Not every guy whose online life revolves around never getting to have sex is an incel. Instead, some have chosen this path, centered not just around their inability to get laid but the belief that they wouldn’t deserve it if they could. Yet rather than call themselves voluntarily celibate, or volcels, they wear a different badge: “pussy-free.”
In subreddits like r/PussyfreePorn, r/PussyfreeMarriage and r/WhiteBoySex, self-identified beta men commit themselves to the “pussy-free” lifestyle, with some even taking a “pledge” to remain so. How this actually plays out varies. For some, it’s just part of a broader submissive fantasy, something they occasionally roleplay online or in person, depending on their mood. For others, it entails never having penis-in-vagina sex. This isn’t to say women aren’t involved — some may have a woman in their life who cuckolds them, or only allows them to orgasm while in chastity. Others don’t even allow themselves to look at pussy, relegating themselves to exclusively looking at dicks with the idea being that they’re so unworthy of women that they ought to service men instead.
Race and gender are linked to the pussy-free community in complicated ways. As the subreddit title r/WhiteBoySex suggests, some pussy-free betas believe that as white men, they’re sexually inferior to Black men. “/r/WhiteBoySex is a safe place for white bois to be their true selves, remaining pussy-free and addicted to interracial porn as nature intended,” reads the description of the subreddit, which has nearly 40,000 subscribers. It further explains that the “modern white boi” has sex only by watching interracial porn, ideally while locked in chastity.
Similar themes appear on r/PussyFreePorn, where Black men are also glorified as “alphas.” Trans women with penises are fetishized, too. One of the most popular posts on the subreddit is a photo of a woman in tight shorts emphasizing her erection with the caption, “Girls with huge cocks are SO much better than girls with vaginas. Stay pussy-free forever!” The notion here isn’t simply a preference for trans women, but instead reflects a theme repeated throughout these subreddits that beta men ought to be hypnotized or convinced to prefer dick, instead.
As that post suggests, though, neither anal nor oral function as loopholes to the pussy-free beta. He could provide oral or be penetrated anally, but he’s still not allowed to be the one penetrating, regardless of orifice. At all turns, the central idea is that these men are unworthy of experiencing pleasure in its conventional form. In many cases, this seems to be a coping mechanism to deal with the fact that they’re virgins, or otherwise struggle with sex and dating.
But unlike the incels who’ve allowed their circumstances to fester into anger and toxicity toward women, the pussy-free beta embraces their position through erotic humilation. While some incels like Nick Fuentes have pushed their agenda to such extremes as to say “having sex with women is gay,” pussy-free betas still fundamentally venerate women. Some of them are even in relationships with or married to women but follow the pussy-free lifestyle as a form of femdom or cuckoldry.
The racial and gender implications of aspects of the pussy-free community may be questionable, but there remains a consistent effort to subvert the traditional cultural hierarchy that positions white men as superior. Above all, though, it’s proof that there’s an entirely different path available to the would-be incel. Rather than be unhappy with their circumstances, they’ve found a way to fetishize them.
Magdalene Taylor
Magdalene Taylor is a staff writer at MEL. She covers internet culture, sex and the online adult industry. She lives in Brooklyn but is from God's Country, Western Massachusetts.
