Why Sexless Men Are Increasing in Mexico

A paradox of ambition and loneliness is rewriting the story of the global incel.

When a 19-year-old student in Mexico City killed one of his classmates this fall, calling himself an incel (involuntary celibate) many assumed the familiar story: a young man radicalized by loneliness and economic despair.

But data from Mexico tells a different, and more complex, story. One that doesn’t fit the global narrative of inceldom as the domain of the uneducated or the dispossessed.