Taboos as Drivers for Counterculture: Normalizing Misogyny in Incel Communities and Beyond

Countercultures are defined in opposition to the mainstream. They permit the exploration, promotion, and adoption of ideas and practices placed outside the status quo. One way to do so is by exploiting taboo utterances that are prohibited in mainstream culture. We define taboo utterances as those that either constitute socially prohibited acts (e.g., slurs), express elements of a prohibited ideology (e.g., claims advocating the subjugation of women), or promote socially prohibited actions (e.g., violence against women). Such transgressive utterances help create, negotiate, and reproduce countercultural roles and ideologies. Adopting a countercultural role can function as an act of resistance that seeks to redefine the mainstream community's standards, values, and expectations. In this paper, we explain this process by building on a framework of social role revision put forth by Berškytė and Popa-Wyatt (2025). In their account, reclaimed slurs and self-derogatory terms are critical to revising in-group social roles. We expand on this proposal in two ways: (i) we show that taboo utterances can also be used to revise these roles; (ii) we extend the mechanism of role revision not only for the in-group but also for the out-group. Our contribution is to show how exploiting taboo utterances can help construct ideological roles both for in-groups and out-groups which, we argue, are key drivers to reproducing countercultural ideologies. These ideological roles enrich the landscape of social roles. We proceed as follows. Section 2 outlines how taboos affect countercultures. We describe the different functions of taboos and how they might be exploited to resist or challenge mainstream norms, values, and expectations. In Section 3, we outline social roles, highlighting mechanisms for reproducing or revising unjust social roles. In Section 4, we introduce our case study of the manosphere incel (involuntary celibate) counterculture. The manosphere is a collection of online spaces united by its misogynistic and anti-feminist rhetoric. One such space consists of forums hosting manosphere incels, that is, men who desire but are unable to obtain an intimate relationship and place the blame for their failure on women. Incels adopt a nihilistic ideology (known as the blackpill1), perpetuating the narrative that one's immutable features and women's shallow nature relegate incels to a permanent low social standing. We end with brief ethical implications by considering how these countercultural norms might extend and normalize beyond the incel counterculture (Section 5). We conclude in Section 6. Taboos are prohibitions on transgressive behavior: they function to delineate acceptable and unacceptable behaviors within a group, community, or society. They thus act as a boundary for what can be said or done, typically concerning issues that violate moral and social norms.2 Several ingredients make up the anatomy of a taboo. First, the tabooed language or behavior is transgressive. It goes against deep-seated beliefs; it can threaten moral codes; or it can violate prevailing social norms in a group, community, or society. Second, the violation of taboos can cause varying degrees of upset, unease, discomfort, offense, or harm. A more transgressive taboo is likely to cause more upset. Third, the social order is restored by imposing sanctions on the transgressor. Fourth, transgressions need to be policed to ensure compliance. Given these factors, we can understand taboo as a regulatory mechanism that seeks to maintain the status quo of a given social order. Taboos are also drivers for social change. Noncompliance through taboo-violation can be as important as compliance with taboos. Essentially, by breaking taboos one not only challenges prevailing norms but also seeks to explore, promote, and adopt ideas and practices placed outside the status quo. This opens up the door for new social arrangements—both for good and ill. For example, the continuous transgression of taboos related to homosexuality contributed to the dissolving of the taboo such that same-sex marriage is more widely adopted. On the other hand, Trump's utterance of “grab them 'em by the pussy” violated the taboo of prohibiting sexual assault; making it more permissible to speak of and treat women in a misogynistic manner. Taboo-violation can challenge norms of fairness and decency in progressive societies. Breaking a taboo against racist speech signals disrespect for norms of racial equality, thus disadvantaging target group members who are treated as having lesser social standing. This has been a critical mechanism for prohibitionist accounts of slurs, which defend that slurs offend simply because they are taboo (Anderson and Lepore 2013). Similarly, swear words, expletives, profanities, obscenities, insults, and other derogatory language may cause offense because they are prohibited in polite society.3 The speaker signals a transgressive intention to break the rule of what is permissible to say or do, and that, in and of itself, can upset and offend. Taboo violation can also function as a tool to expose harmful norms and practices. This works as a form of protest, pushing against perceived injustices. A notable example is Sinead O'Connor's 1992 performance on Saturday Night Live, where she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II. This bold gesture was intended to expose the rampant practices of child abuse within the Catholic Church, condemning it as deserving of moral outrage (McCabe 2023). By breaking the taboo of publicly disrespecting religious authority, O'Connor not only took a stand against the hypocrisy masked by the Church's sanctity but also dared to confront religious corruption head-on. By questioning the unchallenged reverence for clerical values, her act was a political statement seeking to unmask the institution's failure to uphold justice. Her transgressive act was powerful because it was also an expression of solidarity with the victims of abuse and their families, amplifying their voices in a public outcry for accountability and reform. Change can be brought about not only through taboo-violation but also through taboo-exploitation. While breaking taboos involves disrupting prevailing social norms, exploiting taboos involves re-purposing those norms to achieve different outcomes. For example, slur terms can sometimes be appropriated by the very groups they target, thereby putting them to a different use. Anderson and Lepore (2013, 42) argue that reclaimed slurs introduce an embargo, or a “defeasible escape clause,” on the taboo associated with a slur term such that the offense is defused. Similarly for swear words, expletives, profanities, insults, and so forth, which can enable conditions for emotional bonding and camaraderie. For example, two friends exchanging vulgarities and obscenities in private signal they intend no harm, thus re-purposing the taboo to express strong positive affect that could not be conveyed otherwise. This is because shifts in context enable new usages with new meanings. Exploiting taboos through swear words can serve not only an expressive function but also as a signal of identity (Allan 2023). For example, a student swearing at their teachers will be perceived as a troublemaker, and this role will become part of their identity. Exploiting taboos can also function as a mechanism of in-group signaling, whereby individuals signal allegiance to a particular group of like-minded individuals, thereby reinforcing their sense of belonging and shared values, and building solidarity. For example, a group of teenagers using swear words among themselves do so to cement their group identity as rebellious and show solidarity with one another—“we are in it together.” This shows that tabooed language can serve as a mechanism to foster group identity and a common understanding of shared values. As Stapleton (2010, 298) writes, swearing is a “powerful, yet complex, resource for the construction and display of group and individual identities.” These are powerful identities because they are defined in reaction to prevailing norms and values of polite society, thus forging alternative practices in which swearing is not only permissible but becomes the norm. So far, we have shown that breaking and exploiting taboos can perform several functions. Three are notable: (i) denouncing or rejecting norms and values associated with the status quo in a group, community, or society; (ii) forging and displaying (individual or group) identity; (iii) in-group signaling to express solidarity within the community.4 We argue that these functions are instrumental in enabling countercultures to emerge. By disrupting the status quo—that is, challenging, contesting, or rejecting deep-seated beliefs, mainstream norms and values—countercultures create conditions to forge their own practices and ideologies, with their own sets of norms and values. The goal is to “reconstruct an alternative social order that rejects or subverts those [mainstream] values and norms” (Cutler 2006, 238).5 Consider a hippie commune such as Drop City established in 1965. Drop City embraced many stereotypical hippie practices such as “anarchy, pacifism, sexual freedom, drugs, open membership, art” (Miller 1992, 87). In this community, tabooed behaviors such as drug use and sexual freedom were not only accepted but celebrated. The commune redefined these taboos as expressions of freedom and acceptance. Within the behaviors the behaviors associated with or as the new taboos. far, we have how taboo violation and can function as powerful to alternative practices by mainstream norms and values to A key to explain the to alternative practices is the of social roles and its roles and ideological roles. 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