"I wish girls were attracted to me. I don’t know why they aren’t."
May 24, 2014 1:11 PM   Subscribe

California drive-by shooting: 'Son of Hunger Games assistant director' Elliot Rodger suspected of killing six in attack. Rodger embarked on his shooting spree hours after posting an online video detailing his plans for "retribution" for rejection by women.

In his final video, Rodger blamed his plans on his lack of romantic success. "Girls, all I’ve ever wanted was to love you and to be loved by you. I've wanted sex. I've wanted love, affection, adoration. 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." (Slate)

"George Duarte...remembers Rodger from the SBCC Math Lab last fall. “He was always talking about the same thing, how annoying his roommates were, how he’s gonna move to a different place,” said Duarte. “He was constantly annoyed by people. Of course, when you’re that type of person, no girl is gonna want to hear you whine and complain all day." (Santa Barbara Independent)

According to The Telegraph (first link above), "[Rodger] was a regular poster on an online message board called PUAhate [for self-styled haters of “pick-up artists”] where male participants express anger at what they call the “seduction community” and their failure to meet women."

In Rodger's case, the rejection seems to have been largely hypothetical: "All those girls that I've desired so much, they would've all rejected me and looked down on me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them." (Jezebel)
posted by a fiendish thingy (1759 comments total) 73 users marked this as a favorite
 
Well, that's absolutely awful.

Wait, there's a message board devoted to hatred of PUAs, but through the lens of misogyny? What? Huh? B-barf?
posted by Sticherbeast at 1:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [22 favorites]


It was pretty clear this guy was a ticking time bomb. For example someone commented in response to one of his creepy threads: "In before school massacre".

He was apparently under the care or multiple shrinks.
posted by Justinian at 1:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Well, that made me upset and uncomfortable.
posted by oceanjesse at 1:19 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


He was apparently under the care or multiple shrinks.

We've really gotta work on mental health care in this country when a kid like this can be under the care of multiple shrinks while simultaneously posting such creepy and unhinged videos, and then subsequently pull off a mass murder like this one.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 1:21 PM on May 24, 2014 [52 favorites]


. . . . . .

Sad
posted by JoeXIII007 at 1:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


We've really gotta work on mental health care in this country when a kid like this can be under the care of multiple shrinks while simultaneously posting such creepy and unhinged videos, and then subsequently pull off a mass murder like this one.

I agree with the initial statement but I'm not sure it follows from the latter part. It's possible someone could receive top notch care and something terrible could still happen in the same way that someone could get top notch cancer care and still die of cancer.
posted by Justinian at 1:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [66 favorites]


My god.
posted by brundlefly at 1:28 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I agree with the initial statement but I'm not sure it follows from the latter part. It's possible someone could receive top notch care and something terrible could still happen in the same way that someone could get top notch cancer care and still die of cancer.

That's true. On the other hand, sometimes top-notch care should mean temporarily reducing a mentally ill person's autonomy when their illness entails credible threats of violence or violent ideation.
posted by clockzero at 1:30 PM on May 24, 2014 [37 favorites]


Hegemonic Masculinity and Mass Murderers in the United States, Deniese Kennedy-Kollar and Christopher A.D. Charles, Southwest Journal of Criminal Justice, Vol. 8(2), 2013 Academia.edu and SSRN
This exploratory study examines the act of mass murder as an attempt by the perpetrators to lay claim to a hegemonic masculine identity that has been damaged or denied them, yet that they feel entitled to as males in American culture ... There is no psychological profile unique to mass murderers and many authors have speculated on their motivations. However, in this study, the range of interrelated stressors experienced by the majority of mass murderers threatened their hegemonic masculine identity and these men engaged in violence to protect their identity.

posted by the man of twists and turns at 1:30 PM on May 24, 2014 [179 favorites]


Wait, there's a message board devoted to hatred of PUAs, but through the lens of misogyny? What? Huh?

No kidding, that is seriously weird. I kind of want to know more, but I'm reluctant to go look because I can guess what I might find.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:31 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I guess the question before criticizing standard of care is what ratio of people who behave like this go on murder sprees. I have the feeling there are a lot more disgruntled losers with a sense of entitlement who'll never pick up a gun and shoot anyone.
posted by BrotherCaine at 1:31 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm not going to link to the dude's last video where he says he's going to do this but you can find it if you look around. But here is a transcript if you want to know just how screwed up this guy was. Really, you might not want to read the whole thing because it is very disturbing. A sample:
Im 22 years old and Im still a virgin. I've never even kissed a girl. I've been through college for 2.5 years, More than that actually. And I am still a virgin. That 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 have had to rot in loneliness. Its 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 is an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I am the perfect guy. And yet you throw yourselves at all of these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish of all 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.
The dude's crazed maniacal laugh is awful.
posted by Justinian at 1:32 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Dude was definitely unhinged. His speaking style just oozes a sense of superiority. So, how/where/why did he get the gun?
posted by Benny Andajetz at 1:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Bleah.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 1:33 PM on May 24, 2014


I kind of want to know more, but I'm reluctant to go look because I can guess what I might find.

They are apparently already hailing him as their hero, but I saw that on the Daily Mail so I didn't link to it (because Daily Mail).
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:34 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


This guy seems atypical of the disgruntled loner stereotype in that he seems to have, sexual frustration notwithstanding, led a very privileged life. Just a 10 cent observation.
posted by jonmc at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


The [family's] attorney is also claiming that the parents told authorities about their son’s videos weeks ago.
Bluh. A whole lot of weirdness in this story.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2014


This sad, anger-inducing event strongly resembles the shootings at the LA Fitness gym in Collier Township, PA back in 2009.

As in that crime, the motive seems to have been "sexual frustration," a euphemism for narcissistic rage borne of socially-sanctioned male entitlement to the bodies of women.
posted by kewb at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [190 favorites]


This all just reminds me of Marc Lépine and the École Polytechnique massacre. /goes to look at videos of kittens and bunnies
posted by rtha at 1:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [80 favorites]


On a grammatical issue, while I am familiar with attorneys general, "crimes scene" sounds wrong to me:

There were nine separate crimes scene
posted by Dip Flash at 1:37 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


This is a misogynist hate crime. I wonder how many times it will be called out as such.
posted by Summer at 1:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [234 favorites]


rtha, that's what I was thinking of too.
posted by ambrosia at 1:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


There's something very, very sick in society when there's this attitude among men that they feel entitled to women. If you're good enough you get sex/romance/etc. The fact that women are people and not prizes is something they can't comprehend. And it's not even just this guy, or people who take it to this level. It's really very prevalent-guys who say "aww, come on, it's just one drink" guys who cat-call, guys who tell us to smile. There are varying levels but the idea is always the same- that women are there to provide you with something- company or something nice to look at or sexual release.
posted by FirstMateKate at 1:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [206 favorites]


I watched another video Elliot Rodger posted, "Why do girls hate me so much?" I was really struck, from that video at least, at how it didn't come off as an "unthinkable" illness he was displaying, in an isolated bubble, but rather it was garden-variety, textbook defeated male pathology. With a large amount of entitlement on display. It's totally just stuff I've heard from other guys before. I think that video is illustrative of the cultural ideas he's accepted and the pathologies he's exhibiting - ones that aren't "unthinkable", on the contrary they're built into the very fabric of how men expect women to treat them. It's all existing on a single continuum. This guy is not uniquely evil, it's just a matter of degree between him and men who react erratically and angrily to women rejecting them or ignoring them. This all emerges out of the entitlement men feel toward women. Mental illness may play a part here, but I'm inclined to look at this as a form of patriarchial terrorism, rather than an unthinkable isolated incident without precedent.

There was a guy in one of my college math classes who began acting erratically in class. One day he stood outside of the door as we were all leaving, and said to each of the women walking out, "I know where you live." He was reported after that, and was pulled from the class. He received counseling/therapy, but then a month later he was sitting right back in his chair in class, as if nothing happened. Male psychopathy toward women is not treated as an unusual threat in our society; some small attempts at therapy and then send these men on their way.

Something you'd never see, mental illness or not: a woman going on a man-killing rampage because good-looking boys are all ignoring her. That's completely unthinkable. But this... is just a heartbreakingly inevitable result of cultural messages, echo chambers, and societal enablement.
posted by naju at 1:39 PM on May 24, 2014 [261 favorites]


rtha: I was thinking about the exact same thing. Even though Lépine's entitlement was to a career he felt was denied, partially. This is an even... I don't know, "purer?"... form of rage against women.

Gah. I don't have the words. "Purer" is wrong. Please replace with a better.

Looking upthread, I feel a need to bring together some comments: I suspect that the people in BrotherCaine's comment who will never shoot someone do not make videos whose transcripts read like Justinian's excerpt either.

In any case, . . . . . .
posted by seyirci at 1:40 PM on May 24, 2014


Summer: "This is a misogynist hate crime. I wonder how many times it will be called out as such."

Not a misogynist hate crime because society rarely recognizes them, not ideological terrorism because he's a well-off white guy.

But it's all of that.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 1:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [46 favorites]


There's definitely a phenomenon of the entitled male murderer, who thinks women are stealing or withholding from him, embodied in this douchebag to the Ecole Polytechnique dude to the high schooler who murdered a girl for turning him down, and I wish we would call it terrorism. Because I can't find any way at all in which it's not. I mean, I guess it's technically a revenge killing, but they also seem like weapons for fear-creation, to ensure that women know that if they do something like-- gasp-- claim autonomy and refuse an individual with the social hallmarks of privilege (white male), they will be punished for it. On preview, yeah, misogynist hate crime is maybe a better phrase than terrorism, and there seems no way in the entire universe that it's not a hate crime but of course it won't get framed as such.

Also, I urge you to think of this next time you consider saying, or you hear anyone else say, "Well, why didn't she just turn him down or tell him no (or fight back or say something in response to harrassment or whatever the action-policing du jour is)?" It's 'cause many of us are scared that, if we do, we will be physically hurt or killed. Trying to let men down lightly or being a tease or whatever is not something we do because we enjoy it. It's a freakin' survival strategy.
posted by WidgetAlley at 1:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [130 favorites]


Shooter was influenced by the Men's Rights Movement, meanwhile in Texas, armed guns rights activists threaten, harass and stalk women.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [20 favorites]


I don't think it's useful to lump mentally ill spree killers in with terrorists. The aims are completely different, the politics are completely different, and the response needs to be completely different.
posted by Justinian at 1:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [24 favorites]


This is not a mentally ill killer, this is terrorism. Too much attention is focused in the media as well as in this post on the murderer's mental state rather than the political motivations that led him to his killing spree. Too much attention especially to his whinging about being a nice guy and how women rejected him, which almost if not entirely starts to creep into victim blaming in the media.

Thinking this is just a mentally ill person, nothing to do about, isolated incident, yadda yadda while make sure this will happen again. Because of course the only thing that makes this particular murders unique is the scale of the thing; women are assaulted or murdered on a daily basis by MRA scumbags like him.
posted by MartinWisse at 1:50 PM on May 24, 2014 [74 favorites]


ugh
posted by cj_ at 1:50 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


When I opened up this article in my Reuters app this morning, I was not expecting to see a picture of a store that I know well. I lived in IV several years ago with friends who went to UCSB, and on Friday nights we did the same things the victims were doing: walking around in groups, hanging out and talking on the sidewalks. Christ.
posted by book 'em dano at 1:51 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Thinking this is just a mentally ill person, nothing to do about, isolated incident

Except that this is the opposite of how we should respond to a mentally ill killing spree.

The approach we take to address terrorism and the approach we need to take to address things like this spree killer are not at all the same!
posted by Justinian at 1:52 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


To be rich, decently good looking, and sporting a famous pedigree.... and still failing with women. This guy must have seriously set off warning bells in everyone he interacted with.
posted by Foam Pants at 1:52 PM on May 24, 2014 [82 favorites]


I don't think it's useful to lump mentally ill spree killers in with terrorists.

If (and I emphasize the "if," I don't know the actual numbers) the two groups overlap demographically, then there is a reason to talk about them together. I'm going to guess that young males predominate in both, probably with some education, but I am sure there are complexities within that.

And in this case, while he sounds to have been mentally ill, he also appeared to have some terroristic ambitions in terms of his anger at women.

I don't see the boundaries as being always so sharp, and definitely not in this case.
posted by Dip Flash at 1:54 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


Why can't we be outraged over multiple causes for a tragedy, instead of minimizing one while maximizing the other, and turning it into a political game?
posted by Apocryphon at 1:56 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


I think because how you view the causes of the tragedy determine what sort of action you take to address the causes of the tragedy. At least that's how I feel.
posted by Justinian at 1:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


David Uzumeri has a great piece on how male virginity & the shame we attach to it contributes to this. It's not the whole problem, but it is a piece, and one that I haven't seen discussed much.

And yeah, this is absolutely a hate crime, because it functions as a threat to all women. Every woman who hears about this story now knows that there are men who will kill her for refusing sexual advances, and will keep that in mind when considering her actions.

I don't think it's useful to lump mentally ill spree killers in with terrorists. The aims are completely different, the politics are completely different, and the response needs to be completely different.

His behavior functions like terrorism. Women change their behavior because they are afraid of men like this. Calling it a mental illness individualizes this event, but violence against women who reject men's advances is an ongoing pattern. Women feel terrorized by this.
posted by almostmanda at 1:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [183 favorites]


Thanks, the man of twists and turns, for the (poetically eponysterical) reference.

Wait, there's a message board devoted to hatred of PUAs, but through the lens of misogyny? What? Huh? B-barf?

The counter-intuitive contradictions of hegemonic masculinity. This is the sort of thing I mean when I talk about how patriarchy hurts everyone in society, even the "winners." The pathetic banal reality of the Men's Right's Movement and other such phenomenon is that they're products of masculinity's self-contradictions: the patriarchal order creates a phantasmic identity based on sexual domination, and the living out of this identity begins to consume itself. There can only be so many Real Men(tm), and this kid wasn't one of them -- so few of us are. So he's caught between identities -- male but not a Man -- but desperately wanting something to identify with. Hence the paradox that he can despise the men who humiliate him with their sexual prowess as "brutes" and also hate the women he wants for failing to recognize that he's better than the bullies, that he's what masculinity should be.
posted by Saxon Kane at 1:58 PM on May 24, 2014 [52 favorites]


It seems like after Sandy Hook both efforts towards gun control and increasing funding for public mental health didn't end up anywhere.
posted by Apocryphon at 1:58 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


His behavior functions like terrorism.

Yeah, it definitely does. But that doesn't mean that the way we address terrorism is useful in addressing things like a spree killing! Unless people are arguing that drone strikes and the US army are gonna come in handy here.
posted by Justinian at 1:59 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


God, he even describes himself as a "gentleman" in the transcript. So this is what the deep end of "friendzoned nice guys" looks like.
posted by Iteki at 2:00 PM on May 24, 2014 [30 favorites]


I think because how you view the causes of the tragedy determine what sort of action you take to address the causes of the tragedy. At least that's how I feel.

The brothers who committed the Boston bombings were young men who felt disaffected and unheard and who seemed to me to very much have a "I'LL SHOW THEM!" [how powerful I am] [how much they should have paid attention to me] [etc.] flavor to it. It's not identical, but it's not so different to me either.

On preview:

But that doesn't mean that the way we address terrorism is useful in addressing things like a spree killing! Unless people are arguing that drone strikes and the US army are gonna come in handy here.

Well, the way we address terrorism is not actually very effective. So.
posted by rtha at 2:01 PM on May 24, 2014 [51 favorites]


I guess I'll thank all of the guys who didn't shoot me just because I wasn't attracted to them.
posted by keli at 2:01 PM on May 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


Oh, to be clear I think the was obviously a hate crime.
posted by Justinian at 2:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yeah, it definitely does. But that doesn't mean that the way we address terrorism is useful in addressing things like a spree killing! Unless people are arguing that drone strikes and the US army are gonna come in handy here.

We don't just deal with terrorism through drone strikes. We also address why young men are disenfranchised and what draws them into that life. That seems pretty relevant here, when whole communities exist to prop up men's entitlement and reinforce misogyny.
posted by almostmanda at 2:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


This is just tragic. For the people whose lives were cut short, and for their families.

And for this poor guy and whatever, in the end, broke him to think that this was the best way to feel better. I find it so hard to understand; I totally get the idea of harming as a way of lashing out, but I self-harm, I've never understood "I'm gonna go get a gun/bomb/knife/whatever and kill a bunch of innocent people to make myself feel better."

So many failures on so many sides in this. His mental health care team (who, presumably, he snowed; they'd all be mandatory reporters if he ever expressed desire to cause harm to others and he'd be locked up tout de suite--but it's really easy to play a mental health professional, especially if you've been in the system a while) failed. The authorities failed--they saw the videos. Society failed by instilling this patriarchal bullshit where men somehow believe that they deserve to park themselves in any vagina they want.

And now six innocent people are dead. We have to stop failing people.

The approach we take to address terrorism and the approach we need to take to address things like this spree killer are not at all the same!

Yes, exactly. These are the actions of a mentally ill young man, not terrorism. But the problem of mental health--and respect for women--is a systemic problem we need to address. And for the latter point, 'we' means 'men.' Every time we let another man get away with 'friendzone' or 'that frigid bitch wouldn't let me buy her a drink' or whatever, we are enabling women to be treated like meat, and we are encouraging that culture of male entitlement. We need to do better.

It's not terrorism, but it is a hate crime. And I recognize that some people might find only the slimmest of semantic differences between the two.

It seems like after Sandy Hook both efforts towards gun control and increasing funding for public mental health didn't end up anywhere.

Yeah, where and how the fuck did he get a fucking gun? But you could say the same about so many events over the years.. Columbine, Aurora, Sandy Hook, Boston and so on. Much is said afterwards, and not one fucking thing is ever actually done to address root causes. Columbine was, what, 17 years ago now? How many massacres have there been since? Is this just a level of collateral damage that politicians are willing to accept so they can get re-elected and never have to approve funding for mental healthcare?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [35 favorites]


Except that this is the opposite of how we should respond to a mentally ill killing spree.

It is not a mentally ill killing spree though; Murder is not a sign of mental illness, nor is misogyny. This was done by somebody deep into MRA ideology, in a political climate in which violence against women is normalised, an extreme example of what already happens daily.

Saying he was mentally ill means closing your eyes for the dangers of Mens Rights Activists

turning it into a political game

The murders are already political. The victims were not chosen at random.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [130 favorites]


(oh and rtha I think your comparison to Marc Lepine is spot-on. This is exactly the same thing. How have we learned nothing in the intervening twenty seven years?)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


To be rich, decently good looking, and sporting a famous pedigree.... and still failing with women.

Have you considered that maybe this isn't a sitcom and that money and looks are not the critieria which women evaluate men by?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 2:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [112 favorites]


This kid's videos veer from being really sad to disturbing at random and confusing intervals. In one video, he talks about wanting to take a girl out on a date and proving he's worthy. He seems so earnest and genuinely lonely, and then only seconds later, he's talking about how how it's DISGUSTING that girls go for SLOBS and how they NEVER look at him and how one day they'll be SORRY. It's heartbreaking and disturbing, to me.
posted by SkylitDrawl at 2:05 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


It is not a mentally ill killing spree though; Murder is not a sign of mental illness, nor is misogyny. This was done by somebody deep into MRA ideology

Much terrorism is committed by people deep into Islamic ideology. But we tend to reject the idea that Islam is responsible.
posted by Justinian at 2:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


It is not a mentally ill killing spree though; Murder is not a sign of mental illness, nor is misogyny.

Arguably his rantings about the 'day of retribution' and his delusional view of the world and what it owes him are very, very much signs of mental illness, however.

This whole thing is a heartbreaking mess that, and this is important, could have been prevented.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


And to add to the tragedy the 'Truther' human bilge who claim no children were killed at Sandy Hook will get more mileage out of this.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:07 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Also; murder can absolutely be a sign of mental illness. It isn't always (or even usually) but it can be.
posted by Justinian at 2:07 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Much terrorism is committed by people deep into Islamic ideology. But we tend to reject the idea that Islam is responsible.

I see you palm that card. We don't think Islam is responsible, no, but we do think the ideology behind Al Quida and Wahabism/fundamentalist Islam is responsible.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:08 PM on May 24, 2014 [62 favorites]


Also; murder can absolutely be a sign of mental illness. It isn't always (or even usually) but it can be.

Sure, but it usually isn't, so why the rush to declare it so now?
posted by MartinWisse at 2:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Clarification: by saying that "he can also hate the women he wants for failing to recognize that he's better than the bullies, that he's what masculinity should be" -- I mean in that last part that he THINKS he's what masculinity should be, not that I think that
posted by Saxon Kane at 2:10 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I think one subject that should be considered is how the internet has alarmingly been able to channel lots of misanthropic, nihilist, angry subcultures and communities (many warring against each other) and all of that is leaking into real life with real people getting hurt and killed.

It used to be that the main concern is how the internet ties in extremist political groups- jihadists and white power movements and so forth- but it seems like garden-variety misanthropic trolls are arming themselves and committing these atrocities. From what little I've seen about what this guy had posted, he doesn't come across as simply an MRA fanboy. He seems to be someone full of hate and anger, egged on by internet trolls who mocked him in kind.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:10 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


Sure, but it usually isn't, so why the rush to declare it so now?

Because I've seen the guy's youtube videos and he is clearly a wackadoodle? It's really obvious?
posted by Justinian at 2:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Also; murder can absolutely be a sign of mental illness. It isn't always (or even usually) but it can be.

Sure, but it usually isn't, so why the rush to declare it so now?


Because of everything he said and did up until and including the murders, stop being disingenuous.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [19 favorites]


Southern Poverty Law Center has long been issuing warnings about MRA/PUA groups/ideology 1 2
posted by MCMikeNamara at 2:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [127 favorites]


Much terrorism is committed by people deep into Islamic ideology. But we tend to reject the idea that Islam is responsible.

You're right. We think religious fanaticism is responsible, bred from a very particular set of cultural circumstances. We don't say it came from nowhere just because 'mental illness'.
posted by Summer at 2:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [24 favorites]


Because I've seen the guy's youtube videos and he is clearly a wackadoodle?

Hi. Mentally ill person here. 'Wackadoodle' is about as uncool as calling a queer man a faggot.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:12 PM on May 24, 2014 [62 favorites]


He... murdered like 6 people and you're afraid I slandered him?
posted by Justinian at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


The only effective way to address terrorism / hate crimes (I can see this as either), is to explore the pathology and the enabling aspects of the person's society that encourage that pathology. You have to understand the nature of the beast, and then work to correct that way of thinking. It takes societal change and shunning the harmful attitudes that led to the act. That's why it's so important to label things this way rather than dismissing them as isolated incidents. Because this is NOT a fluke, and if we treat it that way, then absolutely nothing is changed.
posted by naju at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


You're right. We think religious fanaticism is responsible, bred from a very particular set of cultural circumstances. We don't say it came from nowhere just because 'mental illness'.

I agree with this. Communities that foster extremism and hatred attract unstable, violent men. Even if those communities are not directly, legally responsible, they can be complicit when things like this happen, and attributing this all to mental illness ignores that.
posted by almostmanda at 2:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


It seems a little early to declare him definitively mentally ill, or not.
posted by Bovine Love at 2:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Hi. Another mentally ill person here. I'm fine with the term "wackadoodle."
posted by Jacqueline at 2:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [39 favorites]


It seems a little early to declare him definitively mentally ill, or not.

If he wasn't mentally ill then why was he seeing multiple psychiatrists/psychologists? For fun?
posted by Jacqueline at 2:16 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yeah, take it to Metatalk if you want, we probably shouldn't do it here.
posted by Justinian at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


He... murdered like 6 people and you're afraid I slandered him?

Would you have called John Wayne Gacy a faggot?

A little respect for those of us who are mentally ill, ok?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [18 favorites]


Like I said, Metatalk if you want.
posted by Justinian at 2:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Because of everything he said and did up until and including the murders, stop being disingenuous.

Because he believes stupid things doesn't make him mentally ill, or every MRA douchebag is mentally ill.

Also " he murdered people because he was mentally ill. Why was he mentally ill? Because he murdered people, duh." is not an argument.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


Political zealots often look like whackadoos to the noninitiated. Hell, the khmer rouge went around smashing and burning all the electronic devices and TVs in the villages they took over. How is it that people can't see that ideological/political fanaticism is effectively organized, institutionalized, collective mental illness? What's the difference? What separates them? When people do exactly this kind of thing in Afghanistan, we call it political violence against women. When it happens here, regardless of evidence, we say the perpetrator was a lone nut. There's no real difference. It's just how we think about these events in the culture that leads us to apply different standards.

(Also diagnosed with scizoaffective disorder here. Not taking the term personally.)
posted by saulgoodman at 2:19 PM on May 24, 2014 [22 favorites]


Martin, have you seen his videos?
posted by Justinian at 2:19 PM on May 24, 2014


Good thing that's not the argument I was making, MartinWisse. Could you please engage in good faith?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Slightly insulting also to all those mentally ill people not murdering people that we're always so quick to label murderers as mentally ill.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Except, in this case, we have some pretty solid evidence that his thinking was disordered and delusional. Which is the definition of many mental illnesses.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:21 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


As per the shooter's parents he was mentally ill and in treatment. That he was mentally ill isn't in question, it's a known fact.

However, whether his mental illness was a significant factor in his motivation to go on a killing spree is still up for debate.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


Martin, have you seen his videos?

Yep, standard MRA/nice guy ranting, nothing obviously mentally ill about it.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


I have friends in Namibia, and recently there have been a number of posts on Facebook about passion killings.

It seems be be the same root issue of entitlement. Girlfriend breaks up with boyfriend, so he kills her. Sickening.
posted by mantecol at 2:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


This is just horrific. Why do we condone this kind of hate?

.
posted by jetlagaddict at 2:23 PM on May 24, 2014


This kid was a sociopath BEFORE he was rejected by women, not after. So sad for the women whose lives he took.
posted by Hermione Granger at 2:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


This is not a mentally ill killer, this is terrorism. Too much attention is focused in the media as well as in this post on the murderer's mental state rather than the political motivations that led him to his killing spree.

The "spree killing" bucket contains killers with lots of different "reasons". One synonym is "going postal" because work-related spree killings are so common. They're really about the killer's lost honour, and the killing is a way of re-establishing it.
posted by Leon at 2:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yep, standard MRA/nice guy ranting, nothing obviously mentally ill about it.

I think that's a huge stretch. His last video with the crazy laughs was not in any sense standard MRA ranting.
posted by Justinian at 2:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Not treating this as a mental health problem so that it will be properly honored as misogynist terror is a bad move in exactly the same way as responses to other forms of terror that feel that any non-ideological explanation is somehow disrespectful. It is not. In the case of these sorts of killings, research has made great strides at identifying risk factors--pretty much any university with current safety training not only covers this topic, but *exactly identifies* men like this. I knew exactly what this man's problems were before I started up that video because there's no mystery--we can identify and when we have the political will, intervene early with these men. But the three barriers are general availability of services, the failure to identify this as a mental health issue, and the nature of the crisis--social disconnection is a warning sign, but of course it puts people at a distance.

But defining it as a mental health problem neither removes its connotations as misogynist terror nor as a moral failure. Insanity in the sense of a lack of moral culpability is not the same as mental illness, and since mental illness is culturally framed, patriarchy cannot help but be a factor. So we can *both* identify this as a mental health issue requiring intervention *and* an immoral, misogynist act driven by patriarchal cultural messages. We can do this just as we can identify the political origins of terrorist attacks without necessarily justifying them.
posted by mobunited at 2:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [136 favorites]


MartinWisse >

Except that this is the opposite of how we should respond to a mentally ill killing spree.

It is not a mentally ill killing spree though; Murder is not a sign of mental illness, nor is misogyny. This was done by somebody deep into MRA ideology, in a political climate in which violence against women is normalised, an extreme example of what already happens daily.

Saying he was mentally ill means closing your eyes for the dangers of Mens Rights Activists


Murder is sometimes indicative of mental illness, but not automatically so. In this case, the guy who killed these people clearly had mental health issues, though it would be questionable to aver that his issues were the sole cause of his actions. Not all people with mental health issues are violent, and not all violent people necessarily have mental health issues, but it's not a strictly Manichean kind of thing either.

This guy lived in a culture that has lots of very sociopathic and toxic cultural ideas about women, and many of the same kind of ideas about what it means to be a man. It seems clear to me that both his disposition to distorted/pathological thought processes and the sick ideologies he bought into were involved in his actions, at the very least. There might be more causal factors too, but I think it's reasonable to reject monocausality.

That being said, his actions are also part of a bigger social pattern of terroristic, gendered violence which serves to reproduce the domination of women along with many other kinds of behaviors, speech, and norms.
posted by clockzero at 2:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [16 favorites]


Like I've been saying, he's clearly familiar with MRA groups and their thought, but he's hardly some sort of MRA mujahideen, if anything he seemed to have been ridiculed by other misanthropes on PUAHate and on the Bodybuilding site's Misc subforum. There's a lot of issues at play here, both modern misogynist ideologies and cyberbullying/online trolling leading to real-life tragedy.
posted by Apocryphon at 2:28 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I agree with you mobunited and think that's a great comment. I think this was obviously a hate crime and also that downplaying any mental health aspects of it would be a big mistake.
posted by Justinian at 2:30 PM on May 24, 2014


MeTa on the use of offensive language to describe people who are mentally ill, as requested.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:31 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


This kid was a sociopath BEFORE he was rejected by women, not after. So sad for the women whose lives he took

This is an important point. And my, decidedly amateur, opinion is that his rejections involved a good amount of self-fulfilling prophecy.
posted by Benny Andajetz at 2:31 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Whether he was mentally ill or not is irrelevant to whether this was a hate crime. If this was any other group apart from women we would not have an issue with naming the problem, and the mental state of the perpetrator would not be detract from the nature of the crime.
posted by Summer at 2:32 PM on May 24, 2014 [43 favorites]


I don't think anyone here is detracting from the nature of the crime. Cite please.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


He probably had some degree of MI; presumably that's why he had an extensive clinical therapy team.

It's not the whole story.

I think it's possible that his MI made him more susceptible to the radicalizing influences of the internet hate groups he was an active participant in. I also think that his involvement with those hierarchical and organized groups puts this unequivocally in the terrorism realm, and indeed I think a lot of the concepts that we use when thinking about big-T terrorism are useful here. I think he was radicalized by his contacts on the net, and I think the constant echo chamber of violent rhetoric is intended by some to have outcomes like this, even if they don't control which specific people actually get violent. They want to live in a society where women live in fear, and part of that is the credible threat of violence.

The torrents of internet death and rape threats don't mean anything unless they are, at some level, believable. This guy's attack - and the everyday sexual assaults, regular assaults, and domestic violence - are what give those threats power to shape society. Controlling the culture through fear. This is what terrorism is. Just because an individual footsoldier has MI doesn't mean it's not also terrorism.

And yes, some of our standard anti-terrorism approaches would make sense here. Monitoring hate groups. Looking for warning signs like this guy's videos. That's not a guarantee, of course. It's not illegal to post things like his video. But if they'd been able to get word out to the local LE officers that the video had been posted, along with vehicle description and plate #, maybe someone could have stopped the vehicle for blowing a stopsign before he started shooting or something. Anything.

Preventing stuff like this is extremely difficult, but it is terrorism and treating it as such could yield good results.
I think that's a huge stretch. His last video with the crazy laughs was not in any sense standard MRA ranting.
I watched that video and I disagree. There's nothing there that isn't said constantly. He's a Nice Guy and a Gentleman and he doesn't understand why these sluts won't sleep with him but will sleep with men he doesn't approve of, so he's going to hurt them.
posted by kavasa at 2:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [71 favorites]


"We've really gotta work on mental health care in this country when a kid like this can be under the care of multiple shrinks."

Not referring to mental health care as being under the care of "shrinks" would be a good start.
posted by vapidave at 2:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Twitter user @violentfanon has been screencapping some of the murderer's comments on PUAHate. This is disturbing stuff; the usual warnings apply. 1 2 3 4 5

And a tweet linking to an archived version of a PUAHate thread, since the site itself is down, for some reason.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:39 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


I think that's a huge stretch. His last video with the crazy laughs was not in any sense standard MRA ranting.

Take away the direct threats and it kind of is standard MRA ranting. And FWIW I think it's time to look really hard at the MRA/redpill/etc movement, because they're approaching the toxicity of big-time hate groups. Their advocacy (such as it is) has thus far been aimed at limiting the rights of women rather than achieving equality, and all of their efforts have been attempts to counter feminism. For example, despite all their bluster about domestic violence, there has not been a single coherent effort on their part to assist with DV services in stark contrast to the many feminists who have worked on doing so for all genders and orientations.

Sure, there was a lot more in play here, but it seems clear that these groups have generated an environment that is a powder keg for people like this guy. Constant exhortations about the evils of feminism (straw and otherwise) putting masculinity under attack isn't too far away from how white supremacists position the threat of subhuman races.
posted by zombieflanders at 2:39 PM on May 24, 2014 [52 favorites]


Women don't find annoying whiny complaining guys all that attractive.

He should have done the exact opposite of what he was doing.

This PUA stuff is nonsense, just be yourself, be positive, and compliment the woman on her shoes or smile or whatever.

Learn how to sing or play a musical instrument, do something women find an interest in like dance or plant a garden. Get a hobby, don't go and shoot at people, that is wrong.
posted by Orion Blastar at 2:43 PM on May 24, 2014


do something women find an interest in like dance or plant a garden.

Or engineering or comic books or makeup or political activisim or video games or any of the infinite variety of things people find an interest in, regardless of their gender.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [63 favorites]


Those videos display a typical lack of affect in both voice control and facial mobility--this doesn't always come from mental illness, but it can. If someone mostly-expressionlessly describes to you how awful an entire category of other humans is, I believe you should consider that a serious thing.

Incidentally, it probably doesn't help that online organized misogynists recommend doing this no-affect thing *intentionally* to appear strong and stoic. I have no evidence that this would aggravate the shit out of psychological issues, but I intuitively suspect it.
posted by mobunited at 2:47 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


When I first heard of this, I Googled a misspelled version of his name (Rogers) and the THIRD result/FIRST video was a reposting of his manifesto with the title: "ELLIOT ROGERS---Another TOLERANT liberal PROGRESSIVE---goes on a MASS MURDER! Killing 7!" and description "Oh yea this one is definitely a liberal alright like all the rest! Before you all go spouting your crap about banning guns remember that your side has been responsible for more mass shootings then the pro-gun side!" I'm sure the "Fair & Balanced" news media are taking note of this angle.

It does speak for the realities of male-centered advocacy when "ANTI Pick-Up-Artist" groups devolve into the communities that supported him...
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:49 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


How this person made it to 22 is amazing in itself. He was such a dick that he had no buds to GET HIM LAID!!! I just can't grasp how someone could be so alone. I am the ugliest fuck to walk the earth but I still kissed a few girls by the time I was 15 and...just was somewhat on pace with my peers, which means that I spent the greater portion of my time whacking off with no one even on the horizon who would give a second glance. Never entered my mind to kill anyone over it...geez
posted by shockingbluamp at 2:51 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


To me, in those videos he comes across as a very bad actor (with a terrible script) trying to play the role of the "sympathetic" villain, someone who does terrible things but the audience is supposed to understand and sympathize with his motives.

The guy is playing a role, a familiar role, and I think it's worth talking about the toxic stories he was telling himself, the character he believed himself to be, and where he learned them.
posted by straight at 2:51 PM on May 24, 2014 [53 favorites]


Did anyone read the full Telegraph article? The guy's grandfather was a celebrated (and apparently very courageous) photographer, the first to photograph Bergen-Belsen. It's very sad that part of his lineage wound up at this terrible, deluded, Nazi-like place. My condolences to the families of all involved.

I read earlier this week that Anne Lamott recently had been trolled pretty fiercely. ANNE LAMOTT, she of gentle and funny writings about spirituality and the writer's craft. There's something very wrong out there when that happens. I'm not sure what the solution is, but people who are on a good spiritual path need to keep speaking out and writing, and I see that happening in this thread.
posted by Sheydem-tants at 2:52 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


He was such a dick that he had no buds to GET HIM LAID!!!

The idea that getting laid is something ones' buds do for you is absolutely one of the toxic stories I'm talking about.
posted by straight at 2:52 PM on May 24, 2014 [162 favorites]


How this person made it to 22 is amazing in itself. He was such a dick that he had no buds to GET HIM LAID!!! I just can't grasp how someone could be so alone. I am the ugliest fuck to walk the earth but I still kissed a few girls by the time I was 15...

I hate to be the person expressing sympathy for someone who seems to have committed a septuple homicide, but this comment scans as a tad insensitive to, um, the many people out there who didn't kiss a few girls by the time they were 15.
posted by Going To Maine at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [57 favorites]


Mental stability is like a properly built reservoir. Horrible and violent cultural attitudes toward women are like an improperly built storm drainage system that directs water into unwitting people's homes (people the city planners consider less valuable).

When the reservoir breaks, the water floods the homes of the innocent, drowning them; but afterwards all city planners are willing to see is the faulty reservoir, not the problems with the storm drains.
posted by daisystomper at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [18 favorites]


The posts I've seen from MRA guys talk a lot about deserving a mate, wanting to spread one's genes, etc. They don't talk about their desire to be in a loving relationship with spouse or children. So really, it sounds like they are upset about women being in a position to turn down people who wouldn't make good mates.

And in the next breath, they talk about how the need for feminism is dead, and it's just a bunch of man-hating by crazy women.
posted by mantecol at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [24 favorites]


With all due respect, shockingbluamp, "I can't believe he was 22 and couldn't get laid!" is not the best route to take in this discussion. You're just contributing to the problem.
posted by naju at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [48 favorites]


The PUAHate site Rustic Etruscan linked to was scary stuff. Very "wake up sheeple" in its off-center (aka unrelated to reality) view of the world. The whole approach to women is that they're possessions and not actual people in their own right.

I know it's hard to figure out when the site is down, but I have to wonder what makes these guys hate the PUA crowd. It seems like they've got a lot in common. Is this just hating on competitors for the scarce resource of sex with women?

(And for the six dead victims: ...... )
posted by immlass at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Seems like having a team of mental health professionals is a clear indication that people in his life thought he was mentally ill, so that's good enough for me. That doesn't mean it isn't a hate crime - but since he is dead, how does treating this as a hate crime change the respose (genuinely asking).

We don't even know yet what his real-life interactions with women were - for all we know he never approached anyone. The online comments were chilling - I think I will not be watching any videos.

Also, personal datapoint of one, if I were in my twenties this incident probably would not have changed my attitude towards men, but if anything would have made me avoid them a little, not give in to any demands (as some posters have suggested).
posted by maggiemaggie at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014


I just can't grasp how someone could be so alone.

As per his parents he was diagnosed with Aspergers as a child and it's common for people on the spectrum to have social difficulties and fewer friends than neurotypicals.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Seems like having a team of mental health professionals is a clear indication that people in his life thought he was mentally ill, so that's good enough for me.

That and his own parents called the police on him a few weeks ago. Then today his father identified him as the probable shooter before the police had even released the shooter's name because his father knew it had to be him.

Several people with professional responsibility to prevent this sort of thing from happening dropped the ball here.
posted by Jacqueline at 2:59 PM on May 24, 2014 [24 favorites]


Hating women isn't a mental illness. Neither is a man feeling entitled to something he wants. They are directly reinforced by society as it stands today. Mental ilness doesn't make someone a killer nor does it make someone more prone to be violent or abusive: some of the worst abuse I have seen female friends go through were at the hands of men who appeared as neuro-typical as can be.

I am saying this a man today: We need to not talk over women regarding lived experience, and maybe at least today, just for today, and just for a little bit, we need to just listen. We, who have not directly suffered at the hand of misogyny and misogynistic violence-- we need to just listen right now.
posted by ShawnStruck at 3:00 PM on May 24, 2014 [36 favorites]


This seems as much "terrorism" as the Ft. Hood shootings: not really, despite all the people desperately trying to pretend it is. And while MRA stuff is ugly as wet shit, blaming it for the killing is wildly unscientific; statistically, the number of MRA goons who kill someone–or even commit a crime– is an infinitesimal percentage. If you want to account for an event, you look to what's unusual about the perpetrator. If you want to use an event to score points against a group you don't like (and here, we're back to Ft. Hood), you focus on what they have in common.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 3:01 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


According to Twitter, 3 bodies were removed from Eliot Rodger's apartment this afternoon.

And a station in Santa Barbara has received his 140 page manifesto.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 3:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Have you considered that maybe this isn't a sitcom and that money and looks are not the critieria which women evaluate men by?

Well, no, it isn't a sitcom. But I've always found that being attractive and wealthy and connected were powerful advantages in attracting the opposite sex, both for men and women. It may not get you a *second* date, but "attractive, rich and connected" will get you a lot more opportunities than "ugly, poor and unemployed." I don't think it's wrong to point out that someone who's unwillingly a virgin at 22 must have had some serious negatives (like, "oozes sociopathy," maybe) to so utterly cancel those advantages out.
posted by tyllwin at 3:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [35 favorites]


I read earlier this week that Anne Lamott recently had been trolled pretty fiercely. ANNE LAMOTT, she of gentle and funny writings about spirituality and the writer's craft. There's something very wrong out there when that happens. I'm not sure what the solution is, but people who are on a good spiritual path need to keep speaking out and writing, and I see that happening in this thread.

I don't know anything about this specific incident, but I'm confused by the use of "trolled" here. I am maybe an Old in internet ways, but to me, "trolling" still means "saying shit you don't mean to get a rise out of people." It is not, at all, anything like "send rape threats" or "post sex-based hate messages about someone" and I wish we would stop dismissing - even inadvertently - violent threats and speech directed (in this case) at women as "trolling" as if it's not to be taken seriously.
posted by rtha at 3:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [90 favorites]


but since he is dead, how does treating this as a hate crime change the respose (genuinely asking)

Labeling it a hate crime against a particular group helps us investigate the pattern and work against the culture that perpetuates violence against women. This is an extreme example, but violence against women is incredibly common and the media has a habit of fitting it into other narratives (unhinged rapist, jealous husband pushed too far etc) and labeling it as just another isolated incident. The problem needs to be named.
posted by Summer at 3:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [37 favorites]


There are many people who form their identity and morality to an ideology. It happens all the time across all cultures. Religion is a big one. So are political parties and some 'interest groups.' Generally these ideologies are okay and have rules for society to help it function for a better good. Sometimes these groups get off kilter and the in-group out-group thing takes hold where there are promises that some way is the only way and everyone else does not understand or is not worthy.

This isn't a sign of mental illness in and of it self.

What is a sign of mental illness is the exclusion of mainstream social norms (how to talk to women and not see them as a strange other) and the obsession of being wronged to the point where he was willing to kill others to express that. It isn't problem solving behavior. People who are healthy problem solve within in their ideologies. They figure out ways to work within their ideological framework to make things work for them. They create exceptions. (Much like how someone who is racist can have one friend of a different race who is the exception).

In terms of mental health care it gets squigglely. We need better mental health care. But this is such a subset of the population that statistically it's hard to figure out what would even be effective. Secondly this happens so rarely that even people who show signs aren't necessarily going to need long term specialized treatment.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


Misogyny, mental illness (treated and untreated), objectifying women and whatever are not unique to American culture. What is unique is the almost unrestricted access to firearms, the glorification of firearms, The NRA and a total lack of political will. In every killing there is always a relentless pursuit for the "reason"( games, videos, mental illness, misogyny, drugs, poverty). There is one and only one common thread in all killings by firearms--firearms. Until that is resolved ( and I doubt it will be in the next 10 decades) all the other things are of only marginal importance in limiting death by firearms. Of course we should improve mental health treatment--but I assure you--the science is not there nor is the legal framework there to force treatment and restrict rights prior to clear and present danger.
posted by rmhsinc at 3:05 PM on May 24, 2014 [24 favorites]


What ever happened to just writing a bunch of shitty poetry?
posted by stltony at 3:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [37 favorites]


Mor evidence of how fucked up our mental health system is. Even when a person has reliable access to psychiatric services and family support to advocate for them, the system doesn't work. This reminds me of the recent incident with Ceigh Deeds' son in Virginia. His son had a mental health crisis and even though Deeds is powerful Virgina politician they couldn't find a bed, even though there were here available. His son got worse. Then the son stabbed Ceigh and killed himself.
posted by humanfont at 3:08 PM on May 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


Labeling it a hate crime against a particular group helps us investigate the pattern and work against the culture that perpetuates violence against women.

This guy cleaves closer to the set of "spree killings" than the set of "violence against women".

Of course, he belongs in both sets, but he has more in common with Columbine than he does with a serial rapist. All he needed was an excuse.
posted by Leon at 3:08 PM on May 24, 2014


And while MRA stuff is ugly as wet shit, blaming it for the killing is wildly unscientific; statistically, the number of MRA goons who kill someone–or even commit a crime– is an infinitesimal percentage.

MRA is just one of the forms this set of misogynistic behavior takes. They may not call themselves MRAs, but the percentage of men who commit crimes aimed at women that subscribe to the MRA kind of viewpoint is essentially 100%.
posted by zombieflanders at 3:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [39 favorites]


USA Today: Lawyer: Family warned cops before Calif. rampage
Shifman said family members called authorities several weeks ago after being alarmed by YouTube videos "regarding suicide and the killing of people."

Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a "perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human," Shifman said. Authorities did not find a history of guns, but did say the 22-year-old had trouble making friends, he added.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:10 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


And while MRA stuff is ugly as wet shit, blaming it for the killing is wildly unscientific; statistically, the number of MRA goons who kill someone–or even commit a crime– is an infinitesimal percentage. If you want to account for an event, you look to what's unusual about the perpetrator.

Misogyny at any level is bad and harmful. Many misogynists harass women. Some misogynists are actually violent. A few actually kill people. This is an extreme form of misogyny, but it's not some completely different thing.

Sometimes the best way to address an extreme end of a bell curve is to try shifting the entire curve a little bit in the right direction.
posted by straight at 3:12 PM on May 24, 2014 [36 favorites]


I think what would make this a more terroristic act would be using his ideology to send a message and that his death is some sort of reward/political statement to advance said ideology.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Women don't find annoying whiny complaining guys all that attractive.

He should have done the exact opposite of what he was doing.

This PUA stuff is nonsense, just be yourself, be positive, and compliment the woman on her shoes or smile or whatever.

Learn how to sing or play a musical instrument, do something women find an interest in like dance or plant a garden. Get a hobby, don't go and shoot at people, that is wrong.
posted by Orion Blastar at 5:43 PM on May 24

Sigh.
posted by futz at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


the number of MRA goons who kill someone–or even commit a crime– is an infinitesimal percentage
?

It's pretty well-established that somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 6 women are victims of sexual assault. It's pretty difficult (impossible) to get good numbers, but it seems likely to me MRA and PUA type people are at least as likely as the average man to have assaulted a woman, groped them, etc.

Also, the argument I made was that he had been radicalized. This is a known process that takes place in other contexts. The young men that left Minneapolis to join al-Shabab in Somalia were radicalized over the net and in-person. Read the screencaps of the dude's message board posts. Explicitly violent rhetoric with explicitly stated goals of getting women to live in fear. Obviously the internet stuff isn't the sole and exclusive mechanism at work here, but just as obviously it is part of it. It is not irrelevant, and unless you're trying to argue that it is I'm not sure what you're doing.

When those cops interviewed this guy, they should have watched those videos. They should have had training about what hate groups and ideology looked like, and they should have known to dig deeper. I'm not saying it's their fault, but I am reiterating my contention that a terrorism-investigation response might have helped.
posted by kavasa at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [41 favorites]


Individual women are murdered for rejecting men every single day. The scale of the crime is new, but the background misogyny is normalized. I will bet you dollars to doughnuts we see a copycat within three months. No one would date this guy because it was obvious he hated women, but hating women is pretty much treated as a normal variant.
posted by gingerest at 3:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [48 favorites]


I have a LOT of feels and thinks about this. As a college TA, I am very cognizant of being a functional first responder when mental illness manifests. Though they have RAs and advisors and all those people, the TAs are often the ones who notice them falling off the map, or behaving oddly... and besides that, this took place where I live. He's from 40 minutes one way and at school 40 minutes the other. AND I frequently TA the kids of Hollywood folk.

One think I think this really speaks to, however, is how imcomprehensible gender relations on most college campuses are right now. I honestly feel like it makes much less sense than it did 10 years ago when I was an undergrad. The regressive and reactionary sexuality happening in Greek circles, abutting with other empowered, progressive gender discourses.... it's getting really messy and kind of reaching fever pitch, in my anecdotal experience.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


Alleged Gunman's Apartment Now A Crime Scene mentions more potential victims, and rants about a "First Phase" that may have started the day before yesterday.
posted by effbot at 3:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think what would make this a more terroristic act would be using his ideology to send a message and that his death is some sort of reward/political statement to advance said ideology.

Well, he did send his manifesto to his local TV station so I think it's looking more and more like "act of terrorism" might indeed be the correct label here.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [25 favorites]


Thinking more about the apparently counter-intuitive notion of an anti-PUA "gentleman" being at the same time violently despotic towards women. Looking at those screenshots on Twitter of his comments on PUAHate or whatever, it seems to me that while the victims of his violence were women, the "targets" -- those intended to receive the message of his violence -- are primarily other men. It's about competition with the "silverbacks" over who has possession of women and thus civilization itself. As much as he talks to women in his sick videos, I think he's talking through them. They are objects to him, and the punishment he sees himself as doling out is his hysterical way of demonstrating to other men -- both his comrades and their enemies -- the power that he so desperately wants.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:16 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


"On the day before the Day of Retribution, I will start the First Phase of my vengeance: Silently killing as many people as I can around Isla Vista by luring them into my apartment through some form of trickery."

Unbelievable. Disgusting and SO BADLY WRITTEN.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


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 is an injustice, a crime, because I don't know what you don't see in me. I am the perfect guy. And yet you throw yourselves at all of these obnoxious men instead of me, the supreme gentleman. I will punish of all 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.

The very Nicest Guy has made himself known.
posted by jaduncan at 3:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [20 favorites]


He was such a dick that he had no buds to GET HIM LAID!!!

"Surely a girl is a thing that most any guy deserves to get as a gift from his friends unless he's such a loser he has no friends to give him one."
posted by straight at 3:19 PM on May 24, 2014 [84 favorites]


Mor evidence of how fucked up our mental health system is. Even when a person has reliable access to psychiatric services and family support to advocate for them, the system doesn't work.

It's pretty well established that anti-depressants can cause suicidal and violent behavior. As far as I know, most mass shooters have been on prescription medication.
posted by empath at 3:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Now not only is he getting his 15 minutes, but people are going to read his 140-page book too.

I feel sure he will get no benefit from this.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 3:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Joining the dots.
posted by Summer at 3:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


I get why my comment upset people. I grew up in a culture in that your friends had your back. My best way to explain is the example of the group of friends in "Good Will Hunting." Buds...just don't let you get away with that shit. If you start acting crazy, you get a beat down, and you do LEARN. And with this code is also that you never, ever, ever, ever hit a woman...or a kid.....or you will be trashed. Sorry folks, but it was the man code some of us grew up with. This guy who killed....never had this kind of support.
posted by shockingbluamp at 3:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


The scale of the crime is new, but the background misogyny is normalized.

Which is why I'm of the opinion that it is men who need to take the lead on shutting this shit down.

Which is not to say, suggest, or imply that we shouldn't be listening to women the whole time about what effective strategies are or their lived experiences or anything like that.

But when you're coming from a starting point of "Women are pieces of meat and I deserve them for my pleasure," it's the responsibility of the guy standing next to you to say "WTF? That is wrong and this is why." We need more guys doing that. We need more guys saying "Go tell your mother/sister/daughter that and see how she responds." We need a whole helluva lot more guys ostracizing men who exhibit misogynistic behaviour, shunning men who commit sexual assault, and so on. We need to make these behaviours as unthinkable as.... well, I can't come up with a good simile there.

It's not a woman's responsibility to change a man's behaviour. It is his, and the men around him.

I doubt many MRA/PUA types are willing to listen to women on this matter, is my point. Not that women don't need to be listened to.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [34 favorites]


I think Saxon Kane has a point with women being (again) props to him. He finally "got" some women. Perhaps more importantly he has finally deprived some alphas of women, in the only way he knew how.
posted by Iteki at 3:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Police interviewed Elliot Rodger and found him to be a "perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human," Shifman said. Authorities did not find a history of guns, but did say the 22-year-old had trouble making friends, he added.

Shorter cops: "Seemed normal to us."
posted by bleep-blop at 3:25 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


The regressive and reactionary sexuality happening in Greek circles, abutting with other empowered, progressive gender discourses.... it's getting really messy and kind of reaching fever pitch, in my anecdotal experience.

Can you expand a bit? I too was at university a decade ago, which is a lifetime ago considering the explosion of social networking that has happened recently. Can't really imagine what it's like now.
posted by mantecol at 3:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


That PUAHate thread reads like pretty normal MRA stuff to me. My understanding from what's come across my dash today is that it's a forum for people who have had PUA stuff not work and are enraged about it. I've read a fair amount of MRA stuff-- spent a couple years on reddit and read manboobz and some of the specifically anti-MRA boards.

Of course he sees women as objects. Mainstream society sees women as objects and he's not only subscribed to that level of misogyny but has sought out and joined a community for people for whom PUA wasn't enough.

This likely wouldn't have happened if we didn't breed this kind of entitlement into white men, especially the ones who come from privilege. It wouldn't be labeled as "sad" or "heartbreaking" and certainly wouldn't be a sign of our poor state of mental health if it was done by a man of color. If it was done to another specific marginalized group and not women, it would likely be termed without question as a hate crime.

Being heartbroken for this guy just pisses me the hell off, because there's an entire goddamn community of these assholes celebrating their abuses of women on a regular basis. I've seen comments on talking about how spousal abuse is necessary, about encouraging rape, etc. Murder is an escalation of that, but it's not a far one, and it's certainly not a goddamn surprising one.
posted by NoraReed at 3:30 PM on May 24, 2014 [90 favorites]


I get why my comment upset people. I grew up in a culture in that your friends had your back. My best way to explain is the example of the group of friends in "Good Will Hunting." Buds...just don't let you get away with that shit. If you start acting crazy, you get a beat down, and you do LEARN. And with this code is also that you never, ever, ever, ever hit a woman...or a kid.....or you will be trashed. Sorry folks, but it was the man code some of us grew up with. This guy who killed....never had this kind of support.

While such a community is & was a good thing for you, they also seem to have potentially problematic relationships to patriarchy (though I suppose most things do). I mean, it's great that you have a fellowship that enforces appropriate conduct towards women. It's problematic if that kind of support requires a woman to be treated as a commodity to be obtained as a favor. That might not apply in your particular case, but certainly seems like the sort of behavior that could be inferred from your description.
posted by Going To Maine at 3:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [33 favorites]


Final Videos, Postings Leaked

He evidently made some final posts at Wizardchan before he started killing people. Reading the reaction of the users there as the news came out... I seriously don't even know what to say but my skin won't stop crawling.
posted by palomar at 3:34 PM on May 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


I googled the involuntary psychiatric confinement proc's for my zip code and found them in twenty seconds. You have to talk to somebody in the courthouse M-F 9-5 to have high probability of success but if his father lived where I live he would not have to try all that hard to at least postpone this crime spree. Are things that different in Santa Barbara County? I tried to find their proc's online but was unable to find them in a minute.
posted by bukvich at 3:34 PM on May 24, 2014


“It’s so easy to say that Rodger is something awful and strange, an alien metabolism that somehow processes everyday interactions into poison. It’s so easy that men you know are doing it right now, as you read this—explaining to the women around them that this is about mental illness, not about hate. They’re doing this because they don’t want to admit that the poison is real and they’re drinking it too. They’re doing it because they don’t want to acknowledge that they’re feeding others poison every day. They’re doing it because they don’t want to understand that saying 'this crime of anger and hatred against women is not a crime of misogyny' is the same as saying 'here’s a shot of the poison that just killed seven people. Drink up.'”
posted by naju at 3:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [68 favorites]


I think that maybe we need to take a second to recognize that yes he seemed normal to most people. He was talked to by the police. He had an mental health team but no one saw these huge red flags. Yeah the YouTube and works plus his actions obviously show a picture of something very wrong. But this man deliberately hid this stuff from the people who could do anything about it. He planned this. He went to class and led a semi normal life. He had his own apartment. That's partly of what makes this so scary is that nobody saw it coming because he knew enough to get away with being just normal enough. It is easy in the mental health field to commit the schizophrenic who is so delusional he doesn't understand he is telling law enforcement he wants to kill people. It is much harder when someone understands the law and consciously carries out a plan.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


It’s so easy that men you know are doing it right now, as you read this—explaining to the women around them that this is about mental illness, not about hate.

Heh, my husband and I are having this argument right now and I read your comment to him out loud.
posted by Jacqueline at 3:39 PM on May 24, 2014 [19 favorites]


It's pretty well established that anti-depressants can cause suicidal and violent behavior.

Data point: 3 out of 4 of my suicide attempts have been while on anti-depressant medication.

Being heartbroken for this guy just pisses me the hell off

Guess we're different people then, because I can be heartbroken over how many different ways society failed him (including people who are mandated to make sure he causes no harm), just as much as I am heartbroken over six innocent lives ended, and six families traumatized to hell. (And about to be re-traumatized in public by voracious media sharks).

This could have been prevented. That's the real heartbreak. This never should have happened. Did the police or his mental healthcare team ever actually watch the videos? If the answer is no, those six families should sue the shit out of them for negligence. The police knew the videos existed; did the mental healthcare team?

What can we as a society possibly do when you are quite literally telling the police that your son is dangerous and there are videos to prove it, and they just interview him and walk away?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:40 PM on May 24, 2014 [16 favorites]


this kind of entitlement into white men

A week ago, in of the bodybuilding threads, he complained about how he'd seen a blonde girl in a Honda Civic with an Indian guy behind the wheel. So not just 100% misogynist, but racist as well.
posted by effbot at 3:41 PM on May 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


So what's really odd about this subsection of the MRA movement - the incels and the anti-PUA crowd - is that their obsessive need to sleep with women seems entirely focused on impressing men. For these people, it sure seems that homosocial bonding is the ultimate goal of all heterosexual behavior.

The accused didn't want to sleep with women because he loved women - clearly he didn't, he killed at least six. He wanted to improve his standing within a male hierarchy. He saw himself as a "beta male" which meant that women weren't interested in him - and because women weren't interested in him, he'd never move up the male hierarchy.

I can't help but believe that he cared more about what other men thought than anything about women at all. And in some sense, this mass murder was done both to terrorize women and to impress men.

And I don't think it's a pathology. I think we need to accept this as a facet of present-day male heterosexuality - something that I find deeply upsetting. That it's upsetting doesn't make it less true. This is part of being a straight guy under patriarchy, whether we like it or not.
posted by allen.spaulding at 3:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [119 favorites]


Heh, my husband and I are having this argument right now and I read your comment to him out loud.

...and it turned into a big screaming fight that ended with me ordering him to get the fuck out of my presence until he stops saying shit like "feminists are crazy too."

I guess we're not going to go see X-Men: Days of Future Past tonight after all. :(
posted by Jacqueline at 3:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [70 favorites]


Is it cynical that I find it very hard to believe that anyone would ever know about "PUAhate" communities besides persons-who-have-failed-at-PUA-behavior? Sounds circlejerky.

I'm really sad that a lot of people are dead because some super privileged Hollywood kid was sexually frustrated and bonkers, but that detail jumped out at me as weird, and especially weird to mention in the context of this news like it's even relevant.
posted by trackofalljades at 3:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


this is about mental illness, not about hate

This is about what happens at the horrifying intersection of those two things.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


"feminists are crazy too."

AAARRGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
posted by Summer at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [47 favorites]


It’s so easy that men you know are doing it right now, as you read this—explaining to the women around them that this is about mental illness, not about hate.

Women don't have the luxury of not noticing patterns in violent crimes against women. It's on us to avoid it, and we're often blamed when we are the victims of it. To women, it doesn't matter if this guy was mentally ill--"avoid all mentally ill people" is not a strategy to avoid violence. We have to look for more specific patterns. We are looking to prevent this from happening to us in addition to looking for ways to prevent it from happening at all. And holy hell, dudes who are that deep in MRA language make my spidey sense tingle like crazy. That's why women are focusing on this dude's hateful language in addition to his mental illness. We are looking out for our own safety.
posted by almostmanda at 3:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [84 favorites]


From my perspective turning this into a thread about mental health treatment and misogyny is the same as threads about bullying causing Columbine, academic pressure for the shooting on college campuses, mothering/parental abilities in Sandy Hook, employee discrimination/bullying in I don't know how many work place shootings, drugs in x( n) robberies, etc. Everyone of these is a valid issue but a huge distraction from the central and consistent issue. I find this not all that different from what FOX news will do as they find an issue/person to castigate and call for all the persons in Santa Barbara to be armed--as if that would stop a drive by killing.
posted by rmhsinc at 3:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


It’s so easy that men you know are doing it right now, as you read this—explaining to the women around them that this is about mental illness, not about hate.

Heh, my husband and I are having this argument right now and I read your comment to him out loud.


This might be about hate, but I do think that that medium piece is a bit glib. It seems to be equating all forms of misogyny as existing on a single-dimensional axis. This isn't some kind of sliding scale; it's a bumpy map, and people can co-exist on it while never being at risk of meeting up.


Everyone's a little bit misogynist, it's true...
posted by Going To Maine at 3:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


If he were from Afghanistan, the press would report it as an honor killing.
posted by saulgoodman at 3:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


The terrifying thing isn't that there are a bunch of obvious red flags in his YouTube videos. The terrifying thing is that these kind of red flags are rampant in the MRA community, with people regularly talking about wanting revenge on women for rejecting them. There's nothing being done about the ones posting stories about the rapes they commit, or the abuse they've performed. It's all publicly available. I'm not talking about some fucking darknet or IRC logs, this is on goddamn reddit.

Here's the deal, everybody: this is normal. When society teaches men-- especially white men-- that they deserve access to the bodies of women, this is what's going to happen. This is within the range of what we teach men it is okay to do if they do not get the access they 'deserve'.

Stop fucking saying 'it's because he's on the spectrum', because it's not goddamn okay to stigmatize and throw people with autism under the bus because it's easier than looking at our culture and saying, yes, violence against women is endemic. Misogyny is endemic. Our culture has a disease, and this is a flare-up, and pinning it on mental illness or on autism isn't how we deal with it.

Do we need better mental health coverage in this country? Yes, but you know who needs it because of something like this? The women who have been abused and terrorized by the sick goddamn society we live in. Not the overprivileged, entitled, racist, virtulently misogynistic assholes who can't deal with women not being served up to them on a silver platter.
posted by NoraReed at 3:49 PM on May 24, 2014 [177 favorites]


mantecol, I'm not sure I see past the end of my nose on the issue, or speak very eloquently or clearly about a generalization here... suffice it to say that I am still reeling with culture shock from coming to work at a traditional, Greek/Sports institution of predominately privileged students, USC, having come of age myself at humble, hippie UC Santa Cruz. The strong divisions between Haves and Have Nots, Beautiful People and The Rest, and perhaps even the Popular vs. the Political seem agonizingly clear, in ways I imagine would be very frustrating to anyone with dreams of making the world their own. If I found myself a college freshman today, I think I would be very disillusioned and find the world to be a hypocritical place.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:50 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


So would it be fair to say that his mental illness turned him into a gun, and misogynist culture provided a target?
posted by Mooski at 3:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I'm sitting here and I'm thinking of Anders Breivik. Different continent, different methods, different motive. Still, I am thinking of Breivik.

I am thinking of white men in relative affluence. Men who feel marginalised. Men who are angry and find other angry men on internet fora and blogs. Men who feel like losers. Men who feel threatened by the Other and decide to fight the threat.

Different continent, different methods, different motive.

I think we will see many more of these Lone Angry Man crimes - each with their own unique flavour and motive. And each time we'll find a new sub-genre of message board where people fuel each other's fears and anger.

The great thing about the internet is that it allows people to connect. It is also the downside.
posted by kariebookish at 3:58 PM on May 24, 2014 [28 favorites]


News says he had Asperger's disease; maybe if our mental health system was better and firearms were better controlled, this could have been prevented.
posted by Renoroc at 4:01 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Everyone of these is a valid issue but a huge distraction from the central and consistent issue. I find this not all that different from what FOX news will do as they find an issue/person to castigate and call for all the persons in Santa Barbara to be armed--as if that would stop a drive by killing.

Just this past week, a 21-year old university student in Taipei killed four people on a subway train and injured over 20 others with a knife. This past March, Uighur separatists killed almost 30 people and injured 140 others with blades in China.

I think gun control should always be a relevant topic in the face of these events, but the above incidents show that even societies where firearms are highly restricted fall prey to violent attacks of both spree killing and politically-motivated terrorism.

Ideological terrorism is something we will always have with us, or perhaps it is something we as a species finds it easier to understand and explain. But violence committed by lone, disgruntled, otherwise normal seeming people, in the case of both Elliot Rodger and the student in the Taiwanese attack- or Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold- that seems less understandable and troubling in its puzzling nature.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


> I watched that video and I disagree. There's nothing there that isn't said constantly. He's a Nice Guy and a Gentleman and he doesn't understand why these sluts won't sleep with him but will sleep with men he doesn't approve of, so he's going to hurt them.

This bears repeating. Repeatedly.

Mental illness may be an amplifying factor, but these are deeply embedded cultural narratives that are only now really encountering any significant pushback, and that pushback is in turn causing many who have bought into those narratives to become even more entrenched in their positions.
posted by Superplin at 4:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [42 favorites]


Data point: 3 out of 4 of my suicide attempts have been while on anti-depressant medication.


Of course all this proves is that depressed people are often treated with antidepressants but that these aren't always as effective as you hope they will be. There is a common, linked causal factor called "mental illness."

And while I do believe there is substantial evidence that certain antidepressants are associated with elevated suicide risk for depressed persons who take them, particularly adolescents, I am not aware of any such association that has been proven for acts of mass murder.

Anyone care to substantiate that claim? It's a fine line between concern and unnecessary stigmatization of millions who rely on those drugs to function.

Alcohol, with which many self-medicate, causes far more violence, while we are free associating on the topic.

Severely mentally ill people are often drawn to violent ideological politics and cohorts. That's why they make very good terrorists. It's not either/or.

Fucking horrible, but it's the not so new American normal. I agree that the only problem that admits of a linear solution is keeping guns away from the criminally disturbed. Fight misogyny with all you got, but it's bigger than a few MRA assholes and way more dangerous when armed.
posted by spitbull at 4:05 PM on May 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


He evidently made some final posts at Wizardchan before he started killing people. Reading the reaction of the users there as the news came out... I seriously don't even know what to say but my skin won't stop crawling.

Jesus. There's one comment there that talks about how society ("normies") uses sex (who has it, who doesn't) as a measuring stick and then withholds it from some people - the commenter acts like this is personal, as if he himself (and other guys on this board, I guess?) have been personally chosen and denied sex. Because obviously, sex is a thing that everyone is entitled to, and the only reason they aren't getting it is because there's a conspiracy against them.

Regarding the involuntary psych hold: Someone we know is on their third week of an involuntary hold because they threatened to hurt themselves and someone else, and their partner called the cops, and they (our friend) has been unable to even act like they might not harm themselves or someone else. But sometimes people can, and do. This may have been one of those times.
posted by rtha at 4:07 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


Any more information about the bodies in his apartment? I've only found the short links above and unconfirmed reports.

Completely terrifying.
There is supposed to be a press conference at 5.
posted by kittensofthenight at 4:08 PM on May 24, 2014


I do sometimes wonder what would be posted on MeFi if for a week posts regarding misogyny, homophobia, income inequality, sexual discrimination and racism were banned. One would assume that these are singularly the explanation or much of the human condition. They are never OK and Americans are at extremes on these issues--extremes at both ends of the continuum but the US does not in anyway have a monopoly on them. Loneliness, mental illness, cultural paranoia, child neglect/abuse, drugs, alcohol, cultural stereotypes, fear of rejection, discrimination etc are part of human condition. I am simply sick and tired of the Wild West mentality, the accessibility of guns and ammunition and extremism in all forms whether rhetorically or behaviorally.
posted by rmhsinc at 4:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


News says he had Asperger's disease

There's no known connection between Asperger's and violence, so that has nothing to do with him being a misogynistic and racist shithead that killed a bunch of random people. All the talk about mental illness in this thread is speculation based on his acts, not from any professional first hand sources.
posted by effbot at 4:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


Gun control is a valid discussion in the wake of this, but it's not the only discussion and it's not what distinguishes this event, the way I see it.

It's a multi-layered thing.

Layer 1: Person is exposed to or subscribes to [fanatic religious ideology] / [fanatic political ideology] / [fanatic {insert-poison-here} ideology / [fanatic MRA ideology]. I left that last one explicitly named, because that is the specific case here.

Layer 2, optional: Person might be mentally ill, with the potential effects of [lowering inhibitions] / [increasing the severity of reactions] / [being under medication which may lead to violent ideation] / [increasing the vulnerability to suggestion from the groupthink in Layer 1].

Layer 3: Person has access to weaponry, which in the USA tends to be in the form of guns because of easier accessibility.

Maybe I can think of them as a reservoir and pipes. Layer 1 is the reservoir. Layers 2 and 3 channel the outcome.

When we discuss gun control in the wake of an event like this, we're focusing on Layer 3. Which is valid. When we discuss the sorry state of access to and attitudes towards treatment of mental illnesses, we're focusing on Layer 2. That is also valid.

But what makes this case... OK, it's not unique, and it's not novel either, but let's say what classes this with the Ecole Polytechnique case is the specific ideology and thought system of Layer 1. And in this case I believe discussing Layer 1 takes precedence, because we have named and shamed other options that I've listed in Layer 1, but how the MRA ideology is, at heart, a toxic and terrorist ideology has not been brought up into wider discourse. The comments in this thread which give voice and name to this thought, this meme, are the most valuable to me in terms of shaping the discourse on this event.
posted by seyirci at 4:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [26 favorites]


If there's any connection between antidepressants and spree killings, I think it's most likely just that psychopaths get depressed too. When you're depressed you just lie around in bed all day, but when the antidepressants start working you finally have the physical energy and mental motive power to get up and do something. For most people that "something" is more along the lines of take a shower and talk to a friend, but for that small percentage of the population with psychopathic tendencies that "something" might be mass violence.
posted by Jacqueline at 4:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [17 favorites]


It seems like after Sandy Hook both efforts towards gun control and increasing funding for public mental health didn't end up anywhere.

Because there is money to be made creating and enforcing a culture of violence as expressed by the Military-Industrial-Congressional complex pimp'n war and PTSD is just self-help after the fact. (There may be other addressable PTSD - hood disease)

The nation was born of violence and has a history of avoiding the mental health issues of the violence.

Computer controlled drones striking based on metadata is the future to address both issues it seems.
posted by rough ashlar at 4:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Thanks, Ambrosia Voyeur.

On another note, I hope this incident encourages society to take a hard look at MRA and similar movements. They employ circular, pseudo-scientific pseudo-logic that is extremely corrosive to impressionable young minds.

- In what ways can we fortify youth to defend their minds against such rhetoric?
- Regarding young men specifically, how are their needs failing to be met, and what can be done about this on a societal level?
- It's time for everyone to take a stand against hate speech. I have no idea why reddit entertains MRAs, but hypothetically it could be for a reason like "Well if we don't let them do it here, they'll just take their discussion somewhere else and we'll lose revenue." Or maybe, "It would be too much moderation work to try to prevent it." Allowing hateful speech on massively popular sites legitimizes it, and makes it easier for young people to stumble across it. In today's online world full of digital public forums, the duty to "serve and protect" falls to more people than just police officers.
posted by mantecol at 4:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


On the other hand, sometimes top-notch care should mean temporarily reducing a mentally ill person's autonomy when their illness entails credible threats of violence or violent ideation.

Simple enough! Just have a person who has Government blessing to make such determinations state the person to be restrained is credibly unmutual!

What could ever possibly go wrong or ever be abused?
posted by rough ashlar at 4:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Reminds me of Marc Lepine and L'Ecole Polytechnique when I was an undergrad in 1989. I'm not sure what it is like for other people, since I am long gone from university, but I do remember December 6 each year.

One of the outcomes of the 1989 massacre was stricter gun control in Canada.

While it's not particularly relevant or even, in the context of the premeditated murder of these young women, even particularly important, the Harper government's efforts to relax gun control in Canada over the past five years or so means the Conservatives will likely never enjoy any more support in Quebec.

I guess what is important is that there are people who remember what happened, who wanted things to change, and managed to change things (stricter gun control), and people still do care.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


His manifesto is 140 pages long and apparently talks about how women should be kept in concentration camps and reproduction should only be done artificially. I don't see how one can argue he wasn't delusional.
posted by Justinian at 4:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


Yes, if you have an organization devoted to hating vegetarians*, and you spend lots of time in your organization talking about how all vegetarians should be force-fed meat and then shot, and how they are awful people preventing you from succeeding at life by eating celery, and how when you meet them you want to punch them in the face and strangle them and kill them; and while you personally may be just using rhetorical excess but you make your organization a welcoming haven to angry, alienated people and you approve and reinforce their violent thoughts with social approval when they express them; and then you are shocked -- SHOCKED! -- when someone ACTS ON THE VIOLENCE Y'ALL HAVE BEEN TALKING ABOUT and insist "It's not all vegetarian-haters! 99% of us aren't violent!", this is a problem.

Every organization attracts people who aren't fully functional and has to take steps to protect itself and other people from sheltering or reinforcing dysfunctional behavior. Organizations that instead protect or promote violence, who provide violent, angry people with validation, are partly responsible when IN A TOTALLY FORESEEABLE HUMAN FASHION, someone who is more angry or more impulsive or less functional than usual takes all that violent rhetoric and turns it into action.

That's pretty much the purpose of a hate group, to provide a protected space (almost always justified in terms of "free speech" and "free association") for angry people to get angrier and angrier and feel more and more justified in that anger, until someone manages to turn the anger into violence. Which will then be met with the dual chorus of "random people" from the group saying "Finally! Good for that guy!" and "officials" from the group saying, "We deplore violence and those people don't speak for us."

It's not exactly disingenuous, because a lot of us all the time rhetorically say things like, "Man, this guy cut me off in traffic and I wanted to kill him!" and it's just a figure of speech. I am sure it has never occurred to some of these guys on PUA sites that some of their cohorts are not speaking rhetorically about violence. But when violence actually erupts, justified by your rhetoric, the correct response is some serious soul-searching for your organization about how you might be contributing to the problem. Immediately retreating into "But free speech is important! But not ALL members of our group are violent!" and so on is a sign of denial and rationalization and that, yeah, you're probably a hate group because you consider violence to be (at most) collateral damage to be tolerated while advancing your hateful agenda.

I'm not very wrapped up in whether we call this a "hate crime" or not, but it's definitely an interaction of the social and the individual, and it's irresponsible to ignore the role that communities that provide validation and social approval for acts of hate and violence play in enabling crimes like these. "Most" members of almost any community are not committing acts of violence, but those communities can still be providing a fertile breeding ground for violence.

*I picked vegetarians because I know of no violent vegetarian hate groups.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [103 favorites]


I'm a guy unsuccessful with women. Just don't date, ever. I've known a few other guys like this. Most have been okay, harmless, although they may release the occasional oddball comment about women and relationship/gender dynamics, percolated in their brains out of a combination of naivete, social isolation and awkwardness. I don't want to watch the videos or delve further into his writings to get a more personal sense of the individual here, but I think that it's possible that he never approached women and rarely interacted with them. Rather than this action being a reaction to any real world rejection, it may be that he sat and stewed in his own sense of inadequacy. Counted himself out before he ever tried. Strip away the big talk when he's looking to go out with a bang and it just may be that he felt lonely and unworthy. It may be that his anger doesn't stem so much from a misogynistic expectation that any woman he desires should be available to him. Rather it may rise out of a mostly untested belief that something so central to the human identity - relationships, friendships, love, sex - appears easily available to everyone else but is denied to him (and because that has been his reality so far, will always be denied to him). There are a lot more 22-year-old - and 40-year-old - virgins than the 22-year-old virgin would ever believe. He would believe his state is unique, a great shame, a sign that society has scorned him specifically, might think it so unique a state that it requires dramatic response.

(Or not. We always project when we try to understand these murderers. Many unhappy people come up with skewed ideas. But pulling a trigger to bring harm, to end the days of a real living laughing loving person a few feet from you takes a mindset that thankfully few of us ever know.)
posted by TimTypeZed at 4:25 PM on May 24, 2014 [52 favorites]


I googled the involuntary psychiatric confinement proc's for my zip code and found them in twenty seconds. You have to talk to somebody in the courthouse M-F 9-5 to have high probability of success but if his father lived where I live he would not have to try all that hard to at least postpone this crime spree. Are things that different in Santa Barbara County? I tried to find their proc's online but was unable to find them in a minute.

It would take a lot more than some alleged YouTube videos and forum posts for a father to get his adult son involuntarily committed.
posted by humanfont at 4:29 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Outliers like this guy have been and are always around. Pick any group, and you'll find posts and vids and other rants about how we need to take up arms and fight back against ___________. A few actually do it.

What I've never understood is why they often target a random crowd. In the middle east, it's often a market place or a bus station. This guy was a student at a community college, but he drove to Isla Vista at UC Santa Barbara...and then just randomly went on a shooting spree. What's the connection?

I suppose you have to be insane to understand the insane?

Seems to be a typical blame game going on now: who is at fault here? Message board? Mental Health Community? A law? Gun control?
posted by CrowGoat at 4:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Allowing hateful speech on massively popular sites legitimizes it, and makes it easier for young people to stumble across it.

Might as well shut Reddit down then. If you removed everything that someone found offensive or hateful there'd be nothing left but cute cat pictures. If you shut down TRP do you leave TwoX up? Or SRS? Where is that line drawn? And how much can you alienate what is probably your core user base (young, white, males) before your massively popular website isn't so massive or so popular any more?
posted by MikeMc at 4:41 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Censorship and restriction against "bad thoughts" is about as effective as prohibition against narcotics. The real solution is changing the culture and social attitudes through gradually winning hearts and minds. Unfortunately, that shit's hard.
posted by Apocryphon at 4:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


You need to allow this sort of speech in order to a) provide a relief valve for the crazies and b) figure out who the crazies are.

It's kind of funny Obama and the NSA want to have all this access to our private data, but never seem to be able to prevent any of this sort of thing from happening.
posted by KokuRyu at 4:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'm a social worker. Involuntary committing someone takes a phone call and some paperwork if all goes well in my area. But the real variables is the hospital social workers opinion and client presentation. Occasionally insurance plays a role as well. Sometimes police do make the judgement call not to pick up if the person is calm and collected. I've had it happen to me when trying to commit someone for suisidality. (She didn't kill herself so you can argue they made the right call but I disgress).

And most of my people are 100 percent aware of the mental health system and sign themselves out AMA after 72 hours. The one that wasn't was quite delusional and they kept her for 5 days and sent her home with a nice injection of anti psychotics that kept her good for about 30 days. Yay medicaid .

To keep someone longer than a temporary hold takes a court order and is not done unless it is very clear and usually there is a long history of behavior.
posted by AlexiaSky at 4:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


And how much can you alienate what is probably your core user base (young, white, males) before your massively popular website isn't so massive or so popular any more?

I hear you, but the fact that insisting misogynist speech is a no-no can be called 'alienating' young, white males is a large part of the problem, in my opinion.
posted by Mooski at 4:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


And how much can you alienate what is probably your core user base (young, white, males) before your massively popular website isn't so massive or so popular any more?

It is definitely a dilemma, which is why I brought it up. Without outside influence to push it in a different direction, a business will act in its best financial interest. Whether that entails destroying the environment, helping breed hate, whatever.
posted by mantecol at 4:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Since my MeMail inbox is now blowing up with messages of concern about me and the state of my marriage, I'd like to reassure y'all that screaming fights are just how we roll and we've already (mostly) made up and I am in fact writing this comment on my phone as my husband drives us to the movies.

I'm still mad at him but we negotiated that I'd table it for the duration of date night if he'd read some stuff about misogyny when we got home. (Any suggestions for quick, effective, persuasive primers aimed at men who are feminist in their actions yet live in a mental bubble where they don't see that misogyny is real and thus say crap like "I'm an individualist, not a feminist"? Or better yet, short videos -- he's more of a videos guy.)
posted by Jacqueline at 4:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [49 favorites]


This video of a father, whose son Christopher Martinez is among the victims, is gut-wrenching.
posted by raztaj at 4:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


The first thing my wife told me when I got up this morning was this horrifying news. I was a grad student at UCSB in the 1990s and lived across the street from IV for many years. I hadn't been back in Santa Barbara for well over a decade. But on a caprice of a weekend visit, we were in Isla Vista last Saturday, and exactly a week ago were taking a pleasant stroll to the beach crossing the very streets where the rampage took place. This one is hitting home for me.
posted by Numenius at 4:53 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


What I've never understood is why they often target a random crowd. In the middle east, it's often a market place or a bus station. This guy was a student at a community college, but he drove to Isla Vista at UC Santa Barbara...and then just randomly went on a shooting spree. What's the connection?

It's not always a random crowd, it can be family members or others who they feel have slighted them (think school killings). The spree killing is an act by which they regain lost honour. Check this guy out. When he gave himself up to the cops, he said "they would all be dead if he wanted"; it's really about proving your power, worth and honour to your fellow men (spree killers are basically always men). Saxon Kane, way way upthread, was right on the money IMO.

Look at the history of the work "amok" - it was in the DSM at one point. It's not about misogyny, misanthropy, politics, religion, economics, sexual success... those are just the yard sticks to which these guys fail to measure up in their own heads.

If you want to stop it happening, remove the pressure to measure yourself against other men (see the obsession with alphas and betas at the PUAHate forum). You'd have better luck there than removing any individual measuring stick, 'cos they'll always find another one.

nothing left but cute cat pictures

Uh... I really hate cats. Sorry. Close the whole site down.
posted by Leon at 4:56 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


never seem to be able to prevent any of this sort of thing from happening

Those numbers were deemed irrelevant.
posted by the man of twists and turns at 4:59 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


I hear you, but the fact that insisting misogynist speech is a no-no can be called 'alienating' young, white males is a large part of the problem, in my opinion.

That's a thorny issue no doubt. How to address certain behaviors in a certain without that group feeling "targeted"? As a white guy I can understand the feeling that sometimes one is beset by "enemies" on all sides. Feminists want to emasculate you, groups lobbying for minority groups want to knock you down a peg or three etc... Now, I know that having been born a straight, white male in America I pretty much hit the birth lottery but that feeling is very, very real and it's very hard to ignore. It takes a deliberate effort to resist that message. Many people don't resist, some can't.
posted by MikeMc at 5:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


The shooter attended the city college downtown, but lived in Isla Vista, which is not unusual for a lot of SBCC students. I did the same for a year before moving downtown. IV is basically an residential extension of the university campus (though mostly non-affiliated) and it looked he was targeting sorority girls in particular.
posted by book 'em dano at 5:05 PM on May 24, 2014


Look at the history of the work "amok" - it was in the DSM at one point. It's not about misogyny, misanthropy, politics, religion, economics, sexual success... those are just the yard sticks to which these guys fail to measure up in their own heads.

That's kind of the crux of the disagreement I was having with MartinWisse early in the thread. If it wasn't women he was mad at for not recognizing his magnificence and power (his actual words) he would have been a white supremacist mad at minorities for their unfair advantages, or a right wing extremist mad at the government for keeping him down, or a religious fanatic mad at our immoral and sinful ways, or any of a hundred other things.

Which isn't at all to suggest we shouldn't do everything we can to address misogyny and its ilk, only that it will not stop people like this man, only change their delusions.
posted by Justinian at 5:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


I do sometimes wonder what would be posted on MeFi if for a week posts regarding misogyny, homophobia, income inequality, sexual discrimination and racism were banned. One would assume that these are singularly the explanation or much of the human condition.

When you're a member of a marginalized group and those factors constantly effect how people treat you, then yes, that is an explanation for a lot of your life. When you're a member of a privileged group and you're handed stuff you haven't earned or don't deserve, that is also an explanation for a lot of your life. If we banned discussion of those issues, it would benefit people in the privileged groups, because silence about those issues benefits the people already in power. Got it? Can we be done with this kind of fucking thing now, or do we have to reiterate this kind of point another thousand times to every fucking dude who thinks his dude status makes his opinion fucking matter?

Might as well shut Reddit down then. If you removed everything that someone found offensive or hateful there'd be nothing left but cute cat pictures. If you shut down TRP do you leave TwoX up? Or SRS? Where is that line drawn? And how much can you alienate what is probably your core user base (young, white, males) before your massively popular website isn't so massive or so popular any more?

Are you seriously comparing TwoX and SRS to TRP? TwoX is a shitty fucking community infested with MRAs and transphobes, but it's made to be a safer space for women, a marginalized group. SRS is a forum specifically for pointing out issues of racism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, fatphobia and other oppressions on reddit, which is a community deeply sick with those things.

If you can't tell the goddamn difference between a community MADE FOR PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM OPPRESSION where those people often TALK ABOUT THAT OPPRESSION and A FUCKING HATE GROUP then I don't know what to tell you, except to get off my fucking corner of the internet, because it's goddamn shitty and intolerant enough without people pretending they're just being dense instead of defending rampantly misogynistic hate groups.
posted by NoraReed at 5:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [94 favorites]


Um, Leon, you do realize what your username means, right? ;)
posted by futz at 5:07 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


He is filled with self-loathing.
posted by Justinian at 5:08 PM on May 24, 2014


I've read some interesting excerpts from Lundy Bancroft's book and one that's really stuck with me is the case of an abuser who appears to "go crazy" and completely trash the apartment. But in an interview with his partner, she realizes he was only destroying her stuff. I think misogyny is so pervasive that there IS a spectrum. Rodger's problem wasn't "sexual frustration," if he was having sex he would likely be an abuser.

Bringing up whether this was "terrorism" seems to imply the American security state can solve this (the military is no stranger to sexual assault scandals). The police response to Rodger would have been very different if his target wasn't women.
posted by gorbweaver at 5:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


I... don't know about that? I mean, he did die.
posted by Justinian at 5:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]




Futz: (after Googling) Lion? Interesting. I was going for something else entirely (it's an anagram).
posted by Leon at 5:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Out of a US population of 310+ million let's say we have 10 of these types of sprees per year. ( I think that's high but I couldn't find any good statistics off hand) that means it takes 10 years to amass 100 people to study. Depending on their ages, SES, race, gender, and other variables they may not be very alike at all and make up 0.00003 percent of the population.

I think expectations on that we should know and be able to pick these people out is simply impossible. There just isn't enough of them (in the US). Maybe if you look world wide but religious, cultural, and language starts playing a role and it's even harder to untangle.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Jacqueline, I was gonna tell you to see the movie without him, but since you're already going I'll just say "sit apart from him or hog all the popcorn or something".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


According to his story, Elliot Rodger had a pattern of violent thoughts and actions that stemmed from sexual rejection.

One of his friends had to dissuade him from throwing a drink, unprovoked, at a group of men and women in a Panda Express. He later confessed to the friend that he wanted to flay any man who is successful with women. He smiled at two women in a car, and when they didn't smile back, he felt insulted and threw a drink at them. He drunkenly hit on several girls at a party, and after being rejected, tried to push several people off a ten foot ledge. Other party goers beat him up in retribution. He regularly fantasized about killing men and women he saw together.

He attended all three Star Wars red carpet premieres. He played World of Warcraft addictively in high school. He drove to Arizona to buy thousands of dollars in Powerball tickets because he thought being a millionaire would get him laid. I find all this perversely fascinating.
posted by Hume at 5:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [29 favorites]


If you can't tell the goddamn difference between a community MADE FOR PEOPLE SUFFERING FROM OPPRESSION where those people often TALK ABOUT THAT OPPRESSION and A FUCKING HATE GROUP then I don't know what to tell you, except to get off my fucking corner of the internet, because it's goddamn shitty and intolerant enough without people pretending they're just being dense instead of defending rampantly misogynistic hate groups.

Well that's Reddit's conundrum isn't it? Ban TRP and then it's "Why is it that women can have communities but men can't?" and SRS is, well, SRS (and probably ranks right up there with TRP as far being generally hated). Reddit can't win no matter what they do. /r/Creepshots got shut down but it's back under a new name. Same with /r/ni**ers. Reddit, in a way, is a victim of it's own popularity.
posted by MikeMc at 5:19 PM on May 24, 2014


He was also a big fan of GRRM's Song of Ice and Fire. Not sure that's relevant, though.
posted by Justinian at 5:19 PM on May 24, 2014


My sympathies to anyone who wants to dig through that 140-page manifesto. I got through the first paragraph then decided, you know what, my nerves are already shot to hell by the videos, that's enough for one day.
posted by naju at 5:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Justinian: His manifesto is 140 pages long and apparently talks about how women should be kept in concentration camps and reproduction should only be done artificially. I don't see how one can argue he wasn't delusional.

Pretty standard stuff for MRA types. Theodore Beale/Vox Day has posted similar stuff, and the right wing of SF fandom has decided he's a sainted martyr. Vile misogyny (often teamed with vile racism) is considered in the acceptable range of political views in this country.

I'm also pretty tired of politically driven terrorism against women being excused with a "pat-pat, poor boy, it was just mental illness".
posted by tavella at 5:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [35 favorites]


Previously.
posted by blue suede stockings at 5:25 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


When a white guy violently deprives women of their lives and education, it's mental illness. When men of color violently deprive women of their lives and education, it's Boko Haram.

The only difference I see is degree, race, and place. Sigh.
posted by Ouverture at 5:28 PM on May 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


Just skimmed the manifesto and it's mostly an autobiographical account of his life. It's only in the last couple of pages that he describes his ideal, "pure" world--where women starve to death in concentration camps, except for a select few that are bred through artificial insemination, and men are finally freed from the "barbarity" of sex and women. The hate crime accusations earlier in the thread are spot-on.
posted by xekul at 5:30 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I don't think anyone here is saying that mental illness is the end all be all and that's just it. It is complicated and nobody at this time is able to write a comprehensive list of the interplay between all the factors in this case. That will take a very long time. There is only so much that can be processed and discussed at one time. And more information keeps coming out. In addition most likely most of us do not work in forensic psychology so our opinions are just opinions.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:32 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Yeah, I'm actually reading the damn thing -- I'm on page 40 now. He's just turned 13, he's seen his first porno and it traumatized him and destroyed his entire life (his words), he's just gotten into WoW, and his mom, having had her child support drastically reduced by his father, has had to move them to an apartment, which just absolutely disgusts this kid because apartments are for low-class poors. (It doesn't seem to occur to him that his mom had to make that move in part because his dad wanted to pay less child support. Nope, his dad's still an awesome dude.)

Mostly, he reads as deeply entitled and completely unself-aware. The whole thing so far has been a litany of what neighborhood he lived in at what ages, how his father's career was advancing and what a stud he was, what kinds of possessions he had and vacations his family took, how many friends he had and what kind of benefit he got from them (popularity, getting to attend parties with bouncy castles and famous people), and on and on and on. Actually, I just got to the part where he says that he stopped seeing his friends because he moved to this apartment and was too embarrassed to contact them, and also his mom could now have high speed internet so he spent all his time at home playing WoW. But of course he's not to blame for that, it's his friends' fault. Or his mother's fault. Or the universe's fault. Anyone but poor Elliot's fault.
posted by palomar at 5:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [23 favorites]


The knee-jerk reaction to blame this on mental illness takes the blame off of the misogyny in society and increases the already rampant stigma against people with mental illnesses, who are more far likely to be the victims of violent crime than the perpetrators. Even if those symptoms manifest as different kinds of entitlements and different kinds of violence in different spaces and different men, all of this is a piece of the same societal disease, and like any bacterial or viral plague, it strikes the healthy as well as the sick.
posted by NoraReed at 5:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [22 favorites]


I didn't (and don't plan to) watch the videos, but I've skimmed the purported manifesto up through age 18 so far and (of course realizing that this is pretty much the archetypical unreliable narrator...)

Outwardly, this guy's life doesn't seem so different or awful from many, many other people, and certainly he'd had a much better time of it than many people who don't go on to murder anyone. I didn't see any abuse, sexual or otherwise. No deprivation of pretty much any kind. Just a not super-popular kid with divorced parents who invested a bunch of time into video games because his real-world social interactions were awkward and didn't result in instant comfort.

The primary difference, from what I can tell, is his constant internal dialogue combined with an almost entire lack of expressing it.

Everybody else is having sex. Nobody likes him. He would never be able to attract anyone. He talks about how he went to a party where he didn't know anyone, but "it would only be a matter of time before they detected I was an outcast" and so he left after an awkward few minutes.

It's like that at least up to age 18, but what I didn't see much if any of was an outlet for any of those thoughts. He had friends, but it doesn't mention discussing any of this with them. Ditto parents. He was aware of AIM and Facebook, but no mention of venting there or on Livejournal or someplace.

Frankly, he seems to have started off normal, then had a few negative-but-normal growing-up experiences, but instead of venting them, expressing them, talking about them, whatever, they just festered and spread and rotted him from the inside.

Terrifying, actually.
posted by brentajones at 5:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


"Mostly, he reads as deeply entitled and completely unself-aware. "

Yeah, that's some pretty extreme narcissism. On the narcissism scale of 1 to 10, this guy scores a zillion. It is absolutely, positively, serious mental illness.
posted by mikeand1 at 5:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


I couldn't watch more than the first few seconds of the video rant. It reminds me too much of how sickened I was by the TV broadcast, by a major network, of the VA Tech killer's tape.
posted by thelonius at 5:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


It is absolutely, positively, serious mental illness.

Of course it is. But being absolutely positively seriously mentally ill and being a tremendous misogynist aren't mutually exclusive. His mental illness doesn't excuse or explain why he targeted women.
posted by palomar at 5:53 PM on May 24, 2014 [23 favorites]


(It doesn't seem to occur to him that his mom had to make that move in part because his dad wanted to pay less child support. Nope, his dad's still an awesome dude.)

Yeah, dad's still awesome because if what you want is to be like dad (successful, famous, etc.), then your role model can't possibly be a fucking deadbeat - if he's anything bad, it's because he's a victim of circumstances, and probably gold-diggers who just want him for his money.
posted by rtha at 5:53 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Not a misogynist hate crime because society rarely recognizes them, not ideological terrorism because he's a well-off white guy.

This likely wouldn't have happened if we didn't breed this kind of entitlement into white men, especially the ones who come from privilege.

When a white guy violently deprives women of their lives and education, it's mental illness. When men of color violently deprive women of their lives and education, it's Boko Haram.

Lot's of statements about how the killer is a white male. But his manifesto says his mother is Malaysian Chinese, and he complains that his Asian appearance made him invisible to the white girls he was attracted to.
posted by dgaicun at 5:56 PM on May 24, 2014 [19 favorites]


I'm reading from CNN that the victims in the apartment were all men. I'm sure a lot of people are going to follow that up with "See? This wasn't about gender, he targeted men too" and miss the point entirely.
posted by naju at 5:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [20 favorites]


"That's kind of the crux of the disagreement I was having with MartinWisse early in the thread. If it wasn't women he was mad at for not recognizing his magnificence and power (his actual words) he would have been a white supremacist mad at minorities for their unfair advantages, or a right wing extremist mad at the government for keeping him down, or a religious fanatic mad at our immoral and sinful ways, or any of a hundred other things."

I don't understand why you're taking such an extreme position on this. I'm pretty sure we had the same arguments in the marathon bombing thread, where people were taking extreme positions that weirdly deny the interrelationship between institutionalized inequality, hate-filled ideological extremism, and mental health. Each contributes to the end result and it makes no sense to argue that only one thing is important and altering the others won't make a difference. They're all important.

It's perfectly obvious to most of us that there's a symbiotic relationship between violent political extremism and mentally ill angry young men. For that matter, there's a symbiotic relationship between violent political extremism and violent young men who are otherwise not mentally ill.

Yes, as several people have discussed above, there are really and truly some strong cross-cultural correlations about spree killers and those correlations are basically marginalized young men who feel they have been disrespected. And it's quite likely that there's no realistic way to eliminate these killers entirely.

And it's also possible that the number of spree killers like this, being quite rare to begin with, would be about the same regardless of other social forces, as you argue. That's possible. I'm not sure that I'm willing to accept that, but I'll grant that it's a credible argument.

But even if that's true, these spree killers are nevertheless signifiers of the social forces that are also influencing many other people. If a large number of spree killers are enacting misogynist revenge, then at the very least that's indicative of social conditions that are amenable to that path to violence and therefore it's almost certain that many other people, people who weren't predestined toward some form of violence, enact misogynist violence when they wouldn't have otherwise. This is obviously true with racist killings. Maybe the worst of the racist killings are committed by people who'd have killed, regardless. But a bunch of racist killings itself indicates a social propensity for racist violence and that implies that there's a lot of racial violence that is happening that otherwise wouldn't, because there are social forces promoting it. Or with homophobic violence.

It's really quite remarkable that anyone, but especially someone like yourself, Justinian, would ever try to counter claims of the importance of socially acceptable misogyny when a spree killer explicitly enacts his misogynist violence as murder given that it's so obvious, and I know well-known by yourself, that misogyny is a very powerful and prevalent force in our culture. This is a hate crime, this is terrorism of a sort, even if it's been committed by a deeply mentally unhealthy human being who was likely to enact violent rage one way or another.

Also, I read this entire thread before I read the NYT article, and I am aghast at how much the article almost deliberately avoids the context of socially-acceptable anger at and hatred of women given that his words and his known association make it clear that he was motivated by these other people saying the same sorts of things. Like Justinian, there seems to be some weird willful need to have blinders on and see it as nothing other than a tragedy of mental illness.

I can totally understand why people like Nora Reed are getting upset about this.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 5:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [56 favorites]


"But being absolutely positively seriously mentally ill and being a tremendous misogynist aren't mutually exclusive."

Agreed. I don't mean to imply otherwise.
posted by mikeand1 at 5:57 PM on May 24, 2014


Yeah, I was going to say the same thing as dgaicun. He's not a "white guy" in the usual usage.
posted by Jahaza at 6:00 PM on May 24, 2014


News says he had Asperger's disease

Not only is there no connection between autism and violence, autistic people are statistically vastly more likely to be the victims than the perpetrators of violence. Autistic people get killed by their caregivers with some regularity and almost universally the framing of the story is "oh the poor parent they had to bear too heavy a burden."

Certainly the people treating him failed and I'm with you on the gun control thing, but please be careful about bringing up autism in this context, especially when "aspie" and related terms are commonly used as a slur by a lot of people, including ones in a forum he was associated with.
posted by sparkletone at 6:00 PM on May 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


Ivan: Because correctly identifying the root causes of this man's actions is central to being able to prevent these sorts of things. And I think the history and study of these kinds of mass killings supports the idea that the root cause is not whatever particularly fanatic ranting any given killer spews forth. Those just happen to reflect whatever illness is infecting that society; in this case, society is ill in that we often treat women very badly. And his rantings reflect that.

But were we to treat women perfectly that doesn't mean this man wouldn't still feel marginalized and go on a rampage, it just means he would pick different things to rant about. And possibly pick different targets.

But, again, that doesn't mean that eliminating misogyny and stamping out the kinds of hatred he espoused isn't critical. It just means that it isn't how we'd stop this particular kind of evil (the phenomenon of the mass killing spree).

I feel like you're overlooking that last important point. Saying "We should definitely do everything possible to stamp out hatred of women but we need to do other things as well to prevent mass killings" is somehow turning into denial of hatred of women as a serious problem.
posted by Justinian at 6:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Futz: (after Googling) Lion? Interesting. I was going for something else entirely (it's an anagram).
posted by Leon at 7:15 PM on May 24 [1 favorite +] [!]



My bet for the original arrangement of letters is on "el no", as in a transcription of "Hell no!"
posted by mr. digits at 6:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


This guy nails every one of these criteria for narcissism, dominated by the elitist and fanatic subtypes.

I'm not a mental health professional, but I've had to deal professionally with clients who were diagnosed as narcissists, and I recognized these traits immediately.
posted by mikeand1 at 6:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'm a guy unsuccessful with women. Just don't date, ever. I've known a few other guys like this... Strip away the big talk when he's looking to go out with a bang and it just may be that he felt lonely and unworthy... He would believe his state is unique, a great shame, a sign that society has scorned him specifically, might think it so unique a state that it requires dramatic response.
I'm a guy like this and a lot of the time I feel lonely and unworthy too. To a large extent, guys like me are, in fact, scorned by society because the overwhelming message presented by and to society is that, if you're a 'real man' you'll be attractive to women and you will be accorded all the sex and adoring companionship you want. The constant message to men is that, if you aren't getting that, you are a loser and deserve to be alone. A similar message is sent to women by society, with variations but the same result. Until our society stops valuing people primarily based on how physically attractive they are or because of how rich they are (with a weird sliding scale where more money reduces how traditionally attractive you need to be to be accepted, for males anyway), there will always be people ostracised from society in subtle and pervasive ways. Combine that feeling of being 'othered' with, perhaps, a tendency to be easily influenced, then mix in a connected world where there is ready access to people of like mind but more aggressive personalities and the absolutely inevitable result is going to be violence. Add to the mix ludicrously easy access to firearms and the only surprising thing is that this doesn't happen more often. I'll be very surprised if these kind of attacks don't increase dramatically over the next few years.
posted by dg at 6:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [35 favorites]


I looked up his Facebook page. NO FRIENDS. A lot of selfies. The one pic with his dad and brother, he looks deflated. All the rest, he's going for the sharp dressed man look.

From my perspective? Mentally ill, personality disorder AND evil, with heavy emphasis on the latter. I get the feeling he had no ability to feel empathy whatever. Don't blame mental illness on the evil, most folk in that boat are more victim than perp.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 6:14 PM on May 24, 2014


It's not about misogyny, misanthropy, politics, religion, economics, sexual success... those are just the yard sticks to which these guys fail to measure up in their own heads.

Yup.

SO many of these spree killers seem to be doing it because they feel that they have failed social expectations of masculinity--or that society, writ large or small, has failed them in not helping them meet those expectations, or has failed to see how he has in fact met them.

Once they come to believe this, it's a short walk to finding an ideology that allows him to blame a certain subset of society: women for failing to sleep with him; Jews for keeping all the money to themselves; liberal western politics for undercutting his chances to show his masculinity; and so forth.

So I don't see much difference between Breivik and this kid, or the Aurora shooter, or the Columbine kids. They feel they've been disrespected by the world, in the specific by X group, and they're going to Make Their Name. We'll all know his name, now.

A friend of mine who studies this kind of shit says the best thing we could do is stop publicizing these stories, and under no circumstances publish the murderers' names.
posted by suelac at 6:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


But, again, that doesn't mean that eliminating misogyny and stamping out the kinds of hatred he espoused isn't critical. It just means that it isn't how we'd stop this particular kind of evil (the phenomenon of the mass killing spree).

So, you think that how to "stamp out this particular kind of evil" is the only discussion that's worth having about this?
posted by LogicalDash at 6:16 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I looked up his Facebook page. NO FRIENDS.

That doesn't mean he never had friends on Facebook. Facebook would have deleted his friends list to prevent any problems.
posted by Justinian at 6:17 PM on May 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


So, you think that how to "stamp out this particular kind of evil" is the only discussion that's worth having about this?

I don't have any idea how you got that from what I said.
posted by Justinian at 6:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


It doesn't matter if it's the blue, green or grey, threads where the community starts speculating about the motivations and mentality of people are the absolute worst.
posted by The Hamms Bear at 6:18 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Well, Ivan granted that you may be right about the way to stamp out this particular kind of evil, and tried to talk about something else... and... you responded by talking more about stamping out stuff...
posted by LogicalDash at 6:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


this is just

i can't believe this


this is aweful
posted by rebent at 6:21 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


"threads where the community starts speculating about the motivations and mentality of people are the absolute worst."

It seems kind of important to me to explore the motivations and mentality of people who commit serious crimes.
posted by mikeand1 at 6:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


And I think the history and study of these kinds of mass killings supports the idea that the root cause is not whatever particularly fanatic ranting any given killer spews forth. Those just happen to reflect whatever illness is infecting that society; in this case, society is ill in that we often treat women very badly. And his rantings reflect that.

Please consider that there is also a wealth of data regarding the violence that men commit against women, and that this fits that profile, as well. We are not all in agreement that this exclusively fits a "killing spree" profile--entitlement & narcissism are prevalent in domestic violence, stalking, and other male-on-female violence.

And I'll say it again--when you are a woman trying to avoid violence, affiliation with misogynistic hate groups is really, really important information for you to know about a person. It's much more useful than knowing that someone is, for example, on the autism spectrum.
posted by almostmanda at 6:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [34 favorites]


I looked up his Facebook page. NO FRIENDS. A lot of selfies.

There are likes and comments on his publicly visible photos and posts, so obviously he has to have had FB friends at some point. I have several FB friends who have their friends lists hidden, even from other friends.
posted by palomar at 6:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Can someone provide some context for Wizardchan? I'm familiar with the imageboard concept but is there a focus to this particular board or Wizardchan in general that would make that thread more comprehensible?
posted by murphy slaw at 6:23 PM on May 24, 2014


LogicalDash: Ah, gotcha. I was trying to clarify my position. But that's not stopping anyone else from discussing whatever they wish to discuss.

Anyway, where does he complain about being Asian? I didn't see that anywhere. I thought it was his stepmother who was Asian. I'm not sure how relevant any of that is, though.
posted by Justinian at 6:23 PM on May 24, 2014


And I'll say it again--when you are a woman trying to avoid violence, affiliation with misogynistic hate groups is really, really important information for you to know about a person

True enough. It would also be great if other men avoided idiots who affiliate themselves with misogynistic groups. Maybe they'd get the message eventually.
posted by Justinian at 6:25 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


murphy slaw, from Google:
Wizardchan is a Japanese-inspired image-based forum (imageboard) for male virgins to share their thoughts and discuss their interests and lifestyle as a virgin.
posted by palomar at 6:26 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, it's in his inane rantings manifesto.
posted by Justinian at 6:28 PM on May 24, 2014


Currently about half the threads on 4chan's /r9k/ (nsfw) board are about this guy, which isn't surprising considering his stuff would fit right in there. I don't spend any time there, because it's a cesspool. Of course, it's probably not as bad as /pol/ (nsfw), the news and politics board, but considering that's full of actual hatred and fringe politics and trolls, it's hard to be worse. All in all, it's not a big win for algorithmic moderation.

Thankfully, /adv/, the advice board, has a much more reasonable and caring culture, so if you actually want to do something to help yourself, it's not the worst place to go.

Fun fact: I was the person who suggested that moot add a suicide prevention hotline number to /adv/. There's no way to prove that, of course, but I'm proud of it.
posted by Small Dollar at 6:28 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Gun laws that enable any mentally ill 20something to buy weapons... what could possibly go wrong?
posted by 3mendo at 6:31 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Do we know that he bought the weapon?
posted by futz at 6:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


We talk a lot about people having been radicalized, I think - having gone through a process that ends with a willingness to commit horrific crimes. When we talk about why people are susceptible to radicalization, we often talk about frustration, unhappy home lives, disenfranchisement. We talk about the ways in which people are radicalized - often on websites in which they are made to feel welcome and valuable, in exchange for accepting and repeating progressively more violent statements about the people who are being blamed for keeping them down, and through literature and videos that present a skewed vision of the world designed to appeal to their unhappiness and frustration. A tiny fraction of people exposed to that kind of experience will go on to commit criminal acts. Others will find themselves progressively alienated from mainstream society. Many others will ignore it, or mock it, or flirt with the periphery and then get bored, or be motivated to oppose it.

That path - anger and isolation followed by the discovery of others expressing similar feelings, and the progression through progressively more violent rhetoric ultimately to horrific acts, egged on by specialist communities or media - is often associated with extremist groups with roots in the Middle East or Africa, but the same patterns apply to right-wing hate groups or people who shoot doctors who perform terminations. The people who do it are generally treated as criminally culpable - that is, not insane, or at least not so insane as not to be tried and imprisoned or executed, if they survive.

So... I think it's tempting to think of this kind of horror as the result of a fundamental badness or madness within someone the route of expression of which is almost arbitrary. But I don't think it's a complete picture.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:35 PM on May 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


I don't think we know anything at all about where he obtained the weapon he used. I'm not even sure if we know what weapon he used yet?
posted by Justinian at 6:36 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wizardchan is a Japanese-inspired image-based forum (imageboard) for male virgins to share their thoughts and discuss their interests and lifestyle as a virgin.

Even knowing this, I found their internal slang alternately bewildering, offensive and creepy.
posted by sparkletone at 6:37 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I just skimmed through the manifesto and he states that he already owned a glock and was going to purchase two more handguns.
posted by cazoo at 6:38 PM on May 24, 2014


I don't think we know anything at all about where he obtained the weapon he used. I'm not even sure if we know what weapon he used yet?

Based on the live tweets from a press conference a little bit ago, he had 3 handguns, all legally purchased with 400 rounds in his car.
posted by Stynxno at 6:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think we know anything at all about where he obtained the weapon he used. I'm not even sure if we know what weapon he used yet?

From here:
Three 9 mm handguns—two Sig Sauers and a Glock—were found inside of Rodger's car, along with 41 magazines loaded with ten rounds of ammunition each.
posted by palomar at 6:39 PM on May 24, 2014


He had three guns and after the shootout police found 41 loaded 10-round magazines in his car. Once again, it's not just the weaponry, it's the stockpiling of ammunition that is a huge problem in this country.

Also, ABC now reporting that he stabbed 3 people in his apartment before the shooting spree.

I certainly hope we learn more about how the cops gave this guy a pass, and what can be done to better train cops in warning signs.
posted by TwoStride at 6:40 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Thanks, palomar and TwoStride. I've been watching the news on TV. Perhaps that's my mistake.
posted by Justinian at 6:44 PM on May 24, 2014


The Sheriff just held a press conference that was carried on local radio with lots of other weird details, like how he put his roommate under citizen's arrest for stealing a candle...

Several news outlets are reporting that he was housed at the Independent Living Institute, which would mean his roommates were also people with mental/social challenges...
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 6:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


One of the pieces of the puzzle that we might need to work on, with respect to all this, is that we need to stop shaming men who are virgins. No virgin-shaming men (involuntary celibates or otherwise), no slut-shaming women. These are two areas where judgment of others, and patriarchial ideas intertwine in ugly ways. There are no "real men" defined by getting laid, in the same way a woman is not "tainted" by sleeping with men. Cultural ideas of where men or women SHOULD be at to not be broken or unlovable w/r/t to their sex lives is toxic, full stop. Also, one thing college dudes really should know is that being summarily rejected, at your age in particular, is totally par for the course and is not a big deal AT ALL. Things get better.
posted by naju at 6:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [83 favorites]


I can't quite get my head around the concept of a family calling the police and asking them to check on their son's welfare. A well-off family that appear to live in the local area. I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.
posted by dg at 6:47 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I was just thinking about a friend who went to the mental health urgent care clinic at his local VA hospital because he had no insurance and needed his depression meds refilled. The initial exchange went something like this:

Q: Are you thinking of harming yourself or others?
A: No

Q: Do you have any guns?
A: Yes

Q: Are they locked up?
A: Yes

That was it. Like my friend would actually answer in a way that would cause them to take his guns were he actually inclined to use them. I doubt the police were any more through than the VA.
posted by MikeMc at 6:49 PM on May 24, 2014


Even knowing this, I found their internal slang alternately bewildering, offensive and creepy.

I'm learning about so many weird new subcultures tonight. I wonder if there's much overlap with the cuckolding fetish.

From skimming the manifesto: "I eventually grew to hate him after I heard him having sex with my sister. I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister's vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister's moans."

Jesus wept.
posted by Leon at 6:51 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


What I've never understood is why they often target a random crowd. In the middle east, it's often a market place or a bus station. This guy was a student at a community college, but he drove to Isla Vista at UC Santa Barbara...and then just randomly went on a shooting spree. What's the connection?

I deeply regret watching the original video this morning when it first appeared, before it was clear how awful the content was. He talked about how he was going to go to the [insert misogynistic adjective here]-ist sorority house he could find and kill women, blond women in particular. I think what happened is that he was too chicken to get out of the car and ended up spraying people from the driver's seat instead.
posted by blue suede stockings at 6:53 PM on May 24, 2014


Fuck, this is awful.
posted by homunculus at 6:54 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.

I think that's a poor assumption. He may have refused to see them. They may have been afraid of him. They may have thought that a visit from the cops would make him back down, or not do bad things, or Send a Message somehow.
posted by rtha at 6:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [37 favorites]


Yeah, I'm actually reading the damn thing -- I'm on page 40 now. He's just turned 13, he's seen his first porno and it traumatized him and destroyed his entire life (his words)

I guessed something like this: it's a kind of one man penis panic.

He was a virgin because he saw himself as irreparably sexually inferior; I doubt he could have had sex with a woman no matter how much she might have been into it.
posted by jamjam at 7:00 PM on May 24, 2014


One of the pieces of the puzzle that we might need to work on, with respect to all this, is that we need to stop shaming men who are virgins.

I didn't have sex until I was 23 years old. I remember thinking that there must be something terribly wrong with me. I was shy, and depressive, and I had really, really fucked up ideas about women. I felt like "getting laid" was some kind of word problem and everyone else seemed to be coming up with the answer.

I didn't make any progress socially or sexually until I finally gave up on the prospect of ever "losing it" and just started treating women like human beings, suitable for non-transactional relationships, who didn't owe me anything.

I look at a guy like this and I think that if i was a slightly different temperament, had slightly more self-regard, and had fallen in with a community that reinforced my distorted thinking about women and sex, I could be this guy, or at least one of the guys pouring one out for him as a martyr to the cause.

And it makes me sick to my stomach.
posted by murphy slaw at 7:01 PM on May 24, 2014 [69 favorites]


That was it. Like my friend would actually answer in a way that would cause them to take his guns were he actually inclined to use them.

Balancing safety and liberty is always a challenge. In the wake of violence, many people swing way toward safety and that's easy to do if you think you won't ever be the person on the loosing end of "keeping people safe".

Being mentally ill is pretty much the only time a person can be locked up before and without doing anything wrong. I hate how in the wake of horrifying and terrifying events like this, everyone starts acting as if the bar should be lowered and we should be locking up more people before they do bad things, even though we don't have a metric for determining who will do bad things and who won't.

The few times there's been a solid question of danger to others at my job, it's been frustrating to try to make the arguments over and over that so-and-so is clearly a danger, but honestly it should be that difficult because the alternative is lots more people locked up without having done anything wrong.

Psychology's predictive value is horrible. The closest we have to a "definitive" test is the psychopathy one, and that one has a 20% false positive rate, so for every 80 people we lock up and it's good we did, there's 20 more locked up who wouldn't harm others (and keep in mind this test is mostly used on offenders - they already did a bad thing once). I'm shocked at how readily people accept that math when they're reasonably sure they won't be one of the 20%.
posted by Deoridhe at 7:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [11 favorites]


I'm on page 35, he is 12, and so far every year is the best year of his life.
posted by maggiemaggie at 7:04 PM on May 24, 2014


It's not quite like virginity necessarily has anything to do with the rites of passage that mark out an adult male: it is that American society has no meaningful rites of passage, and that implicit in the whole messy deal with modernity is that you're supposed to think them not quite necessary. I mean, Bar Mitzvahs? Do people feel like adults after that? Fraternity hazing seems effective, but you don't want more of that. I'm not quite sure that having some formal way to make him a man that he could achieve would have helped, what with the mental illness, but it's a thought. And if you want to take the general phenomenon of virgin-shaming and try to root it out, it would be a place to start.

What's the viable alternative male rite of passage? These rites of passage can be very terrible: the Krypteia and the fraternal hazing in America being fairly representative, if vastly different in degree. But having a viable and positive male ritual of passage would be a force for good: it would stop a lot of this specific form of the shaming, it could give confirmation to those born without male bodies, it could help ameliorate the negative ways that these uncertainties splash out. And there are viable and positive (more positive than hating yourself because you're a virgin, at least) rituals of passage like that: the Mekuyo, the Rumspringa, the Vision quest, and lots more.
posted by curuinor at 7:04 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


I love how the internet lets people form communities around weird little interests and passions and subcultures that they share that they may not be able to find with the people around them so they can find the reinforcement and community of like-minded folks. The flip side is that I hate how the internet lets people form communities around things like the "men's rights" movement because it gives them reinforcement and an echo-chamber of like-minded folks and they can get further and further into the weeds of WTFery.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:06 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


I mean that fraternal hazing seems effective at convincing men that they're adults, not necessarily that they behave like adults afterwards, by the way. In making people behave like adults, it doesn't seem incredibly effective.
posted by curuinor at 7:06 PM on May 24, 2014


"This whole thing is a heartbreaking mess that, and this is important, could have been prevented." I disagree. It is pretty much impossible to predict violence, other than that people who have been violent in the past are more likely to be violent in the future. We don't detain people for their possible future crimes. If we had a different society, without easy access to guns, then it might not have happened.
posted by ClaudiaCenter at 7:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Time will sort the story out, I hope, BUT if he, with his well documented history was still able to obtain guns...
posted by futz at 7:09 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.
I think that's a poor assumption.

You're right, of course. I have no way of knowing what else was going on or being done to try and help him.
posted by dg at 7:10 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Several news outlets are reporting that he was housed at the Independent Living Institute, which would mean his roommates were also people with mental/social challenges...

This would explain the head-scratcher as to why a BMW-driving, unpopular, upper class misanthrope had not just one but several housemates. And it (as well as the parents calling the police for the welfare check) suggests that the parents may have been very aware of the situation and were doing what they could, for a 22 year old. I'm reminded of the horror of Eric Harris' parents.

Sociopathy, even "just" narcissistic personality disorder, is very, very difficult to intervene in unless someone is actively breaking the law....and self-aware enough to make treatment possible (or even desired). I honestly don't know how much the police could have done.
posted by blue suede stockings at 7:10 PM on May 24, 2014 [13 favorites]


Obtain = buy.
posted by futz at 7:11 PM on May 24, 2014


Looking at some of these threads at the men's rights sites-- that is some sick shit.
posted by sporknado at 7:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


The final pages of that manifesto are purer misogyny than I think I believed existed in the wild.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 7:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Page 76 of the manifesto, where he talks about seeing a pretty girl while walking on the beach at Malibu:
I did, however, pass by one young girl, and she was like a goddess who came down from heaven. She was walking alone, in her bathing suit, with her luscious blonde hair blowing in the wind. I coudln't help but slyly admire her beauty as we passed by each other. I was scared. I was scared that she might view me as nothing but an inferior insect who's [sic] presence ruins her atmosphere. Her beauty was intoxicating! And then, just as we passed each other, she actually looked at me. She looked at me and smiled. Most girls never even deigned to look at me, and this one actually looked at me and smiled. I had never felt so euphoric in my life. One smile. One smile was all it took to brighten my entire day. The power that beautiful women have is unbelievable. They can temporarily turn a desperate boy's whole world around just by smiling.

That smile put me in a good, healthy mood for the rest of that walk, but it soon faded away as I realized that I could never actually have a girl as beautiful as that. She probably only smiled out of politeness. She would never go for me. And what is the point to life if I can't have a girl of such beauty? Some men get to have beautiful girlfriends like that, and some don't. I am among those who are denied such a pleasure, and that is why I hate life.
One of the major points I see throughout this guy's story, and I'm sure it's no surprise to anyone: he never actually makes any effort. Up to this point in the story, he hasn't mentioned once actually speaking to a girl and getting rebuffed, let alone speaking to a girl at all. He encounters girls at social events or at school, but he makes a point of mentioning how outrageous it is that they already have boyfriends and have fun with other people (page 78):
In my history class, I had a crush on a really pretty girl, only to find out that she had a boyfriend, and in my psychology class there was this group of popular kids who acted obnoxious the whole time. One of them was a very pretty blonde girl, and she actually enjoyed associated with the obnoxious boys in her clique. The injustice! I hated them all.
There are also several mentions of how easier it would be for him to get women to pay attention to him if he could just be a multi-millionaire, but he refuses to accept any job that he considers beneath him, so the entry-level teen-appropriate jobs offered to him by counselors and family friends are rejected, and he pins his hopes for millionairehood on Mega Millions lotto tickets.

After every experience, he mentions being angry and upset that he once again didn't get the life he wanted... but per his own writings, he made no efforts. He just waited for everything to be handed to him, and waited for his peers to treat him with deference, and when that didn't happen... yeah. I just can't even anymore.
posted by palomar at 7:14 PM on May 24, 2014 [40 favorites]


"Sociopathy, even "just" narcissistic personality disorder, is very, very difficult to intervene in unless someone is actively breaking the law....and self-aware enough to make treatment possible (or even desired)."

My understanding from therapists is that narcissism is one of the most difficult mental illnesses to treat precisely because of the intense lack of self-awareness and the pervasive delusion. It is extremely difficult to convince such a person that they are even ill in the first place, much less getting them to turn inward long and hard enough to deal with it effectively.
posted by mikeand1 at 7:16 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


I don't want to read the manifesto, so can someone tell me: was it written over the course of his life (i.e. age 12 was written when he was 12) or was it written more recently?
posted by mantecol at 7:16 PM on May 24, 2014


Balancing safety and liberty is always a challenge. In the wake of violence, many people swing way toward safety and that's easy to do if you think you won't ever be the person on the loosing end of "keeping people safe".

This is true. My "friend" (by which I meant me of course but I didn't want to put that in the post due to lingering stigmas about people with any type of mental illness) was just surprised at how easy it was. I have no history of violence towards myself or others but it seemed so simple. Then again someone bent on committing violence probably wouldn't show up at a clinic like that anyway.
posted by MikeMc at 7:20 PM on May 24, 2014


I looked at the wizardchan thing a while ago, and some of the posts are fantasies of how their scene will be persecuted and victimized by this. Think about that - a man murders at least 10 people, and their reaction is.......self-pity? That's not so good.
posted by thelonius at 7:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


"was it written over the course of his life (i.e. age 12 was written when he was 12) or was it written more recently?"

It seems pretty clear that it's written more recently.
posted by mikeand1 at 7:21 PM on May 24, 2014


Think about that - a man murders at least 10 people, and their reaction is.......self-pity? That's not so good.
But also not surprising? Seems to be the only thing they know to do.
posted by bleep at 7:28 PM on May 24, 2014


No, not a surprise. It's a habit of mind that tends to grow.
posted by thelonius at 7:30 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Psychology's predictive value is horrible. The closest we have to a "definitive" test is the psychopathy one, and that one has a 20% false positive rate, so for every 80 people we lock up and it's good we did, there's 20 more locked up who wouldn't harm others

Just to note that the math doesn't work that way, and that you also have to factor in the incidence of psychopathy in the population being tested. If psychopathy is rare, it would be entirely possible for a 20 percent false positive rate* to mean that for every 80 people we lock up and it's good we did, we also lock up 50 or 80 or 200 people who aren't psychopaths.

*That is, when 100 people who aren't psychopaths take the test, 20 of them are falsely scored as psychopaths.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


Wizardchan is their Internet community and they don't want people who have conventional views about sex and relationships to go there and change it. Maybe they're afraid of people making fun of them or harassing them, which is a valid concern, but if they're afraid of "normies" who want to give them constructive advice offered without malice, then they have a bigger problem.
posted by Small Dollar at 7:33 PM on May 24, 2014


ROU_Xenophobe is describing the False Positive Paradox.
posted by Justinian at 7:38 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


From the little I've read on wizardchan, I don't think advice from "normies," constructive or not, would be at all welcome. "We" are already the enemy.
posted by rtha at 7:39 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I may have taken them to be a little more grandiose fears than that people will hassle them, or that the board will get taken down, I guess. Like society is going to band together against them or something.
posted by thelonius at 7:41 PM on May 24, 2014


His manifesto is 140 pages long and apparently talks about how women should be kept in concentration camps and reproduction should only be done artificially. I don't see how one can argue he wasn't delusional

Actually, this is a common enough idea/fantasy that I first heard it a good 12 years ago, in a completely social setting.

I (female) was on a camping trip with my then-boyfriend and four of his male friends. We all attended a STEM-focused college where the male/female ratio was about 70/30. I don't remember the conversation leading to this, but I vividly remember sitting around the campfire, and one of the guys, Steve, talking about how great it would be if the world were reorganized such that all women were kept as sex slaves in a vast underground dungeon. Reproduction would be through artificial insemination, and he went into some detail about a ceremony boys would go through during puberty: their fathers would take them into the dungeon and they'd pick out their first woman. All women in the world would be captives kept alive for raping.

He finished talking and looked around expectantly for a response. There was a brief silence and then someone changed the subject. Nobody even jokingly rebuked him, not even a "man, that's kinda sick" type response. I felt horrified, but in no way comfortable enough to call him out on it. They had all been friends for awhile, I was (in a way I couldn't have articulated then) afraid of being perceived as a horrible Yoko Ono type.

And you know, besides Steve, these were not misogynist guys. That boyfriend and I were together for years; over time he became as sensitive to sexism against women as I was. They were nice, normal college-aged dudes who purely had not been taught that they needed to speak up about this kind of thing.
posted by pocketfullofrye at 7:44 PM on May 24, 2014 [71 favorites]


I read this entire thread before I read the NYT article, and I am aghast at how much the article almost deliberately avoids the context of socially-acceptable anger at and hatred of women


I am reminded of the Chinese press which can (at times) criticize individual acts of well documented local corruption but cannot look at the wider system.
posted by shothotbot at 7:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Charlie Brooker on reporting of such tragedies.
posted by whyareyouatriangle at 7:51 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


"They were nice, normal college-aged dudes who purely had not been taught that they needed to speak up about this kind of thing."

That at least merited a "WTF dude??!!". I wouldn't think you would even need to teach that, that would seem to just be a normal response by most guys. I've heard guys say some fucked up shit and and in a group setting at least one one person would say something. Not because they they were in any way educated or enlightened on the subject of misogyny but because, well, fucked up is fucked up and good friends aren't the least bit inhibited about calling each other out.
posted by MikeMc at 7:59 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


"I can't quite get my head around the concept of a family calling the police and asking them to check on their son's welfare. A well-off family that appear to live in the local area. I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves."

Maybe they were scared of him and too afraid to go deal with him themselves. Cops are allowed to carry weapons into a situation like that, after all. Family walking in to object to what he wanted to do might have just been his first victims.

"He finished talking and looked around expectantly for a response. There was a brief silence and then someone changed the subject. Nobody even jokingly rebuked him, not even a "man, that's kinda sick" type response. I felt horrified, but in no way comfortable enough to call him out on it."

I'm guessing the guys there also felt "in no way comfortable enough to call him out on it." Nobody endorsed it, but they were shocked and didn't know how the hell to defuse a bomb like that. I'm not saying it's right, but not everyone's gonna know what to do with a guy who publicly admits to thinking stuff like that. While they're out in the woods at night, too.

One line stood out to me from the glosswatch link above: "Women are hated. Until we admit this I see no point in begging for crumbs from the equality table."

That is the case. There seems to be some kind of "bitch should be putting out for me, bitch must die" sort of metamessage going on along with all of the testosterone, at least with some people. Entitlement, testosterone, rage, women being weaker than men...there's just this giant mess of hate out there and this guy embodied it today. Tomorrow tons and tons of other men will be doing something related even if their body count is smaller. Every day, women are the targets of men's rage, whether it's for not putting out or for just freaking existing on the planet.

Another quote from the medium link above:

"Elliot Rodger may or may not have been mentally ill. It is likely he was—it is probably the only reasonable explanation—but hearing this voice was no proof. This voice speaks to everyone. It’s louder some places, it’s more convincing to some people, but it’s always there, a psychic loudspeaker calling out a march cadence. Even choosing not to listen isn’t enough; you have to choose to shout back."

posted by jenfullmoon at 8:04 PM on May 24, 2014 [14 favorites]


As recently as yesterday he could have been described as a responsible gun owner.
posted by Joey Michaels at 8:20 PM on May 24, 2014 [42 favorites]


Mental illness + an over-inflated sense of class privilege + an over-inflated sense of male privilege + easily obtained weapons of mass destruction= this young man whose name I don't even want to type.

He wanted to be a rich stud, a warrior with powerful weapons, an all-American male success story.

This masculinity is socially constructed and all of us need to work on deconstructing it, deracinating it.
posted by mareli at 8:21 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


This incident has reinforced my prejudices against young men in BMW's.
posted by humanfont at 8:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Wait, so the argument here is that society doesn't provide enough coming-of-age rituals for young men, not that they are constantly pounded with unquestionably virulent messages from society as a whole and then they find communities where they can find and connect to more virulent misogynists, creating an echo chamber in which their violence is not only normalized but encouraged?

Anyone with any passing familiarity with the MRA/Manosphere community and the way it encourages abuse likely looked at this story and said, yeah, of course that happened. It was never an "if this provokes murder" situation, it was always a "when". Because just like abusers often escalate, abusive communities tend to escalate too. Please keep in mind that there are numerous posts on these sites encouraging rape and abuse. Look through the We Hunted The Mammoth archive if you want specific examples.

This is what happens when complaints about communities like the Manosphere are ignored, and when complaints about rape culture, about male entitlement, about patriarchy, and about everything else feminists have been complaining about since feminism existed, are not only ignored but mocked, belittled, and those who make these complaints are stigmatized. This is a direct reaction to the backlash against feminism.

I just want you to know that every time we go into a thread and say "Hey, that was a sexist thing," it's because this culture is invasive. This sickness gets into all of our communities. It poisons our relationships. It rapes, abuses, harasses and murders women. And every person who dismisses it, who wants to to just stop talking about sexism, who lets their friends make misogynistic comments around them-- you're supporting that system, when you do that. You're creating a society that says it is okay to hate women. Silence only serves to support the systems in place, in which it is okay to hate women, in which misogyny will fester into rapists, into abusers, into murderers.

These are the stakes. This is the danger: that our cries of warning will be ignored, that rape, other abuse, harassment-- none of these things will be taken seriously, and when men routinely get away with abusing women, when that is normal, of course some of them will murder. Women are murdered by their spouses and exes and stalkers all the time, that's basically normal. It only makes the news like this, spreading over the internet like wildfire, when they manage to kill more than one, because violence against women is normal and expected.

Silence supports the system already in place, and that system is violent and misogynistic, and it takes lives. Most women already know this, it is why we carry our keys between our fingers, walk along lighted paths, choose masculine handles, take self-defence courses, and reject the advances of men who set off red flags. We know we are in danger of being killed by men. But we live in a society with such a failure to listen to the voices of women that it is entirely possible for men to be ignorant of this, and it so values men over women that these ignorant men are made to believe that their geyser-like, fountainous spoutings of ignorance actually matter. Even when women are actively dying.
posted by NoraReed at 8:24 PM on May 24, 2014 [215 favorites]


Looks like he killed he room mates as well. What a lovely creature he was. Fox news link.
posted by gideonswann at 8:24 PM on May 24, 2014


I just want you to know that every time we go into a thread and say "Hey, that was a sexist thing," it's because this culture is invasive. This sickness gets into all of our communities. It poisons our relationships. It rapes, abuses, harasses and murders women. And every person who dismisses it, who wants to to just stop talking about sexism, who lets their friends make misogynistic comments around them-- you're supporting that system, when you do that. You're creating a society that says it is okay to hate women. Silence only serves to support the systems in place, in which it is okay to hate women, in which misogyny will fester into rapists, into abusers, into murderers.

Quoting for emphasis, because I can't favorite this comment the thousand times that I'd like.
posted by palomar at 8:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [32 favorites]


This reminds me of the recent incident with Ceigh Deeds' son in Virginia.

This is an extremely well done article on Deeds's recent work on the psychiatric holds issue, for anyone who is interested.

The intersection of mental illness and misogyny is something that has been on my mind for awhile (since long before this incident) and something I feel like I haven't been able to articulate clearly. Sometimes when experiencing or hearing about experiences of various sorts of harassment (men catcalling, making threats, exposing themselves, etc.), I have felt sort of uncomfortable being angry at perpetrators who seem like they aren't just like run-of-the-mill jerks but probably unwell in some way. And yet writing it off as simply mentally ill behavior felt like a wildly reductive, inaccurate, and unfair generalization. Thinking today about how misogyny (both in MRA type groups and in the broader culture) shapes people's thought processes and channels their behavior is starting to pull some pieces together for me, but I'm still rolling things around in my mind a bit. Apologies if I've stated anything less sensitively than I intended.
posted by naoko at 8:29 PM on May 24, 2014 [8 favorites]


This is such a rare and specific event, an intersection of obvious severe mental illness and extremist internet forums, that I wonder if it is even productive to hold it up as an example of misogyny and call to action. Doesn't it hold it up as something exceptional and newsworthy when the fact is that the most harm is banal and everyday and happening everywhere?
posted by cacofonie at 8:38 PM on May 24, 2014


There is a point where things stop being sexist and becomes about power and control . That's why you see domestic violence in same sex relationships as well because it isn't just sexist it is about power and control over someone else.

Sexism provides an outlet for power and control. So do so many other -isms. Focusing on just one isn't the true issue.

I'm not saying sexism isn't dangerous. It is. The culture is terrible and the stakes are very high. I'm saying that beyond sexism is a desire to control others as an extention of one's self and view of the world.
posted by AlexiaSky at 8:41 PM on May 24, 2014 [4 favorites]


Mental illness is a difficult and fluid concept, and one I don't think it's worth speculating on too much here. What is absolutely clear is that this was a hate crime - without any doubt, this was a hate crime.

To emphasize that point, and because, like many others, I fear this aspect will get lost in the conversation of mental illness and gun control, I have recreated this salient passage from the 140 page 'manifesto.' I don't think 'terrorism against women' would be too strong given his writings (TW):
The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. They are the main instigators of sex. They control which men get it and which men don't. Women are flawed creatures, and my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth. There is something very twisted and wrong with the way their brains are wired. They think like beasts and in truth they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally. They are completely controlled by their depraved emotions and vile sexual impulses. Because of this, the men who get to experience the pleasures of sex and the privilege of breeding are the men who women are sexually attracted to...the stupid, degenerate, obnoxious men. I have observed this all my life. The most beautiful women choose to mate with the most brutal men, instead of a magnificent gentlemen like myself.

Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. The 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, stupid offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more depraved and evil than the human female.

Women are like a plague. They don't deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order to prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they deserve to be treated as such.
posted by Lutoslawski at 8:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [22 favorites]


Well, that's the thing. It's not rare and specific. People in this thread and elsewhere have repeatedly advanced the idea that it's connected to the broad social context of violence towards women, as well as violence in general being a method for men to acquire and defend honor or status. So catcalling, groping, stalking, sexual assault, and domestic violence are seen as intimately connected to this event and others like it.
posted by kavasa at 8:43 PM on May 24, 2014 [27 favorites]


I'll admit I've always had sympathies for the so-called Lone Actors, the bullied kids who turn psychotic and snap, not at all above my sympathies for their victims, but the sympathies for those people did exist.

Even I will draw a line here. No sympathy for Elliot. I can't imagine what went through this kid's mind even as I hear his spoken thoughts, and he's clearly sincere. The fact that it's bewildering to me tells me that I need to pay closer attention.

Having said that, now I'll read the entire thread. I generally trust you people's judgment.
posted by quiet earth at 8:45 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ugh. Dear god that's vile.
posted by saulgoodman at 8:47 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I'll admit I've always had sympathies for the so-called Lone Actors, the bullied kids who turn psychotic and snap, not at all above my sympathies for their victims, but the sympathies for those people did exist.

I totally understand this, and to a certain degree I'm the same way. But not now. Not after I've read that whole damn manifesto. After reading that, I'll just come right out and say it: I'm glad he's dead. I wish he'd only killed himself.
posted by palomar at 8:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [9 favorites]


(The quote above, I meant.)
posted by saulgoodman at 8:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


I would never advocate for banning these groups that post vile remarks. But I don't know that these sites allow people to vent. Sometimes I think they allow people to egg each other on, to try to top each other, and give them the impression they're part of a movement, not just a person in need of help. I have no way to prove or disprove this but after watching conversations spin entirely out of control while spreading false information, I just don't know.
posted by etaoin at 8:55 PM on May 24, 2014 [6 favorites]


I looked up his Facebook page. NO FRIENDS.

There's a privacy option to set visibility of your friends list to "Only Me" so it's possible that he either set it that way himself or someone changed that setting on his account after he died.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:01 PM on May 24, 2014


This would explain the head-scratcher as to why a BMW-driving, unpopular, upper class misanthrope had not just one but several housemates.

I lived in IV and attended UCSB in the mid 80s. I lived in a 2 bedroom apartment with 3 other guy for $1500 (that like what, $3000 in 2014 dollars?) that is about a block away from where this shit went down. The places on Del Playa were even more expensive. I had friends who had 7 roommates in a 2 bedroom apartment. It was on the beach and obscenely expensive. Even rich kids in IV have multiple roommates.

What blows my mind is I was just there visiting a few years ago and very little has changed since I went there. Bikes and skateboards rule the streets. Cool stores. Shitty overpriced apartments. Parking is a pain in the ass. Friday night people would go out and have fun. The absolute last thing we thought about was the possibility of getting shot by a madman.
posted by birdherder at 9:05 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Also possibly people deFriended after the murders?
posted by gingerest at 9:06 PM on May 24, 2014


I'm saying that beyond sexism is a desire to control others as an extention of one's self and view of the world.

If this was the case, women who feel out of control of their lives would murder people more. They don't. And women tend to have more reasons to feel out of control of our lives, since we're often being controlled by the violence of men.
posted by NoraReed at 9:08 PM on May 24, 2014 [75 favorites]


Can I just say briefly while I'm reading that I appreciate the actual discussion here, instead of solely attacking this mostly-indefensible individual? I'm getting the attacks aimed at him on Twitter, but that's why I'm here, to get a well-rounded set of viewpoints.
posted by quiet earth at 9:21 PM on May 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


Nora: Women are also socialized from a young age that this is the way it until we are enlightened otherwise. So it's generally socialized that there is some level of powerlessness women have to accept.

The power and control narritive does play on the perception that whoever is suppose to be in power and enforce that power. Culturally we send those messages to men so of course men are more likely. But women do it too in more subtle ways. Anorexia is all about power and control of one's body. Maybe the pervasive messages have gotten so prevalent that women feel it's easier to control themselves than to control the men around them.

Women do have power and control problems. To say otherwise is ignoring many problems of bullying, judgement , body shaming and other things women do to eachother and to men.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:23 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Help is out there. I seriously wish the marketing were better so that people would use these resources. From my Twitter feed:

White Ribbon ‏@whiteribbon 13h

Men, If you're feeling chronically rejected, send us a tweet, email, call us. We're a safe space for discussion. Violence isn't the answer.
posted by quiet earth at 9:26 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


Wait, so the argument here is that society doesn't provide enough coming-of-age rituals for young men, not that they are constantly pounded with unquestionably virulent messages from society as a whole and then they find communities where they can find and connect to more virulent misogynists, creating an echo chamber in which their violence is not only normalized but encouraged?


The virulent messages are there: this is true. But how would you change society so that the virulent messages are no longer there, and the communities are not viable? It is infeasible to ban them in a society like America, and people are often loath to be educated. How would you do it? What would be the actions to be taken?

If we are to listen to the voices of women more, then how would this happen? It doesn't happen in most of the societies that have ever been in the presence of agriculture: what would be the actions that people would take so that our society would become the special one? If force should be used, then how should it be used, since it usually fucks up things? If persuasion, then how would it happen?

You cannot say that men do not matter, because you cannot say that women do not matter. Of course, in this subject this is a false equivalence: women are clearly in the bigger danger. It is often mentioned that rape more about power than sex in and of itself: wouldn't a more humane relation to power reduce that rate?

You have said a true thing, but history tells us that this seldom works at convincing people, certainly not delusional people. And of course, you have no real obligation to answer any of these questions. But these are some thoughts I had.
posted by curuinor at 9:26 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


"The intersection of mental illness and misogyny is something that has been on my mind for awhile (since long before this incident) and something I feel like I haven't been able to articulate clearly. Sometimes when experiencing or hearing about experiences of various sorts of harassment (men catcalling, making threats, exposing themselves, etc.), I have felt sort of uncomfortable being angry at perpetrators who seem like they aren't just like run-of-the-mill jerks but probably unwell in some way. And yet writing it off as simply mentally ill behavior felt like a wildly reductive, inaccurate, and unfair generalization."

I think you're raising a lot of important questions here, and you've put your finger on the messiness of it all.

There are several threads of thought here that need to be pulled apart. I think the main overlapping--and hence, complicating--concepts here are:

* Mental illness vs. misogyny
* Delusion (which might excuse moral agency to some extent) vs ignorance (which excuses it much less so)
* Delusion- or Ignorance-based hatred vs. deliberate/intentional hatred (with the latter being morally more blameworthy)

None of these are strict divisions whatsoever; nor are they mutually exclusive. The intersection of all these things is made even more complicated by the grey areas: both grey areas in between them, and the degrees of intensity inherent in each concept by itself (e.g., any particular mental illness or deficiency falls on a spectrum).

I can imagine a person who has a specific mental deficiency--perhaps as the result of a physical defect in the brain--who becomes deluded and, on the basis of that delusion, develops an intense hatred of the opposite sex. That person would be in one location of this multi-dimensional space.

Or, I can imagine a person in the polar opposite of that location--someone who is mentally in touch with reality, who is reasonably well-informed, and who, as the result of intentional, deliberate analysis, consciously chooses to cultivate a hatred or bias towards the other sex.

It seems clear that the former person is much less morally blameworthy and condemnable than the latter. But most misogynists probably fall somewhere in between these extremes. I'm guessing that most misogynists are born-and-raised with a certain amount of ignorance and life-circumstance-based factors--perhaps with some degree of mental conditions/illnesses--that cause them to be the way they are, as well as a substantial amount of intentionally/deliberately/knowingly-cultivated hatred.

And it seems to me that we should be careful about pointing to a person who appears to live in one area of that space and implying or inferring a degree of moral blameworthiness as to someone who lives in a totally different place.
posted by mikeand1 at 9:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


There's a privacy option to set visibility of your friends list to "Only Me" so it's possible that he either set it that way himself or someone changed that setting on his account after he died.

I'd hope someone at FB has decided to save every single contact he has from the sheer tsunami of abusive messages ("you should have stopped him"), creepily supportive messages and/or trolling that would otherwise arrive. That would be a humane general policy.
posted by jaduncan at 9:29 PM on May 24, 2014 [10 favorites]


If we are to listen to the voices of women more, then how would this happen? It doesn't happen in most of the societies that have ever been in the presence of agriculture: what would be the actions that people would take so that our society would become the special one? If force should be used, then how should it be used, since it usually fucks up things? If persuasion, then how would it happen?

Get police departments to start actually responding with humanity and decency to women's claims. Hire more female cops. Promote gun control. Create more narratives with greater variety of women in them. Force boys to read stories about women so they learn to empathize with them like girls have to do with boys. Get websites to actually respond to complaints of harassment and ban people who do them. Take complaints about sexual assault and harassment in mixed-gender spaces seriously. Allow women to have women-only spaces, and make those spaces safe for trans* women, who are especially vulnerable. Call men out on their casual misogyny until they fucking stop. Ban men who use professional organizations to meet women who they harass or assault from those organizations and do so without argument or apology. Stop nominating Vox Day for awards. Prioritize helping women in their careers of choice. Make it so that no misogynistic man can just go through their whole lives without ever having to hear a female viewpoint. Fire misogynistic men so that their female coworkers don't have to deal with that shit. Stop treating service workers like you're entitled to their kindness or affection. Value mothers as much as fathers. Stop marketing fatherhood and motherhood in dramatically different ways.

That's just off the top of my head, I'm sure the ten billion feminist blogs out there would also have other ideas. Assuming you're actually asking this question honestly, and not as a rhetorical gesture equivalent to throwing one's hands in the air and saying "but what is to be DONE" which is honestly what people mean 90% of the time when they say shit like that.
posted by NoraReed at 9:36 PM on May 24, 2014 [188 favorites]


Folks have already noted the things I would say; just wanted to agree that whatever mental issues or personal oddities aside, from what I've heard so far the killer was bringing to an extreme conclusion an utterly normal story about what it means to be a man, and that I can't imagine complicating factors which somehow excuse or explain away the role of 'masculinity' in this case. And masculinity as a cultural narrative may hurt both genders, but it sure doesn't hurt them equally.

Also really liking NoraReed's comments.
posted by postcommunism at 9:40 PM on May 24, 2014 [5 favorites]


Halfway through the thread.

I still don't feel sympathy for the killer. That said, his pathology is easy to trace on the internet. Try the False Rape Society, which leads to an incredibly messed-up anti-marriage and anti-woman message board (whose name I can't remember). Their misogyny was concise and brilliant rhetorically, and all the more scary for being so.

Here's one such link.
posted by quiet earth at 9:42 PM on May 24, 2014 [2 favorites]


if that shit is concise and rhetorically brilliant I'm Mark fucking Twain
posted by NoraReed at 9:47 PM on May 24, 2014 [28 favorites]


I strongly encourage people linking directly to hate sites to either not do it or to use the nofollow tag, so as to not increase the hate sites' SEO ranking and advertising income.
posted by nicebookrack at 9:48 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


Actually there isn't much difference these days between follow and nofollow tags, if the referrer is relevant. Which this MetaFilter thread most certainly is.
posted by KokuRyu at 9:53 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Those are excellent ideas, some of which I had heard before and some that I had not, NoraReed. I didn't mean the questioning as a rhetorical gesture, but as an extension of a general pessimism about anything getting done by reactions to piecemeal events, no matter how horrible. I am a pessimist in these matters, because that seems to be the best mental model of what will happen, based upon what has happened previously.

The thing to note, however, is that the majority of your suggestions require real power: the power to censure and be heard in censuring, the power to imprison, to harm and destroy the lives of people who do indeed deserve it. So many of the suggestions are just a suggestion that women should have more power, which is a laudable goal and something that hasn't been happening.
posted by curuinor at 9:56 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


Excruciatingly long manifestos for mass murder come from something deeply messed up within, but the language and conceptual frameworks for those manifestos come from something deeply messed up without.

The MRA/PUA/misogyny-cult stuff is like a macrocosmic mental illness, self-validating and self-amplifying.
posted by holgate at 9:57 PM on May 24, 2014 [28 favorites]


For those who haven't read it, Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time is a part of the essential canon of modern sci fi as well as one of the founding works of feminist sci fi. In it, Piercy attempts to construct a utopian society purged of misogyny.

Minor Spoiler Alert:
One of the most fascinating concepts to me was the restructuring of the family so that every child had three "mothers" -- who could be male or female -- but no father. The elimination of the patriarchal function was crucial to the elimination of misogyny: the dissolution of the father/mother binary means that child is not socialized into a particular notion of gender/sex relations, where the father is the primary authority (and male, and heterosexual) while the mother is secondary in authority, or even property of the father (and female, and heterosexual). Instead of the Freudian choice of identification between these 2 unequal examples, the child has a far greater freedom in the fashioning of per's* own identity through the more democratic "3 mother" system. As radical as it may seem, I think that such fundamental de- & re-construction of kinship is exactly what is needed if there's ever going to be a meaningful transformation of our society away from masculinist hegemony.

*"per" is the unisex pronoun they use in Piercy's future, short for "person." Isn't that wonderful?
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:00 PM on May 24, 2014 [23 favorites]


What happens to adult males in Piercy's utopian society, Saxon Kane? Are they involved in the raising of children at all? What if they want to?
posted by curuinor at 10:02 PM on May 24, 2014


One of the pieces of the puzzle that we might need to work on, with respect to all this, is that we need to stop shaming men who are virgins. No virgin-shaming men (involuntary celibates or otherwise), no slut-shaming women.

You know, I've seen a lot more virgin-shaming by men towards other men than by women towards men. Yes, some women jump on that bandwagon, but it's usually a certain set of insecure guys who make the biggest deal out of it.

However, some guys who are sexually inexperienced do get hit by the stereotype "virgin living in mom's basement" that women can refer to also. The thing is, what I personally always found offputting about many of those dudes was not the virgin part, but the unpredictably angry, emotionally stunted, unable-to-get-his-own-life part that usually seemed to come with it.

I mean, I hang out with geeks and am one. I have often tried to befriend, and even flirt with, geeky guys who were shy with women. Shyness is not repulsive to me, nor is being devoted to an odd bit of culture or being really smart. But what did happen, more than once, is that we'd be having a normal conversation and the guy would get all hostile to me all of a sudden--he'd burst out with some weird libertarian crypto-racist rant, or make a cutting remark about women's brains, or just generally reveal himself to be an asshole. It was confusing, but also alarming--I don't hang out with people prone to angry inexplicable outbursts for basic self-preservation reasons. Not to mention the weird racist/sexist shit that was just gross.

And so I became more wary of guys like that, and started focusing my efforts on dudes who were, if not suave, just able to have a normal conversation and treat me with respect. These were also often guys who had dated before and had managed to move out of their parents' house. I'm sure to a lot of PUA types this would be seen as rejecting "betas" for "alphas" but it's really not. It's rejecting assholes for non-assholes.

I don't know where you draw the line on hatred/mental illness. At a certain point, the actions of a hate-group member certainly seem to be those of a person with a sick mind. But it seems wrong to exempt people from responsibility for their decision to view other people as less than human.
posted by emjaybee at 10:02 PM on May 24, 2014 [80 favorites]


We've said, over and over and over again, that you have to start calling other men on their shit. That's the #1 thing. Call other men on their shit and stop supporting men who pull misogynistic shit. This means calling out your professional organizations on their shit and leaving them when they refuse to fix it. This means no more supporting comics who lean on rape jokes. This means kicking creepers out of your social group. This means calling out your coworkers and your bosses. And it means doing all those things to be a basically decent human being.

Again, if you google stuff individual men can do, you'll find a zillion things that I'm not gonna bother repeating here, both because other people have done them before and because I don't feel like it.
posted by NoraReed at 10:03 PM on May 24, 2014 [64 favorites]


"the power to imprison, to harm and destroy the lives of people who do indeed deserve it."

Harming, imprisoning and destroying lives. Now there's an agenda we can all get behind.
posted by MikeMc at 10:04 PM on May 24, 2014


I mean, if you call out your professional organizations and stop supporting comics and stuff, that is harming them. They deserve it and are, presumably, assholes and such, but you are harming them and they will probably take steps to respond.

So you must have the power to harm them, it seems. If you depend on the professional organization utterly and they decide your fate, you can't do that, or at least you're very much hampered in doing that. So it seems power is a pre-requisite, and something that should be considered as a pre-requisite.
posted by curuinor at 10:07 PM on May 24, 2014


Whenever I read about MRA groups and the like, I can't help but think of Al Bundy and No Ma'am. Kind of scary how prescient Married with Children was?

curuinor: (spoiler) Well, first thing to be said is that people do not carry children themselves; instead, there's some sort of complex cloning/incubation procedure. The idea being that women had to be separated from the biological act of reproduction in order to be finally freed from masculine control of their bodies. Anyway, because of this "mothers" are not required to be women. Both men and women serve as "mothers," and the parents are not actually genetically related to their children but instead choose to serve as parents.
posted by Saxon Kane at 10:08 PM on May 24, 2014


From the manifesto: "my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth."

Note that the "mistreatment" seems to have boiled down to no girl conspicuously asking him out. No girl did anything to him, literally. And that was "mistreatment?"

Oh, right, they should have just dropped to the floor, rolled over on their backs and spread 'em. Except women are too stupid to pick who to roll over for.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:11 PM on May 24, 2014 [15 favorites]


I am struck by the similarities to the Virginia Tech massacre. This passage from Seung-Hui Cho's manifesto (which he also mailed to the media) could almost have been written by Rodger:
You have vandalized my heart, raped my soul, and torched my conscience. You thought it was one pathetic boy's life you were extinguishing. [...] You forced me into a corner and gave me only one option. The decision was yours. Now you have blood on your hands that will never wash off.

You had everything you wanted. Your Mercedes wasn't enough, you brats. Your golden necklaces weren't enough, you snobs. Your trust fund wasn't enough. Your Vodka and Cognac weren't enough. All your debaucheries weren't enough. Those weren't enough to fulfill your hedonistic needs. You had everything.
posted by Pyry at 10:12 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


I remember the other son of a Hollywood director who killed several people in Isla Vista, although he used his car as the weapon and not guns. I was surprised when I googled it now that it's been 13 years, and that the perpetrator was found legally insane and has apparently been released from confinement.
posted by cell divide at 10:26 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


further insight into "amok" can be found in stefan zweig's novella of the same name.
posted by bruce at 10:30 PM on May 24, 2014




That tag has been really great but it's hard to read for very long because every time I get into feeling solidarity and basking in the wisdom of other women there's another comment from some "not all men" douchebag pissed off about "angry feminists" saying the same shit (often using the exact same phrasing, including totally unironic "not all men"s) I've heard a thousand times before making me start Hulking out and I can't do that right now because these are my favorite shorts
posted by NoraReed at 11:13 PM on May 24, 2014 [38 favorites]


Tell me about it, I had to close three browser windows and change my outfit to a stretchier one for rage-squats.
posted by palomar at 11:15 PM on May 24, 2014 [16 favorites]


NoraReed, thank you for saying these things. It's hard to say them, and we get so much shit when we do (less from Metafilter than the world at large, but it all adds up), but it needs saying. Over and over until we don't have to say it anymore. Thank you.
posted by cmyk at 11:16 PM on May 24, 2014 [26 favorites]


Didn't Hulk only rip his shirts?
posted by matimer at 11:22 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Elliott Rodger was super rich. He had a therapist AND a support network of other misogynists.
He was the child of a hollywood big-shot and he drove a freaking beamer. His dad’s lawyer reports him going to multiple therapists. He was an active member of the ‘manosphere,’ which covers multiple internet communities that have been classed by the southern poverty law center as hate groups.

This is not a matter of him needing help and getting help. He had all the help in the world.
posted by ShawnStruck at 11:27 PM on May 24, 2014 [39 favorites]


You're welcome, cmyk.

Now if only I could get someone to pay me to write this stuff.
posted by NoraReed at 11:33 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]




In addition to his virulent misogyny, Rodger also seemed to have a heavy dose of white supremacist self hatred.

So here are our killer ideologies-- white supremacy and misogyny.

Curious: For all the people asking for stricter surveillance of the mentally ill and of Youtube-- how many of you are offended and angered by the ever growing prison-industrial state?
posted by wuwei at 11:37 PM on May 24, 2014 [7 favorites]


In the media, this case is already well along in the process of being reduced to the comparatively smaller points involved to find a simple explanation. But it's the messy, long-tenured cultural problems that have contributed the most to Rodger's acts.

NoraReed (and cmyk for reiterating the point): Thank you for keeping attention on that big picture. It's helped make this discussion of the incident one of the best and most thoughtful I've seen.
posted by ipe at 11:41 PM on May 24, 2014 [3 favorites]


>This means no more supporting comics who lean on rape jokes.

Yep. 100%.

>This means kicking creepers out of your social group.

I get the feeling that that's what happened here: Elliot Rodgers got kicked out of *everyone*'s social group, and it made him feel the world had wronged him.
posted by surenoproblem at 11:41 PM on May 24, 2014 [12 favorites]


ipe, I think you're onto something big here. There is no one quick fix to stop guys like this from going thermonuclear. It'd be easier if there was, but... there's not. The news wants there to be, because they're better at single talking points. Politicians, same. It's a conflation of other things that all need to be addressed, and we're societally fucked, is why is something nobody really wants to hear. Even though it's true.

It'll take a long time to solve them, and cynically I doubt I'll still be alive to see any of it at least mostly fixed. But the sooner we start, the sooner someone someday can enjoy not being killed because of it.
posted by cmyk at 11:46 PM on May 24, 2014 [1 favorite]


Was this murderer a natural born sociopath who invented a convenient contemporary narrative for a spree that he would have committed anyway? Or was there an ideological turning point? Some combination of the two?

As someone who was 22, very lonely, very touch starved, very depressed and very pacifistic, it’s sad for me to think about some other young man who is reading about all this at age 22 and questioning himself because he may have some superficial traits in common with this murderous asshole.

To the lonely 22 year old men I want to say: "You’re going to be okay. I believe in you."

I wish that I could say the same “be okay” to the victims and families affected by gun violence. I hate that the narrative is once again about the murderer. I hate that the murderer's message of fear to women is being broadcast far and wide.

With regards to MRA... For what it’s worth, feminists have been writing sympathetically about the crisis in masculinity for much longer than Men’s Rights Activism websites were a thing.

I personally think that we need to start the conversation with boys. Boys and girls need to be taught tools in public school about how to deal with impulsive negative emotions. They need to be taught that it’s okay to ask for help. They need to be taught that all body types and sexualities are okay and that everyone has a different rate at which they mature sexually and that’s a-okay. They need to be taught active listening for helping their peers. They need to be taught solutions to domestic violence and they need to be taught how to recognize enthusiastic consent.

Helplessness is also learned. That lesson needs to be replaced in our public schools with designs for self-efficacy and incremental mastery experiences.

As it is, social growth isn’t built into school curriculum. It’s just expected to be a by-product of the circumstance of cramming several dozen kids in one room with one teacher supervising and then giving that teacher some high stakes testing backed curriculum to try to teach. There’s not much attempt that I know of to “train the trainer” in the most important skills for teaching, such as classroom management and social intervention.

Conflict deescalation can be taught to healthy people. Mental control for impulsive desires can be taught to healthy people. Ethical awareness can be taught to healthy people. Start us all when we’re young and malleable instead of waiting for people to be broken before we send them to learn things like CBT and anger management.

MRA, PUA, red pill, white supremacy, religious fanaticism etc... are self-amplifying ideological constructs. Individuals without strong social support systems are especially vulnerable to circular reasoning because they don’t have other people who can act as sounding boards and snap them back into a healthy mindset.
posted by Skwirl at 12:02 AM on May 25, 2014 [51 favorites]


So whoever sold him his guns, directly or indirectly, will be going to prison, right?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:04 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


The news wants there to be, because they're better at single talking points. Politicians, same. It's a conflation of other things that all need to be addressed, and we're societally fucked, is why is something nobody really wants to hear. Even though it's true.

It would also involve the news media criticising their own sexist and racist attitudes on air, which is something one will very rarely experience. All the "$TOWN's most trusted news!"/if-it-bleeds-it-leads razzmatazz doesn't offer much space or commercial justification for that kind of introspection.
posted by jaduncan at 12:12 AM on May 25, 2014


I want to point out a specific fault in this guy's logic: it seems he felt rejected by the world. Yet 99.99999% of people on the planet are ignored by 99.99999% of people on the planet. It's not rejection; it's a physical reality that people's social circles can only be so big, and there's only so many famous people we can keep track of.

I wonder if his Hollywood exposure added another layer of reality distortion. Like, thoughts of 'I am not valuable unless I am famous.' Toiling away to become an actor isn't guaranteed to get you famous. But committing a mass-murder is a surefire fast-track to it.

From that perspective, I think it would be good if we tried to keep the focus off him, and trained it instead on the reprehensibility of the kinds of "movements" he associated himself with.
posted by mantecol at 12:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


The guns were bought legally, and if I could hazard a guess based on some information about his going shooting in Oxnard, probably at the place my gun fancying friends often go, the delightfully named Shooters Paradise.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:16 AM on May 25, 2014


People keep using the term "delusional" to refer to his violently misogynistic ideas, and I think that is a very poor use of the term - especially since it attempts to cast this in a mental health frame rather than a cultural frame.

Misogynistic ideas are false - like most prejudice, the facts simply aren't there - but they are not isolated beliefs that are largely unshared and which exist in a vacuum. The more general misogynistic ideas are perpetuated in television ads and comedy routines, and even the in the lives of people who would bristle if you called them sexist. The under-representation of women is woven into every level of society - from the political, to the media, to business - and even in fields where women predominate like education and nursing, men in the same field quickly rise to positions of power - much more quickly than women do - because men are seen as more reliable and worthy of power than women even by other women (yay internalized sexism).

And like racist beliefs, misogynistic beliefs offer people communities where many, many other people agree with them and more people simply laugh at the jokes and accept the premises. Jokes about how women are so complicated or strange no one (note that "one" doesn't include women) can understand them perpetuate the idea of women as objects, not people. Video games and movies where the hero gets the girl perpetuate the idea that women are rewards for good behavior, not people.

Gender segregation starting at birth reinforces the idea that men and women are fundamentally different, which forms the foundation for men to not only not relate to women as people, but to also ease the objectification of women. The conflation of "sex" with "women's bodies" both objectifies women and gives men who sexually desire women a reason to localize their sexuality in the bodies of others instead of their own body. Television shows and movies where men have complex plotlines and complicated inner lives, and where women exist as goals, motivators, and assistants perpetuate the idea that the important people in the world are male and that women exist in the context of men.

These ideas are so pervasive that the majority of women have internalized sexism; it's something that comes up fairly frequently in feminist circles. Reminding women that we are women is enough to lower our math scores on the SAT.

Give this climate of the objectification of women even by ourselves, there is literally no basis for calling misogyny - even violent misogyny - "delusional." There is way too much cultural reinforcement of misogyny for it to be unsupported. Yes, it is false, but it is false beliefs that are internalized even by the people to whom they apply, that are perpetuated through both public and private lives, and which are based on pervasive cultural assumptions.

(Similar patterns exist for racism, homophobia, etc... and they often cluster together, but here I'm focusing on sexism primarily.)
posted by Deoridhe at 12:56 AM on May 25, 2014 [89 favorites]


As a feminist I kind of dislike the claim that birthing a child is the exact same as being a parent who did not. it leads to justification of less rights for people who birthed and often have a particular bond including lactation and a desire for physical closeness that is not exactly same and when that bond is in place, should be protected. Certainly sometimes the father falls more naturally into the more bonded role early on but as someone interestedin greater rights for parents who are pregnant, birthing, lactating, and the bonds that occur around that,iI don't think we have to make arguments that being a parent who carries, births, and nurses a child eexactly the same type of relationship as one who doesn't.That book that talks about raising infants in incubators and depriving children of their ancestors sounds hellish. There are really great comments all over this thread and otherwise I am just loving the articulate and thoughtful comments.
posted by xarnop at 1:29 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


His fantasy does have sort of a Harry Harlow wire-mother-and-rape-rack thing going on.
posted by Small Dollar at 1:36 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


So all the guns were legally purchased. That's just great. I'm going to assume that they were legally purchased by someone else because if this guy could buy a bunch of handguns we're all screwed.
posted by Justinian at 1:42 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


This one sentence in Nora Reed's excellent comment struck me because it gets to the heart of something I've been pondering this evening:

"Force boys to read stories about women so they learn to empathize with them like girls have to do with boys."

A really important cultural and psychological part of what's involved in this is this pervasive notion in so many cultures that men and women are essentially different kinds of people. The "Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus" paradigm that is virtually unquestioned in our culture has extremely powerful implications. Misogynists like this guy see women as essentially alien and that message is embedded throughout our culture.

The misogynists will respond, no doubt, that women are just as guilty of this (and to some degree, that's true) and feminists, especially, are very guilty of this (which is quite false) because they, as men, perceive that feminists are always making men out to be bad people, the enemy.

What they don't understand is that even when women have internalized our culture's idea that men and women are two different species, it's still the case that women cannot escape seeing the world through men's eyes, developing empathy for the male point-of-view, and to not see all men as some alien group that hates them and is the enemy.

It's very interesting that this is the sexist view of feminists, and that's revealing in exactly the same way that, for example, small government conservatives believe that all liberals necessarily desire larger government for its own sake. It's projection.

Unlike women, men can internalize this cultural view of the essential alienness between men and women without having almost any interactions which challenge, undermine, or weaken it. They can almost exclusively consume media that's made by men, for men. There's so little motivation in our culture for men to pay attention to women other than, of course, as sex objects and opportunities.

Over my adult life, in terms of relationship and sexual activity, I've had good times and bad times, times of plenty and long periods of drought. This is one of the long periods of drought, and, looking beyond this, this whole last thirteen years has been one where I've been in exactly one short-lived serious relationship. But it's never occurred to me to think about my sex life and my relationships (and how they failed) in terms of "men versus women". If I'm resentful against anyone because I've been lonely and sexless, it's never occurred to me to narrow (or widen) that to a resentment of women as a class. I don't even really understand why I would think in terms of "women" like this. When I participate on dating sites, I think in terms of "people" not "women" because I just don't think in terms of these interactions occurring across some sort of deep divide.

But so many people do. I think it's deeply harmful that anyone does. But it's incredibly toxic that men do in the context of a patriarchal culture where males hear and believe messages telling them that sex is something that they want to "get" from women, that women are the gatekeepers of sex and choose which men are worthy and which are not. You might think, wait, isn't that view contrary to the patriarchal view that women exist to serve men's purposes? Well, the answer is, no. It serves those views because it implies that the only way to correct this horribly unjust treatment of men by women is to set up a huge structure whereby women are otherwise at the mercy of men. Thus the fantasies around the campfire of a society of misogynist sex-slavery.

Because a prerequisite for this way of thinking is to not even really see women as people, to see them as essentially other which then makes it so much more possible to a) have zero empathy such that violence against women is almost outside, psychologically, the moral sphere; and b) to see them as nothing more than cogs in the machine of one's own desires.

Despite the fact that all men have mothers, many have sisters, most have had female lovers and partners, it's the case that men in our culture (and others) are profoundly ignorant about the lives that women lead and the world they live in in a way that has absolutely no comparison from the other direction. Even though our culture tells men and women alike that they're essentially different, the fact of the matter is that women live in a man's world. Off the top of my head, I can think of maybe three or four common things about men and men's lives that there's a good chance the average woman won't know. Maybe, and that's at most. But I can come up easily with five things without thinking for more than a second about women that the average man doesn't know. Worse, men don't know that they don't know. That's what so much of this argument is often about — women will say something entirely commonplace and uncontroversially and self-evidently true to almost all women and because many men who hear this had no clue this was the case and, more importantly, never had any suspicion that it's the case, they simply refuse to believe it. As a man who long ago learned to open my eyes and see, I can't really exaggerate just how blind I've discovered most other men to be. It's quite amazing.

All of this is just restating and emphasizing my point that while the message of gender alienation is universal in our culture, it has very different effects on men than on women because, effectively, men and women are living in different worlds of opportunity. Even though it's the case that women are all around and men interact with women constantly, and intimately, the fact is that it's very easy, if one is inclined, for a man to see women as an essentially unknowable object, not a person. It's much, much more difficult in our culture for a woman to similarly think of men this way. Basically, it's a matter of survival for women to learn and care about how men think, to see through male eyes. They can hardly avoid it, anyway, but even if they could, they'd still by necessity have to do so.

One of the most striking thing to me about this guy's rhetoric, and the MRAs and PUAs and such, is how clear and extreme this idea is, this pretty much not even seeing women as people at all, but as a kind of symbol, a function, a satisfaction of a need. In this extreme form it's self-evidently pathological in a way that most can't deny; it's scary and it's clearly interrelated with serious mental health issues. But, as Deoridhe so nicely wrote in her comment as I've been writing this one, all this stuff is right there in vast swaths of our culture. It's a regular punch line in sitcoms. It's on bestseller lists, guests of daytime talk shows. It's found in the male gaze in our narrative media where men have psychology and history revealed in their appearance while women have ... nice breasts.
posted by Ivan Fyodorovich at 1:43 AM on May 25, 2014 [135 favorites]


This isn't a story about misogyny any more than other similar stories have been about Violent superhero films or Islam or Single Mothers or Video Games. Alienated boys sometimes go crazy and kill, and this, in a country with lax gun laws usually turns out to be an awful thing where innocent runners, women and children are murdered.

I don't know what the answer is. It's not removing hate groups because hate groups just spring up. If you crack down on the MRA groups, there's still going to be Animal Rights Activists targeting scientists and Anti-Islamic nutjobs targeting Mosques and Anti-Facist nutjobs targetting the Anti-Islamic nutjobs.

I don't think that it's about Gun Control either. In countries without guns, men will still go on the rampage, sometimes with guns and sometimes without guns. The last two UK stories thatcome to mind have been the stabbing of a teacher by a 15 year old boy and the Raoul Moat affair. Deaths are reduced in countries without easy access to guns for sure, but the US has its second amendment, and it's unlikely that this will change.

I'm not 100% sure what the answer is. The alienated boys you see near me are unemployed and they have no options and little by way of a future. They're misogynistic and they're racist and they love to go out of a weekend to find someone to punch. They revel in violence, both cathartic and actual. Part of me thinks that they're a new phenomenon which means we can do something about them, but part of me worries that they've always been there and in countries that don't send all the boys off to war, they will always be there.

So yeah...

One thing I don't want to minimise in this though is women's voices. A lot of women are using this situation as stepping off point to talk about the wider subject of violence towards women. In the time since the shooting, more women will have been killed in domestic abuse cases by men than were killed in the shooting. They won't be reported. This is the tragedy, and although I think a less sexist society would just have made this killer choose different targets, we shouldn't be ignoring scared people who see these murders as indicative of a larger problem.
posted by zoo at 2:16 AM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'm glad that caught your attention, Ivan, because the fact that women have to, from a young idea, be able to not only empathize with boys but put themselves in boys shoes because it's just not possible to spend your whole childhood reading and seeing stories about boys, while it is possible to do so with stories about girls, is one of the best things I got out of my introduction to Women Studies. Media with powerful female characters is sold to girls to make them feel good about themselves and never to boys to show them that girls are humans, too. It's also why there are female versions of male superheroes, video game characters, etc but you'd never see the reverse. This is also why female authors tend to be far more competent writing men than male authors are writing women.

What you wrote about men having female family members and lovers and partners made me think of a line in a Tamora Pierce book where one of the male characters points out how handsome another male character is, and, when the protagonist gives him a funny look, says "I have older sisters, remember? If I don't know what makes girls wiggle their toes, I've had my head in the [river] for seventeen years." It stuck in my head because of the hilarious phrasing, but it's one of those great little bits of worldbuilding that says that the book you're reading is set in a place that isn't here; it's set in a world where men do learn to see from that perspective, at least they do if they've got sisters. There's a lot of reasons that Pierce is a great feminist writer, but the fact that she writes YA and Children's literature that is not only full of women but full of men who understand them, who are comfortable around them, who don't treat them as alien-- it's amazing how the touch of that can turn a plague-ridden high fantasy monarchy with dodgy law enforcement into half a utopia.

But I worked at a children's bookstore, and I had very little success getting adults to buy books for boys that were about girls. The inverse was an easy sell. And I've spent a lot of time talking to friends about favorite books from childhood and adolescence, and the only one I can think of with a female protagonist** that boys did read a lot (His Dark Materials) is by a man, and it splits the second and third books between her and a boy and she spends half the third one unconscious.

I know I tend toward talking about this a lot because children and teen's fiction + feminism is one of the Major Intersections Of Stuff I Am Interested In And Know A Lot About, but I think the fact that boys aren't challenged to empathize with girls in required material for class and that it's not sold to them as entertainment outside of it is really important. Society also, I think, discourages that interest-- little boys who are more into Princess Peach than Mario are likely to get shit for it, which further discourages figuring out a woman's perspective. (Not that you're likely to get a very good gender relations 101 from a Nintendo game, but still.)

*though I saw one of the trans folks I follow on Twitter point out that saying that everyone has mothers is cissexist, and I know this is totally peripheral to the main point but I still feel I should note it because even though I totally agree with everything you're trying to say here I still want to point that out, because I'm learning to cut a lot of cissexist stuff out of my own vocabulary and I hope I'll be corrected
**not counting Harry Potter, which Hermione is actually the hero of but no one in or out of the books really seems to have figured that out

posted by NoraReed at 2:21 AM on May 25, 2014 [46 favorites]


Steve, talking about how great it would be if the world were reorganized such that all women were kept as sex slaves in a vast underground dungeon

Let's remember that this isn't theoretical. Men actually do this.
posted by Summer at 2:25 AM on May 25, 2014 [41 favorites]


He has some very, uh, interesting views on race:
     My first week turned out to be very unpleasant, leaving a horrific first impression of my new life in Santa Barbara. My two housemates were nice, but they kept inviting over this friend of theirs named Chance. He was black boy who came over all the time, and I hated his cocksure attitude. Inevitably, a vile incident occurred between me and him. I was eating a meal in the kitchen when he came over and started bragging to my housemates about his success with girls. I couldn’t stand it, so I proceeded to ask them all if they were virgins. They all looked at me weirdly and said that they had lost their virginity long ago. I felt so inferior, as it reminded me of how much I have missed out in life. And then this black boy named Chance said that he lost his virginity when he was only thirteen! In addition, he said that the girl he lost his virginity to was a blonde white girl! I was so enraged that I almost splashed him with my orange juice. I indignantly told him that I did not believe him, and then I went to my room to cry. I cried and cried and cried, and then I called my mother and cried to her on the phone.

     How could an inferior, ugly black boy be able to get a white girl and not me? I am beautiful, and I am half white myself. I am descended from British aristocracy. He is descended from slaves. I deserve it more. I tried not to believe his foul words, but they were already said, and it was hard to erase from my mind. If this is actually true, if this ugly black filth was able to have sex with a blonde white girl at the age of thirteen while I’ve had to suffer virginity all my life, then this just proves how ridiculous the female gender is. They would give themselves to this filthy scum, but they reject ME? The injustice!
I don't even...
posted by Rhomboid at 2:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [27 favorites]


It's like reading a bizarre, horrible Adrian Mole, isn't it?
posted by Kaleidoscope at 2:37 AM on May 25, 2014 [22 favorites]




Just read the manifesto and it's definitely Adrian Mole: The Darkside.

His mum buys him a BMW and he notes bitterly that she could have bought it for him earlier.
posted by colie at 2:41 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


It's all quite Breivik as well, and he's massively lauded on 4chan/Reddit. There's a kind of digitally-enabled underclass of these guys now, and like the traditional lumpen underclass, they are beyond all hope.
posted by colie at 2:50 AM on May 25, 2014


When I see links or references to and quotes from this guy's manifesto in this thread I'm reminded of something Roger Ebert said after he was asked for comments about the role that violent films play in school shootings,
"Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy.
As important as it is to understand the source of this violence in our culture, there is this sickening way in which it is way too easy to only feed the beast by doing so. When we talk about this specific shooter, like when we talk about any of the other largely interchangable shooters, as if their name, thoughts or perspectives matter, rather than the ones that influenced them or those of their victims, we only confirm how entitled white men are the center of the world and how shooting people is an effective strategy for keeping it that way.
posted by Blasdelb at 2:51 AM on May 25, 2014 [42 favorites]


> "In the time since the shooting, more women will have been killed in domestic abuse cases by men than were killed in the shooting. They won't be reported."

I looked up some stats on domestic violence deaths: "On average more than three women a day are murdered by their husbands or boyfriends in the United States." And you're right, many such deaths are not classified properly so the number is probably higher. What a tally of murders does not tell us is how many more woman are assaulted, terrorized, abused every day. That number is much higher.

I have been very glad to see the rigor here which keeps this subject as part of the conversation despite the discomfort and continual impulse to discount or deny it, and wants to soothe us with false reassurances that the cause is an aberration and certainly it is not us and our daily world.
posted by Anitanola at 2:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [24 favorites]


KokuRyu: "One of the outcomes of the 1989 massacre was stricter gun control in Canada.
"

Mark Lepin held a valid, old style, FAC at the time of the massacre. It's very likely he would be be granted a modern PAL which is the current regulation for acquisition of non-restricted firearms if the laws in place today were in place in 1989. Mark Lepin used a Ruger Mini-14 in his spree which is very common long rifle and is unlikely to ever be put on the restricted or prohibited list short of an Australian style "ban all firearms" approach to gun control; which isn't going to happen any time in the foreseeable future. Even the Liberals strongly stated that that sort of confiscation would not happen when they were rolling out the long gun registry. He would have have had no trouble purchasing a Mini-14 rifle under either the current regulations or the more restrictive registration (which is the only thing that has been backed off on) requirements initially put in place after his spree if he had held a PAL.

And despite the friendliness of the Harper government to gun users guns are moved from non-restricted status to the restricted or prohibited list on a fairly regular basis essentially at the whim of the Public Safety Minister. With the exception of individual registration of long guns, gun controls in Canada have progressively tightened not loosened since 1989.

TwoStride: "He had three guns and after the shootout police found 41 loaded 10-round magazines in his car. Once again, it's not just the weaponry, it's the stockpiling of ammunition that is a huge problem in this country."

I'm not going to comment on what a reasonable number of guns to own is because to me it makes as much sense as talking about what is a reasonable number of cars or books or cats to own. However, 410 rounds of ammunition spread out over three guns (so ~140 each) is not a huge stock pile. You are easily going to go through that gaining proficiency in a new weapon. I don't know about handguns but it wouldn't be unheard of burn though 100 rounds in a day target shooting with a long rifle especially if the ammunition is cheap like .22LR. Even if the ammunition was a dollar a cartridge spending ~$100 a day on the hobby of target shooting is pretty well in line if not kind of cheap when compared to many other recreational activities. A day's rallying for example will easily cost me 3-5 times that even without an off.

pocketfullofrye: "Steve, talking about how great it would be if the world were reorganized such that all women were kept as sex slaves in a vast underground dungeon.[...] their fathers would take them into the dungeon and they'd pick out their first woman. All women in the world would be captives kept alive for raping. "

This is the thing that squicked me right out in Larry Niven's Known Space setting: The Kzin (with an assist from the Puppeteers) have bread their females into non-sentience and they are kept in massive harems for the use by privileged males.
posted by Mitheral at 3:33 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm reading his manifesto/autobiography because I find this sort of thing fascinating. It's really something else. At some point he tries to persuade his mother to marry a very rich man she's dating, because that would solve all his problems. "She adamantly refused (...). I told her she should sacrifice her well-being for the sake of my happiness, but this only offended her further".
posted by dhoe at 3:36 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]




So whoever sold him his guns, directly or indirectly, will be going to prison, right?

The manifesto talks about him buying first one, then another two pistols, the paperwork and waiting periods etc involved, so I would guess the purchases were perfectly legal and above board. Even if he acted nuttier than a fruit cake or described the 'Day of Retribution' he was already planning in great detail, what are the odds of a firearms dealer refusing the sale of either the weapons or the 41 magazines he also had?

I initially felt a little bit sorry for this guy that society appeared to have failed but, after reading that disturbing manifesto and so many thoughtful comments here, I'm coming around to a view that his 'delusion' is the result of someone voluntarily deciding to blame women for his failure to connect with women despite his unwillingness to do anything other than walk the streets waiting for them to fall at his feet.
posted by dg at 4:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


He describes how he goes somewhere, sits down and wonders why girls don't come to talk to him. I first thought the PUA guys were in denial when they say that this is a person who needs their advice, but I do see their point.
posted by dhoe at 4:23 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'll tell you one thing- those God damn Old Spice commercials need to stop. Like now.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 4:24 AM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


"I wish girls were attracted to me. I don’t know why they aren’t."

Maybe it had something to do with you being the kind of creepy, heartless little monster who would respond to this very common male disappointment by murdering innocent people.
posted by Decani at 4:28 AM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


From here...

Although King doesn’t believe his novel alone caused those four violent school shooting incidents, he regards "Rage" as a “possible accelerant” affecting people whose troubled backgrounds and psychological problems have already driven them to the brink.

I think this reflects my own feeling about this incident. The PUAs and MRAs were a possible accelerant.
posted by zoo at 4:38 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I just decided to start watching Adventure Time to clear my mental palate. Three eps in we are introduced to the Ice King and I had to turn it off.
posted by Iteki at 4:44 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


So after that reddit thread, he set his videos to private. He probably did not like the attention.
posted by empath at 4:46 AM on May 25, 2014


On men calling out men for misogyny:

I do this, and it's not easy. Those who know me know that I'm not (generally speaking) quiet or timid about my opinions or calling out injustice, that I'm not afraid of being ostracized for expressing counter-opinions.

People who know me know that I am indeed feminist simply because I am deeply humanist like Theodore Sturgeon, Marge Piercy, Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula K. Le Guin.

And it's still not easy to stand up and speak out against sexism and misogyny.

Recently I was sitting in my local city plaza - initially alone, but then joined by various men from my neighborhood, only one of whom I would actually call a friend. The other men were variously middle to retired age and all single.

This is the sort of city scene where these men are sitting together because seating is limited and we're all basically here for the same thing, to sit outside and smoke their cigars or cigarettes, or in my case to puff my ecig and be "social". I didn't choose to sit with these people, but they sat with me.

All of these other men have a history of leering at women, cat calling them, remarking on their aesthetic beauty or lack of it, etc. Classic objectification.

And this is really common, and it's behavior I don't tolerate in people who I would call friends.

I'm also in the dubiously interesting position because my gender identity is fluid and trans. I appear classically masculine, but I'm not. So my life is filled with this strange sort of perspective like some kind of spy or double agent, seeing how some men talk and behave about women when they think they're only among men, and the things I hear and see are fucking disturbing some times.

So I finally have enough. I don't want to be associated with this. I don't want to be seen to be a part of this group of men. It's also making me personally uncomfortable. I speak up and tell them I'm not ok with it, that it's fucking bullshit to be verbally sexually assaulting women in public and treating them like objects.

And as soon as I do, I'm suddenly considered crazy, or uptight, or whatever. Suddenly I'm the asshole because I'm pointing out to these lonely, emotionally and physically unattractive single that they're behaving like jerks, that I don't want to sit with them while they're doing this.

And so I get up and sit somewhere else away from these men. I might be the topic of conversation for a while. Whether or not I'm a fag might be discussed, or what my problem is, etc. Another common reply is "women want this, why else is she dressed up like that?" which just makes me angrier.

If I do it online on reddit or other places (hell, it's happened here on metafilter) I'm accused of being a "white knight" or that I'm only doing it to earn brownie points to simply fake being sensitive for the purposes of getting laid, like good behavior is only ever for a reward, sexual or otherwise.

And I don't really care, and I'm personally happy to self-ostracize. It's not much of a sacrifice to sit alone, which is what I wanted in the first place anyway, these neighborhood men sat at my table, not vice versa.

But it's still not easy, even for me.

My main point is that it would likely be much less easy for someone who was cis-normative male or whatever. It's probably not unlike speaking out against racism while being white in the Deep South past or present, if not even more complicated.

And, yes, "not easy" is never an excuse not to do the right thing.

Yes, speaking up and calling out the sexist behavior is the right thing to do.

But it's not easy. To do so in male culture doesn't usually mean ostracizing a minority from your group. It often usually means ostracizing yourself from a majority. It can mean choosing to be alone, to limit social and even career-related prospects.

And this is not ok. This sexism is still pervasive. Depressingly, I'm not sure if it will ever go away. At least not in my life time. And, if anything, it seems to be getting worse.
posted by loquacious at 5:12 AM on May 25, 2014 [82 favorites]


I don't think that it's about Gun Control either. In countries without guns, men will still go on the rampage, sometimes with guns and sometimes without guns. The last two UK stories that come to mind have been the stabbing of a teacher by a 15 year old boy and the Raoul Moat affair.

This shouldn't be a gun control discussion, in part because there's no point - this isn't going to affect the regulations of the sale of guns in any meaningful way - but those are actually pretty instructive comparisons. Ann Maguire's death was the first time a teacher had been killed in a British school since the Dunblane massacre in 1996. That's 20 years, nearly. In the Dunblane massacre, 16 other people were also killed, along with the murderer, who had access to firearms through legal purchase. That massacre is the reason why legal private ownership of handguns in the UK is now effectively impossible, of course.

In the case of Raoul Moat, three people were shot with a sawn-off shotgun over two days. Moat was a criminal, in the sense of someone who had been convicted of a crime and sent to jail, but he didn't have the kind of criminal connections that would have enabled him to get access to an automatic weapon. Sawn-off shotguns are slow to reload and have limited range, and it is pretty much impossible to accomplish anything like the American model of spree killing if they are the only tool you have access to.

The worst spree killing in the United Kingdom in recent years took place over nearly four hours, and resulted in 13 deaths. The perpetrator had a shotgun and a bolt-action .22 rifle, so even to do that he had to move from place to place, using familiarity or surprise to get close enough to use the shotgun or killing from long range with the rifle and moving on.

British spree killings are specifically not rampage killings, because the set of people with access to automatic weapons is so small that the chance of somebody in that set also having the other factors that make somebody a spree killing risk are very small indeed.

This doesn't change the toxic environment or the misogyny of the stagnant pools online, or the relentless normalization of violence against women. But there is a lot of misinformed or dishonest argument about how knife and gun crime functions outside the US, and it's best not to muddy the waters with it. The price of the free availability of automatic weapons - be they pistols or rifles - is that when people go on rampages, they can usually hurt or kill more people in a shorter space of time, because that's what a huge amount of research goes towards helping automatic weapons to do more efficiently in the face of mechanical and regulatory obstacles.

Whether that's a price worth paying for the benefits conferred by easy and legal citizen access to automatic weapons is another question, and not one worth getting into here, but it's not a huge leap to notice a feedback loop between the sense of frustration and impotence of this kind of thinking, and the empowerment promised by cultural narratives around firearms.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:45 AM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. Hey, probably not the best idea to celebrate *not* having a specific kind of thread derail by actually instigating the derail you say you don't want to have. (Also, folks, let's try to be responsive to concerns about language when referring to people with mental disorders generally. Thanks.)
posted by taz (staff) at 6:07 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I had a thought last night, that the rush of men attempting to convince women that this is about mental illness rather than misogyny is at least somewhat rooted in men trying to be helpful and supportive. Telling women "No, this isn't about hatred of women, this isn't about you, you don't need to be worried. Only a crazy person would do and say those things!" is sort of like saying "They hate us because of our freedom!" It denies responsibility, while at the same time assuring everyone that things are going to be okay, and we just need to keep on doing what we're doing. It's saying we couldn't have prevented this, and it's not really our responsibility to prevent this.

But women know better, and I wish men would believe it this time. This isn't random--it's common, and it's predictable. We know to believe men who say they hate us and are going to harm us. I'd wager that this guy set off all sorts of red flags in everyone who knew him, which is part of why he was alone. Women are fantastic at noticing and avoiding violent men, because we have to be. We do it consciously and we do it subconsciously. That's why it's incredibly frustrating when men dismiss the role misogyny plays in this, and focus on the perpetrator's poor mental health. Saying "This guy was just crazy, men don't believe this stuff! He's just spouting off whatever craziness he could find!" is so false that you aren't even having the same conversation women are having right now. We know better. We know that when someone says "I am going to kill women because I hate women" he means exactly that.
posted by almostmanda at 6:25 AM on May 25, 2014 [84 favorites]


A thing: when you say " a lot of men hate women", I have noticed that men often respond by saying "oh, that's not true, men want to have sex, men want to have relationships, how can they do that and still hate women?" But the thing is, it's perfectly possible to want to have a relationship or sex and still hate women. I think a lot of men actually do hate women, like, really hate them. And the reason that stuff like this shooting won't be recognized as a hate crime is that we have a cultural narrative that it is completely normal for men to hate women. (Just as when the cops kill black men, that isn't recognized as a hate crime - because we have a racist cultural narrative that people of color are always-already suspect.)

Something I will never forget: years ago, my father said to me in the course of some conversation about gender, "The thing you need to understand is that most men think women are stupid". He didn't see this as evidence of sexism, just the way things are*, the way men are.


*In my father's defense, my father obviously doesn't think most women are stupid and has had - in a very introverted life - several friendships with women who he has praised to me for their intelligence and accomplishments, plus he has always supported me in thinky stuff and in general I have never observed him to treat the women around him as if they were stupid.
posted by Frowner at 6:35 AM on May 25, 2014 [43 favorites]


Justinian: "So all the guns were legally purchased. That's just great. I'm going to assume that they were legally purchased by someone else because if this guy could buy a bunch of handguns we're all screwed."

It's never been very hard to own a gun in the US. I've known some pretty far out people who owned them.
posted by octothorpe at 6:45 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


On the upside, seeing headlines today like "VIRGIN KILLER" or "RAGE OF A VIRGIN" will hopefully dissuade copycats out there. I can't imagine this guy foresaw his infamy getting written up that way.
posted by fungible at 6:47 AM on May 25, 2014


I'd hardly categorise it as a "rush of men".

almostmanda: I'm going down the "not misogyny" road, not to try and be helpful and supportive to women???, but because I think men going on killing sprees is often incorrectly blamed on some other factor, and we need to be wary of doing that.

The Batman Killer didn't go on a killing spree because of Batman.

Anyway - this whole thing made me look up recent murder statistics.
posted by zoo at 6:49 AM on May 25, 2014


Using that database, I think this view is the most telling, especially when you scroll down and see how many of the 26,356 women killed by men were killed by men who were close to them and how domestic abuse is just lumped into "Other arguments" so it easily becomes the #1 motive.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 6:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


On the upside, seeing headlines today like "VIRGIN KILLER" or "RAGE OF A VIRGIN" will hopefully dissuade copycats out there.

Unfortunately, these headlines could also further stigmatise virgins and make them feel inferior in meainstream society. See also: "DERANGED KILLER" vis-a-vis the earlier discussion of mental illness.
posted by spoobnooble II: electric bugaboo at 7:02 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'd hardly categorise it as a "rush of men".

I'll refer again to the post on Medium that naju referenced upthread: this is a common thing that women are experiencing right now. Men have a vested interest in this not being about misogyny. So, when do we get to talk about the role of misogyny in male-on-female violence? Because someone literally said " I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it." and then killed women. It's a big deal that women are saying "Maybe that whole punishing women thing is relevant here." and men are telling us "Nope, he was just crazy." It's happening on Twitter, and in this thread, and with people I know in person.
posted by almostmanda at 7:10 AM on May 25, 2014 [62 favorites]


RIP Katherine Cooper, Veronica Weiss, & Christopher Michael-Martinez, and the other, as yet, unnamed victims.

I don't pray, but my thoughts are with their families.
posted by Fence at 7:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


But the thing is, it's perfectly possible to want to have a relationship or sex and still hate women. I think a lot of men actually do hate women, like, really hate them. And the reason that stuff like this shooting won't be recognized as a hate crime is that we have a cultural narrative that it is completely normal for men to hate women.

I think it's even easier for men to hate women because they want sex. If a person thinks someone (whom everyone regards as axiomatically less valuable and important) controls a resource to which that person feels entitled, hate is the natural consequence.
posted by winna at 7:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [29 favorites]


Wow, his grandfather shot this picture. I was convinced it was commented on in either "Gender Trouble" or "Sexual Personae" but I just checked both and couldn't find it.
posted by dhoe at 7:21 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Because someone literally said " I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it." and then killed women.

People. He killed people. Starting, apparently, with his roommates.
posted by Leon at 7:28 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


> He evidently made some final posts at Wizardchan before he started killing people. Reading the reaction of the users there as the news came out...

Reading through that now. They're mostly complaining that he was two steps away from a "normie" and are citing his bodybuilding.com posts. I don't go on either board much, but from what I know wiz is more reclusive and BB is more macho.
posted by postcommunism at 7:28 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I did a summer session at UCSB. I'm a blonde girl who, on Friday nights would walk around IV with my girlfriends, go to parties, flirt with boys. I don't think I am misunderstanding when I say I am EXACTLY the sort of girl he targeted and killed. I had nightmares last night.

I do not consider myself a fearful person. I try to call people out when they are being sexist. I disengage with people who set off my danger radar. But my main takeaway of this is to be scared. I hadn't ever delved into MRA or PUA rhetoric before and it's terrifying to me to learn that there are thousands of people who are bigger and stronger and have more power than I do who wish me such ill. And the fact that they are in an echo chamber egging each other on quite literally gives me goosebumps.
posted by chatongriffes at 7:40 AM on May 25, 2014 [68 favorites]


He explicitly stated that he was targeting women, and his largest number of victims were women. Just because the guy who attacked the Jewish Community Center or the guy who attacked the Holocaust Memorial hurt non-Jews doesn't mean they were not antisemitic attacks. This was explicitly, admittedly an act of misogynistic violence, and the only reason to say otherwise is because you wish it wasn't so.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 7:50 AM on May 25, 2014 [69 favorites]


Have there been any studies about "antidepressant discontinuation syndrome" and its relation to these types of incidents?
posted by Monkey0nCrack at 7:55 AM on May 25, 2014


> People. He killed people. Starting, apparently, with his roommates.

Look at the context in which he did so.
You will be the only man left, with all the females. You would be able to have your pick of any beautiful woman you want, as well as having dealt vengeance on the men who took them from you.
He was not telling himself a story about unreasoning violence, he was using/given a very specific framing.
posted by postcommunism at 7:56 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


his largest number of victims were women

He killed two women and four men, plus himself for a total of seven dead. (I'm totally not trying to make a "see, it wasn't about women" point. I'm just relating it because I was confused earlier about the numbers and had to look it up. )
posted by Rhomboid at 8:00 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


He did also injure several more people (I don't think their names/genders have been released).
posted by oinopaponton at 8:04 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


It seems pretty clear that he had a problem with his roommates in particular and with women in general. The fact that he killed his male roommates doesn't somehow disprove that he was also a misogynist.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 8:07 AM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


He did start shooting outside of a sorority house, which he explicitly mentions as a target.
posted by bperk at 8:09 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I can't quite get my head around the concept of a family calling the police and asking them to check on their son's welfare. A well-off family that appear to live in the local area. I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.

If you can't get your loved one to respond to your phone calls and you believe them to be in danger/dangerous, it's oftentimes the only option family members/mental health workers have. Once, I successfully advised a family member to make a welfare check call on a client and it prevented at least one death.
posted by echolalia67 at 8:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


Just a point of information re: white supremacy discussion angle : the deranged killer Rodger here is half-white, half-Chinese ( mother= Chinese Malaysian), as per his manifesto (which is mostly an account of his life) and other sources

the reason there keeps being a focus on white supremacy is because he was focused on white supremacy. he was glad his "asian side" didn't show, he became angry at men of color who had white girlfriends (describing those men as filth), he hyper focused on the white patriarchy ideal of beauty, he went on about his british aristocratic roots. he told other asian men that it didn't matter what car they got or what job they had-that their race would always keep them from being on a level playing field with white guys. it is perfectly on topic to discuss how white supremacy played into this.
posted by nadawi at 8:16 AM on May 25, 2014 [42 favorites]


Yes, the two women that he killed were at the Alpha Phi sorority house.
posted by Rhomboid at 8:16 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


So all the guns were legally purchased. That's just great. I'm going to assume that they were legally purchased by someone else because if this guy could buy a bunch of handguns we're all screwed.

It seems to me that the guns used in most, if not all, of the mass shootings in the U.S. over the past two years (if not longer) have been legally purchased by the person or persons who carried out the act. This guy didn't have an arrest record, didn't have a history of problems with the cops or any other governing body that might prevent a gun purchase from going through. We all know background checking is a farce, but we don't know what kind of mental health reporting history he had (did he actually get an official mental health diagnosis for a condition that would prevent him from legally owning a gun, and if so, would a properly run background check have pointed that out?), and given that gun store employees probably deal with a fair number of mild weirdos, I'd bet there was nothing about this guy that set off anybody's internal alarm bells when he went to make purchases. And if a guy at the gun store has every legal right to buy a gun, and he meets the scant criteria necessary to make the purchase, and he doesn't do anything so weird that he scares the gun store employees, of course they're going to make the sale.

I'm not sure how or why that surprises anybody at this point in time, given how many mass shootings we have every year with legally acquired guns and ammo.
posted by palomar at 8:19 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


However, 410 rounds of ammunition spread out over three guns (so ~140 each) is not a huge stock pile. You are easily going to go through that gaining proficiency in a new weapon.
But do you need all of that at home? Wouldn't it be great if people had to keep their extra ammunition at the gun range? It might either cut down on some sprees or provide one last opporunity for someone to notice that someone else is... not quite right anymore.
posted by TwoStride at 8:21 AM on May 25, 2014


But do you need all of that at home? Wouldn't it be great if people had to keep their extra ammunition at the gun range?

I imagine that it isn't quite the same around Santa Barbara, but for those of us who live relatively rurally big gun ranges with safes and staff aren't really a "thing", to discuss this point on a general level.
posted by mr. digits at 8:30 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, I should've written "aren't necessarily a 'thing'"...
posted by mr. digits at 8:31 AM on May 25, 2014


So would it be fair to say that his mental illness turned him into a gun, and misogynist culture provided a target?
posted by Mooski at 6:57 PM on May 24 [4 favorites +] [!]



Ok, i know this is kind of far up thread, but it's been bothering me since yesterday and I haven't been able to put into words why until now (and, let's face it-I'm not the most eloquent person in the world, and that's doubly intimidating on this of all websites)

No, no, no, no. This thinking right here is placing %100 of the blame on mental illness. Oh, he was crazy. He was going to kill someone, right? And that is the kind of thinking that's offensive to mentally ill people.

But moreso, it creates this defeatist attitude that's terribly unproductive. This is a hate crime. He didn't murder people because he was crazy, he murdered people because he was entitled. Because he's been bombarded with images that dehumanize and objectify women. To him, I have no humanity, I do not deserve the rights to my own body.

And that's why he thought it was reasonable to murder those people-they were standing in the way of what he thought was rightfully his. Like a farmer killing wolves who go after his goats, and then the goats for not producing milk.

I wholeheartedly believe that the reason this all happened is because we live in a time that fosters and nurtures the idea of women as a conquest. And I think the solutions need to reflect that. Yes, we need better gun control, definitely need better access to mental healthcare, but we also need to take a long, hard look at where our values are as a society, and how we got to a point where women are regularly threatened, harmed, or murdered for being autonomous.
posted by FirstMateKate at 8:32 AM on May 25, 2014 [31 favorites]


>I can't quite get my head around the concept of a family calling the police and asking them to check on their son's welfare. A well-off family that appear to live in the local area. I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.

dg, his parents had been checking up on him, as well as noticing the videos he was posting online, and it seems the police call was an attempt to have him involuntarily committed to an inpatient facility because they realized he was becoming dangerous. If the person you're trying to have committed is a legal adult, that requires a call to emergency services; in this case that was the cops rather than EMS, and the cops decided he seemed normal enough and let him go.

Wrt mental illness-- Rodger was obviously profoundly disturbed, he was under the care of multiple psychiatrists and was living at a facility for mentally disabled adults. So were all of the housemates he murdered, none of whom went on to become spree killers.

Ugh. This entire thing.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:36 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Alienated boys sometimes go crazy and kill

I don't want to pick on any one response because I hear a lot of stuff like this, but these responses feel like "it's just a lottery until some man-hater draws your number and kills you". There are things we can do about misogynist killers (spree killers and single-victim murderers) before they kill and those things start with society acting like women are people, not walking, talking sex dispensers.

Also, NoraReed has been right on in this thread a lot, and has said what I have to say before I could get it out onto the e-page more than once already.
posted by immlass at 8:38 AM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


Yeah, 400 rounds isn't much of a "stockpile" -- I've shot through more than that in a 2-day defensive handgun course.

Also, given that prices fluctuate quite a bit, there are plenty of non-sinister reasons to "stockpile" ammunition. My husband and I stock up whenever it goes on sale at Walmart just like we would with any other shelf-stable good that we know we're going to use eventually.

And no, there are no staffed gun ranges in our town where we could store it. We do all our target practice on our own private land or on land owned by friends and family, just like everyone else in our local area.
posted by Jacqueline at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


was living at a facility for mentally disabled adults.

I've seen this said a few times, but it doesn't appear to be correct. Per verified news reports and information from his own manifesto, he was living at the Capri Apartments, which are furnished apartments for college students. They offer roommate matching services and their website has a page specifically aimed at parents looking for housing for their college student children.
posted by palomar at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I posted on my livejournal. I apologize if this far down the "mental illness" issue has already been picked apart... But... This is what i posted on my LJ...
Holy shitballs.

So that killing that happened at UCSB by a hunger games assistant director's son. The video is just fucking insane.

I'm kind of pissed that some mefites are in denial over his clear mental illness.
There is no excuse for his actions, and yes, the PUA/MRA movement is dangerous and full of very problematic people. This video shows the mind of one individual who was infected by such horrible thinking.

As a guy who has been rejected in the past, who has had self-pitying thoughts and can understand where they come from (and who still occasionally gets his pity-party on), I can understand where these feelings of rejection come from, and the anger the "what's wrong with me?" feeling... then the inability to accept that there might be something wrong (the way you approach women, the way you treat them, the way you reach for someone who isn't really "your type", etc...)... And indeed, this whole "you're not a man if you don't get laid by the time college is over" is just as insidious and rotten as the inverse of "Wait til you're married". Both are social mores that must be combatted... Both, ultimately, stem from the same source: Patriarchy.

That said, watching his videos, there is some form of... I would guess a personality disorder. Some form of narcissistic element is very very very clear. The "I am god" and "you are animals"... The sort of sense of deep importance and pride he puts in himself, and this "pretty girls" as if he demands it from them, and they MUST submit. MRA/PUA mentality fits his mind very well, as it is that sort of thinking that dictates that women OWE them something just cuz they're men, and if they're rejected it's certainly not their fault it most be "YOU girls" (as he says in one of the videos).

I don't understand how someone can watch these videos and not see a clear sense of mental issues.

I don't think it's fair to say the cause of his actions are pure mental illness or mere MRA/PUA/RedPill bullshittery. It's a combination. That, however, does NOT excuse the toxic environment of the movement. I think many people who try to say there's no mental illness involved are taking a reactive approach as if by saying that if there is mental illness involved it excuses the MRA from their role in his actions, and that does not follow. Not a bit. Social environments play a role in an individual's formation. Individuals act within a social environment. Individuals are complex entities with conflicting inner desires that may or may not be met by the outside world or by themselves. Thoughts can fester.

It's clear this individual has something wrong with him, and I would hazard a guess that the girls who told him "no" understood this and saw it. "I am a perfect gentleman" (he exclaims in an authoritarian, almost demanding to be recognized, and most definitely chuffed in this proclamation). I see the seeds of narcissism very deep here, the insecurity he feels towards himself, the need to project and outwardly gain status via self-aggrandizement... If it isn't NPD, it's certainly some other personality disorder with similar traits.
I don't know what else I can say, but that there are multiple factors, mental illness is one of them, but it does not negate the fact that there is a social component (not meaning his rejection, but the environment of MRA/PUA) that is a substantial contributor to his way of thinking and that this movement, as it continues to fester, will continue to spawn more and more dangerous actions to innocent lives.
posted by symbioid at 8:40 AM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


When incidents that are declared to be terrorism are reported in the news and discussed on the internets, people are perfectly willing to talk about who the victims are and what made the terrorists target them (because they hate our freedom, because we are Americans, etc.).

So far, on news reports about these shootings, which, in spite of the manifesto he sent to news orgs ahead of time, is not being talked about as a terrorist attack, there has been no reporting or analysis of his misogynist motivation or of how much he wanted to target one very specific group for punishment.
posted by rtha at 8:41 AM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


I imagine that it isn't quite the same around Santa Barbara, but for those of us who live relatively rurally big gun ranges with safes and staff aren't really a "thing", to discuss this point on a general level.

I don't want to derail this into the specifics of gun control, but I've been shooting all my life and have literally never once been at a range that would meet this description. It might be a great idea, just understand that it implies creating an entire infrastructure that does not currently exist.

I can't quite get my head around the concept of a family calling the police and asking them to check on their son's welfare. A well-off family that appear to live in the local area. I guess they had more important things to do than check on him themselves.

I have known several people who have called the police to check up on a child, usually when they were concerned about a combination of drug use and self-harm. Particularly with an adult child (a phrase that sounds like an oxymoron) who isn't motivated to or capable of seeking help himself, calling the local police is one of the only mental health safeguards that exists in the US. I don't think it's a great use of the police and I'd much rather that there were other tools available, but at least for the people I've known in this situation it's been the only tool that they could access.
posted by Dip Flash at 8:42 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Even his attacks on men were framed through the lens of misogyny. The salient quotes:

“If I can’t have you, girls, I will destroy you,” he says. “You deserve to be annihilated, and I will give that to you.”

Roger is stoic as he details his plans to “slay every single person” he sees on the street.
“I’ll take great pleasure in slaughtering all of you. You will finally see that I am in truth the superior one, the true alpha male."

posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:42 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


I still cannot get over the fact that the police thought he was a-OK. If there's any point to be made about mental illness here imo it's about stereotypes of what a ~dangerous mentally ill person looks like-- eg not a wealthy, well-dressed, young man who's capable of speaking politely to the police.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 8:46 AM on May 25, 2014 [17 favorites]


Even his attacks on men were framed through the lens of misogyny.

Exactly. His hatred of other men comes from his belief that they were partly responsible for preventing his access to women.
posted by Green With You at 8:50 AM on May 25, 2014 [17 favorites]


#YesAllWomen trending on Twitter in response to UCSB shooting

I might end up tweeting for the first time in forever. If I can get my Hulked-out fingers to hit the right keys.....
posted by rtha at 8:51 AM on May 25, 2014


The problem here is not misogyny or racism, any more than the problem at Columbine was video games. The problem is that a mentally ill person had easy access to a semiautomatic weapon. Any attempt to parse this further is playing right into the hands of the gun manufacturers, who want to lie and say that every killer is a rational cold-blooded monster so they can deny that their products are at all responsible.
posted by miyabo at 8:52 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I said this elsewhere -- this didn't happen in a vacuum. If you insist that there's only one cause for this problem, you're doing a massive disservice to the victims, their families, and our society, because if we keep pretending that the shit he said in that manifesto ISN'T a problem, things are just going to get worse.
posted by palomar at 8:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [28 favorites]


He wanted to kill women. He could have done that without guns, too. Misogyny is the primary problem.
posted by winna at 8:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [19 favorites]


He wanted to kill women. He could have done that without guns, too. Misogyny is the primary problem.

Three guys with a knife. Lunacy was his primary problem.
posted by IndigoJones at 9:01 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


In his manifesto his original plan was to go to his father's house and kill his five year old brother so that the boy wouldn't grow up and surpass him with women. (He acknowledged that he'd also have to kill his stepmother, but he tried to plan his attack for a time when his father would be away, because he knew he'd choke if he tried to kill his dad.) Then he'd steal his dad's Mercedes SUV and use that to mow down as many pedestrians as he could on the streets of Isla Vista, as well as shooting them.

He still would have killed people without the guns. Stop pretending his killing had anything to do with having access to guns, and look at the 140 pages he wrote telling us EXACTLY WHY HE DID IT.
posted by palomar at 9:02 AM on May 25, 2014 [26 favorites]


maybe there's not a lot to get out of emphatically ranking which parts are the most broken. walk and chew gum, people.
posted by nadawi at 9:03 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


I still cannot get over the fact that the police thought he was a-OK. If there's any point to be made about mental illness here imo it's about stereotypes of what a ~dangerous mentally ill person looks like-- eg not a wealthy, well-dressed, young man who's capable of speaking politely to the police.

Particularly poignant to me (and this is a multi-layered problem with no easy solutions) is that there seems to be a steady stream of stories about police officers killing schizophrenics who aren't armed, or at least not armed with a firearm, after their parents call for assistance; and here we had someone capable of and prepared for mass murder, complete with ample firepower on site, and he was walked away from with a handshake.

Police are not social workers or mental health professionals and ideally would have one on a ridealong for these calls with the chronic mentally ill--or at least more training.
posted by blue suede stockings at 9:03 AM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


If the person you're trying to have committed is a legal adult, that requires a call to emergency services; in this case that was the cops rather than EMS, and the cops decided he seemed normal enough and let him go.

Is this really the case in Santa Barbara? Where I live you do not call the police. The last city I lived in, you do not call the police. Apparently your rank-and-file law enforcement officer is not trained to do this job competently. In Houston you talk to a judge. In New Orleans you talk to the coroner. (That last one sounds really weird but as I understand it this is a job for a government lawyer, not a law enforcement officer.) I am skeptical that you call the cops in Santa Barbara when you want to get someone committed. I also do not understand why the Santa Barbara government does not seem to have this information where I can find it with a search engine in under a minute.
posted by bukvich at 9:04 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


rtha: So far, on news reports about these shootings, which, in spite of the manifesto he sent to news orgs ahead of time, is not being talked about as a terrorist attack, there has been no reporting or analysis of his misogynist motivation or of how much he wanted to target one very specific group for punishment.

My problem with insisting on the "terrorist" label in these cases is that the word has been inextricably linked to a very right-wing framing, not only in how many people view the perpetrators, but also in how our government approaches law enforcement. There is, of course, a great deal of overlap between, say, al-Qaida-linked extremism and people like Timothy McVeigh, Scott Roeder, and this asshole, but I think we're fighting the last war by spending so much effort to reclaim the terrorism label. "Hate crime" captures the nature of something like this perfectly, IMHO, and has the advantage of being more detached from the "war on terror" framing.

I'm not saying we just roll over and give up when words are misappropriated, but this issue is important enough that we ought to try to avoid clouding it with larger discussions about the post-2001 approach to fighting terrorism as a tactic.
posted by tonycpsu at 9:05 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's all quite Breivik as well, and he's massively lauded on 4chan/Reddit.

It's interesting to reflect on 4chan here...

I'm not even defending 4chan's "honor", as of course 4chan has no honor. Rather, it might be interesting to contextualize 4chan and /r9k/...

4chan has sub-boards whose memberships not only do not overlap, but which are actively hostile to one another. For example, /r9k/ and /pol/ are widely and correctly known to be garbage. 4chan's /r9k/ board is known as the "bawww mon visage quand no girlfriend" board. Moot even tried to kill it once, but he brought it back after being besieged by complaints. (People say that he would love to kill /pol/, but the fear is that the /pol/ecats would then spill over into all the other boards.)

So, even within the world of 4chan, which as we all know is not exactly a feminist paradise, and which is also widely known as a geeky place for geeky people, people's opinions about this guy are about the same as MeFi's. This kid was a dangerous narcissistic asshole, whose unjustified anger was something which we see reflected in other sketchy, creepy, scary men.

Bringing this back around to the PUAHate (and Wizardchan): it's worth noting that this kid didn't even fit into the PUA "community". This kid did not relate to geeky pursuits, he did not relate to other young men who had problems dating, he did not relate to young men who even had some sort of ambition to get better at dating women, he did not even relate to other super duper sexist young men who were trying to use behavioral algorithms to date women. This kid's horny carapace of narcissism and entitlement was beyond all of this.

To show 4chan's more typical view on this guy, here are some choice quotes from a random thread on /tv/:
in that video he talks like george lucas wrote his dialogue.

seriously, just like anakin

...

>Go to /r9k/
This is never a good idea

I did peek at some of the worse boards just to see their reactions. Even /b/ and /pol/ seem to recognize that this kid was a laughable tool for the most part. /r9k/ is truly broken

...

You know, it's weird. I know a guy a couple of years younger than me. I was introduced to him through my girlfriend at the time... who he'd had a massive crush on until I came from nowhere and got with her. I was that other guy from so many stories.

Anyway, he kept writing songs about her, had similarly poor tastes in music, and we found out his younger brother had got laid when he still hadn't. Tried to be nice to the guy but he became a massive douche[....]I totally forgot my point, the guy looks like rodger. Like same face shape, proportions, similar mannerisms. I actually heard him bitch a few times about how girls wouldn't like him like that... iunno, some people just sad, mang.

...

I'm reading some of this guy's crap. I used to be a writing tutor in college, i cant even count how many losers i met who thought just like him. Most of them werent crazy enough to shoot a bunch of people, but it was the same mindset.

They all think they're geniuses, even though they're all fairly dumb. They cant write for shit, but always have aspirations to set the writing world on fire with their amazing literary skill. They all got sent to me because all of their writing is just a collection of narcissistic babbling, fuckers cant even stick to whatever the assignment is.

A 140 page manifesto? Shit dude, the unibomber's wasnt even that long, and he actually had some pretty interesting things to sya.

...

Good news if you're wondering if you're as psycho as that guy: You're not. Because if you were as psycho as that guy, you wouldn't be wondering about it, you would be sure you weren't

...

>Pushes what people want to be friends with him away and ignores them
>Wonders why he is alone in the world and why no one likes him

...

notice how he states multiple time his gf has to be "beautiful"
he doesn't seek love as he would let himself believe, he just want to be noticed and envied by others

little narcissistic prick

...

>give me your sex
>I deserve pleasure
>pls respond
>muh BMW

He's kinda a less dedicated, more realistic Patrick Bateman

...

I can't wait to The Last Psychiatrist writing about this.

...

My mum was like "oh this 22 year old american killed all these people because he didn't have a girlfriend... you don't have a girlfriend or boyfriend either, do you? I hope you wouldn't be so silly"

I was all like jesus christ mum give me some credit here

...

>liked GoT
>didn't wait until after season 4 finishes to embark on his rampage
Doofus

...

He was clearly not right in the head. He seems to think that women should be throwing themselves at him for arbitrary reasons like his car, and he struggled with human interactions and was searching for a perfect girlfriend who would not come.

posted by Sticherbeast at 9:05 AM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


bukvich, you're looking for this.
posted by palomar at 9:06 AM on May 25, 2014


do we actually know they called the cops? their lawyer says they called "authorities" which doesn't necessarily mean the local police department. has there been any corroborator from law enforcement about the call or the response?
posted by nadawi at 9:06 AM on May 25, 2014


While he did kill people without guns, the fact that a person as mentally disturbed as this was legally allowed to purchase 3 guns should be alarming to people. His original plan was to go to a sorority and kill everybody inside, which would have required guns.

It's very fortunate that he didn't carry out his original plan, and I wonder if he attempted to go there but something stopped him from carrying it out.
posted by ryanfou at 9:07 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


The problem here is not misogyny or racism, any more than the problem at Columbine was video games. The problem is that a mentally ill person had easy access to a semiautomatic weapon. Any attempt to parse this further is playing right into the hands of the gun manufacturers, who want to lie and say that every killer is a rational cold-blooded monster so they can deny that their products are at all responsible.
posted by miyabo at 11:52 AM on May 25 [+] [!]


I'm not going to say it's the problem, but I will say it's the biggest problem. And your argument just does not follow. NRA wants to blame sociopaths for deaths instead of guns, so we cant call this kid who hates women a misogynist?

Misogynists are not "cold blooded", they are not necessarily mentally ill. They are every day people who buy into the media's portrayal of women as service providers (either sexual or romantic, etc), and not as people. Your thinking, and it's rage-inducingly common, is that this type of behavior is isolated instances, perpetrated by the lone dudebro. When in reality misogyny is saturated in our culture and is perpetuated by the majority of men, and experienced by women on a daily basis.

And I'll say it again:the solution we come to needs to reflect this fact.
posted by FirstMateKate at 9:07 AM on May 25, 2014 [18 favorites]


You cannot ban mentally ill from having guns. It's like banning men from having guns. Most mental illness is not deadly. We already have a problem (in this state) that all people who are Involuntary hospitalized loose access to guns. If a police officer gets Involuntary hospitalized for suisidality because of PTSD they loose their livelyhood. It creates a culture where people don't get help because they lose rights.
Blanket rules and bans lose track of the complexity of these issues and have unintended consqeuences.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


The Batman Killer didn't go on a killing spree because of Batman.

Dude, if you're going to do this, at least do the groundwork. The connection between James Eagan Holmes' actions and Batman remain questionable - initial reporting said that he was dressed as Batman (incorrectly - he was wearing tactical combat gear) or had his hair colored and style like the Joker (again incorrectly - his hair was dyed red/orange, not green), and referred to himself as "the Joker" (later retracted). You're confusing motivation with location, as the media did in the first, confused few hours when they were scrabbling for viewers and put any unfounded rumor on screen, because the news media are horrifyingly irresponsible.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Holmes did not write a 140-page manifesto detailing his reasons, and identifying Batman as the reason for his actions. Holmes' motivation remains unclear, and the legal system has yet to determine whether he can be tried as a sane person.

This is not that case. This is a case where somebody explained at length, across more than one medium, that he hated other men for being more successful with women than he was, and hated women for being more interested in other men than in him, and that he was going to commit murder as a result of this.

Being mentally ill and having diminished capacity due to that mental illness when committing a criminal act are different things.

Any attempt to parse this further is playing right into the hands of the gun manufacturers, who want to lie and say that every killer is a rational cold-blooded monster so they can deny that their products are at all responsible.

This is incorrect. The NRA has been blaming gun crime on mental illness for a very long time - see this NRA article:
Since 1966, the National Rifle Association has urged the federal government to address the problem of mental illness and violence. As we noted then, “the time is at hand to seek means by which society can identify, treat and temporarily isolate such individuals,” because “elimination of the instrument by which these crimes are committed cannot arrest the ravages of a psychotic murderer.
The gun lobby constantly argues that failures in the federal mental healthcare system is the issue in these situations, in order to shift responsibility onto mental healthcare rather than the ease of acquiring guns. It is the same argument as "people would kill each other with knives or bricks if guns were not available". It's true in some ways, untrue in others, and advanced with a particular goal in mind.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2014 [17 favorites]


i do think it's an interesting note that he acquired the guns himself. often in these sort of spree killings the shooter has used family to get the guns.
posted by nadawi at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Lunacy was his primary problem.

I don't know or care what his primary problem was. His problems are over. I care about the problems that affect the largest number of people. Lunacy isn't going to be a big problem for most people -- most mentally ill people never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by somebody who is mentally ill.

And yet misogyny is an everyday, destructive, murderous force in America. Whether or not the fact that he hated women is the main issue, it is an issue, and it is an issue that effects the rest of society. His acts were the vanguard, the extreme of a sort of behavior that effects women all the time, and his violence was an extreme version of a violence that effects women relentlessly. Mad or not, his wasn't an act that existed in isolation, and his death won't see the end of it.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:08 AM on May 25, 2014 [51 favorites]


The problem here is not misogyny or racism, any more than the problem at Columbine was video games. The problem is that a mentally ill person had easy access to a semiautomatic weapon. Any attempt to parse this further is playing right into the hands of the gun manufacturers, who want to lie and say that every killer is a rational cold-blooded monster so they can deny that their products are at all responsible.

It's not an either-or. The misogyny in our culture contributed. The vitriol and hatred that is entrenched in the MRA and similar movements contributed. The failure of both our mental health and law enforcement, as well as their abilities to communicate with each other, contributed. The ease with which he was able to obtain guns contributed. The hyper-masculinization, paternalism, and wild success in the walling off of mental health and domestic violence in American gun culture contributed.

This was not just misogyny or a failure in the system or guns. It was all of the above and more.

Three guys with a knife. Lunacy was his primary problem.

And why did he kill those three? The knife was just so he didn't raise any alarms, the gun was always going to be the best and easiest way to kill and maim the others.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:09 AM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'm listening to a report about this on NPR right now, and the thing that's amazed me most is that apparently the front door of the sorority he targeted was locked. The residents reported hearing loud, aggressive knocking for a minute or two. He couldn't get in, so he shot two people standing outside.

I don't know or care what his primary problem was. His problems are over

I care, because he's not the only one afflicted by one of these big "problems" and they didn't die with him.
posted by rtha at 9:12 AM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


He wanted to kill women. He could have done that without guns, too.

Yes, he did. And yes, he could. But it would have been significantly more difficult without the firearms he owned. That's the danger of guns; there's no time to think that last-minute "Should I do this?"

It's just point, squeeze trigger, target of your hatred is dead.

And for what it's worth, this is what I tweeted on the issue, rtha:
@Daniel_Gadsby It is up to men to combat misogyny and yesterday's tragedy.. "Not ok, bro, and here's why" needs to be said more often. #yesallwomen rt please
He still would have killed people without the guns. Stop pretending his killing had anything to do with having access to guns

It had plenty to do with guns and how easy it is to kill people with them versus hitting them with a car.

I am skeptical that you call the cops in Santa Barbara when you want to get someone committed

In Toronto, the cops are exactly who you call, because they are the only people with the legal ability to take someone into custody. Had to do it with an ex-roommate (who had uttered death threats), who ended up on a 30-day psychiatric evaluation hold at CAMH. At our (exbf and mine) request, no charges were ever laid; the dude needed help and here at least, that's what you call the cops for.

(Obviously the situation is different if you're already in a hospital. But if you tell your therapist on the phone that you're planning on killing/harming yourself or others, particularly children, it is the police that show up at the door and take you to the hospital, where they then do the Form 1 (I think it's Form 1, might be 3) paperwork to have you committed).


Lunacy was his primary problem.

Could we not use this word please? ctrl-f Taz who made a very specific comment about word usage here.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:13 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I said I don't care what his primary problem is. I think it's splitting hairs. And I think it's splitting hairs at the service of minimizing the misogyny that he himself found enormously important, that he himself identified as the motivations for his actions, and is precisely the thing that is most likely to continue to impact people.

I should have said I don't care about the hair splitting. But that's not true -- I do care about it. I think it's a problem, and I think it should stop. I don't think we should be minimizing his murderous misogyny in favor of a narrative of mental illness, which I also think does a disservice to the mentally ill.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:17 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


Here is Chicago the police are exactly who you call too. Even as a mental health professional. Outpatient Mental health professionals dont have the resources or ability to forcefully take someone to a hospital. I'm trained to talk to people. I'm not trained to restrain someone in the community at their home and take them to a hospital.
I did some training in California and i think it is the same way there.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:18 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


do we actually know they called the cops? their lawyer says they called "authorities" which doesn't necessarily mean the local police department. has there been any corroborator from law enforcement about the call or the response?

FWIW, the manifesto includes their visit from his point of view.
posted by brentajones at 9:18 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


Where I live you do not call the police. The last city I lived in, you do not call the police. Apparently your rank-and-file law enforcement officer is not trained to do this job competently. In Houston you talk to a judge. In New Orleans you talk to the coroner. (That last one sounds really weird but as I understand it this is a job for a government lawyer, not a law enforcement officer.) I am skeptical that you call the cops in Santa Barbara when you want to get someone committed. I also do not understand why the Santa Barbara government does not seem to have this information where I can find it with a search engine in under a minute.

I'm speculating that what happened was they requested a welfare check, which is not the same as requesting someone be legally committed, at all (though it could be the first step towards bringing them in for evaluation for an involuntary hold). You can request one if your employee hasn't been at work or answering the phone, or your neighbor's mail is piling up and they're supposed to be in town, or if a relative sounds like they're going into diabetic sugar shock or suicidal, etc. These are very routine and low key. I had a 20-something roommate who was depressed after moving to a new state for a stressful job (where he had no friends or family after a breakup, to boot), and one night a couple police officers stopped by to have a brief, calm conversation with him in our living room after a sister halfway across the country was alarmed at some overly dramatic statements he had made during a phone call. Nothing resulted except (poor guy) embarrassment, since he was not actively in danger of self-harm and already under the care of a mental health counselor. Ironically, the fact that Rodgers was already in treatment, with alarmed (i.e. engaged) parents, may have made the situation seem less critical, in terms of law enforcement involvement.
posted by blue suede stockings at 9:18 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Note that there is a difference between a committal and a hold. A hold is usually a short period where someone can be hospitalized (1 to 3 days) regardless. Hospitals use this time to get documentation if a committal is required. After that it requires a court order. Now most holds never ever end in a actual committal as that is a very difficult process.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:22 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Where I live you do not call the police.

Who else can you call that will send a couple of people to check on an adult in a dangerous situation late on a weekend night? I've never lived somewhere with an alternative to calling the police in that situation that I've been aware of.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:24 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


NoraReed: "Hire more female cops."
This is one of the things that really has stood out to me after moving to Germany. Most of the time I see two cops walking or driving down the street, there's one male and one female cop. It makes a big difference to how I perceive the presence of police.
posted by brokkr at 9:25 AM on May 25, 2014 [27 favorites]


If a police officer gets Involuntary hospitalized for suisidality because of PTSD they loose their livelyhood.

No, because they are not entitled to be employed as a police officer. They can do many, many other jobs that don't require carrying a gun. If they want to continue to serve their city, they can become an EMT or firefighter or dispatcher. There is no Right To Be A Police that is infringed upon when a cop gets charged with domestic violence and gets his gun taken away.
posted by rtha at 9:26 AM on May 25, 2014 [17 favorites]


I read the manifesto. I wish I hadn't. A couple of things that stood out - the manifesto is a completely warped account of his life, without almost any empathy or understanding of other people. His dominant emotions that he describes are rage and jealousy. People exist as they are useful to him only.

He purchased the guns and planned this over six months in advance. He meant to kill in April, but had a cold so delayed for a month to when his father was away on business. He meant to kill his little brother and stepmother before killing his flatmates.

He was obsessed with winning the lottery and The Secret. He didn't do the NLP/PUA type tactics. He barely ever spoke to a woman his own age from fear.

He spoke to the police, terrified they would ask to see his room and see his guns. He was able to keep calm and control himself and convince them to go. He was frequently able to "act normal".

He writes of attacking couples before. He threw coffee on people, and at a party when he was drunk, tried to shove people, mostly women, off a 10ft ledge, but ended up breaking his ankle. He was then very angry none of the women from the party had come to comfort him and offer sex as he was in physical pain. He ran from the scene or lied to cover up his attempts.

He was also very racist, and hated being part-asian. White, then Asian, then Hispanic, then Black in his racial hierarchy.

Prostitution or sex wasn't his goal. He wanted to be sexually desirable, not so much to have sex. Sexually desirable to him was power.

The manifesto is awful. You get glimpses of people trying repeatedly to reach out to him, all the steps his family took and the support, and how he writes of them as - nothing. He's going to kill his little brother who loves him because he hates that he might have a happier life than he has had. He's very, very broken and high functioning. So much hate.

The family's statement has made it clear that mental health issues were involved. Asperger's can co-exist with mental illness. And hate.
posted by viggorlijah at 9:26 AM on May 25, 2014 [57 favorites]


No, no, no, no. This thinking right here is placing %100 of the blame on mental illness.

As I respond, I should probably mention that my internal biases may make it impossible for me to see this as you do: I'm a white male, living in the (southeastern) United States, with the leisure time to be discussing this on a personal computer in my own home. Nonetheless, I'm going to try to explain the logic that makes me disagree with your statement above:

The young man we're all talking about was both frighteningly typical and an aberration.

He was typical in that his life experiences in U.S. culture had taught him that men measure themselves against other men by the desirability of their possessions, and that women were simply another type of possession. That they were the one sort of possession that he did not have and felt he could not have seems to have been an obsession with him. Our culture also tends to teach the 'if I can't have one, no one can' philosophy, and he appears to have embraced that philosophy.

He was an aberration in that he concluded killing people was his solution to his 'problem'. With the information available to me, I would say this conclusion and the resultant actions were a product of mental illness.

Where you and I appear to disagree is in whether or not the young man represents more than one problem, and that seems to be a common theme these days as well: insisting on a single cause for something as complex as this defeats all the causes associated.
- Misogynist culture plays a role here
- So does mental illness
- So does access to weapons that make killing large numbers of people trivial
None of these things are less true for them all being true.
posted by Mooski at 9:26 AM on May 25, 2014 [39 favorites]


I said I don't care what his primary problem is. I think it's splitting hairs. And I think it's splitting hairs at the service of minimizing the misogyny that he himself found enormously important, that he himself identified as the motivations for his actions, and is precisely the thing that is most likely to continue to impact people.

This is one of those cases where both sides are right. Humans are social creatures. They crave connection. Mentally ill people who feel disconnected from society at large need connection and they latch onto a group who have figured out the cause of his problem and have someone to blame. Because wanting to blame others for a shitty situation is also a human thing. It just feels right to a loner. It all makes sense.

And on the other side of the coin, militant MRA factions are no fucking bueno for a mentally ill person to hook up with. But since they're already disconnected from society shame isn't an effective emotion to keep someone from hooking up with them. And for someone who's mentally ill and looking for answers, all it takes is one person with a distorted thought process to take things to their "logical" solution for something like this to happen.
posted by Talez at 9:27 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


absolutely, the society he lived in failed by giving a mentally ill person a fucking awful narrative and set of assumptions through which to view the world and his place in it, and it is failing others (pretty much everyone) in this way literally all the time, to all kinds of terrible consequences.

that failure was compounded by online communities that spectacularly failed to consider the consequences of their actions or probably worse.

that society also failed by letting him have free access to firearms that lots of people probably knew he shouldn't be trusted with, and it's failing in that way all the time too.

a number of mental health and law enforcement professionals, and others around him, failed to recognize the extent of his issues or act on them sufficiently, for whatever reason, and I'm sure they're all feeling that right now

and he failed too, because those failures are not insurmountable, and he had every opportunity to act other than he did. even if he was suffering himself (and I do think that he must have been, in spite of his circumstances), he had a choice at every point and he chose to make others suffer.

I'm not really convinced much further sense can be made of it. some failures are chronic and some seem to have been acute. it could have been stopped or mitigated lots of places, if this thing or that thing had been better. nothing was good enough. we're responsible for identifying and working on everything we can
posted by Nomiconic at 9:32 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I won't say the PUA community caused this. But I will say that their reaction is icky.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:32 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, I think it is important to note that militant MRA folks aren't the only problem here. He actually seems to have had very little to do with them ans held them in contempt.

We have a problem with a pervasive socially constructed atmosphere of misogyny that seems to be invisible to men and everyday to women, so that an indicent like this is, for many women, juat an extreme version of everyday violence that is directed at women, and for many men is an expression of an incomprehensible madness.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 9:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


This is a detailed timeline of events as of late last night. Three of the dead have been named, they were still notifying next of kin for the others at the time of the article. The total death count of seven includes the three roommates found dead at the apartment, those three have not been named.
posted by palomar at 9:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I read the manifesto. I wish I hadn't.

Likewise.

I did find his relationship with Addison Altendorf quite interesting though. Addison was someone Elliot identified as having successfully 'made himself popular' (something Elliot had failed to do) and hated him for it. At one point, Addison also insulted Elliot by saying "No girl will ever fuck you", which obviously didn't help. Yet apparently they maintained contact over facebook and had 'philosophical' discussions. Later still, Addison is quoted as saying something along the lines of "You're really intelligent, don't do something rash".

I think a lot of people around Elliot feared something would happen. That's part of what is so horrifying, you feel that it could easily have been prevented if someone had intervened more effectively than the police.
posted by knapah at 9:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Before buying a semiautomatic weapon -- which has no real use for hunting or for self defense -- you should need professional training, a six-month waiting period, and a one-on-one interview with a state employee. That's what we require for a car, I don't think it's too much to ask for a specialized machine whose only purpose is to kill humans.
posted by miyabo at 9:48 AM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


I also read Breivik's manifesto. The parallels are striking.
posted by knapah at 9:49 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


We have a problem with a pervasive socially constructed atmosphere of misogyny that seems to be invisible to men and everyday to women, so that an indicent like this is, for many women, juat an extreme version of everyday violence that is directed at women, and for many men is an expression of an incomprehensible madness.

That invisibility, precisely, is why I think men are responsible for changing this attitude. Women didn't create, reinforce, or support it. Men do. (And, ok, co-opt women through various means into supporting the misogyny). It's up to us to call out every sexist (and, frankly, any -ist) comment. It's up to us to teach other men that, shockingly, women are people too with independence and agency and that must be respected and celebrated the same as it is for men.

This helps everyone. Reagan's economic bullshit about a rising tide was nonsense; but a rising tide in social justice and equality does lift all boats.

So come on, men. Let's fix this.

(And, again, I want to be perfectly clear that what I am saying does not in any way suggest that we shouldn't listen to what women want and need and act accordingly. What I am saying is that we are the problem; therefore we must be the solution.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:51 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


I would like to see published what medications he was on and if there was any evidence of sudden stoppage or snorting them.
posted by Brian B. at 9:54 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Before buying a semiautomatic weapon -- which has no real use for hunting or for self defense

Please educate yourself about what a semiautomatic weapon actually is and how it works before declaring that it has no use for hunting or self defense. Being able to fire the next round without stopping to manually reload is in fact *very* necessary for both hunting and self defense because a single bullet is often not sufficient to kill an animal or stop an attacker.
posted by Jacqueline at 9:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


Based on the amount of time it takes to write a 140 page manifesto I'm highly highly doubtful this had anything to do with a change in medication(on a new drug or stopping one) or drug use.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:57 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


"I don't know or care what his primary problem was. His problems are over. I care about the problems that affect the largest number of people. Lunacy isn't going to be a big problem for most people -- most mentally ill people never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by somebody who is mentally ill."


Well, it's also true that most misogynists never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by a misogynist. As for which problem affects the largest number of people, I don't know whether it's misogyny or mental illness, but that's not really a good reason to ignore mental illness.

I feel like there are a lot of people here intent on denying the mental illness aspect of this occurrence because you want to use this crime as a vehicle to attack misogyny, but the mental illness factor is complicating the narrative and making this guy look slightly less like the specific type of monster you want to present him as.

To which I say, I'm all for attacking misogyny, and the heavy role that misogyny played in this event ought to be plenty of ammo for that, if that's your goal. But you're doing all of us a disservice if you try to pigeonhole this as driven by strictly by misogyny, because that's pretty clearly not the total reality here.

Some of us do care about the broader question of what is driving people like this to mass murder, apart from the broader problem of misogyny. We shouldn't be ignoring one factor because of the existence of another; we need to look at all the causes.
posted by mikeand1 at 9:58 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Well, it's also true that most misogynists never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by a misogynist.

Well, they may not get killed by one, but most women are liable to have their life negatively impacted by one, which is why I described him as being a vanguard of a very common behavior.

And I certainly didn't say I think that this is exclusively about misogyny. I said I'm not interested in any discussion of it that tries to identify mental illness as being the only important motivator, at the expense of a discussion of misogyny.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 10:02 AM on May 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


Based on the amount of time it takes to write a 140 page manifesto I'm highly highly doubtful this had anything to do with a change in medication(on a new drug or stopping one) or drug use.

I could probably churn out 140 pages of that drivel (I'm only partway through) in a single night with the help of some snorted Adderall. Which is obviously not something commonly used by university students.

I'm not saying that drugs (legal or recreational) were a factor, but it also doesn't mean they weren't. It would be very interesting to know a) what medications he was on, b) how compliant he was with his medication regimen (probably impossible to know; blood tests at his autopsy will show titers of whatever medication in his bloodstream, but won't say much about whether he was taking them properly a month before, for example), and c) what if any drugs he was using recreationally. Speaking from experience, MDMA + SSRI = bad news bears.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:03 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


mikeand1: That sounds a lot like what I was arguing yesterday, really. Although I probably took it even further.
posted by Justinian at 10:03 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


That's what we require for a car,

I had a cursory driving test at 16 (during which the evaluator chose to ignore what should have been a failing mistake on my part, ironically). Since then I have driven in at least half of the US states and in perhaps five or six other countries. The only revaluations of my driving have been one or two multiple choice tests (sometimes required when moving to a new state) and a few easy vision tests. Every five years or so I pay a little bit to renew online, no visit to the dmv needed. Definitely never an interview and no further practical exams.

Buying a new firearm, even in the current lax environment, is more invasive and time consuming. Getting a concealed carry permit is yet again more intrusive (with fingerprinting and usually a required class) and more expensive.

I'm in favor of creating more safety checks and legal hoops for gun buying, but truthfully we'd probably save more lives by improving the checks and education for drivers.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:16 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Before buying a semiautomatic weapon -- which has no real use for hunting or for self defense -- you should need professional training, a six-month waiting period, and a one-on-one interview with a state employee. That's what we require for a car, I don't think it's too much to ask for a specialized machine whose only purpose is to kill humans.

Clearly, there is a problem with mentally ill people with a predisposition to violence having easy access to weapons. We have driver's exams before giving out driver's licenses to people who want to drive cars; no rational, sane reason why we couldn't administer mental health exams to gun operators.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:16 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Well, it's also true that most misogynists never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by a misogynist. As for which problem affects the largest number of people, I don't know whether it's misogyny or mental illness, but that's not really a good reason to ignore mental illness.

Well, but to flip this: Most mentally ill people will never kill anyone, and most people who are killed are not killed by someone with a diagnosable mental illness.

I really don't read any here as saying anything like there was no mental illness here, let's ignore that, it was "just" misogyny. I see a lot of people acknowledging the intersection of mental illness and the (far end) of misogyny, especially as encouraged/enabled by certain kinds of online forums.

It's not misogyny or mental illness, and I don't think anyone here thinks that. I do see, in news reports all over the place, an almost complete focus on the mental illness aspect (even as they discuss the manifesto!) and what they call his "social isolation." I have not heard an mainstream media reports use the words sexism or misogyny (though it is totally possible they have and I've missed it).
posted by rtha at 10:17 AM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


I've seen NPR use the word misogyny in their coverage of this story, but I don't know if that's considered mainstream media?
posted by palomar at 10:19 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I feel like there are a lot of people here intent on denying the mental illness aspect of this occurrence because you want to use this crime as a vehicle to attack misogyny, but the mental illness factor is complicating the narrative and making this guy look slightly less like the specific type of monster you want to present him as.

The tone of this apart, I don't think anyone is "denying the mental illness aspect of this occurrence". Denying it is not the same as suggesting that emphasizing the role of mental illness to the exclusion of other factors stigmatizes the mentally ill - most of whom have to live difficult lives made more difficult if they are constantly under suspicion of being about to embark on a spree killing, happens to be exactly the tactic the gun lobby adopts in the face of spree killings and ignores specific elements of this actual case in favor of, for example, vague statements about previous, dissimilar cases.

Someone who kills other people for no sane reason is clearly not wholly stable, but simply saying mental illness is meaningless - a court, judge and experts are still attempting to establish whether James Holmes' mental illness is forensically relevant, and if so how.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:20 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


People should be more kind to each other.
posted by buzzman at 10:20 AM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


Well, it's also true that most misogynists never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by a misogynist.

The other side of that, though, is that I would be surprised if most murderers weren't committed by misogynists. Not necessarily for reasons of misogyny (though the statistics about domestic violence speak loudly), but because having a hateful and reductive view of the world fits well with a willingness towards violence.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:21 AM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


I feel like there are a lot of people here intent on denying the mental illness aspect of this occurrence because you want to use this crime as a vehicle to attack misogyny, but the mental illness factor is complicating the narrative and making this guy look slightly less like the specific type of monster you want to present him as.

Zero people are claiming his obvious and confirmed mental illness didn't contribute to this happening. We are insisting that the misogyny element not be forgotten. It's really easy for men to have a conversation exclusively about how this fits the pattern established by past spree killings and ignore the explicit messages of hatred involved. But for 50% of us, this was a cold reminder that gendered violence is a real thing we have to worry about. Women can't ignore the misogyny aspect of it and how it affects them.
posted by almostmanda at 10:24 AM on May 25, 2014 [44 favorites]


But for 50% of us, this was a cold reminder that gendered violence is a real thing we have to worry about. Women can't ignore the misogyny aspect of it, and how it affects them.

Yup, exactly.

From the manifesto:
I cannot kill every single female on earth, but I can deliver a devastating blow that will shake all of them to the core of their wicked hearts. I will attack the very girls who represent everything I hate in the female gender: The hottest sorority of UCSB.
That sure looks a lot like hate speech to me, designed to make a specific group of people afraid. Replace the word "female" with the name for any other group of people, see how it sounds, and then tell me that shouldn't be a factor in how we discuss this issue.
posted by palomar at 10:29 AM on May 25, 2014 [80 favorites]


I'm not even defending 4chan's "honor", as of course 4chan has no honor.

The weird thing about 4chan, especially /b/, is that it's fundamentally nihilist: anon would never write a rambling manifesto because anon thinks everything you believe and hold dear is stupid.

Mentally ill people who feel disconnected from society at large need connection and they latch onto a group who have figured out the cause of his problem and have someone to blame.

It reminds me a little of the Kingsley Hall approach to treating severe mental illness by putting people in secure environments where they could live out their symptoms. That was controversial and short-lived, in part because the boundary was permeable.

Certain online communities offer a fucked-up mirror image of group therapy that can far too easily be directly enacted upon the world. And I wish I knew what could be done about that.
posted by holgate at 10:33 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Blazecock Pileon: "Clearly, there is a problem with mentally ill people with a predisposition to violence having easy access to weapons. We have driver's exams before giving out driver's licenses to people who want to drive cars; no rational, sane reason why we couldn't administer mental health exams to gun operators."

Max Fisher of The Atlantic on how firearm ownership differs in Japan:

"To get a gun in Japan, first, you have to attend an all-day class and pass a written test, which are held only once per month. You also must take and pass a shooting range class. Then, head over to a hospital for a mental test and drug test (Japan is unusual in that potential gun owners must affirmatively prove their mental fitness), which you'll file with the police. Finally, pass a rigorous background check for any criminal record or association with criminal or extremist groups, and you will be the proud new owner of your shotgun or air rifle. Just don't forget to provide police with documentation on the specific location of the gun in your home, as well as the ammo, both of which must be locked and stored separately. And remember to have the police inspect the gun once per year and to re-take the class and exam every three years."

The result: In 2008, the U.S. had over 12,000 firearm-related homicides. All of Japan experienced only 11.
posted by bluecore at 10:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [29 favorites]


It seems like people have some idea that "real" terrorism and "real" hate crimes AREN'T ever committed by people who are mentally disturbed. Like every single suicide bomber is obviously a 100% rational actor and not ever a person who was mentally ill and had that illness exploited by an ideology. Like if it turns out that this guy had some sort of diagnosable illness, that somehow makes him unique.

No. The only difference is, in his case, people WANT to find an "excuse" for his behavior, so they can handwave it away.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:34 AM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


I'm getting really tired of mental illness being used as an umbrella term for a catagory of people so wide and diverse it almost has no meaning. Mental illness is everything from a simple phobia of spiders to schizophrenia. In fact the CDC states that approximately 10 percent of the population suffers from diagnosable depression at any given time. And the way mental illness works is once your diagnosed your mentally ill forever. It's not like a virus where you have it or you don't.

We need better vocabulary. What that vocabulary is I'm not sure but mental illness is just to broad to effectively use.
posted by AlexiaSky at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2014 [23 favorites]


Is anybody actually arguing that? All I see are people saying that its important to identify all the causes of this situation so it can be effectively addressed and we shouldn't focus on one thing because that will make preventing these tragedies less likely.
posted by Justinian at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


He purchased the guns and planned this over six months in advance. He meant to kill in April, but had a cold so delayed for a month to when his father was away on business. He meant to kill his little brother and stepmother before killing his flatmates.

That's just...i don't know, it's almost as if English language just doesn't have words for this sort of craziness. "I've made these plans to kill a lot of people, but shit, I have cold. Gotta reschedule." My mind boggles that.

His ramblings sound somewhat similar to diary one of the Columbine killers kept. Just full on rage and hatred for the world and what can only be described as a lunatic desire for vengeance against it, despite being better off that most of the world. There was just some fundamentally bad wiring in his head.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:37 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Reading through the misogyny vs. mental illness debate, I don't see a clear "winner." Which suggests to me that both played a role. However, there are clear differences between the two that I think it's important to keep sight of. Hopefully I'm not oversimplifying to the point of absurdity. Feel free to augment or modify the list.

Mental illness:
- Not a learned condition
- In a word, would not be described as "bad"
- Greater social acceptance would likely lead to a decrease in violence and mass murders


Misogyny:
- Learned condition
- In a word, could be described as "bad"
- Greater social acceptance would likely lead to an increase in violence and mass murders
posted by mantecol at 10:41 AM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


Mooski, this might be the part where you're going wrong: He was an aberration in that he concluded killing people was his solution to his 'problem'.

No, that is not the part where he is an aberration. Men murder women all the time; that's hardly ever of note except as a statistic. The aberration part is where he a) wrote 140 pages of manifesto and b) accidentally displayed a lack of any sense of others as human beings to the point that he makes avalanches look comforting and cosy. That's the part that's weird.

Usually when men murder women it's a lot more complicated, facades-wise, deliberate targets-wise, with people stepping up to be like "but he was such a great guy!" Not this dude. I have seen exactly zilch of this reaction posted anywhere other than the cops. That is the other part that is deeply strange.

That he told us who he was and what he wanted and meant it? Not strange at all.

Declaring that the shooter must have been necessarily mentally ill and that being mentally ill/having access to guns, etc., is the important part about all this only makes sense in a world where making misogynistic threats that he intended to follow through is an unusual occurrence that only would happen under extreme circumstances like, say, impulse reduction from mental illness.

I really wish this were the case. It's not.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:49 AM on May 25, 2014 [15 favorites]


There's certainly misogyny at play here. I believe it's also fair to say that misogyny and mental illness are not mutually exclusive. Is it possible that the killer's potential mental illness could have exacerbated the misogyny? Misogyny is widely regarded as having a cultural basis, but the biology of untreated mental illness (or perhaps rejected treatment) could easily have pushed this behavior over into the "abhorrently violent" realm. At least in this case, they seem inextricably linked together.

In short: without the confluence of misogyny/mental illness/access to destructive forces (guns, knives, whathaveyou), we wouldn't be talking about this. It can't be broken out into one thing on the list. It has to be all of them working in terrible concert.
posted by conradjones at 10:53 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


E. Whitehall: Going on a spree killing is without question an extraordinarily unusual occurrence. You're wrongly trying to conflate domestic violence killings and this kind of spree killing. They are not at all the same and have very different etiologies and have to be addressed in radically different ways.
posted by Justinian at 10:54 AM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


There's certainly misogyny at play here. I believe it's also fair to say that misogyny and mental illness are not mutually exclusive. Is it possible that the killer's potential mental illness could have exacerbated the misogyny?

No one ever says this when poor black men commit murder. Then they're just "thugs," and no one ever, ever suggests that they might have some mental health issue. But if it's a rich (half) white guy, suddenly everyone is falling all over themselves to explain his behavior as a tragic illness that happened to him.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:55 AM on May 25, 2014 [65 favorites]


We disagree on what constitutes an aberration.

Again, it is no less a misogyny problem for it also being a mental illness problem or a gun control problem.
posted by Mooski at 10:57 AM on May 25, 2014


I've been trying to wrap my head around the "virgin" part of this discussion, as well as the "rites of passage" part, along with all the misogyny and entitlement. I understand how sex becomes a rite of passage and a mark of maturity. But it seems to me that we've done very poorly all along to reduce the concept of sex to a single and very specific sex act.

The fact that engaging in this one sex act, regardless of how you got there, or what else is going on, or whether it's even enjoyable for anyone involved, is a rite of passage that changes both parties involved from one kind of human (virgin) into another seems profoundly weird and unhelpful. And inaccurate (obviously).

The framing of this particular sex act also tends to reduce one party into an object to be acted upon, even though there's nothing really inherent in the act that demands that kind of framing. That a man like the one in question should feel both required to, and entitled to, stick his cock in a lady to make himself a Real Man is not a surprise, but it is fucking stupid. It creates an arbitrary hoop to jump through, it reduces sexual expression in a bizarre way that turns it into something more akin to a getting a driver's license, and it turns women into objects to be used by men for their own gain. But those words still have those meanings when you really look hard at them.

I understand why there's an argument about how to understand what's happened, and whether it's best understood as an individual case where a particular combination of factors resulted in something unthinkable, but the roots of this man's thinking are plainly visible in our most common of tropes, assumptions, and language. If would be nice if it would force us to rethink some of these things.
posted by Hildegarde at 10:59 AM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


Well, it's also true that most misogynists never kill anyone, and most people will never be killed by a misogynist.

From Chuck Wendig: Not all men, but still, too many men.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


He meant to kill his little brother and stepmother before killing his flatmates.

'Mental illness' is such a broad term. I think the focus should be on his desire to harm others and his thinking he would be justified in doing so. I'm sure there are people who suffer from Asperger's and more serious 'mental illness' who struggle with relationships and being bullied without any desire to kill people out of revenge.

Maybe the best thing to do as a society is eliminate acceptance of mysogony and make more of an effort to help young men struggling with social isolation. If more people knew this guy better, maybe he could have been committed, or prevented from following through on his plans some other way.
posted by Golden Eternity at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


showbiz_liz - I rarely see mental illness discussed when non-white, non-upper middle class murderers are reported on by the media. I agree there's a gap in this dialogue here. Also, we're far too likely to rely on prisons as mental health care "providers" in the United States rather than providing adequate care.

However, I also don't see 140 page manifestos with some seriously "out there" text provided to the media in a lot of the cases you refer to. In this particular instance, I think the murderer himself laid the groundwork to drive this discussion toward mental health. I also don't think it's any excuse for his behavior for a variety of reasons, but that's a different discussion altogether.
posted by conradjones at 11:01 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


They are not at all the same

I really, really disagree with this. Men who abuse and kill their girlfriends or wives seem to feel entitled to a level of control over and obedience from their partners that they don't get. That doesn't seem so different; in absolute per-incident numbers are they different? Yes. But not in the sharing of a fundamental attitude, no.
posted by rtha at 11:03 AM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


Justinian: How is it a spree killing if it was planned several months in advance?

I mean, I agree spree killing is different from other forms of murder, but this wasn't spree killing as far as I can tell -- this was premeditated murder. He said he was going to do it and he did it. How is that not premeditated?
posted by E. Whitehall at 11:03 AM on May 25, 2014


Eh? Spree killings can be pre-meditated and most are. A spree killing doesn't mean a spur-of-the-moment killing, it means a mass murder which occurs at more than one location.

It's no wonder there's a lot of confusion over this is we're not even clear on what kind of crime we're talking about.
posted by Justinian at 11:06 AM on May 25, 2014


(The distinction between spree and mass murderers is pretty iffy, though, so if you want to think of it as a mass killing rather than a spree killing that's probably even better)
posted by Justinian at 11:08 AM on May 25, 2014


My bad, Justinian! I was working off a different definition of spree killing. I suppose it's the word "spree" -- I think of the impulse definition of spree, not the many definition, and that's how I generally see spree killing used as a term -- impulsive, multiple acts of murder.

Mass murder might be more accurate, absolutely. Thanks for pointing that out -- that was a cultural thing I hadn't even noticed.
posted by E. Whitehall at 11:11 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, it avoids confusion over the word "spree" which a quick googling suggests is becoming deprecated perhaps for this very reason.
posted by Justinian at 11:16 AM on May 25, 2014


Well, the distinction is pretty clear... a spree killing is the killing of more than one person in more than one location, with those killings taking place within a short space of time. The definition is being deprecated as not useful to law enforcement, but not to merge it with mass murder, but to define it as a form of serial murder distinct from mass murder, IIRC.

Honestly, though, Justinian, I'm not sure what you're aiming to achieve by arguing so hard on taxonomy. Especially when you argued above that this definitely could not be called terrorism, even though terrorism actually is an imprecise term, in the way "spree killing" or "mass murder" are not - there's no generally agreed criminal definition of terrorism, and this was pretty clearly a violent act intended to cause terror, driven in part by an ideological conviction.

So, to work back, what are you seeking to achieve by arguing for this terminological bright line? What's the positive outcome that is achieved?
posted by running order squabble fest at 11:25 AM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't care one way or the other what term anyone uses to refer to it as long as its not confusing. But it absolutely matters how we think about these killings because, as I said and as even the briefest of research will support, the causes and treatments and ways to prevent this kind of killing are quite different from the incredibly more common kinds of misogynistic domestic violence.

It's not inherently about terminology, it's about being a very different phenomenon which some people seem to be either unclear on or disagreeing with a distinction being made. I don't see how that's unclear?
posted by Justinian at 11:31 AM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh, and then Whitehall and I started talking about a tangent because that's what happens in threads. Eh.
posted by Justinian at 11:32 AM on May 25, 2014


But it absolutely matters how we think about these killings because, as I said and as even the briefest of research will support, the causes and treatments and ways to prevent this kind of killing are quite different from the incredibly more common kinds of misogynistic domestic violence.

We are not in agreement about this. Please stop stating it as fact. This man's attitudes and actions have a lot in common with perpetrators of domestic violence, and many of us believe that there is a lot of common ground in how to address them.
posted by almostmanda at 11:39 AM on May 25, 2014 [31 favorites]


With respect to the limitations of police officers as first line screeners (via welfare checks) of potentially dangerous versions of mental illness, bear in mind that many recent mass shootings prove that professional psychiatrists and psychologists don't do a particularly good job of predicting which of their patients will act out violently. It's just not like Law and Order out there.

Anyone who has ever struggled with a severely disturbed or addicted relative or friend to try to get "the system" to "do something" about a clear trajectory toward harming self and/or others knows that most of the comments on this subject in this thread are facile at best, ignorant at worst of the reality of involuntary commitment, patient rights, legal battles costing thousands of dollars, fractured and divided families and friendships, and blunt brutality that is "doing something" about an adult in crisis in the United States, irrespective of city or state. They differ, but only in degree of Byzantine and maddening focus-- some states are more civil libertarian, some more authoritarian, etcetera.

As I'm involved in such a situation now, and hardly for the first time in my life (it will happen to many of us!) I'm not at all ready to blame the family or believe some little part of "the system" somehow "failed" in a definable and reparable way.

Only on television. Grown ups need to understand that there is no "system" except in the broadest and most abstract sense. To a certain extent this is justified by appeal to liberty, a point that bears serious consideration. But mostly it's just under-resourced humans fucking shit mostly up in a rough approximation of doing their level best to save a few lives. Inevitably, there are failures.
posted by spitbull at 11:41 AM on May 25, 2014 [22 favorites]


From Chuck Wendig: Not all men, but still, too many men.


Wow, that's a truly terrible post on the other end of that link.

It's currently fashionable to falsely assert that it is impermissible to challenge false universal generalizations about men. That is sophistry. False generalizations about any group are bad, and it's bad enough to make them. The current sophistical fad adds an additional layer of confusion. Not only does it pretend that it's permissible to make such false generalizations (but only about men), it pretends that it's impermissible to challenge them. That's nonsense. Everyone should always challenge false generalizations about any group, no matter what group they belong to, and no matter what group the generalizations are about.

In order to condemn bad actions and bad attitudes toward women, there is no need to say false things about all men, nor to suggest them.

Some men are bad and violent. So are some women. It seems that more men are; and men are bigger and stronger, so their badness and violence are more dangerous.

But it may be worth remembering that men are more often the victims of violence than are women.

This isn't a battle between men and women. This is a battle between bad, crazy people and good, sane people. The killer in question was bad and crazy. He had a lot of shit attitudes about women. For that matter, he had a lot of shit attitudes about human beings in general. But he seems to have killed twice as many men as women. How is it that this is so easily ignored?

This probably isn't the time--and I'm pretty sure it isn't the place--to try to have a serious discussion about these issues. It is difficult enough to get a clear view of something like this. But once something is seen largely as an opportunity to trot the hobby horses around the track, the odds of seeing the thing clearly drop to near zero.
posted by Fists O'Fury at 11:59 AM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


But it absolutely matters how we think about these killings because, as I said and as even the briefest of research will support, the causes and treatments and ways to prevent this kind of killing are quite different from the incredibly more common kinds of misogynistic domestic violence.

I do not agree that there is such a difference. The cause of these most recent killings has obvious roots in a misogynistic narrative that tells men they are entitled to female attention and that women are inferior beings who should be under the control of men. Domestic violence, I would argue, shares those roots. You are arguing that they don't. Can you explain?
posted by rtha at 12:00 PM on May 25, 2014 [15 favorites]


try to get "the system" to "do something" about a clear trajectory toward harming self and/or others

Committing someone involuntarily should require an extremely high bar obviously, but we should not need such a high bar to separate them from their firearms if they are on a 'clear trajectory,' imo.
posted by Golden Eternity at 12:01 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The focus on his mental health really speaks volumes on the state of the American justice system.

Because what people are really asking when they talk about whether a killer is mentally ill or not is whether or not they're someone we feel comfortable stamping the word "EVIL" on and throwing them down a hole forever, or maybe having them killed by the state.

If you're not quite "crazy" enough, we don't have to give a shit about how you got the way you are, we don't need to learn anything from it, and we don't have to care about whether there's anything that could have or can be done for people like you.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:02 PM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


Very sick people tend to be poor at jumping through hoops. I don't think it really matters that much what the hoops are, whether it's a psychological evaluation or a safety class or a mandatory dance competition. The point is to make sure that they're a careful, mindful person who has really thought their decision through, and is not acting in a week-long episode of mania.
posted by miyabo at 12:03 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think a lot of this hinges on whether or not evil is a subset of mental illness or not.

I don't think it necessarily is but it certainly can be a comorbidity.

What DO we know? We know that he was concerned about himself, period. We know that he did NOT see himself as an inferior being, but instead, a superior one who DESERVED his desires and was enraged that they weren't being fulfilled. We know that instead of looking inside himself for the reasons, he instead looked outward, blaming others for not providing him with what he felt he deserved.

And as a result of him not getting what he wanted, he simply desired to destroy and wreak havoc.

Because of his pride and arrogance he cut himself off from what could and should have been the help that would have allowed him to achieve what he wanted.

Is that an illness? If so, why don't we have thousands upon thousands acting out as he did?

A few decades ago a then famous psychiatrist wrote a book about the concept of evil. Wish I could remember the name of it. I think it's worth looking at in this case, at any rate.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 12:05 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


Just to keep going on my mental illness is a useless term rant. Using mental illness as a term is looking at a population that is bigger than the number of African Americans in the United States.
Saying guns should be banned for people who are mentally ill would actually impact more people than banning ALL African Americans from ever owning a gun.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:06 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


AlexiaSky, a number of states will confiscate or not sell firearms to people who have been hospitalized and/or declared mentally incompetent. People with run-of-the-mill diagnoses of depression and in treatment for same are not at the top of any list for having their guns taken, so please stop acting like that's what people are talking about. If someone has a documented history of threatening to harm themselves or other people, do you think they should get to buy or keep guns no matter what? I don't think you do.
posted by rtha at 12:10 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


No I don't. But people are not making the distinction at all and we don't have a good term to make that distinction. It makes me very angry. Calling for Stricter gun control for the mentally ill covers everybody until someone clarifies something.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:14 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


But he seems to have killed twice as many men as women. How is it that this is so easily ignored?

There were seven deaths. One was Elliot's. Three were his roommates, who he had expressed a strong desire to kill because they were annoying, low-class, and so nerdy that they could never get girls, and he believed that they deserved to die because they could not get girls. He shot three women in front of the sorority house, two of them died. The rest of the shooting victims were completely random, because he was driving his car and firing the gun out the window, and at last report only one of those victims had died, a man by the name of Christopher Martinez who was standing inside the IV Deli Mart when he was shot.

According to the manifesto and the multiple videos he left behind, Elliot's primary motivation to kill was that he had been denied sex. He wanted to kill all the pretty blonde women he had lusted after and never had the guts to talk to, because they would not fuck him, and he wanted to kill the men they talked to and smiled at and laughed with, because those men were denying what was rightfully his by not recognizing his superior alpha male status. These are his words. It disturbs me that you're working so hard to deny that misogyny played a part here.
posted by palomar at 12:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [86 favorites]


I don't care one way or the other what term anyone uses to refer to it as long as its not confusing. But it absolutely matters how we think about these killings because, as I said and as even the briefest of research will support, the causes and treatments and ways to prevent this kind of killing are quite different from the incredibly more common kinds of misogynistic domestic violence.

Honestly, that sounds like you're aiming to win an argument nobody is having. E Whitehall said that the killing of women was not an abnormal decision for men to make (or at least not so abnormal a decision as to be describable as an aberration):

Mooski, this might be the part where you're going wrong: He was an aberration in that he concluded killing people was his solution to his 'problem'.

No, that is not the part where he is an aberration. Men murder women all the time; that's hardly ever of note except as a statistic. The aberration part is where he a) wrote 140 pages of manifesto and b) accidentally displayed a lack of any sense of others as human beings to the point that he makes avalanches look comforting and cosy. That's the part that's weird.


The phrase "spree killing" wasn't actually mentioned by Whitehall, I think - you brought it in:

Going on a spree killing is without question an extraordinarily unusual occurrence.

So, you refuted a statement Whitehall hadn't made - Whitehall was saying that this horrific tragedy had to be considered as part and in the context of a continuum of violence against women, and the readiness of men to use threaten and to employ violence against women without consequences. Not that domestic violence and spree killing were the same thing forensically.

The terrorism thing again is a bit askew - you're arguing, kind of aggressively, that calling it terrorism would mean it would need to be addressed by "drone strikes and the US army", so people shouldn't use the term here. But this is clearly not actually the case.

On the level of bare facts, counter-terrorism operation are generally led by civilian agencies, with military support being brought in as needed. The military, and military UAVs, provide resource, but if we're committed to accuracy the military generally takes the lead in operations against insurgents, not terrorists.

On a more conceptual level, "terrorism", as I said, doesn't have a defined rubric - there is no universally agreed crime of terrorism, but rather criminal acts are terroristic in nature. The killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Britain was terroristic in intent and execution - it was a violent act committed for ideological purposes with the intention of causing terror - and was dealt with by the police, as was the Admiral Duncan bombing in '99. The Unabomber was called a terrorist, not I think inaccurately, and was dealt with by the FBI. Ramzi Yousef was caught by the FBI and the DSS. Dealing with international terrorism is the job of a large number of agencies, many of them civilian, most obviously the CIA.

Is Scott Roeder a terrorist? Clearly, he committed violence for ideological reasons, with the intention of causing terror to other medical practitioners who performed terminations. I would be OK with calling that at least terroristically inclined, but I don't think that changes how it should be handled. I do think we have a cultural reluctance, and specifically a reluctance in the media, to call white people terrorists.

Anyway. Clearly, this is not going to be investigated as a case of domestic violence, nor did anyone suggest it should be. Nor is drawing attention to a climate in which violence against women is normalized going to change the criminal investigation. Likewise, calling it "terrorism" here, on MetaFilter, is not going to lead to military involvement. These are lenses and perspectives being used by people, many of them with an informed perspective on the cultural invisibility of less egregious (but relevant) acts of aggression driven by hatred of women, to examine a traumatic event.

Like I say, I don't get what you're aiming for, here, exactly, although I think there are some methodological problems with how you're aiming for it.
posted by running order squabble fest at 12:17 PM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


I'd say I'm aiming for exactly what everybody else in the thread is aiming for; talking about the situation and its implications and causes.
posted by Justinian at 12:19 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I wonder of the past several mass shooting episodes how many of these people were on various kinds of SSRI's? I'm not trying to make a case for this, it's that I've read claims by commentators that negative reactions to SSRI use makes people go berserk. Perhaps that's a simplistic reasoning. I wonder if on a per capita basis if crimes of this nature have risen over the past 100 years? Guns were just as prevalent 100 years ago.
Certainly there's always been a segment of society who are bat-shit crazy. What I wonder is whether for some people if their SSRI use isn't a strong causative factor. I would think this guy would more than likely be using an SSRI. This is the only link I've found that discusses this. Given our society routinely over-medicates people with a variety of substances it's not too big a stretch of the imagination to think our primitive tinkering with brain chemicals drives people in the wrong direction.
posted by diode at 12:19 PM on May 25, 2014


I went to UCSB, I lived within walking distance of Isla Vista. I had friends who went out partying on Fridays, and could have been in the same places. So this all has a personal tinge of horror to me.

Yes he was insane, yes he lived in a misogynistic culture, and yes he had access to guns. It's not a binary situation. The question is, what are we going to do? And bear in mind, that since this happened, something like eight women have been killed by men.
posted by happyroach at 12:20 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


that I've read claims by commentators that negative reactions to SSRI use makes people go berserk.

SSRIs can sometimes raise a person's level of functioning before they've dealt with their own negative impulses, thus enabling them to carry out plans that they were previously unable to get their shit together enough to carry out.
posted by KathrynT at 12:21 PM on May 25, 2014 [23 favorites]


Three were his roommates, who he had expressed a strong desire to kill because they were annoying, low-class, and so nerdy that they could never get girls, and he believed that they deserved to die because they could not get girls.

Jesus, so he wanted to kill the women who wouldn't have sex with him, the men who were having sex with the women he wanted to have sex with, and the men he thought were unworthy of sex?
posted by nath at 12:22 PM on May 25, 2014 [13 favorites]


Apparently he was prescribed risperidone and decided not to take it after looking it up online.
posted by knapah at 12:22 PM on May 25, 2014


He pretty much wanted to kill everybody except for himself...
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:23 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


From the Chuck Wendig essay that is a "truly terrible post":
I understand that as a man your initial response to women talking about misogyny, sexism, rape culture and sexual violence is to wave your hands in the air like a drowning man and cry, “Not all men! Not all men!” as if to signal yourself as someone who is not an entitled, presumptive fuck-whistle, but please believe me that interjecting yourself in that way confirms that you are.

...Instead of telling women that it’s not all men, show them.

Show them by listening and supporting.

Show them by cleaning the dogshit out of your ears and listening to their stories — and recognize that while no, it’s not “all men,” it’s still “way too many men.”
posted by palomar at 12:27 PM on May 25, 2014 [49 favorites]


Pretty sure he wanted to kill himself as well. The only group he omitted from his rage was other male virgins.
posted by ryanfou at 12:35 PM on May 25, 2014


I'd say I'm aiming for exactly what everybody else in the thread is aiming for; talking about the situation and its implications and causes.

Fair enough - in which case, I'd suggest that nobody at any point has said that this situation is domestic violence, and that your argument for not mentioning terrorism - that terrorism is something necessarily dealt with by military force - does not reflect how terrorism works as a term.

More broadly, I think it's OK to let people speak a little more loosely, and to make use of metaphors and draw inferences from their broader experience of surviving in a sexist society, given that this is a horrific and upsetting event, and that what is said on MetaFilter is not actually going to change the way the investigation is conducted.

Anyway, this is heading for derailsville, so I'll leave it there.
posted by running order squabble fest at 12:35 PM on May 25, 2014


I'd say I'm aiming for exactly what everybody else in the thread is aiming for; talking about the situation and its implications and causes.

Then I still don't understand why you keep insisting that these crimes have nothing in common with domestic violence killings and must not be conflated with such, and I really wish you would explain how you come to this conclusion, or point me to where you did if I missed it.
posted by rtha at 12:37 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, just as much misandry as misogyny in the manifesto. He hated and wanted to kill everyone who was less lonely than him. Then I watch the vid and he doesn't strike me as particularly unattractive. Plus he's sitting in his own beemer? Plus his dad's a successful director in h-wood? Plus he's got his school trip paid for? Did he ever stop to think that others might be envious of him?

All during reading the manifesto I want to call out "join a club!", "get a hobby!", "pick up an instrument!", "do anything but sit around and brood how you aren't getting any!". But I'm probably not addressing the real issue which appears to be compounded mental illness.
posted by telstar at 12:37 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


The advantage men have in combating misogyny is an increased likelihood that misogynists will listen to them. Gotta keep chipping away at these beliefs.

This guy hated so many people, I wonder who he would have listened to. Maybe his father--he intentionally planned to do this at a time when his father would be out of town.
posted by mantecol at 12:39 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, just as much misandry as misogyny in the manifesto.

Given that he literally wanted to round women up and keep them in concentration camps for rape and breeding purposes, I don't see how you can possibly say that.
posted by KathrynT at 12:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [77 favorites]


> Yeah, just as much misandry as misogyny in the manifesto

This is really not true. It is clear throughout that women are blamed for sexuality and sexuality is his bane, the thing motivating his rage. Women are the hateful cause, no matter who he punished.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:48 PM on May 25, 2014 [31 favorites]



This guy hated so many people, I wonder who he would have listened to. Maybe his father--he intentionally planned to do this at a time when his father would be out of town.


I think he was too wrapped up in his own self importance and fantasy that everybody should just know he is deserving and awesome and should be laid by all attractive women for an intervention.

This isn't somebody who never heard 'go talk to a girl you might have better luck that way. '

He missed thousands of not millions of social cues, advice, and social norms over his lifetime. He either ignored advice, completely missed advice or vilified the advice. Therapists, and psychiatrists didn't help. Law enforcement didn't help. Family didn't help. Money and resources didn't help. Health insurance didn't help.
posted by AlexiaSky at 12:49 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I've been skimming the "manifesto"/autobiography and it's beyond surreal. It veers between "it was then that I realized that I had to kill everyone so that no one else could enjoy having sex" and "I was super-excited when the new World of Warcraft game came out" and "how embarrassing that mother had to move into a condominium with only four bedrooms".

J.G. Ballard *wishes* he'd written this.

For that matter, *I* wish J.G. Ballard had written this. Instead it's apparently a real thing, and more people have died in another random shooting. Which is not so hard to believe as I'd like.
posted by uosuaq at 12:51 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


The advantage men have in combating misogyny is an increased likelihood that misogynists will listen to them.

I really wish this were true. You'll note that the misogynist in this instance was equally adept at writing off men.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:53 PM on May 25, 2014


> People with run-of-the-mill diagnoses of depression and in treatment for same are not at the top of any list for having their guns taken, so please stop acting like that's what people are talking about

And Jesus Christ, who cares if it is. I have a run-of-the-mill diagnosis of depression and I would happily be prohibited from gun membership if that's what it took to get some common sense going here.
posted by The corpse in the library at 12:54 PM on May 25, 2014 [30 favorites]


To restate my first point above in what is hopefully a clearer way -- misogyny is a pretty uniform phenomenon in my experience and really closely interrelated across a lot of different kinds of violence against women. In the end it has all just felt like a matter of degree.

Because I don't care if the guy or guys this time round hate me a little bit or hate me a lot - it doesn't matter, the point is that they hate me. I care that they feel entitled to inflict that hate on me. The only difference is in how they choose to express that entitlement and how much.

We're talking here, specifically, about a man who felt so wronged, so grieved, by his virginity that he felt the need to punish strangers over a span of years, culminating in murder, for what seems (from his videos) to have felt like an incredible cosmic injustice done to him against everything he believed he was entitled to have. Like a woman willingly touching him would have been the last piece in a jigsaw of self-esteem, calling forth the Inner Elliot that was suave and cool and amazing and had a gorgeous girlfriend (so he must naturally be suave and cool, or he wouldn't HAVE this girl, right?) and if only he had that final piece, everything would have been different.

I think that's where misogyny and MRA boards and forums and vblogs and ex-PUA artists comes in. It takes this kind of fear and rage and inadequacy and directly posits women as the barrier between Now-You and You-Only-If-She-Touches-Your-Dick and there is so very little in culture to oppose that idea. So little about the idea of settling with yourself first. I see nothing in his manifesto that indicates that he ever learned to settle with anything, much less himself as he was. Is that a mental illness thing? The all-consuming extent of it, maybe. But I've met quite a few men like that, men who just don't like themselves at all and expect women to be their mirrors and show selves that they could pull on and hope to be enough.

So while I can see how a criminal and legal definition could be useful and helpful in separating out domestic violence/spree killing/mass murder/serial killing, I don't think it's helpful to use those definitions to divide up things in theory that aren't all that divided in (my) experience. It's not that far a step at all from saying "the only thing you're worth is ..." to saying "you're not worth anything because you're not even doing that one thing". And it's not too far from looking at people who seem to have their suits of You-Only-If all buttoned up tight while being told that it is all their fault, all these other people's fault for taking what you want, and beginning to wonder what the hell is wrong with them that they don't understand how much you deserve it too.

Because, yeah, everybody is actually entitled to some measure of self-reflection/contentment/settling. They're just not entitled to use other human beings to do it. Sometimes I think whether one of the largest functions of misogyny, one of the most enduring, is attempting to eliminate that distinction entirely. The chaff around male virginity and PUA plays awfully well into that narrative.
posted by E. Whitehall at 12:56 PM on May 25, 2014 [19 favorites]



Some men are bad and violent. So are some women. It seems that more men are; and men are bigger and stronger, so their badness and violence are more dangerous. But it may be worth remembering that men are more often the victims of violence than are women.


I don't think you quite got the point of what Chuck was trying to say in the post I linked. Wanna try a reread?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:58 PM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


Anytime anyone puts their self-worth and identity in the hands of other people's actions it is a recipe for disaster and disappointment.

I think culture does this with men way way way to often in a way women don't experience. Having sex with another, being able to win a fight, being a 'protector', having other people listen to you/being a leader, preforming well in sports that are dependant on a team and so forth.
It seems to me that self worth for men is more action based and less relationship based.
posted by AlexiaSky at 1:10 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


I think it behooves us not to further folklorize the supposed demonic effects of SSRIs or other psychiatric drugs. The casual assertions that are repeatedly being made here are exaggerations and misunderstandings of the clinical literature (KathrynT has the most obvious mechanism about right above).

Taking an SSRI for its intended purpose under the supervision of a doctor makes many formerly functionally handicapped people able to live a fulfilling life, as in millions. Over prescribed, abused, used too carelessly or without adjunct therapies, yes. And even likely to play some role in triggering violent behavior on some individuals under some circumstances -- as can craft beer. But the pop mythology that taking a course of Zoloft (or whatever) might trigger a homocidal rampage in some otherwise safe and merely mildly depressed person is not, to my knowledge, evident in any science.

Homocidal rampages lie at the far end of possible human psychopathology, along with other crimes of cruelty. Otherwise "fine" people don't just switch one day and become killing machines. In retrospect there is always a developmental explanation for many aspects of violent psychopathology. It really is not a "silicon chip inside her (his) head" that some drug "switches to overload." It just seems that way from a distance. Tons of bad code had to get written and ported to that chip to produce a mass killer.

SSRIs raise many serious concerns and their efficacy and safety are the subject of many legitimate debates. But it's become urban legend now that they are a causal factor in spree killings and that gets repeated (above, e.g) more as something like a fact at the peril of focusing on much more obvious causes, ultimate, proximate, and in between.

To call mental illness a factor in this latest hideous atrocity is not at all to dismiss or diminish misogyny as equally causal, along with guns and other factors. But I think as repulsive as this act is as an act of gendered violence, it calls attention to the culture of violent misogyny from which this dude developed. Like all complex human events, this one has many causes, and it's silly to rank them in a competition for Most Salient Explanation.
posted by spitbull at 1:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [21 favorites]


This probably isn't the time--and I'm pretty sure it isn't the place--to try to have a serious discussion about these issues. It is difficult enough to get a clear view of something like this. But once something is seen largely as an opportunity to trot the hobby horses around the track, the odds of seeing the thing clearly drop to near zero.

Do you intend to engage in the conversation at hand at some point, instead of this completely invented one you have constructed in your head? You've misrepresented the point of the article you linked to, the point of almost every single person here, and the problem with the "not all men" retort in one fell swoop. The nature of this latest bit of horror is varied, but trying to hand-wave a very relevant cause away to grind your axe once again only makes the problem worse.
posted by zombieflanders at 1:30 PM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


Given that he literally wanted to round women up and keep them in concentration camps for rape and breeding purposes, I don't see how you can possibly say that.

And he wanted to kill the men. I mean seriously, read the manifesto. He ends up hating all the men in his life, too. The guy was a misanthrope through and through. The only thing he appeared to love was perceiving himself as above everyone else. Trying to hang all that on misogyny seems like specious reasoning to me.
posted by telstar at 1:50 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


He hated all the men in his life because he perceived them as getting the things he was entitled to, i.e. all the pussy. I fail to see why it's hard to understand how misogyny is involved there.
posted by palomar at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2014 [52 favorites]


It's hanging on misogyny because his hatred of women was driven by them not having sex with him just because he wanted them to, and his hatred of men was driven by them having sex with the women he wanted to have sex with him.
posted by nath at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


He seemed to think that his motivation was more specifically about hating women and wanting to punish them, and I don't see any reason to doubt him on that.
posted by rmd1023 at 1:55 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


Trying to hang all that on misogyny seems like specious reasoning to me.

But it's not. Look at the reasons he gives for hating the men around him. Over and over again it's through a lense of misogyny. Yes, he hates men too, but he hates them because they're more successful with women. He wanted to kill his brother because his brother might grow to be the same. His hatred of his roommates was tied into how they were hopeless and weak when measured by his gross, horrifying standards, a huge component of which is based on misogyny.
posted by sparkletone at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2014 [20 favorites]


No one ever says this when poor black men commit murder. Then they're just "thugs," and no one ever, ever suggests that they might have some mental health issue.

The videos, the manifesto, his mental health team, his parents affirming that he was mentally ill--these would all seem to suggest that mentioning mental illness as a factor here has not one single thing to do with racism. At all.

bear in mind that many recent mass shootings prove that professional psychiatrists and psychologists don't do a particularly good job of predicting which of their patients will act out violently. It's just not like Law and Order out there.

Well for one it's surprisingly easy to fool a psychiatrist or psychologist. For another, one of the great unanswered questions here is whether his mental healthcare team knew about or had seen his videos or rantings online. If they did, as I said above, they should be sued into oblivion for negligence. If they didn't, it's because he was high-functioning enough to successfully hide those things. I suspect the latter is the case here; I can't imagine any mandatory reporter anywhere looking at those videos or rants and not going "Oh. Shit."

The cops, however, definitely knew about the videos. Did they watch them, or did they think the parents were overreacting, had a five minute chat with the guy, and bounce? That's my guess, and if so, they should be turfed from the force immediately and also sued into fucking oblivion. I mean, when parents come to you and say "Our child is deeply disturbed, is making videos talking about killing himself and others and posting them to the internet, and has access to guns," one can hardly be blamed for expecting the police to do something of a more thorough job in assessing his state. E.g. taking him into custody for a psychiatric hold and figure out what to do next.

Apparently he was prescribed risperidone and decided not to take it after looking it up online.

Jesus. I'm assuming you have this information from a reliable source? Because if so, that's terrifying. He may well have wanted to keep feeling the way he was feeling. (Yes, I know it has side effects. But they're relatively rare. This, however, from Wikipedia may have been what actually dissuaded him (emphasis mine):
In 2012, Johnson & Johnson settled a lawsuit claiming that Risperdal caused hundreds of male patients to grow breast tissue. Additionally, Johnson & Johnson face many claims that consumers were misled by both marketing and product packaging of Risperdal. [cite]
So it's entirely possible, given how maladjusted his worldview seems to have been, that he refused medication because he thought it would make him look like an inferior; a woman. (From his POV I mean).

OTOH if it was being prescribed to him because of psychosis or delusion, there could be a bunch of reasons he'd refuse, and I find it pretty damn weird that if a mental healthcare team is going so far as to prescribe antipsychotics, they wouldn't be taking means to make sure he's actually taking the things. There are better medications for dealing with irritability in autism-spectrum people, and it would do nothing for his social skills. So if it's true he was prescribed Risperdal, it was most likely either for psychosis/schizophreniform disorders or bipolar I/II/NOS.

A kind of perfect storm of failure happened in this tragedy, and once again I say it could have been prevented. When I see her next week, I'm going to ask her what the gold standard is when prescribing Risperdal and how much she would follow up to ensure compliance.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


The videos, the manifesto, his mental health team, his parents affirming that he was mentally ill--these would all seem to suggest that mentioning mental illness as a factor here has not one single thing to do with racism. At all.

I didn't say "he can't possibly have been suffering from any mental illness." I said "it sure is interesting that people give a shit about that in this case but not other cases." But, of course, you knew that.
posted by showbiz_liz at 2:01 PM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


No, actually, I didn't. Snark: unnecessary.

I would assume that if this boy's skin had been darker and his bank account smaller, and all other circumstances the same, we'd still be talking about his mental health status because it is pretty vitally important to understanding what went on here.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:05 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's very, very unsettling to me the degree to which people are focusing on mental health, here and elsewhere. It seems pointed and unusual, even compared to past shooting sprees. I get the sense that people are holding on to it tightly because there's a fear of contemplating any alternative. That this was a clear-headed bloody-minded effort from someone who has absorbed virulent ideas. He's stated very clearly what his motives, ideas, and attitudes are. It's up to us whether we want to look unflinchingly at them, or deflect to another cause. What he's written and said is outlandish, but only insofar as it's a horrific amplification of MRA values, which are a horrific amplification of wider cultural norms.
posted by naju at 2:13 PM on May 25, 2014 [43 favorites]


The weird thing about 4chan, especially /b/, is that it's fundamentally nihilist: anon would never write a rambling manifesto because anon thinks everything you believe and hold dear is stupid.

I can't speak for /b/, as the last time I was on there for more than a few seconds was maybe 2008, but I don't think it's really true at all that 4chan is nihilistic. 4chan is more like the id of a certain portion of the internet, and oftentimes "smart people acting stupid on purpose"...except even then not really, especially on the specialty boards like /p/ and /tg/, where the trademark 4chan tone is heavily modulated.

Even just from what I'd quoted from /tv/, which as a board is usually as silly/awful/FOR YOU as the rest of the place, you see that their reaction to Rodger was quite thoroughly grounded in, well, you know, basic ideas of right and wrong, propriety, respect of human life, etc. From what I saw, people weren't even halfway agreeing with anything the kid said and stood for. From what I saw, one person wrote a post trollishly agreeing with Rodger, and people promptly responded to the post with pictures of fedora-wearing neckbeards, "you're real edgy dude", etc.

Again, I'm not saying this to defend 4chan, as 4chan does not deserve, require, nor even want a defense.

What I am saying is, one would think that the Rodgers of the world would have an outlet on a place like 4chan, where the place is heavily male, where the male gaze is omnipresent, where the word "feminism" itself might raise an eyebrow, where nothing is forbidden and everything is permitted...but the Rodgers of the world actually really don't fit in there, except in the sewers of /r9k/ (and maybe /pol/).

Rodger is certainly a product of society's misogyny in general, and his hate certainly draws from that. It doesn't take away from that to also recognize that he would have been a reject even in the darkest and weirdest corners of the interbutts, even among other sexist men. His overwhelming narcissism and apparently constant urge to isolate himself from other humans was thoroughly interwoven with the thoroughly misogynistic attitudes which he had inherited from society at large. I wonder how much of his online communication only served to isolate himself further - would he constantly test others' boundaries, waiting for that moment where he would become too much for them?

I'm not even entirely sure what my point is any more.

I'm still getting over the fact that there is apparently a sub-sub-culture devoted to ultra-misogynistic men who are upset even at the PUA "community", for apparently not helping them get laid? I guess? And there are enough of those guys to form their own boards? That's just...wow. That is a deep cut from the hate library.
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]






I work with the chronically homeless. These people are known for having all kinds of serious disorders and not being in touch with reality.

Medication adherence aside from talking to them about it and hospitalizing them for a couple days if they become too out of touch is the very best we as mental health can do. Occasionally these days we see more Outpatient anti psychotic shots that don't turn people into zombies and last for awhile. But for someone who isn't treatment adherent there is nothing I can really do and the shots eventually get out of their system and it is a waiting game.

I see clients all day. I don't have time nor should I be expected to Google all of them all the time. I'm not the police. I'm in a helping profession. Besides it messes with the therapeutic relationship to find out things about someone before they are ready to tell me. Easiest way to get someone not to come back would be along the lines of 'So I searched the Internet and found out your really embarrassed about being a virgin do you want to explore that? '
It's also ethically blurry.
We do have what is called ' The duty to warn' if we find out about threats. If the parents sent the YouTube links to the professionals and they didn't do anything them yes absolutly someone should be held accountable.

Anti psychotics are given for lots of reasons including sleep. Sometimes doctors give it just to slow somebody down (i cannot tell you how many crack addicts I have met with a prescription for at least one anti psychotic.) I've also seen it used to treat PTSD hypervigilance.
posted by AlexiaSky at 2:19 PM on May 25, 2014 [11 favorites]


The only way you could see as much hatred of men as hatred of women in this man's writings and videos is by ignoring a fair amount of misogyny because it's normal, a part of the background radiation of our cultural lives. It takes more misogyny to even register. But his hatred of men is more individual and rooted in envy besides. His hatred of women is general and rooted in entitlement.
posted by NoraReed at 2:38 PM on May 25, 2014 [53 favorites]


The idea that this is a failure of 'the system' seems to be the most logical fit here, to my mind. More accurately, the failure of anything systematic to exist. It's pretty easy to see how the confluence of some form of mental illness, a huge degree of misogyny, a conscious decision to punish people (which may be partly an outcome of mental illness) and ownership of weapons set all this in motion. Well, it's easy to see now that all those factors are known. It's also pretty easy to see how none of the range of people involved who had some capacity to do something weren't aware of one or more of those factors. Did his family know about the guns? It's not as if he was a regular firearms user - the one time he fired a gun prior to this, it made him physically ill to think about what he was planning to do. Did the mental health professionals know about the guns? Not likely - surely that would have triggered a much stronger set of responses. Did the cops (who, it turns out, were likely the last chance to stop this) know all these things? Had they had a chance to see the videos? I doubt there was a single person who had enough information to reasonably foresee this.

Unfortunately, events like this are the price of freedom to some extent. The freedom to have your personal information kept private, to have and express whatever fucked-up and hateful views you want and the freedom to own pretty much whatever devices designed to kill people you want. They're not going to stop happening until society decides that the price of all that freedom is simply too high.
posted by dg at 2:40 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


Oh, Jesus. Apparently he sent his manifesto to his parents and at least one therapist before starting the attacks. CNN.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:42 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


fffm: The reliable source on his being prescribed Risperdal is his manifesto. He specifically mentions it being prescribed, then says that he looked it up online and because of what he read, he decided not to take it. Here's the quote from p. 125: "The doctor ended up dismissing it by prescribing me a controversial medication, Risperidone. After researching this medication, I found that it was the absolute wrong thing for me to take. I refused to take it, and I never saw Dr. Sophy again after that."
posted by augustimagination at 2:43 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


The words 'unreliable narrator' come to mind. I haven't gotten that far into the manifesto yet (it's way too much to take in except in small bites, for me). Does he say why it was the absolute wrong thing for him to take?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:45 PM on May 25, 2014


moonlight on vermont: If the person you're trying to have committed is a legal adult, that requires a call to emergency services; in this case that was the cops rather than EMS

In Santa Barbara County it pretty much has to be the cops; all other avenues for getting someone assessed for a 5150 (involuntary hold) have been closed besides the police, even if the 5150 is on the basis of gravely disabled, not danger to self or others. Evaluation is usually based on a fifteen to twenty minute interview, and many people will comply and hold themselves together under those circumstances; one of the gravely disabled holds I facilitated was predicated on me assessing my client's ability to access homeless services, and thankfully emergency services believed me, not him.

Medication adherence has become harder to guarantee. Right now in Santa Barbara there are less than five board and cares (where medication observation is standard), one program for doing med observation for clients who live independently, and a handful of other programs, none of which can legally support med observation because they are not licensed. Funding cuts in SB County in 2008 closed easily 50% of the community based mental health programs. The county currently has around twelve inpatient beds and should, based on population, have between forty and fifty.

A higher standard for 5150s is unlikely to have change anything. People make aggressive, violent, an threatening videos all the time. People contact other people to make threats all the time. We Hunted the Mammoth contains links to thousands of incidents of people saying things very similarly, in writing and in video, to this young man. I don't know of any woman who hasn't received at least one death threat online, including myself, and there are hundreds of women who have received hundreds of thousands of death threats, including ones which indicate the threatener knows where the woman lives. The vast, vast majority of these people will never act on their threats; a tiny minority will, and the tiny minority will plan well enough in advance to not get caught (a tautology, since if they got caught they couldn't act on it).

The only thing which might set the seriously threatening people apart from those who just want women to shut up and won't act to make us shut up is if there is a higher social cost (among peers of the person) to making these kinds of threats. I leave how to do this as an exercise for the reader.

Re: types of mass murder and states about it

Serial killers kill one person (very rarely two or more) over a long period of time with refractory periods after each murder.

Spree killers kill multiple people in at least two locations within a short period of time with a negligible refractory period.

Mass murderers kill multiple people in one location.

Continuing evidence shows that a portion of spree/mass murderers also have aspects of family annihilation, which means they start with killing the people at their home, then go to kill someplace else. All three types of mass murder require organization and planning to a certain extent since they are usually done with weapons which must be acquired.

Statistically, the rate of mass murderers/spree killers with diagnosed mental illnesses prior to committing their crimes is the same as the general population - around 30%. This strongly implies no relationship between mass murder and mental illness as we use the term in our country; people with a history of violence - even gendered violence - are rarely considered mentally ill, though they may pick up a criminal history depending on their location, level of poverty, and racial background. Rates of violence by people with mental illnesses is lower than the national average. Rates of violence against people with mental illnesses is higher than the national average. It is likely that homelessness accounts for some of the difference, since rates of mental illness among the homeless is relatively high.

Many people, post mass murder, tend to use a "no true Scotsman" argument that killing a lot of people a priori means they have a mental illness; this is inaccurate and harmful to people with mental illnesses, as again statistically people with mental illnesses are less likely to be violent than the national average. It's also largely meaningless since the term "mental illness" covers such broad categories of people, but the stigma persists and results in many people who could be successfully treated for their mental illnesses avoiding treatment due to both social costs and often economic/job costs.
posted by Deoridhe at 2:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [57 favorites]


Does he say why it was the absolute wrong thing for him to take?

No, and as I recall, that is the only time he mentions any medication at all.
posted by palomar at 2:50 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


That's sort of what makes me worry there; this kid decided he knew more than the doctor, didn't even consult with the doctor, and simply refused to see the doctor again.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:52 PM on May 25, 2014


The only way you could see as much hatred of men as hatred of women in this man's writings and videos is by ignoring a fair amount of misogyny because it's normal, a part of the background radiation of our cultural lives. It takes more misogyny to even register. But his hatred of men is more individual and rooted in envy besides. His hatred of women is general and rooted in entitlement.

Yes, exactly. Besides, his hatred/envy of men appears to only show up in the context of jealousy over how well most other men can relate to women.

...

Rodger reminds me of the concept of the Žižekian "heretic". For Žižek, the heretic is the figure who subverts the prevailing through over-adherence: the person who breaks the rules by following the rules too closely. Rodger had fully absorbed the idea that beautiful women are objects to be earned by men in exchange for the money, valuable objects, and good looks of me. Rodger took this idea to its literal, absurd, tragic conclusion. According to Rodger, if you are a man, and if you are wealthy and good-looking, then you are entitled to receive at least one free beautiful woman. You don't even have to do anything! She should just show up. So, if you are wealthy and good-looking, then you are being WRONGED every single time that a beautiful woman does not become "yours" as soon as she sees how wealthy and good-looking you are.

Rodger wasn't just overly-literal: he was so narcissistic that he wrote a manifesto before running amok. He essentially wrote a 140 page book explaining how society was wrong, and he was right. In response to having failed to "earn" his girl, he proceeded to essentially "explain" to society why it had failed to follow even its own rules!

Either way, Rodger did not fit into even the sexist fringes of society.

However, his overly literal adherence to a certain traditional conception of gender relations was nonetheless a representation of the misogyny present in his culture. His attitudes did not develop in a vacuum. The fact that his actions and attitudes were so extreme doesn't mean that they were in no way representative of general societal beliefs. Think of it as how a product safety recall will typically be based on just a relatively small portion of injuries - the product is defective, and we know this because in certain rare cases, the defect caused this extreme result.

...

Statistically, the rate of mass murderers/spree killers with diagnosed mental illnesses prior to committing their crimes is the same as the general population - around 30%.

I like your comment, but, this doesn't seem responsive to the idea that mass murderers and spree killers would be predominantly mentally ill. "Was not previously diagnosed as mentally ill" does not mean "was not mentally ill at the time of the shooting".
posted by Sticherbeast at 2:54 PM on May 25, 2014 [27 favorites]


The vast, vast majority of these people will never act on their threats...

Nevertheless, the threats are still an infraction I would think, and a good enough reason to take their guns away and mandate some sort of therapy.
posted by Golden Eternity at 2:55 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


The words 'unreliable narrator' come to mind.

I hear you. I'm thinking the same thing, reading through it. It seems, though, from some of the various news reports corroborating other events he describes, that his unreliability is more in the form of leaving huge amounts of detail out than it is about making things up. Because of that I'm inclined to believe the sections where he describes that he saw therapists and was prescribed medications (although I'm guessing that his take on what was actually discussed during his appointments is fairly skewed).

He's very vague through the whole thing about his specific experiences with therapists and psychiatrists, but the main thread I got was that he had been seeing a number of mental health care providers starting from a fairly young age (11-12, maybe?) and, as an older teenager and adult, began to resent that they didn't view his problems the same way he did. In this particular instance, it sounds like he got fed up that the doctor was viewing this as his problem and prescribing meds, instead of joining in with him in his narrative about how everyone else needed to be taught a lesson.
posted by augustimagination at 3:02 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


his unreliability is more in the form of leaving huge amounts of detail out

Yeah. In fact it seems kind of odd that he wouldn't explain why Risperdal was the wrong medication for a magnificent gentleman like himself--and why no others were discussed or suggested.

Ugh I just realized this manifesto reminds me way too much of A Confederacy of Dunces.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:07 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Really? I don't get that at all, but I do get the comparisons to Patrick Bateman and American Psycho that I've seen in the media.
posted by palomar at 3:10 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I like your comment, but, this doesn't seem responsive to the idea that mass murderers and spree killers would be predominantly mentally ill. "Was not previously diagnosed as mentally ill" does not mean "was not mentally ill at the time of the shooting".

How are you defining "mentally ill"? I know of no DSM category which covers: "Thinks women owe him sex" or even "thinks he should be able to have sex slaves". Both of these things, when they occur, are treated as criminal infractions, not mental health infractions, if they are considered infractions at all (in the case of "women owe me sex" it's more of a cultural norm; 'I bought her dinner, why won't she give me at least a blow job, the slut').

The studies I've seen take mass murderers, primarily school shooters since that used to be the main data set, and track their level of diagnosis in the community. They can't be diagnosed for something before they do it, however; everything is based on symptoms. Are you really saying we should start adding things like "says women owe him sex", "thinks virgin men are losers," or "thinks blond women shouldn't have sex with black men" to the DSM?

Nevertheless, the threats are still an infraction I would think, and a good enough reason to take their guns away and mandate some sort of therapy.

How.

Seriously, I'd love to hear how in a society where people want therapy and can't get it, where thousands of people are returning from war and can't get therapy they desperately want, we're going to mandate therapy for people who don't want it based on bog standard sexist threats.

We can't currently get enough men to say "that's not ok" to their peers when their peers make threats against women; how in the nine worlds are we going to somehow make something a legal mandate?

And even if it did somehow become illegal, evidence from similar crimes indicates it would do nothing except maybe give the police another axis by which to harass men of color. In fact, rape happens to be against the law, and for years now women have done their part by having rape kits done even when cops tried to convince them not to, and thousands of those rape kits were improperly stored and thousands more they just didn't bother testing. There is a literally nauseating amount of evidence of something which is already a crime which is being ignored by the police, and you want to make something else a legal mandate to solve a complicated problem?
posted by Deoridhe at 3:14 PM on May 25, 2014 [18 favorites]


We do have what is called ' The duty to warn' if we find out about threats. If the parents sent the YouTube links to the professionals and they didn't do anything them yes absolutely someone should be held accountable.


From what has been repeated in the media, the parents saw the videos, called his treatment team who watched them and called the police to do a welfare check on him. Cops showed up, had a quick chat, decided that he was a perfectly nice young man and bounced.

Back when I worked in half-way houses this happened very frequently, with the person usually ending up in a locked facility a few days later, when their condition deteriorated even further. I don't know why family and treatment team members aren't taken more seriously when they make that call ; I don't know why a person has to suffer even more and become even more of a danger to self/others before something is done. It's totally fucked.
posted by echolalia67 at 3:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


palomar, I mean the narcissism, me-against-the-world, I'm not broken the world is, that sort of thing. There's a similarity in how this (real) boy and that (fictional) man viewed the world, and their overwhelming senses of entitlement.

I don't know why family and treatment team members aren't taken more seriously when they make that call ; I don't know why a person has to suffer even more and become even more of a danger to self/others before something is done. It's totally fucked.

Seriously. Even a 72-hour psychiatric hold in April would have prevented this, presuming that his parents or the cops then went and looked through his apartment.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:19 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm not sure this guy's actions make for a good "teachable moment" about misogyny in society, because this guy was misogynistic in the way that Hitler wasn't a fan of matzoh-ball soup and Narcissus enjoyed relaxing by the local pond. He's so far off the scale of "entitlement" that he makes cats look like seeing-eye dogs.
I absolutely do *not* wish to diminish or contradict anyone's comments on this thread about misogyny. I only want to suggest that pointing out the influence of societal misogyny is more helpful in the context of people who aren't so completely fucked in the head that no one's going to identify with them anyway.
posted by uosuaq at 3:21 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


We've tried that. We've tried pointing out everyday misogyny, but lots of people, women included, tend to write it off as not serious enough. Trite, even. All in good fun! Boys will be boys! Take it as a compliment! Maybe showing the logical conclusions of that kind of thinking will help.
posted by Hildegarde at 3:25 PM on May 25, 2014 [72 favorites]


He's so far off the scale of "entitlement" that he makes cats look like seeing-eye dogs.

I'd dispute this. I think he's definitely at the far end of the scale, obviously, but he's not in a qualitatively different place than the guy who tried to get me to sit on his lap when I was walking down the street and grabbed my arm and hissed "someone's going to give you what you deserve someday, bitch" when I refused. They're different, sure -- but they're not SO different that I think they're two entirely different phenomena.
posted by KathrynT at 3:26 PM on May 25, 2014 [55 favorites]


Echolalia yes. I mentioned upthread where I've made a call as a mental health professional and the cops said she's fine and didn't bother to get them evaluated. Everything turned out just fine in that case though.

It is very very messed up.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:27 PM on May 25, 2014


How are you defining "mentally ill"?

For one thing, are we talking about whether people are mentally ill, or whether they have received a proper diagnosis? Those are two separate concepts.

For a working definition, for better and for worse I could turn to the DSM-5's definition of a mental disorder:
A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.
I know of no DSM category which covers: "Thinks women owe him sex" or even "thinks he should be able to have sex slaves". Both of these things, when they occur, are treated as criminal infractions, not mental health infractions, if they are considered infractions at all (in the case of "women owe me sex" it's more of a cultural norm; 'I bought her dinner, why won't she give me at least a blow job, the slut').

As far as thinking goes, merely thinking that women owe you sex, or that you ought to be able to keep sex slaves - neither of those are criminal infractions at all. You can think what you like. Neither would either of those constitute mental disorders per DSM-5 - however, they could be if these issues were clinically significant and reflective of the categories of individual dysfunction described in that para.

The studies I've seen take mass murderers, primarily school shooters since that used to be the main data set, and track their level of diagnosis in the community. They can't be diagnosed for something before they do it, however; everything is based on symptoms.

Of course they cannot always be diagnosed before they kill people. However, being diagnosed with a certain mental disorder is not the same thing as actually having a mental disorder. One can be misdiagnosed, or one can lack a formal diagnosis.

Are you really saying we should start adding things like "says women owe him sex", "thinks virgin men are losers," or "thinks blond women shouldn't have sex with black men" to the DSM?

No, nobody has said anything of the sort.

What I am saying is what I had said: the fact that only 30% of these killers are diagnosed as mentally ill before they had committed their crimes is not responsive to the question of whether or not those killers were mentally ill at the time they had committed their crimes. Those are different concepts, even if they are related.

This does not take away from the other problems which can exist with reflexively chalking up these crimes to mental illness.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:31 PM on May 25, 2014


Risperidone is an antipsychotic. Clearly the doctor who prescribed it could see what was going on. I find this detail so frustrating, as I take Risperidone for my Bipolar mania and it works. I hold normalcy in my hand every day when I shake the pill out of the bottle. If he'd taken it, who knows how things would have turned out for him. Maybe he would have just been an asshole, instead of a murderous asshole.
posted by Biblio at 3:54 PM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


I'd dispute this. I think he's definitely at the far end of the scale, obviously, but he's not in a qualitatively different place than the guy who tried to get me to sit on his lap when I was walking down the street and grabbed my arm and hissed "someone's going to give you what you deserve someday, bitch" when I refused. They're different, sure -- but they're not SO different that I think they're two entirely different phenomena.

Agreeing and expanding - it's been mentioned upthread, but We Hunted The Mammoth is a good place to get a sense of the vehemence and violence of the far end of the manosphere (TW, NSFW, bring brainbleach). The end of this particular example is egregiously horrific, but the rhetoric Rodger was using to work himself up to it is by no means unique.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:55 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


How are you defining "mentally ill"? I know of no DSM category which covers: "Thinks women owe him sex" or even "thinks he should be able to have sex slaves". Both of these things, when they occur, are treated as criminal infractions, not mental health infractions, if they are considered infractions at all (in the case of "women owe me sex" it's more of a cultural norm; 'I bought her dinner, why won't she give me at least a blow job, the slut').


It's not these beliefs that say mentally ill to me, it's that after living in Isla Vista for two years and never talking to a woman of his own age he thinks they have all rejected him. Thinking that all the women in a town (to whom you've never spoken) have all rejected you is mental illness not ideology.
posted by Jahaza at 3:57 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Deciding to exact revenge on those women because they denied you what is rightfully yours is ideology, though.
posted by palomar at 3:59 PM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


wait

is someone unironically saying this guy was so misogynistic that we can't draw a line between ordinary everyday misogyny and his crime

and is that same person implying we can't draw a line between ordinary everyday German anti-Semitism and Adolf Hitler

is that what I'm reading

have I misunderstood
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 4:04 PM on May 25, 2014 [22 favorites]


@Hildegarde: Maybe showing the logical conclusions of that kind of thinking will help.

I guess in a sense this guy might represent the "logical conclusion" of that kind of thinking (although his "logical conclusion" seems to be closer to a "final solution" than simply returning to the happy days when women were chattel). But just because you've tried pointing out everyday misogyny and it's still going on doesn't mean pointing to a lunatic will work. That's basically what I was trying to say.

@KathrynT: I guess I consider this guy "off the scale" because of his obvious insanity and the murder spree, but you're right, if he'd just had one gun and used it to rape one woman, it wouldn't even make the news. Again, I'm just wondering whether this is a *helpful* example to highlight the phenomenon of misogyny.

I felt a little nervous just making my last post (seriously, y'all, the White Man's Burden is *heavy*), so thanks for disagreeing with me politely.
posted by uosuaq at 4:05 PM on May 25, 2014


I miserably failed the sensitivity to misogyny/white man/priviledged test some posts ago (as was pointed out by NoraReed). Let me quickly try the Mental Illness, Freedom, Rights, Guns issues. I have some level of confidence in this as I ran an organization(for 20 plus years) that did nothing but emergency psychiatric assessment/intervention including about 2500-3000 +/- assessments annually for involuntary commitment/treatment. And I am comfortable generalizing to most States, the UK and Ireland because of consulting arrangements. State and Federal case law (and State statutes) clearly establishes that persons can not be detained/held/involuntarily hospitalized or ordered for treatment on an emergency basis except when there is "imminent" danger to self or others. Not, likely danger,probable or maybe danger etc. With additional due process including, probate/civil hearings,persons can be detained at a lesser standard but this takes time and usually some level of initial cooperation from the person and their willingness/ability to make themselves available for evaluation or to decompensate so they can be held involuntarily. There are also well establish rights (US Supreme Court) that a person has the right to refuse treatment unless very specific criteria are met. The bottom line is that if one is going to maintain legal due process, the right of the individual to participate in their own treatment and to refuse medication unless court ordered ( and this is not easy practically or legally) you are going to have people who kill themselves or others. To think otherwise is to assume a level of science, practice and organizational discipline that simply does not and can not exist. The cracks are not only "mental health system cracks", but knowledge, science and practice gaps in mental health treatment. When coupled with the second amendment, due process and human imperfection some of these deaths will be with guns and unfortunately semiautomatic guns. In the UK where guns are much harder to come by there are significantly more obstacles to purchasing OTC medications used in suicide attempts. Same in Ireland. Guns+due process+civil and individual rights+imperfect science+humanity (imperfect institutions)=mass killings. The solution(s)--many have already been posted. At the risk of again offending some posters--I really think (from a psychiatric perspective) that if he was as ill as these posts and reports indicate if it had not been women (misogyny) he targeted it might just well have been men, gays, minorities, ethnic groups are simply "people". Which is not to say that misogyny did not play a critical role in this particular mass murder nor that is not an extremely valid social cultural problem. I would imagine that there are similar, biological, chemical, structural, individual developmental, social and cultural phenomena whether it is Sandy Hook (children), Aurora( people), Universities (students/faculty) or Churches (participants). Finally, I also think the it may not necessarily be as much about misogyny as it is about masculinity/maleness and the associated cultural/social/biological issues. Men seem to be much more able and willing to kill anyone/anywhere under almost any circumstance. Therefore--my absolute commitment to the economic/social/political rights, freedom and emancipation of women. Even I, a somewhat tired,old,privileged,white male thinks it is time to turn over the reins for a century or two and see what happens.
posted by rmhsinc at 4:06 PM on May 25, 2014 [7 favorites]


miyabo: "Before buying a semiautomatic weapon -- which has no real use for hunting "

Ya, that isn't true.

diode: "I wonder of the past several mass shooting episodes how many of these people were on various kinds of SSRI's? I'm not trying to make a case for this, it's that I've read claims by commentators that negative reactions to SSRI use makes people go berserk. Perhaps that's a simplistic reasoning. I wonder if on a per capita basis if crimes of this nature have risen over the past 100 years? Guns were just as prevalent 100 years ago."

Violent crimes across the board have been trending downwards for decades in the US. I'm a fan of the theories that posit at least some of the decline being the result of freer access to abortion post Roe and the phasing out of leaded gas.
posted by Mitheral at 4:10 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I guess I consider this guy "off the scale" because of his obvious insanity and the murder spree, but you're right, if he'd just had one gun and used it to rape one woman, it wouldn't even make the news. Again, I'm just wondering whether this is a *helpful* example to highlight the phenomenon of misogyny.

But -- OK. To pull from the real-life example I posed above, that guy didn't have a gun. He wasn't obviously a "danger." He was a guy in a suit enjoying the summer air in front of his office, out drinking a coffee, with a couple of other guys, and I walked in front of him carrying my own coffee, and he said "Hey, pretty girl, come sit on my lap." His buddies didn't do anything to stop him, and he obviously didn't see any reason why it would be problematic to lay hands on a total stranger and threaten her with violence in broad daylight. That's normal. That is a normal thing, that normal men do; he was a normal guy doing normal things, and his actions didn't raise any eyebrows or give anyone any pause. As much as we might all like to believe that no, that guy was a sicko and a creep and decidedly unusual, the reaction of the men with him and the other people on the (crowded city) street around us indicated otherwise.
posted by KathrynT at 4:15 PM on May 25, 2014 [35 favorites]


For people who want to argue the fine logical details of this horrific crime as if it were a game of Clue, I ask that before you post you remember that this man wanted to kill every woman on earth except for the ones imprisoned in camps for sexual purposes and reproduction. And that he went out shooting at random women as part of his grand plan.

For a lot of us this isn't a freshmen philosophy seminar because we happen to be in the group he thought should be in a camp or dead.
posted by winna at 4:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [84 favorites]


Killer's psychiatrist (who also treated Paris Hilton) has previously drawn criticism for how he practices and divided his public and private roles.
posted by Jahaza at 4:23 PM on May 25, 2014


(Plus, the guys threatening women with violence - on the street or on the Internet - may have no intention of making good on their threats personally, but they create a smokescreen for the ones who do have that intention. Like, the Secret Service used to investigate personally every threat to the President's life that came to their attention, no matter how apparently frivolous. I can't imagine how that would be possible today, when a Twitter account might threaten to kill him six or seven times during a single TV appearance...

And most women don't have a 24-hour security detail looking out for them - they just have their own instincts about whether a particular email or tweet or blog comment telling them they are going to be raped or murdered is worth contacting the police about.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:29 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Cracked nails it, as always.
posted by Melismata at 4:31 PM on May 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


@KathrynT -- Agreed. That's "normal". And it needs to be called out and dealt with, the same as, for example, racism, which has its own scale. But I think it's too easy for people, when an *egregious* example of sexism or racism turns up, to say "hey, I'm not Donald Sterling*/Elliot Rodger, so I'm fine". If you use the *worst* examples, you may not get your point across.
I may well be wrong about this. I'm just trying to think about how to get the point across to those who are ready to hear it.

* Grudging apologies to Donald fucking Sterling for comparing him to a murderer.
posted by uosuaq at 4:34 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I may well be wrong about this.

I think you are, but not in the way that you think you might be. See, when women tell stories like that mine, one of the common responses is "OK, but did you really feel that threatened? I mean words are just words; he's not going to do anything, best to just ignore it. So he touched you? BFD! you can't let fear run your life."

I think showing the continuum between the guy who thinks that life is a competition and a hot girl is the prize, to the guy who catcalls women, to the guy who uses violent, gendered language when a woman turns him down, to the guy who threatens actual violence when a woman turns him down, to the guy who actually USES violence when a woman doesn't comply with his desires the way he wants her to -- I think THAT'S the way we can start to shine a light on how toxic this kind of misogyny is. Or at any rate, I don't think it's actively unhelpful.
posted by KathrynT at 4:39 PM on May 25, 2014 [44 favorites]


Ugh, god. I feel a bit fucked up saying it, and i've mostly kept my mouth shut... but watching the ramp up of media response to this whole thing all i see is more and more mentions of how he was ~autistic~ so he was obviously scary and abnormal and no one needs to worry about a normal guy doing this, he's like some lizard person you wont see again! don't worry!

As someone on the spectrum, it's just like oh great yet more reasons to never admit to anyone that i am unless i already know them REALLY well(or they are, or are experiencing something similar) and don't think they'll just randomly blurt it out to the wrong person. Every time the media throws us, collectively under the bus again it just increases the stigma.

I've never met someone on the spectrum who went down this path. I can vaguely understand how it would happen, but it just seems even more unlikely than your average neurotypical joe off the street. If you have to carefully watch other people, be instructed, and learn from trial and error(and in the modern day, lots of reading online and essays by people who have been mistreated, including women, as a sort of "what not to do") how to act like a normal person... it's pretty easy to look at the structure of society and go "Oh, ok, what these guys are saying is obviously not reflecting reality" and end up well... the opposite of this.

But nah, a bunch more people now are going to take this and go "autism makes you a delusional weirdo who cant interact with normal society and who thinks the problem is everyone else having a conspiracy against them!"

And how much can you alienate what is probably your core user base (young, white, males) before your massively popular website isn't so massive or so popular any more?

The fact that sites like this(but especially reddit) care only about attracting the largest userbase, and intentionally opt out of really policing much of what's going on there until they end up on the news for child porn kinda speaks to part of the problem as well. They'd rather be a free market bastion for hate speech than lose some clicks. This is sort of the disgusting face of the internet in 2014, right there. It's the yin to the yang of what caused the downturn in MeFi traffic, honestly.

That at least merited a "WTF dude??!!". I wouldn't think you would even need to teach that, that would seem to just be a normal response by most guys. I've heard guys say some fucked up shit and and in a group setting at least one one person would say something. Not because they they were in any way educated or enlightened on the subject of misogyny but because, well, fucked up is fucked up and good friends aren't the least bit inhibited about calling each other out.

I get it, i guess. I lived with a guy like this for a year. Me and two of my roommates called him out constantly. The other two who had been his good friends for years just... never really said anything. They'd just kinda remain silent or go "heh... ok dude". Quite a lot of men will just sit by and let other men say things like this without any comment. and i just... don't get it. Never did. Both me and my other male friend who called him out are weird, and had a nontraditional education(homeschooled for a while, went to a weird alternative high school) but i always found myself wondering, are most men just socialized to nod and grunt at this kind of shit?
posted by emptythought at 4:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


diode: "I wonder of the past several mass shooting episodes how many of these people were on various kinds of SSRI's"

I've heard it's Twinkies.

e-Psychiatristy notwithstanding, you're not going to see many actual psychiatrists making public diagnoses of people who are not their patients, because that's a clear breach of ethics (both AMA and APA).

Why do these things sometimes seem to come in clusters? As the Charlie Brooker snippet linked earlier with "Park "Iceman Interviews" Dietz illustrates, part of it is to do with implicit media adulation:
We've had twenty years of mass murderers, throughout which I have repeatedly told CNN and our other media, if you don't want to propagate more mass murders, don't start the story with sirens blaring. Don't have photographs of the killer. Don't make this 24/7 coverage. Do everything you can not to make the body count the lead story, not to make the killer some kind of Anti-Hero. Do localize this story to the affected community, and make it as boring as possible in every other market. Because every time we have intense saturation coverage of a mass murder, we expect to see one or two more within a week.
Publishing these people's screeds online is just a new way of creating copycats. I see a few similar tomes every year -- though thankfully not usually as long -- and there's a lot of that stuff out there. Making one or two famous inspires envy in others, and envy is key here.
posted by meehawl at 4:49 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


@KathrynT: I still don't feel like we're disagreeing that much. I brought up the example of rape at gunpoint above, as the far end of the "normal" spectrum, which (as I said) wouldn't even make the national news like this story has.
Maybe I should put it this way: bringing this Rodger guy into it is like Godwinning the discussion. People might stop listening. People need to listen.
posted by uosuaq at 4:50 PM on May 25, 2014


I'm not so sure that his feelings about women were genuine, nor the cause. I feel like they were a (mimicked) symptom. So much of what he wrote (which I didn't finish, my eyes got tired) reflected back onto the situation the feelings he claimed to have now.

And as a gay man... I find it *really* hard to believe that if what he really wanted was to get laid that he couldn't. He could walk into any club in my area gay or straight and go home with someone, regardless of his attitude. Maybe we're a bunch of whores around here?

Maybe he did really feel the way he said he felt, but I also wouldn't doubt the possibility that he maybe found a group that he could 'fit in' with as long as he said the right things. He wasn't good at any of the sports he tried (not enough to stand out), and he fell behind the trends more often than not.

While what he claims his feelings are about women are wrong, I don't think that's the ultimate cause. I think he latched onto it at some point as a reason for feeling the way he felt. So yeah, that kind of thinking needs to go the way of the Dodo... but I think I saw someone else upthread that said it could have been any other such group, and I agree.

His writing also talks of being 'bullied' and the way he described it was certainly not the way I was bullied growing up, but I can see how a person of privilege would perceive it that way.

There's just so much going on with all of this, and I don't jive with it all being blamed on his feelings towards women. And my heart goes out to the families affected, and to the friends... of every party involved... whose names are now forever tied to the event.
posted by one4themoment at 4:58 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Let's call the Isla Vista shootings what they were: misogynist extremism - by Laurie Penny
As soon as women began to speak about the massacre, a curious thing happened. Men all over the world - not all men, but enough men - began to push back, to demand that we qualify our anger and mitigate our fear. Not all men are violent misogynists.

Well, there have always been good men. Actually, I firmly believe that today there are more tolerant, humane men who recognise and celebrate the equality of the sexes than there have ever been before. Today, what I hear from many men and boys who talk to me about gender justice - decent, humane men and boys of the kind the twenty-teens are also, blessedly, producing in great numbers - is fear and bewilderment. Who are these people? Where do they live? And the unspoken fear: do I know them? Might I have met some of them, drunk with them? If the wind had changed when I was growing, if I had read different books and had different friends, might it have been me? If any man is capable of this, is every man capable of it?

Well, those are the correct questions to ask. What I hear more often, however, is “not all men”. I hear that age-old horror of women’s anger drowning out everything else. Not all men are like this. Don’t look at us. Don’t shout at us. Please, don’t ask us to stand up and be counted.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:59 PM on May 25, 2014 [27 favorites]


We had a small workplace shooting by current standards a few weeks ago in Atlanta. The father of the shooter was very open and helpful about talking to police and the media. He had no idea what had happened or why, but he freely admitted to possible mistakes in his raising of his son and joined everyone around him in being simply horrified and saddened--his only request was that people don't use his son's name, that he does not want his son to be remembered so that no one might glorify him, so that no one else might be inspired by him to do the same thing. It struck me as a remarkably sane and humane response by an absolutely devastated human being. (In keeping with that father's wishes, I'm not even going to link to the story.)

About all the misogyny, I just don't even have time or energy anymore. This is the world we live in, that I live in every single day as a woman, and it has completely worn me down long before I read this thread.
posted by hydropsyche at 5:02 PM on May 25, 2014 [25 favorites]


If you follow some of the links people here supplied you can that there are lots of other people with misogynistic views that aren't much better than his. Are those people mentally ill? If so, we have a huge problem, what are we going to do about it? But if this misogyny isn't evidence of mental illness, if it's part of our society and is (at worst) wrong-but-tolerable then we have a huge problem. What are we going to do about it?
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:05 PM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


I don't think I can risk looking at the "Manifesto," so maybe somebody can answer a couple of questions for me: is it 140 (8.5 x 11, 10/12 Microsoft Word) pages? So really huge? Were there lots of little fixations, or do blonde hair and throwing drinks at people stand out in particular?
posted by zbsachs at 5:06 PM on May 25, 2014


bringing this Rodger guy into it is like Godwinning the discussion. People might stop listening. People need to listen.

People stop listening because they don't want to hear it. In particular, men don't want to hear it unless they're willing to step back from the idea that a woman owes them something (attention? sex?) because she's female and they're male, and that a guy like Rodger is the far end of a continuum that they're on somehow. The problem is not the language but the concept.

We had a Schroedinger's Rapist discussion once here. Somebody opened the Rodger box, as it were, and found Schroedinger's Murderer.
posted by immlass at 5:10 PM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


The stepmom is a big focus, along with the changes in custody schedule... the blonde hair doesn't last long, the throwing drinks is I think a sentence... he talks about the coming and going of his various friends James being one of the biggest (whose hair is apparently regal?) and his fascination with travel and being upper class and his love of video games and escape into World of Warcraft III and WoW... (I stopped reading after a while... it's really more like 140 pages of a paperback... the format was awful... dunno if it's equivalent to 8.5x11)... If you have more questions lemme know (in essence not a lot of little fixations and a lot of pressing his current world view back onto those memories)
posted by one4themoment at 5:10 PM on May 25, 2014


I’m disinclined to view Rodger through the lens of mental illness.

Instead, I view him as evil. He’s an evil product of a fucked up culture. And it’s really too bad when he got beat up in Isla Vista that it was only his ankle that broke— because if it had been his neck the shooting spree never would have happened.

He is an expression of the values of a large section of American society, especially the Hollywood-entertainment world. There are plenty of rich, sexist bro-dudes running around Topanga date-raping women and fist bumping their way through school, and eventually, up the corporate ladder where they will oppress the shit out of everyone they possibly can, from their subordinate employees to the people whose pension funds they loot. The difference is that Rodger couldn’t succeed in that world. I don’t accept that this problem could be helped by “more access to care,” since Rodger was a guy with considerable financial resources to seek help of all kinds, from therapists to “relationship coaches.” He made a moral choice.

His writing is , as I mentioned above, white supremacist, misogynistic and also classist. What jumps out at me also is his self-hatred. He’s the son of a Malaysian Chinese mother and a British father, and yet all he can talk about is how disgusting Asian people are. He talks about how much he enjoys first class air travel, expensive food, his father’s house, and his shame at having to live in an apartment. Rodger embraced the values around him, which was a moral choice. The classism, racism and misogyny that Rodger displayed had to come from somewhere. One can’t discount the surroundings of Topanga/Malibu, and his wealthy private school classmates and their families. I have to wonder if any of Rodgers WoW playing friends ever questioned the values they were absorbing. It’s pretty clear that Rodger himself never did.

What to do about it? I find it interesting that so many people are calling for more laws, more surveillance and more aggressive law enforcement response. We’re already the leading jailer in the world. We already have a surveillance society with draconian laws and punishment. I’m curious to know how asking for more surveillance of Youtube, and asking people to dime out anyone they think is a weirdo violent misogynist is going to make this any better? Please tell me, if that’s your preferred strategy, how this isn’t going to just turn into one more way that vulnerable people are going to be targeted both by the state and by people with an axe to grind.

I want to step back too and look at the rhetoric of the “rule of law.” That’s the catch all solution right? Everyone wants more rule of law. Let’s prosecute these jerks to maximum, throw them in jail. That’ll show them.

Except…that’s what we’ve been doing since the ‘70s. We’ve increased surveillance. We’ve made stricter laws. Prosecutors have less discretion. We’ve criminalized all kinds of behavior, made prison harsher, kill more people both with the death penalty and via officer involved shootings. We have very professionalized prosecutors, and consistent law school education that ensures lawyers are all consistently indoctrinated into a common standard of practice.

The rhetoric of rule of law even extends to the MRA community, which sees itself as trying to enforce rights for men. But what are rights? In the court system, a right is something that court must allow you to do, or bar the government from doing. What this means in effective terms is that if you feel your rights are violated, you go ask a judge for a ruling. If the judge agrees, then you get an order telling the other person to give you your rights. But what’s behind the order? In almost all cases, failure to comply means that law enforcement will come out and punish you, either by taking something from you, or putting you in jail. So all this really is, is the outsourcing of violence. What that means is that people can sit back and say to themselves, I’m a nice person, I would never hurt anyone, if I have a dispute with them , I go to court and settle it like that. What goes unsaid is that it’s all backed up by violence anyways, but in a way that lets the majority of people in society to feel good about themselves as “nice” people.

What the hell does this have to do with MRA? In talking with friends who’ve been on the receiving end of MRA crazytown, it seems the MRA people really believe that they have a “right” to female affection. What their rhetoric is really saying, is that they believe that they can use violence to force a woman to pay attention to them. That’s what “rights” are really about, when you strip away the story.
posted by wuwei at 5:11 PM on May 25, 2014 [15 favorites]


And I find it odd that to me, it sounds like his dad was dating his step mom long before the divorce... but to him his dad just plucked her out of thin air...
posted by one4themoment at 5:12 PM on May 25, 2014


And I find it odd that to me, it sounds like his dad was dating his step mom long before the divorce... but to him his dad just plucked her out of thin air...

Yeah, that's another thing that makes him an unreliable narrator. Add it to the other examples upthread.
posted by palomar at 5:21 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


I’m disinclined to view Rodger through the lens of mental illness.

Instead, I view him as evil.


This is handwavium.

1) He was, obviously, diagnosed with at least one mental illness.
2) He was, obviously, delusional about a great number of things.
3) Calling something 'evil' is a really great way of not having any discussion about causes and whys and wherefores and who failed whom and how to prevent these things in the future. "Oh, he was just evil" is a nice little soundbite, but it adds not a single thing to our understanding of this tragedy. It's a wallpaper word, not an informative.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:29 PM on May 25, 2014 [13 favorites]


No. I'm refusing to give him the excuse of saying that he's mentally ill. He made moral choices, as I discussed above. I think trying to put this on mental illness is a refusal to admit that our society is wrong. We made this asshole.
posted by wuwei at 5:33 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


— I don't think I can risk looking at the "Manifesto," so maybe somebody can answer a couple of questions for me: is it 140 (8.5 x 11, 10/12 Microsoft Word) pages? So really huge? Were there lots of little fixations, or do blonde hair and throwing drinks at people stand out in particular?

— The stepmom is a big focus, along with the changes in custody schedule... the blonde hair doesn't last long, the throwing drinks is I think a sentence... he talks about the coming and going of his various friends James being one of the biggest (whose hair is apparently regal?) and his fascination with travel and being upper class and his love of video games and escape into World of Warcraft III and WoW... (I stopped reading after a while... it's really more like 140 pages of a paperback... the format was awful... dunno if it's equivalent to 8.5x11)... If you have more questions lemme know (in essence not a lot of little fixations and a lot of pressing his current world view back onto those memories)

Sorry if this seems trivializing, but these little things seem to me to be strange indicators. From what I've gleaned, he is tempted to throw his orange juice on a black kid called Chance I think it was, some friends prevent him from throwing his drink at strangers at a fast food joint, he later throws a drink at a couple in a car? And he hates Chance in particular because he was involved with a blonde, the idealized girl on the beach was a blonde, etc.

Blonde is obviously enough the most obvious expression of his obsession with race. Throwing drinks is a highly socially inappropriate gesture, especially, perhaps, from a man; his friends even stop him at one point (I can imagine them wounding him by calling it a "weak move"). In the hothouse fantasies of movies and television, his later choice of projectile is shown, by contrast, as the archetypical weapon of the strong.

Also, to those people (way upthread) who keep saying *this loser didn't even try*—it should be pointed out that this is also an upsetting aspect of our culture, where Sadie Hawkins Day is a kind of bizarro world.
posted by zbsachs at 5:36 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


I don't think anyone here has excused his actions because he was mentally ill.

Yeah, our society is wrong. Yeah, to some extent we created this asshole. And 100% yes, we need to eradicate this misogynistic rape culture yesterday.

But it's not only society; mental illness seems to be a very, very large factor here and it's very odd that you're so intent on discounting it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 5:38 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


1) He was, obviously, diagnosed with at least one mental illness.

Point of clarification. I haven't been keeping up with the latest, but I thought this is definitely NOT the case. He has been diagnosed with Asperger's, which is a developmental disorder rather than a mental illness. And as sparkletone noted upthread, there is no known connection between Asperger's and violence, or Asperger's and any of the hatred he espoused.
posted by naju at 5:40 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm sorry? Could you be more specific about what you find odd about my comment?
posted by wuwei at 5:41 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The thing, for me, is that even if you believed every vile nugget of his 'ideology', going on a murder spree and then killing yourself would still not be anything approaching a rational course of action. It's not as if he starts from terrible, immoral premises and ends up at their natural conclusion-- rather, he starts from terrible, immoral premises and ends up at a course of action that is totally irrational even in his own worldview.
posted by Pyry at 5:43 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


ends up at a course of action that is totally irrational even in his own worldview.

It's a rational course of action if you consider this an act of terrorism -- he certainly wouldn't be the first terrorist to martyr himself to advance an ideology.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:50 PM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


The interesting thing to me (in a giant mess of ew, gross) is the I'm most deserving/I'll never get it so why bother even trying tension.

For example, the girl that smiled at him on the beach - I guess instead of smiling she was supposed to beg him to let her blow him or something. But later he feels like she would never have liked him anyway and doesn't even kick himself for not saying hi. In spite of all his superior, alpha male bluster, he suspects deep down he's unlikeable.

I also think Wong gets it slightly wrong in this specific case in the Cracked article. It's not even that he was promised 'A' beautiful girl to live happily ever after with. It's that there is a fundamental score, a single measure of success in life. His measure of success was about how many women were willing to offer him sex. [Which, IME, isn't that unusual for men in their 20s]

It was always about competition with other men. Getting laid once in a while would not have been enough. A beautiful woman who adored him would not have been enough. There would always be someone getting laid more or with a more beautiful woman. He hated women because they were the corrupt authority figures, the cheating referees, giving goals to the undeserving team.

So while I think he was definitely misogynist, and casual misogyny is a thing, and I've been reading #yesallwomen all day long and thinking right on!, I think his main problem was the obsession with needing the "score" to be fair combined with his narcissist belief that he was better than everyone else. What he needed wasn't a dose of #yesallwomen "women are people too," it was "life is not a strict competition, sex is not the score, and besides, you are not that special."
posted by ctmf at 5:50 PM on May 25, 2014 [15 favorites]


One can be irrational and yet not be mentally ill.
posted by St. Alia of the Bunnies at 5:52 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Thanks, Western capitalist society, for programming our youth this way. Top job, it's working good.
posted by turbid dahlia at 6:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


One can be irrational and yet not be mentally ill.

One can also be irrational and mentally ill, and still be a moral actor, and thus be considered morally and legally responsible for criminal actions.

The bar of mental illness at which people are no longer considered able to act as moral agents - where an affirmative defence of "not guilty by reason of insanity" can be offered and agreed by the jury - is generally high.

Guilty but mentally ill, or diminished capacity (the Twinkie defence mentioned above, where diminished mental faculties make premeditation impossible) are guilty pleas, accepting culpability but asking for an impaired state caused by mental illness to be taken into account in sentencing.

(Obviously, the law varies hugely from geography to geography, but California AFAIK has no provision for a "guilty but mentally ill plea", does famously have a diminished capacity plea, and uses a relatively broad definition of insanity, where the defendant has to prove either that they did not know what they were doing, or did not understand that what they were doing was wrong - so, was experiencing a break with reality beyond simply having a skewed and unrealistic view of it.)

Since this case will never go to trial, and Rodger will never be examined by a psychiatrist attempting specifically to evaluate whether he was criminally insane, or has/had diminished capacity at the time, the mental illness avenue is a hypothetical based on currently limited information and a rambling "manifesto". However, it does seem that at least while he was making videos and writing screeds that he understood what he was planning to do, and that he understood that what he was planning to do was illegal, and he was not being made to do it by any other force than his own desire for revenge.

However, there are circumstances where a multiple murderer has been apprehended, and has stood trial, and has been considered both sane and culpable - most notably the case of Anders Behring Breivik. Morally repugnant, legally culpable and mentally ill are not in any way necessarily exclusive of each other.
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:33 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


A mental disorder is a syndrome characterized by clinically significant disturbance in an individual's cognition, emotion regulation, or behavior that reflects a dysfunction in the psychological, biological, or developmental processes underlying mental functioning. Mental disorders are usually associated with significant distress in social, occupational, or other important activities. An expectable or culturally approved response to a common stressor or loss, such as the death of a loved one, is not a mental disorder. Socially deviant behavior (e.g., political, religious, or sexual) and conflicts that are primarily between the individual and society are not mental disorders unless the deviance or conflict results from a dysfunction in the individual, as described above.

Ok, look... I get that quoting from the DSM is great when defining a mental illness, but so is actually reading it.

Under the definition of the DSM, he wasn't mentally ill; his thoughts and actions are consistent with a misogynistic culture, much like his belief that he could win the lottery is not a delusion but rather a cultural trope. In several cultural sub-groups, the men who speak violence against women and perpetrate violence against women are praised and the men who murder are considered martyrs for the cause of equality. The people blamed by those sub-groups are women, and the message is clear - none of you are safe.

And outside of those sub-groups a thousand apologies and he was just 'mentally ill', and a thousand minimizations of women when they say "I don't feel safe" and a thousand untested rape kits all reinforce who is really important.

Misogynistic thoughts about how women are the gatekeepers for sex and should give men sex, and are teases so men should take sex from them is an expected response to the common stressor of not getting the sex one wants if one is male. They are the frequent topic of comedy shows and routines, and women who object are "humorless". Women frequently receive violent threats for refusing sexual advances from strangers, and usually are asked what they were wearing if they talk about it.

Domestic violence is common, and often believed to be the fault of the women who are beaten (men who are beaten are usually mocked or ignored). People killing their partners is also common; I think the stats in the US are three dead women and one dead man a day, on average. Lots of people murder without being diagnosed with a mental illness.

His thoughts and words all all within the bounds of the society that exists in police reports, restraining orders, and murder statistics. It's the society that exists every time a woman warns another woman against an important man because he "keeps refilling your glass" and "gets handsy" if you're alone with him. It's in the warnings about what streets and school hallways to avoid. It's in the avoiding of those places by women being viewed as normal and expected, instead of unusual and odd. It's violent and anti-social, and it warps peoples lives, but it isn't mental illness.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:48 PM on May 25, 2014 [36 favorites]


Deoridhe and others have pointed out a key thing: violent rhetoric and direct threats of sexual assault and murder are just considered the normal thing for any woman with a public internet presence to endure. People (mostly men) are desperately trying to paint this guy's opinions as extreme, but they are well within the normal background range. I pointed out earlier that Vox Day, hero of the SF right wing, is barely a degree off this guy -- he's said the women should be stripped of the right to vote, kicked out of universities, that if a woman has sex outside of marriage that anyone should be free to rape her, that the government should supply all men with sex bots, etc. Yet a major SF publisher is happy to be on a Hugo slate designed to support him.

Rodger wasn't nuts, he was the logical outcome of a culture of violent misogyny that is tolerated and coddled.
posted by tavella at 6:52 PM on May 25, 2014 [50 favorites]


Under the definition of the DSM, he wasn't mentally ill

You have changed the subject. This is not why the DSM-5 had entered the conversation. We had been discussing the general rate of mental illness among spree killers and mass murderers, and how we could or could not determine such a thing. I was not talking about a wild diagnosis for this particular person. A wild diagnosis for this particular person has no bearing on whether 30% of mass/spree killers being diagnosed as mentally ill before they had committed their crimes is responsive to the question of whether or not those killers were mentally ill at the time they had committed their crimes.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:24 PM on May 25, 2014


zbsachs, the most striking thing about the memoir to me (and my father, who read it over my shoulder-- we've lived in some of the less $$$ neighborhoods in the West Valley and were morbidly fascinated to recognize malls and landmarks) was that it was 140+ pages full of repetition and fixations. He lists place and brand names, is heavily repetitive (phrases like 'exquisite" for food and "beautiful blonde girlfriend" for women get a lot of play). I worry this will sound cliched to the point of being disrespectful, but tone and repetitive language are REALLY A LOT like Bret Easton Ellis' writing, particularly American Psycho but also Less Than Zero, which takes place in the same peer group and the same city. Also, do you remember the parts of American Psycho where Patrick uses mimicry to try to sound either cultured or like a normal person, and fails completely? The music or pop culture reviews where he's trying to approximate what a normal person would say about some work of media that they like? There's a lot of that going on.

The thing that jumped out to both me and my father was the indiscriminate listing-- he writes like a very young child, dumping huge amounts of information without being able to really process them or tie them together. "And then we drove to the school and then we picked up my sister in my mom's new car and then we drove home and then we had snack and snack was peanut butter crackers," that kind of shit. My father's observation was that he didn't seem capable of making generalizations, summaries, or abstract concepts. In fact the ONLY abstract idea in the whole thing is the "revelation" that women are evil and withholding sex from him. He goes for most of his life viewing "beautiful blonde girlfriends" as the ultimate accessory that mark the worthy vs inferior men, and curses the universe for its unfairness at denying him one. And then, when he's around 21 and driving back and forth across the CA/AZ border weeping hysterically and obsessively trying to win the lottery, he realizes that women aren't objects or prizes that will be awarded to the coolest kids. They're people, with agency, and that means that they're with other men and not him because they've CHOSEN not to be with him. This is when the switch flips, and the objects of his rage stop being the other men around him, who he resents for being the unfair recipients of hot blonde girlfriends, and starts really really hating and blaming women. Because it hadn't occurred to him that they had been choosing, this entire time, and they hadn't been choosing him.

There's also, as other posters have noted, a lot of unreliable narration-- he never seems to pick up on the fact that his father had been dating his stepmother for some time before his parents' divorce, and there's other stuff that to me says volumes. I actually disagree with wuwei that he was normal for Topanga/Calabasas boys-- when someone from his family background graduates high school and the family has NO expectation that they'll get a job, or go to school other than one or two perfunctory community college classes, or do anything other than sit around playing WOW, that's usually a sign that there's been something wrong with that kid for quite a while and the family has long since reconciled to the idea that they are not really capable of being an independent, functioning adult.

Pardon the glibness, the neighborhood familiarity is REALLY creeping me out.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:25 PM on May 25, 2014 [58 favorites]


I pointed out earlier that Vox Day, hero of the SF right wing, is barely a degree off this guy -- he's said the women should be stripped of the right to vote, kicked out of universities, that if a woman has sex outside of marriage that anyone should be free to rape her, that the government should supply all men with sex bots, etc.

Ok, but which of these are logical outcomes for Vox Day given his beliefs:
A) Vox Day rapes one or more people.
B) Vox Day donates money to misogynistic causes.
C) Vox Day votes against the interests of women.
D) Vox Day kills his roommates, goes on a drive-by-shooting spree, and then kills himself.

I would say A,B, and C are logical (expectable) outcomes, while D is not.
posted by Pyry at 7:27 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


wow I was going to comment again but moonlight hit most of my major points...
posted by one4themoment at 7:32 PM on May 25, 2014


While it isn't super statistically likely that Vox Day will do #4 specifically, he normalizes A-C for his fan base and makes it increasingly likely that one of them will do D. Also, it is basically inevitable that they're already doing A-C, and society is pretty much okay with that and doesn't really do anything about it.
posted by NoraReed at 7:37 PM on May 25, 2014 [31 favorites]


One last point... am I the only one that gets the gay vibe? Like he was overcompensating to the point of what happened?

I hate to bring it up but... after reading and watching the videos and... I just get the vibe...

Is there any history of his parents stance on such an issue? As in this was a last I tried your way and I failed kind of deal? Could that be the reason for the unreliable narration? Could he be leaving out significant details that would point to such?
posted by one4themoment at 7:39 PM on May 25, 2014


No, Fox News also got the gay vibe. I don't see it, and I think it's just throwing theories at the wall to see what sticks, but there you go.
posted by palomar at 7:44 PM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


... *shrugs* I don't watch tv only NetFlix... but I totally got the vibe from his Internet presence... What did Fox say about it? Memail me if you want to keep it out of the thread but I'm genuinely curious.
posted by one4themoment at 7:49 PM on May 25, 2014


one4themoment, I didn't get a gay or bi vibe from him, no. He is super sexually fixated on women, and outside the "King Arthur haircut" thing about his kindergarten friend, only seems to register other men and their appearances when he spots them as part of hetero couples and ranks himself as either superior or inferior to them, then has a covetous-of-blonde-girlfriend meltdown.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 7:50 PM on May 25, 2014


There is a note somewhere that he lived in a supported apartment, not independently. He writes about crying for long periods frequently without any sense social stigma about it - a girl in his class smiled at her boyfriend and ignored him so he goes to the bathroom and sobs for an hour. He cries in front of his family and it's not a sense of grief crying, but of a very short emotional range. There is no awareness of other people's pain except as justice. He's just blank.

I saw no hints of homosexuality. He was not particularly sexual, more possessive. Sex wasn't about pleasure but desire of women for him. He liked food and pretty objects, but cost and relative status mattered most.

He didn't seem to enjoy other people's pain or pleasure particularly. Only how it ranked up in status. The Bateman comparison is very apt.

I keep thinking about his mother. I am in much much slighter similar circumstances but close enough to know that in some universe, I might have been in that small horrific club. But not that small - all the parents who've raised murderers and rapists and spree killers. His brother and sister. When you are the victim of violence, it's a tragedy but you have a path to follow. When your family member has caused this tragedy - where do you go?

He planned to kill himself, drugs and gunshot, because he did not want to be in prison.

Also his parents called 911 as soon as they read the first sentences of the manifesto he emailed to them. Friends of the family tried to help him. So much help.

This is unusual in how much help he did get and how well he evaded that help. It's terrifying.
posted by viggorlijah at 7:54 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


You can do a Google search for Fox News's reports on this story and see what they said pretty easily. I honestly don't enjoy hunting for the bullshit they say so I'm sorry I can't do it for you.
posted by palomar at 7:56 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's been almost exactly 20 years since Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. I was shocked at the time that the crime was not seen as primarily about domestic abuse, The women I knew seemed to be divided strictly on racial lines about the verdict and the men didn't care about her death.

When misogyny flies under the radar, as it did in that case, it becomes more entrenched in our culture. This is just one of the reasons so many of us are arguing here for full recognition of the role misogyny played in these California murders. Comment after comment in this thread, among the best of the best on the web, has stressed the intersectionality of factors and the continuum of misogyny underlying the behavior that erupted there. Again and again, someone has sought to downplay the role of misogyny.

Over the last few decades we have seen our culture change, to some it seemingly turned on a dime, about gays in the military, same sex marriage, mainstream acceptance of LGBT people. This has happened despite the efforts of Tea Party and the Religious Right. The tide has turned when even the Boy Scouts of America have reversed course and are now saying they'd have no problem with gay scout leaders. Women, it sometimes seems, are the last legitimate target.

For anyone following the dismantling of access to abortion, the rhetoric is married to misogynistic rant. The steady stream of misogyny online is palpable.

I believe that young people will make this world different for women as has already happened to a great extent for people of color and LGBT people. I know those job are not done yet--might never be, but it is better, vastly better. I also believe a great many deaths were at the heart of what caused society to change its mind on both of those fronts. Deaths of civil rights activists as well as multitudes of black martyrs in this country on the one hand and gay, lesbian and trans victims of hate crimes as well as a generation decimated by AIDS on the other.

We women speak and shout because this is happening to us and we fear if you don't listen and help make the story different for men and boys, it will just keep on getting worse for women and girls and it won't stop until many more people are killed.

What is important is to take away from this conversation some bit of enlightenment about what one can do to fully see this ubiquitous misogyny and to begin to change it. It's hearts and minds time and we are the people who can speak out. Nothing changes on the national stage until it changes in our hearts and minds. We can think and we can speak. It makes a difference to do so.
posted by Anitanola at 7:59 PM on May 25, 2014 [35 favorites]


moonlight on vermont,
I should have been a little clearer. What I was trying to say was that Rodger had attitudes that seemed to me to be consistent with his wealthy upbringing and philandering father. As you pointed out, his father was probably seeing the second wife before he divorced the shooter's mother.

viggorlijah,
That's why I say this was an evil/moral choice problem. Rodger had every advantage in terms of access to help. Sure, his family situation may have been ugly. But he had access to mental health care. He had people in his life who were trying to pull him out of the mental corner he put himself in. But he chose not to take that help.
posted by wuwei at 8:01 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


"It's interesting, 'cause he seems gay" is the first thing someone I work with wrote back to me when I sent along the main video. My gaydar hadn't gone off, but I admitted it might've been overwhelmed by my bad actor radar. (It seems strange to me that his laugh is being called "crazy" when to me it seems to be so clearly a misguided affectation. If that video were part of a movie you would write it off as hopelessly amateur.)

In any case, I kind of think it's a distraction from the way this whole event points toward the violence and rage bubbling up underneath a culture of misogyny that implicates and/or threatens all of us. (And I'm...suspicious of what seems to push a good number of commenters -- less here than elsewhere -- toward a weird legalistic denial of that.)
posted by nobody at 8:04 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


But he chose not to take that help.

Most likely he didn't believe he needed it; that is a major problem in treating certain personality disorders. Look at his manifesto--he's the only sane person in a world gone crazy, according to him.

Why would he take any help if that is his worldview? Mental illness, and treating mental illness, are a hell of a lot more complicated than just "He had access to help."

I'm in Canada. Healthcare is free, including mental healthcare (though the waiting lists, oy...). There are crisis lines. Etc etc. And yet, I've attempted suicide twice in the last 12 months. I have access to amazing care, a case worker who's actually invested in my well-being, phone numbers of crisis lines memorized, and an upstairs neighbour whose door I can knock on any time day or night if I'm having a crisis.

And yet, two months ago--to the day, in fact--I swallowed every pill I had. I didn't seek out help, even though it was ready and waiting for me. You know why?

Because I didn't want help. And I don't have the delusions and sense of entitlement he did. He had no reason to seek help, because he didn't believe there was anything wrong with him.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:17 PM on May 25, 2014 [16 favorites]


Wuwei, I don't think he had the ability to make that choice or see it as a choice. In his narrative, morality doesn't appear. He makes no references to moral acts beyond social status and power. He repeatedly writes that his mother disappoints him by not forcing herself to marry a wealthy man who she does not love because this means less wealth for him. He does not see why she brings up her happiness or love at all.

He may understand theoretically and follow social rules of morality, but they are externally imposed without empathy.

Can you be evil if you have no sense of good or evil? His misogyny and hate for everyone is also - it certainly comes from the cultural stew he's in. He sought out a structure to view the world as he understood it and MRA fit perfectly. But he is an outlier both for his extreme lack of empathy and his access to support and help.
posted by viggorlijah at 8:25 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Interesting point. I keep thinking about how he rescued his little brother (or some other kid) from drowning at one point. To me that seems like a moral intuition. He was by his own admission not a very physical guy, but he jumped into a pool to stop someone from drowning. It's obvious to me at the end though that he had gone to a dark place where he was willing to kill his 6 year old brother, Jazz, to prevent him from one day enjoying life. God that was the worst part of the entire manifesto to me, because it so clearly signaled a person with no emotional ties at all.

Kids take time to develop morality and it seems to me at some point Rodgers clearly did not get there.
posted by wuwei at 8:34 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


The idea that this is a failure of 'the system' seems to be the most logical fit here, to my mind.

This phrasing assumes that the system's design deals with this sort of problem, and I think a lot of people would argue that it simply does not. Every time the question of untreated mentally I'll folks comes up here I suggest Pete Early's fantastic book CRAZY. This time will be no different.

It's a hard read, but an important one. Early opens with the story of trying to get his son committed because he's off his meds and, his family believes, a danger to himself. This was in Virginia, where a decade-plus later Deeds's son would be turned away from treatment because of a lack of a bed. (Or, in fact, lack of awareness of an available bed) It never seems to get any better,

Early covers in detail how much the criminal justice system has become how we cope with the mentally ill and explores the changes to commitment and care that got us here. It's a fascinating reveal that none of the people whose legal challenges led us to this point thought this is how it would roll out. They thought that when the ability to forcibly warehouse people indefinitely was removed that OF COURSE the system would wise up and get people the real care they needed.

It's a sobering lesson that "fuck it, burn it down, the replacement couldn't be any worse" often reflects a failure of imagination in just how bad things really can be.
posted by phearlez at 8:34 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


naju: (quoting an article from Medium) "'here’s a shot of the poison that just killed seven people. Drink up.'”"

With regards to this event, I've been following only the discussion in this thread and had not yet clicked through on any links so you can imagine my surprise upon finally doing so and encountering one of my photographs being used as the header image for that Medium piece.

Even being associated with this event in such a tangential manner leaves me feeling unclean. At least I agree with the bulk of Zimmerman's message.
posted by komara at 8:38 PM on May 25, 2014 [2 favorites]


And I'm...suspicious of what seems to push a good number of commenters -- less here than elsewhere -- toward a weird legalistic denial of that.

Well, I guess the difference is whether you see this as an extension of a culture of misogyny, or whether you see it as part of a different pattern of violence (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook). So while I can see the merit in the argument that a culture of misogyny normalizes violence and thereby increases the likelihood of this type of extreme event, personally I think this fits more strongly into a pattern of school shootings in which the circumstances are similar but in which there is surprisingly little commonality among the self-professed motivations of the perpetrators.
posted by Pyry at 8:42 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


I did a cursory search for fox on the whole gay angle and didn't find anything on any of their main pages. Were you implying that I was repeating fox news rhetoric or were you implying that I had come to the same conclusion as them? I see you've gotten three favorites palomar about how it's not your responsibility to google for me, and yet I presented my honest opinion unbiased of news reports... but based on first hand accounts (his writing and his videos). So please provide the Fox evidence. I *honestly* want to hear what they had to say.
posted by one4themoment at 8:44 PM on May 25, 2014


Dude...seriously?
posted by Hildegarde at 8:49 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


Dude.. fox news guest? And why on earth would I search for Fox Gay I already know how they feel. *I'm* gay.
posted by one4themoment at 8:53 PM on May 25, 2014


It's the top news story. It's right there. It's extremely easy to find. You don't need palomar to find it for you.
posted by Hildegarde at 8:58 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


And if that's all you've got, Dr Ludwig... I'm sorry to everyone here for saying it, but she's right. He could have been jealous that none of the men chose him. He seriously could have. I have been there. That's why I want to know WHY he was seeing so many people about his mental problems.
posted by one4themoment at 8:59 PM on May 25, 2014


Stop asking everyone to do your homework for you, it wasn't cute in 5th grade and it's not cute now.
posted by elizardbits at 8:59 PM on May 25, 2014 [18 favorites]


I'm not sure his sexual preferences for gender even really matter. He is relating to the world as objects and formulas. Nothing is dynamic. It's him doing the right thing and what should in his head happen next never happens because his equation completely lacks humanity.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:00 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm not asking anyone to do my homework for me... I'm sorry that "fox gay" brings up the story when "fox news elliot rogers gay" doesn't...

And yeah it does actually matter if he was in the programs he was in to try to reverse that...
posted by one4themoment at 9:02 PM on May 25, 2014


What matters is that he could have been trying to convince himself and everyone else that he was heterosexual when he wasn't... and that could have been the ultimate cause... but everyone here is focusing on the whole misogyny thing... which while a problem doesn't seem to be the main cause... but nobody wants to hear it... read about how he revered the female role models in his life... don't just assume that his final words were what he really felt in actuality.
posted by one4themoment at 9:09 PM on May 25, 2014


Well, I guess the difference is whether you see this as an extension of a culture of misogyny, or whether you see it as part of a different pattern of violence (Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook) ... think this fits more strongly into a pattern of school shootings in which the circumstances are similar but in which there is surprisingly little commonality among the self-professed motivations of the perpetrators.

The self-professed motivations are irrelevant. The commonality is young, angry men, lashing out at a world that hasn't given them the things they feel they deserve.

But I don't see any dichotomy between 'extension of a culture of misogyny' or 'different pattern of violence.' Misogynistic culture (in the global sense as well as in the very intimate MRA/PUA crowd) planted the seeds for this to happen. Echo-chambery (anti)PUA forums watered that particular poisoned plant, and a combination of some sort of mental illness and easy access to firearms were its tragic fruit.

This horrific thing happened at the intersection of a whole bunch of broken society, the misogyny so prevalent in our society, mental illness, failure of authorities to investigate some truly terrifying videos properly (I mean seriously, the therapy team was concerned enough to alert the cops for a wellness check, and didn't follow up?), entitlement, and easy access to firearms.

Any single one of those problems could have been prevented, and seven people would still be alive today. There are a multitude of approaches to take to solve these messes, and the best part is they're all necessary. Rape culture as a whole needs to be attacked--from the inside, by men, standing up for what's right. Cops need to do better with wellness checks--why wasn't there at least a social worker along for the ride? And so on and so forth.

FWIW I haven't gotten a gay 'vibe' from him at all.

but everyone here is focusing on the whole misogyny thing... which while a problem doesn't seem to be the main cause

Misogyny absolutely is one of the main causes here. It's kind of baffling that you can read this thread and then come out with that statement. If misogyny wasn't the main cause, what was?

don't just assume that his final words were what he really felt in actuality.

say what now
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:14 PM on May 25, 2014 [17 favorites]


It's been a crazy weekend (I graduated from law school, y'all!) but I wanted to tell you about Isla Vista. I'm a UCSB alum, I guess I just want to let you know/remind you that IV is a real place. I'm old now. I graduated from UCSB in 2002. A year earlier, David Attais used his car as a weapon on a busy Saturday night and killed four people. But IV stayed IV. IV is dirty, expensive, gross, and loud. It's one big housing department violation. The bluffs are eroding and the stilts that keep the ocean-side Del Playa homes standing are going with them. The rent is out of this world expensive and there's no place to park. Here's an excerpt from the Santa Barbara Independent that explains a lot, but not all, of IV's problems:
To an exceptional degree, Isla Vista — about a square mile of densely packed and hormonally charged humanity — has always been notably disconnected from any broader urban context, a municipal orphan disowned and disavowed by any government agencies that might possibly play the role of foster parent. In fact, when the City of Goleta incorporated about 10 years ago, its founders took pains to exclude Isla Vista from the boundaries for fear that UCSB students would become enfranchised, take over the government, and enact some form of rent control.
Every generation of graduates will tell you IV was "cooler back then". By the time I lived there, there was a BofA ATM (students burnt down the actual bank during Vietnam protests) and the fire department was religious in its couch patrol, soaking any couches left on curbs with water because couch bringing was a sport. But I never locked my doors. I lived about 40 feet from the ocean. Parties thrown by Del Playa residents were free and everyone was invited. You'd walk from front lawn party to front lawn party in the middle of the street. You walk wiith your red solo cup turned upside down-hopefully avoiding a "minor in possession" charge by IV Foot Patrol (Sheriff's Dept). Like most small towns, IV ends up in the news mostly when something has gone horribly wrong. IV will always have problems. It's a town of huge houses and open air apartment complexes, where the balconies, alleys and front lawns are just extensions of kids' homes. It's almost exclusively populated with 18-22 year olds who age in and out every year. And for its very long list of faults, it was magical.
posted by atomicstone at 9:15 PM on May 25, 2014 [9 favorites]


Here, some reporting on bullshit reporting: 'Homosexual Impulses' Cause Of Santa Barbara Shooter's Killing Spree Suggests Fox News Expert
posted by nicebookrack at 9:16 PM on May 25, 2014


What matters is that he could have been trying to convince himself and everyone else that he was heterosexual when he wasn't... and that could have been the ultimate cause... but everyone here is focusing on the whole misogyny thing... which while a problem doesn't seem to be the main cause... but nobody wants to hear it... read about how he revered the female role models in his life... don't just assume that his final words were what he really felt in actuality.

Unlike you, I'm not a mind reader and tend to believe when someone writes an entire novella on their motivations that they aren't in fact concealing their real agenda behind some bullshit story only you and fox news have concocted.
posted by winna at 9:20 PM on May 25, 2014 [40 favorites]


One4 there had been documentation that this guy subscribed and actively participated in online communities that supported misogyny. And now here we are with repressed homesexual urges have him this terrible conflict and that's why he did it. Please. Fox is just spinning the sinner angle. Because a white male that fits in with patriarchy and hasn't had sex before marriage really is to close to their ideal .
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:21 PM on May 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


Plus then they get to blame the gays and avoid calling a white man a terrorist or having to use the words 'hate crime.'

God I fucking hate Fox.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:22 PM on May 25, 2014 [14 favorites]


Ugh.

He must be a repressed homosexual. Totally ignoring the misogyny. Gross. It would be funny if it weren't so sad.
posted by futz at 9:23 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Let us know when being a gay man who doesn't watch Fox news makes you an expert on the mindset of a 22 year old dude with asperger's and god knows what else who makes a bunch of videos about not being able to get a girlfriend, joins a bunch of men's rights comms for dudes who can't bag a lady, and then commits premeditated mass murder.
posted by Hildegarde at 9:31 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


"Unlike you, I'm not a mind reader and tend to believe when someone writes an entire novella on their motivations that they aren't in fact concealing their real agenda..."

But, we have established that he's an unreliable narrator. Of course the fact that he's dead precludes anyone from definitively establishing any motive other than what he explicitly spelled out in his manifesto and videos.
posted by MikeMc at 9:31 PM on May 25, 2014


Mod note: Folks, let's please quit the examination of one4themoment's opinions and knowledge. Thanks.
posted by restless_nomad (staff) at 9:33 PM on May 25, 2014


About the unreliable narrator thing.

Everybody is an unreliable narrator. We all have beliefs and values and world experiences that impact our interpretation of the world.

He had no self awareness and doesn't understand causality. He has no empathy and objectified women and men. He places everyone on a scale of prestige and value.

His narration of his perspective is actually quite clear. He states his point of view and his reasons and tells everyone this is why.

It doesn't make sense to most (hopefully all) of us. It shouldn't. Because he is missing so much and his perception is skewed. But in terms of him explaining his point of view his motives and reasons he is reliable.
posted by AlexiaSky at 9:45 PM on May 25, 2014 [4 favorites]


Why was my comment deleted? I honestly did not understand who one4 was responding to. It was a genuine question.
posted by futz at 9:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


futz, a lot of one4's comments were also deleted - your question would have been out of context.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:49 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Christ. I just glanced through the manifesto and am echoing the above observations that this is definitely heavily inspired by Bret Easton Ellis and Catcher in the Rye.

I haven't read into the whole story of this awful state of affairs, but I would be very surprised if he waited 141 pages before releasing this to somebody. Any info on who might have read this before it was widely distributed?
posted by turbid dahlia at 10:11 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


What matters is that he could have been trying to convince himself and everyone else that he was heterosexual when he wasn't... and that could have been the ultimate cause... but everyone here is focusing on the whole misogyny thing... which while a problem doesn't seem to be the main cause... but nobody wants to hear it... read about how he revered the female role models in his life... don't just assume that his final words were what he really felt in actuality.

You are perhaps unfamiliar with the idea that Homophobia is a Weapon of Sexism (.pdf). This is a book by Suzanne Pharr, which talks about how not wanting to be or be seen as gay - about why being gay (especially being a gay man) is bad is a thing that has its roots in sexism. Because being gay is the like being a woman. Worse, actually - being female, which is both a biological and social status that is inferior; in sexual terms (the only ones that really matter), it means being fucked, not being the one who performs the fucking. Receiving is passive, and therefore bad.

Misogyny is not somehow the opposite of being gay. They are not unrelated. They are intimately connected. Someone who is afraid - profoundly, violently afraid - of being (seen as) gay is going to hold deeply, profoundly, violently negative feelings about things associated with being (seen as) female and (things seen as associated with) womanhood.
posted by rtha at 10:16 PM on May 25, 2014 [40 favorites]


turbid dahlia: "I haven't read into the whole story of this awful state of affairs, but I would be very surprised if he waited 141 pages before releasing this to somebody. Any info on who might have read this before it was widely distributed?"

Well, he e-mailed it to his parents (who called 911 and started driving to IV to look for him), one of his therapists, a TV station, and a bunch of other people in the couple of hours before he started killing people, but given that the manifesto talks about how terrible it would have been if his "writings" had been found during the welfare check in April, I think he probably kept this as a big secret. (I haven't read the manifesto and plan not to; this is just gleaned from the CNN piece and a tweet someone linked above.)
posted by gingerest at 10:23 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Misogyny is not somehow the opposite of being gay.

Ach, missed the edit window. Thanks to a bad cut-n-paste, this should have read:

Misogyny is not somehow the opposite of afraid of being gay.
posted by rtha at 10:26 PM on May 25, 2014


That's kind of my point... what would you latch on to if you were vehemently trying to not be perceived as gay?
posted by one4themoment at 10:33 PM on May 25, 2014


Well, I don't think it would be my hatred of and disgust with the opposite sex.
posted by gingerbeer at 10:37 PM on May 25, 2014 [10 favorites]


And now "Roosh" of PUA-land who says:

We live in a society where being shy, normal, or a little awkward is duly punished by entitled American women who have been encouraged to pursue exciting and fun casual sex in their prime with sexy and hot men as a way of ‘experimentation.’””

He then explains when women have “passed their physical prime” they then select a “nice guy” with whom to settle down, with the understanding that he is “expected to keep his mouth shut when a trickle flow of informational torture reveals that his bride-to-be has experienced more than a dozen different penises in her vagina, anus, and mouth—the same mouth that is supposed to kiss his future children good night.”

I mean, this guy is basically saying that he could have helped the killer because he knew more successful methods for getting women, but I don't see a hair's worth of difference between them otherwise. Is Roosh insane? Or just filled with hate?
posted by emjaybee at 10:46 PM on May 25, 2014 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Hey guys -- as always, bringing over the most awful stuff you can find online to repeat here really isn't great.
posted by taz (staff) at 10:50 PM on May 25, 2014 [12 favorites]


mjb, a big problem I've been seeing in the discussion of Rodgers' hate vs Rodgers' mental illness is the idea that his misogyny was so extreme that it should, by itself, qualify as a symptom of mental impairment. I think this is obvious denial and apologism, and it's obfuscating the real discussion about the role the exact same tenets play in countless incidents of abuse, even if they never escalate to mass killings. Roosh is filled with hate rather than insane because he is, afaik, capable of functioning on his own in society, he hasn't committed any felony hate crimes lately, hasn't spent most of his adult life weeping in public in response to watching couples socialize, and isn't dodging his psychiatrist's recommendation of powerful antipsychotics. These are the factors that make me say that Rodger was disturbed as well as being violent, not his hatred of women.
posted by moonlight on vermont at 10:53 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


But I don't see any dichotomy between 'extension of a culture of misogyny' or 'different pattern of violence.' Misogynistic culture (in the global sense as well as in the very intimate MRA/PUA crowd) planted the seeds for this to happen. Echo-chambery (anti)PUA forums watered that particular poisoned plant, and a combination of some sort of mental illness and easy access to firearms were its tragic fruit.

Well, that's the big question, isn't it? If Rodger had never found the MRA crowd, would this massacre have been averted, or would it have still occurred but under a different rationale? Was misogyny the seed of this tragedy, or was it simply a mask of hate he put on to try to give legitimacy to his rampage?

In the long list of school shootings the motives have rarely been straightforward. After Columbine the nation was caught up debating whether it was bullying, video games, or perhaps music that drove them to kill. After Virginia Tech the debate was on bullying and mental health. The motives for Sandy Hook remain completely opaque.

I think the reason no comprehensible motives are to be found is because there actually are no motives beyond the killing sprees themselves. The rampage becomes an end in itself, and everything else is part of the narrative the killer tries to build around himself, his self-mythology.

A number of people have remarked on the somewhat, well, scripted affect of Rodger's words and mannerisms. I suspect this is because in a way it is scripted, he is acting according to an internalized mass murderer script that he has seen played out in the media time and time again. He hews so closely to the script that, consciously or not, he picks the exact same guns (a Glock and a Sig Sauer P226) as Adam Lanza, who in turn modeled his killing spree on Columbine.
posted by Pyry at 10:54 PM on May 25, 2014 [5 favorites]


He hews so closely to the script that, consciously or not, he picks the exact same guns (a Glock and a Sig Sauer P226) as Adam Lanza, who in turn modeled his killing spree on Columbine.

Eh, I wouldn't read too much into his choices of specific guns other than those are both really popular models -- I think most people I know own one or the other. (I'm a Kahr P9 gal myself, but I have little girly hands.)
posted by Jacqueline at 11:02 PM on May 25, 2014


I would definitely agree that our obsession with serial killers/making them famous has an influence. Isn't the Scary Serial Killer also a masculine power fantasy (for a sick subsection of people)? If you can't be the hero, you can be the villain; either way you are more powerful than the rest. Female serial killers don't get the same kind of treatment, most of the time.

I'm not sure how we could approach/report on serial killers that wouldn't continue to feed into this dynamic, though.
posted by emjaybee at 11:03 PM on May 25, 2014


(just wanted to clarify per a discussion with taz that the Roosh link wasn't just "behold the endless amount of shit out there" thing but about the idea that extreme misogyny=mental illness since Roosh is not known to be mentally ill. But I think moonlight on vermont's response took it there already, so thanks moonlight.)
posted by emjaybee at 11:06 PM on May 25, 2014 [1 favorite]


Eh, I wouldn't read too much into his choices of specific guns other than those are both really popular models -- I think most people I know own one or the other. (I'm a Kahr P9 gal myself, but I have little girly hands.)

I wouldn't be surprised if it's a coincidence. But on the other hand, the chance of picking the exact same two guns has got to be pretty low (he even remarks how expensive the Sig Sauer was!), and I have the feeling that it was intended as a kind of perverse homage to Adam Lanza. (Christ, what a fucked up thought).
posted by Pyry at 11:13 PM on May 25, 2014


But on the other hand, the chance of picking the exact same two guns has got to be pretty low...

Not really. "Which handgun should I get -- Glock or Sig Sauer?" is a perennial debate in defensive carry circles (my husband has a Glock and my brother has a Sig Sauer), so it's not surprising that someone obsessed with status and having the best of everything would answer "Why not both?" to that question.
posted by Jacqueline at 11:26 PM on May 25, 2014 [6 favorites]


Pyry: "Well, that's the big question, isn't it? If Rodger had never found the MRA crowd, would this massacre have been averted, or would it have still occurred but under a different rationale?"

Don't underestimate the reinforcing behavior of an echo chamber. It can be the difference between thoughts and action.
posted by spiderskull at 11:29 PM on May 25, 2014 [8 favorites]


The thing that scares me about things like this is that could have been me. The Columbine thing could have been me. I was miserable and lonely as a teenager, and resented people all around me, wondering why *other* people got to be happy, but I didn't. I had a lot of lonely nights where I cried myself to exhaustion, wondering what was wrong with me, and a lot of times I felt like the world was what was wrong, not me. I wondered why I couldn't find a girlfriend, why I couldn't have what, to me, obviously everyone had.

For whatever reason, I didn't turn out like this guy, or Dylan and Clebold, but I easily could have. I think it's a credit to the people around me, the people I had assumed didn't care about me. And it's not that I'm all better. I can be horribly suspicious of other people's motives, and I nearly automatically assume the worst. I've seen the poison about alpha and beta behavior, and I find identifying parts of myself with the beta bullshit, which I know is bullshit, but when I'm at my lowest, it just seems to fit so well. In a way, I'm glad I grew up in a time before forums supporting this crap were so common and easily accessible. Who knows what would have happened if I had had a chorus of voices commiserating with me, rather than people trying to smack some sense into me.

The other thing that's hit me, reading this thread, is that, for my own part, MetaFilter has been a key part of identifying the behavior and language that I have used as not just inappropriate, but truly wrong, and something that I need to change to become the person I had thought I was, and it's still an ongoing process. The thing is, while a lot of mysoginist behavior is just obviously wrong, so much of the behavior I've seen called out here (and elsewhere) is behavior that I'd grown up having it confirmed as proper behavior. So much of the behavior that women, here and elsewhere, have come forward and said, hey, stop this shit about, it's stuff that I was utterly unaware of. Through places like this, I've been able to try to start figuring things out. I'm lucky enough to have a place like this where I have people telling me exactly why behavior X or phrase Y isn't acceptable.

The thing is, and this is my own opinion, but I think the vast majority of men and boys don't have anything like this, don't have a place where things can be explained to them. What they do have is a worldwide echo chamber filled with male aspirational figures who act in horrible ways, and say and do awful things, and never get called on it. I can't, myself, even begin to truly understand the shit any woman goes through on a daily basis, but at least I've found a place that can get me to shut up and listen for a while.

One of the things that hit me the hardest was the person in the yesallwomen tag saying "I've spent the last 19 years teaching my daughter how to avoid being raped. How long have you spent teaching your son that?" I'm stunned by how little I've understood, and how far I need to go to understand what women go through, and I have no idea how to get other men to even begin to acknowledge it.

To me, all of the people trying to say it's not that he was a mysoginist, he was crazy, or look, he killed men, too, so it's not a sexism thing, it's a part of the dismissiveness that makes the whole thing so fucked, the idea that behavior that makes the life of half the world miserable isn't a *real* problem, or even the reason someone would kill, even though that person specifically said he hated women and wanted to kill the ones he felt most likely to shock and terrify as revenge for his own delusions. I can't imagine a clearer example of mysoginist terrorism than this, but we've got tons of people, from the not all men squad to the PUA scum who seem to be saying that, if only this guy had employed their repugnant tactics that treat women as objectives in a game, he would have had sex and 'been fine,' falling all over themselves to qualify and rules-lawyer over what, and who, exactly, gets to decide what is and isn't hatred of women. I honestly don't understand how any of this gets better.
posted by Ghidorah at 12:32 AM on May 26, 2014 [94 favorites]


The thing is, and this is my own opinion, but I think the vast majority of men and boys don't have anything like this, don't have a place where things can be explained to them. What they do have is a worldwide echo chamber filled with male aspirational figures who act in horrible ways, and say and do awful things, and never get called on it.
Not just your opinion. Plenty of us grew up in an environment where those were the only role models available to us. Before I get jumped on, I'm not making excuses in any way. Somehow, us men that didn't take that on board as truth or found out the truth later need to figure out a way to spread the message that, just because someone you look up to treats women like objects, doesn't mean you should aspire to be like them.
posted by dg at 2:16 AM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


There's something in our culture that makes "he would have killed anyway" feel intuitive in response to these supposedly "senseless" killings, but do we have any basis for that? It seems worth being suspicious of this claim precisely because there's comfort to be had -- especially in terms of being able to deny any societal culpability -- in considering the drive to commit mass murder somehow fundamental, inextricable to who they are. (Only a mass murderer could commit mass murder, we tell ourselves tautologically, and every mass murderer will find a reason to.)

There's also a categorical difference between using these events to put a spotlight on a toxic culture of mangled masculinity vs. earlier rushes to place blame on video games and violent movies. You can accept a feminist reading of these events without also retroactively accepting that violent cultural products should have been banned after Columbine.
posted by nobody at 5:23 AM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


So all the guns were legally purchased. That's just great. I'm going to assume that they were legally purchased by someone else because if this guy could buy a bunch of handguns we're all screwed.

He has no significant criminal history. He does not appear to have been previously held under a 5150 otherwise out under court order care. There were no restraining orders against him. He was over 18. He would have passed the background check.
posted by humanfont at 6:03 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Mod note: A couple of comments deleted. As restless_nomad requested above, it would be better to drop the focus on making it all about one person's opinion here.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:52 AM on May 26, 2014


(edited my comment to comply)

humanfont, that's exactly the problem. He shouldn't have passed a background check. That kid should never have had anything more dangerous than a butter knife.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:56 AM on May 26, 2014


This is completely an aside, but because I work in film it's jumped out at me.

Articles keep referring to the shooter's father as either a "Hollywood director" (22.6 Million google results when combined with "Elliot Rodger") or an "assistant director" (29.1M results), specifically on the Hunger Games.

His credit on the Hunger Games is really "2nd Unit Director" because he directed the intra-diagetic propaganda spot (which is, debatably, a more prestigious credit than Assistant Director, traditionally an entirely uncreative role, though it also means he had no hand in production of the movie shoot itself). And he's primarily an advertising director, though he did direct a documentary a few years back in which he asks people on the street whether they believe in a god. These are basically his only two film credits.

(For comparison "'Elliot Rodger' 'unit director'" shows only 12k results, and "'Elliot Rodger' 'commercial director'" shows fewer than 1.5k results.)

I'm not sure why I'm bothering to mention this. Hope it's not too much of a bother that I am.
posted by nobody at 7:42 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


There is a "Elliott Rodger is an American Hero" Facebook page, which has been set up to "pay tribute" to someone who "made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle against feminazi ideology". One of the status updates on the page reads, "Feminists, whether you like it or not, you are the cause of this incident. You have empowered women to essentially bully and reject people, and in this case it would seem that this happened to some poor kid with Autism. A generation of self important narcissistic cows have been raised rather than the nicer ladies of the previous generations. Who's fault is that? That's the feminist's fault." I'm not cherry-picking either - the whole page is like that. I've reported it for hate speech twice, and both times Facebook claimed they examined the page for hate speech and decided it didn't violate community standards. Unbelievable.

Last year it took months of public pressure to get Facebook to remove a page that essentially existed to call a teenage gang rape victim who later committed suicide a slut, so it'll probably take a long time to get them to remove this page. By contrast, when I posted a picture of knitted elephant shorts for men (the junk, as you might expect, was in the trunk) to my knitting blog's Facebook page last winter, the photo was removed within a few hours and I was given a 12 hour time out to reconsider my community standard violating ways.

Fuck you, Facebook. I hate you so much right now.
posted by orange swan at 7:46 AM on May 26, 2014 [83 favorites]


Well. You can't stop selling Americans guns. I don't mean you shouldn't, which is another question. I mean you can't. There is no party with the political will and the political capital to stop the widespread sale of firearms in the US.

With that in mind, you also can't stop people buying guns because they look squirrelly, or have a weird feel to them. An individual shopkeeper can (although gun sellers who exercise their right to refuse service will be targeted by gun rights activists and probably see their business suffer terribly), but that person, absent an official notice saying "do not sell this person guns", can just cross the street and buy a gun somewhere else.

Should there be a register of people who have issued death threats on the Internet, or put up YouTube videos explaining how other people are worthless and should be exterminated, or sent terrifying manifesti to their parents? Maybe, but it's not workable, because of the Vox Day issue above - there are far too many people exhibiting behavior on the Internet that would make them look potentially dangerous.

Any attempt to do this would be totally unworkable because of the sheer numbers involved (a) and would be a political minefield (b). You'd get Prom Queens looking sad on Fox News because they were denied a sale because of an essay they wrote in English class, with a cut to video of scary youths in hoodies buying legal firearms.

And you can't give everyone who wants to buy a gun a psych evaluation - there just aren't enough trained people in the country to do it, or people who would want to risk the malpractice suits and/or revenge killings. Even if you could set up such a system, you might be looking at waiting lists of months, which again no party has the political will or capital to create. And of course the system would be imperfect, and people would slip through.

Even if that system was perfect, nobody could predict when somebody buys a firearm whether they would become a danger to others at some point in the future due to an unforeseen circumstance. Alexis Aaron believed that he was having thoughts placed in his head through extremely low frequency radio waves. However, he had a decade of legal adulthood during which he had nothing on his medical record, and although he had been arrested several times he had never been prosecuted. Would the gun lobby in 2012, have agreed that that should exempt him - and many, many others, including respectable [*cough*white] people who just had a little too much to drink once in a while, or got a little heated during an argument - from being able to purchase or own a firearm?

The gun lobby talks a lot about mental illness in the aftermath of spree and rampage killings precisely because of the near-impossibility of selecting for mental illness at the point of sale. So, when the lobbyists emerge from what must be a very well-used briefing room this time, or the next time a spree or rampage killing takes place, they will once again blame mental health care services for not identifying that the killer was dangerously mentally ill and preventing them from getting access to firearms. They are demanding that other institutions do what is effectively an impossible job, and one made harder, of course, by the campaign against centralised registries of gun ownership.

However, if anyone seriously moved toward limiting the right to buy firearms on a precautionary basis, which is the only way this could work, the gun lobby would go nuclear. Why not, after all, stop Americans from buying steak knives, or power tools, on the suspicion that they might be used at some point further down the line to kill? What kind of incipient fascist government takes away second amendment rights from citizens because they had a bad day and vented on the Internet, or told their doctor about some bad dreams they were having? And so on.

So, while it seems common sense in hindsight to say that somebody who used the guns they bought to kill innocent people should not have been able to buy those guns, there is a huge lobbying apparatus designed to ensure that they could, while simultaneously theatrically nodding its head and agreeing that they should never have been sold the guns, and that the healthcare service should (somehow) have identified them as a precrime risk, while letting all the people Tweeting about their second amendment solutions to government tyranny continue to buy guns, because they are just expressing patriotic sentiment and celebrating the American individual.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:46 AM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


Just from the information we know at this point, I don't see how a background check process could have prevented him from buying guns, unless you are imagining a super intrusive and labor intensive FBI security check process where they call your parents and friends. He seems to have had the ability to act normal (like when the deputies came to his place for the welfare check), so he would have passed an interview, and there's no central registry of people who have accessed mental health care.

I'm not at all arguing against background checks, just that in this case I don't see how it could have worked.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:48 AM on May 26, 2014


I'm reading the #yesallwomen feed on Twitter and have contributed a few items of my own to it. About how I've been hassled on the street by strange men thousands of times. About how I've lost count of how many female friends have been physically abused and sexually assaulted by men they were dating. About how I grew up being cruelly treated by my oldest two brothers who were still slapping me around when they were in their early twenties and I was an adolescent girl, how my parents never disciplined them for it (my father egged them on, my mother told me "if you wouldn't get so upset, they wouldn't do it"), how my brothers have never apologized for anything, how they have continued to freely insult and ridicule me to this day though they're now middle-aged. About how so many men have said derogatory things about women to me, i.e., that "women don't work", "women don't care about anything but what's in a man's wallet","women are evil", "women are crazy", and how they lash out at me when I respectfully try tell them why it's offensive. And how despite the fact that this is a significant amount of abuse and harassment, I still feel I've been one of the lucky ones because I know so, so many women who've had it so much worse than me.
posted by orange swan at 7:50 AM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]


(The above in response to:

He shouldn't have passed a background check. That kid should never have had anything more dangerous than a butter knife.


Although more of this applies to Facebook and the Bay Area dream of neutral platforms and self-regulation through status monitoring than is comfortable.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:50 AM on May 26, 2014


The hell of the #yesallwomen thing is that even there there are women saying "not me though" and using it as an excuse to pitch gun rights by implying "if this really does happen to all women why do feminazis want gun control".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:53 AM on May 26, 2014


That strikes me as something of a non-sequitur, EmpressCallipygos. But I suppose I'm already steeped in the crazy feminazi culture or something.
posted by rmd1023 at 7:57 AM on May 26, 2014


According to this story, the deputies who did the wellness check on him never saw the videos he made and were not aware that it was because of the videos that his parents had asked them to do the wellness check.
posted by rtha at 8:02 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


orange swan, I reported that Facebook page as hate speech, and I posted a link to the page on my own wall asking my friends to please report the page if they have time. Huge numbers of flags in their queue might spur them to take it down faster. If anyone here would like to report that page, please do, it'll help.
posted by palomar at 8:06 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


unless you are imagining a super intrusive and labor intensive FBI security check process where they call your parents and friends.

Hey that sounds like a great idea actually. When are you guys going to start doing this?

Oh, right, never. 7 people dead is acceptable collateral damage for people to buy people-killing machines.

According to this story, the deputies who did the wellness check on him never saw the videos he made

I thought it was the therapy team that made the actual call to the cops, or have I messed up the timeline? I thought it was concerned parents > therapists > cops.

Even if it was the parents, how the fuck did the information about the videos not get passed on to the cops? Seriously? How?

I'd be willing to bet some heads are going to roll over this, and within a few months there are going to be at least six lawsuits naming various parties.

The way this has become the usual online tribal argument between Team Misogyny and Team Mental Illness is so depressing. Is there nothing that can't be churned into social media tribal warfare propaganda?

Except, uh, it hasn't really. Some of us are focusing on different aspects of what caused this tragedy, which is not at all the same as pretending they don't exist.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:07 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


The Facebook page is gone, orange swan and palomar.

This exists though. As a memorial for the victims.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:12 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


The Guardian reports that Facebook page has been removed..

Thank god because I was very squigged out about having to go there in order to report it
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:14 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


orange swan, i agree with you that facebook is a bad thing, and i have a suggestion which may help. don't look at facebook, and don't post stuff on it anymore.

there's a tradeoff for that convenience. mr. zuckerberg, his ad network, the shadowy figures who funded him initially, and a passel of total strangers get access to your social graph, the details of your daily life, pictures of clothing you knitted, etc., etc. when you use email instead, you're in control. you can limit the readership, at least in the first instance, to the addresses you put in the "to" field. i don't know of any email services that would give you a 12 hour timeout for sending a picture of elephant shorts to your friends.

IF ENOUGH OF US STAND UP AND TURN OUR BACKS ON FACEBOOK, CEASE AND DESIST FROM USING IT, NOBODY WILL PAY IT TO RUN ADS ANYMORE, AND FACEBOOK WILL DIE! WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS?
posted by bruce at 8:15 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


Hey that sounds like a great idea actually. When are you guys going to start doing this?

*So* much easier said than done, as you probably know, since you're not a stranger to the politics of American gun control. Please, please don't snark and sneer about this - it's not like we're unaware, it's not like it's a thing that is new to us. If it were this easy, it would be done already. The sneering is not really helpful and as someone who totally agrees with you, I don't even enjoy it, at all.

I thought it was the therapy team that made the actual call to the cops, or have I messed up the timeline? I thought it was concerned parents > therapists > cops.

From what I've read, it was his parents who called the cops directly, though I think I remember reading somewhere (probably linked in this thread!) that they also called his therapists.
posted by rtha at 8:15 AM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


At least as of right now, a new page was created about an hour ago on FB, looking exactly like the old one that was taken down.

Hopefully it won't last as long, but someone isn't getting the message.
posted by ambrosia at 8:19 AM on May 26, 2014


I'm not sneering. Full actual background checks would have kept guns out of the hands of this guy, Adam Lanza, and God knows how many other people who went on to kill and kill and kill.

The attitude you're sensing is bone-weary frustration that nobody with power in the USA is looking at the body count that racks up every year and does nothing about it.

Year after year after year we hear about some angry frustrated young man somehow getting his hands legally on guns and then going and making holes in people. What is it going to take for something to be done about this? At what point do people stand up and say "The right to have a gun is not worth the collateral damage they cause?"
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:22 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


a word about the parents, remember, they're hollywood people, and they, their lawyer/spokespeople/etc. are going to script this to cast them in the best possible light after they enabled their son to do this awful thing. they are going to paint themselves as prophets whose alarms went unheeded, when in actual fact, they provided their son with enough support to buy three guns which he used on people, and a fine sports car which he used on people. the parents owe society an accounting, which should be regarded with skepticism.
posted by bruce at 8:23 AM on May 26, 2014


You mean the same parents who got him into therapy, who were so worried that they warned the therapists and the police, and were frantically searching the area for him as soon as they saw the manifesto?

'Uncharitable' is the least offensive word I can use to describe what you are saying.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:27 AM on May 26, 2014 [39 favorites]


The sheriff's office has said his parents called them last month; do you think the sheriff is in on some conspiracy to make the parents look good?
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:27 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


That Facebook page was pretty obviously a parody.
posted by empath at 8:29 AM on May 26, 2014


We have no evidence the parents were enablers in this particular crime, and in fact they actually seem to have been the ones most concerned about where he was headed.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:30 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


No one can guarantee your safety. Or rather, anyone who can guarantee your physical safety can also completely eliminate it whenever they see fit.
posted by wuwei at 8:30 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Full actual background checks would have kept guns out of the hands of this guy,

I don't know how you can say this as if it's a given truth, because from what we know, he didn't have a serious criminal record (certainly not a felon) and he'd never been declared mentally unfit, and just being in treatment for mental health issues is not something that keeps someone from getting guns legally. Did I miss something that you're referring to that would have prevented him from buying guns? What exactly do you mean by "full actual background checks"?
posted by rtha at 8:31 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


That Facebook page was pretty obviously a parody.

Maybe, but I think it cut a bit close to the bone. I thought this was quite sincere until I read this.
posted by Going To Maine at 8:32 AM on May 26, 2014


Oh, and if what you mean is that there should be a different kind of background check mandated for gun buyers, then that's a horse of a different color. The background checks they did on him are the ones mandated and allowable by law - there's not some other kind of check they *could* have done, but didn't. There is no other kind (allowed by law), as far as I know. Some of our gun-owning mefites can probably clarify and correct.
posted by rtha at 8:33 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


none of us knows for sure what really happened, all we are hearing is the narrative, and i don't trust the narrative. what i can tell you is that when i was in college, i couldn't afford a gun, and i could only afford the worst piece of shit car you ever saw for junior and senior years. one of the problems with this guy is he had too damn much money. i plead no contest to the charge of being uncharitable, but i don't think i owe any charity to anybody in this situation except the victims and their families.
posted by bruce at 8:34 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


What exactly do you mean by "full actual background checks"?

Exactly what I said above: talking to friends and family, for one.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:37 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


ROSF, I was wondering how to phrase a similar post. By contrast, the UK system requires an annual report from your GP to maintain a hunting rifle licence, which is rubber-stamped by the police (who absolutely have a central record of gun owners and make impromptu visits). There is an extremely low threshold for taking the guns off you (a messy divorce would be plenty). As mentioned above, you can't get handguns, and you need a very good reason for a rifle ('target practice' would get you laughed out of the room). So yes, a UK-style background check would have stopped him getting guns (but wouldn't stop him knifing people or making a nailbomb, and may make gun-owners less likely to seek medical help as somebody mentioned upthread - this is definitely a problem for the armed forces).

The UK has an entirely different attitude to guns though (our police don't have guns, there is no culture of hunting, so wanting a gun is a bit of a red flag in itself). Bear in mind that just being found in possession of an illegal gun (ie it's locked up in your house and the police find it) will get you a mandatory 5yr minimum sentence, on top of whatever you were actually done for. I just cannot see UK-style regulation ever getting traction in the US. I also don't see how you can take guns off citizens and not off the police - your police seem to shoot first and ask later too. The whole culture needs to change before you are going to be able to bring in root and branch reform of gun laws. And the number of guns in the UK is probably barely into 5 figures (certainly even when I lived in a village and went to school with Young Farmers, nobody had guns), which makes it easier to regulate.
posted by tinkletown at 8:37 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


there is no culture of hunting

In the UK? Are you serious?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:41 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Exactly what I said above: talking to friends and family, for one.

But that's not what the law permits. Should it be different? I think that's a discussion for a different thread, but the background check that was done was the one required and allowed by law.
posted by rtha at 8:42 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


I am aware of those facts.

Those facts need to change, or every 4-6 months there's going to be yet another of these.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:43 AM on May 26, 2014


The Facebook page is gone, orange swan and palomar.

Score one for the social pressure applied by those who care about truth and respect, but still... fuck Facebook for not deleting the page the minute they became aware of it. They should have deleted the page because it was the right thing to do, not because a legion of their users shamed them into it.

That Facebook page was pretty obviously a parody.

I do not believe that it was, but supposing for the sake of argument that it was, parody is supposed to be distinct from the real thing, and that page wasn't. Therefore it was only adding to the misogyny out there instead of undercutting it, and was rightfully deleted.
posted by orange swan at 8:44 AM on May 26, 2014 [9 favorites]


> one of the problems with this guy is he had too damn much money

It's good to figure out what went wrong so we can work to prevent similar incidents. I don't see how anything would be better if he had driven "the worst piece of shit car" like you had. I drove a '74 Pinto when I was in college and that's not what stopped me from killing anyone.

Poverty is not the solution to growing up in a sexist culture, having easy access to guns, or poorly treated mental health issues.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:44 AM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


orange swan, i agree with you that facebook is a bad thing, and i have a suggestion which may help. don't look at facebook, and don't post stuff on it anymore.

Let me tell you, for a minute there I wanted to do exactly that. But it'll hurt me more than it'll hurt them. I use Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends, and to promote my knitting blog. Without it I'd be even more horribly lonely than I already am and make even less from blogging than I already do. I just can't afford to take that kind of a hit.

My best hope is that Facebook is eventually made obsolete by the rise of some other social media juggernaut.
posted by orange swan at 8:53 AM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


if he couldn't afford the guns, his weapons would have been limited to a baseball bat and a fishing knife. sure, he could have killed a couple of people, but not an entire sorority house. but for the grace of the woman on the inside of the alpha phi door not opening it when he was pounding on it, he would have slaughtered every single one of them. if he had invaded it with a baseball bat and a fishing knife, the women could have fought back with their own sports equipment.

i agree that the sexist culture, easy access to guns and poorly treated mental health issues contributed to this, i was just adding another factor that i don't think has been getting enough attention. happy now?
posted by bruce at 8:53 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Under the definition of the DSM, he wasn't mentally ill; his thoughts and actions are consistent with a misogynistic culture, much like his belief that he could win the lottery is not a delusion but rather a cultural trope.

According to his "manifesto", he was prescribed risperdal by his psychiatrist. Was that because of his not being mentally ill?
posted by Jahaza at 8:55 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


if he couldn't afford the guns, his weapons would have been limited to a baseball bat and a fishing knife.

Guns are not exactly chewing gum but they are also not prohibitively expensive to someone who really wants one. A handgun costs less than a piece of shit car that runs. It costs less than a college course. It costs less than a month's rent for a shitty studio apartment. And someone who is actively planning to use a gun to kill people is likely to be willing to scrounge up the cash even in the case where it is a hardship.

It's just not an issue primarily of money, and putting it on Hollywood parents letting the kid have access to money, instead of every single other thing in play, doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
posted by cortex at 9:00 AM on May 26, 2014 [17 favorites]


"When are you guys going to start doing this?"

Never. See "lack of political will" above. Not to mention the fact that are already more guns in private hands than there are people in this country. There's no way even a significant fraction of those can be recovered (and be prepared for bloodshed if the attempt is made).

I'm not sneering. Full actual background checks would have kept guns out of the hands of this guy, Adam Lanza, and God knows how many other people who went on to kill and kill and kill.

IIRC Adam Lanza used a rifle owned by his mother, Klebold and Harris used a "Straw Buyer" as they were underage and many school shooters used guns owned by family members. Not to mention the fact that private party, person-to-person, sales are entirely unregulated. If you were in the neighborhood I could sell you a pistol and box of hollowpoints in the time it takes you to hand me the money.
posted by MikeMc at 9:00 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


You know what, I feel like sitting here telling people "just don't look at it if it bothers you" is a terrible response to the issue of seeing shitty things like "parody" pages praising a murderer. I'm a little sick of living in a culture where my gender reduces me to an object and being told to toughen up if I don't like it.
posted by palomar at 9:06 AM on May 26, 2014 [29 favorites]


If you were in the neighborhood I could sell you a pistol and box of hollowpoints in the time it takes you to hand me the money.

That is horrifying.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:08 AM on May 26, 2014


I'm the first one to speak up against guns (I broke up with a guy because he owned one, and won't visit the homes of anyone I know who has one), but I really, honestly don't think access to guns were the main issue here. This guy's first three victims were stabbed. He was a bomb waiting to go off, and his family knew it. Whether the police did their job or not, we don't do a good enough job in this country of watching out for each other. How many saw this guy's ramblings on YouTube and never did anything about it?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:10 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


i agree that the sexist culture, easy access to guns and poorly treated mental health issues contributed to this, i was just adding another factor that i don't think has been getting enough attention. happy now?

Not particularly. Poverty doesn't prevent violence--breeds it, in fact. And his parents, according to reports from other people, did their best to have him treated.

So while his parents might be some factor in this, they're not a factor worth considering. They tried.

but I really, honestly don't think access to guns were the main issue here. This guy's first three victims were stabbed. He was a bomb waiting to go off, and his family knew it.

Indeed he was. But minus those guns, he wouldn't have been able to kill other people so quickly and, ugh, efficiently. It was sheer dumb luck that the sorority house door was locked and the girl wouldn't let him in. If he'd had a knife, he wouldn't have been able to do quite as much damage. He had three guns and 400 rounds of ammunition. If he'd gotten into that house all those girls would be dead. And probably the ones in the next sorority over.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:15 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


feckless fecal fear mongering, that's a good point. I just think there were so many times in this kid's life that he should have been deemed a danger to society.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:17 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Mental illness doesn't make a person more likely to be hateful or misogynistic or violent. Autism doesn't, either.

Claiming that mental illness or autism could "explain" why this man decided to murder women and people who fucked women and people he deemed unable to fuck women perpetuates the stigma against mental illness and autism by making those "disorders" into monster-creating boogeyman, and by essentializing autism and mental illness. This was a *person* not a disorder, and he made *personal choices* that were appalling and destructive (and, for what it's worth, I think his choices were evil).

His misogyny was expressed by the way he essentialized gender, so the essentialization of his autism and (possible) mental illness(es) are especially disturbing to me.

The vast majority of ASD and/or mentally ill people would never ever ever do anything like this, and are not ticking time bombs. I know that plenty of the people reading this thread understand that, but it's bothering me to see this "explanation" get thrown around because it seems to paint autism and/or mentally ill people as inherently dangerous because of their autism and/or mental illness and that is a stigmatizing, ableist, and dangerous assumption in and of itself.

Oooph just had to get that out.
posted by rue72 at 9:17 AM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


I just think there were so many times in this kid's life that he should have been deemed a danger to society.

No argument from me, here. April would have been a good time for the cops to have actually looked at the damn videos.

it seems to paint autism and/or mentally ill people as inherently dangerous because of their autism and/or mental illness

Nobody in this thread is doing that.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:21 AM on May 26, 2014


In Taiwan last week, a man killed four and wounded twenty four with a knife. That happens with some regularity in China as well as. Let's say we ban all guns, and are able to successfully get them out of all hands. Even, say most of the police-- we move to the way things are done in the island paradise of the UK. Okay fine.

I would like to ask what the next step will be when our admittedly violent, misogynistic, hyper-winner-take-all capitalist nation is still suffering from routine spree killings?

What would make you feel safe then?
posted by wuwei at 9:25 AM on May 26, 2014


The lack of guns? I mean, maybe that's a trite answer but you're trying for some gotcha here and I am disinclined to indulge you.

Fewer guns = fewer people dead by guns

This is a very simple thing to understand. It is equally simple to understand that having a gun (vs a knife) makes it far easier to kill multiple people, while also making it hard to subdue the attacker; that gun could get pointed at you next. Guns are impersonal; they deal death at a distance.

Knives are far more personal, far less likely to be fatal, and wielded by people easier to subdue, even by civilians, specifically because wounds inflicted are less likely to be fatal.

In Taiwan last week, a man killed four and wounded twenty four with a knife.

And what do you think the death count would have been if he'd had a couple of handguns instead?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:30 AM on May 26, 2014 [13 favorites]


What's your point, wuwei? That because it's still possible to kill people even if you don't have a gun, that we might as well give up?

But to answer your question: NoraReed has some good suggestions for next steps.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:31 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The guns aren't my point at all. I'm talking about existential dread. I'm asking people a simple question-- how will you feel when the guns are all gone (which might be possible actually) and the killing continues?
posted by wuwei at 9:33 AM on May 26, 2014


In the UK? Are you serious?

I think it's more that there's a different culture of hunting...

Fox hunting - the best-known form of hunting in the UK - is now illegal, but was previously done with horses and dogs, not guns (and still is, covertly, insofar as a bunch of men in red jackets on horses shouting and blowing horns can be said to be covert).

Generally, hunting for food with guns is just not something meaningful numbers of people do on a regular basis, though - not enough wild land, not enough wild life. Hunting for game - wood pigeons, pheasants or grouse - is done using "fowling pieces" - that is, single or double-barrelled, breech-loading smooth-bore shotguns. Regular game hunters (or farmers, who need to scare off or kill foxes or rabbits) might well own their own guns - but for many it's an activity where you go to a country estate for a weekend of team-building or recreation, and use guns provided by the organisers.

So, there's a history of hunting (and/or poaching) in the UK, but what hunting is done with guns is largely done with smooth-bore weapons with one or two shots available before a reload, not least because it's easier to get a license for that kind of weapon. Even that relatively simple process involves submitting an application for a license to the police, in writing, with photos and a character reference: you can't walk into a shop and buy a gun.

Also, there are no bears and very few wild boar, so self-loading ("semi-automatic") rifled-bore long guns above .22 rimfire are totally banned. You're just not going to meet anything big enough and dangerous enough to justify them, so there's no hunting justification, and self-defence is not a justification for buying or owning a firearm*.

(I mentioned upthread that the relative ease of getting a license for a smooth-bore, one-or-two shot gun, or getting hold of one without a license, is why sawn-off shotguns are often used in firearm crimes in the UK, making it very hard to perform a US-style spree or rampage killing, because of the need to reload frequently).


* Although if you do own a licensed firearm, it is allowable to use it in self-defence, although reasonable force applies. You can't shoot someone who is running away from you, for example, and not expect to be arrested.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:33 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm talking about existential dread.

But what is the point? What conclusion would you like us/you to come to in admitting that something is so fundamentally broken in our society (and not just ours, we're not that special) that even if guns are banned people still hate each other and find non-gun ways to express their rage and disaffection? I am despairing. That is my answer. What good does that do you, or any of us?
posted by rtha at 9:35 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


After I picked up the handgun, I brought it back to my room and felt a new sense of power. I was now armed. Who's the alpha-male now, bitches?
Elliot Rodger's manifesto
posted by ryanfou at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2014


Those of you who have I-could-have-been-this-guy moments; can you speculate as to why that way of thinking appealed to you? Did your family teach you toxic masculinity crap, or was it all peers/society? Can you imagine ways in which you could have been raised that would have inoculated you against that?

Asking because I have a boy-kid. His dad has said he knew guys like this and can't really articulate why he didn't turn out that way, but says he just could never take that step into hatred even though he experienced plenty of bullying and rejection from girls. He had a good relationship with his mom, I suspect that helped.

But it would be good to know more, if you have any insights to share.
posted by emjaybee at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


rtha,
Precisely. Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere, whether by well-spoken urban liberals or glib "Texan" politicians is how we've ended up with a prison-industrial state at home, and death from the skies abroad.

There are limits to our power.
posted by wuwei at 9:38 AM on May 26, 2014


And if you think about it, that refusal to accept that there were limits TO HIS POWER is how Elliot Rodger got to the fucked up and evil place that led him to kill all those people.
posted by wuwei at 9:40 AM on May 26, 2014


The guns aren't my point at all. I'm talking about existential dread. I'm asking people a simple question-- how will you feel when the guns are all gone (which might be possible actually)

Much, much safer when crossing the border.

and the killing continues?

Assumes facts not in evidence. To use your Taiwan example, there's really not much you can do about someone who's been planning such an attack since childhood. Earlier detection of sociopathy would help, but that would require a massive investment in mental healthcare that no politician--at least in North America--seems willing to make.

In five minutes, that guy killed four people and injured a couple dozen others. That's seriously fucked up in any case; he must have been moving incredibly fast. People defended themselves with umbrellas for God's sake.

Tell me, how much use is an umbrella against a 9mm slug? How many more people would have died in Taiwan if he'd had a couple of handguns?

Again:

Fewer guns = fewer dead people


There are limits to our power.

There are. That doesn't mean we shouldn't push those limits as far as we can to stop innocent people from dying because some asshole felt like pulling a trigger a whole bunch of times.

Evil exists in the world.

As I said way upthread, this is handwavium. Call something evil and there you go, it's neatly explained and pigeonholed and wrapped up in a nice bow. Unfortunately that contributes not a single iota of information or understanding of why and how these things happen and how to prevent them from happening again. 'Evil' is a wallpaper word used to cover up huge cracks in arguments.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:43 AM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


> Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere, whether by well-spoken urban liberals or glib "Texan" politicians is how we've ended up with a prison-industrial state at home, and death from the skies abroad

Are you saying we're supposed to accept that there will always be evil (which has religious connotations for me; I don't know if that's how you mean it) and give up trying to improve society?
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:44 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Wuwei, dude, self-aggrandizing hypotheticals about the personal courage required to stare into the abyss do not trump the actual, happening-now emotions being felt by people in response to a thing that happened in the world.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:45 AM on May 26, 2014 [19 favorites]


Fewer guns = fewer dead people


That's so obviously true, and you can't even sell THAT to people. Thousands of little kids die in gun accidents/shootings each year and you cannot get the 2nd Amendment believers to change their stance on anything.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:46 AM on May 26, 2014 [17 favorites]


Handwavium is continual banging on about unrealistic gun control ideas without acknowledging the legal and political context that exists here. It's a sweet idea, but very straightforwardly it isn't happening. If multiple mass shootings (including of cute white children) and the shooting of a congressperson didn't create a possibility of this, I can assure you it is off the table at this point in time.

We can acknowledge that as crappy and unfortunate, but then it is time to move the conversation forward.
posted by Dip Flash at 9:47 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


I have in fact acknowledged the reality as it is on the ground, so uh, not really sure what point you're getting at. Or you're just having yet another dig at me, in which case, please don't.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:49 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere, whether by well-spoken urban liberals or glib "Texan" politicians is how we've ended up with a prison-industrial state at home, and death from the skies abroad.

There are limits to our power.


Gosh why hadn't I realized that my desire to be seen as a person instead of an object will inevitably lead to dystopia so I should just fold my hands and give up?

Maybe because it's an incredibly stupid, cynical and lazy idea I dunno.
posted by winna at 9:53 AM on May 26, 2014 [51 favorites]


Yeah I mean seriously, that's nihilism that would have made even Nietszche go "Hey, maybe you should go play with a puppy or something."

Striving against what you term as 'evil' is, in essence, exactly what being human is all about. You're talking about giving up, wuwei. That helps nobody.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:55 AM on May 26, 2014


Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere, whether by well-spoken urban liberals or glib "Texan" politicians is how we've ended up with a prison-industrial state at home, and death from the skies abroad.

Fuck this bullshit. This is nihilistic assholery. I do not accept that the evil that manifests (for example) as murderous misogyny is just OH WELL something I give up on changing or fighting against, or that fighting against it is responsible for creating drone diplomacy and the prison-industrial complex. I mean what the fuck.
posted by rtha at 9:58 AM on May 26, 2014 [33 favorites]


OK, so we all agree that if someone stands for election promising that if elected they will end evil everywhere we should be suspicious of that, and also that if there were no guns bad things would still happen?

IANAM, I think this would be a good place to leave this argument.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:11 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere,

welp.. I guess we should just pack it in, repeal child labor laws, disband the police, reinstitute slavery, and invade Canada.

now excuse me I'm off to burn down the neighbors house

DON'T JUDGE ME!!

{/}
posted by edgeways at 10:18 AM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]




"Go fuck yourself" is a sort of sexual option, I suppose.
posted by cortex at 10:23 AM on May 26, 2014 [65 favorites]


It's one of the few options open for women over a certain age.
posted by goofyfoot at 10:28 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Time covers the "most powerful #YesAllWomen tweets" though I'd say they left out a lot of good ones.
posted by emjaybee at 10:30 AM on May 26, 2014


I've got a sexual option for this guy: he could stick his dick in a wood chipper.
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:31 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


emjaybee, last night my husband and I were discussing his experience with how he was raised and why he went through a brief period of being A Nice Guy. I can tell you what he told me and throw in a couple of my observations as well.

He's in his 40s now, raised by a single mother in a very matriarchal family. His contact with his out-of-state father was infrequent enough that it didn't play much of a role in his upbringing. In his late teens and very early 20s, my husband was the stereotypical nice guy. However, he was steeped in emo and angst, not bitterness and anger like the killer.

He was fortunate in that eventually a couple of women actually sat him down (at different times) and said, "you're a great guy but here's your problem. Here's the trouble with your line of thinking." He listened and credits their honesty with changing his behavior for the better.

By all accounts, my husband shouldn't have gone down the nice guy path since he was raised by and surrounded by strong women. On the other hand, the women he was surrounded by growing up are somewhat controlling (to put it mildly). I didn't know him as a child but I see how the other males of varying ages in his family are currently treated and I strongly suspect there is a correlation between the womens' behavior and the trend of the males in my husband's family to be varying degrees of Nice Guy.

There is a very strong undercurrent of "be a good boy and make mommy/aunt/sister happy." It's easy to see, at least in the case of my husband's family, how spending your childhood being nice and sweet as the only way to gain approval from the women could easily translate into a Nice Guy attitude once they reach dating age.

So, that may not be much help in terms of how to raise your son but perhaps it's a data point of some sort.

Aa an aside, I am eternally grateful to the women who took the time to show my husband better ways to behave. You would be proud to know him now.
posted by _Mona_ at 10:37 AM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


I find it disturbing that the PUA slimedwellers have changed the meaning of 'nice guy' so radically.

When I was growing up, being a nice guy was something to be proud of. Now? Not quite so much, because of those misogynistic assholes.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:43 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


how will you feel when the guns are all gone (which might be possible actually) and the killing continues?

How do you feel that seatbelts and airbags are legal requirements for operating a vehicle, even as people still die in car accidents?

Personally, as I am a rational, sane, empathetic person who values the reduction of avoidable human suffering, I can see the obvious utility in seatbelts and airbags, which save lives that would have otherwise perished in an accident.

I would feel good that guns were off the list of legal options for crazy people to act out with. It would mean many fewer avoidable deaths. I would feel pretty fine with it, honestly.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 10:44 AM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


I have to keep reminding myself that I'm a nonviolent person who believes all life has value. Because many of the people like the PUA linked above speaking of the problem of "secual access" seem to be going out of their way to self-identify as people I wouldn't miss if they died in a hail of bullets.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:46 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The corpse in the library
I never said give up. That's the classical conservative argument, i.e. "the poor will always be with us." I'm saying something a little different. What I'm saying is, how much are you willing to give up to get what you say you want? I'm asking people to directly confront how the desire for a guarantee of physical safety has driven the rise of surveillance, the NSA, imperialistic war both at home and abroad. I'm asking people to stop and carefully consider that they may never be able to eliminate people like Rodger, and how the effort to do so has unintended consequences that we're living with right now. Maybe some people would like to live in a more intrusive surveillance society if it means that we can drastically reduce the number of people like Elliot Rodger in circulation. I don't think it would even be that hard, since we've built most of the infrastructure already. I'm very much interested in improving society if you look at my post history you will see pretty clearly that I have regularly advocated for precisely that.

Please let me clarify what I mean by evil, since it does have religious connotations, as you say. In secular terms, I am talking about about unpredictable threats. Rodger had all the advantages in terms of access to help. He was also in the mental health system-- he had seen therapists who, under CA law have a duty to report imminent threats. But they failed. Now you can say that if the system was better, that never would have happened. But all systems have points of failure, and sometimes, you can't even know what the point of failure is until it happens.

winna,
You absolutely should be seen as a person, and misogyny is unacceptable. Of course we should fight it, and, I never said "give up." All I'm asking, again, is for people to carefully consider the unintended consequences of particular choices of action (criminalization of the mentally ill, increased surveillance).

rtha,
Again, I never said "give up." I said, acknowledge limits to power. There's a difference. Can you see that? We can work very hard to solve a problem and still understand that it will never be 100% solved, and that some solutions may make everything worse. Which is what I'm saying we've done with the surveillance society and the police state.

Regarding guns, generally, I do think it's possible to remove them all from civilian hands. The only problem is that there is a substantial number of people (admittedly outside the coastal cities) that don't agree with such a policy. Though they are easily lampooned and many probably have relatively poor fashion sense (is it still normcore if it's unintentional?) some can be counted on to resist it with force of arms. Some of those people will also be, incidentally, members of the security services. That's not an insurmountable problem though, since this is a rural/urban or coastal/interior split, you can simply pit one against the other. Add in a little racial and religious animus and you're back to the old playbook of recruit one group to kill another.

If we brought the full coercive power of the state, along with the mass media (excepting Fox News) onside with such a campaign, it doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.

So then, we come back to my comments above about limits. How much violence are you willing to inflict on these people to get what you want? And are the kind of institutions you would have to empower to do this, the kind of institutions you want to live with?

Anyways, I've gone on too long here and feel like I'm threadshitting, so I'm happy to bow out if that's what people prefer.
posted by wuwei at 11:05 AM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


how will you feel when the guns are all gone (which might be possible actually) and the killing continues?

There are basically no guns in the UK and consequently hardly any spree killings. I was born in London over 40 years ago, have been here ever since, and I've never seen a real gun or heard one fired or ever met anyone who had either (actually scratch that, the police near Downing Street and the US embassy now carry guns, as of a few years ago).
posted by colie at 11:05 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


If you're feeling particularly frustrated or helpless regarding the misogyny of all this, contact your local news outlets and express your desire to see this story treated as a hate crime. At the very least, a hate crime in addition to or compounded by mental illness.

And please keep the educational resources coming. Efforts like We Hunted the Mammoth and the Southern Poverty Law Center are awesome, but it's going to take a concerted effort to drag this manosphere far enough into the light where we can watch it burn.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 11:06 AM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


My fella was a 34-year-old virgin when we met. It was startling to learn that, but I was far more surprised to hear that he'd never smoked weed.

He was a feminist, suspected he was on the autism spectrum, read Metafilter (this was in the early oughts), bald, and awkward as hell. He was also kind, and goofy, and knew things I didn't. Catnip!

He never thought he'd have a girlfriend. I wonder why this killer didn't consider weird girls, rather than the ones he was told to desire.
posted by goofyfoot at 11:11 AM on May 26, 2014 [10 favorites]


> Again, I never said "give up." I said, acknowledge limits to power.

Here's what you actually said:

> Evil exists in the world. Always will. Refusal to accept this and the desire to try to end it everywhere, whether by well-spoken urban liberals or glib "Texan" politicians is how we've ended up with a prison-industrial state at home, and death from the skies abroad. There are limits to our power.

You didn't say "There are consequences to wanting the government to interview everyone you've ever met before you are allowed to purchase a gun." You didn't say "The expanding security and surveillance state is, um, not without its downsides!"

You want us to acknowledge existential dread (thanks! already at that station!) and you handwavium'd about "evil" without defining what you mean when you use that word. You don't get to be surprised if people misunderstand you, or if you have to use a whole lot of paragraphs to explain what you *really* meant earlier.
posted by rtha at 11:18 AM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


There's ample room to suggest that the cure for evil is worse than the disease, which is a reason to consider the supply-side versus the demand-side option to avoiding it. The supply-side, like the prohibition era, would lead to a reaction based on good intentions but ultimately corruption and unintended negative outcomes. It targets the production or supply of the problem, the symptoms that may result in banning guns, forums, movies, games, mentally ill people, etc. All of those are political quicksand, and thus a dead end. The demand-side approach would promote a healthy and responsive society and distribute good things like education, safety training and mental health services, then linking those to the gun's background check to minimize the intrusion on everyone else. Furthermore, this can be done privately by demanding insurance or bonds for gun owners, no further government required.
posted by Brian B. at 11:20 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Today's headlines in Finland have been about a court case of two 24 year-olds, a man and a woman, who have been planning a mass murder in University of Helsinki. They had been discussing the act through Tor, but included one person too many to their discussion.

(The following is from prosecutor's side, the defense claims that they never intended to fullfill their fantasy, from timeline in Finnish: )

Their initial date for the act was supposed to be 20.1. Young man travelled from north to Helsinki in 15.1. The man had located two Helsinki gun stores and their opening times and his plan was to rob one of them to get the weapons he needed and then immediately do the deed. On 17.1. they scouted the locations, on 19.1 they move to hotel in the centrum. On 20.1. the man decides to postpone the gun shop robbery, because the whole operation needs more planning. On 23th the man contacts with a third party who has posted mass-murder positive messages in some board and asks if she would be interested to join the plan. The third party declines after few messages are exchanged and later tells to his friend, who tells the police, and soon searches and arrests are made. The police finds a crossbow, handcuffs, hundreds of bullets, 3 pistol clips, hunting knives and poison gas ingredients.

I see two interpretations for the story. First is defense's claim that they wouldn't have done it anyways. It was only talk, a shared fantasy and they always would have found an excuse to postpone it. The other interpretation is that they were going to do it, but difficulties with getting the guns gave enough delay for the plan to leak and to be stopped.

+1 for making bad plans fail more often.
posted by Free word order! at 11:22 AM on May 26, 2014 [29 favorites]


I'm asking people to directly confront how the desire for a guarantee of physical safety has driven the rise of surveillance, the NSA, imperialistic war both at home and abroad. I'm asking people to stop and carefully consider that they may never be able to eliminate people like Rodger, and how the effort to do so has unintended consequences that we're living with right now.

This argument seems to conflate the rise of the surveillance state with the existence of sensible gun control. Assuming that there is a sliding scale from no surveillance of anything to total surveillance of everything ignores the fact that many different portions of society require different degrees of surveillance. The fact that the intelligence community has a surplus of funding to monitor signals intelligence while the NRA has been able to keep the BATF from maintaining a registry of firearm's owners to limit the potential for domestic violence would seem to be prima facie evidence of this.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:23 AM on May 26, 2014 [11 favorites]


goofyfoot, I don't think logic could be applied to the killer's actions. He was obsessed with the idea that "hot, sexy blonde girls" were rejecting him and no amount of evidence would ever have convinced him otherwise.

As for the PUAs talking about how they could have helped him, in his horrible "manifesto" he says that he had visited a friend of his father's who was "successful with the ladies" and was willing to offer him pointers (eek). He apparently rejected the pointers.

One thing that struck me in the "manifesto" was how so many tried to reason with him, but he rejected all of it.
posted by maggiemaggie at 11:24 AM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


I wonder why this killer didn't consider weird girls, rather than the ones he was told to desire.

The killer never considered any girls. He was never rejected. Smiling at some stranger and then being ignored is not a rejection, even if you're wearing a nice shirt. Neither is seeing a black man hanging out with some white women.
posted by leopard at 11:25 AM on May 26, 2014 [16 favorites]


The killer never considered any girls. He was never rejected. Smiling at some stranger and then being ignored is not a rejection, even if you're wearing a nice shirt.

OK, nobody actually knows that for sure. Taking his manifesto as truth of anything isn't really evidence.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:27 AM on May 26, 2014


The phrase 'consider weird girls' came as a very welcome opportunity to break out a smile in all this hideousness. Do it, guys. :-)
posted by colie at 11:27 AM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


I reported that second "Elliot Rodger is an American hero" page, which seems to be some kind of parody of the first one and just got a notification that Facebook reviewed it but will not remove it. Dah.
posted by daninnj at 11:30 AM on May 26, 2014


OK, nobody actually knows that for sure. Taking his manifesto as truth of anything isn't really evidence.

This guy churned out a 140-page manifesto explaining his rage towards the world, how he wanted to put women in concentration camps, and how he humiliated he felt from seeing other people enjoy themselves. Then he went on a killing spree in which he murdered his roommates, some random sorority girls, and some random bystanders.

Conspicuously absent are any mentions of actual encounters with women. Even his killing spree doesn't involve any women that he knew.
posted by leopard at 11:37 AM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


I don't hate weird girls, why would I wish this guy on them?

But honestly, there is no "kind" of girl that works for someone who actually hates all women, so it seems like a pointless question. As others have said, even if he'd had a hot blonde girlfriend appear like magic, it wouldn't have been enough; after all there would still be lots of other hot blonde women who weren't worshipping him. Or that were hotter than the one he had, in some twisted metric (not to mention the injustice of making some woman responsible for this guy in any way). Hatred is not appeasable, it just finds another target.

That's why it's wrong to blame rape on "sexual frustration" because if that were the case, you could prevent it by making sure everyone had access to a prostitute once in a while. Sex is just the weapon, but rape and assault have always been about power over and destruction of women. This guy, so far as we know, skipped the rape step and went straight to destruction, but of course many rapists also escalate to killing their victims.

This was not someone who could be loved by the right woman back into humanity (and that's such a gross cliche anyway). He rejected any and all paths to being a decent human being, so that he could spend more time with his hatred until he finally exploded in violence. Why he chose the way he did is what troubles us; we want a solution or a way to keep more like him from happening.
posted by emjaybee at 12:02 PM on May 26, 2014 [37 favorites]


What I'm saying is, how much are you willing to give up to get what you say you want?

What exactly am I giving up by living in a society that expects people to wear seatbelts and drive cars with airbags? The country didn't turn into some dystopian nightmare when car makers had to add these technologies.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:05 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


He didn't want to have to lower himself to actually ask anyone out. He seemed to think that women should just be flocking to his door, propelled by the gravitational field of his awesome alphaness.
posted by octothorpe at 12:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


$1 says if any girl/woman had actually asked out this douchebag, he would've disliked and rejected her for being a pushy slut.
posted by nicebookrack at 12:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [34 favorites]


I started reading this thread a few days ago. I think the thing I find so horrifying about this isn't that I have an 8 year old goddaughter I just visited who I love to pieces and this is the world where she's growing up. I'm freaked out because just 15 years ago, I was a cute girl who was irresponsible with young men's affections and part of me feels like, there but for the grace of God. I got hurt, emotionally and physically, in relationships and spent time with some unsavory characters. Plus I was flirty and led people on, intentionally and unintentionally. And I can't read about this without feeling lucky to have emerged with the few scars I have.

To me, that's why this feels like a hate crime. Because I don't look at his targets and think they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, but because I think, that could have been me.
posted by kat518 at 12:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


He didn't want to have to lower himself to actually ask anyone out. He seemed to think that women should just be flocking to his door, propelled by the gravitational field of his awesome alphaness.

Bingo. In a way, this guy's behaviour (and the entire PUA/MRA nonsense), and its consequences, are a microcosm of the American Dream. The idea that all you need to do is tick off the right boxes and success and a good life will come to you.

Realizing that's not at all how the world actually works leads to despair in some, homicidal rage in others. In that very limited sense, what he did was no different than postal workers shooting up their workplaces; they have been forced to realize their dreams are just air, and lash out.

I don't know how to counter that kind of existential despair; I don't know what we as a society can do to help these men living lives of quiet desperation. Fuck, if I can't do it for myself (please note I have the existential despair, not the 'go kill lots of people' part), how can we possibly address the ~180 million men and boys living in North America?

It is an unimaginably vast problem to tackle, when the world as a whole is facing how many unimaginably vast problems?

How do we teach boys to grow up with reasonable expectations, and respect for women?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


I keep being tempted to wade in here and give local, anecdotal info, though I know it doesn't make a difference to the people who just want to rail. But the Hollywood Parents thing, yuck, drop it. I'm as cynical and as working-class shoulder-chipped as can be, and living in the Rodgers family's vicinity, and teaching at USC in the film program, I get to know lots and lots of kids this age from industry families. There's a lot of variation among them, and generally speaking they are as down-to-earth and as kind and sensible as can be. In fact, my bias leans TOWARD the industry kids in favor of other stripes of kids who grew up with similar wealth. It's a creative profession that depends on good interpersonal skills, which I don't know if I can say about accountancy or law or other high-paying dad jobs that pop in my imagination. Everything I've read about this family leads me to believe they are interesting, worldly people who dealt with a psychotic adult child just about as well as they could.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:31 PM on May 26, 2014 [19 favorites]


People with mental illness are still part of the culture, and they reflect the culture. I can't bear to read the manifesto, but what I've read about Rodgers show someone profoundly narcissistic and unable to have a relationship, however cursory. Also profoundly unrealistic about relationships and about women, probably fostered by spending time with people like the ones at stoppoa. And here we are in the US, in a culture steeped in violence and misogyny, with guns easily available.

I don't know how his mental health care providers missed his rage and missed his suicidal plans. He seems to have been miserable, and I feel bad for all the families of the victims, including his.
posted by theora55 at 12:35 PM on May 26, 2014


Hi! I'm a man!

This fucker's awful fucking actions are clearly the result of deep embedded misogyny. You're deluding yourself if you think otherwise.

Speaking again, as a man, I think there are a couple of things that are making other men uncomfortable, unwilling, or unable to see that. Those things are:
  1. We only outgrow our own misogyny through difficult struggle, and are not entirely okay with admitting that enough to recognize it in others.

  2. We are still, to varying extents, caught up in a misogynistic mindset, and thus have a difficult time seeing as appalling attitudes which we can somewhat relate to. (Emphasis here, though, on varying.)
I'm not saying this as an criticism of or an excuse for other men. If anything, it's a criticism of our entire culture, which is rotten in countless awful ways. I've been drafting, over the last couple of weeks, an essay about how misogyny affects men for the worse, though in the aftermath of this atrocity that'll probably be put on hold for a least a while longer, if not indefinitely.

The short of it is: men are taught from a young age that women exist to affirm their own self-worth. They prove men's menliness. They provides men's lives with meaning. They are an outlet to every mode of gratification that our culture deems worthy of emphasis, from the hedonistic to the "noble", i.e. sanctified relationships in the eyes of God. This mindset is pervasive throughout more parts of our culture than various groups would like to believe, i.e. there are a number of "liberal" and even "progressive" cultures that still see sex as a goal to aspire towards, even if it comes in the guise of "free love" or something similarly lofty-minded.

The sick double reacharound of our culture is: at the same time as they're teaching men all these things, our culture attempts to persuade or batter women into thinking essentially the same things. There are enormous industries dedicated to telling women that they exist only for men, to providing them with ways of hating themselves unless they make ridiculous efforts to appeal to men, to sending them narratives packaged with the end moral of, "Wouldn't it be lovely if we could all give men exactly what they want out of us?" The result, beyond being highly damaging to women in a lot of ways I still can't entirely comprehend, frequently reinforces all of the notions which men, especially young men, have been pressured into accepting. It creates a mindset that is highly toxic, and far more difficult to escape than something as absurd as that ought to be (and the mindset is certainly absurd). I hesitate to call it outright brainwashing, but it is something similar. Acting like this is merely a mild cultural irritation would be, I think, a pretty major mistake.

I was talking the night before the shootings to a victim of assault and near-rape who was telling me how pervasively her attacks reinforced for her the idea that she was fit for sex and little else. It's not just the instance of rape itself. It's the way that such incidents play perfectly into a certain social message that this is what the relationships between men and women ought to be: woman as a tool for men to use, fit for being used and thrown away. Stated bluntly like that, perhaps it seems ridiculous; compare it, however, to the actions of a would-be rapists, and not only that but to the responses of people to women who claim they've been raped — "You must have been leading him on!" "Surely you wanted this, on some level." "X is an upstanding guy and I can't imagine him doing this unless it was some kind of a mistake" — all suggest this relationship between women and men without outright saying it in quite as ugly a way as it's intended to be. (All three of those responses come directly from my friend's account, by the way. No exaggeration necessary.)

The word "desensitization" has become something of a joke among people I know, mostly because of video game panics, but it is an important word to throw about here regardless. The culture we live in desensitizes men to women's lives. To the possibility that women exist beyond men's needs for them. To the notion that women are capable of being anything more than subjects of a male perspective.

I say this because I know it to be true, from firsthand experience. I was raised by thoroughly decent human beings, grew up reading a fair amount of feminist literature, had a decent number of female friends who I wasn't constantly trying to bang. In perhaps 90% of my interactions with women, I was a fair-minded regular person who did shit like listen to people and enjoy their company and treat them like, well, people. Men and women alike. But when hormones kicked in, pretty much the only ways that I learned how to respond to my overwhelming emotions involved an increasing amount of shittiness towards the poor recipients of my affections. I say "learned" because I am still aware of at least a couple incidents where I was taught to behave certain ways, by my peers, that I accepted because, hell, I was a young kid at the time and what the fuck did I know?

I remember admitting a crush to a boy in the locker room, thinking about soft hair and light eyes and all the usual silly fun distraction-y things, and hearing him ask: "You wanna feel her titties? You wanna stick your dick in all her holes?" I was shocked, because no I hadn't thought about any of that, but then... what do you do? If that's what boys are supposed to want, I guess I ought to go about wanting that. I was thirteen at the time.

I remember a boy talking about a girl I liked when we were both eleven, talking about how he was gonna fuck her in the bathroom, he was gonna show her what a man was like, and I mean we both had high-pitched squealy voices, we both had no fucking clue what men were like, but he heard it somewhere, maybe an older sibling. And when you're young and have no idea of how to process your feelings, locker room culture is like a cold war-style escalation where you incorporate all these feelings and try to outdo everybody else, confused, alone, scared, ridiculous. Frightening.

I couldn't count the number of instances where my friendship with a girl ended over my increasing frustration with, like, what the hell was I supposed to do? I'd talk to her, I'd be all friendly and stuff, I'd genuinely appreciate her company, why wasn't I getting fucking laid? Surely she knew what was happening here. Surely her locker-room friends had told her all about the ritual the way all mine had. Was she just being a tease? Was I somehow incomparably ugly? What the fuck was the problem?

I recently had a conversation with an old crush of mine, where she told me what middle school gossip circles were like and I told her about my experiences, and I think we were both horrified by how violently, aggressively sexualized male discussions over women got, not in the abstract but in the sense of "here's what you're supposed to do when you think you like a woman". And then we all went about acting like that was the right way to behave and like if we just followed all the steps, we would get what we wanted, no resistance, no worry. Until things went wrong, at which point we all worried plenty.

Nothing that anybody I know did approached the level of psychosis that Rodger displayed here — at least, not to my knowledge. (I wonder how many rapists I secretly know.) But I can absolutely see where the logic that Rodger developed came from. There's a profound lack of communication between the sexes, especially at young ages, and the result is that men frequently develop horrifying, dehumanizing ideas about the women they encounter. It's not just a matter of "expectation". It's a matter of completely goddamn misinterpreting human behavior, cultural norms, and what the hell signals mean. And it is pervasive as a motherfucker.

Rodger displayed clear signs of narcissism, sure. He was at the very least a little bit loopy. But his entire process of alienation and hatred towards others, which he did us the kindness of comprehensively documenting, was rooted in misogyny. In a profound incapability to acknowledge women as thinking, living, conscious beings. In a similarly profound inability to understand himself or other men except in their capacities to "retain" women, or to think of society as anything other than a game in which "women slept with" is equivalent to globally-tracked points.

He proposes keeping women in herds, for the pleasure of men. Why? Because women aren't people. Because men deserve women. Because society is all about men having women whenever they want. That's not too far off from our cultural norm. I hate to say it but it's true. There're a lot of men who've got the capacity for empathy, for recognizing women as people far more effectively than Rodger did, but those men have still got at least a shadow of this pattern imprinted on their minds — at least, a whole lot more men do than anybody should ever feel comfortable with.

It has been said before that insanity is not an inability to see logic — it is a seeing of far too much logic, more than is really there, more than can possibly be healthy in a world governed by a certain amount of ridiculousness and absurdity. It's connecting patterns together until the whole world makes sense, against its will, against reality. It's insisting that your rules on how the universe ought to be matter more than anybody else.

By this definition, I think, our culture's misogyny is itself a low-grade form of insanity, a series of rules and logic which cannot possibly make sense but which we act as if they do. Its victims, in a sense, are both men and women — but the male victims pass on their "victimhood" in the form of violence against women, so ultimately women lose twice. I don't think misogyny alone drives people to kill or commit crimes, but misogyny sure as shit makes it easier. It raises anxiety and tension, encourages delusions, encourages thinking of women as victimless targets of a crime. I have heard the logic of too many rapists, read too many screeds against women, to think otherwise. Whatever they have wrong with themselves is enhanced, fueled, amplified by misogyny. Whatever issues they're dealing with are given a concrete explanation in the form of misogynist thought. Misogyny was Rodger's outlet, and though I think it is possible for misogyny to exist without violence erupting — and I thank god, because I went through that myself (and am still going through it) — I can't believe the claims, amidst a society that sees far, far, far too many rapes, assaults, and murders of women, that mental illness or access to guns were the only, or indeed the primary, factors at play here.

It ought to be deeply troubling that misogyny is a factor at play here. It is deeply troubling. It is a problem without an easy solution. If you look for one, it is at the expense of women who suffer daily, violently, from the problem at hand. It is a serious and terrible problem, which is why we should be acknowledging it, and talking about it, and admitting that the problems run deeper than we would like to think. To do otherwise is to open the door for more incidents like this one. At this point, it would be delusional to think that this will not happen again, and for precisely the same reason.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:39 PM on May 26, 2014 [124 favorites]


The idea that I should have to submit myself and my family to a police interrogation and review of my medical history in order to exercise my constitutional rights is not something that I could support.
posted by humanfont at 12:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The idea that I should have to submit myself and my family to a police interrogation and review of my medical history in order to exercise my constitutional rights is not something that I could support.

Yeah, and I wish I owned a printing press. Not all constitutional rights are as straightforward as they seem.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:46 PM on May 26, 2014 [37 favorites]


Had such a thing occurred, there would have been fewer dead people in Santa Barbara this weekend.

This comes back to a question I've asked before: how many deaths like this are acceptable as collateral damage before you start questioning how important that constitutional right really is?

Think about that. Your opposal to deeper background checks is exactly what put three legal guns into this boy's hands. Period. Had his parents been asked if he was responsible and stable enough to have guns, the answer would have been a big fat NOPE.

And more innocent people would be alive today.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:48 PM on May 26, 2014 [9 favorites]


Except, uh, it hasn't really. Some of us are focusing on different aspects of what caused this tragedy, which is not at all the same as pretending they don't exist.

Are we really reading the same thread? because i'm still getting caught up on this beast, but i've seen a lot of what they're talking about. Is that a hyperbolic way to describe it? yes. Is there plenty of "don't call this mental illness" and "don't call this misogyny" wrapped up in whatever bun or frosting they think sells their point?... yea, for sure. Sometimes there's a "just" thrown in there, but the point they're selling is still exactly the type of thing that he's describing. There are absolutely people here who are essentially 100% against one or the other.

I also, after digesting and sleeping on a lot of this thread have to agree with the very early comment in here. Something feels deeply gross to me whenever MeFi starts trying to spitball what was going on in someones head and project their assumptions onto them, and starts trying to internet psychoanalyze them. I realize that ship has totally sailed, but it still squicked me out multiple times in this thread. It's ok when it's more generally about commonly held opinions in society or whatever, but when it starts getting in to "this is what i think was going on in this persons head" it just makes me wince. I'm not really telling anyone to stop, but just like... take a moment to think about what you're saying and how presumptuous it can come off.

Oh, and i just spent some time talking to a friend of mine who literally just a couple weeks ago moved back from going to UCSB, and living in IV. She's a blonde lady who hung out in... exactly the area this happened. She hasn't been able to get ahold of anyone who can confirm who was shot, and thinks she might know someone who was and is just completely distraught... ugh.
posted by emptythought at 12:49 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I wish I could exercise my constitutional rights as easily as people can buy guns: that I could get an abortion without jumping through umpteen billion hoops and that I didn't have to worry about being shot by misogynists as I walk down the street.
posted by hydropsyche at 12:49 PM on May 26, 2014 [61 favorites]


there's a tradeoff for that convenience. mr. zuckerberg, his ad network, the shadowy figures who funded him initially, and a passel of total strangers get access to your social graph, the details of your daily life, pictures of clothing you knitted, etc., etc. when you use email instead, you're in control. you can limit the readership, at least in the first instance, to the addresses you put in the "to" field. i don't know of any email services that would give you a 12 hour timeout for sending a picture of elephant shorts to your friends.

IF ENOUGH OF US STAND UP AND TURN OUR BACKS ON FACEBOOK, CEASE AND DESIST FROM USING IT, NOBODY WILL PAY IT TO RUN ADS ANYMORE, AND FACEBOOK WILL DIE! WHO'S WITH ME ON THIS?


The problem is no one uses email anymore except for receipts and signing up for things.

The generation coming just after me and my mid-20s friends seems to have solved this though, with stuff like snapchat. It's not perfect, but the gist of it is correct and it'll be improved with time. You control who sees what and for how long. When your timer expires, it's gone. That can be cracked fairly easily right now, but if people want actual security it will come.
posted by emptythought at 12:53 PM on May 26, 2014


Meanwhile, I just fielded the fifth call in 12 hours to my cell phone of someone fapping? or something, and not saying anything. #YesAllWomen
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 12:55 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


The idea that I should have to submit myself and my family to a police interrogation and review of my medical history in order to exercise my constitutional rights is not something that I could support.

The expectation that innocent people need to unnecessarily forfeit their lives to exercise arms manufacturers' constitutional rights to turn a profit is one that seriously needs to be questioned.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


That is all kinds of fucked up and would have me getting those numbers traced and a new number for myself ASAP. Jesus, Ambrosia. That's awful.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


He didn't want to have to lower himself to actually ask anyone out. He seemed to think that women should just be flocking to his door, propelled by the gravitational field of his awesome alphaness.

Disagree. It seems pretty clear that he had severe social anxiety.
posted by gyc at 12:57 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Meanwhile, I just fielded the fifth call in 12 hours to my cell phone of someone fapping? or something, and not saying anything. #YesAllWomen

Jesus. I thought Philip Seymour Hoffman's character in Happiness was a twisted exaggeration, not real life.

Who even, like, thinks to do that? Where do they get it in their head that this is a good idea?
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:02 PM on May 26, 2014


You know what, I feel like sitting here telling people "just don't look at it if it bothers you" is a terrible response to the issue of seeing shitty things like "parody" pages praising a murderer. I'm a little sick of living in a culture where my gender reduces me to an object and being told to toughen up if I don't like it.

Especially when it's in the context of internet culture, in which there's a large mixture of "it's just the internet, it's like that" and a general attitude on most major websites and social media services that it's better to err on the side of not deleting something than delete something that would cause an uproar, or imply that they aren't essentially a "common carrier" of content 99% of the time except when they act just often enough that they can pretend they actually do anything.

Hate speech is implicitly allowed besides a few token takedowns on basically all social media, and the majority of the largest sites on the internet. Why make excuses for it? Why defer culpability in this from the administrators and moderators(and more likely, the policies under which the moderators work) of said sites and services?
posted by emptythought at 1:03 PM on May 26, 2014


Nobody in this thread is doing that.

It's swirling around the internet and media at large right now though, and i understand the frustration and feeling the need to say "this is how i feel about this". It's not really bringing shittiness from the rest of the world in here, as much as it's going "this is bad, and i'm happy that i'm surrounded by other people who presumably also recognize the problem"

Or at least, that's how i took it as someone who was alternating between cringing, actually hurt, and dreading what this was adding to the collective consciousness after seeing what's been flying around in the greater discourse.
posted by emptythought at 1:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I wish I could exercise my constitutional rights as easily as people can buy guns: that I could get an abortion without jumping through umpteen billion hoops and that I didn't have to worry about being shot by misogynists as I walk down the street.

Odd, isn't it? The right to life is described as unalienable in the Declaration of Independence, but I guess strict constitutionalists have a laser-like focus on that one document...
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


(That wrt not being shot by misogynists. Although "liberty and the pursuit of happiness" feel pretty relevant to having the liberty to get an abortion, also...)
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:12 PM on May 26, 2014


The right to life is described as unalienable in the Declaration of Independence,

Abortion was practiced then and the "right to life" didn't apply to modern slogans about controlling reproduction.
posted by Brian B. at 1:18 PM on May 26, 2014


I wrote and deleted a long rant about gun control, but I don't want to derail the thread. Suffice to say, I am for background checks, in fact a Japan-style system sounds marvelous. Because here in Texas, I can't even go out to Chipotle with my kid without worrying about a bunch of gun-worshippers crashing the joint with their giant dangerous pointless weapons.
posted by emjaybee at 1:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [11 favorites]


Abortion was practiced then and the "right to life" didn't apply to modern slogans about controlling reproduction.

Yeah, I realised almost immediately that that could be read as anti-choice rather than pro-not-getting-shot. I'm very much in favor of women having control over their reproductive decisions, and also women not being shot by misogynists, and I think the Declaration of Independence would agree on both counts.

[The Founders: a bunch of white knighting betas.]
posted by running order squabble fest at 1:22 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I remember admitting a crush to a boy in the locker room, thinking about soft hair and light eyes and all the usual silly fun distraction-y things, and hearing him ask: "You wanna feel her titties? You wanna stick your dick in all her holes?" I was shocked, because no I hadn't thought about any of that, but then... what do you do? If that's what boys are supposed to want, I guess I ought to go about wanting that. I was thirteen at the time.

Rory, i just wanted to say that this is one of the best posts i've ever read on this site. Flagged as fantastic. I hope you finish your essay at some point, because this is great stuff.
posted by emptythought at 1:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I remember admitting a crush to a boy in the locker room, thinking about soft hair and light eyes and all the usual silly fun distraction-y things, and hearing him ask: "You wanna feel her titties? You wanna stick your dick in all her holes?" I was shocked, because no I hadn't thought about any of that, but then... what do you do? If that's what boys are supposed to want, I guess I ought to go about wanting that. I was thirteen at the time.

Exactly. I was running in a group with boys talking like that when I was ten. Ten years later, I was around frat guys who were telling rape jokes to each other to see how much more offensive they could be. Statistically, some weren't really joking. It's impossible to overstate how thoroughly we're socialized into this, and how early on it starts.
posted by naju at 1:50 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


can you speculate as to why that way of thinking appealed to you? Did your family teach you toxic masculinity crap, or was it all peers/society? Can you imagine ways in which you could have been raised that would have inoculated you against that?
I spent my adolescence in an all boys boarding school, and so I think I would have been particularly at risk for exposure to this toxic combination of status anxiety, male hyper competition, and believing that girls are an alien species. Add to that this belief that the world functions just like a classroom where all you have to do is say the right things and demonstrate the correct forms of knowledge for a reward and I certainly did have my share of awkwardness, confusion and frustration in my university years.

I believe that a large reason for dodging the corruption into outright misogyny was having an extremely positive relationship with my mother and that most of my views on sex and relationships were formed by my mom. At an early age, I was told by her that one may meet many people before finding their love and that implicit in this is rejection, and that in the same way that I am free to reject someone with whom I may not feel a close attraction , others may feel the same about me -- And That Is OK and part of the world.

A bit hand in hand with that was seeing various members of my family struggling and sometimes succeeding and sometimes feeling. We were taught at an early age that life is work and it is disappointment and it is failure and you are measures by what you achieve despite your setbacks. You are entitled to nothing. You get some privileges by dint of not being born in a slum or ghetto but the universe owes you fuck all and you get what you do by virtue of hard work and doing right by others.

I was taught that helping others is a virtue, but I did turn that into martyrdom and Being Nice not in the generic creepy guy variant but in the less misogynistic and mor universally human variant of just doing good things for others with the express intent of being rewarded. I learned that it was dysfunctional because enough people called me on it. But I include it here to say that the struggle isn't just won at adolescence or young adulthood. This can be something we work and refine throughout our lives because we are struggling against a toxic social culture that profits when we indulge in our baser instincts
posted by bl1nk at 1:53 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


That was the part that my old acquaintance was shocked at the most, I think. At first you say "there's a problem with how boys obsess over girls" and the response is, "trust me, we girls were boy-crazy too!" Then you describe exactly how boys are obsessing over girls and........ oh. Shit. What the fuck.

Not enough men realize what a problem that is and (possibly) not all women realize how horrifically twisted the male perception is of women from the age of, like, 8 on. Probably younger for a lot of guys. By the time you hit adolescence and the hormones REALLY kick in, you've already been taught comprehensively how you ought to respond to those feelings, and "entitled" doesn't begin to describe the nightmare of what's jammed inside little kids' heads.

(I worked as a camp counselor for a few summers, and attempting to deprogram 11-year-old boys is one of the funniest and most depressing tasks I've ever had to perform. Not that I was at all successful, of course. Why would you trust a grown, experienced guy's experiences when your equally-ignorant peers are lying to you about how sexually experienced they are?)
posted by Rory Marinich at 1:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [13 favorites]


Yeah, and I wish I owned a printing press. Not all constitutional rights are as straightforward as they seem.

Did I miss a post? You want a printing press buy a printing press. There are no legal restrictions on them. You could probably even finance it. Of course a PC and a commercial quality laser printer would probably serve you just as well.
posted by MikeMc at 1:57 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


But his entire process of alienation and hatred towards others, which he did us the kindness of comprehensively documenting, was rooted in misogyny. In a profound incapability to acknowledge women as thinking, living, conscious beings.
...
It has been said before that insanity is not an inability to see logic — it is a seeing of far too much logic, more than is really there, more than can possibly be healthy in a world governed by a certain amount of ridiculousness and absurdity. It's connecting patterns together until the whole world makes sense, against its will, against reality. It's insisting that your rules on how the universe ought to be matter more than anybody else.

By this definition, I think, our culture's misogyny is itself a low-grade form of insanity,


Look, misogyny is everywhere around us, it's like water, and it has profound and harmful consequences on all of us. And Rodgers was a hardcore misogynist. And the PUA/MRM communities can go fuck themselves.

But on page 121 of the Rodgers manifesto, he describes his last-ditch effort to "save" himself. He goes to a party but doesn't know how to interact with anyone. He starts getting frustrated and angry. He sees an Asian guy talking to a white girl, the sight of which fills him with rage. He had always assumed that he had suffered from lower status because he was half-Asian, so "how could an ugly Asian attract the attention of a white girl, while a beautiful Eurasian like myself never had any attention from them?" He glares at them and then "decided I had been insulted enough." He bumps the guy, stumbles off and later tries to push some girls off a ledge.

Rodgers assumes that the world plays out according to a simple deeply misogynistic formula which insults him and causes him great pain and suffering. Confronted with some stark evidence that this formula does not actually apply -- that women are not mindless automata -- how does he react? He feels even more insulted and full of rage.

There is "logic" here, but it's not the logic of misogyny. The logic is that nothing is ever his fault and everything is a grave personal insult.
posted by leopard at 1:58 PM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


Rory: That's a great comment. The only point of contention as far as I can tell (at least for me, other people may be different) is whether dumbass' actions are a reflection of society's misogyny rather than a result of it. Which may sound like a distinction without a difference but as we've discussed in the thread is, I think, an important one.
posted by Justinian at 2:12 PM on May 26, 2014


Which may sound like a distinction without a difference

It is. Reflecting society's misogyny is therefore acting as a result of it. Acting as a result of society's mysogyny is reflecting it.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


As someone on the receiving end of misogynist speech and actions, I don't really care if it's coming from someone reflecting society's misogyny or what. It is, in its effects, a distinction without a difference.

The guy in KathrynT's comment - were his actions a reflection of or the result of? What *is* the difference, if the effects are indistinguishable?
posted by rtha at 2:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [20 favorites]


It is.

No it isn't. If it's caused by society's misogyny then stopping misogyny would have prevented his actions. If it's rather a reflection of it then in the absence of misogyny he would still have done something similar and the only difference would maybe have been choosing different targets to rant at.

Maybe that's better, I don't know. But it would still result in a bunch of dead people.
posted by Justinian at 2:28 PM on May 26, 2014


I literally have no words to describe how offensive that hair-splitting is, particularly given rtha's statement right above yours.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:37 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


the only difference would maybe have been choosing different targets to rant at.

In the world we live in, maybe if he'd chosen different targets to rant at, his violence wouldn't have been blown off so easily. We live in a world where violent misogyny is normal; it happens all around us, at every level of society, in all our media, and is largely ignored or excused. That's how a guy can post a video in which he says that women don't deserve to live except as breeding stock and the police can say that he is a perfectly polite, pleasant man.
posted by KathrynT at 2:39 PM on May 26, 2014 [30 favorites]


If the guy was a sociopath, the misogyny, while disgusting and pervasive, is a red herring here.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:39 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


NB, KathrynT, the police never watched the videos. Parents and therapists did.

The police bloody well should have, obviously.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:40 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's hard not to read the purpose of your hair-splitting, Justinian, as yet another round of "well, let's not go rushing into discussing sexism, guys, unless we're absolutely sure there are no other factors at play." (Honestly, I think "what could have 100% for sure stopped this precise instance of violence" is the red herring, the purpose of which is to stop any such discussion in its tracks.)
posted by nobody at 2:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [26 favorites]


(Honestly, I think "what could have 100% for sure stopped this precise instance of violence" is the red herring, the purpose of which is to stop any such discussion in its tracks.)

Agreed.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:46 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


Various media are now posting bikini pictures of a woman mentioned by name in the manifesto.
It's unbelievable. Does anybody doubt that she will now be the victim of death and rape threats?
posted by maggiemaggie at 2:48 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


I just don't understand why Rodgers' parents and therapists or other people who saw those videos didn't report them to the police. They were clear evidence that the guy was a danger to others.
posted by orange swan at 2:48 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's hard not to read the purpose of your hair-splitting, Justinian, as yet another round of "well, let's not go rushing into discussing sexism, guys, unless we're absolutely sure there are no other factors at play."

Yesssss, because "his actions were a hate crime and a reflection of society's misogyny" sure sounds exactly like that. Right.
posted by Justinian at 2:49 PM on May 26, 2014


I just don't understand why Rodgers' parents and therapists or other people who saw those videos didn't report them to the police. They were clear evidence that the guy was a danger to others.

They did. The police spent a cursory amount of time talking to him, did not watch them, and concluded he was a normal kid.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:50 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


They did. The police spent a cursory amount of time talking to him, did not watch them, and concluded he was a normal kid.

Hindsight is 20/20, okay, but if you believe your child is in imminent danger to himself and others, and the first police don't take you seriously, you go to another set of police. You call back. You go up the chain.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 2:51 PM on May 26, 2014


Beat me by thirty seconds, DM.

The parents and therapists were obviously concerned. I want to know why the cops didn't watch the videos; the therapy team are mandatory reporters and the videos are online anyway, so there's no problem with breaking confidentiality there.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:52 PM on May 26, 2014


Not sure why Rodger's crime can't be a reflection and a result of wider cultural misogyny, honestly. Don't see any reason it couldn't be both. And either way, like rtha said, the same people get hurt in the same ways. Can we call this nit picked?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 2:55 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Hindsight is 20/20, okay, but if you believe your child is in imminent danger to himself and others, and the first police don't take you seriously, you go to another set of police.

There are varying criteria for what constitutes the legal definition of imminent danger. I don't disagree with your general point but, as has been explained further up this enormous thread, it's just not that easy to confine someone who isn't literally shouting death threats from the roof — weapon in hand.
posted by Dark Messiah at 2:57 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


but if you believe your child is in imminent danger to himself and others, and the first police don't take you seriously, you go to another set of police. You call back. You go up the chain.

Excellent point. The therapy team should have done this, as they were the ones who knew his mental state best and could interpret the videos better. It shouldn't have been a 'wellness check,' it should have been an 'imminent danger to self or others, here's the paperwork for the psychiatric hold.'

I don't disagree with your general point but, as has been explained further up this enormous thread, it's just not that easy to confine someone who isn't literally shouting death threats from the roof

Uttering a death threat is exactly how I had a former roommate placed under psychiatric evaluation.

This guy uttered several.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 2:59 PM on May 26, 2014


That's how a guy can post a video in which he says that women don't deserve to live except as breeding stock and the police can say that he is a perfectly polite, pleasant man.

KathrynT, I really hope you are being rhetorical here, but if not, that is a very tragic line of thinking.
posted by ryanfou at 3:00 PM on May 26, 2014


KathrynT, I really hope you are being rhetorical here, but if not, that is a very tragic line of thinking.

Yes. It is.

Though not, I suspect, in the way that you seem to be intending.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:03 PM on May 26, 2014 [14 favorites]


I don't think she's being rhetorical at all. That is how bad our society is. Had those cops actually watched the videos I have no doubt at all there would be seven more people alive in Santa Barbara today.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:03 PM on May 26, 2014


Depending on the 911 operator and the police the amount of information that tthey police will take from you before doing a check varies. There is no confidentiality on the videos as they on a public website anyway. Anybody could watch them. It's not like handing over letters or other documents from am office.

The mental health team followed the law. They did exactly what they were suppose to do. Unfortunately we send police officers who have no training in mental health to make the call.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:05 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The next time someone questions whether something is really misogyny, just remember this. Someone LITERALLY declared a "war on women" and everyone's like "yeah, but is that really a result of misogyny?" Someone LITERALLY wanted to keep women in concentration camps for breeding purposes. "OK but can we really blame misogyny for this?" It's hard to imagine something more misogynistic than this. On one hand you have people constantly asking the bar for misogyny to be raised because they don't believe it. And then when something like this comes along that meets the impossibly high standards so well that you can't argue against it, then people ask for the bar to be LOWERED because it's "too much." Do you see why that's frustrating?
posted by naju at 3:06 PM on May 26, 2014 [147 favorites]


The mental health team followed the law.

The Aurora shooter's psychiatrist also warned police that he was a ticking time bomb. Apparently, something is wrong with this system.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


We should have dedicated police teams worth mentalhealth specialists who respond to these calls. It's absurd that we do not.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:07 PM on May 26, 2014


I demand a million extra favourites to give to that comment, naju.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


And then when something like this comes along that meets the impossibly high standards so well that you can't argue against it, then people ask for the bar to be LOWERED because it's "too much."

I think there's a difference between misogyny and the ravings of a sociopathic lunatic.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:10 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


No it isn't. If it's caused by society's misogyny then stopping misogyny would have prevented his actions. If it's rather a reflection of it then in the absence of misogyny he would still have done something similar and the only difference would maybe have been choosing different targets to rant at.

This line of argument is foolish and pointless, since we are so far from ridding our society of misogyny (in order to tell if some people's attitudes are reflections or results?) that I cannot see how you can be seriously arguing that it matters so much that there is a difference.

We do not live in a society without misogyny. We never have. We perhaps never will. But we can work towards one where attitudes like this guy's and those all over the PUA boards are taken seriously, and where women who have the nerve to talk on the internet about sexism don't get rape threats, and if they do, the threats are not dismissed by nice guys as "oh just trolls ignore."

Please spare me this absurd concern that we must investigate whether or not Rodgers' hatred of women was a reflection or a result. Because even if you can right here prove to everyone that there is a big difference and it really matters there is not a fucking thing anyone can do about it right now. Not a goddamn thing.
posted by rtha at 3:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [28 favorites]


> I think there's a difference between misogyny and the ravings of a sociopathic lunatic.

Really? There's a way to HATE half the people of Earth and NOT be sociopathic and crazy for doing so? Please explain.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


I demand a million extra favourites to give to that comment, naju.

Yeah seriously.

Additionally, posting things like "if he was mentally ill/a sociopath then that is the problem, not misogyny" seem to be putting WAY WAY WAY more emphasis on what sociopathy/mental illness is like than seems appropriate. Like, narcissism and psychosis are really bad, yes, but there are plenty of narcissists who don't get it in their head to kill their younger brother, kill their beta male roommates, and attempt to rampage inside a sorority. Even psychotic ones.

Acting like people exist separately from the cultures that define them is, like, human monster-excusing 101. With all respect to a lot of people here who I do think are trying to argue in good faith, it reads to me like a lot of attempts to other this guy rather than admit that many of his problems are square one for modern culture w/r/t male-female relationships, which they are.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [16 favorites]


I keep seeing people saying that, but when I ask them "okay, so where'd the idea to kill all women come from?", they can't answer. Can you answer? Where'd that idea come from?
posted by palomar at 3:12 PM on May 26, 2014


Really? There's a way to HATE half the people of Earth and NOT be sociopathic and crazy for doing so? Please explain.

C'mon, really? Why be fighty about that? Misogyny is disgusting and does not always indicate someone is a violent sociopath.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


the ravings of a sociopathic lunatic.

Those ravings are not without cultural context. That asshole who shot those people (who ended up not even being Jewish!) in the parking lot of the Jewish community center a few weeks back: Does him being diagnosed as a sociopath mean that violent anti-Semitism really doesn't exist?

Being a sociopathic lunatic and being a misogynist are also not mutually exclusive categories.
posted by rtha at 3:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [29 favorites]


On the subject of misogyny: Let's get to the meta-discussion at hand. Equality vs. misogyny.

The whole feminists vs. MRA narrative, a lot like gun control, is one of those Manichean discussions that don't seem to lead anywhere, and ultimately both sides are talking past each other and just doing their own thing with the already converted, instead of having any sort of meaningful dialogue.

Certainly, as with so many of these debates in the post-Bush era, you can say one side is clearly correct, and the other is a reactionary bunch of troglodytes etc., etc. But that side is still populated by people, as human as you. And their beliefs, as terrible as they might be, are still based on legitimated grievances. And yes, it well might make one despair and throw one's hands up frustration at the appalling things these people believe. To mock them as idiots instead, completely disconnected from reality. But then, they think of you in the exact same way, and so both sides silo themselves off, refusing to interact with anyone except one's own in the best way the internet is capable of. So what happens next? If the sort of victimized thinking that partly created Elliot Rodger is caused by patriarchy's effects on men, how do feminists reach out to men?

Also, if we are to change the culture, where do we start? How do we get young men to realize there's more to life than competing over idealized, objectified, women, and start treating women as people? And how do we do that without making it seem like some sort of Tumblr sjw Rainbow Coalition agenda designed to emasculate them?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:17 PM on May 26, 2014


Does him being diagnosed as a sociopath mean that violent anti-Semitism really doesn't exist?

Of course not. I'm saying in this case, it's possible this guy was going to target any population that he felt unworthy of his ilk.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:18 PM on May 26, 2014


AlexiaSky: The National Alliance on Mental Illness gives mental health crisis intervention training to police forces. As a best practice, the ideal is to train a fraction of your force as specialists and have them respond specifically because if you train 100%, you end up with a lot of cops who don't care just going through the motions.

I don't know if the training goes into handling someone who had (in my armchair assessment) sociopathic traits. Many, many sociopathic mass murderers have managed to talk their way out of scrutiny when facing the police.
posted by Skwirl at 3:18 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The whole feminists vs. MRA narrative, a lot like gun control, is one of those Manichean discussions that don't seem to lead anywhere, and ultimately both sides are talking past each other

Positing facts not in evidence. I'm pretty sure feminists understand the MRA people about a billion times better than vice versa.
posted by Green With You at 3:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [13 favorites]


rory marinrich: I mean tragic in 2 ways. If you think that police officers or society in general would be knowledgeable of such degrading statements towards women and subsequently refer to that person as a polite and pleasant man, then that is certainly tragic if it actually happened, and tragic if you thought it could happen based on previous experiences in your life.
posted by ryanfou at 3:19 PM on May 26, 2014


Why be fighty about misogyny? I can't believe you just asked that. I really can't.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:20 PM on May 26, 2014 [11 favorites]


Hindsight is 20/20, okay, but if you believe your child is in imminent danger to himself and others, and the first police don't take you seriously, you go to another set of police.

There are varying criteria for what constitutes the legal definition of imminent danger. I don't disagree with your general point but, as has been explained further up this enormous thread, it's just not that easy to confine someone who isn't literally shouting death threats from the roof — weapon in hand.


To keep beating my Pete Earley and his book CRAZY drum, you can read the first chapter of his book online. It details his inability to get his son checked in for treatment despite in-person, hands-on efforts.

Some snippets from it, listing some of the incidents as his son Mike started having psychotic issues.
Mike hadn’t slept for five nights. He’d spent most of his days wandering aimlessly through Manhattan. He’d walked twenty miles one day going nowhere. He’d also become fixated on a friend named Jen, only she didn’t know it. He was convinced they’d soon be married. He told me his plans shortly as his friend dropped him off.

“I’ve got to save her,” Mike said. “I’ve got to save Jen.”

“From what?”

“Evil.”

...

Although confused, Mike seemed to be thinking rationally. We brought him home. Two days after that, he got up early before everyone, slipped outside and decided to go for a drive. About a mile from the house, he let go of the steering wheel and shut his eyes. He told me later that he’d not been sure if he had been awake or dreaming. He figured the quickest way to find out was to turn loose of the wheel.

The car crashed into a parked sedan.
After some back and forth and in and out of treatment centers, Mike has a breakdown and Earley tries to get him admitted, after telling the above stories and more to the admitting nurse. And waiting. And waiting.
For the next two hours, we waited. Two hours! No one came to help us. No one poked a head in to ask if we were okay. Mike was still reading the same magazine. He was starting to discern secret messages in the text. I was beginning to seethe.

“This is incredible,” he giggled.

Another hour passed and then, unbelievably, another. I’d always prided myself on being polite, patient. But four hours! It was midnight now. I couldn’t believe we were still waiting. What was the hold-up?

“I’m leaving,” Mike announced.

“Just a minute,” I said. I rushed into the hall and waved down a nurse. A few minutes later, a doctor entered the room. He was in his thirties, clean-cut, and all-business. As he came in, he raised both hands as if he were surrendering to enemy troops.

“Sorry you’ve had to wait, but we’re busy, and there’s not going to be much I can do for you,” he said.

I thought: You haven’t even examined my son! But the doctor explained that the intake nurse had already warned him that my son believed all medicines were poison.

The doctor asked Mike: “Do you know who I am?”

“You’re the witch doctor. Ow-ee-ow-ah-ah.”

The doctor grinned. This isn’t funny, I thought. I blurted out: “He’s been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder.” I began to explain how Mike had been hospitalized at Dominion Hospital twice and how he had not been taking his anti-psychotic medicine for at least five months.

But the doctor cut me short.

“What’s happened before this moment doesn’t really matter,” he declared.

I was stunned. “It doesn’t matter?” Would you say this to a patient complaining of any other illness?

“On the drive here from New York, Mike asked me how I’d feel if someone I loved killed himself,” I said. I wanted this doctor to understand how serious this was.

He turned to face Mike and asked: “Are you going to hurt yourself or anyone else?”

“No!”

The doctor glanced back at me and shrugged.

I couldn’t believe this was happening.

“He’s delusional!” I exclaimed. “For godsakes, he’s been reading the same magazine page for four hours.”

With an irritated look, the doctor asked Mike: “Who’s the president of the United States?”

“That idiot George Bush.”

“What day is it today?”

Other questions followed: “Can you count backwards by sevens from a hundred? What does the phrase ‘Don’t cry over spilled milk’ mean? How about the words: ‘A heavy heart?’”

Mike answered each question easily. Then he explained that he was God’s personal messenger and that he was indestructible.

The doctor said: “Virginia law is very specific. Unless a patient is in imminent danger to himself or others, I cannot treat him unless he voluntarily agrees to be treated.” Before I could reply, he asked Mike: “Will you take medicines if I offer them to you?”

“No, I don’t believe in our poisons,” Mike said. “Can I leave now?”

“Yes,” the doctor answered without consulting me. Mike jumped off the patient’s table and hurried out the door. I started after him, but stopped and decided to try one last time to reason with the doctor.

“My son’s bipolar, he’s off his meds, he has a history of psychotic behavior. You’ve got to do something! He’s sick! Help him, please!”

He said: “Your son is an adult and while he is clearly acting odd, he has a right under the law to refuse treatment.”

“Then you take him home with you tonight!” I exclaimed.

Before the doctor could respond, we both heard a commotion in the hallway. Mike was screaming at his mother because she had told him that he needed to take his medicine. “You drink beer, why not take your medicine?” she’d asked. “Alcohol is a drug.”

My son was so out-of-control that a nurse called hospital security. I was glad. Maybe now they will medicate him, I thought. But before the security guard arrived, Mike dashed outside, cursing loudly. I went after him. Meanwhile, the doctor told my ex-wife that it was not illegal for someone to be mentally ill in Virginia. But it was illegal for him to treat them unless they consented. There was nothing he could do.

“Even if he’s psychotic?” she asked.

“Yes.”

Mike couldn’t forcibly be treated, the doctor elaborated, until he hurt himself or someone else.
Then later:
Unsure what to do next, I slipped into my office and called the Fairfax County police.

“Until he breaks the law, we can’t get involved,” a dispatcher told me.

Patti telephoned a friend whose daughter has bipolar disorder. The friend told her: “I had the same problem when we took our daughter to the hospital. I yelled at her doctor: ‘Do I have to wait for my daughter to hang herself before you’ll treat her?’ And he said: ‘Yes. If she attempts suicide, then we can do something. Sorry, but it’s the law.’”
posted by phearlez at 3:20 PM on May 26, 2014 [27 favorites]


Let me be more lucid: misogyny is sociopathy. Every time. The end.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:21 PM on May 26, 2014 [16 favorites]


Why be fighty about misogyny? I can't believe you just asked that. I really can't.

Yeah, that wasn't what I said. I'm saying that it's ridiculous to imply that all misogynists are sociopaths. There are tons of men in this thread who admit to having had wrong perspectives on how to treat their fellow human beings. Doesn't make them sociopaths or violent.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:22 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


it's possible this guy was going to target any population that he felt unworthy of his ilk.

Well, sure! But the thing is, he didn't. He targeted women. He wrote up a 140 page manifesto talking about how much he hated women, and how badly he wanted to punish them for never choosing him and always choosing other, inferior men. His stated mission was to strike fear in the heart of every woman. Says so right in his manifesto. But I guess we can't take this guy's word for his own motivations, because obviously misogyny isn't a thing that inspires anyone to kill, not ever.

Come the fuck on, buddy.
posted by palomar at 3:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [32 favorites]


Like, narcissism and psychosis are really bad, yes, but there are plenty of narcissists who don't get it in their head to kill their younger brother, kill their beta male roommates, and attempt to rampage inside a sorority. Even psychotic ones.

I'm not really that interested in having a proxy debate about whether misogyny is a big deal or not (my position: it's a big deal), but by this logic there are plenty of misogynists who don't get it in their head to kill their younger brother, kill their beta male roommates, and attempt to rampage inside a sorority. There are literally billions of such people.
posted by leopard at 3:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


And their beliefs, as terrible as they might be, are still based on legitimated grievances.

name some terrible feminist beliefs & some legitimate MRA grievances, please
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [33 favorites]


I'm saying in this case, it's possible this guy was going to target any population that he felt unworthy of his ilk.

And in this context, the marinade in which he steeped, that population was women. Hating women and wanting to control us and subjugate us is not rare or crazy or fringe. The world is packed with people like this, though they usually exhibit their feelings by controlling our schooling, our reproductive rights, our property rights, our ability to decide when and whom to marry, whether or not we will get to live if we report being raped, etc. rather than just gunning us down. Sometimes, of course, they kidnap large groups of us. Then the media can use euphamisms for our fate like "sold into marriage" rather than "sexually enslaved, raped, and killed."
posted by rtha at 3:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [31 favorites]


> I'm saying that it's ridiculous to imply that all misogynists are sociopaths.

Please, please realize how tortured, backward and disturbing what you're saying is. Hating people for their sex, having deep-seated biases against women by virtue of their just being women, IS. SOCIOPATHIC. Women are people, part of society, a big part. It is tautological.
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [26 favorites]


Skwirl: the problem is the training is not near enough and they don't even always respond. To be a licensed clinical social worker in my state it takes a master's degree and 3000 hours of supervised work experience and then the actual test. They need a actual practitioner to go or with them nor somebody who sat through a 40 hour course.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:24 PM on May 26, 2014


Sociopathy is not just a biological or genetic phenomenon. Sociopathy can be induced by a culture as well.

Ours is a society of many low-grade sociopathies bouncing into one another. Misogyny is among the most prevalent and potent.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:25 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


We should have dedicated police teams who respond to these calls. It's absurd that we do not.

Here in Toronto at least there's a specific number you can call that sends cops, yes (in case someone needs to be taken into custody), but they bring a psychiatric nurse with them. Cops scope out the scene to make sure there's no danger, then wait outside while the nurse does the actual wellness check. Seems like a pretty smart system to me.

I keep seeing people saying that, but when I ask them "okay, so where'd the idea to kill all women come from?", they can't answer. Can you answer? Where'd that idea come from?

From, as I keep saying, the toxic intersections of hate (as aided and abetted by the PUA crowd), failure of authorities to act properly (cops should have been told to watch those videos; therapists should have pushed a lot harder for a committal), systemic society-wide misogyny, easy access to weaponry, and as disclosed a diagnosis of at least one mental illness.

It was a perfect storm of awful. And if you could take any one of those things above out of the equasion, you'd probably have heard of this guy's name.

Which is also why this problem needs to be attacked on multiple fronts: teaching boys to treat women like people, not objects they are entitled to; eradicating the MRA/PUA bullshit from the earth entirely; a mental healthcare infrastructure that treats a broken brain with the same serious and lack of stigma as an ER deals with a broken arm; serious, wide-ranging changes to gun control to keep deadly weapons away from dangerous people.

It's a lot of work to do. It's almost overwhelming.

And their beliefs, as terrible as they might be, are still based on legitimated grievances.

Are you honestly saying with a straight face that the MRA assbags have legitimate grievances? Seriously?

If the sort of victimized thinking that partly created Elliot Rodger is caused by patriarchy's effects on men, how do feminists reach out to men?

The same way they have been for 50-odd years? By saying "We are all equal."
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:26 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


Certainly, as with so many of these debates in the post-Bush era, you can say one side is clearly correct, and the other is a reactionary bunch of troglodytes etc., etc. But that side is still populated by people, as human as you. And their beliefs, as terrible as they might be, are still based on legitimated grievances.

I generally don't say this, because it's obvious and dismissive, but... dude. Cit. req.

On a tangent, although not as big a tangent as I'd like, this seemed relevant, especially given the discussion of Vox Day further up the thread.

N.K. Jemisin's guest of honor speech at WisCon 38 addresses the institutional response:
During the month or so that it took SFWA to figure out what it wanted to do with this guy, a SFWA officer sat on the formal complaint I’d submitted because she thought I had “sent it in anger” and that I might not be aware of the consequences of sending something like that to the Board. A SFWA affiliate member posted a call for civility on his website; in the process he called me “an Omarosa” and a “drama queen”, but of course he didn’t mean those in a racialized or gendered way.

In a semi-secret unofficial SFWA forum there was intense debate — involving former SFWA presidents and officers, and people who weren’t members at all — about why it was desperately important that SFWA retain its harassers and assaulters, no matter how many members they drove off, because their ability to say whatever they wanted was more important than everyone’s ability to function in genre workspaces, and SFWA’s ability to exist as a professional association.
#yesallspacewomen.

Another pretty amazing fact from that speech - the owner of the MedievalPoC Tumblr, a woman, gets about 30 death threats a month. For pointing out that there are people of color in medieval art.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:27 PM on May 26, 2014 [19 favorites]


Yeah also, it is surprisingly easy to sell feminism/treating women as equal to people once you can get them over that initial hump of paranoia.

To this day, every time I interact with any woman ever I get this embarrassingly strong sense of elation along the lines of, THANK GOODNESS YOU ARE NOT A SPACE ALIEN AND I CAN UNDERSTAND YOUR FEELINGS AND BEHAVIORS. Feels good man.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:28 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


Positing facts not in evidence. I'm pretty sure feminists understand the MRA people about a billion times better than vice versa.

Granted, this is me falling into an appeal to ignorance fallacy, but it seems like whenever feminist sites bring up with MRA, it's to denounce them and dismiss them as a load of reactionary bigots. Which, to be fair, merited. But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups? Why not understand the roots of their anger? And then attempt to work to address their anger, while uplifting the cause of women?

[And yes, I understand with equating Jezebel with the totality of the huge sprawling umbrella of ideologies known as "feminism" (as broad an umbrella as say, Marxism, or Christianity), is an over-generalization]

name some terrible feminist beliefs & some legitimate MRA grievances, please

Saxon Kane spelled it out way better than I could.

I'm not saying that the arguments they bring up are legit, but certainly their anger is based on something, no? When electorates vote in reactionaries, there's reasons for it.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:29 PM on May 26, 2014


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups? Why not understand the roots of their anger? And then attempt to work to address their anger, while uplifting the cause of women?

Because the roots of a lot of their anger is, "Women owe me something and they're not coughing up." It is hard to acknowledge that when you're simultaneously suffering from the shitty actions of people who buy into that ideology wholesale.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:30 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


Ambrosia Voyeur, you are calling a number of people in this thread sociopaths for mistakes they have made, based on the way they grew up. It's not cool.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:31 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Psychopathy (or sociopathy) is traditionally defined as a personality disorder characterized by enduring antisocial behavior, diminished empathy and remorse, and disinhibited or bold behavior.

By that definition, sociopathy is admired by much of society, American more than others, and is commonly TAUGHT to boys as "the way to succeed".
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:32 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


roomthreeseventeen, sociopath is not an insult, it is a description. Whether or not somebody's a sociopath because brainfrizz or because of the way they grew up, the description is still apt.

I would absolutely call certain of my younger behaviors sociopathic. Isn't it common to describe people of a certain age as "little sociopaths" already? This is the exact same thing, only the sociopathy in question involves perceiving women.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:34 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups?

You first.

Why should I, as someone who believes that women are people, consider as legitimate the arguments of those who believe women are inferior and here only for the pleasure of and at the tolerance of men? Why must I engage on their terms?

I think you should go to those MRA boards and make your case there for them to reach out in the spirit of understanding.
posted by rtha at 3:34 PM on May 26, 2014 [36 favorites]


Saxon Kane spelled it out way better than I could.

MRAs' legitimate grievances, per Saxon Kane's comment, would seem to be against patriarchy, yet they all attack feminism & women for some reason

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:34 PM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


I totally agree with the sentiment Ambrosia is trying to get across if not the precise medical or psychological definitions.
posted by ryanfou at 3:37 PM on May 26, 2014


Men should be angry and confused. Men have been lied to their entire lives about makes a man a man and how they can them sex without ever discussing that the sex part comes with another human being and not a fleshlight.

Women are angry and so are men. Some men figure this out and are good people and other men retreat to these spaces where that can bemoan that the fantasy they were taught isn't real and how unfair it is and then take it out on the people who won't give them what they want.
posted by AlexiaSky at 3:37 PM on May 26, 2014 [11 favorites]


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups? Why not understand the roots of their anger? And then attempt to work to address their anger, while uplifting the cause of women?

They turn to such ideologies because they have a lot of internalized misogyny and there's a group of people who have an explanation ready that fits their already existing worldview to explain their problems. The root of their anger is that they feel they aren't getting what they're owed by society. In some cases they have experienced legitimate injustice. Fortunately, by working to dismantle the patriarchy feminists are advancing both their cause and the cause of men who experience hardship in this system.

The problem with MRA types is that due to their internalized misogyny they don't recognize the kinship they should have with feminists. And because of their internalized misogyny they aren't liable to listen to feminists either. It's like asking why didn't ask slaves just explain things better to slavers. If you believe that a group of people are less than human in some way there's no reason to listen to them.
posted by Green With You at 3:38 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


I'm not saying MRAs' arguments are legitimate. "Legitimate grievances" was not the best phrasing. But I mean something is happening to cause them anger, and thus funnel it into these ideologies.

Sorta like economic doldrums and endemic corruption and loss of faith in the democratic process causes people to back fascists, perhaps?

I'm not advocating that people take MRAs at their word, and consider their arguments as valid. I'm saying that maybe we should examine why the way they think they do. See why they construct such arguments. Because it has to be based on something.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:41 PM on May 26, 2014


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups? Why not understand the roots of their anger? And then attempt to work to address their anger, while uplifting the cause of women?

Because that examination has already happened. When women say "patriarchy hurts men too", This is exactly what we mean by that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:42 PM on May 26, 2014 [52 favorites]


> Ambrosia Voyeur, you are calling a number of people in this thread sociopaths for mistakes they have made, based on the way they grew up. It's not cool.

No, I'm definitely not calling anyone who ever "made mistakes" sociopathic. That would be something a Big Bad Feminazi would do, I guess. I, real life man-smoochin' feminist, however, am saying that misogyny is tautologically sociopathic. I'm just gonna let the English language go ahead and back me up on that.

Anywho, as I am, as previously stated, very much a part of the local and specific culture of this story, very upset by the specific intersectional problems of which it is a symptom, and since beginning online discussion about it have (hopefully randomly) begun to be subjected to harrassing phone calls. So, as much as I'm enjoying a bit of a return to MeFi after a long hiatus PhDing, I think I need to just wrap it up and let the others talk. I'm gonna catch The Lego Movie in 3D at the theater where you get to put your own butter on the popcorn (choice!)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 3:43 PM on May 26, 2014 [16 favorites]


I live in Georgia. Right here, where I live, white people used to form gangs and torture black people to death, then leave their bodies hanging in trees for the world to see. Ordinary people did this, and then went home to their families, jobs, and churches. Ordinary people are capable of engaging in sociopathic behavior. This should not be something that is really needed to debate.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [52 favorites]


Because it has to be based on something.

AlexiaSky answered your question already, Apocryphon:
Men have been lied to their entire lives about makes a man a man and how they can them sex without ever discussing that the sex part comes with another human being and not a fleshlight.
So did Green With You in the comment right above yours.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


But I mean something is happening to cause them anger, and thus funnel it into these ideologies.

Yes. They have been taught that they are entitled to certain things (attention from women, e.g.), and they feel they are not getting it. They are angry at women, not at a system that wrongly taught them they are entitled to attention from women. This is not an unsolved mystery.

The solution is not "give them the attention of women." The solution is "teach children that other children, regardless of what is or is not between their legs, are human beings, and no one is entitled to the attention or sexual favors from anyone just because."
posted by rtha at 3:45 PM on May 26, 2014 [23 favorites]


Ordinary people are capable of engaging in sociopathic behavior.

Someone who lynches another human being is not ordinary.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 3:46 PM on May 26, 2014


MRAs' legitimate grievances... would seem to be against patriarchy

Yep, the 'legitimate grievance' most referred to, inequality in Divorce Law (and judges handling Divorce), originated well before Feminism-as-we-know-it, as a result of paternalistic attitudes toward men's and women's roles in Marriage.
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:47 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Someone who lynches another human being is not ordinary.

There was a time and a place when that was not, strictly speaking, true.

If we still have a civilzation around in 2-300 years, they are going to look back on this (societal misogyny) and go what the actual fuck.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:49 PM on May 26, 2014 [14 favorites]


Someone who lynches another human being is not ordinary.

Mob behavior allows ordinary people 'coverage' to contribute to extra-ordinary behavior.

You could say that killing another human being in general is not 'ordinary', but today is a holiday set aside to honor people whose job it was to do just that (but were, regrettably, the ones killed - there is no Memorial Day for civilian victims).
posted by oneswellfoop at 3:51 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


If we do know the reason, then what would be an effective way to reach out to those who don't? How do we reverse the culture? Something like the Good Men Project?
posted by Apocryphon at 3:54 PM on May 26, 2014


This guy thinks he couldn't get laid? Try being a women near 50.
posted by goofyfoot at 3:54 PM on May 26, 2014 [11 favorites]


.
posted by Drinky Die at 3:55 PM on May 26, 2014


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups?

Because stage 4. In both directions.
posted by ctmf at 3:57 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't mean to brush off the comments from people saying that we should give a shit about why MRA sorts feel the things that they do. The main reason that I've been meaning to write an essay about this subject — and the reason I don't feel comfortable doing it in the wake of this story — is that I feel there's not a whole lot of attention paid to the pain of attraction you deal with when you also happen to be in a culture that is as anti-women as ours is. It's kind of a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't-type situation. And the fact that, like I said, our culture places a lot of pressure on young women to try and be exactly the type of object men are told women ought to be, at least outwardly, can make it even trickier. One of the reasons I'm taking as long as I have to draft/think about this essay is that I want to be really, really careful about observing the ways in which this dynamic exists without accidentally going too far and giving people, like, ammunition to justify male behavior by saying "see? it's just really haaaaard when women buy cute clothes and read cosmo, man!"

I do believe there is a lot of genuine pain here, even a little bit beyond the point where it's rooted in delusion. I have made a lot of efforts to be less of a piece of shit person, but I still bump into a situation every couple months where I wind up feeling depressed or mopey for an evening because something something somebody I met, but the only possible action I can picture taking would be unfair to whichever person triggered the irrational mopiness in the first place.

Here's the thing, though: I care a lot about that because I am a straight man who's dealt a lot with feeling injured or upset over things and can relate a whole ton to guys who might go from those feelings to taking horrible actions. Given a completely neutral environment, I'd love to spend some of my time reaching out to those people, providing them with ways of recontextualizing their feelings, and figuring out methods of working out those feelings that feels satisfactory without completely fucking somebody else over in the process. The key word, there, is neutral. In an environment in which women are constantly made the targets of men, let alone... I dunno... slaughtered in a not-quite-random act of malevolence and hate, it is unbelievably unfair to ask people who have been made to feel like targets to immediately sympathize with the sort of culture that spawned this killer.

When things are decently okayish, it's well and good to say that we should spend some time trying to empathize, trying to understand, and if you happen to be detached enough from the violence being committed that you don't have to fear it yourself, like I am, then maybe it's a little bit easier. But there is value to be had in dialogue that consists of "this is NOT okay, this IS horribly misogynistic, and WE HAVE A PROBLEM", without any immediate attempts to feel bad about the poor mass murderer who just mass murdered. I wrote a whole thing above saying I empathize with this guy, and I still feel like there is something majorly problematic about asking people in this thread to please think of the poor MRAs. It's the same reason why I'd feel terrible about sympathizing with a KKK member, or an anti-Semite group: it's well and good to assume humanity on the other person's part, but peace and love cannot be the only tool we've got in our bag, because it is absolute folly to try and peer into the hearts of the people who're convinced they've gotta kill you just to teach you a lesson.
posted by Rory Marinich at 3:59 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


The New York Post (no link because screw those guys) just posted a bikini shot of one of (the only?) the women mentioned in Rodger's manifesto and wrote that the photo showed "[t]he aspiring model whose childhood rejection of Elliot Rodger lit the fuse that turned him into a murderous madman".

Clearly it was this woman, who interacted with Rodger when she was 10 years old, who caused this tragedy. I'm out of the emotional energy to be angry at this point, honestly. Anyone who still thinks that we don't have a misogyny problem in our society has simply not been paying attention.
posted by jess at 4:03 PM on May 26, 2014 [81 favorites]


Jesus wept
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:05 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


That's pretty fucked up.
posted by Justinian at 4:06 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Anyone who still thinks that we don't have a misogyny problem in our society needs has simply not been paying attention.

Nobody in this thread has said that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:06 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


hey, agreement. jinx.
posted by Justinian at 4:06 PM on May 26, 2014


Mod note: super difficult topic folks, make a real effort to show that you are making an effort, if in fact you are.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 4:10 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Nobody in this thread has said that.

Arguing about whether or not this was sociopathy or misogyny or whether it was a reflection of or the result of societal misogyny is really tiresome and feels pointless and like some people would really rather not acknowledge that misogyny levels are toxic and murderous and that there must be some other reason instead of or in addition to.
posted by rtha at 4:10 PM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]




There's an internal contradiction in Rodger's (PUA/MRA-derived?) worldview: on the one hand, women are powerful gatekeepers who block the way to male fulfillment and happiness; but on the other hand, they're not-really-human creatures who can and should be manipulated and/or controlled. This mixture of desire, fear, and contempt comes through in his hateful rhetoric. If he didn't desire women (as an abstract goal, not any particular woman); if he didn't fear them; if he didn't hold them in contempt; perhaps he wouldn't have exploded the way he did.

I can see parallels in hateful rhetoric directed against other groups: Jews are powerful and scary but also weak and disgusting; Blacks are naturally servile even though they wish to rise up and kill us all; the gay lifestyle is repulsive and unnatural but also so addictive that it cannot be withstood. Perhaps these attitudes have more to do with the person and less to do with the target than we imagine? Perhaps Rodger was predisposed to some sort of hatred, but if things had been different he might have ended up shooting Jews or gays instead? I wish I knew more about this sort of thing.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


Nobody in this thread has said that.

Okay, but I didn't say anyone had? I find it pretty upsetting, honestly, that when I write something like "misogyny is prevalent in our society" your immediate reaction is to imply that I'm overreacting or speaking out of turn. I really am not interested in getting into it with you here, but you should perhaps consider your reaction and how it could be interpreted.
posted by jess at 4:13 PM on May 26, 2014 [22 favorites]


Nobody in this thread has said that.

No, of course not. The party line goes, "You can't blame any of this tragedy on misogyny when it's obvious that the killer was mentally ill." Did I get it right?
posted by palomar at 4:13 PM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


If we do know the reason, then what would be an effective way to reach out to those who don't? How do we reverse the culture? Something like the Good Men Project?

It depends - are you looking for an overnight fix? Because that ain't gonna happen. It will only happen in increments.

But the way you reverse the culture is by doing exactly what we are doing here. Talking about this incident, examining how misogyny contributed to it, and - most importantly - accepting the role misogyny played in this incident, and continues to play in thousands of other, smaller daily incidents. So that way a) you can check your own behavior if you are about to commit even a minute act of misogyny, b) you have the courage to check the behavior of others, and c) so the next time something like this happens we don't waste so much time in handwringing over "but how can we get to the root of what makes men do this" when we women have been telling you again and again the answer to that question since nineteen-sixty-fucking-two.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


The New York Post (no link because screw those guys) just posted a bikini shot of one of (the only?) the women mentioned in Rodger's manifesto.

I posted about that an hour ago but nobody noticed.

You just know the tabloids are running around trying to get dirt on everyone who is mentioned in the manifesto - and he mentioned a lot of people by name. I hope they all have good lawyers.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:15 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


By the way, I can testify that MetaFilter and discussions like this one made me a lot better at seeing my own gender-related blind spots and being less shitty towards women I know in general.

As proof I offer up all my comments from 2009-2011 inclusive. Please do me a favor and don't actually check up on that.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:15 PM on May 26, 2014 [20 favorites]


The party line goes, "You can't blame any of this tragedy on misogyny when it's obvious that the killer was mentally ill." Did I get it right?

The party line might, but not necessarily anyone on Metafilter.
posted by Justinian at 4:23 PM on May 26, 2014


Way upthread I pointed out (but did NOT link) a reposting of his manifesto with the title: "ELLIOT ROGERS---Another TOLERANT liberal PROGRESSIVE---goes on a MASS MURDER! Killing 7!" and description "Oh yea this one is definitely a liberal alright like all the rest! Before you all go spouting your crap about banning guns remember that your side has been responsible for more mass shootings then the pro-gun side!"

There are some very very wrong people who are using this tragedy atrocity to support their own very very wrong agendas. Asa result, anything that smells of "supporting an agenda", even if it goes far to intelligently explain what happened, will inevitably get blowback. There are obviously multiple contributing factors - societal misogyny IS an important one - for Rodger's rampage. But events like this ultimately fail as 'learning opportunities', especially with so much effective disinformation being sold as information these days.

My personal philosophy has evolved in recent years to "It's never just one thing. Things are never that simple."

on preview, as Rory Marinich courageously admitted, some people DO learn from the opportunities... just never enough
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:24 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


The New York Post (no link because screw those guys) just posted a bikini shot of one of (the only?) the women mentioned in Rodger's manifesto.

I posted about that an hour ago but nobody noticed.


Not only did they post several pictures but also the name and location of her place of employment. I would like to say they should know better but I know they don't.
posted by MikeMc at 4:25 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think she's being rhetorical at all. That is how bad our society is. Had those cops actually watched the videos I have no doubt at all there would be seven more people alive in Santa Barbara today.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 4:03 PM on May 26


Feckless FFM, I got the impression she thought the cops had seen the videos. I hope you are right.

Anyways, if ER had succeeded in his original plan, who knows how many girls would have been killed had he been able to enter the sorority and there wouldn't be any question about the sexism.

But for me this was about sexism + mental health + gun violence and gun control + racism. Most misogynists do not go on murderous rampages, and we want to prevent those in addition to fighting misogyny. Stopping murderous rampages might be an easier nut to crack than getting every misogynists head out of their ass. And I'm not in any way suggesting we shouldn't fight both battles.
posted by ryanfou at 4:26 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Not only did they post several pictures but also the name and location of her place of employment.

Obviously positioning reporters/photographers there awaiting the Attack of the Elliot Roger Fans for a future front page.
posted by oneswellfoop at 4:28 PM on May 26, 2014


In stark contrast to the poor girl being named and shamed by the media for her "involvement" with this guy, here's another person named in the manifesto. Let's see what kind of treatment he gets.
posted by palomar at 4:28 PM on May 26, 2014


I hope this can be tolerated as an aside and not come across as an attempt to change the subject, but in light of my earlier aside, it's interesting that the NYPost article writes:
Rodger’s dad, Peter Rodger, worked on the 2012 blockbuster “Hunger Games” as a second unit director, collecting background shots and scenery footage
which, unsually so far, gets the father's credit on the film correct, but then elaborates with a textbook description of a 2nd unit director that doesn't comport with Rodger's actual role.

It's weird seeing such an almost irrelevant detail getting mangled everywhere. I guess I had this fantasy of newspapers fact checking every single declarative phrase. (Maybe that's just the New Yorker? They don't have an article up yet.)
posted by nobody at 4:34 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]



There is a "Elliott Rodger is an American Hero" Facebook page, which has been set up to "pay tribute" to someone who "made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle against feminazi ideology". One of the status updates on the page reads, "Feminists, whether you like it or not, you are the cause of this incident. You have empowered women to essentially bully and reject people, and in this case it would seem that this happened to some poor kid with Autism. A generation of self important narcissistic cows have been raised rather than the nicer ladies of the previous generations. Who's fault is that? That's the feminist's fault."

Oh, fuck that poster. I know girls in their 20's who have never had sex and manage to cope with it without going on a killing spree.
posted by magstheaxe at 4:34 PM on May 26, 2014 [7 favorites]


Ryanfou, the number of lives lost to misogyny is probably a couple of magnitudes higher than the number of lives lost to "murderous rampages", even ones caused my misogyny itself. This was an outlier, but women are highly vulnerable to male violence. According to this study by WHO, 38% of women that are killed, are killed by their partner.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:35 PM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


When women can't get laid, they think the problem is with them. They starve themselves and spend tons of money on clothes and makeup and when the pain gets really overwhelming they harm themselves.

When men can't get laid, they think the problem is with the people who won't fuck them.

~not ALL men~
posted by showbiz_liz at 4:37 PM on May 26, 2014 [48 favorites]


Society would be so much better if men who didn't get laid were spending all their money on makeup.
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:38 PM on May 26, 2014 [36 favorites]


Yeah, Apocryphon... quite a lot of work has been done on the men's rights movement, and why men get into it. Usually aggrieved men - often because they cannot get a girlfriend/sex/a better-looking girlfriend/a better job/visitation or custody rights after a divorce - find a community that tells them what they want to hear, which is usually:

1) Women are basically animals, ruled by simple emotions and behavioral rules. By buying my book/DVD/personal training session, you will get a set of rules which you can apply to exploit these rules and get women to have sex with you. You are not getting the women you deserve now, but we are going to change all that.

2) The legal system is artificially biased towards women, and that is why you are having difficulty getting custody, or have to pay child support. Feminists have infiltrated the justice system, and made normal interactions between men and women, such as a corrective tap once in a while, into a huge deal. Men get screwed by divorce, but we are going to change all that.

3) Feminism and affirmative action have made it impossible for white men to succeed in business. You are right to think you are more talented and intelligent than your female boss. She is there because of affirmative action, or because she had sex with the right men. But we are going to change all that.

But they don't change all that, because many of their grievances are hallucinatory, and their understanding of others is eccentric to the point of orthogonality. So, they complain about their lot, and fantasize about retribution. There's very little productive activism coming out of the manosphere on issues that should be close to their hearts, like prostate cancer, sexual assault in prison, promotion of single fatherhood as a valid and normal lifestyle and so on. So, the complaints get more baroque and the punishments more terrible, until you end up with meticulously planned strategies for putting women in camps, taking away their vote, forcibly impregnating them and so on.

And it turns out that PUA techniques are not as 100% guaranteed effective as was promised, so they have to deal with that yawning cognitive gulf. Either you start getting more aggressive with younger and more vulnerable women, getting them drunk, travelling to poorer countries to raise your relative affluence and ability to buy those drinks ... or you decide that the techniques never worked, and you were being lied to and fleeced by the PUAs, and that women (that is, attractive women to you) won't have sex with you because they are evil, and/or stupid, and intent on dating assholes because they do not respect your wonderful qualities, and will only do so once they have had sex with lots of bad boys and are looking for a steady source of money.

(If you think I am overstating the case, and have brainbleach handy, this perfect gentleman on Thoughtcatalog, home of the angry jemble, runs through this process in an imaginary conversation with a woman who ditched early on their first and only date, ten or so years later. He's insistent that she forced him to take her to an expensive restaurant by mentioning it, and then went home with her $100 steak in a doggy bag to feed to her boyfriend, in a weird sort of charcuterie/cuckoldry collision:
Face it, you’d get sick of me and my nice guy ways. I’ll remember your birthday and our anniversary and I’ll buy you flowers on both. I’ll treat you with respect and you’ll get bored. I know damn well you’re going to end up cheating on me, and I don’t plan on giving you half my stuff when you do. I work hard for what I have and now that I’ve achieved a little success I would love someone to share my life with. But that’s not going to be you. You thought I wasn’t worthy of you back then and I feel you’re not worthy of me now.

Now that the bad boys have used you up and moved on to women 10 years younger, so have I. It’s a funny thing, now that I’ve achieved a little success, drive a nice car and have stability in my life, I’m getting attention from those girls too. I don’t need you anymore. I’m not in the mood to deal with you, your issues, or your ex and his issues. I’m not looking to help you raise the mini-me version of some guy you used to bang. I want my own children someday, not the offspring of Mr. Neck Tattoo.)
And, sometimes, people find that sitting around talking about this stuff is no longer doing it for them, and they go a little further, and then a little further again, because they have established that whatever they do is an act of retaliation in the face of the violence women are doing to them all the time - by outperforming them academically or professionally, by sleeping with other men, by refusing to sleep with men at all, by ignoring or mocking their pick-up lines.

It's not wholly surprising that one of the manosphere grievances is that women can terminate pregnancies without the permission of the father - there's a huge overlap between the resentment of female autonomy here and in hardcore pro-life groups. And, while the overwhelming majority of the people talking about how someone should kill that doctor or burn down that clinic will never do it. It doesn't actually take a huge percentage to have quite an impact.

Speaking of: California man alleged to have fired a pistol at women for refusing to have sex with him and his friends.

As for how you fix it - yeah, EmpressC covered that. A lot of these guys, you probably can't. You just watch them like any other potentially dangerous group, and try to preempt outbreaks of real-world violence, and try to show those who are less deeply embedded, or on the fringes, that this isn't a good place to go, and that their actual problems can be addressed in more productive ways.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:40 PM on May 26, 2014 [36 favorites]


I haven't seen this angle examined much/at all, but did his manifesto explain why he wasn't willing to just go to Nevada and get a prostitute? Did that even occur to him at any point?
posted by Green With You at 4:41 PM on May 26, 2014


I really don't understand the need to play tug of war (or chicken/egg) between misogyny and mental illness here, unless it's to undercut the role of misogyny. It seems to me in this case, Rodger's mentally illness was akin to being immunocompromised, and misogyny was the pervasive social pathogen that infected him.

If we aren't going to do anything to reform mental health and illness in our society (which by all indications we aren't, in the short term) then it just makes the larger context of misogyny that much more important. And addressing the pervasive misogyny improves things not only for the mentally ill who may fall victim to it in dramatic ways, but each and every one of us.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


I mean, it was probably for the same reason he never initiated contact with women in general I just wonder if he even thought of it as an option at any point.
posted by Green With You at 4:45 PM on May 26, 2014


did his manifesto explain why he wasn't willing to just go to Nevada and get a prostitute?

That would have been paying for something he seems to have believed he had "earned" with his inherent excellence. A guy who thinks beautiful women are supposed to prostrate themselves at his feet in recognition of his alpha status is hardly going to think that paying for sex makes him seem more impressive.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 4:46 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I haven't seen this angle examined much/at all, but did his manifesto explain why he wasn't willing to just go to Nevada and get a prostitute?

No need to read his manifesto, just reflect on the incel (or PUA) ideology as outlined in this thread: men are entitled to sex from women. To pay for it would be to surrender that right and accept shameful beta status. Or some kind of nonsense like that. Plus the creepy self-glorifying white knight aspect of looking down on prostitution as a bastardization of the kind of control men are supposed to exert over women (for their own good and that of society), but turned against other men (betrayl) for profit (corruption)!

And now I need to go bleach my brain.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:47 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


I really don't understand the need to play tug of war (or chicken/egg) between misogyny and mental illness here, unless it's to undercut the role of misogyny

That seems oddly one-sided; do you likewise feel it could be to undercut the role of mental illness?
posted by Justinian at 4:48 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


This guy didn't just want sex, he wanted women to recognize his "magnificence and power". That wouldn't happen with a hooker.
posted by Justinian at 4:49 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Joe in Australia: I'm sure it is several orders of magnitude higher. No disagreement there.

Ok let me try to say it another way:
The tactics for preventing events such as this are different than the tactics required for stopping Asshole from killing his wife. If people want to try to use this as a catalyst for greater social change, well fine go ahead. But I see obvious warning signs being missed and wondering why that is. There is a good chance this could have been prevented, and we are very lucky it wasn't much much worse.
posted by ryanfou at 4:50 PM on May 26, 2014


"The legal system is artificially biased towards women..."

Often this is true. As someone mentioned above it's not because of feminism but because that's the way it's always been. The man moves out, the man pays alimony/child support etc... That system was put in place by men in an age when women, by and large, stayed home with the kids while men worked. It's not new, it just hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Also, men are much more liked to be imprisoned or given a longer sentence than a woman for the same crime. Again, not new, just never changing.
posted by MikeMc at 4:51 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Green With You, he never mentioned prostitutes - I got the feeling it was only about women in his "peer group"- he was very snobby in addition to everything else.

There was nothing remotely rational about his grievance.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:52 PM on May 26, 2014


But I see obvious warning signs being missed and wondering why that is. There is a good chance this could have been prevented, and we are very lucky it wasn't much much worse.

A better and more comprehensive understanding in this country of mental illness.

Movements to restrict gun ownership to people who have been more comprehensively checked for psychological soundness.

Training people to recognize each other as people and not as means to an end.

Pick [all three].
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:52 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


I haven't seen this angle examined much/at all, but did his manifesto explain why he wasn't willing to just go to Nevada and get a prostitute?

Melissa Gira Grant, former sex worker, writer and journalist tweeted this earlier today, from her experience:
The men most intent on commodifying women as status symbols are typically those least willing to "resort to" simply paying them.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:54 PM on May 26, 2014 [10 favorites]


Yes let's talk about how hard men have it in a thead about a killer who wanted all women either dead or in damn camps that's totally not enraging and shitty or anything.
posted by winna at 4:54 PM on May 26, 2014 [34 favorites]


I haven't been engaging in that discussion at all but it does seem to me if the dude's manifesto is all about how hard (he believes) men have it, it is legitimate to talk about how full of bullshit or not he is.
posted by Justinian at 4:56 PM on May 26, 2014


I really don't understand the need to play tug of war (or chicken/egg) between misogyny and mental illness here, unless it's to undercut the role of misogyny

I do understand why it seems one sided, but no -- I don't feel that way, at least as regards who is dead and why vs. the fact that this person turned homicidal.

Rodgers was sick, and absent misogyny might have committed a similar crime. But not this one. And given that the same received misogynistic ideas and attitudes that led to this result in his extreme context are involved in the constant perpetuation of a host of injustices great and small every day, it makes sense to say this crime is 'about' misogyny, more than it is 'about' mental illness.

Plus, mental illness is on some level and organic condition that the human organism suffers from. Misogyny is a sociocultural condition that is more directly within our ability to eradicate and not just ameliorate.

We could maybe talk about but for and proximate causation but that might just muddy the waters, and would only be useful for a few of us.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


maggiemaggie, thanks. That's what I expected.

I asked because it directly flies against those (not here, but elsewhere) who say the problem was women not wanting to have sex with him when he could have easily paid women to have sex with him. Just more ammo against their ludicrous beliefs that the problem is with how women behave and not with Rodger's entirely irrational grievances against women.
posted by Green With You at 4:56 PM on May 26, 2014


I haven't been engaging in that discussion at all but it does seem to me if the dude's manifesto is all about how hard (he believes) men have it, it is legitimate to talk about how full of bullshit or not he is.

There is no response to this that is not impolite, I think.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:59 PM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]


Oh god, don't go read what places like /r/theredpill have to say about this. Because apparently the problem was that this idiot was a total "beta male". I think I need brain bleach.
posted by Justinian at 5:00 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


rosf; this thread seems large enough to contain more than one discussion at a time. I don't see why that can't be true.
posted by Justinian at 5:01 PM on May 26, 2014


I want to find a place to discuss this where it's just women. No men allowed.
posted by The corpse in the library at 5:03 PM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]


Oh god, don't go read what places like /r/theredpill have to say about this.

What were you expecting them to say?
posted by palomar at 5:03 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yeah, I wish I could exercise my constitutional rights as easily as people can buy guns: that I could get an abortion without jumping through umpteen billion hoops and that I didn't have to worry about being shot by misogynists as I walk down the street.

Get a gun and stand your ground sister. These fuckers are not giving up without a fight.

posted by humanfont at 5:03 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Often this is true

This is an MRA talking point that seems like it should be true-ish but is not actually true, or rather there is a lot more nuance than these talking points usually include. A few cites

- Gender Bias Study of the Court System in Massachusetts (1990)
- Women and the Criminal Justice System (UK, 2012)
- Women and Girls in the Justice System by the National Criminal Justice Reference Service (ongoing)

One of the things that is true is that people who have primary custody of minor children are often given shorter sentences or are more likely to get probation. The fact that, in a country where most children have one male and female parent, you're still seeing mostly women getting this benefit tells you more about generalized gender roles and/or sexism in our society than decontextuaized stats from people using them to prove an axe-grinding point (not saying you were doing that MikeMc but you may have just stumbled into a larger argument from elsewhere on the internet/world)
posted by jessamyn at 5:04 PM on May 26, 2014 [31 favorites]


Oh god, don't go read what places like /r/theredpill have to say about this.

What were you expecting them to say?


Regardless, that's pretty solid advice.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:05 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well.

I haven't been engaging in that discussion at all but it does seem to me if the dude's manifesto is all about how hard (he believes) men have it, it is legitimate to talk about how full of bullshit or not he is.

"So, OK, he killed 8 people. And he injured several more, either by shooting them or by hitting them with his car. And he wanted to kill an entire sorority house, but was frustrated by a locked door. And he also wanted a world in which women were kept in camps.

But, really, we should check whether or not he had some valid points."

As I say, I don't think there is any reason why this is a good idea, and I'm slightly confused about how it could look like a good idea. Not everything has to be debate team material.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:06 PM on May 26, 2014 [17 favorites]


That system was put in place by men in an age when women, by and large, stayed home with the kids while men worked. It's not new, it just hasn't changed much in the last 50 years.

Also, men are much more liked to be imprisoned or given a longer sentence than a woman for the same crime. Again, not new, just never changing.


Except that men, when they ask for custody, often get primary or joint custody.

And although men get longer sentences for most crimes, there's one where women get much longer sentences: killing a partner. On average, men get 2-6 years, women get 15 (these women are generally killing abusive partners; men are generally not).
posted by jeather at 5:09 PM on May 26, 2014 [21 favorites]


One of the things that is true is that people who have primary custody of minor children are often given shorter sentences or are more likely to get probation. The fact that, in a country where most children have one male and female parens, you're still seeing mostly women getting this benefit tells you more about generalized gender roles and/or sexism in our society than decontextuaized stats from people using them to prove an axe-grinding point (not saying you were doing that MikeMc but you may have just stumbled into a larger argument from elsewhere on the internet/world)

This, and may other on-the-ground complications.

But even assuming arguendo that the manosphere canard about jail time, alimony and custody were true in the flat sense, their urged interpretation would still completely miss the obvious point that these policies and outcomes they complain of injuring them are the historical outgrowths of or concessions to the same paternalistic social mores that they are loudly demanding be revitalized. Which is to say, men as the sole head of household, and the sexual aggressor, initiator, and dominant partner; with women confined to the domestic sphere, sexually passive and explicitly dependent upon their huband's (or father's) fortunes and vulnerable to their whims -- thus meriting special legal protections when those arrangements went awry.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


The reason it never occurred to him to hire a sex worker is the same reason athletes don't just go to trophy shops and buy medals. He, and those like him, saw life as a competition between men where hot girls are the prizes.
posted by KathrynT at 5:13 PM on May 26, 2014 [34 favorites]


and I'm slightly confused about how it could look like a good idea. Not everything has to be debate team material.

Fuck if I know, I wasn't participating in that discussion as I said. I just don't think the people who do are bad people or anything.
posted by Justinian at 5:14 PM on May 26, 2014


That's true KathrynT. It also explains why treating women as livestock would be a fine solution: it levels the playing field for men.
posted by Green With You at 5:17 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Add to the very very wrongness about Elliot Roger, see what what the co-founder of Rap Genius wrote about Roger's Manifesto on his own site. (once again, news story, because I don't link to bad shit)
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:22 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


I don't think anyone thinks he has any valid points. It's more like, figuring out the roots of his misogyny and those he had been associated with. And if the causes of anger have been understood and known since the '60s, it doesn't make sense why there hasn't been more headway towards reducing violence against women compared to say, efforts against lynching. Seems to me that the points made here aren't even feminism-specific, but applicable to anyone who believes in human dignity.

So why is it these MRA types don't get it? Why are self-evident facts so alien to them?

Maybe rosf is right, you can't really do much about these groups as a whole except write them off, and try to explain to less-than-true believers that what they're getting into is a whole lot of nonsense. Like jihadists, or white supremacists, they come from worldviews too orthogonal to reality, and whatever core human concerns are drowned out by odious ideology and whacked out inaccuracies. There is an inescapable paranoid style in internet politics that causes groups to get more and more radical or reactionary, and thus cut off from the rest of reality.

But trying to figure them out does not involve sympathy for the devil. I view it more as draining the swamp of extremism, really.

And I can see why discussing their talking points would be upsetting, just as if there was a thread on the shooting at the Jewish center and people started considering the Protocols of Elders of Zion.
posted by Apocryphon at 5:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Those of you who have I-could-have-been-this-guy moments; can you speculate as to why that way of thinking appealed to you? Did your family teach you toxic masculinity crap, or was it all peers/society? Can you imagine ways in which you could have been raised that would have inoculated you against that?

I was waiting until i had some more time to sit down and really write to reply to this, and also to collect my thoughts... but uh, i was someone who kinda walked up to this abyss, stared in, and said "not today".

Up until i was maybe 6 or so i didn't have any real problems. I went to a shitty catholic school where there was plenty "girls have cooties" type stuff but i didn't really take it seriously, and several of my best friends at the time were girls. It was, however, where i first started hearing the kind of stuff Rory was describing above. Even though me and all the other boys were you know, like 5-7, and still assumed that girls peed out of their butts... stuff like that was still getting flung around in really rudimentary ways. A sort of "hmm, i guess we're supposed to like... have sex with girls? how does that work. I heard that's what they're for though, like that's what you're supposed to do with a girl if you like her". The language involved though, on the part of a lot of the boys however was as crude as we could muster and in retrospect from what i can still remember, fairly disturbing for what age we were.

From that age until i was like 9 or 10, i was home schooled and mostly outside of the sphere of typical american school age kid social interaction. I mostly went to homeschool groups, or small summer adventure camp things set up by people involved in those groups and hung out with similar kids. This was the granola-y hippie side of home schooling, not the super religious side. The general message seemed to be "Boys and girls aren't really different at all. they commonly seem to have different interests, but if they have interests from the other side or don't conform to the typical thing that's also normal" and generally pretty progressivey and stuff. There was the occasional asshole or bully, but those people are everywhere. Didn't really notice or learn anything weird here.

Then, what happened when i was around 10-11 was that it was sort of mutually decided by me and my parents that i wanted to and should go to an after school program that a lot of kids from the local middle schools near my house went to.

Holy shit.

It was like that scene in Starship Troopers when the door of the drop ship opens, and it's just total war all around them with heads exploding, people getting disemboweled, and utter chaos.

It was basically my first face-on experience with what Rory was talking about. I was just starting to hit that super hormones age, and all the other boys were absolutely obsessed with being super macho and policing/making fun of the boys who didn't play the game. Mostly in a playful, no-this-is-how-you-be-a-man-i-think get with the program duh kind of way, but also at times in a teasing/bullying way. "Never say tummy even as a joke, it's a STOMACH bro" kind of stuff. Constantly talking about girls, what you wanted to do to them(note the phrasing there either. with them wasn't a non-uttered thing, but to was said).

This culminated in one of the closest experiences i had to something Elliot described. One of the popular boys who liked to make fun of me and his friends, and several of the popular girls decided to pull a prank on me.

For valentines day, they put a girl up to asking me out on a date. She was really pretty and nice, and someone who i admired in the really innocent way Rory described. This prompted much boy discussion of what i was going to do and what my plans would be, some mild teasing about my cutesy plans leading in to "What are you supposed to do in that situation anyways? Maybe he has the right idea. yea, it's gotta be classy dude".

Then of course the big reveal. All the girls and all the boys, involved or not pretty much just cartoon like pointing and laughing at me. Making jokes about what i'd said endlessly. Making jokes about what they had prompted me to say when they were bringing up the "Nah man, you gotta touch her boobs" type stuff. It was ENDLESS for at least a week. I was angry at that group of boys, at that group of girls, and at her. She actually later talked to me when no one else was immediately around and apologized not knowing the extent to which they'd be mean about it, and said i was an alright person... but the general message i had gotten was very similar to what he was saying about other people. In that how dare i, the "retarded" kid who was all spergy and awkward and uncool, dare think i would be entitled or even allowed by greater society to have any aspirations or feelings towards a girl like that? how could i possibly think it was anything but a joke to put me in my place?

I was pretty much ostracized at this point, and if i was going to become mr mass shooting this would be the beginning of it. My only remaining friends consisted of a super nerdy kid who played videogames all day and was obsessed with hampsters, a girl showing the beginning signs of schizophrenia(which her entire family on both sides had) who was obsessed with furries, anime, and saw invisible cats, and a guy who later became a neonazi and legitimately got taken to the police station for staging a "prank" school shooting threat with bag full of semi-toy weapons and an airsoft gun. Good company for that sort of thing.

What stopped me? What changed? Well, three things. My mom was always there for me to talk to, and offer sensible advice. I never felt like there was really anything i couldn't talk to her about, or that she would seriously judge me if i told her. She's an amazing person who's lived through some ridiculous stuff, and had jobs ranging from a florist to a teacher at a special needs school. And friends with people from hobos to tv stars and famous DJs.

The other was meeting my best friend right after that, who had been through a lot of the same stuff but also had awesome parents and an unshakeable "Fuck the haters man, they just don't like us because they either can't tell how cool we really are or are assholes who have the wrong opinions about the world anyways" attitude.

For years i was ostracized by even the nerds, and those sort of thoughts bounced around in my head. I had come to the realization, but also complete acceptance that i had no interest in playing the popular kid game or being involved in those groups of people at all, guided by my few friends, experiences with those kinds of kids, and discussion with my parents and my best friends parents.

By the time i started high school a couple years late i had an established very small group of friends and just didn't give a fuck at all. I was teased and bullied even at a weird alternative school... but i just didn't really care that much, and had mostly buried the feelings i had of rejection or entitlement.

I ended up meeting a girl who had similarly grown up outside the standard framework, who didn't really get the girl social conditioning and also had very few friends. She was completely repelled and somewhat afraid of all the standard boy social conditioning that i had also had bad experiences with and sort of rejected. Despite her friends telling her i sucked and wasn't cool, we ended up dating for maybe six months. It didn't work out, but i think we both learned from it that we didn't have to "play the game" to be allowed to have romantic interests and relationships or whatever, and that you weren't automatically going to end up a forever alone if you didn't seek all the things you had been constantly told to look for and want by your peers since you were 6-8 years old non stop.

I ended up pretty OK after that, despite being a constantly rejected nerdy video game and other geek culture-obsessed "spergy" kid who felt completely spurned by the typical group of people my age, and for a time society. I found other weirdos who didn't fit in, and by the time i had reached college age figured out that there's a lot of other people like me out there and that once you're out of school you kind of end up just organically finding each other through whatever out-there-people activities you choose to participate in and everything ends up being pretty much fine. You're not part of the "system", but that's perfectly ok.

More than anything though, reflecting back on it, i credit my parents with always being there to talk to, mostly never judging me, and always telling me "no, those kids are assholes and what they're saying isn't true even if it seems like it is". Some of it was also having the right outcast friends at the right times to show me that there were other people like me though, and that i wasn't alone in this weird not toeing the party line situation.

I hope this is somehow helpful? It's sort of a weird brain-dump rant. It's something i've been thinking about a lot since this happened though. What if my parents had been there in spirit but not in practice to support me? what if my friends hadn't? What if my parents hadn't encouraged me to pursue my weird interests, and to hang out with "weird" friends who i clicked with?(i knew plenty of kids whose parents discouraged them from having "weird" friends like me, because i was "too weird" essentially). A lot of these can seem like minor things at the time both to the parents and the kid, but make huge differences in isolation or learning about what normal means to you personally as that child.

The toxic masculinity stuff in my case was 100% peers though. But i knew a lot of people for whom it was also their dad or both parents going "Nah, if you wanna be a real man you gotta XYZ".

Both my dad and my best friends dad made a point of presenting that stuff to us like a warner bros cartoon. Completely sarcastically, as a total joke. "Wow, you're really going to be sitting in your room all day playing nintendo when you could be out there trying to bang hot girls? man you guys are gonna be virgins for life" sort of stuff. Appeal to absurdity(and i'm not doing the levels of sarcasm or phrasing justice there), taking it to it's illogical conclusion sort of stuff. That presentation of those tropes absolutely tempered their seriousness when presented by my peers in middle and high school. Because when something is presented as completely serious by your peers that you've already heard stated repeatedly as a total farcical joke, it just sounds like an elementary school kid explaining that if you run off the stairway you'll hover in mid air until you look down.

It's not that it isn't a pervasive thing you're constantly being explicitly and implicitly taught and told, but if you get even a decent percentage of that material being presented as a total joke, it's enough to crack the armor and make you look at it and go "what's really being said here?".

That's what i was given essentially from the age i was old enough to ask by my dad when i said "what do these kids mean by this?", And by several other thoughtful, somewhat wise, and snarky as fuck fathers and men in my life.

I can't really point at any one piece of the puzzle that stopped me from getting this bitter and fucked up, but i think it could have happened. I took a bunch of different forks in the road than he did that lead me to a drastically different place. But looking at my route on the GPS so to speak, i can see where i could have ended up.

It's no one thing. But if someone forced me to point, i would say it was my parents. Who for all their flaws, and all the fucked up things they said and did when i was a kid, were just there to talk to in a non superficial way. They also lead by example, in addition to telling me things about "No, boys don't act that way around girls even if XYZ".

I think i'm going to stop now, because i don't really know where i'm going with this anymore. Some of that shit was pretty dark times to me, and it was a bit painful to revisit in a few places. I hope you got something positive out of this post.
posted by emptythought at 5:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [52 favorites]


In light of the massive structural inequity and danger involved for women who do sex work, I have to say it's gross to suggest 'well, why didn't he just pay a prostitute?' as if that's not also riddled with huge disturbing problems one of which is treating women's bodies as a commodity.
posted by winna at 5:25 PM on May 26, 2014 [9 favorites]


"you're still seeing mostly women getting this benefit tells you more about generalized gender roles and/or sexism in our society than decontextuaized stats from people using them to prove an axe-grinding point"

Yeah, I wasn't trying to be axe-grindy. I have no first hand experience with family court so I can't complain about it from a personal perspective but boy have I heard it from divorced men who feel they been jobbed by the court system. I think, the fact that when custody is contested the mother is by default the custodial parent unless she can be proven in some way unfit drives a lot of the anger (which MRA groups play like a finely tuned violin). And, as has been mentioned several times, we (men) created this system.
posted by MikeMc at 5:27 PM on May 26, 2014


but it does seem to me if the dude's manifesto is all about how hard (he believes) men have it, it is legitimate to talk about how full of bullshit or not he is.

The bullshit in his writings is inexhaustible and the self-aware insights are non-existent. We could try to filter through all his bullshit for valuable insights into potential gaps in his male privilege. But, I for one, find more relevance in investigating the gaping morass that is his misogyny.
posted by Kerasia at 5:29 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


but boy have I heard it from divorced men who feel they been jobbed by the court system. I think, the fact that when custody is contested the mother is by default the custodial parent unless she can be proven in some way unfit

This is just plain false.
posted by jeather at 5:29 PM on May 26, 2014 [15 favorites]


There is a "Elliott Rodger is an American Hero" Facebook page, which has been set up to "pay tribute" to someone who "made the ultimate sacrifice in the struggle against feminazi ideology". One of the status updates on the page reads, "Feminists, whether you like it or not, you are the cause of this incident. You have empowered women to essentially bully and reject people

Emphasis added to pretty much sum up what the problem is with this viewpoint. (Not that you all needed to be told, it just jumped out at me).
posted by Pink Frost at 5:29 PM on May 26, 2014 [18 favorites]


I did read the manifesto, and it was eerily similar to my former boyfriend, except that he wanted me to win the lotto for him, so that he could have the lifestyle he deserved, and he did collect guns. And thought his parents and the world should give him his due, but it was more subtle than that. I'm sure he never spoke a lot of what he thought out loud because he was very good at pretending (but he did express his disdain for much of the world). And the whole, "my mother should have married a rich man to give me the lifestyle I deserve," thing really resonates, except he wanted it to be me (I should have won the lotto for him). He used to say things like, "all women are bitches. All women are nags." But it was in the context of talking about his mother and sister, and he was very charming, they just didn't understand him, but I was so beautiful, etc. his ideal. Up until the point where he turned that attitude toward me. I love you, I hate you, never meant so much as it did with this guy. He was really that creepy.

I don't think people really understand the narcissistic aspect of this young man. It's not just misogyny, it's a brain disorder that he may have been born with, that the rest of us can't understand: a person with no empathy, who thinks and believes they deserve the best in life and if their parents can't provide it, then by god, the rest of the world will. It's really weird, and like I said, he was very good at pretending, in order to get what he wanted, so I count myself lucky that I got out with only a shove and a bump on the head because there was a Glock next to the bed and an AR-15 in the back room and about 10 other weapons in the house after he beat me up and I left.

What I am saying is that this poor young man had no empathy and perhaps society gave him misogyny as an outlet to that, and his family tried to help and didn't understand, because how can you understand someone who has no empathy? You can't. I never could.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 5:36 PM on May 26, 2014 [26 favorites]


but boy have I heard it from divorced men who feel they been jobbed by the court system. I think, the fact that when custody is contested the mother is by default the custodial parent unless she can be proven in some way unfit

This is just plain false.


While many states have officially removed gender as factor when awarding custody men quick Googling indicates that fathers are awarded primary custody less than 20% of the time. I will look for better cited articles than some I have read if anyone actually cares.
posted by MikeMc at 5:41 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Marie thank you for saying it so well and kudos for getting out. It may not sound like a difficult choice to some, but it can be one of the toughest choices to make.
posted by ryanfou at 5:42 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


but boy have I heard it from divorced men who feel they been jobbed by the court system. I think, the fact that when custody is contested the mother is by default the custodial parent unless she can be proven in some way unfit

This is just plain false.


It is accurate that this is now false. For a while now, all the states have had gender neutral custody rules. Here's an article from 2002 that briefly discusses that shift.

As mentioned in the article, there once was a presumption in favor of maternal custody, both generally and especially with younger children (known as the 'maternal preference' and 'tender years' presumptions), and arguably the palimpsest of these rules in case law and legal thought or more generally their persistence as cultural norms influences the thinking of family court judges. But that's a discussion for another thread.

posted by snuffleupagus at 5:43 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Does anyone have a link to any discussion of the acquisition of the firearms Rodger's used? I'm still aghast that someone so clearly mentally unfit for possessing firearms was able to get them so easily.
posted by Justinian at 5:44 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


In cases where fathers seek custody -- the only relevant cases -- fathers get primary or joint custody more often than mothers get primary or joint custody. Fathers had not, historically, sought custody particularly often, but this is changing.
posted by jeather at 5:45 PM on May 26, 2014 [16 favorites]


Jessamyn: One of the things that is true is that people who have primary custody of minor children are often given shorter sentences or are more likely to get probation. The fact that, in a country where most children have one male and female parens, you're still seeing mostly women getting this benefit tells you more about generalized gender roles and/or sexism in our society than decontextuaized stats from people using them to prove an axe-grinding point

Right - plus, imprisoning women has unique challenges. Only 5% of the prison population in the UK, for example, are women, and most of them are spending short sentences - not just because of the custody issue, although that's a factor, but because they tend to have stolen small amounts of money or goods. There are very few female violent criminals.

(At this point the manosphere will tell you that this is because women's violence against men is downplayed by a feminist-dominated culture, and so violence against men by women is underreported and underprosecuted - a very good example of blaming feminism for patriarchy.)

Distance from family is a key factor in a bunch of metrics in prisoners, including recidivism rate and quality of behavior (and thus likelihood of further punishment or loss of parole). And, since there are so few female prisoners, there are fewer women's prisons and they are spaced further apart. So, women in prison have specific problems about being distant from their families that are often not experienced by men.

(Although not, I hasten to add, all men)

but boy have I heard it from divorced men who feel they been jobbed by the court system. I think, the fact that when custody is contested the mother is by default the custodial parent unless she can be proven in some way unfit


Where? Residence is usually determined in the US by the preference and interests of the child. In many cases - because patriarchy - the mother has been the most consistent carer for children, even if both parents are working. And, often, the father does not seek custody (or residence, as it is increasingly termed).

It is also worth noting that many MRAs will say that women falsify reports of domestic abuse in order to secure custody. It's probably a matter for the individual conscience to decide how many of those reports are in fact falsified. The idea that women get custody just by saying "domestic abuse" is one of the bigger articles of faith in the manosphere.

On preview - I think some quick googling is not going to cut it here, and this is probably a derail anyway.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:46 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


The murderer's manifesto does have at least one reference to prostitution:

It has the same effect as hiring a prostitute, I imagine. It temporarily feels good for the moment, but afterward it makes one feel like a pathetic loser for having to hire a girl when other men could get the experience for free.

Of course he's referring to the experience of having a female social skills counselor. "It was the only time in my life that I had the experience of spending time with a girl my age, and even though it was all fake, I really enjoyed it." (page 121)

This is why the whole "he's just a product of a misogynistic society" seems slightly off to me. His head was full of misogynistic horrors but he was also mentally defective. People talk a lot about "mental health awareness" and de-stigmatization but what does a society do with a person who so steadfastly holds on to his feelings of anger and victimization? People tried to help him and he refused to be helped. Society is incredibly flawed but it's not like it gave this guy a lot of positive feedback on his ideas.

I guess in retrospect you lock people like this up somewhere. But there are other people like him out there. I know someone who is also bi-racial, also obsessed with his supposedly aristocratic white heritage, also obsessed with blond women, also racist as fuck, also feels like he has been denied the access to the sex and female companionship that he deserves, also incapable of perceiving his own responsibility for his social issues, also spoiled by his parents who have always known that he's a bit "off" but they still want the best for him. He also seems to like the movie American Psycho unironically. But he's never made any death threats that I know of, and he's past 30 now. I haven't seen him in a while, I assume he's toiling away at some low-end job feeling angry about life.
posted by leopard at 5:47 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


I'm still aghast that someone so clearly mentally unfit for possessing firearms was able to get them so easily.

And I still don't get why you're aghast that someone over the age of 21 with no criminal record and no public mental health history (i.e. no involuntary commissions, no court rulings declaring him mentally unsound for legal purposes) was able to legally purchase a handgun. It appears that he followed the correct legal procedure to purchase his guns in accordance with the laws on the books.
posted by palomar at 5:54 PM on May 26, 2014


Sorry winna, I should have thought of that as a possible reading of my comment before I posted. I didn't mean to imply that he should have resorted to prostitution. I absolutely can can see how it looked like that though. I didn't mean to suggest or open the door for others to suggest it as a legitimate solution in his case or in general and I'm sorry for the derail.
posted by Green With You at 5:56 PM on May 26, 2014


I think there are interesting parallels for men who have to undo the objectification of women and women who have to undo the objectification of themselves because of violence or what have you. Personally I was actively sexually abused for about 7 years (4 to 11) and lived with my perpetrator (dear old dad) until I was 16 or so. I had contact until I was 24. Aside from the obvious molestation and rape the we're a million messages about how I could serve men.

It took massive amounts of therapy before I could even form an opinion that was not his. What was my favorite food? I had no idea. I knew my dad's favorite restraunt. I couldn't make decisions because the input and judgement was so skewed to what he wanted.

What helped ? Los of professional support. Peers with compassion and allowed me to explore myself as a human without too much judgement, people out there saying these feminist things about misogyny.

I think in the end for extreme cases of misogyny in men it is going to be rather similar. Reflection boards of peers and mentors guiding along allowing men to explore themselves and there relationship to the world with others.
posted by AlexiaSky at 5:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


It appears that he followed the correct legal procedure to purchase his guns in accordance with the laws on the books.

If the laws completely allowed it, as they evidently did, they're abhorrent.
posted by raysmj at 5:56 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]




And I still don't get why you're aghast that someone over the age of 21 with no criminal record and no public mental health history (i.e. no involuntary commissions, no court rulings declaring him mentally unsound for legal purposes)


Mostly because he proceeded to post crazy rants about wanting to kill everyone and then proceeded to try to do so.
posted by Justinian at 5:59 PM on May 26, 2014


On a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people? It's a weirdly specific thing he keeps returning to. He talks about "almost" throwing orange at people, he fills a Super Soaker full of orange juice and shoots it at people, he splashes coffee at people, etc.

I also wonder how many of those incidents actually happened as described.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:05 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


In light of the massive structural inequity and danger involved for women who do sex work, I have to say it's gross to suggest 'well, why didn't he just pay a prostitute?' as if that's not also riddled with huge disturbing problems one of which is treating women's bodies as a commodity.

Also: why does anyone actually believe that Rodger's diagnosis of his own problem was correct? That if he had just gotten laid once he would have been happy? Isn't it obvious that whether he had sex once or a hundred times he would still have been the same person? And that if he had the girlfriend he wanted he would have been the stalker/abuser from hell? Why is his own narrative accepted? Sex would not have solved his issues. Ever.
posted by jokeefe at 6:08 PM on May 26, 2014 [30 favorites]


Yes, exactly.
posted by Justinian at 6:13 PM on May 26, 2014


On a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people?

I thought it was a sign of his mental deterioration. He was beginning to act out violently.

Those incidents struck me as well because I know someone who, as part of a psychotic episode, threw a pie in someone's face. I was really scared that it was a signal this person could become actually violent and hurtful in the future.
posted by maggiemaggie at 6:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


On a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people?

I noticed this too; lots of 'precious bodily fluids' undertones, I suppose.
posted by jamjam at 6:17 PM on May 26, 2014


so, are people born sociopaths, or do they learn to be them? - i'm not smart enough to answer that question, but they sure have a lot of learning opportunities in today's society, don't they?

people may not choose to be obsessive or paranoid or sociopathic - but they DO choose what to be obsessive, etc. about

he chose misogyny - and there were plenty of people available to give him the mental ammunition to take that as far as he wanted to

it's like giving a hungry dog poison and then blaming him for eating it - that's over simplified, of course, but i'd like to accuse the MRAs and PUAs of enabling a sick person by giving him sick ideas that intensified his sickness to the point where he went on a rampage - they might as well have bought him the guns, too

here's a thought i would like everyone to consider - if you pretend to summon demons enough some will eventually appear - if you pander to the worst in people with extreme negativity, eventually someone's going to pick up that ball and run with it - if you have a poisonous ideology, eventually someone is going to take it seriously enough to kill people over it and calling them mentally ill is not going to absolve you of what you've put out there
posted by pyramid termite at 6:17 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


On a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people? It's a weirdly specific thing he keeps returning to.

That does stand out doesn't it? Convenience maybe? Too afraid to actually throw a punch? Seen it done in a ton of movies and television shows? I'm sure there are professionals deconstructing this manifesto as we speak so I imagine there will be a rough analysis soon (if there isn't already).
posted by MikeMc at 6:18 PM on May 26, 2014


Also: why does anyone actually believe that Rodger's diagnosis of his own problem was correct? That if he had just gotten laid once he would have been happy? Isn't it obvious that whether he had sex once or a hundred times he would still have been the same person?

More to the point, the evidence available so far would seem to suggest that he didn't really even try to have sex. Women failed to offer themselves to him, in response to the most fleeting interactions. He felt shunned in adolescence (like many of us did, and typically by the hazing of members of our own gender, even if by reference to the other) and that alienation led him to fervently presume rejection by all women by the delusional logic of the manosphere and incel subcultures, and by operation of that logic to blame women for his misery. Men did much more to harm Rodgers than did women. But, again by that same logic, it was women he singled out to suffer for it.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people? It's a weirdly specific thing he keeps returning to.

That does stand out doesn't it? Convenience maybe? Too afraid to actually throw a punch? Seen it done in a ton of movies and television shows?


Ritual humiliation, would be my instinctive characterization. To outwardly mark pollution or corruption -- this person is dirty and should look dirty. Their shame should be visible. To expose it is a righteous act. And so forth.

Another shot of brain bleach, please.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:27 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Mostly because he proceeded to post crazy rants about wanting to kill everyone and then proceeded to try to do so.

He bought the guns before he posted any of his materials online, and it would appear that at the time of his purchases, he was not exhibiting poor enough mental health to be forcibly committed, which is basically the only way his right to buy a gun would be taken away. I agree that gun violence is horrible and needs to be stopped, and that there need to be much better background checks, and in general I'd be fine with having gun laws like Australia's. But... there was no unique failure here. This is quite honestly no different than the hundreds of other cases every year where someone a little mentally questionable but still well within their legal rights buys a gun and then uses it to kill someone. And maybe I have "hellish world" fatigue, since I get to live in a world where my gender makes me a target for assholes like this but I have to pretend that it's nothing to do with my gender lest I upset a bunch of people who aren't willing to confront institutionalized misogyny, but I just can't get all apoplectic about the fact that this guy got some guns, when I know it's just a matter of days or weeks until this happens again, and I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired.
posted by palomar at 6:33 PM on May 26, 2014 [17 favorites]


That's sort of why I asked if anyone had links to info about the guns; I didn't know he bought them before any of his posts, etc. Honestly I still don't know the exact timeline.
posted by Justinian at 6:43 PM on May 26, 2014


so, are people born sociopaths, or do they learn to be them? - i'm not smart enough to answer that question, but they sure have a lot of learning opportunities in today's society, don't they?

I think it's striking and weird that his mother is Malaysian of Chinese descent, and that this is almost a classic case of running amok:
Amok originated from the Malay/Indonesian word mengamuk, which when roughly defined means “to make a furious and desperate charge”.[5] According to Malay/Indonesian culture, amok was rooted in a deep spiritual belief.[6] They believed that amok was caused by the hantu belian,[7] which was an evil tiger spirit that entered one’s body and caused the heinous act. As a result of the belief, those in Indonesian culture tolerated amok and dealt with the after effects with no ill will towards the assailant.[8]

Although commonly used in a colloquial and less-violent sense, the phrase is particularly associated with a specific sociopathic culture-bound syndrome in Malaysian culture. In a typical case of running amok, an individual (often male), having shown no previous sign of anger or any inclination to violence, will acquire a weapon (traditionally a sword or dagger, but presently any of a variety of weapons) and in a sudden frenzy, will attempt to kill or seriously injure anyone he encounters and himself.[9] Amok typically takes place in a well populated or crowded area. Amok episodes of this kind normally end with the attacker being killed by bystanders or committing suicide, eliciting theories that amok may be a form of intentional suicide in cultures where suicide is heavily stigmatized.[10]
...
A widely accepted explanation links amok with male honor (amok by women is virtually unknown).[12] Running amok would thus be both a way of escaping the world (since perpetrators were normally killed) and re-establishing one's reputation as a man to be feared and respected. ...
posted by jamjam at 6:47 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


If I could just interject a personal note...this thread has been a real eye opener for me (Despite what some may think of some of my comments (I'm so much better at nuance IRL)). This discussion has really prompted me to examine what I'm taking in and what I'm seeing in the media with a more critical eye. It has also given me a greater appreciation of some of things that the women in my life have had to cope with. My wife and my mom have both been absolutely wonderful to me over the decades and maybe it's just now starting to really dawn on me how much shit they've had to put up with and how hard they've had to work to be those wonderful people. So thanks to all of you and thanks to #YesAllWomen.
posted by MikeMc at 6:48 PM on May 26, 2014 [38 favorites]


and re-establishing one's reputation as a man to be feared and respected

And interestingly he wrote almost exactly this in his ranting screeds.
posted by Justinian at 6:49 PM on May 26, 2014


Justinian, from what I read, he had bought the first gun in 2012. I could be wrong but that's what I got from his manifesto.
posted by Marie Mon Dieu at 6:49 PM on May 26, 2014


He talks about buying the guns in his manifesto. Maybe you could try reading that.
posted by palomar at 6:53 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Previously on Jezebel: "They should be considered murderers because incel kills. Rodger seems to have graduated from this school of thought.
posted by dabitch at 6:55 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


from CNN: He had been seeing therapists on and off since he was 8, family friend Simon Astaire said. When he went to high school in Van Nuys, California, he met with a therapist "pretty much every day," Rodgers was 22, and is reported to still have mental health are providers. How did he hide his murderous rage and hatred?
posted by theora55 at 6:58 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Something that's unclear to me is the nature of his parents' call to the cops for the wellness check. I would like to think that if they called the cops and said "We are worried about our adult son, that he might hurt himself or other people" or "We are worried about our adult son, who has been threatening to hurt himself/others", that the cops would check to see if he owned any registerable guns, like the ones he owned. I don't know if his parents knew that he owned guns.
posted by rtha at 6:59 PM on May 26, 2014


Maybe you could try reading that.

Yeah, all 140 pages of ranting. Did you manage to wade through the whole thing?
posted by Justinian at 7:01 PM on May 26, 2014


Yes, I did. You can ctrl-F my username in this thread to see where I mentioned reading it on Saturday.
posted by palomar at 7:02 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Ugh, my condolences.
posted by Justinian at 7:03 PM on May 26, 2014


You know, if you're unwilling to read the manifesto, I'm unclear on why you keep citing his "crazy rants". What have you actually read that you keep citing here?
posted by palomar at 7:04 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


The wikipedia page has many details not listed in the news articles.
posted by valkane at 7:04 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, it's just hard to have a discussion of evidence with someone who won't actually look at the biggest piece of evidence.
posted by palomar at 7:07 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


the cops would check to see if he owned any registerable guns, like the ones he owned

Is that something the police can do in California? Where I live regular handguns and rifles aren't "registerable" so the police would have no database to check of who did or did not own them.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:12 PM on May 26, 2014


Well, it's just hard to have a discussion of evidence with someone who won't actually look at the biggest piece of evidence.

I've posted transcripts of his last "Day of Retribution" video, clearly read large excerpts of the full manifesto, and seen many of his videos. The idea that you can't have a discussion without reading all 140 pages is dumb.
posted by Justinian at 7:15 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


Is that something the police can do in California?

You have to fill out an application and undergo a federal background check (if you're buying from a licensed dealer; does not apply to private sales) and you have to have a safety certificate. (wikipedia). So there are records, is what I'm getting at. What I don't know is if it's standard for cops to check those records if they are asked by family or medical people to check on someone, or if it depends on *why* they're being asked. Like, a wellness check because your employee hasn't shown up at work for three days is different from a wellness check for "I think my child might be suicidal or homicidal." I think. I don't know.
posted by rtha at 7:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Could we maybe back off on trying to win the thread, here? It's kind of freaking me out.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]


This guy wanted his manifesto read. When you read it, without having a legitimate police purpose for doing so, you give him a little more power. I'm not going to do that.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 7:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Get a gun and stand your ground sister. These fuckers are not giving up without a fight.
posted by humanfont at 8:03 PM on May 26 [+] [!]


Q: How many NRA members does it take to change a lightbulb?
A: More guns!
posted by hydropsyche at 7:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [27 favorites]


I don't think anyone thinks he has any valid points. It's more like, figuring out the roots of his misogyny and those he had been associated with. And if the causes of anger have been understood and known since the '60s, it doesn't make sense why there hasn't been more headway towards reducing violence against women compared to say, efforts against lynching. Seems to me that the points made here aren't even feminism-specific, but applicable to anyone who believes in human dignity. So why is it these MRA types don't get it? Why are self-evident facts so alien to them?

You know how I mentioned "minute levels of misogyny"? By that I mean things like people who are not MRA types, and who may be perfectly fine and polite people - but when discussions like this come up, they question whether misogyny really had anything to do with it, or when they hear about women who are facing street harassment they whine about "so how ARE men supposed to talk to women" or question whether it really happens, or they split hairs and rules-lawyer a discussion to death trying to question "so how do we know the man really meant [foo] and not [baz]?" Or they are compelled to point out, no matter what the discussion, that "not all men do this". That kind of thing muddies the waters and I'm sure let's MRA types think "see, I'm right."

Or our own government - in a staggering number of states a woman's right to autonomy over her own body, and her autonomy over whether or not she chooses to become pregnant or remain so, has legal limits placed upon it by men. I'm sure MRA types see that too and think, "see, the government even thinks I'm right about women's place."

I have to admit, I'm not sure exactly what kind of solution you're hoping to find here that you think mightn't have been already tried. You compare this to lynching - but did you know that that wasn't condemned by our government until the 2000's, despite all the people you acknowledge were trying to fight it? A state of being that has been so deeply entrenched in society for so long isn't gonna go away overnight.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:27 PM on May 26, 2014 [21 favorites]


Elswhere, sex and sexuality vlogger Laci Green criticizes the media's tendency to portray Rodger, and other killers like him, as one-of-a-kind madmen, ignoring a continuum of sexual aggression against women.

(Contains clips from Rodger's YouTube videos, for anyone avoiding.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:35 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


Absent a reasonable national gun policy or even the possibility of one in the near future, and mindful of the current situation regarding violence by misogynistic a-holes what is the best option? Maybe if NOW encouraged women to arm themselves and printed wanted posters like the NRA we would have the ERA. That racist old bastard Bundy is still ranching illegally on government property, while we are watching states close down clinics and force transvaginal ultrasounds on rape victims.
posted by humanfont at 8:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Or our own government - in a staggering number of states a woman's right to autonomy over her own body, and her autonomy over whether or not she chooses to become pregnant or remain so, has legal limits placed upon it by men. I'm sure MRA types see that too and think, "see, the government even thinks I'm right about women's place."

But when society advances in a more feminist direction (which does happen occasionally, believe it or not), the MRA types don't react by saying, "See, we're on the wrong side of history, time to get with the program and reconsider our views." Instead they just double down on the feelings of victimization and persecution. They're being oppressed.

The background misogyny is a big part of the MRA bullshit, but there's also a very deliberate rejection of the better ideals that our society has to offer.
posted by leopard at 8:14 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Apologies if this has already been stated; fast moving-thread here.

But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups? Why not understand the roots of their anger? And then attempt to work to address their anger, while uplifting the cause of women?

Here is something that happens; when women mention an injustice, we are often tasked with cleaning up/preventing that injustice, somehow. Even when it's against us. So this response is likely to raise a few hackles.

But hey; clearly this is a large problem that will take all of us to work on. It's just that I really think a lot of the immediate work needs to be done by men.

Talk to your sons/nephews/grandsons about horrifying locker room conversations and how messed up they are, preferably before they have them. Read to them the things that you have read that have changed your mind. Share the pain you struggled with that threatened to make you turn out like this guy. This is not work women can do for you. We are pretty busy on the work we can do; this is something we really can't.
posted by emjaybee at 8:21 PM on May 26, 2014 [44 favorites]


If he'd had sex, he probably would've ended up one of the men that doesn't get nearly as much attention and stories because no one gives a shit when a man abuses, stalks or rapes a woman. Maybe it'd get in some local news if he killed her, which is also likely. Wishing someone with this level of entitlement and misogyny on a sex worker is fucking unconscionable-- someone who HATES WOMEN and has a ton of his own fucking issues with sex and setting him up with someone from not only a gender that is marginalized but from a profession that is marginalized as an extension of that? Fucking hell, people, that's just asking for him to start killing sex workers instead of random people.

Saying that prostitution could've solved this problem is wrong on several levels: it makes sex workers disposable (because being in intimate contact with a violent man who hates your entire gender is dangerous), it implies that this is about sex and not power and status, and it puts the burden again on women, saying that if he'd had the attention he thought he deserved from us he wouldn't have become a murderer.

So yeah, fuck the "well he should've gotten a hooker~" argument and fuck the horse it rode in on
posted by NoraReed at 8:38 PM on May 26, 2014 [59 favorites]


fuck the horse it rode in on

is that legal in Nevada?
posted by ryanfou at 8:42 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


Bestiality laws are unclear on the legality of sex with metaphorical horses.
posted by NoraReed at 8:43 PM on May 26, 2014 [10 favorites]


Seems like the feminist struggle is currently beset by the classical issue of former elite majorities backlashing against social change.
posted by Apocryphon at 8:48 PM on May 26, 2014


yeah, I never considered until now, but is feminism taught in schools? High school and earlier I mean. I never learned about it and have never heard of it being taught in schools in the general curriculum. Seems like it would be a pretty good idea, you know, "teach the controversy!"
posted by ryanfou at 9:02 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Seems like the feminist struggle is currently beset by the classical issue of former elite majorities backlashing against social change.

Maybe I had one too many at my family's Memorial Day thing, but I am struggling to parse this and failing to make any sense of the second half of it except "resistance." To which I'd say, yes, the agenda of demolishing those relations of ingrained social inequality that are largely more useful than inconvenient to the beneficiaries of the prevailing cultural hegemony, is not without resistance by that hegemony.

Duh?
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:04 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


but is feminism taught in schools?

I'm sure this varies in different places, but we almost exclusively read books by white dudes and learned white dude history, though some particularly good teachers did make effort to also include history of the marginalized, but since that wasn't on the test it didn't get a lot of space.

Schools can't even teach basic sex ed, so of course they aren't teaching shit like consent, and my experience with education was definitely male-centric, including with dress codes that were supposed to "keep the boys from getting distracted", and generally heterosexist and cissexist besides. Maybe stuff has changed in the 8 years since I graduated, but considering how often posts from high school students who are angry about their male administrators policing their bodies (especially that of fat girls, girls of color and girls who developed secondary sexual characteristics before many of their peers) and outfits and protesting dress codes (or at least the framing of dress codes, which is to make sure that straight boys aren't distracted) come across my Tumblr dash with brave teenagers doing the work to teach the shitty-ass male teachers and administrators who are in charge of them and often involved with or at least complicit in the gender and sexual orientation related harassment, bullying, physical and sexual abuse, I'd guess that, uh, the answer is "no".

Also, snuffleaupagus, I had no idea what they were saying either, and all I've had to drink is water and a really fucking fantastic agua fresca de piña.
posted by NoraReed at 9:21 PM on May 26, 2014 [6 favorites]


Those of you who have I-could-have-been-this-guy moments; can you speculate as to why that way of thinking appealed to you? Did your family teach you toxic masculinity crap, or was it all peers/society? Can you imagine ways in which you could have been raised that would have inoculated you against that?

For valentines day, they put a girl up to asking me out on a date. She was really pretty and nice, and someone who i admired in the really innocent way Rory described.


This happened to me too. Not valentines day and through notes and messages passed around, but basically the same thing. Again, a girl who I really liked but, as someone who could never really muster up the courage to talk to girls, was never going to do anything about it (she was one of the 'cool chicks' in the schoolyard pecking order). I fell for it, hard. It seems that pretty much everyone in the school was in on it except me and, when the inevitable happened, I was the laughing stock of something like 800 kids. Turned out her and her friends had made something of a game out of pretending to like boys just, you know, for fun. I don't know that this would have led me down a path that had mass murder at the end of it, but I sure hated girls for a long time after that. As the only boy in a family of three sisters and my Mother, I can see how an event like that on top of general social anxiety, pretty much no self-esteem and with no consistent role model to show me how to act (this was mid-70s, so not exactly a period of gender equality despite what TV might tell you) could have led me down that path at least some way.

I don't think, for me, it was anything specific I was taught or shown that made me feel that way. It was more the complete absence of any kind of guidance as to how I was supposed to act with this bizarre body that was doing all sorts of weird things to my brain. I had no fucking idea what was happening to me, really. I don't even know what happened to stop that. But what I do know is that, yeah, I could have been that guy if the cards had fallen a little differently.

I do still have moments when I fall back into that toxic thinking and it happened reading this thread when people started talking about family court issues. Having been in the position of having a woman lodge false reports of domestic abuse, ending up in jail (not charged or anything) because of them and faced with never seeing my daughter again, I occasionally have some sympathy with those that complain about how the family law system is biased against men. But then I remind myself that those things happened 25 years ago. Society has changed, the rules have changed and that almost certainly wouldn't happen he same way today, so men need to let go of all those horror stories and move on with the rest of society. All those stories - they don't reflect today's reality. I still can't talk to girls, though, without looking like a complete dickhead :-(
posted by dg at 9:21 PM on May 26, 2014 [8 favorites]


What I'd like to see is sexual ethics classes taught in high school as a part of sex ed. Kids need to be told that they have the right to say no, that they must respect a "no" from others, that someone who is physically incapable of consent (i.e., passed out drunk) is refusing by default etc. These things aren't intuitive, and many kids are getting the wrong messages from their friends and popular culture, or from terrible parenting.
posted by orange swan at 9:26 PM on May 26, 2014 [9 favorites]


roomthreeseventeen: "This guy wanted his manifesto read. When you read it, without having a legitimate police purpose for doing so, you give him a little more power. I'm not going to do that."

He's dead. He is not capable of having power. There are lots of reasons to skip it - the manifesto is yucky, the manifesto is boring, you would rather spend your time doing something else - but nothing you do will affect him at this point. And his legacy is that he murdered six people and wounded 13 others, not his writing - you aren't glorifying or enhancing that legacy by the trivial act of reading what he wrote.

Don't get me wrong, I don't care if you read it or not.I won't for my own reasons. But it's a helluva thing to suggest that people who have read it are in any way complicit with a mass murderer.
posted by gingerest at 9:31 PM on May 26, 2014 [12 favorites]


feckless fecal fear mongering: "Fewer guns = fewer dead people"

One thing I've always wondered about is why these revenge spree killers don't use explosives. It doesn't take elite hacker skills to construct effective antipersonnel mines from commonly available materials.

Rory Marinich: "Yeah, and I wish I owned a printing press. Not all constitutional rights are as straightforward as they seem."

Assuming you didn't make this comment with a keypunch you own a printing press so powerful Gutenberg and the founding fathers would not have been able to conceive of its utility.
posted by Mitheral at 9:31 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


On a different note entirely, is it just me, or does his manifesto feature way too many incidents of him throwing beverages at people? It's a weirdly specific thing he keeps returning to. He talks about "almost" throwing orange at people, he fills a Super Soaker full of orange juice and shoots it at people, he splashes coffee at people, etc.

If one thought Freud was on the money, getting people wet with drinks could have been a sublimation of the ejaculation he wanted to be having with hot girls.

It's interesting, though, that to me at least the idea of throwing a drink in someone's face is, societally at least, a very stereotypically (hollywood, tv) female thing to do. Date says wrong thing at dinner, she throws water in his face. That sort of thing.

Also also while on the one hand it is a violent act, it is a plausibly deniable violent act, and most people (guys especially) won't necessarily see it as violent. Insulting, maybe, and physical-contact violence could easily ensue.

when I know it's just a matter of days or weeks until this happens again, and I'm tired. I'm so fucking tired.

I'm partly interested, but mostly knowing that seeing such a thing would just fill me with the creeping horrors and send me to bed for a week, in seeing a graph charting the frequency of these events since let's say 1950.

Maybe it's confirmation bias but it seems like it's happening more and more often as more and more men realize how much they've been lied to by society. Which is to say, how much they have been lied to by other men.

How did he hide his murderous rage and hatred?

It is surprisingly easy to deceive therapists/psychologists/psychiatrists if you're a relatively intelligent human being. It also points, somewhat, to him knowing on some level that what he wanted to do was wrong. I think anyway.

It's just that I really think a lot of the immediate work needs to be done by men.

So much this. It is not the responsibility of women to fix the fucked up and broken system that men have built. We need stop letting sexism slide from other men (personally I got sick and goddamn tired of the horrific misogyny in the gay community, which is a major reason why I almost never go to the village anymore; calling out the same guys over and over for e.g. calling women 'fish' just got to be too much), we need to (as I said above) say "Would you say that to your wife/sister/mother/girlfriend/daughter? No? Why not? Good. So why would you say that woman-hating shit to me?"

feminism taught in schools? High school and earlier I mean.

Teaching equality should start the first day of kindergarten and be a required daily class until you graduate highschool, male or female. Age-appropriate obviously, but that means issues like consent need to start being discussed at the grade 6 or 7 level.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:38 PM on May 26, 2014 [3 favorites]


Until our society stops valuing people primarily based on how physically attractive they are or because of how rich they are (with a weird sliding scale where more money reduces how traditionally attractive you need to be to be accepted, for males anyway), there will always be people ostracised from society in subtle and pervasive ways.

I'm still working my way through the thread, but this kind of comment is also on the spectrum of where that guy is. It's the same shit I hear from these types of guys all the time. "Why won't girls value me? They're only attracted to rich, attractive assholes. Somebody needs to make them be attracted to people like me."

You know what? Even if women were only attracted to the rich and attractive, or purple people eaters for that matter, that would be perfectly fucking fine and not deserving of scorn or hatred or bullshit about how they need to change for anyone else's desires. Even if women were only attracted to 1% of the men on the planet, that's their prerogative, because their bodies belong to themselves and no one else in the world is entitled to them.
posted by corb at 9:39 PM on May 26, 2014 [20 favorites]


One thing I've always wondered about is why these revenge spree killers don't use explosives. It doesn't take elite hacker skills to construct effective antipersonnel mines from commonly available materials.

Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:39 PM on May 26, 2014


feckless fecal fear mongering: "I'm partly interested, but mostly knowing that seeing such a thing would just fill me with the creeping horrors and send me to bed for a week, in seeing a graph charting the frequency of these events since let's say 1950.

Maybe it's confirmation bias but it seems like it's happening more and more often as more and more men realize how much they've been lied to by society. Which is to say, how much they have been lied to by other men.
"

I'd be interested in seeing some numbers on this as violent crime has been steadily declining in the US for decades.
posted by Mitheral at 9:49 PM on May 26, 2014


And in Canada, Mitheral. Maybe that's what makes these stick out more? I dunno.

I just... I just don't think I want to see my fears confirmed that it's happening more and more often, you know?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:51 PM on May 26, 2014


Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.

I think this is true. The IEDs and car bombs that wreak such havoc in Iraq and Afghanistan are possible because of networks of training and supplies connected to a whole panoply of state security agencies. It's not that a solitary person or two can't research and build a bomb, but it's not simple and there's more oversight now than there was when the Oklahoma City bombing happened.

The Boston marathon killers made some bombs that killed and injured some people, but hardly on the scale that could have happened with better skills and supplies and more resources. And that was with two of them and possibly some overseas training.

It's like how anyone with even very basic metalworking tools can make a gun, even a fully automatic Sten gun can be made by hand in your basement, for example. And yet almost no one does that, and aside from the occasional zip guns criminals in places like the UK aren't arming themselves with homemade firearms. The barrier does not need to be all that high to be a real impediment.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:00 PM on May 26, 2014 [2 favorites]


emjaybee: "It's just that I really think a lot of the immediate work needs to be done by men."

feckless fecal fear mongering: "So much this. It is not the responsibility of women to fix the fucked up and broken system that men have built. We need stop letting sexism slide from other men (personally I got sick and goddamn tired of the horrific misogyny in the gay community, which is a major reason why I almost never go to the village anymore; calling out the same guys over and over for e.g. calling women 'fish' just got to be too much), we need to (as I said above) say "Would you say that to your wife/sister/mother/girlfriend/daughter? No? Why not? Good. So why would you say that woman-hating shit to me?"

Yes, but. The problem is that having men do the work risks that the work will end up centred around men, with the priorities that men set, and further marginalizing women. Even with the best of intentions, we can't make this all about men. I don't have a solution.
posted by gingerest at 10:03 PM on May 26, 2014


gingerest, it's not either-or. Men participating doesn't have to make it about men unless the men choose to make it about them. Women work on feminism all the time regardless of men and that'll keep going on no matter what men do.

As it is stands there is basically no way for women or girls to reach men the way other men can. It's either "men step up and talk to men" or the status quo continues. It's not a question of men "doing the work", it's a question of men assisting with the work that women do.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:08 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.

Yeah. Guns, especially handguns, are literally point and click. Improvised explosives are at least difficulty level: model rocketry -- which is significantly more involved.

Anecdata, but: I passed a basic firearms safety course while at summer camp as a 12 year old. If I were an adult it would have been enough to meet the requirements for a permit (under whatever law was in force at the time, or so I was told). The handful of times I've been to target practice since suggests that just from that brief experience I retain enough knowledge from that to be able to figure out how to load, ready, aim and fire your average gun without instruction. It's like driving. The skill is not that complicated and readily transferable across most of the equipment out there.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:10 PM on May 26, 2014


The first step for men is to see the problem. Can't fix something you can't see. Some men here have discussed that. I think as a society we do this together--we talk, as we have done here over this long thread. And just keep talking and learning from one another.

I have watched this backlash gain momentum for fifty years since the first hippy guy figured out he didn't have to open doors for a girl any more and I've seen women surge ahead over their former subordinate position, aiming for equality. Every gain has been viewed as insurrection by some men and still is today. Turning that around is going to require that we talk and work together.

This thread, as exhausting as it is, has been good work on the part of the women and good work on the part of the men. Keep it going after this thread finally lets us get some sleep!
posted by Anitanola at 10:11 PM on May 26, 2014 [5 favorites]


Yes, but. The problem is that having men do the work risks that the work will end up centred around men, with the priorities that men set, and further marginalizing women. Even with the best of intentions, we can't make this all about men. I don't have a solution.

Well I've said basically the same things a couple times in this thread, but my point about men policing men isn't meant to imply, suggest, hint at, or otherwise say that we should do so without consulting women.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:12 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


E. Whitehall: "gingerest, it's not either-or. Men participating doesn't have to make it about men unless the men choose to make it about them. Women work on feminism all the time regardless of men and that'll keep going on no matter what men do.

As it is stands there is basically no way for women or girls to reach men the way other men can. It's either "men step up and talk to men" or the status quo continues. It's not a question of men "doing the work", it's a question of men assisting with the work that women do.
"

I agree with you about most of this, but (even very well-meaning) men can make it about themselves without choosing to. It's the nature of being the socially dominant class. As a white feminist woman, I am learning all about this myself, and about how and when to take a seat and listen as my contribution to positive social change. Sometimes "nothing about us without us" means "and nothing about you right now, please."
posted by gingerest at 10:15 PM on May 26, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah that's the thing... most of the kinds of guys we're talking about in this thread are guys who will stare at you blankly while you talk about equality and sexism, and then tell you to go make him a sandwich.

Men have more chance of being listened to by these men, is all I'm saying.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:17 PM on May 26, 2014


But why not also examine why men turn to such ideologies and groups?

A little over a year ago, I asked dear metafilter about how to deal with this vile bullshit from someone I was dating.

I thought the resulting advice gave me some nice insight into how someone's anxieties might produce an affiliation with MRA bullshit.

Flash forward.

That dude, my former dude, was psychotic. I do not mean that in the colloquial sense at all. I am personally and professionally qualified to say he had clinically significant paranoid delusions. Anxiety was the tip of the iceberg there.

He is no longer in my life, so I don't know what his reaction to these murders is - and having the feeling that I don't want to know gives me the willies, like I suspect he'd be an empathizer, if not an admirer.

There was no pushback against his virulently misogynist statements from his father or brothers, all of whom heartily endorsed the ideology themselves and joined in the fun. He had friends who seemed normal, gender relations wise, but he was utterly silent around them. (It was creepy.)

Men don't have to "turn to" misogyny at all. In our culture, they have to make the active choice to turn against misogyny.

Narcissism and paranoia share a common root in the self as the center of the universe. The judgement about whether that's good or bad is the variance.

Their forums strongly reinforce the self as the center of the universe, so drifting into the poisonous gas cloud of MRA/PUA feels like a natural progression, like an uncovering of a hidden truth, for men who are narcissistic or paranoid and already take misogyny as a given.
posted by The Noble Goofy Elk at 10:19 PM on May 26, 2014 [30 favorites]


This incident is a sad example of why gun control is a feminist issue, and indeed an issue for every group that faces oppression.

As a feminist, I make a habit of assertively challenging casual misogyny, street harassment and unwelcome approaches from pickup artists when I encounter them. It's necessary work, but I can only do it if I'm relatively certain that my physical safety is not at immediate risk.

Guns change that whole equation. If I lived in a country where any creep who made a pass at me might be carrying a concealed handgun, I suspect I would not be as "brave" as I am now. I would probably do a lot more of the smiling, giggling and shutting-the-fuck-up that women and girls are socialised to believe are appropriate responses to unwanted male attention.
posted by embrangled at 10:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [13 favorites]


One thing I've always wondered about is why these revenge spree killers don't use explosives. It doesn't take elite hacker skills to construct effective antipersonnel mines from commonly available materials.

Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:39 PM on May 26 [+] [!]


The power with guns lies with the person pointing and shooting. The power with explosives is in the explosive. A common element in many of the instances discussed here (Columbine, VATech, Sandy Hook and now IV) was the element of control or power- who had it, who didn't, who deserved it and who didn't. Using a gun as a primary, if not the sole, weapon is also a statement about power, entitlement to power, and "taking it back".

I also want to thank the men who have shared their stories about near misses and struggles with misogyny here. I really learned something today, and I hope it makes me a better person going forward. (The locker room stuff. Wow. I had no idea.)

It's changed my mind about who fights what battles. I'm pretty staunch about fighting my own as a feminist, but this has shown me that there are areas where the battles really need to be fought by the most qualified person. Tearing that poisonous locker room mentality out by the roots not only in the locker rooms, but in whatever the 30, 40 or 50 year old analogue is? Yeah, I'm not best placed to do that. My heartfelt thanks to those who are and who do.
posted by susiswimmer at 10:58 PM on May 26, 2014 [10 favorites]


Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.

Yep, plus there have been attempts to use bombs and they often fail. The Columbine killers, for example, tried to use bombs and they mostly didn't detonate. It isn't all that well known but they had attempted to blow up the school cafeteria and if the bombs had gone off it's likely many hundreds of students would have been killed or wounded (there were nearly 500 present in the cafeteria at the time).
posted by Justinian at 11:01 PM on May 26, 2014


> I have a run-of-the-mill diagnosis of depression and I would happily be prohibited from gun membership if that's what it took to get some common sense going here.

Any other rights you'd be willing hand over without a fight? Some depressed people harm or kill children, so maybe we'd all be better off if you gave up your reproductive rights, by that logic.

Maybe that's a bit too charged, so why not just give up your 4th or 5th Amendment rights, since some depressed people might be hiding the tools of self-harm, or in denial about how they harm others.

It's the easiest thing in the world to stand up for rights you use, and roll over on the ones you don't. None of these rights will be something we can just take back anytime we need them, and give up when we don't. If it's common sense that people should give up their rights, then it's no sense at all.
posted by Sunburnt at 11:23 PM on May 26, 2014 [4 favorites]


Another thing that I find myself really struck by -

When I read this guy's manifesto, I found it really, really scary. Not so much because it is unique and freakish, but because I've heard pieces of it said by men I know. Men who think they deserve women and want to know why women dare to not want them. Men who think that they deserve "Beautiful women" but that women aren't allowed to not be attracted to them because of physical appearance. Men who are angry at being short and think women are awful because they want taller men.

Even the rage. Maybe especially the rage.

I knew someone who told me once that he wanted to go to the top of tall buildings on Valentine's Day and shoot couples, because he couldn't get a girl. I don't remember what I said at the time. I probably laughed and evaded, because he was a man, and I was a woman, and he wanted to date me, and I didn't want to date him, and I just wanted to get home and pet my kitty and lock the door. But I remember his rage, just as I remember the multiple angry messages and voicemails when I dared to date someone else, and later, dared to get married to not-him. I still avoid him.

I would send this manifesto to these men as a way to shock them into reality, but the truth is I'm not sure if it would send them the right way.

There are more of these guys than we think out there. Or more at least than we would like to think.
posted by corb at 11:27 PM on May 26, 2014 [27 favorites]


Building bombs is far more difficult than pulling triggers, is my guess.

Yep, plus there have been attempts to use bombs and they often fail. The Columbine killers, for example, tried to use bombs and they mostly didn't detonate. It isn't all that well known but they had attempted to blow up the school cafeteria and if the bombs had gone off it's likely many hundreds of students would have been killed or wounded (there were nearly 500 present in the cafeteria at the time).
posted by Justinian at 11:01 PM on May 26 [+] [!]


It is my understanding that the extent of possible damage to the cafeteria wasn't known even by the perpetrators- the intended effect of the bombs in the cafeteria was to herd students into the guns.
posted by susiswimmer at 11:55 PM on May 26, 2014


That's correct AFAIK, but they looked at the propane bombs afterwards and concluded they would have been pretty powerful since they were both 20lb propane bombs.
posted by Justinian at 11:57 PM on May 26, 2014


One thing I notice in Hollywood films is that the hero must personally defeat the bad guy. It isn't enough for the bad guy to get caught or even die: the hero must subdue him, preferably in a fist fight. If you think you're a hero - as Rodger apparently did - then you don't use bombs; they're not personal enough.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:01 AM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


Guns change that whole equation. If I lived in a country where any creep who made a pass at me might be carrying a concealed handgun, I suspect I would not be as "brave" as I am now. I would probably do a lot more of the smiling, giggling and shutting-the-fuck-up that women and girls are socialised to believe are appropriate responses to unwanted male attention.

I believe the NRA term is "a polite society". Comparisons with 'uppity' and 'knew their place' comments are left as an exercise for the reader.
posted by jaduncan at 12:55 AM on May 27, 2014 [18 favorites]


I had to mention this somewhere. I just unfollowed a bunch of friends on Facebook who were/are attempting to hijack #yesallwomen with videos of a woman abusing a man to draw attention to the very important issue of how men get abused too because it bothers them that so much attention is being given to the abuse of women. Argh.
posted by Joey Michaels at 1:28 AM on May 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


I have one friend who is posting that on fb--I know something of his circumstances so I am trying to engage in conversation with him and offer perspective. He likes to be something of an iconoclast and a special snowflake but I think he's bright enough to recognize when he's being played. He just has a lot of fear where women are concerned. I am old enough to be his grandmother so he lets me say stuff to him younger women can't. Probably won't do any good but I feel that I have to try.
posted by Anitanola at 1:40 AM on May 27, 2014 [10 favorites]


I'm sorry so many men had the experience as boys of a girl being put up to asking them out and having the whole school laugh at them. I'm sorry that made you hate girls and women. As a girl, I had multiple similar experiences of boys being put up to asking me out and having the whole school laugh at me. But, because I was a girl, it taught me to hate myself, not boys and men.
posted by hydropsyche at 3:42 AM on May 27, 2014 [102 favorites]


The background misogyny is a big part of the MRA bullshit, but there's also a very deliberate rejection of the better ideals that our society has to offer.

Yeah, some people are just self-centered shits. No societal transformation is ever going to be universal, and no "better ideal" is ever going to be 100% self-evident.

yeah, I never considered until now, but is feminism taught in schools? High school and earlier I mean. I never learned about it and have never heard of it being taught in schools in the general curriculum. Seems like it would be a pretty good idea, you know, "teach the controversy!"

Nope, feminism is not taught in schools. In fact, that's yet another instance of casual misogyny, in schools - how many instances of boys bugging girls, even at the grade school level, have you heard being dismissed as "boys will be boys"?

That phrase needs to be changed to "boys are kids and kids can be shits until you teach them not to be".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:19 AM on May 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


One thing I've always wondered about is why these revenge spree killers don't use explosives.

A lot of them do. Tim McVeigh, Columbine, the Unibomber, the Atlanta Olympics, the Boston Marathon bombing, etc.
posted by empath at 4:49 AM on May 27, 2014


Emptythought, thanks very much for that post - kind of anti-eponysterical, if there is such a word. But while I recognise the whole alienation/mocked by peers and knowing one is always going to be outsider (been there) what I just cannot understand is how this turns into wanting to kill etc lots of people. I don't understand the pathway. I can't see it. How do you get there? What is switched off, or on, in a person? For this reason I am willing to listen to arguments that say this goes beyond misogyny, although misogyny clearly creates the context that enables it.

I'm sure, although can't reference it, that I've come across the anthropological finding that misogyny can be one of the building blocks of male solidarity. Is misogyny an inevitable component of contemporary western masculine identity? As a partner of, and parent of, men, I certainly don't want to believe that.
posted by glasseyes at 4:50 AM on May 27, 2014


I'm still working my way through the thread, but this kind of comment is also on the spectrum of where that guy is. It's the same shit I hear from these types of guys all the time. "Why won't girls value me? They're only attracted to rich, attractive assholes. Somebody needs to make them be attracted to people like me."
This has to be the shittiest possible reading of my comment imaginable. Seriously, maybe you could do with reading it again if that's what you read the first time.

I'm sorry so many men had the experience as boys of a girl being put up to asking them out and having the whole school laugh at them. I'm sorry that made you hate girls and women. As a girl, I had multiple similar experiences of boys being put up to asking me out and having the whole school laugh at me. But, because I was a girl, it taught me to hate myself, not boys and men.
I guess it hadn't occurred to me that this happened in reverse, even though it's obvious that it would. I'm sorry you had to go through that. But it didn't make me hate girls and women. It made me hate girls for a while but I, you know, grew up and got over it. If anything, it just added to my view that I was at fault and that I deserved to be mocked. I certainly don't see my experiences as any kind of justification for hatred of any kind. I've copped some pretty crappy treatment from women over the years, but I still don't hate them, either individually or as a group. I'm actually much more comfortable in the platonic company of women than I am with men, mostly. I've never been able to get comfortable with the whole macho male bonding thing for some reason. I don't think much at all of people, collectively, to be honest, but I don't distinguish by gender in that opinion. Collectively, people of all genders, cultures, race and political persuasion basically suck. One of the reasons I hang around here is that there are so few people that suck compared to the rest of the world.
posted by dg at 4:52 AM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


I've heard pieces of it [the manifesto] said by men I know. Men who think they deserve women and want to know why women dare to not want them. […] Men who are angry at being short and think women are awful because they want taller men. Even the rage. Especially the rage [...]
There are more of these guys [i.e. like Elliot Rodgers] than we think out there. Or more at least than we would like to think.


There is that possibility. But there's also the possibility that there aren't, but the *idea that there are* is rhetorically useful to wave away unsightly people and unseemly questions under the pretense of public safety.

Women get angry, too, at how we consign people to loneliness because their bodies fail to walk the line of beauty and stick the landing. They get angry when we say that real women have curves but mean golden ratios, uphold or refute womanhood like geometric laws. They get angry at the composite faces and bodies we must glue together to make a cover girl, fractured, prismatic women sharing a smile, selling eugenics. They get angry about these very things, on this website, and we allow them that anger without attaching to them the baggage of a Solanas with a Manifesto and a gun.

Sane, decent men and women can find celibacy absolutely mortifying, and when it seems imposed by aesthetic guidelines too rude for grading statues, I think we're the greater problem, not them.

The first serial killer in literature (I think) was Procrustes, and he killed for beauty too.
He had a bed of exact dimensions that he measured his guests against, stretching the short, hacking down the tall, making his victims perfect in their sleep. I see women laid in centerfolds and men in tanning beds and I wonder how many of us have spent a night there.
posted by kid ichorous at 5:25 AM on May 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


what I just cannot understand is how this turns into wanting to kill etc lots of people. I don't understand the pathway. I can't see it. How do you get there? What is switched off, or on, in a person?

I don't know, I think think there are a lot of paths that could lead to not having much respect for human life, and some of those (war mongering, death penalty) are even directly sanctioned or even celebrated by our culture. Misogyny taken to its limits plus the brand of xenophobia that keeps us shrugging at 'collateral damage' in the Mideast seems like it would lead right there.

But there are other paths, too. The intellectual endpoint of absorbing that we're all dust in the end, and then even our civilization is dust, and then even our planet is dust, kind of makes any life feel not very important. I guess we're lucky that nihilism also makes going on a killing spree feel like a whole lot of effort for no good reason, too.
posted by nobody at 5:26 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


It made me hate girls for a while but I, you know, grew up and got over it.

What I think hydropsyche was saying--although I'll use my own experiences here, not hers--is that she didn't go through the part where she hated boys in response at all. That was not a stage she experienced. She went directly to self-criticism and self-loathing. There was no "hate boys for a while."

And if that's not what she meant, I can tell you that I also had similar experiences of "hilarious" rejection and ostracization--not to mention rape threats and sexual violence threats in elementary school--and there was no point at which I "hated boys."

I never had to get over that. I did not have to grow out of it. Why would I "hate boys" at the time? I loved (and still love) my brothers, and my male cousin, and I had friends who were boys, and knew my brothers' friends who were good dudes. And classmates who were boys who were totally uninvolved, or not my friends but kind enough people.

I understood that, even as a child. I was angry with the people who hurt me purposefully, but not "boys."
posted by Uniformitarianism Now! at 5:29 AM on May 27, 2014 [37 favorites]


Do you guys remember a post a while ago, about a successful neurologist who discovers he is a sociopath? He said that he and his friends and family weren't exactly surprised by this news, but the man was a nonviolent, successful member of society who would never in a million years consider doing what this guy did. Why? Because he was raised not to. There are millions of people like him, people who have the capacity for hideous violence but have been raised to consider it unthinkable. Let's raise the rest of them like that.
posted by showbiz_liz at 5:52 AM on May 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


while I recognise the whole alienation/mocked by peers and knowing one is always going to be outsider (been there) what I just cannot understand is how this turns into wanting to kill etc lots of people. I don't understand the pathway. I can't see it. How do you get there? What is switched off, or on, in a person?

Boys are socialized to direct anger outward - girls, inward. Some people are just extreme about it. You probably see just as many girls who commit acts of extreme self-hatred as you do boys who want to commit extreme acts of mass violence.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:54 AM on May 27, 2014 [22 favorites]


I believe the NRA term is "a polite society". Comparisons with 'uppity' and 'knew their place' comments are left as an exercise for the reader.

I'm feeling stupid, because I never saw that connection before, though it seems obvious the minute I read it. Now that it has been pointed out, I will notice it every time I hear that term.

how many deaths like this are acceptable as collateral damage before you start questioning how important that constitutional right really is?

I've been thinking about this question for a couple of days now. To me it is clear that the underlying problem -- the driver of so many individual killings of women by a partner and mass killings like this one -- is a society that has normalized misogyny and violence. Guns become a tool to that end (and a compelling tool, with all their Freudian baggage, their cheapness, and their ease of use), but they aren't the driver of the violence, just an enabling component. Banning guns (even if that was easily possible) would prevent a certain number of killings, but we would still have a culture where women are told to walk in groups at night for safety and men feel entitled to women's attention and bodies.

I genuinely do feel like US culture is beginning to shift (incrementally and imperfectly) on this issue, between the recent focus on campus sexual assaults and then the interpretation of this killing as not a random crazy guy but rather reflective of a culture of misogyny. This article on the front page of the New York Times is the first time I've seen that issue discussed so bluntly and matter of factly in the Times, for example, linking the microaggressions of catcalls to this kind of headline-grabbing violence.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:18 AM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


I've been following the odd subreddit in the wake of UCSB and I think I found the gold nugget on this one.

Definitely do not equate learning the tools to earn a girl's affection (from TRP or elsewhere) with believing you are inherently entitled to it. These are absolute opposites that are somehow being treated as identical in the media. Feminism, as an advocate for women, wants to oppose TRP because these strategies are about increasing male power in the sexual marketplace, and they perceive this as at women's expense. So don't let them use the image of a violent killer, who thinks nothing like you or the men here, to prevent you from hearing potentially useful and life-changing ideas.

Oh TRP. You just don't get it.
posted by Talez at 6:51 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


They [women] get angry about these very things, on this website, and we allow them that anger without attaching to them the baggage of a Solanas with a Manifesto and a gun.

Women do get angry about these things, on this website. But there's a huge difference to the anger. First, it's not personal. We know our enemy, and it is patriarchy. Do we try to separate men from it? Absolutely. But I've never heard a single woman on this website talk about the men who won't date her in the same tones of frustrated rage that the men do. In fact, to make things more equal, I've never heard a single woman on this website talk about the women who won't date her in the same tones that men do.

And our anger doesn't come with violence, as so much of male anger does. Our anger is to change the system, not to punish wrongdoers who follow it.
posted by corb at 7:02 AM on May 27, 2014 [20 favorites]


Wouldn't it be beautiful if the hate he felt and demonstrated became a call to arms to stop misogyny and shine light on feminist issues of all stripes? A gal can dream...
posted by agregoli at 7:03 AM on May 27, 2014


Hate is a strong word but I can say that I strongly detest the whole macho male bullshit with the casual violence and the dicksizing and the contempt for compassion that goes with it, and guys who embody it make me feel sick to my stomach. Is that misandry or is it just that I expect more from supposedly civilized people? My public humiliations when I was younger didn't lead me to this feeling; having had contact with too many arseholes over 47 years has just cemented what I've always felt horribly uncomfortable with.

I've known so many guys who've held similar (although thankfully less extreme) views to this vile piece of work and sometimes it's hard having to share the world with them, particularly when there seems to be so many people (not in this thread, thank og) who sympathise with the mindset that leads to this kind of incident not being universally greeted with absolute horror. So many men, when confronted with an actual worst case scenario of what misogyny can lead to just want to say 'nooo, not me nor any of my friends, don't blame us' instead of 'holy shit, that's bloody awful and it happens how often, you say? Man, my eyes have been opened' which would be a nice step forward, I think.

I have two young sons and both of them are somewhat socially awkward which worries me sometimes, although it's not that unexpected because I'm an awkward lump myself, mostly, but at the very least they have been raised with the firm belief that women are equal and fellow members of humanity and not some strange and exotic 'other'. I hope that they continue to think that, regardless of how many shitheads of all genders they'll be required to mix with in their lives.

If nothing else, that's a fundamental lesson all parents should be teaching their children, boys and girls. It would have to make some difference, wouldn't it? I'm so naiive, I know.

And to bring this rant back on topic, if it wasn't so acceptable among so many men to casually denigrate women who dare to decide for themselves who they want to be with and what they want to do with their own lives then, although you can't stop everyone with a grudge and a gun and a complete lack of respect for anyone else, it might stop a few who are teetering on the brink and who get pushed over the edge because they feel that they are being punished by 'feminazis' and have the backing of a large section of society.
posted by h00py at 7:17 AM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


WidgetAlley> I urge you to think of this next time you consider saying, or you hear anyone else say, "Well, why didn't she just turn him down or tell him no (or fight back or say something in response to harrassment or whatever the action-policing du jour is)?" It's 'cause many of us are scared that, if we do, we will be physically hurt or killed.

almostmanda> Every woman who hears about this story now knows that there are men who will kill her for refusing sexual advances, and will keep that in mind when considering her actions.... [V]iolence against women who reject men's advances is an ongoing pattern.

dg> .... I was the laughing stock of something like 800 kids. Turned out her and her friends had made something of a game out of pretending to like boys just, you know, for fun. I don't know that this would have led me down a path that had mass murder at the end of it, but I sure hated girls for a long time after that. [...] It made me hate girls for a while but I, you know, grew up and got over it.

hydropsyche> I'm sorry so many men had the experience as boys of a girl being put up to asking them out and having the whole school laugh at them. I'm sorry that made you hate girls and women. As a girl, I had multiple similar experiences of boys being put up to asking me out and having the whole school laugh at me. But, because I was a girl, it taught me to hate myself, not boys and men.
"Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them."
posted by Westringia F. at 7:20 AM on May 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


> I have a run-of-the-mill diagnosis of depression and I would happily be prohibited from gun membership if that's what it took to get some common sense going here.

Any other rights you'd be willing hand over without a fight?


Way to miss the entire point there, chief. Your country needs to grow the hell up regarding guns, which really does include much deeper and more stringent background checks to at least try and prevent guns from ending up in hands like these.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:23 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


(Oh, and keeping guns out of the hands of depressed people would probably do something to reduce the 20 000 people who kill themselves with guns every year)

You know what? ctrl-f 'collateral damage,' read my comment, and answer the question I posed.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:28 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I've been doing a lot of reading into Texas history, because this place, if you want to find some misogyny well Texas does misogyny quite well. Here's what I've found to be the case in my familial history and the familial history of some racist misogynists I know steeped in rugged individualism and "I LOVE ME SUM GUNS" cowboy BS. Texas was violent as fuck.

Criminals came here, orphans were shipped here, people went off and lived in cabins and were isolated and could abuse anyone they wanted without interference quite easily. And life was hard as fuck so you needed every set of hands you could to grow and harvest food, build tools and houses and do repairs and the back breaking labor of existence. Weak people were treated like shit, and since women had lesser physical strength on average they often fit the bill. If anything, seeing women as a different species was considered a kindness to them because they were sometimes omitted from the brutal process of forcing boys to learn how to slaughter animals in a gruesome often obviously painful manner, of doing physical tasks that required greater muscle strength than women were expected to have, and what's more, large quantities of strenuous exorcize actually IS bad for women's reproduction. When women go into intensive athletics many can expect to have changes in their menstrual cycle: "Amenorrhea (absence of 3 to 12 consecutive menstrual periods) and oligomenorrhea (irregular, infrequent menstruation: 6 to 9 menstrual periods per year, or cycle length less than 90 days but greater than 35 days) have both been seen in exercising women in all sports."

People were trained to hate and abuse weaker people, in order to build their own strength to deal with a brutal and often traumatic world around them where they would have to fight, face death, kill animals and possibly people and have the level of sadism needed to feel comfortable doing these things or even enjoying themselves while doing so, and continue living and doing the tasks of life after without collapsing in horror and grief.

Misogyny is part of a tyrannical view of human relations, power, and interaction with other species and beings in the world, a view of entitlement to any being seen as weaker or who possesses less strengths-- might makes right.

Those who are seen to have the most admirable intelligence, strength, and capabilities are entitled to use anyone "less" than them however they like for their own gain.

It's a part of the capitalist structure of our entire society and to question misogyny is to question the very foundation of the might makes right system of entitlement (shifted from physical strength to the skill sets to dominate the school and business world) we have going here in the states. We literally, label our children as passing at the game of life or failing. We RATE them.

We RANK our children as worthy of college education or not.

We do so many disturbing things that facilitate the ideology that anyone who is not dominating at a variety of skillsets we consider admirable deserves to be tossed to the curb, and when they come crawling best desperate for access to society and the resources to live, they can then be treated however anyone wants to treat them because they deserve nothing anyway.

Women and trans men often do have different relationships with their children than cismen, and they are more vulnerable and in need of care and support from either a partner, their family, society, or perhaps stashes of money they saved while working previously. They will be impaired at doing the tasks of life for a period of time and in various periods of history that period of time could mean life or death. For much of history women NEEDED men during this time, not wanted, but NEEDED, and those needs are still there however they are now met with the power of technology to assist with laundry, cleaning dishes and other life tasks that used to take up all of the day.

And any time a person is dependent, they considered unworthy or respect for their humanity. How do we treat the homeless in our country? How to we treat the disabled, especially those who basically become homeless because we refuse to properly acknowledge their disabilities and fund their existence? Why did women's rights also come with the expectations that to defend their worth as people women need to get back in the "real" work force as soon as possible because otherwise... well otherwise they are back to be the unworthy good for nothing housebound weaklings they were often considered.

Many orphans of the living throughout the world exist because mothers who have been widowed or abandoned by a father did not or do not have access to day cares and literally have no way to work to bring in money while also caring for their children. Somehow, both things have to happen and no one person can do both of these things alone. You have to either outsource the labor or have a partner (or other family).

I guess what I'm saying is that I still think misogyny fits in a larger picture or rampant ablism and abuses toward anyone seen as weaker or lacking the desirable skills of the time, and we have something similar to a caste system here in the US where we literally, label a portion of the population unworthy of college, and unworthy of good jobs because they have needs that we don't acknowledge as worth catering to or designing our systems around.

As someone who has spent a huge amount of time reading research on pregnancy and mother infant bonding in both humans and other species, I also think the US has a lot of issues with isolation, seeing extended family networks as undesirable or not worth working to protect; failing to see the bond a nursing infant needs to form with it's mother as a valid infant need and something to put a great deal of supportive resources towards when something disrupts that. We're not very good at understanding human needs for bonding and socialization and social acceptance or creating society around human health needs rather than medicating people to submit to a rather shitty system that is failing to meet a lot of people's needs whether physical, cognitive, emotional, familial, or educational.


I think a lot of people see the origins of aggression as mysterious when in truth, a lot of research into epigenetics and the effects on personality and on multiple generations of offspring are actually pointing to effects we really can understand the variables that create them much better. We can learn about this and we need to be doing that research and we need to be reading it to have these discussions and to create solutions that are informed by an understanding of the fact that how we care for women during pregnancy and early childhood, how we protect and foster those bonds, how we understand the complexity and extend of children's needs for a nurturing enriching environment, a healthy diet, clean air and water, sun, exercise, play... etc etc.... (and the ways each persons and families needs can be individual).

Most of us admit that in an emergency violence can be useful. You might not usually yell at your children but if a car is about to hit them and they are standing in the road and won't move when you say run, you might scream at them in way that terrifies them and it might work better. You might not usually steal but if you were starving and had exhausted all options, might you find yourself more likely to take food if you got the opportunity? Things change in individual situations and sociopathic traits are protective, and unhealthy environments stimulate these traits to be more active.

My dad said to me once, "Sometimes only one person is going to eat and you want it to be you." We recently went through many wars where people saw terrible violence, we went through periods of lawlessness in our history where even the "good" people needed to be willing to kill to survive a fight, we went through the great Depression and all these things contribute to epigenetic effects that last generations. What's more when individual families are starving or coping with violence many children ARE growing up in a warzone or a starvation zone and their systems are coping in the same ways.

Neglect of childrens needs can happen even in well meaning and kind families who simply don't understand their children's needs or who are coping with a scarcity of resources to meet those needs, whether financial or social or otherwise. You can't buy love. So if that is short supply it's hard to outsource. No one really takes on, or thinks they should take on, all children as their own. No one loves a child like their parents do.

And if the parents are needing help with child rearing, even if they have money, it's often not possible to buy the kind of help they need, that a healthy loving family would do if they were present and available.

I don't know what caused this guy to grow into what he became but I want to know and I actually think we already have a lot of answers about how people like this are grown by societies. We need to address all of it and be willing to really read in depth about what we are learning is need to support families and children and to create healthy policies and practices that create a healthy society as a whole. The details of how we caregive and what needs we see as valid needs in humans have huge effects. They can do good or cause harm. We need to learn these details and value understanding them and using that knowledge.

Mostly I am just rambling as it pours out of my body in response to that which I wish to change with all of my being.

We should do all that we can to change this, it a manner that is well researched in the potential causes and effects all potential solutions (as a fan of harm reduction I believe slow gradual change with supports and positive reinforcements works at the societal as well as the individual level). As well as understanding the root causes of behavior with the respect for the reality that some times human behavior is simply a chain of events that have very clear causes we can do something about so that we aren't cultivating this kind of hatred and delusional thinking that is so difficult to penetrate once established and reinforced and self protecting within individuals and peer groups.

I think our thoughts become part of our identify and when you attack a persons thoughts, you attack them, and in truth most people DO completely change their perception of someone who says they value hate or cruelty. Attacking their ideology of hate often IS about attacking them. In order to ask someone to change you almost have to give them the space for it to be forgiven the wrong way they were thinking, where they THEMSELVES can question it's origin, can wonder with you, can still have a compassionate framework for the self within the hateful ideology.

In aikido they talk about turning to side with your enemy and face your enemies battles along side them. It is a powerful technique, and while I don't know that it works in actually physical confrontations (I believe in self defense situations, do what you feel you need even if it's violent or harmful) but for social change it can also be powerful. This doesn't mean giving your enemy what they want at all. What they want is to hurt you and you DO have to stop them from doing that. My take on ahimsa is you do the least amount of harm possible but that is never no harm in this world or we would never eat at all. We get as close as we can to that with respect for various beings level of consciousness and development paths and needs and the level of harms and benefits to a huge range of beings involved in the short and long term. But you learn more about how to deal with the issue if you understand why they are arising, and it doing tons and tons and tons and tons or reading about the family lives of criminals and people with anti-social issues, and epigenetics and how environments create needs for various traits in people, and various dynamics in families and social systems to cope with adversity...

I think all of us who are on board with Team Let's Fix This should be reading, learning, understanding and creating new strategies to really get at the root of these issues and at least solve that which we can solve while knowing there may be sometimes of human hatred/criminality that may arise no matter what, I think that is a smaller portion than that which arises from linear progression (or rather a complex interplay of various variables bouncing off of and reacting to each other) of events we can understand better if we dare to ask ourselves to really learn about these things.

I don't want to just keep sighing and making comments and sharing opinions while we watch these events occur over and over.

There is so much excellent research into the origins of these phenomena and we need a complex understanding from a variety of scientific disciplines to come to a deeper understanding that is beyond simply our opinions which won't of themselves get us as far.

Also I would like there to be a Team Let's Fix This.

What I'm doing is volunteering as a postpartum doula for families who can't afford one and making referrals to community services that help build up parents and address complex issues in their own and their children's lives. I bet there is some aspect of this that everyone who wants to can take on.. and I will add, while it doesn't seem to do much, I actually count sharing things on the internet, and learning about the issues and spreading that knowledge as part of the active force of change. We are riding the waves of it and we can choose to do all we can from that point. Anytime who are healing, supportive, building up others, helping them learn their own strengths even as a friend or neighbor or family member or even teach knowledge of a better way of doing things that causes less harm and does more good-- you change the world more than you know.

I know this is rambling and may not be of any benefit, if there is anything useful in it please take it and carry it with you to do more good with, discard the rest as the saying goes.
posted by xarnop at 7:33 AM on May 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


> It's the easiest thing in the world to stand up for rights you use, and roll over on the ones you don't

Sure. I don't use my right to bear arms because, among other reasons, I don't want to have that right. I don't want the people around me to have that right. I'll roll all over the 2nd amendment.

Poof! There went any hope of me ever having a career in politics.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:33 AM on May 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


Those of you who have I-could-have-been-this-guy moments; can you speculate as to why that way of thinking appealed to you? Did your family teach you toxic masculinity crap, or was it all peers/society?

It's doubtful family, peers, or 'society' had much (if anything at all) to do with Rodger's intense hatreds and violent actions, which developed from his own unique social and emotional impairments. (This is obvious but unpopular because everyone always wants some political or cultural scapegoat : movies, parents, guns, liberals, bullying, sexism, etc, etc.)

Is it hard to feel victimized by the opposite sex when you feel unwanted? Nah. Typical mundane stuff. The Doors: "Women seem wicked when you're alone". Women develop the same grievances against men (although men, of course are more violent and extreme than women, at the center and, Oh my God, certainly at the edges). So much misogyny and misandry just bubbles up organically, because men and women are covetous of sex, reproduction, and relationships. Because of mutual (and often paranoid) confusion about their psychological differences. And because men and women have competing interests at the personal level and at the political level.

There's not much evidence in the autobiography that the Internet or "mansphere" subcultures had much influence on Rodger's anger and attitudes. He just continually nursed and amplified his resentments at the world and at females based on the real and imagined slights of his lived experience.
posted by dgaicun at 7:41 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


"It's doubtful family, peers, or 'society' had much (if anything at all) to do with Rodger's intense hatreds and violent actions, which developed from his own unique social and emotional impairments."

But where do the impairments come from? Genetics is actually finding that much of what we call "genetic" is actually epigenetic, heritable effects of the physical, environmental, and social environment.

We need to understand these processes. To not do so makes us liable in the creation of people who are very unhealthy because we choose not to understand their needs or create a society that empowers individuals to develop and to access what they need for a healthy life.
posted by xarnop at 7:47 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


So much misogyny and misandry just bubbles up organically, because men and women are covetous of sex, reproduction, and relationships. Because of mutual (and often paranoid) confusion about their psychological differences. And because men and women have competing interests at the personal level and at the political level.

Can you clarify in what way that isn't 'society'?

There's not much evidence in the autobiography that the Internet or "mansphere" subcultures had much influence on Rodger's anger and attitudes. He just continually nursed and amplified his resentments at the world and at females based on the real and imagined slights of his lived experience.

Plenty in his (now-deleted) commentary on such sites, though. Those sites are echo chambers that reinforce misogynistic behaviour and thinking, and as with any insular community they encourage radicalization.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:49 AM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Can you clarify in what way that isn't 'society'?

I put those quotes around 'society' because I find the idea kind of nebulous, and feel like the way it is used probably doesn't correspond closely to my own intuitions about the concept.

A Hutterite community would not likely experience an event like this, nor would it develop a person with the same problems and ideas as Rodger.

On the other hand, I haven't seen any plausible (much less favorable) ideas or ideologies for a way to tweak a democratic, modern, industrial, market-based state that might influence this kind of event.
posted by dgaicun at 8:02 AM on May 27, 2014


I want to circle back around to an idea we were talking about earlier; ways in which we can teach boys that girls are not objects and trophies. Amongst the ideas broached were more books with female protagonists for that age group.

NoraReed mentioned that books with a female protagonist are a difficult sale to people who are buying books for boys, and publishers know that and perpetuate it. Last fall I took a writer's workshop led by some of the more powerful editors in my market. They asked everyone to submit a 10k word story or novel beginning, and an "elevator pitch" for it.

On day 1, they told the room full of writers that they shouldn't bother writing anything with female protagonists, that the market was oversaturated with "chick-lit", and that "nobody writes books for boys. We're only considering works thru 2015, that are aimed at the young male and/or male adult market." They subsequently returned all of the manuscripts with female protagonists with no edits or suggestions, and focused on a non-ironic manuscript which referred to women as "broads". So, there ya go. That is the state of affairs at one of the largest and most powerful publishing houses in America.

And this thread, and all of the honest and thoughtful responses to this tragedy, have made me wonder what I'm doing to make sure that my son doesn't become comfortable thinking that he is somehow "owed" a woman, or sex, or anything other than the common courtesy we extend to everyone.

In reviewing my book collection, which numbers in the thousands, I'm astonished to discover how little of it has an autonomous female lead that exhibits full agency. In scanning the collection of movies and DVDs, I discovered the same thing. I am literally shocked. It's been a matrix-moment...where I just spun around and realized that the universe I'd created around myself with my books, didn't have any women. I mean, it had a few, thanks to Marion Zimmer Bradley and others, but it was a precious few, peeking through the legions of heroic men who were off to save women. So, ya know, they could have them. As you do, when you're a hero.

WTF, Me? How can I, a leftist, socialist-leaning, feminist, have not even seen the fact that there are virtually no strong, independent, fully actualized women on my bookshelves?

My point, (tldr), is that the tendrils of the patriarchy which have in turn spawned these horrific MR/PUA type communities and belief systems, are so deep in our culture that they're almost invisible, even when you're looking for them.

Also, if you have recommendations for books with female leads that would be appropriate for 11-13 year olds, please memail me.
posted by dejah420 at 8:05 AM on May 27, 2014 [42 favorites]


"But, really, we should check whether or not he had some valid points."

Oh, my god, this.

Michael Myers offers life lessons in resiliency, shouldn't we stop and listen?
Jason Vorhees - what can we learn about our own gardening from his use of tools?
Chucky is trying to reach us with the value of play in learning!
Godzilla - A desperate cry for urban planning critique.
posted by Slap*Happy at 8:07 AM on May 27, 2014 [20 favorites]


A Hutterite community would not likely experience an event like this, nor would it develop a person with the same problems and ideas as Rodger.

When you say "an event like this," do you specifically mean the mass slaughter with firearms, or do you mean any epidemic of gendered sexual violence?
posted by KathrynT at 8:14 AM on May 27, 2014 [16 favorites]


> It's doubtful family, peers, or 'society' had much (if anything at all) to do with Rodger's intense hatreds and violent actions, which developed from his own unique social and emotional impairments.

So it's not "society," but then:

> A Hutterite community would not likely experience an event like this, nor would it develop a person with the same problems and ideas as Rodger.

On the one hand, you seem to be saying, his hatred of women just came from someplace inside him, without any influence by the culture he grew up in, but on the other hand, someone who grew up in a completely pacifist culture would not have committed murders like this. (Though it's not like Hutterite communities don't have weird gender things!)

On preview: jinx, KathrynT!
posted by rtha at 8:16 AM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


What I think hydropsyche was saying--although I'll use my own experiences here, not hers--is that she didn't go through the part where she hated boys in response at all. That was not a stage she experienced. She went directly to self-criticism and self-loathing. There was no "hate boys for a while."

And if that's not what she meant, I can tell you that I also had similar experiences of "hilarious" rejection and ostracization--not to mention rape threats and sexual violence threats in elementary school--and there was no point at which I "hated boys."


Count me in as another woman who had similar experiences of ostracism and rejection in elementary school -- that whole "so-and-so likes you, do you like them?" game where you end up a laughingstock in front of the whole school and the girl you like is pointing at you and laughing and screaming about how gross you are and she would never? Yeah, that happens to girls, too. All the time. It's especially fun when it happens to you multiple times because you move and change schools at least once a year and even though you learn to expect that it's a joke, so they never really get to humiliate you in front of a large crowd again, you're still always the butt of the joke.

But like hydropsyche and Uniformitarianism Now! and others, I hated my specific tormentors, and I hated myself, but hating all boys never entered my mind. Why would it? It wasn't all boys everywhere that teased me and made me feel like shit, it wasn't even just boys -- girls joined in, too. So why didn't I grow up with a festering sore for a heart, blindly hating an entire gender for the actions of a representative few? I'm not an especially saintly person... is it simply the gender essentialism of the society I was raised in, where girls are supposed to be meek and quiet and never express negative emotions (we just bottle them up inside and learn to hate ourselves very efficiently, yay!), but boys are allowed to have anger and express it? Is it honestly that simple?
posted by palomar at 8:25 AM on May 27, 2014 [25 favorites]


"do you specifically mean the mass slaughter with firearms"

A spree-killing. I recall one older article that suggested that there has only been 1 recorded murder by an Amish person in the U.S.

"but on the other hand, someone who grew up in a completely pacifist culture would not have committed murders like this... Though it's not like Hutterite communities don't have weird gender things!"

rtha, your last point kind of gets at what I was driving at. There are known social organizations that would not facilitate this kind of event, but they are radically different, and overall less preferable to the modern open liberal society. Within that framework I can't see any obvious cause of or solution to these periodic spree-killings.
posted by dgaicun at 8:28 AM on May 27, 2014


Michael Myers offers life lessons in resiliency, shouldn't we stop and listen?

Michael Myers walks instead of running, to conserve energy, and to go easier on his knees. Unless you're an elite runner, you shouldn't run too much. (On the other hand, don't skip leg day.)

Jason Vorhees - what can we learn about our own gardening from his use of tools?

Jason teaches us that the creation of our identity is a gradual process. In the first movie, he was a helpless figure, protected (and avenged) only by his mother; in the second movie, he inherited the family trade; in the third movie, he adopted the hockey mask to make his image his own. If only we could be all so at ease in our transformation through life.

Chucky is trying to reach us with the value of play in learning!

Chucky is a husband and a father, you monster.

Godzilla - A desperate cry for urban planning critique.

Godzilla is the hero, after the first movie! Also, he is a loving parent.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:32 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]




On the other hand, I haven't seen any plausible (much less favorable) ideas or ideologies for a way to tweak a democratic, modern, industrial, market-based state that might influence this kind of event.

Wait, really?
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Count me in as another woman who had similar experiences of ostracism and rejection in elementary school

Me too. It was so constant that I preemptively assumed all through school that anyone asking me out was doing it as part of some malicious joke. But I didn't hate all boys for it; I hated myself for being so whatever-it-was-that-was-wrong-with-me that made it happen.
posted by winna at 8:35 AM on May 27, 2014 [17 favorites]


Count me in as another woman who had similar experiences of ostracism and rejection in elementary school

And me, in a different way. I never got the teasing or the overt cruelty- I just never got any male attention whatsoever. And, like the shooter, I didn't even try to get it because I "knew" beyond the shadow of a doubt that I was 100% undesirable to the opposite sex. Like, there was no question in my mind about this, it was a fact.

Where we diverge is, I didn't blame men. I didn't blame other women. I didn't even REALLY blame myself, although I did a bit- I mostly just sighed and resigned myself to a life of loneliness, because I was Not Dating Material.

Why didn't I get angry? Why didn't I blame men for not noticing me? Because I was not raised to expect male attention as my due. I was raised to think that men seek out the women they want, and other women may as well not exist, and there is nothing they can do about it, and there is nothing they should expect or deserve in the way of romance.

That point of view is just as fucked up as the shooter's, it is just as rooted in patriarchy, and it is just as WRONG. But it's a point of view that is less likely to encourage murderous rampages.
posted by showbiz_liz at 8:39 AM on May 27, 2014 [48 favorites]


Also I think it's really funny that we accept without question that our physical bodies store complex thoughts and ideas within them, but scoff at the idea that some of that interplay of ideas may be literally held within various types of cells on a biological level, which can effect ideologies and types of thinking in offspring as well.

There's nothing bizarre about the idea, and personally I know for sure since almost everyone in my family was adopted at birth, that for many of us ideas that were related to issues our parents or grandparents were directly coping with have been part of our own thought processes. I like science, so I explored the concept with science and found a lot of evidence this actually may have some probability of being a thing. (And anyone wanting to dismiss me right away for having "bias" do you not have your own bias that's stopping you from even daring to EXPLORE the idea or read the relevant extensive research yourself? Do that first, then we can debate if you want, but let's do that in memail). The ways in bacteria other single cells structures communicate may generate a collective of behavior that is not dissimilar to the united communication and behavioral expectation that happens within the human mind.

Which also means, teaching and behaving and thinking in positive ways may not only alter physiology in one person, but in generations after them having a slightly higher inclination toward that as well.

People often think it's funny to think organs, organ systems, or bodies of tissue/cells in the body might have their own consciousness, but to be honest thinking that individual humans have a "consciousness" as completely different than what arises on the cellular/tissue/organ level is equally ludicrous and "woo". It's a sort of spiritual notion really that we a "spirit" that is more than the some of our parts.

I guess my point is, even if something arises from "within" a person, there are still so many variables about which stimulates or suppresses those potential manifestations of all that is within us. And those are all variables, physical, social, heritable, environmental, cultural, that we can study and understand. Maybe we inherited some urges or active thought patterns, but what set that off in us given our parents and grandparents environments? Was there damage to the fathers (or grandfathers etc) sperm due to a toxic exposure or other environmental variable? Did a virus manage to alter development in the womb and cause genetic damage? Where did the damage come from? What factors increase the types of de novo mutations that lead to disease because we have found environmental factors can lead to increases in the rates of potentially harmful de novo mutations in offspring.

Thoughts don't come from nowhere, they come from a sea of cells coasting across generations of experience and adversities.

"Within that framework I can't see any obvious cause of or solution to these periodic spree-killings."

That's totally fine, you don't know how to address complex societal problems at the individual or societal level. There are actually a lot of people doing some brilliant research who are coming to other conclusions, that there is a world of information we can tap into and use to cultivate healthy individuals and communities who have fairly health instincts and who know what to do if they feel some is going wrong inside them and they need help, or have a set of options about how to handle ideas or feelings of anger and hatred within themselves and how to cultivate a different kind of inner self and find the resources need to do so. Complex problems often require complex understandings and multifaceted sets of responses to address the problem at many levels. That includes combating mysoginistic and hate based ideologies at the educational level, and through addresses other factors in the physical and familial and social environment that increase aggressive behaviors in men across generations.

For example, let me lay some science on you that everyone who cares about violence should be reading as much as they can about:
"Chronic physical aggression (CPA) is characterized by frequent use of physical aggression from early childhood to adolescence. Observed in approximately 5% of males, CPA is associated with early childhood adverse environments and long-term negative consequences. Alterations in DNA methylation, a covalent modification of DNA that regulates genome function, have been associated with early childhood adversity."

Twins studies find that it's heritable. Not the language no longer uses "genetic" to discuss heritability. They could have inherited altered biology due to epigenetic alterations in the parents or womb environment due to environmental factors that altered the biology of of the parents or grandparents or great great grandparents etc.

There are THOUSANDS of studies like this. Who is reading them? We need to be using this vast toolbox of information to inform our social and family and educational policies, in addition to the way we design our support structures and school and work systems. There TOTALLY IS so much we can do to understand and prevent a large portion of the types of violence in the world! It also means addressing difficult things like poverty, and scarcity, and isolation with support structures to address them instead of taking any new info related to biology and thinking it needs a "medical" cure.

People who don't get enough exercise might have health problems but the first solutions shouldn't be to ask pharma for a solution. We are missing very obvious solutions to problems because we want everything to be defined as a medical problem just because biology is involved. We need to be careful about that.
posted by xarnop at 8:48 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


While I think it's very enlightening to consider why boys and girls have such different reactions to humiliation and ostracization, there's no evidence that this murderer was actually humiliated and ostracized in a way that anyone here would find recognizable.

Below is an excerpt for his "manifesto" that describes an incident that "would scar [him] for life." I honestly have no idea how I would handle this young man if he was my son. I would probably provide him with considerable access to mental health care and do what I could to set him up to have a semi-functional life. But that basically sounds like what his mom did for him anyway.
At this camp, an incident happened that would scar me for life. The first time that I was treated badly by a girl occurred at this camp. I was innocently playing with the friends I made, and they were tickling me, something people always did because I was very ticklish. I accidently bumped into a pretty girl the same age as me, and she got very angry. She cursed at me and pushed me, embarrassing me in front of my friends. I didn’t know who this girl was… She was only at Pinecrest for summer camp… But she was very pretty, and she was taller than me. I immediately froze up and went into a state of shock. One of my friends asked me if I was ok, and I didn’t answer. I remained very quiet for the rest of the day. I couldn’t believe what had happened. Cruel treatment from women is ten times worse than from men. It made me feel like an insignificant, unworthy little mouse. I felt so small and vulnerable.

I couldn’t believe that this girl was so horrible to me, and I thought that it was because she viewed me as a loser. That was the first experience of female cruelty I endured, and it traumatized me to no end. It made me even more nervous around girls, and I would be extremely weary and cautious of them from that point on.

Before summer camp ended, I saw that same girl hanging out with Oren Aks a few times. Oren Aks was one of the popular kids in my grade. I hated Oren so much when I saw him with her. It made me feel so inferior… that this girl was mean to me and yet she liked Oren. Thankfully, Oren wouldn’t be returning to Pinecrest for Seventh Grade, and I would never see him again. I wonder what became of him… I bet he lived a good life.

I felt relieved when summer camp ended. That experience with the mean girl ruined it for me. Hell, it ruined a part of my life. Whenever I think about summer camp I would think about that girl, and my emotions would flare up.
posted by leopard at 9:00 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


there's no evidence that this murderer was actually humiliated and ostracized in a way that anyone here would find recognizable

Well, not in the reality the rest of us live in, no. But it was very real to him.
posted by rtha at 9:11 AM on May 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


It's interesting he talks about his emotions "flaring up" as research into responses to social aggression find the body literally does, flare up.

What's more, a persons physical health, the presence of pre-existing inflammation, and past experiences of aggression and development can also influence the degree of these responses. And yes I would be curious what experience either of his parents had with abuse or bullying as a lot of animal research is pointing to transgeneration effects from these kinds of biological alterations.

I have a huge physical health reaction to people insulting me and apparently my dad was being screamed at and beaten daily. My startle and shock reactions to this are much higher than others.
posted by xarnop at 9:13 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Was his Youtube channel deleted and then squatted on by someone reuploading all his recent videos?

Symbioid's jokey comment reminded me that I'd noticed he'd somewhat recently favorited (or subscribed to?) a bunch of Pokemon videos and I'd wondered if he might've done that with an awareness of how video game preferences have been used in the media after previous shootings. (But now what looks to be his account only has the recent videos, and the most recent one has a timestamp from today and a "[reupload]" in the name.)
posted by nobody at 9:32 AM on May 27, 2014


We are missing very obvious solutions to problems because we want everything to be defined as a medical problem just because biology is involved. We need to be careful about that.

What exactly are the obvious solutions that we are missing?

I mean, to keep it concrete, what is the obvious solution to the problem of the Isla Vista shooting? Even if it turns out that there might be some link between the shooter's biological inability to process ordinary social events and some experiences that his parents had, what exactly do we do about it? How would such a link change anything?
posted by leopard at 9:34 AM on May 27, 2014


I don't think any amount of good advice could have helped Elliot Rodgers take a different path, but I do think if enough of it is put out there for the other lonely, awkward young men, we could make some real strides towards dismantling the misogynistic, misanthropic communities that both fostered his hate and provoked it.

I received a lot of good advice and a lot of toxic advice, often from the same places: Dan Savage columns, Riot Grrl zines, Sci Fi / Fantasy authors, stand up comedians, my family and friends. I never hated women but I hated myself. I believed the "Friendzone" was real and that women "have all the power" and "only like bad boys and assholes". It grosses me out to see echoes of these sentiments in snippets from Rodgers manifesto. I internalized my hate, and it came out in violence, directed towards myself. My fantasies were just as elaborate but they were always about suicide rather than homicide. Instead of thinking "maybe I'm doing something wrong", I thought "I *AM* something wrong. Maybe, inside; definitely outside."

I fell into a relationship with another troubled goon. I grew as a person. Or maybe I grew as a person and that opened me up the possibilities of a relationship. Everything was so gradual and dramatic at the same time. I kept growing, I pursued a relationship here. I fell into one there. I was forced to rethink the notion that I was unlovable and pathetic. I was still ugly, but I was living a life that I myself would have envied and thought impossible.

I was lucky. I had positive role models, male, female, and celebrity . I had rewarding friendships with women that were mutually platonic. I am lucky now. I have friends who call me out when I'm not being the force of good I want to see myself, when the punchline of the joke isn't worth the subtext. It stings when my privilege gets checked, but I know I'm in good company. I call out the misogyny when I see it in my friends. I get a lot of eye rolls for being "that guy".

I can see where the holes were in the interpersonal advice I was given. E.g. I was told not to be pushy or aggressive, but I was never told to be straightforward and confident. Obviously a lot of guys never got the "don't be pushy or aggressive" memo but I think a lot of nice guys become "nice guys" because of this holding pattern.

They're hearing "be kind, be respectful, be interesting and she will love/fuck you" when they should be told "be kind, be respectful, be interesting, BARE MINIMUM. Make your feelings known if you want something to happen. Accept rejection if they aren't reciprocated."

Which is all a long way of asking, how do I help prevent misogyny in young men like me? I'm not a parent and don't plan to be. I'm not an educator or a mentor or a role model. There is absolutely no reason young men should be talking to me about sex.

My only thought is to do an advice column on tumblr called "Ask A Fat Dude Who Gets Laid a Lot". Is this the worstest idea ever?
posted by elr at 9:35 AM on May 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


Do you really want me to answer? Let's try understanding the link between poverty and aggression/violence. Understanding the link between maternal infant separation and aggression/violence. Toxic exposures/violence. Lack of modelling positive interaction in families and schools///

Look I could go on and on and I'm not sure how you don't see that which is obvious. When we rear animals in unhealthy environments and tamper with the bonds in their families, subject them to predator stress or restrain stress ETC ETC-- they wind up behaviorally abnormal and they're offspring as well.

When you rear them inhealthy environments they will at least only display the normal amount of violence for their species most often.

There's nothing mysterious about it. We can literally study these variables and then approach this by helping families care for their children in healthy enriching and human appropriate environments.

I'm not sure what you aren't seeing, but maybe that's because I've read so much research about what is effective at healing even epigenetic alterations which can be done.

It takes an enriching and therapeutic environment, yes, but there are many variables that alter than kind of damage although prenatal health in the mother, infancy and childhood will have the most impact.

Educate families about health, and connect them with free and low cost health building resources.
posted by xarnop at 9:46 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


*not that getting laid is the be-all-end-all of manhood or the human experience, but a lot of young people spend a lot of time and energy thinking about it, and should probably hear that being respectful and honest I such better than "The Game", both in terms of practice and, y'know, for your fucking soul*
posted by elr at 9:46 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


That includes addressing housing and food instability, income inequality, and a commitment to meeting the educational needs of people who learn in different ways and finding work training and job placement that matches the skill sets and needs of individuals. It means addressing how pollution and toxic exposures alter behavior... I mean there are so many things it means. We should do all of them? It means teaching people to practice and cultivate compassion and empathy which can literally itself change biology when put into use. There are so many awesome things we can do to change these patterns and physical alterations. It just involves supporting people more and making healing and health building factors accessible and helping people understand the benefit of them.
posted by xarnop at 9:49 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


RyanFou: yeah, I never considered until now, but is feminism taught in schools? High school and earlier I mean. I never learned about it and have never heard of it being taught in schools in the general curriculum. Seems like it would be a pretty good idea, you know, "teach the controversy!"

NoraReed: Schools can't even teach basic sex ed, so of course they aren't teaching shit like consent, and my experience with education was definitely male-centric, including with dress codes that were supposed to "keep the boys from getting distracted", and generally heterosexist and cissexist besides. Maybe stuff has changed in the 8 years since I graduated, but considering how often posts from high school students who are angry about their male administrators policing their bodies (especially that of fat girls, girls of color and girls who developed secondary sexual characteristics before many of their peers) and outfits and protesting dress codes (or at least the framing of dress codes, which is to make sure that straight boys aren't distracted) come across my Tumblr dash with brave teenagers doing the work to teach the shitty-ass male teachers and administrators who are in charge of them and often involved with or at least complicit in the gender and sexual orientation related harassment, bullying, physical and sexual abuse, I'd guess that, uh, the answer is "no".

The public high school i went to, which was a weird alternative school did.

In a lot of ways it was a model of how nothing should ever work and completely useless, but probably 99% of the gendered comments/bullying/language/etc was completely disallowed. Like, to the point that if a boy called a girl a bitch everyone would turn around going :O to see them get rekt by whatever member of the faculty was present and likely sent to the principals office. Several classes covered this sort of stuff including womens studies. Registering for those classes wasn't required, but adhering to the be a decent human being rules was.

Sex ed included a complete discussion on consent, discussions about gay sex, condom usage which ended with "here's a bunch of different sized dildos and a bunch of different condoms, take a few shots at putting them on", and even made it as far as "man != penis, vagina != woman" which looking back on it is holy shit star trek for a public school. The entire staff would call you by whatever name and pronouns you chose, and apologize profusely if they fucked it up.

There was no dress code, and anyone who made any sort of mean negative comments or "wow what a slut" type comments was punished. A particularly snarky acquaintance of mine was required to read Cunt by the end of the semester, then write and present an essay to the student court.(of which a similar committee of students also had final approval on hiring, but that's an entire other can of worms).

As much as me and my nerdy, weird, asshole friends made a lot of haze grey and underway type comments about the place that would fit right in to that navy slang thread, and how much i crapped on the place at the time, and it's legitimate issues... i really credit it with taking a bunch of all night lan party type neckbeards who called things gay, said the F word all the time, and were generally while within the confines of acceptable male behavior in america(especially in any frat house) somewhat of assholes, and dragging us kicking and screaming into being more decent people without even realizing it. Because if for most of your day you can't say X Y or Z, not only will you probably inadvertently stop doing it elsewhere... maybe you'll also reflect on why those things are bad. I mean i'll admit that in a traditional academic sense i didn't really get much of an education there, but that was as much on me as it was on them. And i did learn a lot of stuff that's hard to quantify, and a few weird skills you wouldn't expect like... a fairly advanced knowledge in bike repair.

Oh, and pendleton ward came and visited. that was pretty cool.

If anyone is wondering what happened to this place... it's still around. But a new district superintendent tried her hardest to fuck up a lot of the things that made it great. It basically survived though. It really did utterly suck in some ways too, to the point that when i meet someone who really liked the place if they went there i judge the crap out of them unless they're some sort of minority and/or were severely bullied elsewhere.

There's definitely quite a bit of stuff from there, that if applied to national public education in general would make the world a better fucking place. Some of it might happen eventually. A lot of it will probably never happen while i'm alive. Hell, they got in trouble for some of it while i was there.
posted by emptythought at 9:49 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


nobody: "Was his Youtube channel deleted and then squatted on by someone reuploading all his recent videos?

Symbioid's jokey comment reminded me that I'd noticed he'd somewhat recently favorited (or subscribed to?) a bunch of Pokemon videos
"

Whew - I was worried at first, because I'm like "I didn't favorite any Pokemon!" Then I realized you meant the fuckwad.
posted by symbioid at 9:51 AM on May 27, 2014


There's an internal contradiction in Rodger's (PUA/MRA-derived?) worldview: on the one hand, women are powerful gatekeepers who block the way to male fulfillment and happiness; but on the other hand, they're not-really-human creatures who can and should be manipulated and/or controlled.

I don't think it's a contradiction at all; you mention similarly conflicted issues with antisemitism (the weak jew with power (economic?) over you) and black oppression in the U.S. People like Rogers aren't just angry that someone has power over him and can withhold what he thinks is his right, he's angry at the injustice of someone being elevated above their due.

It's also part of how this kind of hate seems to reinforce itself. The bigot/misogynist makes someone more of an Other in order to justify the hate and in doing so helps create more examples of why the hate is justified. That woman is not a person like me - she's genetically limited in X, Y and Z ways. Despite being weak that woman is in a position of power over me! GRR!
posted by phearlez at 9:52 AM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


I never had to get over that. I did not have to grow out of it. Why would I "hate boys" at the time? I loved (and still love) my brothers, and my male cousin, and I had friends who were boys, and knew my brothers' friends who were good dudes. And classmates who were boys who were totally uninvolved, or not my friends but kind enough people.

I understood that, even as a child. I was angry with the people who hurt me purposefully, but not "boys."


What i at least was describing, and i can't speak for anyone but myself, was that after a couple instances of situations like what i described in my long post above it felt like everyone was going to act this way everywhere. It wasn't just a few people being assholes, this must be some giant pervasive illuminati like conspiracy in that everyone sees the same things in and/or wrong with me and is going to treat me like shit.

There's also a special level of this when you've been diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. An actual professional(or in most cases, several) have said There Is Something Objectively Wrong With You. Your parents have talked to you about it. Bullies who find out about it have ridiculed you. From reactions to your own weird behavior you only realize in retrospect, you've concluded that most people(everyone?) can tell that you're Different.

So yea, it's manifold. But i hope that helps some of you see how you can go from "A few people are assholes, but not all people like XYZ are assholes/out to get me/etc" to "Fuck everyone like that".

Because there was a definite period of my life where it seemed like all girls were out to hate me or fuck with me. And the ones who weren't would quickly get the memo from other girls that i was a target, or... something.

There's also something to be said for, although i was young and didn't know any better, even in reflection it didn't feel like misogyny. It was a direct and justified reaction to bullying and mistreatment that had happened to me in my mind. Something defensive, putting bars on the windows. Looking back on it in context and through the lens of what i know now it's filed under "Oh, ugh" with a lot of the other stupid things i thought/believed/did when i was young and clueless... but yea. I think it's a lot like how a lot of rapists don't think they're rapists, and other stuff like that. When you're in the drives seat you're never doing anything wrong, because you're not a bad person, and good people don't do bad things.

I don't know, i feel really gross even having the thought that i can relate to this guy at all. Especially after discussions with my girlfriend about him and the entire situation. I hope that provides some kind of insight though.
posted by emptythought at 10:05 AM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm not sure what you aren't seeing, but maybe that's because I've read so much research about what is effective at healing even epigenetic alterations which can be done.

You seem to think that the barrier to raising children in healthy, low-stress, enriching environments is ignorance about the concept of epigenetics and lack of familiarity with the cutting-edge scientific literature.

That's not the barrier though.

And in this particular case, nothing indicates that "educating families about health, and connect them with free and low cost health building resources" would have had the slightest impact. I mean, sure that's a great idea in general, I just don't see how it's relevant to this particular case at all.
posted by leopard at 10:13 AM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


but is feminism taught in schools?

Cambridge, MA, early 1980s. Yes. We were required to watch the movie "9 to 5" and answer homework assignment questions such as "Name three ways the boss character was sexist." I minored in women's studies in college because it was like shooting fish in a barrel.

We were also taught that men and women were the same, and that women should like all the things that men should like, such as math. Being lousy at math, I felt like a failure at being an enlightened woman. Hopefully, the feminist curricula has been modified since then.

But count me in of the opinion that the misogyny of this guy was a symptom, not the disease. People who feel the need to self-medicate will seek out whatever makes them feel better, whether it be drugs, alcohol, tin hats, or angry misogynist web sites.
posted by Melismata at 10:13 AM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Also early enrichment is also known to effect methylation, so the point is figuring out how to stimulate a very nurturing enriching environment that meets the biological, physical, social, and activity oriented needs of each human. In humans, cultivating a breastfeeding relationship and higher quantities of time physically bonding has health protective effects and may reduce child neglect. In mice it looks like this;

"CN, which consists of a single nest where three mothers keep their pups together and share care-giving behavior until weaning, is characterized by high levels of maternal behavior and peer interactions. Our results show that CN leads to high levels of histone acetylation at the BDNF gene at adulthood, which is more permissive to expression."
posted by xarnop at 10:14 AM on May 27, 2014


Well if you think this was caused by mental illness it's relevant. If you think this is caused by the social environment of misogyny then of course, that would be better addressed by educational programs to combat ideologies of hate and foster building empathy and awareness. I personally thinks it's both and they interact with each other and a lot of variables.

Healing epigenetic alterations seems to take multiple generations in animals so it would be likely to assume in humans these kinds of initiatives would take multiple generations of healthy stable environments.

If your proposal is we do nothing I am not in favor of that!
posted by xarnop at 10:20 AM on May 27, 2014


I don't know, i feel really gross even having the thought that i can relate to this guy at all.

Me too. The body fascism in the gay world is horrendous. Luckily(?) for me I internalized that into self-loathing and removed myself from most of the gay world. But as you (or Rory?) mentioned above, I can look on the GPS and see where a few different forks in the road could have possibly led me to externalizing that anger in violent and deadly ways.

And it makes me feel gross. But! It is an important thing to admit "There but for the grace of God go I." Because that means, on some level, we can connect with these loathsome misogynistic fuckers, no matter how filthy it makes us feel. Having that point of connection gives us the chance, at least, to worm our way into their brains and help them understand how destructive their attitudes are, both internally and externally.

Honestly, and I recognize the irony in saying this, I think big name football players are the place to start. Most American men idolize these guys--and I bet the PUA/MRA guys do too, because they're pretty much ur-Alphas in American society. Get big names to do commercials and talks and be on posters talking about equality and respect. (Along with those same big names shutting down bullshit locker room conversation in private). My theory being that they might be able to get through to these idiots; "Hmm, if SUPER ALPHA MALE is saying these things, maybe he has a point."

Planting the seed of doubt is key in deprogramming anyone from toxic/hateful/destructive attitudes. It's the wedge that lets you open their minds. Who better to start with than what are functionally the American aristocracy? (Hollywood, the other American aristocracy, probably isn't a good place to start unless you're talking about serious MANLY MAN'S MEN like... I dunno, Clooney? I don't recall hearing about sexist bullshit in his private life.)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 10:25 AM on May 27, 2014 [8 favorites]


If anyone is wondering what happened to this place... it's still around. But a new district superintendent tried her hardest to fuck up a lot of the things that made it great. It basically survived though. It really did utterly suck in some ways too, to the point that when i meet someone who really liked the place if they went there i judge the crap out of them unless they're some sort of minority and/or were severely bullied elsewhere.

emptythought, are you talking about Nova?
posted by palomar at 10:34 AM on May 27, 2014


Mod note: I would very much suggest that people who are making edgy jokes in this thread consider not doing that.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 10:50 AM on May 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


FirstMateKate: There's something very, very sick in society when there's this attitude among men that they feel entitled to women.

I've been thinking about this kid for a while, in the context of various guys I know who complain about having no luck with women.

It came to me that the first thing anyone should be told about trying to date is that you should treat the other person like a person first and foremost, and second that you are not entitled to anything from anyone.

Once women shift from being potential girlfriends or hook-ups into people, it can/should be harder to objectify them to something that can be "rated" or "scored." And if you get "shot down," you might be able to be friends, and that's not a thing to bemoan. Make more friends, and your chance of finding a person who would like to date you or hook up with you increases.
posted by filthy light thief at 10:59 AM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


My theory being that they might be able to get through to these idiots; "Hmm, if SUPER ALPHA MALE is saying these things, maybe he has a point."

I couldn't agree more with fffm on this and it reminds me how happy (or as happy as one can be with someting like this needing to exist) when I saw a PSA (Watch President Obama, Vice President Biden and a lot of celebrities speak out against rape) before a movie last week. The only thing that would be better is that if this had more athletes and was played every Saturday and Sunday of football season.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 11:23 AM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Exactly.

All you need is

[ photo of huge sportsball star ]

REAL MEN RESPECT WOMEN
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:28 AM on May 27, 2014




Todd Kincannon's twitter account... now there is one hell of an abyss.
posted by ryanfou at 11:36 AM on May 27, 2014


(I should add trigger warning to that, don't go there, really)
posted by ryanfou at 11:40 AM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Please don't post ugliness from other sites here - it serves no purpose.
posted by agregoli at 11:44 AM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


holy goddamn shit, palomar. I need brain bleach and a cat to cuddle, stat. Thankfully there are three cats in my building so I'm gonna go find one because euuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuurgh "Your dead kids don't trump my rights."

Which, in not so many words, people have actually said or implied in this very thread.

Think on that. Then open a bottle of something sufficiently powerful and suck it down cause it ain't getting any better.

agregoli: it may be ugly shit, but it's ugly shit being said by people with an inexplicable amount of influence and/or power.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:45 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Kincannon's tweet about how his son would die shooting back (like a man, I guess?) is one of those horrible, perfect examples of the toxicity we've been talking about here.
posted by rtha at 11:47 AM on May 27, 2014 [15 favorites]


Please don't post ugliness from other sites here - it serves no purpose.

I think its fine if one links to ugliness that is being commented on orreported, rather than directly to the hate-sites themselves. Personally I find it interesting and eye opening but wouldn't intentionally seek it out myself.
posted by kittensofthenight at 11:50 AM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


We should be thanking people like Todd. It's people like him that puts the "nut" into "gun nut".
posted by Talez at 11:50 AM on May 27, 2014


It's really amazing that most of the media coverage I've seen has the same gun control/mental health talking points and completely ignores the larger cultural context of the killer self-professed motivations.
posted by kittensofthenight at 11:55 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


That Kincannon tweet is such a succinct statement of everything toxic and harmful about the killings that I can't believe it's not self-aware. Male ego, twisted machismo, culture of gun violence as heroism, all in under 140 characters.
posted by naju at 11:56 AM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


kittensofthenight: on a percentage basis, how many men do you think are controlling/shaping that media coverage? 60%? 70. 80, 90%?

They have a vested interest in not discussing misogyny.

Plus, it's like asking a fish to write about water. We're all immersed in this culture, and for approximately 50% of the population it's totally invisible, because they're the perpetrators.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 11:59 AM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


It came to me that the first thing anyone should be told about trying to date is that you should treat the other person like a person first and foremost, and second that you are not entitled to anything from anyone.

I wonder how much we should also be telling our kids that True Love is bullshit. I don't think it's pertinent to Roger, who seemed to think anyone he chose should want him. But I think back to my teen time (and probably early 20s, in a slight flavor variation) as a Nice Guy who felt put out that women chose other folks over me.

Of course the number of women who did that was vanishingly small, as I tended to hyper-focus on someone and apply the Hollywood I-just-need-to-try-harder-and-she'll-see theories. Not that I saw it that way at the time, but I'd certainly internalized that lesson that there's Right Matches and you just need to make it happen.

I think it's toxic thinking for everyone; there's an askme I just resisted commenting on that, to me, turns on our cultural inability to deal with the fact that love isn't binary and doesn't just turn on and off as we progress through partners looking for our correct match. But it doesn't usually turn into stalking and violence when women engage in it.
posted by phearlez at 12:00 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


REAL MEN RESPECT WOMEN

The problem with slogans like these is that this mentality is rooted in homophobia, and it relies on covertly promoting homophobia in order to get its message across.
posted by elizardbits at 12:01 PM on May 27, 2014 [23 favorites]


I might mean inadvertently rather than covertly actually.

im so tired
posted by elizardbits at 12:02 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's really amazing that most of the media coverage I've seen has the same gun control/mental health talking points and completely ignores the larger cultural context of the killer self-professed motivations.

By amazing do you mean exhausting? Because if so I agree.
posted by corb at 12:05 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


elizardbitses: well only insomuch if one defines 'real men' as 'heterosexual.' (Which, likely, PUA/MRA types do.)

But let's be honest here, for the same reason that these PUA/MRA assbags aren't going to listen to women on this issue, they sure as damn hell aren't going to be listening to e.g. Michael Sam. That would have to be the second wave of the advertising.

As hard as it may be to swallow, if we want to get through to the extreme ends of these groups, we need to pander somewhat to their stereotypes and their beliefs. I personally find that distasteful and gross, but their worldview is so insulated from reality and so self-sustaining that they need to perceive it's guys just like them saying "Bro. Grow the fuck up."

Once we start making inroads there, pandering can stop. Cf Will & Grace; Will was functionally indistinguishable from an early 30's heterosexual man, Jack was a parody that was safe to laugh at. Fast forward and now we have e.g. Modern Family where the gay couple--who have a child even!!!!!!!!!!!!!!--are just, y'know, another couple dealing with couple stuff.

Pander first, hit them harder and harder with reality as the message starts sinking in is what I'm saying, y'know? (And I say that as a queer man so I get where your inadvertent homophobia fears are coming from)
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:09 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


kittensofthenight: on a percentage basis, how many men do you think are controlling/shaping that media coverage? 60%? 70. 80, 90%?

They have a vested interest in not discussing misogyny.

Plus, it's like asking a fish to write about water. We're all immersed in this culture, and for approximately 50% of the population it's totally invisible, because they're the perpetrators.


C'mon, there are many men who are doing the work and fighting back against misogynist hate. No need to lump us all together.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:10 PM on May 27, 2014


Please don't post ugliness from other sites here - it serves no purpose.

On the contrary - I think it underscores just how pervasive is misogyny in our culture and gives lie to those who would dispute that it was a factor.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:11 PM on May 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


elizardbitses

Hey, fffm, is this intentional, or are you also tired at the moment?
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:20 PM on May 27, 2014


okay, okay, I get it. we've been asked not to post other internet ugliness here, but if you all want to do it, i'll keep quiet, flag, and move on.
posted by agregoli at 12:20 PM on May 27, 2014


It's really amazing that most of the media coverage I've seen has the same gun control/mental health talking points and completely ignores the larger cultural context of the killer self-professed motivations.

Most of the media coverage I've seen is ignoring or downplaying the gun control aspect — the media is making its usual shrugging motions that we all have to go through with every massacre caused by violent gun owners. Paradoxically, perhaps purposefully not talking about the root cause of avoidable murders could be considered a "talking point"?
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:23 PM on May 27, 2014


C'mon, there are many men who are doing the work and fighting back against misogynist hate. No need to lump us all together.

I'm a man too. I wasn't lumping us all together, that's why I said 'approximately 50%,' because the percentage of men who are really and truly fighting misogyny on a daily basis is probably depressingly low.

Every time one of us lets a sexist comment slide (and we all do; nobody's perfect), we're complicit, you know? Sometimes we have to let stuff slide; I'm 5'7 and I'm not getting up in the face of some meathead jock talking smack about women, for pretty much exactly the same reasons women won't. I don't want to get turned into chunky salsa. (Though at least with those kinds of guys I usually wouldn't have to worry about rape; when I say 'same reasons as women' I mean violence, fully understanding that the range of violence a hetero man can inflict on a woman is significantly worse than the likely punch to the face).

I'm not saying we all have to be perfect all the time (because God knows I am definitely not), but so few men are really fighting back in the places that really matter--in the workplace, especially, but also out on the streets, when hanging out with friends. Public campaigns (which obviously I want) are all well and good, but what we need is more guys saying "That girl is so drunk she can barely stand up. You're going to put her in her own cab and send her to her own home, alone, capisce?"

We need more men in office meetings to stop talking over women, to stop devaluing their contributions (thankfully the female population of my last corporate gig were the kind of women who simply did not put up with that shit; and now that I work in kitchens, boy howdy do women on the line put up with exactly zero shit from anyone. The ones I've worked with anyway).

We need more men educating their sons on the difference between "Okay, I guess" and "Yes! Yes please! Let's make sexytimes!"

I've got to get to a doctor's appointment shortly, but I hope you're getting my point: yes there are men (you included, presumably, and me, and many other men in this thread) who are fighting the good fight, but we need millions more to make any real headway.

Any insult you took from what I said was neither intended nor implied, sorry if it came across that way.

hey, fffm, is this intentional, or are you also tired at the moment?

whynotboth.gif

(plus I've been watching LOTR and hearing 'hobbitses' a lot so 'elizardbitses' kinda happened and yes I'm tired, and worn out from what are presumably allergies, and a whole bunch of other stuff I don't really feel is appropriate to get into here.)


the media is making its usual shrugging motions that we all have to go through with every massacre caused by violent gun owners

I just want to know what number of innocent dead people it's going to take for heads to be pulled, collectively, from contemplating their own rectums.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 12:27 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Most of the media coverage I've seen is ignoring or downplaying the gun control aspect — the media is making its usual shrugging motions that we all have to go through with every massacre caused by violent gun owners.

CNN host bans all gun control talk after Calif. mass shooting, then gets schooled by panelists
posted by homunculus at 12:33 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


“This is an ongoing conversation, and it’s one that’s never going to be resolved,” the CNN host opined. “It’s got to be about mental health, and not firearms.”

It's never, ever a good time to discuss this apparently intractable subject, it seems.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:57 PM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


We don't want to hurt the guns' feelings, BP!

Guns are people, too!
posted by winna at 1:23 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


The shootings happen frequently enough that it's always too soon, but what she was getting at I think (read the article, did not watch the videos) was more the post Sandy Hook fatalism, the belief that gun control is a political impossibility.

I think over the last few years the left has gotten way to used to seeing things as impossible rather than seeing them as hard and likely to take years of effort. A lot of victories have been things that appear to have happened overnight (like you wake up one day and suddenly gay marriage is legal in PA) but the reality is decades of effort in the face of impossible odds were required to get there.

The President can change, the House can change, the Senate can change, and the courts can change. Especially on issues where public anger is only going to grow and grow. That the NRA currently has a stranglehold on policy must be discussed because it is completely insane and aberrant and it needs to be changed and it can be changed. CNN is too shallow an organization to get that.
posted by Drinky Die at 1:29 PM on May 27, 2014 [7 favorites]




Wow. So a friend just posted this on social media, but in this article his parents say:
Astaire said that Elliot Rodger was never diagnosed with Asperger’s (his family “suspected he was on the spectrum”), had no friends, and was very shy. Astaire told the Times, “He was fundamentally withdrawn. The guy on the video was much more confident. That is a guy I never met.”
To say I'm mad about how this has been handled by the media and stuff is an understatement. Everyone I've talked to about this in real life has somehow mentioned something about him being autistic, and I was on board as well and discussing it as if this was a done deal and he had a professional diagnosis.

Way to throw me and everyone else on the spectrum under the bus, guys. Now I'm not just an "awkward nerd like that guy on community but who also doesn't shower" and all that other negative stuff, I'm a potential mass murderer! Bang up job guys, go post some more pictures of that poor woman in a bikini you bottom feeding sacks of crap.
posted by emptythought at 1:51 PM on May 27, 2014 [10 favorites]


also sorry if that's already been posted. This thread has become so large that my phone actually gets warm viewing it, and lags heavily. Jesus. I can barely scroll.
posted by emptythought at 1:52 PM on May 27, 2014


Ok, I'll say it, and I'll even couch it in subjective terms so as to minimize offense:

In my opinion "The Right To Bear Arms" as currently interpreted is one of the biggest fucking mistakes the founding fathers in all their "wisdom" did commit to paper.
Not The ONLY mistake but one of the top five to be sure.
posted by edgeways at 2:11 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


REAL MEN RESPECT WOMEN

I think in their twisted view, men will either think the alpha male has been co-opted by feminists and liberals, OR they'll think this is some plot for the alpha males to keep the women for themselves and also keep the betas down.

The whole idea of sex as biological need has to be deprogrammed, and I mean it in terms of a social idea and not a biologically hardwired one (that's false). It's like some 19th century inspired "brocial" Darwinism idea that we don't have agency and our only Purpose is to pass our genes by any means necessary. That the only "normal" for men is to constantly talk, think, pursue, and have sex. To become an apex (sexual) predator.

With that in mind, any attempt to call for respect or even restraint would be seen as not only an emasculation, but a violation of Nature itself.
posted by FJT at 2:19 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


But.. sex and intimacy is more or less a fundamental need and not something subject to deprogramming. Rodger's problem wasn't that he wanted sex and intimacy, it was that he wanted sex and intimacy in a horrific, misogynistic, and mentally unwell fashion.
posted by Justinian at 2:24 PM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


A lot of MRA i have encountered hate jocks and alpha males almost as much as they hate women. Reddit attracts nerds, and they sometimes have a unique brand of misogyny all their own that mingles jealously/hated of other men with hated of women. I'm not saying it would be a bad idea to get organizations like the NFL more involved in feminism, I just don't think that necessarily hits the target here with this incident. I would like them to do more than just breast cancer awareness though.
posted by Drinky Die at 2:33 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I have only gotten through the first couple of hundred comments in this thread, and would like to read the whole thing, but I wanted to comment on a couple of things:

1) He may or may not have been mentally ill, but this was clearly a hate crime. If he was mentally ill, that may or may not have contributed to his perpetrating this hate crime, but it was clearly a hate crime. When someone shoots up a synagogue we, rightly, do not talk primarily about mental illness in describing what they did.

2) It's an open question as to whether it is possible to commit crimes like this without being mentally ill. What is clear to anyone who has spent any amount of time working in the mental health field is that the list of disorders in the DSM is neither exhaustive nor sufficient to describe the ways in which people experience significant personal distress. That said, there is a big difference between, say, having an adjustment disorder and having schizophrenia.

3) People who are mentally ill are far more likely to be the victim of violence than to perpetrate violence. This likelihood actually increases with the severity of the mental illness. The "scariest" mentally ill people are the most likely to be victimized.

4) Hindsight is 20/20. Not only is it easy to convince your mental health clinician of anything, your clinician is likely prevented from telling anyone else about most of the things you raise with them. The exceptions are (usually) abuse of a minor or elder, real danger to yourself, or credible danger to a specific someone else. This last is called "Duty to Warn," and comes out of the Tarasoff case(s), and others. If someone comes in and says that they want to kill all young blonde women, this very well may not be something for which the clinician can break confidentiality. If they do, they may be open to civil penalties and the loss of their license (read: career). While the math here seems easy, that's only because we know in hindsight that this wish on this asshole's part was not a fantasy, it was a real threat. When you weigh whether you, as a clinician, should call the police about a client, you don't have the benefit of hindsight, all you have is a surely busted therapeutic relationship and the possibility of significant liability. Even discounting self-interested rationalization, which can never be discounted, the judgement of when to exercise Duty to Warn is something that keeps many therapists up at night.
posted by JohnLewis at 2:36 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Way to throw me and everyone else on the spectrum under the bus, guys. Now I'm not just an "awkward nerd like that guy on community but who also doesn't shower" and all that other negative stuff, I'm a potential mass murderer! Bang up job guys, go post some more pictures of that poor woman in a bikini you bottom feeding sacks of crap.

It seems to me that mental illness and autism are apparently so stigmatized that people are assuming Roger *must belong* to one or both of those groups because he committed a fucking horrific, misogynistic, murderous *hate crime.* To me, it sounds like people (in general, in the media, not *particularly here in this thread*) are saying, "oh, there's no explanation for why someone would do something so inhuman/monstrous/horrifying, he must not be like us ~normal~ people, he must instead be a member of inhuman/monstrous/horrifying/*stigmatized* group XYZ."

Roger's roommates -- were any of them on the spectrum? mentally ill? I'm assuming that they also had behavioral and/or health issues because they were also in supportive housing. Yet they right there would be *counterexamples* to the idea that mental illness and/or autism is an explanation for the hate, cruelty, and violence that Roger showed. Even within this *single* incident, it's *oppressed, stigmatized groups* like the disabled and/or women who compose the majority of the victims, and *all* of the victims that Rogers actively sought to target.
posted by rue72 at 2:41 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


He doesn't appear to have been in supportive housing, just student housing? I saw that one report early on but haven't seen anything to back that up and others have said that it was normal student housing.
posted by tavella at 2:42 PM on May 27, 2014


The "real men respect women" slogan gives me a mild case of the creeps. "Real men" as opposed to... what? And "respect women" still has women as this category of "something other than us real men, something to be respected and put on a pedestal."

I dunno, if it works, that's great. But I'd be surprised if it did.
posted by The corpse in the library at 2:47 PM on May 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


It seems to me that mental illness and autism are apparently so stigmatized that people are assuming Roger *must belong* to one or both of those groups because he committed a fucking horrific, misogynistic, murderous *hate crime.*

And just possibly because he was under treatment by a whole bunch of mental health professionals and it was announced publicly that he was mentally ill.

The autism spectrum thing is indeed complete bullshit, though.
posted by Justinian at 2:48 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


He doesn't appear to have been in supportive housing, just student housing?

AFAIK that's correct; the Capri Apartments are just regular housing.
posted by Justinian at 2:49 PM on May 27, 2014


I don't know, i feel really gross even having the thought that i can relate to this guy at all.
Yeah, me too. It's horrifying to me that perhaps, if a few things had happened differently in my life, I could be standing on the sidelines cheering this guy as a hero. Any man could, because society still perpetuates the idea that the Alpha Male is the only real man and if you aren't one, you damn well better aspire to be one. Sure, the influence is nowhere near as overt at it was when I grew up in the '70s, but we live in nothing resembling a fair or equal society. It's the same sort of influence that isolates minorities except this one cuts across all the minority identifiers and fucks up everyone.
posted by dg at 2:50 PM on May 27, 2014


Any man could, because society still perpetuates the idea that the Alpha Male is the only real man and if you aren't one, you damn well better aspire to be one.

This is so true, and is one of the primary examples of Patriarchy Hurting Men Too, as far as I'm concerned. I know so many men who have been hurt by this idea; I'm terrified for my son.
posted by KathrynT at 2:54 PM on May 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


It seems to me that mental illness and autism are apparently so stigmatized that people are assuming Roger *must belong* to one or both of those groups because he committed a fucking horrific, misogynistic, murderous *hate crime.*

No, I assume he must belong to the group of people known as 'mentally ill' because he was under the care of mental healthcare professionals. Because he refused a scrip of Risperdal (which AFAIK is only used in mental health situations). Because that very team of therapists are the ones who watched the video and alerted the police.

This isn't about stigma, it's about actual concrete reported fact.

re: REAL MEN RESPECT WOMEN

That was an off-the-cuff line. I'm not Don Draper. The point that I was trying to get to w/r/t communicating with the misogynist shitbags is: "You want to be an Alpha? You want to be a Real Man? Then you have to start respecting women as independent people, not as objects for you to deserve, use, and throw away." If sportsball is the concern and this needs to be aimed more at nerds, then find nerd heroes to spread the word.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:10 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Astaire said that Elliot Rodger was never diagnosed with Asperger’s (his family “suspected he was on the spectrum”)

Well that's fairly upsetting. The media appears to have actively pushed mental illness and spectrum disorders into the discussion from the very beginning, and deliberately made it a talking point. I don't think this is just a reporting error that got circulated around without any fact checking. It's by design.
posted by naju at 3:11 PM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


When I was in high school, I was always totally crushing on the geeky guys, who would "friendzone" me and complain, bitterly, that girls (i.e., the perky, boobalicious cheerleader-types they were pining over but never actually talking to) only liked bad boys and assholes, pouring out their anguish about how girls sucked to my sympathetic and ever-hopeful ears.

In retrospect, they were correct (as obviously I liked guys who were assholes :P).

Most of them outgrew it and turned in to perfectly lovely men, but it's a little startling to me how several of them are still living their lives pining after a magazine-advertisement ideal of women, ignoring actual real women who are interested in them, and complaining about how women are shallow and only like jerks. I suppose when you're a shallow jerk yourself, and you measure other people's corn in your own scanty bushel ...
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 3:12 PM on May 27, 2014 [25 favorites]


The media appears to have actively pushed mental illness and spectrum disorders into the discussion from the very beginning, and deliberately made it a talking point. I don't think this is just a reporting error that got circulated around without any fact checking. It's by design.

See my comment from above. He has been under the care of one or more mental healthcare professionals since he was 12.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:14 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, that he was mentally ill is essentially undisputed. It's the implications of that fact and the importance of other factors like his obvious misogyny which have been the subject of discussion.
posted by Justinian at 3:17 PM on May 27, 2014


Mental healthcare professionals who did not diagnose him with anything, as far as we can tell. While the media explicitly said that they did.
posted by naju at 3:17 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


But.. sex and intimacy is more or less a fundamental need and not something subject to deprogramming. Rodger's problem wasn't that he wanted sex and intimacy

People don't die from lack of sex, so it's not a biological need, as I wrote. And I could possibly agree it's fundamental to a person's wellbeing like friendship. But men don't build up anywhere as much of a obsession around friendship as they do around sex. Guys don't whip out friend lists and talk about all the ways they would please their friends, or explain how friendship is a need using evo-psych terms, or watch people doing hardcore friendship action with one another.

And I think it's a mistake to believe that Rogers only wanted sex and intimacy, since it seems to lead to the thought that if only he was laid or had a girlfriend, all his problems would be solved. I don't believe that. Sex was a means to an end of what he thought would make him whole, or even better than other men.
posted by FJT at 3:19 PM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


Here's the thing, my cousin with aspergers actually has had problems with violence. The thing is, it is actually very rare for people with aspergers or even mental illness in general to be this level of violent. In fact it's probably personality disorders, which have a lot more to do with the rearing environment and the culture and peer environment that might interact with any predispositions to create a really violent person.

My cousins homelife was not good, and reading about this kids life it sound like his wasn't either. He sounds like he didn't have a close relationship with either of his parents and he was saturated in toxic ideologies about women, human relations in general, and what it means to be a good person (or rather had NOT modelling about how to create a positive set of values from anywhere among his family or peers).

Sometimes the absence of modelling and teaching good values is all it takes for some weird shit to fester, particularly if a person is very isolated and hurting and can't figure out how to make friends or get social support they need.

Hollywood and our larger culture is TOXIC for all the reasons mentioned above and while I do think some of the problems were a lack of brain development that might have helped enable him to do the cognitive tasks of more advanced empathetic thinking, he also doesn't seemed to have a family that totally embraced the toxic shit he was spewing.

Watching even the "wholesome" hollywood shows, they mock "nerds" they make fat jokes, they cast women and girls as highly decorative eye candy.

This kids writes on and on and one want sto shriek grow the fuck up you little shit, but quite frankly all of hollywood and our culture at large all need that wake up call as well. It's gross and it's thriving.

My cousin decided he wanted to go off the meds, and he is actually less violent. He still doesn't really get it when he thinks the whole class at school is mocking him because HE Is the ONLY one who cares about school and they are bullying him!! When in fact they are probably reacting badly to him since he's an overly cocky shit who says random crap like "I'm the smartest one in this class and the only person with good values" and he doesn't get that this shit is lame. We actually talk openly with him about this stuff and if you're gentle with him, you can plant ideas and you can kind of nudge him a little bit towards a deeper understanding... he needs the security of you saying you see his point of view first before you can start unravelling some of the nonsense, and since I start with the point of view that feelings themselves are valid, I find it easy to work up to some of the thoughts as not being necessary.

That kind of stuff, the lack of social understanding? That makes sense as autism stuff. The raging misogyny? Looks like stuff he was regurgitating that was all rightin front of him, he just didn't have the higher thinking to see what BULLSHIT it all was. And apparently neither do a larger portion of people in our culture that perpetuate this stuff.
posted by xarnop at 3:20 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


Yeah, that he was mentally ill is essentially undisputed.

Do we know what flavor of mental illness? Do we know what he had been diagnosed with, and has this information been verified as factual? Do we know what meds he was actually on, if any? Do we know what doctors he was seeing, and what their treatment plan was?

I mean, it's nice that you're so sure about this guy's mental health status, but I'm not, and it appears that the media has no fucking clue either. So where's your info coming from?
posted by palomar at 3:20 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


It seems to me that mental illness and autism are apparently so stigmatized that people are assuming Roger *must belong* to one or both of those groups

To be a little bit fair to people reporting things, the Asperger reference is from the family's lawyer, speaking on behalf of the family on May 24. The new comments are from the family's media advisor, speaking on behalf of the family a few days later.
posted by effbot at 3:22 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


We don't know what he had or had not been diagnosed with. The lawyer had apparently invoked Asperger's, but we have no reason to know that that was the only diagnosis he had ever received. And now there's doubt even about that? Who knows.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:28 PM on May 27, 2014


He had, obviously, at one point received a diagnosis calling for Risperdal as the first line of treatment.

Look it up, look up what it's used for.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 3:31 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mod note: A couple comments removed; please do more of the not continuing to talk to each other thing and less of the talking about how you don't like talking to each other thing if you're feeling mutually annoyed with someone. It's a big thread and a lot of other people are in it too.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:32 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Risperdal is prescribed for a variety of reasons, yes, including reasons relating to the people on the autism spectrum. Even then, knowing that he had been prescribed Risperdal does not give us anything like a full portrait of what was going on. Even if we were to accept for sake of argument that he definitely had been diagnosed with Asperger's (which is not a mental illness), that would not exclude any other diagnoses which had been made. As of today, we just don't really know.
posted by Sticherbeast at 3:38 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


When I was in high school, I was always totally crushing on the geeky guys, who would "friendzone" me and complain, bitterly, that girls (i.e., the perky, boobalicious cheerleader-types they were pining over but never actually talking to) only liked bad boys and assholes, pouring out their anguish about how girls sucked to my sympathetic and ever-hopeful ears.

Yeah, I can't help but think about how in his manifesto, this guy kept talking about how he couldn't possibly get a "blond white girlfriend", how that was all he wanted and the only thing that would satisfy, down to feeling relieved when his roommate's girlfriend emerged and he discovered she didn't meet his exacting standards of beauty. This is not about loneliness or lack of human connection. If that's what it were about, he would have been looking for any girl, not just blond white super-attractive ones. No, he wanted a Barbie doll to own and flaunt.
posted by corb at 3:38 PM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


So where's your info coming from?

Even ignoring that we know he was under the care of therapists who had to contact law enforcement, his violent actions and behaviors before and during his massacre were arguably not those of a sane, rational person. I think it would be very difficult to argue that they were, and there is probably not a whole lot to be gained to push that kind of devil's advocacy.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 3:46 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


No, he wanted a Barbie doll to own and flaunt.

That's why, like in cases of rape, it's obvious that this isn't about sex or lack of sex, it's about power, and he took out the entitlement to power that he felt he had out on strangers. I have little doubt he would've taken his entitlement out on a woman he was actually interacting with (if he was able to do that) by raping and possibly otherwise assaulting her. Maybe murdering her too.
posted by NoraReed at 3:50 PM on May 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


We don't know what he had or had not been diagnosed with. The lawyer had apparently invoked Asperger's, but we have no reason to know that that was the only diagnosis he had ever received. And now there's doubt even about that? Who knows.

This is a useful thing to note - early reporting of these situations is always _terrible_. News reporters have no information, but cannot cut away from the story, so they will repeat anything, over and over again. Family lawyers are not used to being called upon to deal with this kind of situation. People who do not have a clear grasp of medical régimes or diagnoses may mix up conditions and medications. There's no point taking anything reported in the first few days, beyond the absolute basics, as incontrovertible.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:51 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


He had, obviously, at one point received a diagnosis calling for Risperdal as the first line of treatment.

Look it up, look up what it's used for.


With respect dude, and i mean that, not in the snarky lol jk preface way, this is a weak ass argument.

With the most recent revelations that the news agencies trumped that shit up, and the fact that there's conflicting accounts of what happened when(i can dig up links on this, but i don't want to, they're all in this thread) where some say oh he was in treatment like this here and others say other things or have other quotes from the parents...

Can we just like, have a fucking referendum on internet psychologisting about his mental state here? it's been one of the grossest aspects of this thread to me, and honestly reminds me of the whole reddit wild goose chase with the boston bomber. And now that the man behind the curtain has been somewhat revealed that even the media has been ass-talking maybe we can just take a break on the whole "He was mentally ill for sure, now let's debate how and in what way!" stuff?

I'm not even saying he's not. I just don't get why it's a productive conversation to go "He was! No he wasn't!" back and forth and debate exactly what was going on in his brain.

There will likely be a fairly definitive account of this once the dust settles. The stories will coalesce into a fairly consistent narrative. I don't get what rushing that process and backing a particular horse does other than have us all yell at eachother over our pet theories and kinda just make an embarrassing thread to look back on when it all finally settles down.

This is like balloon boy combined with the boston bombing threads or something, jesus.

We don't know yet. We just don't. Definitive statements are only going to be embarrassing in the future.
posted by emptythought at 3:57 PM on May 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


This is a useful thing to note - early reporting of these situations is always _terrible_. News reporters have no information, but cannot cut away from the story, so they will repeat anything, over and over again. Family lawyers are not used to being called upon to deal with this kind of situation. People who do not have a clear grasp of medical régimes or diagnoses may mix up conditions and medications. There's no point taking anything reported in the first few days, beyond the absolute basics, as incontrovertible.

Exactly right. And meanwhile, the 24 hour news panels need discussion material, and explanations are demanded. Mental illness is so tantalizing, it's right there staring at you for the taking, and you don't have to get into messier stuff. Except... things don't appear to be that simple. Meanwhile, mental illness is being pushed FAR more in this case than others. Remember the sikh temple shooting that killed 6 and wounded 4? He had been seeing mental health professionals as well. Yet I don't recall a single discussion about mental illness in the days after that, let alone it being a central point of discussion in mainstream news. Attorney General Eric Holder called it "an act of terrorism, an act of hatred, a hate crime." I wonder what the differences are here, exactly.
posted by naju at 4:04 PM on May 27, 2014 [21 favorites]


The difference is clearly a desire to blame this killing on an "other", to distance it from the lives of the other privileged (and usually white or white-passing) men who society wants us to view as different, as safe. So they attempt to throw people on the autism spectrum under the bus and mentally ill people under the bus in the attempt to uphold that cultural hierarchy.

Relatedly, Alternet writes about White Guy Killer Syndrome.
posted by NoraReed at 4:34 PM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]



Can we just like, have a fucking referendum on internet psychologisting about his mental state here? it's been one of the grossest aspects of this thread to me, and honestly reminds me of the whole reddit wild goose chase with the boston bomber. And now that the man behind the curtain has been somewhat revealed that even the media has been ass-talking maybe we can just take a break on the whole "He was mentally ill for sure, now let's debate how and in what way!" stuff?


Exactly my point. Thank you.
posted by palomar at 4:34 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I have a hard time figuring a construction where this sort of out-of-context massacre-suicide shouldn't be considered mental illness. Something about society's acceptance of the massacre and its context - compare to as recently as My Lai where the war criminals received a great outpouring of public support. This kind of massacre's right out - but I wonder if these things are often a malfunction of a behavior until recently generally adaptive.
posted by save alive nothing that breatheth at 4:35 PM on May 27, 2014


Check out the lawsuits section on the wiki page for Risperidone/Risperidal. My grandmother with Alzheimer's was prescribed it, ffs. (It was not effective.) My experience caring for her showed me that doctors often just kind of... throw drugs at the problem until something sticks.
posted by lovecrafty at 4:38 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I dunno, I have a hard time figuring a construction where this sort of out-of-context massacre-suicide shouldn't be considered mental illness.

Okay, but "mental illness" isn't a diagnosis. It tells us nothing useful for figuring out why this happened. If we get some actual information about his mental health diagnosis that is verified as true, that might be useful to discuss. As it stands, just labeling it "mental illness" is less than helpful. What specific illness or illnesses is it? Everyone keeps talking about how he's on the autism spectrum... except we don't actually know that that's true, now that it's coming out that he may have actually never received a diagnosis and his parents just suspected that might be the problem.

There are hundreds of mental illnesses, and even some physical maladies that can cause or mimic mental illnesses. (Anyone remember Charles Whitman?) If an actual diagnosis ever comes to light (like, for instance, this guy's doctors come forward and/or the family decides to release medical information), by all means let's discuss the absolute hell out of it. Until that point, I don't see the wisdom in sitting here going, "It's mental illness! It's mental illness! It's mental illness!" like a great deranged parrot.
posted by palomar at 4:56 PM on May 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


Something about society's acceptance of the massacre and its context - compare to as recently as My Lai where the war criminals received a great outpouring of public support.

Not sure what you're getting at with this, because everything I've heard about My Lai implied that there was mostly condemnation of that massacre. There may have been some support, yes, but almost definitely it was in a reaction to the condemnation, and almost certainly would have been from a place of "support our troops no matter what".

I'm not seeing that the "outpouring of public support" for those soldiers was as "great" as you perceive, and also wouldn't assume it'd be as much of an "outpouring" if this wasn't a wartime incident.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:01 PM on May 27, 2014


That's why, like in cases of rape, it's obvious that this isn't about sex or lack of sex, it's about power, and he took out the entitlement to power that he felt he had out on strangers.

Yes, definitely about power, and very specifically about status. He viewed everything about humanity as a transactional hierarchy and he needed every interaction he had with people to confirm or raise his social status. He was so convinced of his extremely high status that he seems to have had severe dissonance and emotional problems every time real life challenged him on what he thought was his due.

I doubt he had much interest in sex or intimacy - instead he expected that the highest status women (in his head) would become his, out of recognition of his extreme worth. He seems to have thought life should treat him like a high roller in a movie about Vegas - with all sorts of free shit, and ass-kissing, and chicks throwing themselves at him.

He also seems like a narcissist with extreme self-loathing. It's a really bad combination - I've had some people in my life like this. A giant ego combined with self-hatred is really warping for an individual. And since he had such a rigid worldview that denied reality, love, compassion and anything but status and power, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't have a few other personality disorders.

As for the idea here and elsewhere that much of the misogyny he spouted was extreme or irrelevant because he was "obviously" mentally ill, ha ha. Sigh. I had men friends and even boyfriends who, while not violent or dangerous, skirted really close to a lot what this guy was spouting. Way before the internet made the term popular, I used to try to talk to my guy friends about how toxic their Nice Guy syndrome was and how othering and degrading it was to hear them criticize me and other female friends for dating guys they typified as unworthy jerks / bad boys (because they were envious or whatever.)
posted by Squeak Attack at 5:12 PM on May 27, 2014 [4 favorites]


From my local newspaper today: Pakistani woman stoned to death by family outside court for marrying man she loved

Around 1000 Pakistani women are killed every year by their families in honour killings, according to Pakistani rights group the Aurat Foundation.

The true figure is probably many times higher [...]

Multiply that figure by all the other countries where "honour killings" are A Thing. Include the countries where "crimes of passion" are treated leniently. Add the other countries where men come up with the idea by themselves. Tens of thousands of women, every year, and the perpetrators know that they'll get away with it. It is a silent war on women and it has been going on forever and it has to stop.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:29 PM on May 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


Not pleasant reading, but relevant to the larger discussion: When Women Refuse.
posted by mudpuppie at 5:43 PM on May 27, 2014 [10 favorites]


It is a silent war on women and it has been going on forever and it has to stop.

Three items, closer to home, in the news today:

° DUQUESNE, Pa. -- A pregnant 15-year-old girl who was shot after opening the door of her family's home and lost her fetus is expected to survive, her mother said Tuesday.

° The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office has confirmed the skeletal remains found by several boys last week while they were frog hunting were of a woman reported missing in 2009,

° The arrest warrant for 27-year-old Jermal Holmes said police were alerted to the fatal shooting of Delores Jones, 25, by a 911 call placed by Holmes' father. Jones died from a gunshot to the head.
posted by Anitanola at 5:54 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]



It is a silent war on women and it has been going on forever and it has to stop.

Three items, closer to home, in the news today:


Perhaps not closer to home for Joe in Australia.
posted by sweetkid at 6:13 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


The garden variety (warning: autoplay music), posted today:
Today I was waiting in line for lunch at the cafeteria when a group of boys started pointing a laser at my breasts. For a moment, I tried to ignore them. I was wearing a short dress and my breasts are a bit larger than most peoples, so in a low cut shirt, they are more noticeable (but they were not so noticeable as to pop out of my dress). I played it off cool and ignored them. Then they started making comments about me, saying very inappropriate things about what they wanted to do to me and continued to point the laser at me.

I dropped everything and snapped. Putting my backpack down, I walked directly over to them, FUMING with a red face and immediately went off on them. [snip]

They stared at me for a long moment, some of them trying to hold back a laugh as one then got up, holding up his hands as he proceeded to nod, apologizing for his actions and extending his arms. He seemed as though he was actually, genuinely sorry, so I nodded, thanking him as he then asked if he could hug me for standing up for myself. When I went in for a hug, he proceeded to grab my ass, going INTO my dress. [snip]

Then he tried to hit me. He grabbed my arm with one hand, raising the other to what I assume was to smack me in the face, so I immediately raised my arm and punched him in the nose. [snip]

When teachers finally pulled me out of the cafeteria, they immediately started blaming ME. “You should have ignored him.”
Trimmed only so as not to be overwhelming...see the whole story here. The same basic themes over and over and over.
posted by Hildegarde at 6:16 PM on May 27, 2014 [18 favorites]


Closer to home for me: Jared Remy, the son of famous Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, pleaded guilty today to first-degree murder of his girlfriend. (He stabbed her to death in front of a lot of witnesses, and had a long history of domestic violence.)
posted by Melismata at 6:26 PM on May 27, 2014


With respect dude, and i mean that, not in the snarky lol jk preface way, this is a weak ass argument.

In his own words he was prescribed... oh you know what forget it.

Clearly he was perfectly sane.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:38 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Why does the media always describe these killer manifestos as "rambling"?
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 6:41 PM on May 27, 2014


Have you read it?

It rambles.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 6:42 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Any man could, because society still perpetuates the idea that the Alpha Male is the only real man and if you aren't one, you damn well better aspire to be one.
This is so true, and is one of the primary examples of Patriarchy Hurting Men Too, as far as I'm concerned. I know so many men who have been hurt by this idea; I'm terrified for my son.

As I am for my son. More so for my daughters, though. I can maybe do something to help my son not end up doing harm, but I can't do much to prevent other people's sons from harming my daughters, except prepare them to stand up for themselves and be aware of danger.
posted by dg at 6:42 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


Closer to home for me: Jared Remy, the son of famous Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, pleaded guilty today to first-degree murder of his girlfriend. (He stabbed her to death in front of a lot of witnesses, and had a long history of domestic violence.)

Some classic MRA rhetoric from Jared Remy. "I don’t think it’s right when women use their kids against their fathers." This story has chilled me all day. I didn't hear about it until today, I guess because she was his property so it's not really news.
posted by Ralston McTodd at 6:46 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Okay, but "mental illness" isn't a diagnosis. It tells us nothing useful for figuring out why this happened. If we get some actual information about his mental health diagnosis that is verified as true, that might be useful to discuss. As it stands, just labeling it "mental illness" is less than helpful. What specific illness or illnesses is it?

You might be disappointed to learn that you can't always open up someone's brain and see a "real" specific bona fide illness. Mental illness is a socially constructed category.

In his own words, this guy's life was ruined when he was 10 years old and he accidentally bumped into a girl at summer camp and she yelled at him. Years later, he would think back to this incident and get violently upset.

Now I don't know if some people with fancy medical degrees have gotten around yet to coming up with a label for this. But this shit is fucked up and society needs to do things to help people like this, so I'm personally fine with calling this "mental illness" with the implication that the person is unwell and would benefit from special assistance.
posted by leopard at 7:12 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


But this shit is fucked up and society needs to do things to help people like this, so I'm personally fine with calling this "mental illness" with the implication that the person is unwell and would benefit from special assistance.

Well, yeah, and he'd been in various kinds of therapy since before he was a teenager. His condition wasn't going unrecognized. He was getting assistance.
posted by rtha at 7:15 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Right, my point wasn't that he wasn't getting assistance, it's that I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with calling him mentally ill. Sure, it's a subjective judgment, but I don't see anyone here professing personal or professional knowledge of this situation and yet this thread has over 1,000 comments and is still going strong.
posted by leopard at 7:21 PM on May 27, 2014


You might be disappointed to learn that you can't always open up someone's brain and see a "real" specific bona fide illness.

What a shitty, condescending thing to say.
posted by palomar at 7:34 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


And in fact many mental illnesses can be physiologically diagnosed from abnormal brain structures. There are huge correlations in both depression and BPD with abnormal neural structures, especially around the hippocampus and amygdala.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:36 PM on May 27, 2014


When I was in high school, I was always totally crushing on the geeky guys, who would "friendzone" me and complain, bitterly, that girls (i.e., the perky, boobalicious cheerleader-types they were pining over but never actually talking to) only liked bad boys and assholes, pouring out their anguish about how girls sucked to my sympathetic and ever-hopeful ears.

In retrospect, they were correct (as obviously I liked guys who were assholes :P).

Most of them outgrew it and turned in to perfectly lovely men, but it's a little startling to me how several of them are still living their lives pining after a magazine-advertisement ideal of women, ignoring actual real women who are interested in them, and complaining about how women are shallow and only like jerks. I suppose when you're a shallow jerk yourself, and you measure other people's corn in your own scanty bushel ...


Hi.

I was a perky boobalicious cheerleader-type in high school, and I resent not being considered an actual real woman.

Can we stop with that bullshit now?
posted by keli at 7:44 PM on May 27, 2014 [14 favorites]


Slate has a good piece up on his therapists and expectations for preventing violence.

"Adam Lanza’s story made me sad for everyone involved—including, in a way, Lanza himself, who never got the help he obviously needed. Elliot Rodger’s story makes me feel despair and hopelessness. Rodger met with trained mental health professionals, the people we rely on to identify dangerously disturbed individuals, and they apparently failed to perceive the depth of his problems. Police officers, who spend their days dealing with violent, troubled people, described Rodger as “polite and courteous.” "
posted by viggorlijah at 7:44 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


And in fact many mental illnesses can be physiologically diagnosed from abnormal brain structures.

Yes, but it's also true that it's not always possible to come up with a single "this is the diagnosis!" diagnosis. Life isn't House, MD where if you just keep running enough tests you get an aha moment where it all falls into place. And, lastly, many different mental illnesses are either diagnoses of exclusion or based on symptomatic criteria and have very difficult differentials.

It's quite possible that given Rodgers is dead it will never be possible to know exactly what mental illness he had. Or maybe his family will come forward with something more than "we think maybe..." though under the circumstances we should cut them a heck of a lot of slack on that front.

But his exact diagnosis isn't the issue and it isn't all that central that we in the peanut gallery know what particular personality disorder was present; we can look at the success or failure of the mental health system as a whole, the police response when his parents called to report he was in trouble, and the stigmatization of mental illness in our society. None of that requires any of us to be able to point to the DSM and go AHA, THIS IS HIS DIAGNOSIS!
posted by Justinian at 7:46 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Can we stop with that bullshit now?

You bolded the "actual real women" part, but you seem to have missed the "magazine-advertisement ideal" part. "Actual real women" wasn't a slam on cheerleaders, it was a slam on the dudes who lust after the idealized woman.
posted by palomar at 7:53 PM on May 27, 2014 [13 favorites]


keli, although I didn't make that comment, I interpreted it to mean that men are ignoring actual real women because they don't look like Angelina Jolie on the cover of a magazine. And let's be honest, Angelina Jolie herself doesn't look like Angelina Jolie on the cover of a magazine. But when "real women" are defined as magazine covers, no woman can meet that standard.
posted by Ruki at 7:53 PM on May 27, 2014 [7 favorites]


Or maybe his family will come forward with something more than "we think maybe..."

Yeah, exactly the point.
posted by palomar at 7:54 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Thanks for the clarification.
posted by keli at 8:04 PM on May 27, 2014


keli: "I was a perky boobalicious cheerleader-type in high school, and I resent not being considered an actual real woman. "

Apologies if that's how it came off. That's not how I meant it -- I just meant that they were pining after an idea of women they'd constructed in their heads. I hoped the clauses were separated enough to not cause the conflation. (And I only called them cheerleader-types because that's a familiar category from US movies, most of the very popular girls were actually like lacrosse girls where I went to high school.)

I meant to convey they were reducing these girls to a) their social desirability ("perky" and "cheerleader-type") and b) their physical attributes as measured against unrealistic, idealized female beauty ("boobalicious"). These boys who were pining and moaning after these girls and complaining the girls weren't appreciating them for WHO THEY REALLY WERE INSIDE had absolutely no idea who THOSE girls were inside, and didn't really care about finding out. What made them assholes was the double-edged sword, that they were complaining that "all girls" were too shallow and jerky to appreciate their unique personalities and intellectual gifts (ignoring those girls, such as me, who WERE interested in them), while simultaneously not really caring one bit about the unique personalities and intellectual gifts of the girls they were mooning over, because the key point was "boobalicious cheerleader-type" and not their (generally awesome) personalities. They didn't want to recognize me as real, because I wasn't pretty/popular enough, and they didn't want to recognize the popular girls as real, because their realness wasn't of any interest.

And I get that in high school we're all kind-of hot messes and that romantic relationships are particularly fraught, and that frequently pining after the "unattainable" is a lot safer than pursuing someone you can actually be in a relationship with. (As, there I sat, pining after dudes who were after other chicks.) But it was such an incredibly poisonous triangle for everyone involved -- for me, hearing the message that my personality didn't matter because I wasn't pretty or popular enough; for the popular girl, hearing the message that her personality didn't matter BECAUSE she was pretty and popular; and for the boy who reduced his relationships with girls in his peer groups to looks, status, and unrequited longing, values in himself things that he refuses to recognize in others, and gets constantly reinforced by pop culture that this is okay.

Like I said, most of us outgrow this pernicious set of attitudes and thank God we're not teenagers any longer. But I'm slightly alarmed that some of these guys, now well into their 30s, are still holding tight to the same ideas and categorize women as "smart but ugly" or "pretty but dumb" and in neither case are interested in them as whole people, and are denying themselves human connection because of these awful, awful attitudes about women.

palomar: "You bolded the "actual real women" part, but you seem to have missed the "magazine-advertisement ideal" part. "Actual real women" wasn't a slam on cheerleaders, it was a slam on the dudes who lust after the idealized woman."

Yeah, that, much more succinctly. :)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:04 PM on May 27, 2014 [22 favorites]


and thank God we're not teenagers any longer

Right? There is not enough money in the universe to make me want to repeat those years, and by any standards my teenagerdom was not particularly awful at all. Nope nope nope would not do again nope.
posted by rtha at 8:11 PM on May 27, 2014 [12 favorites]


I liked what Hadley Freedman in the Guardian had to say:

This misogynistic culture exists, absolutely, and what's so dangerous about it is that it attracts potentially mentally unstable people, including Rodger, and validates their most extreme feelings. To say that mental illness played a part in Rodger's behaviour doesn't dismiss the culture that played a part in it any more than saying eating disorders are a mental illness (which they are) excuses the part played by the sick fetishisation of women's bodies in western culture.
posted by maggiemaggie at 8:22 PM on May 27, 2014 [10 favorites]


When I first heard about this, I mentioned it to my father who replied that, for schizophrenic young men, their symptoms frequently start to show in their early 20s. Since then, I've wanted to go back in time to that conversation with my dad and say, "that's not what happened here!!" I think that people are differentiating "hard" mental illnesses like schizophrenia and "softer" ones like mood disorders including depression. There's an inclination to say that if a mental illness cannot be identified on a brain scan that it's not as real and that you could almost walk it off. Like "hard" mental illnesses are more like an injury or deformity in the brain and are therefore more permanent whereas "soft" mental illnesses are more like bad mental habits that can be unlearned through therapy.

I don't know what this kid's diagnosis was but he clearly wasn't seeing things clearly. His persecuted complex, belief that the world owed him something and that women owed him their bodies even though it seems that he never made any advances towards them himself, the fact that he held himself in such high esteem may indicate narcissistic personality or sociopathy. It seems like he was delusional, both in thinking so highly of himself and thinking that people were persecuting him. It sounds like he had been in therapy for a long time but schizophrenia isn't easily treated with therapy. Maybe had he made it a few more years, he would have been diagnosed with something like schizophrenia. Maybe my father is right. But even absent a diagnosis, it seems that there was clearly something very wrong with his thinking.

I feel annoyed when people seem to imply that clearly he had a mental illness because he killed people, as if that's only the purview of the mentally ill. I don't believe that's an adequate explanation for what happened here. But based on what I've read, his thinking wasn't right. Maybe there isn't a concise label for what specifically was wrong with his thinking. But I think that if we're going to attempt to learn something from all of this, I think that saying this happened because he was mentally ill or evil is an incomplete explanation.
posted by kat518 at 8:34 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


kat518: "Maybe had he made it a few more years, he would have been diagnosed with something like schizophrenia. "

Poor/black people get diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Rich/white people get diagnosed with bipolar.

Richest people get left alone. Compared to less well-off patients, I've had a significant number of dangerously delusional yet well-off patients leave the hospital AMA after convincing a judge. Partly it's to do with relatively more congruent sociocultural communications between the patient and the judges, partly with the promise of a greater quantity of available support resources (whether real or imaginary). And partly it's unconscious racism: at least where I practice, many people in authority positions seem to react with less alarm to psychotic rich white people compared with psychotic poor black people.
posted by meehawl at 9:02 PM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Cause and effect were reversed. Being narcissistic disordered, Rodger had gradually accreted to himself various hatreds, which would allow him to explain to himself why he felt so rejected. But anyone reading it could see that the original thought was not programmatic. There was just pain and then hate as a way of transmuting it.

This is the part I mean; that's what I was saying so far up above in this thread about his actions being, I think, a reflection of society's ills rather than being necessarily caused by them.
posted by Justinian at 9:32 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


The “Day of Retribution” is — well, exactly what happened.

I feel it would be useful to call bullshit when people say things like this. This wasn't retribution, it wasn't a revenge killing, which I've heard said elsewhere. It wasn't sparked by the indifference of a 10-year old girl, as the Daily Mail and New York Post got decided to investigate. All these formulations are dramatically satisfying, but wholly untrue.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:36 PM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


So I guess the TL;DR version of that article would be: Because more men died than women, misogyny is not involved.

What a steaming heap of bullshit.
posted by palomar at 9:39 PM on May 27, 2014 [16 favorites]


>"Your child is not going to gun people down — such symbolic, grotesque acts are vanishingly rare (and 15 women in the US have been murdered in boring, unremarkable fashion by their partners since the Isla Vista massacre happened) — but he may be the one who falters, at the age of eight, 11, 13."

What I care about is changing the the future so people won't be "murdered in boring, unremarkable fashion by their partners" or in any other way and I care about changing the way we socialize and teach our children so they don't wind up unhappy and isolated or worse. We have to be more involved with one another, I think.
posted by Anitanola at 9:54 PM on May 27, 2014


I can't abide by what's being said there. I think it's very eloquently saying exactly what a lot of people want to hear. Just long enough to sound like it's truly intelligent, and just short enough that it's a concise little brainsnack people can chow down. Not a taquito, more like a bagel sandwich.

This has nothing to do with a "hyper individualistic" society. And it's not just a "total collapse of the mind".

The act itself may be a damn breaking, or a collapse, but everything in the run up to it is absolutely shored up by the communities he was participating in, it's conceptual cock tirelessly fluffed.

I don't know. It gets some things write, but it seems like it was written with an agenda when it pours its foundation in the shape of the concept that because the shootings he actually succeeded at doing, what he planned on doing is like handwavium or something. That account only makes sense if you utterly ignore the fact that he went to a sorority and wasn't let in.

If someone shows up to a bank carrying a gun and a duffle bag and is tackled right as he goes in the door, would you argue he wasn't trying to rob the bank? it's facetious, smug college freshmen dorm debate bullshit couched in some cute prose.
posted by emptythought at 9:56 PM on May 27, 2014 [9 favorites]


I think the part you're focusing on (with palomar) is definitely crap; the number of men vs women killed has no bearing on this. But that's just one part of a much longer essay which doesn't stand or fall on that one bit.
posted by Justinian at 9:58 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah... this is no doubt heartfelt but it seems like a collection of reckons, some unsurprising, some idiosyncratic, none of which seem to be supported by any solid references. I mean, he saw some people being mean about Rodger on Twitter. I can well believe it. Twitter has quite a lot of people on it, and Rodger had just killed people. That doesn't mean:
Elliott Rodger is treated as a scapegoat, to be loaded up with the sins of society and sent into the wilderness.
A scapegoat is an innocent chosen by society to be driven out as a metaphorical bearer of its sins. Elliot Rodger killed people.

I'm not sure that people saying bad things about him on Twitter supports the following contention that the real problems here are, in order, attempts to institute thoughtcrime laws by liberals, the shallow narcissism of modern culture and the atomization of society.

Honestly, it seems odd that a 140-page description of a young man's growing fury at women for not noticing him, and other men for being noticed by women, should inspire a reflection on the dangers of, in effect, political correctness, millennials and mobile phones.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:04 PM on May 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


He definitely goes off the reservation when he starts moving beyond the mental illness sorts of narcissism into narcissism as a symptom of modern society. It's basically what he was accusing other people of doing, that is to take Rodgers actions and try to shoehorn it into whatever their own social cause is. I wonder if he sees the irony?
posted by Justinian at 10:09 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


I think the part you're focusing on (with palomar) is definitely crap; the number of men vs women killed has no bearing on this. But that's just one part of a much longer essay which doesn't stand or fall on that one bit.

Yea though, that's the thing. I think it kinda does. The entire thing is a really snazzy looking trojan horse to deliver a couple really shitty points.

You can immediately be gonged for making one shitty point after making 10 decent ones if that shitty point is huge. this isn't some sort of videogame with a combo meter where saying a good things builds it up and saying a bad thing only knocks off 25 points or whatever.

The point he's rejecting is pretty critical to the entire situation. If you read what's gone down in this thread, it's something that's been outright rejected by a lot of the media and a lot of people. Completely illegitimately, i might add.
posted by emptythought at 10:14 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Mod note: Comment with extremely long quote deleted, it was giving mobile users sore thumbs. Sorry about that. Feel free to repost as a link.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane (staff) at 10:17 PM on May 27, 2014


I call bullshit on saying people are trying to shoehorn this into their social agenda opposing misogyny and then jumping the track to conclude that means the thought police (feminizes?) are trying to keep people from thinking harsh things about women.
posted by Anitanola at 10:19 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Uhhh... anybody know where it was from so we can link it? Otherwise none of this makes any sense.
posted by Justinian at 10:20 PM on May 27, 2014


wait can someone dig up a link then? because now it's just super confusing as to what all of us were replying to and discussing.
posted by emptythought at 10:20 PM on May 27, 2014


jinx, damnit
posted by emptythought at 10:21 PM on May 27, 2014


From here.
posted by gingerest at 10:23 PM on May 27, 2014


Pastebin link.
posted by L.P. Hatecraft at 10:24 PM on May 27, 2014


He definitely goes off the reservation

WTH?
posted by five fresh fish at 10:25 PM on May 27, 2014 [11 favorites]


Honestly, it seems odd that a 140-page description of a young man's growing fury at women for not noticing him, and other men for being noticed by women, should inspire a reflection on the dangers of, in effect, political correctness, millennials and mobile phones.

You know, if this were one spree killing in isolation, I'd be more willing to dig around into his specific madness, but it's not like this is the first one.

Since columbine there have been dozens of these spree killings and bombings. Are we up to 4 or 5 a year now? Focusing on the subject of his rage seems to be kind of missing the forest for the trees.

It seems to me that what most of them have in common is fringe political viewpoints, failure to thrive, hatred of 'the other', isolation, a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur. Whether they think it's 'women' or 'immigrants' or 'jocks' or 'college professors' that are destroying them is kind of beside the point, if we're trying to stop these things from happening. This behavior is so far outside of normal male sexism (which in itself can be horrifically violent, murderous and oppressive) that it might as well not be the same thing. Even if we fixed sexism in society tomorrow (which is surely a laudable goal), it wouldn't stop a single spree killing.

If we're really trying to stop these things from happening again, we need to get guns off the street and do a better job of identifying people with that specific set of traits and get them appropriate help sooner (and I don't mean just medicate them, which might just give them enough motivation and energy to act out their fantasies instead of wallowing in self-pity)
posted by empath at 10:32 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


And the fifteen women killed by their partners since this tragedy happened that we've discussed and the next fifteen and the next AND those forty five men who also have failed to thrive and don't know how to relate to their partner as a person, not a possession? I suppose this is, strictly speaking, a derail, but I don't think solving the gun problem will necessarily save those lives.
posted by Anitanola at 10:40 PM on May 27, 2014 [3 favorites]


Right, but to me, that's a different kind of madness entirely and I don't think the way you stop one will do anything to stop the other. They are both an ongoing tragedy, but I don't see how you can tie in spree killing (which tends to be somewhat random in its victims) to domestic violence and abuse which is a particular horror visited mostly upon women.
posted by empath at 10:52 PM on May 27, 2014


More lives are at stake in the kind of madness I am most concerned about and I don't concede that misogyny is not involved in this particular spree killing. It is as valid to discuss this spree killing together with the misogynistic domestic murders as it is to discuss this spree killing with the other spree killings.
posted by Anitanola at 10:58 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


> ... Whether they think it's 'women' or 'immigrants' or 'jocks' or 'college professors' that are destroying them is kind of beside the point ...

No, surely you agree that it is entirely to the point.

I will say, in some respects, I agree with the above lengthily-quoted column that novel forms of isolation, whatever their proximate cause, are worthy of as much attention as anything else, but the tone of the column sours its good intentions. Its parentheticals tell tales. People aren't charcoal with which to rub out an impression of your interior intellectual sphere.

Concern with the perception of women, immigrants, or college professors, or yes, jocks, deserve attention: for however freakish each individual occurrence can be portrayed to be, each speaks more directly to the ruptures in the cloth we would like to believe could be a society.
posted by zbsachs at 10:59 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I obviously agree with empath. We need to address the causes and find solutions to stop both rampage killers and domestic violence. But the ways we attack the problems aren't going to be the same.
posted by Justinian at 10:59 PM on May 27, 2014 [2 favorites]


More lives are at stake in the kind of madness I am most concerned about and I don't concede that misogyny is not involved in this particular spree killing

Well sure, and racism was involved in the Breivik spree killing, and the Columbine killings had to do with bullying, and Tim McVeigh killed people because of Waco and maybe batman had to do with the Aurora shooting. I don't think that solving misogyny or racism or bullying will stop spree killing, though they're laudable goals on their own. The specific manifestation of it is going to reflect whatever divisions there are in society, I think, but once these guys get started, they don't even seem to target the people they hate with any specificity.
posted by empath at 11:02 PM on May 27, 2014


If spree killers are outliers, do you think we can stop spree killings?
posted by Anitanola at 11:07 PM on May 27, 2014


Speaking for myself? No, probably not. Not completely. But we can do better than we are doing.
posted by Justinian at 11:08 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


I think if we start getting the guns off the streets and start changing the way people with that specific complex are identified and treated, we can probably reduce them.

I think we can also do a lot to reduce domestic violence, but that's a whole different set of policies.
posted by empath at 11:10 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


If domestic partner killings are not outliers, do you think we can stop domestic partner killings?
posted by Anitanola at 11:15 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sorry if that is argumentative; I meant to add that I believe empath's answer "...if we start getting the guns off the streets and start changing the way people with that specific complex are identified and treated, we can probably reduce them." is exactly the answer to my second question. We know a lot about how patriarchy affects men and we can change it. We won't, though, if we think this is not a problem that is killing people.
posted by Anitanola at 11:26 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Since columbine there have been dozens of these spree killings and bombings. Are we up to 4 or 5 a year now? Focusing on the subject of his rage seems to be kind of missing the forest for the trees.

Not sure I'm buying what you're selling here. Anitanola kinda touched on it already, but this situation is different from any of the other ones you quoted in premise.

Unless you reduce it to some really base level of "he killed several people with a gun" it's just different. Things exist in context, and stripping enough away to make it for your framework isn't really fair.

"Angry entitled man kills woman" happens all the time. "Angry entitled man kills several women" is new in this sort of context. Going "oh it's like all those other mass killings" is the lazy crap the news channels are doing, and a lot of them have an agenda to push.
posted by emptythought at 11:50 PM on May 27, 2014 [5 favorites]


I think it's also problematic that we societally construct mental illness in a way that lumps people who are a danger to others (ie sociopaths and some other people with personality disorders, though obviously not all of them) with people with disorders/diseases/etc that make it harder/impossible to function in their own lives.
posted by NoraReed at 11:54 PM on May 27, 2014 [6 favorites]


Well that's the crux of the issue isn't it, emptythought? Whether one views this as more similar to Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech or to more common forms of violence against women.
posted by Justinian at 11:55 PM on May 27, 2014 [1 favorite]


Well that's the crux of the issue isn't it, emptythought? Whether one views this as more similar to Sandy Hook and Virginia Tech or to more common forms of violence against women

To me the difference is that the more common forms of violence against women are more or less acts committed by 'sane' people with the tacit approval of society.
posted by empath at 12:01 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


A bit off topic from the guns/misogyny/mental illness merry-go-round, but one of the things that really stood out in his life story for me was the marked absence of any interest in education.

I'm not exactly sure what my autobiography would look like--I'd probably temper my use of 'exquisite' for one--but there would be a mixture of hope and despair, joy and sadness, love and hate, friendship and loneliness. In those respects, not completely alien to his. But even now out of school for so long, and certainly were I writing it while at university, a significant proportion would be taken up by the ideas I was introduced to in lectures, in books, in conversation.

I'm a bit taken aback that there is no mention of science or literature or anything--outside of the two magical thinking books his father gave him. I suppose there was WoW, which could be a kind of literature, and there was the creepy forum ideology. And there is at least a part of him which shows up in his self-videos which shows a love of nature and sunsets.

But the overwhelming thrust of his narrative was disinterest in anything but himself--in particular, the absence of any curiosity or interest in the inner lives of other people. And yet, his own inner life--which could have been filled up with a love of Shakespeare or mathematics or model trains--is almost entirely absent as well.

Instead, it's a very long and tedious accounting of status markers. As if life were a WoW game, and the point was to accumulate more gold stars than other players. And perhaps his waterloo was when those gold stars stopped being things you could just tantrum you way into a gift, but became independent actors.

I think it's possible that he didn't hate women (or desire them) at all. To him, they were just more coins in the mario brothers game of life, and he only came to resent them when the rules of the game changed, and he found himself unable to adjust his toolset. I think his most desperate wish was that he could still play life on the novice level.
posted by cytherea at 12:44 AM on May 28, 2014 [21 favorites]


I dunno, I have a hard time figuring a construction where this sort of out-of-context massacre-suicide shouldn't be considered mental illness.

It really isn't out of context, though. The person in question had a great deal of rage, spoke with other people who talked about killing women, fantasized about killing women, and then killed women. Lots and lots of people talk about and fantasize about killing women, and people in general, all the time. A bunch of them tell women, sometimes in great detail, how they want to kill them. Three women are killed a day, on average. This isn't some outlier that is never seen in humanity without a clear diagnosis.

There is a lot about that which isn't preferable in terms of people in society, but people kill other people all the time without being diagnosed with a mental illness. I'm always baffled as to why this specific kind of killing suddenly becomes "must be mentally ill because REASONS."
posted by Deoridhe at 1:17 AM on May 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


"the more common forms of violence against women are more or less acts committed by 'sane' people with the tacit approval of society."

Some of the rhetoric on his video is language I and a great many other women have heard from a partner we were in the process of leaving, "If I can't have you, nobody can," so the similarity of these two kinds of cases is inescapable for us. Nicole Brown Simpson and many other women subsequently murdered have told people, including law enforcement, "He is going to kill me" and, with the more or less tacit approval of society, quite often he does.

I think men see this differently and do not actually make this connection. I do understand that it seems more logical to focus on the guns and the mental illness. I also think this is a time when the women here are right about the function of misogyny in patriarchal society and failing to see it in this discussion is to retreat to a place where all can comfortably debate the merits of various gun control initiatives and speculate about how funding and public will might be marshaled for better mental health programs. Men don't have to look too closely at their man's world but all the while, one by one little boys learn in the chatroom and in the locker room how (not) to be men.
posted by Anitanola at 1:24 AM on May 28, 2014 [26 favorites]


This wasn't 'garden variety' mental illness, or even 'just' a gun rampage killing. It was rage boiling over because our society, our culture promises men, including nerds, will 'get the girl' as some kind of sex prize if we just work hard enough. And if girls don't give us what we've 'earned' then we're entitled to get angry and frustrated with them. And that's fucked up.

Rodger was not unique in temperament, at all. Only in degree. You don't have to look very hard in geek/nerd culture to find the same poisonous, unreasoning anger and hatred towards women, treating them as sex vending machines, not people. And while they might not end up in mass spree killings, they do result in harassment, assault, rape and murder that don't make the big media cycles.

Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds
We are not the lovable nerdy protagonist who’s lovable because he’s the protagonist. We’re not guaranteed to get laid by the hot chick of our dreams as long as we work hard enough at it. There isn’t a team of writers or a studio audience pulling for us to triumph by “getting the girl” in the end. And when our clever ruses and schemes to “get girls” fail, it’s not because the girls are too stupid or too bitchy or too shallow to play by those unwritten rules we’ve absorbed.

It’s because other people’s bodies and other people’s love are not something that can be taken nor even something that can be earned—they can be given freely, by choice, or not.
posted by ArkhanJG at 1:32 AM on May 28, 2014 [28 favorites]


Some of the rhetoric on his video is language I and a great many other women have heard from a partner we were in the process of leaving, "If I can't have you, nobody can," so the similarity of these two kinds of cases is inescapable for us. Nicole Brown Simpson and many other women subsequently murdered have told people, including law enforcement, "He is going to kill me" and, with the more or less tacit approval of society, quite often he does.

Yes, but that, again is targeted violence against a person with a relationship with them. The vast majority of violence is committed against people with a relationship to the perpetrator and generally with a clear motive. Randomly killing large numbers of people unknown to the killer is not how the vast majority of violence against women (or really, anyone) is done.

I'm not at all denying that there is a horrendous amount of violence and threats made against women every single day. But I don't think this guy is in the same category as domestic abusers or stalkers. He's in the same category as Adam Lanza and James Holmes, etc. Again, which is not to say that he's worse than someone who terrorizes his wife and children for 20 years while no one does anything to stop it. He's just different
posted by empath at 2:40 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


"He's just different."

In degree; not in kind.
posted by Anitanola at 3:20 AM on May 28, 2014 [12 favorites]


Yes, but that, again is targeted violence against a person with a relationship with them[...]which is not to say that he's worse than someone who terrorizes his wife and children for 20 years while no one does anything to stop it. He's just different

I'm not sure why it's supposed to be convincing to say that if he hadn't grown up in a culture of misogyny he just would've found another target for his innate killing-machine rage (like these 8 other men recently), but not 'if he hadn't happened to be unable to even fake romantic bonds, he probably would have abused or killed multiple partners (like these thousands of men recently).'

The vast majority of violence is committed against people with a relationship to the perpetrator and generally with a clear motive.

In the case of domestic violence that clear motive is...?

To me the difference is that the more common forms of violence against women are more or less acts committed by 'sane' people with the tacit approval of society.

Right. Because misogyny is so normalized that we have trouble, as a culture, labeling it a pathology. But I bet it'll be in the DSM-XII.
posted by nobody at 3:46 AM on May 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


The vast majority of violence is committed against people with a relationship to the perpetrator and generally with a clear motive.

It's really so surreal how clear and visible this stuff seems to be to the majority of the gender the war is being waged against, while so many others seem to think of these all as isolated incidents. It's one of the reasons for the astounding amount of #yesallwomen stories - because we do connect the dots, because the picture on the other end of the dots is not a mystery.

Sometimes the "relationship to the perpetrator" is one sided, or in the perpetrator's head. I can't remember the amount of men who thought we had some form of relationship, or "connection", many of whom I barely remembered or was offended by. "You danced with me once at a party five years ago; how dare you choose to date someone else?" "I kissed you once when you were 14 and drunk, why aren't you dating me when you're 30?"

These people get violent! Again, look at the Women Who Refuse tumblr, because it's horrifying, the amount of men who think they are owed something by women and get angry and violent when they don't get it. Hell, the "she should sleep with me because I bought her dinner" is so common that it's a fucking sitcom punchline.

People think that because women are 50% of the population, that there can't be any broad based attacks against them, but they are so damn wrong it hurts.
posted by corb at 3:55 AM on May 28, 2014 [20 favorites]


Even if we were to accept for sake of argument that he definitely had been diagnosed with Asperger's (which is not a mental illness)

Putting aside the semantics of Asperger's v. Autism spectrum disorder, Asperger's certainly is a mental illness. It's listed in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and the International Classification of Diseases. There is some discussion to be had about the semantics of calling something an illness versus a disease or a disorder, but most people agree that illness is a rough synonym in this context.
posted by JohnLewis at 4:46 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


So if it's true he was prescribed Risperdal, it was most likely either for psychosis/schizophreniform disorders or bipolar I/II/NOS.

This is not at all true. I could find charts of five kids in five minutes who have been prescribed Risperdal for ADHD, not to mention Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder. It's prescribed to people with Alzheimer's, for Christ sake. Psychiatric prescribing is completely bonkers, and offers no insight whatsoever into which disorder someone in treatment might have.
posted by JohnLewis at 4:49 AM on May 28, 2014 [6 favorites]


Closer to home for me: Jared Remy, the son of famous Red Sox broadcaster Jerry Remy, pleaded guilty today to first-degree murder of his girlfriend. (He stabbed her to death in front of a lot of witnesses, and had a long history of domestic violence.)

I read a bit about this (really don't, especially about all the times the cops were called when he was violent against previous girlfriends) and while it's unusual that he decided to accept a plea, in his statement in court he says that she broke the one rule he made, and so of course he had to kill her.

Of course when women don't listen to men and give them what they want, death should be the penalty. This is so normal it's background noise.
posted by rtha at 5:49 AM on May 28, 2014 [13 favorites]


Has anyone linked to the Not *all* men Tumblr yet? It was covered by Time a couple of weeks ago.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:54 AM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


The specific manifestation of it is going to reflect whatever divisions there are in society, I think, but once these guys get started, they don't even seem to target the people they hate with any specificity.

Andres Breivik targeted young members of the Norwegian Labour Party. Harris and Klebold targeted people at their school. Kip Kinkel likewise. Barry Loukaitis likewise. Luke Woodham, Michael Carneal, likewise. Cho Seung-Hui people at his university. Jennifer San Marco and Joseph Harris targetted co-workers.

Alexis Aaron, who believed that voices were being implanted into his head by ELF transmission, still went to a workplace staffed by civilian naval contractors and Navy personnel - his current and former professional peers - before opening fire.

Rampage killers do not limit their killings to specific people - if they did, they wouldn't be rampage killers - but you'd have to be absolutely determined to ignore quite a lot of work done in the field to argue that targets are consistently wholly arbitrary.

There are people whose targets are arbitrary - Michael Ryan, for example. However, Elliot Rodger intended to kill the members of a sorority house at his university, stated that intent, went to the sorority house and when this plan failed killed randomly.

I genuinely don't get why we have to keep going over this ground. Every single person participating in this thread understands the practical, taxonomic and forensic differences between spree killing and domestic violence. That's not relevant to whether general or specific misogyny is a contributing factor to this particular event.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:56 AM on May 28, 2014 [11 favorites]


Asperger's certainly is a mental illness. It's listed in both the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders

As I recall, Asperger Syndrome has been removed from DSM 5, controversially.

Anyway, a lot of people seem to be confusing psychiatry with internal medicine here. Most mental illness is not diagnosed by empirical evidence from brain scans, which, even if such direct correlations exist, is an aspect of psychiatric medicine still in its infancy. Most psychiatric disorders are diagnosed empirically based on clusters of symptoms and responses to medications. It's one step above random guessing at its most scientific. Two experienced clinicians will often disagree on the interpretation of the same presenting symptoms.
posted by spitbull at 6:31 AM on May 28, 2014


It was removed, I allude to that in the first part of my comment. It still "exists," it's just a part of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
posted by JohnLewis at 6:36 AM on May 28, 2014


And closer yet to home for all of us participating in this discussion: many of us remember fondly MeFite HopperFan/Liosliath, who died tragically a year ago. She was stabbed to death by her boyfriend, a man who was described as "paranoid and jealous [and who] invented scenarios in which men would hit on her if she went out alone." The murderer later wrote that they were "supposed to be married," but a friend who worked with Manner [testified] that there were no marriage plans and the relationship was about to end.

Even here. Even here, amongst members of our happy online community, women are murdered by men who feel entitled to abuse and control them. Voices in our own community have been permanently silenced by acts of violence toward women fueled by misogynistic rage, jealously, and possessiveness. Inevitably there is an impulse to explain these atrocities with something more exceptional than banal sexist hatred: he was drunk; he was mentally ill; he was a religious fanatic. We console ourselves, in a way, with the thought that these are the tails of the distribution. But the distribution itself -- the fact that its tails are large enough to be routinely sampled by those who are drunk, mentally ill, have access to weapons, &c -- is the problem. The silencing of HopperFan's voice and those of the victims in this incident are all part of the same devastating continuum, a continuum so common as to be "background noise" as rtha put it above. And it needs to be seen for what it is so that it can be addressed, in all its forms, before more bright lives are lost.
posted by Westringia F. at 6:55 AM on May 28, 2014 [72 favorites]




... & here's ValleyWag's take.
posted by Going To Maine at 6:57 AM on May 28, 2014


"Angry entitled man kills woman" happens all the time. "Angry entitled man kills several women" is new in this sort of context. Bundy, the Boston Strangler and many (most?) other serial killers target women. Mostly they don't write a treatise on their hatred.
posted by theora55 at 7:03 AM on May 28, 2014


No, Creatine Did Not Make Elliot Rodger Kill People

If anyone would like a little window into just one of the ways this story has been spun out of control by questionable media bodies using questionable research methods and by internet trolls who just like to fuck with people because really who gives a shit about a bunch of dead people amirite yay lulz, there you go.
posted by palomar at 7:21 AM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


OMG, I somehow completely missed the loss -- murder -- of HopperFan/Liosliath. That is gut wrenching.

Her killer has at least been sentenced to life without parole, to update the story a bit, and for the tiny pathetic ice chip of solace it offers that he won't kill again.

But what a visceral reminder of how pervasive misogynistic homicidal violence really is. Right at our doorstep.

Since I missed that MeTa, and remember HopperFan fondly, let me add a heartfelt

.

thanks westringia
posted by spitbull at 7:28 AM on May 28, 2014 [7 favorites]


I think it's also problematic that we societally construct mental illness in a way that lumps people who are a danger to others (ie sociopaths and some other people with personality disorders, though obviously not all of them) with people with disorders/diseases/etc that make it harder/impossible to function in their own lives.

Well um that's sort of one of the definitions of mental illness: a condition that makes it harder/impossible to function positively/adaptively in your own life.

Not all sociopaths are a danger to others, for example. An example was mentioned somewhere way upthread, and there was a post on MeFi within the past few years about how common sociopathy (or at least sociopathic tendencies?) is amongst the upper echelons of successful businesspeople.

As I understand it, both the DSMV and the ICD (10?) both classify disorders according to symptom clusters on various axes, not according to 'danger to others.' That's actually reducing stigma as far as I'm concerned; symptom clusters are relatively objective, whereas 'danger to others' is a very dangerous tool that could be used to lock up people who may fit the symptoms but are in fact not a danger to anyone else.

Think of it like biological taxonomy: we classify living things according to clusters of physical characteristics, not according to whether they're dangerous to us or not.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:38 AM on May 28, 2014


Regarding the Remy story, the Boston Globe put together a timeline of his encounters with the law over the past two decades. Warning: very long reading.

We can pay attention to Remy's MRA rhetoric and his toxic ideas, but what's much more horrifying to me is the fact that he demonstrated literally dozens of times that he was a menace to other people, and courts let him off over and over again. Assault should be considered a very serious crime. (A dozen speeding tickets and driving with a suspended license should be taken seriously too.)

Jackasses who complain that the court system is stacked against men should spend the 3 hours or whatever necessary to review that timeline. WTF.
posted by leopard at 9:59 AM on May 28, 2014 [9 favorites]


Holy shit, Lioslath. I had no idea.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:13 AM on May 28, 2014


Interesting thing about the Remy case is that his father is famous, and admitted to enabling his son despite knowing from the beginning that he was troubled. There's no doubt that all those judges let him walk due to his father. I wonder if that was the case with Rodger.

Highly recommend reading Ralston McTodd's link above to today's Boston Globe column by Yvonne Abraham, it's comforting to know that some people are speaking out.
posted by Melismata at 10:17 AM on May 28, 2014


I am in a bit of A Mood so I was going to respond to It is a silent war on women and it has been going on forever and it has to stop with "apparently it doesn't have to" but that Daily Beast piece, holy cow it's great. Stuff like that and people here and high-profile people like Scalzi pushing us to not be fuckheads even if culture wants us to... it's reassuring. It's not enough, but it's a light.

And something good on Daily Beast? I have to go lie down for a minute and get my worldview in order again.
posted by phearlez at 10:23 AM on May 28, 2014 [4 favorites]


I thought the Daily Beast piece was excellent as well. Then I clicked on "expand comments," where I learned that the true victim in all this is Seth Rogen.
posted by prize bull octorok at 10:27 AM on May 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


spitbull: "Most mental illness is not diagnosed by empirical evidence from brain scans, which, even if such direct correlations exist, is an aspect of psychiatric medicine still in its infancy. Most psychiatric disorders are diagnosed empirically based on clusters of symptoms and responses to medications. It's one step above random guessing at its most scientific. Two experienced clinicians will often disagree on the interpretation of the same presenting symptoms."

While I would not want to disturb your faith in the processes of "internal medicine", you'd be amazed at how many illnesses are diagnosed on the basis of symptom clusters and medication response with minimal understanding or awareness of the etiology or specific pathophysiology. Disease is an etiological concept whereas illness is a biopsychosocial response usually assumed to be derived from a disease perturbation of homeostasis. In clinical practice, you often just don't have time to research the disease and go back to first principles -- you treat the illness and create optimal conditions for the organ or organism to establish a new, stable homeostasis ("the tincture of time"). Wrt their in-hospital treatment goals or their diagnoses, patients are usually shielded from the debate or dissension between their treating clinicians or between different specialties. Often, these dissensions are revealed only during forensic reconstructions after something bad has happened and legal action has been taken. For many outcomes not resulting in legal action, treatment dissension is occult and usually reviewed through internal reviews (worst case: "M&Ms") which use a different format to legal process. There's a whole sub-specialty of hospitalist psychiatry, consult-liaison, where a huge chunk of the liaison component is dedicated to balancing optimal treatment compatibility between competing medicine specialties.

Using brain scans for individual diagnosis is not plausible. Because of the poor spatial and temporal resolution of today's scanners, even when we take pictures of simple organs with minimally interacting, relatively slow feedback loops we're lucky to get typical 70-90% PPV for specific diagnoses ("that's why radiologists always add "clinical correlation is advised" on all their reports). Even for classic diagnoses, such as appendicitis or ischemic colitis, we get a PPV of 90-95% based on radiological data. Pictures can be wrong, but they are intuitively compelling simply because of the overweighted saliency of our occipital lobe creating a neurobiological intentional fallacy. For classic, core psychiatric diagnoses, on the basis of equivalent evaluation from structured clinical interviews by experienced clinicians, diagnostic congruence rates of around 80-90% are possible - which is about equivalent to hospitalist diagnoses of classic illnesses.

Then take the brain which, by recent neuroscience guesses, contains at least 300-400 individual circuits in mutually interacting, incredibly rapid feedback loops. And the pictures we can take of downstream metabolic products barely begin to illuminate what's going on. And we have no real idea of how these circuits integrate to form a mind. Taking pictures of the organ is a nice research tool, and an effective rhetorical device, but quite limited for clinical practice.

You can try taking pictures of brains as a population average to diagnose "psychopathy", but the individual PPV is negligible. Instead of taking pictures, the most sensitive and specific instrument for diagnosing personality disorders and impulse control disorders remains neuropsychologic testing, which seems to dismay significant proportion of parents and adults seeking, say, a quick ADHD diagnosis and who because of quack science believe "brain scanning" for individual psychiatric diagnosis is a real thing.
posted by meehawl at 11:18 AM on May 28, 2014 [15 favorites]


Sorry to link to Dilbert, but this one seems appropriate (part of a series).
posted by Melismata at 11:40 AM on May 28, 2014


Uh, why?
posted by Justinian at 11:46 AM on May 28, 2014 [11 favorites]


Glenn Beck’s The Blaze Mocks Sexual Assault Victims With “RAPE!” Skits

I know not everyone is cool with posting links to heinous shit on here, and I understand that concern, but I feel like it's important to bring things like this to the forefront, to expose this ugliness. Because this degree of misogyny is not relegated to the fringes or to the "mentally ill." Beck has literally millions of viewers (I'm guessing, I don't have his viewership numbers on hand), and the fact that he can air shit like this and not be instantly outraged right the fuck off the air is sickening.
posted by Timmoy Daen at 11:51 AM on May 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


Uh, why?

Yeah, I'd also like to know why that Dilbert cartoon is appropriate. I clicked through to more of the series but I am still confuse.
posted by sweetkid at 12:08 PM on May 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


But who here didn't already know Glenn Beck was a fuckface?
posted by agregoli at 12:37 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


This is sort of related on the male entitlement continuum: Amazon is Killing My Sex Life. It's a reply to a piece that I think got linked in an earlier thread on this male entitlement stuff (the piece it's replying to is linked within). It's a lot of talk about the sort of men brought into Seattle by the tech scene and what dating them is like. What the women describe is on the continuum with Eliot Rodger--not so far down, but the similiarities are clear.

As for creepiness and entitlement on Metafilter, and how far it goes: I had forgotten about Hopperfan/Lioslath (RIP), but there's a member whose account is now disabled who went off on a rant about how he hated women because he was, using different terms, what Rodger and his cronies called an "incel" that terrified me. I think it was ultimately deleted, but I was hesitant about meetups for a while after that. So yes, even here these things happen.
posted by immlass at 12:51 PM on May 28, 2014 [13 favorites]


meehawl, having spent most of the last few weeks in an ICU (not as the patient!), I completely accept your characterization of internal medicine, of course. Under triage circumstances especially. And of course there are many instances of misdiagnosis or sick people hunting for years for a correct diagnosis. My comparison was to an idealized version of internal medicine (physiology, perhaps a better term), where we know the mechanisms -- including the intermediate ones -- that produce most symptoms. (Just today I learned about the predictable relationship between referred shoulder pain and liver disease, which sort of blew my mind, pain being one of those frontiers where we still don't know as much about the mechanism, perhaps, and where we treat the symptom independently as a matter of course.) But still, an autopsy can usually resolve what diseases someone had when they were last living. Cutting into a young shooter's brain will not tell us what went wrong, was my point. And no amount of intellectual discussion about the symptoms or the current DSM-approved ways those are typically clustered to diagnose particular psychopathologies will ever resolve the question

That's because illness is not only a disruption of homeostasis in the individual. Madness/insanity/mental illness are cultural constructions of disruptions to social homeostasis. We barely understand how they emerge in the nodes that make up society, namely individual minds and brains, what causes these variations in human mental functioning, or how to predict the course of their associated morbidities.

But point well taken, and conceded.
posted by spitbull at 12:56 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


Rodger’s gendered snuff dreams are the stock of so many male internet trolls. Indeed he evinces the classic psychology of the troll in his 'manifesto': "It felt horrible to be teased and bullied … but at the same time I got a kick out of getting so much attention." The difference is that he then enacts the fantasies that make below-the-line comments cesspits.

The element of performance, articulating the baseline ideology of the internet misogynist in the idiom of pulp fiction, continued to the horrifying end. In the final video before the massacre, his assumed persona, always unconvincing, became a caricature. [...] He impersonated the "godlike" power that, in a sense, he always believed himself entitled to. Except that, it wasn't just an act. It really was heartstoppingly terrifying. He really did mean to kill.
Richard Seymour: Taking Elliot Rodger Seriously
posted by RogerB at 1:05 PM on May 28, 2014


Seymour says in that essay that Rodger used an assault weapon in his spree. That's wrong, isn't it? He used pistols and knives? Other than that it was interesting though mostly going over ground we've covered ourselves in this thread.
posted by Justinian at 1:33 PM on May 28, 2014


I know not everyone is cool with posting links to heinous shit on here, and I understand that concern, but I feel like it's important to bring things like this to the forefront, to expose this ugliness. Because this degree of misogyny is not relegated to the fringes or to the "mentally ill." Beck has literally millions of viewers (I'm guessing, I don't have his viewership numbers on hand), and the fact that he can air shit like this and not be instantly outraged right the fuck off the air is sickening.

Due to the fact that TheBlaze is owned in part by GB and sponsored by gold affiliated companies ready to cash in on the ignorant and spitefully hateful alike, there's no way to get this nutbag off their air by threatening to boycott sponsors.
posted by Talez at 1:48 PM on May 28, 2014


Becca Irene, "The Elephant in the Santa Barbara Shooting":
We need to look square in the face the very real and tenable possibility that he made a calculated, rational choice according to the beliefs and feelings that he had. He didn’t need to be mentally ill. He just had to hold the beliefs that he had and the experiences that led to his feelings.

This reality is frightening because it forces us to confront the fact that. . . our own beliefs can, in fact, have real world, life or death consequences. And it raises that uncomfortable possibility that we ourselves might hold destructive, false beliefs unawares. That some of the decisions we may have made, and may make in the future, were and will be based on false beliefs, and may be very wrong, evil actions though we believe them to be right and justified.

. . . The champions of patriarchy are coming out of the woodwork in the aftermath of the shooting. Patriarchy has been exposed for what it is. This revelation threatens to weaken the freedom of men to use lesser amounts of violence to control and oppress women in their daily lives. Every time an individual ridicules the idea of a rape culture, or ridicules the idea that American culture is patriarchal and misogynistic, they are choosing to defend a system they like. They are choosing to defend systematic misogyny – that is, to protect their freedom to use overt and covert force against and upon women.
posted by cybercoitus interruptus at 1:52 PM on May 28, 2014 [16 favorites]


Interesting from that Time link Joe in Australia included above:
Perhaps men arguing on the Internet (though not all men!) follow a developmental path that echoes an individual man growing a social conscience, which in a very simplified form goes something like this:

Stage 1. Sexism is a fake idea invented by feminists
Stage 2. Sexism happens, but the effect of “reverse sexism” on men is as bad or worse
Stage 3. Sexism happens, but the important part is that I personally am not sexist
Stage 4. Sexism happens, and I benefit from that whether or not I personally am sexist
Stage 5. Sexism happens, I benefit from it, I am unavoidably sexist sometimes because I was socialized that way, and if I want to be anti-sexist I have to be actively working against that socialization

posted by Anitanola at 1:58 PM on May 28, 2014 [34 favorites]


This is sort of related on the male entitlement continuum: Amazon is Killing My Sex Life. It's a reply to a piece that I think got linked in an earlier thread on this male entitlement stuff (the piece it's replying to is linked within).

Yeah... the writer of the initial piece, about how the influx of men into Seattle is ruining his dating chances, also wrote an instantly legendary piece on Medium about the evils of "cutoff culture" - not, sadly, a group dedicated to wearing short shorts, but the hitherto unidentified culture of women breaking up with men after four months and then not sticking around to help them through their feelings of hurt and abandonment.

And then not welcoming men back into their lives when they email out of the blue a year later. Or when they call to ask why they aren't replying to their emails. Or when men, after being told to stop contacting them, continue to send "kind" emails "in a spirit of healing". Or when men bring a date to the restaurant they are waitressing at, and thus economically compelled to stay at.

Jaw-dropping sample:
Unfortunately, modern technology aids in cutoff. It’s easy to screen calls or block each other on Facebook. Psychology Today’s Elizabeth Svoboda writes, “Remote shortcuts like electronic endings look deceptively appealing—although, at the very least, they chip away at the self-respect of the dumpers and deprive dumpees of a needed shot at closure.” She says it’s “contributing to large increases in stalking behavior…More than 3 million people report being stalking victims each year, the ultimate measure of collective cluelessness about ending love affairs well.”

I believe that most domestic violence is the result of men with trauma histories reacting to powerlessness in response to experiences with their ex, friends, or family. Certainly men are responsible for finding nonviolent ways to respond to feeling powerless, but culturally we need to understand the dynamics driving these kinds of situations if we’re to reduce them.
Remember, this is not a sexually frustrated, cripplingly inadequate college student - this is a wealthy, adult man with a career in technology. So, yeah, toxic entitlement is happening all over, basically.
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:31 PM on May 28, 2014 [22 favorites]


(And the fact that in a more-than-zero number of cases, toxic entitlement leads to stalking, violence or, indeed, murder means that relatively harmless jembles cannot necessarily expect to be treated as harmless.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 3:33 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Jembles?
posted by Justinian at 3:58 PM on May 28, 2014


I thought it was a typo but I googled "jembles" and... kind of wish I hadn't. Ugh.
posted by Justinian at 4:00 PM on May 28, 2014


Jembles

It's truly, truly, truly outrageous how some men act.
posted by Talez at 4:04 PM on May 28, 2014 [6 favorites]


Now I'm sad because jembles sounds delightful before you find out what it means.

Although I'd thought we already had a word for people who were into calling everyone m'lady and it was 'member of the Society for Creative Anachronism'.
posted by winna at 4:17 PM on May 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


ART THOU READY TO JEMBLE
posted by Sticherbeast at 4:22 PM on May 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


Jembles. Huh, it seems I learn something new here every day. Not always a good, thing mind you, but I guess you have to take the WTF with the good.
posted by dg at 4:26 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


Although I'd thought we already had a word for people who were into calling everyone m'lady and it was 'member of the Society for Creative Anachronism'.

[tipping intensifies].gif
posted by Talez at 4:29 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


I know some SCA types and I don't think these fedora types would be into something that requires that much sewing.
posted by NoraReed at 4:39 PM on May 28, 2014 [9 favorites]


Jembles, oft-times, serenade me
When mistaking Bunny for m'lady.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 4:48 PM on May 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


Yeah... the writer of the initial piece, about how the influx of men into Seattle is ruining his dating chances, also wrote an instantly legendary piece on Medium about the evils of "cutoff culture"

Damn, i was just writing a post about this in response to the amazon dating one above. This article is really, profoundly bad. It's like a fucking symphony of bullshit that bends over backwards so far it becomes a Möbius strip in trying to justify its own point.

I hear all the time from women i know that the only real problem with the dating scene in seattle is that there's an abnormally large number of shitty men compared to other places they've lived.

cheetodustonfedora.jpg
posted by emptythought at 4:54 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


Remember, this is not a sexually frustrated, cripplingly inadequate college student - this is a wealthy, adult man with a career in technology. So, yeah, toxic entitlement is happening all over, basically.

Wow, that piece. And he goes from "My ex doesn't want to talk to me" right to "And then domestic violence, duh!" which, I don't....

I see he's a communications consultant. Well.
posted by rtha at 5:02 PM on May 28, 2014 [11 favorites]


I missed the part that he was a communications consultant, but that makes sense, having spent far too much time with people who claim to be experts in communication but who have no fucking idea of simple concepts like 'tailor the delivery of information to the audience' or 'when people beg you for two fucking years that they desperately want x information, don't keep handing them long boring presentations about y'. That whole screed was nothing more than entitlement taken to a deeply personal level combined with a complete failure to understand what was clearly an unambiguous message from someone suffering pretty much the same pain and angst he was, in my view.
posted by dg at 5:46 PM on May 28, 2014


He's communicating plenty. Just not what he set out to communicate.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:04 PM on May 28, 2014 [8 favorites]


His message got all jembled up.
posted by snuffleupagus at 7:20 PM on May 28, 2014 [5 favorites]


> I thought it was a typo but I googled "jembles" and... kind of wish I hadn't. Ugh

I duck duck go'd "jemble" and got nothing useful. Same for Bing and Yahoo. Only Google knew what jembles were.

I want to leave Google, but I guess that's where I need to turn for this sort of v. important thing.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:38 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]



ART THOU READY TO JEMBLE


I did not know this word but get a lot of OKC messages that start this way...my OKC username is a play on my first name that also includes a female royal title, so men start messages with "Your highness.." but still, it's weird. That wasn't why I used that username (forever ago), but now I'm thinking I might need to change it.
posted by sweetkid at 8:25 PM on May 28, 2014


theora55: " Bundy, the Boston Strangler and many (most?) other serial killers target women."

The only number I could turn up is that 65% of serial killer victims [PDF] are women. This is a pretty fuzzy number to pin down obviously because we don't really know how many serial killers are operating nor how many victims they have let alone gender makeup. And many serial killers aren't selective besides choosing small, weak, ill or elderly victims who have trouble fighting back like they were cheetahs on the Serengeti. There certainly aren't a lack of Serial killers who target men exclusively however. Most US infamously Gacy and Kearney.
posted by Mitheral at 8:39 PM on May 28, 2014 [2 favorites]


I just saw this Imgur cartoon that I thought was relevant.
posted by sweetkid at 8:48 PM on May 28, 2014 [19 favorites]


.
.
.
.
.
.
posted by misha at 9:26 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


The observation immediately following in the study Mitheral links to seems pertinent:

"Current statistics suggest an overall United States homicide victim gender split of 25% female and 75% male. (Fox, 2004)"

The study also notes that the younger the victim, the more likely the victim is female.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:28 PM on May 28, 2014


I want to write a book called "The Ultimate Guy's Guide to Getting Laid" with a stereotypical huge-breasted woman on the cover. Inside, it would be full of common-sense non-misogynistic dating advice.
posted by miyabo at 9:31 PM on May 28, 2014 [3 favorites]


OMG. That piece on "cutoff culture". Was it published for Halloween or something? It was terrifying!
posted by Joe in Australia at 10:11 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


Really. I mean, it's true that people leave each other in pretty heartless ways given the easy out that technology dangles (50 Txts to Leave Your Lover! Click here for the crazy relationship trick that AskMe doesn't want you to know about!) but that is a truly odd direction to go with it. I'm pretty sure men do this as much as women, and I'm pretty sure that the women they do it to feel just as awful as I did when my last relationship ended that way. But you know what? A woman did something unpleasant to me? So what? She was *not* all women (as it were).
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:18 PM on May 28, 2014


OMG. That piece on "cutoff culture". Was it published for Halloween or something? It was terrifying!

clearly you have never been talked at by a neckbeard like this.

i used to live with one.

they are very much serious.
posted by emptythought at 10:54 PM on May 28, 2014 [1 favorite]


By his own account she told him to stop communicating with her six times. But it's this line that made me feel scared and unwell:
Psychology Today’s Elizabeth Svoboda writes, “Remote shortcuts like electronic endings look deceptively appealing—although, at the very least, they chip away at the self-respect of the dumpers and deprive dumpees of a needed shot at closure.” She says it’s “contributing to large increases in stalking behavior…More than 3 million people report being stalking victims each year, the ultimate measure of collective cluelessness about ending love affairs well.”
See, it was her fault, and he didn't know he was doing anything wrong.

Incidentally, the author doesn't seen to have any facial hair, and that wouldn't be his problem anyway. Can we please not use physical references to insult people?
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:55 PM on May 28, 2014 [6 favorites]


And even if Svoboda's correct about the one thing following the other in cause and effect, so what? It's not OK to stalk someone, regardless of whatever crass Internet-era dating thing they did to you.

Not that I buy her quoted assertion, which I'm guessing is merely her opinion on the subject rather than findings based on data. Being abandoned by your romantic and sexual partner sucks, regardless of your gender. The mediated communication and persistent data collection that characterizes life on the Internet clearly enables both the dumping partners at an arms length, and stalking behaviors. The correlation (if it's actually supported by data, which seems questionable) is much more likely to be a result of that sharing of a precondition, than a direct causal link between the the two phenomena.
posted by snuffleupagus at 1:13 AM on May 29, 2014


Sorry to add a meta-comment, but can we please put some additional tags on this post? I originally thought I'd favorited it, but hadn't and had an impossible time finding it via tags. Thanks!
posted by iamkimiam at 2:51 AM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


I believe that most domestic violence is the result of men

If only he had stopped when he was ahead.
posted by empath at 3:24 AM on May 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


I've only read parts of his 'manifesto' - I don't think I could take the whole thing. The news in the UK has been pretty grim as it is recently.

What I have read, though, reminded me of something. Years ago, I friended someone on Livejournal; a young man who seemed a little pretentious in that way disaffected young men can be, but otherwise harmless. Once he friended me back, I had access to his friends list posts. (If you were never on LJ, there are privacy settings so that some posts can only be read by those added to your friends list.) These were quite different. Post after post about how awful 'feminazi' women were, and then other posts about how insert-racial-slur-here people would get in his way and make the places he wanted to go less pleasant.

The account is probably long-gone now, but it made me pretty uncomfortable to read posts about what would be left behind once he was dead on the autopsy table interspersed with wishes about taking a gun and shooting all the [minority] at his local Wendy's. This was an era of rotten.com and people enjoying being tooedgy4u online, but this seemed worryingly authentic. I unfollowed and got a 'well fuck you you snooty bitch :p' type message for my troubles.

I have seen a few posts from people taken from online discussions and reposted on Twitter for mockery. Many of them say that this is the fault of women - that we aren't nice enough, are too quick to dismiss disaffected young men. And that's made me second-guess myself. If I was nicer to the weird misogynistic racist guy, would he have been less misogynistic and racist? If I turned someone down, will they develop bitterness that leads to rage, and could I have prevented that by allowing them access to brain and body? Am I just lucky that of the more broken men I've known in this respect, all are too ambitious to want to risk it all on some violent statement? Should we just smile when we're told to and take catcalls as a compliment, just in case?

I don't think it's that much of a co-incidence that, earlier in the week, I was reminded of the Open Source Boob Project.
posted by mippy at 3:40 AM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


can we please put some additional tags on this post?

Tossed a few more on.
posted by cortex at 6:22 AM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I actually friended many of these guys because WE SHOULD ACCEPT AND LOVE EVERYONE!! And it did not seem to help them be better people. I assume you already know this is the case but seriously. It doesn't work.

I even devirginized one of them just because he felt he should be having sex and I felt bad for him when I had all this vagina laying around and why shouldn't I share it?! But somewhere between him saying women should be grateful for rape and that he wished he lived in Japan and could grope women in public places and that child sexual abuse probably wouldn't be such a big deal if we were just more accepting of it....I wound up telling him he was a horrible person and he cried and we never talked again.

I still want everyone to be accepted and loved but some people are like super fucking harmful and community initiatives to help them should probable be done through an organization that allows volunteers to come visit them in a supervised environment where the volunteer can use a fake name and be anonymous or something? And have counseling and support about how to deal with how messed up the person they are trying to give community support to is? And that if there is such a thing as a desirable community support we should all give each other, that includes working on ones self to be kind to others and safe to interact with that some people aren't choosing or able to do?

It's complicated and I've been in communities with forced niceness among everyone and for all these reasons that gets bad. People should generally try to be kind and help each other out and even be open to friendships, but people also have an obligation to respect others boundaries peacefully and know that there are plenty of a good reasons a kind and loving person might not be the right fit for any other given person especially for friendship or extensive aid outside a general community or group setting. AND CERTAINLY NOT FOR SEX.
posted by xarnop at 6:31 AM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


OMG. That piece on "cutoff culture". Was it published for Halloween or something? It was terrifying!

clearly you have never been talked at by a neckbeard like this.

i used to live with one.

they are very much serious.


Can you elaborate? I'd be interested in some details from an outsider perspective...
posted by Going To Maine at 7:22 AM on May 29, 2014


Isla Vista Resident Arrested for Negligent Discharge of a Firearm

Did the Santa Barbara Sheriff's Office just stumble upon another potential spree killer?
posted by indubitable at 7:27 AM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Nah, just some dumbass stupidly playing with a loaded gun. Which he'll most probably lose.
posted by Pudhoho at 8:05 AM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Did you read to the end? The number of guns, the 1000 rounds of ammunition, and the apparently illegal "high-capacity assault rifle magazines" aren't unusual?
posted by nobody at 8:09 AM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I have seen a few posts from people taken from online discussions and reposted on Twitter for mockery. Many of them say that this is the fault of women - that we aren't nice enough, are too quick to dismiss disaffected young men. And that's made me second-guess myself. If I was nicer to the weird misogynistic racist guy, would he have been less misogynistic and racist? If I turned someone down, will they develop bitterness that leads to rage, and could I have prevented that by allowing them access to brain and body? Am I just lucky that of the more broken men I've known in this respect, all are too ambitious to want to risk it all on some violent statement? Should we just smile when we're told to and take catcalls as a compliment, just in case?

When I was younger I had a friend who was harassed by some men in an anarchist group she was part of - with the complicity of the women, who viewed her as bourgeois because she...uh....cooked them dinner but had bought rather than dumpstered the food - and one of the guys' line was "if you won't sleep with me, you have a capitalist attitude about your own body - only a capitalist wouldn't want to share". This was not the only gross misogynist thing that happened during that time.

This was during a particular political situation locally which brought a lot of traveling anarchists to town so social ties were weak, there was a premium placed on macho behavior because people were being brutalized by the police and being able to "fight back" was prized, and it was a situation where "green environmentalism" (the poorly understood version) had pretty much trumped previous local anarchist-feminist and GLBTQ-anarchist organizing. A lot of local factors, some the fault of anarchists and some external, produced an environment where there just wasn't that much other than a really misogynist variant on anarchism for a while. In retrospect it was particularly shocking because saying some bullshit like that would have gotten you bounced from most local anarchist circles a mere five years before - it just wasn't on, local women and queer Big Anarchists Around Town would have made your name mud. It was a really gross time.

I bring this up because I think there are particular social factors which provide space for misogyny - not just the ideology of rape culture/hatred of women itself, but also hypermobility breaking up social networks, social spaces where stereotypically "masculine" activities and behaviors are centered and overvalued, even just generational change or the loss of spaces and institutions. The local much-more-queer-and-feminist anarchist project had run out of money and folded a couple of years before, some people had left town - I really think those small changes helped create cultural space where misogyny could flourish.
posted by Frowner at 8:35 AM on May 29, 2014 [23 favorites]


(Oh, a key feature at the time was an atmosphere of emergency - "we don't have time for your gender issues now, what is important is stopping [Big Local Quite Genuinely Very Bad Thing]". Women being safe and "feminine" things not being despised - that was positioned as trivial. Which is how I think it works in many strongly ideologized communities - academia, the church, financial institutions - where gender stuff is positioned as less important than the Big Issues, and something that will just have to wait until the Big Issues are resolved - which conveniently they never are.)
posted by Frowner at 8:38 AM on May 29, 2014 [15 favorites]


Nah, just some dumbass stupidly playing with a loaded gun. Which he'll most probably lose.

Did you read to the end? The number of guns, the 1000 rounds of ammunition, and the apparently illegal "high-capacity assault rifle magazines" aren't unusual?


Respect the culture!

/hamburger
posted by zombieflanders at 8:50 AM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Christ, Frowner. That's the kind of thing that happened during civil rights and led to the black feminist movement - I remember reading a book called All The Women Are White, All The Blacks Are Men.

Depressing that this kind of marginalisation still happens. (Though I get the sensation that a similar movement is gathering pace amongst trans people - I'm way too cis to opine on that, though.) I once dated a professed anti-capitalist who, during an argument, wou;d happily call me a slag/slapper or whine 'I thought you were different, but you're just like all the other women'. How can someone profess to be far-left and still think things like that are OK? (Mind you, the same guy thought I shouldn't be suffering from depression 'because it's not like you're homeless', so maybe it's just the one guy being an asshole. He wasn't seriously participating in any local groups, just moaning about 'rich kids' and refusing to read No Logo 'because it's for trendy yuppies'.)

What kind of anarchist doesn't want to break down patriarchy? A rubbish one.
posted by mippy at 9:10 AM on May 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


What kind of anarchist doesn't want to break down patriarchy? A rubbish one.

Frowner's experience was exactly mine and why I drifted further apart from the on-the-ground anarchist actions in Seattle post-WTO. A few charismatic vanguardists who were also sort of quasi date-rapists made the whole scene just super unpleasant to be associated with.
posted by jessamyn at 9:14 AM on May 29, 2014 [14 favorites]


The Cutoff Culture thing reminds me of how I reacted to my first serious relationship ending. When you're seventeen, it's entirely normal to get too intermeshed and develop an 'us against the world' attitude, hopefully fuelled by too many viewings of Heathers and feeling that the fact you both liked Catcher In The Rye. As an adult, when your relationships end, hopefully you have friends and family outwith your romantic attachments and the geographical advantage of being able to put distance between you (unlike high school where if your former soulmate dates someone else, it's difficult to ignore).

One of the most important lessons I learned as I grew into adulthood is that you can't expect someone who hurt you to take the pain away. It's a hard but necessary thing to learn. It is not someone else's job to nurse you back to health, particularly if you think that by doing so they will somehow grow to love you again. It is not psychological warfare, the act of an injured person trying to erase past trauma, or a solid excuse for carrying out domestic violence. If you think it is any of those things, you need to talk to a professional. Emma took out a court order against the guy because she ran out of nice ways to tell him.
posted by mippy at 9:17 AM on May 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


The hell of it is, the guy who wrote that "cutoff culture" thing retweeted a "#yesallwomen" post. I was soooooooooooooooooo tempted to make my own tweet to that hashtag about "because this guy's poor ex girlfriend had to get a court order to tell him it was over and he still didn't get it".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:30 AM on May 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


There's no such thing as a slut: "A new longitudinal study examined how college students slut-shame—and found that the practice is as illogical as it is damaging."

(It almost feels to me that the article and the research study may be worth their own FPP, but I'll just put them here.)
posted by mudpuppie at 10:52 AM on May 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


My take, in short, on the "cutoff culture" piece:

- Author and girl meet
- 18 months later, author and girl start seeing each other
- 4 months later, author and girl split up
- ~12 months later, author attempts to reconnect
- Over the next nine months (21 months after they split up), author sends "kind emails in the spirit of healing," girl tells him to stop contacting her.
- Months later, author conveniently shows up with a date at a restaurant where the girl "happened to be waitressing."

TL; DR - A guy dates a girl for 4 months, spends the next two years getting over her and occasionally behaving in a creepy way.

My favorite part:

"Emma’s last note included the phrase, 'Apparently, what I want seems irrelevant to you.' She didn’t realize the irony that what I wanted had long been irrelevant to her."
posted by kat518 at 11:38 AM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


Frowner's experience was exactly mine and why I drifted further apart from the on-the-ground anarchist actions in Seattle post-WTO. A few charismatic vanguardists who were also sort of quasi date-rapists made the whole scene just super unpleasant to be associated with.

There's a really great book about all this - The Revolution Starts At Home - Confronting Intimate Violence in Activist Communities. INCITE is pretty good - they're the same people that produced The Revolution Will Not Be Funded.
posted by corb at 11:45 AM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Did you read to the end? The number of guns, the 1000 rounds of ammunition, and the apparently illegal "high-capacity assault rifle magazines" aren't unusual?

I don't know, we're told over and over by gun enthusiasts that owning a lot of guns means nothing, and that you have to have a lot of ammo on hand because you go through it faster than you think, and that high-capacity magazines are just a really awesome convenience. It seems like a hell of a lot of guns and ammo to me, because I don't own a gun and never will, but look back on any gun control thread here and you can find plenty of MeFi members who don't have a problem with this. It's only unusual if you're not a member of the gun culture.
posted by palomar at 11:45 AM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


I don't know, we're told over and over by gun enthusiasts that owning a lot of guns means nothing, and that you have to have a lot of ammo on hand because you go through it faster than you think, and that high-capacity magazines are just a really awesome convenience.

Another thing that might be useful to keep in mind when thinking about this sort of stuff is that ammunition prices tend to fluctuate as wildly as stock prices, sometimes. It's one of the reasons that so many people are making fortunes off gun speculation. For example - the price of .22 ammunition in many areas of the country is as high as .50 a bullet right now - whereas previously, it would have been as low as .5 a bullet in some cases - a tenfold return on investment. For some people, sitting on a pile of bullets is like sitting on a bunch of stocks that are rising in price but you are hoping to sell before the fall.

Mind you, I agree that some people do probably have nefarious intentions in mind, but that sort of thing makes it hard to tell who's planning evil and who just wants to make (or save) a buck.
posted by corb at 11:51 AM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


I thought the "cutoff culture" piece was going to be about the practice of the "slow fade" or "ghosting" as a way to end a relationship which I agree is a really shitty thing to do. But no-- Emma ended their relationship like an adult, by using her words.

So what that piece is actually about is this idea that women aren't the ones who should be making choices about their own love or sex lives, because men know better. That's the thread that runs through slut-shaming, Nice Guys, and male entitlement, and it was explicity stated in Rodger's manifesto that women shouldn't be allowed to choose who they "breed" with.... which, if you follow that to its logical conclusion, means that that sex shouldn't happen unless it's rape ... because if they were to CONSENT, then they'd be choosing, and we can't have that.

But Reifman felt that he knew what was best for Emma (or else he just didn't care about what was best for her), and what was best for her was HIM, so he wasn't going to take 'no' for an answer.
posted by Asparagus at 11:53 AM on May 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


This might be the most horrible thing I've read about this yet. Because by their own admission a bunch of the PUAHate men are deeply inspired and are making their own terror plans. Lessons From a Day Spent With the UCSB Shooter's Awful Friends (Warning: potentially triggering, deeply upsetting stuff.) We can all start calling these forums dangerous hate groups now, right?
posted by naju at 1:58 PM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I know it's the Daily Mail and they're just flat-out terrible, but I can't find another link -- in any case, they have an interview with Philip Bloeser, a friend of Rodger's who was mentioned by name in the manifesto. (Mods, please delete if this is too objectionable.)
posted by palomar at 2:05 PM on May 29, 2014


wow, that chat room is a trip.
posted by agregoli at 2:12 PM on May 29, 2014


holy shit naju. I mean holy fucking shit. That is worse than I imagined it could be.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 2:13 PM on May 29, 2014


Yeah I really feel like the existence of groups like that are a public health issue. Intervention? Deprogramming? Surely there have got to be ways to address this shit?
posted by xarnop at 2:25 PM on May 29, 2014


What do you mean by intervention, though? That's pretty broad and there's probably not much that can legally be done to people who are talking crap, even scary crap.
posted by Justinian at 2:55 PM on May 29, 2014


Well if free speech protects their ability to say stuff, can't free speech protect the right to say things to them? I mean that wouldn't be illegal right?

I feel like by intervention I mean surely there are things that could be done that would be legal...?
posted by xarnop at 3:00 PM on May 29, 2014


And also it seems like people who host forums would have the right to ban hate speech? I don't know what the laws are about stuff like that....
posted by xarnop at 3:01 PM on May 29, 2014


Maybe I misunderstood; I thought "deprogramming" meant more or less forcibly kidnapping people and keeping them isolated while it went on.
posted by Justinian at 3:02 PM on May 29, 2014


And also it seems like people who host forums would have the right to ban hate speech? I don't know what the laws are about stuff like that....

There aren't any. The only people who think that "free speech means i'm allowed to say whatever i want anywhere" are middle schoolers and assholes. If you run a hosting service, you can absolutely spell out in your contract that you aren't allowed to post hate speech or even content about cats.

A lot of internet assholes don't understand this and are always going YOU'RE VIOLATING MY CIVIL RIGHTS!!. No, they're not doing anything worse than refusing to serve you a drink when you're hammered. Pipe down, chump.
posted by emptythought at 3:12 PM on May 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


Yes, the web hosters for things like PUAHATE are perfectly free to refuse to host their forum.
posted by Justinian at 3:14 PM on May 29, 2014


Lessons From a Day Spent With the UCSB Shooter's Awful Friends (Warning: potentially triggering, deeply upsetting stuff.)

oh god fuckfuckfuckfuck I want to wash my eyes with lye.
posted by corb at 3:17 PM on May 29, 2014


Maybe I misunderstood; I thought "deprogramming" meant more or less forcibly kidnapping people and keeping them isolated while it went on.

diction has context: overcome your programming and be a better man
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:30 PM on May 29, 2014


Jesus Christ, that chat room. Horrifying.
posted by brundlefly at 3:38 PM on May 29, 2014


diction has context

Yes it does.
posted by Justinian at 3:40 PM on May 29, 2014


Frowner's experience was exactly mine and why I drifted further apart from the on-the-ground anarchist actions in Seattle post-WTO. A few charismatic vanguardists who were also sort of quasi date-rapists made the whole scene just super unpleasant to be associated with.

Nothing has changed here. I have several friends who hang out with all the punks, anarchists, and traveling street kids(of which the venn diagram is pretty damn overlapped)

I swear it's like every other week i hear some new thing about "That one guy everybody respects got called out as a rapist by such and such lady, and then like 3 more people came forward". Then i'll hear more stories about that guy for a while and he somehow still manages to have a ton of friends, beg forgiveness, and manipulate his way back into being semi-respected and "ok" until he just does it again.

A bunch of women banded together and basically chased one of the guys out of town, causing him to hitch/catch out to like arizona or something... where people there who were connected to people here immediately started relaying back essentially "why did you give us your problem? he's up to the same garbage here"

I'm sure june will bring a new story of some asshole like that. Again.

I mean yea, basically every community is going to have a stealth creeper or two, but i think it's especially worth shitting on when it's a super radical "progressive" community like that. It honestly tarnishes my opinion and view of that entire community that it just seems like an inexorable scourge.

Lessons From a Day Spent With the UCSB Shooter's Awful Friends (Warning: potentially triggering, deeply upsetting stuff.)

I believe copycat killings and possibly even a bombing are going to happen soon. I'm completely serious.

I know they said it to, but yea... ugh. people are going to take this as inspiration and something to push them over the edge from maybe into yes.

Oh and i refuse to believe the "what's your rape count" part isn't 4chan style trolling. it's just too ridiculous. NO.
posted by emptythought at 3:41 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yes, Justinian, xarnop meant forcibly kidnapping the PUAHaters and subjecting them to the Ludovico Technique. That's a fair reading of what she wrote and not a derail at all
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:43 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sadly, we're up to multiple mass shootings of this type per year now so I think it's a given there will be more soon. Which is an awful thing to contemplate.
posted by Justinian at 3:44 PM on May 29, 2014


Rustic: What the heck? I said I must have misunderstood her in the very comment you replied to. Sheesh.
posted by Justinian at 3:45 PM on May 29, 2014


Sorry, that read as a rhetorical flourish to me rather than as honest misunderstanding. Carry on.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 3:46 PM on May 29, 2014


oh god fuckfuckfuckfuck I want to wash my eyes with lye.

And some of those people have a supposed constitutional right to bear arms.
posted by Talez at 4:17 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


It might also be worth noting that since the 2XC subreddit was made a default, people are starting to notice that it's not such a safe space anymore. It's almost like creating a safe space for women draws jackasses to it like moths to a light bulb.
posted by Talez at 4:18 PM on May 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


Oh and i refuse to believe the "what's your rape count" part isn't 4chan style trolling. it's just too ridiculous. NO.

If I'd read Rodger's manifesto before the shooting I would have said, this is obviously self-aware parody or trolling of some sort. And I would have been so fucking wrong.
posted by prize bull octorok at 4:18 PM on May 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


And some of those people have a supposed constitutional right to bear arms.

One of the more interesting parts:

[1:21 PM]: how many of you here ever thought about committing mass murder?

[1:21 PM]: yeah. just dont have access to guns in the uk. even the police just carry batons


There's a person right here saying yes, they've thought about committing mass murder, and the only thing preventing them is no access to guns in their country. When you have actual would-be mass murderers saying gun control is stopping them, what's left to argue about (with respect to the gun control issue, anyway)?
posted by naju at 4:26 PM on May 29, 2014 [22 favorites]


I am late to the thread - as usual, but want to weigh in since I have been spending most of the past five days on #YesAllWomen. I've read a lot, learned a lot and am quite optimistic about the emerging consciousness I'm seeing online. (I'm also not too surprised to see the feminist perspective mostly overlooked/sidelined on mefi)

If anyone is interested (FYI) here are some links I've collected:

This brilliant writing dissects the tragedy from a feminist Asian American perspective:
Masculinity vs. “Misogylinity”
http://reappropriate.co/?p=5755

"Misogylinity (and yes, I did just make up a word) defines masculinity by the objectified ownership of female sexuality, and in so doing commodifies us as tokens for the purposes of keeping masculine score. Furthermore, misogylinity is distinctly racist ...

Within the Asian American community, the fight to correct systemic emasculation of our Asian American men is not fringe: it is a mainstream"


This commentary may be of special interest to mefites: How Discussing Women's Issues Gets Derailed

And ...

“When you bring consciousness to anything, things begin to shift.” - Eve Ensler #YesAllWomen

We Have Work To Do
http://alistapart.com/blog/post/work-to-do-yesallwomen

Men are reacting:
http://postgradproblems.com/a-mans-rational-reaction-to-yesallwomen/

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html

http://www.policymic.com/articles/90079/37-men-show-us-what-real-men-s-activists-look-like
posted by Surfurrus at 4:30 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm also not too surprised to see the feminist perspective mostly overlooked/sidelined on mefi

I realize there is no way to respond to this without it becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy, but nonetheless, has that really happened here?

(PS I don't have time to read the links now but I look forward to doing so later)
posted by ryanfou at 4:32 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


That is one strange grab-bag of links.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:37 PM on May 29, 2014


(Strange interesting, largely, although the 37 pictures of dudes with placards was a locus of mixed feelings. And "That being said, be patient with us, ladies" gave me an odd tickle in the bile ducts.)
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:47 PM on May 29, 2014


Running_ -- Elliot Roger is the common denominator of all the links above. Misogyny as the key to this tragedy (and many, many others) is the underlying premise in all.
posted by Surfurrus at 4:50 PM on May 29, 2014


I guess I'm just not super committed to hearing about what the mens feel about this right now.
posted by running order squabble fest at 4:56 PM on May 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


You just cannot make these things up:
Pakistani man protesting 'honour killing' admits strangling first wife
A Pakistani man demanding justice after his pregnant wife was murdered outside Lahore's high court this week admitted on Thursday to strangling his first wife [...] Police confirmed that the killing had happened six years ago and that he was released after a "compromise" with his family.
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:27 PM on May 29, 2014 [7 favorites]


We are going to have to listen to the mens at some point if we want the mens to change the way they think and feel in a more positive direction. Closer to the event, when the mens are still experiencing the shock and horror of another mass shooting might not be a bad time. Women were the target, but like with most of these shootings some of the mens died as well. I've known several people who used to be mild NRA types that backed off that enthusiasm after talking to them in the wake of these shootings. People not directly involved or targeted end up forgetting pretty soon when the next news story comes around.
posted by Drinky Die at 5:29 PM on May 29, 2014


If I'd read Rodger's manifesto before the shooting I would have said, this is obviously self-aware parody or trolling of some sort. And I would have been so fucking wrong.

You might be right. I just have a finely-honed radar for that sort of thing from being the type of person, many years ago, who would go on chats like this and just agent provocateur and well... troll, to just see what the most extreme/ridiculous/hilarious responses i could get out of them would be. That entire block of text was just such a break and drift into absurdity from the previous stuff that it broke my mind, and set off my troll-dar.

It's like an altimeter. You set ground level as the baseline level of ridiculous/bizarreness/offensiveness of the discourse, and then monitor where you go from there. It went from ground level(which was in this case, already launching from a mountaintop base high) to 10,000 feet in like 2 seconds flat.

Maybe they really are earnestly like that, but fuck, it broke my mind.
posted by emptythought at 5:42 PM on May 29, 2014


We are going to have to listen to the mens at some point if we want the mens to change the way they think and feel in a more positive direction.

Sure sure - and there's a balance to be struck, good allyhood and so on, and I'm aware of the inherent problem of saying this...

But, yeah.

I actually think I don't want to hear about a dude's epiphany about how maybe many (not all) of the women tweeting with #yesallwomen had a point. If a man has spent two days stomping about being angry and defensive about the mean things women have been saying about men and generally being Not All Men Man, maybe it were better having got past that to talk to women, or indeed to invite a woman to talk about her experience in the place his blog post would otherwise go.

Arthur Chu's article, which has been linked to previously in this thread, is notable for saying, explicitly, "what the fuck is wrong with us?", which hits home a lot more successfully, I think. There's something kind of "hnnng" about having the "hey, maybe these angry women on Twitter have a point" Damascene moment, and then immediately telling the ladies to be patient and reminding them that not all men etc, while continuing to complain about how some of the #yesallwomen tweets are just mean and hateful. So, while:

We are going to have to listen to the mens at some point if we want the mens to change the way they think and feel in a more positive direction.

Is hard to argue with, I feel like right now, actually, the mens listening might be a nice thing to happen. And let he who is without sin etc, of course.
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:45 PM on May 29, 2014 [13 favorites]


Perhaps the mens could listen to each other rather than insist that women listen to them. Such woman as feel, at any given point, that they are in the mood for a little feminism 101 can listen to the mens - and who among us is not occasionally 101-ing on this topic? But as a broad generality the sort of reasoning which runs "well, if [oppressed group] does not categorically commit to [listening to/teaching/etc] their oppressors, why then we will never have any change" just seems silly at best and bullying at worst. "Ladies, if you don't center men we will not play along with your feminism!!!"
posted by Frowner at 5:53 PM on May 29, 2014 [16 favorites]


Per comments, I think perhaps I should have given more info about the above links. Yes, I expect a lot of tldr - but it is your loss.

http://alistapart.com/blog/post/work-to-do-yesallwomen

A List Apart is a tech site ('websites and digital products') - the writer is Editor in Chief.

The women I know, by and large, work in tech. They’re your designer, your developer, your content strategist, your user researcher. They’re our authors. And more often than any of us wants to believe, they’re getting groped at tech meetups. They’re receiving death and rape threats for speaking at a conference. Their bodies are being made the targets of office jokes.
posted by Surfurrus at 5:54 PM on May 29, 2014


"We are going to have to listen to the mens at some point"

I realize you are being diplomatic and mediating and all that but, good lord, sweetheart! Who do you think this society has been listening to so far?
posted by Anitanola at 5:56 PM on May 29, 2014 [40 favorites]


To continue, actually - I think that getting to a point where we-as-privileged/as-oppressors can manage our feelings and not demand attention/validation from the people we're privileged over - that's some pretty important emotional work right there. When we are in positions of privilege, we're used to the experience of others centering our feelings, treating what we say as important, validating us, praising us when we're good, etc. We're used to our feelings being everyone's responsibility. It's very different to become accustomed to stepping back and NOT trying to be in the spotlight. Actual self-work like this is about modesty and taking responsibility for our own feelings and development. This is just as true for me-as-white-person as it is for any given dude-as-dude.
posted by Frowner at 5:58 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


Speaking of listening to the mens: a friend of a friend of mine wrote this essay about that very topic. Long as hell but worth the read. The first part kind of raised my hackles a bit, but the rest of it brought it back around and has some good solutions.
posted by KathrynT at 5:59 PM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


(I think the Venn diagram of "people on Metafilter" and "people who know what a List Apart is" is probably kind of a circle...)
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:01 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


And a third thing (if I may, and then I'll knock it off): I think men do need to have some clumsy, uncomfortable conversations full of "OMG I never realized that" moments and "actually male privilege is real" and "wow, imagine how awful it must be to [experience Thing]". I think those conversations are absolutely okay, partly because I have had the White Person Equivalent conversations and they have been very, very helpful to me in working through and internalizing some stuff. With the minor exception of very close friends, I would not want to subject friends and acquaintances of color to those conversations because it would make them feel either awkward or responsible for educating me or both. While it's important for white people to be able to speak about race with people of color when the topic comes up, and while it's important for white people not to just go off in the corner and ramble/fantasize/theorize about race without paying attention to actual material by people of color, a lot of those "I am starting to take 101 stuff seriously, wow" conversations need to be had between white people.

Similarly, I think men need to have a lot of these conversations among men. They aren't bad conversations to have - they're just not conversations that need to be had with women, unless the women are into that.
posted by Frowner at 6:08 PM on May 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


Perhaps the mens could listen to each other rather than insist that women listen to them.

Healthy gender relations, and relationships in general, will always require listening from both sides. It doesn't really matter who is at fault. You can't understand the male perspective, and diagnose where it is on track and where it is off the rails, without hearing it.

Who do I think we have been listening to all this time? Men, and women less than we should. But those conversations aren't always honest, and they can be changed by new and shocking events. I'd definitely maintain that this is a pretty crucial time to have conversation in both directions because the dangerous end result of ongoing toxic beliefs is still so fresh in the memory.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:13 PM on May 29, 2014


I don't think using the phrase "the mens" helps very much. I understand why it was used and I agree. But it feels to me that it alieanates our allies. I wouldn't react kindly to "the womens" type of comment.
posted by futz at 6:14 PM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


Frowner - well said ... and you may note, the link (fantastic article) KathrynT posted above, you will see more about why it is soooo necessary for men to be talking with men on this pain women are unloading right now.
posted by Surfurrus at 6:17 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


We are going to have to listen to the mens at some point if we want the mens to change the way they think and feel in a more positive direction

To expand on Anitanola's point: I read that PUAHate article and wasn't even especially surprised (although the gonial angle thing was new to me, I'll grant) - as a woman living in a networked world, I hear and absorb male opinion all day every day. I think the people who haven't been listening to men are mostly men, and that maybe they haven't been listening to themselves, either.

Also, casting this as "two sides" suggests a nice neat horizontal position of equals. What's actually the case is a nice neat vertical hierarchy. At the population level, men are in charge of the world, women are expected to live in it. That there are plenty of individual exceptions (in part because there are many other hierarchies in this world, including socioeconomic status and race) doesn't disprove the general population-level effect.
posted by gingerest at 6:18 PM on May 29, 2014 [6 favorites]


And ... the Arthur Chu article - Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds ... probably deserves its own FPP
posted by Surfurrus at 6:20 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


To elaborate a bit on "the mens" thing...

There are many many wonderful and kind men out there who like women. Using that phrase feels like a blanket generic insult to all men. Let's not generalize.
posted by futz at 6:28 PM on May 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


Not... all.... mens?
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:30 PM on May 29, 2014 [21 favorites]




I hear and absorb male opinion all day every day.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that what you hear from men a lot of the time, in regards to themselves, is often bravado and bullshit. I think in a time when emotions of shock and horror are being felt it might be a time when listening will get you to the fears and insecurities at the heart of a lot of men. They aren't all as completely delusional about their faults as the killer was or the explicitly hateful online communities are. They can be reached, I think.

I think the people who haven't been listening to men are mostly men

It's definitely an issue, but men understand men in unique ways because they are men. Women understand women in unique ways. And, I think, men and women see things in the other the personal perspective can be blind to. I don't think we get to the heart of what is broken in men without everybody having a part in the larger discussion.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:44 PM on May 29, 2014


> Yes, I expect a lot of tldr - but it is your loss

What do you think your articles add that we haven't already discussed? It's a bit rude to come into a long thread and dump a lot of links without explaining what makes them worth looking at.
posted by The corpse in the library at 6:49 PM on May 29, 2014


I guess what I'm trying to get at is that what you hear from men a lot of the time, in regards to themselves, is often bravado and bullshit.

Maybe so, but that doesn't have anything to do with whether they're being listened to or heard? Women have been working their asses off just to survive. They listen acutely and vigilantly as part of that survival. Men have some work to do listening to each other and to women, and everyone who's raising children has a massive job to do to try to counter all the poison from every direction, but women qua women don't need to up their listening to men any.
posted by gingerest at 6:52 PM on May 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


women don't need to up their listening to men any.

In the course of general society, I don't disagree. But more specifically on this topic with men who show a willingness to honestly engage, yeah I think they have to be part of the conversation and dismissing them with catch phrases isn't the best approach. I think I've argued this as best I can at this point, so last you hear from me on that. Thanks for listening.
posted by Drinky Die at 6:58 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


You can't understand the male perspective, and diagnose where it is on track and where it is off the rails, without hearing it.

Women are subjected to a tsunami of male perspective at all times, on all days, in all places.
I strongly suspect that women understand the male perspective more keenly than most men as a matter of day to day survival.

I find it both lazy and disingenuous when men assert women must shoulder an equal burden razing their own prison.
Men created misogyny - poured the foundation and constructed the institution. The responsibility belongs to men to demolish this institution.

Women have already spoken: men have the entire catalog of feminist writing available to consult as a guide.
posted by Pudhoho at 6:58 PM on May 29, 2014 [23 favorites]


I think this is something like the sixth day and night I've spent on this thread; I've read every comment and a great many of the links. I have noted carefully what has been said. I believe we have had a very meaningful dissection and conversation and that many men participating have evidenced their listening to the women who are commenting. It doesn't change the world, no, but it's not nothing. I am elated once again at how well this thread has gone.

Moreover, I am not afraid the men in this thread will misunderstand us. I am not afraid they will get their feelings hurt. I think they are bright men, good men and willing to do the kind of work one has to do to be an ally to those less privileged. I am so proud of this place and these men and women I could pop the buttons off my shirt!
posted by Anitanola at 7:09 PM on May 29, 2014 [11 favorites]


hades, I understand completely. I do.

But we have real life good people/men in this thread/post who we have just "othered" by referring to them as " the mens".

*re-read your comment before posting. Mockery may work for you but really it is at the the heart of the problem for both women and men.
posted by futz at 7:21 PM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's funny - I see lots of women who engage with men on this stuff - most of the places I visit on the internet, for instance, are rife with conversations between women and men about gender. There are whole feminism 101 blogs out there, too. And there are, as Pudhoho points out, like about a billion books by women about this stuff.

So when I hear "but the women need to listen to the men", I can't help but assume one of a few things:

1. The speaker either isn't thinking about their words or is thinking of a very specific situation in their own life only but not making that clear.

2. The speaker means that ALL women at ALL times have to be open to talking to men about this stuff - not just some women when they feel like it, but ALL women whenever.

3. The speaker means that when men read books by women that isn't good enough - it has to be a "dialogue", with a woman on hand to pay a lot of attention to the man. It's not enough for the man to read and think and maybe write or talk to another dude; no, he needs attention, or he isn't going to cooperate.

4. The speaker means that existing dialogue isn't good enough, because it does not center men enough or is too uncomfortable for them; dialogue only counts if it makes men feel centered.

5. The speaker means that social change will be achieved when "all men" go through some kind of emotional catharsis and Stop Being Sexist. Not through structural change or through organizing; not through the work of those men who care about feminism or even just the women in their lives, but through All Men Being Transformed. That is why we can't expect anything of men - like regulating their own feelings - because we're not just trying to deal with grown-up dudes who are our allies and can be trusted to self-regulate; we're required to transform All The Dudes. This to my mind contravenes usual organizing principles, where you rely on a coalition/plurality and work with the people you already have things in common with, rather than trying to transform your most hardened enemies.

Anyway. That's why I'm a little skeptical when folks talk about how "we women" have to listen to "the men".
posted by Frowner at 7:27 PM on May 29, 2014 [39 favorites]


> we have real life good people/men in this thread/post who we have just "othered" by referring to them as " the mens".

They'll be fine.
posted by The corpse in the library at 7:38 PM on May 29, 2014 [17 favorites]


Agreed Frowner.
posted by futz at 7:40 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


I thought it was more that men need to listen to women on these issues, and simultaneously men need to have conversations with other men about these issues. (Actually over the past week I've seen some very important conversations initiated by men, for other men on Facebook and elsewhere. It's something that's happening and is mostly positive.)
posted by naju at 7:40 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


It just seems to me that if you're a man and you believe that Things need to Change, it really does behoove you to step in and start educating the men around you who don't get it yet. Stop telling the women around you to do it. We're still tired from educating the existing men who get it and we could use a break.
posted by palomar at 7:43 PM on May 29, 2014 [10 favorites]


Yeah, you know what? Somebody who deserts the cause at a throwaway use of "the mens" is not actually a super solid ally. They are someone who has been prepared to be an ally on their terms, for as long as everything is to their taste and they are not made to feel even slightly unspecial, even by association.

This thread is discussing the pervasive misogyny of a group of verbally and sometimes physically violent men, and the way it encourages and then celebrates murder. These are big things.

If somebody is prepared to agree that this kind of toxic, enabling misogyny is a bad thing, while making clear that their expression of that belief is conditional on nobody being mean about men ever ... well, I really wouldn't know what to say to them. If someone's support can't survive the slightest feeling that somehow, somewhere, men may be being mocked, then they sound more like a risk than a benefit.

So, yeah, derails about word usage feel to me exactly like insistences that the conversation can't continue until everyone has acknowledged that not all men etc., or, per one of the articles Surfurrus linked to, accepted criticism of the hateful and offensive things some women have been saying on the Twitters.

So, you know, futz, when you say:

Mockery may work for you but really it is at the the heart of the problem for both women and men.

I can't but think of that terribly familiar Margaret Atwood saw about men being afraid women will laugh at them. Mockery may be at the heart of that problem, but at the heart of the problem for both women and men? I would disagree. I think there are things that are more frightening than mockery.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:46 PM on May 29, 2014 [34 favorites]


I agree.
posted by futz at 7:48 PM on May 29, 2014


Women have already spoken: men have the entire catalog of feminist writing available to consult as a guide.

Men have had decades to read feminist writing but, with a relatively few exceptions, they we don't (and most likely won't). I don't really know what the solution is. No, it's not your job to educate men but men, as a group, probably aren't going to make the effort to educate ourselves. I know that sounds like I'm throwing my hands up but I'm just giving an honest opinion. If the plan is to wait for men to en masse start read feminist polemic against the patriarchal system and start having personal epiphanies, well, don't hold your breath. More personal things like #YesAllWomen really hit home, "Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center" not so much.
posted by MikeMc at 8:00 PM on May 29, 2014


So...men don't want to engage with what women have had to say on the subject, and we ladies should listen to what men have to say in order to fix this whole misogyny thing.

I think maybe this proposed solution looks a bit too much like the problem.
posted by Hildegarde at 8:09 PM on May 29, 2014 [30 favorites]


I really appreciated Frowner's anecdote above, where she said that women's issues (i.e., safety) were subordinated because "we don't have time for your gender issues now, what is important is stopping [Big Local Quite Genuinely Very Bad Thing]". This was wrong, and the same principle applies, I think, to the use of derogatory terms in this forum.

But. Frowner's situation involved something urgent and critically important. Also, even though I don't like it when people use terms like "the mens" or "mansplaining", I recognise that they're doing so as part of the conversation and not as generalised or unrelated insults. In contrast, I don't think the people in her anecdote actually needed to make women unsafe in order to stop the [Big Local Quite Genuinely Very Bad Thing]. So while I do actually hope that people who are angry and have been hurt by misogyny will still behave with utter rhetorical rectitude, it's not the sort of thing that is worth causing a derail.
posted by Joe in Australia at 8:17 PM on May 29, 2014 [2 favorites]


I take "the mens" and "mansplaining" and the Kool-Aid Guy bursting through the wall shouting "NOT ALL MEN" as being presented mostly in humor. Humor is good. Humor draws people in. Humor is educational.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:27 PM on May 29, 2014 [8 favorites]


With Elliot Rodger’s manifesto, I don’t get the same deep chills that I got when I read the Unabomber’s manifesto and especially Anders Breivik’s manifesto. Elliot Rodger’s manifesto is so clearly juvenile by comparison, and almost laughably cardboard cut-out. The entire thing has the feel of acting- almost as if he’s inventing problems out of boredom; that he’s given to drama because he doesn’t have enough challenging him in his life. It’s also obviously much less political. People don’t die without sex. He’s histrionic and narcissistic in the extreme.

None of this is actually about sex, though. That’s the thing. All he wanted was a living Barbie doll to validate him in front of his friends, his parents, his peers. This is about his self-esteem and his social status. What’s the fastest, best way to look like a man and be treated with the respect you long for? To get a hot girlfriend by your side. Hell, he doesn’t even know what he’s missing when it comes to actual sex- the act itself would probably be a let-down. Imagining him being at all good or giving in bed is also impossible. Because he doesn’t care, fundamentally, about sex. He cares about status. That’s it. A girlfriend is just a doll that makes other men jealous, and he wants other men to be jealous of him so very badly. He wants to be Somebody. If nobody knows you have a hot girlfriend, do you even have a hot girlfriend? She’s basically just like a car or a designer bag in his fantasy world. He talks about being “magnificent” and “alpha” and a “gentleman.” He clearly thinks he’s better than most people; that reality isn’t living up to his inflated expectations is too much. No sweet, meek, brunette girlfriend is good enough for Elliot Rodgers, no!

I don’t get chills or even much pathos from Elliot Rodgers. He leaves me totally unemotional. His entire story is extremely banal and shallow and unmoving. What’s really tragic is the stories of the families of the victims; they died completely senselessly, because a boy thought real life was like a video game. He thought other people were just as shallow as he was. He never actually knew life in its real emotional, human, complexity; it was all surfaces. But the people he killed had real feelings and probably actually cared for someone besides themselves.

Misogyny, MRA online forums: These things unquestionably and without a doubt played into this senseless, stupid tragedy. They deserve proper blame. But to me the shallow, hyper-competitive, narcissistic, consumer-driven, status-conscious, self-aware culture of certain parts of California, maybe even America in general (but especially California, mass media land, Hollywood land, celebrity land, where fantasy and reality collide like nowhere else) is also to blame. It’s that hunger for fame, for friends, for status, for twitter followers, to BE SOMEONE. To live up to the TV shows and the movies. The video games where you get the Princess. To live the American dream, or whatever. To have the Pam Anderson girlfriend. That was a huge part of this, too.

I also wonder about his parents. Undoubtedly the divorce factored had an effect on his mental health. I also wonder if his mother spoiled him, maybe out of guilt. I mean, the BMW at least came from them obviously. Maybe he grew up hearing about how he was a prince and deserved everything.

Anyway, Elliot Rodgers, you’re not an alpha male. Your manifesto and murder spree is just a senseless, stupid, blip in the universe, like a freak car accident. You were nobody before and you’re still nobody. I learned nothing from you.
posted by quincunx at 8:49 PM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


I can't but think of that terribly familiar Margaret Atwood saw about men being afraid women will laugh at them. Mockery may be at the heart of that problem, but at the heart of the problem for both women and men? I would disagree. I think there are things that are more frightening than mockery.

Well of course there are scarier things than being mocked. Or there should be for those who can handle it. What if it wasn't so simple? What if being called out as a virgin and worried about being made mocked for it that you decided to go on a killing spree?

I was the most popular girl at my HS and was still very insecure. Mocking anyone is unacceptable.
posted by futz at 8:52 PM on May 29, 2014 [3 favorites]


I think that the variety of humorous standard stuff mens say, from NOT ALL MEN to Sady Doyle's [BONERS], are a good way to get men who are pretending to be allies but really want everything to be about them to fuck off while also amusing me and keeping me from lashing out my tiny fists in mad violent feminist Hulk rage, so I consider that a win-win. A lot of mens are so used to being catered to that being in feminist spaces where we don't do that feels like they're being treated with hostility, but babying them takes so much effort that it's almost always better to leave them behind until they grow the fuck up.

Being able to laugh at the predictably banal notallmenzing shit we see constantly is essential for keeping us all from burning out, and it is supremely arrogant to tell us how we are allowed to react to that shit. I'll misander these assholes to my dying day, because the alternative to being able to laugh at them is jumping off a bridge.
posted by NoraReed at 9:05 PM on May 29, 2014 [24 favorites]


Undoubtedly the divorce factored had an effect on his mental health. I also wonder if his mother spoiled him, maybe out of guilt.

his parents were still married when he was being over the top disappointed about a theme park ride. i don't know that we can know how his mental health would go without the divorce. also, what a weird thing to say about his mother specifically. maybe i'm oversensative because i grew up with a brother who doesn't feel empathy - but my parents had 3 kids and stayed together for 20 years, splitting long after my brother left home. me and my siblings are very close in age - we were raised damn near identically. sometimes it's obviously the parents, but i don't think that's a leap that can be made here. for my part, i wish my parents had split up long before they did, but they stayed together for the kids - which, unbeknownst to them at the time - locked my other brother and i in a home with a psychopath during our most vulnerable years.
posted by nadawi at 9:10 PM on May 29, 2014 [5 favorites]


also, what a weird thing to say about his mother specifically.

I just mention the mother because he lived primarily with her.

sometimes it's obviously the parents, but i don't think that's a leap that can be made here. for my part, i wish my parents had split up long before they did, but they stayed together for the kids - which, unbeknownst to them at the time - locked my other brother and i in a home with a psychopath during our most vulnerable years.

I don't know if it's the parents for sure. Divorce isn't always a net benefit for kids- in some situations it is better for the kids, but there's a lot of research that suggests that in most "low-conflict" marriages, it's worse for them in all sorts of measurable long-term outcomes. But this is a dicey subject. One thing for sure is that it's possible to do "divorced parents" right and possible to do "divorced parents" hugely wrong. I just wonder if that contributed here in some way. I'm not trying to make some kind of broad brush statement about divorced parents- my parents got divorced when I was 12 and I'm not a serial killer!
posted by quincunx at 9:22 PM on May 29, 2014


I really really doubt, entirely doubt, that his mother did not get a full spray of this dude's misogyny and racism, probably the fullest spray he ever gave anyone outside of murdering them.

I think in his manifesto there's an anecdote about how he pressured her to marry a richer man (or stay married to a rich man?) regardless of her wishes because it would benefit HIS status, and called her selfish for even thinking of it. The threads I read of his mother's presence in the manifesto were mostly focused on belittling her background, her choices, tacitly blaming her for being Asian and making him Eurasian in turn, so on and so forth. I saw no sign that he respected her as a person.

So I think it's counterproductive to speculate he was spoilt by his mother. With men like these that I've seen, they're 'spoilt' in the way that the same mothers they freely mock, abuse and belittle are desperately trying to be good parents to sons who see nothing wrong with publicly proclaiming how much they despise them.
posted by E. Whitehall at 9:30 PM on May 29, 2014 [17 favorites]


what i'm saying is that even in low conflict marriages, staying together for the kids can be extremely damaging. you say the divorce undoubtedly factored and i'm saying i have doubts.
posted by nadawi at 9:34 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


Late in the thread comment; but as a slight similarity; Season 2 of The Wire had a character; "Ziggy"; he went nuts and killed a couple of people. His father was upset with his uncle and cousin for not watching his son better. Their response was a 'where were you, you are his dad' response, as his dad was overly active with work and career; and did not administer any correction to much of Ziggy's poor behavior prior to his killing of two people, nor did he seem to be much of a person in his son's life.

Similarly; this youth's father is blaming the NRA and others for his son's actions.

Not a kind comparison, but the similarity has came to mind for several days now.
posted by buzzman at 10:19 PM on May 29, 2014


>>> .... we have real life good people/men in this thread/post who we have just "othered" by referring to them as "the mens".... Mockery may work for you but really it is at the the heart of the problem for both women and men.

>> I can't but think of that terribly familiar Margaret Atwood saw about men being afraid women will laugh at them. Mockery may be at the heart of that problem, but at the heart of the problem for both women and men? I would disagree. I think there are things that are more frightening than mockery.

> Well of course there are scarier things than being mocked. Or there should be for those who can handle it. What if it wasn't so simple? What if being called out as a virgin and worried about being made mocked for it that you decided to go on a killing spree?

#YesAllWomen - because we think twice about saying "the mens" lest our mockery triggers a murderous rage.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:25 PM on May 29, 2014 [29 favorites]


buzzman, the only statements I've seen from Peter Rodger, Elliot's father, have been full of grief and humility. Are you maybe talking about the father of Christopher Martinez, one of the victims?
posted by palomar at 10:28 PM on May 29, 2014 [4 favorites]


> And ... the Arthur Chu article - Your Princess Is in Another Castle: Misogyny, Entitlement, and Nerds ... probably deserves its own FPP

np yw hand :)
posted by Ambrosia Voyeur at 10:34 PM on May 29, 2014


Nice FPP, Ambrosia - even got that 'mysogyny in geek culture' link in there ... though it is not likely that will get any comments.

Yes, I'm 'late to the game' ... and 'yes' (per one of you guys up there) I didn't give you a Full Review of why I inserted a link -- I only described it as an Asian American feminist perspective (something not of anyone's interest apparently) ... and left a quote about why that was significant to this murder spree.

I'm tired. I drifted away from mefi for a reason.

Yes, I still see the most brilliant minds online sharing things here; yes, I find nuggets of delight ... but I simply can't handle the deep, depressing, pervasive dismissal of all things female. I have far less patience for this flaw (so loudly denied!) in intelligent progressive communities than in the mainstream.

I'm reminded of something I read almost four decades ago -- about how the black man and the white woman had something in common in relation to the White Male. They knew to watch, listen to that White Man (as 'emotional thermostats') -- in order to know exactly what to do and say as to not enrage him. Our lives depended on that - and still do to a large extent.

The White Male does not need to know anything about us.

My tweet: Sometimes I just wanna say, "I'm not a mother bird who will chew up difficult ideas & regurgitate them for yr easy digestion."
posted by Surfurrus at 11:09 PM on May 29, 2014 [20 favorites]


Palomar; yes, my mistake; thanks for pointing it out.

- No excuse; but the shootings seem like a once a week thing; and I do not pay a lot of attention to some of the details anymore. :(
posted by buzzman at 11:24 PM on May 29, 2014 [1 favorite]


what i'm saying is that even in low conflict marriages, staying together for the kids can be extremely damaging. you say the divorce undoubtedly factored and i'm saying i have doubts.
Yeah, it's kind of low-hanging fruit to pin any part of this on his parents being divorced and I don't see anything in his manifesto that suggests he particularly cared about it, except that his mother told him they weren't going to separate and they did so not long after, which he was angry about. As a child of divorced parents and being a single parent myself, I may be a touch sensitive on this topic, but I really don't think this was a factor. Maybe, just maybe, it's one tiny part of a complex puzzle but that all I can see it being. It kind of distracts from the fact that he made a conscious decision to hate women and that a bunch of other men encouraged that hate and it grew and grew, while he deliberately hid what he was thinking and planning from anyone that could have maybe headed him off. This was the act of a cruel, calculating person full of hate and well aware of what he was doing.
posted by dg at 5:06 AM on May 30, 2014


Being a privileged ally is all about getting comfortable with your discomfort. I'm a man, and I literally cannot imagine the reason or purpose for arguing that "not all men" are implicated here, or that now, more than ever, we need to listen to men more.

To be honest, both suggestions seem to indicate that, by definition, the man making them doesn't really understand the topic under discussion.
posted by JohnLewis at 5:10 AM on May 30, 2014 [15 favorites]


Well of course there are scarier things than being mocked. Or there should be for those who can handle it. What if it wasn't so simple? What if being called out as a virgin and worried about being made mocked for it that you decided to go on a killing spree?

Then... I think it would be legitimate to be more scared of the person on the killing spree, or indeed the person who was in danger of going on a killing spree, than of being mocked. Quod, as far as the Margaret Atwood reference is concerned, erat demonstrandum.

If you're specifically asking me what I would do if my fear of being called a virgin was inclining me towards going on a killing spree - that's an incredibly difficult question to answer, because I'm not and it isn't. But I very much hope that the answer would be that I would seek help, get rid of things around me that might be harmful to others or myself, such as guns or sharp knives, seek to be institutionalized if necessary.

Because, while our attitude to sex as a society is messed up, and the patriarchal myth that "real" men must always be sexually confident, accomplished and voracious messes up many people's lives - not least the women who are assaulted by men who have been told over and over again that women are no more than treasure chests full of worth-conferring sexual experience, and that obtaining that is more important than women's safety or consent - going on a killing spree is not a rational response to the fear of being mocked for being a virgin.

This is also, it's worth remembering, an odd question in the specific context of this thread, because Elliot Rodger did not kill because he was afraid of being mocked for being a virgin. He killed, as he explained at tremendous length, because he wanted women he desired to be available to him, and not to be available to other men he considered less worthy. His hatred of women extended to not believing that they were competent to make choices about who they were attracted to and who they should be in relationships with - whether that was being appalled that his mother was not seeking to find and marry a rich man to raise his social status, or being appalled that a white woman would be prepared to date a black or Asian man while he existed and was available.

What he felt "mocked" by was not people calling him a virgin, but women he desired having the autonomy not to desire him, and to desire other men and have relationships with them, rather than having no autonomy, and being available for him to choose from with no risk of rejection. Again, he says this - I'm not going to blame anyone for not wanting to read his interminable, horrifying manifesto, but the first paragraph specifically blames women for not seeing the value in him.

The existence of other people's relationships - and in particular of white, blonde women's relationships with men he considered inferior to him, usually on racial grounds - was to him an intolerable provocation. I very much doubt that anyone is going to argue that we should all try to steer clear of interracial dating, in case it might spark a killing spree in someone. So, perhaps we can acknowledge that more dedicated language policing on behalf of the mens is probably not the best way to avert spree killings.

Or, tl;dr - what E Whitehall said:
#YesAllWomen - because we think twice about saying "the mens" lest our mockery triggers a murderous rage.


[Incidentally, it's a slight derail, but if there's a general-interests discussion board that has an as-high or higher standard of conversation than Metafilter, but is better on issues of race, gender and sexuality, I would be really interested to know about it.]
posted by running order squabble fest at 5:31 AM on May 30, 2014 [13 favorites]


squabble fest, that wonderful #yesallwomen tweet was posted by Westringia F.

Just want to give credit where it is due. I wish I were so pithy!
posted by E. Whitehall at 6:39 AM on May 30, 2014


Ah! Sorry, Westringia F - E/F substitution, there...
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:46 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Aw, thanks. No worries!
posted by Westringia F. at 7:55 AM on May 30, 2014


There's a person right here saying yes, they've thought about committing mass murder, and the only thing preventing them is no access to guns in their country. When you have actual would-be mass murderers saying gun control is stopping them, what's left to argue about (with respect to the gun control issue, anyway)?

Quoted for the motherfucking truth. (And emphasis mine.)

Also, if it is demeaning to refer to all women by an epithet--especially an infantilizing one--it's equally demeaning to do it to 'the mens,' so if that could stop, it would probably be less alienating to those of us who are trying, in our fumbling way, to do better and to get our brothers to do better. It's no better than queers calling heterosexual people 'breeders' even when they're allies. (I may be largely out of touch with the gay 'community' these days but I'm pretty sure that usage has been largely purged from gay vocabulary. So can we maybe purge 'the mens' from MeFi's vocabulary? Please? The answer to misogyny isn't misandry; it's equality and respect going both ways. I recognize that we as men have pretty much forced women to 'respect' us, and the onus is on us to end that behaviour.)

Yes, men need to listen to women a helluva lot more. That is a point not in contention anywhere I'm aware of where intelligent people gather.

But these misogynists? Literally do not believe anything useful can come out of a woman's mouth. We need to make men listen to the men who listen to women.

I find it both lazy and disingenuous when men assert women must shoulder an equal burden razing their own prison. Men created misogyny - poured the foundation and constructed the institution. The responsibility belongs to men to demolish this institution.

Yeah, this. We caused the problem (and in many cases caused women to think this problem is normal and perpetuate it themselves), therefore it is our responsibility to fix it. With the input of women as to what, specifically, the list of priorities are; e.g. I'm thinking ending date rape comes higher on the list than a catcall on the street; both are invasive, both are a form of violence, but one is more severe than the other. Is that a fair characterization? Without getting into razor fine definitions of what needs to change first?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:59 AM on May 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


oh god I started reading that Jezebel article. I've only made it to 9:24am and I already want steel wool for my brain.

or maybe hydrochloric acid.

A tiny, nasty part of me also wants to wave a magic wand and make them glow purple forever so everyone knows who they are.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:17 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


if we're gonna do Violence Triage maybe we should consider that catcalls at women and date rape are both way worse than "the mens" on the internet
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:24 AM on May 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


I'd also like to point out that all of this is extremely about heterosexuality; the rampant misogyny in the gay world also needs to be fixed but it's coming from a different place I think. These guys are misogynist because they feel they deserve women etc; queer men tend to be misogynists, I think, because in so many ways women are just irrelevant to our lives.

Of course that brings up the very disturbing question as to how much queer men exacrbate misogynistic tendencies in society at large, given that most fashion designers are queer men.

if we're gonna do Violence Triage maybe we should consider that catcalls at women and date rape are both way worse than "the mens" on the internet

My point was that Othering is a Thing We Should Not Do. "The mens" is Othering, insulting, infantilizing, and makes those of us who are actually trying feel alienated. I am not saying women need to apologize or walk on eggshells around men--I want that world to end yesterday.

I'm saying hey, let's not fight hate with condescension and mockery. Let's fight it with education and love and inclusiveness. Is there something wrong with that stance?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:30 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


Sorry, I should have noted two things that I think are too big for the edit window:

"because in so many ways women are just irrelevant to our lives." - In insular communities of queer men, which is where you see the most and the worst of the misogyny (and transphobia, while we're at it).

if we're gonna do Violence Triage maybe we should consider that catcalls at women and date rape are both way worse than "the mens" on the internet

Not arguing with that. How does fighting hate with hate end up with a positive result?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:32 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


oh god I started reading that Jezebel article. I've only made it to 9:24am and I already want steel wool for my brain.

I want to start out by saying that I'm singling you out only because yours was the most recent comment like this, fffm.

Reactions like this are kind of baffling to me. I read that entire Jezebel post a couple of hours before it showed up here, and you know what? Absolutely none of it was surprising. It's all horrible stuff, yes, but it's not surprising. Maybe it's because I read feminist blogs now and again and they discuss this stuff all the time, maybe it's because I read We Hunted The Mammoth (formerly Manboobz) every week and it's always full to bursting with fresh examples of this kind of shit. It's not shocking anymore. It's been going on for years, right under your noses. We've been trying to tell you. But hardly anyone listens.
posted by palomar at 8:35 AM on May 30, 2014 [16 favorites]


I'm saying hey, let's not fight hate with condescension and mockery. Let's fight it with education and love and inclusiveness. Is there something wrong with that stance?

Nothing is particularly wrong with it, but scorn and mockery of bad, oppressive beliefs and people who hold them is also a valid rhetorical stance. Telling oppressed people not to voice their anger in any but the most peaceful way - which is an implication of what you've said, though I doubt it was an intentional one - is shitty.

For my own part, I was shaken out of my own privileged complacency by the anger, as well as the patient explanations, that I saw at ShitRedditSays and here.

How does fighting hate with hate end up with a positive result?

Please don't equate hatred of patriarchy with the patriarchy's hate. They aren't equivalent.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:39 AM on May 30, 2014 [28 favorites]


> I'm saying hey, let's not fight hate with condescension and mockery. Let's fight it with education and love and inclusiveness. Is there something wrong with that stance

How about you fight it with education and love and inclusiveness, if that's what you're best with, and I fight with humor and mockery, because that's what I'm best at.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:40 AM on May 30, 2014 [12 favorites]


If you feel included and insulted when women poke fun at "the mens," maybe you should consider why that is. NOT ALL MEN no but really, in this case.
Obviously "the mens" is a joke about a certain kind of man. If you're not that kind of man, then the joke isn't about you. If you are that kind of man, then knock it off.
posted by The corpse in the library at 8:42 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm saying hey, let's not fight hate with condescension and mockery. Let's fight it with education and love and inclusiveness. Is there something wrong with that stance

There's nothing wrong with that stance, except that it's asking the people who've been fighting for a very very long time to just suck it up and be nice to the people treating us like we're not even human. I can only speak for myself, but I am TIRED, and frustrated, and sick of being told that being anything short of Gandhi-like is doing it wrong.
posted by palomar at 8:43 AM on May 30, 2014 [20 favorites]


Oh I knew there was tons of misogynistic stuff on the internet--I made the mistake a couple of times of delving into MRA/PUA subreddits when I was active there and had to keep a puke bucket next to my desk. So I've deliberately avoided those dark corners of the internet as being, frankly, the cause of existential despair that I didn't need to add to my depression and suicidal tendencies. I'm sorry if that comes across as 'not listening to women' because that is absolutely not the case.

The surprising/horrifying part to me is these total assbags lauding Rodger as some sort of hero and actively planning to kill people--the Australian with the bomb, the UK guy complaining he couldn't get guns.

He wanted to start a movement and what's scary is that it looks like he may be succeeding.

How about you fight it with education and love and inclusiveness, if that's what you're best with, and I fight with humor and mockery, because that's what I'm best at.
Nothing is particularly wrong with it, but scorn and mockery of bad, oppressive beliefs and people who hold them is also a valid rhetorical stance.

Because you're lumping all men into a single category. If it's not okay when men do it to women, the reverse is also true. DON'T, please, start this into a derail about Not All Men. Because it's not about that. It's about not alienating people who are trying to fight the good fight.

Telling oppressed people not to voice their anger in any but the most peaceful way - which is an implication of what you've said, though I doubt it was an intentional one - is shitty.


Neither intended nor implied. What I'm saying is direct anger at the people who deserve it, not the people who are trying to help.

There's nothing wrong with that stance, except that it's asking the people who've been fighting for a very very long time to just suck it up and be nice to the people treating us like we're not even human. I can only speak for myself, but I am TIRED, and frustrated, and sick of being told that being anything short of Gandhi-like is doing it wrong.

AGAIN. That is NOT what I am saying. I am saying don't lump everyone into one basket.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:44 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


How does fighting hate with hate end up with a positive result?

Well.

"What about the mens!" is a meme. It's a joke about the way some (NOT ALL) men will demand to know how any proposal or situation affects men, even when men are either not primarily affected or indeed not affected at all.

So, if a dude complains that a hard line on street harassment will make women less receptive to sincere, friendly attempts to engage women in conversation in public, that's "what about the mens". It's a way of pointing out that what they are saying is a) silly and b) missing the misogyny forest for the mens feels trees.

(it's like the way we used to say "OH NOES! THE INTERNET POLICE!" on UseNet when somebody said that they were an undercover police agent/were going to report this discussion to the police for its misandrist hate speech. It's a community-building meme and a highlighting of the silliness of the claim.)

So... I don't think it is fighting hate with hate. If anything, it's whistling past the graveyard.

And, with that having been said, actually a bunch of people - men and women - have explained upthread how phrases like "not all men!" and "mansplain" and "what about the mens!" have been helpful - in highlighting their own complacency, or in making them feel less alone in the face of pervasive misogyny. So, yeah, there's that as well.
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:45 AM on May 30, 2014 [19 favorites]


I am saying don't lump everyone into one basket.

This is not a new sentiment in any imaginable way. Come on.
posted by palomar at 8:47 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


"What about the mens!" is a meme. It's a joke about the way some (NOT ALL) men will demand to know how any proposal or situation affects men, even when men are either not primarily affected or indeed not affected at all.

It's a meme I've never heard, and there wasn't any particular effort to say "by 'the mens' we mean 'the misogynist assholes.'"

My whole point was that using divisive and othering language is something we have tried for a LONG time on MetaFilter to stop. So maybe please don't? I'm on your side.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 8:49 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


I was just talking to someone and it crystallized what I really hate about the #notallmen bullshit. Because you know what? It's not "Not all men." I have yet to know, in the history of my life, a single man that has done nothing sexist and never enforced the patriarchy. Not ever, not a single, tiny bit. So when we, as women, tolerate the #notallmen for one moment longer than it deserves, which is none, we're giving people a pass they don't deserve. We're saying, "Don't worry, it's not you" when it almost certainly is.
posted by corb at 8:51 AM on May 30, 2014 [23 favorites]


It's a meme I've never heard, and there wasn't any particular effort to say "by 'the mens' we mean 'the misogynist assholes.'"

My whole point was that using divisive and othering language is something we have tried for a LONG time on MetaFilter to stop. So maybe please don't? I'm on your side.


There have been a bunch of links in this thread (and in many threads before it) on the whole problem with the "NOT ALL MEN/mockery makes me (or other men) want to help less/etc" line of thinking. Please avail yourselves of them before becoming one of the tiresome whiners on this website who has made it their sworn duty to drag us back down this path in every single thread about misogyny.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:56 AM on May 30, 2014 [14 favorites]


It's getting really, really tiring hearing all these allies saying "just be nicer".
posted by palomar at 8:57 AM on May 30, 2014 [22 favorites]


> there wasn't any particular effort to say "by 'the mens' we mean 'the misogynist assholes.'"

Well that would pretty much destroy the joke.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:00 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


"The mens" is an incredibly gentle irreverence. It's a grammatical imprecision! I see it as counter to the spirit of deference, but to consider it hateful seems to really illuminate a certain privileged standard.
posted by droomoord at 9:03 AM on May 30, 2014 [15 favorites]


The problem isn't with the joke/term itself, but that it lends itself to an shoe-on-other-foot defense of the equivalent hackneyed 'the wimmins' jokes.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:05 AM on May 30, 2014


It's getting really, really tiring hearing all these allies saying "just be nicer".

TO YOUR ALLIES

For the exact same reason I don't call hetero or bi people 'breeders.'
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:06 AM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


I knew there was tons of misogynistic stuff on the internet--I made the mistake a couple of times of delving into MRA/PUA subreddits when I was active there and had to keep a puke bucket next to my desk. So I've deliberately avoided those dark corners of the internet as being, frankly, the cause of existential despair that I didn't need to add to my depression and suicidal tendencies.

I think this is probably a common thing for a lot of men. It sickens you to know this stuff is out there, so you just ignore it. Out of sight, out of mind -- it's a cliche for a reason.

But I don't have that luxury. I don't get to deliberately avoid those dark corners of the internet, because they come find me. This shit doesn't just live in those dark corners, it lives everywhere. In every unmoderated comment thread or forum (and often even the moderated ones), on every website that posts an article that mentions a woman. Basically, if you are active on the internet and you are openly female or even just perceived as female, this shit will find you and ruin your fucking day, over and over and over again.

We're inundated with this shit, every day, from the time we reach puberty (or well before that) until we're either dead or old enough that we're deemed unfuckable and therefore irrelevant.

And the solution to this problem, evidently, is that we need to be nicer to the people that treat us this way?
posted by palomar at 9:07 AM on May 30, 2014 [20 favorites]


The problem isn't with the joke/term itself, but that it lends itself to an shoe-on-other-foot defense of the equivalent hackneyed 'the wimmins' jokes.

If it makes someone so defensive as to endlessly complain about it being "just as bad" and then perpetuating misogyny (or refusing to address it) out of vengeance, then they're contributing to the problem, not solving it.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:09 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


It's getting really, really tiring hearing all these allies saying "just be nicer".

TO YOUR ALLIES


As has been stated upthread, an alliance that comes with conditions is not an alliance worth having.
posted by palomar at 9:09 AM on May 30, 2014 [12 favorites]


You can call me a breeder! I won't mind! It's okay! I think it's weirdly dated, but it's not going to actually hurt my feelings. If you've got funny jokes around "breeders" bring 'em on.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:10 AM on May 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


And the solution to this problem, evidently, is that we need to be nicer to the people that treat us this way?

If you're not going to read the actual words that I am writing, I am not sure what the point of talking with you is.

I fully understand that women swim in a toxic soup of violent misogyny every day.

I would like to be one of the men who helps stop that.

Me, and men like me, are the ones I'm asking, politely, that you not refer to us by infantilizing nicknames. That's all. I'm not saying be nice to the assholes. I'm saying be nice to your allies.

As pointed out upthread, if you are an ally who is driven away by something so gentle as "the mens", you're not a very good ally

Show me where I said I was being driven away. Direct quote please.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:10 AM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


What's completely surreal is seeing people who normally bristle at the idea of tone arguments suddenly come out swinging against "the mens". It makes it seem like it's less the high noble principles being talked about and just that suddenly your ox is being gored.
posted by corb at 9:11 AM on May 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


Compare the gay rights movements of the 80's (where it was very much us vs them) and the 90s (when it was very much welcome allies with open arms).

Once again:

I AM ON YOUR SIDE.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:12 AM on May 30, 2014


If you're not going to read the actual words that I am writing, I am not sure what the point of talking with you is.

I feel the same way about you. You're getting more upset about what you deem an "infantilizing nickname" than you are about the reasons we use that nickname. An ally who doesn't even want to think about WHY we use a nickname like that is not an ally worth having.
posted by palomar at 9:13 AM on May 30, 2014 [11 favorites]


I would like to be one of the men who helps stop that.

All you have to do is be that man. It's really easy once you realize you're not the one being talked about.

Show me where I said I was being driven away. Direct quote please.

It's a generic you. The specific you needs to stop taking everything so personally. Like, in general.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:14 AM on May 30, 2014 [14 favorites]


My side contains Internet memes about feminism, and jokes of questionable politeness. It's how my side gets through the day.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:15 AM on May 30, 2014 [9 favorites]




I AM ON YOUR SIDE.

You are not acting like someone who is on my side. You are acting like someone who wants to be on my side, if only that were different and easier and not as uncomfortable.
posted by KathrynT at 9:15 AM on May 30, 2014 [39 favorites]


Yes, the 'you think' that is the second person equivalent of 'one thinks.'

Be cool people.

Or at least don't impute the worst meaning, if you don't have to, maybe.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:16 AM on May 30, 2014


Are we seriously still on this "the mens" thing? How is that even insulting? If anything it's counter-productive if you want to draw attention to behavior because it provides an out by giggleizing the category of "all men."

I think "breeder" is gone because same-sex public families are so common in any group comfortable enough to quip that way. My wife and I were bemused the first time one of our friends referred to one of the women in a marriage as "the birth mother," something that had previously been used primarily in talking about adoption and mothers who placed their infants with someone else.
posted by phearlez at 9:17 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Mod note: Let's cool it a little, less with the bolding and all caps and reiteration stuff.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:18 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


There are two sides here. One is women who are angry about the constant murdering. The other is people who really with those women would just relax and be nice, and then maybe people would support them in their quest to not be murdered.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:20 AM on May 30, 2014 [29 favorites]


There's a reason it wasn't "We're here! We're queer! Do you maybe have the time to sit down and listen to us explain how hurtful some BUT NOT ALL straight people are? No? Ok well thanks anyway I'll just be over here in the corner in case you change your mind. I'm sorry if I offended you."
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:25 AM on May 30, 2014 [31 favorites]


I can only speak for myself, but I am TIRED, and frustrated, and sick of being told that being anything short of Gandhi-like is doing it wrong.

Say it with flowers fire.
posted by Pudhoho at 9:27 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Compare the gay rights movements of the 80's (where it was very much us vs them) and the 90s (when it was very much welcome allies with open arms).

Uh, I was around for both, and there was very much a "Hey, allies, right on!" for a lot of the pieces of the movement I was around for in the 80s. And in the 90s there was also a lot of "Can you please tone down with the flaming so us nice allies aren't so nervous?" Reducing either decade to a simple "all alone and hostile!" or "open to allies and yay!" is really, really inaccurate and unhelpful.
posted by rtha at 9:28 AM on May 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


Plus the little jibe at "the mens" seems wholly appropriate in response to something like photo-poster #24 on this previously-linked page.

Fancy type carefully photoshopped on a wall behind you, with a big signature underneath to really take ownership over "You don't kill because she told you 'no,'" which is a pretty limited lesson to yell out with such bombast.

I think these sorts of jibes are useful. To the extent to which they implicate you despite your best intentions, take it to heart. To the extent to which they don't, step aside and let them hit their intended target.
posted by nobody at 9:32 AM on May 30, 2014


I'm actually OK with "breeder" as well! I mean, I don't mind being reminded of the fact that one of the things I like to do has some sort of capacity to cause reproduction. I take steps to prevent it - I'm actually a debreeder - but it doesn't upset me to be reminded.

I think a good reason not to use "breeder", for example, is not that it's hurtful to all people-who-do-that-thing (like me), but that it's kind of ass to hear if you have fertility issues and have maybe been trying to have a child for a long time, and have been emotionally and financially hollowed out over time by the attempt. I had to have that explained to me because I hadn't thought of it, because it didn't apply to me. But for me, personally? No big.

And, you know, breeding - the ability to have children by standard, PIV sex within a couple - is one of the big reasons bigots use to explain why they think same sex love is unnatural (it does not have procreation as its aim) and also why marriage equality should be opposed. So, as a term of abuse, it's not so powerful, I think. It sort of reminds me of the Louis CK thing about how black people can't even hurt white people's feelings. Because the closest he can get to experiencing hate speech is to be called a "cracker" - a reminder that his ancestors used to own land. And people*. So, I don't think it _works_ as hate speech very effectively. You don't get many hate crimes by gay people against straight people. Very few people hear "hey, breeder!" before they are beaten up. And so on.

So, I think it's two different things. I don't mind "what about the mens?!" because I understand that it's a joke about a behavior. As is "not all men!" - it's not saying that all men are murderers/rapists/whatever, it's skewering a behavior where asserting that not all men are is more important than addressing the behavior of those who _are_.

So, I guess i) I don't think "breeder" is a lovely thing to call someone, and I think it can be very insensitive, but I don't see it as super terrible hate speech. And ii) I don't think it's the same thing at all as "the mens/teh mens/teh menz".

But I get that you didn't know about the "what about the mens" meme, FFFM, so that was not so clear. But now we have talked about this, and hopefully that added context is going to be useful in the future!


* Louis CK's etymologies are often awry - see the much-repeated routine about hate speech against gay men - and there's some debate about whether "cracker" means "whip cracker", but I think the joke stands - it's really hard to use hate speech from a position of oppression.
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:34 AM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


We're saying, "Don't worry, it's not you" when it almost certainly is.

With that in mind, is #YesAllWomen just a sugarcoat for the real truth which is #YesAllMenForAllEternity?
posted by FJT at 9:42 AM on May 30, 2014


(Also, didn't this derail start with a reaction to "I guess I'm just not super committed to hearing about what the mens feel about this right now," in which "the mens" actually distances it a touch from the harsher "not committed to hearing what men feel about this right now"?)
posted by nobody at 9:43 AM on May 30, 2014 [10 favorites]


If hearing something along the lines of "your opinion on this issue just isn't that important and we really don't care about what you have to say" is shocking to you, then you are probably not a woman, because we hear it from birth to death on every issue from political rights to the content of TV shows.

Feels pretty shitty, huh?
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:53 AM on May 30, 2014 [37 favorites]


You're getting more upset about what you deem an "infantilizing nickname" than you are about the reasons we use that nickname. An ally who doesn't even want to think about WHY we use a nickname like that is not an ally worth having.

Personally I don't find "the mens" remotely insulting, find it fine to use, and I'm going to be on the side of equality no matter how anyone treats me - I think it's the right thing to do and I think it's in my interest as well.

That said, I have to say that this "think about why" and no it's not insulting or no it's about XYZ or "catcalls at women and date rape are both way worse than "the mens" on the internet" reminds me a lot of the sort of nonsense the defenders of the Washington Racistteamname defenders throw around. Powerful or oppressed, can we just not tell people what they are or are not entitled to be bugged by a term referring to them? And not tell people they have better/worse things to worry about?

I think The Mens is perfectly fair game (and possibly even lets some men take themselves off the hook, depending on usage) but I'm going to take ownership of my usage of it, not insist nobody gets to be offended because XYZ. The non-apology "I'm sorry you're offended" is better than telling someone they don't get to be offended.
posted by phearlez at 9:57 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, to be frank, I don't care if someone is offended or not by "the mens". What I care about is whether or not they make it my problem, on top of all the problems we're talking about here.
posted by palomar at 10:01 AM on May 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


And by "make it my problem", I am referring to derailing the entire discussion so that we can focus on the usage of the words "the mens" and how it hurts people's feelings instead of talking about anything else.
posted by palomar at 10:03 AM on May 30, 2014 [15 favorites]


[Actually, I think I am OK with saying that Daniel Snyder does not get to be offended about protests about the name of his NFL team.]
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:05 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


Nobody said they were offended by 'the mens', that's a straw man. Some people said they thought using divisive language was counter productive.
posted by ryanfou at 10:14 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


You know what else is counter productive?
posted by showbiz_liz at 10:23 AM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


queer men tend to be misogynists, I think, because in so many ways women are just irrelevant to our lives

This is a really gross thing to say.
posted by sweetkid at 10:41 AM on May 30, 2014 [18 favorites]


Strictly speaking, it was described as othering, insulting, infantilizing and alienating. And an example of misandry. I guess if one squinted very, very hard one could argue that does not imply offense, but one would have to have one's 'splaisers set to maximum power.

I feel kind of awful about having caused this whole derail, although it wasn't something I was expecting to happen. In my defence, when nobody said:

(Also, didn't this derail start with a reaction to "I guess I'm just not super committed to hearing about what the mens feel about this right now," in which "the mens" actually distances it a touch from the harsher "not committed to hearing what men feel about this right now"?)


That's pretty much exactly it! I was thinking particularly of the guy Surfurrus linked to who who was telling the "ladies" to be patient, because although it only took him two days to stop angrily rejecting every #yesallwomen tweet out of hand (and only reject the "hateful" ones), it might take less awesome men a little longer.

And I was thinking... "dude, you just emerged from a seething pit of anger with women. That's awesome, but I don't think it's a great place to start giving women instructions." Which in turn reminded me of how when Brendan Eich came under pressure to step down as CEO of Mozilla Corp, a lot of straight men took to the web to opine learnedly that this was an attack on political freedom. And when black feminists are active on Twitter, commissioning editors seem keen to find white feminists to write think pieces about the corrosive anger that is destroying feminism from within. It's that whole "And, to discuss this feminist issue, that may have far-reaching consequences for women across America, we're glad to welcome to the studio... Hugo Schwyzer!*" thing...



* I assume this does not happen so much any more.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:44 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


I also thought that was gross - I appreciate you tried to clarify after that, but damn, you included yourself to start with - how half of the human race is so largely irrelevant to your life is beyond me.
posted by agregoli at 10:44 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


And, you know, I really hope that we've now talked over the mens rea, and get where it is coming from, and its etiology and usage, and we're all cool. Like, it was a misunderstanding that has been sorted out. A second wave on whether anyone specifically said the O-word seems kind of unnecessary...
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:47 AM on May 30, 2014


The former roommate of Santa Barbara killer Elliot Rodger said today he had a "bad feeling" while living with Rodger and should have taken the "opportunity to help" his troubled roommate.
Rugg said his roommate informed him that he believed Rodger had a firearm because he could hear a gun "clicking."

"I didn't hear the clicks, but he said that he would click the gun over and over and the way the room is set up you could see the silhouette of everything that's going on there."

While his roommate was a man of few words and seemed to be eager to avoid conversation, Rugg said he heard him having what he presumed to be telephone conversations from his bedroom that got "angrier and louder."
From earlier reporting:
He decided to climb onto a wooden ledge and plop onto a chair. Some partiers eventually climbed onto the ledge, too. But since the students weren't talking to him, Rodger snapped.

"That was the last straw," he wrote. "A dark, hate-fueled rage overcame my entire being, and I tried to push as many of them as I could from the 10-foot ledge."

He didn't succeed. The students pushed him back, and Rodger fell onto the street, breaking his ankle.
I wonder what Rugg thinks he could have done.
posted by Golden Eternity at 10:54 AM on May 30, 2014 [2 favorites]


To be fair to feckless, 99.9999% of the human race is irrelevant to most of us on a day to day basis. You can care about all people and their welfare in an abstract way and have concern for people you encounter along the way but truly caring about more than a handful of people is quite difficult.
posted by ryanfou at 11:00 AM on May 30, 2014


Speak for yourself, ryanfou. That is not a universal truth.
posted by agregoli at 11:02 AM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Nobody said they were offended by 'the mens', that's a straw man.

I was referring to the responses to feckless who I don't think you have to read between the lines to see as offended. I entirely agree that pre-emptively sweating whether or not that trifle would put off potential allies is a waste of time.

Which did remind of of It just seems to me that if you're a man and you believe that Things need to Change, it really does behoove you to step in and start educating the men around you who don't get it yet. Stop telling the women around you to do it. We're still tired from educating the existing men who get it and we could use a break.

The problem with this, for me, is that I go out of my way to not be in the presence of people who Don't Get It. I certainly do not run in circles where they're enough a part of my life that I'm going to be someone they likely look to as an equal to be listened to. I've said "that is some really shitty sexism right there" to people who I have encountered by chance (like the manager who berated a clerk in my presence with something about periods) but in-depth conversations? How many of us who feel strongly about this are spending time with these jokers?

which makes me think of - [Actually, I think I am OK with saying that Daniel Snyder does not get to be offended about protests about the name of his NFL team.]

I'm not okay with Snyder having one single moment in his day where he's not troubled. I hope he's offended to the core, constantly, and that it keeps him up nights.
posted by phearlez at 11:06 AM on May 30, 2014


I have met some gay men who are genuinely and grossly misogynist. But I don't think it's because women are largely irrelevant to their lives. It's because society is misogynist and they don't need to even pretend that women have anything they want (attention, assistance with household tasks, sex, etc.). There are many, many lesbians - and not the separatist kind, either - for whom men are pretty irrelevant and yet most lesbians don't engage in the kind of misandry that would be the equivalent of background-noise misogyny that is invisible to so many people.
posted by rtha at 11:06 AM on May 30, 2014 [24 favorites]


Actual allies and folks who are on our side help by listening to us, not demanding we act nicer to suit their sensibilities.

"Breeders" has fallen out of vogue in my communities because it's cissexist, not because of any fear of alienating the straights. I generally hang out in a lot of queer-normative spaces, though, because I find cishets whining about how ~mean~ we all are and trying to equate our anger with the actual oppression we face tiresome as all fuck.
posted by NoraReed at 11:27 AM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


agregoli - I was trying to counter another derail and don't really want to get into this. If a persons relationships are primarily with other men, saying women are irrelevant is provocative, but I don't he meant it in a way disrespectful to women.
posted by ryanfou at 11:27 AM on May 30, 2014


If a persons relationships are primarily with other men, saying women are irrelevant is provocative, but I don't he meant it in a way disrespectful to women.

So gay men don't work with women, or go to places staffed or patronized by women, or encounter family members or friends who are women?
posted by winna at 11:30 AM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Only men have the privilege to avoid the opposite sex almost entirely; women will have a lot of trouble finding jobs and medical care in particular without dealing with men.
posted by NoraReed at 11:33 AM on May 30, 2014 [24 favorites]


> And by "make it my problem", I am referring to derailing the entire discussion so that we can focus on the usage of the words "the mens" and how it hurts people's feelings instead of talking about anything else.

What's more, at least for me, is the fact that there is a long and considerably less-than-noble tradition of expecting women, specifically women, to be the guardians of others' emotions. There are thousands of parsecs distance between derailing a conversation to police the verbiage and murdering someone who didn't return one's affections -- I am not trying to equate these in any way -- but I do think it's important to realize that they are both informed by a common social expectation that women steward men's feelings. Obviously I'm not suggesting that people should be freely callous with their words, but I think it's important to consider where the impulse to tell women to be nicer comes from, and what other social baggage is bound up with it.

And to rerail things: I think that in the current context, worrying about how women should not "other" men is particularly distasteful. In my opinion, the onus should be on the men who are bothered by "teh mens" to figure out what bothers them so much about it (hint: it's not the same as women's problem with "teh wimmin" or "females" -- cf the bit about "cracker" above) and ask themselves to what degree their upset is a low-level manifestation and/or perpetuation of the very the same shit that Rodger took to its bloody extreme. Focusing on how women should be nicer isn't just a noisy derail; it's antithetical to combating sexist entitlement.
posted by Westringia F. at 11:40 AM on May 30, 2014 [31 favorites]


Yes, no need to 'get into this' (whatever that means - reads as, don't disagree with me and waste everyone's time), but seriously, you had a blanket statement that doesn't include me, or many in this thread. When you presume how others feel, you may get pushback from those who don't feel that way.

In addition, FFF is obviously able to defend himself.
posted by agregoli at 11:42 AM on May 30, 2014 [1 favorite]


If a persons relationships are primarily with other men, saying women are irrelevant is provocative, but I don't he meant it in a way disrespectful to women.

I disagree. We aren't talking about a statement like, "Mongolian yak herders are irrelevant to my life," we're talking about a dismissal of half the human race. In context, I can't see how else you'd read it except as disrespectful. We aren't having some late-night hypothetical dorm room conversation. We're talking about how the world works.
posted by JohnLewis at 11:59 AM on May 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Also, we're on a site where people are talking about the sick, toxic phenomenon in which many men view women as valuable only for their usefulness for sexual and emotional release. To then say "women are irrelevant" because you don't want to have sex with them still implies that you see women as sexual objects, just not for you.

I knew gay men who said things like this in college (also things about how disgusting women's bodies are, which still seems to be a popular theme for gay characters on television) but most have grown out of it by their midthirties and a lot of gay men I know now may have never said things like this.
posted by sweetkid at 12:11 PM on May 30, 2014 [29 favorites]


What's more, at least for me, is the fact that there is a long and considerably less-than-noble tradition of expecting women, specifically women, to be the guardians of others' emotions. There are thousands of parsecs distance between derailing a conversation to police the verbiage and murdering someone who didn't return one's affections -- I am not trying to equate these in any way -- but I do think it's important to realize that they are both informed by a common social expectation that women steward men's feelings.

Not to derail, but your comment reminded me of a small example: A bad (incompetent) review of Patricia Lockwood's new book was pretty much an extended "What about the men? Why does she mock men like this? Could she not have been kinder?" and she responded with a related point.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:31 PM on May 30, 2014 [11 favorites]


Holy shit the responses to that tweet. internetmenz.txt
posted by NoraReed at 12:59 PM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


Yeah, wow, those responses. How was it again that women got the reputation for being overly sensitive?
posted by rtha at 1:05 PM on May 30, 2014 [14 favorites]


The guy who wrote the princess/geek article was on NPR and it was actually really powerful to me. I feel like on the one hand, it's good to have female voices be the center of women's empowerment. However I also feel like, if men who are supportive of such advances think being silent is their best move, the only thing we hear from are guys who are saying shitty things.

In my reality, guys who believe and do vile things about and to women are the norm, and I don't hear other men stand up about it as often. It changes my world when I hear men care about human rights, including trying to understand what females go through and how our culture is often set to misogyny or harmful beliefs about women (and that hurt men too of course) but it's really healing to hear the well written responses from men contemplating this issue and standing up to to the task of educating people about it and making real active changes in our cultural narratives and expectations of each other and treatment of each other.

I feel like women's rights is one part of the spectrum of human rights, and consideration of human welfare we should all actively care about deeply and work to understanding in complex ways because it's a difficult art. And when men work on women oriented issues, they might say things that are wrong, and being a good ally means being willing to hear a thing here or there you said wasn't quite right.

But when you hear that, don't think it means you should stop, it means you have an opportunity to learn. While those of us who are exhausted of this battle and the wounds we carry from the hatred that if often flung at women who stand up against the bullshit in our culture, might get snarky, irritated or exhausted, that doesn't mean to stop being a part of it because we do need men to be activisits for these issues also and to basically have an active rather than passive voice when they see really shitty ideologies growing and festering around them.

We need all of it from everyone.

So thanks to everyone, of any gender, that is willing to do the hard work of examining our beliefs and ideologies and how they effect real people, and how we can take an active role in making the world a better place for human beings. Because every single thing you do toward that goal, even if is is small, it all adds up and it matters and a lot of small things happen is how cultures are often shaped. And sometimes that itself sets the stage for very big things.
posted by xarnop at 1:18 PM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


reads as, don't disagree with me and waste everyone's time

agregoli - well I'm not dismissing you I just think it's off topic and you didn't say in what way you disagreed with me. I don't think it's possible for the average person to be effectively engaged with more than a few thousand people in ones life at any one time.

If you disagree I would be happy to discuss it. If you are offended that someone claims they don't have meaningful relationships with women, well I agree that's myopic and a bit odd, I'm just not sure it's malicious in every case.
posted by ryanfou at 2:12 PM on May 30, 2014


i've been spending a lot of time lately listening to awesome, snarky women of color (and queer people of color). as someone who grew up white, in a pretty white area of arkansas, as a mormon - most of my influences (role models, friends, neighbors, media, etc) were white. i decided in the last few years to actively change that, to seek out other perspectives, to fill my ears and head with non-white people. through all this listening and reading and watching i've many times come upon derisive jokes or statements or caricatures of white people. never once did it occur to me to see it as reverse racism, never once did i want to ask someone to be nicer about white people. you can choose to just listen if something bristles. you can choose to not make it all about you when your axis of privilage gives you the ability to fill up a room. you can choose to just move the fuck on.

i think it can be pretty telling when the person representing the dominate group in a conversation chooses instead to quibble minor points of tone.
posted by nadawi at 2:32 PM on May 30, 2014 [17 favorites]


as to the gay men find women irrelavent thing - i will say that i read that as fffm agreeing with the critiques that came after his comment - that it's wrong for gay men to feel and act that way, that's it's just another side of the misogyny coin - that men have the privilege to not care about women, and that men who don't fuck women are given an even greater ability to just not consider them. i was reading fffm saying that shit needs to stop, that gay men have a lot of work to do on the sexism fight.
posted by nadawi at 2:35 PM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Wow. I hope the men here appreciate the *phenomenal* patience of the women posters on mefi. I'm glad I stuck around to - at least - read the last few posts by them.

Yes ... it has been said over and over and over -- women are not bottomless wells of support for male confusion/questioning/frustration. And YES ... the persistent, petulant derailing that is the automatic go-to on mefi when EVER a question about misogyny or male entitlement comes up -- needs to be snipped in the bud (by MEN, preferably) ... "That's NOT okay, Dude." will suffice! Such childish behavior is so very, very corrosive to any learning community.

I am excited to see that xarbaop has brought the conversation back to the question of how men can work against misogyny. I'd like to refer back to that excellent blog that KathrynT posted -- https://elementalstew.wordpress.com/2014/05/29/notallmenyesallwomen-secondary-trauma-and-relearning-everything-for-the-sake-of-not-killing-each-other/

One of the key points this writer makes (as a social worker) is that men who have not experienced the kind of trauma that they hear women sharing will experience their own form of trauma in listening to the stories. This is significant because, as the writer says, the men need to discuss their trauma with someone. AND ... it is very, very *wrong* for males to try to do this "dealing with secondary trauma" with FEMALES! Women have their own work to do! Whether we like it or not -- men have to learn to process their feelings with other men.

Only then can we be 'allies'.
posted by Surfurrus at 2:51 PM on May 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


"i think it can be pretty telling when the person representing the dominate group in a conversation chooses instead to quibble minor points of tone."

Yeah, if you hear someone griping about how rich people's lives are so easy and it hurts your feelings because you're rich, try ending income inequality and poverty THEN ask people, who now have the same resources, to be more sensitive. Like I want us to all be sensitive, but sometimes when you have a broken bone you're not graceful with your language about your agony, and sometimes when you've been facing systemic inequality and injustice you feel actively mad at all the people who WATCH systemic injustice and just DON'T CARE.

That is actually a choice, the not caring or doing anything about it.

And it's worth being angry at people who walk the other way when they see huge portions of people suffering even if those people aren't directly at fault for the inequality or injustice.

If you think "but I'm just an innocent bystander! It's not my fault I have privilege!" You're missing the point that if you're not actively trying to share the privilege you're siding with the injustice. And if you finally come around and show up to the party wanting to be helpful, you're going to hear that anger and while, yes in a perfect world everyone one of us should be nicer to every other one of us, you're first task is to try to be a bit forgiving of how people are coping with a heavier load than you and that at the moment, they're trying to get the bricks off their backs and not worry about your feelings at all.

Maybe later, if things got totally repaired, they could worry about the fact that they got some dirt in your eye while they were stamping around with the weight of the bricks on their backs and tend to your wounds, it's just they have bigger battles to work on at the moment.

xarboap. Is that me? I like it, it has a nice ring to it.
posted by xarnop at 2:59 PM on May 30, 2014 [4 favorites]


Oops ... must have gotten some dirt in my eye. But, if it's any consolation, Xarnop -- I've done worse mangling of user names -- carbomb ;-)
posted by Surfurrus at 4:17 PM on May 30, 2014


I Refuse To Be One Of “The Good Men”

Once I begin thinking that I could never be like those guys over there, it becomes much more likely that I’ll act exactly like them. Saying that I’m not like that would allow be to become complacent about my privilege and my internalized sexism and misogyny. Recognizing that I could act like that gives me the room to make the ongoing decision to act differently.

When we say that “I’m not like that,” we render those guys as other. Rather than seeing our shared humanity, we demonize them. Rather than seeing the ways in which sexism is trained and shamed into each of us, we call them evil and stop looking at ourselves. And rather than reaching out to them to help them move in a positive direction, we discard them so that we can be “not like them.” I don’t see how that does anything other than perpetuate the cycles that I so passionately want to stop.

posted by showbiz_liz at 4:21 PM on May 30, 2014 [14 favorites]


In the early years of The People's Institute I attended an Undoing Racism workshop. By coffee break, most of us had been sufficiently stunned to be countering with "not all white people" and by lunchtime, we had been told, almost wearily, that our defenses were just us "asking for a cookie." We all thought things over through lunch and when we reconvened, one of us (an Italian-American woman who later shared something of her heritage) handed around a big basket of pizzelles she had raced home to make. This reached us in a remarkable way and the leaders were able to bring us together over our awareness of one or another type of othering. This was the first time I heard "asking for a cookie" which has now become, like "the mens," another meme in feminist circles. Those undoing racism workshops are still going strong apparently and they are valuable. The registration fee of several hundred dollars was a political decision that neatly expressed their rejection of the notion that people owed their oppressors a free education on the subject. I wonder if we will ever see "Undoing Patriarchy" workshops?
posted by Anitanola at 4:36 PM on May 30, 2014 [7 favorites]


... the men need to discuss their trauma with someone. AND ... it is very, very *wrong* for males to try to do this "dealing with secondary trauma" with FEMALES! Women have their own work to do! Whether we like it or not -- men have to learn to process their feelings with other men.
I honestly don't get this. Why is it inherently wrong for me to discuss this with a woman? Assuming this idea of 'secondary trauma' is a real thing in this context (which I'm dubious about, because it sounds to me like just men wanting someone to clean the dirt out of their eye as per xarnop's comment, but I defer to people far more knowledgable), why should the gender of any person I discuss this with matter? I suspect it's 'because women already have enough crap to deal with' but doesn't this attitude simply reinforce gender divisions that shouldn't exist?
posted by dg at 4:52 PM on May 30, 2014


Comfort IN, dump OUT.
posted by Hildegarde at 4:57 PM on May 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


dg, you didn't read the whole article, did you? Not cool, dude.
posted by Surfurrus at 5:03 PM on May 30, 2014


Why is it inherently wrong for me to discuss this with a woman?

Because wanting the person who actually experienced the shitty thing to help you through the difficult feelings that were caused by them telling you about the shitty thing that happened to them is the poor formiest kind of poor form.
posted by KathrynT at 5:09 PM on May 30, 2014 [21 favorites]


I honestly don't get this. Why is it inherently wrong for me to discuss this with a woman? Assuming this idea of 'secondary trauma' is a real thing in this context (which I'm dubious about, because it sounds to me like just men wanting someone to clean the dirt out of their eye as per xarnop's comment, but I defer to people far more knowledgable), why should the gender of any person I discuss this with matter?

Look at it this way.

If I collapsed because someone shot me, and when I collapsed I fell on your foot and cracked your toe, would you ask me to do first aid on your toe while I was still bleeding from my gunshot? No. Because my bleeding gunshot is a much more immediate and pressing concern to me at that moment than dealing with your cracked toe.

A man turning to a woman and saying "hey, I feel really bad as a man now that I realize misogyny is a thing, can you help me feel better," is kind of like saying "hey, you just broke my toe when you landed on it after being shot, can you stop and help me tape it up a sec?"
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:33 PM on May 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Or demanding the firemen get your cat out of a tree when your neighbor's house is burning down.
posted by Pudhoho at 5:48 PM on May 30, 2014 [10 favorites]


You assumed I didn't read the article, didn't you? Not cool, dude.

Hildegarde's link actually made more sense to me and I think the concentric circles thing is a great way to think about dealing with traumatic situations of all kinds. I still don't quite see that, because the only close friend I have is female, it then becomes my duty to go and make male friends so I can talk about my hurt feelings with them and that it's not appropriate for me to discuss misogyny with her. I'm not very bright, though and it's not the responsibility of anyone here to hold my hand until I figure it out.

A man turning to a woman and saying "hey, I feel really bad as a man now that I realize misogyny is a thing, can you help me feel better," ...
I can only speak for myself, but I don't expect anyone to 'help me feel better' about misogyny. Me 'feeling bad' about something like this is not a situation that calls for a salve to my feelings, it's a situation that calls for me to recognise that there's a problem and think about what I can do to help towards a resolution to that problem. For me to 'feel better' about this requires action, not comfort.
posted by dg at 5:50 PM on May 30, 2014


I can only speak for myself, but I don't expect anyone to 'help me feel better' about misogyny. Me 'feeling bad' about something like this is not a situation that calls for a salve to my feelings, it's a situation that calls for me to recognise that there's a problem and think about what I can do to help towards a resolution to that problem. For me to 'feel better' about this requires action, not comfort.

Then....why are you asking about this? Because that's what the "secondary trauma" article is discussing.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 5:55 PM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


i feel like there's a continuum...

near one end, you have your best friend who is a woman where you have a history of tackling issues of all sorts and lots of built up support that goes both ways. i also assume if she were to tell you about misogyny related trauma that you wouldn't turn the conversation to your trauma at hearing the story.

at the other end of the continuum you have the thing we see played out over and over again in spaces like this and other generally progressive groups - where women are sharing their trauma and men turn the conversation into what their reactions are instead of just listening for a bit (and worse, when men assure us how terrible our experience was, then rush to make sure we realize it's not all men or that the guy was just a jerk or any other minimizing bs).

i think it also describes something i've gone through countless times - i tell men in my life about my child, teen, and adult sexual assaults - and instead of comforting me or just taking the info in, it becomes all about how hard the info is to hear for them - and very quickly turns into me having to soothe them because they're so upset. i stopped telling men about my history unless i had the reserves to go over every gory detail at their prodding and then to comfort them for having to know that sort of ickiness exists in the world. and nearly every time the part they miss and skim over is that i'm not special. i'm not some anomaly of victimhood. my story isn't rare, just the willingness to share it.

this is why when someone comes to ask.me saying they're having problems processing the second hand trauma the advice is rarely "talk with the person who suffered the actual trauma to work it out" and is instead, "join support groups, go to therapy, read these books."
posted by nadawi at 6:03 PM on May 30, 2014 [13 favorites]


Man, last night I ended up getting into a 440(!) comment argument on Facebook with some shit who must have been taking notes on what not to say from this thread. His "point" was that men's feelings are treated like they're less important than women's feelings and that Rodger was "just as much a victim." My point was pretty much that women's feelings that they don't want to get actually fucking murdered was more important than men's feelings of being excluded from talking about their feelings right after a misogynistic murder spree. I did get my bingo: I was told that I was a misandrist, that my disregard for men's feelings was causing murders, that I was only doing this to get laid, and that by telling him that was bullshit I was both putting women on a pedestal and making them inferior by not letting them defend themselves. It was the angriest I've been in a long time — I was so surprised that a (liberal, feminist) friend of mine was friends with this asshole; I've just gone through a swath of my facebook friends/acquaintances and dropped anyone who put up any maundering at all about poor Elliot Roger. Fuck 'em.
posted by klangklangston at 6:15 PM on May 30, 2014 [11 favorites]


Rodger... was just as much a victim? I'm pretty sure I'd have to leave a room that guy was in to avoid punching him in the mouth.
posted by Justinian at 6:19 PM on May 30, 2014 [3 favorites]


I honestly don't get this. Why is it inherently wrong for me to discuss this with a woman? Assuming this idea of 'secondary trauma' is a real thing in this context (which I'm dubious about, because it sounds to me like just men wanting someone to clean the dirt out of their eye as per xarnop's comment, but I defer to people far more knowledgable), why should the gender of any person I discuss this with matter? I suspect it's 'because women already have enough crap to deal with' but doesn't this attitude simply reinforce gender divisions that shouldn't exist?


Do you have a woman friend who wants to talk about misogyny and your struggles with it? If so, go ahead. Be aware, though, that if you break out the "and when I was nineteen I only avoided committing rape because I was so drunk that I got distracted, so I understand that men are so terrible!" kind of anecdote, it may change your friendship.

Sometimes I personally am up for discussions about feminism with men, queerness with straight people and assorted para-trans gender weirdnesses with cis folks. Sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I have the emotional resilience to explain "but no, that really does happen" or to say "yes, you definitely learned something!" or "let's talk about your analysis in depth". Sometimes talking about that shit just reminds me that even men I like have been socialized in really fucked up ways. (I assume that this is similar to what a friend of color might experience when we talk about race.)

This is the thing you need to understand: misogyny is terribly, terribly tiring and frustrating and sad to experience. I know that I go through the world being evaluated on my fuckability and Usefulness To Men, that this impacts my job prospects, my interactions with everyone from the counter guy at the deli to the librarian to the bike repair dude. I know that most men think women are stupid at least some of the time. I know that I have been warped and damaged in my sexuality, in my sense of my body, in my health - I would not have hypervigilance and a host of shellshocky stuff - because I was socialized female. I know that I have closed off so much in myself just to survive - that I have learned to doubt myself, to step back from what I want, to feel guilty if I don't caretake, to aim low because it's selfish and immoral to aim high. I know that I still kind of hate myself because I don't look like a fashion model.

I don't swim. You know why? Because I feel so much guilt, body shame and panic that I can't. I sleep basically in clothes because I get too anxious when I sleep in anything even remotely revealing. I very seldom make eye contact with men, because I am afraid that they will launch into homophobic harassment or violence - and this has happened pretty often. I have trouble being touched. I have accidentally ignored men who were speaking to me, because my default mode is "strange men are not going to notice me unless they want to harass me, because I am neither fuckable nor maternal."

What I'm trying to say is that living under patriarchy gets me down. It doesn't just make me feel sad or guilty or angry. It contours every aspect of my life and makes it so much fucking worse.

When you want to have a little chat about how you've just realized that Simone de Beauvoir was right, or ask me about how you can fight patriarchy, you are reminding me once again that this is the condition under which I live, and I am forced to realize that it is very unlikely to improve much in my lifetime.

It's a downer. Sometimes I feel like getting through that, or I'm feeling chipper and exuberant, or you seem like a decent enough person that I'm willing to have that conversation. Sometimes I just don't want to do it again.

Please understand that even if you are very clever, at least 50% of the conversation that you want to have is a conversation I've had many times before and can predict. If you can be 50% original, in fact, I'll be thrilled.

Also please understand that even if you are a swell person, I don't know that - and I've had many conversations about gender go wildly off the rails into Nice Guy whining and creepery.

Sometimes I am just too tired, and I want to think about something other than intractable patriarchy and its consequences all day.

Even if you are the most stand-up ally who ever allied, what is an abstraction and a political campaign for you is life for me.

It's tiring, and I just don't want to get tired all the time. And that is why it's not nice to demand that any person converse with you about their marginalization by people of your general identity.
posted by Frowner at 6:29 PM on May 30, 2014 [31 favorites]


And I want to add that gender divisions do exist. Believe me, I know - I'm right up at the sharp end of them.
posted by Frowner at 6:36 PM on May 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Man, last night I ended up getting into a 440(!) comment argument on Facebook with some shit who must have been taking notes on what not to say from this thread.

UGH dude between this shit and Maya Angelou's death i've seen an inordinate amount of facebook comment threads go down in flames. I've pretty efficiently deleted anyone who i'd need to text-suplex like that, but a lot of my friends haven't i guess... because fuck, it's a warzone out there.

what made me happy though, is that both my friends and a lot of their friends were there to lend erm, fire support.

I think the saddest thing though is sort of a really, really mild watered down version of what Frowner was talking about. When you're having a seemingly earnest conversation with someone who you thought you respected or at least knew as a semi-decent guy and suddenly it takes a Mr toads wild ride type of turn into absurdity, offensiveness, and just regressive dudesplain bullshit.

100 comments was about standard, a few hit 200. but it was like, 10 threads going at the same time. I know i'm not obligated to engage or anything, but just watching it go down even if i backed off was like... such garbage. ugh.
posted by emptythought at 7:10 PM on May 30, 2014 [5 favorites]


Then....why are you asking about this? Because that's what the "secondary trauma" article is discussing.
Because that article is telling me I am not 'allowed' to talk about my feelings on these issues with women. Because it's telling me I should go out and make male friends for the primary purpose of talking about my feelings on these issues with them. Because, for me, that just doesn't make sense. I do truly understand that it's not acceptable to expect someone who is at the centre of trauma to apply a band-aid to any hurt feelings I might have because of their trauma. I get that this is not a case of something that happened to a single woman and that it's happened (and is happening) to women collectively. I'm somewhat appalled by the suggestion that I would demand that anyone converse with me about anything, but acknowledge that there's a long history of men doing just that.

I guess what I really don't get is why it seems to be assumed that I would be talking about this stuff for the purpose (or perhaps not with that as a primary purpose, but that I would expect this as an outcome at any point) of seeking comfort or reassurance. Frowner's comment above brings to my attention something I hadn't considered - that talking about this with women at all can be a reminder of shit that women don't want to have to think about every waking moment, which hadn't occurred to me but probably should have. Unfortunately, I don't have the skills to write this the way I feel without verging into #NotAllMen language, so I think I need to bow out for now before I offend more people, but thanks to those who have taken the time to respond to my ramblings.
posted by dg at 7:18 PM on May 30, 2014


I guess what I really don't get is why it seems to be assumed that I would be talking about this stuff for the purpose (or perhaps not with that as a primary purpose, but that I would expect this as an outcome at any point) of seeking comfort or reassurance.

because the writer doesn't know you and isn't talking to you specifically. because this is a repeated pattern, usually amongst men, when they're faced with someone else's, usually women's, trauma. because generalizations are necessary to discuss the big topics sometimes. if this seems foreign to you, consider that's a privilege you're carrying around since you haven't had to share for the umpteenth time why you flinch when someone bigger than you touches you (and then had to coddle someone who reacted to that sort of story with their own hurt feelings).
posted by nadawi at 8:15 PM on May 30, 2014 [8 favorites]


I guess what I really don't get is why it seems to be assumed that I would be talking about this stuff for the purpose (or perhaps not with that as a primary purpose, but that I would expect this as an outcome at any point) of seeking comfort or reassurance.

I guess what I don't get is why you think the article is specifically talking about you personally, and dismissing it as wrong as a result, rather than thinking "oh, hey, I don't seek out women to reassure me about this like the article is talking about, maybe I just get this already, yay me". Are you, like, TRYING to find things for it to be wrong about?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:44 PM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


Women are also socialized, for the most part, to make sure that they are reassuring and non-threatening and won't offend you. So if you start in on a conversation about your almost-by-definition-naive thoughts on how the patriarchy affects women, many, many, many women are going to feel immense pressure to reassure and comfort you. Can't speak about your bff specifically, but many/most/the vast majority of women are likely to respond in that way because they've been socialized *very* strongly (and explicitly) to do so. Feeling that pressure to comfort and reassure is going to be uncomfortable and shitty and angry-making for those women because they're probably not stupid and know that they're actually the ones who are worse off (relative to men) because of how patriarchy affects women. That they are the ones who know better (relative to men) how patriarchy affects women and what the problems/frustrations/tragedies/injustices it causes are. And then they're left feeling uncomfortable and shitty and angry but pressured into giving comfort regardless. Even if that's not the reaction you meant to trigger in them when you started the conversation.

Just because you intend for a person to have XYZ reaction doesn't mean s/he will. When you're talking about society-wide power structures, like patriarchy, you're not talking about individuals' intentions, you're talking about much larger forces than that (society-wide forces that are so large that they can make individuals' intentions confused/paradoxical and maybe irrelevant anyway).
posted by rue72 at 9:03 PM on May 30, 2014 [9 favorites]


Women are also socialized, for the most part, to make sure that they are reassuring and non-threatening and won't offend you.

We really are. It's awful.

I'm sorry, this is kind of a sidestep from the thread of the conversation, but I can't really talk about this in my usual "talk about things" spaces and it's been on my mind.

I like to think of myself as a pretty confident, self-assured person who doesn't let herself get pushed around. But when men I know -- especially men who are higher up the chain of prestige and influence than me -- say overtly shitty things about women, I find myself softening my response so aggressively that it's barely recognizable as criticism.

A couple days ago, an old friend on my Twitter feed proudly shared a joke his son had made about how fashion magazines are like comic books for women.

I work in comics. I am a woman and comics are my JOB; the axel around which my personal and professional lives revolve. When I saw his tweet I felt like I'd been slapped across the face.

"Did you feel a little sick to your stomach when your son said that?" I wanted to say. "Did you talk to him about how women and girls read comic books, too? Did you tell him that lots of men and boys also care about fashion? Why did you share this tweet? Am I supposed to chuckle? Am I supposed to think he was being clever?" I wanted to say a lot of things.

I think I ended up saying something like, "This tweet made me pretty sad."

He never responded.
posted by Narrative Priorities at 9:20 PM on May 30, 2014 [24 favorites]



I think I ended up saying something like, "This tweet made me pretty sad."


Good for you!
posted by sweetkid at 9:22 PM on May 30, 2014 [6 favorites]


I'm watching The Bletchley Circle tonight, which is about a group of women who were codebreakers during WWII who are trying to track a serial killer. One of them is all, "why do men do this?" and another is "women kill too," and the first one is all, "But not like THIS." And now they just found a body and are all horrified that he took long enough at the kill to take smoke breaks.

Yeah, probably should have had Netflix send me something else right now.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:42 PM on May 30, 2014


Utah Phillips:
[Ammon Hennacy] said, "You've got to be a pacifist."

I said "why?" He said, "It'll save your life." My behavior was very violent then. I said, "What is it?"

He said, "Well, I can't give you a book by Ghandi, you wouldn't understand it. I can't give you a list of rules and if you sign it you're a pacifist." He said, "You look at it like booze. You know, alcoholism will kill somebody until they finally get the courage to sit in a circle of people like that and put their hand in the air and say 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' And then you can begin to deal with the behavior, see? And have the people define it for you whose lives have been destroyed." He said, "It's the same with violence, you know, an alcoholic -- they could be dry for twenty years, they're never going to sit in that circle, put their hand up and say 'Well, I'm not an alcoholic anymore', No, they'd still do it, put their hand up and say 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' So, it's the same with violence. You've got to be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives it's messed with define that behavior for you. And it's not going to go away, you're going to be dealing with it every moment, in every situation, for the rest of your life."

I say, "Okay, I'll try that." And Ammon said, "It's not enough."

I said, "Oh."

He said, "You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege: racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. You want to be a pacifist, it's not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed."

That old man has been gone now twenty years and I'm still at it. But I figure if there's a worthwhile struggle in my own life, that's probably the one.
-- from the audio [yt] of his recording w. Ani DiFranco; similar story in this text interview.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:50 PM on May 30, 2014 [13 favorites]


Q&A: A Reformed Pickup Artist on Elliot Rodger’s Anger

This part made me say "EXACTLY!!" so loud that I startled a sleeping kitty:
One of my dark, early reactions to the shooting was that I wished someone had just slept with Rodger. Obviously, that’s not the real problem. But is there something women can do to defuse what you call “toxic masculinity”?

Honestly, it’s not women’s fault. Women aren’t the gender police. You’re not going to see as many women complaining or punishing a guy for being willing to show more emotions the way you’re going to see men telling a guy, Don’t be a pussy, man up. It’s not on women to change men; it’s on men to change themselves. We already put so much unfair responsibility on women when we say things like boys will be boys and women have to dress modestly because men can’t control themselves. That’s bullshit. Saying that it’s women’s responsibility is a way for men to absolve themselves. Even if someone had slept with Elliot Rodger it wouldn’t have fixed anything. If he had had a girlfriend she probably would have been his first target.
posted by palomar at 11:53 PM on May 30, 2014 [22 favorites]


I guess I wonder what motivates men who express a wish to be an "ally" in the issue of misogyny, and I think that informs my answer to questions like "What can men do about misogyny?", "What can woman do to help men in their struggle to combat misogyny?", and "Why can't men talk to women about misogyny?"

It seems to me that if you are a fair minded, rational, intelligent person, you are by nature opposed to philosophies that seek to demean, or other, or persecute others. If you are a man opposed to misogyny, you are not necessarily my ally. You are an ally of equality and fairness. Of not feeling that your place in this world depends on having someone to stand upon.
posted by Serafina Flummery at 2:12 AM on May 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


This argument by men that "oh noe mens" or whatever is gonna turn men away from feminism, oh nooooooo, is kind of... awful. I have a college degree that theoretically entitles me to practice Advertising should I choose, I took a bunch of courses in PR and branding, and I recently finished an internship which involved a whole lot of talking about tone and "The Conversation" in contexts far more frivolous than this one, and I can't help but think that the misguided souls arguing earnestly that what you need is all positivity and inclusiveness all the time have not done a whole lot of work in the field of starting meaningful conversations among a broad demographic.

In honor of this Monday's upcoming WWDC, I'll use this analogy: it would be like arguing that Apple's "I'm a Mac" ads were bad because they portrayed PCs and/or PC users as frumpy and un-hip. Many people, in fact, made that argument. A lot of people still think that "I'm a Mac" pushed the notion of Apple's being a company for snooty, image-obsessed assholes. And, sure, those ads were less-than-kind towards their competitors, and advanced a certain image of Apple that's not universally loved. But those ads sold shitloads of Macs, in part because when you're talking an audience of millions of people at once, you're not looking to placate every easily-bruised heart in the marketplace. You're looking to make an impact.

One thing that does not make an impact, sadly, is when people are very polite and tell you that surely you must be a wonderful person who's come to your opinions through some inescapable mixture of nature and nurture, etc etc, but....... and at that point anybody who's the slightest bit headstrong, by which I mean literally everybody, has tuned that discussion out for one that's more immediately grasping. Incidentally, it is also really, really, REALLY exhausting for the people trying ever-so-hard to be polite and not ruffle any feathers, so in discussions that involve a lot of struggle already, things that lighten the mood a little bit are usually very welcome.

The notion that negativity is a universal evil, that tone matters more than material, lies at the heart of smarminess (warning: long and awesome essay). Cultural institutions are especially pervasive and difficult to confront; insisting that the people confronting them must be nice and gentle about it is essentially making the argument that we shouldn't try to change those institutions at all. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote: "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection." One of the problems with allies to a cause, as I understand it, is that often they serve to impede the progress of a movement more than they actually advance its outright spread. This is a key example of that.

Frankly (and I'm thinking as an advertiser again), men should be made uncomfortable by this blanket dismissal of a certain male perspective. They should feel a bit unsettled. Maybe even a bit bad about themselves. Making people question themselves and their lifestyle/opinions is one of the trademark techniques of advertising, and while I'll be the first to admit that it's usually a technique used to promote shallow, awful consumerism (and misogyny!), that's not a knock against the technique itself, which has been proven time and again to be a highly effective one. Discomfort and confrontation are key parts of communication itself; they're among the only ways that you can make people stop and re-examine themselves, and they're only effective if you really catch a person's attention. Which "teh mens" clearly does, seeing as we're arguing about it here.

In this discussion, there're a number of "demographics" joining in the conversation. I can't help but think that this lighthearted blanket-generalization humor is effective in handling all of them:

Women get a way of quickly dismissing a certain flavor of bullshit, while communicating to each other that, yes, this is bullshit, you can mock it;

Ignorant jackasses starting stupid fights on the Internet get told that their attitudes are disrespected and not taken seriously, which'll either chase them off (good riddance), make them a teensy bit uncomfortable with their worldview (see above), or get them really worked up and upset (hilarious); and

Male allies get a little more used to the notion, if they aren't used to it already, that male privilege is a pervasive and problematic thing that risks distracting from the issues here that matter (hint: not "what men think").

If you are a guy and not profoundly disturbed about the shitty way that our culture warps men and hurts women, then you are probably not disturbed enough. As a guy, I find that making fun of my entire gender is actually a great way of coming to terms with/not freaking the hell out about the fact that there is something deeply wrong with a worldview I've been taught was completely normal, or about the fact that a lot of men who I'd otherwise think of as decent people are completely oblivious to behaviors of theirs towards women which range from offensive to incredibly hurtful. Some of my fellow male friends are offended by the humor I find in such things, but what are you gonna do? If they'd read my long Internet comments about misogyny when I'd told them to, perhaps we wouldn't be in a place now where I instead have to crack lighthearted jokes about terrible actual things, at the expense of the gender which perpetrates all of the terribleness. Sucks not to have a sense of humor, I guess!
posted by Rory Marinich at 4:28 AM on May 31, 2014 [26 favorites]


because the writer doesn't know you and isn't talking to you specifically.
I guess what I don't get is why you think the article is specifically talking about you personally
Which would explain why I couldn't seem to get out what I was trying to say without sounding all #NotAllMen. Because that's exactly what I was being. I'm sorry.
posted by dg at 4:57 AM on May 31, 2014 [4 favorites]


jenfullmoon--Re; Bletchley Circle. i personally feel your comment lacks a historical perspective on what these women accomplished for the coming generations. I find their courage to break out of traditional roles (and in some cases relationships) both admirable and reflecting an incredible strength of character.
posted by rmhsinc at 6:00 AM on May 31, 2014


The men I feel safe with-- the ones who I can discuss these issues with without feeling wary about their potential responses-- are the ones who I can make feel uncomfortable, and they are grateful for it. Not in a masochistic way, but in a "thank you for waking me up" way. These are not angry conversations! They are full of laughter and smiling.

My dad once said something along the lines of "why do all these women wear these leggings/tight clothes aren't comfortable/why do they do this," and I rolled my eyes at him, then said "girls are dressed in tights from the time we are babies, literally before we can walk, and dressed in those tights for as long as grownups are buying our clothes. Of course most women grow up to find them comfortable." And he said "that's a good point, I hadn't thought of it that way before."

An older male friend of mine said something about how nerve-wracking and humiliating it used to be for him to ask out a girl, and why couldn't girls make it a little less scary, and I gave him the Margaret Atwood line, and he smiled this rueful smile and said he appreciated my willingness to call him on that mode of thinking (this is a dude who has been married for a long time, he was just reminiscing).

When someone points out my embedded racism, for example, it hurts, but I'm glad and thankful for it, because it helps me weed it out. If men find that they default to defensiveness and hurt feelings more than gratitude for honesty, then they need to wonder why that is, and what exactly they are protecting when they make those bruised emotions the issue.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:26 AM on May 31, 2014 [8 favorites]


On a different note, here's something grimly interesting from Rodger's manifesto...

At one point, Rodger says that he had tearfully confessed to his mother that he wanted to kill some people and himself.

This reminded me of a grim piece of advice I learned while getting training for volunteer work at Integrated Domestic Violence Court. One of the attorneys said that the number one most dangerous thing to ever hear is somebody threatening murder-suicide.

People threaten to kill themselves, and of course that should be taken seriously, but many people don't follow through these threats/gestures. People threaten to kill other people, and of course that should be taken very seriously, but many people don't follow through on these threats/gestures.

But, when people threaten murder-suicide, they are almost never, ever, ever, ever, ever anything less than 100% serious. People don't joke about that kind of thing. People don't even say that kind of thing just to manipulate people. It tends to be the expression of a sincere desire. If anybody close to you threatens murder-suicide, get the living fuck out of Dodge and summon all the help you can.

Anyhow, I had found that striking at the time, and, uh, now here we are.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:28 AM on May 31, 2014 [7 favorites]


Further notes on the rhetoric of murderers...

As the "Day of Retribution" approaches for Rodger, he often uses passive framing to describe how things had "come to this", as opposed to merely saying, "I now want to murder people":
When I thought about all of this, I truly did feel sick. I felt a shiver run through me. My whole world had become so twisted and wrong. I didn’t want it to come to this. I desperately wanted a way out.
The psychiatrist Theodore Dalrymple has a long-running concern about the use of "the passive mood and other modes of speech that are supposed to indicate [criminals'] helplessness":
As it happens, there are three stabbers (two of them unto death) at present in the prison who used precisely the same expression when describing to me what happened. “The knife went in,” they said when pressed to recover their allegedly lost memories of the deed.

The knife went in—unguided by human hand, apparently. That the long-hated victims were sought out, and the knives carried to the scene of the crimes, was as nothing compared with the willpower possessed by the inanimate knives themselves, which determined the unfortunate outcome. [source]
Dalrymple may ultimately take his observation too far, but he very much has a point. It's interesting that Rodger uses this passive framing even within his own manifesto, which he had presumably composed in the belief that people reading it would ultimately see things from his point of view.

On a somewhat related note, it's interesting how Rodger himself refers to himself as lacking in talent:
I had no talents, so it was impossible for me to become a professional actor, musician, or athlete; and those were usually the ways that young people acquired such money. I could invent something, or start a business just like Mark Zuckerberg did with Facebook, but the chances of me achieving such a thing were the same chances I had of winning the lottery anyway. I didn’t even have the skills of a computer programmer.
Wouldn't it be more typical for somebody so apparently narcissistic to be more delusional? I mean, how could he be a supreme gentleman if he is also aware that others are more talented than he is, let alone more handsome or more wealthy?

Or was this all just a display of deceptively clear-headed self-loathing, showing the hollow interior of his bubble-like ego?
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:52 AM on May 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I mentioned that upthread - he was a narcissist and he hated himself. It's a terrible combination.
posted by Squeak Attack at 6:59 AM on May 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


Wouldn't it be more typical for somebody so apparently narcissistic to be more delusional? I mean, how could he be a supreme gentleman if he is also aware that others are more talented than he is, let alone more handsome or more wealthy?

My thinking on that one is that he can't help but notice that he sucks at acting if he auditions and nobody will let him on a stage, if no one will let him play on a team, if he's the worst one in the band, etc. He's very aware of comparing himself to other people (i.e. everyone else gets pussy but me), as you'll recall. He can think he's a gentleman (HAHAHAHARRRRRR) because nothing IRL is straight up contradicting it.
posted by jenfullmoon at 7:26 AM on May 31, 2014


That makes a lot of sense, jenfullmoon. Perhaps it's also worth noting that, at least according to his manifesto, he never even approached women--meaning he never gave anyone a chance to disprove his 'magnificent gentlemanliness.' I wonder how aware he was of his delusions.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:29 AM on May 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


Actually, he doesn't strike me as self-loathing so much as profoundly lazy and making excuses for himself.

He didn't want to put effort into anything. Not his studies, not getting a job, not meeting & connecting with women, not even killing (insofar as he put it off on account of having a cold). He had gone through life not putting in effort, had gotten away with it to some degree by benefitting from his family's wealth, and had developed a pervasive view that the world owed him things without him having to earn them in any way.

But here's the snag: viewing oneself as entitled to women is easy to do, since society sends a message to us, from a very young age, that women should be providers of men's comfort and pleasure. Viewing oneself as entitled to money, on the other hand, is much harder in a society that values industriousness, especially one that values it as much as the US does (consider how we perceive "welfare state" vs. most Europeans). Feeling entitled not just to money but to riches would be the source of considerable cognitive dissonance, I would imagine. So he does what any lazy person would do: he makes excuses. "I'm not talented." He's not a lazy mooch, he's just not good enough, the poor dear. And since success for the lazy is indeed as likely as winning the lottery ticket, buying tickets is exactly what he does.

So I don't really see his calling himself talentless as evidence of self-loathing (although he may well have hated himself), but rather evidence of his sense of entitlement: entitlement to women, entitlement to wealth, entitlement to respect, and entitlement to a self-image that does not include the worst quality one can have as an American: being a lazy mooch.
posted by Westringia F. at 7:34 AM on May 31, 2014 [6 favorites]


He certainly felt entitled to women by dint of his mere existence, for reasons including the ones you accurately describe, but that doesn't mean that he couldn't also be self-loathing. I might be misreading you, and my apologies if I am, but I do not see any conflict whatsoever between these two concepts. (I'm also unclear as to how one can hate oneself without feeling self-loathing.)

It is interesting how being without talent is another passive sort of problem. Either you are born talented, or you are not. He also explicitly laments the fact that he was not born tall enough, that his father was not a more famous director, that his mother did not remarry a wealthier man. All of his problems are out of his control.

I also like the connection between laziness and the lottery. If anything, Rodger is being rigorously logical, in a heretical sense - if you are unable and unwilling to acquire wealth in the ways known to you, then of course the lottery is your only remaining option. And since the world revolves around you, of course you ought to win the lottery - otherwise, how could you become wealthy?
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:46 AM on May 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's strange to me that he'd care about wealth and see wealth all around him, and not become a thief. I guess he couldn't lower himself to actually putting in the effort? Or maybe he was so unimaginative that it didn't even occur to him to be underhanded? He seems to have been utterly without shame (judging by his astonishing lack of secrecy or even guile), so I doubt that any kind of moral compass guided his behavior.

Frankly, I think that all "explanations" for his rampage are dishearteningly banal and it's pointless to try and search for deeper meaning in his slaughter. He hated women, as well as most everyone else, and he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory -- so he gave that his best shot.

The similarity that I see between him and James Holmes (who committed those murders in Aurora, Co), though, is that both men seem to have imagined that they were living in a movie. Or at least, that's what I saw in the strange "screen test" feel of Roger's video of himself in his car, and Holmes specifically had some kind of delusions around the Dark Knight. Even if that's a true similarity between them, though, it's a fairly worthless insight. It's already a cliche that "everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story," and obviously murderers are no exception.
posted by rue72 at 8:11 AM on May 31, 2014


that talking about this with women at all can be a reminder of shit that women don't want to have to think about every waking moment,

dg, I have no problem talking about it, I'd talk your ear off about it if it would help you understand how ... saturated/seeped into our culture this is, except I'm tired of it devolving into a response that is never about the perpetrators sense of entitlement that made so he felt like he had the right to do/say what he did, it's always about what I might have done to garner such a reaction. Sometimes, if I'm fortunate, I'm offered suggestions on how to fix it to boot! :/

I'm not sure I agree with his overall point (that this is a [mens] leadership issue) but Jackson Katz illustrates my point in this TED talk here.

(wanted to say more but this is one behemoth of a thread. I lost track and couldn't keep up)
posted by redindiaink at 9:13 AM on May 31, 2014 [3 favorites]


The similarity that I see between him and James Holmes (who committed those murders in Aurora, Co), though, is that both men seem to have imagined that they were living in a movie.

Rodgers' manifesto also liberally (and repetitively) quotes (and paraphrases) from the Star Wars prequels and WoW.

The tight hug on media be an effect of his inability to relate to other human beings.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:27 AM on May 31, 2014


But, when people threaten murder-suicide, they are almost never, ever, ever, ever, ever anything less than 100% serious. People don't joke about that kind of thing. People don't even say that kind of thing just to manipulate people. It tends to be the expression of a sincere desire. If anybody close to you threatens murder-suicide, get the living fuck out of Dodge and summon all the help you can.

I just wanted to say thank you for that - as someone who was subject to a murder-suicide threat from a man I had stopped being romantially involved with, I freaked out and got a restraining order and moved and took a lot of safety precautions, only to have a lot of men I knew say that of course it was a ridiculous threat and I really overreacted.

But what that and the Rogers situation also makes me wonder is honestly, how many of us women have walked close to death in our daily lives, where only their distraction, or a series of other choices, or the response, have meant that we survived? Obviously Rogers interacted with a ton of women in his life. It's like playing "hot potato" with a grenade - everyone's tossing it away from them and eventually it explodes, killing the person it last touched. These guys that raise our red flags, that scare the fuck out of us - when people say that we are overreacting to them, it's just because the grenade didn't explode on our watch. But eventually, it's going to go.
posted by corb at 9:38 AM on May 31, 2014 [11 favorites]


I noticed his manifesto and videos repeatedly used the same phrases and the same word order over and over. There were many times he would say he wanted sex, love, companionship, pleasure, always beginning with sex. I got the sense that he was reciting mantras or he viewed his life like some kind of movie script with the same themes referenced over and over. It didn't seem natural at all. I would be curious what kind of quotes he got from star wars or video games, I didn't pick up on that.
posted by ryanfou at 9:46 AM on May 31, 2014


These guys that raise our red flags, that scare the fuck out of us - when people say that we are overreacting to them, it's just because the grenade didn't explode on our watch. But eventually, it's going to go.

I have a friend who was working with the Green River Killer when he was caught. (Background for those who aren't familiar with the situation: the GRK was a serial killer of sex workers, so named because he dumped their bodies in and near the Green River. When he was caught, it had been something like 13 years since his last murder.) I mean he wasn't in the office next door to hers, but he was in the same building, and she saw him frequently during her work week. She said "If you had to ask me which person in my office was most likely to be a serial killer, he would have been tops on my list. He was so scary in a way I just can't describe."
posted by KathrynT at 9:46 AM on May 31, 2014 [6 favorites]


I just wanted to say thank you for that - as someone who was subject to a murder-suicide threat from a man I had stopped being romantially involved with, I freaked out and got a restraining order and moved and took a lot of safety precautions, only to have a lot of men I knew say that of course it was a ridiculous threat and I really overreacted.

Holy Moses! Great thing you knew what to do, to make an understatement!

But what that and the Rogers situation also makes me wonder is honestly, how many of us women have walked close to death in our daily lives, where only their distraction, or a series of other choices, or the response, have meant that we survived?

Totally, totally true. Trigger warnings galore, but...

Imagine the bemusement of the people who had been splashed by Rodgers' beverages. To them, that might have just seemed like the random, bizarre act of a crazy person, maybe even sort of funny in retrospect. They had no idea at the time that they were the victims of somebody who was literally in the process of becoming a murderer - whose escalation to beverage-splashing was actually a part of his transformation.

Think about those women whom he tried to push off a ledge. They could have died, but for the fact that they and their friends beat the shit out of Rodgers. Did they process at the time the fact that they were almost the first victims of a murderer? I mean, probably - they were by a ledge - but we don't know if his lethal intent was obvious at the time. Or did it just seem like another weird stupid thing at a party? "Ha ha, holy shit, some weird elfin kid just started bouncing against us. I mean, we had no problem chasing him off, but holy shit."

Who knows.

Anyhoo, for those few people out there wondering why women have to deal with Schroedinger's Rapist, here you go. Yesterday's loon in a silk shirt is tomorrow's actual factual murderer.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:13 AM on May 31, 2014 [5 favorites]


> I might be misreading you, and my apologies if I am, but I do not see any conflict whatsoever between these two concepts. (I'm also unclear as to how one can hate oneself without feeling self-loathing.)

Oh, I think I wasn't very clear, Sticherbeast. I didn't mean to say that he wasn't self-loathing; my parenthetical about him quite possibly hating himself was meant to acknowledge that he could well be self-loathing (I don't really differentiate between hating oneself & feeling self-loathing). What I was trying to say was that "I have no talent" doesn't sound like self-loathing as much as it sounds like entitlement & excuse-making. Ie, he may well have hated himself, but I don't see his bemoaning his lack of talent (or height, or success with women, &c) as being an expression of it.

I definitely agree with you that entitlement & self-loathing aren't in conflict. And actually, now that I'm thinking about it, I wouldn't be surprised if they're pretty tightly coupled. Ie, someone grows up believing he's special (because everyone is a special snowflake, but he stakes his entire identity on the notion), observes that he's not a magical outlier of exceptional talent & easy success, and feels that the world has cheated him in some way... and presto, self-loathing and entitlement, wrapped up in a bow.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:22 AM on May 31, 2014 [1 favorite]


only to have a lot of men I knew say that of course it was a ridiculous threat and I really overreacted.

It's this kind of blithe dismissiveness from people who are supposed to care about us that makes me burst into enraged flames. If you take "too many" (no one ever tells you how many puts you into that category) then you're overreacting; if you don't take enough (again, never really defined! Can be anything from 'never leave the house' to 'carry a bazooka and have three bodyguards at all times') and something happens to you, then it's your fault.

And that's the setup, isn't it? Culturally, the baseline is it's always the woman's fault at some level - she should (or should not have) smiled at that dude, because if she had (or hadn't), he wouldn't have shot a bunch of people.
posted by rtha at 10:27 AM on May 31, 2014 [27 favorites]


So... one of the advantages/disadvantages to being a Young who was raised more on the Internet than in real life is, your past self is meticulously documented in ways that don't show you off in a terrific light. That's how I can recall with pinpoint accuracy that as precisely as 5.09 years ago, I was casually spouting off misogynist nonsense on the Internet, and getting horrendously worked up/wounded about the fact that some people found that to be offensive.

On the one hand, 5.09 years (1859 days) is close to a quarter of my life. But geez is that a lot closer to today than I like to admit.

Because it turns out I have a sense of dignity after all, I don't want to link to the specific exchange that shocked me so. In a nutshell I was operating from the mindset that everything in our culture was just hunky-dory for women, and that victims of certain crimes were thus at fault for not reporting them, or perhaps (maybe!, said 18.66-year-old Rory Marinich with perfect magnanimity, only maybe!) were even guilty of provoking those crimes in the first place.

Perhaps context matters, perhaps not. I was in the middle of realizing I had some major problems with the "nerd"-slash-startup culture I belonged to, and was pretty angry about the problems that I saw, because they seemed unforgivable. So I'd written a thing about these problems, posted it to a major startup site, and then started responding to other users' defensiveness by telling them that, no, they couldn't just write off the problems with their culture by saying, "These attitudes are exceptions, it's not all of us, it's not my job to call them out for what they are..." In a sense, I was making the exact same comments then that I've been making in this exact thread, only about a different topic. And with extra thoughtless woman-hating.

My woman-blaming namedrop was one of a handful of rhetorical arguments I'd thought of to back up my argument. McDonald's making people fat, Americans claiming 9/11 happened because terrorists hating our freedom... one of the things I picked up reading startup blogs was that being an inflammatory asshole made you more likely to be remembered, and boy did I go to town there. I wasn't thinking too hard about the plight of women here — isn't that how it works? — beyond a glib "yes that sounds right, and it'll piss people off too!" I'd spent a semester protesting with the College Democrats, I'd argued things out with a bunch of feminists, this would just be another chance for me to show off how enlightened and thoughtful I was for the crowd! Agh.

As luck would have it, a certain programmer idol of mine who is outspokenly feminist decided he was bored and outraged enough my behavior to just thoroughly rip me a new asshole. I wasn't expecting it; I'd walked out for the day to visit sculpture gardens, and suddenly when I came back somebody way more famous and admirable than I was was telling me, very publicly, that I was saying despicable things and ought to be ashamed of myself. It ruined my day, and the day after that was pretty awful too. It stung and it made my blood run cold.

And YES, it was completely off-putting. YES, it did piss me off that somebody was telling me my carefully-considered ally-dom to feminism didn't give me a fucking right to offer up my terrible opinions as if they were worthy of respect. Thankfully, in retrospect, this programmer was apparently so infuriated that he tracked me down to my (now-deleted) Twitter account, where I was posting things like "It took all of a few hours for me to fall out of love with [web site]. Nerds suck." Because YES, smart people calling me out for being a jackass was totally the problem I had with nerd culture, and not... um... people excusing their own terrible behavior while, uh... blaming the people who called them out for... being the... actual...

Shit.

That exchange was basically the end of my trying to become a famous young startup writer and parlay that into launching a start-up, selling out, and making millions. I realized that as thoughtful and well-meaning as I might be, I still had a bunch of ingrained ideas which were frankly pretty appalling. The terrifying thought that I would become famous as an ignorant asshole who other ignorant assholes used to justify their own behaviors pretty much kept me from publishing things to the Internet on my own web sites for years. I'm still trepidatious about doing that to this day. I don't think that's an entirely bad thing.

Anyway, that back-and-forth didn't make me an instantly better feminist. I didn't even agree with the programmer who was tearing me apart. But that fight, and the sinking feeling in my stomach that stuck with me afterwards, made me a lot more willing to hear out people who were arguing that I was wrong in my outlook here, and to try to figure out what it was that I hadn't realized yet. What made my logic not only wrong, but apparently infuriating.

Two reasons I'm telling this story. First, I think it's really important to keep emphasizing, again and again, on and on and on, that the misogyny which permeates our culture is seriously, seriously everywhere. Wannabe liberals who think of themselves as respecting women, respecting their opinions, doing what they can to make this culture a better place, can still harbor grotesque thoughts that they don't even realize are grotesque. Every time I post a comment on MetaFilter, I cringe a little bit because I know that one of these days I'll spout another idea that I've never realized was offensive, and suddenly will find myself on the trying-not-to-be-defensive again. It would be ridiculous to assume that I'm more than marginally more enlightened now than I used to be; in fact, if "enlightenment" means anything here, it's simply the ongoing realization that I'm going to be in the wrong about things, no matter how hard I try to play things reasonably. My reason itself is what's at fault here.

The other reason I bring this up is that I am emotionally invested in the idea that conversations on the Internet, ones that are explicitly negative and confrontational and dismissive, can make an impact. Without such conversations, I would be a whole lot shittier than I am now. My past doesn't begin in 2010 or 2013 or whatever line I'd love to draw and pretend is my origin point; my past begins with a lot of ignorance and hate and ugliness that I was argued out of, more often than not, by people on the Internet, because I was too scared to offer my opinions in person and because the people who knew me were far kinder to me than I deserved.

I'll go so far as to say that there is a point, and it is not a point too terribly far out, at which trying to respectfully debate misogynist attitudes will only make the people who hold them feel more comfortable with what they believe. When I was writing on that web site, I loved people who tried to debate me respectfully; it gave me a chance to restate all my ideas, which would draw out all my sympathizers to reinforce all my opinions and remind me of how many people there were that agreed with me. It was only when somebody lost their shit and decided it was time to tell me to go fuck myself that I actually had to stop and really think about what I was doing. Since then, I've learned how exhausting it is to debate somebody who believes themselves to be in the intellectual right; the sheer idea of a "debate" is that there is a chance the other person is correct, and boy will they seize that opportunity to keep on feeling that way.

Scorn, on the other hand... boy, can scorn work wonders. A couple of well-planted barbs, and suddenly people are far more open to seeing reason than they were just a minute ago. Nobody likes to be mocked. It's not a terrible thing, then, to mock a person even if they are trying to be well-meaning; if they've really internalized the message that they think they're fighting for, they'll laugh it off, and if they're not, then they'll have to stop and re-consider what it is that they're doing here. (If they don't mean well, then toot toot, full steam ahead!) The only "downside" is that it can be emotionally exhausting for a person to have to put that much effort in, but I mean people here are arguing that the people who should be putting in the effort and getting drained are the people who are in the right. Fuck that. If you can pass along the burden of feeling crappy and thinking hard to the people who ought to be feeling that way and thinking that much, I see no reason not to go for it. If the burden-passing itself involves humor and making everybody involved feel a little bit better in the middle of an ugly, ugly debate, then what the hell's the problem?

Eventually, I hope, misogyny will be seen as a joke, and misogynists will be universally viewed as pathetic. Kids will be raised thinking that hating or dismissing women is the sort of thing that makes you a Bad Person, and laughing at the horrible people who invest themselves in that mindset. Why not start laughing now? It'll make people think twice before saying stupid things, it'll make 'em less comfortable with perhaps being who they are, it'll give the people who face the most danger/suffering/abuse a little bit more room to feel comfortable with themselves, and maybe — just maybe — it'll trick a few kids into thinking that decency means more than just lip service. It worked for me, is all I'm sayin'.
posted by Rory Marinich at 12:02 PM on May 31, 2014 [28 favorites]


Sort of relevant:
Getty's Crusade to Turn Photographed Women From 'Dead-Eyed' Props Into People
The story of why the photo service developed a special collection showcasing stronger, more realistic-looking women
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:32 PM on May 31, 2014


Great article on the front page of the Guardian. As usual, don't read the depressing comments.

I felt compelled to send an email to Eva Wiseman, the author. Hope you don't mind me sharing it.
I know that you're pretty certainly going to get a bunch of men's rights 'activists' sending you mysogonist hate as a result of your article about the everday fear of violence. I'm sorry for that; I just wanted to send you something positive, and thank you.

It was writing (and follow on discussion) similar to yours that opened my eyes a few years ago, to what women face that I just didn't realise was there. I couldn't possibly say I understand what so many women go through at the hands of men; but I am trying to, by listening to the stories women share every chance I get, and am grateful for that opportunity to learn new perspectives.

That men think they are owed something by women, that women have some responsibility to give men what they want is so horribly wrong, and yet so embedded in our culture. It shouldn't be women's responsibility to fix that, yet somehow that's gotten dumped on female shoulders as well. And I'm sorry for that too.

I'm sure that your article will reach out to others. It's not enough to be a decent man; that's the bare minimum that should be expected! We must also teach our sons, our brothers, our friends how to be real men - to treat women with respect, as the people they are, protagonists in their own stories and not beholden to 'owe' us anything.

It's not your job to fix us and the toxic culture that teaches men they are more important than women, but thank you for taking on a part of that burden anyway, shedding some light on what happens - what all women know and experience, but men ignore or hide from even if they don't do it themselves.

So, simply; great article, and thank you for writing it.
That thank you goes out to the women who've participated here too. That eye-opening discussion for me was the 'Whatcha Reading' thread right here on metafilter, and the follow-up metatalk; almost 5 years ago now, yet it seems like last week.

I've learned so much from listening to women here on mefi and elsewhere; realising what a truly monstrous burden men and male-centric culture place on all women. I look back, and I was so clueless, so blind. And it's depressing that still, pretty much the first kneejerk reaction from many men is 'what about the mens?' and 'not ALL men' to such events, completely ignoring the toxic environment that enables and teaches so many men that they are owed sex by women.

Yet maybe we're getting somewhere. The '#yesallwomen' twitterstorm has been awesome.
And yes, some men will get their feelings hurt in discussions like this. So what? If you're not a mysogonist, you don't deserve a medal. Far too many men still ignore and/or belittle the problems women face, and assuming they're just minor problems that should be laughed off is part of what allows it to continue, and escalate to even worse violence when men decide to take what they think they're 'owed'.

It is brave to stand up in the face of that entrenched male derision and disinterest and downright hostility and share the painful truth of what happens out in the real world, and I thank the women that are willing to take that on and stand up for themselves and what's right, and share what they feel and experience.

It shouldn't be women's job to bang mens heads together, to force us to SEE what it's like out there. Yet many take it on anyway. The least us men can do is to listen, to believe them, to try and understand what a different world it is out there from what we experience. And then to stand up for women too, and tell other men when they're being sexist and treating women like objects instead of people. To try and share that burden of changing the world, as we damn well should.
posted by ArkhanJG at 2:57 AM on June 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


About that Jezebel article naju linked to a bit upthread - I certainly hope the FBI is investigating and watching these people because that sounds like straight up for real terrorism.

I learned near the beginning of this thread that Southern Poverty Law Center watches these groups and it took me aback, but I'm glad they are.
posted by maggiemaggie at 4:16 AM on June 1, 2014


The legal rationale for targeting radical Moslem groups is that they may be aiding groups that support Al Qaeda, with which the USA is at war. What they may potentially be doing is, in theory, both illegal and an act of war against the USA. Most people think this is a pretty weak legal theory, but anyway.

That theory doesn't work for racist or misogynist groups: the USA isn't at war with them. They would probably hide behind freedom of speech laws unless you could reasonably argue that they're planning to commit a crime, or conspiring to conceal one, or whatever. But misogynists aren't taken seriously even when there is evidence of them planning to commit a crime (proof in point: Elliot Rodger), and we regularly hear stories about perpetrators of domestic violence who have assaulted their partners multiple times. I can't see police infiltrating PUAHate groups any time soon.
posted by Joe in Australia at 6:10 AM on June 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I can't see police infiltrating PUAHate groups any time soon.

In the US, police seem to infiltrate anything that groups - I just did a google search for "police infiltrate peace groups" and there were too many results to just pick out one.

I was actually thinking that the police may already have infiltrated this group and might even be responsible for some of the more provocative posts.
posted by maggiemaggie at 7:08 AM on June 1, 2014


In the US, police seem to infiltrate anything that groups....

They do if they think 'merica is the target.

These guys are a group that is targeting women, so it's not as much of a priority.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:30 AM on June 1, 2014 [10 favorites]


westringia f: 'Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.' (Atwood)

immlass: Somebody opened the Rodger box, as it were, and found Schroedinger's Murderer.

Sticherbeast: Anyhoo, for those few people out there wondering why women have to deal with Schroedinger's Rapist, here you go. Yesterday's loon in a silk shirt is tomorrow's actual factual murderer.

I think this is skirting the edge of something important, something that bears directly on "not all men." I'm leading with a certain example because it should be just as familiar to women as to men, and that is:

If you've ever been followed in a store, you have experienced being someone's 'Schroedinger's shoplifter.'

This is not a sly way to just rebuke the language or reject its use, but an attempt to extend its way of looking and understand what happens at the far end.

In the gamut of reactions and emotions when you're being shadowed by a security guard, there's one that runs like the following:

'He's watching you, so keep cool.
The key thing is to act like you're just a normal shopper.
Don't bristle or make eye contact with him.
Don't slip your hands into your pockets while standing idle. Bad habit.
Speaking of pockets, why the XL hoodie in June? He's almost got a point.
He probably thinks it's bursting with sudafeds."


Everyone who's been there will see what's coming next, "this is actually my fault." And that's indeed where it ends. But where I think this shapes up to a monster worthy of naming is actually the bit at the beginning, that sets off the whole chain of thought:

"*The key thing is to act like you're just a normal shopper.*"

Pretending to be something that *you already are* is a weird and trying bit of business. It strains a metaphor where we're already invoking Schroedinger and reality as a dubious wave. The anxiety of performance in all conventional senses is that failure strips away the role, showing the actress herself. Failing, in that sense, fits Atwood's maxim perfectly in that all we risk is "laughter." We fall and land on our feet.

But 'Schroedinger's' is not that kind of play. Failing this performance, in front of this audience, means that you will be seen in character. The person you actually are is what is being actively disbelieved here; it's the whole labor, the magic act, to prove that you're in a place of commerce, wallet in hand, about to buy a pack of gum.

You will fall, and land on strange feet.

Your motivation in this scene is to buy a pack of gum.

I think speaking lies to power requires a bit more effort than ordinary life, and shows a pack of gum in return. Fortunately, having that cop looking over our shoulder is not a constant condition, for women or men.

Since we're borrowing language from quantum physics to talk about the uncertainty of strangers, there's not much harm extending the lease by one more power of uncertainty: that scrutinizing a thing affects that thing.

Men make up the vast majority of criminals, real and imagined. We came by the latter honestly by way of the former. As such, we have a collective experience wearing these 'Schroedinger's' roles, in fiction and in waking life. It's not a monopoly, as the example above was intended to show; women really do know what this is like.

What I think they don't always know, unless we tell them, is the number and the degree. Just as men don't always know the number and degree of unsafe situations without explicitly being told so.

Nobody wears all the hats, every "Schroedinger" role, in every context. And I'll be first to say that some get through life wearing fewer than others.

But some wear more. For some men, with a whiff of the weird (sexually, or otherwise) about them, or the wrong luck, being at the other end of this thing is a chronic condition. Day-in normalcy entails being plunged into a kind of performance that has criminality as its root assumption. I imagine it's wearying, in exactly the way that feeling and being unsafe is wearying.

We don't actually see any successful performance of 'Schroedinger's' play out. The whole striving of it is to pass unseen, to stay out of character. It's only visible at the moment when it all breaks down and the audience sees them as the problem.

For some, there is a lot being unsaid, and a lot of work in not saying it:

'I'm not going to return a smile or wave from someone's child. I can't believe this is a real thing, but it is, and I'm not doing it. My motivation in this scene is to get to my car. #I'm not Elliot Rodgers.'

'I'm crossing this street so that I don't look like I'm following someone whom, of course, I've not been following at all. I thought I could talk really loudly on my phone and make my presence known that way, but it's 2AM and I'm not sure that's the correct move. What's weird is that, in all this mental wrestling about how to not seem like a stalker, I'm brushing up against something like the lonely logic of those who *are.* And I'm scared she'll reach her car before I reach mine, because an extra person around means I'm in less danger of getting jumped again. #Not all men.'

'I'm going to a school so beyond my station and my means that the t-shirts I wear stick out like red flags in a sea of peacoats and tweed. I've already had uncomfortable run-ins with campus police just for looking like I don't belong here. But I can't believe the proctor just slammed the door and ID checked *me* again, after letting half a dozen people in. I'm not going to make a scene. I get that it's about safety, but still. #I'm not Elliot Rodgers.'

I'm not offering this as a kind of a counterweight to the damage men do. It makes nothing okay. It doesn't change the fact that we're here talking about a mass-killing driven by misogyny. I'm just saying that being seen as dangerous, again and again, amounts to a different kind of damage.

So I can see how "not all men" is not always helpful to the question at hand.

But I can also see how not letting men say it outright *is* awkward; some men have to take considerable pains to say it - albeit in an invisible way - all the time.
posted by kid ichorous at 7:45 AM on June 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


They do if they think 'merica is the target.

Yeah - on a political and operational level, it's easier to get sign-off on quote-unquote anti-terrorist operations targeting certain groups - leading to scope-creep boondoggles like the NYPD "Demographics Unit". And retired members of federal and state security services now running private security consultancies are going to concentrate on the threats most likely to get consulting gigs when they pitch federal and state law enforcement agencies.

As fracking/climate change becomes more of a hot button issue, you're seeing those public and pprivate security consultancies looking for more funding and contracts to address (again, quote-unquote) eco-terrorism. We've already seen security organisations seeking to infiltrate environmental activist groups - most notably in the UK, where undercover police agents deepened their cover by engaging in sexual relationships with women in the groups.

So, yeah - if there's a political will (and money to be made in the private sector) to investigate and infiltrate MRA communities, it will no doubt happen. But when sexual assault is being used as a tool by law enforcement, we're probably still a ways away from misogyny being taken seriously as a terrorist threat by official agencies.
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:55 AM on June 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


I imagine it's wearying, in exactly the way that feeling and being unsafe is wearying.

I imagine it's not quite that exact.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 8:43 AM on June 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm not offering this as a kind of a counterweight to the damage men do. It makes nothing okay. It doesn't change the fact that we're here talking about a mass-killing driven by misogyny. I'm just saying that being seen as dangerous, again and again, amounts to a different kind of damage.

Consider the psychic damage we women have to carry with us constantly being the schroedinger's rape VICTIM.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:52 AM on June 1, 2014 [13 favorites]


Yeah, man. It is totally rough to have to consider in a moment how other people see you. That is exactly the point, that people like me have to do that 100% of the effing time. And not to keep from being temporarily accused of something, but in order to stay alive at all. That's it. Take that feeling you've got, apply it to every moment you're in public, and then up the stakes for failure. That's what we're dealing with.

It's exhausting.
posted by lauranesson at 8:55 AM on June 1, 2014 [21 favorites]


But I can also see how not letting men say it outright *is* awkward

Say what outright?

'Hello, stranger walking down the street at night, please be assured I won't be raping you tonight!'

Yes, I'm sure that's going to be immensely welcome and reassuring.

Not every discussion of what women go through needs to be footnoted with references to how those dynamics of patriarchy and misogyny hurt men too. That's true, and it's important, but complaining when its omitted is to imply that the first discussion ought to be qualified by the second for the sake of fairness. And it's not that long of a journey from there to Fedoraland. Just a quick jemble down privilege lane.

Also there's an incompatibility between saying

I'm not offering this as a kind of a counterweight to the damage men do.

and then saying

I'm just saying that being seen as dangerous, again and again, amounts to a different kind of damage.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:30 AM on June 1, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sorry, should have TL;DRed:
The Schroedinger's rhetoric tells men that they exist in a quantum state between guilt and innocence, where they must prove that they "aren't Elliot Rodgers" a priori by way of certain performances. Telling them then that it's problematic to state "I am not Elliot Rodgers" seems a contradiction. That's asking them to say "I'm not Elliot Rodgers" in numerous types of performance but not once in plain English. Invoking the Schroedinger's Rapist seems at odds with finding "not all men" problematic. That's it.


Etruscan: I imagine it's not quite that exact.
We have about 1.8 million people imprisoned not by public trial, but by their ability to solve the backroom game-theory of plea bargain by mental cunning or legal wizardry. We own an island full of dubious terrorists whose sole hope is being freed not by fact-finding but by military tribunal. Some significant portion of these people is innocent. Every one of those innocent people was someone's Schroedinger's murderer, Schroedinger's terrorist, or the equivalent. Almost every one of them is a man; and each of them failed in that performance. For them, it *was* unsafe. If Schroedinger's is a lens we're comfortable training on half the population, should we consider that?
posted by kid ichorous at 9:36 AM on June 1, 2014


"Schroedingers" is a lens we train on half the population to make decisions about personal safety, NOT about who we lock up. Surely you don't mean to suggest that my distancing myself from the attention of a strange man is equivalent to throwing him in Guantanamo without a trial.
posted by Westringia F. at 9:43 AM on June 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


So essentially your argument boils down to "some men get falsely accused of rape".

*DING!*. Sorry, thank you for playing. For your parting gift we have a year's supply of Turtle Wax...
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on June 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


yeah it's the same kind of feeling as feeling and being unsafe, except that when things go wrong you feel momentarily sad about the imperfections of culture instead of being assaulted or hurt or killed or whatever
posted by Rory Marinich at 9:44 AM on June 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Also, I'll bow out from here. The point wasn't that Schroedinger's is invalid or that one can't find "not all men" problematic. The point was about Schroedingers' and "not all men" coexisting in the same framework, and some seemingly large and unstated difficulties of using Schroedinger's at all as a way of looking at other human beings.
posted by kid ichorous at 9:45 AM on June 1, 2014


That's asking them to say "I'm not Elliot Rodgers" in numerous types of performance but not once in plain English.

Talk is cheap.


Schroedingers' and "not all men" coexisting in the same framework, and some seemingly large and unstated difficulties of using Schroedinger's at all as a way of looking at other human beings.

Violence against women isn't a thought experiment or theoretical science.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:45 AM on June 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


If you don't like the fact that women view men like yourself as potential threats, there is something you can do about it: police the shit out of the other men who dehumanize, assault, rape, and murder women every day. Take action to end the constant threat that hangs over all women. That seems a lot more logical than asking women to put themselves in harm's way over and over again for the sake of men's hurt feelings.
posted by showbiz_liz at 9:48 AM on June 1, 2014 [19 favorites]


Nobody has to say they're not Elliot Rodger. They just have to not be him.
posted by rtha at 9:49 AM on June 1, 2014 [8 favorites]


I imagine it's not quite that exact.

That's kind of the thing for me. Feeling awkward about walking behind a woman at 2am is a sincere feeling, but I don't think it maps to being afraid of being assaulted.

For that matter, the example of being followed around by a security guard is kind of useful, I think, in another way. That's something that happens to black people in some localities with tremendous regularity. And, as we've seen time and again, if a situation like being accused of theft escalates, the likelihood that a black person will end up being subject to violence at the hands of a private citizen or a law enforcement agent is generally higher, as is the likelihood that this violence will not have meaningful consequences for those dealing it out. In the case of Renisha McBride or Jonathan Ferrell, having had an auto accident was apparently reason enough for them to be seen as enough of a threat to justify an armed and ultimately lethal response. Trayvon Martin was, as near as one can tell, walking. Jordan Davis was playing loud music. And so on.

The prison population of the US is about three times more weighted towards African-Americans than the general population of the US. I don't have the statistics on Guantanamo Bay, but I think white people (or people white Americans would think of as white, more precisely) are not heavily represented.

So, yeah. White men may experience feelings of social anxiety in situations where other people have not unreasonable fears for their safety, basically. Social anxiety is not fun, but I don't think these things are comparable.
posted by running order squabble fest at 10:17 AM on June 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


White men may experience feelings of social anxiety in situations where other people have not unreasonable fears for their safety, basically. Social anxiety is not fun, but I don't think these things are comparable.

A couple of months ago I was walking home around midnight. I'd had a couple of beers and was trying to think my way through some stuff so I was paying almost no attention to the world around me, and inadvertently scared the crap out of a young woman by walking up behind her on an unlit section of street. Her spinning around and then sprinting away across a parking lot was the first I noticed her at all. At worst I felt slightly embarrassed while her evening was probably ruined. Being that scared is no fun and you feel it for a long time after.

If I'd been paying any attention, I would have slowed down or crossed the street so as to not come into her space; this was purely my bad but of course all the consequences were on her, not me.

So yeah, it's not comparable and saying it is suggests a lack of empathy or understanding of the actual situations.
posted by Dip Flash at 10:43 AM on June 1, 2014 [5 favorites]


> The point was about Schroedingers' and "not all men" coexisting in the same framework, and some seemingly large and unstated difficulties of using Schroedinger's at all as a way of looking at other human beings.

You know what the *actually difficult* part of "using Schroedinger's" is? It's that a lot of women are given little choice but to use it because some fucking men think it's okay to do all kinds of crazy things to us just because we get near them when no one's looking. It pays to be careful around men. All of them. (Not skittish—just careful.)

That's the most difficult part—not you trying unsuccessfully to apply it in other contexts as some sort of intellectual exercise.

The next most difficult part of the "Schroedinger's" thing is getting some of you to understand that it's not about you. Simply telling you doesn't seem to work. *shrug* I'm kind of at a loss when I consider how many genuinely intelligent/smart men can't seem to get past this point. Lots of you get it, but vasts swaths of you seem incapable of grasping it. To be honest, I find that a little weird, and I'm not sure how to think about it.

I'm just saying that being seen as dangerous, again and again, amounts to a different kind of damage.

Then omg stop nit-picking the way women are handling the situation and get off your ass to help us end it. Solving "our" problem will solve "yours." Good grief, why do people need to be told this?

Do your part to try to get the point across—to men—that women are not punching bags, prey, or less than human. Once you've done that for about 30 years, like a lot of the people here have, then we'll entertain your polite requests that we change our terminology and stop looking askance at you before we really get to know you.
posted by heyho at 2:48 PM on June 1, 2014 [20 favorites]


Eventually, I hope, misogyny will be seen as a joke, and misogynists will be universally viewed as pathetic. Kids will be raised thinking that hating or dismissing women is the sort of thing that makes you a Bad Person, and laughing at the horrible people who invest themselves in that mindset. Why not start laughing now? It'll make people think twice before saying stupid things, it'll make 'em less comfortable with perhaps being who they are, it'll give the people who face the most danger/suffering/abuse a little bit more room to feel comfortable with themselves, and maybe — just maybe — it'll trick a few kids into thinking that decency means more than just lip service. It worked for me, is all I'm sayin'.

I think if anyone succeeds at rebranding misogyny as "lame" and uncool, it'll be republicans. I'm not just making some snarky jab here either.

I wrote and ended up not posting a long comment in the republican party reform thread about rebranding, and what they'd realistically need to do if they wanted a younger generation to buy what they were selling. On the flip side though, what they're selling right now is working wonders to associate misogyny with regressive grandpa thinking and generally uncool stuff that you don't want to be seen as associating with.

As the connection between republican pushes with relation to anti choice/controlling womens bodies and misogyny is being successfully sold, and bought pretty much whole by millennials, the connection between misogyny and uncoolness becomes stronger.

Because yea, i think it's more important that it's seen as pathetic than it's seen as a joke. Pathetic things can be joked about easily, but the interpretation that it is pathetic shouldn't be ironic in this case.

Mainly though, misogyny needs its brand associated with like... this. It's getting there, but that day can't come fast enough.
posted by emptythought at 3:09 PM on June 1, 2014




Not every discussion of what women go through needs to be footnoted with references to how those dynamics of patriarchy and misogyny hurt men too.


Perhaps not, but this discussion might benefit from a bit more of that, surely? Let us not forget, #yesallwomen and Schroedinger's references notwithstanding, it wasn't only women Rodgers killed after writing the manifesto that birthed this thread. Four of his six murder victims were men.
posted by misha at 10:04 PM on June 1, 2014


How could we possibly forget that when we get reminded so frequently?
posted by gingerbeer at 10:29 PM on June 1, 2014 [33 favorites]



Perhaps not, but this discussion might benefit from a bit more of that, surely?


You might benefit from reading the thread before commenting in it, surely.
posted by palomar at 10:37 PM on June 1, 2014 [4 favorites]


Yes, I'm sure the memory of those four men would have been a great comfort to me as I was raped to death in a female concentration camp as per Rodger's overall plan.
posted by elizardbits at 10:39 PM on June 1, 2014 [17 favorites]


The point was about Schroedingers' and "not all men" coexisting in the same framework, and some seemingly large and unstated difficulties of using Schroedinger's at all as a way of looking at other human beings.

The problem with framing the Schroedinger's Rapist/Murderer thing in terms of being innocent but suspicious to the unknowledgeable observer is that the whole point of the SCHROEDINGER part is it's about the observer, not the observed. Of course it sucks to be suspected of something you know you haven't done. Of course it's a contradiction in terms to "act natural".

But it's not at all the same framework, and no matter how difficult it is for innocent men to feel misunderstood, it is harder, still and forever, to fear for your safety and even your life solely because you are a woman alone with a strange man. From a purely numeric perspective, any unfamiliar man may mean me harm. That is a hell of a thing. The even worse fact is that from that same numeric perspective, I am yet more definitely at risk from the men I know - but I have to trust *someone* and I have to hope I can choose the men I get close to wisely.
posted by gingerest at 10:42 PM on June 1, 2014 [3 favorites]


Three of those four men he killed were Asian. Let us not forget these individuals for the sake of generic (usually whitewashing) #notallmen bullshit.

He murdered white women and he murdered Asian men and neither action contradicts the racist and misogynist ideology he outlines over and over again in his manifesto. If you think it does you haven't been paying attention.
posted by E. Whitehall at 10:42 PM on June 1, 2014 [21 favorites]


The Schroedinger's rhetoric tells men that they exist in a quantum state between guilt and innocence

No. The Schrödinger's Rapist essay and concept doesn't tell men anything about their actual state of existence (the actual essay here, just in case anyone's working off a third-hand interpretation of the thing) - it's simply explaining why (many) women feel some trepidation and uncertainty when encountering strange men, and using an analogy with a very commonly-known physics thought experiment concerning uncertainty to illustrate the point.

It's telling me, as a man, how my behavior is possibly or even likely going to be viewed by a woman who doesn't know me, it says nothing about how I actually exist in some kind of weird quantumly uncertain state of being both rapist and not-rapist.

In fact, it actually openly acknowledges that Not All Men are rapists. Which is why the Schrödinger's Rapist idea and being more than weary of "not all men" protests can co-exist without contradiction.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:45 PM on June 1, 2014 [7 favorites]


Surely the term must mean that all men (#YesAllMen) are in a mixed state until they are observed. This why women often contact a friend after a date: to ensure that their wave function has collapsed.

Look for my forthcoming paper Dating and the Measurement Problem which explains why romantic partners often seem more or less skeevy to people outside the relationship.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:09 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yes, I'm sure the memory of those four men would have been a great comfort to me as I was raped to death in a female concentration camp as per Rodger's overall plan.

Ya know, that whole concentration camp bit seemed rather tacked on to me. It's almost like he's grandstanding to his PUAhate buddies right there. I snorted when I read that paragraph, "you and what army, asshole?" was my reaction. But what was he actually truly planning just a few paragraphs before which really was in his grasp, for which he actually had the means to do was to kill his little brother, who, recall, out-classed Elliot (in his twisted little mind) by having the temerity to be in a relationship before he was. And maybe kill (albeit reluctantly) his father. This springs from mysogyny?

Someone made an intelligent comment a few dozen back about how Rodgers saw women as a status accessory Barbie Doll he wished to see on his arm and was infuriated by the fact, for example, that "inferior males" had them and he didn't. This type of sentiment is repeated endlessly in the manifesto, and his hatred is evenly spread over the two halves of many of the couples he sees and feels are persecuting him (I call that type of thinking paranoia). Yes, he hates the women and wants to hurt them in the worst way. But his wrath is not spared for the male halves of the couple, especially if the male is "inferior".

True, he envisions a world in which he and the other "superior" males sexually enslave and control the female population. But what were his plans for "inferior" males? He doesn't say, and again that seems like he is carefully avoiding saying anything that would offend his PUAhate buddies.

I still maintain from reading the entire manifesto that the axis on which Rodgers' mental illness turned was ultimately a narcissistic fucked-up understanding of status, heavily laced with, but not primarily driven by mysogyny.
posted by telstar at 2:57 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


You might benefit from reading the thread before commenting in it, surely.

While that's especially applicable to that specific comment, it is worth noting that people dropping in on the conversation now can't really reasonably be expected to read the entire thread. It's approaching, if not past two hundred thousand words at this point from my semi scientific copy and paste+wordcount test. A large portion of novels out there are shorter than that. It's the equivalent of a 700+ page novel. It's like moby dick, but a comment thread.

If we expect everyone to read that to participate, we're going to end up siloing off the discussion to people who have been participating in the thread since early on and no one else. Hell, it took me the better part of a day reading off and on just to catch up to where i posted my first comment. Now, with over 1500? Jeeze i don't even know.
posted by emptythought at 3:21 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


You know, I'm still not sure why so many people are still trying to downplay the role misogyny played in this. We accept that anti-semitism prompted that guy in Missouri to shoot up a Jewish center, without questioning whether maybe it was just mental illness or whether it was something else "laced with" anti-semitism; why are people falling all over themselves, still, to deny that misogyny isn't at the heart of this incident?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 3:28 AM on June 2, 2014 [19 favorites]


a narcissistic fucked-up understanding of status, heavily laced with, but not primarily driven by mysogyny.

It was a weird desire for status, yes, but it wasn't expressed as a desire to win elections or to adorn himself with diamonds or to be recognised for his poetry; it was a desire to be the top "alpha male" in a world where only men had any rights or office or agency. The word misogynist seems weak, but it's the only one we have: Eichmann was an anti-Semite; Rodger was a misogynist.
posted by Joe in Australia at 4:17 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


I truly don't understand why he couldn't be two things at the same time. He killed his roommates because he hated his roommates. He tried to shoot up a sorority because he hated women. He started firing and running people over indescriminately because he was pumped full of adrenaline and angry at the world. He didn't have to hate women exclusively in order to harbor special hatred for women as a class.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 4:40 AM on June 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


Perhaps not, but this discussion might benefit from a bit more of that, surely?

Maybe, but it's worth it to do it in context, which is why there was a bunch of pushback about following the thread. Otherwise it's just an extension of the "not all men" nonsense, which is always a derail.
posted by zombieflanders at 5:43 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


I'm still not sure why so many people are still trying to downplay the role misogyny played in this.

Judging by the gender of many of the people so presenting, I'm beginning to get a pretty good idea.
posted by corb at 6:18 AM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


Confronting a way that society is deeply flawed and sick is difficult, intimidating and often threatening for people invested in the status quo. It's why you see people trying to dismiss all institutionalized marginalizations, from racism and Islamaphobia to misogyny and sexism. It's also why you get the same "but I'm DIFFERENT" whine from people of privilege over and over again.
posted by NoraReed at 6:49 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


The Schrödinger's Rapist essay and concept doesn't tell men anything about their actual state of existence ... and using an analogy with a very commonly-known physics thought experiment concerning uncertainty to illustrate the point.

This ought to be clear to anyone who reads the essay, but the analogy in the title is very misleading because the Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment is not about uncertainty; it's about illustrating the weirdness of quantum mechanics which seems to mean that a cat could be both alive and dead at the same time. The analogy definitely implies that all men are both rapists and not rapists and it's only some completely random event that determines which of those equally true statements is observed at any given time.
posted by straight at 6:50 AM on June 2, 2014


Schrödinger's Rapist could only be about uncertainty. Yes, the original Schrödinger's Cat thought experiment was about a cat being alive and dead at the same time, but it does not follow that Schrödinger's Rapist would feature the same instance of quantum superposition. The quantum superposition aspect would carry over if and only if one were to reify the Schrödinger's Cat analogy well past the point of sense or relevance. One might as well say that "Life Is A Highway" means that, at all times and in all contexts, for so long as we are alive, we are always riding on asphalt administered by the DOT.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:11 AM on June 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's also why you get the same "but I'm DIFFERENT" whine from people of privilege over and over again.

It's not whining when it's true.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 7:16 AM on June 2, 2014


It's not whining when it's true.

I've found that the people for whom it really is true aren't the ones doing the whining.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:20 AM on June 2, 2014 [13 favorites]


I feel the need to post a quote from the Rebecca Solnit piece that trip and a half linked to, because I feel it resolves the relationship between mental illness and misogyny as dual causes for these murders:
In a fascinating op-ed piece last year, T.M. Luhrmann noted that when schizophrenics hear voices in India, they’re more likely to be told to clean the house, while Americans are more likely to be told to become violent. Culture matters. Or as my friend, the criminal-defense investigator who knows insanity and violence intimately, put it, “When one begins to lose touch with reality, the ill brain latches obsessively and delusionally onto whatever it’s immersed in -- the surrounding culture's illness.”
posted by Asparagus at 7:30 AM on June 2, 2014 [17 favorites]


It's extra frustrating to hear this "heavily laced with, but not primarily driven by mysogyny" misdirection because the entire framework of male competition Telstar spells out in that comment is grounded on women existing solely as the tokens of that status exchange. This isn't laced with misogyny. This is utterly infused with it.

Is there confusion here that misogyny only refers to the parts that look like overt hatred?

I mean, if it weren't for misogyny we wouldn't even be able to refer to it as male competition. If misogyny weren't an animating principle of that competition then you would expect him be mad at women not only for rejecting him but for being more successful than him. You would expect him to be mad at women he considers less attractive nonetheless finding love the same way he rages against men he considers beneath him.

Pointing out that his wrath was also directed toward men doesn't mean anything when even that wrath was a form of misogyny.
posted by nobody at 7:47 AM on June 2, 2014 [8 favorites]


NoraReed: It's why you see people trying to dismiss all institutionalized marginalizations, from racism and Islamaphobia to misogyny and sexism. It's also why you get the same "but I'm DIFFERENT" whine from people of privilege over and over again.

That isn't really fair. Discussions in the wake of terrorist attacks abound with "Not All Muslims."

Likewise, there's a school of thought that "Not All Muslims" distracts us from the sort of socio-political surgery that will suppress religious violence. It's often advanced by those who identify with the victims of religious violence, and it may even be right.

But when Muslims say "Not All Of Us," they aren't necessarily trying to obstruct this progress. They're also responding to a broad and ongoing association with violence and criminality. To not do that is like being tried in absentia. Not everything divides neatly by majority privilege without leaving some difficult remainder.
posted by kid ichorous at 7:59 AM on June 2, 2014 [5 favorites]


It's not whining when it's true.

Why not? Just because something is true doesn't mean that an insistence on it isn't whining and that it doesn't indicate a lack of understanding of privilege. The important thing really isn't this one man. Insisting that it is sure seems like whining to me.
posted by JohnLewis at 8:02 AM on June 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


But when Muslims say "Not All Of Us,"

Muslims in those circumstances are not operating from a place of privilege, which is central to considering the statement whining.

It should be obvious that men saying "Not all men" in the wake of misogynistic murders is not remotely like Muslims saying "not all of us" after something like 9-11. If you can't understand the distinction, you really aren't equipped to participate in a conversation about either.
posted by JohnLewis at 8:08 AM on June 2, 2014 [11 favorites]


That's why I said people of privilege in particular, kid ichorous. "Not all men" is different from "not all Muslims" because Muslims are marginalized.
posted by NoraReed at 8:09 AM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


That isn't really fair. Discussions in the wake of terrorist attacks abound with "Not All Muslims."

Not all terrorist attacks - qv pretty much this whole thread.

With that said, Muslims and people who look like they might be Muslims risk being on the receiving end of hate crimes in the aftermath of a media-heavy crime committed by a Muslim in a country where Muslims are a minority, in precisely the way that white men aren't after a crime like this. "Not all Muslims" often means "please don't beat us up, or kill us, or set fire to our religious buildings". It's a different sort of a thing, as mentioned.
posted by running order squabble fest at 8:28 AM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


Your average Jane q. Public already knows that "not all men" do that, as well. Your average Jane Q. Public may not have had much familiarity with Muslims, so "not all Muslims are like that" is something that needs saying.

We already know that "not all men are like that", so the people falling all over themselves to say "not all men are like that", well....quite frankly it's coming across as "these gentlemen doth protest too much," and is making me wonder exactly WHY you want to make certain of something that there is a good chance that I already know from personal experience.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:43 AM on June 2, 2014 [8 favorites]


NoraReed: That's why I said people of privilege in particular

NoraReed, sorry, but that's exactly what I'm driving at. Privilege isn't a unitary phenomenon but a situational one.

Look at it this way - if you and I went out and committed the same crime tomorrow, I'd be more likely to serve time, and my sentence would be much longer than yours. (In fact, the disparity between our sentences would well exceed the racial disparities we consider unjust.)

The reason these disparities exist is that, while men unarguably have more power in many contexts, they carry a stigma of criminality that disadvantages them in matters of criminal justice. In these select contexts, you would carry the privilege.

So, in select criminal matters, men aren't always the privileged class, and may find themselves making the same arguments as other disadvantaged (specifically: criminalized) classes for much the same reasons.
posted by kid ichorous at 8:46 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


The reason these disparities exist is that, while men unarguably have more power in many contexts, they carry a stigma of criminality that disadvantages them in matters of criminal justice. In these select contexts, you would carry the privilege.

Wrong. The prosecutor, representing the state directly, and the usually male judge carry the privilege and wield it against the accused.

So, in select criminal matters, men aren't always the privileged class, and may find themselves making the same arguments as other disadvantaged (specifically: criminalized) classes for much the same reasons.

Possibly true, but not how you think:

The evidence presented here suggests that judicial demographics have little influence on prison sentences in general, but do impact racial and gender disparities. The findings regarding gender in the case of serious offenses are quite striking: the greater the proportion of female judges in a district, the lower the gender disparity for that district. I interpret this as evidence of a paternalistic bias among male judges that favors women.
-M. Schazenbach, "Racial and Gender Disparities in Prison Sentences: The Effect of District-Level Judicial Demographics" Journal of Legal Studies, Vol. 34, No. 1, pp. 57-92, January 2005


Emphasis added.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:04 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


the criminal justice system's flaws are one of the ways the patriarchy hurts men. fight to dismantle the patriarchy and those issues will lessen as well. this still has absolutely nothing to do with how women evaluate their potential safety in a variety of situations.
posted by nadawi at 9:06 AM on June 2, 2014 [7 favorites]


kid ichorous, it might be more helpful to reflect on how "not all men"-type remarks are self-serving and unhelpful. The sweeping majority of humanity is already quite aware that not all men are literally running amok. When things like this recent event happen, it doesn't really help anything to change the subject to how "not all men" are doing such things. Even if we were to agree for sake of argument that it is indeed true that men generally face longer prison sentences for the same crime, that's neither here nor there: Elliot Rodger was not driven mad as a result of an incident in which he and a female co-conspirator had served disparate sentences for the same crime.

If you still want to show that "not all men" are bad, you can just lead by example and not murder people, while also perhaps just generally condemning bad things (such as murder), expressing sympathy, pointing out how shitty it is when misogyny kills, trying to find actual solutions, etc.
posted by Sticherbeast at 9:10 AM on June 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


I feel like the people complaining about "the mens" and wanting us to be more inclusive (by their terms) want us to be more ladylike. To be forgiving, nurturing, and sweet, to be teachers and gently guide those who have gone astray. Fuck that noise.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:23 AM on June 2, 2014 [9 favorites]


Exactly. #notallmen is really about men reassuring each other that they aren't rapists, instead of actually listening to women about how the social structures being challenged in the wake of Isla Vista harm them. Because most of us aren't used to it, and it makes us uncomfortable. In other word, privilege – in this case to have been mostly oblivious to the problem, despite its impact on half the population — precisely because it's #notallmen, so why do I need to care.

Also, a lot of the guys I'm hearing whine about the tone of #yesallwomen and such and feel the need to distinguish themselves — they seem to miss the notion that so long as your going along to get along, and laughing at or at least letting pass sexist humor, negative objectification and misogynistic vitriol when it's just the guys; as well as not speaking up for men who are shamed for refusing to pariticipate, you're actually a big part of the problem. #yesmostmen, goddamnit.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:24 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


I feel like the people complaining about "the mens"...

Are we talking about this again? I spent some time thinking about the last batch of comments upthread about it and feel like I wasn't effective in communicating what I said about it, at least.

I do think it's funny, and useful. I couldn't care less about 'ladylike.' My problem with it is that it, purely structurally, would seem to provide a fig leaf for redneck-comedy or beleagured-husband style wimmins jokes, that I think are actually pretty harmful because they're regarded as sort of folksy and 'family oriented' and a lot of harmful crap is normalized by that kind of humor's acceptability.

But maybe the mirroring is more subversive than it is enabling. I'm not sure.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:31 AM on June 2, 2014


I feel like the people complaining about "the mens" and wanting us to be more inclusive (by their terms) want us to be more ladylike.

Nah. We're just like you actually: we don't want to be mocked or infantilized.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:33 AM on June 2, 2014


Eh, I don't mean "the mens" in particular, and yes we've debated that plenty. I see "not all men" and "the mens" as being the same debate. I don't mean to start off a stale round of discussion.
posted by The corpse in the library at 9:34 AM on June 2, 2014


Nah. We're just like you actually: we don't want to be mocked or infantilized.

Speak for yourself. I really feel like it's a very gentle mocking, and to make such a ruckus about it given the kind of harm its being trotted out in response to seems.....out of proportion, at best.
posted by snuffleupagus at 9:35 AM on June 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


Jessamyn addressed the "men serve longer sentences" thing above. Key quote:
One of the things that is true is that people who have primary custody of minor children are often given shorter sentences or are more likely to get probation. The fact that, in a country where most children have one male and female parent, you're still seeing mostly women getting this benefit tells you more about generalized gender roles and/or sexism in our society than decontextualized stats
So... dismantle patriarchy and that inequality pretty much clears right up, I think!
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:35 AM on June 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


Exactly. #notallmen is really about men reassuring each other that they aren't rapists, instead of actually listening to women about how the social structures being challenged in the wake of Isla Vista harm them. Because most of us aren't used to it, and it makes us uncomfortable. In other word, privilege – in this case to have been mostly oblivious to the problem, despite its impact on half the population — precisely because it's #notallmen, so why do I need to care.

In AskMe there is a thread started by a woman whose boyfriend read one of her friends' blog posts about this incident, and came to her to talk discuss it - but not to discuss "is this really happening?" and find out how he could help, but to discuss "your friend's blog post hurt my feelings and I need to be comforted". They talked it out, but - seriously, that's coming across as such a self-centered reaction to this incident.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:36 AM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


Nah. We're just like you actually: we don't want to be mocked or infantilized.

"Don't make fun of bad arguments or non-arguments; be positive and soothing and careful 100% of the time": not infantilizing
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:40 AM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


I feel like there needs to be a PSA for threads like this:
Hi there! It appears you are about to say or type "not all X!" in a conversation with a member or members of marginalized or persecuted group telling you about aggression directed towards them. Below is a short and simple guide to what you should know before doing so. For today's demonstration, we will be talking about "not all men," but this guide is quite versatile and can be used in conversations about other groups. Let's begin!

1) Are you literally interrupting them or otherwise stopping them from talking? If so, please STFU and let them finish, because c'mon, you weren't raised by wolves. If not, continue to step 2.

2) Are you or someone you know guilty of the behavior being described, and do you wish to defend yourself and/or others Because Feminazis Amirite? This includes making huffy generalizations like "feminists do THIS and won't let you say otherwise" or rules-lawyering such as "but you didn't specify an exact percentage that I can refute and therefore YOU'RE WRONG" and similar constructions that are easily debunked. If so, you are the problem, so please STFU and go away until you can have an honest conversation or are able to get your head out of your ass. If not, continue to step 3.

3) Are you worried about being guilty of the behavior being described, but consider yourself a feminist and/or an ally? If so, kindly wait and listen to what is being said, mull over why the behavior may be a problem, and ask for why that may be. As with step 2, don't start in with stupid generalizations and rules-lawyering. Also, don't get super defensive, or blame them for not being nice enough, or otherwise say that it's all their fault that more people aren't allies (see step 2). If not, continue to step 4.

4) Are you not guilty of the behavior being described? Great! They aren't talking about you, which is usually extremely clear given the context, or by the fact that they used a conditional such as "I hate it when men do [foo]." You are free to engage in the conversation as if you aren't the focus of it or the butt of a joke, because you aren't. Do not, under any circumstance, make it all about you and how good you've been but how offended you are, or go on about how this makes you not want to be a feminist/ally, or even worse mutter darkly that this is what makes people misogynists/sexists. That's derailing the conversation to make it about how it affects you, and that isn't necessary. If not, continue to step 5.

5) Are you interested in hearing what they have to say, and do you understand it and want to help? Fantastic! Continue being awesome.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:42 AM on June 2, 2014 [32 favorites]


zombie, if you can make that a plugin where it's Clippy who pops up to say that, I would totally fund that kickstarter.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:44 AM on June 2, 2014 [16 favorites]


we don't want to be mocked or infantilized

I think this was pointed out before but if you are an ally, and have been following this and other discussions on feminism, womens' issues, etc. then "teh mens" is not you.
posted by LizBoBiz at 9:45 AM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


Bookmarked, zombieflanders.
posted by brundlefly at 10:24 AM on June 2, 2014


The reason I posted the extended quote from Utah Phillips about Ammon Hennacy above is that there is an important lesson to be learned from his analogies.

When confronted with "group A [eg, men] do thing X which oppresses group B" and you are a member of group A who does NOT do thing X, you have two options. One is to say "but I'm not like that!" The other is to ask oneself in what more mild ways one is like that, or enables other members of group A to be like that, or contributes to an environment that in some other way oppresses people.

When Ammon Hennacy says (emph mine),
"[An alcoholic] could be dry for twenty years, they're never going to sit in that circle, put their hand up and say 'Well, I'm not an alcoholic anymore', No, they'd still do it, put their hand up and say 'Hi, my name's Utah, I'm an alcoholic.' So, it's the same with violence. You've got to be able to put your hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal with the behavior, and have the people whose lives it's messed with define that behavior for you. And it's not going to go away, you're going to be dealing with it every moment, in every situation, for the rest of your life."
it's that latter option that he is referring to. He's talking about listening to the people who are in group B tell you how the oppression harms them -- letting them define it -- and being actively mindful of how you, as a member of group A, might be in danger of falling off the wagon and contributing to their oppression.

And if right now you're thinking, "But the analogy doesn't apply to me -- I'm not a recovering oppressoholic!" my answer is to point you to the next part of the quote:
"You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of weapons. The weapons of privilege: racial privilege, sexual privilege, economic privilege. You want to be a pacifist, it's not just giving up guns and knives and clubs and fists and angry words but giving up the weapons of privilege, and going into the world completely disarmed."
Which is to say: if you are in a position of privilege, you cannot see everything you do that contributes to the oppression of those below you. It's the invisible knapsack idea: you wield power -- even simply by dint of access to extra resources & social capital -- over others which you yourself may be unaware of. That's why it's important to acknowledge that sexism, racism, classism, &c are real and frequently VERY subtle, and allow the people who are on the receiving end of it (women, minorities, the poor) define the problem for you.

In this conversation, I happen to be one of the people in the oppressed group. But as a well-educated wealthy white woman, I'm FAR more often one of the privileged people than the oppressed in social justice struggles. There's a LOT I have to work very hard to see & understand. But I agree with Utah Phillips when he says "if there's a worthwhile struggle in my own life, that's probably the one." Consoling myself that "well, I'm a smart, well-educated, left-leaning liberal person who believes in equality, loves diversity, & contributes money/effort/time to social justice causes, so I'm doing ok; it's those other people who are bigots" is nothing more than a dismissal of the very people I purport to support. Every time I fall into that, it's hypocritical, closed-minded, deeply arrogant, and profoundly lazy.

I have a choice. So do you. What's it gonna be?

Hi. My name's Westringia F., and I'm an oppressoholic.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:29 AM on June 2, 2014 [10 favorites]


zombie, if you can make that a plugin where it's Clippy who pops up to say that, I would totally fund that kickstarter.

I'd settle for a GIF I can embed places. We have people who are good at GIFs right?
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:42 AM on June 2, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's not whining when it's true.

When has that ever been the definition of whining? The ultimate example of whining, "but it's not FAIR" is often true. It's whining because so fucking what, shit is unfair all the time and mewling about it doesn't do anything to fix it "I'm tired," is another one, because, what, nobody else is tired?

Something is whining not because it is true or not, but because it's probably an irrelevant complaint about something that the other listeners either can't or shouldn't do anything about. "Not all men" most assuredly qualifies. It's just a complaint that the speaker doesn't contribute to the reality of an incessant oppressive stream of shit which doesn't impact the speaker.
posted by phearlez at 1:15 PM on June 2, 2014 [15 favorites]


There was an NYT article about Rodger's over the weekend. It shows a 5th grade picture of him and definitely seems to focus on potential mental illness and the bullying he faced. It almost makes Rodger's into a victim. I kind of don't understand why they take this angle, other than the fact he's young and that's been the trend in previous shootings.
posted by FJT at 2:35 PM on June 2, 2014 [2 favorites]


You left "when the shooter is light skinned" off the end there.

Partially serious snark aside, I think there's also some sense in people that if there's an underlying mental illness it's easier to cope with. That's something that maybe somehow somewhere someone will do something about. If it's just the random violence in our society that we're unable/unwilling to do something about then that's more frightening for the news audience.
posted by phearlez at 2:50 PM on June 2, 2014 [3 favorites]


If only there were a public official charged with investigating these things: Gunman Covered Up Risks He Posed, Sheriff Says
posted by Joe in Australia at 3:43 PM on June 2, 2014


Partially serious snark aside, I think there's also some sense in people that if there's an underlying mental illness it's easier to cope with. That's something that maybe somehow somewhere someone will do something about.

Or it could also be that there really is an underlying mental illness? I mean, I realize that there is a lot of discussion about the implications of that fact here but surely we shouldn't just assume it isn't the case at the very least.
posted by Justinian at 5:35 PM on June 2, 2014


The comment I linked to earlier said that, "Not every discussion of what women go through needs to be footnoted with references to how those dynamics of patriarchy and misogyny hurt men too."

It seems to me that talking about how the patriarchy and misogyny hurt men too is perfectly apropos in this thread, because we have four prime examples of that in the men Rodgers killed. When I said as much, though, I was accused of not having read the thread from the beginning.

Not to mention that this is not just a discussion about 'what women go through'. This thread contains multitudes. It is about Rodgers, his manifesto, the people he killed and the various failures that led to that tragedy. We are all trying to make sense out of senselessness here.

So I take issue with the callousness of comments like: "Pointing out that his wrath was also directed toward men doesn't mean anything when even that wrath was a form of misogyny."

Of course it means something! Those men are dead. Up thread, issue was taken with a commenter making fine distinctions between various killings because dead women are not merely an academic exercise for many of us. But bring up the men and the fine distinctions suddenly matter; men taking issue are "whining".

We should be able to discuss the male victims, too, and why they might have died, just as freely as discussing the women, rather than ignore them as if their deaths didn't matter. It is possible, even probable, that Rodgers mght be an embittered misogynist, a jealous misandrist and a delusional narcissist with elaborate revenge fantasies all at the same time.

Yes, I'm sure the memory of those four men would have been a great comfort to me as I was raped to death in a female concentration camp as per Rodger's overall plan.
posted by elizardbits at 1:39 AM on June 2 [12 favorites +] [!]

Nice. Too bad you weren't there to comfort them when they were actually being stabbed to death, also as part of Rodgers' overall plan.
posted by misha at 8:11 PM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


Or it could also be that there really is an underlying mental illness? I mean, I realize that there is a lot of discussion about the implications of that fact here but surely we shouldn't just assume it isn't the case at the very least.

Do you also think that mental illness was also behind Frazier Glenn Cross's actions?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 8:31 PM on June 2, 2014


emptythought: "You might benefit from reading the thread before commenting in it, surely.

While that's especially applicable to that specific comment, it is worth noting that people dropping in on the conversation now can't really reasonably be expected to read the entire thread. It's approaching, if not past two hundred thousand words at this point from my semi scientific copy and paste+wordcount test. A large portion of novels out there are shorter than that. It's the equivalent of a 700+ page novel. It's like moby dick, but a comment thread.

If we expect everyone to read that to participate, we're going to end up siloing off the discussion to people who have been participating in the thread since early on and no one else. Hell, it took me the better part of a day reading off and on just to catch up to where i posted my first comment. Now, with over 1500? Jeeze i don't even know.
"

Is it really a big deal to "silo off" a conversation seven days (at this point, eight) after it started? All of us who've been here since the beginning have read the same 200,000 words. Why is it a big deal to ask people to read those same words to see if maybe their contribution has already been made (possibly over and over and over)?
posted by gingerest at 8:48 PM on June 2, 2014 [6 favorites]


> Four of his six murder victims were men.

By chance. Thank goodness the door of the sorority house was locked and the women inside did not open it, or we'd likely be looking at some very different stats.

.... Actually, no -- not by chance at all. I have a good guess as to why the sorority members were about as willing to receive a strange visitor as cloistered nuns would have been: #YesAllWomen.
posted by Westringia F. at 10:02 PM on June 2, 2014 [16 favorites]


Female-named hurricanes kill more than male hurricanes because people don’t respect them, study finds - I honestly thought this was an Onion link when I first saw it in my feeds. That gender of a name on a giant storm still makes people less fearful when it's female is just terrifying.
posted by viggorlijah at 10:48 PM on June 2, 2014 [4 favorites]


That article demonstrates perfectly that the patriarchy hurts everyone, in unforeseeable ways.
posted by gingerest at 12:36 AM on June 3, 2014


That NYT article was interesting. Everyone knew this kid was deeply disturbed from a young age. Amidst typical upper middle class family chaos, his parents did try pretty hard to help him.

It's pure ideological folly to say this killer was not in some profound sense mentally ill, is my reading. That doesn't make him less an example of misogyny, either.
posted by spitbull at 3:46 AM on June 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


It seems to me that talking about how the patriarchy and misogyny hurt men too is perfectly apropos in this thread, because we have four prime examples of that in the men Rodgers killed. When I said as much, though, I was accused of not having read the thread from the beginning.

Probably because (a) it had actually already been mentioned, and (b) it was in response to someone trying to justify the "not all men" derail, which has been rebutted and rebuffed a ton of times in this thread alone.

Not to mention that this is not just a discussion about 'what women go through'. This thread contains multitudes.

In a discussion about violence directed at and influenced by hatred of women, what women go through should definitely be the focus. Men and the male victims and how the people who should be upset and offended are mainly men has already been discussed fairly extensively in this thread. At this point it sounds like the discussion you want to have is all about the men and the ways misogyny wasn't involved.

But bring up the men and the fine distinctions suddenly matter; men taking issue are "whining".

That was about the tiresome "not all men" whining, not about the victims. Which you would have known had you read the thread as asked several times now.

We should be able to discuss the male victims, too, and why they might have died, just as freely as discussing the women, rather than ignore them as if their deaths didn't matter.

They died because he was (among other things) a murderous misogynist from a misogynist culture that followed an even more misogynist and hateful (yet popular) mindset. That's what the discussion is about. The men he killed were either reflections of his self-loathing about having sexual access to women (his room-mates), men "blocking" sexual access to women (Martinez), or people who happened to be in the path of a bullet while wildly shooting at women he couldn't have sexual access to.

It is possible, even probable, that Rodgers mght be an embittered misogynist, a jealous misandrist and a delusional narcissist with elaborate revenge fantasies all at the same time.

It's not possible or probable that he was a misandrist. The major theme of his manifesto is that he blamed women for being sexual creatures, not men. The main reason he killed men was because they "had" the women he didn't. This is very clearly laid out.

Nice. Too bad you weren't there to comfort them when they were actually being stabbed to death, also as part of Rodgers' overall plan.

Now you're just getting ridiculous. She was talking about what would have happened if he got his wish, and you know that. Combined with your constant misrepresentations about other threads of this conversation, it seems like you want to yet again point out non-existent misandry on this site and in the thread, which is more than a little axe-grindy.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:27 AM on June 3, 2014 [16 favorites]


I just want to thank those of you who are able to do the heavy lifting in this thread. It is exhausting and neverending, but some of you have really been slogging like champs.
posted by corb at 6:39 AM on June 3, 2014 [3 favorites]


Nice. Too bad you weren't there to comfort them when they were actually being stabbed to death, also as part of Rodgers' overall plan.

This is a really weird and ugly thing to say to someone.
posted by palomar at 7:23 AM on June 3, 2014 [20 favorites]


We should be able to discuss the male victims, too, and why they might have died, just as freely as discussing the women, rather than ignore them as if their deaths didn't matter.

Their deaths mattered, misha. All deaths matter. The only way these killings don't matter is as evidence of misandry on Rodger's part, which I would hope would be clear from context, but in your case it clearly was not.

Nothing Rodger wrote suggests he hated men as men; pretty much everything he wrote says outright that he hated women and subscribed to white supremacy (yes, even though he was half-Asian). Simply killing men is no evidence of thoroughgoing prejudice against men as such. Neither is killing more men than you kill women.

When he expressed hatred for men, he expressed it as hatred for them as competition for women, whom he viewed as trophies, the acquisition of which showed one man's superiority over another. The hatred of women, the total adherence to extreme patriarchal values, were central. He planned to kill his five-year-old brother because he feared he might someday get a woman and outdo him - be, in his essence, a better man than he was. He hated his roommates not only as competition, but because they were Asians, whom he saw as beneath him in his racial hierarchy.

So please, yes, let's discuss the male victims. But let's not pretend anyone is ignoring them. Let's not pretend anyone is silencing discussion on the topic. And let's not claim that his having killed men indicates he was a misandrist when everything in the record of his motives shows he was not. He was the opposite. He was a male supremacist. That's what the record shows.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 9:00 AM on June 3, 2014 [26 favorites]


The hurricane thing is an impressive bit of bad data-wrangling. (Hurricanes didn't even have male names until fairly recently, when we've got better comms and forecasting.)
posted by rmd1023 at 9:01 AM on June 3, 2014 [5 favorites]


People are posting that hurricane thing in any thread that has anything to do with women/girls.

It even has its own thread. What even is that
posted by sweetkid at 9:22 AM on June 3, 2014 [7 favorites]


Can I just extend my appreciation to the moderators in this discussion, they have really been doing a fantastic job. This debate has been so challenging, I feel like we have made progress and I do appreciate the people hammering home the points about a wider epidemic of misogyny.

(I also won't feel bad if this comment gets removed as off-topic, I just don't know where else to say it)
posted by ryanfou at 10:54 AM on June 3, 2014


"Rodger... was just as much a victim? I'm pretty sure I'd have to leave a room that guy was in to avoid punching him in the mouth."

It was Facebook, and I made a conscious effort to avoid any threats of violence toward him, since part of his rhetoric was that men were bullied, physically intimidated, especially by men proclaiming to protect women, and he was already prone to the "more men than women died" schtick.

Luckily, years of being thumped on MeFi has left me with a broad vocabulary of synonyms for "you're a fucking moron" that don't involve sexism, homophobia or calling someone retarded. I did have an embarrassing rage-fueled riff on ET, though.

"I think the saddest thing though is sort of a really, really mild watered down version of what Frowner was talking about. When you're having a seemingly earnest conversation with someone who you thought you respected or at least knew as a semi-decent guy and suddenly it takes a Mr toads wild ride type of turn into absurdity, offensiveness, and just regressive dudesplain bullshit.

100 comments was about standard, a few hit 200. but it was like, 10 threads going at the same time. I know i'm not obligated to engage or anything, but just watching it go down even if i backed off was like... such garbage. ugh.
"

Yeah, I'ma guess they're about a million times more practiced than I am. I'm just a fast typer with profanity in my muscle memory. And reading this MeTa made me a lot more forearmed — but it also made me a lot less interested in using persuasive modes an a lot more into, "I don't care if you feel silenced."

"Nobody has to say they're not Elliot Rodger. They just have to not be him."

#NotAllMen feels like the rest of the guys named Elliot Rodger out there complaining that they're getting lumped in. #NotAllElliotRodger
posted by klangklangston at 3:50 PM on June 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


Sweetkid, I added it before I realized it had a fpp of its own because it struck me as a stark example of the misogyny/violence connections being discussed and dismissed by some in this thread. A man writes a 140-page thesis on how he wants to kill women and sets out to kill them, but it's not Real Misogyny. Then a society that sees a female name as less frightening when it's attached to a giant natural disaster - that's so ridiculously bitterly funny and a big blinking neon sign that women are widely and deeply seen as lesser and that Elliot Rodger did not come out of a vacuum.
posted by viggorlijah at 4:24 PM on June 3, 2014


Oh, and one other thing I had meant to write:

It would have been in the public interest to know that Rodger had guns. Gun permits should be publicly-discoverable knowledge, and the twin specters of confiscation and targeting are paranoiac fantasies outweighed by the very real risk of people who own guns snapping and committing mass murder.
posted by klangklangston at 4:27 PM on June 3, 2014 [1 favorite]




I agree, klang, but I'm not sure how the knowledge that Rodger had guns would have stopped this. Unless you think it would have made the cops take his parent's call more seriously? That's possible I suppose.
posted by Justinian at 5:12 PM on June 3, 2014


People are posting that hurricane thing in any thread that has anything to do with women/girls.

That thing is flying around everywhere.

I can't go 10 damn interfeet without running in to it and the rebuttal mostly isn't even coming up.

Kudos to whoever decided to publish it, it's getting a ton of attention for what garbage it is. The cynic in me wonders if it was some experiment to see how much attention something that was plainly bad science could get.
posted by emptythought at 6:00 PM on June 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


Gun permits should be publicly-discoverable knowledge

No, the fuck they should not. Aside from ANY other considerations, learning about a possible Eliot Rogers does not make up for the domestic violence survivors who got permits in order to defend themselves from their violent, crazy exes whose exes can now check to see if they are armed before attacking them.

That said, on purely technical grounds, everyone should be aware that not every locality requires gun registration, so not every place even /has/ "gun permits" unless they are concealed carry permits.
posted by corb at 6:09 PM on June 3, 2014


Bzzt. Flag on the play. Firearms are touted as a deterrent. You would, indeed, want potential attackers to know you had a deterrent.

And yes, every locality should require registration.
posted by klangklangston at 6:44 PM on June 3, 2014 [7 favorites]


Well, the state of California requires that handguns be registered, and police can look that registration information up.

I still don't understand why the cops doing the wellness check didn't see the video(s) - did they not know? What'd I miss?
posted by rtha at 6:51 PM on June 3, 2014


The cops, even if they viewed the video, still had to believe for a 5150 that the dude was an immediate threat. It's a fairly high standard and I imagine that California deals with the same bed shortage as most other populous states.
posted by phearlez at 7:03 PM on June 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


I still don't understand why the cops doing the wellness check didn't see the video(s) - did they not know? What'd I miss?

The cops said they knew about the videos but didn't see the need to view them after they visited Elliot and decided he wasn't a threat.
posted by nooneyouknow at 7:06 PM on June 3, 2014 [1 favorite]


domestic violence survivors who got permits in order to defend themselves from their violent, crazy exes whose exes can now check to see if they are armed before attacking them.

Uh huh.

Meanwhile, here in the real world, (as opposed to the Libertarian Armed Society Is A Polite Society World that exists only in certain magazines and corners of the Internet) -
Firearm Access and Intimate Partner Homicide

Compared to homes without guns, the presence of guns in the home is associated with a 3-fold increased homicide risk within the home. The risk connected to gun ownership increases to 8-fold when the offender is an intimate partner or relative of the victim and is 20 times higher when previous domestic violence exists.

A study of risk factors for violent death of women in the home found that women living in homes with 1 or more guns were more than 3 times more likely to be killed in their homes. The same study concluded that women killed by a spouse, intimate acquaintance, or close relative were 7 times more likely to live in homes with 1 or more guns and 14 times more likely to have a history of prior domestic violence compared to women killed by non-intimate acquaintances.

Family and intimate assaults with firearms are 12 times more likely to result in death than non- firearm assaults. This research suggests that limiting access to guns will result in less lethal family and intimate assaults.

A study of women physically abused by current or former intimate partners revealed a 5-fold increased risk of the partner murdering the woman when the partner owned a firearm. In fact, homicide risks were found to be 50% higher for female handgun purchasers in California compared with licensed drivers matched by sex, race, and age group. Among the women handgun purchasers who were murdered, 45% were killed by an intimate partner using a gun. In contrast, 20% of all women murdered in California during the study period were killed with a gun by an intimate partner.
From a FactSheet (pdf link) published by the Center for Gun Policy and Research, part of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
posted by soundguy99 at 7:11 PM on June 3, 2014 [11 favorites]


Then a society that sees a female name as less frightening when it's attached to a giant natural disaster - that's so ridiculously bitterly funny and a big blinking neon sign that women are widely and deeply seen as lesser and that Elliot Rodger did not come out of a vacuum.

You're probably right about the significance of the female names, viggorlijah; I'd thought of that as an attempt to blame women for an especially threatening and destructive phenomenon of the natural world which would otherwise have to be attributed to God Himself with all the potential to shake people's faith that would entail, as an instance of the way Christian thinkers have taught that Nature itself Fell when Eve yielded to the blandishments of the Serpent, and that she-- and through her all women-- could therefore be held responsible for any destructive manifestation of nature.

Which reminds me, compare a passage from the Manifesto, quoted by Lutoslawski above:
The ultimate evil behind sexuality is the human female. They are the main instigators of sex. They control which men get it and which men don't. Women are flawed creatures, and my mistreatment at their hands has made me realize this sad truth. There is something very twisted and wrong with the way their brains are wired. They think like beasts and in truth they are beasts. Women are incapable of having morals or thinking rationally. They are completely controlled by their depraved emotions and vile sexual impulses. Because of this, the men who get to experience the pleasures of sex and the privilege of breeding are the men who women are sexually attracted to...the stupid, degenerate, obnoxious men. I have observed this all my life. The most beautiful women choose to mate with the most brutal men, instead of a magnificent gentlemen like myself.

Women should not have the right to choose who to mate and breed with. The 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, stupid offspring. This will cause humanity to become even more depraved with each generation. Women have more power in society than they deserve, all because of sex. There is no creature more depraved and evil than the human female.

Women are like a plague. They don't deserve to have any rights. Their wickedness must be contained in order to prevent future generations from falling to degeneracy. Women are vicious, evil, barbaric animals, and they deserve to be treated as such.
To a passage from a work which became the basis for the persecution of witches beginning in the 15th Century and leading ultimately to the execution of more than 40,000 (mainly) women and the torture of many more, the Malleus Maleficarum:
There is also, concerning witches who copulate with devils, much difficulty in considering the methods by which such abominations are consummated.
...
Therefore, let us now chiefly consider women; and first, why this kind of perfidy is found more in so fragile a sex than in men. And our inquiry will first be general, as to the general conditions of women; secondly, particular, as to which sort of women are found to be given to superstition and witchcraft; and thirdly, specifically with regard to midwives, who surpass all others in wickedness.
...
Now the wickedness of women is spoken of in Ecclesiasticus xxv: There is no head above the head of a serpent: and there is no wrath above the wrath of a woman. I had rather dwell with a lion and a dragon than to keep house with a wicked woman. And among much which in that place precedes and follows about a wicked woman, he concludes: All wickedness is but little to the wickedness of a woman. Wherefore S. John Chrysostom says on the text, It is not good to marry (S. Matthew xix): What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an unescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted with fair colours! Therefore if it be a sin to divorce her when she ought to be kept, it is indeed a necessary torture; for either we commit adultery by divorcing her, or we must endure daily strife. Cicero in his second book of The Rhetorics says: The many lusts of men lead them into one sin, but the lust of women leads them into all sins; for the root of all woman's vices is avarice. And Seneca says in his Tragedies: A woman either loves or hates; there is no third grade. And the tears of woman are a deception, for they may spring from true grief, or they may be a snare. When a woman thinks alone, she thinks evil.
Vicious, murderous misogyny recurs in every generation, and in startlingly similar forms in apparently very different contexts. I'd very much like to think it is not innate, but I'm no longer so sure.
posted by jamjam at 7:59 PM on June 3, 2014 [4 favorites]


Firearms are touted as a deterrent. You would, indeed, want potential attackers to know you had a deterrent.

Not exactly. First, in that situation, firearms are more for defense than deterrent, because they are most particularly useful when the other person does not know that the defender is carrying. If the abuser knows the survivor is armed, they may not attempt to engage at close quarters - they may shoot from afar, they may utilize poison or sabotage the car or a host of other possibilities. If they do not know the survivor is armed, they are likely to want to engage closely, under a belief of their superior physical strength.

But honestly klang, I may be oversensitive because of the exhaustion of all this, but as a female DV survivor myself, I have to say that even if you disagree with me, I'm really, really tired of dudes telling me what it's like and what I should want as a DV survivor. I wish to god I could own a gun in this city, I'd sleep far sounder. If any other ladies disagree, that is their right and I respect them for it, but you talking about it just kind of comes off like an ass.
posted by corb at 8:09 PM on June 3, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, I'm not a dude, and I don't quite follow your logic, corb. Is the notion that the abuser's uncertainty increases the likelihood of successful self-defense because the abuser would be more likely to come at the survivor unarmed? Because wouldn't it be even more useful for the survivor to know if her abuser was armed?
posted by gingerest at 9:28 PM on June 3, 2014 [5 favorites]


yeah I'd very much like to be able to look up if a dude has a gun so I can avoid getting involved with someone who's even more likely than the average dude to kill me
posted by NoraReed at 10:11 PM on June 3, 2014 [14 favorites]


"Not exactly. First, in that situation, firearms are more for defense than deterrent, because they are most particularly useful when the other person does not know that the defender is carrying. If the abuser knows the survivor is armed, they may not attempt to engage at close quarters - they may shoot from afar, they may utilize poison or sabotage the car or a host of other possibilities. If they do not know the survivor is armed, they are likely to want to engage closely, under a belief of their superior physical strength. "

Come on. 1) Deterrence is defense. You are more likely to avoid harm without any confrontation. 2) Those harms seem both less dangerous than murder and are of dubious, asserted risk here. 3) Provoking a close-quarter confrontation on the false confidence of carrying a firearm is flatly idiotic and terrible fucking advice for anyone, let alone someone with a reasonable belief of a threat.

"But honestly klang, I may be oversensitive because of the exhaustion of all this, but as a female DV survivor myself, I have to say that even if you disagree with me, I'm really, really tired of dudes telling me what it's like and what I should want as a DV survivor. I wish to god I could own a gun in this city, I'd sleep far sounder. If any other ladies disagree, that is their right and I respect them for it, but you talking about it just kind of comes off like an ass."

I'm not telling you what you should want. I'm telling you that what you want doesn't trump the safety of people around you. You can want to carry an Uzi or strap yourself with a suicide belt every day, but that's a terrible fucking idea and if you're going to do it, everyone else should know that you're a risk to them by virtue of carrying.

Try to get outside of what you want and think about what actually works.
posted by klangklangston at 10:54 PM on June 3, 2014 [12 favorites]


Come on. 1) Deterrence is defense. You are more likely to avoid harm without any confrontation. 2) Those harms seem both less dangerous than murder and are of dubious, asserted risk here. 3) Provoking a close-quarter confrontation on the false confidence of carrying a firearm is flatly idiotic and terrible fucking advice for anyone, let alone someone with a reasonable belief of a threat.

I agree with every single word of this. Unless you live in a world where "abuser" is synonymous with "Mafia assassin", it seems beyond paranoid to be worried about the likelihood of poison or car bomb/brake sabotage or anvil dropped from a great height should said abuser find out you're armed. And frankly, I don't feel safe living in a world where people with paranoid fantasies like this are able to own guns.
posted by palomar at 8:09 AM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


Well, I'm not a dude, and I don't quite follow your logic, corb. Is the notion that the abuser's uncertainty increases the likelihood of successful self-defense because the abuser would be more likely to come at the survivor unarmed? Because wouldn't it be even more useful for the survivor to know if her abuser was armed?

In my experience - which I will grant is not universal for all women, or all women DV survivors - the assumption is already that the abusers are armed. The assumption is that the abusers are already coming with the maximum force, because that assumption is the one that keeps you safe. If you prepare as though your enemy were always armed to the maximum degree, then you're never caught off guard. You are always as prepared as you possibly can be for the confrontation which might take place.

But the same kind of shitty guys who beat their wives and girlfriends and try to terrorize them are the same kind of misogynists who don't really conceive of said wives and girlfriends fighting back. They can't conceive of women being able to effectively hurt them, because it would damage their macho self image. Their minds are full of what they are going to do. When they plan, they plan to avoid interference from others. They don't usually plan to avoid defense from the woman herself. They stalk her online and in person not to find out about her defensive capabilities but to satisfy their own sick needs.

In those situations, I think it's wise for women to take advantage of their shitty stereotypes and be ready to fight back.

Try to get outside of what you want and think about what actually works.

Those are statistics about people actually living with each other, not people who have gotten out of the situation and are facing potential retaliation from their ex-spouse. If you find me statistics that show that domestic violence survivors who are armed are more likely to die than domestic violence survivors who remain unarmed, I will accept your point. Until that point, there is no "what actually works."
posted by corb at 8:52 AM on June 4, 2014


it seems beyond paranoid to be worried about the likelihood of poison or car bomb/brake sabotage

Are you serious? In a thread where we are talking about the harm done by men to women, do you really think that this stuff isn't happening? Poison and sabotaging and god only knows what the fuckers are planning to come up with next. That's the thing. These men are absolutely fucking mad, and they will stop at nothing to hurt women whose only crime was not wanting them.
posted by corb at 9:02 AM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Abstract
OBJECTIVE: Determine the relative frequency with which guns in the home are used to injure or kill in self-defense, compared with the number of times these weapons are involved in an unintentional injury, suicide attempt, or criminal assault or homicide.

METHODS: We reviewed the police, medical examiner, emergency medical service, emergency department, and hospital records of all fatal and nonfatal shootings in three U.S. cities: Memphis, Tennessee; Seattle, Washington; and Galveston, Texas.

RESULTS: During the study interval (12 months in Memphis, 18 months in Seattle, and Galveston) 626 shootings occurred in or around a residence. This total included 54 unintentional shootings, 118 attempted or completed suicides, and 438 assaults/homicides. Thirteen shootings were legally justifiable or an act of self-defense, including three that involved law enforcement officers acting in the line of duty. For every time a gun in the home was used in a self-defense or legally justifiable shooting, there were four unintentional shootings, seven criminal assaults or homicides, and 11 attempted or completed suicides.

CONCLUSIONS: Guns kept in homes are more likely to be involved in a fatal or nonfatal accidental shooting, criminal assault, or suicide attempt than to be used to injure or kill in self-defense.


-----

Study after study shows a very high correlation between having a gun in the home and using that gun against yourself or having it used against you. Whether or not you are a DV survivor will not change those stats.
posted by rtha at 9:14 AM on June 4, 2014 [12 favorites]


Nice cherry-picking of my comment, corb. Maybe you could be intellectually honest and actually quote everything I said, because you cut out the important part of my sentence:
Unless you live in a world where "abuser" is synonymous with "Mafia assassin", it seems beyond paranoid to be worried about the likelihood of poison or car bomb/brake sabotage or anvil dropped from a great height should said abuser find out you're armed.
posted by palomar at 9:14 AM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Those are statistics about people actually living with each other, not people who have gotten out of the situation and are facing potential retaliation from their ex-spouse.

Actually, if you look at the study I linked to in my above comment, it contains a footnote that points out:
"Note: For three reasons, it is likely that these figures are lower than the actual prevalence. First, the data represent approximately 85-90% of police department reports, and therefore do not offer a complete measure of homicides. Second, FBI data do not include a category for former dating relationships (e.g., ex-boyfriend). Third, many relationships reported as “friends” or “acquaintances” may in fact be current or former intimate partners."
So if anything the situation regarding women being murdered by exes is probably worse than that reflected in klang's linked statistics.


they may shoot from afar, they may utilize poison or sabotage the car or a host of other possibilities.

There is no doubt whatsoever that people can and have come up with all sorts of different ways to murder each other.

What I question is your assertion that people will choose to utilize these other methods because they know that their intended victim has a firearm. I would love to see any data you have suggesting that this is the case.

I think it far more likely that people will choose these other more esoteric methods due to some combination of psychological satisfaction, inability to get hold of a firearm themselves, and (most likely) the hope that it will prevent them from being caught.
posted by soundguy99 at 9:52 AM on June 4, 2014 [3 favorites]


Because feminists are apparently the real threat: Men’s rights group raises $25,000 to protect them from feminists
posted by zombieflanders at 10:57 AM on June 4, 2014


If these men can't conceive of a woman fighting back, why would they check this hypothetical database to see if she's armed? It's far more likely to be used the other way: for women to take note of red flags on possibly dangerous men.
posted by NoraReed at 11:18 AM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


That's pretty much irrelevant to this thread, zombieflanders. But, yes, there are real threats, according to the hotel hosting the conference:
“We have received numerous calls and threats and are concerned for the safety and well-being of our employees, our guests and your attendees,” hotel officials wrote in a letter dated Thursday to Paul Elam, A Voice for Men’s founder and publisher.

“The threats have escalated to include death threats, physical violence against our staff and and other guests as well as damage to the property.”
A Voice for Men are not the ones who want the increased security, but they are the ones who have to pay for it. Why shouldn't they ask their supporters for help?
posted by 0 at 11:36 AM on June 4, 2014


why would they check this hypothetical database to see if she's armed?

From my experience and experience working with other survivors, they all need to work very hard in order to minimize their internet presence in order to avoid either being found by their abuser or being potentially attacked by their abuser. Violent men tend to stalk - combing the internet for any sign of their victim's presence.

Another problem with such a hypothetical database is that it would either be forced to include geographic location or would end up being useless for the majority of people. I'm sure that you can see the problems in making information such as the addresses or city that a victim is staying in might be misused. I think it's just really important to be aware of these things. There are few tools that can't be used both ways.
posted by corb at 11:36 AM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


Wait, A Voice for Men is having a conference? A large group of myisognists will all be in the same room together...is there a way we can get a female named hurricane to blow through there?
posted by LizBoBiz at 11:46 AM on June 4, 2014 [8 favorites]


That's pretty much irrelevant to this thread, zombieflanders

This is a group that claiming that feminists should be classified as a terrorist group, in the wake of a violent act against women inspired by the rhetoric of groups like theirs, making themselves out to be victims. This is more than a little fishy given the circumstances.

But, yes, there are real threats, according to the hotel hosting the conference

According to your link, there are threats to the hotel according to the MRA group in question, unconfirmed by either the owner or the police (emphasis mine):
Fort Shelby owner Emmett Moten said he wasn’t aware of the conference or threats, but said it’s not unusual for hotels to require additional security.

Officer Adam Madera, a Detroit police spokesman, confirmed hotel officials recently contacted the department about hiring off-duty officers who work in the Secondary Employment program. The program was established by the city in 2011 and allows uniformed off-duty officers to moonlight as security guards.

“We provided them with information about the program, but other than that, we haven’t received any word about threats,” he said.
posted by zombieflanders at 11:52 AM on June 4, 2014 [5 favorites]


This is a group that claiming that feminists should be classified as a terrorist group,

So? Monkey-see monkey do. Feminists call MRAs terrorists and vice-versa all the time. All sorts of dim-witted people want classify other people as terrorists. Even non-dimwits do this (see this thread).

But, again, the claim of threats comes from the hotel, not A Voice for Men. A PDF of the Doubletree's letter is linked in the article comments. The hotel may not have passed the threats on to the police but obviously they inquired about off-duty officers for a reason.
posted by 0 at 12:07 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


I 100% do not believe anything AVFM is saying anytime about anything, except in the "we are horrible people as is self-evident from our mad ramblings we post publicly on the internet". Here's a writeup on the "threats" they're receiving, though.

Also the text of the Change.Org petition is gold.
posted by NoraReed at 12:17 PM on June 4, 2014 [7 favorites]


the claim of threats comes from the hotel, not A Voice for Men.

No, the claim of threat comes from A Voice for Men, who has linked to a letter of unknown provenance.
posted by rmd1023 at 12:38 PM on June 4, 2014 [4 favorites]


It only takes about thirty seconds of work with Google to see exactly how trustworthy A Voice For Men is on this issue. (Hint: not very.)
posted by palomar at 12:41 PM on June 4, 2014 [4 favorites]


oh man, a group founded on the idea that men just don't have a voice in this society

I believe them because they perceive the world accurately

I trust them because they can only tell the truth
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:57 PM on June 4, 2014 [15 favorites]


Brain bleach required, but doing a quick ctrl/cmd-f on "box cutters" in this Daily Beast article may also be instructive...
posted by running order squabble fest at 2:22 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


we actually discussed the box cutter thing at the time and got a second hand account from a mefite. anyone who takes hembling at his word either doesn't know much about him or are philosophically aligned with him.
posted by nadawi at 4:26 PM on June 4, 2014 [2 favorites]


Yeah - actual evidence, I'm going to go ahead and suppose that the feminist death threats to this event are about as real as the army of box cutter-equipped feminists...
posted by running order squabble fest at 6:30 PM on June 4, 2014 [1 favorite]


("Without actual evidence", that is...)
posted by running order squabble fest at 7:34 PM on June 4, 2014


On the men speaking to men and more-positive front, this story about the lead singer of Staind stopping mid-song to berate people for groping a crowd-surfer is heartwarming in a f-bomb filled way. I can't watch the actual video but the transcript does, unfortunately, seem to imply it's not okay because of her age rather than it's just not fucking okay to grope anyone. But still.

Plus you have to love this gem:
After the tirade, Lewis and Co. picked up where they left off in the song about suicide.
Also love the matter-of-factness of this: After the video went viral, Lewis took to Twitter Tuesday to explain his reaction, saying he’s “not sure how anyone in my shoes would’ve reacted differently.”
posted by phearlez at 7:56 AM on June 5, 2014 [3 favorites]


It's extra wrong and extra illegal to molest minors. It would take a pretty strained read to think that the Staind guy was implying that it's okay to molest women. According that logic, somebody who says "don't molest women" is implying that it's okay to molest little boys.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:21 AM on June 5, 2014


#NotAllBatmen
posted by TheMayorOfCanTown at 8:22 AM on June 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


I'm surprised that more people haven't tried to tie fedoracore back to Humphrey Bogart and/or Don Draper. Style them with MLP shirts and badly-trimmed goatees and bust out the euphoric quotes.
posted by Sticherbeast at 8:28 AM on June 5, 2014


It's probably not the root cause, but at least one red pill/PUA site specifically said that men should wear fedoras as a PUA power move because it would make them feel like Bogart and Indiana Jones...
posted by running order squabble fest at 9:08 AM on June 5, 2014


The "don't read the comments" rule applies in phearlz' link.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:42 AM on June 5, 2014


Salon: Ross Douthat's polite misogyny, in response to these three columns which Douthat wrote after the murders.
posted by Rustic Etruscan at 12:46 PM on June 5, 2014


It would take a pretty strained read to think that the Staind guy was implying that it's okay to molest women.

Jeez, where do you take that from what I said? I just meant it's unclear whether his choosing to stop a performance and make an issue of it was because of a general don't-grope or because he thinks it's extra wrong and illegal.

Would he have had a forceful reaction if she'd seemed of age? I want to think so, but that f-----g girl right there is like 15 f--g years old and you f--g pieces of s--t are molesting her while she’s on the f-----g crowd sounds more like it's about her age than her deserved autonomy at any age. Certainly that's the angle the article writer wants to take with the "the father of three girls said" part of the quote.
posted by phearlez at 12:54 PM on June 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Certainly that's the angle the article writer wants to take with the "the father of three girls said" part of the quote.

It should probably be mentioned that the article in question appeared in New York's Daily News, which is only the minutest bit to the left of the New York Post. Meaning, I'm not surprised if the article writer would have wanted to emphasize the crowdsurfer's youth more so than her gender.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:51 PM on June 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


to me that quote sounds very much like "you guys are so fucking shameless and gross that even a 15 year old isn't safe" not "if she were 25 this would be aok." i saw the lead singer of save ferris stop her show and give a similar dressing down, again involving minors, long before the era of the camera phone.
posted by nadawi at 3:51 PM on June 5, 2014 [4 favorites]


Multiple victim shooting is reported at a school in Seattle just now. Is this going to be weekly?
posted by Justinian at 4:11 PM on June 5, 2014 [1 favorite]


Is this going to be weekly?

Has been for some time.

It speaks volumes that people can't even agree on what defines a mass shooting.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:59 AM on June 6, 2014




Notes from a Boner.
Sometimes the boners want to warn us, as in “Maybe that HitlerBieber³-looking dude out in California wouldn’t have shot so many people if some chick had just touched his boner. Guys get so lonely, you really don’t understand what it’s like.”

Are you fucking serious, boner-owners? There is not a disapproving mom look IN THE UNIVERSE that is withering enough for this. Imagine being That Girl for a moment, the heroine who sacrifices herself so that others might live, delivering the sad lifesaving handy to the twisted boy with the guns in his murder van. Buffy the Boner-slayer. The Chosen One. Do you think it stops there? Do you think she gets to walk out of that van, out of that relationship, alive? Best case scenario she just postpones it for a little while, and then when the shooting starts, it starts with her.
Captain Awkward does love a Buffy reference.
posted by phearlez at 12:45 PM on June 6, 2014 [11 favorites]


In the future maybe we'll have Amok Forecasts like we used to have Weather Forecasts and now (some places) have Smog Forecasts.
posted by Justinian at 12:55 PM on June 6, 2014


Multiple victim shooting is reported at a school in Seattle just now. Is this going to be weekly?

Whats fucked for people in seattle, at least that i know, is that right after everyone checking in(one of my friends lives a BLOCK from where this happened, and has lots of pets she walks/takes outside all the time)... then this tweet from the cops pops up ONE DAY LATER. That location, by the way, is right next to another school. Like, directly across the street from the campus maybe 40 feet away.

it feels like it never ends sometimes.
posted by emptythought at 2:39 PM on June 6, 2014


Proof that we can't have nice things: we now have #YesAllConservativeWomen, because you know complaining about misogyny, rape culture, and the like just makes you a collectivist whiner. (No link, because really, you don't need or want to click through, do you?)
posted by immlass at 8:04 PM on June 6, 2014 [1 favorite]


Further proof we can't have nice things: The originator of #yesallwomen said early last week that she was getting death threats.

For starting a hashtag.

*sigh*
posted by E. Whitehall at 9:25 PM on June 6, 2014 [3 favorites]


#yesallwomen: because death-threats were sent to a woman for starting the hashtag #yesallwomen: because death-threats were sent to a woman for starting the hashtag #yesallwomen: because death-threats were sent to a woman for starting the hashtag #yesallwomen: because death-threats were sent to a woman for starting the hashtag #yesallwomen: because death-threats were sent

Segmentation fault (core dumped)
posted by Westringia F. at 10:48 PM on June 6, 2014 [6 favorites]


How Boys Teach Each Other to Be Boys
Taking cues from family and media, young boys teach their peers how to perform masculinity, to their detriment.
posted by Joe in Australia at 12:36 AM on June 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


Shooters in Metro ambush that left five dead spoke of white supremacy and a desire to kill police
Witnesses told police one of the shooters yelled “This is the start of a revolution” before shooting the officers. Gillespie later said he could not confirm that.

The shooters then stripped the officers of their weapons and ammunition and badges, according to a law enforcement official with knowledge of the investigation. They then covered the officers with something that featured the Gadsden flag, a yellow banner with a coiled snake above the words, “Don’t tread on Me.”

The flag is named for Christopher Gadsden a Revolutionary War general who designed it. It has recently come back in vogue as an adopted symbol of the American tea party movement
[...]
The shooters were a married couple thought to be in their late 20s who were new to the Las Vegas Valley, according to a law enforcement official close to the investigation. Police are looking into their links to the white supremacy movement and found swastika symbols during their initial investigation.

Residents of the Bruce Street apartment complex gathered outside the building to talk about the couple whose unit was being searched.

Several neighbors identified the man as Jared, while one called the woman Amanda.

Like many of the neighbors contacted, Krista Koch said she didn’t know the couple’s last names. She described them as “militant.” They talked about planning to kill police officers, “going underground” and not coming out until the time was right to kill.

Brandon Monroe, 22, has lived in the complex for about two weeks. He said the man who lived in the apartment that was being searched often rambled about conspiracy theories. He often wore camouflage or dressed as Peter Pan to work as a Fremont Street Experience street performer. A woman lived with him, Monroe said, but he didn’t see her as often.

They were weird people, Monroe said, adding that he thought the couple used methamphetamine.

“The man told Monroe he had been kicked off Cliven Bundy’s ranch 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas while people from throughout the U.S. gathered there in protest of a Bureau of Land Management roundup of Bundy’s cattle.” Jessica Anderson, 27, said. She lived next door.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:10 AM on June 9, 2014


Mod note: "Boner" derail deleted. It's maybe not a great idea to make this thread into a catch-all space for complaints/fights about men not being treated fairly in an unrelated performance piece.
posted by taz (staff) at 6:28 AM on June 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


Geez. The Seattle college thing, the Georgia courthouse thing, and now this Vegas thing in like half a week?

Is this happening more often now, or is it just getting reported on more? Is there any place that collects all mass shooting events? Wikipedia isn't comprehensive enough, and also splits up school and workplace and hate crime shootings from general rampage killings, for some reason.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:05 AM on June 9, 2014


Also:

About a month ago I was playing Taboo with a group of people, and someone got a card, can't remember what it was, and for their first clue said "school..."

Two people, at once, immediately said "Shooting!"

The word wasn't shooting. We all got real quiet for a second.
posted by showbiz_liz at 7:18 AM on June 9, 2014 [6 favorites]


showbiz_liz: I think it's happening more often, and personally I think much of this is because of the way the media handles it, which tends to encourage copycats.
posted by rmd1023 at 8:24 AM on June 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


Like many of the neighbors contacted, Krista Koch said she didn’t know the couple’s last names. She described them as “militant.” They talked about planning to kill police officers, “going underground” and not coming out until the time was right to kill.

How the heck does that not get reported? I have pretty strong feelings about the police and civil liberties and try not to involve them unless absolutely necessary. When someone starts talking to me about gunning down cops and shooting up stuff in general - that's under my heading of "necessary."
posted by phearlez at 9:29 AM on June 9, 2014


It has just come out that these people were at that Bundy standoff. This is my shocked face.
posted by Justinian at 12:16 PM on June 9, 2014


How the heck does that not get reported? I have pretty strong feelings about the police and civil liberties and try not to involve them unless absolutely necessary. When someone starts talking to me about gunning down cops and shooting up stuff in general - that's under my heading of "necessary."

I think there's this assumption that if someone is saying something that would be patently ridiculous were they sane, they're saying it as a joke or don't really mean it or won't go through with it. I mean, look at Rogers - he talked about what he wanted for all women to his fellow virgin friend, but even though the guy was creeped out, he didn't think it was worth reporting, because surely he would never actually do any of those things!
posted by corb at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2014


dressed as Peter Pan to work as a Fremont Street Experience street performer

Wut.

Would like my ticket to the Sane Planet now, please.
posted by jokeefe at 12:46 PM on June 9, 2014


I hope there's an express to that planet, because George Will here on *this* planet wants us all to know that
Colleges and universities are being educated by Washington and are finding the experience excruciating. They are learning that when they say campus victimizations are ubiquitous (“micro-aggressions,” often not discernible to the untutored eye, are everywhere), and that when they make victimhood a coveted status that confers privileges, victims proliferate. And academia’s progressivism has rendered it intellectually defenseless now that progressivism’s achievement, the regulatory state, has decided it is academia’s turn to be broken to government’s saddle.
posted by rtha at 1:02 PM on June 9, 2014 [1 favorite]


I mean, look at Rogers - he talked about what he wanted for all women to his fellow virgin friend, but even though the guy was creeped out, he didn't think it was worth reporting, because surely he would never actually do any of those things!

*nod* No doubt there was "surely they are joking/hyperbolic" going on there. Though I would draw some distinction between someone talking about an abstract societal-wide slavery - which requires other people buy in with your insanity - and discussing doing something that a single individual can certainly do on their own, like shooting another person.
posted by phearlez at 1:08 PM on June 9, 2014




THE SECOND GOALKEEPER: Reading the Writing of Elliot Rodger

Highly recommend this one. If his reading is right, Elliot was deeply, deeply damaged in his soul in ways I didn't think were possible. Which doesn't excuse his crime, or the misogyny, racism, and lust for violence that he harbored. But there was something truly wrong with him that makes it difficult to use his experience to adduce things about the broader culture.

The title, BTW, refers to this passage from the manifesto:

I never understood [soccer] and I could never keep up with the other boys in the field, so I always stood by the goalkeeper and pretended to be the ‘second goalkeeper’.

The writer comments:

Here is a weird, small kid trying to be a part of the game but he is failing. He doesn’t have the skills. He doesn’t get it. So he invents his own special role in defiance of the game’s rules so that he can feel like he’s part of the game. But this makes it worse. His weird idea for himself has only further isolated him from the game. He’s not really in the game at all anymore—he’s just in the way. The other kids are baffled by him. They ignore him. A field full of children, but this one kid is completely alone out there, even though he’s standing not too far from the goalkeeper. He’s not ruining the game or anything. It’s just unsettling to watch him, how isolated and confused he is. Maybe it was funny at first to look at him doing this strange thing but it’s getting less funny. Eventually it seems sad, and then almost a little creepy. He thinks he’s the second goalkeeper. Some parents watching the game might quietly wonder what’s wrong with him, but they don’t dwell on the matter. He seems harmless.
posted by Cash4Lead at 2:42 PM on June 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


I decided to read Frankenstein for the first time this week and couldn't help doing so in the context of "man, this fictional monster is way more identifiable and human than real monster Elliot Rodgers". I wonder if I just picked a weird time to read it or if I live in a time when there is always a monster looming large in the public consciousness that a lot of people are simultaneously trying to understand.
posted by NoraReed at 4:50 PM on June 9, 2014 [3 favorites]


I hope there's an express to that planet, because George Will here on *this* planet wants us all to know that

Holy fuck. I think this is another great example of what i've been saying lately, that there's almost no such thing as trolling anymore.

Because on one hand this is total trolling and clickbait contrarianism for its own sake smug garbage("Consider the supposed" as the beginning of that line set off my air raid siren for this, especially), but what it's championing in an almost indistinguishable from the modest proposal sort of jaw drop way is something that a lot of people serious believe, and are primed to go "FUCK YEA SOMEONES TELLING IT LIKE IT IS" at.

I guess i just don't get it. I don't get why it's something people want to hear so desperately, because it has nothing to do with the truth being too awful or whatever since their version of events is also awful. How is "Tons of women are lying about the actions of men and ruining their lives!" a better narrative than "Tons of men are assaulting women"?

And bear in mind, that at one point in my misguided high school and undergrad years having actually witnessed several false rape accusations go down. And before i found out the true scope of how many actual rapists i had met, known, or broken bread with it still didn't seem like something that could be an "epidemic" to me nor was it potentially some national crisis. Never did the "on the other hand tons of rape is happening" bit seem like some exaggerated thing made up for some bizarre reasons to further some "agenda".

So i guess i just don't understand how this was ever more believable of a thing than like, "9/11 was an inside job". I get how it could be a fairly popular fringe belief among certain groups of people, but this gets mainstream media coverage as a "Suppose for a moment" shitpile. What? Is some baseline level of mistrust towards women required here that i didn't ever possess, or that had already been rung out of me by the time i had advanced enough through popular culture that this narrative was going around like a door to door salesman?

Because i really feel like i'm missing something that this is something now credible enough to be in the washington post. When did the overton window move? Did it never really, and i just wasn't aware, around for, or paying attention to the right places?
posted by emptythought at 5:16 PM on June 9, 2014 [2 favorites]


The WaPo oped page has been a festering cesspit for over a decade. I'm not sure it has anything to do with the overton window rather than just being a function of the paper's lack of diversity plus a desire to pander to the older-breaking crowd that still reads the print edition.
posted by phearlez at 8:28 PM on June 9, 2014


Apparently George Will has been a lying asshole for ages. My dad wrote about him misquoting and lying and such back in 2009.

He regularly made my mom so angry that she "isn't allowed to read him in the paper anymore", as she put it.
posted by NoraReed at 9:59 PM on June 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


Oh, you sweet infant, George Will's record of perfidy goes back long before 2009. In 1980, he coached Ronald Reagan for the debates with a briefing book stolen from the Carter campaign. And FAIR's got a desk-thumping laundry list of his offenses against journalistic integrity.

No one in my household is allowed to read him either.

I am totally kidding about the infant thing
posted by gingerest at 11:05 PM on June 9, 2014 [4 favorites]


And now another shooting, this time at a high school in Oregon.
posted by zombieflanders at 9:17 AM on June 10, 2014




Jesus H Christ on a rocket-powered pogo stick. That's horrifying.

How many children need to die before something is done? Seriously?
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:32 AM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


How is "Tons of women are lying about the actions of men and ruining their lives!" a better narrative than "Tons of men are assaulting women"?

It's pretty much the mainstream version of Elliot Rodger's sad, sick ideas about women. It absolves people (mostly men) of responsibility for doing anything to try to deal with the problems of sexual assault and sexual harassment, sparing them from having to ask any hard questions about their own behavior or the behavior of friends, family, co-workers. Instead they can just shake their heads at "women" (or "loose women").

"Tons of women are lying about the actions of men and ruining their lives!" is an ugly narrative, but the easy response is to just keep doing what they're already doing: ignoring women and/or telling them to shut up.
posted by straight at 11:46 AM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Some scholarly work about the problem of violent, misogynistic "surplus men."
posted by corb at 12:18 PM on June 10, 2014


I'm missing something, corb. How are sex ratios in Asia is relevant to this discussion?
posted by 0 at 12:56 PM on June 10, 2014 [2 favorites]


More than that, the paper is about pretty specific forms of misogyny (sex selection that favors boys). I do think it's pretty interesting, but it's pretty orthogonal to this discussion.
posted by JohnLewis at 1:35 PM on June 10, 2014


Yeah, I'm not sure how it ties in either. That said, discussing what is most relevant to this discussion has made up a large part of this discussion. But I do wish corb would weigh in on what she sees as the relevance.
posted by Justinian at 1:43 PM on June 10, 2014


Sorry, the overall piece is specifically about sex ratios in Asia, but it talks a lot about the problem of surplus men - men at the effective bottom of the social totem pole who are unable to secure wives. It also talks about how unmarried men overall are more likely to engage in violence than married men, by a factor of 3.

The paper doesn't go too much into the specifics of why unmarried men who consider themselves unable to attract a wife might become more violent - it talks briefly about a lowering of T in married men, but only very lightly. But it makes me think a lot about the Rodgers case - a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife, who exploded into violence. And it makes me think a lot about the other recent shootings in past years - surplus men all, less for economic reasons than for personal deficiencies, but still definitely surplus.
posted by corb at 2:47 PM on June 10, 2014


All Of The Things Women Are Supposed To Do To Prevent Rape

Or, as George Will might put it:

All Of The Things Women Should Avoid Doing So They Can Achieve the Coveted Rape Victim Status
posted by tonycpsu at 2:49 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


Oh, and of course, the WaPo is also happy to offer some of its online real estate to push this bullshit.
posted by tonycpsu at 2:51 PM on June 10, 2014


a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife, who exploded into violence

What? He wasn't a surplus man the way men in some countries are surplus. We are practically at gender parity here, and actually being outnumbered and out-statused by other men was not what was keeping him from finding a partner. I mean what, dude.
posted by rtha at 3:02 PM on June 10, 2014 [6 favorites]


Yeah, he couldn't attract a wife not because he was surplus but because he was a creeping creepy creepo.
posted by Justinian at 3:48 PM on June 10, 2014 [9 favorites]


If women can make enough money to support themselves and a kid or two, and are safe walking down the street without a man at their side, it isn't going to take an unbalanced sex ratio to generate a whole big bunch of surplus men.
posted by jamjam at 4:20 PM on June 10, 2014


The paper doesn't go too much into the specifics of why unmarried men who consider themselves unable to attract a wife might become more violent - it talks briefly about a lowering of T in married men, but only very lightly. But it makes me think a lot about the Rodgers case - a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife, who exploded into violence. And it makes me think a lot about the other recent shootings in past years - surplus men all, less for economic reasons than for personal deficiencies, but still definitely surplus.

The thing is, though, is that the reason that there's a surplus of men in many Asian countries is because of a cultural preference for boys running into population control. In China, in particular, the men in question were born during China's "one child per family" policy, a policy which a lot of families dealt with by either abandoning baby girls for adoption upon their birth, or aborting them outright.

I mean, I can see the connection you're trying to make in terms of men who don't get what they want reacting by getting violent about it. But there's still something of a cultural difference between "I can't get what I want because the men outnumber the women by, like, lots" and "I can't get what I want because I have blindered myself to all but a very particular category of woman."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:26 PM on June 10, 2014 [3 favorites]


If women can make enough money to support themselves and a kid or two, and are safe walking down the street without a man at their side, it isn't going to take an unbalanced sex ratio to generate a whole big bunch of surplus men.

Wait, what?
posted by KathrynT at 4:29 PM on June 10, 2014 [4 favorites]


If women can make enough money to support themselves and a kid or two, and are safe walking down the street without a man at their side, it isn't going to take an unbalanced sex ratio to generate a whole big bunch of surplus men.

If men continue to believe that "money and kids" is the only thing a women could want out of them, it isn't going to be the fault of women's earning power that so many men strike out with women.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:48 PM on June 10, 2014 [18 favorites]


At least that comment seems to be equal parts misandrist *and* misogynist! Win!

not really a win, no
posted by rtha at 5:05 PM on June 10, 2014 [4 favorites]


men at the effective bottom of the social totem pole who are unable to secure wives.

Unable to secure wives because in certain societies men literally outnumber women by a huge margin. If you married off absolutely every single woman with a pulse, there would still be millions of unmarried men.

From page 7: "Ansley Coale suggests that the sex ratio for a stationary population (as determined by Western model life tables) is between 97.9 and 100.3 males per 100 females."

Then if you look at Table 3 on page 10, you'll see that (depending on the source of data), in China there may be between 113.8 to 121 men per 100 women; Korea between 109.6 to 117.9 men per 100 women; in India between 111 and 156 (!!!) men per 100 women.

This is not the case in the U.S. or (AFAICT) most other "first-world" countries. Which the authors of the paper openly acknowledge - from page 12:
"Who are these young surplus males? First, they are not equivalent to the bachelors of the West. Single men in the West are not surplus males: Indeed they can and often do form semipermanent attachments to women and produce children in that context."

So the paper really is irrelevant - it's describing a certain set of specific circumstances that don't apply here. Furthermore, it's concerned with what happens when you have a large group of "surplus males", and the causes for the behavior of a large group of people don't necessarily apply when considering the behavior of individuals.

I don't think you can draw any conclusions about the behavior of Rodgers or other U.S. individuals based on the data in the paper.
posted by soundguy99 at 5:21 PM on June 10, 2014 [5 favorites]


James Hamblin of The Atlantic commenting on George Will's column:

All She Said Was No
A dangerous misunderstanding of sexual assault
posted by Joe in Australia at 5:35 PM on June 10, 2014 [1 favorite]


But it makes me think a lot about the Rodgers case - a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife

Rodgers wasn't a "surplus" man. I think the whole "surplus" terminology is kind of strange and insulting, even for the countries/populations in which it actually makes sense (which is not the US or this case with Rodgers).

Also he was super young and who knows if he'd been "able to attract a wife" if he'd been able to work with his massive issues fueled by misogyny - for the most part though, he was just trying to get sex with women, I don't even know where "wife" comes into it.
posted by sweetkid at 6:41 PM on June 10, 2014 [2 favorites]


But it makes me think a lot about the Rodgers case - a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife

also this kind of feeds back into the whole basic idea that somehow he (and all men) are somehow owed wives, that had somehow this magical unicorn who wouldn't mind dating an absolutely atrocious and racist human would have managed to find him and would have...saved him, somehow?
posted by jetlagaddict at 7:55 PM on June 10, 2014 [14 favorites]


Well, the thing about the notion of "surplus" is that it applies only to populations, because sex ratios can be calculated only for the aggregate, not for individuals. As well, individual sociosexual partnerships are dynamic over time (i.e. people break up and form new relationships) and occur across as well as within birth cohorts, so the doomsaying around birth cohort sex ratios is vastly overstated anyway.

So, Rodger isn't surplus. He's unpartnered, and perhaps he would be unpartnered for life, but it's still a circular mess to say "he'll be single forever because he's unattractive, he's unattractive because he's a furious woman hater, and he's a furious woman hater because he's single."
posted by gingerest at 12:49 AM on June 11, 2014 [3 favorites]


I don't think that Rodgers wanted an actual relationship with a woman. I mean, he said his objective was to eliminate sex. So speculation about what would have happened if he had had a relationship are doubly hypothetical: what would have happened if he had been normal enough to sustain a relationship and had attracted anyone to have a relationship with. You might as well say "what if he were not an obsessive narcissistic loon, what then?"

There's a human tendency to project ourselves into the role of criminals and say "well, I wouldn't have done something like that unless I had a really good reason, so his reasons must have been at least sort of good." But I don't think this is necessarily true. Rodger was using Underpants Gnome logic:
1) Kill women!
2) ...
3) I am now king of the world breeding the next generation of MEN via my underground harem of surviving women.

I suppose power fantasies like this may be the logical conclusion of misogynistic beliefs, just as Auschwitz was the logical conclusion of anti-Semitsm. None the less, Rodger's thought processes were so messed up that it's hard to extract a useful lesson: teach him that women aren't objects? He seems to have treated everybody like objects. Involve him in social activities? He stood around glaring, then became enraged at the sight of someone being happy. Give him therapy? By all accounts, he was already receiving therapy, which he resisted. There are some people who simply can't be helped.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:36 AM on June 11, 2014 [4 favorites]


But it makes me think a lot about the Rodgers case - a surplus, unmarried man who was unlikely to ever attract a wife

also this kind of feeds back into the whole basic idea that somehow he (and all men) are somehow owed wives, that had somehow this magical unicorn who wouldn't mind dating an absolutely atrocious and racist human would have managed to find him and would have...saved him, somehow?


I think in populations with notable gender imbalance you can use the "surplus" term and talk about "unlikely to ever attract a wife" without it being part of that entitlement mentality; you're talking about the probability of someone managing to find a mate who likes them (well enough). From a statistical issue that's perfectly reasonable - as the Mr T Experience sang, Even Hitler Had a Girlfriend. So the jackholes have a chance of finding someone with bad taste if the balance is reasonably good.

Being a phenomenal asshole isn't necessarily a precluding factor for finding someone, though when your assholeishness manifests as a loathing and disdain for all women you've stacked the deck against yourself. That's why Rodgers wasn't "surplus" - he was self-recalled or too honestly advertised.
posted by phearlez at 7:59 AM on June 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I was meaning it more as "unlikely to ever attract someone because he was a jackhole." I don't think his other characteristics were dealbreakers, but being a creepy creepo from creeptown does make it way less likely that anyone will put up with your shit for more than five minutes.

I sure the fuck don't believe anyone owed this dude to throw themselves on the grenade so it wouldn't explode into violence, though.
posted by corb at 8:28 AM on June 11, 2014


Being a phenomenal asshole isn't necessarily a precluding factor for finding someone, though when your assholeishness manifests as a loathing and disdain for all women you've stacked the deck against yourself.

Bingo. He was actually a pretty good looking dude. If he hadn't been a total and complete misogynist asshole with entitlement problems, and had actually spoken to women, I have no doubts whatsoever that he would have been able to find a girlfriend. There is just so much failure here on so many levels it's heartbreaking to figure out where to begin fixing them.

I guess we start from birth, with (heterosexual) boys: Women are people, just like you. They don't owe you anything. Drill that into their heads all the way through puberty and maybe, maybe we can start killing this toxic culture.
posted by feckless fecal fear mongering at 9:23 AM on June 11, 2014 [2 favorites]


I guess we start from birth, with (heterosexual) boys: Women are people, just like you. They don't owe you anything. Drill that into their heads all the way through puberty and maybe, maybe we can start killing this toxic culture.

Yeah, but before we do that we have to convince people that the culture which exists is toxic, and so long as we still have guys who are still having the "not all men" knee-jerk response to such discussions, that ain't gonna happen.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:29 AM on June 11, 2014 [3 favorites]


The idea of the "surplus man" is relevant, to the extent that many of these boys/men may themselves *feel* that they are surplus. This feeling comes from a misogynistic form of entitlement, of course, but it is nonetheless how they feel: they are bitter cast-offs who enjoy whining on a good day, violence on a bad day. They apparently cannot conceive of self-purpose without having all the sex that they would like.

Think about how the "wizards" of Wizardchan got their name: it's a tongue-in-cheek reference to the idea of men secreting themselves in a distant tower for many years, so as to study to become a wizard. They do not feel like they are part of normal society. It's a sad joke, though, because while "real" wizards may eventually gain incredible powers, quelurous would-be hornballs gain nothing at all.
posted by Sticherbeast at 10:08 AM on June 11, 2014 [2 favorites]


but before we do that we have to convince people that the culture which exists is toxic, and so long as we still have guys who are still having the "not all men" knee-jerk response to such discussions, that ain't gonna happen

I'm not sure I concur. I happen to agree that we rise to the level of 'toxic,' but I don't think you need people to buy that it's that bad to get them on board. When people drop the "love conquers all" trope in my presence I can just say "Ugh, don't tell him that - hollywood shows everything working out the moment people realize they're in love and the reality is that relationships take work."

We don't have to get deep into whether movies excuse behavior that is full-on stalking or show people engaging in assault under the guise of "kiss her suddenly and she'll know you love her!" There's room to nudge people into better spaces just by convincing them something is better. Maybe once they're there they'll be better able to see how fucking horrible the old headspace was, but I'll take progress however we get it.
posted by phearlez at 10:39 AM on June 11, 2014


I happen to agree that we rise to the level of 'toxic,' but I don't think you need people to buy that it's that bad to get them on board.

How do you get them to help fix a problem if they don't believe the problem actually exists?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:45 AM on June 11, 2014 [3 favorites]


I guess the exact sentence you quoted is not as clear as I thought it was. You convince them there is a problem. You just don't necessarily need them to agree it's as bad a problem as you and I think it is, or maybe not even that it's the same problem we think it is.

Thus why I say I don't agree with "we have to convince people that the culture which exists is toxic." No, I think you have to convince them there's a better way. I don't have to loathe one choice in order to think the other choice is superior.

Maybe that means you're talking about how their son will have better relationships and less heartache if he doesn't view Getting a Girlfriend as a goal and instead is encouraged to just see where his interactions go with women. I think treating women as people first and roles second is simply the right thing to do, but if appealing to their concern for their son's quality of life is the only way we can motivate people to participate in drilling "that into their heads all the way through puberty" then I'll take it.
posted by phearlez at 12:58 PM on June 11, 2014


I guess the exact sentence you quoted is not as clear as I thought it was. You convince them there is a problem. You just don't necessarily need them to agree it's as bad a problem as you and I think it is, or maybe not even that it's the same problem we think it is.

I think I see the disconnect we're having; my observation of the "not all men" crowd is that they tend to think that sexism is a narrowly-defined thing that only a small subset of guys do. You know? "Oh, yeah, everyone can agree that a guy who jumps out of the bushes and, like, rapes strangers is bad, and everyone can agree that groping a woman who's just minding her own business is bad....but, that's only, like, some guys who do that. Not all of them. And I'm not one of them, and neither are my buddies...only, like, a handful of losers do that, so...."

You know? The whole "not all men" thing is a form of denial that the problem is a problem, as opposed to being "something that a handful of losers do". When we tell them that "actually, it's a bigger problem than you think and a lot of guys are doing this" and they fall all over themselves to say "but not all of them", that's their way of hanging onto the comfortable belief that it's only a small subset of guys who do this, and that it's not a universal issue. And I believe that that's because they're afraid of considering what about their own behavior may be contributing to the problem, because then they'd find out that they've been doing sexist things too and in their minds, that would be putting them in the same category with the bad guys.

So long as the "not all men" guys are too afraid to look at the truth - which is that sexism is a far more pervasive thing than just being "guys who jump out of bushes and grope strangers", and also includes "cracking sexist jokes" or "assuming are going to quit their jobs to raise kids" or a whole host of other things - they will stay convinced that this is a problem that only affects a few guys, and since they're not one of those guys, it's not their problem, and if it's not their problem, they don't have to raise their own sons any different, so what's the big deal?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:12 PM on June 11, 2014 [9 favorites]


I see our divergence, but it reads like you're conceding these clowns a victory ("that ain't gonna happen") that I don't think they have in their grasp. Yeah, many of those clowns are beyond reaching. They don't see an issue and wouldn't even if you pried their eyeballs open Clockwork Orange-style.

But they're not everyone and they're not immune to Issue Judo. When they have someone's ear we get them at the good-for-men angle rather than the right-for-humans tack. We made tremendous strides in gay rights not by getting parents to say "everyone deserves the right to marry" but by normalization and exposure. But the result is an under-25 crowd that is notably more supportive than their parents.

I don't believe that equal treatment for women can't also use sideways tactics.
posted by phearlez at 1:29 PM on June 11, 2014 [1 favorite]


I see our divergence, but it reads like you're conceding these clowns a victory ("that ain't gonna happen") that I don't think they have in their grasp.

I wasn't "conceding victory", because "that ain't gonna happen" wasn't the sum total of my comment. The sum total of my comment was:
Yeah, but before we do that we have to convince people that the culture which exists is toxic, and so long as we still have guys who are still having the "not all men" knee-jerk response to such discussions, that ain't gonna happen.
What I meant was that it is going to take a lot more than just the percentage of guys who are on board with this plan starting to raise their sons better, because the sons of the "not all men" guys are going to still be around. So just working on the kids alone isn't going to do it all, we need to also work on getting all the fathers on board with the idea that there is a problem to be solved.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 1:54 PM on June 11, 2014


Barring kill squads, we're always going to have guys who have that reaction. Just like we still have racists, just like we still have homophobes. So when you place that never-to-pass as the condition for "we do that and it starts killing this toxic culture" I don't know how I'm supposed to read it in any other way but hopelessness.

I still disagree and feel like I covered all my reasons so above.
posted by phearlez at 6:52 PM on June 11, 2014


Dude, do you always take everyone so damn literally?
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:48 PM on June 11, 2014


Okay, let me try saying that a bit more moderately:

Barring kill squads, we're always going to have guys who have that reaction.

Ironically, when I say that we aren't going to have any progress until we get rid of the "Not all men" guys, I do not actually mean....all of the "not all men" guys. Like, to the very last man.

Yes, I am aware that I am using the "not all men" trope against "not all men" guys. But I'm a bit taken aback that you think I literally mean every last one of them, and not just, like, a majority.

And what is frustrating is that this feels like yet another case where discussions about gender relations get sidetracked into bloody semantics while meanwhile the actual issues go unchecked. If I misread your position and you're actually trying to be supportive, I apologize, but it does look an awful like the kind of semantics-rules-lawyering that "not all men" springs from, the kind that gets used to drag these discussions down all the time, and I'm a bit raw from fighting that so I apologize if i've mistaken you.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:55 PM on June 11, 2014 [3 favorites]


Jeez, I don't feel like I took you all that literally at all. I was really more interested in the idea that we don't always need to approach a problem such that we convince everyone it's as bad as we think it is; we can go after people with an angle other than "you should go this because it's just basic human decency" and perhaps appeal to them in other ways. I feel like I provided examples and I tried to draw some parallels. You took it back in the direction of whether you'd been negative or not and focused on the segment of jackass problem deniers.

I guess neither of us are being completely explicit about quantities of people or tipping points or whatever, so maybe I should. I read fffm's bit about teaching the kids and it made me think of the way the numbers have run on gay rights. Successive generations have moved in double-digit quantities over their parents on viewing gays as just other folks. They've done it despite the fact that some quantity of them were raised by complete jackholes.

So when you followed up that initial bit with what feels like a quick "we can't do it until" and yourself use no quantifier... I'm not trying to get bogged down in some semantic argument here, but where do I go from that and why wouldn't I interpret it as "this won't work/happen?" And later you went back and quoted yourself again and the extent of your quantifier is "a lot more." You've only just now said "majority."

And I disagree that we don't start improving the toxic culture till we have a majority that stops the denial. Do we eventually need a lot more? Yeah. But for all the ways that society has sucked rocks and keeps hanging on to some percentage of jackholes, there's some point at which we get some traction and stuff moves towards better. Arc bending towards justice and all that.

On the gay rights issue we've only just tipped into a majority on marriage equality, but I wouldn't say we weren't making the world better before that. We didn't need a majority of the bigots to stop their shit first. We came at it from several angles and the result was compounding results.
posted by phearlez at 9:03 PM on June 11, 2014


I guess I read fffm's comment as being much a much more sweeping start-over-with-the-next-generation-and-that-will-fix-everything kind of thing. I agree that each individual family can do that within their own family, but I was reading his as a more "collectively teach the next entire generation and give up on this one" comment. And I was questioning whether something of that scope was possible because you need to get way more fathers on board to be able to do that.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 9:10 PM on June 11, 2014 [2 favorites]


Here's an article about edits Rodger made on Wikipedia. He got banned because of antagonistic edits made about a male model and a dead bodybuilder, who he considered "Alphas" and "beast-men", on the night he went out and broke his leg after trying to shove women off a ledge.
posted by Small Dollar at 8:40 PM on June 16, 2014 [1 favorite]




To threaten it anyway since that guy got busted for making threats not for actually killing anyone. Which is absolutely the right thing to do! Because you can't tell which threats are going to be followed through and which are just talk.

I wonder what the sentence is for making threats of this sort and whether they can add time for being a hate crime or a terroristic threat of some sort.
posted by Justinian at 12:42 PM on June 17, 2014


Oh, he's being investigated for "felony harassment". That... sounds not good but not exactly like something he's going to do a lot of hard time for?
posted by Justinian at 12:43 PM on June 17, 2014


he's being investigated for "felony harassment". That... sounds not good but not exactly like something he's going to do a lot of hard time for?

And therein lies the problem.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:45 PM on June 17, 2014 [1 favorite]


Yeah I expected a more serious charge until I came across that. Maximum penalty appears to be 5 years and a 10,000 fine. I expect that means a first offender (assuming he is one) would get something like community service, probation for a number of years, and a fine. Unless the judge decides to throw the book at him in the wake of Rodger. We'll see.
posted by Justinian at 1:22 PM on June 17, 2014


A thread founded upon an incident with misogynistic overtones (at LEAST) probably is a good place to post some good news about someone getting comeuppance for misogynistic behavior -

American Apparel just fired Dov Charney, for "ongoing investigation into alleged misconduct” which "does not appear to be criminal in nature, but involved his personal conduct with women and poor judgement."
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:35 AM on June 19, 2014 [3 favorites]


Amusingly, I was recently reminded of Charney's scumminess in the AV Club's interview with Jenny Slate, who had personally experienced such things.
posted by Sticherbeast at 5:45 AM on June 19, 2014


Mayer said he expects some critics to question why the board didn’t act sooner. But Mayer said, “a board can’t make decisions on the basis of rumors and stories in newspapers.”

I wonder what finally tipped the scales for the board to fire Charney? These rumors and stories have been around for years.
posted by rtha at 6:02 AM on June 19, 2014


These rumors and stories have been around for years.
And lawsuits! Don't forget the lawsuits!

I think there are two possibilities. One is that he did something incredibly egregious, and it would have to be pretty darn egregious, given that he famously once whipped out his penis and started masturbating in the middle of an interview with a reporter for a national magazine. The other is that they wanted to fire him because the business is in trouble, and his reputation for sexual harassment gave them an easy excuse to do that without admitting how grim the finances are.

Anyway, this probably merits its own FPP.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 6:11 AM on June 19, 2014


yeah from what i've read the firing seems to be a delaying tactic wrt aa's finances. charney has just give them a giant list of reasons to scapegoat him. if aa was doing better financially chances are the firing wouldn't have happened.
posted by nadawi at 6:32 AM on June 19, 2014


The cynic in me is also wondering if maybe he finally hit on an investor's daughter or something.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 6:35 AM on June 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


Once there are some good links and analyses an FPP on the Charney firing would be great. It's big news, there are at least one or two previouslies, and it fits well with a set of recent FPPs including this one and the Terry Richardson one.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:41 AM on June 19, 2014


I'm smirking at the fact that Charney's firing has made American Apparel's (penny) stock rise considerably. Of course, it's only been a few hours.

Unrelated to the sexual harassment aspect, but remember American Apparel's weirdness with Deloitte?

I wonder if a quorum of the board has finally figured out that Dov Charney is a bad pony, and they should not bet on him.
posted by Sticherbeast at 7:03 AM on June 19, 2014


> Unrelated to the sexual harassment aspect, but remember American Apparel's weirdness with Deloitte?

I wasn't sure that I fully understood the language in AA's SEC filing that you linked, so I did a quick search for news stories.... It seems there was some rather shady business with AA's accounting that prompted a switch of accounting firms (which is what that SEC report describes) and a subsequent SEC audit to investigate the switch. Whatever was going on made Deloitte distance itself and send its own letter to the SEC rebutting AA's claims. Yikes.

Definite FPP stuff, esp with that backstory.

And even if Charney's misogyny is just a scapegoat for financial woes or malfeasance, I'm VERY glad that we're at a point where a board can publicly say "sexist behavior is unacceptable, and you're out." Not so long ago, boards wouldn't have been able/willing to boot a CEO for sexual misconduct, and the financial angle would have been necessary for cover. I almost don't care if it's a calculated maneuver to keep their stock up; the fact that it does keep their stock up is encouraging.
posted by Westringia F. at 3:40 PM on June 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


There was a piece about this on Marketplace earlier today. It links to a long, weird interview with Charney. A quote: “My biggest weakness is me. I mean, lock me up already! It’s obvious! Put me in a cage, I’ll be fine. I’m my own worst enemy. But what can you do—I was born strange.”

Yeah.
posted by rtha at 5:04 PM on June 19, 2014


Why is the CEO of a clothing chain this big celebrity? I honestly couldn't name even one similar CEO in Australia.
posted by Joe in Australia at 7:02 PM on June 19, 2014


You could, too - Dick Smith. Charney's famous because even though he didn't name the company after himself, it's his baby and he's worked hard to ensure everyone who knows about American Apparel thinks of him as its auteur.
posted by gingerest at 7:10 PM on June 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


It's also more an infamy thing I think. If he wasn't such a known dirtbag, I'd say I'd guess 95% of us would have never heard of him either.

But as it happens, I know two separate acquaintances from different parts of the country whose only connection, as far as I know, is knowing me personally and Dov Charney slightly in a professional context, who have personal "Dov Charney was not-legally-actionable-but-pretty-fucking-gross-to-me" stories.

And I'm not exactly privy to hot corporate retail gossip.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:19 PM on June 19, 2014 [1 favorite]


I had the weirdest discussion with his art director, who's the woman who takes most of the photos — I was canvassing her for, uh, I think teaching about LGBT heroes in schools, and we got to talking. She said stuff that definitely sounded like what assistants/accomplices for Richardson say, what with everyone having fun and it all being consensual and collaborative. But it was all, like, the media and stories and everything were just coming from outside a bubble, and I don't know how self aware she was. I like a lot about the aesthetic that she works from, but part of flitting that line of exploitation and unhealthy sexualization is that in order to make it work, you've got to be so fucking ethical about it (no pun intended). That means at the least that everyone knows what they're getting into when they sign up — and not just having that be implicit either, but actual consent — and they have to be cool with it throughout. Playing with sleaze isn't an excuse to be actually sleazy.

One of the ways that she rationalized the Jane thing with the idea that the reporter was cool with it and then regretted it; likewise some of the other stories I'd heard. And it seems like Richardson does that too. But that just doesn't comport with my experience — and maybe it's too limited — but it seems like that isn't something that really happens or leads to sexual harassment charges, especially not ones like this.

I don't want to make the art director into a villain, I just kinda think that she's someone who hasn't really thought a lot of this through, or who is too close to Charney to see that he really does hurt people. I wonder if it's something like because he acts creepy toward her but hasn't (at least when I talked to her) overtly harmed her, she assumes that he's harmless with other women too, and that there's no broader harm from the way he conducts himself.

It's a callow, self-destructive aesthetic that I think can magnify the consequences of a lot of bad decisions and dumbass behavior by young women in a way that's really unfair to them. I know I was a dumbass at 19 and into all sorts of shit I shouldn'tve. I mean, a lot of the adult models I've talked with have talked about wanting to be seen as sexy and to explore what that means, and I think that means having the freedom to make some mistakes along the way without being sexually harassed or coerced into shit they don't want to do, especially since for so many people figuring out this sort of identity stuff means often trying out a lot of roles that other people have already constructed. And it's a weird power play for Richardson or Charney to impose this sexual identity on other people without getting authentic buy in from them.
posted by klangklangston at 7:57 PM on June 19, 2014 [5 favorites]


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