Filipa Melo Lopes: What do incels want? Explaining Incel Violence Using Beauvoirian Otherness

Simone De Beauvoir: A Toolkit for the 21st Century

In recent years, incel violence has moved from obscure corners of the internet onto mainstream news. In this episode, Filipa Melo Lopes discusses why most feminist explanations fail to grasp the specificity of this violence because these explanations focus on either the objectification of women or the perpetrator's sense of entitlement to sex. Instead, what incels want is a Beauvoirian “Other”. For Simone de Beauvoir, when men conceive of women as Other, they represent them as both human subjects and as embodiments of the natural world. But, in being both of these things at the same time, they are neither.

This lecture is moderated by Deva Waal.

Hosted by Ashika Singh and Liesbeth Schoonheim

More readings....

• Baele, Stephane J., Lewys Brace, and Travis G. Coan. 2019. From “incel” to “saint”: Analyzing the violent worldview behind the 2018 Toronto attack. Terrorism and Political Violence: 1-25. https://doi.org/10.1080/09546553.2019.1638256
• Beauvoir, Simone de. 2011. Myths – Chapter 1. The Second Sex. Translated by Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Vintage Books.
• Direk, Zeynep. 2011. Immanence and abjection in Simone de Beauvoir. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 49 (1): 49-72. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2010.00044.x
• Manne, Kate. 2020. Involuntary – On the Entitlement to Admiration. Entitled: How male privilege hurts women. London: Allen Lane.
• Nagle, Angela. 2016. The new man of 4chan. The Baffler, No. 30, March. https://thebaffler.com/salvos/new-man-4chan-nagle
• Rodger, Elliot. 2014. My twisted world: The story of Elliot Rodger. Accessed July 10, 2021.https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/1173619/rodger-manifesto.pdf
• Tolentino, Jia. 2018. The rage of incels. The New Yorker, May 15. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-rage-of-the-incels