ABSTRACT

The group known as ‘incels’ (involuntary celibates, usually men) has become a spectacle for feminism as well as for mass media. Both popular and academic feminisms have condemned the incel for his involvement in many examples of misogyny and of violence. He is, in many ways, an unredeemable figure. I consider the incel beyond these denunciatory terms and in particular examine how the incel is represented as a ‘boy’; that is, as a man who cannot grow up. I also reflect on the reasons incels give for this arrested development – feminism, loss, and crisis, among them – and grapple with how boys like the incel are living in a world already changed by feminism. The incel is not a ‘good boy’, but this essay argues that ‘bad objects’ can disrupt the surface of our political projects in new, generative ways and that thinking with and through the incel in these terms is made possible by an affirmative feminist framework.

摘要

被称为“incels”（非自愿独身者，通常是男性）的群体已成为女权主义和大众媒体的奇观。流行的和学术的女权主义者都谴责了 incel，因为他参与了许多厌女症和暴力的例子。在很多方面，他都是一个不可救药的人物。我认为 incel 超越了这些谴责性的术语，并特别研究了 incel 如何被表示为“男孩”；也就是说，作为一个无法长大的男人。我还反思了 incels 为这种停滞的发展提供的原因——女权主义、损失和危机，其中包括——并努力解决像 incel 这样的男孩如何生活在一个已经被女权主义改变的世界中。incel 不是一个“好孩子”，但这篇文章认为，“坏对象”可以破坏我们在新的政治项目的表面，