Mass Shooting in California

[Hunter]

"ER was mad about, he bought all their pick up artists books and DVDs and still couldnt get laid.

Also about whether he asked any girls out, in his manifesto he says he has never asked a girl out on a date. You get the very obvious impression that he didnt think he should have to, he believed they should be lining up to date him and he shouldnt have to put in the effort to find them and ask them. But, he does make it clear that he never asked a girl out in his life. So basically he didnt even try because he was under the impression they should be lining up for a nice guy like him."

He actually bought the DVDs? I definitely got the impression that he never tried asking anyone out. I mean running up to people and assaulting them with coffee, soda, water, etc. screams of social isolation. You get the sense that internalized all of his feelings, and that nobody had any clue what he was thinking half of the time.

If he never tried any PUA stuff, then how can he actually be a PUA? These anti-MRA anti-PUA "he's a misogynist" criticisms make no sense. And PUAs are trying to have sex with women, not murder them. You can argue that they are misogynists because they objectify women, etc. But they are not the violent, murdering kind of misoanthropes that ER was. Most PUAs are just awkward guys who are trying to learn social skills so they can get a girlfriend or a wife eventually.

The whole point to PUA is go out and get rejected a million times, learn from lots social interactions, and gradually improve at socializing with women.

Do you think the recent rise in the PUA and MRA community has anything to do with a whole generation of kids staying in their bedrooms playing video games and never developing any real social skills, now they are coming of age, out in the real world and they have no skills and they feel slighted as males? My wife thinks this is a big part of it all.

[Iamwhomiam]

Thank you Hunter & jlaw for sharing some of his history. WE should not forget that it was his father who first alerted the police of his son's dangerous ambitions, which they discounted as not credible.

Such evaluations should not be made by uniformed officers, but by trained professionals.

[jlaw172364]

@Hunter

Yes definitely. I was one of those kids. I moved to another country and got bullied right away for being different, even though I was well-liked in the other country and lots of friends, it didn't translate to the USA. So I retreated into books, television, and video-games for most of my adolescence. When I started to come out of that and socialize, I then fell in with the drug and party scene and that fucked me up in a completely different way. It tooks years to claw my way out of all of that and undo the damage. Hell, I'm still undoing it! Videogames offer nothing more than counterfeit accomplishment for the most part, although occasionally you learn lessons from them, the experience is mostly compulsive and drug-like. The games are engineered on behaviorist ground to exploit a person's need for accomplishment. Everything is engineered to make the game addictive. The effects on the brain are similar to cocaine. Few parents had any clue about this because it was new technology. My parents tried to stop me from playing, but they eventually knuckled under when they learned I was playing at a friend's house and at a youth center. For me, it was an escape from having no friends, no prospects at friendship, constant bullying from both boys and girls. I could lose myself in the game and unleash my aggression.

I also think television and junk food play huger roles. At least video-games are active. You can use your brain with them. With television, you're just passively vegetating, absorbing stuff in, although you can learn to watch it critically, it's very hard for young kids to do this.

In high school, I started to understand how women gravitated to men at the top of a social hierarchy, but unlike ER, I possessed enough social skills to start to move up it. But then I kind of recoiled at occupying a position I had formerly despised when I was at the bottom. I also questioned the morality of what I was doing, namely acting more assertive and pushing back when pushed, and sometimes doing some unprovoked pushing of my own. There's no question in my mind that PUA and TRP tactics and strategies work, but I viewed them through a moral prism at the time as "evil." Now I just view them as neutral tools that can be used morally. I.e. You can apply TRP by lifting, finding things you are interested in, self-improvement, career-development, and then attracting women, and you can apply PUA by learning to be charming, witty, and how to gauge interest as to whether you should pursue someone or note their lack of interest and move on. These are all vital skills, IMO, even if you don't apply to romance. I wish I had come across those concepts earlier as a unified whole; now they mostly just confirm experiences I've had over the years.

In one way, drugs and alcohol were good things because they got me away from video-games and back to socializing with people, but then I realized after a few years that my relationships were dysfunctional and shallow, as they centered around self-destructive hedonism, so I had to cut ties with a lot of people for self-preservation purposes.

Looking back on it, I think the worst part for me was the sense that nobody knew or cared what I was going through psychologically; nobody had any solutions or suggestions beyond platitudes; not the school system, and not even my parents, who I knew loved me, but were preoccupied with other issues. I mean, there was a real sense that I was completely alone in facing my problems. I drew some strength from it, and I think it gave some character, but I wish there had been a better than having to endure psychological abuse on a daily basis.

[Iamwhomiam]

Do you think the recent rise in the PUA and MRA community has anything to do with a whole generation of kids staying in their bedrooms playing video games and never developing any real social skills, now they are coming of age, out in the real world and they have no skills and they feel slighted as males? My wife thinks this is a big part of it all.

Not that you had asked me, but I would agree with your wife, at least in some other instances, though not in relationship to this fellow.

I have no basis really for this, but I think that his aspergers was the isolation factor that uniquely set him apart, though all young males struggle with being accepted by their peers of both sexes.

I wonder, did any member of one those blogs ever suggest to him to actually approach a woman to attempt asking her out? It would have been nice for someone to have suggested this to him.

[Luther Blissett]

@Luther, you never addressed the male victims and attacks at men addressed in his manifesto.

Why is that? Do their deaths not count for anything?

He killed men as well as women.
He constantly wrote of his hatred for other men. They were obnoxious brutes.

And yet, you call him only a misogynist.

He was a self-centered narcissistic psychopath MISANTHROPE with a god-complex.

I thought it seemed rather obvious that his hatred of other men had to do with their perceived ease with women. The focus of his videos and activity online were geared around sex, love, relationships.

Can anyone back me up on this? I would think violent rhetoric and the communities in which it develops would draw the ire of plenty of posters here. I mean really, what's the fundamental difference between st**mfr**t and pussy pass?

I've been following these little friendzoned children for a few years now because I recognized the potential danger in a lot of what they were saying (and continue to say). The trend was too widespread and the hate speech was too strong, too reminiscent of fascist, nationalist, racist communities that I've been observing for longer (mostly thanks to this board). I can't be tricked on this subject and that's what a lot of this thread feels like.

[Iamwhomiam]

When I was about 11 or 12 a friend's cousin moved into my neighborhood. He was born in Panama and his older sister was born in Holland. His father was the president of one of the world's largest dairy operations and they had just moved from South America to Holland where they spent a few years before moving to the states.

His name was Vaughn, he was skinny and not very attractive, wearing glasses too large for his face. We got along well, but one day I was mean to him and he went home crying and I was not allowed to play with him any longer. I have no idea what I said, but I've spent many hours since in tears, regretting my moment of most unnecessary cruelty.

And while I have searched for him to apologize, I have not found him and have been unable to tell him how very sorry I still am for hurting his feelings so long ago.

And so, jlaw, allow me to apologize to you for what pain you experienced from at least one of those who had bullied you so unkindly: I am sorry for causing you such pain.

[Luther Blissett]

I too found it odd that there's not too much talk about violent video games this time around, but then I take a step back, think about the overarching points of his manifesto that he kept coming back to time and time again and his final modus operandi video, and remember that he was first and foremost driven by his misogyny.

I count the number of times I've been a victim of sexism about the same number of times I've been a victim of "reverse racism": approximately zero. I think I have an enormous amount of privilege and power compared to women.

Hey Luther,

I'm saying this in a context of trying to understand you AND I find your languaging very 'cloud word' based (ie subject to a great deal of ambiguity)

Please have a peek at your last sentence.

When I hear you say "I have an enormous amount of (privilage and) power compared to women."
I really need to unpick this to understand it.

Power compared to WHICH women? How do you MEASURE this power?
Power begs the question of what class of power? Physical? Emotional? Mental? Spiritual? Artistic? Communicative?

Power to me (at it's deepest) means the power to create and bring things into being in one's life.

What does it mean to you?

Power: social. The way in which power is always referred to in this context. Outside of my university, I imagine that I even have a lot more power than the highest-placed women administrators and trustees. My colleagues whisper behind their backs that they are morons, achieved their power through their spouses, fucked their way to the top, and so on and so forth. It's been the same at every job. It shouldn't be a revelation.

As a man, I have, on average, more access to anything than any woman.

[Hunter]

Do you think the recent rise in the PUA and MRA community has anything to do with a whole generation of kids staying in their bedrooms playing video games and never developing any real social skills, now they are coming of age, out in the real world and they have no skills and they feel slighted as males? My wife thinks this is a big part of it all.

Not that you had asked me, but I would agree with your wife, at least in some other instances, though not in relationship to this fellow.

I have no basis really for this, but I think that his aspergers was the isolation factor that uniquely set him apart, though all young males struggle with being accepted by their peers of both sexes.

I wonder, did any member of one those blogs ever suggest to him to actually approach a woman to attempt asking her out? It would have been nice for someone to have suggested this to him.

People arent generally nice on forums, they usually troll and make fun of eachother, especially those kind of forums, but yea I agree, would have been nice if someone told him to just try and ask a girl out. I mean it blows my mind he never even tried. Really what did he expect. The kid is warped, it is sad for sure, just tragic.

I also think that being aspie or isolated alone didnt cause this but when you put them all together, home life, rich and spoiled, no sense of reality etc, for this case at least, a perfect psychopathic storm was created.

[jlaw172364]

@Luther

You're basically minimalizing and making irrelevant all the evidence that points to hatred of humanity as opposed to just women. He hates men as well as women. He hates the entire social hierarchy because he thinks he should be at the top, but instead is at the bottom. He repeatedly expressed hatred for different males in his life. It wasn't just women. And he didn't just hate the men for being sexually attractive to women, he hated them for being bigger and therefore better than himself. Since he had everything handed to him and never had to work for everything, he was furious when women weren't just somehow handed to him. The concept of working to romance women was utterly foreign to him because had never really worked for anything in his life.

St**Mfr**t is a white nationalist movement with constituents that desire the extermination or at least subordination of people they view as non-white.

Pussy pass is a problematic, pejorative term used to describe a double standard that applies women in the criminal justice system, and society in general, where women are given lighter sentences, lighter punishments, or sometimes let off scot-free if the politics will allow it.

These are two different things. The first thing is based on a false, self-serving pseudo-scientific worldview; the second is generally an amalgam of anecdotes, along the lines of, "Look, this woman got a slap on the wrist when she did this bad thing, but this man got the boom lowered on him. It's not fair or just!"

Also, I have been tracking these groups for awhile, and while there are racists and homophobes in them, there are also people who hold the opposite views to them. Finally, the whole friend-zone thing only applies to a subset of the population that has failed to successfully apply the principles thus far. Usually guys who discover the sites realize what's going on, and extricate themselves from situations like that because they realize that they're engaging in an unsuccessful, bound-to-fail romantic strategy under the pretext of a friendship. And I know many women who disingenuously exploit men for economic favors under the auspices of a friendship, even as the man tries to use it as a means of romancing the woman. All men in these situations hope the woman will eventually see through their initial lack of attraction and fall for the guy. Woman do this with men also. Generally it's not a good idea to stay in someone's friendzone if you have a romantic interest in them.

@iamwhoiam

No need to apologize to me. I bullied kids too, althought not as systematically as I was bullied. It was more of a situational thing, but I wasn't innocent by any means. In fact, one thing I failed to mention, was that I bullied this kid before I moved to the USA because he kept doing things that I perceived to be annoying, like wiping the snot that ran from his nose everywhere. It drove me crazy, and he wouldn't stop doing it, and he started doing it more deliberately to annoy me, so then I rallied some other kids against him, but it still didn't stop him from doing gross things. After I started getting bullied, I looked back to that situation and thought I was being punished by God or the Universe for that round of bullying, which last a period of a few weeks. Mine lasted for three years, and it seemed like it involved the entire school. It was basically death by a thousand cuts where every day two or three humiliating things would be done to me by different people, some of them repeat offenders, others I hardly knew.

After that experience, I tried to avoid bullying people, although I occasionally lapsed, and I also found that if I didn't muster a certain amount of assertiveness or aggressiveness, I would start to attract bullying.

Anyway, no need to apologize. Personally, I blame the parents and the school system. The kids were basically forced into it against their will, and they had no power. Bullying is an act of rebellion against a system that engages in bullying itself. As a child, you're constantly being coerced into doing things "for your own good," and it gets very frustrating. I was good at academics, so I may have provoked kids by appearing to be a "traitor" who kissed up to the adults who were oppressing them, or as a threat because I was outperforming a lot of them, so I had to be taken down a peg.

[Hunter]

@Hunter

Yes definitely. I was one of those kids. I moved to another country and got bullied right away for being different, even though I was well-liked in the other country and lots of friends, it didn't translate to the USA. So I retreated into books, television, and video-games for most of my adolescence. When I started to come out of that and socialize, I then fell in with the drug and party scene and that fucked me up in a completely different way. It tooks years to claw my way out of all of that and undo the damage. Hell, I'm still undoing it! Videogames offer nothing more than counterfeit accomplishment for the most part, although occasionally you learn lessons from them, the experience is mostly compulsive and drug-like. The games are engineered on behaviorist ground to exploit a person's need for accomplishment. Everything is engineered to make the game addictive. The effects on the brain are similar to cocaine. Few parents had any clue about this because it was new technology. My parents tried to stop me from playing, but they eventually knuckled under when they learned I was playing at a friend's house and at a youth center. For me, it was an escape from having no friends, no prospects at friendship, constant bullying from both boys and girls. I could lose myself in the game and unleash my aggression.

I also think television and junk food play huger roles. At least video-games are active. You can use your brain with them. With television, you're just passively vegetating, absorbing stuff in, although you can learn to watch it critically, it's very hard for young kids to do this.

In high school, I started to understand how women gravitated to men at the top of a social hierarchy, but unlike ER, I possessed enough social skills to start to move up it. But then I kind of recoiled at occupying a position I had formerly despised when I was at the bottom. I also questioned the morality of what I was doing, namely acting more assertive and pushing back when pushed, and sometimes doing some unprovoked pushing of my own. There's no question in my mind that PUA and TRP tactics and strategies work, but I viewed them through a moral prism at the time as "evil." Now I just view them as neutral tools that can be used morally. I.e. You can apply TRP by lifting, finding things you are interested in, self-improvement, career-development, and then attracting women, and you can apply PUA by learning to be charming, witty, and how to gauge interest as to whether you should pursue someone or note their lack of interest and move on. These are all vital skills, IMO, even if you don't apply to romance. I wish I had come across those concepts earlier as a unified whole; now they mostly just confirm experiences I've had over the years.

In one way, drugs and alcohol were good things because they got me away from video-games and back to socializing with people, but then I realized after a few years that my relationships were dysfunctional and shallow, as they centered around self-destructive hedonism, so I had to cut ties with a lot of people for self-preservation purposes.

Looking back on it, I think the worst part for me was the sense that nobody knew or cared what I was going through psychologically; nobody had any solutions or suggestions beyond platitudes; not the school system, and not even my parents, who I knew loved me, but were preoccupied with other issues. I mean, there was a real sense that I was completely alone in facing my problems. I drew some strength from it, and I think it gave some character, but I wish there had been a better than having to endure psychological abuse on a daily basis.

Great insight, thanks for sharing! You made it through it all and that is an accomplishment to be proud of.

[Hunter]

Ill try and posts some excerpts for those of you who dont care to read it all, it is tedious but does have some revealing parts like this:

During this Spring of 2013, I began to seriously think about planning the Day of Retribution. My next step towards planning for it was to buy my second handgun, a Sig Sauer P226. It is of a much higher quality than the Glock, and a lot more efficient. In turn, it was also a lot more expensive. My Glock 34 was around $700 dollars, whereas my new Sig Sauer P226 was $1100.

These prices were of no concern to me, however. When I first moved to Santa Barbara and experienced all of those horrible revelations about the nature of humanity, I knew that something like the Day of Retribution could very well happen if the world continued to mistreat me. I began to carefully save up all of the money that my parent’s and grandmothers were sending me. It was an ample amountto live on, leaving me with a lot left over to build up in my bank account. When I hit the $5000 dollar mark, which was fairly soon after my move to Santa Barbara, I decided never to go under it, deeming that $5000 was enough to buy all of the supplies and equipment I would need if I had to do something like this. The Day of Retribution had always been in the back of my mind as a final solution if all else failed in my life, ever since I had moved to Santa Barbara. As it so happened, all else did indeed fail. Women continued to reject me and mistreat me, and I remained an unwanted virgin.

Keep in mind when he says women keep rejecting him this doesnt mean he asked them out and got shot down, he makes it clear he NEVER asked a girl out so what he means here is they never came up and TALKED TO HIM and he felt they were shunning him because of this. That is just crazy thinking.


He also says "When I see a young couple I look at the girl and think to myself 'how dare you give your body to him and not me, I am so much better than these guys. This mistreatment of me is a crime that cannot be forgiven.'"

What in the... I cant even... a crime?!

[Hunter]

Continued

In Santa Barbara, I spent almost all of my time in my room, brooding. I began building on all of my philosophical views and theories about the world. I had to question why things were the way they were. The world is so twisted, and I wanted answers. I hated all of those obnoxious, boisterous men who were able to enjoy pleasurable sex lives with beautiful girls, but I hated the girl’s even more, because they were the ones who chose those men instead of me. It was their choice. They are the ones who deprived me of love and sex. My hatred and rage towards all women festered inside me like a plague. Their very existence is the cause of all of my torture, pain and suffering throughout my life. My life turned into a living hell after I started desiring them when I hit puberty. I desire them intensely, but I could never have them. I could never have the experience of holding hands with a beautiful girl and walking on a moonlit beach, I could never embrace a girlfriend and feel her warmth and love, I could never have passionate sex with a girl and drift off to sleep with her sexy body beside me. Women deemed me unworthy of having them, and so they deprived me of an enjoyable youth, while giving their love and sex to other boys. In all of those years I suffered a life of sexual starvation and unfulfilled desires. I will never get those years back. My life has been wasted, all because women hate me so much. All I had ever wanted was to love women, but their behavior has only earned my hatred. I want to have sex with them, and make them feel good, but they would be disgusted at the prospect. They have no sexual attraction towards me. It is such an injustice, and I vehemently questioned why things had to be this way. Why do women behave like vicious, stupid, cruel animals who take delight in my suffering and starvation? Why do they have a perverted sexual attraction for the most brutish of men instead of gentlemen of intelligence? I concluded that women are flawed. There is something mentally wrong with the way their brains are
wired, as if they haven’t evolved from animal-like thinking. They are incapable of reason or thinking rationally. They are like animals, completely controlled by their primal, depraved emotions and impulses. That is why they are attracted to barbaric, wild, beast-like men. They are beasts themselves. Beasts should not be able to have any rights in a civilized society. If their wickedness is not contained, the whole of humanity will be held back from advancement to a more civilized state. Women should not have the right to choose who to mate with. That choice should be made for them by civilized men of intelligence. If women had the freedom to choose which men to mate with, like they do today, they would breed with stupid, degenerate men, which would only produce stupid, degenerate offspring. This in turn would hinder the advancement of humanity. Not only hinder it, but devolve humanity completely. Women are like a plague that must be quarantined. When I came to this brilliant, perfect revelation, I felt like everything was now clear to me, in a bitter, twisted way. I am one of the few people on this world who has the intelligence to see this. I am like a god, and my purpose is to exact ultimate Retribution on all of the impurities I see in the world.

Fucking unbelievably delusional. Just wow...

[Hunter]

More

The Spring of 2013 was also the time when I came across the website PUAHate.com. It is a forum full of men who are starved of sex, just like me. Many of them have their own theories of what women are attracted to, and many of them share my hatred of women, though unlike me they would be too cowardly to act on it. Reading the posts on that website only confirmed many of the theories I had about how wicked and degenerate women really are. Most of the people on that website have extremely stupid opinions that I found very frustrating, but I found a few to be quite insightful. The website PUAHate is very depressing. It shows just how bleak and cruel the world is due of the evilness of women. I tried to show it to my parents, to give them some sort dose of reality as to why I am so miserable. They never understood why I am so miserable. They have always had the delusion that everything is going well for me, especially my father. When I sent the link of PUAHate.com to my parents, none of them even bothered to look at the posts on there.

Parents in denial.

[Hunter]

Been planning this a long time:

I had nothing left to live for but revenge. Women must be punished for their crimes of rejecting such a magnificent gentleman as myself. All of those popular boys must be punished for enjoying heavenly lives and having sex with all the girls while I had to suffer in lonely virginity. It was already June, and I had been living in Santa Barbara for two years. Two whole years. I lived in a college town full of young, attractive students who partied and had sex all the time, and I didn’t get to experience any of it. No one invited me to any parties, and in all the times I went out by myself to Isla Vista, none of the beautiful blonde girls showed any interest in having sex with me. Not one girl. These are crimes than cannot go unpunished. The more I thought about all these injustices that were dealt to me, the more eager I became for revenge. It’s all I had left. I didn’t want to die, but I knew that I had to kill myself after I exacted my revenge to avoid getting captured and imprisoned. For a while, I had been deciding on whether I would exact my Retribution in Isla Vista or at Santa Barbara City College. In both places, I had suffered greatly at the hands of everyone there. I have seen attractive young couples walking around in both places, and those were my targets. I wanted to kill as many attractive young couples as I possibly could. After a lot of thinking, I came to the conclusion that the Day of Retribution will take place in Isla Vista. On weekend nights, the streets of Isla Vista are always flooded with young couples and good-looking popular kids walking to their parties. What better place is there to exact my Retribution on my enemies?
Every time I walked around Isla Vista, trying to meet girls or fit in with popular kids, I’ve only been treated with disdain, as if I’m an inferior mouse. On the Day of Retribution, the tables will indeed turn, I
mused to myself. I will be a god, and they will all be animals that I can slaughter. They are animals… They
behave like animals, and I will slaughter them like the animals they are. It came to a point where I had to set a date for the Day of Retribution. I originally considered doing it on the Halloween of 2013. That is when the entire town erupts in raucous partying. There would literally be thousands of people crowded together who I could kill with ease, and the goal was to kill everyone in Isla Vista, to utterly destroy that wretched town. But then, after seeing footage of previous Halloween events on Youtube, I saw that there were too many cops walking around. It would be too risky. One gunshot from a cop will end everything. The Day of Retribution would have to be on a normal party weekend, so I set it for some time during November of 2013

The delusion of grandeur is strong in this one..

[Project Willow]

I find it very saddening that in our male dominated world we have men blaming women for their own failure, for their own inate inability to dominate other men.

Yep, except I don't think it's innate. Ironically, it's the strictures of culturally constructed masculinity, a masculinity that favors domination over personal empowerment, emotional numbing over intimacy, among many other factors, that help keep men trapped in this circle. Are these men's rights groups interested in joining feminists in countering the destructive elements of our gender roles? Reading over some of the comments, it appears it's far easier to keep hating on the female sex. It makes me feel like I'm some sort of demigod, my every whim carrying the power of life and death over some poor unsuspecting man. It's sad, and twisted, and something that men have to fix for themselves.

https://twitter.com/hashtag/YessAllWomen?src=hash

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/25/elliot_rodgers_fatal_menace_how_toxic_male_entitlement_devalues_womens_and_mens_lives/
Elliot Rodger’s fatal menace: How toxic male entitlement devalues women’s and men’s lives

Rodger felt victimized by women, whom he appeared to desire and loathe simultaneously. He expressed anger and resentment toward other men, often because of their relationships with women. He seemed to be a profoundly troubled, profoundly lonely young man. According to a statement from the Rodger family’s attorney, he was receiving care from mental health professionals after his parents were alarmed by his Internet footprint — a series of YouTube videos and men’s rights chat groups where he expressed his violent views about women, men and himself.

It’s hard to say what any of this actually tells us. Maybe nothing. I won’t pretend to know. What role did Rodger’s misogyny play in this tragedy? And what about his apparent struggle with mental illness — that big, blanket term we never talk about except to throw it around as if it explains why someone would murder six people? And what about guns? What of our cowardice — the cowardice of our elected officials — when it comes to regulating deadly weapons so that we stand a better chance of keeping them out of the hands of men like Elliot Rodger? What about these things? As a friend and I discussed earlier while trying to grapple with the tragedy as we learned each new chilling detail, all of these things matter, but none seem sufficient to explain what happened. They couldn’t possibly, and yet they’re all we have.

It would be irresponsible to lay this violence at the feet of the men’s rights activists with whom Rodger seemed to find support for his rage. Rodger is alleged to have murdered six women and men. No amount of Internet vitriol — no unfulfilled threats of violence — can equal that. But it also denies reality to pretend that Rodger’s sense of masculine entitlement and views about women didn’t matter or somehow existed in a vacuum. These things matter because the horror of Rodger’s alleged crimes is unique, but the distorted way he understood himself as a man and the violence with which discussed women — the bleak and dehumanizing lens through which he judged them — is not. Just as we examine our culture of guns once again in the wake of yet another mass shooting, we must also examine our culture of misogyny and toxic masculinity, which devalues both women’s and men’s lives and worth, and inflicts real and daily harm. We must examine the dangerous normative values that treat women as less than human, and that make them — according to Elliot Rodger — deserving of death.

There is an angry part of me — a frightened part of me — that wants to tear Rodger’s video manifesto apart in the pettiest terms imaginable. Point to how cliched it all is — the tired self-importance, the god comparisons, his lazy use of “sluts” and “brutes” to describe the women and men he would allegedly target and murder only hours later. I have seen these videos before. Women have heard these threats before, and been forced to consider how seriously they should take a man who tells them on Twitter that he knows where they live and that, “You are going to die and I am the one who is going to kill you.” If Rodger had posted his angry monologue to YouTube or fired it off in an email to a woman online and then gone about his day — seething privately and without violence about his wounded sense of entitlement and the sting of having his resentful and warped desires unfulfilled — the country wouldn’t be talking about him. Because until the moment that he is alleged to have killed six women and men, Elliot Rodger was every bit the same as the other men who are defined by their resentment toward women and their sense of bitter victimization in the world. Men who threaten women in person and online in an attempt to control their lives. Men who feel that girls and women owe them adoration, sexual gratification, subservience. Men whose sense of rage and entitlement has rotted their brains and ruined them.

And this anger — this toxic male entitlement — isn’t contained to random comment boards or the YouTube videos of disturbed young men. It’s on full view elsewhere in our culture. Earlier this week, a writer for the New York Post quoted a member of a men’s rights group as the sole source in a report on Jill Abramson’s ouster at the New York Times. Mel Feit of the National Center for Men told columnist Richard Johnson that Abramson was systematically firing men and replacing them with women. He said that our society gives women preferential treatment. On his website, Feit bemoans a culture in which men are subject to the powerful whims of vindictive women who exist on “sexual pedestals.” He argues that men can’t be blamed for rape after a certain point of arousal. These views about women and violence are replicated in our criminal justice system. They filter into our media. This is what makes Rodger’s misogynistic vitriol so terrifying — the fact that in many ways it’s utterly banal.

The news out of Isla Vista is still painfully fresh, and in the coming days we will continue to struggle to understand this pattern of violence. And while we do that — the work of considering what laws, support systems and cultural shifts must be put in place to prevent these tragedies from destroying more lives, families and communities — I can’t help but be reminded of all of the women who have been victimized by a culture and a system that denies their humanity.

I’m reminded of Marissa Alexander, whom the state of Florida is trying to imprison for 60 years because she fired a warning shot to ward off a man who had a history of violently abusing her and had told her that he was going to kill her. I’m reminded of CeCe McDonald, a trans woman of color who was incarcerated for defending herself during a brutal assault. “Her gift for survival was a prison sentence,” trans actress and activist Laverne Cox recently observed. I’m reminded of the 276 Nigerian schoolgirls who were abducted more than a month ago and remain missing because they had the audacity to go to school.

I think of the millions of other women and girls whose names the public does not know, but who have been forced all the same — by institutional forces larger than themselves, by systemic and enduring misogyny and racism, by the sheer bad luck of being at a given place at a given moment — to become statistics or symbols of our culture’s profound disregard for the humanity of women and girls. I am reminded of all of them and I don’t know where to put the pain and anger that comes with that. There is no possible vessel large enough to hold it all.

http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2014/05/25/not-all-men-but-still-too-many-men/

Chuck Wendig is a novelist, screenwriter, and game designer. This is his blog. He talks a lot about writing. And food. And the madness of toddlers. He uses lots of naughty language. NSFW. Probably NSFL. Be advised.
Not All Men, But Still Too Many Men

A young man felt spurned by women and shot people because of it. He drove up and fired a weapon out of a BMW and committed murder, leaving behind a video and a manifesto about his rage against women. He felt rejected by them. He was reportedly a follower of MRA (Men’s Rights Activism), which is a group of men who are upset because they feel they have an unequal set of rights in a few key areas, which is a lot like a rich guy who is mad at a homeless guy because the homeless guy is standing in his favorite patch of sunlight. (The term “men’s rights” is roughly analogous to the phrase “white power,” and equally creepy.) Yes, we can talk about gun rights and mental health issues because neither are properly addressed in this country. But we also need to talk about the entitlement of men and the objectification of women.

Most of the men who read this blog are, I hope and assume, not entitled piss-bags who think that they are owed affection by women, as if that’s the role of women in this life, to be willing and charitable receptacles for our urges. To be punching bags and accessories. To reiterate and sound the horn just the same: women don’t owe you anything. Whether you’re an alpha male or a wanna-be alpha, some faux bro-dude bad-ass or some repressed alley-dwelling CHUD, it matters little. I don’t care who you are; your maleness does not entitle you to anything.

You may have been told otherwise.

Culture wants us to think that. That being a guy comes with a rider like we’re Van Halen demanding a fucking bowl full of green M&Ms or some shit, but I’m here to tell you, that isn’t true. It’s a myth. You’re entitled to nothing, and yet, ironically, you’re born with this pesky thing called privilege. And sure, someone out there is already mad I’ve invoked that word, that being a dude is hard on its own and privilege is an illusion and blah blah blah something about divorced men and prostate cancer, but just remember that the men go on dates thinking they won’t get laid, and women go on dates thinking they might get raped, punched, maybe killed. Remember that as a man you can say all kinds of shit and add “lol” at the end of it and nobody gives a shit, but as a woman anything you say might be interpreted as antagonistic and end up with rape threats or death threats. Remember that any seemingly safe space — train station, bookstore, social media, city park — is an opportunity for a man to catch a train or read a book, but is also an opportunity for a woman to be the subject of threat or sexual violence.

Remember that men get paid more, get to do more, get to be more.

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. Because forcing yourself into safe spaces and unwelcome conversations makes you exactly that.

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.” Consider actually reading the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter not to look for places to interject and defend your fellow men, but as a place to gain insight and understanding into the experiences women have. That hashtag should serve as confirmation that women very often experience the spectrum of sexism and rape culture from an all-too-early age. Recognize that just because “not all men” are gun-toting, women-hating assholes fails to diminish the fact that sexism and rape culture remain firmly entrenched and institutional within our culture.

Because if your response to the shooting is to defend men (or worse, condemn women) instead of speaking out against this type of violence and attitude, then you best check yourself.

This isn’t the time to talk about nice guys. Or friend zoning. Or men’s rights. Or rejection.

This isn’t the time to ride up as standard-bearers for the realm of menfolk.

You have privilege, so use it. You’re not a white knight, but if other men try to objectify women or talk down to them — step up or walk away. If you have a son, teach him about consent and drive home the point that the 100% of the fault in a rape case is on the rapist, not the victim. Help other men — you, your children, your friends — reach a place of empathy.

This isn’t about you. Don’t derail. Don’t pull that mansplaining bullshit.

Shut your mouth and don’t speak over them.

Open your ears and listen.

Open your eyes and see.

Thus endeth the lesson, gents.