When people hear the words “incels” and “trad wives,” they might think of very different images. While “incels” are thought of as lonely, radicalized, or dangerous, “trad wives” might invoke associations with being soft, natural, or motherly.
But despite these differences in how they’re perceived culturally, these communities may not be quite as far apart as you might believe. And both pose a real danger to women’s rights and futures.
What is an incel?
The “incel,” or “involuntary celibate,” community has a pretty bad reputation in most circles, and for good reason. Put simply, incels are often men who have struggled for one reason or another to sleep with or date a woman and have channeled their shame and disappointment into anger against women.
Incels thrive in online forums that promote and encourage violence against women. Too often, the violent rhetoric on online forums bleeds into real life (“IRL,”) putting women at serious risk of injury, trauma, or even death. As of 2023, more than 100 people have been injured or killed by people who identify as incels.
Misogynist incels very clearly represents an enormous threat to women and our communities as a whole. So how does this group known for its acts of domestic terrorism align with “trad wives?” Let me explain.
What is a pronatalist?
Trad wives represent an idealistic version of how conservatives believe that women should behave: online, you frequently see them staying home to raise children while their husband goes off to work. Their photos feature happy kids, homemade lavish meals, and a clean home and tidy garden. It’s an attractive picture on the surface, but behind the scenes pronatalists are seizing on the romantic appearance of the trad wife lifestyle for their political gain.
And unfortunately, their political gain comes at the expense of women’s rights. Pronatalists (literally meaning “pro-birth”) believe that the government has a responsibility to encourage women to have more children and that women’s primary value to society is having and raising babies. In order to achieve this goal, they want to restrict women’s ability to choose other futures for themselves by restricting access to reproductive rights and making it harder for women to be financially secure on their own. Pronatalists use phrases such as “traditional family values” and “restoring the American dream” to couch their radical ideas that push women into narrowly defined gender roles. The pictures on Instagram may seem pretty, the ideas behind them are not.
So, how do these movements overlap?
Controlling Women
- Pronatalists want to control women’s fertility by arguing that women should be at home to take care of children and be discouraged from working. Leading pronatalists have even gone as far as to say that women should be shamed for having careers.
- Incels similarly seek to control women by depriving them of their rights. They believe that women cannot be trusted and therefore must be controlled by men. Some also say that the government should enforce monogamy and that women should be forced into sex and having children with their partner.
White Supremacy Worldview
- Pronatalists often embrace eugenics, including complaining about “declining genetic quality” (read: non-white) and staunchly opposing immigration reform, which would be the most logical path to increasing birth rates.
- Incels often express racist beliefs, reject interracial relationships, and promote white nationalism. Online, many white incels complain about women who have sex with men of color while using antisemitic and racist terms.
Homophobia
- Pronatalists support efforts to restrict LGBTQIA+ rights because they view queer relationships as antithetical to their desire to increase births, as well as because of a more base discrimination against anyone who doesn’t adopt a heternormative lifestyle.
- Online, misogynist incels frequently use slurs against LGBTQIA+ people and deploy homophobic and transphobic stereotypes about sexuality and mental illness. Incels also determine ingroup status based on rigid alignment with the gender binary and see LGBTQIA+ people as an enemy.
Pronatalists and misogynist incels provide a warning for all that for us that movements to take away our rights are deeply interlinked, no matter how aesthetically pleasing they may seem on the outside. While these movements may seem far apart, both use similar tactics and narratives to restrict women’s autonomy, including by convincing the public that there is “natural” and “inevitable” gender hierarchy that benefits all of us.
The pronatalist movement may be bathed in soft neutrals and the smell of homemade sourdough, but it poses just as much of a risk to women’s rights and autonomy as the culture inside misogynist incel forums.
The post The Dangerous Overlap Between Incel Culture and Trad Wife Politics appeared first on National Women's Law Center.