Incels, dry spells and marrying up | William Costello | Ep.14

So many fail to find love. Self-described involuntary celibates (Incels) are rampant online and causing both controversy and intrigue.
There is, and always has been, a disparity between men and women in terms of the numbers of sexual partners that they have. No - it’s not the case that on average heterosexual men have more sexual partners than do heterosexual women. If you think about it, it takes two to tango, so every time a man has sex with another women, so is a women have sex with another man. So interestingly, inevitably average number of lifetime sexual partners is about the same between the sexes. However, the amount of variation between individuals in terms of their number of sexual partners is markedly different between the sexes. Specifically, men vary more in this respect than do women. We can see this in data most clearly in natural living tribespeople but also in Western. Not only does the number of sexual partners vary more between men but many men will have zero sexual partners, at least for long periods of their adult lives and when they are most fertile. These people are termed ‘incels’ (involuntarily celibate). They’ve always existed of course, but in recent years, through social media, they have galvanised, and they have been garnering a fair amount of attention.
William Costello is studying for his PhD at the University of Austin in Texas, and his thesis is a deep dive into Incel culture. I had the pleasure of speaking to William about his work on Incels along with wider themes concerning online dating and clashes in mate preferences between men and women.
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