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.
Having an argument with someone about whether this individual would have “cracked” and killed people for some other reason if he’d not been affiliated with the MRM.
@marinerachel
What like a reason besides entitlment? Or if he were associate not with the mrm?
More stuff from SPLC:
http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2014/05/24/shooting-suspect-elliot-rodgers-misogynistic-posts-point-to-motive/
Yeah, that’s what he wanted. That women fear him. Ugh. You literally couldn’t design a fictional villain as vile and reprehensible as this piece of shit. Nobody would take such fiction seriously!
Octo – OF COURSE HE WAS A FUCKING RACIST. WHAT A SURPRISE.
@marinerachel, why? Are they trying to absolve the MRM or to downplay his misogyny by saying if it hadn’t been this hate it would have been another?
They’re discussing his mental state on CNN now and the MRA/PUA and his hatred of women has been discussed there.
Double fuck this raging asshole titty-baby. Mr. HK is not an Asian piece of shit nor is he disgustingly ugly.
Disgustingly ugly is someone who shoots people because he can’t get laid.
All I can say is I hope there are legos in Hell. Thousands of massive tubs of legos, just for stepping on.
@Octo, dear gods, those quotes! The rage at “lesser” men combined with the objectification of the “hot white girls”.
Still upset but I’m going out for Mexican food and mojitos (Cuban, not Mexican I know but I like them better than margaritas and the restaurant serves them).
Hopefully the cheese + alcohol combo will make the world seem a little nicer.
Oh, I think entitlement and it’s effect on his being is key. Without the influence of the MRM though would he not have found something else to feel horribly disadvantaged with regards to? Like Brievik, one of whose main complaints was having cultural identity snatch from him by immigrants and Muslims? It ultimately doesn’t matter because we’re talking about hate movements which rise from the ashes of entitlement and in response to others being given equal rights. Doesn’t matter which hate group this little asshole aligned himself with. It’s all about entitlement.
I’m not going to pull the mental illness card but I will say this kid’s thought processes were FUCKED UP and that’s not a disease. That’s the result of socialisation. His head was screwed on sideways, not because of any mental illness, but because of the attitudes and ideas that formed his way of thinking and identity.
@titianblue, nah, not at all. Talking with a rad feminist dude. He’s just arguing the vast majority of entitled little assholes don’t go on to murder, which is, of course, true, and that this kid’s personality obviously played a role in his demise as a mass murderer. That’s of course not to say that the MRM isn’t uber-toxic and doesn’t attract such individuals and it certainly doesn’t suggest entitlement doesn’t result in these attitudes. In that regard, this kid wasn’t an outlier at all. In the regard that he went full-on, he is though.
Some do, though, and I wonder how many of them go on to abuse and/or rape, though.
I can’t say I’m surprised that the MRM has influenced this guy. This is how the Men’s Human Rights Movement ‘helps’ men? I weep for those left behind in this tragedy. I can’t imagine the pain of the families and friends. I’m in shock.
Reblogged this on Dreams of the Shining Horizon and commented:
Will say more on this soon.
And you’ll get no argument from either of us about that.
I’m exhausted by the ableism all over my facebook feed, the suggestions that he “just needed a friend,” even the assertions that it’s all the fault of the dreaded PARTICIPATION TROPHY!
Can we ever just have a conversation about the type of violence which seems to only be committed by men, the culture that feeds their entitlement over the bodies of women, and the refusal of law enforcement to take credible threats seriously? Oh no, he’s a affluent white dude so he was probably just TOO CRAZY TO FUNCTION, that’s the only possible explanation. Go fuck yaself.
@lionicle
::offers hugs::
I don’t have the energy to deal with the ableist people right now.
Rambling, but I think the reason so often the problem is put on mentally ill people is that it’s either that, or admit that white men tend to murder a fuck of a lot. And lots of people would rather throw already marginalized people under a bus (mentally ill people) than admit the problem is entitlement among privilged people.
Shudder. Finding bodies in his apartment makes it worse, and I didn’t know it was possible for it to be worse.
I don’t suppose that this guy never got dates because women correctly divined that if they went back to his apartment, he would murder them?
Here’s one bit I’m particularly disliking: so they think I should have had sex with this guy and his ilk? That would have been a reasonable solution?
But of course not. They have a whole bunch of horrible things to say if I do have sex with guys like him too.
My thoughts exactly.
I just had to listen to his entire video, wondering what triggered his insanity in full. And it’s nothing that I haven’t heard before. He seemed to be living a life of luxury, so much so that he was able to obsess about his dick, not about what he was going to eat tomorrow or even pay the bills, like many an American. He came across as a spoiled, egotistic, self-entitled kid, whose misogyny is shared by the manosphere — more or less.
I’ve definitely heard anti-fems/anti-women guys adding this complaint to their issues. A lot of them are sexually frustrated and, rather than blaming themselves for it, they blame females. Yet for much of the world, it’s like this in one form or another. That’s why rape culture still exists, that’s why Yemen females are sold off to marry at such a young age — because perverts out there don’t want to have to experience what Elliot experienced. They want to be so in control of females so as to satisfy those carnal urges early on.
I say this because I recognize the parallels with his discontent to those the world over. Violence against women has something to do with male ego, in part. It has something to do with unsatisfied urges and a sense of self-entitlement to it. It has something to do with guys putting their sexual desires before the liberties and existence of females, so much so to the point of killing them with a gun, with stones during an honor killing or sacrificing virgins to their god. The basic attitude is — ‘Females are the property of a man’s dick. He is entitled to it. Yet if he can’t have her, no one will.’
It’s selfishness, chauvinism, misogyny and gynophobia at it’s core. And it’s the reason many a female, the world over, have reason to distrust males.
I’m not ready to listen to the video.
As a female college student in California, I’m now terrified to go to on campus and I don’t even go to Santa Barbra. This whole thing has been sickening.
I’m just grateful for this place not being virulently awful about it like every other comment section I’ve glanced at. I’ve legitimately seen people hold this up as an example of why gun control is useless and should be abolished, people rambling about how violent “leftists” are, saying that people who think this has anything to do with misogyny are ~sexist against men~, and my ‘favorite’, if you bring up how many mass shooters have been white men you’ll instantly get countered with people capslocking about the number of crimes committed by black men.