Standpoint, Privilege, and Responsibility

As such, the conception that our social position shapes what we know and see is uncontroversial. As Simone de Beauvoir reflected in The Second Sex, being dismissed “because she is a woman” illustrates how being positioned differently in society affects how your perspective is received. It was this very experience of not being taken seriously that made her sensitive to constructions of gender. bell hooks pointed out that people on the margins can often see dominant structures more clearly precisely because they don’t hold power over others. And Nancy Hartsock similarly argued that women’s marginalization gives them insight that those at the center often miss.

To some extent, these positions echo Karl Marx, who tied knowledge to the position of the exploited working class. But for Marx, the working class possesses an epistemic privilege not by virtue of its suffering or oppression but because its objective position in the relations of production gives it a uniquely clear vantage point on the mechanisms of exploitation. This privilege is rooted in the practical and historical role the working class must play: its own liberation requires the abolition of wage labor, private ownership of the means of production, and the entire apparatus through which surplus value is extracted. In struggling to overcome exploitation, the working class is compelled to confront the total architecture of capitalist domination — something no other class has both the interest in abolishing and the structural capacity to do so. Thus, its standpoint is “privileged” not morally or experientially but politically and materially: its class interest coincides with the emancipation of all humanity, since the end of its exploitation entails the end of exploitation as such. Unlike Marx, Hartsock and other standpoint feminists have treated marginalization itself as a source of privileged perspective, widening the range of groups who can claim epistemic authority but at the same time losing the material dimension of the theory.

In Marginality and Epistemic Privilege, philosopher Bat-Ami Bar On underscores the political difficulties that this position might generate. By shifting attention exclusively to marginalization — without examining the specific nature of that marginalization or its structural function — epistemic authority risks becoming reframed as a competition for the status of the “most oppressed” or marginalized, resulting in a dynamic that frequently generates internal conflict within movements. In turn, debates over “Who has the most legitimate knowledge?” end up targeting other marginal — or slightly less marginalized groups — while those in power simply ignore such disputes. What we end up with is a situation where the powerless accuse the relatively powerless of domination, while the truly powerful sit back and rub their hands.

In short, relying solely on marginalization can spark conflict within progressive movements, as struggles over authority and legitimacy play out. But there is an added danger: anti-feminist movements can exploit these frameworks, turning the tools of feminist analysis against feminism itself. This dynamic is evident in my research on incel knowledge production, which, strikingly, echoes several tropes found in feminist standpoint theory.

Incels as a Warning: When Marginalization Becomes Reactionary

On the front page of one of the world’s largest incel forums, Incels.is, the rules are strict. Membership is limited to men who identify as true incels; sympathy with, or even agreement with, the forum’s critique of society is not enough. Women are categorically excluded: according to incel logic, a woman who remains celibate is never truly marginalized, because she could always find a sexual partner if she wanted. Such women are labeled “volcels,” voluntary celibates.

Much of the forum’s discussion revolves around who counts as a “real” incel. The distinction between “truecels” and “fakecels” hinges on experience: truecels are doomed to celibacy, while fakecels could escape it with effort. In other words, epistemic authority within the community is based on marginalization. Consider, for instance, a discussion thread on Incels.is in which users debate whether “Chads” — that is, men who hold privileged positions in the gender hierarchy by virtue of their physical attractiveness — can ever be genuinely “blackpilled.” As one user wrote in the thread: “They can’t ‘know’ that, they can only believe it to a certain degree. The only way to truly know it’s from experience. They will never be truly blackpilled because they’ll never experience true forced loneliness and hopelessness.”

The more socially and sexually excluded a member is, the more legitimate their voice. Factors like appearance, ethnicity, and social status determine this hierarchy, and the forum’s internal logic often ranks these traits in ways that deepen marginalization. An incel’s identity is relational, defined against others in a web of intersecting power axes, much like intersectional feminist theories describe social positioning.

Experience — or lack thereof — is central to the community’s collective life. Only those who have lived the full “incel experience” are considered qualified to participate or offer insight. In this, the community mirrors feminist ideas about situated knowledge and epistemic privilege, but it applies them without ethical reflection: access to “true” knowledge is determined by suffering, not by critical reflection or a commitment to justice.

Yet experience alone is not enough. The forum polices ideological conformity: “bluepilled” content — perspectives considered naive or ignorant of the social reality incels claim to see — is banned. Drawing from The Matrix, the “red pill” symbolizes awakening to the truth of society; the “black pill” signals hopelessness and political passivity. In this framework, incel identity is not innate but acquired: it emerges through adopting a specific worldview, critically analyzing one’s marginalization, and participating in collective interpretation of social structures.

In this framing, incels ground their truth claims in their lived experience and in the collective articulation of that experience, while feminists are cast as a “blind hegemon.” The idea of finding oneself in a hegemonic feminist system, that one needs to unveil, is expressed by the following Incels.is user, who mobilizes critical theory to make his case:

It’s all about living in a world dominated by sexual norms. You see, according to Gramsci, there’s this idea that the folks in power — the bourgeoisie — pretty much control everything that shapes our social culture. So, whether it’s the movies you watch, the news you read, or the music you listen to, it’s all been given the thumbs up by them. And if something doesn’t fit their agenda, well, you might not even hear about it.

The resultant struggle for epistemic authority thus becomes more than an internal debate: it is a political battleground between progressive movements and their adversaries, and incel forums function like a dark mirror of feminist consciousness-raising in turning personal experience into collective insight. So, what to do with this?

Lessons for Feminism

Feminists often dismiss incel narratives of victimhood and marginalization as exaggeration or bad faith. And rightly so when those narratives serve the patriarchal premise that men are entitled to sexual access to women, a claim feminism has every reason to reject. Yet these forums clearly attract many boys and men who are, in fact, truly vulnerable. Taking that vulnerability seriously does not mean endorsing the reactionary demand to women’s bodies. It means acknowledging that isolation and despair are real social conditions worth grappling with. One reason for the near-total refusal to acknowledge incel vulnerability may be that doing so would require a significant portion of the feminist movement — according to its own epistemology — to take incel claims seriously. Instead of reexamining the epistemic link it draws between marginality and credibility, much of feminism dismisses incel narratives about loneliness and victimhood entirely. This, in turn, fuels the sense among certain groups of men that feminists are more invested in power than in truth.

From a Marxist perspective, this highlights a critical distinction between mere marginality and epistemic privilege. As the Marxist conception of the working class as the universal class implies, experience becomes epistemically meaningful when it discloses the mechanisms of exploitation and the possibility of their collective abolition. In confronting the mechanisms that oppress it, the working class gains insight into social structures that, if transformed, would benefit humanity as a whole. The lesson for feminism is parallel: marginality and experience confer epistemic weight not automatically but when they are mobilized in ways that illuminate oppression, challenge systemic hierarchies, and promote collective understanding. Within incel communities, by contrast, marginality is leveraged to reinforce grievance, hierarchy, and reactionary ideology rather than critical insight or emancipatory knowledge. Feminist theories of standpoint and situated knowledge carry the same structural potential for misuse if claims to authority are uncritically linked to experience alone.

Feminist politics must therefore balance the recognition of women’s experiences with the understanding that marginality in itself is not inherently progressive. Experience should guide knowledge not because it is marginal, but because it can generate collective insight, challenge oppressive structures, and foster mobilization and social change. Feminists must ensure that epistemic authority is grounded not in grievance or victimhood, as in the case of incels, but in critical reflection, collective responsibility, and a transformative engagement with social structures — aligning the ethics of standpoint with the emancipatory logic that Marx ascribes to the working class.