How to Tackle Incel Culture in Schools

The signs that a young person might be at risk are largely the same as indicators which apply to all forms of radicalisation. Individuals may be radicalised passively, via extremist recruitment, or by actively seeking out and engaging with extremist messaging. 

Often recruiters look for people who have an emotional, physical or psychological need that is not being met, or for people who are seeking meaning, identity or purpose. They look to exploit this disconnection with society – much like gang culture – and manipulate that vulnerable person.

This makes young people particularly vulnerable, as it is during the teenage years that individuals start to explore their own identities and beliefs, or potentially seek a sense of belonging.

Additionally, individuals who are particularly vulnerable to radicalisation may include those who:

• Have experienced significant life events such as family breakdown or bereavement.
• Have experienced or are experiencing abuse, including familial abuse and bullying.
• Are experiencing mental health difficulties, or feelings of isolation.
• Are subject to peer or familial pressure, or influence from other people (including via the internet).   
• Display anti-social behaviour, or are experiencing family tensions.
• Hold personal or political grievances.
• Are a victim or perpetrator of crime, including hate crime.

Indicators that might alert you to the possibility that a young person is being radicalised include (but are not limited to) them:

• Seeming withdrawn, isolated or excluded.
• Fixating on one new subject, such as injustices stemming from feminism.
• Adopting speech that sounds scripted, and using new phrases.
• Changing their friendship groups – in person and online.
• Showing signs of being influenced or controlled by a group or an individual.
• Struggling with mental health issues, including showing signs of anger or stress.
• Lying to their family or other trusted adults.
• Handing out literature.
• Appearing to make less effort at school or experiencing a drop in academic attainment.
• Showing disregard for differing opinions, and being closed to discussion and other views.

Boys and young men who feel rejected and isolated are particularly vulnerable to incel ideology. The online incel community may appear to offer them a place of understanding and acceptance. In addition to the general indicators above, those drawn into incel ideology may also:

• Display low self-esteem and insecurity, especially with regards to their own looks or romantic status.
• Compare themselves negatively to other men in terms of attractiveness. 
• Speak negatively about girls and women, their appearance and perceived sexual relationships.

A shared vocabulary of slang plays a large part in incel communication and can be found in online interactions, including on social media, in memes and messages. Much of this shared language focuses on describing women, and their sexual partners, in generalised, derogatory and dehumanising ways. It also emphasises the ‘us and them’ attitudes that categorise the community.

Many adults will be unaware of the significance of this slang. Children and young people may hear and repeat these terms without necessarily understanding their meaning or ideological roots, or it may be a sign that they are being drawn into incel subculture. By being aware of these terms, staff and parents will be better able to spot any cause for concern in a young person’s communication. This can act as a warning sign that would warrant further discussion and exploration. 

The following terms are used commonly within the incel community. Some of these are also used within the wider ‘manosphere’.

Incel terms used to describe men include:

• Alpha – a confident, dominant, attractive male who is successful with women.
• Beta – the opposite of an alpha; a submissive man who is afraid of confrontation.
• Chad – a man who is sexually attractive to women (an alpha). The stereotyped image of a Chad is usually a young, white, muscley man.
• Cuck – a man whose partner has cheated on them with a Chad. Someone who has not yet taken ‘the red pill’ – according to incel views, cucks are happy to live in a society which oppresses them. 
• Normie – someone who is of average intelligence and attractiveness, usually relatively neurotypical.
• Simp – a man who is overly submissive to women, who does too much for a person they are interested in and gets nothing in return.
• Tyrone – a black man who is sexually attractive to women.

Incel terms used to describe women include:

• Stacy – a sexually attractive woman, who has lots of sexual encounters with men, usually Chads. Usually depicted as unintelligent and promiscuous. 
• Femcels – used as an insult by incels to describe women. (There are women who identify as incels but they are not welcomed on incel message boards and not accepted by the incel community.) 
• Femoid or Foid (female humanoid)  – dehumanising terms, portraying women as sub-human. 
• Hitting the wall – women reaching their late twenties and ceasing to be sexually attractive.
• Landwhale – an overweight woman.
• Roastie – a sexually active woman. The name comes from the concept that high level of sexual activity has resulted in changes to the appearance of her labia – some incels apparently believe this is an actual possibility.

Further incel terms to be aware of include:

• Red pill – a reference to the film The Matrix. To have ‘taken the red pill’ means to have realised the ‘truth’ about women and society.
• Blue pill – continuing the analogy, this refers to people who incels regard as being unaware of the ‘truth’.
• Black pill – an extreme, nihilistic expression of realising the ‘truth’. Incels who take the ‘black pill’ resign themselves to the fact that their position in society (and sexual sucess, or lack of) is predetermined and there’s nothing that they can do to alter it. At its most extreme, this can manifest in the decision to respond with aggression and violence – against themselves and/or others.
• AWALT – stands for ‘all women are like that’.
• ER – Elliot Rodger, sometimes used in the context of ‘doing an ER’, meaning to follow his violent example.
• LDAR – stands for ‘lay down and rot’ reflecting the hopeless concept of the black pill.
• Roping – this refers to suicide or suicidal ideation and is linked to the idea of taking the black pill and the incel accepting that his fate is sealed.
• ‘The Supreme Gentleman’ – Elliot Rodger.

Within the incel community, there are also self-identification terms for sub-groups of incels. For example ‘mentalcels’ believe that mental illness contributes to their lack of sexual activity, whilst ‘poorcels’ consider their financial status to be a major contributing factor.

There are steps that schools can take to help prevent students becoming drawn into incel ideologies. The suggestions below focus on creating a whole-school culture which acts as a protective factor for vulnerable students. These strategies have a multitude of benefits – not just in relation to combating radicalisation.

Regular Safeguarding Updates

It is a statutory requirement that members of staff are kept updated in terms of safeguarding issues. This could be through additional training, bulletins, staff meetings, emails, etc. Being aware of the risks means that you are more likely to be able to identify and respond to concerns. 

This summer saw a campaign by charity Hope Not Hate to ‘de-platform’ misogynistic content creator, Andrew Tate, after a huge rise in his extremist material being shared via apps such as TikTok. His popularity soared during the summer holidays (when many children’s screen time increases) meaning that there could have been a real risk of teachers being unaware of him, or the potentially harmful nature of the content he is associated with. This example highlights why it is important to keep staff informed of new and changing risks.  

Teaching and Promoting Online Safety 

The incel community operates predominantly through online channels – it has been suggested that a young person is potentially just two clicks away from radical incel forums.

By educating children, staff and parents about online safety, they will be better equipped to recognise and respond to online risk and potential harm.

It is worth being aware of some of the common platforms used to promote incel ideology. These include certain Reddit threads (some of which have more than 40,000 incel members), extreme messaging boards such 4Chan and 8Chan, and groups within mainstream social networking sites. Groups and boards are often removed but then renamed and resurrected. The site Urban Dictionary has also largely become a dictionary of manosphere language (Koller, 2021) – something that many teachers, parents and pupils may be unaware of.

Staff should receive regular online safety training and online safety education should be embedded throughout the curriculum. Children and young people should be given the tools to critically evaluate the information that they encounter online, helping to protect them from harmful content and contact. They should also feel confident to report anything they encounter online that is concerning.

Providing High-Quality Relationships Education

The DfE statutory programmes of study for Relationships Education (Primary), Relationships and Sex Education (Secondary) and Health Education includes the requirement to teach students about the characteristics of healthy relationships (including online relationships). It includes the importance of respect, understanding and tolerance. 

The aim should be to provide a spiral curriculum revisiting key topics in an age-appropriate manner, ensuring that the building blocks for healthy relationships, and an understanding of how prejudice can cause damage, is embedded throughout a child’s school journey. Our article, How to Teach Children About Healthy Relationships, provides further information. Teachers need to feel confident teaching this content, and should be supported to access further training if desired.

If children are taught from a young age what a healthy, respectful relationship looks like, then the extremist view of relationships promoted by incel culture will hopefully seem less reasonable to vulnerable children and young people.  

Promoting British Values

The Prevent Strategy places a mandatory duty on education professionals to promote fundamental British values – a set of social attitudes thought to maintain social cohesion and equality.

These values are:

• Democracy.
• The rule of law.
• Individual liberty.
• Mutual respect for, and tolerance of, those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith.

Promoting British values should be embedded throughout the school curriculum and at every stage of education. As children get older, more discussion around these topics, and different attitudes related to them, can take place.

Teachers can play a vital role in challenging extremist thought, providing safe spaces for discussion. Care needs to be taken when discussing issues regarding incel culture, so that young people considered by their peers to be celibate, or to be displaying signs of being an incel, are not singled out.

Prioritising Mental Health and Wellbeing

Incel communities attract and exploit young people with low self-esteem, who are feeling isolated and rejected. By taking measures to generally support and promote students’ mental health and wellbeing, it is possible to  lessen the additional vulnerability that mental ill-health presents. 

Supporting students’ mental health is a priority for the Department for Education, and schools are recommended to appoint a mental health lead, with strategic responsibility for creating a school culture which nurtures child mental health. Our article, How to Support SEMH in Schools contains further information and sample strategies. 

Adopting a Zero-Tolerance Approach to Harmful Sexual Behaviour

The 2021 Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges uncovered a shocking prevalance of harmful sexual behaviour in schools. 

Key findings included:

• Nearly 90% of girls, and nearly 50% of boys, said being sent explicit pictures or videos of things they did not want to see happens to them or their peers. 
• Children and young people reported that sexual harassment occurs so frequently that it has become ‘commonplace’. 
• 92% of girls, and 74% of boys, said sexist name-calling happens to them or their peers.

Statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education, describes how ‘sexual harassment creates a culture that, if not challenged, can normalise inappropriate behaviours and provide an environment that may lead to sexual violence.’ Awareness of harmful sexual behaviour in schools and how to respond to it should be a key part of safeguarding training, especially for Designated Safeguarding Leads and their deputies. 

If young men are in a school environment where this behaviour is normalised, then it is easy to see how they might be vulnerable to being drawn to the views aired within incel culture. 

Concerns relating to children being radicalised in terms of incel culture fall under the Prevent duty. Prevent is part of teachers’ wider safeguarding duties and, as such, reporting Prevent concerns involves a similar procedure to reporting other safeguarding concerns.

Your Local Authority website should be consulted for specific details, and you should be familiar with your organisation’s own safeguarding policy. As a general guide, if you have a concern, the process would include the following steps:

• Gather information.
• Speak with the child or young person.
• Speak with your safeguarding lead or a colleague.
• Share your concerns as appropriate with relevant professionals to get a contextualised picture.
• Speak with friends of the child (where appropriate).
• Keep a record of the concern.
• Report the concern through the most appropriate route.

After checking your concern, if it is felt that an individual may be vulnerable to radicalisation, then you (or the safeguarding or Prevent lead in your setting) should make a Prevent referral.

Anyone can make a Prevent referral, and it can be made in the following ways:

• Contacting your Local Authority Prevent Lead.
• Using your Local Authority Prevent referral form.
• Contact your Regional Police Prevent & Channel Lead.
• Contacting the Local Policing Team on 101.
• Contacting the Anti-Terrorist Helpline on 0800 789 321.

Remember if there is risk of immediate involvement with terrorist activity, you must call 999.

For further general details regarding your Prevent duty, see our guidance pack here.