The Other McCain

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Trigger Warning: Violence, Scapegoating, Misogyny and a Creepy Little Weirdo

Posted on | May 25, 2014 | 53 Comments

The Mass Murder Blame Game:

Elliot Rodger, Gunman in California Mass Shooting,
was influenced by the “Men’s Rights Movement”
— Will McLeod, Daily Kos

UCSB Shooter Elliot Rodger Posted
Racist Messages on ‘Puahate’ Website
— Matt Willstein, Mediaite

The Pick-Up Artist Community’s Predictable,
Horrible Response to a Mass Murder
— Amanda Hess, Slate

Elliot Rodger’s California shooting
spree: further proof that misogyny kills
— Jessica Valenti, Guardian (UK)

It is apparently very important to some people that the blame for Elliot Rodger’s crimes be generalized so that the murders in Isla Vista are not the sole responsibility of the Creepy Little Weirdo who perpetrated them, but rather are fitted seamlessly into the “War on Women” narrative that helped Obama win re-election in 2012.

Having stayed awake until 4 a.m. reading Elliot Rodger’s bizarre 141-page “manifesto,” however, I recognize his collectivist worldview, his envious obsession with “fairness” and especially his narcissistic sense of entitlement as typical of left-wing Millennials.

Yet there was nothing genuinely political — neither liberal nor conservative, neither Republican nor Democrat — about his twisted hatred: Crazy is not a political philosophy.

Nor can the NRA be blamed, as Andy at AOSHQ explains:

Love this L.A. Times headline: 7 dead in drive-by shootings near UC Santa Barbara
Of course one of the 7 was the assailant himself, and 3 of the 7 were stabbed, not shot. But other than that, it’s a faithful representation of what happened.
Twitchy has a nice rundown on 3 myths about this incident plus one more that are already running rampant. . . .
Like always, the left would love to tell you that passing one more perfect law would solve this, but they can’t because of that damned NRA. Out in the real world, it’s hard to see how anything they openly claim to want would’ve made a difference here. Of course, what they really want is a complete gun ban but they don’t have the balls to say it.

Leaving aside the predictable anti-gun rhetoric, however, let’s focus on the claim that Elliot Rodger was influenced by the “Men’s Rights Movement” or “pickup artists” (PUAs) or “misogyny” and ergo — to make the logical leap that the Left would have you make — we must embrace feminism, vote Democrat and fight the patriarchy.

This is a non sequitur: “Men’s Rights,” a movement chiefly concerned with the misfortunes suffered by men in divorce battles, is not a partisan cause; certainly the womanizing ways of “pickup artists” are contrary to the social conservatism of the Religious Right; and it is an extreme stretch to say that Elliot Rodger’s profoundly personal resentment of women can be generalized as a focus of feminist politics. The Creepy Little Weirdo was a minority of one, and if there are others like him out there . . . well, lock ’em up in the loony bin before it’s too late, I say.

Donald Douglas at American Power continues pushing back against the feminist narrative of Elliot Rodger’s crime, but what is fascinating is how the Creepy Little Weirdo’s rant mirrors and mimics feminism’s critique of heteronormative patriarchy. “Feminism’s War Against Nature,” as I have described it, shares Rodger’s hostility toward the normal patterns of female sexual behavior, e.g., the way in which women seek to make themselves “sex objects,” to attract the interest of traditionally masculine men — tall, muscular, assertive — whose high social status is largely a function of their successful dominant qualities.

 

Like so many radical feminists — Mary Daly, Andrea Dworkin, Dee Graham, Janice Raymond, et al. — Elliot Rodger was ill-suited to participate in that competition and, as a disgruntled spectator, he resented the winners in the Game of Love. He was short, skinny and socially awkward, and he hated romantically successful men just as much as he hated the women who rejected him. His attitude was very much like the fat, ugly and/or un-feminine women whose jargon-laden intellectual critiques of “patriarchy” are transparently a sour-grapes rationalization of their own unfortunate circumstances.

Here’s a clue: Go read the Creepy Little Weirdo’s “manifesto” and see if you find even one mention of feminism. (Hint: It’s not there.)

Whatever anyone may say of Elliot Rodger’s “misogyny,” he never articulated any opposition to feminism, per se. True, he viewed women strictly as sex objects, but in 141 pages of his rant, he never criticizes any feminist policy, never name-checks any feminist author, never manifests any awareness of feminist theory. Abortion rights? The “pay gap”? Nope, he never said a word about any of that.

What we do find in the Creepy Little Weirdo’s rant, however, is a phenomenon common among feminists, i.e., he’s crazy as hell. But don’t take my word for it. Page 128 of his “manifesto”:

To my extreme rage, I discovered that my sister now had a boyfriend, and that she had lost her virginity. She had casually “dated” boys in the past, but never to the serious extent that she did with this one. . . . He seemed like the typical obnoxious slob that most young girls are sexually attracted to. . . .
I eventually grew to hate him after I heard him having sex with my sister. I arrived at the house one day, my mother being at work, and heard the sounds of Samuel plunging his penis into my sister’s vagina through her closed room door, along with my sister’s moans. I stood there and listened to it all. . . . It reminded me of how pathetic I was, that at the age of twenty-two, I was still a virgin.

Creeptastic!

In a way, it’s too bad Elliot Rodger never paid attention to feminists. They had so much in common: “PIV is always rape, OK?”

“If you consider sexual desire and romantic love between men and women to be natural and healthy, you are not a feminist.”
— Robert Stacy McCain





 

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Category: Crime, Feminism

Comments

53 Responses to “Trigger Warning: Violence, Scapegoating, Misogyny and a Creepy Little Weirdo”

  1. A Tale of Two Tragedies | The Fog of Law
    May 28th, 2014 @ 2:14 am

    […] that paints Rodger as a victim: writers and commenters rallied around their new standard-bearer, a young man who wrote a hundred-fifty page manifesto about how his ill treatment at the hands of women made him want revenge upon hot sorority girls. In […]

  2. Conniption Fitz
    May 28th, 2014 @ 4:14 pm

    Rodger had been diagnosed with Aspbergers as a child. He had never been mentally ‘right’.
    The combination of family dysfunction, dissolution, lack of positive guidance, a steady diet of sicko, violent media and possibly psychotropic drugs was the problem. Rodger was an Adam Lanza repeat.

  3. James Allen
    May 29th, 2014 @ 12:08 am

    Whoa, whoa, whoa. Liberal culture caused the shootings? Sure, he was apparently a TheYoungTurks subscriber, but I’d say that accusation’s a bit far-fetched (at least more so than liberals claiming he would’ve killed less people if no one in America had guns). This is a problem I’m having with both liberals and conservatives right now – they defend any accusations the other side lobs on them, but for some reason they feel like they have to retaliate by implying the other side was responsible, no matter how toxic their claims sound.
    And about that article…I’m not so sure about the whole comparison between Rodger and feminism. I mean, some feminists are pretty crazy, but only some. And calling them too fat and ugly to form relationships the “normal” way is a ludicrous way to dismiss their beliefs, anyway. It doesn’t make the fact that he viewed women as objects to be acquired magically disappear. Neither does the fact that he never seemed to research feminism – I’m pretty sure he never mentions feminism because he was in a little bubble where feminism never existed, not because he wouldn’t disagree with feminists.
    I don’t think the claim that because h
    Also, you can’t just assume every article on Slate carefully crafted to advance some liberal agenda. If pickup artists aren’t conservative, then she probably wasn’t intending to attack conservatives in the first place. Sure, their connections to Men’s Rights were probably stupid, but I’m pretty sure they never intended to pick a fight with conservatives in general as well.