntary celibacy" was effectively changed to largely mean members of the online subculture, we could have interpreted it as a plain English phrase, a more concise way of saying "the state of wanting sex but not being able to have it". Hence we'd have been able to include the views of Aquinus, Augustine, Fourier and potentially thousands of sources with a more modern take on the subject. Part of the reason I've talked so much about broad sense incels is to highlight that – at the time – the decision to focus on the online subculture was maybe not the most encyclopaedic thing to do. Yet it possibly happened anyway due to understandable RGW reasons. Hopefully by being aware of the way RGW arguably carried the day in earlier discussions, we can avoid a repeat.

Here's reasoning for the 3 suggestions, starting with my opinion on why it's justifiable to add back the female incel subsection on purely encyclopaedic grounds, even if we're indifferent to the IAR societal impact reasons in the last collapsed section below.

The woman question, rebuttal to the Writ Keeper argument

It would be so much easier if the Writ Keeper argument could be dismissed as spurious. Its actually quite strong. Yet when we look at the women question in the round, it seems to me that the encyclopaedic counter arguments are stronger. the incel subculture--is notable because of the misogyny, violence, etc. of its members There's nothing in our policy that says a subculture is notable due to its misogyny or violence. Like any other topic, subcultures are noteable if they've received significant coverage in reliable sources that are independent of the subject . Quite a bit of the coverage doesn't even focus on their misogyny or perceived violence – for example, it talks about their suffering, and our compassionate obligation to do something about it. consensus has shown that the latter [broad sense incels] is not independently notable, and I imagine the same would be for the former [female incels]. This seems debateable. I included 3 sources entirely about female online incels. Its been a while since I was a reg at AfD, but back in the day even a couple of passing mentions in independent RS was enough to prevent deletion on notability grounds. Theres other sources entirely about female online incels, and theyre also partially covered in several of the existing sources. Additionally notability doesn't apply to the contents of an article (only to whether the article itself should exist) And lastly, as per below, the existing consensus has been to cover female incels as part of the article, which has been stable for more than a year. any "female incel" subculture would be a different subculture Granted, several of the sources point out that while male & female cels have some things in common, they also tend to have quite different behaviours & attitudes. So the thing is, this is to be expected in a marginalised group. Individuals at the apex of society are more likely to be androgynous, while it's those in marginal group where you typically see the strongest expression of gender stereotypes. For example , take 3 of histories greatest rulers - Semiramis , Zenobia and Catherine - women who've been widely depicted & written about as having maculine qualities, despite the first two's legendary beauty. This is rareer with great men, but there's still plenty of examples, e.g. Baggio or Platini. Conversely, it's with the lower working class where we typically see individuals with hyper feminine & hyper masculine modes of dress & behaviour. Yet there's still such a thing as working class culture, its not conventional to divide it by sex. A stronger point is that our article already very clearly treats females as part of the same online subculture. The online community was founded by a woman, as an inclusive subculture . Our existing article has a whole paragraph about this, starting "The first incel website, Alana's Involuntary Celibacy Project, was gender-inclusive.[90] There are also women-specific forums, such as /r/Femcels ...." It says in the FAQ at the top of this talk page that. "If coverage of the subject changes, the article should be updated to reflect that." The coverage has changed. We now have a source suggesting that the number of females in the core online incel communities may now outnumber males. We can verify that this may indeed be accurate, by comparing the membership sizes on the forums themselves. We have a Guardian source specially pointing out the injustice of giving near 100% attention to men, when female cels may experience comparable suffering. I can see a RGW wrong reason for suddenly changing our past consensus to include female incels as part of this article, which could admitedly be supported by the Melmagazine source. But on balance encyclopaedic reasoning seems to suggest that per the additional coverage femcles now receive, a level 3 sub heading & a couple more paragraphs is justified. This still leaves >90% of the article focussing on men.

Reasons for a L3 sub section on the sympathetic coverage

Abundant sources express at least partial sympathy towards incels, or at least talk about others doing so. This includes many of the sources already in the article. Some of them are even entirely about it- e.g. Toby Young source is focussed largely on advocating sex bots as a solution. While the FT source is largely about what the author sees as poorly argued sympathetic coverage. Positive points are made in this existing huffingtonpost source, such as that not every member of the sub culture agrees with the misogyny, and that the forums serve in part as support groups. There's scarcely a hint about all this in the article. This is not to mention new sources in my proposed addition or others I'd previously linked to but not included. Yes, some are opinion pieces, but by senior columnists, and with views attributed to the author, as per WP:RSOPINION. These are not fringe views; some of them come from senior figures much closer to the mainstream establishment than junior journalists used to source much of the negative coverage. While agreeing that the vast majority of coverage should be negative, IMO NPOV demands we include some of this sympathetic coverage.

Proposed two sentences to add to the lede

Thanks GW for your interest in this, and your agreement in principle that would it be good to add a little to help reduce the risk of innocent "loveshy" folk being tarred with the negative criticism. My suggestion is tied up with proposals 1&2. If you don't agree with the new sections for female cels &/or sympathetic coverage, maybe you could add a new line to the lede yourself? E.g. maybe add some of the Lauren Chen Spectator article to the Criticism section (Chen being the one who most fully engaged with the "tar with same brush issue"), and perhaps something like an extra line to the history section, then it would be justified to add what's needed to the lede? PS by coincidence, just a few minutes ago Chen released a podcast all about sexbots. It's a little icky in parts, so to summarise, she echoes much of what's said in the Dr Gibson source, & by myself above. While Chen agrees that sexbots could be valueable for some lonely people and she has reservations on some of the feminist criticisms, she addresses the view they could be civilisation ending, and agrees that overall sexbots are a net negative. Anyhow, my proposal for the lede is: "A minority of sources have been more sympathetic, mentioning that not all incels are men, and that even male incels may not all agree with the violent and misogynistic views ascribed to the subculture. They also point out the term "incel" is increasingly being used as an insult, to label men who may be unsuccessful in dating, but who aren't part of the online community."

I'd be happy if other editors made their decisions on the 3 suggestions without reading the last collasped section below, as it's mostly IAR reasoning & my own analyses. But including as may be useful context for some.

IAR societal impact reasons why the 3 suggestions are desirable; the terrible power of the Blackpill

All the below is based on the assumption that for a new topic like this, our coverage can have a strong influence on the media, and hence on academic study & policy making. i) If we allow a more balanced coverage on female & male incels, folk might start working on a more holistic solution. E.g. multi dimensional intervention such as funding cheap cosmetic improvements like non surgical facial fillers, tailored therapy, ideas from the radical self love movement , and adding tweaks to encourage romance formation to the many existing projects aiming to reknit the social fabric by increasing connections between people, so as to dispel loneliness. ii) It should help reduce the risk of non-incels being afraid to seek help for severe anxiety and other treatable conditions that are making them romantically unsuccessful. iii) It should stop folk like me getting attacked as an incel apologist during our consulting on the problem of romantic loneliness. (Im a member of the UK labour party & I mostly only consult in progressive or bipartisan circles. Of course those working in conservative circles aren't going to have this problem. The conservative & private sector actors who are mostly running the show in English speaking countries obviously largely ignore Wikipedia & progressive media.) iv) A more balanced approach might be more successful in getting across the progressive take on the Incel topic, as a non NPOV presentation is less believeable, and more likely to provoke backlash. v) Incels may be viewed as individually socially powerless. But the blackpill is not. And incels are its evangelists. The blackpill seems to have a comforting effect on many cells. But for mainstream society it's a huge net negative. It's neoliberalism squared, it's dis-enchanting, it promotes negative solidarity. It's the opposite of almost everything that's life enhancing. And it's spreading via the big platforms into mainstream culture. .I'm no pacifist, but this process can not be stopped by force. Even if the big ISPs effectively banned all incel forums from the clear web, they'd still continue spreading the blackpill. "Repressive forces don't stop people expressing themselves; they force them to express themselves". In fact, taking down the central incel forum would actually make the blackpill harder to stop. I've spoke to SargentIncel who runs incel.co. He's a reasonable guy who's all about evidence based science. Right now it would be pointless to try to explain to him the blackpills many half truths. The good Sargent wouldn't listen, and in a sense he'd be right not to. Why should he care about mainstream society, when we so clearly don't care about cells. But if & when that changes and effective packages start being deployed to help cells, it would be different. (In a sense its already too late as the blackpill now has a life of its own. It's already beyond even SargentIncel's control, but at least while the central sites remain, the potential is there for the credibility of the blackpill to be greatly reduced.)

FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:12, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

@FeydHuxtable: To respond to your suggestions in order:

1. I don't have major objections to the proposed edit regarding incels who are women, though if you make the edit I will probably do some copyediting/etc.—for example, I think it's better we just refer to them in-article as "female incels" rather than "femcels". One thing that should be fixed before the edit is made, though is the rewording of the sentence starting with "It's been claimed that it is impossible for women to be incel...": that rewording makes it unclear that it is incels themselves who are claiming this, not the public at large. I also object to the "as of [year]" additions—it implies that we think those figures have changed in recent years, which does not appear to be a claim made in any of those sources. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:44, 8 March 2020 (UTC)
2. Regarding sympathetic responses: I could see potentially including the first part of paragraph one of your suggested change. I think I understand from reading the sources why you are trying to include the sex robots topic in the sympathetic responses subsection, but from the wording of your proposed change it is not really clear why this point is mentioned there. I also don't understand why you are including the paragraph about "incel" being used as an insult in there—what does that have to do with sympathetic coverage? Overall, I don't think this needs a separate heading, and I would oppose any change to the lead per WP:WEIGHT.
3. As I have said, discussion of what you term "broad sense" incels should not be introduced to this article without formal consensus. GorillaWarfare (talk) 21:37, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

1) Outstanding. I agree the female incel expansion would be better with your suggested amendments. I'll make the edit probably in a couple of days, just in case anyone else wants to chime in, such as GMG who I hope very rapidly recovers from feeling indisposed.

2) I don't have any strong desire to include mention of sexbots, it's just that seems to be what most of the sympathetic coverage so far focuses on. I'll have a think on how we could make it clearer why we mention it. No problem if you don't want the sympathetic coverage mentioned in the lede. The insult thing is something that from my PoV is much more important to include than robots. It's covered in sympathetic sources - I see what you mean about it not being great fit to the "sympathetic coverage" title - that's why I titled the proposed new L3 header "Sympathetic and mixed responses". But I'd agree it would fit in the Criticism section without the need for a new header.

3) Have to admit I'm a little crestfallen by this. The desirability to reduce the tarring of non subculture romantically unsuccessful people (all ~300 million of them) with the incel brush is the whole impetus for me getting involved here. I'd perhaps wrongly understood from this edit that you suported this. Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but are you saying that you'd class adding just the line The term "incel" is increasingly being used as an insult, to label men who may be unsuccessful in dating, but who aren't part of the online community. as a large enough refocussing towards broad sense incels, as to need formal consensus? Per the April 2018 discussion to refocus the article's original embrace of both the narrow & broad meaning to narrow, only involving a handful of editors, I don't see why we need to go down the formal route.

That said, you know the community better than me. On the plus side, I think I could frame a suitable RfC for this with only 3-4 lines :-) Which I'll draft for your approval first, if this is what you think we should do? FeydHuxtable (talk) 22:22, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Regarding point 3: no, I don't think just adding that one suggested line would need formal consensus. Like I said, I think it's okay for the article to clarify that incels are not the same as people who are just sexually frustrated. I think the confusion over what I was agreeing to stems from the fact that you consider people who would like to be having sex but aren't to be incels, and I do not. I don't mind discussing that group of people in this article; it is including them under the incel label that I object to, and that I think would need broader consensus. The April 2018 discussion you mention is only one of many discussions that have been held about the focus of this article; see the multiple AfDs and DRVs listed in the template at the top of the page. Those repeated discussions that have agreed that the sourcing/notability is not there to discuss "involuntary celibacy" as if it is a recognized psychological condition or sociological group outside of the Internet subculture are why I think you need formal consensus to refocus this article in any major way. As for my opinion on any RfC, I've already given it: [10]. I don't think it's likely to be successful, given that a) the prior discussions concluded that the idea of involuntary celibacy in the "broad sense" is not backed by sourcing, and should just be discussed at sexual frustration, and b) coverage has, if anything, trended more towards discussing incels in the context of the Internet culture in the couple of years since. I would love to not have to deal with arguing this same point yet again in a new RfC, but if you think it's worth the time and has a chance of success I'm certainly not going to claim veto power. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:00, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Excellent. I think we're now in agreement. I'll wait a couple of days in case anyone else wants to chime in. If not, I'll go ahead & add 1) a slightly amended expansion to our Female Incel coverage; 2) some scaled down & tuned up sympathetic/other criticism (without a section header, & with no addition to the lead, & which no doubt yourself or others will later further modify) ; 3)I'll add the one line to the lede that you agree with.

I was only suggesting a possible RfC as I mistakenly thought you might prefer a formal concensus before we add that one line. (the RfC would have been about just said single line) I've no intention of trying to refocus the article in any major way. Again sorry for creating that false impression. Both now and looking forward, I don't expect it will ever be optimal to refocus back to broad sense, pretty much for exactly the reasons you've explained. FeydHuxtable (talk) 23:21, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Great, sounds like there's a pretty straightforward path forward! I've (obviously) got this article on my watchlist so I'll keep an eye out for your changes. Thanks for being so willing to discuss all this, and for helping improve the article. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:32, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

Source quality

• On source quality: For a mature topic, we might not want to give any weight to opinion pieces at all, except perhaps to highlight the view of an especially relevent expert. But this is a quite new topic. We're currently giving weight to the view of relatively junior journalists in publications whose reliability we've specifically questioned . Arwa Mahdawi is a respected columnist at a major bradsheet. So not sure why we'd want to reject these sources on quality grounds, at least for this article. Esspecially as I only proposed adding a relatively small section, still leaving over 90% of the focus on male incels? I'll get to Writ Keeper's point on apparently seperate sub cultures soon, I'll probably wait a few hours so less chance of distracting GW at work. FeydHuxtable (talk) 21:08, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

  The section wasn't removed because of concerns over source quality, nor does that seem to be the predominant concern about said section in this conversation. GorillaWarfare (talk) 23:03, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. But GMG's points regarding source quality seemed worth addressing, and it seemed much easier to do so than to start specifically discussing the various NPOV & WP:OR issues with the article. But now you've graciously invited me to be blunt, I guess the its time to do so. FeydHuxtable (talk) 00:14, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Ah, got it. It wasn't clear to me that you were specifically replying to GMG here. GorillaWarfare (talk) 00:20, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry. I'm around, but mostly indisposed. GMG^talk 21:46, 8 March 2020 (UTC)