Why are incels so obsessed with other men’s semen? The answer is much darker than you think

By David Futrelle

Right-wing shitposters aren’t the only ones who like to call everyone a “cuck.” Quite a few incels are fond of the insult as well, though in their minds it’s less of an insult than a description of the typical straight man — and they mean it quite literally.

No, the incels don’t mean that every single woman in a heterosexual relationship is getting it on with other men on the side, with her partner’s permission or not, though most incels seem to believe this is pretty much the norm.

Rather, the incels have expanded the definition of “cuckold” to include every man who has sex with a girl or a woman who isn’t a virgin. In other words, if a woman has ever had sex with a man other than the one she’s currently with, she’s basically cucking her current man as much as if she were to have sex with another man right in her boyfriend or husband’s bed while he watches, humiliated.

Given that these guys — the incels, that is — aren’t currently getting laid, and many never have, you might think their peculiar obsession with what you might call “universal cuckoldry” stems from pure sour grapes. And to some degree this is undoubtedly true. If you’re “involuntarily celibate,” as these guys insist upon labeling themselves, redefining most heterosexual sex as something deeply degrading to the men involved in it is likely going to make you feel a bit better about yourself.

But alas, there’s much more than sour grapes going on here. The incel obsession with what they see as almost universal cuckoldry isn’t just a “cope” for them; t’s a way to demonize women for having normal sex lives, to redefine all sexually active women as evil, deceptive monsters who can never fully love a man because they’re always pining for the alpha Chad they once had (because of course every women has supposedly slept with an alpha Chad, or several dozen, in her younger years). (In these incel discussions, I should note, they’re pretty much only considering straight sex between cis partners; incels do think and talk about trans women, but that’s a whole other topic, probably worth a dozen posts on its own.)

This demonization of sexually active women also helps to cement incels’ weird fascination with other men’s semen — something that many of them seem to think about more often and urgently than actual cuckold fetishists or bukkake fans, though incels insist that they are disgusted by semen, not desirous of it, and I actually think most of them are. (Many of them are disgusted by their own semen as well.) By fixating on what they see as the inherent ickiness of sperm, they can demonize women as not only deceptive cuckoldresses but as deeply disgusting, sperm-hungry animals in thrall to their primal Chad-cock-lust.

If you do a search for “semen” on the Incels.is forum — and I wouldn’t recommend it — you’ll turn up countless discussions with titles like these. (Click for archived versions of the original discussions; NSFW ads.)

As is virtually always the case when men demonize the sexuality of the women they themselves desire, the incels’ inverted cuckold fetish is ultimately all about control. They don’t just want to have sex with women; they want to be the only ones who have ever had sex with these women. They don’t want their partners to be able to compare them to anyone else. They don’t want their partners to feel they have any other options. This, as much as the pedophilia (sorry, ephebophilia) rampant in incel circles, accounts for their fixation on female virgins.

You can see all of these different elements at play in one discussion started by one prolific Incels.is commenter — with more than 4000 posts to his name — warning his fellow incels of the allegedly horrible fate that awaits men “If Your Wife has has [sic] Sex with Another Man Before You.” (NSFW link.) His warning takes the form of a 10-point list. Let’s go through it.

If your future wife is one of these nasty women, he declares:

1. She has been throttled and tossed around by someone that isn’t you.
2. She has squirmed with pleasure under the control of someone that isn’t you.
3. She has had her first experience, satisfying her curiosity, with someone that isn’t you.

Here’s that fear of comparison.

4. She has developed emotional bonds with someone that isn’t you.

More fear of comparison. It’s an incel folk belief — backed up with some dubious science — that any woman who has loved one man will never fully love another. (This belief is widespread in the manosphere and everywhere else evo psych is worshipped.)

5. She has been drenched in the semen of someone that isn’t you.

Here’s that vivid incel imagination at work again. Yes, fellas, if she’s had sex with another man, she has almost certainly encountered another man’s semen in some fashion. Whether she has been “drenched” in it is a whole other question. And it’s really none of your business.

6. She has willingly put herself under the possibility of having the kids of someone that isn’t you.

And, if she’s not already a mother, she has almost certainly done everything in her power to avoid this possibility every time she has had sex. But again, her sexual past is really none of your damn business.

7. She potentially still has remnants of semen inside of her from someone that isn’t you.

Uh, not unless she had unprotected sex with the best man right before saying “I do.” Not if she had sex with another man a year ago. Because That’s Not How Vaginas Work.

8. She may give birth to the child of someone who isn’t you.

This is number six again, but this time with the added worry that women will secretly saddle hapless beta men with responsibility for children that aren’t biologically theirs. Incels, like Men’s Rights Activists and many other manosphereans, assume that paternity fraud is rampant — because most women want alpha DNA, but can’t get alpha males to marry them. So they have  unprotected sex with alphas and make their beta husbands think the kid is theirs. Many manosphereans literally believe that most men are unwittingly raising other men’s children.

Like I said, these guys have vivid imaginations.

9. She has gasped in pleasure and pain due to the penetration from someone who isn’t you.

And we’re back to the fear of comparison again, as well as a tacit admission that most incels are destined to suck at sex and know it.

10. She has bled on the sheets due to the penetration of someone who isn’t you.

You have to be a pretty big virgin fetishist — or a vampire — to see missing out on this as something inherently terrible. And hey, if you’re really that into blood, there’s always period sex!

Naturally, only one of the numerous incels commenting in this thread took issue with any o f these claims. Most agreed and amplified the OP’s points.

“Another quality post,” wrote the first responder.

[W]hile you provide for her she is thinking about all the Chad cock she took in her prime. She cannot truly love you.

Another complained that “all women fuck dozens of guys minimum before ever getting married.”

“Good luck finding a virgin woman that isn’t gross,” added a third.

One commenter managed to push the definition of cuckold even further than the already quite expansive incel definition, suggesting that the problem wasn’t just the men that one’s hypothetical wife had slept with in reality, but also those she simply thought about having sex with. “Everyone wants a virgin wife,” he wrote, as if this were self-evidently true.

The thing is: would you be OK knowing that your wife is at least fantasying in getting fucked by a Chad?

Dude. You’re jealous of her thoughts now?

Other responses were less pathetic than chilling. Several commenters declared that the OP was “rage fuel.” Others expressed their rage quite openly.

“This is precisely why they should be property,’ wrote someone calling himself SaintMarcLepine, after the misogynist who murdered murdered 14 women at Montreal’s École Polytechnique in 1989.  (The admins of Incels.is apparently have no issue with SaintMarcLepine’s handle or his violently misogynistic comments; he has been allowed to post more than 1600 comments on the site and its predecessor, Incels.me.)

A commenter called Krispenwah threatened violence explicitly. “If I get arranged marriage and she doesn’t bleed after I first time I fuck her,” he wrote, “I will kill her instantly.”

It’s comments like this that lead me to conclude that the real tragedy isn’t that incels like those who populate Incels.is aren’t getting laid. The tragedy would be if any of them did. Unless they can work through whatever inner demons are leading them to think and to post things like these, these men are dangerous to any women who dates much less marries them — or even simply attracts their obsessive attention.

They’re also dangerous to the rest of us. As I’ve said many times before, the incel ideology is utter poison. Sites like Incels.is aren’t self-help groups any more than sites like Gab or Stormfront are self-help sites for racists. As those sites have served as enablers of racist extremism — which regularly bleeds into real-life violence, as we have all been reminded so tragically in recent days — so sites like Incels.is are enablers or misogynist extremism. And, like White Supremacists, incels don’t just fantasize about violence and murder. Some of them have committed it.

That’s why these weird bad ideas on the internet are worth looking at seriously. Because ideas, good and bad, have consequences. The ideas being spread every day on Incels.is put all of us in danger.

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