Involuntarily celibate women, or femcels, are a divisive topic — partially because nobody quite knows how to define them. They are frequently mislabelled as radical feminists, inaccurately associated with online subcultures like “coquettes”, or dismissively branded as “picky” or having “unrealistically high standards” by their male equivalents, incels.
They’re also understudied: in contrast to the considerable attention given to male incels, the unique experiences of femcels have been significantly neglected in academic research.
