Why Elliot Rodger’s misogyny matters
A chart posted by Elliot Rodger, giving his chilling spin on a manosphere meme depicting supposed female “hypergamy”
When a white supremacist murders blacks or Jews, no one doubts that his murders are driven by his hateful, bigoted ideology. When homophobes attack a gay youth, we rightly label this a hate crime.
But when a man filled to overflowing with hatred of women acts upon this hatred and launches a killing spree targeting women, many people find it hard to accept that his violence has anything to do with his misogyny. They’re quick to blame it on practically anything else they can think of – guns, video games, mental illness – though none of these things in themselves would explain why a killer would target women.
In the case of Elliot Rodger, who set out on Friday night aiming, as he put it in a chilling video, to “slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut” in a popular sorority house at the University of California, Santa Barbara, some Men’s Rights activists and other manospherians are doing their best to convince the world that misogyny had nothing to do with it.
On A Voice for Men, for example, Janet Bloomfield (who goes by the name JudgyBitch), notes that Rodger killed more men than women, and thereby declares that
Elliot was an equal opportunity hate monger, torn between wanting to kill women and wanting to kill men. …
Jessica Valenti proclaims that “misogyny kills”, blithely unconcerned with the fact that more men than women were killed. Killing men is misogyny? That’s an interesting interpretation.
Bloomfield ignores the reason more men were killed than women: Rodger’s planned massacre of sorority women failed. He was unable to get inside the sorority house. And so he was forced to improvise.
On Twitter, meanwhile, cultural commenter Cathy Young, long sympathetic to Men’s Righsters, seems to think that Rodger’s rampage was entirely due to “mental illness” and argues that connecting Rodger’s rampage to a wider culture of misogyny is a form of “anti-male hate speech.”
Even more strangely, the proudly racist Steve Sailer – a hero to Heartiste and others in the “alt-right” wing of the manosphere – has declared that Rodger wasn’t motivated by misogyny but rather by “anti-Blondism,” and that his targeting of “ blonde sluts” in a popular sorority house was “an extremely intentional racial hate crime.” Never mind that the half-Asian Rodger idolized blonde women as superior (even as he hated them) and that his comments online are littered with rather crude, rather traditional racism against people who weren’t white.
But Sailer’s claim is little more than an attempt at a derail.
The fact is that Rodger made his misogyny very clear — in his videos, in his internet postings and most of all in his 140-page “manifesto,” which is filled with angry denunciations of women and elaborate fantasies of violent “retribution” towards them. As with many misogynists, his misogyny was largely driven by thwarted sexual entitlement: he desired women intensely but they (wisely) wanted nothing to do with him.
Consider the following passages from his manifesto. I’ve put some of the most disturbing bits in bold.
The most beautiful of women choose to mate with the most brutal of men, instead of magnificent gentlemen like myself. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. That decision should be made for them by rational men of intelligence. If women continue to have rights, they will only hinder the advancement of the human race by breeding with degenerate men and creating stupid, degenerate offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in human society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more evil and depraved than the human female.
Women are like a plague. They don’t deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they need to be treated as such. … All women must be quarantined like the plague they are, so that they can be used in a manner that actually benefits a civilized society. …
The first strike against women will be to quarantine all of them in concentration camps. At these camps, the vast majority of the female population will be deliberately starved to death. That would be an efficient and fitting way to kill them all off. I would take great pleasure and satisfaction in condemning every single woman on earth to starve to death.
I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds just a little bit like misogyny.
Rodger saw his “Day of Retribution” as part of a war against women. Elsewhere in his manifesto he wrote:
Women’s rejection of me is a declaration of war, and if it’s war they want, then war they shall have. It will be a war that will result in their complete and utter annihilation. I will deliver a blow to my enemies that will be so catastrophic it will redefine the very essence of human nature.
Now, there is no question that he also hated certain kinds of men and boys – the “obnoxious brutes” he so often saw with the “pretty blonde girls” he simultaneously desired and despised. His manifesto is dotted with denunciations of them, as well as with denunciations of humanity as a whole. At one point, he posted a fantasy on PUAhate about killing all the men on earth with a virus so he could have all the women for himself. But he thought about, and wrote about, killing women all the time.
Indeed, even when he was bullied as a youngster, he directed most of his anger not at the bullies themselves but at their girlfriends.
Remembering one bullying incident from high school, he wrote
Some boys randomly pushed me against the lockers as they walked past me in the hall. One boy who was tall and had blonde hair called me a “loser”, right in front of his girlfriends. Yes, he had girls with him. Pretty girls. And they didn’t seem to mind that he was such an evil bastard. In fact, I bet they liked him for it. … The most meanest and depraved of men come out on top, and women flock to these men. Their evil acts are rewarded by women; while the good, decent men are laughed at. … I hated the girls even more than the bullies because of this.
Rodger was not only a misogynist; he was explicitly an enemy of feminism. While he doesn’t seem to have ever identified as a Men’s Rights activist per se – the only “rights” he seemed to be interested in were his own – his postings online echo the extreme and ignorant denunciations of feminism seen amongst MRAs and other manospherians.
This, too, has been denied by Men’s Rights activists. On AVFM, the “non-feminist” would-be “philosopher” Fidelbogen declares that
We have no evidence yet that Elliott Rodger was anything but apolitical in regard to feminism as such. He was not outspoken about feminism … He was only a sexually frustrated chump with mental issues, who apparently “hooked up” with PUA literature, and websites like “the Manhood Academy”.
In fact, Rodger attacked feminism explicitly in a number of comments on PUAhate, where rabid antifeminism is essentially the default ideology. In one comment, he declared bluntly that “feminism must be destroyed.” In another he predicted that
One day incels will realize their true strength and numbers, and will overthrow this oppressive feminist system.
Start envisioning a world where WOMEN FEAR YOU.
And while he saw PUAhate itself as “a putrid pit of despair,” he argued that
it does give a view of what the world is really like, what women are really like, and the evils of a feminist society.
Every male should read the posts here so that they can be awakened. There are too many delusional males worshipping women who would only spit in their faces.
There is no question that Rodger was a very disturbed man. I’m not a psychiatrist, nor do I have access to his medical or psychiatric records. But I would not be shocked to find that he was struggling with some sort of mental disorder or disorders. He was seeing several therapists, and a psychiatrist prescribed the antipsychotic Risperidone for him; he refused to take it. This prescription in itself doesn’t prove he was psychotic; psych meds are often prescribed for off-label uses, and Risperidone is also used to reduce irritability in people with autism. (Rodger was reportedly diagnosed as having aspergers.)
But, as someone who has himself dealt with depression for decades, I cannot help but think, reading through his manifesto, that his thinking was, as mine has sometimes been, distorted by depression.
He was also clearly a narcissist, in the colloquial sense if not necessarily in the clinical sense, whose resentment of others was driven by narcissistic rage. And some of his pronouncements, particularly towards the end of his life, were so grandiose it’s hard to know whether these reflected his tendency towards melodrama, fueled by his love of fantasy literature and video games, or if they are symptoms of a delusional disconnection from the real world.
I don’t think, given the considerable evidence there is of his troubled state of mind, that raising these issues detracts from the main point, and that is:
Rodger was a misogynist through and through. In many ways his misogyny was his life. If you watch his videos and read his manifesto, you’ll see that he related anything and everything in his life to what he saw as the grand tragedy of his rejection by “girls,” a state of affairs he blamed entirely on the girls of the world and not on his own “magnificent” self.
He was utterly consumed by his sexual obsession with “pretty blonde girls” and their utter lack of interest in him, and, increasingly, by his elaborate fantasies of “retribution” against them, which ultimately led to his killing spree on Friday night.
To deny that he was driven by misogyny makes as little sense as denying that Hitler was driven by anti-Semitism.
The evidence is as clear-cut as it can be on this point. Anyone who can’t or won’t admit this is either an ideologue or a liar – or both.
–
Thanks to Melody and several other readers for pointing me to some of the examples used in this post.
Posted on May 25, 2014, in a voice for men, ableism, advocacy of violence, alpha males, antifeminism, armageddon, creepy, empathy deficit, entitlement, evil sexy ladies, evil women, FemRAs, FeMRAsplaining, fidelbogen, grandiosity, hypergamy, imaginary oppression, incel, irony alert, judgybitch, lying liars, men who should not ever be with women ever, misogyny, MRA, narcissism, oppressed men, playing the victim, PUAhate, racism, taking pleasure in women's pain, terrorism and tagged a voice for men, antifeminism, elliot rodger, men's rights, misogyny, MRA, racism, santa barbara, twitter. Bookmark the permalink. 1,920 Comments.
Hypnosis via turtle
Sir Bodsworth
Absolutely. What would these people have said if he’d turned out to be just another one in the terrible, dreadfully long line of men summed up at http://whenwomenrefuse.tumblr.com/ . Probably nothing. Just another news day.
Or is every single one of these entitled, violent, murderous assholes also suffering from this mysterious mental illness that no one’s been able to name.
I remain convinced that the killer was simply insane. Yes, his hatred was focused upon women, but it could have as easily been focused on anything else that his diseased, tormented mind singled out as the source of his angst. There is no shortage of examples of the oppression of women in the world and it is not the least bit hard to present cases of misogyny that are valid and supportive of the feminist perspective. To prop up a guy who was unmistakably mentally ill hurts the cause by making it seem to be desperate for a clearly visible villain, when there are no shortage of suitable villains to be had. Most of Hollywood and the advertising industry should suffice.
And I remain convinced that you are an ableist, misogynist, privileged shit-head with all the logical ability of a lichen. Glad I’m not you.
But somehow, taking a man at his word when he spends his time ranting about how he hates women, fantasises to other misogynists how he wants to kill us, and doesn’t get called out for that, then goes on to kill women … no, that’s not a valid case of misogyny.
I guess you don’t think Lepine and Sodini and all the other men who’ve mass-murdered women or killed us one at a time were valid examples, either.
I’m surprised there aren’t lost hands lying thick on the ground. You’d think they’d fall off with all the nuclear-strength handwaving going on.
Also: wtf is this “the feminist perspective” shit? If you think there’s any other perspective on this that doesn’t support misogyny, then you’re basically joining them. There’s no fence-sitting on this subject.
Oh well, italics look pretty, I guess.
Feminist logic….
1. This man was so misogynistic that he went on a gun rampage to specifically murder women.
2. His plans to murder only women were thwarted
3. So as a last resort he changed his plans and ended up murdering more men instead.
Actual logic…
1. Misogynists do not murder men, just as vegetarians do not slaughter cows, racists do not persecute their own race and terrorists do not buy their enemy flowers
2. If he had claimed, before going on his killing spree, to be from the planet Zarkon on a mission to wipe out the human species, that does not mean he actually is from the planet Zarkon….. it just means he has serious mental health issues
3. His actions reveal that he was not really a misogynist, he was just a deranged and violent lunatic with serious mental health issues.
4. We know he had serious mental health issues because people of sound mental health do not go on a killing spree because they can’t get a girlfiend
5. We know he was not a misogynist because he murdered more men than women, and because he was a deranged gunman with mental health issues (see point 4)
To use the actions of a mentally deranged person to try to demonise all men is absolutely disgusting behaviour.
Imagine he was a mentally disturbed black man who was obsessed with ‘white privilege’ and not getting a job in this ‘white dominated world’. Then he goes on a rampage and murders a mixture of black and white people (more black people than white people if truth be told).
You people are acting like white people saying “This proves he hated white people – even though he actually murdered more black people. It also proves we live in a culture which hates white people. Black people are a threat to white people”
That is how twisted, hateful and disgusting your arguments are. You are trying to use the actions of a mentally deranged gunman to stir up hatred towards men. YOU people are the ones spreading hate.
#2 is rebutted by the fact that there are no websites dedicated to the planet Zarkon. Whereas there are many websites dedicated to hating women and talking about killing them. Belief in Zarkon is not a common belief whereas mysogyny is pervasive. You do not have to be crazy to believe mysogynistic things – in fact to have no mysogynistic beliefs at all would require serious dedication and self-reflection to the extent that I doubt such a person exists.
So, Spinning Up Your Own Arse, you identify all men as misogynists?
Men who aren’t misogynists won’t be particularly impressed with that.
http://abcnews.go.com/US/elliot-rodgers-trail-carnage/story?id=23858106
He tried to murder more women, including a woman outside the sorority house who was shot five times but lived. There are twelve others of unknown gender who were injured as well.
If you want to ignore how he clearly attempted to get into that sorority and murder more women, no one can stop you. However, it’d be great if you would leave and deny the facts of the case on a different website.
Spinning For Difficulty, instead of making up imaginary feminist logic, why don’t you read what I (and the various commenters here) actually said about his motives? I mean, if you want to argue against imaginary people who argued something different than what we argued, that’s fine, I guess, but there’s no point in doing it here. Why not just wander around your house yelling at yourself? That way at least we don;t have to hear it.
I don’t know why people think Hitler was an anti-Semite. After all, his policies resulted in the deaths of many more non-Jews than Jews. Sure, he was known to be involved with anti-Semitic groups and to say things that were just like what those groups said, but to draw some kind of link between that and the whole Holocaust thing is just nonsense from people who hate Gentiles.
Clearly, there is no need for any self examination or reflection needed on the part of the anti-Semites who are blameless in the whole affair. Or they would be, if they even existed, which they don’t.
No, the reason Hitler did what he did is that he was clearly Austrian. I’m sorry if that offends those of you who are Austrian, or who have friends, family or other loved ones who are Austrian, but that’s really all there is to it. All we have to do in the future is keep poisonous gasses out of the hands of Austrians and we’ll never see a repeat of the tragedy.
Try again after understanding feminism. I’m not holding my breath, since I’ve seen the garbage people who use the phrase ”feminist logic” in a derogatory manner spew out.
Rodger was an idiot who had no plan B in case his plan A failed (which it did). That his bloodlust took out more men than women doesn’t negate the fact that the real target of his hate was women.
I’m annoyed by people who think real-life murderers are some frickin’ Hannibal Lecter or Jigsaw level geniuses who always stay one step ahead of others. Most of them are not particularly intelligent, and are prone to screw up their plans. The media glorifying serial and mass murderers is a problem (probably ties into the whole ‘lone wolf’ thing).
Firstly, vegetarians don’t identify as cows, so your comparison is stupid.
Secondly, persecution takes many forms, not all of them outright violent. Someone going on a killing spree is not persecuting his victims, he’s fucking murdering people. Are you seriously saying this act would have only counted as misogyny if a large group of men had been rounding up women for concentration camps (which was, incidentally, what Rodger wanted to do)?
Thirdly, you’re mangling the definition of terrorist. A terrorist is defined by his violent acts of terror, not by the group he’s targeting. A misogynist hates women, but doesn’t necessarily go out and murder them. Indeed, a misogynist might buy a woman flowers (or drinks, or dinners, etc.) because he expects to be sexually rewarded by the woman. The terror begins when the woman refuses.
Learn to logic before accusing others of failing at it.
That’s… stupefyingly stupid. Read Kim’s response to get a clue of how utterly asinine your argument is.
How?
Spot that fallacy: ”He had mental health issues because he did X, and X is only done by people with mental health issues.”
Logic, not your strongest suit. Where’s your evidence that only people with mental health issues do this? What are you basing your premise on?
All you’ve shown so far is an impressive amount of false equivalencies, circular reasoning, begging the question and ignoring evidence. Logic, you no haz it.
Nobody was demonising all men. I’m a man, and I do not feel demonised by the fact that Rodger was motivated by misogyny. Or are you suggesting all men are really misogynists? Tell me, who’s the one demonising men, again?
What is it with the false equivalencies? Men are not oppressed as a group. Black people are. Trying to equate the two groups is dishonest at best, hateful at worst. And again with the mentally disturbed. There is no evidence of that. Stop it.
Anyway, if the hypothetical black man had left behind a 130+ manifesto of how he hated white people, then yes, we could assume the crime was racially motivated, and that he failed at getting at his true targets. But minorities are usually the victims, not the perpetrators of hate crimes, so again, your comparison fails. A better comparison would be a white man going out to murder black people.
No. Women are not the privileged group, men are. Your false equivalencies are getting nerve-grating. Try understanding privilege and power dynamics before opening your ignorant mouth.
”No, you’re the real criminals for suggesting there is an institutional problem that I might be a part of!”
There is no institutional hatred of men. Misandry is not a problem on par with misogyny. Feminism pointing out that this act was motivated by institutional misogyny is not hateful, it’s stating facts. Feminists are not saying that all men are inherently misogynistic, you are. Expressing criticism against an unfair, uneaqual system that teaches men that they are entitled to women is not spreading hate.
You, sir, are an idiot.
Vegetarians aren’t comparable. They don’t hate humans.
Racists don’t persecute their own race? Are you seriously suggesting that no white supremacist has ever hated another white person before? That’s literally like arguing that the South wasn’t racist in the civil war because they killed white northerner soldiers.
Also buying someone flowers doesn’t negate, ya know, suggesting that every one of their kind be put in concentrations camps. That’s like arguing that Hitler wasn’t racist because he was nice to a Jew once.
Wat.
Wat. Misogynists are incapable of being extremely violent? This is a total WAT. (Also redundant redundancies).
You realize that just saying something doesn’t make it true, right? See watch: “hitler wasn’t racist, he was just crazy, because no one with sound mental health would kill millions.”
He planned to murder a sorority, but failed to get in. This is why he killed more men. Do your research.
Except no one is doing that. Also you realize that your ableism is totally disgusting?
Except no one is using this as sole evidence of a misogynist society. If we lived in a society where black people had been violent towards white people for thousands of years, there many other signs in our culture of a black supremacy, and there were many black on white shootings, then what idiot wouldn’t connect that to a black supremacy??
Also it’s funny that you used black on white instead of a more realistic shooting. If a white racist shot up a bunch of people because he wanted to fight against “anti white” policies (immigration, interracial coupling, welfare, etc), would you seriously consider this person to not be racist? Are you seriously that stupid?
Seriously, tell me that these murders weren’t fueled by racism because there were more white victims than black: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mississippi_civil_rights_workers'_murders
Because by your brilliant logic, this was just some “crazy” person, and it’s “hate” to point out the racist motives.
… Said after writing this ridiculously ableist garbage. Wow.
Actually that logic does sound pretty familiar, when applied to the Mississippi murders. You know, like “You’re just demonizing white people! Murder is awful, you can’t make this into a race issue! Stop blaming white people for your problems!”
The lack of self awareness Spinning for Difficulty has is ridiculous.
(Sorry for triple post)
I think by the “Zarkon” thing he’s suggesting that misogyny is as real as Zarkon? I think? Like it’s literally impossible for someone to be a misogynist or something.
It’s stupid anyways, since the two aren’t comparable (false equivalency? From this guy? Shocking). To be from Zarkon you have to be from Zarkon, regardless if you say it or not. To be a raging misogynist, all you have to do is just want to be a raging misogynist, and you’re already one.
Seriously it’s like he tried to cram as much logical failure as possible into one post.
Wow. I went a whole 8 hours without hearing “Not All men” and “Rodgers didn’t hate women!”
Well, I’m up now. (Sigh. Scrolls up). Nevermind.
What I have learned from Spinning For Difficulty: Bullets are magical and go exactly where the shooter wants them to. Therefore, the people who are shot are just exactly who the shooter wanted to shoot, and this all has nothing to do with chance or opportunity or any silly feminist concepts like that. Killing six people means you are insane. If one fewer person had been seriously wounded instead of killed, we’re not sure what that means, but Spinning certainly would have had an opinion on it. People who have hatred towards a group are only ever and always violent towards that group, because people who are consumed by hatred, unlike everybody else, always express themselves in a perfectly logical manner. That about right?
Shiraz:
If it makes you feel any better, this made me giggle over coffee.
@spinning for difficulty
More spinning I see. White folk need to stop with that “black people are a threat to white people” nonsense. Here’s an exhaustive statistical analysis to show how conservatives dont understand jack about crime.
http://www.timwise.org/2013/08/race-crime-and-statistical-malpractice-how-the-right-manipulates-white-fear-with-bogus-data/
You are literally too stupid to insult.
No, he wanted to kill men as well from the start. It’s just that his main target was college women.
Also, seriously, shut the fuck up about mental illness. YOU HAVE NO FUCKING EVIDENCE TO SUPPORT THAT CLAIM SO JUST FUCKING STOP JESUS FUCKING CHRIST IS IT THAT MUCH TO ASK YOU DISABLIST SHITHEAD
:: breathes deeply ::
Intragroup violence is very common among male supremacists, white supremacists, etc. It doesn’t cancel out their own bigotry. If you knew anything about bigotry functions in society you would know this. Just because they benefit from the social privilege doesn’t mean that they care about helping anyone else in their privileged position.
Also, in case it’s not blatantly obvious to you yet, Rodger was also racist. His first victims were men of color. So he was killing the men mainly out of racism, not misogyny.
Also, drop the disingenuous false equivalencies. They aren’t fooling anyone, dipshit.
What Ally S. said, and also:
The point that seems to escape those who wish to claim that misogyny was not a huge motivator for Rodgers is that he started from a position of seeing women as things, things to have or not have. It led him to try to kill women and those who “had” women. But when you view the acquistion of women and sex from women in much the same way that you do the acquisition of money – and he did; he wanted money (from the lottery) to drop into his lap without effort, and he wanted women to do the same – you are misogynistic. It is that simple and not difficult to grasp; why do we have to keep pointing it out?
SfD,
What nearly everyone else said. You are being an awful, awful person. Pleases go away.
Come back when you get a grip on why claiming evil people must be insane, because only insane people are evil is so awful.
Also, if you can’t conceptualize why misogyny can hurt men, please think seriously about the examples presented here of other hateful people killing victims not in their specific hated group. I know they’re really, really hard to think about, because of how awful they are, but please, do it.
Also, stop pretending we hate all men. Good grief.
Please don’t come back until you stop spinning just to be difficult, ableist, and hateful.
Why, because women are things, and one doesn’t listen to what things have to say to actual people, does one?
::hurl::
What pisses me off the most about SFD to be honest is that he insists that “mentally ill” people and people who don’t have mental disabilities have mutually exclusive thoughts. What kind of bullshit is that?
Okay, I don’t know if you’ve read ER’s manifesto/autobiography of personal anguish and hatred, but I’m doubting it at the moment. I have, and I’ve come to different conclusions.
[MASSIVE TRIGGER WARNING: quotes and some description of scenarios in ER's manifesto below. Though I've tried to sanitize as much as I can, it's still awful]
In his manifesto, ER laid out his plans *and his motives* plainly. He murdered his roommates because he was planning to use his apartment as a torture chamber/abattoir (and of course your housemates would get in the way of this kind of plan, y’know?). He said he was going to lure people in there and dispose of them, by hand, as cruelly as he could. “The first phase will represent my vengeance against all of the men who have had pleasurable sex lives while I’ve had to suffer. Things will be fair once I make them suffer as I did. I will finally even the score.”
After that was done, he was going to go the sorority house, shoot as many happy, pretty girls as he could, and then torch the place if he had the time. “The Second Phase will represent my War on Women. I will punish all females for the crime of depriving me of sex. They have starved me of sex for my entire youth, and gave that pleasure to other men. In doing so, they took many years of my life away. I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can dliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts.”
Then he was going to go to his dad’s house and kill his long-suffering stepmother and his poor little brother because “It is very unfair how some boys are able to live such pleasurable lives while I never had any taste of it, and now it has been confirmed to me that my little brother will become one of them. He will become a popular kid who gets all the girls. Girls will love him. He will become one of my enemies.”
The drive-by shooting and smashing part of his plan was supposed to be the climax of it all. He would take out as many random people as he could before he ended with a distribution of trophies from his earlier kills and his own suicide.
Did his plans go exactly the way he wanted? Obviously not, but you can see that he stuck to some of his outline; only ER knows why he didn’t decided to kill even more people in the comfort of his apartment, and why he skipped his plan to visit vengeance on his dad’s second family. Did he want to kill guys as well as girls? Sure, but he gave us his rationale for those decisions:
“The males deserve to be punished for living a better and more pleasurable life than me, and the females deserve to be punished for giving that pleasurable life to those males instead of me.”
“I desired girls, but girls never desired me back. There is something very wrong with that. It is an injustice that cannot go unpunished.”
He had desires for sex, human connection, and above all, status. ER believed that women were the key to achieving what he wanted, and when they didn’t enthusiastically throw throw a happy life at him as a reward for breathing, he got angry. Angry at men, too, because they were thieves who stole his birth right. He was *furious* at the female half of our species, because “women represent everything that is unfair with this world, and in order to make the world a fair place, they must all be eradicated.”
Dude, do you really want to argue that he didn’t hate women?
WAAAY TL;DR – ER told us exactly what he wanted to do, and why he wanted to do it. I just listed quotes. Why do so many people want to ignore this? Because he failed in the execution of his plan? Because he was under care of mental health professionals, and getting mental health care somehow erases all rational thought and agency? Because it’s easier to throw mentally ill people under the bus than admit that, yes, there really are people who blame women for all their problems and feel perfectly justified in hurting them – and the people they love – as retribution? Nuts to that. When someone tells you who they, are believe them.
Interesting conversation. I see comments on both sides pouring abuse on each other and wonder; if they had knives and guns and an SUV it they would be cutting and shooting and running over each other? The hate I see thrown back and forth is not at all unlike the hate expressed by ER. I’m not perfect and I have strong feelings too, so maybe we should all take a look at ourselves and what we write and see of it is really safe lobbing our stones in this big glass house.
@gdgdurden
Get off your high horse.
@boring ableist troll who’s name is a mash up of letters that I’mnot going to bother to spell
Yeah, you keep being convinced of that, without any evidence, you piece of shit.
God it’s like why are ableist shitheads drawn so hard to this thread?
1. This man was so misogynistic that he went on a gun rampage to specifically murder women.
2. His plans to murder only women were thwarted
3. So as a last resort he changed his plans and ended up murdering more men instead.
Which is consistent with what happened. Or are you saying that he wouldn’t have killed anyone had he gotten past the door of the sorority?
MRA Logic:
P: Dude makes a plan. P: Attempts to carry out plan. P: Is thwarted.
Conclusion: It wasn’t really his plan.
1. Misogynists do not murder men, just as vegetarians do not slaughter cows.
Have you heard of PETA?
racists do not persecute their own race
Ever heard of “The Order”.
terrorists do not buy their enemy flowers
Pehaps not, but I have seen them apologise for “needing” to kill innocent people to make their point.
So far you’ve taken three swings, and missed three times, back to the bench for you.
2. If he had claimed, before going on his killing spree, to be from the planet Zarkon on a mission to wipe out the human species, that does not mean he actually is from the planet Zarkon….. it just means he has serious mental health issues
There are two failures of “logic” here. 1: He didn’t claim a counterfactual as his basis. He claimed to hate women. There is nothing to indicate he had any ulterior motive in writing 140 pages about that hate, nor in the (voluminous) other writings, video-postings, interactions with his friends, to contradict this conclusion.
2: Anecdotally I know one person who believes himself to be a member of a non-terran race of people. I know several people who think they are of some-non-human race of terrestrial creatures/fanstastic beings. These are not the sort of “serious” problem you imply in your statement. They are decidely not a menace to themselves or others.
3. His actions reveal that he was not really a misogynist, he was just a deranged and violent lunatic with serious mental health issues.
4. We know he had serious mental health issues because people of sound mental health do not go on a killing spree because they can’t get a girlfiend
No true Scotsman, married to question begging. Tres cliché.
5. We know he was not a misogynist because he murdered more men than women, and because he was a deranged gunman with mental health issues (see point 4)
See reply above. We know he was a misogynist because he said so, long and loud. That he was a crappy planner, inept killer and all around somewhat less than logical thinker doesn’t mean he wasn’t a misogynist.
It just means that in the same way he couldn’t see the problem wasn’t women (and actively resisted seeing this simple fact); and didn’t deal well with not being catered to, he didn’t have any way planned to carry out his scheme if the women in the primary target refused to just let him in to carry out his movie-plot attack.
To use the actions of a mentally deranged person to try to demonise all men is absolutely disgusting behaviour.
Good thing no one is doing that. I’m a man. I am not offended in the least by people saying misogynists are assholes. I’m not offended by them saying this dude killed people because he was a misogynist (of a particularly virulent and violent stripe).
I am not offended because while I am not a misogynist. So the critque doesn’t fall on me.
I was an Army interrogator. Some soldiers commit atrocious acts in war. Some committed atrocious acts in the war I took part in. Some did it while I was in theater. Some of them were soldiers I knew.
And when when someone condemns those soldiers who committed atrocities I don’t get bent out of shape and say, “OMG, they hate all soldiers,” unless, of course, someone does say that, which I have seen. I also been asked, “So how many people did you torture?”
BUt since that’s not happening here I have to wonder why you are so offended. IS there something you aren’t telling us? Perhaps there is.
That is how twisted, hateful and disgusting [my] arguments are. I won’t even take a person’s last words as being indicative of what they believe, because it makes misogynists like me look bad.
FTFY
marie: God it’s like why are ableist shitheads drawn so hard to this thread?
Because that ableism absolves them not only of passive complicity, but of any need to examine what they might do which supports societal misogyny.
And that’s for the people who aren’t active misogynists.
It’s easier to see from up here on this horse.
gddurden Interesting conversation. I see comments on both sides pouring abuse on each other and wonder; if they had knives and guns and an SUV it they would be cutting and shooting and running over each other? The hate I see thrown back and forth is not at all unlike the hate expressed by ER. I’m not perfect and I have strong feelings too, so maybe we should all take a look at ourselves and what we write and see of it is really safe lobbing our stones in this big glass house.
Ooh… A spock-droid. A clueless one to boot (but aren’t they all?).
You, my good man, are confused. You think that anger at fools, bigots, liars, and charlatans is the same as the hate which the misogynists, and their apologists are pouring out.
You are wrong.
You also think that being angry about hate is bad. Sorry, it’s not. For all that I wish the world were full of comity, and that reason alone would sway people to being better to each other, so we could “all just get along”, the Messiah hasn’t come yet (and I’m not gonna hold my breath while I wait).
I have to assume that people who apologise for Rodger, that people who dismiss his stated motive, that people who cheer his actions, and encourage others to emulate him, have an animus against women.
Maybe they haven’t realised it. Maybe they have acquired some blinkered ideas about “how women are” from someplace outside their own experience (oh, I don’t know, from a film where a man says, “”only birds get breast cancer”?, as if women were some alien species to men), but their hostility to the plain facts means they aren’t willing to see the huge amounts of misogyny which is present in society.
And when they insult people who do see it. When they slag attempts to make the world more equitable by accusing those who do of “hating men”, well contempt isn’t out of line.
But if you want to coddle assholes, and be polite to them, and pretend they aren’t assholes and allow them to shit on the rest of the world… go ahead.
But I’m gonna treat you like an asshole. Because you are telling me that the assholes deserve to be handled gently as they shit on everyone.
So, according to Spinning for Difficulty’s logic… (if it can really be called that)…
If a white racist, who spent lots of time on racist forums and wrote a racist manifesto, went on a killing spree in which he targeted white men in interracial relationships, and his manifesto clearly outlined that he was killing them for being race traitors, we wouldn’t be allowed to talk about his racism because he killed white people. Especially if that white racist had ever in his life been in therapy.
Not only wouldn’t we be allowed to talk about his racism, and what a toxic environment is being promoted by those racist forums, and how those attitudes are often mirrored and supported in media and culture, but we’d be the real bad guys for even bringing it up.
Yeah, I’m not really seeing the logic there.
Sorry if I’m repeating anyone, I haven’t read through all the newer comments.
*bangs head on wall* yes dear, I’m sure if I had my license I’d go around shooting random men cuz they might be misogynists. Or something. I’m not sure your point really.
Things that annoy me, besides those expounded on in detail already: the assumption that he hit exactly who he was aiming for, and with the desired degree of lethality. It’s hard enough to shoot moving targets in the first place, to shoot them while you’re also moving AND ensure fatal shots on only the ones you intend to? We’re into sharpshooter terrority here, and except for military elite, I doubt many of them could manage it if you swap “target” for “person”.
Where am I going with this? The genders of the people he killed say a hell of a lot less about his motives than knowing the genders of who he was aiming at would (if he was aiming at all by that point). Seeing how he can’t answer that, we’re left with his manifesto and video, which, quite clearly, say he was out to kill women.
cloudiah: You aren’t repeating. You are finding other ways of illustrating the world-class failure of logic which is SfD’s oeuvre.
Given the amazing levels of fail in his post, it would be incredible were we to have run out of ways to demonstrate it.
And yours was very good.
Wow, pecunium, did you just issue a manifesto?
And according to gdgdurden, if one set of people are saying hateful/bigoted things, and another set of people critique them, sometimes angrily, both sides are equivalent. The NAACP & SPLC are just as bad as the Aryan Nation folks!
Yup, not really seeing the logic there either. Especially since misogyny/racism/bigotry are actually frequently correlated with violence (as in multiple times/day), whereas critics of bigotry are rarely associated with violence.
And now, because ER wrote something long, and pecunium wrote something (much shorter but still kind of) long, they have both written manifestos. pecunium is clearly a mass murderer! (How he finds the time with all of his other hobbies and interest, I’ll never know.)
Note to gdgdurden: Why don’t you spend a little time actually reading and trying to understand what pecunium wrote? It’s only 9 paragraphs if you remove the one quoting you.
“Wow, pecunium, did you just issue a manifesto?”
*dies laughing* oh boy, if pecunium ever writes a manifesto it will 1) be WAAAAYYY longer than that and 2) be substantially above your reading level.
And probably be about growing your own fruit trees and using the fruit in mead, or something.
Pecunium — speaking of plants, your African violet is in my window. Broke down the terrarium after your wedding and it’s doing just fine out in the open. 4″ pot currently, but I’d make room for a 6″+, things getting big and will be yours next time I see you.
…you open your wedding gifts yet? ^.^
Lotta human kindness in here. You guys go on with your party, and make certain, DEAD certain, that nobody with a dissenting opinion spoils it. Time for me to get out of Mom’s basement and go play in the sun.
dgdurden: Wow, pecunium, did you just issue a manifesto?
No
BUt I can see how a guy who writes just shy of 1,000 words to admit he has no clue about how to solve any of the problems Rodger’s attack points up; before moving on to more than 3,000 words about watching movies in France might be confused by the pointedness of 286 telling him he’s a fucking idiot.
…I probably should too. Not the mom’s basement part, the sun part. My vitamin d levels are in the “good thing I’m done growing or I’d have rickets” range, and maybe the robin eggs have hatched.
Also, I have an ikea children’s tent to fix, my mosquito netting is all twisted and I need to tape up a waterproof door.
Pecunium — one more plant thing before I go, how’s the crassula doing? Remember when I dropped the terrarium lid on the parent plant? The top did root, I have a small, but well rooted, one if yours went blah.
Ok, time to get some sun, more whack a troll later!
re plants. I have one crassula left (the other suddenly quit). I need to try to root some forsythia for you, before we whip it out.
Yes, we did videotape it, but you were a trifle overt in the writing. I wasn’t surprised by the inclusion just for me.
It kind of appears to me that gdgdurden is the one with a problem with dissenting opinions, since he’s running away to avoid them whereas we carry on discussing them and refuting the ones we disagree with.
But hopefully he’ll stick the flounce.
Wow. This is the stupidest thing I’ve seen on this thread so far. Considering the huge volume of trolls we’ve had lately, that’s a tough bar to clear. Congratulations.
Charles Manson is a racist. He killed white people in an effort to frame black people and start a race war. Does it mean he’s not racist because he had his family kill white people? So much logic fail on your part. Elliot Rodgers explicitly told us his motive. It was so explicit that you don’t even need critical thinking skills to figure that out. Yet that is still too much for our trolls to manage.
While we’re on the subject of Hitler. He was thought to be mentally ill. He supposedly heard voices. Does that mean his anti-Semitism is irrelevant? Does that mean he wasn’t anti-Semitic at all? No. It doesn’t mean that all.
Hmmm… there’s a 4WD Jeep in my driveway, I have the key to a gun cabinet with a deer rifle and my husband’s practice work side arm in it, and some sheathed hunting knives in the garage. Somehow this morning, instead of killing those who don’t echo my exact opinions, I’ve managed to make my kids strawberry pancakes and pay the electric bill. Could it be that feeling passionate about an issue and expressing it thusly is not the same as being homicidal?
I get that there are people out there arguing in good faith for better mental health care and gun control (and yes, my husband and I are gun owners, and I’d be happy to melt them all in a furnace if it meant that no one else in our country was hurt or killed by a firearm ever again). That’s fine, I hope they succeed in getting better mental health care and better firearm regulation.
That, however, does not mean that I’m going to sit idly by while people try to dismiss the misogyny in this killing and the toxic undercurrent of it in our culture at large. Those kids who left a big syrupy mess on my kitchen table are a boy aged 3 and a girl aged 6. I don’t want to send my son into a world where my son feels that a lot of his worth is tied to how much sex he’s had, or whether he has a “hot” girlfriend, or where he believes that he has to follow some kind of script where he’s always up for it and can never say no in order to be a man. My daughter shouldn’t have to spend her life being harassed to fit someone’s else’s standards for femininity or beauty, to be forced into the role of the costar in someone else’s life, to be demonized for her sexual choices no matter how she makes them, or to be encouraged to give a guy a “yes” despite her gut saying “no,” and then to be scolded if he does something dangerous or violent because she should have seen it coming.
So no, I’m not dangerous. I’m angry. I’m still trying to figure out what I can do to make things change, and I’m not going to shut up about it in the interim.
Actually the only ones who have been using violent threatening language on this site are the misogynist trolls that have been coming in here lately.
I’m not sure what point you are trying to make.
I might just be extra suspicious of trolls right now, but I’m getting a hint of sock smell. Gdgdurden is reminding me of the early minutes of Erin and Davis’ trolling careers when they were pretending to be reasonable and rational. The mom’s basement comment has me wondering.
We’ll see if the flounce sticks.
And I remain convinced that you and people like you who are working so hard to deny that Rodgers hated women even when it’s right in your face are irredeemable shitheads who should just stop feeling the need to spread your gross apologia all over the fucking internet.
Maybe because the dissenting opinions are ableist garbage?
gdgdurden is reminding me of the early minutes of Erin and Davis’ trolling careers when they were pretending to be reasonable and rational. The mom’s basement comment has me wondering.
He has a blog, which is boring as fuck (no sense of how to develop a topic, and a lack of understanding on what makes a reminiscence interesting) but implies he’s not a sock.
I say implies because it’s possible he bashed out 20,000 words or so, and did some back-dating for verismilitude, but the subject matter is coherent to it’s theme, and not the sort I’d credit one of our trolls to be introspective enough put up as a false front.
So garden variety clueless about how his, “it’s all too big for use to deal with, and we ought to be polite as we work it out” nonsense actually works to perpetuate the things he decries.
@Gdgdurden and all other wannabe-neutral ignorants who feel like tone trolling or some shit:
Sorry to burst your bubble, but our society is not value neutral. Claiming neutrality in issues of opression and inequality is siding with the oppressors. By waggling your finger at people who are criticising an unjust social practice, you are not being neutral, you’re choosing the side of those who’d like injustice and inequality to continue unaddressed.
In other words, by claiming neutrality, you’re choosing to become part of the problem. Stop it.
Boring as fuck is accurate. I skimmed far enough to get to the post about Elliot Rodgers and it turns out he’s one of those people who thinks that in the good old days people were less violent. I hate that attitude. It’s demonstrably false.
People in the past were LESS violent? WTF? Is this another manifestation of “In the good old days, ALL families, without exception, were the Cleavers.”?
Pecunium — damn! As for the crassula, try putting it in a terrarium of some sort, or keeping it indoors and only watering via the dish of water method. And yes, you owe my mother her dreaded yellow blooms!
Also, I picked up Tito vodka when my regular was sold out. As always, you have excellent taste in booze. Damn that shit is smooth!
I’m normally fairly placid. But this drumbeat of “you’re demonizing male sexuality!” is making me testy. There is nothing inherent in male sexuality that demands that men abuse, objectify or kill women. It is both possible AND desirable for men to express their sexuality without any negative consequences for women. Why is this so challenging for some men?
I am, once again, deeply impressed by the collective bravery of women, and moved by the depth of their love for the men in their lives.
So you’re going to completely ignore the biased perspective that comes with your self-righteousness? I see.
I’m not interested in any principle of “human kindness” that prohibits the expression of contempt for others and polices people’s emotions in general. We have contempt for you because you’re being a sanctimonious jerk, and it is entirely justified.
Oh, and you should probably drop your disingenuous remark about us silencing dissent. We have been criticizing a great deal of the dissent, not silencing it. Unless you’re one of those insecure people who think that criticism of any kind is censorship, I don’t see how you could say such a thing without some degree of dishonesty on your part.
Like I said: get off your high horse.
Lemme guess: you’re one of those people who thinks that your “freedom of speech” means everyone else should be silent. No irony there, nope.
OT: Ever since I woke up this morning, I’ve had Loverboy songs stuck in my head, especially “Turn Me Loose”. It’s not a bad song, but hearing the chorus play constantly in my head is more than a little grating. Woe is me…
gdgdurden:
Oh, you wanted the human kindness blog. Well, see, that is not this blog. This is the blog where we mock misogyny. Next time make a left turn by the parked waaaaaahmbulance and drive a bit up Manly Tears Lane, you’ll see it.
We can always dream.
I am honestly a tad disappointed in the article. Before reading it, I already quite assumed Rodger was a misogynist. The statement I hoped to read some arguments for, was: “Why Elliot Rodger’s misogyny matters”. Perhaps I haven’t read well enough?
I do think that most men specially young men see their entire existence dependent on having a woman in their lives. Perhaps its the dependance on having a woman figure that resembles their childhood. Doesn’t our culture validate a mans worth by the concept of family?
Being a single man is frowned upon by society. In some countries single men cant go to certain restaurant and social environments that are labeled family only. Even here singles night in clubs or bars is a desperate attempt to get single women to attend to attract customers.
I think all this peer pressure from society forces men to validate their self worth by having a women in their lives. In other words its not a feeling of entitlement but an obligation to prove you are worthy of having a family. If this is not a factor at play please feel free to explain why.
Darn you! I HATE that song!
Do the trolls relate to ER’s rants? Are they horrified they they relate to his rants?
Is it too much like having the public see inside their heads and realizing their hateful thoughts inspire collective disgust. Maybe that’s jarring some of them, I dunno.
Or is it the idea that when people say things like, “Women are already equal, we don’t need feminism.” Someone will reply, “What about Elliot Rodgers?” That’s driving them here.
You duders who keep saying “He was crazy! He didn’t hate women.” I can’t tell if you believe that or not. It’s seems very important to you that we believe this, but we don’t. Many people don’t. And you don’t represent all men, though sometimes I think you do. We’re going to have to assume you can’t read or don’t understand that words mean things. In short, don’t be so fucking dumb, guys.
Or maybe Amanda Marcotte right:
“Instead, for some reason, I’m seeing another response coalesce. I call it the “How dare you besmirch the good name of misogyny?!” gambit. The idea is to deny and deny and deny that Rodger was motivated by misogyny. Which is weird. Since 95-99% of misogynists deny they are misogynists, what’s it to them to admit that he was motivated by misogyny? The only reason I can think to deny he’s a misogynist is that you secretly know damn well you are a misogynist, and you want to deny that your misogynist ideology played any role in the killings.”
Her article is here: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/category/pandagon/
Hey dudes, switch the gender on ER
Nice piece. It’s ludicrous to say misogyny didn’t come into play because he killed men. If anything, it shows another reason why misogyny is bad for men too.
I don’t know if you saw this yet (sorry if it’s already in the thread somewhere) but Chris Gethard had a great piece about seeing his high school self in Elliot Rodger and how to overcome that programming and become a better man: http://thechrisgethardshow.tumblr.com/post/87041806996/overcome-your-programming-and-be-a-better-man
I’ve noticed that this happens in every -ism and -phobia there is. The response always seems to be “this is not what you think it is. That’s not racism or sexism or homophobia . It’s obviously this_____, and these are not the droids you’re looking for…”
It seems to be the philosophy of what I like to call The Lazy Ass. They will come up with any other reason for what happened that requires they either get up off their ass and do something about it, or stop thinking about themselves for longer than 30 seconds. They will say or do whatever makes them feel good and causes them the least amount of inconvenience.
Has anyone els noticed this trend in the Manosphere of saying ” Well girls, you better give us sex or there will be some more shootings just like this.” I’m guessing that they don’t realize or refuse to realize that when said on a one on one basis, ( you know, threatening women into having sex with you) that that’s called rape. That when they make statements like that it sounds like “Fuck us, or we’ll kill you.”
Jules — in epic short, you’ve explained what social programming goes into them feeling entitled to a
familywoman. It’s still a sense of entitlement though.Wow men really need to look back at Their story, HISTORY, or rather His Story…..it’s full of raping, beating, and killing women. I must spread the word of this book until my death because the author died from cancer because he felt this book was so important and it really is. Please read and spread the word of Jack Holland’s: Misogyny, The World’s oldest prejudice. It is chock full of man’s long attempt of genocide on women. It takes the reader all the way back to the birth of misogyny….may be out of print….buy used, it’s that important.
It seems my comment has provoked a reaction. I stand by my arguments, but perhaps I did not explain them well enough – especially given how emotive this event is for everyone.
Let me try again (before running for cover!)
If he was a misogynist then if we look at his actions we have to conclude he was also a misandrist to AT LEAST the same extent. When someone is BOTH a misogynist AND a misandrist the two effectively cancel each other out…. and you are essentially left with someone who is just a violent, sick, dangerous lunatic.
I don’t think either of these labels (misandrist / misogynist) are really adequate to explain the man’s state of mind or attitudes towards men and women.
As I pointed out previously, he cared about women enough to hate them, but he did not even care about men enough to even consider them worthy of hate (or any other feeling). Men did not seem to even register as people in his sick mind.
The men he killed were like bugs splatted on a windshield to him. They were in the way, he killed them, it meant nothing to him. He did not care about men to even kill them out of hatred. Watch his videos and you’ll see he is incapable of viewing men as people in their own right. And that is why he does not spend time and energy expressing hatred towards men.
Do you ‘hate’ the bugs that you splat with your car windshield, or tread on when you walk down the street? No of course you don’t. But neither do you care enough about them to get upset when you squash them. The truth is they mean NOTHING to you. The injury, death, pain and suffering you cause to hundreds of insects on a daily basis means NOTHING to you. This is also how Elliot Rodger felt about men. He viewed them as bugs.
And this is why it’s (at best) over-simplistic to label him a misogynist for (1) ranting about women (2) killing some women (3) ignoring men completely and (4) killing some men.
Those were his actions and those actions should determine how we label him. You can’t pick and choose!
By portraying the men that he killed as simply ‘collateral damage’ or ‘the next best thing to women, when no more women were available to shoot at’ you people are demonstrating EXACTLY THE SAME attitude towards men as Elliot Rodger.
Your attitudes demonstrate that you do not even value the murdered men’s status (as men) high enough to attribute any significance or importance to their murder!
This is the essence of the message you are all conveying…
He murdered women = he hated women
He murdered men = he hated women
And (apparently) for me to view the men’s deaths as significant makes me an evil witch who is trying to distract everyone reading these comments from his REAL crime (the only crime we should be focusing on!) …… which is the murder of the women.
Your collective reaction to my comments is the epitome of ‘patriarchal’ attitudes in action.
In a patriarchy men are disposable and women’s (and children’s) protection is of utmost importance (This is why we have the convention ….”women and children first” ….. or the news headline…… “Five people died in the accident, including two women”). And there are obvious biological (survival) reasons why we have always tended to adopt this unequal value system. A population which loses half its males is really not in any real danger of going extinct, but a population which loses half its females is. We are hard wired to value women’s safety and survival above men’s. That is what the ‘patriarchy’ has always been about.
You are viewing Elliot Rodger’s actions through the lens of patriarchy, not gender equality. I’m not saying you *have* to view his crimes through the lens of gender equality – I am just pointing it out, that’s all.
The fact is Elliot Rodger viewed men as disposable, worthless and insignificant to the point of not really being able to view them as human beings at all. Like bugs or bacteria or weeds he was incapable of hating men because he was incapable of feeling anything significant about them at all! And like bugs, bacteria or weeds he had no hesitation in killing them when they got in his way.
To depict his actions ONLY in terms of misogyny (especially in the unavoidable context of ‘gender equality’) is dishonest and exploitative. And it demonstrates a total lack of empathy or concern towards the male victims and towards men in general. ANd it make a mockery of the concept of ‘gender equality’ where men are supposed to be equal human beings who’s lives and deaths are just as significant as women’s.
Even though I think the term misogynist is wholly inadequate to describe this deeply sick individual, I would not have objected to him being labelled a misogynist if he had been labelled a misandrist at the same time. By labelling him as both, the inadequacy of those labels to describe his behaviour becomes apparent.
Misogyny – like racism, xenophobia, homophobia etc – might be irrational and abhorrent stances to take from moral / philosophical point of view, but they ARE based on well defined principles and in THAT sense are logical (ie they have internal consistency).
Misogyny = specific hatred of women
Racism = specific hatred towards (or feeling of superiority relative to) other races based on their race
Xenophobia = specific hatred of people from other countries
Homophobia = specific hatred of homosexuals
When those principles do not apply to someone’s behaviour (ie when that internal consistency is broken) then the label can no longer be applied to them. For example…
If I SAY I hate foreigners, but my actions demonstrate I actually hate everyone then the label ‘xenophobe’ is an inaccurate term to describe my behaviour (even if some of the things I say are indeed examples of xenophobic hate speech).
If I SAY I discriminate against gays, but my actions demonstrate I actually discriminate against everyone who is in a sexual relationship (heterosexuals, homosexuals, bisexuals etc), then ‘homophobe’ is an inaccurate term to describe my behaviour (even if some of the things I say are indeed examples of homophobic hate speech).
If I SAY I hate women, but then I go out and murder men AND women (and more men than women), then ‘misogynist’ is an inaccurate term to describe my behaviour (even if some of the things I say are indeed examples of misogynistic hate speech).
I don’t think I can explain it any clearer than that. Describing Elliot Rodger’s behaviour in terms of misogyny is so over-simplistic it is completely misleading.
There are only two reasons to misrepresent the reality of an event with inaccurate terms.
1. You made an honest mistake because you haven’t thought about the subject deeply enough
2. You are being dishonest and are deliberately trying to mischaracterise the event for some ulterior motive
Finally, I have been accused of unfairly defining Elliot Rodger as mentally ill, when he is (according to so many people in these comments) just a misogynist. Examples have been provided of racist tyrants throughout history who also murdered or persecuted their own population etc etc.
I would classify ALL of history’s tyrants and mass murderers as mentally ill (mentally damaged), along with Elliot Rodger. The history books only label them as racists or xenophobes or anti semites (or whatever) because it does not serve the ruling classes’ interests to have the general public grasp the true nature of the ruling classes throughout history – which is a succession of sociopaths/ psychopaths who were the product of abusive and dysfunctional parenting and schooling.
When you understand how sociopaths and psychopaths are actually created (ie through sustained trauma and abuse, particularly in early childhood) you soon realise the childrearing practices of the *aristocracy* as well as the *elite school system* and *the military* have ALL been purposefully designed to create sociopaths and psychopaths of varying degrees.
The majority of the ruling classes throughout history from kings and queens to modern day presidents and prime ministers were (like society’s crazy gunmen) all sociopaths/ psychopaths who’s minds were broken by abuse, trauma and neglect in early childhood. That is not to excuse their actions – it is to UNDERSTAND the root causes of their actions.
By denying the mental health issues these people obviously have you are closing the door to the ONLY way we have to prevent future tyrannical madmen or mass murderers, which is to start focusing on early childhood and specifically parenting. We live in a world were 90% of mother still *admit* to hitting their infants and children! Rich career obsessed women who abandon their infants to strangers within weeks of giving birth when they can well afford to be a full time mother is wilful child neglect. Feminist women are the ONLY group in society who appear regularly on daytime TV defending their moral/ legal right to assault other human beings – and their own children no less!
Looking at the causes of sociopathy/ psychopathy and mental illness in general leads us to some very uncomfortable home truths and THAT is why most people prefer to simply attach over simplistic labels to society’s broken people and pretend they grew up to be the way they were in a vacuum.
The cry of ‘misogyny’ and the label ‘misogynist’ only serves to whip up emotion and animosity between (and amongst) the sexes. It has zero use in understanding what is ACTUALLY GOING ON in the minds of these *obviously* seriously damaged people.
Only by studying how sociopaths and psychopaths (and other variations of those) are formed can we actually protect ourselves and the next generations from being victims of more violence. Science is already extremely clear about how these kinds of people are made. And abusive and traumatic parenting is the main factor. But this does not fit well into the feminist ‘victim narrative’ where women are automatically innocent victims with no agency, and thus have no responsibility for helping to create the often dysfunctional and violent society we live in…… and the feminist ‘threat narrative’ where dangerous, violent, rape-y men just appeared on earth in a teleport machine – rather than being molded and defined by their early childhood experiences at the hands of their parents – not least by their mothers, daycare staff, primary school teachers – who all tend to be women.
This kind of responsibility-free attitude is both disempowering and demeaning to all women.
Anybody who just cries ‘misogyny!’ instead of asking ‘How the hell did his mother and father treat him as an infant and child to cause him to turn out such a mess?” has already shown they have zero interest in understanding how this event happened or how to prevent another similar event from happening again.