Incels should be offered “date coaching” and “speed dating” to help reintegrate them into society, a leading expert has said.
Andrew Thomas, a senior lecturer at the University of Swansea, has done numerous studies on the incel movement.
Incel, short for involuntary celibate, is a long-running online subculture of men who want to have sex with women but are unable to find romantic partners.
Dr Thomas said that relationship coaching was “not about getting these guys laid”, but rather about helping them challenge their incel views and form healthy relationships with women.
He told The Telegraph: “My perspective is that for a lot of these guys there’s a huge deficit in knowing how to have any sort of social relationship at all. And helping them with that puts them in a social position where it’s harder to hold the views that they have.
“It’s very easy to walk around hating 50 per cent of the population if you’re never subjected to that half of the population.”
His comments come after Netflix series Adolescence sparked a national conversation in the UK about the incel movement. Schoolchildren are also set to be given lessons in how to counter misogyny and toxic masculinity amid the rise of social media influencers such as Andrew Tate.
Teachers have raised concerns about the detrimental impact of some influencers, saying children as young as 10 were using derogatory language towards female staff, including barking at women at the school.
Sir Keir Starmer, hosting a meeting at Downing Street late last month to discuss the influence of toxic social media content, said the Netflix show had been a difficult watch with his teenage children.
The prime minister agreed the show should be shown in schools to help teach teenagers about healthy relationships, but he warned there was no “simple solution” to stop boys from being dragged into “a whirlpool of hatred and misogyny”.
Dr Thomas said research from Singapore showed “that speed dating coaching can work” on young men who have a tough time forming relationships.
“Coaching them on dating skills improves their ability to connect, and that can lead to the formation of longer-term relationships,” he said.
“But the moment you encourage these guys to go out and start re-engaging with family members, re-engaging with female friends, that can give them counterexamples of real women who are not one-dimensional, but three-dimensional. And then what has become a black or white view starts to turn into shades of grey.”
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