Radicalised Masculinity: Incel Ideology as Modern-Day Eugenics
4 min read
Incels have reimagined early 20th-century eugenics, internalising its logic to frame themselves as biologically “unfit” while blaming women for their exclusion from sexual access. Unlike traditional eugenicists who sought societal control, incels view themselves as evolution’s failures, fixating on looks and genetics as absolute determinants of desirability. Mirroring historical obsessions with “racial purity”, they construct rigid hierarchies of attractiveness, denying the role of social structures in shaping desirability. Rather than confronting capitalism, the beauty industry, or white supremacy, their rage is misdirected at women, reinforcing a self-perpetuating narrative of genetic doom. In the digital age, eugenics has resurfaced under a new guise, not as a means of control but as a justification for entitlement – fuelling a patriarchal ideology disguised as biological determinism.
In the early 20th century, eugenicists argued that society could be improved by discouraging, preventing, or outright eliminating the reproduction of the so-called "unfit" – people who were biologically “meant” to be undesirable. Now, in the digital age, a new group has taken up the mantle – not through forced sterilisation or phrenology charts, but through Reddit threads and rage-fuelled manifesto PDFs. It’s the incels.
Historical eugenicists were primarily focused on race, disability, and class – not the beauty standards or notions of masculinity they would later help shape. But had incels existed as a defined group in the early 20th century, their own self-professed “genetic unfitness” would surely have made them targets of eugenicist intervention, with active efforts to “improve” the population by controlling their reproduction. But, living in the 21st Century, modern incels, with their self-categorization at the very bottom of the very rigid hierarchies of attractiveness they have constructed, required no human or systemic intervention at all. Indeed, their exclusion from sexual access as a form of biological persecution today requires a lot less work – it simply needs a woman to say ‘no’.
From Mendel to Misogyny: Incels and the Science of Self-Loathing
Unlike the traditional eugenicists who sought to control reproduction at a societal level, incels internalise eugenicist logic to frame themselves as victims of genetic inferiority. For them, dating apps and plastic surgeons are the modern-day tools of a "lookist" genocide where only the tall, symmetrical, and square-jawed survive.
Incels refer to themselves as being in possession of "subhuman" traits. They self-diagnose by obsessing over their "recessive genes" and lamenting that evolution has deemed them unworthy of mating. They reduce themselves to nature’s failed experiments in the selection of a supposed genetic hierarchy, with women as the cruel arbiter of their genetic potential.
But is this really about genes, or is something else actually at play?
Same Pseudoscience, Different Targets
At its core, eugenics was always about maintaining power. It was less about ensuring genetic superiority and more about deciding who got to participate in society. When you look closely at incel ideology, the echoes of this are unmistakable, because, like early 20th-century eugenicists, who fixated on "racial purity", incels see attractiveness as an objective “biological science” rather than a set of cultural and social constructs.
They believe in a "Chad" and "Stacy" ruling class of hyper-attractive men and women who wield social and sexual power, while categorizing themselves as "low value" genetic refuse.
They speak in terms of "blackpills" – the belief that looks, status, and genetics determine everything; that women are biologically programmed to reject unattractive men, no matter how much they improve themselves; and that there is no hope – if you weren’t born tall, muscular, or good-looking, you are destined to a life of loneliness and rejection as if it were the worst thing in the world.
They speak of "ascension" – the idea of escaping inceldom through various means, from "looksmaxing" – the practice of attempting to improve physical appearance through surgery, grooming, or extreme body modification in a desperate effort to escape their perceived genetic disadvantage; to wealth accumulation; extreme self-discipline; or death.
All of this mirrors the old eugenicist obsession with breeding out the weak and cultivating the strong; asserting that exclusion is predetermined, rather than influenced by social conditioning, economic mobility, or manufactured standards of desirability, which inevitably keep changing; and, perhaps the most disturbing commonality between incel and eugenic movements, scapegoating problems onto groups with less institutional power.
Why Incels Hate Women, Not Capitalism, Or White Supremacy, Or the Beauty Industry
To some, it is tempting to see incels as merely misguided, socially awkward men with low self-esteem. But let’s be clear: their rage isn’t just about personal rejection. It’s a political ideology that, rather conveniently, never takes aim at the larger systems of oppression that actually dictate their lives.
Instead of questioning the beauty industry’s role in shaping desirability, incels blame women for "only dating 6’4'' men with six-packs". Instead of challenging capitalism’s commodification of human relationships (swipe left if you can only afford dinner at Nandos), they blame "hypergamy" – the idea that women only want rich, dominant men. And instead of interrogating the white supremacist racial and class biases that shape who gets to be considered attractive in the first place, incels dive into diatribes on “degeneracy” and "the decline of Western masculinity".
This misplaced rage serves a purpose: it keeps incels looking down at others rather than up at the actual structures that make life, let alone dating and social mobility, harder for everyone. By convincing themselves that they are “genetically doomed” rather than socially conditioned, incels avoid the uncomfortable truth that their predicament isn’t “written in their DNA” – it’s engineered by systems they refuse to confront.
Eugenics in the Age of Algorithms
Eugenics never truly disappeared and now, as we can see, it has found new branding. The same logic that once justified unspeakable horrors now thrives in incel forums, where men (and women) doom-scroll their way into believing that their own inferiority is an undeniable genetic sentence. But let’s be real about this: when an ideology leads you to blame others for your struggles instead of the systems that structure everyone’s reality, you’re not a revolutionary – you’re just a pawn.
Because if incels truly believe they are the victims of biological determinism, then, as with all deterministic views, their ideology dictates they should arrive at acceptance and find a place of peace there. But they don’t. Because deep down, they don’t actually believe in genetic determinism. They believe in entitlement. And their belief in entitlement – their supposed “right” to power and privilege – has nothing to do with logic, science, or philosophy. It’s just patriarchy in its latest, self-pitying form.
