Our (communal property) is in another Castle.
Misogynist entitlement, sociopathy, disconnection, delusion, arrested development, and pure fantasy collided last week in an angry unleashing of bullet holes and stab wounds. It left six men and women dead. It left grief, and anger, and hatred, and loss. I won't use the killers name. You know him. I won't link to his "manifesto." You can find it yourself.
Now the pundits who get paid to speak come out of the wood work with their agendas and talking points - and so many narratives come out in response. One that keeps being repeated, and repeatedly shot down, is that this just maybe, maybe, might have had something to do with the caustic undercurrent of misogynist tropes and fueled expectations that exist in our culture?
But no! It couldn't be. So we are told by experts on TV and a good many editorial writers. There were men killed as well! This wasn't misogyny! This wasn't even an offshoot of Rape Culture. This act wasn't born from a culture of entitlement and expectation. It wasn't a hate crime
The guy was just ill, an autistic Sociopath! He has a label, end of story. Oh, and he had guns! Guns + mental illness! Oh, he also drove a BMW? Guns + illness + affluenza! Oh, some girl laughed at him once? Guns + illness + affluenze + he was bullied! That's why he did it - and it was mostly due to the guns! Because those objects just picked themselves up, and along with their cousins the knives, went out for a fucking stroll around town.
But it most definitely wasn't due to any misogyny! I mean it's not like he wrote a thick book or made some cringe worthy films explaining it all in his very own words or anything...
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Explain it to us in your own words!
Doesn't matter, we still won't fucking get it. |
The chorus has it! Generalized ingrained misogyny and sexist culture of entitlement isn't in any way behind this.
I mean, what are you chicks talking about with your hashtag activism and candle light vigils? You're over thinking his actions. There aren't that many societal
narratives that embrace violence against, conquering of, and control of
women. There isn't some narrative that repeatedly portrays women as objects to be chased after, possessed, and won! And then damns them if they don't give in to the hero.
And anyways, even if there
was (and there isn't!) not all men are part of it! We're the good guys! We will show you how good by taking over the narrative of your experiences! So let's now focus on how
good some of us are. Because any conversation about your experiences with misogyny and violence great and small or how this man might have been influenced by the acceptance and diminishment of these experiences, needs to focus on us the Good Guys who are totally NOT misogynist and definitely not patronizing and completely missing the fucking point about other people sharing their experiences. It's not about you.
Look, dear reader, better writers than I have said this often enough. Most men are in fact decent people and by now, in 2014, this can be taken as fucking implicit in most conversations about Mysogynists and Rape culture. Think of it like the assumption that not all people are rasicist when talking about the racist shit that the Racists do! When someone is talking about their encounter with a skin head who threatened to beat them up do you interject yourself in the conversation and say "Yeah, well, I'M NOT RACIST!"
If you do this you might want to pause for a second here, drink your tea, and then stare out the window. Thoughtfully.
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| ... I think I should be a better Human. |
Now, if someone is saying that all whites are racist skinheads or all men are misogynists, then that's different. Feel free to correct their closed minded ass and engage in loud angry conversations that will likely change no ones mind about anything but could make you feel slightly better.
So yes. For the last time. There are good guys and good gals, and good people. They are everywhere. But the point is, they are often the silent majority. Hint: the key to understanding how insidious misogynistic behavior is to society is the "silent" part of "silent majority". In other words speak the fuck up when it happens or hold your piece about being a good guy.
The existence of good people doesn't change the fact that a murderer is now being held up as a martyr by rather disturbed factions of the Red Pill, "friend-zone," and PUA swallowing members of society. He has Facebook fan-boy pages devoted to him. Twitter heads and gamers are extolling his virtues and debating on what he did wrong.
Spoiler, what he did wrong according to some in these groups isn't the whole killing people bit.
What he did wrong was in his choice of weaponry. Or that he shouldn't have killed the guys. Or that he should have targeted a place with more easily accessible women and less security. Or he should have waited till summer was in full swing and targeted ONLY the "slutty girls" wearing next to nothing. Yes, I know that these are the extremes. There are also men who are saying that they know what he went through to lead him to such actions. Who are still complaining about how women never want to fuck them. How they have tried everything to "get" or "win" this or that girl and fuck her friend-zoning ass, she just won't see how "glorious" they are and put out.
Are some of these comments pure anon trolling? Sure. Of course. It's the fucking internet. But remember that the people he interacted with on boards and in games thought that he was the troll in their midst.
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| Tough call. Let's see who he kills. |
And now there are people - both men and women alike - who are having serious conversations where they say "It's tragic and all, but what if only a women had ...." Those same types of people are also harassing the girl he mentioned in his manifesto. Telling her that IT'S HER FRIGID CUNT FAULT that people are dead.
What the fuck? So essentially you, me, your mother, your daughter, should just have sex with any asshole that wants it in case he should go on a killing spree if he is denied. And it's our fault if he goes mental.
The fact that this girl was 10 years old when the gunman fixated on her since childhood is beside the point. Hell, the fact that putting that sort of blame on another human being for not allowing the use of their body is just sick.
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| Not creepy at all! |
There are men who deem it their God Given Right to get a good fucking whenever and with whoever they want. Men who quite often also deign themselves to be too "good" to pay for that sex if they want it. It's a crown, to be taken, like a king! Not a commodity, to be purchased, like a commoner! I swear, we have such a warped view of sex.
Equally glorified, vilified, stigmatized, and desired. I can't help but wonder what it's like in some alternate universe where sex is an act that's simply acted out between adults. It's not put on some pedestal as sacred or dirty. Women and men can sell it or give it away. They can enjoy it or not partake but the core fact is they are free to do with their sex what they want.
That shouldn't be an alternate universe.
But back to the asshole. His rampage wasn't really about sex now was it? Not sex as in a union of consensual adults. Not sex as in a pleasurable and shared experience. Not sex as in a way to fulfill bodily needs or a desire for intimacy. Maybe it started as such but it became something mutated, delusional, and grotesque.
No. It's NEVER about sex in these cases.
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This image is probably NSFW.
And that's what's wrong right fucking there... But i digress. |
It's about control and living your life so deep inside your own warped self that you end up believing that the world owes you everything by virtue of you being born. It's about a person, a male person, who thought himself better than every other person around him.
"Why can't they see how Glorious I am?"
What is the solution? Is it banning guns? How about banning movies or games? Forced institutionalization of the mentally ill? Is it about unleashing the PC thought and action police to monitor our every word and behavior in case we set off some complex algorithm of red flags?
Fucked if I know but maybe, just maybe, the starting point should be realizing that all of us have drank from a kool-aid mix that's destructive and damning. All of us have absorbed the narrative.
Women and men alike. And let me be clear in one thing, misogyny can not exist without misandry. Neither can exist without some deeply warped beliefs about "the other." Hatred is hatred and fuels hatred. But misogyny is pervasive in our culture to the point of influencing everyone's behaviors and expectations. It's a corrupted view of women's agency. It is Toxic Masculinity personified.
No, I’m not saying most frustrated nerdy guys are rapists or
potential rapists. I’m certainly not saying they’re all potential mass
murderers. I’m not saying that most lonely men who put women up on
pedestals will turn on them with hostility and rage once they get
frustrated enough.
But I have known nerdy male stalkers, and, yes, nerdy male rapists. I’ve known situations where I knew something
was going on but didn’t say anything—because I didn’t want to stick my
neck out, because some vile part of me thought that this kind of thing
was “normal,” because, in other words, I was a coward and I had the
privilege of ignoring the problem. - Arthur Chu
But the narrative we've created is that the men expect to rescue the princess and get rewarded for their acts of valor, and the women expect to be the rescued princess, to be the reward for prince charming. This simple myth, this Disney trope, this misplaced Hero worship, this Fantasy building block, this bullshit lazy story line is so deeply ingrained in our media, in our activities, in our way of being and interacting within a sexual dynamic ... That i wonder if it's even possible to move forward from it?
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| We should ALL be this. |
But we aren't plot devices in movies and video games. We are not protagonists. Or heroes. Or even deserving of a happy fucking ending. We are simply individuals living our lives. Each and every single one of us.
Maybe we should start with facing that simple, every day reality in our own actions and assumptions about ourselves and others.
Neither you, nor I, deserve anything.
Further Analysis and Commentary:
- Lonely outcast, obsessed with status (this one actually annoys me but is a good run down of the events. Look, he was an outcast yeah. Of his own design. His own making. And he was obsessed with status in order to gain, what he felt, were his just rewards.)
