Over and over this weekend we've seen leftists and feminists argue that Elliot Rodger wasn't mentally ill. I'm simply blown away by these statements. For ghoulish progs the ravings of this literal madman were all about "misogyny" and (unbelievably) "white male privilege" (the suspect's mother is Malaysian-born).
Here's a comment I saw the first night at
KEYT:
Actually, it's the definition of misogyny, entitlement, and male privilege. Do your research before you post things like this. People who are classified as mentally ill are actually less likely to commit violent acts because they often don't act out unless they are afraid. Elliot Rodger planned this entire massacre. There is video evidence. There is written, published evidence. He was a misogynist, a 'Men's Rights Activist', and a hateful, deranged man, but he didn't do this because of mental illness. He did this because he genuinely believed that women owed him their bodies and to refuse his sexual advances was a criminal act and an injustice.
This killing spree was committed literally because according to this man, women should not be allowed to make decisions on who they are attracted to. They should not be allowed to exist if they are not existing for the pleasure of men. And if that doesn't scare you, something is really wrong.
The next commenter responded:
Please google narcissistic personality disorder.
Indeed, he was sick, as Louise Mensch noted when calling out feminists earlier:
On Twitter last night the domonic far-left trolls came out big time. Here's
an exchange with a "Mad Scientist," for example, who was literally seething with leftist hatred. Film Ladd had already blocked him:
Twitchy commented on the feminist campaign, "
‘Unless they’re conservative’: Feminist hashtag #YesAllWomen gets reality check from those standing ‘strong and free’."
And it was picked up at major MSM outlets, like the L.A. Times, "
#YesAllWomen: Isla Vista attack puts a spotlight on gender violence," and at the Wall Street Journal, "
California Shooting Sparks Massive Social Media Response From Women: Twitter Hashtag #YesAllWomen Generates More Than 500,000 Tweets by Sunday Afternoon."
A taste of the feminist misandry can be seen at the Boston Globe, "
Everyone Needs to Read #Yesallwomen." And back at Twitchy, "
‘Perfect example of male entitlement’: Pro-feminist supporters of #YesAllWomen angry about #YesAllPeople."
Professor Chris Ferguson, who is the Chairman of the Department of Psychology at Stetson University in Florida, had this yesterday at Time, "
Misogyny Didn’t Turn Elliot Rodger Into a Killer":
Initial reports note that Rodger stabbed to death three roommates before beginning his shooting spree, but his anger appears to have been particularly directed at women. This has led some to speculate that cultural misogyny has contributed to this shooting. For instance, Jessica Valenti, writing in the Guardian, states that “Rodger, like most young American men, was taught that he was entitled to sex and female attention.” And Valenti isn’t the only writer to see cultural misogyny at the core of this shooting. Some reports suggest Rodger may have associated with “men’s rights” groups that view women as hostile....
Linking cultural misogyny to a specific mass shooting is more difficult, however. Although I understand Valenti’s point, I suspect cultural messages on the interaction between men and women are more complex than merely saying that men are taught to feel “entitled” to women’s attention. And although Rodger appears to have been particularly angry at women (and men who were successful with women as he was not), there’s little common thread among mass-homicide perpetrators to target women.
Rodger appears to have indeed been a misogynist, but this misogyny appears to have raged from within, a product of his anger, sexual frustrations and despondency rather than anything “taught” to him by society. Had he not been so focused on his own sexual inadequacies, his focus might simply have moved to mall-goers rather than sorority sisters. We have an unfortunate trend when mass shootings occur to focus on idiosyncratic elements as potential causes. That is to say, we look for something unique about the shooter to explain why they may have done what they did. The January 2011 Tucson shooting by Jared Loughner was initially (and incorrectly) blamed by some on right-wing political demagoguery. A rare 2010 shooting by a woman, college professor Amy Bishop, led some to speculate on the traumatic experience of tenure denial. Video games are conveniently blamed when the shooter is young, then ignored when a shooter is older.
All of this serves to distract us from the commonalities between such shooters. With few exceptions, they are angry, resentful, mentally ill individuals. Certainly, we are right to worry about the stigmatization of the mentally ill, the vast majority of whom are nonviolent. But pretending no link exists at all with these crimes, if anything, prevents us from considering an overhaul to our mental-health system that could service all individuals in need, whether at any risk for violence or not.
Well, there is one commonality among all the shooters Ferguson cites: They were all far-left ideological fanatics.
But progressives don't want to deal the facts. The "cultural misogyny" program is the ideological underpinning of contemporary radical feminism. As Robert Stacy McCain pointed out last night in his discussion, "
Toward Anarchy and Oblivion":
The Apostles of Equality and Progress, who have done everything in their power to destroy whatever vestiges of courtesy, decency, loyalty and honor remained in American society, now presume to disavow the Age of Hatred and Violence they have unleashed upon us. What Burke called the “barbarous philosophy” of the French Revolution — whereby “a king is but a man, a queen is but a woman; a woman is but an animal, and an animal not of the highest order” — has prevailed as he foretold, and the horrifying consequences are everywhere. Lesbian feminist Lisa Needham believes all men are Elliot Rodger:
[T]his might be mental illness, but it is an illness that is not unfamiliar to women who routinely and disproportionately are the victims of harassment, neglect, violence, and death at the hands of men. Rodger’s actions were an extreme manifestation of a cultural view that is not actually uncommon: that women “owe” men attention, that women who don’t put out are bitches, that women who do put out — for other guys, of course — are sluts, and all these women get what they “deserve” — violence from men.
Right. Women are victims “routinely” of “a cultural view that is not actually uncommon,” and a psycho creep who kills six people is just an “extreme manifestation” of this “not unfamiliar” illness....
Los Angeles Times headline: #YesAllWomen: Isla Vista attack puts a spotlight on gender violence — and never mind the fact that four of the six people Elliot Rodger killed in his murder rampage were men: Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, 20, Cheng Yuan Hong, 20, George Chen, 19, and Weihan Wang, 20. If the facts don’t fit the liberal narrative, liberals will just ignore the facts, and will bristle with indignation if you dare to point out the cognitive dissonance.
“You have to hand it to the liberals: they never miss an opportunity to convert tragedy into political gain,” and who can disagree?
Ginning up hatred is always “political gain” for liberals, and this is what the hashtag #YesAllWomen is about: Convincing women that men are their enemy. The standard Tweet format is for a woman to say that A Terrible Thing happened to her because of a man (or men in general) and #YesAllWomen – a slogan framed as a reply to “Not All Men,” which is a feminist pet peeve: Whenever they complain about men in general, someone is always certain to point out that the generalization is unfair...
Understood in this context, #YesAllWomen is a chip on the shoulder, daring anyone to claim not all men are responsible for violence against women — to frame rape and abuse as a collective victimization of women for which men are collectively to blame.
