TW for violence against women, misogynistic language, violent language
Last night, a 22 year old man named Elliot Rodger killed six women and injured seven more in what most news outlets are describing as a “shooting rampage.” Rodger died later that night from a gunshot wound to his head, though it’s still unclear as to whether or not it was self-inflicted or from responding deputies shooting back after he opened fire on them.
Almost everything I’ve read about him has referred to him as a “madman” or “mentally ill.”
No. We have no evidence yet that he suffered from any kind of mental illness or was under any sort of treatment. Immediately claiming that with no proof to back that fact up leads to the further stigmatization of the mentally ill, and contributes to the (incorrect) assumption that mental illness equals violence, and vice versa.
We don’t know whether Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. What we do know is that he was a Men’s Rights Activist, or MRA.
He was an active member of the “PUAhate,” an online forum (which has been down since the shootings) dedicated to “revealing the scams, deception and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to mislead men and profit from them.” And just to clarify, they’re not revealing these scams because of how vile and misogynistic they are, but rather because these men have tried these techniques and still failed to trick women into sleeping with them. These are men who both feel entitled to have sex with women and also blame all women everywhere for not fucking them. See, they want to have sex with a woman because that’s what they deserve just for being dudes, but they also hate women for withholding what they view as rightfully theirs. And I mean, boy do they ever hate women. The PUAhate forum has, according to an article on The Hairpin, threads with titles like “Are ugly women completely useless to society?” and “Have any hot women ever committed suicide?”
Rodger also subscribed to several YouTube channels on how to be a ‘pick up artist,’ including The Player Supreme Show and RSDfreetour as well as multiple MRA channels.
Last night, shortly before going on his killing spree, Rodger posted a video on YouTube to serve as his manifesto. In it, he declares that he’s a 22 year old virgin, and then goes on to say:
‘College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure. But in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness. It’s not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me. But I will punish you all for it,’ he says in the video, which runs to almost seven minutes.
>‘I’m going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB and I will slaughter every single spoilt, stuck-up, blonde slut that I see inside there. All those girls that I’ve desired so much, they would’ve all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them,’
‘I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am, in truth, the superior one. The true alpha male …’
This is what the Men’s Rights Movement teaches its members. Especially vulnerable, lonely young men who have a hard time relating to women. It teaches them that women, and especially feminist women, are to blame for their unhappiness. It teaches them that women lie, that they cheat, trick and manipulate. It teaches them that men as a social class are dominant over women and that they are entitled to women’s bodies. It teaches them that women who won’t give them what they want deserve some kind of punishment.
We need to talk about this. The media, especially, needs to address this. We live in a culture that constantly devalues women in a million little different ways, and that culture has evolved to include a vast online community of men who take that devaluation to its natural conclusion: brutal, violent hatred of women. And I don’t mean that all these men have been physically violent towards women, but rather that they use violent, degrading, dehumanizing language when discussing women. Whose bodies, just as a reminder, they feel completely entitled to.
Another reminder: this isn’t an isolated incident. Not by a long shot. No, most men don’t go out in a blaze of glory after shooting up in a sorority house, but there are so many examples of men’s violence against women triggered by a sense of rejection. Like the kid last month who stabbed a girl to death because she wouldn’t go to the prom with him. The threat of violence is the main reason why many women feel unable to leave an abusive relationship – because after leaving is when they are at their most vulnerable. When you look the statistics on violence against women, Elliot Rodger’s act doesn’t seem so much like a one-off incident. He was participating, albeit in a grandiose public way, in the time-honoured tradition of controlling women with violence and punishing them when they don’t behave as desired.
We don’t know if Elliot Rodger was mentally ill. We don’t know if he was a “madman.” We do know that he was desperately lonely and unhappy, and that the Men’s Rights Movement convinced him that his loneliness and unhappiness was intentionally caused by women. Because this is what the Men’s Rights Movement does: it spreads misogyny, it spreads violence, and most of all it spreads a sense of entitlement towards women’s bodies. Pretending that this is the a rare act perpetrated by a “crazy” person is disingenuous and also does nothing to address the threat of violence that women face every day. We can’t just write this one off – we need to talk about all of the fucked up parts of our culture, especially the movements that teach men that they have the right to dominate and intimidate and violate women, that lead to this, and we need to change things. Because if we don’t, I guarantee that this will happen again. And again. And again.
‘”Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.” Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.’
Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character (1982)
What can one say when something like this happens? We have to reach put when we see people in trouble.
Leslie
This story is so horrible and sad. What a horrible Shit. You won’t give me your bodies so I’ll smash them all up and kill them. I hope this tragedy shows that the Men’s Rights Movements is rooted in misogyny.
This B.S has nothing to do with Men’s Rights activist. This is about a bitter Pick Up Artist which happens to be a community that HATES MRA’s! MRA’s are not concerned with picking up women. They are worried about our society showing equal compassion for men and boys. Feminists would much prefer our overwhelmingly female focused posturing on gender issues. I think expecting compassion for men should not require people to transverse a gauntlet of angry feminist trying to protect their gender issue fiefdom.
You want to talk about misogyny and MRA’s want to talk about misandry. Presuming any a man who expects equal compassion from the people in the society he lives in must automatically hate women is exactly why MRA’s have turned against feminist.
Well he was a MRA and he just killed 7 women for not having sex with him….sooo….don’t know what to tell you.
Reblogged this on Infinite Multiverses and commented:
‘”Why do men feel threatened by women?” I asked a male friend of mine. So this male friend of mine, who does by the way exist, conveniently entered into the following dialogue. “I mean,” I said, “men are bigger, most of the time, they can run faster, strangle better, and they have on the average a lot more money and power.” “They’re afraid women will laugh at them,” he said. “Undercut their world view.” Then I asked some women students in a quickie poetry seminar I was giving, “Why do women feel threatened by men?” “They’re afraid of being killed,” they said.’
Margaret Atwood, Writing the Male Character (1982)
‘”Why do men feel threatened by women?”
You are making a pretty offensive negative generalization about men. I’ve learned it’s best to take premises such as yours and see if they can apply to both genders. The problem with your start point is you already rationalized women’s anxieties and are blinded by the assumption men must be so better off that any anxiety that remains is due to some deeper underlying character flaw. This is entirely too sexist.
Men and women have some natural forces that work within them that makes appearing good in front of the other seem like a incredibly important thing to do. Let’s not run from our shared humanity so we can find excuses to vilify the other or condemn them for falling short of our expectations. I think we can learn a bit more from intra-sex interaction than we have been. This side tracking with one line of theories on gender revolving around a ‘broken’ set of premises isn’t the way forward in my opinion.
Regardless; I’ve actually gone and asked people this question. The guys always answer with a variation of they fear being laughed at.
The women always either say they’re most afraid of being raped or killed.
These totally different deep-seated anxieties do exist, and they are real. Rationalising it away with logic on how you want the world to work doesn’t make the world operate on that wishful thinking.
This was a very enlightening article. I do wish you included cited sources but you did a great job in creating a detailed picture of the issues. You pointed out some great points such as stigmatization of the mentally ill.
This is terrifying and so incredibly sad. That video is bone-chilling.
I did read on multiple news reports that Rodger’s had a very high-functioning form of Asperger’s, and was being seen by school counselors prior to the shootings. It’s by no means an excuse, but it is part of the story.
Oh really? Weird, I haven’t seen anything about that.
I’m not sure that Asperger’s is considered to be a mental illness though? Not from the stuff I’ve read, anyway.
‘Asperger’s NOT a mental illness?’ Please tell me you are joking. For someone who is such an expert on the psychology of misogyny I can’t believe you seem to have neglected to research a condition that effects so many women as well as men. I guess it doesn’t fit into your narrative though? Aspergers has serious consequences for any of it’s sufferers if not given the necessary support – add in the toxicity of the good ole gun-lovin’ USofA weapons worship and you will see incidents like this time and time again.
Oh Jesus Christ. I know what Asperger’s is, and I know how seriously any disorder on the autism spectrum can impact people. I meant that it’s not classified as a “mental illness.” That doesn’t mean I don’t believe it’s real.
Also the vaaaaaast majority of people with Asperger’s are not violent.
No, I don’t personally consider Asperger’s an “illness” either. I do think that it may be part of the reason this young man felt so isolated and alone, because he apparently struggled with social interactions his entire life.
Dear Simon:
I did some research. Guess what five seconds of Google showed me?
“Despite Asperger’s being listed in the APA’s Diagnostic manual it is not a mental illness, it cannot be caused by trauma or neglect and it cannot be cured with therapy or a change in lifestyle or attitude.”
Source: http://www.behavior-consultant.com/aspergers.htm
I re-enrolled in college in early 1990, just weeks after the murderous misogynist attack on 14 female engineering students in Montreal. At the time, the media refused to call it for what it was, despite the gunman’s many threatening letters to leading Montreal feminists, despite the fact that he blamed these students for taking his rightful place as a student of engineering… despite fact that this was misogyny at its most brutal enforcement. I joined rallies, and became an active feminist voice for equality. Many in Canada still refuse to call this massacre for what it is, an act of misogyny. That this hatred has now found a new harbour online, where cowardly men gather to conspire against women, is a sign that nothing has changed but the way the game is played.
Who cares whether it is classified as a ‘mental illness’ or not? The causes of this incident are a lack of mental health awareness and support (plus the stigmatisation of the mentally ill) coupled with an embedded infatuation with gun ownership in America. Misogyny is a contributory factor but not the main motivation. Try and see beyond your intended narrative.
And if you watch some of his tragi-comic videos, it seems he has just as much contempt for the males of our species!
Simon, what you are saying is valid, however, this is a misogynistic killing not because of narrative subjectivity but because Elliot Rodger’s had said so specifically in his YouTube video. And yes I accept when you said he hated males too. But his targets were not the males they were specifically females. Even if he hated males he didn’t go after any males he thought was deprecating him or condescending him, etcetera he went after women saying he is “superior than them” and also “the alpha male” . Misogyny is the main motivation with frustration. The last video itself is both part and parcel of the massacre. There are other factors but misogyny is clearly an overriding one.
Also I have a friend who was said to have a bit of high functioning Asperger’s tendencies and he has yet to do anything severely disrespectful to any living human being, male or female. Everyone is different, true, but should not those activists be held accountable in slight for allowing to propagate such mean ideas about both females and males? Also, we live in a culture, a hegemonized one, where sex itself, both the categorical idea and the act, is fabled, labeled and immersed in both age and personality categorizations that we all in different degrees are hounded and persecuted by it.
Yet, that did not lead us to easily murder. Think how his hatred was left to rot him rather than him not getting any and how he specified sorority members as “blonde sluts”. The culture betrayed him, I accept that. But he also betrayed himself by going off that way.
BULL SHIT. This is not what the Men’s Human Rights Movement teaches. This is no more an accurate depiction of Men’s Rights than Solanis’s SCUM Manifesto and her murderous rampage are accurate examples of Feminism.
The Men’s Human Rights Movement is about equality. Not “equality for women” but real equality, equality for all. This includes equality in criminal sentencing, equality parental rights, equality in victim services, equality in educational opportunities and many other aspects of society where men get the shit end of the stick.
The real story here is the lack of mental health services. Particularly mental health services FOR MEN.
What boggles my mind is that this young man’s family had CALLED the cops. Seeing a well-to-do young white man with a fancy car, the cops pronounced him just dandy and left him at large.
I grew up with a father whose constant threat was to murder us all whenever he was “ready to go” — I leave my house less and less; as do other members of the family. We don’t shop at malls, we only attend a movie maybe once a year or more rarely. Sad to say that the biggest hope of change is if American businesses start to believe that their bottom line is affected by gun madness.
What also got me is that no one has really criticized this guy or shown a rap-sheet or something like that. If this person was Black or Coloured or of some religious Faith then that would be the first subjects to be easily disclosed and discussed like The Garden Party of some sorts