A mass shooting in Santa Barbara last night left seven dead, including the man suspected of being the killer. Local authorities say that this chilling video, titled Elliot Rodger’s retribution, “appears to be connected” to the shootings. It is a supremely disturbing real-life villain’s monologue in which a young man, evidently the killer, explains on the day before the massacre why he intends to kill: because women have rejected him.
As the person who sent this video to me this morning noted, it sounds almost like a parody of the misogynistic beliefs and rhetoric that I write about on this blog. His language and his melodramatic tone both echo the writings of many of those young men who consider themselves “incels.” His anger is the same anger we see from the rejected men who lash out with insults and threats on OkCupid when their often crude advances are turned down. He reminds me of every so-called “nice guy” who is inwardly seething with resentment born of sexual entitlement denied. He even, at one point, calls himself a “gentleman.” He also calls himself an “alpha.”
It is clear that his resentment at women was stoked by what I call the “new misogyny” and by steeping himself in at least one online community that reaffirmed his exaggerated, unwarranted sense of victimhood. So far we have evidence that he was a commenter at PUAhate, a site ostensibly designed to critique PUAs but which has degenerated into a haven for misogynistic “incels” and angry trolls. I suspect we will find that he was also a reader of, or a commenter at, some of the other sites I critique on this blog.
For those of you who cannot make it through the video — I found it very hard to watch — here is a transcript of what he said.
Hi, Elliot Rodger here.
Well… this is my last video. It all has to come to this.
Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity. Against all of you.
For the last 8 years of my life, ever since I’ve hit puberty, I’ve been forced to endure an existence of loneliness, rejection, and unfulfilled desires. All because girls have never been attracted to me.
Girls gave their affection, and sex, and love, to other men but never to me.
I’m 22 years old and I’m still a virgin. I’ve never even kissed a girl.
I’ve been through college for two and a half years, more than that actually, and I’m still a virgin.
It has been very torturous.
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.
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 gentlemen.
I will punish all of you for it. (laughs)
On the day of retribution I am going to 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’ve 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 will take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you.
You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one. The true alpha male. (laughs)
Yes, after I’ve annihilated every single girl in the sorority house, I’ll take to the streets of Isla Vista, and slay every single person I see there.
All those popular kids who live such lives of hedonistic pleasure while I’ve had to rot in loneliness for all these years, they’ve all looked down upon me every time I try to go out and join them. They’ve all treated me like a mouse.
Well now, I will be a God compared to you. You will all be animals. You are animals, and I will slaughter you like animals. I will be a God, exacting my retribution, on all those who deserve it.
And you do deserve it, just for the crime of living a better life than me.
All you popular kids. You’ve never accepted me, and now you’ll all pay for it.
And girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you, and to be loved by you. I’ve wanted a girlfriend, I’ve wanted sex, I’ve wanted love, affection, adoration, but you think I’m unworthy of it.
That’s a crime that can never be forgiven.
If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you. (laughs)
You denied me a happy life, and in turn, I will deny all of you life. (laughs) It’s only fair.
I hate all of you, humanity is a disgusting, wretched, depraved species. If I had it in my power, I would stop at nothing, to reduce every single one of you to mountains of skulls and rivers of blood, and rightfully so.
You deserve to be annihilated. And I’ll give that to you.
You never showed me any mercy, and so I will show you none. (laughs)
You force me to suffer all my life, and now I’ll make you all suffer.
I’ve waited a long time for this.
I’ll give you exactly what you deserve.
I will have more on this as the story develops. My heart goes out to the loved ones of all the victims.
Misogyny kills.
EDITED TO ADD: Elliot Rodger seems to have been a commenter on PUAhate, the anti-PUA message board that is as misogynistic and generally awful as the PUAs it critiques. PUAhate has taken itself offline, so all evidence of this may end up scrubbed. I added a paragraph about this.
I will keep updating as I track down more information on this story. Please post anything you find in the comments as well.
EDIT 2: This will be a NO TROLLS thread. Anything gratuitously argumentative or less than respectful of the victims will be removed.
Hello this story has made me very angry and upset and all over tumblr I am seeing people making excuses and trying to show understanding and sympathy for him and shouting blah blah autism and I am sick of living in a world where women can be brutally murdered by entitled men and everyone will rush to defend and excuse them and throw neuroatypical people under the bus in the process and I hate it I hate it.
What boggles the mind is that his family reported him to the police, the police saw his internet postings and videos, came round & talked to him, and left saying what a gentle kind young man he was.
So videos full of virulent misogyny – just the everyday postings of a kind young man? Nothing to worry about here? Really? is the internet so full of this hatred that it is completely normalised?
Actually my first thought there is, how normalized is violent misogyny in the police force that they saw no cause for alarm in his videos?
@historophilia – neurotypical! That’s the word I was looking for. Thank you.
I have said that I pity this guy, and I do. I pity anyone with that much hatred in his heart. That does not mean, however, that I don’t hold him responsible, or that I don’t think what he did is inexcusable. It is inexcusable. I don’t “feel sorry” for him. I’m just very sad for everyone involved, including him.
As a Christian who believes in Heaven, and believes that Hell is being utterly miserable and as far removed from God as possible, I believe he will be in Hell, and that is a very sad prospect, and for that, I do pity him. But I’m not going to lobby to get him into Heaven, because “INJUSTICE!” or “The women should have had sex with him!” or any of those other arguments. They are sickening. He made a conscious choice, planned it out, went into it intentionally and without regret. How can anyone even try to excuse that?!
Sympathy? No. Not for him. All my sympathy right now is for the loved-ones of those who were slain, and for the ones who were injured and had their lives drastically changed by this. Also, I have sympathy for the people who were otherwise touched and terrified, by witnessing it, or by feeling they may have been on the target list. But not for him. Nope.
There is a reason I’m not looking up anything anywhere but here. Here is safe. Thank you, David.
Historophilia – all the hugs. From a king, too, historian-person!
bluecat –
Squeee!
Might be time for some Helen’s Pets videos.
http://youtu.be/7CnXgLbraVE
@titianblue
Did they, by any chance, send male police officers? I do believe the gender of the officers might have made a difference in his response.
OK, I’m off for a while. See y’all later.
Jesus… skimming through the “manifesto”… I can’t get over how really saturday morning cartoon villain-ish evil that guy was. As I’ve said before, if he was a fictional character, nobody would believe it! How can a single person get so self-centered and entitled? Really believing the world is all about him? He literally believed nobody is allowed to have more joy or success than him! But at the same time, he wanted to be special – rich, famous, etc. He even thought he had a right to that.
And numerous times, variations of:
I mean, come on… even the “just” is included. It sounds like somebody parodizing his evil thoughts, but he means that completely honestly. It’s baffling!
Here, too. Self-described “Brilliant perfect revelation”? This reads like something a cartoon villain would cackle about, ffs. How can a real person think like that?
kittehserf, thank you, royal hugs are much appreciated!
You know what I have seen that is the worst thing? All the men rushing to try and argue that this was not motivated by hatred of women, nope no misogyny, he hated men and women equally don’t you know?
Even when we are being murdered by men who hate us we can’t have women at the centre of the conversation.
And a guy that I defriended for this stuff then preceded to send me pm’s telling me I was using “censorship”, “playing the oppression card” and “playing the victim” and basically told me not to complain about oppression to him because he is a gay man.
This is not directed at anyone here who happens to be a white gay man but so often white gay men are happy to gather up the privileges that come with their race and gender and leave other oppressed groups in the dust, and in fact try and use the fact that they are gay to silence people talking about oppression. I have seen so many white gay men accuse women talking about misogyny of homophobia, in fact it has happened to me when I once pointed out that white gay men benefit from misogyny and the oppression of women because they are still men.
Well, of course not. If even one man was killed then he’s obviously more important than any of the women who were the real targets, and we shouldn’t talk about why those women were targeted because it might make some men feel bad.
Yes. Just because gay men don’t relate to women exactly as straight men do, doesn’t mean that no gay men still have the entitlement and misogyny that comes with male socialization. I have heard several stories of women being groped and sexually assaulted by gay men, their defense being “I’m gay so I don’t mean anything by it.”
Also, guess who has perpetrated a huge amount of misogyny within the LGBT movement? Gay male drag queens. Many of them actually fucking mock the existence of us trans women (“Oh my you look like such a fucking tr*nny mess!”). While transmisogynistic cis women in the LGBT movement have also tried to push us away from it, quite a few men have done so as well. Gay male misogyny is extremely pernicious and must be called out at every feasible opportunity.
I’ve read a number of comments online from someone with social skills problems who just cannot seem to realize that his constant whining about women wanting nothing to do with him may just be a major turnoff. Just glancing at this murderer and seeing a bit of his words makes one want to run the other way as fast as possible, but when you are this narcissistic it would never occur to you that your own persona and behavior may be the cause of your problems.
I’ve now read a fair chunk of his “manifesto”, and one thing that’s really leaping out at me is the fact that he seems to have made no actual effort to make women interested in him: he genuinely seems to have believed that wearing obviously expensive clothes and hanging out in notionally “cool” places would cause women to fall over themselves wanting to get to know him.
He talks about “rejection” all the time, but I can’t recall a single instance where it took the form of someone saying no to him after he asked them out – but dozens where it involved women having the temerity not to start a conversation with him or to acknowledge his existence.
He also described an incident whereby he made eye contact with a fellow student but didn’t go any further, and then someone else struck up a conversation with the woman in question, earning his undying hatred for both of them – but as far as I can see he did absolutely nothing, and the woman’s “crime” was (a) not to start talking to him spontaneously, and (b) to respond positively when the other person did what he was kicking himself for not doing.
I’d amassed plenty of rejections by 22, but at least they were proper ones. But I really hope that the people I didn’t talk to in the supermarket this morning didn’t think that I was “rejecting” them.
Shit, how many people did I reject the last time I was in an airport? Must have been hundreds of them. And, I mean, some of them were men!
Unfortunately there is no level of mockery that will ever convey to men who think that way just how ridiculous they’re being.
@bluecat
Of course, if they actually thought men who didn’t get sex would go on murder sprees, the solution wouldn’t be ‘women have sex with men you don’t like’ but ‘lock men up to stop them from fucking murdering anyone’.
But they just want an excuse to control women’s behavior
@titanblue
WIat, fuck that happened?!?!
I don’t think I can watch that video.
But I will say this: my Facebook has been full of people condemning reports that blame his actions on mental illness and/or autism rather than rampant misogyny. My friends get it. I chose good friends.
A few weeks back I made a post on FB about a rape case and a gay male friend of mine pulled the “well yeah but women lie about rape all the time for the money and fame.” When I asked him for an example he said the Duke Lacrosse victim. I defriended him immediately.
@Anarchonist & Michelle – yeah same here. I was considering suicide and couldn’t go through with it because I knew what it would have done to my mother. I got down off the ledge (literally and figuratively).
I hope those cops get fired. And hauled into court, even if it’s only on civil charges.
He talks about “rejection” all the time, but I can’t recall a single instance where it took the form of someone saying no to him after he asked them out – but dozens where it involved women having the temerity not to start a conversation with him or to acknowledge his existence.
This is one of the (smaller, frankly) holes in the “if only women had slept with him” argument–even if they were willing to sleep with this guy purely for terrorism prevention purposes, how the hell would they have KNOWN to? It’s pretty hard to tell the difference between “guy sitting silently in the corner because he wants to be left alone” and “guy sitting silently in the corner because he’s angry you haven’t already come up to him and offered him sex.”
I’m not sure what to think of the “cops came by and left thinking he was a nice boy” thing. Obviously the “nice boy” is hideously wrong, but if at that time they didn’t see any weapons or specific plans for violence… they can’t actually arrest someone for being a horrible person. That would set some really bad precedents for the treatment of people who weren’t mass murderers.
Adds “acquire psychic abilities” to the list of Things that Nice Girls Do that, as a woman, I am constantly focused upon fulfilling.
BTW, hi Cliff!
@Ally, yes and white gay men are super racist a lot of the time as well.
Oh and in a slight ray of hope, I found a mainstream news article actually highlighting that hatred of women is the issue here and calling out the narrative of ableism in the media coverage so far: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/24/elliot-rodgers-california-shooting-mental-health-misogyny
Augh. The media here (the UK) have leapt all over the mental illness and gun control angles with this and generally buried the misogyny way down the page (it looks like one of the police officers in the case gave a statement mentioning mental illness without much evidence and they’ve all jumped on that?). There’s been no reference that I’ve come across to Rodger’s PUA involvement, just vague mentions of ‘rejection by women’ as a possible motivation.
Apart from the general shittiness of equating mental illness with violence…haven’t PUAs specifically recommended that their fanboys target women with mental illness (‘c***y chicks are great in bed’, and all that catshit)?
I had a really nice walk in the woods this morning; I think I’d like to go and live there for a while.
That’s nothing new. Hell, I just heard a few days ago that I should’ve known that the guy who wanted to be my workout buddy was actually going to contact me three times in the course of half an hour and try to get me to “hang out” with him. Because nobody could possibly want my phone number to actually start a workout!
Even though actually with my lifestyle, I DO give out my phone number a chunk because it’s the only way to rig up rides to meetings and cons. But I should totally be able to tell the creepers from the non-creepers with my super-intuition powers!
You’d think that being mentally ill would mean people would have lower expectations, but no.