“Degenerate” Queers and “Chadsexual” Sapphics: Anti-LGBTQ+ Rhetoric in the Incelosphere

Press/Media: Research

Description

At present, our understandings of misogynist inceldom centre binary gender relations, positioning these as issues solely between cisheterosexual men and women. Despite the community’s roots in queerness, the larger body of incel-focused literature has rarely engaged with how queer identities are targeted and delegitimised in misogynist incel spaces. At the time of writing, the most extensive work engaging with users’ discourses about queerness are from Kelly and Aunspach (2020) and Vallerga (2024), whose analyses centre on compulsory (hetero)sexuality and the disparaging of lesbians within the main misogynist forum, respectively. Building on findings from my doctoral work assessing the nuances of identity-based harm, this Insight explores how narratives of symbolic othering, degeneracy, and deviance are used to delegitimise queer subjectivities, including effeminate gay men, sapphic women, and trans women. It also draws explicit connections to both historical and contemporary discourses about queer identities, centring how male supremacist speech intersects with the current rise in gender-critical ideologies and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric across the globe.

Period2 Dec 2024

Media contributions

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Media contributions