Racialised Hierarchies in the Incelosphere: A Thematic Analysis of South Asian Male and Female Identities

This study investigates the intersection of racism, self-racism, and misogyny within the online Incelosphere, with particular attention to the construction of South Asian identities. Drawing on a corpus of threads extracted from the Incel forum Incels.is (2024–2025), the analysis focuses on two subcorpora discussing South Asian men (“currycels”) and South Asian women (“currywhores”). Using a mixed methodological approach combining corpus-assisted discourse analysis and Thematic Analysis, the study examines how racialised hierarchies and gendered hostility are discursively produced and reproduced within these digital communities. The findings reveal that Incel discourse constructs a rigid racial hierarchy in which whiteness is positioned as the ultimate marker of desirability, power, and social legitimacy. Within this framework, South Asian men are frequently depicted as occupying the lowest tier of the sexual and social order, a position that many users internalise through self-deprecating and racially derogatory language. At the same time, South Asian women are subjected to intensely racialised misogyny, framed as both sexually available and racially disloyal for allegedly favouring white men. Overall, the study demonstrates how Incel discourse simultaneously reproduces white supremacist ideologies and patriarchal norms while framing participants as victims of systemic exclusion. By highlighting the convergence of internalised racism and misogynistic resentment, this research contributes to broader scholarship on digital extremism, online hate speech, and the linguistic construction of gendered and racialised hierarchies in contemporary digital cultures.