A self-proclaimed “incel” pled guilty on Oct. 11 for attempting to carry out a mass shooting of women at a university in Ohio.
According to a USA Today article, the shooting was planned for the Ohio State University.
Tres Genco, a 22-year-old from Hillsboro, Ohio, admitted he planned a hate crime. He was arrested by federal agents in July 2021 and has remained in custody since.
Genco is a self-proclaimed incel, or “involuntary celibate.” Incels tend to form online communities of (mostly) men that harbor an anger and hatred towards women because they are denied sexual or romantic attention they believe they are entitled to.
According to the Department of Justice, Genco maintained multiple accounts on a popular incel website from at least July 2019 through mid March 2020, making hundreds of posts.
In one post, Genco detailed spraying “some foids and couples” with orange juice in a water gun. “Foids” is an incel term short for “femoids,” referring to women. Genco compared his actions to similar conduct of known incel Elliot Rodger. In May 2014, Rodger killed six people and injured 14 others, including shooting individuals outside a University of California sorority house. Prior to this shooting, Rodger shot a group of college students with orange juice from a water gun.
Genco also wrote a manifesto, stating he would “slaughter” women “out of hatred, jealousy and revenge.”
Law enforcement agents discovered a note of Genco’s that indicated he hoped to kill 3,000 people with a reference to the same date as Elliot Rodger’s attack. The investigation revealed the day he wrote his manifesto, he searched online for sororities and a university in Ohio.
In 2019, Genco purchased tactical gloves, a bulletproof vest, a hoodie bearing the word “Revenge,” cargo pants, a bowie knife, a skull face mask, two Glock 17 magazines, a 9 mm Glock 17 clip and a concealed holster clip to carry a Glock.
Genco’s court documents detail that he conducted surveillance at an Ohio university on Jan. 15, 2020.
He pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to commit a hate crime, which is punishable by up to life in prison.
Evelyn Napier, president of the women’s empowerment alliance at Capital (WEA), shared her thoughts on a hate crime being planned so close to campus.
“I feel extremely afraid not only for my safety but that something like this can be going on and we choose to not talk about it,” Napier said. “The number of people on our campus alone not aware of this or issues similar to this is frightening, especially considering we have a largely female population on campus. I think that the people on this campus should have been made aware, and should have been educated on the topic, and then on what can we do to help prevent this and to stay safe.”
Napier said although women have arguably gained political equality, there is still a lot of progress to be made.
“We can still see extremely harmful stereotypes pushed onto women in our current society,” Napier said. “We are still teaching our young children the mindsets of people who [have] no respect for women and who never intend to change.”
Napier continues, discussing how incel ideologies are harmful to society.
“The idea that you owe someone sexual pleasure for simply being a woman is absolutely ridiculous,” Napier said. “Sex is about consensual enjoyment and empowerment; this type of ideology makes it seem as if it is something we have to do, not something we get to do when we want to… It continues to push the idea that [men] own women, that we are below them and must be subordinate to them.”
Napier believes a required class, similar to a global systems or cultural pluralism course, focused on gender descrimination and violence could be a useful tool in educating college students and pushing for change.
“I think it is something that schools and people need to be putting the effort into learning about and learning the ways we can stop it,” Napier said. “I think one important thing is to have safe groups like WEA on campuses that allows people to come together to talk about these issues in a safe place, and for people to feel heard about these issues.”
