Involuntary Celibacy

Involuntary celibacy (colloquially incel) is chronic near-total or total absence in a person's sexuality of intimate relationships or sexual intercourse that is occurring for reasons other than voluntary celibacy, asexuality, antisexualism, or sexual abstinence. It is the psycho-social opposite of having a sex life. Incel people, despite being open to sexual intimacy and potential romance with another person and also making active, repeated efforts towards such an end, cannot cause any such end(s) to occur with any significant degree of regularity—or even at all.

Involuntary celibacy is distinct from other forms of celibacy in two major ways: First, it explicitly does not depend on choices of the celibate, and remains stable even if the person succeeds in improving his or her looks and social skills to try to attract sexual partners. Second, involuntarily celibate individuals lack intimate physical connection for very long spans of time—years or even decades at a time—while also lacking opportunities for sexual advancement in the first place, thereby making betterment of their own sexuality through accumulation of "sexual experience" impossible.

Involuntary celibacy cannot generally be explained through external personal factors—most incels, based on inquests by researchers into the population, are not physically unattractive, and most resemble in an interpersonal sense their peers who are sexually active. Although a few of the involuntarily celibate population may have discernible personality disorders that preclude current and future sexual opportunities, the small amount of research done on this subject indicates that the incel population are on the whole socially normal, otherwise healthy individuals whose frustration is merely a product of their lack of sex, and not vice versa.