Description
Incel and misogynist ideologies have proliferated across online and popular culture, drawing increasing attention from feminist scholars, sociologists, and security experts. As these ideologies intersect with public acts of violence, efforts to securitise such communities have intensified. Alongside this, there has been a rise in what some commentators call the “womanosphere”, a digital and cultural space where women promote conservative gender roles, anti-feminist ideas, and sometimes misandrist views. This includes tradwives, femcels (female involuntary celibates), red-pill wives, and pink-pill communities that rework incel ideologies. This paper offers a preliminary investigation into the popular culture and social media content emerging from the womanosphere. I argue that to understand securitised incel ideologies, we must situate them within broader patterns of gender-based violence. Drawing on feminist literature and critiques from Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), I highlight how mainstream security approaches often fail to engage with the racialised and gendered foundations of these ideologies. As Gentry (2022) notes, such work frequently overlooks patriarchal cultures and feminist analysis. This paper re-emphasises the need to understand the politics and violence expressed in these spaces within the wider systems of power that enable and sustain them.
