I have mixed feelings about how to discuss mass killers who leave manifestos explaining their behavior. In a way, I wish we could all collectively ignore their writings and never even mention their names. For example, in all my writings about the Newtown massacres, I have tried to avoid mentioning the shooter’s name. Why enlarge his notoriety when notoriety was his motivation for the attack? I feel the same about the guy who just shot up the UC-Santa Barbara campus. Shortly before he went on his rampage, he sent an online friend a 137-page manifesto explaining why he felt compelled to slaughter innocent people. By reading his manifesto, we are giving him exactly what he wanted. Yet, we do want to understand these killers, if only so we have a better chance of protecting ourselves against them in the future. In this case, the guy admits that jealousy and envy basically ruled his world from about the time he reached 4th Grade and realized that he was the shortest kid in his class. He also claims to have suffered from bullying, which is probably the most common theme with these cases. But, in the end, the guy was just bug-nuts.
I am not part of the human race. Humanity has rejected me. The females of the human species have never wanted to mate with me, so how could I possibly consider myself part of humanity? Humanity has never accepted me among them, and now I know why. I am more than human. I am superior to them all. I am Elliot Rodger… Magnificent, glorious, supreme, eminent… Divine! I am the closest thing there is to a living god. Humanity is a disgusting, depraved, and evil species. It is my purpose to punish them all. I will purify the world of everything that is wrong with it. On the Day of Retribution, I will truly be a powerful god, punishing everyone I deem to be impure and depraved.
So, yeah, we can learn something from his manifesto, but the actual person is best left forgotten so as to not to encourage the next maniac.
Just like Breivik, a 141 page manifesto and expecting one day of “fame.” Policemen were at his house after a warning of the very troubling YouTube videos. An interview of a few minutes outside his home …
Actually that seems to be a pretty understandable reaction if he really was rejected like that.
NO, IT’S NOT:
If a woman doesn’t want to date or kiss some guy, that doesn’t give the guy the right to kill or rape her. Life has difficulties and disappointments — learn to deal with it without violently lashing out at others.
Yes,
how dare those women actually have A CHOICE as to whom they kiss and date.
So, no choice for you – women.
Just lay there for the guy, after all, he wants YOU and that’s all that matters.
What you want women just doesn’t matter.
Imagine if some dude wrote a manifesto then shot up some corporate headquarters because he couldn’t get a job due to employers actually having a choice as to whom they hire.
Actually, I wonder why we don’t see that happen more often in today’s economy.
I believe (hope?) this was a tongue-in-cheek post, although this isn’t something that I would be cheeky about.
Especially since there were men on those MRA forums within minutes of the news story breaking defending, even applauding what he did.
Seriously? Are MRA forums related to those that championed Koresh and/or the OKC bomber?
Are they related to the Wikipedia Men’s Rights entry?
One of those two dudes punched out an ex-girlfriend and the other is clueless about relationships.
Yep. That’s them. Not sure that they’re directly related to Warren Farrell, but most certainly the same mindset.
Or the disgusting misogynist website A Voice for Men
Hey — a friend (female) on meeting one of those two guys said, “He seems okay.” I said, “Ya think?” After thirty minutes of social chit-chat, my friend whispered to me, “I loathe him,” and I smiled, “Now you get it.”
Examples found:
Vixen Strangely: Men Who Hate Women
Saw it yesterday. So sad because the most beautiful blond women — the ones he wanted — would have nothing to do with him.
The thinking behind these MRA men that led to one killing was crafted by those original writers. One of whom I briefly worked for. What I failed to see back then was how attractive his narcissistic, male privilege thoughts would be attractive to younger men.
Relax, I meant if you feel rejected telling yourself you are really above the rejectors better, superior, more virtuous etc. is understandable. Not that the violence was acceptable.
I think everyone was instantly worked up thinking you meant that if some guy can’t get laid, it’s understandable that he might go and rape a woman, or murder people.
By reading the short snippet of his writing, the guy is clearly mentally disturbed and likely has had a break with reality. If he doesn’t consider himself a human being, then killing a bunch of human beings would have as much moral meaning as a person killing a non-human, such as a bug, or a goat.
It’s called psychosis.
I get what you meant. You’re just commenting on the state of mind. The people who want to punch him in the face, though…seems pretty ignorant in my mind. Do they also want to punch someone with paranoid schizophrenia for their thoughts and behaviours?
He complained, as I understand, that women preferred “brutes”. Well, actually, those women were demonstrating good judgement even if they picked an repeat-offender wife beater because, awful as such people are, they’re a lot less bad than he was.
It’s not something that one should do, but it should be possible for a reasonable person to have empathy and understand what is going through his head. That you can have empathy does not mean that you approve.
Bullshit.
No one is entitled to a girlfriend (or a boyfriend for that matter). You EARN a girl/boyfriend. This “nice guy” shit just burns me up: nothing but self-aggrandizing, self-pitying whining.
I watched a few seconds of his video and wanted to punch him in his stupid face.
His family was pretty wealthy apparently. A couple of different houses in pricey places.
And he couldn’t get a social climbing girlfriend? How bad was he? I’ve seen women attach themselves to real slime because they had money or pedigree.
An adult and not even kissed? Really bad sign. I’m not proud of the lies I told in High School but there is always some girl, not so pretty, shy, maybe overweight, who would kill (almost literally) for a boyfriend, any boyfriend. H.S. girls can be very vicious to each other, as I’m sure at least half of you realize. I remember one girl in particular, overweight by the standards of the ’60s, totally unremarkable today, who wore me on her arm like a trophy. It reminds me of Bob Seeger’s Night Moves, “I used her. She used me. Neither of us cared. We were getting our share.”
Back to the topic, this guy was REALLY a social outcast. I suspect his creepiness came through and even the totally desperate would not go out with him.
That reminds me of the old joke: How is a fat girl like a moped? They’re both fun to ride, but you wouldn’t want your friends to see you on one.
But, yeah, he was a social outcast. An undersized nerdy kid who couldn’t get his peers to share his interests in Star Wars and World of Warcraft. Bullied to the point of waiting for the hallways to clear before he could walk to class. Crying and begging his mother not to send him back because of how ostracized he felt at school.
His manifesto reads like he lived the life of the prototypical nerd you see on television.
Yeah, too stupid to get any girl. Too stupid to breed.
Well, no, it’s not an understandable reaction to rejection. I really don’t think mass murder is an understandable reaction to anythig, let alone completely mundane experiences like someone you’re attracted to deciding that they don’t want to date you. Nobody owed this guy shit–this guy who was living in an apartment he didn’t have to pay for, and who was driving around in a BMW in his early 20s.
Also, it’s not like the “nice guy” who decides to kill a lot of people because a woman isn’t there to fuck him every time he gets the urge is going to be a reliable judge of character. I don’t want to get too crazy here, but a dude like that might just overreact to minor slights and nurse grudges to an extent completely out of proportion with anything that was done to him.
Lastly, it’s not exactly surprising that women weren’t lining up to date the local Travis Bickle wannabe.
These dudes that feel entitled to kill and maim others because the world doesn’t recognize just how special and exceptional they are for merely being and not doing anything even within the abilities almost everyone, manage to confirm why others don’t respond favorably to them. Although from a macro-perspective, they don’t behave all that differently from those that use military violence against those that don’t do whatever a government demands of them. So, not so much “bug-nuts” as socialized for a job far beyond anything they will ever get.
His feelings are pretty rampant and widespread; most people who share them just don’t happen to go killing people over it.
The term “Friendzone’d” comes to mind; a word with misogyny inherent in its meaning.
“Friendzone’d” is just a condition where a man or woman has feelings for someone who doesn’t have them back, and that person knows of the feelings and uses them to use the person for a variety of things.
I don’t think there’s anything inherently misogynistic about the term or the condition. Men do have more testosterone and are more violent, generally speaking. That is likely the reason why men are inherently more violent than women.
But I’m sure in the last 250,000 years or so a woman has been “Friendzone’d” by a man.
No, the term reflects back to entitlement that men have about women. They see them as machines or robots: if I just put money in them, eventually I’ll get teh secks. It’s inherently misogynist because they don’t see women as people, but commodities for sex.
It’s perfectly fine to want to fuck your friend and after you’re rebuffed to politely say “I don’t think we can be friends right now until I get over the rejection.” But that’s not how they view the world, or their friends.
http://www.salon.com/2013/10/12/6_reasons_the_friend_zone_needs_to_die/
See also Vixen’s link I posted above. The first first screen shot’d tweet says “Well girls, keep that in [mind] the next time you friendzone somebody!”
None of that makes the condition/status/event inherently misogynistic, though.
“Friendzone” doesn’t necessarily entail sex of any kind. Instead, it is where Person A has feelings for Person B, which are not returned. Yet, Person B, knowing of the feelings, uses Person A for any number of things.
This happens to both men and women, and is, in my opinion, an attribute of a sociopath.
If a man knows a woman likes/loves him, and he uses her (not necessarily for sex, but for any number of things) I would call it sociopathy, although the kids on 4chan might use the term “Friendzone’d”. As in, that guy totally has her in the “Friendzone”.
Is that misogyny?
If a woman knows a man likes/loves him, and she uses him (not necessarily for sex, but for any number of things) I would call it sociopathy, although the kids on 4chan might use the term “Friendzone’d”. As in, that girl totally has him in the “Friendzone”.
Is that misogyny?
Ultimately, I’m talking about the behaviour, rather than the word. The behaviour/condition described through the use of the word “Friendzone” isn’t inherently misogynistic, since men and women can do it.
If a man knows that a man likes/loves him, and he uses him (not necessarily for sex, but for any number of things) I would call it sociopathy, although the kids on 4chan might use the term “Friendzone’d”. As in, that guy totally has him in the “Friendzone”.
Is that misogyny?
No, “friendzone” is misogynistic because it implies a tactical, manipulation by the woman: she’s “leveraging” the man’s attraction to her in order to get what she wants. By playing up the sexual tension she can get him to move boxes into her apartment or buy her dinner or (as “a friend”) be supportive when she’s been hurt by the other guy (the sexy guy who isn’t a “friend”).
Please understand that I’m only explaining this concept! I don’t in any way endorse the idea and I never use the term myself. I don’t think that women “friendzone” guys in this exploitative way, or in any way. It’s a male construction. I’m just trying to show how it’s inherently disrespectful.
Is “friendzone” misogynistic when used regarding a man who is using another man in the same way?
If you want to play word games, we can play word games. I’m just pointing out that it’s not an innocent term.
And…he punts.
Who is playing word games, exactly?
This was my school (1995-1999) and my town (1997-2004). I don’t live there anymore but I work in Santa Barbara and all of our company’s interns live in Isla Vista. I.V. has already had a rough 2014, to put it mildly, but this is obviously the worst and most traumatic hit.
The university and community at large will have to deal with I.V.’s ugly-stepchild status, and sooner rather than later. This has been slowly building for decades (it was escalating while I was a student in the 90s), but the last several years have brought it to a head. Too many cops, too many kids, too much money, too much alcohol. I.V. is supervised by the county; it’s not campus land, it’s not part of Santa Barbara (though it could have been annexed) and not part of nearby Goleta either (explicitly so, in that city’s incorporation campaign).
And that’s just the local issue, aside from the recurring sick insanity of macho gun culture and paranoid misogyny already flowing through our society. It’s a lot of work and I have little faith that it will actually be tackled anytime soon, if at all.
My romantic/sexual life got going relatively late in life as well. I hurt plenty during those years and lighted onto some angry, inappropriate ideas about women during this time. But those ideas were my self-created problem to overcome. All men have had their own struggles. That’s understandable. I’m far from perfect. That’s understandable.
I sure as hell didn’t dream of anything like the horrible intro and conclusions of that manifesto. Nothing close to those ideas are “understandable”. And I am extremely disturbed, but should not be surprised, that there are websites dedicated to supporting and justifying acts of frothy misogyny.
The (thankfully) few guys who have expressed to me some of these hostile ideas of sexual and domestic entitlement have ensured that I will never spend social time with them again. There’s plenty of flaws I can overlook, but that women-are-our-servants-amirite? POV is pure poison.
Yet women will buy into that misogynist position, i.e. the battered woman who wonders what she did to him angry and vows to do better instead of putting arsenic in his coffee.
BTW, I wish to apologize for my emotional outburst in this thread . The mother-child bond is one of the strongest and although I have tried to live up to the ideal of the emotionless Sicilian man, I am by nature extremely emotional. I am really glad that your experience was different from mine.
Thanks for the response. No problems at all, Voice. Losing our parents is very painful; when it’s paired with bad health care at the end, it’s easy to understand why you were upset.