The release of Adolescence on Netflix has one again brought incels back into the spotlight – with calls for the hit drama to be shown in school to combat a culture of misogyny, racism and self-pity among young men who have been radicalised online.
But in 2025, an equally rapidly growing group are the ‘femcels’: women who share their own hatred of men who they brand ‘predators, cheaters and wife beaters’.
While many are swearing off men completely – or simply find they are unable to get into a relationship – others vow to give up on gender equality and turn the tables by using men for financial gain.
While Adolescence follows the story of 13-year-old Jamie Miller who is accused of stabbing his classmate Katie to death, after being warped by the impact of online male incel culture, Femcels are supposedly non-violent.
However, in a Channel 4 documentary last year, Journalist Ellie Flynn, investigated the hidden world of ‘Femcels’ and discovered a more complicated picture than simply ‘women who hate men’.
She was told how some women turned to the Femcel community for support after being raped, while Ellie was left horrified by footage of women cutting and eating their own flesh in ‘gore’ videos shared on extreme online forums.
The group, which first began to appear on Reddit around 2018, is rapidly growing, with many taking to more public platforms such as TikTok and Instagram to assert their identities.
Another TikTok user, Chloe @boopcreate, who is based in Texas still goes on dates with men, despite often calling herself a femcel on her account
One TikTok user based in the UK even said she is getting so ‘tired of being single’ that she’s decided to start a relationship ‘with herself’.
The young woman has also shared a series of posts slandering men.
Several read: ‘Men love to say femcels don’t exist but when I say ‘would you date me then’ they get P*****’;
In another video, she said: ‘I am tired of being single and have decided to start a relationship with myself.
‘It doesn’t matter to me how attractive a man is, you can repackage evil all you like it’s still evil’
‘Why do you hate irl [in real life] men? They literally despite women who they do not deem attractive enough to sleep with them. Call me woke but it sounds like a huge ego issue to me.
‘When a man is nice to me (he’s trying to get me vulnerable so he can laugh at me).
‘Stop caring about what men find attractive cause that’s literally trying to impress predators, cheaters and wife beaters.’
Femcels see men as having little value, with one on TikTok saying they ‘have no benefit to us’
Many TikTok posts now use the femcel hashtag and are racking up hundreds of thousands of views
Meanwhile @sumimrk, who lives in London, used the femcel hashtag in a recent post
The incel movement first came to prominence in 2014 after 22-year-old Elliot Rodger killed six people and injured fourteen others at the University of California, Santa Barbara after becoming radicalised by the incel movement.
The growth of femcels is a much more recent one, and they’ve only recently started posting in the mainstream media.
As a result, the incel community is still predominately associated with men.
Much of the ‘femcel’ community stems from the Female Dating Strategy, which started as a Reddit Forum and now has its own website and podcast.
The site has a six-point strategy: men should pursue women, women should use them for financial gain, and most man have no value.
Describing itself as ‘exclusively for women who want to take control of their lives’, the site is filled with ‘lies men tell’, while the Reddit thread has more than 260,000 followers.
Recent posts include ‘clocking the subtle misogyny’ on reality series Love Is Blind, while another says ‘if a man chokes you [during sex], he hates you’.
Another TikTok user, Chloe @boopcreate, who is based in Texas still goes on dates with men, despite often calling herself a femcel on her account.
The conversation around incels has gained attention following the release of Adolescence on Netflix. Pictured: Owen Cooper, who plays Jamie Miller
She said: ‘I get asked a lot, ‘why do you call yourself a femcel?’ And the answer is, I don’t. Or at least that’s what the answer used to be because I’ve created a bit of a self-fulfiling prophecy for myself.’
Even on dates, she will bring up the topic of femcels, often referring to her music or anime taste, or while telling a joke.
In other videos, she’s shared examples of ‘the best femcel characters in film and anime’, naming the likes of Jennifer Check from Jennifer’s Body, the narrator from My Year Of Rest And Relaxation and Bella Swan from Twilight.
‘I’m really tired of getting comments saying ‘oh, you’re not a real femcel or you’re too hot to be a femcel because it’s just not true,’ she added.
Chloe said she’s been permanently banned from most mainstream dating apps, posting evidence of her ban from Hinge.
She then posted her ‘top artists’ on Spotify, which include Weezer, Radiohead and The Strokes.
‘I currently have over 500 hours played in Fortnite just on PC,’ she said.
Meanwhile @sumimrk, who lives in London, used the femcel hashtag in a recent post, explaining: ‘I’ve always despised the idea of getting home from work or uni one day and then just wanting to watch like brainrot TikToks and then some Gossip Girl, and then there’s a dude in my house.
Journalist Ellie Flynn (pictured), from London , delved into the darkest corners of the internet to investigate the hidden world of women who call themselves Femcels
Al’s (left) housemate, (right) who remain anonymous and also explores these dangerous websites, said she met a guy on one of them when she was 14 and he sexually assaulted her three times
‘Think about it, you’re already emotionally drained, you’ve had a long day, and then you have to be emotionally available, and like, talkative. I just want to have my protein smoothie when I get home and chill for an hour on the couch and not talk to anybody, be on my phone.
‘How the hell do people get married? I don’t understand. How do you like someone enough to want to share a home with them?’
She said she would happily live with her two best friends, but not ‘some guy’ who would ‘annoy’ her, and asked if people could help her join a ‘feminist commune’.
Other femcels claim that the term is ‘actually a compliment’ as it proves someone has very little interaction with men.
TikTok user Miffy, from Australia and who posts under the username @femcelvictim, said: ‘Remember girls! Men will only drag you down, they are a risk to your physical and mental wellbeing. Focus on fostering deep and meaningful friendships with other women.
‘No more sleeping with men. No more marriage. No more dating. No more children. They have no benefit to us.’
Previously, journalist Ellie Flynn, from London, delved into the darkest corners of the internet to investigate the hidden world of women who call themselves ‘Femcels’ for a Channel 4 documentary Radicalised: Are Femcels The New Incels?
Ellie’s investigation into Femcels revealed a more complicated picture than simply ‘women who hate men’.
Lauren (pictured), who doesn’t identify as a Femcel but has built a community of friends in the Femcel forums, revealed the forms make her less alone
Elsewhere Ellie spoke to a popular Femcel YouTube content creator, known as Kidology, who explained the differences between Incels and Femcels
One girl called Lauren spoke about how she’s never got beyond kissing and believes she’s ‘very unattractive’ and will be alone forever, while Ellie was left horrified by footage of women cutting and eating their own flesh in ‘gore’ videos.
Ellie met up with a Femcel, who she met on an online forum, to try and get a better understanding.
Al, who has been part of the Femcel community for four years, said: ‘A Femcel for me is someone who has garnered enough life experience with men to grow a disdain for them.
‘I don’t hate [men] really, I constantly feel frightened, especially in relationships, I don’t really show emotion to them, I don’t give them the time of day.
‘I’m not celibate or involuntary, I suppose a lot of people would consider me a fake, I just hold a lot of their views.’
Ellie pointed out that for incels it appears to be the ‘lack of sexual experiences that make them incels’, but for Femcels like Al, it is the ‘past experiences with men that make them consider themselves Femcels’.
Elsewhere Ellie spoke to a popular Femcel YouTube content creator, known as Kidology, who explained the differences between incels and Femcels.
She said: ‘Incels very much see the world as the problem, particularly modern society – feminism and the ability for the woman to be picky about their sexual partners. Whereas most Femcels tend to see it as something that is wrong with them, like their looks and something that they need to work on to eventually find those relationships.’
Lauren, who doesn’t identify as a Femcel but has built a community of friends in the Femcel forums, revealed the forms make her less alone.
The ‘manosphere’ has figureheads such as Andrew Tate (left), who is currently awaiting trial in Romania over rape and human trafficking charges – pictured with brother Tristan (right)
‘I have never had a relationship unfortunately, I have never experienced anything past a kiss and I do feel shame about it, I am 28 and I feel like I am going to be 70 and have lived my life alone.
‘It’s scary, depressing and isolating. The thing that is wrong with me is my facial appearance. I do have body dysmorphic disorder, but I have also never seen anyone attracted to me. I personally find myself very unattractive.
‘When I go to these communities you see a lot of people who have experienced the same thing, it’s nice in a way to show you are not crazy or wrong. It’s a place I go every day to read experiences and it makes me feel less alone.’
Ellie said the more woman she spoke to women involved in the Femcel communities the less worried she was about them committing any violence, and the more worried she was about their mental health.
However even though the Femcel communities didn’t appear to be violent some of the forum have merged with the incel forums, meaning these vulnerable woman are exposed to a lot of graphic and gruesome content.
After meeting back up with Al, Ellie asked to see some of these merged forums and she was horrified to see violent rape videos shared.
Al said: ‘I have been sent videoes of women being raped. I was around 14 years old.’
She said she’d been exposed to so-called ‘gore’ videos from the age of 11.
Al’s housemate, who remained anonymous and also explores these dangerous websites, said she met a man on one of them when she was 14 and he sexually assaulted her three times.
Al added: ‘I had a similar relationship actually when I was 14. I didn’t realise me saying no and him continuing to do it was wrong at all. It’s happened in multiple relationships.’
The women explained they use the forums because they feel lonely and isolated and the graphic content become strangely ‘addicting.’
They added that they get desensitised to the graphic content shared on them and learn ‘to cope’ with it.
According to one researcher, who has been studying the reaction of young women to the mainstream and the spaces spawning online as a result, rather than incels, there are a new breed of ‘femcels’ (TikTok influencer Leila Layzell pictured)
After asking how likely is it that a Femcel could end up committing a violent act, Al’s housemate said: ‘These people have been raped, molested, bullied, disowned by their own families and society does treat these women like it’s your fault these things happened to you and that makes the most radical Femcels.
‘Femcels and Incels have the similarity of anxiety, depression, bad lives, But how it’s self internalised for women is a huge difference.
‘I think there is potential for a real violent act. We will get there and the world will go ”How did she do that’?’. I would say: ‘You let incels do it, you let men get mentally ill, you didn’t let them get the mental health [help] they needed and then they shot a place up’.
‘Now woman are getting more mentally ill. I think something big will happen and the world will be shocked.’
Elsewhere Ellie was shown graphic content, known as ‘gore’ which was posted on the Incel and Femcel shared forum, which showed a woman cutting herself and eating her own flesh.
The journalist appeared visibly shocked and disgusted by the content, looking away from the screen she said ‘I can’t watch that’.
Al’s housemate said: ‘This is something that multiple people did in the server, I know, it’s hard to watch, but four or five people did this specifically.
Describing the graphic footage they said: ‘They are cutting out a square, that’s her eating it, they are bleeding, she is smiling like that is funny for her.’
Before it was hijacked by men, the term incel was coined in the 1990s by a woman known only as Alana, who used it to describe her own experience with being unable to find a romantic or sexual partner.
And mimicking male ‘pickup artists’, who deploy devious schemes to entice women into bed, there are female dating strategists exploiting their ‘dark feminine energy’ to seduce men into financially providing for them (dating influencer Margarita Nazarenko pictured)
She created the website Involuntary Celibacy Project with the goal of it being an inclusive community for people who were experiencing the same things she was.
Alana eventually passed the site on to someone else and didn’t hear the term again until years later when she read about Elliot Rodger describing himself as an incel in online posts before going on a murder spree.
‘It’s frustrating,’ she told the Guardian. ‘I feel like I did something important, for the good of the world — that then turned out to be a weapon as well.’
Speaking to the Observer, Dr Jill Kay, an expert in feminist media and cultural studies at Loughborough University, described ‘femcels’ as a growing movement of women promoting ‘conservative’ and ‘toxic’ behaviours to ensnare men who will support them financially.
According to Kay, while most women active in the femosphere describe themselves as feminists, many adhere to conservative and traditional gender roles within dating – such as men always being the pursuers, women avoiding casual sex so as not to diminish their ‘value’ and the man always picking up the bill on dates.
Like incels, some members of the femosphere say they are ‘involuntarily celibate’ but tend to find fault with themselves for being ‘unattractive’, while men usually put the blame on women for not taking an interest in them.
The beliefs touted by influencers in the femosphere centre around the notion that there are inherent differences between the genders – with men naturally ‘chasers’ who are ‘afraid of commitment’ – and that women must strategise accordingly.
Dr Kay said she believes that the movement is a rejection of the feminist ideal of ‘having it all’ or being a ‘girl boss’ who strives hard, and in the absence of a middle ground to align with, women have gone in the complete opposite direction towards ultra-conservative values.
On TikTok there are thousands of videos where women suggest tips and tricks on how to secure a wealthy man, many of which involve wielding ‘feminine’ powers such as aligning with traditional ideas of woman by ‘wearing dresses and skirts’, being ‘obedient’ – and seeking out rich men and pretending to ‘look confused’ (Australian TikToker, beezicreation pictured)
In one TikTok video, dating influencer Margarita Nazarenko said: ‘Women have intrinsic value that is high and he has chased you. Look at the world, men chase women.
‘Men do anything for women, they have fast cars for women, they want to have you and find you and chase you.’
‘Women have value, men gaslight you and pretend you don’t. But we all know men chase women, that is the natural biological order of the world.’
In a clip discussing ‘values’ that each gender holds, Margarita insisted that women are a ‘natural resource’ with the ability to ‘nurture’ and should be ‘chased’ by men who in return provide ‘financial and protection provisions’.
It’s a sentiment echoed by others online lauding the power of the ‘divine feminine energy’.
TikToker Stef Baker uses her account to offer dating tips, encouraging women to embrace the divine feminine in order to attract a ‘deeply healthy masculine partner’.
‘Women by nature, are ruled by their emotions, they are governed by the emotional intuitive body,’ she says.
Meanwhile, this new wave of ‘femcels’ insist that men are resistant to ‘commitment’ and thus must be handled strategically.
‘The number one thing men fear is commitment’, said one TikToker, Esther Sarphatie. ‘Because commitment mean giving up his freedom.’
During her research, Kay studied a Reddit thread titled Female Dating Strategy. Boasting 250,000 members, the thread, which also became a social media page and podcast, included a six-point ideology for members.
Several encouraging women to harness their ‘divine feminine energy’, urge daters to abstain from sleeping with men until they have secured his commitment, or refusing dates that are offered too last minute (TikTok dating coach Jordana Singer pictured)
Among these were the idea that men should always be the pursuers of women, and that women should seek financial gain from potential mates.
Kay remarked on this concept that ‘men are the gatekeepers of relationships and women are the gatekeepers of sex’.
‘So women’s currency in the sexual marketplace resides in her withholding sex from men, and you diminish your value if you have casual sex,’ she explained.
It’s an idea that’s been echoed across social media channels offering a myriad of dating tips to women.
Several are encouraging women to harness their ‘divine feminine energy’ and urging girls to abstain from sleeping with men until they have secured his commitment, or refusing dates that are offered too last minute.
‘If a guy texts you and asks to see him within 24 hours notice, say no,’ TikTok dating coach, jordanadoesthings, insisted.
‘Even if you want to see him, even if you have no plans, you’re just doing nothing, you’re saying at home being a lazy couch potato, still say ‘no, I’m busy’.
‘This creates a boundary, that you’re not just available at his beck and call. You are an empress, a queen energy and you deserve to have someone preplan something.’
In addition to abstaining from sex, the movement also encourages women to refuse to pay for anything; with the expectation that the man should be financially responsible during courting and the relationship itself.
‘Do not pay for the date as a feminine energy,’ one TikToker, jordanadoesthings, insisted. ‘You don’t need to go 50/50, he should be paying you to take you out.
TikToker Stef Baker said ‘women by nature, are ruled by their emotions, they are governed by the emotional intuitive body’
‘There’s something called the investment principle for men, and they value what they invest into,’ she added.
Social media sites are flooded with clips from women advising others on how to secure a wealthy man; many of which involve wielding ‘feminine’ powers such as aligning with traditional ideas of woman by ‘wearing dresses and skirts’, being ‘obedient’ – and seeking out rich men and pretending to ‘look confused’.
Australian TikToker, beezicreation, offered followers tips on how to secure rich man that ‘all women want’.
‘If you do want to marry a rich man, there are certain things you have to do and you have to change if you want to be with a man like that,’ she said.
This involves ‘learning how to compose yourself’ around others, avoiding drawing too much attention to oneself and always being ‘composed, elegant an stylish.’
‘When you’re walking into a room with him, he wants everyone to know you’re his. But you also still need to be approachable.’
‘A man like that will have you there and he will spoil you and treat you well – if you’re doing certain things.’
To secure her rich husband, she admitted, involves ‘changing’ herself and learning to ‘obey, abide and follow orders’.
Rules which she gladly took on in exchange for being ‘spoilt’ without ever ‘having to ask’.
Another influencer from the UK, Leila Layzell, has a video titled ‘how to snag a rich man’, where she details her top tips on how to seek out men of a certain wealth, following them to popular public places and ‘looking the most feminine’.
She suggested going to bars and restaurants in high end areas, and even going to the supermarket ‘in the early evening when he’s finished work on a weekday.’
Leila also encouraged followers to seek out men by going ‘on a hot girl walk in a wealthy neighbour’ or joining gyms in luxury apartment buildings.
Among thousands of videos offering tips on how to locate wealthy men, others suggest going to expensive hotels, bars, and clubs, and ‘always wear a dress and heels’.
Elsewhere creator Mia Dio – whose content flits between skits about marrying ‘old rich men’ to avoid work, and serious advice on how to seek out wealthy love interests – urged women to go to hotels where ‘a room is at least $2,000 a night’ and to ‘look expensive, look mysterious, look confused’.
She explained: ‘My personal favourite is to look distressed and a bit sad. When they ask you what’s wrong, just say ‘I’ve had such a bad day but it looks better now you’re here’. Little bit corny, but it works.’
And tips don’t just stop at looking good in wealthy areas. Other influencers tout tactical conversation pointers and ways of asking ‘about his finances without it being obvious’ – methods that mimic strategists deployed by ‘pick up artists’ in the ‘manosphere’.
One infamous social media user in the field of the ‘femosphere’ is SheRa – a self-styled ‘financial advisor’ who offers women advice on sourcing a wealthy older partner.
Once secured, she then encouraged women to lie and use reverse psychology to insist men pay all of their household bills. She even refers to men with little wealth as ‘dusties’ and insists they should be avoided.
SheRa’s videos have been viewed more than 20 billion times on TikTok and she boats a loyal fanbase of women seeking expertise on find a wealthy suitor. She is often known for her ‘sprinkle sprinkle’ mantra online.
Her first book, which is titled Too Pretty to Pay Bills: Keys to Gold Digging Success: Tips on How to Have the Life You Deserve as a Woman!, was published in 2017.
‘What is the one way to get a man to spend money on you?’ she asks in one video. ‘Look way better than him, look out of his league. Look like you would never be with him unless he was spending money on you.’
‘When you’re looking for a man, don’t go for looks, go for how much he looks like he’s going to spend.
‘Another way to get him to spend money on you is to always give him problems for him to find a financial solution to,’ she added.
Her ideology demands women hide ‘insecurities’ and never openly act jealous – instead, if fearing their partner is having an affair, they should purport to call them and say they have a ‘flat tire’ – instead of calling to check they are being faithful.
Adhering to conservative ideas of femininity, to SheRa insists that a woman’s role is to ‘look good’ and to be worshipped by her partner.
She also maintains that women should not have to perform cooking or cleaning tasks or exchange for her partner’s money, and they he should pay someone else to do it instead.
According to Kay, while these methods are ‘incredibly conservative’, their aim is to reframe strategising as ’empowering’.
