‘I want to be the best man possible’: Meet the manosphere-curious men trying to deradicalise themselves online
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In 2023, I stumbled across a subreddit called r/IncelExit. It’s a self-described place “for people who got drawn into the incel community but want support and help with a way out”. With the aim of writing about the group, and the young men taking proactive steps to deradicalise themselves, I ended up chatting with a few members about their involvement in the incel community and their reasons for trying to shake its misogynistic mindset. Their struggles felt urgent at the time — they told me about their experiences of loneliness, anti-feminist thoughts, and a feeling of being rejected by society (often manifesting as a feeling of being rejected by women). And yet today, they feel even more pressing.
Then, the subreddit — which was created in 2019 — already had 14,000 members. Today, it has 21,000. In the last two years, the divide between young men and women has only grown. New data shows that 56% of millennial and Gen Z men in the UK think we’ve gone ‘too far’ in promoting women’s rights and that we’re now actively discriminating against men. Donald Trump, a man who’s been accused of sexual misconduct, including rape, by at least 26 women, has been re-elected as US president, largely thanks to a boom in young male supporters. Meanwhile, violence against women and girls is growing, as is misogyny. The influence of the manosphere, men’s rights figureheads like Andrew Tate, and incel ideology on all of this can’t be overstated.
But, for obvious reasons, there aren’t many places on the internet (and beyond) where people who’ve experienced — and are conflicted about — this kind of radicalisation can speak frankly about it: its allure, its downsides, and their internal battle over their beliefs. And, although this topic floods the mainstream when radicalised men and boys commit horrific acts of violence, general conversations about inceldom tend to happen in shadow-y or more niche corners of the internet and the media. Now, though, a new four-part Netflix series, called Adolescence, is addressing the topic head on.
Content retrieved from: https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/reports/a64253141/reformed-incels/.
