BY EMILY MALONE
(Photo: Derek Bridges via flickr)
Trigger warning: violence against women.
Late Friday night in California, Elliot Rodger, 22, shot dead six people, wounded a further 13, then turned his gun on himself.
Publications around the world were quick to report that Rodger was mentally ill. He was diagnosed with high-functioning Aspergers as a child, and his family confirmed that he was receiving psychiatric support.
What many media outlets neglected was that this man’s actions stemmed from a noxious culture of entitlement and misogyny. The silence of this one sentence excuses his actions as the result of a deranged, troubled young man, instead of addressing the deep-rooted societal problems of male privilege.
Upon breaking the story, Santa Barbara County Sheriff, Bill Brown, called the shooting “the work of a madman”, highlighting the shortcomings of the American mental-healthcare system.
Major news sources headlined their coverage by saying that Rodger killed out of “sexual frustration” or because he felt “spurned in love”. Other sources turned towards America’s gun culture to blame.
However, the manifesto and online footprint which Rodger left behind leaves little doubt about his motives. He stated that “[women] forced me to suffer all my life, now I will make you all suffer…I’ll give you exactly what you deserve, all of you.
His involvement with many websites and YouTube channels run by Men’s Rights Activists and anti-Pick Up Artists were arenas where Rodger virulently expressed his hatred for women and denounced them for not sleeping with him.
There has been an outpouring of anger on Twitter, with a reported 1.2 million tweets using the hashtag #YesAllWomen by Monday afternoon. The hashtag responds to the internet meme ‘not all men’ which is a humorous trope of the idea that sexist behaviour is only exhibited by a minority of men.
Women from around the world shared their experiences of everyday misogyny, which evoked a powerful online discussion.
I’ve spent 19 yrs teaching my daughter how not to be raped. How long have you spent teaching your son not to rape? #yesallwomen
— Deanna Raybourn (@deannaraybourn) May 24, 2014
Because every single woman I know has a story about a man feeling entitled to access to her body. Every. Single. One. #YesAllWomen — Emily (@emilyhughes) May 24, 2014
Because I shouldn’t have to wonder how posting my experiences to #YesAllWomen will affect my job. And it will.
— Amber Naslund (@AmberCadabra) May 25, 2014
Because we teach girls to dress decent instead of teaching boys to act decent. #YesAllWomen — Laurène (@LaurneOrozco) May 25, 2014
Because a lot of you are reading these and thinking “ugh yeah, we get it. Calm down.” #YesAllWomen
— Christine Nangle (@nanglish) May 25, 2014
Clementine Ford has written an insightful piece that draws attention to the media’s lack of discussion around misogyny in the face of Rodger’s hate-crimes. Similarly, Ruby Hamad points towards the hypocrisy between Saturday’s shooting in Brussels being declared “anti-Jewish” terrorism, whilst the Santa Barbara incident is dismissed as the actions of a damaged, alienated man.
The silence of misogyny protects its predators and shames its victims. We, as a society, need to stand up to this in order to stop the rampant justification of a culture of gender inequality.
I definitely agree with you that misogyny is one of the biggest factors in Rodger’s killing spree and has lacked the necessary media attention and education. Social media seems to be a way in which members of the public can pick up on what the media is not reporting and voice those concerns themselves. This is similar to the #BringBackOurGirls twitter campaign, which resulted in more media attention on the kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls. However, at the same time, I think mental illness and gun control laws are also incredibly important factors in this case and cannot be disregarded. I think all three factors, misogyny, mental illness and gun control laws, require attention, discussion and education.