“Women? they're all whores, subhuman animals”: mapping gender-based harm on the internet through a qualitative study of incels’ cyberspace

Abstract

This thesis investigates gender-based online hate speech as an emanation of gender-based harm through qualitative content analysis of incels' communication patterns. Following high-profile violent attacks by self-identified incels, scholarly and public attention has surged towards the manosphere – a collection of anti-feminist online communities that engage in various levels of misogyny. The term “incel” is a portmanteau for “involuntary celibate”, and while originally used inclusively, has come to refer to mostly young men united by a feeling of rejection and rage towards women. This research addresses how modern online communities and their coded communications patterns can inform the broader concept of gender-based online hate speech. It explores the extent to which freedom of expression safeguards need to account for modern challenges of online communities of the manosphere. Current approaches to hate speech may fail to address the coded language and seemingly marginal nature of communities like incels, creating a gap in recognising their contribution to broader ecosystems of misogyny. Incels’ communications embody hostile commentary that dehumanises, objectifies, and sexualises women. However, their spaces remain relatively marginal, potentially leading to considerations that their communications are too contextual and insufficiently mainstream to constitute hate speech. The identification of violent and hateful expressions is complicated by incels’ coded language, including derogatory terms used to talk about women, e.g. "foids," "toilets," "holes," or "noodlewhores," alongside communications presenting beliefs about “female nature.” Speech in incel cyberspaces may not always constitute hate speech yet still function as gender-based harm by contributing to digital ecosystems of gendered harm. Current approaches to protecting freedom of expression and hate speech struggle with the intersection of marginality and harm, failing to recognise how seemingly peripheral communities contribute to broader ecosystems of gender-based violence. Given the tension between freedom of expression and hate speech recognition, this thesis argues for more nuanced approaches to understanding online gender-based harm on the Internet and how gender-based online hate speech contributes to thereof.