Playing with politics

Every time a mass murder happens people play politics with it. They blame the lack of mental health resources. They blame the gun lobby. They blame video games. They blame political groups. They blame religious groups. They point the finger at everyone but themselves.

Yet what happens when the actual events do not follow they desired political narrative? What if, for example, someone wanted to frame a recent mass murder as yet another case of misogynistic killing when the majority of the victims are male?

Enter the case of Elliot Rodger:

After promising a “day of retribution” on YouTube, a heavily armed, mentally disturbed 22-year-old went on a killing spree in a California college town, authorities said.

He fatally stabbed three men in his residence, shot two women to death in front of a sorority house, shot a man to death inside a deli, exchanged gunfire twice with police and injured 13 people as he drove from block to block, the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office said Saturday night.

Elliot Rodger, 22, ended the Friday night rampage near the University of California, Santa Barbara, apparently by fatally shooting himself in the head while sitting behind the wheel of his wrecked BMW, Sheriff Bill Brown said.

Rodger claimed in his 140-page manifesto:

My orchestration of the Day of Retribution is my attempt to do everything, in my power, to destroy everything I cannot have. All of those beautiful girls I’ve desired so much in my life, but can never have because they despise and loathe me, I will destroy. All of those popular people who live hedonistic lives of pleasure, I will destroy, because they never accepted me as one of them. I will kill them all and make them suffer, just as they have made me suffer. It is only fair.

It is not fair; it is delusional.

Rodger’s manifesto shows a person who wallowed in self-pity for so long that he believed what he thought was true. That may be part of his mental illness. It is not uncommon for people who suffer from untreated mental issues to assume the world is against them. Often their mental illness makes it difficult for them to relate to others, which only worsens the situation. Yet Rodger goes well beyond this. Rodger thought his life sucked and intentionally blamed others for it, even those trying to help him.

Enter the feminists. They gleefully jumped on Rodger’s manifesto and wrote dozens of articles about how the men’s rights movement spawned Rodger’s “misogynistic” murder-spree. They are all wonders to behold, but my personal favorite is Joanna Schroeder’s Why I Don’t Want to Write About the Santa Barbara Shooting.

Schroeder writes:

No, I’m not shocked by the mass murder that happened last night in Santa Barbara. I’m horrified, distraught, devastated and depressed, but I’m not surprised. Why not? Because it’s something many of us who are aware of the anti-woman hatred of certain (scarily popular) online groups have felt building for years. It’s something many of us were afraid of since we were little kids, well before these online groups brought attention to it: The anger of a man rejected. The anger of a man who hates women. […] Many are wondering why this shooter would (allegedly) choose to do this. Well, we don’t have to wonder. He told us. He told us he’s mad that he was rejected by women for so many years. He told us that he is angry that certain men get the women he thinks he’s entitled to. […] But ultimately, this murderer wouldn’t have targeted these young women had he not hated women and felt they had robbed him of something he was entitled to. I can’t say for sure that he wouldn’t have done it without the nurturing of his hatred by the online groups he is reported to have associated with, but one can’t help but wonder. Ultimately, one thing we can’t ignore about this story and others like it is that teaching boys they’re entitled to women’s bodies and attention will lead not only to frustration and rage on the boys’ part, but also a dangerous world.

Here is the problem: Rodger killed four men and two women. Specifically, he shot two women in front of a sorority and a man in a deli, but stabbed his three male roommates, Cheng Yuan Hong, George Chen, and Weihan Wang. Anyone working in law enforcement and psychology will tell you that stabbings are a more intimate crime. The assailant typically holds a grudge against the victim and feels the need to kill the victim up close so that the assailant can experience the death. It is an incredibly vicious and personal intent behind stabbing someone.

That level of violence suggests those three men were or represented the people Rodger was actually angry with. If he had a similar hatred of women, as Schroeder and other feminists claim, he would have stabbed women. He did not. He shot two women at random. He specifically targeted his roommates and stabbed them to death in their sleep. He even mentioned in his manifesto the joy he would take from killing them:

“These were the biggest nerds I had ever seen, and they were both very ugly with annoying voices,” he wrote. “If they were pleasant to live with, I would regret having to kill them, but due to their behavior I now had no regrets about such a prospect. In fact, I’d even enjoy stabbing them both to death while they slept.”

“After that, I will start luring people into my apartment, knock them out with a hammer, and slit their throats. I will torture some of the good looking people before I kill them, assuming that the good looking ones had the best sex lives. All of that pleasure they had in life, I will punish by bringing them pain and suffering. I have lived a life of pain and suffering, and it was time to bring that pain to people who actually deserve it.”

That does not sound like someone hellbent on punishing women.

Let us deal with the facts. Fact: Rodger killed four men and two women. Fact: the two women were chosen at random and shot from a distance. Fact: three of the four men Rodger knew and specifically targeted because of his anger towards them.

That leads to a very basic conclusion: this was not a crime motivated by misogyny, rejection by women, or male entitlement. If it were, Rodger would have targeted women and likely stabbed them to death.

Of course, that does not fit Schroeder or other feminists’ narrative. Or as Theorema Egregium put it on Schroeder’s post:

That led to this exchange between Schroeder and Eagle:

Which led to this exchange between Schroeder and Theorema:

There was no manipulation of Schroeder’s words. Theorema states, “Yes, I know, the murderer had a profound hate of women and wanted to take revenge on them. They are the important victims. They are the plot. The men just got in his way, like in an action movie the heros will mow down male enemy mooks by the scores without long justification speeches, agonizing or moving death scenes afterwards.” Schroeder responds with, “The reason he was mad at the men, according to himself, was because they got girls and he didn’t. See how girls are at the center of it?” That looks very much like, “Men were killed, but they don’t matter, it was not about them, they were just in the way, no hard feelings, nothing to see here.”

Threatening to ban someone from commenting on the entire site for calling you out on your flawed argument is rather childish. It also shows proves Theorema’s point. Schroeder, and other feminists like her, are more concerned with exploiting the murders to further their political agenda than the facts. They do not care about the victims who do not fit into their narrative. They simply want to present the “all men are bad” trope.

To this point, Schroeder quotes Ariel Chesler who quotes bell hooks who states:

Even though masses of American boys will not commit violent crimes resulting in murder, the truth that no one wants to name is that all boys are being raised to be killers even if they learn to hide the killer within and act as benevolent young patriarchs.

Neither Schroeder or Chesler question that statement. Chesler goes on to add that boys learn to be violent from other men and it gets worse when they hit puberty. Schroeder does not mention it at all until Gary Dietz points out the statement’s absurdity, to which Schroeder states, “I think the quote refers to a system rather than individuals. I DEFINITELY do not think all boys, literally every individual boy, are being raised to be killers.”

Note that Schroeder does not dismiss the idea altogether. She equivocates, claiming that hooks meant a “system” when there is no mention of a “system” in the statement, and then quickly adds the obligatory “I don’t think ALL boys are raised to be killers” despite her article suggests otherwise.

This is what happens when you play politics with serious issues. Instead of addressing the actual problems, you end up putting your head so firmly up your ass that you cannot help but talk shit. And that is all the feminist commentary on this horrific act of violence has been: shit.

They have added nothing to the conversation. They have offered no new insights, no better understandings, no lost truths. They have only used Elliot Rodger’s crimes as a means of attacking men and the men’s right movement. And they have done it at Cheng Yuan Hong, George Chen, Weihan Wang, and Christopher Martinez’s expense.

To feminists like Schroeder, those four men are not as important as Katherine Cooper and Veronika Weiss. They are in the way of her narrative. In many ways, Schroeder’s comments read like Rodger’s manifesto. They read like someone trying to convince herself that her projected anger and envy are justified.

It then comes as no surprise that Schroeder is only one of dozens of feminists–and it is only feminists–writing the same misandrous, delusional screed. Perhaps it is, as she states, “because unstable minds seek each other out for validation.”

Unfortunately, like Rodger, some of those unstable feminist minds act on their perceived slights. They often target the men and boys around, leading the very anger and hatred against women feminists decry.