In the spring of 2018, a 25-year-old man rammed a van into an intersection of Toronto’s business district, killing 10 civilians and injuring 16.
In the aftermath, public discourse popularized the term “misogynist terrorism” such that the perpetrator was a self-defined “incel” and claimed to be motivated by resentment over women rejecting his sexual advances.
“Incels”, or involuntary celibates, are merely one component of a digital community which has been dubbed “The Manophere”. “The Manosphere” is a collection of web-based misogynist movements including incels, to pick-up artists (PUAs), men’s rights activists to “men going their own way” (MGTOW) (Riberio et al., 2021). The emergence of web 2.0 is cited as a cause for the proliferation of such movements (Ging, 2019), which are “roughly aligned by their common interest in masculinity and its alleged crisis” (Lilly, 2016).
Background Research
Digital communities evolve independent of a common material setting; at the onset of such communities members are not necessarily connected by their origins, appearance, experiences or identity. Resultantly, language plays a crucial role in defining online communities; by using a particular vocabulary, individuals can participate in community discourse and demonstrate their in-member status. Similarly, socio-linguistic theory asserts that language both constitutes and is constituted by reality, which suggests that language also plays a role in preserving and developing the ideology of a community (Axelsson & Lindgren, 2021). Thus extensive research has been performed into the effect of language on ideological continuity within online communities, and how the study of language can be used to detect said communities.
In this context, Scholarship on the manosphere has largely been concerned with characterizing the movements of which it is composed, often through the lens of language. It has been observed that lexicon, characterization of women and perceptions of masculinity can differ greatly across the manosphere (Ribeiro, Blackburn and Bradlyn, 2021).
For example, the article “From Chads to Blackpills, a Discursive Analysis of the Incel’s Gendered Spectrum of Political Agency”, by Kurt Fowler investigates and analyzes the specific language used by incel communities. Fowler uses linguistic and discourse analysis to tap into ideological attitudes and their impact on group differentiation.
Interestingly, in contrast to other literature usually locating inceldom as a sub-category of a broader 'Manosphere', this paper identifies inceldom as its ideological basis. For Fowler, other communities – Men Going Their Own Way, Pick Up Artists etc. – are all declinations of incel communities. The paper finds that the use of specialized vocabulary is significant in “explicitly or implicitly reinforcing the group’s central ideology” and plays an important role in conveying group memberships.
Similarly, “Exploring Misogyny across the Manosphere in Reddit” (Farrell et al., 2019) analysed 7 subreddits, aiming to assess how misogynistic attitudes are expressed through specific word choice and rhetoric. Ultimately, Farrell et al. concluded that misogyny is increasing online, and further noted a common dialect of jargon among the subreddits studied. The study therefore posits that this reveals a deeper culture existing across sub-communities of the Manosphere (Farrell et al.) It is important to note that though this study presents its findings as applicable to the entirety of the manosphere, five of the subreddits analyzed by Farrell et al. were explicitly ‘incel’ and the only other community represented in this sample was MGTOW.
In slight contrast, “Alphas, Betas, and Incels: Theorizing the Masculinities of the Manosphere” by Debbie Ging recognizes different factions within the Manosphere, and theorizes that sub-communities are differentiated primarily by their conceptions of masculinity. Ging notes that these “diverging elements” display distinct language patterns which parallel varied conceptions of masculinity. For example, Incels depict themselves through a language of victimhood and self-deprecation as a reflection of their identification with a “beta” male archetype. In so forth, the unique lexicon of the incel community reinforces its member’s conception of their own masculinity, thus distinguishing them both linguistically and substantively from the broader Manosphere. Yet in spite of Ging’s recognition of distinct sub-communities within the Manosphere, she only provides an in depth analysis of language and ideology amongst incels.
Research Question
Analysis of the Incel movement has demonstrated the significance of language in the construction and communication of their ideology. However, there remains a disparity within scholarship regarding the ideology and linguistic character of other sub-communities in the Manosphere. In fact, we noted that sub-groups of the Manosphere are often conflated, especially under the assumption that ‘inceldom’ acts as the ideological foundation of this community as a whole. Thus we wish to explore the extent to which the communities within the manosphere are ideologically distinct, and concurrently, we hope to determine whether each community has developed a unique lexicon, comparable to that used by the incels.
Therefore, our research will be guided by the question: “How does the use of language differ across the four sub-communities of the ‘manosphere’, and to what extent can it confirm the ideological differentiation of these communities?”
Hypothesis
We expect to see a degree of thematic continuity between Manosphere communities through resentment over a perceived decay of the patriarchy and oppression by feminist forces (Lilly, 2016). Nonetheless, we predict the subcommunity ideologies will differ in their response to this perceived societal change. We also predict the use of language will change across the Manosphere with regards to vocabulary/jargon, most frequently referenced words, and reference fields around commonly used words. Identifying these differences will help to expose and categorize deeper substantive differences between communities. Overall, we expect to find that linguistic analysis can be used to differentiate between subcommunities of the Manosphere.
Methodology
In order to characterize the manosphere, we selected 4 platforms representing the four sub-communities respectively; this included the subreddit r/Mensrights, the incels.is forum, PMUA forum, and MenGoingYourOwnWay forum. We were forced to analyze independent forums with regards to the latter three communities as they had all had their major subreddits banned. In order to perform our analysis, a four step methodology was applied to each of the communities. This included the following components:
Familiarization: The first 200 posts in each forum were documented and characterized based on topic to allow for a contextual understanding of the community. Specific jargon was noted, aiding our analysis by allowing us to understand nuances of discourse within the forums.
Selection: 10 of 200 threads were chosen to analyze in depth. We aimed to select a sample spanning the timeframe of the first 200 posts, and with substantial textual content. Sometimes, discussion threads had very few comments but extensive introductory posts. In other cases, long comment sections compensated for simple introductory questions or statements.
Qualitative analysis: The 10 threads were subjected to in-depth qualitative analysis. We noted specific language, reoccuring terms, common themes, the way users identified, their conception of masculinity and their understanding of women. This allowed us to address the first element of our hypothesis, predicting that subcommunities would display substantively different ideologies.
Quantitative analysis: Using the software program ‘Tropes’, we determined the most frequently occurring words and associated words, along with most frequently discussed relations and situations for each sub-community. This allowed for quantitative results pertaining to the question of language use.
Tropes is a free French semantic analysis software, created by Pierre Molette and Agnès Landré. This program analyzes text, extracting the most frequently used terms, and maps out the words surrounding each of these terms, among many other features. It primarily uses Artificial Intelligence and was a precursor of many search engines today.
Take the Red Pill
Go to our Findings
Bibliography
Habib, H., Srinivasan, P., & Nithyanand, R. (2022, February). Making a Radical Misogynist.
Lilly, M. (2016). ‘The World is Not a Safe Place for Men’:. University of Ottawa, Canada.