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Oh Sheesh, Now We Need To Be Considering “Femcels” Too?

What’s this wrinkle?

Ted Bauer
3 min readJan 15, 2025

Incels have been a big topic for years now, and you can easily argue they are a domestic terror threat. A lot of male mass shooters are, at heart, “incels.” It stands for “involuntary celibate” and while the crass version of the idea is someone who cannot get laid or get dates in their prime female-adjacent years, it is a lot more serious than just that, and usually involves a lot of issues around bad parenting, mental health decline, and feelings of being unloved or not belonging. I personally do not condone incel men culminating with violence — no one should — but a lot of times in the media, we just discuss it as “oh, this kid couldn’t get laid so he shot up a school.” That’s not really the narrative, but I understand we like simple definitions for things.

Ironically, the Trump PA shooter — Thomas Matthew Crooks — probably was an incel, as there are reports he couldn’t get on a shooting/rifle team and wanted to in order to impress a girl. But because he shot at Trump, whose very existence creates an ideological divide almost when you say his name, we turned that incel discussion into a political discussion. Missed the boat there too.

Now there is more discussion around “femcels,” which yes, is the female version of incels. Although — there is one notable…

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Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

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