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.
So we should just shut up about the misogyny that led this guy to kill is what you’re saying? Fuck off, go sit and have think about the life choices you’ve made that led you to say this utter codswallop.
Titianblue
I agree entirely, we cross posted; I had just sat there, read my post and hit myself over the head with the nearest blunt instrument…
@vegwell
Much citation very believe so fuck off.
re: Mental illness and violence
I wish I could remember the thread, but awhile back folks are discussing this, and Argent had some good research that showed that people with a mental illness were not more likely to be violent than people without a mental illness; but a that other co-morbid factors did increase the likihood of commuting violence. Those co-morbid factors being, IIRC, having co-occurring substance abuse and being a young man. So, no, having a mental illness does not make a person more likely to commit violence. Again, I wish I could remember the thread because Argenti linked the articles.
From my searching I found this:
Source.
NO ONE is entitled to a woman’s body.
In fact, NO ONE, is entitled to aything in this world
However, if you don’t get hot smoking babes, hook ups, and have hot girlfriends, you are a loser as a man. People will look down on you, they won’t give any considerations to your opinions, and you will be expected to always go along with what the guys with hot girls say in a social situation. If you challenge anything they say in a social situation you are blamed for creating tension and stepping out of line.
Bottom line, men respect men who get the babes, and look down on those who don’t. Women want to fuck guys that get hot girls, and are not attracted to guys who don’t get babes. Try it out, make out with a hot girl in a bar, or be seen flirting with a hottie in a bar, and watch all the other girls in the bar start approaching you. Walk in to a bar with a cock farm or beta males and watch all the girls avoid you.
No point in further discussion because this is all biological andto claim it is cultural is naive and out of touch with reality. Accept it people. No one is entitled to anything, but if you don’t get girls, your life will be pain and you WILL be viewed as pathetic by other people
“I find the point of view on this thread warped and really, really, reaching. Yes, Elliot Rodger had internalized a lot of misogynist materials he had read. Yes, there are misogynist groups out there on the internet, just like there are homophobic groups, and racist groups, etc. However, the vast majority of these people, though they are spewing vile words and ideas, do not kill people. We can use this opportunity to shine the spotlight on this hateful neer do wells, and bring their crazy out into the light of day.”
In his vidoes, Rodger does indeed come off as mentally ill. He claims that women rejected him left and right, yet he never actually approached them, which makes him seem delusional and possibly paranoid, However, you cannot deny the possibility that “game” and misogynistic online forums may have enabled his worst traits. Plus, he was able communicate with people who encouraged his hateful ways thinking and later hailed him as a hero. Since he claimed to live a lonely, friendless existence, he probably had more contact with people on PUAhate than anyone in the real World.
I also think that online misogyny is an issue, even if that does not kill people. There is a disturbingly large number of people who symphatises with Rodger in his hateful rants against women on youtube. and there are dozens of misogynistic pua/manosphere that encourage hateful ways of thnking towars women. Return of Kings, a hategroup disguised as a selfhelp site for men has almost 9000 fans. The fact that so many people symphatise with misogynists is depressing.
@ Ethan: Yeah, unless, for example, you’re gay or asexual. I heard, sometimes there are men, that aren’t interested in women. Oh noes!
Also, from your point of view, one can come to two conclusions. One would be, that every guy should instantly get a hot girlfriend. The other is, that maybe guys like you should stop looking down on single guys (or every other guy) that don’t treat women as an accessoire to gain respect from fellow men. But hey, that’s just silly me, being naive as ever.
I can’t speak for everyone else but I know lots of guys who don’t fuck a constant stream of “10’s” who are perfectly happy, have many friends and are generally well respected by others.
I’m going to have give your comment a big fat “citation needed” especially since you claim human males are divided into alphas and betas. A claim that is completely unsupported by science (evo psych isn’t a science).
Also, fuck you for coming dangerously close to sympathizing with Rodgers.
Ethan: So, you think it’s a really good idea to come into a thread about a man who killed 6 innocent people and injured 13 others because he hated women with “but not having sex with hot women makes your life so haaaard!”
Says who?
Who are these people? If they are the kind of people who judge you and your opinions based on hot they think your girlfriend is, then they sound like awful, stupid, petty people who I wouldn’t want to hang out with. Or give their opinions much weight, either.
Ah, I see. One, that’s awful sexist against men, don’t you think, that the only thing that they use to judge their fellow men is how “hot” their girlfriends are? Two, that sounds an awful lot like its these men who need to face reality and change their thinking, not us.
Damn. I’m so sick of this shit. Really, all women only want to have sex with men who have sex with “hot girls.” All of them. And this is a horrible injustice and the worse thing in the world. A lot worse than a man shooting people because he hated women because women he thought were “hot” didn’t just throw themselves at his feet and beg him to fuck them but instead were with other guys.
Oh, wait.
…well, this is all a messy turd of wrong. And completely untrue. And is just about the opposite of my experience in life.
Stevie,
Don’t hurt yourself 🙂
Oh good, Ethan is here to tell us that men are the only actual people, with women merely being either “hot babe” accessories to impress other men or – well, not in existence actually. Thanks, Ethan. That’s such an original viewpoint. /sarcasm
And “cock farm”? Really? Is that where the attack chickens? breed? Erin, is that you?
Titianblue,
We’ll know if he’s Erin if he starts posting a million times and repeatedly failing to stick to the flounce.
I was wondering what a cock farm is supposed to be. I figured it might be a really, really stupid euphemism for gay man.
I’ve been trying to avoid the internet, and I’ll probably disappear again after this comment, because, frankly, I’d rather be gardening, playing with my dog, and playing video games than reading about depressing shit that I really shouldn’t be surprised about, but Ethan seems to require a bit of advice.
Ethan,
You should not require outside validation in order to be able to view yourself as a human and a person with value and worth. That said, if you feel the need for some validation, acknowledgement and/or praise from other people (as many people often do), please, please, please, don’t do it by reducing other people (namely, women) into objects and hurting them. Take up a hobby, like painting, or be good at your job, or work on being a good supportive friend. Please don’t use other people as interchangeable fashion accessories. Please don’t claim that the attitude that women are trophies and have no value outside of their trophy status is somehow inevitable or healthy.
If you have friends who do this, may I suggest finding better friends. Anyone who would judge you based on the relative attractiveness of the person you are dating isn’t a very good friend, or a very good person.
Am not going to deal with this Ethan dude but just FYI FB finally did take down that horrible page: http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2014/05/27/eliot-rodger-facebook-youtube/9622951/
Wow. Toxic. A point of view derived from intense insecurity about your own masculinity.
“No point in further discussion because this is all biological andto claim it is cultural is naive and out of touch with reality. Accept it people. No one is entitled to anything, but if you don’t get girls, your life will be pain and you WILL be viewed as pathetic by other people.”
Also, it sounds like Ethan hangs out with a bunch of assholes.
Gosh, Ethan is boring.
Ethan, you may be an evopsych troll but do you SPEAK SEVEN LANGUAGES?
@leah
Him ‘coming off’ as mentally ill means nothing, stop armchair diagnosing, find a citation, fuck off, ect.
Aren’t women entitled to their own bodies, then?
What an Everest-challenging pile of absolute twaddle. I’ve always gravitated towards women who tend more towards being highly intelligent and witty than “hot” and “smoking” (aside from the couple who actually did smoke), and it’s never done me any social damage at all. Quite the reverse, in fact.
If you genuinely believe this crap, I feel desperately sorry for you, because either you have no social life at all or it’s limited to people who also believe this crap, thus creating an endlessly self-fulfilling prophecy. I really hope you’re too young and immature to know better, as the alternative is frankly depressing.
Well, no. Any more than if I’d said “The moon is made of green cheese and I’m not going to back down”. Because if you post asinine drivel on this scale, there are times when further discussion is indeed pretty worthless.
Why “girls”? Why not “women”? And, more pertinently, why do I view you as pathetic even though I have absolutely no idea about the state of your love life?
Well, on the off chance that Ethan really exists, I would like to point out that no one has ever produced any scientific evidence to support this drivel. There are species in which the concept of an alpha male may be relevant, but humanity isn’t one of them; if Ethan spent more time studying and less time regurgitating garbage from the web he would not only improve his chances of getting a job but also improve his chances of getting a girlfriend.
Incidentally, if the sole purpose of a guy trying to acquire a hot girlfriend is to impress other guys then said guy may need to consider the possibility that he’s not heterosexual…
@Ethan
If you really believe that shit you posted, then you have the “honour” of being one of the most pathetic people I’ve heard about all day.
So sorry your life sucks. If you’d pull your head out of your ass, you might see that the world isn’t really like this.
However, if you don’t get hot smoking babes, hook ups, and have hot girlfriends, you are a loser as a man. People will look down on you, they won’t give any considerations to your opinions, and you will be expected to always go along with what the guys with hot girls say in a social situation. If you challenge anything they say in a social situation you are blamed for creating tension and stepping out of line.
Bottom line, men respect men who get the babes, and look down on those who don’t. Women want to fuck guys that get hot girls, and are not attracted to guys who don’t get babes. Try it out, make out with a hot girl in a bar, or be seen flirting with a hottie in a bar, and watch all the other girls in the bar start approaching you. Walk in to a bar with a cock farm or beta males and watch all the girls avoid you.
No point in further discussion because this is all biological andto claim it is cultural is naive and out of touch with reality. Accept it people. No one is entitled to anything, but if you don’t get girls, your life will be pain and you WILL be viewed as pathetic by other people.
Remember, everyone, Eliot Rodger was a lone nut with no connection to the broader misogyny in his culture. The attitudes that inspired him to kill aren’t shared by other people, sane people. You certainly can’t go online and find dozens of men posting similar aggrieved rants and encouraging each other to see women as objects that exist to serve and gratify men. Only Rodger, and maybe a few other total cray-crays, are so obsessed with fantasies of sex and status, and so lacking in empathy, that they see mass murder as insignificant compared to their own need to “get the babes,” and refuse to accept that there might be anything wrong with thinking this way. His manifesto isn’t just a slightly more extreme version of the stuff MRAs post on a daily basis. Nope.
As long as we’re all clear.
Ethan, have you ever taken an etholology, sociobiology, evolution, sociology, or psychology class in your life?
Current peer reviewed literature is not in accordance with your claims.
Also, my anecdotal experience is not in accordance either.
Have you considered finding some friends who are not shallow and judgmental jerks? Volunteering is generally a great way to meet awesome folks, who aren’t convinced everything revolves around getting laid.
Hobbies are also a great way to meet interesting people. Just be polite, and people are generally polite back.
Please, drop evotruths learned from blogs from all future posts. They just make biologists laugh, because assfax.
Funny thing: My dad didn’t get married till his 30’s. He was a virgin son of a preacher man, literally, who never drank anything harder than wine.
Somehow, he was pretty well liked and very well respected by all the engineers at the Power Plant and all the guys on the ambulance/rescue squad.
Funny. It seems being genuinely polite to strangers, playing fun jokes on close friends (like putting the Books of Order out of order, and posting a warning sign), and being competent in your field can earn good people’s respect and friendship, without needing a decorative pretty lady.
It also seems to me, that those things were what made my mother interested, too.
I can come up with any number of similar anecdotes about my own family and friends. As, I suspect, can pretty much every other regular here.
But what’s so peculiarly pointless about Ethan’s burbling is that he’s picked completely the wrong audience. Just how likely is a blog whose commentariat is largely female to respond favourably to something as self-evidently wrongheaded as “Women want to fuck guys that get hot girls, and are not attracted to guys who don’t get babes.”?
(In fact, in my experience the exact opposite is true, but I suspect the women I hang out with are a fair bit more intelligent and independently-minded than the caricatures being peddled by Ethan here.)