By Laura Van Oudenaren
Editor’s Note: This article contains references to sexual assault and murder; it quotes language that is abusive and degrading toward women. It may be – in fact, ought to be – disturbing to readers.
On November 2nd, 2018, 40-year old Scott Beierle entered a Tallahassee yoga studio and opened fire, killing two women and himself. The victims were random, but Beierle selected the yoga studio intentionally. He wanted to kill women – fit, beautiful women that frequent yoga classes near a college campus.
On the internet, there is a term for this type of shooting – “to go ER.” ER is an abbreviation for Elliot Rodger, the 22-year old Isla Vista shooter who brought mainstream the vitriol of a group calling themselves “incels,” short for “involuntary celibates.” Rodger killed six people and himself, targeting blonde women.
To go ER is to channel incel rage and sexual frustration into the mass murder of women and men who support them. Incels believe that sex is a male right and that women are evil for withholding it from them. They subscribe to the pareto principle of sex, that 20% of men are having 80% of the sex. As a result, they view male-female relationships in the context of a sexual marketplace in which “Chads” and “Stacys” – archetypes of alpha men and attractive women – supposedly dominate, leaving out the incels.
While it’s hard to estimate the size of the incel subculture and other male supremacist groups that exist almost exclusively online, it is clear that their influence is significant. An incel website founded a year ago after Reddit shut down an earlier incel community boasts over 10,000 forum participants. Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), a male supremacist group on Reddit, has 79,000 followers, and a Youtube channel with a following of 140,000.
Since Elliot Rodger’s 2014 attack, five acts of terrorism have been linked to the incel community. Before the most recent yoga shooting, Beierle recorded a YouTube video in which he praised Rodger and identified himself as an incel. The 2015 Umpqua Community College shooter likewise left a manifesto at the scene that praised Rodger. The 2017 Aztec High School shooter used the screenname Elliot Rodger on online incel message boards. The 2018 Toronto van attacker Alek Minassian posted on Facebook before committing his crime, “The incel rebellion has already begun! …We will overthrow all the Chads and Stacys! All hail the Supreme Gentleman Elliot Rodger!”
Before opening fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school on Valentine’s Day, Parkland Florida shooter Nikolas Cruz wrote on a 4chan discussion board, “Elliot Rodger will not be forgotten.” Others took notice – not out of concern, but admiration. Linking the post to breaking news of the Parkland shooting, one user asked, “Did OP [Original Poster] deliver?” “I hope so,” replied user Disciple. “It’s so rare for OP to actually deliver, problem is there’s an empty mass shooting threat like every 30 minutes on 4chan.” “Hopefully Stacy and Chad take notice,” chimed in Lurker, a third incel on the forum. “Sex is a male NEED.”
Incels vs Volcels
To understand the world of the incel killers, one has to first understand 4chan, Reddit, and other such anonymous messaging boards. 4chan is an online anonymous community divided into different boards, each with its own topics and accompanying rules.
The 4chan thread /pol/ is reserved for political incorrectness. It’s where male supremacists hang out. It’s also where white supremacists and anti-Semites meet, which means these worlds often overlap, using the same language, sharing ideas, and inevitably brawling. Distinct male-supremacy groups such as Pick Up Artists, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Incels gather on Reddit under distinct subreddits.
MGTOW is an online community of men who vow to distance themselves from women as a reaction to what they perceive as a negative cost-benefit outcome of associating with women. They believe that the legal, financial and emotional ramifications of marriage, long-term relationships, and even communicating with women far outweigh the positives. They’re what incels call volcels, or “voluntary celibates.”
‘Eventually, a fully indoctrinated (or “Red Pilled”) MGTOW will divorce himself from society entirely.’
MGTOW is purportedly empowering, offering men a path to happiness and independence. Adherents believe that we live in a gynocentric society that has become so preferential towards women that men can no longer succeed within conventional gender roles. For men to thrive, therefore, they must “Go Their Own Way,” or distance themselves from women. A MGTOW will avoid all sex and friendships with women – with the exception of prostitution, which they advocate. MGTOWs are also proponents of sex dolls and pornography. Eventually, a fully indoctrinated (or “Red Pilled”) MGTOW will divorce himself from society entirely.
While MGTOW may be rooted in ideals of empowerment, hatred is its lifeblood. One MGTOW reddit user was called a legend for breaking up with his girlfriend the day she was raped. He wrote, “She broke my trust, went somewhere I said not to, was probably going to end up cheating on me anyway and got raped and beaten over it and I’m supposed to feel sorry for her.” One user responded, “Chalk this under ‘Why women were considered property for millennia.’”
Another popular thread on the MGTOW subreddit shows a photo of two nude women chained to a wall. “Are women really humans?” it asks. “The main difference between animals and humans is culture and civilization. Since it’s nearly exclusively men who created culture and civilization, ask yourself: are women really humans?”
MGTOWs live in a world in which all women behave alike; “AWALT” is an acronym they use to mean, “All Women Are Like That.” They believe women are inherently hypergamic or inclined to “marry up.” Women are always looking for a better alternative, a more alpha male – or as they call him, a “Chad.” MGTOW believe that hypergamy leads women to betray, lie and manipulate. In the MGTOW world, all women are prostitutes, except prostitutes.
According to MGTOW, women have the power in the sexual marketplace until they hit “the wall.” The wall is a point in time when women cease to be attractive because of age and weight (fatism is ingrained in MGTOW language and forums). A frequent saying in MGTOW message boards is, “Men age like wine. Women age like milk.” MGTOW believe that if they remove themselves from the sexual marketplace, women will have nowhere to turn once they “hit the wall.” They anticipate a day when women who once rejected them “hit the wall” and become willing to settle down with non-alphas – only to find they’re no longer available. The men will be gone, fulfilling their needs with sex dolls and prostitutes, and society will need to shift power back to men to right the wrongs of feminism.
Many MGTOW men are divorced. Some join as a response to the #MeToo Movement. They fear being falsely accused of rape or sexual assault and see lifelong abstinence as the only way to stay safe from accusations. Men feel they were pushed to go their own way; as a result, their language, rules and lives are packed with bitterness towards the women and male “betas” that supposedly drove them there.
For all their interest in sex, MGTOWs are not interested in children. They deride women for having “Baby Rabies,” a phenomenon defined in the group’s official glossary as “the female biological clock in full hyperdrive”: “Firing all cylinders, she has a plan to get pregnant and you are not a part of it. Except to make 216 monthly payments which she plans to extort using any and all methods at her disposal.” Perhaps worst of all, having a child exposes a MGTOW to the ultimate risk, or “cuckold”—having a daughter.
MGTOW is a knee-jerk reaction to changing gender roles, feminism, and the MeToo movement. Although MGTOW are often linked to incels in mainstream culture because of their decision to abstain from sex—or rather, non-commodified sex—in actuality, MGTOW look down on incels for yearning for female companionship. They believe that incels have yet to be enlightened and will never win in a world dominated by women.
‘Incel Rebellion’
Incels share much in the way of volcel ideology and vocabulary. Yet they don’t think merely boycotting women as MGTOWs do will change anything. Many incels in hidden pockets of the internet instead believe that only an “Incel Rebellion” will shift the sexual status quo. The original incel subreddit, which Reddit shut down last year, was notoriously pro-rape and anti-woman. Posts explicitly named how to rape women, while others advocated for legalized rape.
In these communities, incels self-define based on the thing they believe makes them celibate, or what helps them cope with their celibacy. Currycels are of Indian descent and believe their race keeps them from sexual activity. Heightcels believe they are too short. BlackOps2cels spend their time playing video games, while gymcels frequent the gym.
The anger and hatred towards women that flooded message boards where Parkland Shooter Nick Cruz and other incel killers hung out did not disappear when they were shut down. It simply migrated. On incel message boards, users ask for advice on how to have sex with unconscious women and post fantasies of raping a woman as they slit her throat. They also discuss romantic failures and ways to revenge “normies.”
They use fake profiles on Tinder to “Chadfish” attractive women and have recently begun reporting “cam girls” to the IRS for unreported income. Mass murder is just one of the many ways incels seek to punish sexually active “Chads” and “Stacys.”
Scott Beierle on trial
On November 5th, 2018, three days after the Tallahassee shooting, members of the MGTOW community gathered for a 2.5-hour live chat with the YouTuber MGTOWValues to determine whether Scott Beierle was one of them. The video is called, “Scott Beierle Unrequited Love Drives Murder.”
The moderator determined that Beierle was neither a MGTOW nor an incel, but an “alpha tradcon,” or a leading male who advocates for and promotes traditional gender roles—someone who has not “swallowed the red pill” yet. Beierle was simply too confident to be a MGTOW. And the MGTOW men knew this because court records showed that he had assaulted a woman. In 2012, Beierle was charged with battery for slapping a sunbathing woman. To MGTOW, these charges were proof that he was an alpha male.
The MGTOW members neither condemned the shooting nor condoned it. They acknowledged that “red pill rage” is natural when a person first becomes enlightened. “We’re getting all this bad press on this guy,” said Youtube user MGTOWvalues on his livechat. “I think the unrequited love is the unrequited love of anyone for, you know, what he was promised. A woman of quality. He couldn’t find a woman of quality.”
According to MGTOW, Beierle was pushed, by women, beta males, and the government, to murder women. But he was not one of them. The difficulty that MGTOW members had in categorizing Beierle is evidence of the complexities of the male-supremacist underworld in which vocabulary, ideas and xenophobia are dominant, but consensus is rare.
Incels likewise hesitated over Beierle. Although Beierle had called himself an incel on YouTube, just as their hero Elliot Rodger had, he didn’t look the part. Unlike Rodger, who was skinny, socially awkward and publicly bemoaned his virginity, Beierle looked confident, he had served in the army, worked as a teacher, and was rumored to have been married. Some members of the incel community labeled Beierle a “fakecel,” or fake incel.
Initially only a handful of incels embraced Beierle, and they did so predominately because of their support for mass murders, the harbinger of the incel rebellion. They further applauded Beierle’s choice of venue—a yoga studio—and victim, a 22-year old beauty whom many on the site labeled with slurs.
But for the most part, the incels drew short of claiming Beierle. He was not one of them. In fact, he was something far worse—a Chad. He was a relatively attractive army veteran who had had experiences dating women, unlike many of the ‘truecels’ on the internet who have no dating experience whatsoever. Once labeled a Chad, Beierle quickly came under fire for a low victim count. As one poster wrote on a thread calling Beierle a Chad, “Well that explains the low kill count. Truecels tend to be better mass shooters. Chad has been given a good life and doesn’t feel the need to gun down more foids.” (‘Foids’ stands for ‘female humanoid,’ a term used to indicate that women are not fully human).
‘By killing only two people, Beierle failed the incels.’
Initially, no one would claim Scott Beierle. He was too attractive to be an incel, and too traditional to be a MGTOW. Usually, the disavowal of a mass murderer is a good thing, proof that a community is distancing itself from violence. But in this case, there’s something disquieting about the initial rejection of Scott Beierle — it tells us that male supremacy movements are continuing to radicalize, developing firmer identities that are less and less inclusive, and that place higher demands for blood.
Decades ago, the term “incel” was coined by a woman, Alana, a college student in Canada who began a mailing list for lonely, celibate people. At the time, the community she started was an inclusive one, open to anyone, male or female. Today, most incel message boards only allow heterosexual male posters, and they are closing ranks, increasingly rejecting anyone who is not a “truecel,” someone who has never had any form of physical intimacy.
As male supremacy groups tighten the standards for membership, their definitions become more extreme. In the media, incels are portrayed as loners, but they aren’t loners. They are backed by communities of others behind keyboards and computer screens. These message boards serve as an opportunity to build a shared identity, an identity that is becoming increasingly radical and discriminating.
Google takes action
Within hours of Beierle’s naming in connection with the Tallahassee shooting, his racist and misogynistic rants were removed from Youtube, the Google-run site that allows anyone to upload content. This prompted a flurry of posts on incel message boards demanding access to them.
Beierle’s Youtube videos were his public manifesto and in them lay any possible proof of his alignment with the incel movement. Their removal further complicated his place in the world of male supremacists. Without evidence of his motive, no one could be certain of what he stood for. Compare that to Elliot Rodger, a “Saint” of the incel world, whose Youtube videos are still available today. His “Retribution” video, posted shortly before he opened fire on the town of Isla Vista, has been viewed 236,000 times.
Removing the internet footprints of terrorists in the wake of their attacks may be the most effective method of cutting them off from the online communities that bred them. In a world dominated by virtual communication, an internet trail is of paramount importance. Within the incel community, self-professed incel Toronto van attack killer Alex Minassian is largely believed to be an Islamist prop in part because incels have yet to find proof that he communicated on their message boards.
Just like their Catholic counterparts, incel saints must leave proof of their good deeds. As user Leucosticte wrote on the website incel.is, “The establishment was able to pretty effectively stop Scott Beierle from getting canonized into incel sainthood. They had to shut down his YouTube channel before anyone had a chance to download his vids. Anyone who wants to get inducted into the pantheon has to have a bunch of vids like Elliot did. But they put the kibosh on that this time.”
Canonization
On November 25th, 2018, a 35-year-old anonymous user on the website incels.is posted a thread entitled, “Scott Beierle AKA St. YogaCel Album reuploaded to a different site.” The post contained archives of media earlier removed from the web—Beierle’s racist and misogynistic Soundcloud album and Youtube posts, as well as screenshots of his Facebook.
The user and self-professed “alcoholicel,” going by the handle Outherebrothers, was swiftly credited with having reintroduced Beierle’s manifesto to the incel community. He had downloaded and preserved Beierle’s record prior to its removal, then reintroduced Beierle’s manifesto to the incel community on November 25th.
Until then, Beierle’s name had been largely absent from the incel message boards, throughout most of the first month after the shooting. The possibility that Beierlie was a ‘Chad’ had been too discomfiting. But when the videos resurfaced from the hard drive of a fan, incels had a chance to hear Beierle’s voice, a voice that called women treacherous, hateful, and leprous.
After the videos, some continued to call Beierle a “Chad.” But others celebrated the new material. For many, the private archive of downloaded Youtube videos was their first exposure to the killer. It was their first chance to hear his philosophy, and to listen to his songs, which make degrading statements about women and homosexuals.
“hERo,” wrote one poster. “Good to see he hasn’t been forgotten,” wrote another. “He lives on through his work.” By the end of the week, the term St. Yogacel was circulating the forums with regularity. Multiple users changed their profile picture to his 2012 mugshot. Profile pictures of mass murderers are not uncommon on incels forums; Ted Bundy, Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho, Newtown shooter Adam Lanza, Columbine shooters and of course, Elliot Rodger, are popular choices for profile pictures in a world where few want to show their face.
By now, Scott Beierle is almost universally dubbed St. Yogacel by the incel community. On November 20th, he was added to the “Hall of Heroes” on Truecels.org, joining the ranks of other killers. A thread was started to celebrate the number of happy college students murdered in November shootings, including the Thousand Oaks bar shooting. “He left behind a pillar of work which shall forever be preserved,” wrote Outherebrothers.
And just like that, Scott Beierle was canonized into incel sainthood. The user Insomniac wrote, “St. Elliot is smiling in the heavens, sipping on his vanilla latte as he laughs at the state of our world.”
Photo Credit (top): CC BY-SA 2.0, Fabice Florin
2 comments
urgh! Not easily shocked, however, this leaves me speechless…