Incels waging ‘war against women’ and pose ’emerging threat to children’, study finds
Warning: this article contains terms and references readers may find offensive.
The incel movement is waging a “war against women” and poses a growing threat to children, according to a report that calls on tech companies to intervene to stop the radicalisation of lonely men and boys online.
The incel – or “involuntarily celibate” – movement is an online subculture involving men who feel unable to have sex or find love and express hostility and extreme resentment towards women.
Research into the leading incel forum found a “community of angry, belligerent and unapologetic” men that poses a “clear and present danger” to women and an “emerging threat to children”.
Users posted about rape every 29 minutes and the forum’s rules were changed six months ago to accommodate paedophilia.
More than a fifth of posts featured misogynist, racist, antisemitic or anti-LGBTQ language, with 16% of posts featuring misogynist slurs, the study said.
On the forum Sky News found posts saying “women should be sex slaves” and “I feel hate when I see a girl”.
The study of more than one million posts over 18 months found that posts mentioning mass murders increased by 59%.
Perpetrators of mass shootings are known to have been active in incel communities or discuss their ideas, including the Plymouth gunman Jake Davison, who killed five people including a three-year-old girl.
Researchers warned that “unchecked, incel communities have the potential to radicalise further” and called on tech companies to act.
Jake Davison carried out the UK’s deadliest mass shooting since 2010
‘Not lone wolves’
Imran Ahmed, chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), a British non-profit group which carried out the study, said: “Incels are not lone wolves or socially isolated.
“They are in fact enmeshed in highly active communities with a coherent, evolving ideology that has radicalised further in the past 18 months.
“They are egging each other on to commit mass violence, normalising sexual violence against women and even codified their approval of sexualising children.”
‘Power-users’
The research was conducted by “scraping” forum posts and analysing members’ activity, trends and keywords.
The forum received an average of 2.6 million monthly visits, with 17,118 members. In the 18 months covered, only 4,057 wrote posts.
Almost half (43.8%) of traffic to the forum came from the US, with 7.5% from the UK.
Discourse is driven by 406 “power-users”, who produce 74.6% of all posts, some spending more than 10 hours a day on the forum.
The forum’s rules were changed in March from “do not sexualise minors” to “do not sexualise pre-pubescent minors”.
Incel content on YouTube
The study found that forum users most frequently shared content from YouTube, where incel channels have more than 136,000 subscribers and 24.2 million video views.
Davison subscribed to an incel content channel that YouTube has refused to take down despite public pressure, the CCDH researchers said.
Another channel posts videos of women covertly filmed in London.
Read more:
Incel killer’s father lives ‘reverse nightmare’
Incel movement of growing concern to UK police
The CCDH urged YouTube to take down all incel channels and called on Google to push “incelosphere” websites down search results.
Mr Ahmed said: “We find in this study a reflexive dynamic between misogynistic communities online and incels.
“They argue with each other, support each other, share ideas, promote each other’s lexicon and values. In short, they are brothers-in-arms in a war against women.
“That’s why a small subculture, numbering in the thousands, has had such an enormous effect.”
Sky News has asked YouTube for comment.
‘Not all violent’
Dr Lewys Brace, a senior lecturer at Exeter University specialising in online extremist radicalisation, including incel culture, told Sky News that he agreed with the study’s recommendations.
“The thing that concerns me personally most about this incel movement, is that people don’t actually need to look for this stuff to get to it,” he said.
Although he said that some people in the community posed a real threat to others, he stressed most are not violent.
“Obviously not everyone in this community is violent,” he said. “In fact, my research has shown that actual violent conversations are the minority of conversations on these platforms.”
The problem for law enforcement is telling the difference between someone acting out on the internet and someone who poses a threat, he said.
He added: “For me, the ones that concern me are the ones that take these ideas, and they’ve written long posts where they’ve integrated these ideas with their own personal offline experiences.”
Given the example of Davison posting long YouTube videos featuring incel ideas, Dr Brace said: “That’s exactly it. Those are exactly the kind of examples we should be concerned about.”
NHS England has warned the health service is facing a “worst case scenario” December with a surge of “super flu”.
The warning comes as new figures revealed the number of people in hospital with flu have increased by more than half in just one week.
Catch up as it happened: NHS warns of ‘worst-case scenario’ as ‘super flu’ surges
Latest figures show:
• An average of 2,660 patients were in hospital per day with flu last week
• This is the highest ever for this time of year and up 55% on last week
• At this point last year the number stood at 1,861 patients, while in 2023 it was just 402
Health service bosses are warning the number of flu patients in hospital has already increased sharply since the week covered by this data – with no peak in sight.
Read more: Why is flu season worse this year?
Virus outbreaks coincide with doctors’ strikes
Weekly flu numbers in England peaked at 5,408 patients last winter and reached 5,441 over the winter of 2022/23, the highest level since the pandemic.
Alongside rocketing flu, the number of norovirus patients in hospital has also risen by 35%.
The NHS is now warning winter viruses are starting to “engulf hospitals”.
Demand for A&Es and ambulance services is also soaring.
New monthly figures show A&E attendances were a record for November at 2.35 million – more than 30,000 higher than November 2024.
In addition, there were 48,814 more ambulance incidents (802,525) compared with last year (753,711).
Some hospitals across the country have asked staff, patients and visitors to wear face masks to cut the spread of flu, while others have gone in and out of critical incident status due to the high number of people attending A&E.
The record-breaking demand on the NHS coincides with a resident doctors’ strike from 17 to 22 December over pay and jobs – sparking fears of major disruption for patients in the run up to Christmas.
People are being advised to attend any planned appointments scheduled during the strikes unless they have been contacted to reschedule.
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Will doctors accept late deal to avoid strikes?
Flu vaccinations on the up… who can get one?
The NHS is urging anyone eligible to get their flu vaccination to help prevent them getting seriously ill.
Latest figures show more than 17.4 million people have been vaccinated so far this year, more than 381,000 higher than last year.
You can get it if you:
• Are 65 or over in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland
• Are pregnant
• Live in a care home
• Are the main carer for an older or disabled person, or receive carer’s allowance
• Live with someone who has a weakened immune system
• Are a frontline health and social care worker
• Are of school age
• Have certain medical conditions (the NHS has a full list)
Wes Streeting, the health secretary, warned of a “tidal wave of flu tearing through our hospitals”.
“We are working with the NHS to make sure it is able to cope with this as best as possible,” he said.
Warning ‘extremely challenging few weeks ahead’
Professor Meghana Pandit, NHS national medical director, warned the health service faces “an extremely challenging few weeks ahead” with “staff being pushed to the limit”.
She said: “With record demand for A&E and ambulances and an impending resident doctors’ strike, this unprecedented wave of super flu is leaving the NHS facing a worst-case scenario for this time of year – with staff being pushed to the limit to keep providing the best possible care for patients.
“The numbers of patients in hospital with flu is extremely high for this time of year. Even worse, it continues to rise and the peak is not in sight yet, so the NHS faces an extremely challenging few weeks ahead.”
She added: “We have prepared earlier for winter than ever before, and stress-tested services to ensure people have a range of ways to get the help they need and avoid needing to go to A&E.
“For non-life-threatening care, people should call NHS 111 or use 111 online, which can direct you to the most appropriate place, and use A&E and 999 for life threatening conditions and serious injuries.”
Read more from Sky News:
US accused of ‘piracy’
Flights diverted in Moscow
Mr Streeting has offered the British Medical Association (BMA) a last-minute deal in the hope doctors will call off the walkout, which starts next Wednesday.
The doctors’ union has agreed to put the offer to members over the coming day, and is expected to announced a decision on Monday, just two days before the planned strike.
The offer includes a fast expansion of specialist training posts as well as covering out-of-pocket expenses such as exam fees, but does not include extra pay.
The spread of subclade K, the super flu, is picking up – and it’s not looking good for the NHS.
An average of just under 2,700 hospital beds a day in England were occupied by patients with flu last week.
There are fears that could jump to somewhere between 5,000 and 8,000 by the end of this week.
That’s on top of COVID and RSV.
And with the possibility of a five-day strike by resident (junior) doctors next week, it’s a perfect storm for hospitals.
An NHS hospital ward at Ealing Hospital in London. Pic: PA
Christmas flu
Children are the super-spreaders of flu. It races around classrooms and some schools have temporarily shut because of the impact.
The Christmas holidays aren’t far off. They are likely to put the brakes on children passing around the virus.
But it’s also a time of year when families mix with elderly relatives, who are more likely to be hit hard by the infection – perhaps even needing hospital care.
So while the holidays may temporarily slow the overall rise in infections, the impact on hospitals could get much worse.
File pic: PA
Subclade K
Flu is spreading so rapidly at the moment because immunity to subclade K from previous infections and vaccinations is low.
The virus – a variant of the H3N2 flu strain – suddenly acquired seven new mutations in late summer.
Every 100 people infected with seasonal flu would typically pass the virus on to 120 others.
With subclade K, it’s 140.
And that’s why cases are rising so quickly on the charts.
At the moment, 18 in every 100,000 patients in England are consulting their GP with flu-like symptoms. That’s still well short of the peak of around 50 in every 100,000 in 2017/18, the worst flu outbreak in recent years.
File pic: PA
The grim reality of flu
Flu is a really unpleasant disease, nothing like a cold. I’ve had it twice in my life and it physically hurt to get out of bed. It’s grim.
Most people get over it with a few days’ rest and paracetamol to take the edge off the fever.
But vulnerable people can become seriously ill. In the outbreak of 2017/18, around 22,000 died.
Read more:
Nurses ‘deeply concerned about what lies ahead’
NHS braced for ‘toughest winter’ after record-breaking month
That’s why the NHS is urging people in certain groups – the over 65s, those with underlying health conditions, pregnant women, carers and children – to get the jab.
The vaccine isn’t a great match for subclade K, but still reduces the chance of hospital admission by 30-40% in adults.
It’s impossible to say when the spread will peak, but the latest figures suggest the outbreak is far from over.
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