So, today I was doing my semi-annual tumblr scroll - a far cry from the days when I used to be the typical "tumblr all day err' day" kinda teen - and noticed a lot of super feministy posts to which my response was obviously WOO FEMINISM but as I scrolled further and further down my dashboard I realised where these posts had been initiated from. They started, mainly, after the news came of the killing of six students at UC Santa Barbara by a student, who for media want of brevity has predominantly been described as a rich virgin kid who failed to get what he wanted and sought to payback "blonde sluts" for their rejection of him. Since I am a serious fan of psychopaths and their minds, for the last few days I have been reading his "141-page manifesto", a phrase used in almost every media outlet, which according to various sites is quite simply a tirade against all the many females who made this young man, Elliot Rodgers, feel undesirable (oh, hello there).
At this point, I am really sorry to say, I had a moment of 'woah feminism, hold up', because, in some cases, I just was not with these girls at all. One thing that irked me was that a male had said to one of these tumblr people that they were using a serious violent crime to support their argument, which yes was quite obviously was what was happening, but I personally, having read what I had of his life story (45 pages in) could see so many more reasons than male entitlement to his feelings towards women. These girls, advertising themselves as feminists, made clear that a feeling that he was owed ownership over a woman was what drove him to such a violent act. But I disagree. Elliot Rodgers' actions were a simple case of the bullied becoming the bully. We see it all the time in school playgrounds, but as children age and grow into teenagers and then adults, it's saddening to say that those pent up feelings, contained for so long can release themselves as violent bursts of rage. That is exactly what the world has seen in Elliot Rodgers' crime.
That is not to say that there was no misogyny in his words. He was an angry boy, and it seems as if all of that anger was directed towards women, starting from his imposing stepmother Soumaya and continuing on to the girls in his college until his murder of two females there. Interesting that, actually: he killed more males than he did women. So even though we, as a society, have concluded that he was a woman-hater and he was a misogynist who wanted to see women crushed, it clearly is not totally true. Elliot Rodgers also wanted to kill males, males that he perceived as better than him, perhaps. I do not know enough about his roommates and the other males he killed to say that for definite, but from what I have read about Elliot, he had rage towards the males around him who were (in particular) taller than him, and generally who were more physically fit and able-bodied than him. Understandably, Rodgers felt hard-done-by by the universe. It's a feeling that we all feel at some point; how come this other person can get something brilliant that I cannot just by nature? Why do I have this illness whilst other people can stay healthy? Why, even, am I not born the gender I feel? Rodgers question to the universe, quite simply, was - as a child - "Why am I worse at sports than all these other boys even though I try twice as hard?" And then as puberty hit and sexual realisation occurred, the question grew into "Why do these mean boys get the girls that I love when I am nothing but cordial to them?" These are both perfectly acceptable questions, and I am certain that other males around the world ask this exact same question.
So, what we as a society should be asking ourselves is "Why did Elliot Rodgers feel as if he was owed these things?" We, as feminists, cannot simply blame this boy and say that he felt entitlement to the female body. Because as much as we may want to believe that it is a trait of the general male population that we should just blame them for, we cannot; it is our problem too. Both genders have instigated this by the simple expectations of males. The larger problem at hand is the characterisation of the male gender and what happens when a few outliers secede from this by nature. When Rodgers was young, he notes in his "manifesto", he would cry when he felt jealous. From a young age, boys in our culture are taught to not cry or show any emotion except pure rage. Young Elliot would have been told to stop crying and to grow up and perhaps even to "be a man". He was unable to engage in sports like football and basketball and later he found that he was unable to participate in the sexual conquests that perhaps his peers could. From earliest childhood, Rodgers failed to display the traits that he was expected to as a male and the consequent bullying he received due to this created the problems that escalated to the situation at hand.
So as we talk about the case of Elliot Rodgers, I urge you all to see a human, a boy who had gone through incredible pain through his life because he could not live up to his society's vision of a male, not just an example of male entitlement. Perhaps, if he lived in a less masculinised society, if he had had a less American ideal to live up to (that is not to say we should blame solely American culture, but the sort of women that he singled out in his writing show that he was predominantly attracted to the often unachievable and unattainable Hollywood archetypal woman, and also that he wanted to look like the cool, white, blonde kids he saw at a young age) perhaps then, Elliot Rodgers would be fine right now. Maybe if he had grown up in Portland, where his whole city wanted to be kept weird, or if he hadn't had the social pressures of movie industry families and excessive wealth surrounding him from a young age, or if he had learnt to accept himself as an outsider, this crime would have never happened. I truly believe that, had Rodgers waited it out a little longer, he would have found someone perfect for him. As far as I have seen, he was not an unattractive boy but rather a boy who had been taught all his life to live up to a certain ideal and to funnel his emotions into rage instead of creativity, a toxic concoction of life experience that led up to this painful mass murder. I am not saying that what he did was not wrong, but I do feel sorry for him. He is yet another product of a society that remains unwilling to accept deviations from the norm and a long-standing need to fit in. He was not a monster, just a boy who could not see the worth in himself and went from blaming himself for his lack of worth to blaming others. If only he had spent a minute in my life, I think he would see that the world was not that bad.
Rest in peace, Elliot Rodgers, may your soul find its long-awaited solace.
Disclaimer: I wish for all those he killed to also find their solace, but have not mentioned them because this piece is not about them. They were jerked away from their world with a violent tug and it is awful to think that it is simply because someone could externalise their self-hatred to such an extent that it took the life of others. Yet another anti-gun argument. If Rodgers still lived in England, likely he could only stab a few people who would have live to see today, as in the stabbing at that Pennsylvania high school where twenty people were stabbed and all are expected to survive. America, your right to bear arms is hurting your own children and if you do not see this and want to make a change, I cannot understand how selfish you are being.
