美国国家公共电台 NPR What's An 'Incel'? The Online Community Behind The Toronto Van Attack

 

LULU GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

Last week, a van plowed¹ into a busy Toronto sidewalk, killing² 10 people, in what appeared to be a deliberate act. The suspect in the attack, Alek Minassian, was quickly linked to an online community of trolls and violent misogynists³ that called themselves incels, a term that stands for involuntarily celibate⁴. We wanted to know more. Arshy Mann is a reporter at Xtra, a Toronto-based LGBTQ online magazine, and he's been covering the incel community. And he joins me now. Hi.

ARSHY MANN: Thank you for having me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: What is the incel community?

MANN: It's a online subculture of young men who feel very frustrated⁵ with their sexual and romantic lives. They get together online to kind of talk about this. But the way that they express that isn't through, kind of, working through their feelings or talking through their issues. Instead, they've moved towards a kind of really virulent⁶ misogyny. And they spend a lot of their time engaging in really violent ideation about the horrible things that they want to do to women and to sexually successful men. And they venerate⁷ a lot of these violent figures who have kind of come before, especially Elliot Rodger, who murdered a number of people in 2014 on the campus of the University of California, Santa Barbara. And they see him as a kind of hero. And they talk about replicating⁸ that violence. It's quite a disturbing part of the Internet.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: You wrote in one of your articles about the incel community that, while misogyny is nothing new, the way these men organize and express it is.

MANN: Yeah, exactly. I think what really distinguishes them is the fact that they find each other online, and they escalate⁹ their rhetoric¹⁰ consistently until it reaches this kind of violent feverish¹¹ pitch. Obviously, there are a lot of young men and women out there who are not happy with either their romantic or sexual lives.

But what distinguishes the incel subculture is that they get together, and they really egg each other on. It's a kind of process that is similar to other forms of radicalization that we might associate with terrorism, whether it's, say, ISIS or white supremacist terror. These men are told that they're worthless. And they're told that by their peers in these communities. And if they try to improve or leave these kinds of communities, they're pushed back against even more by their fellow community members.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: And does it cross with racist¹² rhetoric, like we may see in the "alt-right" and other communities?

MANN: Yes. And so it often has a kind of racial tinge¹³ or racial panic element to it. Elliot Rodger, in his manifesto¹⁴, talked about being especially horrified¹⁵ seeing, say, black men with white women. He had a feeling of entitlement to white women's bodies in particular. However, we shouldn't just - when it comes to incels specifically, they are not just limited to kind of young white men. There are men of all ethnicities who are kind of involved in this subculture. But, at least for a good number of them, these more misogynistic¹⁶ movements can often be an entry point into the more racialized or anti-Semitic branches of the "alt-right."

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Are these online communities, as far as you know, being monitored by law enforcement like an ISIS forum¹⁷ would be?

MANN: We really don't have a sense of whether or not law enforcement had been monitoring these communities. But from the ways in which law enforcement in the past have treated online misogyny, which generally has been to not take it very seriously, I would be shocked, frankly¹⁸, if these groups and these forums¹⁹ had been monitored in any kind of systematic²⁰ or substantial way.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Arshy Mann is a reporter at Xtra. Thank you very much.

MANN: Thank you.

1 plowed   

v.耕( plow的过去式和过去分词 )；犁耕；费力穿过

参考例句：

• They plowed nearly 100,000 acres of virgin moorland. 他们犁了将近10万英亩未开垦的高沼地。 来自辞典例句
• He plowed the land and then sowed the seeds. 他先翻土，然后播种。 来自辞典例句

2 killing   

n.巨额利润；突然赚大钱，发大财

参考例句：

• Investors are set to make a killing from the sell-off.投资者准备清仓以便大赚一笔。
• Last week my brother made a killing on Wall Street.上个周我兄弟在华尔街赚了一大笔。

3 misogynists   

n.厌恶女人的人( misogynist的名词复数 )

参考例句：

4 celibate   

adj.独身的，独身主义的；n.独身者

参考例句：

• He had defended the institution of a celibate priesthood.他捍卫了独身牧师制度。
• The instinct of the celibate warned him to hold back.单身汉的本能告诫他回头是岸。

5 frustrated   

adj.挫败的，失意的，泄气的v.使不成功( frustrate的过去式和过去分词 )；挫败；使受挫折；令人沮丧

参考例句：

• It's very easy to get frustrated in this job. 这个工作很容易令人懊恼。
• The bad weather frustrated all our hopes of going out. 恶劣的天气破坏了我们出行的愿望。 来自《简明英汉词典》

6 virulent   

adj.有毒的，有恶意的，充满敌意的

参考例句：

• She is very virulent about her former employer.她对她过去的老板恨之入骨。
• I stood up for her despite the virulent criticism.尽管她遭到恶毒的批评，我还是维护她。

7 venerate   

v.尊敬，崇敬，崇拜

参考例句：

• They came to venerate him as a symbolic figure.他们把他当作偶像来崇拜。
• We were taught to venerate the glorious example of our heroes and martyrs.我们受到教导要崇敬英雄、烈士的光辉榜样。

8 replicating   

复制( replicate的现在分词 )； 重复； 再造； 再生

参考例句：

• Applications create these partitions for storing and replicating data. 应用程序创建这些分区用来储存和复制数据。
• The closest real things to these creatures were bits of self-replicating RNA. 最贴近这些造物的实物是能做一点微不足道的自复制的核糖核酸。

9 escalate   

v.(使)逐步增长(或发展)，(使)逐步升级

参考例句：

• It would tempt Israel's neighbors to escalate their demands.它将诱使以色列的邻国不断把他们的要求升级。
• Defeat could cause one side or other to escalate the conflict.失败可能会导致其中一方将冲突升级。

10 rhetoric   

n.修辞学，浮夸之言语

参考例句：

• Do you know something about rhetoric?你懂点修辞学吗？
• Behind all the rhetoric,his relations with the army are dangerously poised.在冠冕堂皇的言辞背后，他和军队的关系岌岌可危。

11 feverish   

adj.发烧的，狂热的，兴奋的

参考例句：

• He is too feverish to rest.他兴奋得安静不下来。
• They worked with feverish haste to finish the job.为了完成此事他们以狂热的速度工作着。

12 racist   

n.种族主义者，种族主义分子

参考例句：

• a series of racist attacks 一连串的种族袭击行为
• His speech presented racist ideas under the guise of nationalism. 他的讲话以民族主义为幌子宣扬种族主义思想。

13 tinge   

vt.(较淡)着色于，染色；使带有…气息；n.淡淡色彩，些微的气息

参考例句：

• The maple leaves are tinge with autumn red.枫叶染上了秋天的红色。
• There was a tinge of sadness in her voice.她声音中流露出一丝忧伤。

14 manifesto   

n.宣言，声明

参考例句：

• I was involved in the preparation of Labour's manifesto.我参与了工党宣言的起草工作。
• His manifesto promised measures to protect them.他在宣言里保证要为他们采取保护措施。

15 horrified   

a.(表现出)恐惧的

参考例句：

• The whole country was horrified by the killings. 全国都对这些凶杀案感到大为震惊。
• We were horrified at the conditions prevailing in local prisons. 地方监狱的普遍状况让我们震惊。

16 misogynistic   

参考例句：

• And it brings out everything that is most noxious and misogynistic about the right. 而且，这种情绪也流露出右派思想中最为保守有害，歧视女性的那一面。 来自互联网

17 forum   

n.论坛，讨论会

参考例句：

• They're holding a forum on new ways of teaching history.他们正在举行历史教学讨论会。
• The organisation would provide a forum where problems could be discussed.这个组织将提供一个可以讨论问题的平台。

18 frankly   

adv.坦白地，直率地；坦率地说

参考例句：

• To speak frankly, I don't like the idea at all.老实说，我一点也不赞成这个主意。
• Frankly speaking, I'm not opposed to reform.坦率地说，我不反对改革。

19 forums   

讨论会； 座谈会； 广播专题讲话节目； 集会的公共场所( forum的名词复数 )； 论坛，讨论会，专题讨论节目； 法庭

参考例句：

• A few of the forums were being closely monitored by the administrators. 有些论坛被管理员严密监控。
• It can cast a dark cloud over these forums. 它将是的论坛上空布满乌云。

20 systematic   

adj.有系统的，有计划的，有方法的

参考例句：

• The way he works isn't very systematic.他的工作不是很有条理。
• The teacher made a systematic work of teaching.这个教师进行系统的教学工作。