Posted on 05/25/2014 5:57:08 PM PDT by 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
Youre women, youre going to be engineers. Youre 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.
*********
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.
You can’t judge musloids based on the actions of a few crazos, but you can judge white males based on the actions of a few crazies.
When is someone going to bring up the racial hatred that drove this?
This mixed race killers hatred was focused on not just white women, but blond white women.
His obsession and hatred was of the most fair of white women, of Northern Europe ancestry, it was them that he wanted to kill during his spree.
She doesn’t want to disarm, silence, ostracize, imprison and kill Muslims.
So she has a chart of 22 school shootings and 16 are white, 73%, that isn’t a lot of material to work with.
I wonder what percentage of school killings are done by whites, let’s see all the school killings and their methods.
He kills 4 males and 2 females and they say he hates women. sounds like he hates men twice as much.
Do they mean gay liberal mysogyny?
this kid was protected by his dad’s liberal bodyguards of Political Correctness and murdered with their guns, BUT WE GOT TO HAVE OUR GUNS BANNED. Makes perfect sense.
These people are traitors. they use a special language against American men... It is not “insurgents” but “mysogynists”.
Memo to Elizabeth and all of these other “I’m smarter than everyone else in the room” types. Yes this was a hate crime. When you shoot up a bunch of people you’re not doing it out of love. Oh lord.
The intellectual and moral dishonesty of this screed is beyond contempt.
I thought it was the NRA who shot, stabbed and hit and run the joint up. What’s this “Rodger” and “misogyny” crap all about?
Maybe those spree killers had lousy mothers.
Sooth? What you said on the thread nuked for too much truth needs to be repeated here.
Well, there have been days when I;ve wondered if I’d end up hating men as a group forever.
Grew up topping out at 6 feet 1 inch. Took crap for that, also for having a brain in my head, also for not having big boobs.
Saw men fawn all over runty women, brainless, but with big boobs. Had an ex-boyfriend with an ex-girlfriend like that.... meanest thing in shoe leather, but at long as her looks held out, she had the suckers lined up for her (short, bottle-blonde, with blue eyes that got brighter when she’d scream). She was a druggie, too, and every time she got pregnant she had no idea who the father was. But still she was able to fool men...
IMO it made them, and her, look stupid.
Crap like this has always angered me... but yet it didn’t turn me into the female equivalent of Elliot Rodger, or a mad bomber.
Lady, quit trying to make sense of crazy.
It sounds like an interesting article, Elizabeth. Fetch me a beer while I read it.
So some stupid female British born, over educated, idiotic, pundit opines about the evils of white males in the USA, based on how one of her own expats conducts himself in the USA?
But it's all the fault of our indigenous USA men?
While the EU is rapidly importing all the worst of lethal misogynists of color they can get their hands on?
This little creep wasn’t a man. He was a repressed, rage-filled homo as queer as a three dollar bill.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.