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Why Elliot Rodger's misogyny matters

A chart posted by Elliot Rodger, giving his chilling spin on a manosphere meme depicting supposed female "hypergamy"
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.

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weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

19

Marie
10 years ago

twenty! 😀

Jules
Jules
10 years ago

“Also, privilege doesn’t work like that. If you experience, idk classism or wahtever, and are a man, you still benefit from male privilege, even though you aren’t privieged in one aspect.”

Is it not possible to think that some women have more privilege than some men? whats the point of debating privilege then because literally most of us have probably lacked or gained it from time to time.

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

Also none of those links said all primates are patriarchal so how can it be a biotruth that chimpanzees mean patriarchy is ingrained in human biology?

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

21

Marie
10 years ago

@jules

::headdesk::

Is it not possible to think that some women have more privilege than some men? whats the point of debating privilege then because literally most of us have probably lacked or gained it from time to time.

Ohmigod you are so missing the point.

women can have privilege over men.

but not on the basis of being women.

and you’re whole ‘I bet I’m less privileged than all of you’ comment was really weird, wrong, and derailing as hell.

You’re being called out for misogyny, you, as a man, benefit from misogyny, what privileges you have/don’t have are not relevant at the moment.

Marie
10 years ago

22

Fade
10 years ago

23

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

If people are going to give the troll links let’s not send him over to any womanist or class-focused blogs, yeah? I know it might get rid of him for a while, but it’s like re-gifting last year’s fruitcake. It’s just not nice.

Jules
Jules
10 years ago

“Tolerance doesn’t mean accepting any have-baked, unsubstantiated claim about – what exactly are you trying to argue again for, Jules? That men as inherently violent? That Rodger wasn’t motivated by misogyny? That male entitlement isn’t a real thing that causes real damage? Because chimpanzees? ”

-I didn’t say accept my argument, but to leave room for one.

How I see this:
– Humans are inherently violent, males specifically alpha’s show more violence.
– Rodger was motivated by jealousy, anger and a sense of entitlement which according to him other successful men fueled in him.
– Male entitlement is real although I dont see it as men inherently feeling entitled to women. I see it as men being pressured to get married and to start a family. Also women. So I see both men and women feeling entitled to having a family. Difference being that this guy was mental for a while before he commit-ed these crimes. He never got help, so his profile sounds like a typical schizo believing his own delusions. At that point he might as well claim to be a prophet with an important agenda which he kind of did.

weirwoodtreehugger
10 years ago

I wasn’t trying to foist him onto the comment sections, but point taken. Anyway this is a relevant quote. Maybe it will keep him away

Also, let me be blunt about this: I think there’s a relatively small but non-trivial number of people arguing the wealth/class thing who believe that if they can only and simply make this all about wealth and class, then they can flat-out deny (or at least hugely mitigate) the idea that the US in particular still has issues with race, sexuality and gender, and that directly related to that, they have unearned advantages as straight white males. Well, that’s just stupid, and I’m not in the least inclined to indulge these folks in their particular fantasy.

Kim
Kim
10 years ago

I agree with that yes. All I’m saying is that men are under pressure by society to think that way. Don’t women have a role in this pressure at all?

For fuck’s sake, this is exactly what we’re saying. There is something wrong with society. It’s called institutional misogyny and patriachy. Some of it is internalised misogyny coming from women. We’d like it to change.

(sorry to mammoths if this has been said already, I am behind in the thread but it annoys me so much when people are so clueless)

Marie
10 years ago

@Jules

Difference being that this guy was mental for a while before he commit-ed these crimes. He never got help, so his profile sounds like a typical schizo believing his own delusions.

1) citation motherfucking needed
2) fuck you and your ableism
3) so now you’re distancing yourself from him by acting like it was mental illness, instead of misogyny. FUck you again.

Jules
Jules
10 years ago

“1) citation motherfucking needed
2) fuck you and your ableism
3) so now you’re distancing yourself from him by acting like it was mental illness, instead of misogyny. FUck you again.”

you think this guy was normal? He had multiple therapists. What fucking citation? ?i wasn’t his therapist. I’m going by what his relatives are saying…

http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2014/05/elliot_rodger_therapists_why_did_they_and_law_enforcement_fail_to_recognize.html

Jules
Jules
10 years ago

“For fuck’s sake, this is exactly what we’re saying. There is something wrong with society. It’s called institutional misogyny and patriachy. Some of it is internalised misogyny coming from women. We’d like it to change. ”

In other words women who pressure a man to get married and have kids are misogynists internally?

Jules
Jules
10 years ago

“You obviously know nothing about schizophrenia. Fuck you.”

Have you read what he wrote? not just some of it all of it??? Misogyny is maybe 20 percent of it, he talks about ruling over everyone. Putting people into work camps etc….

cassandrakitty
cassandrakitty
10 years ago

Have a video of a fox getting belly rubs, everyone.

Marie
10 years ago

@jules

you’re ass is not a citation, his family is not a diagonsis, you can’t just say that it’s not misogyny because you don’t like the idea, fuck off, ect.

pecunium
10 years ago

Jules: The only reason I said that is because the argument was male violence is the result of culture.

What you said was, “ALL PRIMATES ACT IN A CERTAIN WAY”.

That was bullshit.

Saying you didn’t say that, is a lie.

It wouldn’t be a lie if you said, “I make a mistake, I meant to say, “x” and here is the research* to support the claim I am now making.”

Until then you are nothing but an asshole who like to lie to people when he is shown to be full of shit (a common state for assholes).

*Newspaper and magazine articles ARE NOT research.

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

– Humans are inherently violent, males specifically alpha’s show more violence.

If men are especially, inherently violent, then that’s a great argument for locking all men up and throwing away the key.

– Rodger was motivated by jealousy, anger and a sense of entitlement which according to him other successful men fueled in him.

No, Rodger was motivated by hatred for women for not sleeping with him. He told us this over and over again in his videos and his manifesto. He was, indeed, jealous of men, but because they had girlfriends and he didn’t.

– Male entitlement is real although I dont see it as men inherently feeling entitled to women.

You don’t see it. Of course not. Women have told you about their all-too-common experiences with male entitlement, but you don’t see it.

See, that right there? That’s part of the problem.

I see it as men being pressured to get married and to start a family. Also women. So I see both men and women feeling entitled to having a family.

We are talking about men feeling entitled to use women’s bodies as they see fit. We are talking about women being seen as not having bodily autonomy. We are talking women being seen as objects. And you think this is all about having a family? Yeah, both men and women can want to have a committed partner and raise a family, and yeah, society does pressure men and women to fit into this heteronormative nuclear family mold, but that doesn’t negate male entitlement. And “wanting” is not the same as “entitlement.”

Difference being that this guy was mental for a while before he commit-ed these crimes. He never got help, so his profile sounds like a typical schizo believing his own delusions. At that point he might as well claim to be a prophet with an important agenda which he kind of did.

Aaaargh! No, you have no idea if Rodger had a mental illness or not. “Typical schizo?” No, just no; you are not a psychiatrist and can’t make those kind of determinations. Hatred and violence are not a mental illness; and the mentally are not more prone to violence.

Ally S
10 years ago

If people are going to give the troll links let’s not send him over to any womanist or class-focused blogs, yeah? I know it might get rid of him for a while, but it’s like re-gifting last year’s fruitcake. It’s just not nice.

Yeah, I only suggested an author. Those blogs already have more than enough trolls – they don’t need one more.

LBT (with an open writeathon!)

RE: auggziliary

I’m trying to get rid of freckles

I didn’t know that was POSSIBLE.

RE: Jules

Im the minority on this board

save the guilt trips. They dont work on me.

I don’t want you to feel guilty. I want you to GO AWAY. I couldn’t care less how you feel.

Im willing to bet you had more privilege than me,

*SNRRRRRRK* Child, I ain’t playing Oppression Olympics with you. That’s a fool’s game.

And you don’t know jack shit about schizophrenia either. Big surprise. See, the reason you’re getting insulted and mocked (which, might I add, is what our site is about, mocking misogyny) is because all day, you’re pulling the equivalent of walking into a high-level class about philosophy and going, “Hey guys, have you ever thought about what if the blue YOU see isn’t the blue I see?” and then waiting for us to fall all over your genius.

What you are saying is trite, simplistic bullshit. But sure, go ahead and Internet diagnose a stranger that you’ve read a couple things about online. Sure, that totally makes you sound knowledgeable.

Be honest, Jules. You’re fourteen, aren’t you?

LBT (with an open writeathon!)

You know, I really wish people wouldn’t think of axe-murderers with schizophrenia and they’d know more folks like John Nash who never harmed anybody and went about their lives as best they could.

Seriously, my sympathy to schizophrenic folks. They are probably the folks most stereotyped as dangerous. Poor bastards.

sparky
sparky
10 years ago

Have you read what he wrote? not just some of it all of it??? Misogyny is maybe 20 percent of it, he talks about ruling over everyone. Putting people into work camps etc….

No, women. He talked about putting women into concentration camps and watching as they starved.

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