(2014)What Elliot Rodger Said About Women Reveals Why We Need to Stamp Out Misogyny (Fetch a pail)

PolicyMic ^ | May 24, 2014 | Elizabeth Plank

[2ndDivisionVet]

n Friday evening ahead of Memorial Day weekend, a drive-by shooting near the University of California, Santa Barbara, left seven people dead, including 22-year-old suspect Elliot Rodger.

Just as past school shootings in America, the media has reacted by isolating the event as a monstrous and heinous act with no precedent. Rather than seeing Elliot Rodger as a product of society, the media has depicted him as a bloodthirsty madman, a mere glitch in the system. And yet the facts show a very different story.

Judging by the chilling YouTube video Elliot Rodger left behind, the gunman knew exactly what he was doing when he went on a shooting rampage with a semi-automatic. Frustrated by the fact that women, inferior creatures he felt like he was entitled to, rejected him romantically, he decided to get even. An excerpt from the video and a transcript from the Daily Kos show how deeply misogyny informed his worldview.

"It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls have never been attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. It's an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I'm the perfect guy, and yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men, instead of me, the supreme gentleman."

"I will punish all of you for it," he said before erupting in an almost satanic laugh.

"On the day of retribution, I will enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB, and I will slaughter every single spoiled stuck up blonde slut I see inside there. All those girls that I've desired so much, they would have all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them. While they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes. 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."

What happened in Santa Barbara is nothing less than a hate crime, and yet mainstream news outlets are distilling the issue to "mental illness" and "premeditated mass murder." Although we should be shocked by Elliot Rodger's actions, we should not be surprised. In fact, most school shootings share chillingly similar characteristics. It's time we stop treating these incidents as anomalies and start recognizing the deep societal issues at play.

1. Men commit most school shootings

All but one of the mass murders in the U.S. over the last 30 years has been committed by men. The fact that gender is often omitted from the story speaks to how we still see the masculine as the irreproachable and invisible standard. As Michael Kimmel notes in his extensive research on school shootings, if the genders were reversed and most school shootings were committed by women, you'd bet gender would be part of the analysis.

We often instead shift the conversation to "mental illness" and describe shooters as madmen, while the characteristics they exhibit are often an extension of toxic masculinity ideals that are institutionally reinforced.

Details are still emerging, but according to the Daily Kos, Elliot Rodger subscribed to many Men's Rights Activists' (MRA) websites and may have adopted their radical ideology about women. The comments that motivated his killing spree were not far from many of the ones that are openly made by men in those communities. Even in the aftermath of the tragedy in Santa Barbara, a pick-up artist group (many of which often classify as MRAs) left a horrendous comment publicizing their services, as if their view of entitlement to women were valid in the first place.

2. Most school shooters are white

Although it's rarely addressed by the media, most victims of school shootings are female. Indeed, according to a blogger at RadFem Reader who compiled the sex of school shootings, female students are twice as likely to be injured than male students, but news outlets often rarely even bother to give the sex of those who were injured.

Although we often talk about the fact that men perpetuate most violent acts, we rarely acknowledge the other side of that equation: Women are most often victimized by men.

4. Many school shooters target females who have rejected them in the past

A study that looked at 15 school shootings between 1995 and 2001 found that romantic rejection was a common feature in most gun-related incidents. It is not uncommon for perpetrators to target ex-girlfriends or classmates who have refused advances. Elliot Rodger cited this frustration openly and specifically went after "sluts" who weren't interested in him.

5. Most gunmen exhibit a large sense of entitlement

Like many other school shooters, Elliot Rodger displayed a colossal sense of entitlement in his unsettling manifesto. He describes his inability to attract women as something he needed to "punish" them for. He describes the fact that women are not interested in him as an "injustice" and a "crime" because he is the "perfect guy." In an attempt to prove that he is the "alpha male," he decides to slaughter them. He believes he is entitled to women's bodies and, when denied access, he retaliates. "It's not fair. You girls have never been attracted to me. I don't know why you girls have never been attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it," he says.

This kind of attitude toward females can be seen in bullying patterns too. Although we tend to believe that girls bully girls and boys bully boys, cross-gender bullying is much more frequent than we think. When it occurs, it is often "unpopular boys" who are not deemed to be the Alpha Male by their peers who bully "popular girls." These boys seem to use bullying to prove their manhood.

We live in a society where being white and male affords one with countless privileges and, for some, a toxic sense of entitlement. As Michael Kimmel explains, "righteous retaliation is a deeply held, almost sacred, tenant of masculinity: if you are aggrieved, you are entitled to retribution. American men don't just get mad, we get even."

6. Many school shootings could qualify as hate crimes against women and girls

You’re women, you’re going to be engineers. You’re all a bunch of feminists. I hate feminists."

This is what Marc Lépine said before killing fourteen women at a school in Montreal in 1989. Since then, similarly chilling school shootings have specifically targeted women and girls. In 2012, for example, when a 42-year-old man entered Oikos University, he only targeted women and killed six females. The only male casualty was the person driving the car he carjacked.

Although these were classified as school shootings, they are should also be considered hate crimes against women.

Although the gender of all the victims in Santa Barbara is not yet known, Elliot Rodger's motives seem to have been rooted in a profound hatred for women. Despite having killed three men, his intent to "slaughter" female students at the sorority house he entered were detailed in a gruesome 140-page manifesto released online. So far, two women have been reported dead, with more victims still in serious condition.

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Elizabeth is the Executive Social Editor at PolicyMic. She has a Masters degree from the London School of Economics and has experience in the field of behavioural science and women's advocacy.

[Billthedrill]

I read Rodger's ramblings when first they were published. This was a severely disturbed individual from an age where even the manifestation of that sort of problem is rare. To draw any broad conclusions about the rest of society from his meticulous description of his own oppression, almost entirely imaginary, is to lean on a very slender reed indeed. The author has a case to make and is grotesquely unscrupulous about her evidence.

There are more precise professional terms used these days, but "paranoid schizophrenia" will do for a lay discussion. This guy had it all: delusions of grandeur, delusions of persecution, a decade of medication he had begun refusing to take when he turned 18, parents/guardians in denial, and a truly remarkable ability to seem normal in casual conversation until the worms began crawling out of his brain. He killed his roommates with a knife while they were sleeping before embarking on his murder mission. They had done nothing whatever to him.

His was, to be sure, a corner case, and "the System" nearly stopped him. He could not purchase firearms in California, for example, or in neighboring Nevada, and so had to drive three states before he found a source willing to sell to him. He was reported to the police by two therapists, a psychologist and a psychiatrist, as a potentially dangerous and violent individual mere hours before he went on his rampage. So close. What is less forgivable is the length of time his condition was hidden, minimized, rationalized off, forgiven. The people who did so regret it bitterly now but the relatives of his victims regret it a lot more.

[Albion Wilde]

Because you posted to an earlier thread about this shooting and/or its aftermath re the 2nd Amendment. Don’t worry, it’s a one-time ping.

[Albion Wilde]

Thanks for your post. I also read the manifesto and was so saddened by it, and left a long comment upthread. He was so badly, badly handled by his parents and ostensible mental health caregivers.

However, I had pinged you today to give you the link to the very riveting follow-up story in today's DailyMail about the survivors. For them, it will never be over.

[lee martell]

I’m waiting for his father to make a documentary film about his son and the murders. Mr.Rodgers will justify it by saying he wanted the real story told correctly, and could find no other director trustworthy.
I can only imagine Elliott’s parents and siblings will need some manner of ongoing therapy. Some may choose to change their names.

[M-cubed]

This mixed race killer’s hatred was focused on not just white women, but “blond” white women.<<

Tiger Woods had no comment..../s

[maxwellsmart_agent]

Could you please copy the post and send it to me? I have no recollection of posting anything with regard to it. I went back and looked and found nothing.

[berdie]

Thanks for the update and the ping.

Ya know it’s a sad commentary on our times when something of this magnitude happens and one has to search one’s memory for the details of what this particular nut did only a year after the event.

[Albion Wilde]

Could you please copy the post and send it to me? I have no recollection of posting anything with regard to it. I went back and looked and found nothing.

Go to post 48. See the lettering that begins "EXCLUSIVE..." — it is a different color from the rest. That means it is a hyperlink. Click on it, and it will open the story. I linked it again within the text in my second post to you.

[Albion Wilde]

Ya know it’s a sad commentary on our times when something of this magnitude happens and one has to search one’s memory for the details of what this particular nut did only a year after the event.

Evil is hitting out full bore. We have to try not to get numb.