Feminism

[Nachimir]

No one is "just" a psychopath, they have some complex of motives and habits. Elliot's were fed and enabled by misogynist subcultures, which people seem to have a huge problem seeing and understanding as such, and in turn, people from those subcultures are able to overlook that the was probably a psychopath because he murdered and wrote invective about a type of person they obsessively hate.

 

He probably was a hateful person who would have ended up doing terrible things without that influence, but I think it's significant that of all the places online he could have ended up, PUAHate and a few other alpha moron forums were the closest to home.

[Bjorn]

Scanning the coverage today, it does seem like there is a lot of focus on misogyny, PUAs, MRAs and the toxic attitude that fed whatever other mental illnesses this guy had.  I'm somewhat surprised by the coverage, to be honest.

 

I also scanned the right leaning blogosphere, and it's as disgusting as one would expect.  Blaming women, blaming feminism, blaming liberals, blaming Hollywood, blaming Rodger's dad (he takes artistic nude photos!  The horror!), trying to discredit any piece that mentions misogyny, all sorts of crap.

[Professor Video Games]

On a brighter note, there's a woman on Jeopardy right now who's got a 16-game win streak going for something over $300k so far. Third most all time (both in consecutive wins and dollars) and the winningest woman in Jeopardy history. That belongs in this thread right? Whatever, it's pretty cool!

[Argobot]

http://the-toast.net/2014/05/27/movie-girlfriends-hate-heroism/:

 

LADY: dont go to the big Thing tonight
HERO MAN: i have to
otherwise the guys wont be proud of me
LADY: ill still be proud of you
HERO MAN: lol
no offense but
that doesn’t really count
i already have sex with you i dont really need your respect

[Argobot]

This was pretty good http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/27/your-princess-is-in-another-castle-misogyny-entitlement-and-nerds.html

[Bjorn]

 

Also on the Beast:

 

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/26/santa-barbara-shootings-show-that-hating-women-is-an-ideology-and-killing-people-for-ideological-reasons-is-terrorism.html

 

I'm definitely seeing some backlash on my Facebook about some outlets pushing the mentally ill element of the story, which I think this paragraph sums up nicely why this is problematic:

 

According to his family, Rodger was seeking psychiatric treatment. But to dismiss this as a case of a lone “madman” would be a mistake.

 

Doing so not only stigmatizes the mentally ill—who are much more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it—but glosses over the role that misogyny and gun culture play (and just how foreseeable violence like this is) in a sexist society. After all, while it is unclear what role Rodger’s reportedly poor mental health played in the alleged crime, the role of misogyny is obvious.

[syntheticgerbil]

I guess I just don't understand. He is still admittedly a psychopath but we can't speak of that? The guy should have been committed to a mental hospital and his parents should have tried a little bit harder instead of just his mother anonymously calling the police and then denying it to him. I think that is still an important element to consider. I don't feel like most PUA/incels/MRAs are going to become homicidal, and to use Elliot Rodger as an example that something needs to change will not work on those perpetuating these ideals because those who are involved in this stuff will not like the implication that they will commit murder. Similar to Godwin's law in a way except less nazis.

However I do completely agree with this:

Yeah, I agree completely. That's why I hate that the general public and the media are as obsessed as they seem to be about finding an ultimate cause and leaving it at that. Rodgers might have found some reason to shoot up a university campus no matter what, because he was a very sick and hateful individual, but it doesn't change the fact that PUA/MRA culture was there to give him the reason that he actually did find. Not all ideologies are created equal in the type of worldview they encourage, so it's clearly a smoking gun here, but more attention needs to be paid to how PUA/MRA stuff interacts with mental illness, internet anonymity, and gun culture, because Rodgers stood at the intersection of all those and made a series of decisions that most never do.

There's a lot of bad enablers here and ultimately I would like to see them wiped out, but I still maintain he would have found something that drove him to extreme hate with possible homicide without some kind of psychological intervention. He actually reminds me of Mark David Chapman in that he had fantasies about ruling many little people that he would blow up when he got mad. Something was just as inherently warped about the mind of Elliot Rodger as it was with Chapman.

 

I think until there is some kind of mob mentality to this sort of homicide it just doesn't strike well enough not to be the work of a lone madman.

[Chris]

I, for some goddamn reason, read this guy's "manifesto." I'm pretty convinced the MRA angle of this is a red herring, at least the way it is generally being discussed on blogs and Twitter. I think, more accurately, this guy's internal logic points to the reasons people seek out MRA "communities"—as opposed to the other way around, with MRA communities being the reason that an event like this happens. The internal logic that led to this tragedy had clearly been formulated and reinforcing itself for YEARS before this guy ever found any of those websites. It appears to me that the sites served as an outlet for conclusions he had already reached—which is presumably why those sites exist: because there is a not-insignificant number of people who have convinced themselves of this fucked-up worldview, and they seek out others like them. I don't doubt that there is power in the reinforcing and self-reflecting nature of such communities, but realistically I don't think they created this massacre unto themselves.

What IS very clear reading this guy's writing is that he was, for whatever reason, able to marinate in his own toxic thinking for years and years, with his parents seemingly aware that something was wrong but not knowing exactly what to do about it or how. (His home life sounds less than great, and the reporting that he was a spoiled rich kid is overly simplified. He was, essentially, a spoiled baby, it seems, but by the time he was in middle school and high school he appears to have been socioeconomically below the norm for his unusually affluent surroundings. I haven't seen this brought up much, but I think class is a secondary but significant factor here in addition to sex.)

I've seen a lot of people claiming that this is the result of an MRA worldview rather than mental illness, and we shouldn't try and sweep it away by claiming the latter, but I think it's hard to believe that some degree of mental imbalance wasn't a significant factor here if you actually parse through the events and circumstances of this guy's life, bearing in mind his own bias in the telling. As vile as their thinking is, most MRAs don't do things like this. (Also, when he alluded to his intentions on such sites, the overwhelming response was disapproval, mockery, and attempts at dissuasion.)

I'm not saying any of this to minimize the toxicity and horror of the kind of deep misogyny clearly held by this guy and those who disgustingly approve of his actions. I just feel like the actual causes of this specific event MIGHT be sort of passively misdiagnosed by a lot of people because of larger narrative involved, and misdiagnosis doesn't necessarily lead to beneficial treatment.

[Twig]

So I'd never heard of "incels" before this came up. What the hell is an incel? Urban Dictionary tells me it's someone who is involuntarily celibate - i.e., someone who wants to have sex, but hasn't yet. Is there a reason we're actively grouping that category of people with PUAs and MRAs? I'm obviously missing a whole hell of a lot of context here. Just a quick summary will do, I'm not trying to start a huge discussion about incels or whatever.

[Gormongous]

So I'd never heard of "incels" before this came up. What the hell is an incel? Urban Dictionary tells me it's someone who is involuntarily celibate - i.e., someone who wants to have sex, but hasn't yet. Is there a reason we're actively grouping that category of people with PUAs and MRAs? I'm obviously missing a whole hell of a lot of context here. Just a quick summary will do, I'm not trying to start a huge discussion about incels or whatever.

 

I'm not an expert, thank heavens, but I think the distinction for an "incel" is a man who resents women for denying him sex and affection, but does not see it as part of the systemic oppression of all men (MRA) and does not believe that there are hidden ways to game the system (PUA). It's a more personal identity, but still political because it is so misogynist.

 

I, for some goddamn reason, read this guy's "manifesto." I'm pretty convinced the MRA angle of this is a red herring, at least the way it is generally being discussed on blogs and Twitter. I think, more accurately, this guy's internal logic points to the reasons people seek out MRA "communities"—as opposed to the other way around, with MRA communities being the reason that an event like this happens. The internal logic that led to this tragedy had clearly been formulated and reinforcing itself for YEARS before this guy ever found any of those websites. It appears to me that the sites served as an outlet for conclusions he had already reached—which is presumably why those sites exist: because there is a not-insignificant number of people who have convinced themselves of this fucked-up worldview, and they seek out others like them. I don't doubt that there is power in the reinforcing and self-reflecting nature of such communities, but realistically I don't think they created this massacre unto themselves.

 

...

 

I've seen a lot of people claiming that this is the result of an MRA worldview rather than mental illness, and we shouldn't try and sweep it away by claiming the latter, but I think it's hard to believe that some degree of mental imbalance wasn't a significant factor here if you actually parse through the events and circumstances of this guy's life, bearing in mind his own bias in the telling. As vile as their thinking is, most MRAs don't do things like this. (Also, when he alluded to his intentions on such sites, the overwhelming response was disapproval, mockery, and attempts at dissuasion.)

 

Yeah, that's why I've been trying to focus on a multitude of causes whenever I talk about it with people. MRA/PUA culture didn't cause this shooting any more than Islam caused 9/11, but it's still important that we see how the violent fringes of these ideologies can interact with other factors to create extremely dangerous situations for certain types of people. I cringe a little bit at people who are highlighting the MRA/PUA angle, but for many it looks to be an important object lesson in the potential consequences of tolerating "harmless" misogyny in today's society. It does pose a huge potential threat, albeit only when mixed with something else just as bad, in this case our culture's poor handling of mental health and wellbeing.

 

Also, and this is just an aside, I think there's a desire by many to have the headline be "UCSB shooting by mentally ill misogynist" instead of "UCSB shooting by mentally ill man", if only because, horrifically, the latter has become common enough to the point of being forgettable.

[syntheticgerbil]

I, for some goddamn reason, read this guy's "manifesto."

Wow, I could only stomach about 15 random pages around the end and checking a collection of his forum posts. That's astounding.

But thank you, I was sort of trying to say the same but you said it billion times better out and more comprehensible. Writing is hard. :/

[Chris]

One thing I should clarify about my thinking on this is that I DO absolutely think there are really terrible cultural forces that perpetuate misogyny and result in many of this guy's views and assumptions. But he was clearly also delusional in significant additional ways.

[Twig]

I'm not an expert, thank heavens, but I think the distinction for an "incel" is a man who resents women for denying him sex and affection, but does not see it as part of the systemic oppression of all men (MRA) and does not believe that there are hidden ways to game the system (PUA). It's a more personal identity, but still political because it is so misogynist.

Aha, gotcha. Thanks.

[Argobot]

One thing I should clarify about my thinking on this is that I DO absolutely think there are really terrible cultural forces that perpetuate misogyny and result in many of this guy's views and assumptions. But he was clearly also delusional in significant additional ways.

 

Yes, but those other delusions are all traceable to the generally toxic attitudes that our culture imbues in young men. I would say that the feelings of sexual inadequacy, financial inadequacy, and maybe even some of the mental issues all stem from the pressure that men are under to behave a certain way. It's all from the same source. I, however, do think it's really important to remember that these MRA communities probably didn't give him the tools to act this way, as you already said.

[Chris]

Yes, but those other delusions are all traceable to the generally toxic attitudes that our culture imbues in young men. I would say that the feelings of sexual inadequacy, financial inadequacy, and maybe even some of the mental issues all stem from the pressure that men are under to behave a certain way. It's all from the same source. I, however, do think it's really important to remember that these MRA communities probably didn't give him the tools to act this way, as you already said.

Yeah, I mean I do agree with that. But I do also really think there must have been reasons in this particular case that those attitudes affected this person so incredibly deeply. He describes friendships with other men who had similar perceived problems with women he did, including the person who was his best friend for most of his life but became increasingly estranged from him due to the clearly terrifying intensity of his frustration and hatred. It's hard for me not to believe that in addition to his reaction to these social forces and worldview he constructed, he had additional mental imbalances that are probably not specific to those things, but served as a vector that allowed them to culminate in an act of extreme violence.

[Bjorn]

I guess I just don't understand. He is still admittedly a psychopath but we can't speak of that? The guy should have been committed to a mental hospital and his parents should have tried a little bit harder instead of just his mother anonymously calling the police and then denying it to him. I think that is still an important element to consider. I don't feel like most PUA/incels/MRAs are going to become homicidal, and to use Elliot Rodger as an example that something needs to change will not work on those perpetuating these ideals because those who are involved in this stuff will not like the implication that they will commit murder. Similar to Godwin's law in a way except less nazis.

 

I'll see if I can get the gist of what I'm seeing out of some of my friends on Facebook.  The umbrella term "mental illness" is used entirely too much to lump together what is in fact a hugely divergent set of illnesses.  Addiction is a kind of mental illness.  Imagine if we were used to seeing headlines that said, "Mentally ill man kills family of five in car crash" while the reality is "Drunk driver kills family of five in car crash".  Or if a drug addict stabs someone to rob them, "Mentally ill man stabs local clerk in robbery".  We don't use the umbrella term when we have more accurate and obvious terms.  The problem is that we don't necessarily know what's wrong with someone like Rodgers.  Misogynist, sure.  Delusions of persecution?  Likely.  Sociopath?  Maybe?  And since we don't have a specific term, we just say "mental illness."  Which is a really poor way to discuss something like this. 

 

Mental illness is as likely to be used to describe someone with depression as it to be used to describe a cult leader as it is used to describe a serial killer.  It is functionally meaningless because of how it is used, but furthers the stigma of mental illness in this country.  Which is already tragically stigmatized in the first place.  We need specificity, but often lack both the proper knowledge or terminology.

 

As for MRAs...I believe that these are dangerous groups composed of at least a percentage of dangerous people and that real harm comes to people because of them.  Some of them pursue and harass women they believe are false rape accusers, publishing their personal details online and encouraging others to harass them.  At one point A Voice for Men maintained a wiki with a list of hundreds of supposed false rape accusers (thankfully it appears to have been scrubbed since the last time I looked at it).  As for PUAs, multiple of the "guides" in fact promote strategies that can lead to sexual assault and rape, like not taking no for an answer, isolating a woman from her friends and using aggressive physical contact, to some extent engineered to make a woman feel unsafe saying no.  Kickstarter had to institute a ban financing PUA books and apologize after it was revealed that the previous writings of one author were essentially advocating sexual assault.  But he still got his money as the campaign had already finalized.  We have examples of other harm coming out of these communities.  Rodgers may be an extreme case, but he is not isolated. 

 

Absolutely Rodgers himself is a complex stew of influences that we will likely never fully understand, and we should not mischaracterize him as being the poster child for how screwed up MRA/PUA culture is.  But I fully support using this incident to take a harder look at the MRA/PUA communities, their toxicity and their systemic enabling of violence against women. 

 

Edited to add: Actually, it's not just the MRA/PUA stuff.  As Argobot said, it's the greater culture surrounding young men, sex and entitlement.  The MRA/PUA are just a really extreme, visible extension of that culture.  And that culture needs to have more attention paid to it. 

[Chris]

Absolutely Rodgers himself is a complex stew of influences that we will likely never fully understand, and we should not mischaracterize it as being the poster child for how screwed up MRA/PUA culture is.  But I fully support using this incident to take a harder look at the MRA/PUA communities, their toxicity and their systemic enabling of violence against women.

Yes, I do agree with this. And your point about generalizing "mental illness" is well taken. I obviously don't know the full extent of what actually afflicted this guy. I just don't think most of the rest of the people trying to formulate explanations do either.

[Argobot]

Yeah, I mean I do agree with that. But I do also really think there must have been reasons in this particular case that those attitudes affected this person so incredibly deeply. He describes friendships with other men who had similar perceived problems with women he did, including the person who was his best friend for most of his life but became increasingly estranged from him due to the clearly terrifying intensity of his frustration and hatred. It's hard for me not to believe that in addition to his reaction to these social forces and worldview he constructed, he had additional mental imbalances that are probably not specific to those things, but served as a vector that allowed them to culminate in an act of extreme violence.

 That's fair. It definitely was the result of a lot of horrible factors. Sadly, plenty of men are fully capable of acting violently (albeit on a smaller scale) in the absence of a severe mental disorder.

[syntheticgerbil]

Mental illness is as likely to be used to describe someone with depression as it to be used to describe a cult leader as it is used to describe a serial killer.  It is functionally meaningless because of how it is used, but furthers the stigma of mental illness in this country.  Which is already tragically stigmatized in the first place.  We need specificity, but often lack both the proper knowledge or terminology.

But I think it's only generalized in cases where we don't know what's wrong with someone. I don't see how that is incorrect or contributes to a stigma against all mental illness. I would further venture that many societies in general know enough about mental illnesses to not confuse one with the other. Most people know someone who has been diagnosed with depression for instance and I am very sure almost no one would think that causes general concern for homicide or that someone with depression should be locked up.

 

Don't get me wrong, there have been bad attitudes towards the mentally ill in the past, but we have definitely come a long way. I will concede the stigma is still there, especially because I have a diagnosis for a mental illness and take meds everyday and I refuse to tell almost anyone about it because I don't want that to change their perception of me. I believe the stigma comes from "normal" people who don't want to deal with someone who is unstable or comes with baggage rather than someone who is possibly violent or homicidal.

 

I do agree social norms within certain groups can certainly lead to violence just as well, but it usually tends to be more of a movement of masses than one extreme individual. Like lynch mobs for instance, like this one horrid event: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_of_Jesse_Washington (This is extremely gruesome, please don't click if sensitive to extreme acts of violence)

 

With that in mind, for sure those who are into this culture of misogyny should have an eye kept on them (and convinced to change) especially if it leads to massive amounts of violence, but I still maintain it won't be helped at this point with this incident as an example.

[Chris]

That's fair. It definitely was the result of a lot of horrible factors. Sadly, plenty of men are fully capable of acting violently (albeit on a smaller scale) in the absence of a severe mental disorder.

Yes definitely.

ALSO I just realized I did the classic internet discussion thing of getting sidetracked on a sub point and then losing the actual thin I meant to say in the first place.

Which is this: mental illness completely disregarded, the actual main thing I originally intended to communicate is that I think the MRA stuff this guy was into is a MANIFESTATION of the social forces you brought up in a previous post, rather than the CAUSE of this event. The stated motive of this event, as well as the MRA participation, are BOTH sad results of the more fundamental factors, rather than the event resulting from MRA websites or the codification of a specific MRA ideology. That's what I meant to try and say in my first post in general, not as a reply to any one person.

[Bjorn]

Yes definitely.

ALSO I just realized I did the classic internet discussion thing of getting sidetracked on a sub point and then losing the actual thin I meant to say in the first place.

Which is this: mental illness completely disregarded, the actual main thing I originally intended to communicate is that I think the MRA stuff this guy was into is a MANIFESTATION of the social forces you brought up in a previous post, rather than the CAUSE of this event. The stated motive of this event, as well as the MRA participation, are BOTH sad results of the more fundamental factors, rather than the event resulting from MRA websites or the codification of a specific MRA ideology. That's what I meant to try and say in my first post in general, not as a reply to any one person.

 

I fully agree with that, and by and large I think that's probably true of many of the men who identify as MRAs (that they do not become misogynists because they found an MRA site, they found an MRA site because they are already a misogynist). 

 

But I think it's only generalized in cases where we don't know what's wrong with someone. I don't see how that is incorrect or contributes to a stigma against all mental illness. I would further venture that many societies in general know enough about mental illnesses to not confuse one with the other. Most people know someone who has been diagnosed with depression for instance and I am very sure almost no one would think that causes general concern for homicide or that someone with depression should be locked up.

 

Don't get me wrong, there have been bad attitudes towards the mentally ill in the past, but we have definitely come a long way. I will concede the stigma is still there, especially because I have a diagnosis for a mental illness and take meds everyday and I refuse to tell almost anyone about it because I don't want that to change their perception of me. I believe the stigma comes from "normal" people who don't want to deal with someone who is unstable or comes with baggage rather than someone who is possibly violent or homicidal.

 

Honestly, talking about mental health is pretty far afield from anything that I am particularly well versed in. But what I was saying is mostly summarizing the thoughts of friends whose opinion and experiences I respect and can sympathize with, and their logic makes sense to me.

[Nachimir]

Chris, Argobot and Bjorn have said most things better than I could, but:

 

But I think it's only generalized in cases where we don't know what's wrong with someone. I don't see how that is incorrect or contributes to a stigma against all mental illness. I would further venture that many societies in general know enough about mental illnesses to not confuse one with the other.

 

[…]

 

Don't get me wrong, there have been bad attitudes towards the mentally ill in the past, but we have definitely come a long way.

 

Things are not as progressive as you think, Synth. Yes, the DSM is revised periodically, and a lot of prejudice and poor understandings have been excised from it. However, "It's only generalised in cases where we don't know what's wrong with somebody" is itself a terrible generalisation. Many named disorders are very poorly understood, even in diagnostic settings, and in turn sensationalised by media. Where there is an understanding, it can be extremely difficult to propagate that outside of that professional context. Schizophrenia is a really good example. I've also known people with extremely complicated sleep disorders that (so far) defy diagnosis and treatment.

 

I would really like for there to be an understanding of mental illness on as broad a spectrum as physical illness. I think there is such a thing as very mild mental illness that just gets fixed by regression to the mean, but we call it "being a bit stressed" or "being bummed out for a few days". The label "mentally ill" still implies a degree of severity to many people though, and as such is a still something media uses to sensationalise. When it comes to physical illness, we usually have or are capable of a fairly accurate assessment of risks. I think mental illness in others is still an incredibly vague blob of anxieties for most people.

[Merus]

I hate to bring this up, but if we're going to have a run-up at why Rodgers (a name that will never stick in my head) did what he did, some attention needs to be paid to how much more common shootings are in the US compared to any other developed country. Plenty of other countries have MRAs, have spoiled entitled rich kids, have poor handling of mental illness, have guns reasonably available. At this point, violent rampages are almost part of American culture, and that's a horrifying scenario that you can't really revert.

[Empty]

i've seen quite a lot of 'you shouldn't focus on mental illness as it stigmatizes people who already have enough issues', at least on twitter, but i'm not sure if i agree with it. prime facie, yes, you absolutely want to avoid people correlating mental illness which is common and an ordeal with you being a dangerous out of control nutter. that's very unfair and otherizes people with them in a cruel, unhelpful way. these are also extraordinary events, though clearly not nearly as extraordinary as you'd hope, and it's sometimes dangerous to try and relate them to more quotidian life.

 

now i'm not really knowledgeable enough to make expert judgments but after reading the reports and manifesto i've been thinking a lot about it to try and process how you get to that stage, and i think there's stuff to be learned from this case that can increase understanding of mental illness and empathy towards those with them. i think people struggle to see mental illness as a real problem because the idea of someones brain working against them and undermining them and robbing them or the ability of make rational choices constantly is alien to their experiences and just what our understanding culturally is of a person, yet reading about rodgers you can really see how his brain just completely fucked him over constantly and led him to dangerous, self-destructive, irrational takeways from events in ordinary life. such an extreme example somehow makes this easier and clearer to process than the more banal experiences i'm used to. i also think there's a sense that mental illness is untouchable and there's nothing you can do, which can make people distant and evade talking about it. yet i feel like the way he was completely isolated and trapped in his horrible thought patters, his inferiority yet also superiority, his anger, his jealousy, for years really fueled him and made real problems absolutely toxic and ultimately fatal. i don't think this means other people are bad people for not being friends with him, but to me the takeaway from the manifesto was to try and be more cognizant of friends that seem isolated and distant and pay more attention to what's going on with the people around me. rodgers was probably too much of a mess to live a normal happy life even with optimal treatment, but i think a meaningful human connection at the right time could at least have prevented this tragic outcome, so i'm going to try and remember that in how i relate to those around me with mental illness or symptoms of them, being there to help prevent them from getting worse.

[Problem Machine]

Regarding the MRA/PUA stuff, my concern at this point, now that a fleshlight has been shown on these subcultures, is that people are going to drill down on them as The Problem rather than a symptom of the problem. Misogyny, gender expectations, virgin-shaming, etc, may be values that are exemplified by these groups, but they weren't founded there, and are really just extreme examples of omnipresent social pressures.

 

I worry that, now that this is starting to get acknowledged by the news outlets, the understanding is going to be "THIS IS WHAT MISOGYNY LOOKS LIKE", making it even more difficult to understand the extent to which it defines our society, far beyond the bounds of any particular subculture. This is pretty close to the popular misconception of racism, where racists are Bad Guys, obvious villains, and are motivated entirely by hate, granting onlookers license to ignore the more minor instances of racism that pervade the narrative of our culture.