When you think of an ‘incel’, what springs to mind? A scrawny Reddit addict with a nonexistent jawline? A “grown white man in his underwear in Mommy’s basement”? Perhaps Owen Cooper, starring as fictional teenage killer Jamie Miller in Netflix’s hit show Adolescence? Whatever you imagine, it’s unlikely you think of a woman. But female incels or ‘femcels’ – that is, women who are involuntarily single and/or celibate – are real, with growing numbers of women taking to social media to speak candidly about their experiences of rejection, loneliness, and chronic singledom.

Milly Goldsmith is a 27-year-old content creator who has spoken frankly about her frustrating dating experiences. “How do people do it? How do people actually end up liking a guy, and then they like them back?,” she says in one TikTok video which has been viewed nearly 100,000 times. “That doesn’t happen. That doesn’t happen! That is luck… it just so happens that everyone seems to be lucky in this world apart from me.” In the comments section, other women express similar sentiments. “It [remains] a mystery to me why some people jump from one relationship to the other and meet potential partners so easily while some of us have literally nothing going on [in] their love life,” reads one comment with over 100 likes.

30-year-old Ryan Spencer went viral last year after posting a similar TikTok expressing her frustration at being unable to find a partner. In the video, which has been viewed over a million times, she vents about her inability to find a life partner. “Am I just supposed to be alone? Is that the message? This beautiful life I’ve built for myself – it’s just supposed to be me in it, alone?” she says, her voice breaking mid-sentence. “All of my friends have their fiancés and their boyfriends and their husbands that they prioritise. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been left behind.”

“I was having a bad day,” Ryan tells Dazed, explaining her thought process behind posting the video. “The thoughts running through my mind seemed like a conversation that needed to be had. I had no expectations for the reaction it received, but overnight it went viral.” The response, Ryan says, was “overwhelming” – but positive overall. “It’s definitely been reassuring to know I’m not alone.”

There’s no doubt that Ryan is not alone. Across the world, research suggests that more and more people are staying single for longer. Relatedly, Gen Z are less likely to have experienced a romantic relationship than previous generations: according to a 2023 poll from the Survey Center on American Life, 41 per cent of Gen Z adults did not have a relationship at any point in their teen years (compared to only 31 per cent of millennials and 24 per cent of Gen Xers). Separate research from Hinge found that 44 per cent of Gen Z have little-to-no-dating experience.

25-year-old Bella, for example, has never been in a relationship. “It’s not for lack of trying. I’ve been on lots of first, second and third dates but have had fairly limited experience past that,” she says, adding that often these burgeoning relationships end with her being rejected. “I do think there’s more of a stigma around being perpetually single as a woman,” she continues. “I’ve definitely felt ashamed of my lack of relationships in the past.”

In recent years, most discussions about singledom have attempted to reframe it as an empowering choice. The likes of Florence Given have built lucrative careers by branding themselves as free, independent, and happily unpartnered women. Some have connected the prevalence of female singleness to the feminist 4B movement, which originated in South Korea and encourages women to abstain from dating or having sex with men, or the more general call to ‘decenter men’. Against this backdrop, it’s become unfashionable at best, shameful at worst, for a woman to admit to being unhappy about being single.

Girls and women are not socialised into believing that they have a ‘right’ to men’s bodies [...] they are socialised into self-blaming more broadly

Many women enjoy the freedom afforded to them by singledom: sleeping diagonally in bed, not having to share your fries, etc. But equally, many crave companionship. Significant numbers of straight women in particular really do feel as though they’re entirely at the mercy of the whims of men, with no control over their romantic lives whatsoever. Many are tired of being the chronically single friend; tired of supplying anecdotes from ‘the trenches’; tired of being called ‘strong’ and ‘independent’ and told, often from partnered friends, that platonic love can ‘replace’ romantic love. This idea that all femcels are celibate by choice is an argument often peddled by misogynistic incels themselves, who contend that some men are so desperate that femcels could have sex if they just ‘lowered their standards’. But almost everyone has ‘standards’; it’s still an issue if large swathes of women feel as though they can’t have fulfilling romantic and sexual lives.

“There is certainly a crisis of loneliness and isolation which is widespread, and is in no way limited to men,” says Dr Jilly Kay, a senior lecturer in communication and media at Loughborough University who has extensively researched femcels. She attributes the crisis to neoliberal capitalism, which is continuing to erode possibilities for meaningful social connection. “The pressure to be romantically and sexually successful would not be so intense and all-consuming in a society where everyone felt materially safe and socially valued,” she says, adding that “we are all now encouraged to see ourselves as self-contained individuals who are responsible for our own successes and failures.”

While both men and women are reporting extreme loneliness and difficulty in forming romantic relationships, it’s worth acknowledging that there are differences in how incels and femcels react to their plight. “Research does tend to show that incel culture – and the manosphere more broadly – projects this sense of frustration, humiliation and anger outwards onto women and feminism,” Dr Kay explains, adding that sociologists describe this type of resentment as ‘aggrieved entitlement’. By contrast, “women are more likely to direct these feelings inwardly, and blame themselves – in significant part because girls and women are not socialised into believing that they have a ‘right’ to men’s bodies, and also because they are socialised into self-blaming more broadly.”

It’s somewhat ironic that recent discussions about inceldom have largely centred around men, given that a woman created the first-ever incel forum. Back in 1997, a Canadian woman named Alana established a “supportive” forum for lonely people with little romantic experience back in 1997 called ‘Alana’s Involuntary Celibacy Project’. “I was kind of a late bloomer. I thought, ‘Maybe there are other late bloomers out there,’” Alana told the BBC in 2018. It was Alana who first began abbreviating “involuntarily celibate” to “invcel”, which eventually became “incel”.

In 2018 Alana told the Guardian that she sometimes feels guilty for creating the first incel website – like “the scientist who figured out nuclear fission and then discovers it’s being used as a weapon for war” –  given how harmful and toxic the ‘manosphere’ has become. Thankfully, though, today’s femcels – who largely want community, advice, and the occasional opportunity to vent about being ghosted for the fifth time in a row – are continuing Alana’s mission to destigmatise chronic singledom by being frank and forthcoming about their experiences. 

“It’s been super rewarding to hear how helpful I’ve been to others,” Ryan says, explaining that she regularly receives “messages thanking me for my vulnerability”. She adds that she is now generally feeling more “optimistic” about dating. Bella, meanwhile, says that while she’s had her “fair share of ranting and crying” about failed relationships, now she tries to focus on the bigger picture whenever she faces rejection. “I try to look at it as a situation between two people that didn’t work, rather than the fault of one person or the other,” she surmises. After all, as she puts it herself: “Rejection is just a part of life.”