Canary’s note: My executive editor wanted to write this week, so I gave him the space usually reserved for my column:
“I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them.”
This is the line that national media are attributing to Elliot Rodger, who recently wrote a manifesto expressing his anger at this world—and women, specifically—then killed multiple people as he exploded across Isla Vista.
Comments from national opinion makers and everyday citizens alike have dissected the late Rodger’s words, actions, and motives, putting the blame for the six deaths at his hand on the killer’s mental health, on the assessment and treatment system that failed him, on not enough gun control, on too much gun control, on parenting failures.
But go back and read that first line again.
There’s no question he was lonely, but based on what I’ve read, Rodger believed that women owed him. He was a man, he made an effort, he put himself out there, and—like a student who studies and expects an A, or an athlete who hustles with an eye for the gold trophy—his reward was to be sex. Maybe a relationship. Perhaps love?
None of these, however, is guaranteed in life. But Rodger believed them to be. He was a man, and he wanted a woman. Her particular identity didn’t matter. Name? Hair color? Body type?
Does it matter whether your trophy is on a stand or has two handles on either side? Does it matter if your “A+” is written in red or blue ink at the top of your essay?
Women were no longer humans to Rodger; they were a goal. The female gender needed to surrender just one of its own to him as the prize for his longing. He deserved pleasure from them.
And when he didn’t get it, he killed.
Yes, the authorities have told us that he killed women and men. Each death was unnecessary and terrible and tragic. Other reports have indicated that he was furious when in the presence of happy couples. At this point, I’d imagine, other men were seen as rivals who took away prizes that could have been his. They stood in the way of his ambition. I’m speculating, but with violence of this level, what else can I do? What else can any of us do?
All accounts I’ve seen state that Rodger’s initial plan was to enter a sorority—a home based on sisterhood, and a physical space devoted (at least on paper) to the exclusion of men—and indiscriminately kill any female who came into his sights. Those few would take the punishment for each individual woman who rejected him, knowingly or not. Because, to Rodger, women were interchangeable.
Reports indicate that when his plan was frustrated by a door that wouldn’t open, his rage broadened. Reality fractured further, and the killing sprayed into the community at large.
Read that first sentence again.
“I was giving the female gender one last chance to provide me with the pleasures I deserved from them.”
What if the outcome were different after that one last chance? What if Rodger had become a hermit? What if Rodger had killed himself, alone, in his room?
What if someone else said it?
What if someone else has said it? Or thought it?
Rodger may be in a very small minority in how he acted out his frustrations, but he isn’t in how he sees women.
Plenty of men feel that they deserve pleasures from the female gender. They feel they’re owed a night in bed or a few minutes in the bathroom. They’re men, after all, and they believe that women are here on this Earth to be, well, whatever they want them to be. Need something to grind your pelvis into on the dance floor? Pick one of the many interchangeable females enjoying the beat. Tired of porn (and don’t get me started on that) and your own hand night after night? Find someone with a pulse to make you feel good.
She’s not a person, an individual with goals, dreams, hopes, hangups, etc., of her own.
She’s a conquest.
She’s a prize.
She’s a woman.
On the whole, men who don’t get what they feel they’re owed don’t stab their roommates and then rampage through the streets. But they do rape. They get angry, they yell, they even turn violent when she won’t do exactly what I hoped, wanted, expected, essentially “paid” her to do.
This is not a mental health problem, or a gun problem, or an any sort of problem besides a cultural problem, in that our society has no problem telling women to protect themselves at the best of times and to not “invite” an attack by “dressing wrong” or “leading a man on” at the worst of times.
And this same society tells men … what? That if you work hard, be the nice guy, be persistent, say the right things, buy flowers, buy a diamond, listen, make the effort, you’ll get the girl.
You will get her. She will be your reward, you proud sons, because your faithful adherence to being a man earns you access to a pair of breasts and a vulva for your amusement.
When women speak up about the fear they face, this same society responds by cracking jokes, telling them to stay in the kitchen and make sandwiches. This same society produces a court system that says a rap song naming women victims involved in a sexual assault case, the same song that talks of snitches winding up dead, is protected, in part because it rhymes. This same society pretends that Rodger was alone in how he thought about women.
Executive Editor Ryan Miller thanks the Canary for the space this week. Send comments to rmiller@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in May 29 – Jun 5, 2014.