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The Lack of Love: The Sacred and the Suffering Experiences of Female Involuntary Celibates
Uppsala University, Disciplinary Domain of Humanities and Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts, Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology.
2023 (English)Independent thesis Advanced level (degree of Master (Two Years)), 30 credits / 45 HE creditsStudent thesis
Abstract [en]

This ethnographic study investigates the reality of female involuntary celibates. To understand how the identification of being a female involuntary celibate has developed online in a shared online environment, I explore the experiences from women who identify as femcels and women who identity as forever alone women. Through the study, I found that a distinction between the two categories femcel and forever alone women needed to be made, since the two groups have different characteristics and different ways to cope with and understand their status as involuntary celibates. Moreover, I investigate how and why the lack of romantic love is such an important factor in these women’s sense of self. From a phenomenological approach, I apply several theoretical concepts; orientation, direction, habitus, initiation, and respair, which are all helpful in order to understand how the suffering connected to the lack of love results in a strong orientation towards the sacred, which is how I understand the femcel-based online environments. Several themes are highlighted in the study, where a complicated family history, mental health issues, and a focus on looks, are the most prominent themes. The thesis discusses how the women’s orientation towards the online environments has created a shared identity of being involuntary celibate, and how membership within an online context can create a sense of individual and collective autonomy which otherwise often are found in a romantic relationship. Furthermore, the thesis analyses and discusses the risk of individual constrain when collectively sharing an identity within the online, and finally how the identification of being a femcel or a forever alone woman differs from the interlocutors understanding. Finally, this thesis argues that the suffering both femcels and forever alone women experience has become a shared collective identity online, which in turn has given them an autonomy that they otherwise would have found in a romantic relationship. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2023. , p. 89
Keywords [en]
femcel, Forever Alone Women, FAW, incel, involuntary celibacy, love, online environment, online community, lookism, objectively ugliness, Reddit, Discord, phenomenology, orientation, ethnology, ethnography
National Category
Ethnology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-496433OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-496433DiVA, id: diva2:1736399
Subject / course
Ethnology
Educational program
Master Programme in the Humanities - Ethnology
Supervisors
Examiners
Available from: 2023-02-23 Created: 2023-02-13 Last updated: 2023-02-23Bibliographically approved

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Department of Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
Ethnology

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CiteExportLink to record
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Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
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  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
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  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
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  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
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