His Twisted World: An Analysis of Elliot Rodger and Inceldom Through Life-Course Theory

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.