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Ohio ‘Incel’ Pleads Guilty In Plot To Kill Up To 3,000 Students: What Is An Incel?

Ohio ‘Incel’ Pleads Guilty In Plot To Kill Up To 3,000 Students: What Is An Incel?

incel

Tres Genco, Oct. 11, 2022. (Miami Valley Jails via AP)

A 22-year-old Ohio man named Tres Genco has pleaded guilty to planning to carry out a mass shooting of female students at a university, federal prosecutors announced. Genco is a self-described “incel,”

In 2021, Genco of Hillsboro, Ohio, was charged by a grand jury with one count of attempting to commit a hate crime. On Oct. 18, 2022, he pleaded guilty to the charge. Genco “admitted he plotted to commit a hate crime, namely, a plan to shoot women at a university in Ohio,” the DOJ said in a press release.

The charge is punishable by up to life in prison “because it involved an attempt to kill,” the DOJ said.

Genco considers himself an incel, or “involuntary celibate.” The incel movement is an online community of predominantly men who harbor anger toward women and who advocate violence in support of their belief that women unjustly deny them sexual or romantic attention, according to the DOJ.

Law enforcement agents uncovered a note they say was written by Genco in which he hoped to kill up to 3,000 people. The note referenced the same date as a 2014 mass shooting committed by known incel Elliot Rodger. Rodger killed six people at the University of California, Santa Barbara, ABC News reported.

The term incel first became well-known following Rodger’s 2014 mass murders. Incels are heterosexual men, who consider themselves to be beta rather than alpha males, and they blame women and society for their lack of romantic conquests.

According to the incel, attractiveness is pre-determined by genetic factors and if they do not have the attractiveness to get the attention of women they are “doomed to a life of involuntary celibacy.” Thus, the term “Incel.”

Under the incel worldview society is based on a rigid three-tier model centered around physical attractiveness. They believe a minority of alpha males (Chads) and females (Stacys) are at the top; a majority of average-looking betas (Normies) in the middle; and the exclusively male and minority group of incels at the bottom, according to research by the Centre for Research and Evidence on Security Threats (CREST), a hub for behavioral and social science research into security threats in the U.K.

On social media platforms, particularly Reddit, incels speak of an incel or “beta” uprising to overthrow what they view as the oppressive feminism of society, The New York Times reported.

The incel Reddit community, a subreddit, has about 40,000 members.

The involuntary celibate sub-culture is growing, say experts. And they are growing violent. Incel-related violence was initially distinctly a North American and Canadian phenomenon. Among the incidents are Alek Minassian’s 2018 Toronto van attack, the 2018 Tallahassee Yoga Studio shooting, the 2020 Toronto erotic spa machete attack, and the 2020 shooting at the Westgate Mall in Arizona, among others. All of these incidents have a combined death toll of nearly 50 people, CREST reported.

The movement has spread, and there have been incidents in the U.K. involving incels.

Tres Genco of Hilliard, Ohio, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Cincinnati, Oct. 11, 2022, to a federal charge of attempting a hate crime. (Miami Valley Jails via AP)