Investigating The Incel Community - Naama Kates - #363

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi friends, welcome back to the show. Before we get into today's episode, you may notice something slightly different about my voice, and that is because I've managed to lose it for almost a full week now. Apparently, there are other illnesses out there than COVID, and this one decided that the only thing it was going to do would be remove my ability to speak, which is unfortunate, given what I spend most of my time doing. So I've rearranged a bunch of podcasts, and I've rescheduled stuff. However, it's got to the point where I actually need to record intros, and the choice is between not putting episodes out and doing pre-roll intros sounding like Joanna Lumley or someone very horsey that's trying to seduce you. So sorry, you're going to have to put up with this slightly sort of wispy old man voice today. I do feel fine, other than the weird sounds that are emanating from my face. I do actually feel okay, so don't fret. But yes, you are going to have to put up with this for a little while. Onto today's guest. I'm joined by Naama Kates, who is a writer, producer and creator of the Incel Podcast. The world of involuntary celibates continues to be thrust into the public limelight with incidents in the United States and most recently in the UK, with Jake Davison's shooting in Plymouth. Naama has spent years investigating incels, so I figured she would be a good place to go to understand exactly what's happening. Today, expect to learn whether the incel community is a terrorist organization, why the incel culture can trap members inside of it, how incels relate to the Mens Rights Movement, the problems associated with driving these communities underground, and much more. I really, really enjoyed this episode. It's fascinating to think about what the externalities are of a modern society when it comes to the dating economy, when it comes to being able to offer up support to men that can't find wives. It's one of the key reasons that we exist on this planet, to be able to find a partner. But for some reason, the sympathy doesn't seem to extend to men that can't do it. It's only to other marginalized groups. Why 50 percent of the men that are in these incel communities are non-white, and what that means for intersectionality, it's just endlessly interesting. The implications of this, I can only really see getting bigger. So yes, enjoy this one. But now, it's time for the wise and wonderful Naama Kates.
Naama Kates, welcome to the show.

**Naama Kates** (2:48)
Thanks for having me.

**Chris Williamson** (2:49)
How did you get into researching incels?

**Naama Kates** (2:54)
I've been asked this many times, and I don't have a neat story as to how. Basically, I have a background in media. I'm a filmmaker, I've written things and acted and music, everything kind of in that world. And so I was finishing up a film when I started really getting into podcasts, just as a medium. And the ones that I liked the most were true crime kind of stuff. As you know, Crawl Space, my network, is very true crime oriented. And I was just listening to a lot of them. And I guess kind of having just worked on a film that is very costly and, you know, labor intensive, time intensive, planning intensive process, also a visual medium, which I've since realized I'm much less visually oriented than I am in terms of words and sound and things like that. And yeah, I was just kind of really appreciating the medium, like storytelling through that form was interesting to me. And around the same time, I think incels kind of made their way onto my radar.
And then I had a happenstance encounter with one, with an incel, I think in 2017 or so. And it was just a random social media thing. And I started talking to this person and it became very interesting. And I asked if we could record our conversations and he said, fine. And I listened to them back and found them interesting. And it just seemed like a good topic for a podcast. You know, I looked around for information about it and there was hardly any at the time. And that's kind of how it started.

**Chris Williamson** (4:46)
Well, I asked all of Twitter for their suggestions and the two names that came up as like incel experts were you and James Bloodworth. So you've managed to reach the pinnacle of what Twitter thinks an incel expert is.

**Naama Kates** (5:01)
Yes. I've also managed to reach the whatever you would refer to as the bottom of that.