Reconsidering trauma and symbolic wounds in times of online misogyny and platforms

Abstract

This article provides an exploratory discussion of the misogynist online incel community and its discourses around mental health. Incels’ discussion of mental health conditions, trauma and victimhood is outlined in relation to Allen Meek’s development of the concept of the symbolic wound. It is argued that incels’ alleged trauma constitutes the construction of a symbolic wound as a marker of group identity as well as a means of shocking and potentially traumatising others. The concept of the symbolic wound is further developed through the psychoanalytic notion of dis/inhibition which shows how incels are torn between modes of desiring and symbolically destroying women. The collective identity of the symbolic wound and its (non)-relation to trauma can thus be more fragile and contradictory than has been discussed in the literature so far.