A Multidimensional Computational Analysis of Dehumanization in Incel Discourse

Abstract

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. This study provides the first theory-informed, multidimensional analysis of gendered dehumanization in incel discourse, operationalizing five dimensions (negative evaluation, moral disgust, animalistic framing, mind denial, and agency denial) and applying them to 10.3 million posts from incel forums (2018–2024). We extend an existing framework by adding a mind denial dimension and refining the operationalization of animality and negative evaluation, thereby strengthening its theoretical grounding and empirical coverage. Across analyses, women-associated terms demonstrate a small but statistically significant overall increase in dehumanization. However, none of the individual dimensions show reliable women–men differences, and these patterns remain stable over time. Taken together, the results indicate that dehumanization functions as an enduring representational baseline in this community: both women- and men-associated terms are evaluated negatively and embedded in dehumanizing contexts. These findings illustrate how theory-informed computational measures can characterize the multidimensional ways ideological harm is expressed in online communities.