Adolescence: Incels and the Impact on Young Boys
One TV show in particular is making waves at the moment, Adolescence is a 2025 British crime drama miniseries which aired on Netflix in March. The series follows the 13-year-old Jamie Miller who is accused of murdering his classmate Katie. The entire story unfolds over 13 months and concludes in the fourth and final episode, where Jamie makes an unexpected confession to his father.
What is so important about this miniseries is the message it brings, it shows how easily young men and boys fall into misogynistic tendencies with sometimes fatal outcomes. It also shows that parents are not always capable of stopping this downfall, highlighting the need to look at legislation regarding phone usage but also regarding rules of protection against these ideologies on the web. With Meta for example back-tracking on its fact-checking, the latter seems further and further away.
What is Misogyny, the Manosphere, and what are Incels?
We have had Dr. Elizabeth Pearson and Nicholas Martin on the Podcast discussing misogyny and its consequences, as well as extremism. Which you can listen to here and here. But what is misogyny exactly?
Misogyny is essentially hatred of women. Misogynistic extremism has a lot in common with far-right nationalism, and right-wing extremism. All have rigid ideas regarding what men and women should do in their day to day lives, believe in systemic oppression, and endorse violence to solve issues that arise. Moreover, all challenge principles of equality and justice. These extremists believe they are superior. Superior over women, superior over POC’s, in its most common form, white men’s superiority. This sense of superiority goes hand in hand with the entitlement discussed previously.
We discussed the topic extensively here.
The Manospehere is a controversial network of websites, blogs, forums, and online communities centred on men’s rights, male interests, and opposition to feminism. It is inherently misogynistic and tends to harbour incels and movements like 764 and the Order of Nine Angels.
Incels are inherently misogynistic and part of the Manosphere. Derived from the phrase “involuntarily celibate”, incel culture in its simplest form is someone who deems themselves unable to find a romantic partner despite desiring one.
As mentioned in Misogyny and Extremists. Incels believe that men are the superior sex and men have the right to objectify and criticise women as a result. The irony is that they are tempted to think they are owed something, namely sex, by the women they have ‘protected’ or treated ‘well’. As much as the idea of protecting women comes from a good place, for example thinking women should be able to feel safe and that young girls can play with whomever they want, misogynists and extremists also believe that they have a right to women’s bodies. They tend to want a woman that is subordinate, that does as she is told. Often, the argument is that for protection one needs something back, usually access to her body. However, it seems like a false equivalence being asked to have sex with someone because they did not rape you.
Influencers like Andrew Tate have been connected to the growing corner of the internet in which young boys are being radicalised from this certain viewpoint.
Read more here.
The Impact on Society
Impact on young boys/men
As discussed in Misogyny, Men’s Health and the International Risks, misogyny online is dangerous, because the more accustomed people become to seeing women referred to as objects, the easier it becomes to forget that they are people too. With social media being so unregulated, you get a whole new generation of young people (mostly men) being drilled in techniques for mistreating women.
As Adolescence shows, the type of young boys that fall into it can be from any background. It usually starts innocently. As a young teenager, your aim is not to hate women, but to understand and get help towards questions you might have regarding women, feminism, being in love, fitness tips, etc. You end up, with just a few clicks, on incel and extremist sites very quickly. Their aim in turn, is to lure you in, and have you buy whatever product they sell. Think of a book explaining how to get women to like you, or how to get a girlfriend, amongst others. However, none of these books or websites are aiming at making you feel better about yourself – if you are happy, why would you buy more? The type of masculinity they sell, one that asks for division, hatred, and violence, doesn’t benefit anyone.
The meaning of some of the often used Emojis in the Manosphere:
Pill: ‘red pilled’ indicating that someone is an incel. It is a key symbol in the manosphere, derived from the movie The Matrix. It tends to mean that someone sees the world as “it really is”, with and understanding of the “true nature” of women’s behaviour and dating preferences.
Deeply misogynistic.
100: 80/20 rule, where “80 per cent of women are attracted to 20 per cent of men”. This imbalance justifies the “tricking” of women into relationships, as normal dating approaches are seen as futile for most men.
“Women, you must trick them because you’ll never get them in a normal way.”
Kidney Beans: self-identification as an incel. It has also been used to belittle women and reinforce harmful misogynistic stereotypes.
Dynamite: an exploding red pill, suggesting radical incel beliefs.
Red heart (manosphere interpretation): love.
Purple Heart (manosphere interpretation): horny / sexual attraction.
Yellow Heart (manosphere interpretation): I’m interested, are you interested?
Pink Heart (manosphere interpretation): I’m interested but not in sex.
Orange Heart (manosphere interpretation): you’re going to be fine / reassurance.
Impact on young girls/women
Misogyny online is also an issue for young girls, as the access incels have to them has become bigger and easier. According to Emily Cherrington, women tend to be less aware of the beliefs of incense and how much of a threat they pose to them. In the last few years however, there has been more and more research done towards the threat of incels and the manosphere, with authors like Laura Bates and Laurie Penny asking to view incels as extremists, demonstrating the feeling of urgency and worry that incels are inflicting on women.
Young girls, however, are easily pushed into the narrative of ‘owing’ young boys or men something. Stories state that it has become the norm to share nudes for example as girls get pressured in doing so, this then gives the boys leverage and can push these girls into activities they would normally say no to. In addition, the current political climate has taken away boundaries for people to say certain things which would have been frowned upon a few years ago. Being barked at is a more common experience, and one I have had myself. In addition, it is not ‘weird’ to have been cat called or yelled at in the street, especially if you look young, vulnerable, and are identifying as a woman.
Solutions
There are a few things we as a society can do:
- Ensure children can grow up as children. With this I mean that they play outside, do board games, puzzles, use their imagination. Screen time should be limited and supervised, i.e. tv-shows you as a parent have agreed to. Do not get me wrong, children will always try to find new ways, which brings me to point 2.
- Ensure that your child feels safe and feels like they can say everything to you. Allowing for good communication will ensure that a child might ask the parent questions which they would otherwise google.
- As a society we need to vote for the right people and advocate for laws being made that ensure accountability of tech companies. Meta taking away fact-checking should for example be outrageous.
- For example the government should step in and guide children and their parents to the correct use of social media.
- In addition, the UK government has vouched to treat misogynistic extremism as extremism under British law, this would ensure that people can actually be held accountable for the hatred they spread.
- Moreover, more is required from platform moderators, i.e. fact-checkers, and the government to ensure the safety of everyone online. For example, the improvement of algorithms and AI could lead to catching posts that have managed to evade tactics so far and ensure the removal of offensive and obscene posts.
- Read books about the subject! There are so many authors who discuss how it is for women, what the experiences are, why it happens, and that give great ideas for solutions as well. Examples are “Men who hate women” by Laura Bates, “Sexual Revolution” by Laurie Penny, “The Other Pandemic” by James Ball, “The Authority Gap” from Marie Ann Sieghart, and many more!
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