After yesterday’s murders, I put the scheduled posts for Fifty Shades on Ana back into draft mode for a few days. I’ll back-post them in a few days, and continue on track. But for right now, I’m still processing the gut-punch of what happened yesterday.
Normally murders (you may notice that I avoid calling this a shooting, and the reason for this is that the first half of the murder victims, his own roommates, were stabbed to death, and were the largest concentration of those killed, making this something that can not be neatly summed up as a shooting) where six people are killed, and more than that injured but who survived, gets media attention for a few days, then fades. I have friends overseas who rarely hear about our mass-killings. Of course Sandy Hook made massive news, but six murders and a suicide are almost par for the course, regardless of weapon used. What sets yesterday’s killings apart is that we know why the killer did it, and the reason shows so clearly how deeply entrenched misogyny is in America, and the world.
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’s an injustice, a crime, because I don’t know what you don’t see in me. I’m the perfect guy. Yet you throw yourselves at all these obnoxious men. Instead of me. The supreme gentleman. I will punish all of you for it [laughter].
It gets worse.
On the day of retribution, I am going to enter the hottest sorority house of UCSB [University of California, Santa Barbara], and I will slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up, blonde slut I see inside of there. All of those girls that I’ve desired so much. They would have all rejected me and looked down upon me as an inferior man if I ever made a sexual advance towards them. While they throw themselves at these obnoxious brutes. 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.
I’m not entirely sure what to say, which means this may be a rambling post. It seems that why this is wrong should be self-evident. Yet Elliot Rodger managed to write a 141-page manifesto (that link takes you directly to the entire thing), in which he even manages to blame his mother because how dare she not marry someone rich. Apparently his father, who IS rich, was never rich enough. Of course the fault is his mother’s….
I will always resent my mother for refusing to do this. If not for her sake, she should have done it for mine. Joining a family of great wealth would have truly saved my life. I would have a high enough status to attract beautiful girlfriends, and live above all of my enemies. All of my horrific troubles would have been eased instantly. It is very selfish of my mother to not consider this.
Nothing was good enough, yet he clearly thought himself better than others. How dare we women not go for a prize like him for his Beemer (I don’t think I can stomach getting another BWM after all this) instead of a “short, ugly Indian guy driving a Honda Civic.”
IMAGE: SCREENSHOT BODYBUILDING.COM, FROM AN CACHED ARCHIVE
Never did it cross his mind that the reason no one wanted to have sex with him was his own attitude. Contrary to what books like Fifty Shades want us to think, men who treat women like property are NOT desired by the general population. Elliot made no secret about how he viewed himself as better than others. Men obsessed with themselves (his Facebook page is little more than a depository for selfies and pictures of his cars) and adopt a sense of ownership are not going to find many women, if any, who are going to fawn all over him and want to hop into his sack. Believe it or not, World, there ARE things that matter more than wealth.
Well, we can say his rantings and views are the ramblings of a deranged, misogynistic asshole. We could, if he wasn’t being held up as a beacon against feminism, hailed as a hero, viewed as a pawn for “the Feminist Agenda.”
Elliot Rodger was a hero, even though he was a shill for Feminist Propaganda. He helped show us that we need to shut down Tumblr and Reddit, because they are sexist and cause mass murders.
A new hashtag on Twitter has popped up, #YesAllWoman. Time has chosen some to share, but all are worth reading. Not surprisingly, there is now #YesAllPeople, which clearly was started by someone trying to detract from what #YesAllWomen is about. It’s first use was a whine about how #YesAllWomen is so “tit for tat.”
It’s second use on Twitter was an attempt at usurping a valid post a woman had made.
But Mokgethwa says:
Dominique Villarreal:
Unsurprisingly, the forum Elliot seems to have loved most, PUA Hate, is “down for maintenance. Yet if you go to the comments section of almost any article, and you’ll soon come by people sympathizing with him, feeling bad for his sexual frustrations.
As Salon pointed out, his actions have devalued lives. I can’t even pick out just one comment to share here. So many people are claiming he was merely mentally ill and didn’t have access to psychiatric treatment (according to his family, he had TWO doctors), and that his hatred of women is merely coincidental, and that claiming male privilege exists at all is itself a mental illness.
AltHouse discusses how the twisted turn the men’s rights movement has taken as influenced him. In the comments, Bruce Hayden “treats” us with the comment, “What feminists need to understand is that misogyny is a natural and consequent result of feminism. The urge to procreate is one of the most basic of drives, and to be deprived of opportunities for such, in order for females to have more power over their own sexuality and choice of sex partners, means that this drive in a lot of males is going to be thwarted.“
How can we women be blamed for this? What kind of sick, twisted logic can make us the real perpetrators of this violence? Not only did Elliot claim that we are to blame through his YouTube videos and his manifesto, but others around the internet are saying we’re to blame. Sure, we have plenty of articles talking about how we women shouldn’t have to live in fear of violence, and that violence must end, but there’s radio silence about how there is an attempt, by other people, to pin the blame on us. Wow. Why the silence about victim-blaming on this topic?
Misogyny exists not only in the violence that happens with woman as the primary targets (yes, there were men killed yesterday, more men than women, but his hatred of women started this, and his plan was to kill a sorority, which was thwarted by locked doors), but in the blame. Those people saying one of us should have “taken one for the team” are essentially saying that we should open our legs to anyone who wants in because we might be pacifying a future-killer. Wow, what a comforting thought…. Those expressing sympathy for Elliot’s sexual frustrations, and claiming it’s not fair that no one gave him sex, are once again putting it on our shoulders, making it the fault of women for not ensuring his sexual urges were satisfied.
Yes, sexual urges, not sexual needs. Calling this desire a “need” makes sex into a right. We have the right to pursue sex, but not the right to sex itself. We have the right to have our NEEDS filled, such as the right to food, medical care, and safe shelter. No one has the right to sex with another person. There are two simple reasons. First, there are other ways to relieve your hormones. You’ve got hands. Use ’em. Second, and more important, if you have the right to sex, that means someone else would be obligated to give up the right to say no to avoid violating your supposed right. You don’t NEED sex, you WANT sex. You won’t die without it. It’s not a right. Period.
Sure, his urges weren’t satisfied, but that shouldn’t be made into my problem, or the problem of any other woman. Blaming us for not attending to his “needs” insinuates that we get what we deserve when a man snaps and kills us, because this says we could have avoided it if only we’d let him penetrate our bodies.
No, it’s not our fault this happened. No, we are not to blame now. Every single person who says that this whole tragedy is the fault of feminists because we’re making sex unattainable to the men we don’t want to have sex with are all sick, twisted people. Every person who is saying this is our fault, every person who sympathizes with him because the poor, poor little fellow couldn’t get someone to want to have sex with him, should all be ashamed.
All of you blames, think of your daughters. How would you feel if someone violated her body? How would you feel if someone blamed her for not giving a man the sex he thought he was entitled to? That is how we women feel. You are making victims out of ALL of us by telling us we’re awful, that we are the killers-by-proxy for not pacifying horny men. Do us woman a favor. SHUT UP AND GO TO HELL.
Alys Marchand 