Reddit has banned a controversial online forum where commenters promoted misogyny and, in some cases, advocated for violence against women.
The online message board blocked the group called “Incels,” a term that refers to men who blame women for their celibacy. In a statement this week, the company said that the forum violated its policies, specifically its “sitewide rules regarding violent content.”
The Incels group was a popular meeting ground for celibate men to vent their frustrations about women and a society that they feel contributed to their unhappiness and failure to find romantic relationships. Although many Reddit members used the message board to talk about their depression and sadness over their celibacy, several others posted hateful comments about women and violence.
IncelTears, another Reddit community, collected some of the most egregious postings from the Incels group. In one example, someone posted about plans to drug and sexually assault a woman. In another post, a forum member said that “rape should be legal because it reduces inbreeding.”
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Many of Reddit’s Incel group, which the BBC said had about 41,000 members, also supported the violent actions of Elliot Rodger, who murdered six people in the Santa Barbara, Calif. Area in 2014 and wrote a manifesto expressing his hate of women.
Reddit’s purge of the Incels community comes a little over a week after the company updated its content policy and banned three subreddits related to Nazis and members of the Far-Right that support violence and hateful ideologies.
In February, Reddit closed a community dedicated to members of the alt-right, a catch-all term for an extreme branch of conservatism that sometimes supports white nationalism and other racist beliefs.