Murray State's Digital Commons Honors College Theses Honors College 11-2020 Incel Rhetoric: Origins of Digital Misogyny Virginia Sisemore Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/honorstheses Part of the Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Commons This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Sisemore, Virginia, "Incel Rhetoric: Origins of Digital Misogyny" (2020). Honors College Theses. 63. https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/honorstheses/63 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Honors College at Murray State's Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors College Theses by an authorized administrator of Murray State's Digital Commons. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. 1 Content Warning This thesis is the result of an in-depth study of a community that uses truly vile language and expresses similarly vile ideas. In order to convey the seriousness of addressing online misogyny and in following Emma Jane’s model of scholarship (discussed later), I have chosen not to censor any sexually explicit language. This is a content warning for descriptions of sexually violent acts and extremely derogatory language. Introduction In May 2014 in Isla Vista, California, near the UC Santa Barbara campus, Elliot Rodger murdered six people and injured 14 others with his vehicle, a gun, and a knife. While the victims themselves were random, his motivation was not. Rodger was an incel, an involuntary celibate, and he was angry at women. Before the terrorist attack, Rodger uploaded a video to YouTube wherein he laid out his motives: he was tired of women rejecting him and jealous of the men they chose to sleep with instead of him.