A Multidimensional Computational Analysis of Dehumanization in Incel Discourse

Dehumanizing language is a core feature of hostile online communities, often serving to reinforce ideology and justify harm. Despite widespread claims that incel discourse uniquely dehumanizes women, it remains unclear whether dehumanization systematically differs across gendered targets. In this paper, we analyze 10.3 million posts from incel forums from 2018 to 2024 using a multidimensional framework for dehumanizing language. We operationalize five dimensions: negative evaluation, moral disgust, animalistic framing, mind denial, and agency denial. Across analyses, women-associated terms show a small but statistically significant overall increase in dehumanization, but individual dimensions do not show reliable women–men differences and remain stable over time. The findings suggest that dehumanization functions as an enduring representational baseline in this community, with both women- and men-associated terms evaluated negatively and embedded in dehumanizing contexts. The paper was presented by Jemima Kang on behalf of the author team.