Incels are an online subculture of young men who espouse misogynistic and nihilistic worldviews and experience significant mental health challenges. This thesis analyzes contemporary scholarship on incels to provide a meta-level overview of the theories and approaches applied to incels. A significant finding is the determination that most scholarship analyzes inceldom from three perspectives which share an emphasis on responding to or classifying the phenomena. As a result, I draw from comparative human development to present life-course theory as an alternative approach to analyzing incels. Life-course theory may help illuminate hereto unidentified or underappreciated components of incel experiences and present pathways for conceptualizing a need for the prevention of inceldom, rather than simply a response to inceldom. The second half of the paper applies life-course theory to the case of Elliot Rodger, the first legitimate perpetrator of incel-related violence, using his positionality within incel mythos to articulate how developmental experiences which include familial instability, “off-time” social development, and ineffective interventions contributed to his pathway to incel philosophies. This analysis includes a queer reading of Rodger’s text to highlight potentially repressed queer sexuality as a significantly overlooked possibility in contemporary analyses of Rodger and inceldom more broadly. This paper culminates with recommendations for future research and practical engagements with the subculture and its participants.
