‘Misogyny kills’

MASS SHOOTINGS—in schools, in a movie house, workplaces, churches—in the United States and elsewhere, including the Philippines, have become so common and frequent that we give them but a few minutes’ notice before changing the channel and moving on to the next Kardashian wedding.

But the story of the shooting spree allegedly committed by Elliot Rodger in a bucolic California university town got more than the usual attention a few days back. Maybe it was because we were watching CNN with my sister Chona and her husband Willy, who were visiting from San Diego. With the drive-by shootings (apparently preceded by the killing of three young men in the apartment of the suspect) taking place in the same state, they were expectedly curious, interested and alarmed, because the killings transpired so close to home.

Even without the California connection, though, the killings were especially chilling. The suspect, Rodger, had apparently driven his car through the streets of Isla Vista in search of members of a college sorority (all of them blonde) whom he perceived as “mocking” him for refusing to go out on dates with him or even give him the time of day.

Though his parents had previously reported their concerns to law enforcers, police who had been called to the family home some weeks back said they found a “perfectly polite, kind and wonderful human” when Rodger met them at the door.

But apparently, beneath his affable exterior, the young man hid a personality seething with resentment against young women and the young men they apparently favored over him.

In a commentary, Jessica Valenti decried the characterization of Rodger as a “madman,” arguing that “it ignores a stark truth about our society… misogyny kills.”

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REPORTS say Rodger was seeking “retribution” against women, apparently members of a sorority, who had “sexually rejected” him. After stabbing three young male acquaintances in his apartment, Rodger got into his car and began trolling the streets of the town, killing three more people and seriously wounding seven others. He then turned his gun on himself.

Before going on his deadly “hunting” mission, Rodger made YouTube videos where, says Valenti, he complained that “he was a virgin and that beautiful women wouldn’t pay attention to him. In one, he calmly outlined how he would ‘slaughter every single spoiled, stuck-up blonde slut I see.’”

Rodger’s family says he had been seeking psychiatric help, but to attribute his actions merely to his mental instability, says Valenti, “not only stigmatizes the mentally ill—who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it—but glosses over the role that misogyny (hatred of the opposite sex) and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society.”

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VALENTI presents as evidence Rodger’s videos. For instance, in his final video, the suspect declares: College is the time when everyone experiences those things such as sex and fun and pleasure, but in those years I’ve had to rot in loneliness, it’s not fair … I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me but I will punish you all for it.”

Valenti comments: “Rodger, like most young American men, was taught that he was entitled to sex and female attention. (Only last month, a young woman was allegedly stabbed to death for rejecting a different young man’s prom invitation.) He believed this so fully that he described women’s apathy toward him as an ‘injustice’ and a ‘crime’.”

In another video, Rodger ranted, apparently addressing young women: “You forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer. I waited a long time for this. I’ll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you. All you girls who rejected me, looked down upon me, you know, treated me like scum while you gave yourselves to other men.”

Were the three men he stabbed in his apartment some of the “other men” his female targets had favored? Whatever, Rodger was reportedly involved with the online “men’s rights movement,” active in one forum and was said to have been following several men’s rights channels on YouTube. “The language Rodger used in his videos against women—like referring to himself as an ‘alpha male’—is common rhetoric in such circles,” observes Valenti.

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RODGER is thus much more than an individual unhinged by rejection, or a spurned specimen of manhood seeking revenge against his torturers.

“If we need to talk about this tragic shooting in terms of illness,” writes Valenti, “let’s start with talking about our cultural sickness—a sickness that refuses to see misogyny as anything other than inevitable.”

Referring to the visit paid by police after his parents aired their concerns about Rodger’s mental health, Valenti says: “I have to wonder how much police dismissed Rodger’s video rants because of the expectation that violent misogyny in young men is normal and expected.”

She quotes feminist blogger Melissa McEwan, who tweeted regarding the shootings: “Dismissing violent misogynists as ‘crazy’ is a neat way of saying that violent misogyny is an individual problem, not a cultural one.”

Says Valenti: “The truth is that there is no such thing as a lone misogynist—they are created by our culture, and by communities that tell them that their hatred is both commonplace and justified.

“So when we say that these things are unstoppable, what we are really saying is that we’re unwilling to do the work to stop them. Violence against women does not have to be inevitable, but it is almost always foreseeable: what matters is what we do about it.”