Last week, a violent lunatic killed four men and two women at UC Santa Barbara. This week, we learned the reason: misogyny exists.
Before I get started, you need to read Ameena Schelling’s take on this:
In the wake of the Isla Vista shooting, there’s been a massive push to turn the reported shooter, Elliott Rodger, into a poster boy for the evils of misogyny. A number of columnists have jumped on the bandwagon, penning spiels about how Rodger was spurred to murder by his profound hatred of women, and picking particularly violent passages from the semi-delusional 140-page autobiography he left behind to prove their point. Readers have jumped on board with the confusingly unrelated hashtag #YesAllWomen.
But Rodger wasn’t a murderer because he was a misogynist; he was a murderer — and a misogynist — because he was seriously mentally ill.
Read the whole thing. This guy was a problem waiting to happen.
So, then. What is #YesAllWomen, and what does it have to do with this madman’s rampage? It seems to have started off as a legitimate effort to find some sort of meaning in such insanity. But now it’s largely an excuse for unhappy women to whine about bad dates, being stared at by men they find unattractive, etc. All that stuff stinks, don’t get me wrong, but I don’t really see what it has to do with college kids being murdered by a psycho who went off his meds.
Which inspired me to note this:
If your response to the murder of four men and two women is to whine about your own life with a #YesAllWomen hashtag, #YouMightBeALiberal.
— Jim Treacher (@jtLOL) May 29, 2014
And then a bunch of people yelled at me, etc. It’s Thursday.
Misogyny didn’t kill those people. It was a big part of his disjointed, narcissistic ravings, but it didn’t kill anybody. He did. Because he was crazy.
And I’m guessing that the same people who think misogyny killed those people would wail and gnash their teeth if you said “Islam caused [fill in particular act of violent behavior here].” Hell, even big ol’ racists like Yours Truly don’t say Islam causes people to do bad things. It does give Islamic terrorists a hell of an excuse — “Allah told me to” — but they’re responsible for their behavior.
(NOTE: This is the precise reason I started the #NotAllMuslims hashtag. When I point out that an act of terror is committed by Islamic terrorists, inevitably I’m accused of saying all Muslims are terrorists. Well, of course they’re not, stupid. So #NotAllMuslims is my futile attempt to answer such dimwitted criticism up front. You can believe that most Muslims are good people without ignoring that an act of terror is committed by Muslim terrorists.)
Crazy people do crazy things because they’re crazy. It’s not caused by misogyny. It’s not caused by violent video games. It’s not caused by dungarees and rock ‘n’ roll music. It’s people doing what they’ve always done: killing other people. Our instinct is to look for answers. Sometimes there just aren’t any.
I’m sorry if you don’t feel safe walking to your car at night. I’m sorry that rapists exist. I’m sorry that some men hate women. I’m sorry that bad things happen to good people. And I’m glad that Andrew Dice Clay went away.
But this miserable bastard’s killing spree has no effect on your rights as a woman whatsoever.
Okay, go ahead and yell at me.
Update: Remembering the young men killed in the UCSB rampage.
Update: The Ten Most Asinine Things About #YesAllWomen. It’s written by a woman, so if you criticize it, you’re a misogynist.