February 16, 2024 - 7:00pm
Involuntarily celibate women, or femcels, are a divisive topic — partially because nobody quite knows how to define them. They are frequently mislabelled as radical feminists, inaccurately associated with online subcultures like “coquettes”, or dismissively branded as “picky” or having “unrealistically high standards” by their male equivalents, incels.
They’re also understudied: in contrast to the considerable attention given to male incels, the unique experiences of femcels have been significantly neglected in academic research.
Recognising this gap, a new study from Adam Lankford and Hannah Rae Evans has carried out an analysis of approximately 24,000 posts on the femcel discussion forum ThePinkPill.co during its first year of operation, from May 2021 to May 2022. The report covers three primary types of sexual frustration experienced by femcels: unfulfilled desires to have sex, unavailable partners, and unsatisfying sexual activities. In other words: like incels, femcels want sex and intimacy — they’re just not finding it.
However, the study also raises critical questions that may validate some of the existing beliefs about femcels. Namely, whether they’re involuntarily celibate, celibate by choice, or celibate at all.
The study doesn’t quantify the prevalence of the different forms of sexual frustration experienced by the posters. Unsatisfying sexual experiences, while not desirable, are still markedly different from a complete inability to find a sexual partner. Because they don’t include these metrics, it’s unclear how many users on ThePinkPill.co simply don’t like the sex that’s available to them.
The authors also find that a significant percentage of posts (39%) related to sexual topics centred on a fear of sexual misconduct by men. Femcels, they write, were fearful that men’s sexuality was ultimately predatory: though they had “to work harder than other women to attract men […] they faced threats of being harassed or attacked for their efforts”.
Lankford and Evans still establish a direct link between femcels’ sexual frustration and their fear of sexual assault. Based on the analysis of ThePinkPill.co, it’s unclear whether femcels’ avoidance of sexual activity is primarily due to an intrinsic fear of sexual assault or if such fears serve as a secondary rationale for their involuntary celibacy. The study also notes that there is reason to believe that femcels, at least the ones studied, are overwhelmingly though not completely “misandrist”, and subscribe to second-wave, radical feminist ideas. But the question remains: what’s the causality?
There’s an argument to be made that the choice between bad or degrading sex and no sex isn’t a choice at all, and that the same dichotomy may be true of incels. (Is an incel really an incel if he can pay for sex?) Incels would argue that maybe this isn’t an ideal choice, but it’s better than having to buy it — thus, femcels aren’t real.
Beyond the population over at ThePinkPill.co, which itself was an outgrowth of one of the original femcel communities, /r/trufemcel, the subreddit /r/foreveralonewomen doesn’t use the terminology “femcel”, but describes itself as a forum for women with “no or very limited experience with dating, sex, and relationships,” and has a strict moderation policy that prohibits posters who may have prior romantic experience.
This forum seems, at least superficially, to be more specifically focused on women who are incapable of receiving sexual attention at all. Posters often complain of feelings of invisibility, or that they face disbelief about their situation from people who erroneously believe “all women are beautiful.” The type of despair that appears relatively frequently on /r/foreveralonewomen is much rarer on ThePinkPill.co, at least according to Evans and Lankford. One group of women feels completely inadequate; another feels like the oppressive conditions of the world have rendered them inadequate.
Lankford and Evans’s study is helpful, though there are many more conversations about femcels to be had. There are likely many types of femcels — just as there is a diverse ecosystem of incels — with different motivations and different reasons for their celibacy. While people who vent their frustrations online tend to represent the fringe better than they do ordinary people, further research may give us important clues into the state of the dating landscape.
Katherine Dee is a writer. To read more of her work, visit defaultfriend.substack.com.
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SubscribeAll women, if not indisputably ugly, think themselves at least handsome.
– Lord Chesterfield
All men, even the indisputably ugly, think themselves at least studs.
—Kimberly
Do you think that’s actually true?
The first quote does at least have some truth to it. Data from dating apps shows that women consistently overestimate their own attractiveness relative to men.
And common experience shows that women who are lucky to have the man they have, still think they have “settled”.
No, I don’t think it’s true. I was just picking on men the way Lord Chesterfield picked on women. Certainly, some average guys think they are God’s gift to women (Andrew Tate comes to mind), and some average women think they are goddesses. My late husband was an average looking guy, I guess, but to me he was the best looking man who ever lived. He was definitely above average intellectually and damn funny. And that’s all that matters.
Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
My favourite of Lord Chesterfield’s bons mots.
One sees a #10 woman with a #7 man but rarely the other way around.
Funny and so true.
Which is more or less true if you know biology
Why do I think that the “misandry” piece of that is two fold.
They dislike men so men have no interest in being near them.
Men have no interest in them, so they hate men.
Why do I also think that the overwhelming number of the misandrists are the same women who spend inordinate amounts of time online reading about bad things that have happened to women in the news or chatting with other women of like mind about how bad men are in the female equivalent of a circle jerk.
It’s like they think the worst must be true so they treat men like it is true and then men want nothing to do with them.
Lonely men seek companionship. Lonely women sit at home and wait. They never meet. — Abraham Lincoln
These women often do not want ordinary kind men. They also don’t want marriage. And they want handsome and/or wealthier men who use/abuse them for sex. How is that feminism workin’ for you ladies?
A man will pass out sperm like cheap candy but finds child support expensive. Women need to be realistic about their value in the marriage market. They also have a dowery. This includes her property, salary, her beauty & egg fresh date. A child by another man is a big negative dowery. Who wants to spend money raising another man’s child. A child support contract by the first man acts as a positive dowery. A fat divorce settlement is a dowery. If no child support contract, 10 drops to a 3 when the new prospective husband evaluates a woman. A woman’s eggs have a short shelf life. The 50-year-old 10 must put herself on a bargain basement sale. In addition, a woman must decide what level of incel that she would prefer a vibrator to. For sex a 50-year-old woman should find a discrete 13-year-old boy. The discrete is the hard part since they often brag, and police appear. A teacher will lose her job this way.
Are you seriously advocating paedophilia here?
If it’s a joke it is not funny. If it isn’t you need therapy.
What have we done to younger people?
Of courses sex isn’t always good. Even if both partners know what they are doing, they may not yet know each other.
Bad sex can give way to good sex, if you and your partner communicate with each other, are kind to and patient with each other, and keep trying.
But if you see bad sex as a sign of malevolence or inadequacy in you or your partner, you won’t keep trying. And then you will be lonely.
Worse still, if you have been told to see, or suspect every bad experience, even ones born out of clumsiness or inexperience or some other innocent reason, is the work of some vast but invisible conspiracy against you, no wonder some young women become anxious and angry and give up.
Like the “incel” identity for young men, the idea that wome who go through a period of loneliness are “femcels” is possibly one of the cruellest things we could tell a group of people.
What is for the overwhelming majority probably just an unlucky time, or even just a period of learning in which they would otherwise have worked out why they are currently unlucky in love, becomes a.fixed identity and a trap.
The phrase “don’t worry, it’s just a phase” is long overdue a comeback.
Throughout most of the past celibacy was regarded as an honourable estate both for men and for women.
Only in a sexually permissive society could it be despised as a shameful condition to be rid as soon as possible. The varieties of despair experience by these people who label themselves as ‘incels’ or ‘femcels’ is evidence of the mental stress induced by a society where sex is now everywhere.
If only they realised that they are possessed of a great strength. They are naturally defended against the demands to conform to this sexually permissive society.
All those who have died in infancy – a sizeable portion of the human race – would have been celibate without knowing any diminution.
Yes, ‘get thee to a nunnery‘ comes to mind. Women in the West have more choice now with the contraceptive pill providing protection from pregnancy, something the nunnery walls may have provided in the past, along with prayers. I agree that women are now coerced into feeling they should ‘have it all’, and not wanting it all is somehow being less than. When it can equally mean having what you really really want!
when you say “most of the past” what do you mean exactly? Presumably you are just thinking of western Christianity or other religious extreme?
Most religions celebrate sex and procreation. They just put a moral wrapper around it and some hurdles so people don’t have children without the support structure needed for them.
A good chunk of English literature from way before the 60s is preoccupied with finding partners and getting married with protagonists expressing despair that they may never do so. Censors and good taste would never have allowed it but a contemporary readership would have known that the temptations of the flesh are at least a partial motivation…
It’s a zero-sum game in the end. We are a monogamous species, and over the long term there can’t be an incel problem without a matching femcel one.
That is assuming approximate equal division of births between males and females. So it is right unless this is not the case, for example if you are Chinese with a 40+year history of a one-child policy and with families favouring male births.
I’ll keep that in mind when commenting on a story for Chinese femcels.
We are predominantly a monogamous species but there is an undercurrent of polygamy that is always there. It’s not so visible in American society but you do see hints of it: the rich and successful men are often “serial monogamists”, a type of polygamy. Thus, men at the bottom of the mating pecking order will go without.
I will simply point out….
The couples with the highest rates of domestic abuse…..lesbiansThe couples with the lowest rates of domestic abuse……gay menThe couples with the highest rates of divorce……………….lesbiansCouples with the lowest rates of divorce……………………..gay men
If hetero couples have rates of domestic abuse and divorce between those of gay men and lesbians then what is the denominator most likely to increase the likelihood of domestic abuse and divorce?
Interestingly, the reasons given for lesbian divorce include, failure to share household duties. Sound familiar?
So, is it MEN creating all the havoc, or has a large swath of the female population simply gone mad?
Sloppy, sloppy “data”. Virtually impossible to use it as a description of any kind of reality.
Yep, academic studies are not what they once were!
Given the intense focus society puts on sexual assault – coupled with dubious feminist statistics about the prevalence of sexual assault (1 in 4, etc) it isn’t surprising that many young women are afraid they will be assaulted.
Any woman of any age can get sex at any time but getting a reproduction child support contract from a high genetic value sire isn’t easy. Sperm are Cheap. Child support costs money and someone else’s child sans child support dowery payments are expensive. To get sex, all she has to do is to find a corner and practice prostitution. She can even get good sex from repeat clients if she waves the fee if the guy agrees to pleasure her. Convincing a man to support her children is the difficult problem. Incel women are over pricing themselves out of the reproduction market. They need to analyze whether they are a 1 or a 10 and the level of male who will buy. They also must consider that a woman’s eggs depreciate with age. A 10 at 50 years of age should look at 13-year-old incel boys since her x replaced her with a newer model. A 10 woman should bargain basement herself if she has a child by another man and no child support payments. If no acceptable male at her bargain basement price is available, get a vibrator.
Editors please remove this paedophile advocacy from the comments. I don’t subscribe to read this sickening stuff.
Maybe they are just really hard work. They sound it.
What happened to that good word Spinster. Elderly spinster. Embittered Spinster. Ugly Spinster.
Spinster is the word.
Do people still have maiden aunts?